The State of Greed

The arrogance of politicians goes on.

Is this ever going to change? Both sides of the house are at it if Channel 4 are to be believed and the camera, as they say, never lies.

Some people say this is about their pay implying that they don't get enough. I don't actually care what they get paid, but it's relative. They have no right to complain when they vote for pay rises that are ten times what they begrudgingly offer people in jobs like nursing. What is it that has bred this culture; this notion that being a politician, which should be an honourable role, isn't enough or that it's a means to a lucrative end?

Serving the community and society should be a privilege. But in this country it seems that it has ever been the sole refuge of the privileged. We have career politicians who place themselves in line for a peerage so they can see out their time in the Lords, unaccountable and unelected. They claim that being a Member of Parliament demands a lot of their time, which is quite likely, and then find the time to take up positions on boards 'advising'. This means they use their position and the connections made to gain advantage in return for cash. 

This is only going to change if we do away with a financial system that breeds this kind of thinking; that creates the career of politician that erodes the position of public service. We could start by shutting down the Lords including all the vastly subsidised services within (the wine cellars and fine dining). We don't need a second chamber and to claim it holds the Commons in check is a nonsense given that government stuffs the Lords full of supporters anyway. If a bill needs proper scrutiny then give it scrutiny. But that would require politicians to attend and anyone looking at a picture of the disgustingly dismal government turnout during the WOW petition debate will realise how corrupt it is. What is more important a discussion than that? When even the minister responsible can't be arsed to attend something is deeply wrong.

We would also need to dismantle the systems of privilege throughout society. This is not just about the abused expenses system which is something that's easily fixed really. It's about the private institutions that cover our legislators in money in return for whatever. It's about the schools that the elite and only the elite attend that are breeding grounds for subsequent candidates for the high ranking positions in our society. We might have a few 'commoners' that make it into Parliament but few of them are ever likely to become PM compared to the Eton Mess that rule our society.

We must break the back of this system. Britain seems unique in mixing capitalism with aristocracy. This is a toxic mix that leads to this bizarre worship of big business and the veneration of the 'entrepreneur' class. This in turn gives us such phenomena as Dragons Den wherein a number of wealthy people sit in a warehouse surrounded by their money lauding their success and fighting over the hopes and dreams of the bedraggled and be-suited wannabes that apply in the hopes they will receive the blessing of at least one of these 'dragons'. Why do we worship these people when we do nothing to support creativity or art or culture?

The modern world has become the playground of the rich to the point of absurdity. We have powerful institutions that exist to protect the interests of big business who routinely whine that schools should exist solely to train people in shelf stacking or till operation (rather than train people themselves). Where is the institution calling for schools to provide knowledge for the sake of learning, art appreciation, understanding of music, philosophy, etc. Public services are a football to be used to generate disdain in the public mind as a precursor to inevitable privatisation: a highly short termist approach benefiting the few at the expense of everyone else. Like the privatisation of the Royal Mail.

Sooner or later this house of cards will crash. Ultimately it will be technology that forces a change. Maybe we will actually create nanotechnology and move into a post scarcity economy. Or maybe cheap energy will take the burden. Or maybe we will all have Star Trek replicators. Or maybe financial systems that gamble on food and resources will plunge their owners and those who play them into darkness, crashing into society like an asteroid into the planet. Who knows when that kind of change will happen.

Or it could be sooner: ultimately I believe 'we the people' still have the power. The problem is there isn't the will for the masses to come together. That's why we need the unions to call a general strike. Unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon. 

Somehow the frustration in society will find an exit; pressure will force it to explode and when it does it will be ugly. Ukip supporters may not like the protrayal of race riots in the 100 Days fiction, but that is where we are most realistically headed. Someone will snap, something will give, and again the politicians will have blood on their hands.

Business As Usual

I couldn't sleep (as usual - at least late night radio is somewhat interesting) and on the radio was Labour's latest proposal: double the duration for paid paternity leave to 4 weeks. Innocuous enough, you might think, but of course the voice of Big Business would not be silent. The BBC (for it was they) were ready with a quote from tedious toad faced free market apologist Mark Littlewood (he's another non entity from another capitalist think tank). His cry of wolf was that the cost would have to be passed on to someone somewhere, either cutting the workforce or dumping on to the consumer. This is despite Labour qualifying the idea explaining that it is paid centrally, from government.

Well so fucking what? Going along with Capital's straw man, as set out by Littlewood, if your profit has to take a hit in order to meet the needs of a human being in your employ: so what? It's an extra two weeks, this is not gonig to be something that happens 365 days a year for all time for everyone. 

Oh but won't someone please think of the profit line? Why? Profit is supposed to be that which a business makes on top of its costs. Turnover minus costs = profit; isn't that correct? So why is profit so important. As far as I can tell it's so you can ultimately sell your business in an act of loyalty - the kind you demand from your workfroce - so you can spend your days sitting pretty in the sun. No social good at all. 

Someone will claim that, through this convoluted nonsense, people's pensions are funded. But that is only because that's the way the market has been rigged. That's how the rich and powerful that run capitalist societies (like HSBC for instance - who will doubtless get away with their tax evasion crimes) stack the deck. In ohter words, it doesn't have to be that way and thus it is unfair to deflect valid criticism accordingly.

The only argument left is the special pleading from small business. The problem here is that, yes, a case can be made in favour of small business in such cases; it's an easy example to make because it sets up capital as the underdog. The reality is that these entities, while they might technically be businesses, are really no different than the people I'm defending: the workers, the poor, those who do not have the capacity or the resource to fight their corner in the market (never mind the rigged market that is capitalism). To regard Mr Smith who runs the Local Business Shop as a fully paid up member of UK PLC - as someone who has a voice among the ruling classes or any real authority - is a mistake. He is no better off and suffers the same economic and systemic depredations as the working man in the labour market. Just because he runs a Local Business Shop is immaterial.

So clearly the message is: if you're working class, you shouldn't breed.

Explaining Problems

I spoke to the Clinician again, complete waste of time of course. She's not going to change her mind and I can't say I'm surprised. So either I speak to the Patient Advisory Liaison Service which will be no more effective in persuading her to change her mind, but it's what she's duty bound to recommend, or I go back to the GP and ask for a second test. 

How that will happen I don't know. She is a member of the only local service (other than private services that of course won't be cheap - nor anything close) and previously said that a second opinion was out of the question because she had discussed it with her colleagues and they'd all decided. Naturally.

So I will have to go back to the GP, which I will be doing in two weeks. I'm not remotely confident, they don't understand these issues at all. The fundamental problem with these sorts of issues (let's call them mental health problems, it's so much easier) is that they are very personal. An individual grows up with his mind the way it is, particularly in the case of issues such as Aspergers and the like. However your brain is wired, it forms the way your experience of life is shaped. That means you don't know any different and you don't know, necessarily, whether what you experience is problematic because you have no basis for comparison. So you go through life struggling - a bit like a blind person bumping into things they can't see. 

It's only as an adult, or t least with the wisdom of years, that you start to think "hang on, other people aren't experiencing things the way I do. No one else seems to find life such a struggle intrinsically". (That is, there are people who do struggle, obviously, way more than I, but those struggles are born of specific conditions, usually imposed - benefit sanction for instance.) So you start to examine and learn what might be the cause, even if your studies are not informed by proper knowledge of the field.

However translating those experiences into a clear soundbite for a GP or a clinician, or even a Work Programme god botherer, is difficult - particularly when you have to penetrate the prejudices of such people. So you find yourself banging your head against people who have been conditioned, particularly in respect of the unemployed, to downplay these problems. Nevertheless the reality remains and the individual struggles.

Until mental health provision can adequately deal with these difficulties it cannot even begin to provide help. When you further impose cultural values (ie "get a job, that will cure you") and do not actively hear what the patient is trying to tell you. Or when you have a diagnostic process that can't deal with adults and doesn't make an effort to tease the full scope of the patent's difficulties you aren't going to get anywhere. I don't think the testing process did either of those things: a picture book of flying frogs maybe a recognised tool (I’m not suggesting the clinician was a quack), but it's no good for adults for example, especially when there is no provision on  hand for dealing with adults who cannot provide an objective life experience to be cross referenced. My life experience is my own, it's in my head; it's not separate from me.