Labour has published what amounts to a pre-manifesto, a 24 page document called Let’s Get Britain’s Future Back. Hours, blood sweat and tears will have been shed coming up with this title. I am willing to bet that there was some debate about whether the word ‘Great’ should have appeared somewhere. Let’s Get Great Britain’s Future Back or perhaps Let’s Get Britain’s Great Future Back. Clearly that discussion didn’t go anywhere. We don’t want MAGA overtones. As a pre-manifesto the document deserves some scrutiny, I am guessing that we are now too close to the general election for Starmer to launch a document with his signature on it which will be shoved onto the shelf like his many previous slippery and cynical non commitments. We are also entering a period when as has been widely reported, Labour shadow ministers and their teams will be given the customary access to civil servants to discuss their plans. This means that we should hear less of the old excuse ‘we need to see the books’ which people like Rachel Reeves (and her many predecessors of all persuasions) hide behind when they refuse to talk about what is financially possible). The Great Leader proclaims in LGBFB that ‘his’ Labour Party has changed under his leadership so it is fair to ask what has changed. One of the very first policies that caught my eye was a cast iron, no holds barred commitment to keeping our nuclear ‘deterrent.’ I highlight this first because that commitment is immediately followed by a promise to hold a strategic defence review. Talk about putting the atomic cart before the horse, but this is the ghost of New Old Labour, with its craven obeisance to some conservative notion of patriotism and national dignity. Some may have noticed this week the story that the Royal Navy has withdrawn three ships for want of crews. Well, our enemies will have picked up on that. Anyway, the glass is half full. Here’s a picture of Our Beloved Leader in his borrowed kit. Or is it borrowed? Is it proper NATO or TK Maxx? Proper service personnel by the way wear hats when they’re in uniform, I really object to this pathetic dog whistle signalling which can’t quite cut it (yes, I was told off once for not wearing a hat. It hurts). I think the prominence given to the nuclear deterrent is simply to show how Labour has ‘changed’ since Corbyn’s day—even though JC didn’t junk the policy. Theresa May said she would have no compunction pressing the button. JC was iffy. Starmer would hit it with a sledgehammer (if given permission by the White House). Man of Action! And what a break with the past = real change! But that’s just one policy which just happens to be a bugbear of the left, and should not be allowed to prejudice our take on the whole LGBFB document. Here’s some of the things I like: Abolishing non-dom status for the super rich, potentially generating £3 billion. According to LGBFB this £3 billion will pay for a great many of the promises made in the document. Cutting tax breaks for private schools—which it is said will pay for investment in schools. Creating a national energy company to corral investment in new green energy - fine so far as it goes, but co-incidentally the £28 billion figure (absent in the document) for green investment is just the sum the nuclear industry thinks it needs to develop its new modular nuclear reactors. The document recommits to the NHS principle of ’free at the point of need’ but that’s not to say that structures within the NHS won’t continue to be privatised. No mention of this or how it will be controlled. At the core of everything of course is the economy, and here we have a solution fit for the age, ’securonomics’ which sounds like it’s straight out of a policy wonk’s doodle pad. How will everyone benefit from securonomics? The proposals in LGBFB are fine in themselves—more powers to the Office for Budget Responsibility, an Office for Value for Money, a clampdown on cronyism in public contracts, cutting consultants but most importantly setting a ’fiscal lock’ to temper any outlandish tax and spend proposals—which sounds like maintaining austerity– or having ’tough fiscal rules’ as the document puts it. Given the crises we face, LGBFB doesn’t present a vision for lasting change, but merely tempers some of the worst aspects of Toryism. In so much as it does that, if implemented it could provide some temporary relief for ordinary people. But its core message is don’t rock the boat. Don’t mention the equality gap, don’t mention the urgency of climate change or the radical response that demands, don’t mention the botched deregulation of the City. Steady as she goes! To have credibility as a government in waiting it is important not to challenge very much. Perhaps I’m wrong. When Rachel Reeves was in Davos last week, I am sure she was mercilessly challenging the business execs all the time.
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+Attacks on merchant shipping seem to be with us all the time. It’s not a particularly modern development of course, remembering the likes of Sir Francis Drake and the glory days of state tolerated or for that matter state sponsored piracy. But these days it’s just bad ‘uns, like Putin and now the Houthis of Yemen who get up to these criminal acts. They should, it goes without saying be stopped, and anti-drone or missile weaponry should be deployed. But since it costs a lot more to shoot a drone down than it does to launch it, the tactic now is to strike at the launch sites. One wonders what the Saudis have been doing in Yemen all these years with their Western supplied armoury. Kier Starmer has naturally gone along with the new line of attack after being briefed by the PM—and this appears to be in defiance of one of his leadership pledges to consult Parliament prior to any military action. Now it seems that pledge only applied if there were going to be ‘boots on the ground.’ Another sleight of the hand from the U-turn King. But perhaps he is not yet aware that these days military action relies a lot less on ‘boots on the ground?’ Perhaps in future more use will be made of the phrase ‘special military operation.’ We’ll see how long this particular piece of string gets.
+I am ambivalent about the new law now coming into effect which grants UK voting rights to all expats no matter how long they have resided abroad and regardless of whether they never intend to return. Having dual citizenship myself I am conflicted since I could if I wished freely enjoy the rights afforded to a citizen of another country—in this case Canada. Perhaps the only reason I don’t is because it's thousands of miles away. It was assumed many years ago when the Tories introduced voting rights for expats that it was purely for partisan advantage, in that Tory supporting criminals living on the Costa del Crime would all take up the opportunity to vote for their fellow n’er do wells in Westminster. But post-Brexit I think the ground has shifted. Brexit has screwed up the easy going life of many expats. I wonder if more of them had voted remain we could have avoided the whole bloody disaster. +I am breaking a vow, which was never to refer to the awful rightwing gobshite Lee Anderson, the MP for Ashfield in this blog. A Labour Party member up until 2018 he was appointed a Vice Chairman of the Tory Party but has now resigned that position in order to ‘toughen up’ the government’s immigration (Rwanda) Bill. Anderson is one of an increasing number of very unpleasant populists and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he doesn’t jump ship again, this time to the Reform Party. Electoral Calculus predicts he’ll lose his seat to Labour. It also suggests Reform is one per cent ahead of the Tories in his seat. Reform makes a natural home for gobshites, so it’s a fair bet he’ll be off. People do say the stupidest things (except me of course). Some survey or other reported in the Daily Express (the Mother of people who say the stupidest things) showed that London is the slowest city to get around –about 37 minutes to go 6 miles—which in my experience is true. But the Tory Mayoral candidate had this to say:
‘Ms Hall, the Tory London mayoral candidate, said: "This is the consequence of Sadiq Khan's war on motorists, which has gridlocked our roads and made London the worst city in the world to drive in.’ Clearly Ms Hall hasn’t been to Dhaka, but one wonders how fewer cars on the roads leads to ’gridlock.’ She also says it’s the worst city in the world ’to drive in.’ This suggests that she doesn’t use buses which along with the Tube is how most people in London get about. So today I am nominating Ms Hall as the first fully fledged Numpty of the Year. I wonder how many more there will be? The Great British Post Office Scandal has taken the media by storm following an ITV drama about how Postmasters/Mistresses were in their hundreds convicted of fraud, when in fact a flawed new computer system called Horizon was introduced to (mis)manage their local accounts. All of a sudden Post Office branch accounts went into the red, and the prosecutions started. Now every MP in the land is jumping up and down demanding answers, compensation and blanket reversals of convictions. Which is all very well, but since the scandal was well known for many years how did it take so long to get to this point? It’s been 15 or so years in the making—right back to the time when I was an MP before 2010. Did I get any local correspondence about this? I really can’t remember, and I had developed friendly relationships with local Sub-Postmasters in various campaigns, not least to save their businesses threatened by ‘modernisation’ and ‘rationalisation.’ Anyway, there’s now a big blame game going on, and on the obverse a self credit game of MPs’ trying to exculpate themselves by ordering their caseworkers to see if they ever wrote on behalf of a constituent to a minister on the subject.
Who was the first MP to take up the Sub Postmasters/Mistresses cause in the House of Commons? It takes a lot of digging to find out, and it turns out to be someone whom the establishment of all political persuasions would have preferred to have disappeared without trace (that’s s hint). Here’s what the MP said: ‘in view of the fact that over 20,000 sub-postmasters in shops receive as remuneration only £20 to £40 a year for working a day of twelve hours, without a meal hour, and that many of them are compelled out of this sum to pay for assistance if they desire to absent themselves for a single evening, whether he [the Postmaster General] will take steps, without at present reopening the general question of postal employees’ grievances, to make some improvement in the cases cited.’ Yes, not today’s case, but a parliamentary question dating from February, 1908 asked by one Victor Grayson, the Socialist member for Colne Valley. Perhaps he should be made the parliamentary patron saint of Sub Postmasters/Mistresses. (Quotation in Victor Grayson: In Search of Britain’s Lost Revolutionary, Harry Taylor, Pluto Press, 2021 p. 107) Well Grayson did disappear without trace, although he left behind quite a story (which I’m still reading). I think we could do with a few Graysons now. +Elections, elections. Getting some coverage today is the Tory Party’s choice of candidate to replace Peter Bone, the now disgraced ex-MP for Wellingborough. And the candidate is . . . . his current partner! Talk about Bone Idol! Beyond that, I feel there’s little more to say, although I am bound to wonder where Bone’s oft-cited ex-wife will put her cross and if her pencil will break in the process.
+The world’s eighth most populous country has just had an election, but it’s not important enough to get much attention here. Bangladesh has re-elected Sheikh Hasina for her fifth term. I met her in 2009 after her first victory, and can only ponder on how little things have changed. Bangladesh, since its creation has been in the grip of two families, the other, now seemingly eviscerated were the Zia’s. It used to be the case that you knew who was in control when you saw their family name on Dhaka’s international airport terminal. +It’s the first of January as I start writing this and a major piece of news has hit the airwaves, viz, the original image of Mickey Mouse is no longer copyrighted having passed its 70-year protection. But what, you may wonder has this got to do with the downfall of our current model of capitalism? (In this blog I get to ask the questions.) I’ve been struggling for some time with the oft-bandied phrase ‘late capitalism,’ almost as if the beast has entered its death throes. Personally I don’t think the gorgon is anywhere near dead, but then I bought (half-price at Waterstones) Yanis Varoufakis’s latest book Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism. It’s a good title which is not borne out by its contents. I will now attempt to figure out what the liberation of Mickey Mouse has to do with any of this.
I think Varoufakis has nailed a new trend very accurately—this is the ‘techno feudalism’ part, which is to say the new cyber magnates who control Google et al have amassed immense new technologies and economic powers which make of us poor humans mere feudal vassals. They gather information on us all with our willing connivance, and that information—freely given—then becomes ‘cloud capital.’ This info-capital is a highly lucrative commodity, and increasingly influences the choices we make and the very way we make them. The tentacles of cloud capital spread far and wide, and traditional capitalist ventures will increasingly be submissive to the new monster. Want to sell without Amazon? Try your luck. Want a suggestion for a birthday present? Ask Bing. Let’s not even mention the spies in the house, Alexa or Siri. Let’s not even mention Tesla cars, which monitor your every move and have built-in technologies to stop you using unauthorised (cheaper) servicers. It is Varoufakis’s argument, if I understand it correctly that cloud capitalism is draining away the power or perhaps the dominance of received capitalism. That may be so, but I don’t think it as the book title suggests will ‘kill capitalism.’ It may just have a bigger hand in shaping it. In other words, we are not witnessing ‘late’ capitalism, unless of course the c-word is to be purely and only defined in the rip-roaring Victorian sense. And just as that form of capitalism flourished as an essential component of the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century, cloud capitalism is a variant borne of the techno/cyber revolution of the last 20 or so years. Varoufakis makes much of the Cloud—but seems to accept some of the hype. In reality the Cloud is no more than a collection of physical temperature controlled servers distributed in such a way as to access regular energy supplies. The Cloud cannot escape the constraints of the planet, and consequently could be forced to obey, (parochially, where that anonymous server shed sits) whatever the local regime dictates (should it take the option). Talk of a Cloud suggests we are dealing with an amorphous unaccountable and even untraceable entity. Not so. Those evil algorithms can’t operate without machines humming away, consuming shedloads of electricity. This is one place where legislators could look to exercise control over the Cloud. And what of Mickey Mouse (not forgetting Minnie)? If you are so minded you can now use without penalty the original images of this pair. Disney can’t stop you. But they would if they could. What stops them is the law. The law that protected their ownership no longer does so. I’m sure Disney would prefer it otherwise, but this is a simple demonstration of the power of the law over a massive (and Cloud headed) corporation. If patent and copyright laws didn’t exist, the Cloud would be desiccated beyond repair as its proprietors struggled to hang on to their intellectual property, which after all is all they have. If we don’t like the Cloud we should look to changing a few laws. The Cloud as Varoufakis clearly demonstrates poses many risks, but the trouble is not everyone agrees. Ask Google (ha!) ‘How many Alexas have been sold?’ and back comes the answer—100 million. How many people have iPhones? 1 in 8 of the world’s entire population. Oh, and what of ‘late’ capitalism? I think it's better to think in terms of Capitalism Mk.1, Mk. 2, Mk. 3 etc, etc. We may be heading for Mk.4 or 5 depending on your definitions. +A thought for the new year: I’ve now been a member of the Labour Party for 40 years. My message to anyone thinking of leaving is: the party always outlives its leaders. Perhaps that’s not much of an encouragement but it’s nevertheless true. As of today, the website Electoral Calculus suggests the outcome of the next UK general election to be Labour on 459 seats, Tories on 120 and the rest hardly anywhere to be seen (no consolation for the Greens who stay on one - if they're lucky). This prediction is based on a round-up of all the latest opinion polls and hasn't really changed all that much for over a year. It's not necessarily good news for Starmer - if he did win a massive majority it wouldn't be long before he discovered that a new opposition would be energised on his own backbenches as the official opposition sank into a crisis of confidence and irrelevance. Hopefully new Labour MPs, many of whom may have small majorities in 'blue wall' seats will be impatient to see results quickly. From what I've heard, Labour doesn't seem to have anything in mind which would deliver that. Quick wins doesn't seem to be the message emanating from the Starmer/Reeves camp. More a message of 'just bear with us.' Inspirational stuff.
One Labour big wig, talking on Sky News has suggested that it's no parliamentary secret that the election will probably be in May, allowing the Tories to benefit from a Budget rebound, with tax cuts a plenty. It is my prediction that Sunak will continue until October. Why throw away power six months early? What else will happen in 2024? Surely, it will be the year of our first AI disaster. I am not sufficiently techy to say what sort of disaster, but I bet there's a 50/50 chance there'll be some bad actors behind it. Climate change will follow its inexorable course to - and past - irreversible tipping points. There is a lot of new technology which could ameliorate how badly and how fast things deteriorate, but following all the talk and pledges made at COP meetings, CO2 emissions have continued to rise. The immediate future, i.e. before significant sea level rise occurs will see impacts in agriculture and refugees. Both of these factors will lead to more protectionism and another rather large wound in the teetering globalisation model. R.I.P. Israel seems intent on continuing it's genocidal war on Gaza (and the West Bank for that matter) for many months into the new year, with a very present danger of an escalating conflict. This is excellent news - for arms manufacturers - along with with no end in sight in Ukraine either. Somebody needs to develop a human enmity off switch. But it now seems that the right to self-defence means that if somebody comes at you with a knife you can respond with an UZI machine gun. I wonder how this doctrine would go down in an English court? Come on Keir, tell us! So the only thing we can be relatively hopeful of in 2024 is seeing the back of the Tories, with a hope, (not too slender I hope) that Labour will improve things. Somehow achieving that of course without challenging the hegemony of the City. On the election front, what happens in the States may be more significant but at the moment it is too close to call. A heart attack could settle the outcome. +A few tech issues have crept up on me, like the failure of my hard drive. It's certainly one way of learning more about computers as one trawls through various searches for fixes and explores one's BIOS. Since my laptop was a few years old I guess its time had come. I gather this was to be expected. I'm now using another device which means a slightly limited freedom in what I can post here - until I learn how do things differently.
+I was going to post a picture of Starmer in camoflage gear posing on manoeuvres in Estonia, with two officers who were both wearing face paint. Starmer looked even more inauthentic with his white face, as if to say to snipers 'Here I am! Shoot me! Starmer follows in the footsteps of Thatcher and Heseltine in revelling in camoflage gear, as if that enhanced their steely qualities. But he needs to do a bit more if he wants a veteran's badge. +I was in the Hague last week and paid a visit to the wonderful Mauritshuis gallery, where a temporary exhibition called 'Loot' was on, about stolen art. Two designers behind the show prepared some virtual reality stuff. They are quoted saying 'At one point during our tour of the [museum's] depot, we were taking reference pictures of the space with our phones, and noticed that these masks triggered our phones' facial recognition feature. Each face we looked at would light up our phones' screen with these little digital rectangles as the algorithm searched though our camera roll to see if we knew these people. There was something funny and eerie about it. Like, do you know Frederick the Great? Have you hung out with Beethoven before?' I would add the word 'sinister' to errie and funny. The potential for identity theft, coupled with the oncoming horrors of AI will mean many faces will be electronically 'looted.' Smooth talking PM Rishi Sunak is in Italy talking to neo-fascists about his wonderful methods for dealing with illegal immigrants. It should be heartening news for right-wingers, since they’re often told that the right, and particularly the hard right are best placed to deal with the problem, not least by packing a few hundred ‘illegals’ off to Rwanda (or in Italy’s case to Albania), all at a huge cost (quarter of a billion so far in the UK’s case without a single deportation). The irony here is that Sunak was telling his fellow nutters that his government this year had already reduced the numbers by one third, through working with foreign law enforcement agencies. It would seem in this regard that, dare I say it, Keir Starmer is right, since he says Labour’s approach is to beef up that approach. Sunak is clearly using Rwanda as a very expensive propaganda tool, a tool plucked from the Tories’ cultural wars armoury. Perhaps he’ll call a general election just as soon as he can get a picture into the Daily Mail of at least one deportee on board a plane to Rwanda. He could go to the airport himself to wave them off, perhaps holding up in the air their deportation paper. That would make a good photo.
The title of today’s blog is copied from the subject line of an email I received today from the Guardian. It sounds like the Guardian has turned into a charity with responsibility for the entire globe. Not just any charity of course, but a very precious charity with a noble history of uncompromising honesty and fair dealing. Their appeal this time round (the words ‘support us’ are delivered about once a week) proclaims:
So far this year, we have published more than 6,000 articles about the environment which have been read more than half a billion times. You recently heard from George Monbiot, Jonathan Watts and Natalie Hanman, writing about many of the pressing issues facing our living planet today and how we report on them. If you have enjoyed our journalism and value it as much as we hope you do, then please take a moment to consider supporting us so that we can keep our reporting open to all. All this writing! All this reading! But when you get the chance to support a politician who might seriously do something about it, you stick a hot poker up their arse (sorry for the vulgarity, my writing is not informed by Guardian writers’ guidelines). The Guardian is not about change, it’s about a form of journalistic voyeurism which translates into a) give me a byline and b) how much per column inch? The opinion writers are the worst, although to his credit Monbiot has stuck his neck out a few times and even Polly Toynbee temped a bit in the low waged economy. But it’s all a form of cushioned ’activism’ and so when their corporate paymasters decide it’s time to call time on a politician who threatens their model, the model wins. No, Guardian, the planet doesn’t need you urgently. One is entitled to ask, on behalf of the planet, what happened as a result of your 6,000 articles? Editorial note and faux apology: The author of this blog is very cynical and we hope no offence has been given. But after all, when they say ’we hope you have enjoyed our journalism’ it rather gives the game away. |
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