It's not /that/ you did it. It's that you won't even admit that it was wrong...

am I the only person who couldn't care less about MP's expenses? The only realistic response is to increase their salaries and decrease their expenses. The use of expenses has always been understood, for anyone who cared to look, as a way of topping up an incommensurately low salary.

2 hours ago · 

yeah god how could they survive on just the £65k (parliament.uk) they earn as a base rate, a mere £40k more than the average british citizen (statistics.gov.uk) and a mere £60k more than the average human(success-and-culture.net - from a World Bank report)?

I didn't care at first but nigh on every one of the ***** has failed to pay anything back. In fact the one's who didn't quit have just given themselves a pay rise while cutting, capping or scrapping across the rest of government expenditure. GB, DC and all the other big names came out to condemn the situation roundly while doing nothing, and now the four nominated scapegoats are claiming parliamentary privilege. 

"The protection of privilege applies only to proceedings in Parliament." (justice.gov.uk). While it is ultimately at Parliament's discretion to decide what is covered (ibid), the examples presented (ibid) are all papers, amendments, motions or bills. By 'bills' I presume they don't mean receipts...

As the only noble scoundrel, Michael Martin, put it himself on December 5th 2008 (Hansard). "I should also remind the House, as stated in chapter 7 of “Erskine May,” that parliamentary privilege has never prevented the operation of the criminal law. [Interruption.] Order. The Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in its authoritative report in 1999 said that the precincts of the House are not and should not be “a haven from the law”."

They're taking the ******* piss out of us.

Category Error

Academics frequently publish chats, so I thought I would follow suit.

did you see michael foot died today?

i did

heroic principled hero or harbinger of doom?

goes to show how far the labour party have moved to the right that he's now being described as a left winger

his left wing extremism has been blamed for the unelectability of a left wing govt in britain ever again

the current unelectability of a left wing government has more to do with the alienation that has come from thatcher's individualism and the atomisation of society more than anything else

and the major trade unions covering the backs of the labour shifting as far to the right on most issues as the tories

i dont know that thatcher necessarily created that

the sense of social alienation seems to me to be mostly brought about by judgement

judgement distinguishes people

for one thing

puts people into sets

in what sense?

these people are criminals, these people are black, these people are white, these people are heterosexual, these people are royalty, these people are sporty, these people are mentally unbalanced... blah blah

us and them

make people afraid and ashamed

the destruction of manufacturing industry has undoubtably reduced the ability of the left to organise as it has traditionally done since the dawn of the labour movement and has to be the major driving force behind this atomisation

people were descriminated against for whatever reason before thatcher

trying to be whatever the incidental norm of good is in the culture

exactly

i think thatcherism relies heavily on it

though those judgemental sentiments were exploited by her government admitedly

that's true, though it's fairly incidental compared to the restructuring of the economy into segments that were harder for the unions to organise

the idea of aspirationalism is itself so closely tied to the valuing of particular and contingent values attached to particular human behaviour

this was also a significant factor

the biggest victory thatcher had was over the miners, not by introducing things like section 28

hmm i dunno

they were both massive

and related

it relied on a lot of rich southern people not giving a shit about poor northern people

which i think resulted from a perceived 'otherness'

like miniature nationalism

regionalism

you might say

the things people say about the unions round bucks

unions are a wonderful thing

undoubtably there was an element of that

you only have to look at where tories get elected to see it's concentrated in teh south

right wing politics doesnt erase class but it somewhat disguises it

definitel

y

people in the south think of themselves as middle class

they sneer on the north

it derides anything vaguely left-wing as 'class war' when they go and carry out the most virulent form of divisive and socially counter-productive class warfare themselves

well they like the class system but they dont like to mention it

if no one talks about it it wont be so obvious that they benefit so much from it

yes, especially when you mention the gap between teh rich and the poor to tories

they who pretend to have these values, and yet will perpetually fall short of them

well its unpleasant to be reminded of your own decadent lifestyle and the cost to others

they just go on about them being obsessed with classes when everyone's middle class really

to realise your wealth can only ever be at the deprivement of someone else

aspirationalism painted everyone as middle class

'now everyone can reach for these values (but some people will be members of various randomly joined sets - by birth - and therefore have distinct advantages)

in capitalist society that's definitely true, but increasing standards of living doesn't necesarily have to entail lowers others'

not naturally determined, even, most of the time

no not at all

our standard of living has gone up largely in response to better science

aspirationalism basically is just encouraging people to not give a shit if they see others in genuine hardship

in fact solely as far as i can see

yeah it says thats a good thing to do

as a person

in some ways yes, though it hasn't lead to us having to work for less time like science and advances in technology should do

no it just gave us better stuff

all it's done is make people work harder, output more for the same or less pay

we could have less stuff and work less

yeah pay hasnt changed

and given us widescreen tvs

yup

stuff

the point of aspirationalism is to sell us the idea of excess work

stuff but not actually improved our lives interms of working conditions, society, culture, education, health etc.

um

no but thats largely because of govt spending

i duno it maybe has a bit

people are on the whole getting more education

and the internet allows for better education

and freedom of expression

its no cheaper than pens and paper

but its maybe easier

in some respects

science has definitely improved health

not necessarily its distribution though

which is a govt spending/taxation issue

science is also controlled by private companies and is restricted to what can make a profit

not entirely, but sadly increasingly

therefore things like cure for aids and orther deiseases prevalent in impoverished regions get ignored

but thats always been the case i guess

used to be kings employed scientist, now its the new landed gentry and the govt, to a lesser extent

always in teh era of capitalism at least

hmm

capitalism coincided with the rise of science tho

the move away from feudalism

seeing that has enabled the development of the pharceutical industry

exactly

capitalism is an expression of a new class controlling this advance in science and productive forces

or did it allow for it?

all that stuff happened together

in britain and europe

capitalism, democracy and science

out of feudalism, monarchy and religion

i dunno if there's relaly a difference to be honest

between whether it's an expression or allowed for it

sure there is

o i see

ok

we need something new anyway

tories always want to go backwards

the opportunity arose and what happened was an expression of it

yes

fuck religion, agriculture and powerful executives

agriculture has to exist though

or we'll starve

i'm sure people would be more inclined if it wasn't a poorly paid, socially derised industry

relatively

clearly

how can you say the class system doesnt exist when some people earn £10k and others earn £1.2 billion as a year end bonus

ffs

you're living in the past obsessed with classes

can't you see the weath trickling down before your eyes?

wealth*

i see widescreen tvs trickling down

haha

when the rich are tired of the technology they let us have ot

it

i only thought tories believed in teh trickle down effect because people kept chucking coins at them

lol

its like the thing about charity

like charity is best, cos thats an act you choose to commit

bullshit

its an excuse for some people to be way richer to others

than, to, what difference does it make?

it does fuck all to address why people starve, are homeless, are subjected to abuse, turn to drugs etc.

and just sooths conscience of the rich

as the old adage goes, "when i gave food to the starving i was called a saint. when i asked why they starving, i was called a communist"

exactly

lol

thats beautiful

clearly not my words 

but it perfectly highlights the hypocrisy of charity

People are always telling me smoking is bad for me. Really? Shit, I never knew...

I think I have to agree with this criticism of Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. It reminds me so much of this comment, which calls people who go into their overdraft 'bad'. It seems that a lot of morality is really middle class habits, ways to justify maintaining the rich-poor gap, instead of going 'well, we're all equal as people, maybe we shouldn't be so much richer than these people.' Life is easier when you have money, it's much easier to make the right choices, so then you can look at others and point out they're mistakes and be a bit smug. Well thanks but no thanks. We know that being fat isn't ideal, that it would in some sense be better to drink and smoke less etc. Thanks.
Having said that, I know for years I had no idea what eating healthily meant. Now I know, I do eat a bit better. It's a struggle, though, to change your habits. What makes it more of a structure, and what I think is actually the key to this whole debate, is the structure in which I consume. The places I shop, the food I buy, the ways I think about buying food and what constitutes a meal, all tend towards me eating a lot of carbs and junk. This is the 'prole diet'. Compare what you buy in Waitrose with Asda. And it's nothing knew. Poor people fill up on bread and butter, because it's cheap. Who buys all the junk food with no nutrition? Poor people. Who don't give a shit because they feel their life isn't worth living since they could never have all the things the TV tells them they need to be happy, and so they feel forgotten and alone against the background of hollywood etc?
Now it's not *necessary*. If you're low income, but you budget well and know what you're buying, you can do ok. Particularly if you have time to prep stuff and shop around. But that isn't what most peoples lives are like. On the whole, poorer people will be less educated, have less free time and will have less access to good food and less motivation to find it.
If you want to tackle this problem, Michelle (I'm not using your first name to be disrespectful, I'm trying not to define you by your husband), then good. But don't imply fat people are lazy and patronisingly tell them to get off their ass. Attack the supermarkets. Make it easier to buy healthy food than unhealthy food. That's when it'll change.

I am white, middle class, male, brunette, medium tall...

I keep telling myself I'm a freak.




I have been reading A Softer World, which is brilliant.


I am incredibly *normal*, according to my local culture's conditions of normality. You know, women, homosexuals, people who aren't white etc all get treated differently, all get defined by that particular aspect of themselves. People also talk about them as if the rest of their identity and personality could be discovered by merely knowing in what way they deviate from the sort of people that make up most of our MPs. Like gays are emotional and fashion conscious, girls are emotional and like chocolate but hate being fat, black people like rap and guns. Whatever. There are a lot more subtle ones as well. Oddly it tends to create a feedback loop, since people tend to become what is expected of them, to varying degrees. It takes a conscious will to defy expectations of societal norms.
Anyway, it must be annoying, to have people assume they know all about you cos they know one thing about you. I have been experiencing this a bit at my new job. I work pretty much entirely with women, and they like to say the boys are rubbish and the girls are much better. The funny thing about this is it creates lower expectations for the boys, so they don't have to try as hard... o well. Anyway, it bugged me a bit, but I can't complain. I generally don't get any persecution. Which is a bit dull really. It means I constantly have to define myself, which is a responsibility I don't always want. Can't you just stereotype me and I'll just rebel against each thing you assume of me and accuse you of being lazy? To an extent I do this anyway. I question my sexuality, my mental health, my religious views, my tastes, my practices... whatever they actually are, I always want to 'other' myself from everyone else. I guess really I just have to live with being the norm. It entails a little middle class guilt, you know? What group do I represent? The one that is excluding people from wealth and stuff. I guess this is why I became quite left wing etc. How can I stand on the outside with everyone else? O crap, I'm that guy from Avatar. I'm the self-proclaimed hero from the one side leading the other side (who couldn't have done it by themselves, apparently). Ah well, whatever, I'm broadly happy with my identity, and I can continue to tinker. 

Read this

This is funny cos where I live they just put a gate on the back of a row of gates

A Brief History of The United States of America

Just a reminder

Until the Terrorism Act (2000 - pre 9/11), we had:

freedom of speech
freedom to join organisations
rule of law
habeas corpus

now you can't even take photographs


I just want to ask again, what is terrorism, what is it threatening, and what exactly is being protected here?

News Round-up

Morning all! What better way to start your day than with American far-right journalists calling your continent anarchist and implying you're a terrorist by association!


"In a newly released tape broadcast on Al-Jazeera televison, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden expresses views that are nearly indistinguishable from those of radical environmentalists, European anarchists, or many Congressional Democrats."


Wonderfully helpful stuff for the redstate news there. This argument from analogy (not strictly logical, since 'X is like Y in n respect, therefore X is like Y in any respect whatsoever' can easily be proved to lead to endless contradictions) only works, of course, if you engage with the rhetoric of good and evil (probably why religion is leaned on so much by both far-right Americans and extremist Islamist groups such as the Taliban), another example of that in this interview (which is admittedly not new), where Bill O'Reilly stops a man from giving a balanced and considered opinion  - that other religious leaders in the Arab world may agree somewhat with Bin Laden's gripes but not with his violent actions - by claiming they can only be scared of his 'evil' and that if they were less cowardly they would say he was going to 'hell'. Remember Bush's speeches about good and evil?


As we address these challenges — and others we cannot foresee tonight — America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.


Well what luck we didn't kill nearly 800,000 Iraqis to win their 'hearts and minds' to 'democracy' then! Cause of peace! Cause of peace! Cause of peace!


I have often thought of the way we talk about Hitler as unhelpful in a similar way. Was he evil? No, although a lot of the things he did were almost unprecedented in their vile inhumanity and we should condemn these actions totally. He wasn't evil, though, because he was a human being, and human beings are complex biological organisms. Only characters can be evil. Characters are capable of being two dimensional exhibitions of an idea, but people can never be. Distorting the likes of Hitler, Mugabe and Bin Laden into two-dimensional faces for primitive moral dichotomies (with whoever is making the comparison cast as the wholly distinct alternative: the good) solely serves to obscure the truth: that we all commit both good and bad acts. Of course, if you are the President and you want people to follow you, you don't want them to believe you have committed a bad act, so you appeal to the notion of good vs evil and paint your enemy as evil. That way you must be the good.


If your actions have clearly brought terrible consequences, but you wish to preserve the notional goodness of your character, you can always claim that your intentions were good, and no-one can ask more than that (I've used this - even invoking Kant to support my claims - during a very messy break up when I acted like a complete arsehole and didn't want to admit that I had been bad). And so to possibly the most self-righteous man in the world - let alone the most self-righteous war criminal - Tony Blair, who this week gave evidence at the Chilcott enquiry. Blair is a master story-teller, and he is always the hero. He was such a post-modern PM - plausible things Blair could have said: 'I don't believe in beliefs, but I believe them very strongly', 'truth is just belief multiplied by conviction', 'the facts are whatever we tell you they are, and anyone who says otherwise is lying'. It was never about truth, it was about conviction. As long as he believed himself to be right, and followed that belief to whatever disasterous consequences, he was right, in his own eyes. Good job he wasn't a mathematician or a scientist or a chef then. Much better to be a PM, where even if everyone tells you you're wrong you can just say "Well I'm the PM, so I actually get to decide what's right and wrong." Like a God, but a really shit one.


Talking of story-tellers (that was pretty smooth, right? Look, I'm still learning here), Michael Moore has a new film out soon - Capitalism: A Love Story. I always used to think of this man as an annoying childish irritant, immature and unrealistic and just not playing the game. But then I used to be a right wing young tory from Beaconsfield with his head up his ass. The guy may be irritating, but good! He is making some good points, and if you don't think so, have a look at this from an interview in the Guardian today:

The film is certainly shocking. Early on, Moore sets out the meaning of "Dead Peasants" insurance. It turns out that Wal-Mart, a company with a revenue larger than any other in the world, bets on its workers dying, taking out life insurance policies on its 350,000 shop-floor workers without their knowledge or approval. When one of them dies, Wal-Mart claims on the policy. Not a cent of the payout, which sometimes runs to a $1m (£620,000) or more, goes to the family of the dead worker, often struggling with expensive funeral bills. Wal-Mart keeps the lot. If a worker dies, the company profits.

Wal-Mart is not alone. Moore talks to a woman whose husband died of brain cancer in 2008. He worked at a bank until it fired him because he was sick. But the bank retained a life insurance policy on the unfortunate man and cashed it in for $4.7m (£2.9m) when he died. There were gasps from the audience in a Washington cinema at that.

Right, off to the shops! Weekend!

x

Obama, Fox, branding, Haiti, polling and race

Fantastic article in The Guardian from Naomi Klein this week, I learnt a lot.

So what's happened to brand Obama? He is not polling well. Look, he was never going to live up to that hype. Campaigning is about dreams, government is about compromise. But look at what he's actually done: pretty much gotten out of Iraq, closed Guantanamo and pushed America close to universal healthcare. Not only that, he's pulled the rest of the world back on board, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the process. What did you want from the first year?

So the polls are not amazing. Unsurprisingly, Obama has slowly lost popularity as the reality sets in: that he alone cannot end wars, reverse economic trends and create the world's greatest healthcare system in the face of extreme opposition. This app from Fox let's you compare Obama and Bush, and you can see exactly the same slide under Bush - until 9/11. I'd say this suggests the best thing that could happen for Obama's popularity is another major terrorist event, but I suspect that it would be interpreted as somewhat his doing (that even happened to Bush, and no-one thought he was a Muslim and an illegal immigrant, as around a quarter of American's think of Obama). I imagine a huge invasion of another country - some more 'us' and 'them' politics as practised so well by Bush - would win him a couple of red votes, but most of those voters would never vote Obama because of his race and his party. I still think Obama, though not the superhero he may appear in our wildest fantasies, is doing an incredible job, and I can't think of a better first year in office of any politician.

O and just to balance that praise for Fox News, here's an article where "'Critics' Decry Decision to Halt Deportations of Haitian Illegal Immigrants". A nice example there of using the 'someone else' (and we're not saying they're right, but we are saying that they are experts, and we are putting them as leader) is saying something that *someone else wants you to believe* is extreme and ridiculous - we're just saying' method of endorsing-without-being-accountable-for a position.

"The paradox of the first black president is that it is not nearly enough for him to be merely the first black president."

Robert E. Pierre and Jon Jeter