Monday 30 December 2013

Human Rights, who needs them with Westminster looking after us?

For all of the people who genuinely believe that we are Better Together in a glorious united Great Britain, I would ask you to consider the real world for a moment. The latest data from the Office Of National Statistics, published last month show us that since the financial crash in 2008, real wages have fallen on an average of 13.8% across the UK whilst average executive pay has risen by 14%. In Scotland, average pay has fallen by 9.9% which would suggest that the existence of a Scottish Parliament is doing something to help the working people of Scotland. Across the UK the average salary of a company executive is £2.1million whilst the average chief executive was paid £3.7million.
This data also informs us that the average employers earns 136 times more than the national average. I surely cannot be accused of distortion when I conclude that this shows that the government’s policies are wholly directed to beggaring the workforce and enriching the wealthy, thus transferring wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest.

On top of this, the laughingly titled Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, today informs us that Britain is drafting plans to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act. Grayling said on the BBC's Radio 4 that

"I think that what we've got to is a situation where the European court of human rights has lost its legitimacy in the UK by doing things that frankly, the people of this country and their elected representatives do not want," and that the Tories would set out a "clear pathway" for change by publishing a draft bill and leaving the European convention on human rights would be one possible option.
"We're looking at a number of different options," he said. "There are four principles that have to underpin what we do. We have to curtail the role of the court in the UK. We have to replace the Human Rights Act, which as Lord Judge rightly says is one of the key reasons why the European court of human rights seems to have such sway in the UK. We've got to ensure there's a balance of rights and responsibilities in our laws, and I think above all, we've got to make our supreme court supreme."

I love the way that Westminster politicians always claim to be speaking for the people of the country. I am one of those people and no-one has ever asked me my opinion on anything. I do not know anyone who has actually been asked for their opinion by any politician.

As I continually warn you, these people will simply not be constrained in their activities, which primarily consist of looting the national treasury and reducing the working people of the country to a state of modern slavery. If you don't believe me, then at least believe the evidence that continually confronts you every day. The only ray of hope we have is an independent Scotland that will sever us from these barbarians. If we remain Better Together your future is impoverishment, dependence on foodbanks, and the removal of all forms of human rights that are your only possibility of any form of redress against these licenced criminals that pose as your elected representatives. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Saturday 28 December 2013

Why get something for nothing when you can pay for it?

I have been asked why I portray human beings as being irrational. As I have said earlier, human beings have the capacity for rationality, and, we can be very rational when we put our minds to it, but we do not start from that position. Human beings pay lots of money in supermarkets for bottles of water which they can get for free any time they wish by turning on a tap. A rational being would buy a bottle of something, perhaps Coca Cola, and then, after having consumed the Coca Cola, fill the empty bottle with tap water if they wished to have a bottle of water for their convenience. When you buy a bottle of water in a supermarket, do you really think that the people who produced that bottle actually made the water, or that their water is somehow different from that which you get from a tap? As I said before, I am as irrational as the next person, but I draw the line at buying water; that is a descent into insanity, it is quite extreme irrationality. Bottled water is, however, a good metaphor for our consumer society and the power of advertising. The modern discipline of marketing is the science of fooling people and exploiting their irrational nature. It convinces you that the water you are buying is better than normal tap water when even a moments reflection will tell your rational self that this is an impossibility.

However, as I have also previously noted, I do not claim any great insight into such matters. It was David Hume who taught us the basic concept that our reason is a result of our feelings, that is, we do not feel the things we do, for example about what is right and wrong, about what is good and bad, from the application of reason, in fact the opposite is true, that we reason about things because of our feelings (that reason is, as he said, the slave of the passions) which are dominated by our socialisation. It was Sigmund Freud who taught us that when our feelings (what he termed our affective interests) motivate us in relation to any kind of phenomenon, we are liable to act like imbeciles and our reason flies out of the window. It is only when we master our feelings and consciously apply reason that we are able to act in a truly civilised manner, that our intellect can only reliably function when it is removed from the influence of our emotional impulses. You see our intelligence is not an independent force, it is, as both Hume and Freud point out very dependent on our emotional life.

I was drawn to this topic by the fact that the last post I published, warning you that this new year may be your last, attracted more views than any other post I have published. I may be wrong, but I suspect that was because some people may have thought that I was about to predict the end of the world, instead of just the end of your annual holiday. Such ideas of Armageddon appeal to people's irrationality, whereas they are not particularly interested in reasoned argument, it is too boring. I can sympathise with that as I am an avid fan of Terry Pratchett and appreciate escaping from reality from time to time.

I have come to the conclusion that the capitalist system that dominates our Western nations is in the early stages of its death. That is because, as I continually post here, it is founded on a false set of premises and theories. The capitalism that it purports to represent was abandoned many years ago, and the discipline of economics has become basterdised to the point of unrecognisability. Economists simply no longer quite know what they are talking about. Have a good new year and be tolerant and kind. Ps. I watched my favourite English team win 2.1 on Boxing Day thus recovering from their 3.0 drubbing last Saturday. I thought I'd share that with you!

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Monday 23 December 2013

Happy New Year, it may be your last.

All the major supermarkets are open in Scotland on New Years Day. This is the first time this has happened and is a good example of how the dominant ideology in this country is systematically destroying our culture, our institutions, our values and our normative order in its never ending pursuit of profit and the exploitation of its workforce. It is only a matter of time until Christmas Day is sacrificed to the economic gods and the destruction of the moral order is complete. Easter as a holiday from work as a mark of respect is just a memory now. I have no particular time for the Christian religion but I am very conscious of the symbolic nature of its holy days and how that particular religion underpins the moral order and social cohesion of British society. What is happening is the destruction of respect and of the increasing contempt that the masters of our economic and political life display towards values, rights and any form of moral barriers to the pursuit of profit.

As Emile Durkheim explains, religion is simply the worship of society itself, and the destruction of religion and its attendant symbolic characteristics is a manifestation of the relentless attack on traditional British society with the purpose of altering the nature and structure of that society to resemble one huge business enterprise that operates 24 hours per day, 365 days per annum. Now, I am aware that New Years Day is not a religious matter, but in Scotland it has been traditionally more important than Christmas and is central part of Scottish culture. When I worked in industry we had a days holiday at Christmas but two days at new year. This traces back to the Protestant Reformation in Scotland when the Church of Scotland discouraged the recognition of Christmas on the grounds that it was a Popish festival. But even these fanatics and bigots recognised the need for a substitute to break the monotony and mitigate the bleakness of winter, something our ruling elite cannot now bring themselves to recognise.

You see holidays, and holy days, interfere with profit making, they are constraints and, as I continually stress, the neoliberal free marketeers will not tolerate constraints on their activities. What the British people continually fail to realise is that we are governed by people with no moral compass. They have neither dignity, decency nor self-respect. They only operate by one value, money. Everything is judged and calculated from the point of view of how much they can gain from it. Thus, if a tradition like new years day interferes with their pursuit of gain then they will have to remove that tradition. Thus, religious and cultural norms and values must be modified to justify an economic imperative or removed and replaced altogether. In the process the workforce must be increasingly subjected to conditions of employment that resemble forms of slavery and the unemployed, the sick and disabled be penalised for their unproductive characteristics. They must be made to accept that they are scroungers and parasites and of no economic value. Surely even the most biased conservatives in this sick society must see what is happening. Britain is a very sick society and is drowning in a moral swamp of its own making. Oh, the economy may eventually make some sort of recovery, but by that time society will be dead because under the neoliberal agenda economic recovery is contingent on the destruction of a fair and just society. It need not be this way, you have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Sunday 22 December 2013

Irrationality can be fun

I apologise for not having posted for five days, but I have been away. I live in Scotland, but I frequently go to England to watch football. I was down in Milton Keynes this week, watching my team being thrashed three nil. I say thrashed, because they were lucky it was only three. I often ponder why I should travel 400 miles to watch a team lose, as, when I am leaving the ground on such occasions, wet, cold and thoroughly disappointed, I recognise that I am probably quite insane (though I must say I watch them win more often than see them lose). At home I watch football every week. I follow a team that plays in what is known in Scotland as Junior football. It is a semi-professional form of the game.  I used to watch my home team in the Scottish senior leagues, but I gave that up as I came to increasingly realise how corrupt senior Scottish football is and how all the teams that play in Scottish senior football are in reality only expected to provide opposition to the old firm of Rangers and Celtic. Have you ever noticed how, according to the Scottish media, Rangers and Celtic are never beaten, they only lose games. In other words, when they lose it is their own fault, they are never beaten by a better team.

I appreciate that travelling to watch a team from the lower leagues in both England and Scotland is rather irrational, but, as I have posted before, the human being is a profoundly irrational being and I recognise that in myself, and, where appropriate, quite enjoy allowing my irrationality to lead me. I love the cruelty of football, where a team can be very dominant in a game and still get beaten. I love its tribalism when thousands of people who do not know one another are best mates and kindred spirits for an hour and a half each week. Football is a very social activity and a powerful source of social cohesion. It is particularly focused and in our age where the ruling elite are determined to atomise society and destroy the social and cultural ties that present barriers to financial crime it forms a powerful social role of communalism and solidarity. It is also a very working class sport where even the Manchester United's of the world are still dependent on their working class roots for their survival. The Junior leagues in Scotland are particularly working class and are not forums for the faint hearted or easily offended. They are supported by real people with a very defined cultural philosophy. Football is a powerful antidote to what sociology calls, anomie. In that context I have gained a grudging form of respect for those Rangers supporters, who, when their team was forced to begin playing in the bottom tier of Scottish football, refused to abandon them and travelled to Alloa, Cowdenbeath, Brechin etc. in numbers to show their loyalty and their love, thereby displaying an inordinate irrationality and proving the philosophy of David Hume whilst torpedoing free market economic dogma.

Another fascinating aspect of football is how it is frequently refusing to be bullied by the market. How supporters, if they dig their heels in, are forcing business interests to rethink what they assumed would be an easy target for asset stripping and a quick profit. You see, contrary to what business and financial interests believe, football is not a business and does not have customers. It has supporters who can follow teams even when the team is quite unsuccessful, and that is irrational, it does not mirror the supposed rational consumer model of free market economics. In that sense I am irrational. Football is a community based voluntary activity, because, as I said, supporters are not customers, they are people who voluntarily turn up at their chosen ground every week and pay to watch an activity that they have no possibility of influencing and that often fails to reward them with a result. No business could survive under that form of economics. Because a thing is irrational it is not necessarily stupid, I am going to watch my English team again on Boxing Day, and, because I am succumbing to my irrational self, am supremely confident they will win. I will report in due course.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.

Monday 16 December 2013

Thatcher's greatest success was hiding the truth

The following is a cut and paste from an editorial in the Guardian today

Has British politics given up on the working poor? It is an extraordinary question to have to ask after a week in which official figures recorded wages lagging the cost of living for the fifth straight year, with pay even more stagnant at the bottom end. The proliferating use of zero-hours contracts since the recession is only the tip of an iceberg of insecurity. And even as unemployment declines in the recovery, the number of unwilling part-timers, lumped with inadequate hours, continues to set records. Toil for scant reward really ought to be the great issue of our day

My point in pasting this is that I have been telling you this since I started my blog, and, whilst it is welcome that the Guardian is at least attempting to highlight the state of poverty in modern Britain, it is to be condemned that such sentiments are just beginning to be spoken when this state of affairs has been obvious for many years now. There are several reasons for this. First, by taking all this time to see what was in front of them, the Guardian writers betray how they have successfully bought into the neoliberal agenda, and have shared the 'there is no alternative' narrative. Thatcher was uniquely successful in winning the battle of ideas and establishing what Antonio Gramsci called a 'hegemony' in ideological terms. As I continually tell you, to accept that there is no alternative is intellectually imbecilic, as, in economic, social and political life, there are always alternatives, there is a multiplicity of alternatives if you only sit down and look for them. There is no one 'correct' or acceptable economic and social system. There is no one model of capitalism. But in Britain, we have been lulled by constant propaganda to believe that there is. This is the principal reason that we cannot affect any recovery from the recession as we are still applying the model that has so catastrophically failed. All the so-called alternatives we are being offered are in reality simply variations of the same theme.

Next, the notion that the British political system has given up on the working poor refuses to accept that the economic model we are operating from has a very deliberate agenda for working people, and that is to impoverish them as far as possible. They haven't given up on the working poor, the fact that we have the phenomenon of working people being driven into deeper and deeper poverty is evidence of the government's active agenda. In other words, being increasingly poor whilst being actively employed has been the deliberate goal of British government since 1979. What has happened is that it has taken a long time to attack and remove the carefully constructed institutional safeguards that were erected over many years to prevent such things happening. Now that most of these safeguards have been removed the Tory led neoliberal agenda is bearing fruit and the Thatcherite programme is finally being realised in all its glory. What the British people and its so-called intellectual leaders cannot seem to accept is that the Westminster elite are at the forefront of a programme to transfer as much wealth as possible upwards and away from the mass of the people, and in doing so reduce the working people of the country to a modern form of slavery in which they will work for almost any wage, under almost any conditions. That is the whole rationale behind the phenomenon of zero-hours contracts, to create a ferocious insecurity and transfer, not only as much wealth, but as much power as possible into the hands of the super-wealthy and the owners and controllers of that wealth. Neoliberalism and modern Toryism, which are also the dominant ideas of both Labour and the Lib-Dems, is immoral, unethical and criminal. That is what you voted for, and is all you will be offered in 2015 if you remain blind and loyal to the Westminster lie. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Saturday 14 December 2013

The Wealth Creators must be judged differently from the scum

We have been given a glimpse of the future as Western society increasingly mirrors ancient Rome where the wealthy and powerful were governed by different laws than the rest of the people. A 16 year old Texan boy, Ethan Couch killed 4 people and left another brain damaged and unable to move or speak whilst driving under the influence of alcohol 3 times over the limit but was given 10 years probation instead of a prison sentence.

His defence successfully argued that he suffered from what they called 'affluenza' which means that he was so wealthy that he believed that his actions would have no consequences and the judge accepted this.

The constant Tory propaganda that wealth creators are special and should be treated differently than other people is now a reality. The Tories of course borrowed this idiocy from the Americans, and of course, this ruling by an American court will soon be established in this country as well. I have already noted in other posts how, if you work in the capitalist conglomerate system you can do what you want as you will not be held responsible, and now we have graphic evidence that the wealthy are to be judged by different moral criteria from the rest of society.

Britain is entering a perilous and dangerous state whereby we are in fact becoming two different nations sharing the same geographical space. There is the nation of the rich, important and powerful and the nation of the poor, disadvantaged and unimportant. They poor are unimportant because they are not wealth creators. I have, however, also pointed out in other posts how this is simply wrong and that wealth is created by human labour and not by bankers and financiers who simply manipulate the wealth that is created by working people. Should power be disrupted by the weather, all so-called wealth creation immediately comes to a halt until some working person physically restores the power supply by repairing the damage. The so-called wealth creators cannot operate without electricity or computers and so any wealth they supposedly create is ultimately dependent on someone maintaining and installing electricity supply and physically making and assembling the computers.

That we are in this state is testimony to the power of socialisation and constantly repeated lies. If working class people are not involved in the creation of our wealth, why do you suppose that the authorities are so paranoid about strikes? Why is it that they constantly warn how striking damages the economy and disrupts everyone's lives; if working people have no input into wealth creation then what does it matter if they go on strike?  Rome was a slave society and could not operate without the slaves who did the work and created all the wealth, and we, in modern Britain, are increasingly being reduced to a slave like status. The beauty of it is that the ruling elite have actually convinced us that their vision of society is the correct one and the only available model and that working people are actually worthless and are totally dependent on the great and the good for their survival. We must therefore be totally thankful to these people for whatever crumbs they are willing to give us and stop complaining. If we want to blame anyone there are plenty of people available, the useless of society, the poor, the sick, the disabled. They are the real culprits, they are the people to blame for the state the country is in and are ruining our lives by demanding benefits they neither deserve nor should be entitled to. They are the scroungers and the skivers who live off our hard earned taxes. So, it is only right and natural that the wealth creators should be governed by different laws and different moral standards. The next time you see a banker or someone who is obviously wealthy, shake their hand and thank them that they allow you to share the same space and breath the same air that they do and accept that they have a right to do what they want.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.

Thursday 12 December 2013

Work your way out of poverty, Aye Right!!!

I would just like to add to what I posted yesterday on the future of the UK after the next election in 2015. I trust you noticed that, in evidence to the Treasury Select Committee of the House of Commons this morning, the Chancellor George Osborne, said that he wanted to cut the welfare budget by billions after 2015. In addition, I want you to remember that just last month Labour's Shadow Welfare Minister, Rachel Reeves, told us that Labour intended to be even harder on benefits than the Tories.

Now, to be fair to them, Both Labour and the Tories are telling us quite openly what we can expect from them and that we are of course Better Together. So, there will be no use complaining after 2015 that you didn't know, nor can anyone even suggest that I am either making this stuff up, or even exaggerating, even though if you do not keep up with the news, it must seem as though most of this is a figment of my imagination as it seems hard to believe that it is occurring in a supposedly civilised society.

In addition, all this frenzied activity, whose purpose is to impoverish the majority of the population so that they will be prepared to take work at almost any salary and under conditions that are little better than slavery, will take place just as Westminster MPs get an 11% pay rise. Labour and the Tories will continue to tell you that such measures are necessary to ensure recovery, but I trust that by now you will recognise that for the lying propaganda that it is.

What a wonderful country we live in, governed by wise, decent and charitable Samaritans whose sole purpose is the welfare of the poor, the disabled, the sick and the needy. What a wonderful institution we have in the Westminster Parliament, under whose guidance we are so obviously Better Together. I also trust that you have read the latest Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report which shows that over half of all the officially poor people in Britain are in work. That is people who are classified as living in poverty by this governments own standard of poverty. So, even if you can get a job, you have no appreciable hope of a better life.

As a result, the ordinary people of Britain have no future hope of any form of improvement or betterment, and you have heard it from the Prime Minister, The Chancellor and the Labour Party. Scotland however does have hope, you have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat 

Wednesday 11 December 2013

No Welfare State, no NHS, welcome to your future if you think we're Better Together

I must confess to you that I committed a grievous sin today, one I am truly ashamed to admit. I was in a hospital waiting room and I picked up and read a Daily Mail. There, I've told you and I will now spend a week in sackcloth and ashes in burning shame. However, I read a report in the Mail that Prime Minister Cameron had told a Mail reporter that he wanted a clear majority at the next election because being in coalition had prevented him from fully implementing the policies he deeply desired to implement unhindered, cutting income and business tax, go further on welfare reform and reform human rights law. So, there you have it, your future with the Better Together people, because whether you vote Tory or Labour at the next Westminster election that is what you will get because I will remind you again that Labour has already committed themselves to match the Tories benefit reforms and tax cuts.

You will notice that the tax cuts will be on income and business taxes, no cuts in the consumption taxes that penalise the poorest the hardest, like VAT, petrol, clothes etc. and are designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich, a process that will intensify under such policies. This attack on the poor will be intensified by even harder benefit cuts and attacks on the welfare budget. This will affect benefits, health and education. It will hit the poor, the elderly, the sick and of course, the disabled, the clear enemy and principal target of Mr. Duncan Smith. How that man hates the disabled. His hatred of the disadvantaged is genuinely terrifying to behold.

As I have repeatedly told you, the attack on our human rights is economically motivated. Its purpose is to remove all constraints on the government's economic policies and programmes and to ensure that their destruction of the NHS and the welfare state, and their relentless determination to reduce Britain's working people to modern forms of slavery will meet with no resistance. What they call the war on terror is merely a convenient excuse to introduce measures that are distinctly authoritarian and undemocratic and are aimed at rights at work, rights of public welfare, benefit rights and trade union rights. One of their great aims is to end rights of protest and demonstration, and this is a desire of all the major parties, indeed that is what is meant by all being in it together.

I will remind you again, no politician has been elected to do these things, no-one told you at the last election that this was their actual policy programme, they are getting away with it because they have managed to convince the British people that the financial crash was their own fault, it was not Westminster or the financial class. It is classic scapegoating. We have the spectacle of another banking scandal today with Lloyds being fined £28million, but nobody is to be punished, nobody is to lose their job, nobody will be prosecuted. Their rights to break the law and defraud the public are protected by the very legal system that is supposed to punish. Their punishment is corporate, it is never individual. If you work in Britain's corporate or financial system you can actually do anything you want and you will not be punished. The corporation will be punished, and of course if a bank is punished then that is actually you and I being punished instead because if a bank is fined they pay the fine with the money you and I save in that bank, it comes out of the money you and I are supposed to get back in interests, it never comes out of their pocket. If you vote to maintain this disgraceful system next September on the farcical proposition that we are Better Together, then I repeat, you will deserve all you get. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Privatisation is a criminal activity

I apologise for not posting for almost a week, but I am rather busy just now. However, I was amused to read a thought from Sir Terry Leahy, until recently the chief executive of Tesco, who was quoted as telling us that

The state has to do less. It has to get out of the way and expect the private sector to do more, be it investment or new business creation.

What is interesting about this is the revelation of how the people like this who run this country and who tell governments what to do live in an alternative universe, in actual cloud cuckoo land. Since the election of Thatcher, the state has been systematically 'rolled back' to use her own words. The entire rationale for all the privatisation that has taken place since then has been the need for investment and jobs that cannot be provided for by the public sector. Not one of those privatisations has worked, and rather than invest, the newly privatised industries and sectors have, instead, happily siphoned off all the wealth into their own pockets. The recent farce of the Post Office is ample testimony to that.

It was getting the state out of the way that produced the financial crisis with the disaster that is Labour and their 'light touch' approach. The light touch that is required for these criminals is the light touch of a police hand on their elbow guiding them to a deserved prison sentence. It should be remembered that the first great privatisation was council housing. I was ridiculed for years for predicting the inevitable result of this policy. Oh, it was very popular, but was also the predictable disaster it has proved to be. You see, the real reasons for all these measures have nothing to do with the public good, or the benefit of the nation. They are purely motivated by elite greed and for the profit of a very few people. The public are of course invited to invest in the newly privatised sectors, but as soon as they are privatised at ridiculously low share levels, the major corporations step in and offer the mugs a good profit on their small investment and within a short time the same gangsters control the newly privatised industries and the public at large are left paying the bill for the profiteering that was the real motivation for the privatisation in the first place.

No public utility should be privatised full stop. They are state assets and must necessarily be controlled by the public through their representatives. Christ told us that we will know the real nature of people and events by their fruits, and the fruits of privatisation are all sour and rotten. The tragedy is that the Sir Terry Leahy's of the world believe such nonsense and the Westminster criminals believe it too as they live in their own out of touch little world and kid themselves on that they actually know what they are doing. As I keep reminding you, they are congenital liars. For example, they keep parroting the lie that they have created a million new jobs and they are never challenged on it. If they are creating all these jobs, why do the unemployed figures not reflect that? I gave you the example recently that over 200, 000 of these so-called new jobs were created by simply redefining the staff in the further education sector as private sector as opposed to public sector workers, there were no new jobs, it was a bare faced lie. That is what you voted for and continue to vote for. You have been warned. The market doesn't work and is a massive lie. It is not, and can never be free and the evidence is all around you, it is one of the most demonstrable aspects of the modern world.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Friday 6 December 2013

Westminster- The Legion of the lost and Lonely

It is only fitting to mark the death of the only great man left in this sorry world, Nelson Mandela. Indeed the world has become a poorer place this morning. I was left thinking about his work when listening to Question Time last night and was forced to turn it off halfway through as I could no longer stand listening to such a bunch of gibbering bombastic charlatans with the exception of the admirable Mary Beard. The two representatives of government and opposition, Danny Alexander and Rachel Reeves, can only make anyone with even a sliver of intelligence and decency despair for the future of this country. They are quite frankly appalling. You see, everything they say and everything their parties stand for, is constrained within the very narrow confines of the dominant neoliberal economic ideology. They have neither imagination or self-respect and are simply robotic mouthpieces for the neoliberal ruling elite they represent. I repeat, Westminster politicians are lost and are intellectually bankrupt. They not only constantly repeat the lie that there is no alternative, they actually believe it, and it is that belief that demonstrates that they are not at all intelligent. If I can remind you of some of the words of Nelson Mandela

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of fundamental human rights. Everyone everywhere has the right to live with dignity, free from fear and oppression, free from hunger and thirst, and free to express themselves and associate at will.Yet in this new century millions of people remain imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. Massive poverty and inequality are terrible scourges of our times - times in which the world also boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation.While poverty persists, there is no true freedom. Amnesty International is right to stand up against the rights violations that drive and deepen poverty.People living in poverty have the least access to power to shape policies - to shape their future. But they have the right to a voice. They must not be made to sit in silence as"development" happens around them, at their expense. True development is impossible without the participation of those concerned.

If you will allow me to remind you of something I posted recently, that the richest 1% of the world's population own half the world's wealth. Such a statistic is hard to believe, but it is accurate. By contrast, the poorest 66% of the world's population own only 3% of the world's wealth. If Mandela is correct in what he says, what successive British governments have been doing, since at least the election of Margaret Thatcher, and yes, this includes the Labour Party, is ruling unjustly and denying much of the British people their fundamental human rights. British government has been quite deliberately transferring wealth from the poor to the rich and has produced a society where, just this week, the British Medical Journal has published that poverty in this country has become a dangerous health issue. The 7th richest country in the world has over half a million people depending on food banks and announcing that people will have to work until they are 70 before being considered for a pension. The imbecile Alexander admitted on Question Time last night that this meant everyone, even people who would be physically incapable of still being able to do their job at that age, such as people who work in heavy manual labour. He thus admitted on national television that the government had just announced a policy that is not only unjust, but unworkable. That is the nature of government in this country today. If that hadn't occurred on a national television programme I am sure people would have accused me of making it up.

Never underestimate the hatred of Britain's ruling elite for ordinary people, or their determination to subject the bulk of the population to modern forms of slavery. It may seem extreme to say that they have deliberately created this poverty and despair, but they have. It is quite calculated. These are successive governments who quite deliberately make no attempt to recover an estimated £40 billion of unpaid tax per annum. That alone could remove all poverty and hardship in this country and provide everyone with a decent pension, so you should ask them why they let this situation continue?
Should you vote to continue to support such people next September then that is your choice. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Tuesday 3 December 2013

Westminster - a threat to our liberty

I have been writing since I started this blog about how our government and its ruling elite simply refuse to he held to account on any level of their activities and how this renders our so-called democracy a farce and a fraud. In defence of that I ask you all to take note of the dangerous threats levelled at the Guardian newspaper today in Parliament, behaviour that even the President of America admitted could not happen in the USA. We had the ludicrous spectacle of a Labour MP demanding to know if the editor of the Guardian loved his country, and of Tory MPs demanding that the Guardian be prosecuted, all because they have dared to expose the unacceptable levels of surveillance that we are subjected to by the government and its henchmen in the security services.

Every other country in the Western world has accepted that what the Guardian has done is not only democratically acceptable, but necessary, in that they are doing what the government itself should have been doing by holding the security services to account for unacceptable practice. What this sordid episode demonstrates vividly is the extent of the corruption within the entire Westminster establishment, from the politicians through the civil service and the security forces.

I am intrigued by this Labour imbecile equating loving your country with a refusal to criticise it. Any criticism of government and its activities is now being likened to treason and proof that you hate your country and are a stooge of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This is not a minor point, and should be taken very seriously by all of us. Westminster is becoming a genuine danger to freedom and liberty.

Oscar Wilde was spot on when he described patriotism as the last refuge of every scoundrel. The claim that they loved their country was the refuge of the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the KGB and the Stasi. It is the refuge for racists, religious bigots, warmongers and every kind of official criminal. You love your country so it has to be cleansed of all degenerate influences, of the weak, the poor, the dangerous minorities who are different etc. However, genuine love of your country involves analysing its faults, its weaknesses, its intolerances and its injustices and remedying them. It involves exposing bad legislation and governmental criminality. It was that dangerous Marxist revolutionary St Thomas Aquinas who told us that an unjust law was no law at all and that we are not obliged to obey it (well he must have been a dangerous Marxist revolutionary if he said a thing like that - no?).

A country is its people, its traditions and customs, its institutions and its history, To know who we are, we must first know who we were and how we came to be who we are. A country is (supposedly) represented by its government, but the government is not the country, nor, as is abundantly obvious, does it always represent it faithfully and properly. I know you must be fed up reading me saying it, but our political class in modern Britain are appalling and so out of touch as to be a genuine worry. They are, in addition, not very intelligent, and they are certainly a danger, both to our liberty and to our well-being. Westminster represent nobody but themselves and their elite mates. You are the electorate, you can change things if you use your votes wisely. It's up to you, you have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Monday 2 December 2013

If you're corrupt then we're certainly Better Together

I trust you have been reading about the Tory MP Andrew Lansley, the man who wants to completely privatise the NHS and who earns a salary of £135,000 per annum as a cabinet minister, and who has claimed £6000 in expenses for hotel bills in London, despite the fact that he owns a £1million flat 1 mile away from the Houses of Parliament and another house a 34 minute train journey away. This is one of the architects of the government's austerity programme who constantly tells us that we are all in it together and that there is no alternative. This comes on top of Tory MP Liam Fox, a man who lost his cabinet post for corruption, who claimed 3p on his expenses for a car journey of 100 metres. The people who persistently tell us that we are all in it together are the same people who constantly tell us that we are all better together.

As Alex Salmond pointed out in the Scottish Parliament, the leader of the better together campaign, our own Darling Alistair, was in the television studios 1 hour after the publication of the Scottish Government's proposals for an independent Scotland rubbishing the document and telling us how irrelevant it was. This was a 649 page document, and, as Salmond pointed out, if he had read it, he must have read 3000 words per minute. The Westminster clique have neither shame, dignity or any self-respect, but of course we will all be better together with them leading us into a glorious Westminster neoliberal future of poverty, foodbanks and zero-hour contracts whilst we cheerfully watch and applaud them looting the national Treasury.

From another perspective of the future under the Tories, we have the spectacle of the Tory MP Tim Yeo, being de-selected by his constituency party because he has supported gay marriage and continued membership of the EU. So, what does that tell you about Westminster politics. Well, MPs are supposed to represent the people who elect them, not a 25 person committee of their local constituency party caucus. Thus, if Yeo wishes to remain an MP he will have to represent his local party management committee and the rest of the electorate in his Surrey constituency can go to hell whether they want him as their MP or not. They are not going to be asked.

The Westminster system is genuinely corrupted beyond repair under the present three parties who represent it. If you still listen to them, particularly that grotesque and mindless caricature of a Labour Party that inhabits Hollyrood then that is your choice. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Friday 29 November 2013

Ruling class Ignorance

To say that greed is a good thing is a denial of the social nature of the human being. Greed necessarily implies selfishness, a refusal to consider the circumstances of other human beings. Human beings are indeed capable of selfishness, of great selfishness, but selfishness is destructive of human society and cohesion. As a result, human beings generally resist the selfish impulse as they intuitively understand that it is both damaging to the self, and to the social. The idea that selfishness is an important driver in economic activity is supposed to come from the writings of Adam Smith. The most successful academic economist is Paul Samuelson whose book, 'Economics' has sold millions and has been read by millions of students throughout the years. My edition is the 15th edition, published in 1995. I don't know how many editions have been published at this time, but even 15 is a very impressive pedigree. In my 15th edition, Samuelson writes

The orderliness of the market system was first recognised by Adam Smith….Smith proclaimed the principle of the invisible hand. This principle holds that, in selfishly pursuing only his or her personal good, every individual is led, as if by an invisible hand, to achieve the best good for all….Smith’s insight about the functioning of the market mechanism has inspired modern economists….

The problem here is that Smith said no such thing, what Smith said was that in pursuing our own interest every individual is led, as if by an invisible hand...etc. and, as I showed yesterday, Smith argues that it is in all of our interests that workers are well paid and enjoy good conditions of employment. In Book 4 ch 2 of the Wealth of Nations, Smith writes

By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

Our own interest, our self-interest, is a quite different thing from selfishness, in other words, Samuelson got it wrong and was responsible for sending modern economic theory down a blind alley. He was not alone in this, but he was very influential. Samuelson did not do this deliberately as he is not a neoliberal, but what it suggests is that Samuelson did not actually read Smith and was only repeating what he himself was told when he was a student. As Smith continually stresses, our self-interest is often the promotion and the happiness of others, even when there is no immediate benefit for us. Indeed Smith condemns the attitudes displayed by the Boris Johnsons of the world as corrupt and used to sustain a divisive class system. In the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' he writes

This disposition to admire—and almost to worship—the rich and the powerful, and to despise or at least neglect persons of poor and mean condition, is (on one hand) necessary to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, and (on the other) the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. Moralists all down the centuries have complained that wealth and greatness are often given the respect and admiration that only wisdom and virtue should receive, and that poverty and weakness are quite wrongly treated with the contempt that should be reserved for vice and folly.
 
As I said yesterday, we should be very sceptical of the pronouncements of anyone who boasts an Eton and Oxbridge education, Smith himself certainly was. What the Boris Johnsons of the world deal in is propaganda, not academia, and in doing so display both their ignorance and their arrogance. I ask you to contemplate this person as a future Prime Minister. You have been warned.
 
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Thursday 28 November 2013

Boris the Bampot

If any one person symbolises the bankruptcy of politics in modern Britain, of the tragedy that poses as leadership in this sorry country, it is the mayor of London Boris Johnson. I am inclined to label this man as an imbecile, but he is not as intelligent as that. Johnson is a product of the Eton, Oxbridge set who deeply believe that they are born to rule, and the genuinely scary part is that this creature is a real candidate for a future Prime Minister.

When Adam Smith went to Oxford he left after 6 months because he considered it totally useless and was convinced that the professorial clique that taught at it were incompetent. When Bertrand Russell attended Cambridge he wrote that the Cambridge dons served no useful purpose whatsoever, that he learned absolutely nothing from his teachers. Thus, we must not assume that attendance at the two most celebrated universities in the world means anything at all. For example, how can a buffoon like Johnson graduate from such an elite university? Well, you simply don't fail the offspring of the rich and great whom you rely on for finance and patronage, do you?

Johnson is credited with having studied the classics. which means that he would have no introduction to political economy. However, despite what is supposed to be the study of Mediterranean Roman and Greek history and philosophy, it is quite obvious that he was never introduced to the Sophist Thrasymachus, who tells us that justice is the interests of the strongest, in other words, that the law serves the elite and punishes the weak and the poor, although I suspect that if Johnson was to read that, he would argue that this was exactly as it should be in a well-ordered society. Johnson's latest foray into the wisdom of modern Britain is to declare that inequality is essential to fostering "the spirit of envy" and hailed greed as a "valuable spur to economic activity". Thus, for the Johnson's of the world, the fundamentals of economic growth and prosperity are founded on envy and greed. This is a brilliant metaphor for neoliberalism, and, as I have noted in recent posts, has no basis in economic theory, but is an essential element in the psychopathic philosophy of Objectivism as outlined by Ayn Rand.

Inequality is inevitable in human society as people all have different talents and attributes, but what Johnson is speaking of is economic inequality, an artificial as opposed to a natural inequality. So, let us look at what Adam Smith says is the valuable spur to economic activity in The Wealth of Nations Book 1 ch8.

Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part, can never be regarded as any inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged....
The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low Bk1 ch8

Thus, what we find in the father of modern economic theory is that it is not inequality that is necessary, but equity. Now, equity is not equality, it is fairness. Smith does not advocate minimum wages, but 'a plentiful subsistence.' It is high wages 'the liberal reward of labour' that will drive economic activity and growth, not the promotion of greed. This brings us to the subject of greed which I will deal with in another post as this one is getting to its maximum length. Britain is entering a dangerous phase in its history because it is being increasingly led by economic illiterates and quasi-fascists. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Wednesday 27 November 2013

The Myth of the Market

Following on from my post on the subject of free schools, what is clear to me is that the discipline of economics as we know it in this country is a fraud, and that economists do not actually know much about their own discipline. We are in the financial and economic crisis that we are in because of economists, and the economic models used by bankers and those in the financial system. What this tells me is that the models and assumptions that economists and financiers operate by are deeply flawed and in many ways simply wrong. So, how does this come about? Well, this is a huge topic that could well take a textbook to explain, but if I may offer some insights.

One of the great mantras of modern economics is that markets, when left to their own devices with no external interference are self-regulating. This is demonstrably wrong. As we continually witness in our modern world, any market, when left to its own devices will develop into a monopoly situation. For example, the rise of the supermarket has witnessed the death of high street suppliers in bakeries, fishmongers, butchers, greengrocers, drapers etc. All such activities now take place predominantly within supermarkets that are ruled by four multinational conglomerates and genuine competition and choice has been deliberately killed off. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with this as it is a result of technology as much as anything. What is wrong is that we are still being peddled the myth that we live in a market economy, when what we live in is a capitalist economy that has systematically destroyed markets and competition.

We are constantly still being peddled the lie that market self-regulation will flourish because of the stimulus of free dynamic competition, and if you believe that you must live on a different planet. Where is the competition in energy, retail distribution, fuel, transport, housing etc. etc.? It doesn't exist. What we are faced with in modern Britain is a choice between a few licensed gangsters. In fact I cannot think of one product or service in our society that offers genuine competition.

Constant propaganda has demonised the state and public services whilst promoting the benefits of a market system in health education, care etc. etc. that does not, and cannot exist. What is wrong is that just when we need a healthy active state, intervening and regulating such activities, we are governed by criminals who are removing such state activities in the cause of exploitation and profiteering. All of the great private companies being employed by the British State to provide us with the wondrous benefits of the private sector are all revealed as criminal organisations who are not only incompetent, but are defrauding the taxpayer of millions each day. ATOS, Serco, G4s are all exposed as fraudulent. There is an unanswerable case for the immediate nationalisation of energy and the railways for example. The recent sale of Royal Mail is a classic example of the type of activity Al Capone would have been proud of.

As I have alluded to previously, modern economics operates from some quite fundamental mistaken premises. For example the concept of Adam Smith's invisible hand is not at all what modern economists tell us that it is. The biggest selling economist in the world, Paul Samuelson, tells us that the invisible hand is perfect competition. That is simply wrong. Indeed, Samuelson goes on to tell us how perfect competition is an impossibility, so, if he is correct, and I agree that he is, then Adam Smith must have been an ignoramus, and I can assure you that Smith was anything but. Another myth is that Smith ever describes or uses the term selfishness with respect to the human being. Nor does he ever use the term laissez faire. I shall attempt to explain these in understandable terms to show you that our rulers simply do not know what they are talking about when they start to pontificate on 'markets.' In the meantime, the only light in sight is the prospect of independence for Scotland that will allow us to start to redress the balance and to hold some of these gangsters to account. It is your choice, but you have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Book Event

Christmas Event at Hillhead Library, byres rd

At 6 pm on Thursday 5th December (in the main hall, first floor)

Dress code: vagabond (i.e. anything you like)

Four local authors, one actor and one pianist = a little piano music and very brief recitals of the authors' works

Wine and food provided, informal atmosphere and any seating will not be in rows

Peter Kerr's Human Rights in a Big Yellow Taxi was published last September. It's a superb analysis of how our human rights are being eroded, and how they will be difficult to defend if we let this erosion go much further.

Chris Dolan's Redlegs was published last year, got excellent reviews and a French edition will be coming out in 2014. "It is an engrossing and compelling novel. The picture of island life is vivid, the characterisation of the principal personages convincing, the elaboration of the narrative moving. As in many really good novels, there are small scenes which stick in the memory, ..." - The Scotsman

Peter Gilmour's The Convalescent was also published last September and was reviewed in the Herald: "There's a refreshingly unromantic and level-headed tone to The Convalescent. Taking control of your life and becoming a healthier and stronger individual is always promoted in sunny, positive terms, but Gilmour highlights the uncertainty and anxiety that accompanies such a struggle, accentuating the shadows as well as the light."

          Allan Cameron's In Praise of the Garrulous was reissued in a new edition last September and was reviewed in the Guardian: "On the whole, there is so much here that is important ... and his humanity is so winning."

Stewart Ennis will be reading passages from all four books.       

          Silviya Mihaylova is a concert pianist and music teacher, and will provide some interesting music as a counterpoint.

Sunday 24 November 2013

Free Schools

I apologise for not posting for a few days, but I was engaged in other activities. Someone kindly told me how they liked my blog and asked me for my opinion on the policy of free schools, and I will address that if you will indulge me. However, when thinking about the subject of free schools, I thought how a topic like this goes to the heart of the deep seated problems that bedevil our nation. As a result, this will lead me on to what may be a series of posts on an on-going train of thought. Should anyone find this tedious or wishes me to take up other topics, then please tell me. Also, as I keep saying, if you feel I am talking rubbish then please contact me and tell me why. I genuinely welcome such input.

Free schools are another example of neoliberal free market thinking that have a superficial attraction but turn to dust with even a passing examination. The point about free schools is that they are not free, they are funded by the taxpayer and give guaranteed priority to the offspring of the people who run them. Thus, there is a big element of exclusivity about them. In true neoliberal fashion the free part of these schools is that they are free from local authority control. They are thus fundamentally undemocratic, as education is a local authority function and the neoliberals wish to completely bypass local authorities so that they can withdraw as much local authority finance as possible. They wish to take schools out of local authority control altogether as they did with further education colleges, and look at what they have become. They are run by neoliberal managers who remove all full time permanent staff and replace them with part-time, temporary staff on zero-hour contracts and remove as much education as possible and replace it with training that makes them a profit.

The point about free schools is that they are largely unregulated. Oh they are still subject to inspection and are obliged to offer a general curriculum, but they are free to employ unqualified and untrained teachers, set their own wage rates and conditions of service and teach a very ideological syllabus that, at times, resembles a form of brainwashing. In addition, they are selective. Anyone is theoretically free to attend a free school, but the school is equally free to refuse them.

The whole point of the matter is that you must never allow for a market in education. In any market there are winners and losers, and, if you don't have money then you cannot enter the market. This has nothing to do with equality as the neoliberal accuses, but is all about equity. A free market allows for privilege, for queue jumping, for exclusion. It allows the wealthy to make benefits at the expense of the less well off. Paradoxically, one of the earliest advocates of public education for all children, paid for out of general taxation, was Adam Smith, the so-called father of the free market, which of course he was no such thing.

Free schools are a manifestation of the free market neoliberal's hatred of the state, of their hatred of all things collective and their dedication to the concept of the individual consumer who must be free to make their own choices to spend their money as they see fit. The problem with the neoliberal concept of individualism is that not only does it not exist, but it cannot exist. If there is one thing that Adam Smith was definitive about it was the social nature of the human being, not their individualism. This is why I continually stress that the free market is a fraud because its fundamental assumptions are all wrong. I will expand on these themes if you allow.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Monday 18 November 2013

Scotland after Independence, according to the economic geniuses in London.

The press and media have been salivating triumphantly all day today over the report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies that an Independent Scotland would have financial difficulties and would have to seriously increase tax revenues in order to make the books balance. This Institute has been trumpeted as being independent of political bias, but, as I have continually stressed in this blog, what does that prove, when all our political parties are committed to the same ideology?

The Institute of Fiscal Studies was founded by four men, a Conservative Party politician who was also a banker, a stockbroker, an investment trust manager and a tax consultant. In 2008, shortly after the banking crisis, this Institute's ideas for recovery included a plan to abolish corporation tax and replace it with a higher rate of VAT. Corporation tax is levied on company profits, so, these unbiased geniuses were advocating allowing companies to keep all of their profits, whilst raising VAT which impacts most heavily on the poorer sections of society. How does it do that? Because VAT is a tax on consumption, and poor people spend all of their income on consumption, they have to to stay alive and keep a roof over their heads. In 2008 corporation tax raised £52billion, thus, in order to compensate for that VAT would have needed to be increased from 17.5% to 28.3%. Thus, companies would have gained a nice increase in their income, whilst working people, the unemployed, the disabled etc. would have witnessed their expenditure rising by 10.8%

The Institute for Fiscal Studies may not be politically biased, but they most certainly are neoliberals to the core. Their analyses certainly start from the Thatcherite mantra that there is no alternative, and they therefore base all their calculations on the existing dominant economic ideology.  Further proof of that is that the same report argued that VAT should be extended to include food, children's clothes and books. Such changes will impact very heavily on the less well off, but affect the wealthy only marginally. Another report by the Institute recommends abolishing inheritance tax, whilst another advocates removing tax on interest on personal savings. So, how many of you out there pay corporation tax? How many spend the bulk of your income on consumption however? How many of you gain large sums from your bank on interest payments on your savings? How many of you have had to pay tax on an inheritance? But of course all of these recommendations are all unbiased and value free and it is a pure coincidence that they all benefit the wealthy and penalise the less well off.

You see, the findings of the Institute of Fiscal Studies are only relevant if, after independence, Scotland stays the same and does not seek alternatives methods of governance and economic prioritising. However, should Scotland ditch the dominant neoliberal poison and seek more equitable forms of policy-making, then the Institute's Report is about as much worth as a chocolate cigarette lighter. There are alternatives, there are other ways, the people who live and work in Scotland are an intelligent people and indeed are a more caring and humane people. After independence, the Scottish electorate may just be daft enough to vote for a Labour government, but they most certainly will never be daft enough to vote Tory or Lib Dem. However, even the Scottish Labour Party will surely understand that they will have to be different from the Westminster mafia. Whatever the case, do not fret about the findings of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, and please, do not take too much notice of what they say. As I continually warn you, the state of economics in this country is on a similar scale as its democracy, decidedly dodgy. We are ruled by political and economic illiterates!!!

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat



Sunday 17 November 2013

Can Westminster get any more useless?

The present state of British politics genuinely beggars belief and rational understanding. We are supposed to be a democratic society and we have a whole Parliamentary system that simply refuses to be held accountable or to give the electorate any form of respect or recognition. I remind you, all politicians, including the government, are put into office by us. They are not there because they are qualified, or because they are the best people for the job, they are there simply because they won an election. In office we pay their wages, their pensions, their expenses and provide their standard of living and that of their families. If it transpires that they are competent and/or honest, then that is entirely by chance.

The biggest decision any politician can make is the decision to commit the nation to war. This decision is therefore the most important area for which they must be held accountable and must justify to the people of the nation. The last government set up the Chilcot Enquiry to try to determine the justification for this country waging war against Iraq. This was set up because there is no doubt that the fundamental reasons given to the nation for going to war by the then government led by Tony Blair were a farrago of lies. In addition, under the government's duties in law, the war was illegal. As a result, we devastated a sovereign nation, killed hundreds of thousands of its citizens, brought terror onto our own streets and spent billions of pounds illegally and untruthfully. None of that is in dispute.

However, we now have the spectacle of an unelected civil servant, Sir Jeremy Heywood, who was, incidentally, Tony Blair's private secretary at the time of the Iraq war, refusing to release crucial documents to an enquiry set up by Parliament that may shed light on the reasons behind the biggest foreign policy disaster in the nation's history. The Chilcot Enquiry has been refused access to 25 notes sent from Blair to George Bush, plus 130 documents discussing the war and dozens of records of British Cabinet meetings by this man, on the grounds that Blair's negotiations with Bush were private. I mean, you simply could not make this stuff up. Who on earth does this Heywood think he is? He should be immediately arrested, placed in handcuffs, thrown in a cell and be forbidden to hold any form of public office for the rest of his life. So, why hasn't he? This situation defies rational understanding. There is no possible argument for considering that such discussions can be regarded as private. These people are elected, they don't fight the war once they have declared it, they get other people to fight it for them.They don't finance the war, we do. This is the most public decision any politician can take, and, incidentally, is coming from people who claim that they have a right to monitor every conversation, every text, every email that the population of this country make. As far as this government is concerned, you have no private life, and, they inherited such attitudes from Labour.

This is a genuine national scandal. Remember, Blair and his toadies didn't just wage illegal war, they have also indulged in widespread torture, large scale international kidnapping, and widespread criminality. That this situation has arisen tells you everything you want to know about modern British government and the overweening arrogance of the Westminster Parliament and its unelected civil officials. It also serves to highlight the utter uselessness of Westminster. Any decent MP with a scintilla of intelligence, or understanding of their roles and functions would be demanding this information immediately and would have called in the police to have Heywood arrested. The British people have no hope for any form of just and equitable society under present structural conditions. It requires a radical change, and all the evidence we have shows us that this just will not happen. It can happen for Scotland however, if the Scots just have the bottle to believe that they are intelligent enough to rule themselves. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

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Friday 15 November 2013

Westminster is lost in a corruption of its own making

The senior United Nations official for freedom of expression, Frank La Rue,  has warned Britain that the way it is treating the press and particularly the Guardian over the Snowden files is unacceptable. Accusing the British government of doing serious damage to our reputation for press freedom, he stated that "I have been absolutely shocked about the way the Guardian has been treated, from the idea of prosecution to the fact that some members of parliament even called it treason, I think that is unacceptable in a democratic society."

However, what I have been trying to impress on you in this blog is that Britain can no longer claim to be a democratic society in the proper sense of the political concept of democracy. The Westminster Parliament is irredeemably corrupt and its members represent no-one but themselves and a narrow circle of business and financial interests. Our MPs have lost all sense of purpose. If you had to ask any MP what their role and function is in a democratic society they would not be able to tell you. What they would tell you is what their party told them to tell you. Thus, their role has been corrupted, their functions have been corrupted, they have lost all sense of individuality and have submerged their personal identity completely under their party identity. They have no sense of shame, no dignity and no self-respect. They lie constantly and, even after the expenses scandal, still continue to enrich themselves at the public's expense. If you watch Question Time or any decent news programme you will see for yourself that they are an utter disgrace and an embarrassment.

The reasons for this is their allegiance to the economic imperatives of neoliberal free market economics that will accept no restraints on its activities. Thus, in order to pursue the goals of neoliberalism, our MPs refuse to be accountable, to give honest answers to questions, to represent their constituents or take any notice of public opinion. As I wrote recently, privatisation has been a disaster but that is of no consequence to Westminster as they and their mates are making fortunes out of it. The decline of the health service is deliberate, and the slow slide to slavery of the working people of the country is also deliberate. Westminster has genuinely become a club whose members must share the goals and objectives of the club in order to become a member. That is why all parties have taken the selection of candidates out of the hands of local parties and control such selections from their central office. You must be 'one of us' to get into the Westminster club.

Why has David Cameron attended the Commonwealth Conference in Sri Lanka when other states have condemned it for its human rights? Because Britain is in no position to preach to anyone else about human rights, the harassment of journalists, the bugging of phones, torture, rendition, and all the other delights normally associated with tyrannies. We have a chance to escape this situation next September. If you vote to remain in the UK next year, then you must agree with the slow death of democracy, freedom and human rights we are witnessing at the hands of the Westminster Parliament, you have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Tuesday 12 November 2013

The British State will wither away

The following is the start of an article in today's Guardian.

The government is to forge a "leaner, more efficient state" on a permanent basis, David Cameron has said as he signalled he had no intention of resuming spending once the structural deficit has been eliminated, a clear change to claims made after the last general election .
In a change of tack from saying in 2010 that he was imposing cuts out of necessity, rather than from "some ideological zeal", the prime minister told the Lord Mayor's banquet that the government has shown in the last three years that better services can be delivered with lower spending.

This is a graphic example of the lie machine that is the Westminster Parliament. In addition, it also reveals that no amount of facts and data is allowed to spoil a good ideological view of the world when this man tells us that the last three years has shown that better services can be delivered with lower spending. In just the last month the news has been inundated with stories about the catastrophic state of our service sector, for example, health, education, energy, roads, rail, bus services, care services, children's services and on and on. If you read the papers and watch the news, you will be fully aware that I am not indulging in rhetoric, that services right across the country are in permanent crisis. That Cameron can make such a statement in public shows anyone with a shred of intelligence that he is totally out of touch, totally out of control and completely unfit for public office.

Cameron is here revealing the Tory hatred of the state. Of course we have a leaner more efficient state today and its efficiency is judged, by the Camerloonatics of the world, how fast it can cut benefits, wages, increase working hours and working weeks, how fat it can make managerial salaries and bonuses, how many workers it can make redundant, how much privatisation it can visit on our health and education systems etc. etc. On those standards, the British state is very efficient, and, as I've been telling you for some time now, all such policies are the priorities of the Westminster Parliament. As I've also been telling you, Labour and the Lib Dems are as much to blame, so do not be fooled for a moment that if you stay within the British state after next September, but vote for someone different that anything will change. Remember, Labour have already committed themselves to accepting the Tory cuts for at least three years if they win in 2015, and have promised to be even harder on the benefits system.

The commitment to forge a leaner state on a permanent basis means only one thing. There will be more privatisation of all state services such as health and education. The state will be pared down to a minimum and we will have private roads, private bridges, private libraries, private health and education, and the entire British nation will be sold of for profit to the private sector. This is no false warning, nor am I being alarmist. I have warned you repeatedly that the neoliberals of all parties are preparing the working people of this country for modern forms of slavery. You have been warned. Westminster has become a genuine threat to your health, welfare and your liberty and if that's what you vote for next September, then you will deserve all you get.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Saturday 9 November 2013

You get what you vote for!

The Daily Telegraph on Friday 8th November 2013 carried a report that told us that the government is proposing measures to remove the legal protections that give a legal right to index linked final salary pensions for workers in the private sector. In other words, they will remove the right for a pension to move in accordance with inflation. The report noted that, in the course of a 15 year retirement, a person's pension could lose one-third of its value. In other words, once you retire, you will become increasingly impoverished. However, another two proposals are that employers will be given the right to delay a person's retirement in  order to save money, and that the government proposes to cancel survivors rights, in other words they will stop any payments to widows and widowers.

The brutality and callousness of our Westminster political class knows no bounds and knows neither shame nor common decency. I have consistently warned you about the war Westminster is waging against ordinary working people, and war is not too strong a word to use in this context because they are quite literally trying to destroy people. The ideology they live by assumes that the only people who actually create wealth are the business and financial sectors of society, and that the rest of us are simply leeches who sponge off, and depend on, the important people. They cannot conceive that the value of all production comes from the labour of the people who produce it, and, that without working people all of their wealth would not exist. I have written about this before but if you will excuse me I will quote Adam Smith, the so-called father of free market economics at some length because what he says about this subject is in complete contrast to what modern economics tells us. The following is from Smith's The Wealth of Nations Book 1 Ch. 5 and is not from Karl Marx
 
The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities........ The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it and who wants to dispose of it, or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money, or with goods, is purchased by labour, as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money, or those goods, indeed, save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labour, which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labour was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command….Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only……Labour, therefore, it appears evidently, is the only universal, as well as the only accurate, measure of value, or the only standard by which we can compare the values of different commodities, at all times, and at all places.

Thus, the real value of a house is equivalent to the sum total of the labour required to build it, from the labour that went into producing the bricks and wood for the structure right through to the final coat of paint to finish it. The actual cost of a house is speculation, licensed gangsterism. The real trick of the ruling elite in Britain is to convince us all that working people are actually worthless and that we should all bow down to the rich and wealthy, the real 'wealth creators' and they have actually managed to convince the working class itself. So, be thankful for the crumbs off your masters table because at the end of the day, if you accept this distorted sense of reality and subscribe to such an ideology then you deserve all you get. As I keep saying, you voted for it. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat    

Friday 8 November 2013

Security and the Rule of Law

Labour's shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry was on Question Time last night and highlighted perfectly the crucial malaise that afflicts our country and our system of government. It goes to the heart of the corruption of the Westminster system. Should Labour win the next election, this person would then become the Attorney General, the highest legal officer in the land, and what she showed was that she has neither a clear understanding of politics, nor, most importantly, of the law. I have already warned in other posts that the political class in the UK are persistently telling us that we must be prepared to sacrifice our freedoms in the name of security. We must never be seduced by such arguments.

On Question Time Ms Thornberry made the statement that the principal function of government is to protect our security, and no-one on the panel or in the audience took her to task on this. Now, at first sight this may seem to be correct, but it is fundamentally garbage, and is of profound importance to the nature of government and the government's relationship to the rest of society. The principal function of any government is to uphold the law, and it is law that protects our security, not the police or the armed forces or politicians, because, in order that our security is comprehensively and properly protected, all those personnel must, in a system genuinely operating by the rule of law, be subject to the law on an equal basis to everyone else. However, if we accept the Thornberry position, which is of course the position of all the criminals within Westminster, then the security measures under discussion, that is, the right of government to intercept all our communications and invade all of our privacy under the imperatives of their so-called war on terror, requires us to negate our fundamental rights and freedoms and hand unlimited and unrestricted power to people who are manifestly unfit to be trusted with it. If Ms Thornberry genuinely believes what she said, then it demonstrates that she herself is manifestly unfit for public office. Indeed, the reason that we have a problem with our security in modern Britain is because our government, with the support of the Westminster Parliament, broke the law and engaged in illegal activities for which we are paying a terrible price.

It is the same in our domestic lives, we are insecure in our own homes because we now know that, not only our own government, but foreign governments, are invading our homes through our phones and computers and engaging in illegal activities against us. No politician anywhere or for any reason is justified in behaving in such a manner, and the tragedy for us, is that our politicians are protecting people who are not elected, have no authority and are simply mindless civil servants.

The great Athenian statesman Pericles tells us how
Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state, in my view, is not far off; but if law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state.

It is clear that in this country, the law is subject to some other authority, the authority of the security services and their demands that they operate unrestricted by legal considerations. On the economic front, the law is subject to the imperatives of the 'market' whatever that is? The law in Britain takes no action against a banker who steals millions of pounds, but gives 6 months in jail to someone who steals a bottle of water. As a result, our governments are perfectly happy to subvert the rule of law in pursuit of their own interests and the interests of America. Aristotle tells us in his 'Politics' that
It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens: upon the same principle, if it is advantageous to place the supreme power in some particular persons, they should be appointed to be only guardians, and the servants of the laws.

Thus, our real security lies, not with the security services, not with the government, but in respect for, and obedience to, the rule of law. However, for modern British governments, security doesn't mean law, it means force and illegality if they consider it necessary. For the rest of society security means having confidence that we are secure from arbitrary interference from the forces of the state, from poverty, from hunger and from a fear of the future.

The principal source of insecurity in modern Britain is the direct result of our governmental system's obsession with security. However, we can never be secure if we are governed by criminals. If you or I break the law we are branded criminals and the same applies to our politicians, and they stand exposed as criminals, as kidnappers, as torturers. The American Declaration of Independence tells us that

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Thus, government is instituted to secure our fundamental rights, but how do they secure them? By security measures, or by law? Humans are social beings and are therefore regulatory beings and they secure our rights by regulation, the most common form being formal law. Other forms of securing our rights are norms and values, but, and this is the crucial point, the security forces must always operate within the established laws, norms and values. These regulations precede, and are the locus of, the authority of the security services. I could write much about this, and it has been difficult presenting it in this truncated manner, however, I trust it has been sufficient to explain the problem. Should anyone wish further explanation please ask and I will be happy to reply. Remember, one of the oldest warnings from history is 'quis custodiet ipsos custodies?'  -  'who watches the watchers?'

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Thursday 7 November 2013

Privatisation - the prototypical Westminster lie.

I've been pondering the latest saga over the closure of Portsmouth shipyard and the charge that it is a bribe to the Scots not to vote for Independence, and of course that's exactly what it is. However, I sincerely hope that the Scots don't fall for this extremely vulgar piece of political manoeuvring and vote against Independence on the premise that if you do you may lose some 2000 jobs when the Scottish Parliament could create 10 times that number at the stroke of a pen. Any decent government who sincerely wished to end unemployment could do so quite easily in little over a year. The Scots would likely be quite to prepared to accept such a policy, whereas the rest of the UK wouldn't and that is one of the reasons why we need Independence. I will happily explain this to anyone who asks me to.

The real lesson of this catastrophe however, is the disaster that is privatisation. I have been trying to think of a genuinely successful example of privatisation and cannot think of one. If anyone can enlighten me then please do not hesitate to reply.

The most popular privatisation was of course council housing, but that is a completely different thing from it being successful. It has of course been a complete disaster with our housing situation left in complete chaos. I showed in an earlier post how there are twice as many empty properties in England and Wales alone than there are homeless people. The catalogue of disastrous privatisation is well-known, rail, energy, water, buses, NHS111 and all the Labour inspired Private Finance Initiatives, with licensed gangsters in the shape of A4e, ATOS, G4s, Serco etc. robbing us blind for providing overpriced underperforming so-called services. In short, privatisation simply does not work and is another example of the fraud that is supposed to be the free market and the pathological lying of the Westminster governmental system that includes all three major parties.

It is simply unbelievable that anyone can tell you that we are better together with a straight face. It speaks volumes that the most prominent spokesman of the Better Together campaign is the former Chancellor Alistair Darling, a prominent member of the government who presided over the financial collapse and a man of genuinely monumental incompetence. A member of the worst government in British history, a government that was financially stupid, that took away whole sections of our fundamental rights, that waged illegal wars and brought terror onto our streets, that engaged in rendition and torture and whose activities in government mean that they are incapable of waging any genuine form of opposition to the present brutal and callous administration of elite public schoolboys who will complete the destruction of a once rich and vibrant nation, but a nation that is now characterised by greed, selfishness and hate. Hatred of the poor, the sick, the disabled, the disadvantaged, the Europeans, Muslims, indeed anyone who is not one of them. Is that what you want, to be allied with and supportive of people like that? You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat