Another landmark in Margaret Thatcher's long-term goal of transferring as much wealth as possible from the poor to the rich has been realised. The rented sector in the housing market is now larger than the social housing sector. Thatcher privatised council housing in the early 1980's with the purpose of preventing working people from being housed in low rent, comfortable and secure housing. The government desired to close off the supply of housing in order to drive up the price of houses. In future all house building would be done by the private sector, or by so-called housing associations which were out of local authority control. They forced councils to raise rents by an average of 400% in order that a mortgage from the private sector would become economic and forbade local authorities to build any housing to replace housing that was purchased by the tenant. In addition, they forbade councils to spend any of the money they got from the sale of council houses, except for repairs and maintenance. Michael Corleone wouldn't have thought of such measures.
Such policies were purely ideological and had no practical value other than for profit for private sector businesses. As we now see they were disastrous, creating a massive housing shortage and the boom in house prices and therefore mortgages that led directly to the financial crisis of 2007-08. I trust that you have noticed that it is happening all over again, barely five years after the last disaster. These people are nothing if not consistent in their piracy. The present housing bubble must not be mistaken for the fact that they have not learned from their mistakes. It is not that, it is simply showing us that they don't care. If the housing situation leads to another crisis, they will be OK, they will have made their fortune and have it stashed away in some foreign bank. They have produced a record number of homelessness and an acute crisis in affordable housing, especially in the south of England. Private landlords now get housing benefit paid directly to them, allowing them to inflate rents to levels that most people cannot afford. This has resulted in a record number of empty properties in England and Wales as landlords restrict the supply of housing in order to drive up prices and rents. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of this policy are the royal family, including the Queen and the bonnie prince. All privatisations have been a disaster, but housing must take pride of place for bare faced gangsterism and exploitation. I remind you, Labour never lifted a finger to do anything about this situation in 13 years in government.
However, I again remind you that you get what you vote for. Should you vote no in September, this is what will happen increasingly in Scotland once Labour gets back into power. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Wednesday 26 February 2014
Monday 24 February 2014
The future is worse than you think!
People have indicated that they think that I may be a bit hard on the government and that I am extreme in my analysis of their actions, for example my repeated argument that they are deliberately introducing modern forms of slavery. I have cut and pasted this from today's Independent newspaper
Today, in the seventh-richest country in the world, this government is on an ideological mission to punish and degrade the poor. Those who question that mission are savaged. It is political sadism. David Cameron, George Osborne, Iain Duncan Smith and others inflict incalculable pain on the most dispossessed because they can.
Thankfully some commentators are wakening up to what I have been trying to tell people for many years now, but also in this blog since I started it. If you read the papers, you will note that HSBC has given over 200 of their banking staff in excess of £1million bonuses. So, today in modern Britain if you are a member of the elite financial and banking staff you get rewarded for gross incompetence and the government actually passes measures in order to protect such practices, but if you are of the lower orders you are continually punished and demonised regardless of whether you are good at your job or not. Remember, wages have continually fallen for the past five years. In addition, its no use looking to Labour to sort this out for you as they are as guilty as the Tories, and have no plans to do anything to restore some fairness. I remind you how Rachel Reeves told us that Labour would be even tougher on benefits than the Tories and Milliband spends all his energies distancing himself from the labour movement.
Another friend of mine told me he doesn't like my style of writing because there is no humour in it. Fair enough, but I do not find anything remotely humorous about poverty, slavery and the destruction of the society I grew up in. When I read articles online and then read the comments that follow them I despair at the viciousness and hatred that people exhibit towards the disadvantaged in this society. It is true that the majority agree with the Tories about how the poor and disadvantaged should be hammered because they are all feckless scroungers and skivers. This is the true victory of Thatcher and her most enduring legacy. The UK is a genuinely sick society. However, the divide between the classes and the massive inequalities we see in modern Britain cannot continue much longer. Should the Tories win the next election and should Scotland vote no in the coming referendum, both of which are likely scenarios, then the Tories have already warned us that we have only seen £1 of cuts so far for every £10 still to come. You had better brace yourselves for a Ukrainian style confrontation should that happen.
The people of Britain find it very difficult to believe that their government can do such things deliberately. They still think that they are acting in the best interests of the country and have difficulty conceiving that the people they have elected can operate by such spite and malice, indeed outright hatred towards their fellow citizens. However, as I wrote in my book Human Rights in a Big Yellow Taxi, Thatcher freed them from the ideological and moral constraints that stopped them doing such things. She unleashed pure naked greed and hatred and told us all that they were good. I trust her disciples will remember that if the positions become reversed. As an aside, I trust you are all by now aware that all the lies and hatred spewed out over the past year about millions of Romanians and Bulgarians flooding into the country were just that, lies and racist hatred. These are the kind of people who either govern you, or seek to get your vote, the kind of people who live by, and thrive on, lies and hatred. The British elite is characterised by lies and hatred, that is their nature and if you are an ordinary working person in modern Britain, you have no future under such people. Independence has become a moral necessity, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Today, in the seventh-richest country in the world, this government is on an ideological mission to punish and degrade the poor. Those who question that mission are savaged. It is political sadism. David Cameron, George Osborne, Iain Duncan Smith and others inflict incalculable pain on the most dispossessed because they can.
Thankfully some commentators are wakening up to what I have been trying to tell people for many years now, but also in this blog since I started it. If you read the papers, you will note that HSBC has given over 200 of their banking staff in excess of £1million bonuses. So, today in modern Britain if you are a member of the elite financial and banking staff you get rewarded for gross incompetence and the government actually passes measures in order to protect such practices, but if you are of the lower orders you are continually punished and demonised regardless of whether you are good at your job or not. Remember, wages have continually fallen for the past five years. In addition, its no use looking to Labour to sort this out for you as they are as guilty as the Tories, and have no plans to do anything to restore some fairness. I remind you how Rachel Reeves told us that Labour would be even tougher on benefits than the Tories and Milliband spends all his energies distancing himself from the labour movement.
Another friend of mine told me he doesn't like my style of writing because there is no humour in it. Fair enough, but I do not find anything remotely humorous about poverty, slavery and the destruction of the society I grew up in. When I read articles online and then read the comments that follow them I despair at the viciousness and hatred that people exhibit towards the disadvantaged in this society. It is true that the majority agree with the Tories about how the poor and disadvantaged should be hammered because they are all feckless scroungers and skivers. This is the true victory of Thatcher and her most enduring legacy. The UK is a genuinely sick society. However, the divide between the classes and the massive inequalities we see in modern Britain cannot continue much longer. Should the Tories win the next election and should Scotland vote no in the coming referendum, both of which are likely scenarios, then the Tories have already warned us that we have only seen £1 of cuts so far for every £10 still to come. You had better brace yourselves for a Ukrainian style confrontation should that happen.
The people of Britain find it very difficult to believe that their government can do such things deliberately. They still think that they are acting in the best interests of the country and have difficulty conceiving that the people they have elected can operate by such spite and malice, indeed outright hatred towards their fellow citizens. However, as I wrote in my book Human Rights in a Big Yellow Taxi, Thatcher freed them from the ideological and moral constraints that stopped them doing such things. She unleashed pure naked greed and hatred and told us all that they were good. I trust her disciples will remember that if the positions become reversed. As an aside, I trust you are all by now aware that all the lies and hatred spewed out over the past year about millions of Romanians and Bulgarians flooding into the country were just that, lies and racist hatred. These are the kind of people who either govern you, or seek to get your vote, the kind of people who live by, and thrive on, lies and hatred. The British elite is characterised by lies and hatred, that is their nature and if you are an ordinary working person in modern Britain, you have no future under such people. Independence has become a moral necessity, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday 21 February 2014
Welfare, a gross abuse of language
Anyone familiar with the discipline of sociology will be aware that we live in a symbolic universe. What that means is that we make sense of much of our social reality through symbols, and a great portion of such symbols are delivered by language. When I use the word chair, each of us have a symbolic representation of a chair in our consciousness and so I do not have to explain what I mean by a chair. It is the same with words like kettle, pen or computer. If I use a word like love however, or a word like Muslim or Catholic or black or gay, then the symbol that each of us carry in our consciousness for words such as these that do not denote a physical artefact will depend largely on our socialisation which will render such words either positive or negative depending on how we have been socialised to see them. Language is dynamic, in that meanings alter between and within societies, and over time. In my lifetime the word gay has changed its meaning completely and is almost never used in the Anglo-Saxon form that I learned as a child. In my world, a fag is something you smoke, but in the US it is something different.
The same thing has happened to the word welfare, which was always referred to as social security until the Tories decided to adopt the derogatory and demeaning American use of welfare and render welfare a negative symbol thus stigmatising people who depend on it. This was quite deliberate in order to begin the process of demonising people on benefits and creating a national hatred for them amongst those who are fortunate enough to have a good job. Remember, the Tories goal is to drive as many people into low wage, zero-hours employment as possible. Into jobs with no rights and no security thus replacing one form of benefit dependency with another because the people in such jobs will be totally dependent on the employer and be prepared to accept whatever conditions are on offer. This is the modern form of slavery I keep warning about. Welfare now denotes dependency instead of its Anglo-Saxon definition of well-being and care. It is a stigma today to be a welfare claimant when you are in fact a recipient of social security.
This is in line with Thatcher's infamous statement that there is no such thing as society. Individuals and families get welfare, usually from charities and voluntary associations, but people who are citizens of a real and caring society get social security. Social security is anathema to Tories because it signals that society has a responsibility to those citizens that society has failed and they will not admit that. People in need of social security are in that position because, according to the Tory gospel, its their own fault. Now, admittedly, some people who need benefits are themselves to blame, but, in the cause of a much greater social need, it is of little consequence if these people are included even though they don't really deserve it. That is the hallmark of a civilised society. I remind you, benefit fraud accounts for only 0.7% of the benefits budget whilst the Tories policies have produced foodbanks, widespread poverty and in some cases starvation. Which is the greatest fraud? Such things will not be allowed in an Independent Scotland, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
The same thing has happened to the word welfare, which was always referred to as social security until the Tories decided to adopt the derogatory and demeaning American use of welfare and render welfare a negative symbol thus stigmatising people who depend on it. This was quite deliberate in order to begin the process of demonising people on benefits and creating a national hatred for them amongst those who are fortunate enough to have a good job. Remember, the Tories goal is to drive as many people into low wage, zero-hours employment as possible. Into jobs with no rights and no security thus replacing one form of benefit dependency with another because the people in such jobs will be totally dependent on the employer and be prepared to accept whatever conditions are on offer. This is the modern form of slavery I keep warning about. Welfare now denotes dependency instead of its Anglo-Saxon definition of well-being and care. It is a stigma today to be a welfare claimant when you are in fact a recipient of social security.
This is in line with Thatcher's infamous statement that there is no such thing as society. Individuals and families get welfare, usually from charities and voluntary associations, but people who are citizens of a real and caring society get social security. Social security is anathema to Tories because it signals that society has a responsibility to those citizens that society has failed and they will not admit that. People in need of social security are in that position because, according to the Tory gospel, its their own fault. Now, admittedly, some people who need benefits are themselves to blame, but, in the cause of a much greater social need, it is of little consequence if these people are included even though they don't really deserve it. That is the hallmark of a civilised society. I remind you, benefit fraud accounts for only 0.7% of the benefits budget whilst the Tories policies have produced foodbanks, widespread poverty and in some cases starvation. Which is the greatest fraud? Such things will not be allowed in an Independent Scotland, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Wednesday 19 February 2014
The morality of slavery
I trust you will have seen the response from Prime Minister Cameron to the charges from Archbishop Nicholls that cuts in social security are creating hunger, poverty and despair. Cameron tells us that the Archbishop is wrong, that the cuts he is implementing are giving people hope and that they are an integral part of the government's moral mission. So, on one side we have a man who has been gathering empirical evidence from sources all around the country and relating the experiences of thousands of people who are living below the poverty line, using foodbanks and part of the 860,000 people who have been cut off from all social security because they have been excluded by the government's ferocious targeting of the weakest elements in society, and on the other side we have a pathological liar, a millionaire who exudes a hatred for the poor and the disadvantaged and the leader of the movement to reduce the working people of this country to modern forms of slavery.
Now, the last politician who claimed to be on a moral mission was Mad Tony, whose moral drive claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. We should be deeply alarmed when we hear our politicians claiming the moral high ground because morality is none of their business. Government is an administrative and decision-making function and its relations to morality is only concerned with establishing, upholding and maintaining the rule of law. As the philosopher John Locke tells us
"The whole trust, power and authority of the civil ruler is vested in him for no other purpose but to be made use of for the good, preservation, and peace of men in that society over which he is set. The civil ruler hath nothing to do with the good of men's souls or their concernement in another life, but is ordained and entrusted with his power only for the quiet and comfortable living of all men in society, one with another".
In addition, morality is a relative thing and differs widely between and within societies and groups. In this instance Cameron is using the concept of morality as a weapon of propaganda, to give the demonization of the poor and disadvantaged and their continuing pauperisation the appearance of respectability and to present government spite and malice as good and necessary. These people have absolutely no shame, never mind a sense of moral conscience. If there is one thing you can be certain of, it is that I do not even recognise what Cameron describes as morality. As far as I am concerned, Cameron represents moral degeneracy and blatant class values. Now, I have no particular truck with the Roman Church but in this instance the Archbishop is simply highlighting a national scandal, a scandal that only a scoundrel or an imbecile would deny.
Cameron's Tories remind me of the American slave owners who subscribed to a theory known as 'drapetomania'. In the 19th century, an American surgeon and so-called psychiatrist (note, another professed moralist) a Dr Samuel Cartwright from Louisiana in the American south, describes a form of mental illness he calls ‘drapetomania’ which is an uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery. Such slaves were irrationally ungrateful for all that their white masters had done for them, and therefore to desire freedom from slavery must be a form of insanity. He described the black race as natural submissive knee-benders. That is exactly how the Tories see the working class and the poor, and their moral mission is to put them back in their rightful place.
I am going to address the problem of how the government has systematically dropped the reference to social security and adopted the American expression of calling it welfare. This is done deliberately and for a purpose, but this post is long enough for the moment.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Now, the last politician who claimed to be on a moral mission was Mad Tony, whose moral drive claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. We should be deeply alarmed when we hear our politicians claiming the moral high ground because morality is none of their business. Government is an administrative and decision-making function and its relations to morality is only concerned with establishing, upholding and maintaining the rule of law. As the philosopher John Locke tells us
"The whole trust, power and authority of the civil ruler is vested in him for no other purpose but to be made use of for the good, preservation, and peace of men in that society over which he is set. The civil ruler hath nothing to do with the good of men's souls or their concernement in another life, but is ordained and entrusted with his power only for the quiet and comfortable living of all men in society, one with another".
In addition, morality is a relative thing and differs widely between and within societies and groups. In this instance Cameron is using the concept of morality as a weapon of propaganda, to give the demonization of the poor and disadvantaged and their continuing pauperisation the appearance of respectability and to present government spite and malice as good and necessary. These people have absolutely no shame, never mind a sense of moral conscience. If there is one thing you can be certain of, it is that I do not even recognise what Cameron describes as morality. As far as I am concerned, Cameron represents moral degeneracy and blatant class values. Now, I have no particular truck with the Roman Church but in this instance the Archbishop is simply highlighting a national scandal, a scandal that only a scoundrel or an imbecile would deny.
Cameron's Tories remind me of the American slave owners who subscribed to a theory known as 'drapetomania'. In the 19th century, an American surgeon and so-called psychiatrist (note, another professed moralist) a Dr Samuel Cartwright from Louisiana in the American south, describes a form of mental illness he calls ‘drapetomania’ which is an uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery. Such slaves were irrationally ungrateful for all that their white masters had done for them, and therefore to desire freedom from slavery must be a form of insanity. He described the black race as natural submissive knee-benders. That is exactly how the Tories see the working class and the poor, and their moral mission is to put them back in their rightful place.
I am going to address the problem of how the government has systematically dropped the reference to social security and adopted the American expression of calling it welfare. This is done deliberately and for a purpose, but this post is long enough for the moment.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Tuesday 18 February 2014
Where will you go to my lovely??
If you will indulge me, I will attempt to address some of the frequently asked questions I am confronted with over the question of the referendum and Scottish Independence. This referendum is asking you if you want Scotland to be independent. It is not asking you if you support the SNP, it is not asking you to vote for Alex Salmond, it is asking you if you wish to claim sovereignty for the Scottish people and use the power that will come from a yes vote to be in control of your own country, make your own decisions, and determine your own future. It is asking you if you wish to continue living under the incompetence and corruption of Westminster, to continue to be ruled by people who care nothing about Scotland and care only about lining their own pockets. It is asking if you wish to continue to be ruled and have all the decisions affecting you made by a bunch of pathological liars and confidence tricksters.
Should you vote yes, there will then be elections for the new independent parliament where you will be able to vote for whoever you wish, however, and this is very important, these elections will be carried out under a system of proportional representation that will reflect the democratic choice of the Scottish people, and will not reflect the corrupt and party-rigged first-past-the-post Westminster farce where securing 22 votes out of every hundred is then presented as giving you a mandate from the British people to declare war on, and invade, bomb and torture nations and their peoples who have done you no harm and who have done nothing to deserve it. Saddam Hussein may have been a bad man, but the half a million Iraqis who have died because of our actions did nothing to deserve being bombed and shot to death, and the remainder did not deserve to have their society utterly destroyed and left resembling the aftermath of a Mongol invasion. That was from a government that was rejected by 78 out of every hundred possible voters and if that is democratic then I no longer understand that concept.
I was at a seminar where a large group of business persons, all Better Together supporters gathered to hear a presentation from a leading member of the Yes campaign. The Yes speaker openly told them that they would have to pay more tax in an Independent Scotland if they earned more than £150,000 per annum to which one of the business persons piped up with, 'well if that's the case we'll all just up sticks and move elsewhere.' The speaker simply responded by saying 'no you won't.' Rather taken aback the business person then said 'we wont, why not?' To which the speaker asked the group, 'where would you go?' He continued, 'where will you find a job like the one you have here paying you that kind of money? Where will you find a house like the one you have at the price you paid for it here? Even if you can find a job, will you go somewhere that means the type of house you can afford will require you to commute at least one hour probably two each way each day? Will you take your family, your wife and children away from their school, their friends, their relatives and the wide social circle they enjoy here? I think not' He then asked for anyone in the group to seriously tell him that they would indeed do such a thing, no-one replied. Very instructive. This is the result of the Better Together campaign of lies and disinformation and I trust that you are all aware that the title of the Better Together campaign is Project Fear. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Should you vote yes, there will then be elections for the new independent parliament where you will be able to vote for whoever you wish, however, and this is very important, these elections will be carried out under a system of proportional representation that will reflect the democratic choice of the Scottish people, and will not reflect the corrupt and party-rigged first-past-the-post Westminster farce where securing 22 votes out of every hundred is then presented as giving you a mandate from the British people to declare war on, and invade, bomb and torture nations and their peoples who have done you no harm and who have done nothing to deserve it. Saddam Hussein may have been a bad man, but the half a million Iraqis who have died because of our actions did nothing to deserve being bombed and shot to death, and the remainder did not deserve to have their society utterly destroyed and left resembling the aftermath of a Mongol invasion. That was from a government that was rejected by 78 out of every hundred possible voters and if that is democratic then I no longer understand that concept.
I was at a seminar where a large group of business persons, all Better Together supporters gathered to hear a presentation from a leading member of the Yes campaign. The Yes speaker openly told them that they would have to pay more tax in an Independent Scotland if they earned more than £150,000 per annum to which one of the business persons piped up with, 'well if that's the case we'll all just up sticks and move elsewhere.' The speaker simply responded by saying 'no you won't.' Rather taken aback the business person then said 'we wont, why not?' To which the speaker asked the group, 'where would you go?' He continued, 'where will you find a job like the one you have here paying you that kind of money? Where will you find a house like the one you have at the price you paid for it here? Even if you can find a job, will you go somewhere that means the type of house you can afford will require you to commute at least one hour probably two each way each day? Will you take your family, your wife and children away from their school, their friends, their relatives and the wide social circle they enjoy here? I think not' He then asked for anyone in the group to seriously tell him that they would indeed do such a thing, no-one replied. Very instructive. This is the result of the Better Together campaign of lies and disinformation and I trust that you are all aware that the title of the Better Together campaign is Project Fear. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday 14 February 2014
The strange death of British democracy
I trust you saw the result of the Parliamentary by-election in Wythenshaw in Greater Manchester yesterday. Labour won with 55% of the vote on a 28% turnout. What this means is that an MP has just been elected into the most important law making and decision-making forum in the country with 15.4% of the possible votes in that constituency. Now the turnout is not the fault of the winning candidate, but it does go to show the appalling disconnect that now exists between Westminster and the British people. These are the same people that are demanding that unions must have an absolute majority in a vote before they can take any form of industrial action, they are absolutely shameless.
What we will now witness is this person purporting to speak for the British people, and claiming that he has a mandate for how he votes and the measures he supports once he reaches Westminster. What this result highlights is the dreadful state of British politics and the nonsense of what we claim to be a democratic country. With all that is going on in this country, with cuts, unemployment, foodbanks, austerity, the bedroom tax etc. 72 voters out of every hundred in this constituency couldn't even be bothered to vote, and a man has just been returned to represent those people with only 15 out of every hundred possible votes. Even before he has taken his seat he lives down to all my expectations. After the vote he told the press that
"voters had 'sent a very clear message' to the Government. "They have rejected the failed policies of the out-of-touch Tories, they have rejected the isolationism and scaremongering of Ukip," He added. "It's a result which emphatically demonstrates that people here know the NHS is not safe in David Cameron's hands, and that we've had enough of his utterly out-of-touch government."
Good luck to him in his parliamentary career, but he will not need it as by this type of utterance he will fit right into Westminster. The very clear message that the voters sent was that they cannot be bothered with any of them. How out of touch can anyone be who has just been elected with 15 out of every hundred votes, a little humility would have been more appropriate because he has been rejected just as surely as the rest of the gang. We now have a man in our Parliament who believes that 28% of voters emphatically demonstrate something, you genuinely couldn't make up nonsense like this, it is like an ongoing pantomime. This type of development in the British system is quite genuinely dangerous as the electorate are quite simply allowing people like this to do what they want with no form of accountability.
However, what I want you to take from this result is a warning of what the general election will be like in 2015. Scotland must disassociate itself from this chaotic mess as a matter of priority, because if you vote Better Together in September, it is your future you are committing to people like this and to the system that supports and sustains them. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
What we will now witness is this person purporting to speak for the British people, and claiming that he has a mandate for how he votes and the measures he supports once he reaches Westminster. What this result highlights is the dreadful state of British politics and the nonsense of what we claim to be a democratic country. With all that is going on in this country, with cuts, unemployment, foodbanks, austerity, the bedroom tax etc. 72 voters out of every hundred in this constituency couldn't even be bothered to vote, and a man has just been returned to represent those people with only 15 out of every hundred possible votes. Even before he has taken his seat he lives down to all my expectations. After the vote he told the press that
"voters had 'sent a very clear message' to the Government. "They have rejected the failed policies of the out-of-touch Tories, they have rejected the isolationism and scaremongering of Ukip," He added. "It's a result which emphatically demonstrates that people here know the NHS is not safe in David Cameron's hands, and that we've had enough of his utterly out-of-touch government."
Good luck to him in his parliamentary career, but he will not need it as by this type of utterance he will fit right into Westminster. The very clear message that the voters sent was that they cannot be bothered with any of them. How out of touch can anyone be who has just been elected with 15 out of every hundred votes, a little humility would have been more appropriate because he has been rejected just as surely as the rest of the gang. We now have a man in our Parliament who believes that 28% of voters emphatically demonstrate something, you genuinely couldn't make up nonsense like this, it is like an ongoing pantomime. This type of development in the British system is quite genuinely dangerous as the electorate are quite simply allowing people like this to do what they want with no form of accountability.
However, what I want you to take from this result is a warning of what the general election will be like in 2015. Scotland must disassociate itself from this chaotic mess as a matter of priority, because if you vote Better Together in September, it is your future you are committing to people like this and to the system that supports and sustains them. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday 13 February 2014
Will the floods make a difference? Think again!
If you will forgive me using a terrible pun, I believe that the flooding that we are seeing throughout southern England will mark a watershed in British politics. There can no longer be any argument as to the necessity of the state and for state activity on a national scale. Now, when I talk about the state I include our systems of local government. As I said the last time, successive governments have systematically destroyed local government and privatised all of its essential functions, those functions that should be getting utilised right now to deal with this catastrophe. However, they cannot be utilised as they no longer exist, they have all been privatised or centralised out of local government control. Fire, ambulance, police, direct labour, buildings and works departments would all, in the past, have been actively coordinating relief. Local councillors in partnership with local voluntary organisations would have been active from the first day of flooding to mitigate the worst effects of the weather, people who know their community and who know its priorities.
The systematic atomisation of civil society has to be reversed as a matter of priority. Given the finances, local governments throughout the country could utilise our 3 million unemployed people, working under the direction of local planners to restore communities and rebuild the damaged infrastructure. We have a national emergency and it requires national priorities. The £1.7million bonus being awarded to the chairman of Lloyds bank should be confiscated along with the £1.4billion in bonuses that the banking sector in London is due to pay their managers. Those people don't need that money, the flood victims do. By the way, I trust you noticed that the chairman of Lloyds bank told the press that his bonus was in the national interest. He should get a bonus for sheer affrontery.
The relentless de-regulation of the economy, the privatisation of its essential services and the relentless centralisation of political power and decision-making must be stopped and reversed. However, despite the blindingly obvious evidence for this, it will not happen. None of the Westminster political parties and their personnel have either the intelligence or the vision necessary to accomplish what is necessary, and none of the people who are suffering from this situation will be prepared to vote for it to happen. The Tories are still daily denying climate change and so are not willing to make concessions as to the necessary measures to protect our society in the future. Labour are too scared to take the first necessary steps, which requires a radical change in the distribution of resources and of our system of taxation. The measures that are necessary will require money, and these people think that the money belongs to them by right. How on earth can such people justify paying such obscene bonuses otherwise? Never underestimate the Westminster hatred of and contempt for, the UK outside the south-east of England. Never underestimate their hatred of the working class, and never underestimate their hatred of the Scots. Most importantly, never underestimate their intention to loot the national treasury as much as they can. I ask you to think - for the past five years we have been told that we are in a period of extreme austerity. We are constantly being told that there is no money left. There is no money for health, for caring services, for the disabled, for social security. All of those areas must suffer cuts which are absolutely necessary for recovery, but yesterday Cameron told us that money is no object because the playing fields of his beloved Eton were flooded. He told the House of Commons this is because we are a rich country, oh really? Money is no object because we are a rich country, but half a million people are dependent on food banks, and half of all benefit claimants are in work! I genuinely must be missing something. There is not one single persuasive reason for the Scots to remain in union with these type of people, but its your choice, you have been warned. If you vote for more of this political criminality you will deserve all you get.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
The systematic atomisation of civil society has to be reversed as a matter of priority. Given the finances, local governments throughout the country could utilise our 3 million unemployed people, working under the direction of local planners to restore communities and rebuild the damaged infrastructure. We have a national emergency and it requires national priorities. The £1.7million bonus being awarded to the chairman of Lloyds bank should be confiscated along with the £1.4billion in bonuses that the banking sector in London is due to pay their managers. Those people don't need that money, the flood victims do. By the way, I trust you noticed that the chairman of Lloyds bank told the press that his bonus was in the national interest. He should get a bonus for sheer affrontery.
The relentless de-regulation of the economy, the privatisation of its essential services and the relentless centralisation of political power and decision-making must be stopped and reversed. However, despite the blindingly obvious evidence for this, it will not happen. None of the Westminster political parties and their personnel have either the intelligence or the vision necessary to accomplish what is necessary, and none of the people who are suffering from this situation will be prepared to vote for it to happen. The Tories are still daily denying climate change and so are not willing to make concessions as to the necessary measures to protect our society in the future. Labour are too scared to take the first necessary steps, which requires a radical change in the distribution of resources and of our system of taxation. The measures that are necessary will require money, and these people think that the money belongs to them by right. How on earth can such people justify paying such obscene bonuses otherwise? Never underestimate the Westminster hatred of and contempt for, the UK outside the south-east of England. Never underestimate their hatred of the working class, and never underestimate their hatred of the Scots. Most importantly, never underestimate their intention to loot the national treasury as much as they can. I ask you to think - for the past five years we have been told that we are in a period of extreme austerity. We are constantly being told that there is no money left. There is no money for health, for caring services, for the disabled, for social security. All of those areas must suffer cuts which are absolutely necessary for recovery, but yesterday Cameron told us that money is no object because the playing fields of his beloved Eton were flooded. He told the House of Commons this is because we are a rich country, oh really? Money is no object because we are a rich country, but half a million people are dependent on food banks, and half of all benefit claimants are in work! I genuinely must be missing something. There is not one single persuasive reason for the Scots to remain in union with these type of people, but its your choice, you have been warned. If you vote for more of this political criminality you will deserve all you get.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 10 February 2014
Help, I need somebody, Help not just anybody!
Every event has a cause, and every sequence creates a consequence. Since 1979 the neoliberals in government have waged war against the state. Thatcher dedicated her efforts to 'rolling back the state' and reducing the influence and the role of the 'dead hand of the state'. It has become a mantra that the state is a bad thing, that it is self-evident that the private sector is superior to the state in every aspect of economic life. If anyone like me advocates an active and interventionist state they are looked on as, as best, eccentric, at worst a lunatic.
The entire South of England and large parts of Wales are flooded and in desperate need of help and relief, and what is the government and the state doing, nothing! When the chickens come home to roost and those poor people look to the state for help it is not there any more, it has been neutered, and has been neutered for ideological and political reasons. The people of Somerset, Cornwall and the Thames Valley have been left completely to their own devices. The only people doing anything for these people are volunteers and whatever emergency service is available at the local level. On Channel Four news, the only people who they could identify actively offering outside help in the Somerset area was a Sikh charity from London who came down to help them. John Snow interviewed residents from a flooded village right under the Heathrow Airport flight path, a mere 30 miles from the centre of London, and they had no outside help whatever, despite the lies of their local Tory MP.
The reality is that the Thatcherites have been spectaculary successful and the state no longer has the manpower, the finance, nor the strategic planning available to adequately cope with any form of national emergency. The government has been shown to be hopelessly out of touch and without a clue what to do to tackle this problem. The Chief of the Environment Agency could not even tell Channel Four news who was responsible for coordinating the emergency services in such an event. He thought is was either the local Chief Constable or his Deputy, but when pressed he did not know. This is not me propagandising, this is all from the reports on the national news.
As I keep telling you, the dominant ideology in this country is simply wrong and this is being highlighted more and more with every passing day. However, the people who are suffering worse from this catastrophe are the same people who have persistently voted for this neoliberalism year after year. This situation is the result of their choices at the ballot box, and I have no confidence that they will be any different in the future. All the evidence points to them even switching to UKIP in the near future, so, they will go from one set of incompetent nutters to an even more extreme form of incompetent nutters. The only thing that will begin to rectify this disaster is state spending and that is one thing they will not vote for. Scotland must not replicate this insanity, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
The entire South of England and large parts of Wales are flooded and in desperate need of help and relief, and what is the government and the state doing, nothing! When the chickens come home to roost and those poor people look to the state for help it is not there any more, it has been neutered, and has been neutered for ideological and political reasons. The people of Somerset, Cornwall and the Thames Valley have been left completely to their own devices. The only people doing anything for these people are volunteers and whatever emergency service is available at the local level. On Channel Four news, the only people who they could identify actively offering outside help in the Somerset area was a Sikh charity from London who came down to help them. John Snow interviewed residents from a flooded village right under the Heathrow Airport flight path, a mere 30 miles from the centre of London, and they had no outside help whatever, despite the lies of their local Tory MP.
The reality is that the Thatcherites have been spectaculary successful and the state no longer has the manpower, the finance, nor the strategic planning available to adequately cope with any form of national emergency. The government has been shown to be hopelessly out of touch and without a clue what to do to tackle this problem. The Chief of the Environment Agency could not even tell Channel Four news who was responsible for coordinating the emergency services in such an event. He thought is was either the local Chief Constable or his Deputy, but when pressed he did not know. This is not me propagandising, this is all from the reports on the national news.
As I keep telling you, the dominant ideology in this country is simply wrong and this is being highlighted more and more with every passing day. However, the people who are suffering worse from this catastrophe are the same people who have persistently voted for this neoliberalism year after year. This situation is the result of their choices at the ballot box, and I have no confidence that they will be any different in the future. All the evidence points to them even switching to UKIP in the near future, so, they will go from one set of incompetent nutters to an even more extreme form of incompetent nutters. The only thing that will begin to rectify this disaster is state spending and that is one thing they will not vote for. Scotland must not replicate this insanity, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Sunday 9 February 2014
Let the Private Sector deal with the Floods - Aye Right
One of the greatest damnations of the free market model that dominates in modern Britain is the
disaster that is privatisation. This was the flagship policy and the fundamental core of the Thatcherite revolution, that privatisation would unleash the innovative and entrepreneurial genius that was just waiting in the private sector to be the cure for all our ills and that was being suppressed by the dead hand of the state.
It is fair to say, 30 years later, that this was a load of nonsense. As you know I am an empiricist which means that I only accept what I can observe and experience, I do not listen to what people say, I judge them on what they do. By that criteria I can safely conclude that privatisation is a total failure. This does not mean that I am opposed to private industry and private creativity, what it means is that there are some very important areas of public and social life that can never be entrusted to the profit motive.
Anyone who knows me will be able to confirm that as early as 1982, I predicted that the privatisation of council housing would bring a serious housing crisis, but even I did not suspect at that time, that it would eventually cause the financial crash of 2007. Housing is in permanent crisis and the fundamental cause of it is the refusal to build council houses, therefore keeping housing in a situation of permanent shortage in order to drive up the price of houses. In addition, the character of Thatchers policy has resulted in licensed gangsterism. Indeed the entire privatisation policy since Thatcher took office can only be described as gangsgterism. Only last week, on Dispatches on Channel Four, Sir Iain Byatt, the architect of Thatcher's water privatisation programme dissociated himself from the results of that policy by accusing it of simply being a 'cash cow' for the international money markets.
In the past 5 years, profits in water have risen 50% but is simply paid out in dividends to shareholders rather than in being invested in improvements. The programme also highlighted how it is the same water companies who are the biggest culprits in sewage pollution. If I can remind you, only two years ago, Channel Four News uncovered the £1000 rail fare in Britain.
In rail, bus, electricity, gas, all essential services, privatisation has been a disaster leading to massive profit making and exponentially rising prices. These people have privatised blood services, air traffic control, ambulances and they even privatised the Criminal Forensics Service. All of these services have been put out to profit, services that are all crucial to the health, well-being and safety of society. We have just recently had the spectacle of Royal Mail being sold off at less than half its market value, thus generating billions of pounds of instant profit to speculators. I ask you to watch how these valiant champions of private enterprise cannot rush to get the dead hand of the state to intervene quickly enough when they are flooded, no call for private enterprise there I'm afraid.
The British public have been duped, lied to and robbed of countless billions of public assets. Westminster has duped you and lied to you, Michael Corleone was a better moral role model than any Westminster MP. The free market is one huge lie, it is a confidence trick operated by the gangsters we elect into Parliament. If this is what you want then so be it. I urge you to have a look at a new book that has just been published, In Place of Fear 2 by Jim Sillars, it is available from a publisher called Vagabond Voices and it will show you how the Scottish Labour Party is dominated at all levels from London. That is why they cannot be trusted when they tell you we are Better Together. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
disaster that is privatisation. This was the flagship policy and the fundamental core of the Thatcherite revolution, that privatisation would unleash the innovative and entrepreneurial genius that was just waiting in the private sector to be the cure for all our ills and that was being suppressed by the dead hand of the state.
It is fair to say, 30 years later, that this was a load of nonsense. As you know I am an empiricist which means that I only accept what I can observe and experience, I do not listen to what people say, I judge them on what they do. By that criteria I can safely conclude that privatisation is a total failure. This does not mean that I am opposed to private industry and private creativity, what it means is that there are some very important areas of public and social life that can never be entrusted to the profit motive.
Anyone who knows me will be able to confirm that as early as 1982, I predicted that the privatisation of council housing would bring a serious housing crisis, but even I did not suspect at that time, that it would eventually cause the financial crash of 2007. Housing is in permanent crisis and the fundamental cause of it is the refusal to build council houses, therefore keeping housing in a situation of permanent shortage in order to drive up the price of houses. In addition, the character of Thatchers policy has resulted in licensed gangsterism. Indeed the entire privatisation policy since Thatcher took office can only be described as gangsgterism. Only last week, on Dispatches on Channel Four, Sir Iain Byatt, the architect of Thatcher's water privatisation programme dissociated himself from the results of that policy by accusing it of simply being a 'cash cow' for the international money markets.
In the past 5 years, profits in water have risen 50% but is simply paid out in dividends to shareholders rather than in being invested in improvements. The programme also highlighted how it is the same water companies who are the biggest culprits in sewage pollution. If I can remind you, only two years ago, Channel Four News uncovered the £1000 rail fare in Britain.
In rail, bus, electricity, gas, all essential services, privatisation has been a disaster leading to massive profit making and exponentially rising prices. These people have privatised blood services, air traffic control, ambulances and they even privatised the Criminal Forensics Service. All of these services have been put out to profit, services that are all crucial to the health, well-being and safety of society. We have just recently had the spectacle of Royal Mail being sold off at less than half its market value, thus generating billions of pounds of instant profit to speculators. I ask you to watch how these valiant champions of private enterprise cannot rush to get the dead hand of the state to intervene quickly enough when they are flooded, no call for private enterprise there I'm afraid.
The British public have been duped, lied to and robbed of countless billions of public assets. Westminster has duped you and lied to you, Michael Corleone was a better moral role model than any Westminster MP. The free market is one huge lie, it is a confidence trick operated by the gangsters we elect into Parliament. If this is what you want then so be it. I urge you to have a look at a new book that has just been published, In Place of Fear 2 by Jim Sillars, it is available from a publisher called Vagabond Voices and it will show you how the Scottish Labour Party is dominated at all levels from London. That is why they cannot be trusted when they tell you we are Better Together. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Wednesday 5 February 2014
How dare slaves desire freedom?
Another example of sick hypocritical Britain is the reaction to the strike by London tube workers. The strikers have been accused on causing disruption, but there is no reportage of the disruption caused by employers who break contracts and lie through their teeth. When Boris Johnson stood for election as London mayor he gave guarantees that there would be no closures of ticket offices, which is the cause of today's strike. If your employer tells you a total lie, then breaks his contractual duty without discussion or negotiation and tells 940 people they are going to be sacked when he had previously assured them that their jobs were safe, what on earth are these workers to do? I implore someone who supports the condemnation of strikers to come on and tell me!! Thus, Johnson is openly advocating that he has a right to tell outrageous lies, deceive his workforce, sack them at will and his workforce has no right whatsoever to do anything about it! If that is not advocating a subtle form of slavery then someone will have to tell me what it is!
Now, all day long Johnson has been on the news fulminating about the strike ballot and how it was not representative and the Conservatives are also considering demanding that strikes be mandated by an absolute majority of a union's membership, rather than a simple majority of those who vote. There are no more draconian laws in this country than the laws governing strikes, and the tube workers fulfilled all the requirements to make the strike both legal and official. When Johnson was elected as mayor in 2012, he was elected on first preference votes under the Supplementary Vote system with 44% of first preferences. The turnout in the election was 38.1%. As a result, on first preference votes, which is the same as an election under first-past-the-post, Johnson managed to get 16.764% of the possible vote in London. How is that for democracy, he couldn't even muster 17 votes out of every 100? When second preferences were added, he managed 51.5% of the vote and that is how he was elected, but they are not new votes, they are the same people voting twice. Tube workers do not have the luxury of second preference votes, so, their strike vote was vastly more democratic than Johnsons. Since 1945, only one government has managed an absolute majority, so, by the Tories definition of democracy, no government since 1951 has been democratic, and that goes for all Thatcher's and Blair's governments, as well as the present one. Yet this loathsome hypocrite is all over the news, supported by his lackeys in the right wing press calling for strikes to be subject to even more draconian legislation. If this form of government persists and is not stopped, the strike action will be outlawed in my lifetime. Workers have only one sanction, the ability to withdraw their labour. That ability is illegal in this country, but is a civil liability, it is breach of contract. What is going to happen is that it will be criminalised.
I maintain that striking is a fundamental human right. If I cannot withdraw my labour from an employer I fundamentally disagree with, even if I am wrong in what I am arguing, then I have no control over my own freedom of thought and action, I am quite literally enslaved, and that employer has rights over my freedom to attempt to control my own destiny in the workplace that supersede my own rights. The only way I will get free is to leave my employment or be sacked. But why should I have to leave? You can argue that only if you are prepared to argue that an employer or the appointed management, must have absolute control over his/her workforce, and if you do, then you are arguing for slavery. When I was a trade union representative I actually had to fight a case for a lady who was refused to have a day off work to get married, and this was a manager who was refusing, not an actual employer! That is the mentality of modern management and employers. I actually suggested to this cretin that he may want to produce a broomstick and have the couple jump it! He, of course, hadn't a clue what I was talking about.
I realise that many of you may think that I go on about the same thing too much, but it cannot be said or reinforced enough that our fundamental human rights are being attacked, eroded and removed all the time. As I have said before, the ruling elite are determined to remove all constraints on profit making and striking is simply another constraint. It is, however, the only weapon at the disposal of working people, remove that, and they are completely powerless. Such actions, even the suggestion of such actions must be exposed and vigorously challenged as a priority, it is your freedom that is at stake. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Now, all day long Johnson has been on the news fulminating about the strike ballot and how it was not representative and the Conservatives are also considering demanding that strikes be mandated by an absolute majority of a union's membership, rather than a simple majority of those who vote. There are no more draconian laws in this country than the laws governing strikes, and the tube workers fulfilled all the requirements to make the strike both legal and official. When Johnson was elected as mayor in 2012, he was elected on first preference votes under the Supplementary Vote system with 44% of first preferences. The turnout in the election was 38.1%. As a result, on first preference votes, which is the same as an election under first-past-the-post, Johnson managed to get 16.764% of the possible vote in London. How is that for democracy, he couldn't even muster 17 votes out of every 100? When second preferences were added, he managed 51.5% of the vote and that is how he was elected, but they are not new votes, they are the same people voting twice. Tube workers do not have the luxury of second preference votes, so, their strike vote was vastly more democratic than Johnsons. Since 1945, only one government has managed an absolute majority, so, by the Tories definition of democracy, no government since 1951 has been democratic, and that goes for all Thatcher's and Blair's governments, as well as the present one. Yet this loathsome hypocrite is all over the news, supported by his lackeys in the right wing press calling for strikes to be subject to even more draconian legislation. If this form of government persists and is not stopped, the strike action will be outlawed in my lifetime. Workers have only one sanction, the ability to withdraw their labour. That ability is illegal in this country, but is a civil liability, it is breach of contract. What is going to happen is that it will be criminalised.
I maintain that striking is a fundamental human right. If I cannot withdraw my labour from an employer I fundamentally disagree with, even if I am wrong in what I am arguing, then I have no control over my own freedom of thought and action, I am quite literally enslaved, and that employer has rights over my freedom to attempt to control my own destiny in the workplace that supersede my own rights. The only way I will get free is to leave my employment or be sacked. But why should I have to leave? You can argue that only if you are prepared to argue that an employer or the appointed management, must have absolute control over his/her workforce, and if you do, then you are arguing for slavery. When I was a trade union representative I actually had to fight a case for a lady who was refused to have a day off work to get married, and this was a manager who was refusing, not an actual employer! That is the mentality of modern management and employers. I actually suggested to this cretin that he may want to produce a broomstick and have the couple jump it! He, of course, hadn't a clue what I was talking about.
I realise that many of you may think that I go on about the same thing too much, but it cannot be said or reinforced enough that our fundamental human rights are being attacked, eroded and removed all the time. As I have said before, the ruling elite are determined to remove all constraints on profit making and striking is simply another constraint. It is, however, the only weapon at the disposal of working people, remove that, and they are completely powerless. Such actions, even the suggestion of such actions must be exposed and vigorously challenged as a priority, it is your freedom that is at stake. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 3 February 2014
Why do I support Independence? Simples!
I am frequently asked why I propose an Independent Scotland and I am happy to reply. First, I am not a nationalist and never have been. I am not a supporter of the SNP, although I vote for them because they are a means to an end. Neither am I a communist, despite my blog name, which I have told you actually comes from a song. I am not a communist because I am opposed to the Leninist principles of democratic centralism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
My desire for independence comes from a disgust with the Westminster system of politics which is irredeemably corrupt and has become completely divorced from reality. For example, we see the major banks setting billions of pounds aside to compensate people for criminal activity in selling them fraudulent policies. Such activities were sanctioned by successive governments who refused to regulate such activities, and, no-one has been held to account for a form of criminal activity that is quite staggering in its proportions, whilst the government demands that a man who stole a bottle of water from a supermarket gets 8 months in jail. It also arises from the corruption of the dominant ideology of political and economic neoliberalism, an ideology that is systematically destroying British society, and I mean systematically, as it is quite deliberate. When Thatcher told us there was no such thing as society, it was because she represented a movement that was born out of a hatred for a society that was motivated by care and welfare for the less well off. It was a society that regulated excess and greed, that quite deliberately redistributed wealth to make society, not equal, but fairer. Neoliberalism represents a burning hatred of the state, of working people, of the poor and disadvantaged. Neoliberals will privatise all health and education and, if you cannot afford health care and private education, you will die or remain illiterate. In addition, the Westminster system has saddled us with the most appalling personnel imaginable. Look at the calibre of MPs we have in parliament, they are quite ghastly. I cannot seriously identify one present member of parliament that I would vote for.
Neoliberalism, or the Thatcherite variation that we suffer from, is an ideology that is profoundly ignorant of the real nature of the human being, it is profoundly wrong. I published a quote from Pope Francis recently that highlighted how neoliberalism is exclusive. That means it quite deliberately and systematically excludes people, as Francis said, it leaves them excluded from meaningful political, social and economic participation in society, it leaves them outside of society, I remind you, the Pope referred to them as 'leftovers.'. Now, human beings are social beings, and if you exclude them from their social state you effectively dehumanise them, you make them non-persons. This was the essence of Nazi ideology, the concept of the 'untermenschen' the underman, the non-person, who is only fit for slavery and death.
So, my argument is that we are ruled by corrupt people who support and sanction criminal activity from a class position. Their class committing crime is OK. Poor people committing crime must be hammered. They are also incompetent and quite stupid, but are committed to reducing the working people of the country to modern forms of slavery. They are consumed by hatred for large sections of the very people they are supposed to represent, and live in a completely divorced reality. In short, we are ruled by bad people who adhere to a bad ideological vision of the world. Independence may not cure this situation, but it is the only alternative on offer at the moment.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
My desire for independence comes from a disgust with the Westminster system of politics which is irredeemably corrupt and has become completely divorced from reality. For example, we see the major banks setting billions of pounds aside to compensate people for criminal activity in selling them fraudulent policies. Such activities were sanctioned by successive governments who refused to regulate such activities, and, no-one has been held to account for a form of criminal activity that is quite staggering in its proportions, whilst the government demands that a man who stole a bottle of water from a supermarket gets 8 months in jail. It also arises from the corruption of the dominant ideology of political and economic neoliberalism, an ideology that is systematically destroying British society, and I mean systematically, as it is quite deliberate. When Thatcher told us there was no such thing as society, it was because she represented a movement that was born out of a hatred for a society that was motivated by care and welfare for the less well off. It was a society that regulated excess and greed, that quite deliberately redistributed wealth to make society, not equal, but fairer. Neoliberalism represents a burning hatred of the state, of working people, of the poor and disadvantaged. Neoliberals will privatise all health and education and, if you cannot afford health care and private education, you will die or remain illiterate. In addition, the Westminster system has saddled us with the most appalling personnel imaginable. Look at the calibre of MPs we have in parliament, they are quite ghastly. I cannot seriously identify one present member of parliament that I would vote for.
Neoliberalism, or the Thatcherite variation that we suffer from, is an ideology that is profoundly ignorant of the real nature of the human being, it is profoundly wrong. I published a quote from Pope Francis recently that highlighted how neoliberalism is exclusive. That means it quite deliberately and systematically excludes people, as Francis said, it leaves them excluded from meaningful political, social and economic participation in society, it leaves them outside of society, I remind you, the Pope referred to them as 'leftovers.'. Now, human beings are social beings, and if you exclude them from their social state you effectively dehumanise them, you make them non-persons. This was the essence of Nazi ideology, the concept of the 'untermenschen' the underman, the non-person, who is only fit for slavery and death.
So, my argument is that we are ruled by corrupt people who support and sanction criminal activity from a class position. Their class committing crime is OK. Poor people committing crime must be hammered. They are also incompetent and quite stupid, but are committed to reducing the working people of the country to modern forms of slavery. They are consumed by hatred for large sections of the very people they are supposed to represent, and live in a completely divorced reality. In short, we are ruled by bad people who adhere to a bad ideological vision of the world. Independence may not cure this situation, but it is the only alternative on offer at the moment.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Sunday 2 February 2014
Beat the Bullies!!
In the news today, two separate reports, one on the armed services and one on the NHS highlights the serious problems of bullying. Such reports follow reports on bullying within the police services, the care sector and many other areas of British life. Bullying has been the principal characteristic of the British for many years now since the triumph of Thatcher's policy of managerialism, that is, allowing managers free rein to do whatever was necessary to implement her neoliberal policies. In further education I watched the spread of bullying across the sector following the privatisation of further education in the early nineties. I warned all of my colleagues, but they were too arrogant to listen until it finally hit them with a vengeance and by then it was too late. Bullying is one of the clearest signs of the callous indifference that too any people in Britain have towards others, an indifference that has been fostered by a dominant ideology that there is no such thing as society, that the poor and disadvantaged have only themselves to blame, that there is a job for everyone who wants it and so the unemployed are all skivers and scroungers etc.
Bullies are cowards, they are normally incompetent as well, that is why they bully because they know they are vulnerable and try to scare their colleagues into silence. Look at the Westminster parliament, at the banks and financial institutions, at the management of the NHS and those industries previously held in the public sector. Incompetence on a genuinely Olympic gold medal scale runs through British society like a cancer, and is held in place by a culture of bullying and malice. Anyone in a position of influence in Britain who challenges government policy gets sacked. As I reported earlier, even in British universities, this culture now means that there is only one model of economics being taught. When the Tories tell you that there is no alternative, they mean that literally, and if you dare to offer an alternative you will be replaced. If you are being bullied you will immediately see the cowardly side of them if you confront them, which of course is what you must do. Competent leaders have no need to bully because they gain the respect of the people they lead and the hatred of the incompetent. In further education, management was taken over by bullies because following privatisation, the boards of management, encouraged by politicians, were determined to destroy the terms and conditions of the workforce and break the professionalism of staff. As a result, they hired managers with impeccable neoliberal credentials who were quite prepared to do whatever was necessary to please their masters. Thus, bullies were appointed, who then appointed other bullies at lower levels to do their dirty work for them. This process has been repeated throughout society in all institutions, and Labour were every bit as guilty of this as the Tories.
We are ruled by a dominant ideology of aggressive individualism, and therefore this produces aggressive individuals. Indeed, in a society of aggressive individualism it is only aggressive individuals who will succeed, because decent people are repelled by such a culture. What is required in this society is a profound cultural shift and a serious challenge to the dominant ideology. We need to say enough is enough, the bullies can be beaten. People who know me know that I was never bullied, many tried, they all failed because I refused to be bullied. It is sad, but there is no solution within the current political system because there is no party to vote for who will offer an alternative vision. The Scottish people must stand up to Westminster and Scotland must start afresh and offer alternatives. This, if successful, will actually be to the betterment of our colleagues in the rest of the UK. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
Bullies are cowards, they are normally incompetent as well, that is why they bully because they know they are vulnerable and try to scare their colleagues into silence. Look at the Westminster parliament, at the banks and financial institutions, at the management of the NHS and those industries previously held in the public sector. Incompetence on a genuinely Olympic gold medal scale runs through British society like a cancer, and is held in place by a culture of bullying and malice. Anyone in a position of influence in Britain who challenges government policy gets sacked. As I reported earlier, even in British universities, this culture now means that there is only one model of economics being taught. When the Tories tell you that there is no alternative, they mean that literally, and if you dare to offer an alternative you will be replaced. If you are being bullied you will immediately see the cowardly side of them if you confront them, which of course is what you must do. Competent leaders have no need to bully because they gain the respect of the people they lead and the hatred of the incompetent. In further education, management was taken over by bullies because following privatisation, the boards of management, encouraged by politicians, were determined to destroy the terms and conditions of the workforce and break the professionalism of staff. As a result, they hired managers with impeccable neoliberal credentials who were quite prepared to do whatever was necessary to please their masters. Thus, bullies were appointed, who then appointed other bullies at lower levels to do their dirty work for them. This process has been repeated throughout society in all institutions, and Labour were every bit as guilty of this as the Tories.
We are ruled by a dominant ideology of aggressive individualism, and therefore this produces aggressive individuals. Indeed, in a society of aggressive individualism it is only aggressive individuals who will succeed, because decent people are repelled by such a culture. What is required in this society is a profound cultural shift and a serious challenge to the dominant ideology. We need to say enough is enough, the bullies can be beaten. People who know me know that I was never bullied, many tried, they all failed because I refused to be bullied. It is sad, but there is no solution within the current political system because there is no party to vote for who will offer an alternative vision. The Scottish people must stand up to Westminster and Scotland must start afresh and offer alternatives. This, if successful, will actually be to the betterment of our colleagues in the rest of the UK. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
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