Well it has happened. The hate and inflammatory speech that has so characterised the EU Referendum has cost a life with the political murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox. It is no use those in the Brexit campaign desperately trying to deny that this crime was motivated by their campaign as, when he was asked his name in court he replied, "Death to Traitors. Freedom for Britain". As I told you in my last post, the level of hate and the language of violence in this campaign is something I never thought I would ever encounter in this country, and I include the Remain campaign in this assessment because one of the worst offenders in lying and stoking fear has been our own Prime Minister, the great CaMoron. What is ironic is that this act has given an immediate boost to the Remain campaign as people have been sickened, and perhaps ashamed, as they realise what is happening to decency and fairness in this appalling nation and are beginning to draw back from such dangerous rhetoric. As I continually tell you, almost all of the claims made by the Leave campaign are a lie, because the Leave spokespeople know that what they are telling you is untrue. The great, and it must be admitted very effective, slogan of the Leave campaign is "Take back control" arguing that we no longer have any control over our own affairs and are ruled by a set of 'faceless unelected bureaucrats.' For example, the appalling Michael Gove gave a speech in which he argued that he wants the British voters to take back control from EU institutions that are "distant, unaccountable and elitist' (I loved the arch Thatcherite Gove complaining about elitism, that's one thing about the British, they have no problem with irony). However, my point is that Gove knows full well that he is telling a quite deliberate lie.
It is really sickening when you hear a British politician complaining about the European bureaucracy. The European Union employs just over 55,000 civil servants, those much vaunted and much maligned bureaucrats. The Westminster pigsty employs over 400,000. In addition, anyone with even a passing knowledge of politics knows that all European legislation is subject to the agreement of two different institutional sets of elected politicians, the Council of the European Union which is composed of democratically elected government ministers from each member state, and the European Parliament, whose membership is all directly elected. Thus, there are no bureaucrats in the EU making laws that override the will of the pigsty. That is a lie. In addition, the government of the UK contains members of the House of Lords who are unelected and are the political appointments of whoever is the Prime Minister of the day. So, who is the more undemocratic, the EU or the Westminster pigsty?
I repeatedly warn you that one of the most overriding priorities of the free market leavers is the continual enslavement of the British workforce. We are continually being asked to consider democracy from the most undemocratic people in the world. We are continually being asked to consider fairness from people who have erected, and preside over, the most unequal society in the developed world, but perhaps most importantly we are being asked to consider the plight of what they call "decent, hardworking taxpayers" from the people who will strip those same hardworking taxpayers of all their rights and protections the day after we vote to leave the EU. How else can we interpret the intentions of the free market Tories? In an address to the Institute of Directors last week, the Employment Minister, Priti Patel told them that
“If we could just halve the burdens of the EU social and employment legislation we could deliver a £4.3 billion boost to our economy and 60,000 new jobs.”
I wont go into any particular detail because I have spoken of this many times, but the EU social and employment legislation she speaks of are our rights and protections, particularly health and safety, which employers hate with a passion, and remember, this is the political party who told the country that unionised employees are the enemy. Thus, when I was a union representative, I was genuinely considered to be an enemy of the state by these people. Not even Donald Trump talks like that. The other major hatred of the free marketeers is the Working Time Directive. The melodiously named Priti Patel fiercely denounced the Directive and was particularly keen to argue that lorry drivers should be exempt from this measure. Her name may be quite melodious but her message most certainly wasn't except to those people who believe they should be able to make profit completely unrestrained from common decency. Can you imagine such stupidity, effectively arguing that employers should be able to demand that drivers drive on our roads and motorways until they are exhausted? This highlights the intellectual level that we in this country have come to expect from the pigsty, but particularly the Tory part. The woman is a genuine halfwit. These are the same people who foamed at the mouth denouncing the minimum wage arguing that it would cost the country over a million jobs when in fact the exact opposite happened. She was quite keen to avoid how she came to the figure of £4.3 billion by the way.
It will be interesting to see what happens now in the wake of this genuine tragedy. Karl Popper tells us that the study of politics is the study of the unintended consequences of intentional human action. I think that the deliberate murder of an MP will have the opposite effect to what was intended and that the people of the country will react with disgust and waken up to the reality of this atrocious referendum. I hope so regardless of the outcome on Thursday. We cannot continue with this form of politics as we slide deeper into fascism and intolerance. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Sunday, 19 June 2016
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
This referendum is destroying the United Kingdom
The betting on the EU referendum is now 8/15 to remain and 7/4 to leave. So, we are still favourite to stay in according to the betting, with the Leave campaign rapidly closing the gap. However, I am beginning to think that we may actually leave, because it must be difficult for people outside the UK to envisage just how poisoned and polluted our politics has become during this campaign with the blatant racism and hatred of foreigners that is posing as a concern for immigration and the Leave campaign targeting all of our baser and lower instincts and prejudices. What is the worst part of this is that it is working. The Camoron's decision to call this referendum has become an unmitigated disaster. The Leave campaign has descended below the gutter in its lies and propaganda and their propaganda genuinely reflects the type of filth last seen in 1930's Germany. Yesterday, in the wake of the tragedy of the Orlando night club massacre, Leave launched a national poster campaign
seeking to capitalise on this tragedy and claiming that the same thing will happen in the UK unless we leave the EU because of radical Islamic immigrants, which are all the fault of the EU of course and have nothing to do with British foreign policy or their wars in the Middle East. Their poster actually said "Islamic extremism is a real threat to our way of life. Act now before we see an Orlando-style atrocity here before too long". This is politics in modern day so-called Christian Britain, and I have been taken to task for telling you that Britain is drifting into a fascist style state. The people who peddle such atrocious filth have neither decency, dignity nor self-respect, but more importantly are quite indifferent to the consequences on ordinary Muslims and other immigrants of their poisonous hate, and they are the people at the very heart of the British political elite. They are determined to win at all costs, and is why I told you in my last post that the pigsty is showing itself in its true colours. Because of this type of politics we are witnessing, in all of our news bulletins, the England football supporters in France for the European Championships rioting, fighting with other supporters and the police, and chanting "F..k off Europe we're all voting out". As a result of their behaviour before the competition has even begun, the English, along with the Russians, have been told by football's governing body that if there is any more violence they will be banned from the competition. Thatcher's legacy? I hope she would be proud!
If you demonise immigrants it is next to impossible not to breed hatred for all foreigners, because you cannot contain the ripples you have caused by throwing the stone into the pond. Immigrants are foreigners and we are now telling such people loud and clear that they are not wanted here. My comment about the type of language not heard since 1930's Germany was actually the comment of a lady on last week's Question Time who immigrated to this country over twenty years ago and she stated that she was really scared now because of the language being used as a matter of course as well as being presented as matters of fact. I persistently tell you how such people refuse to accept any restraints on their activities and now they also refuse to exercise any restraint on their language and hatred. As a result of their determination to defy any authority or respect the common decencies, they have abandoned all self-respect or self-constraint, and it is a common truism that policies decided at the top of any organisation will filter down and affect the behaviour of those at the bottom. As a result, what is certain about this disastrous referendum is that the United Kingdom will never be the same again regardless of the result because Britain is being poisoned and hatred is becoming institutionalised, and I will return to this theme in my next post as this post is getting too big. I want people to understand the type of Britain that is likely to emerge from the wreckage of this horrendous referendum if the Leave camp win, and I trust you will remember who warned you.
This morning, the Sun newspaper, the flagship paper for the Murdoch empire in Britain, came out in headlines backing Brexit. It did not do so in its Scottish edition because in Scotland it always attempts to curry favour with Scottish nationalists who are promoting the Remain agenda (Murdoch always seeks to back a winner, but more importantly he will support almost anything that will damage the British state and the British elite for whom he has a visceral loathing). In seeking to explain why Murdoch would do this two weeks before the actual referendum, the columnist on the London paper the Evening Standard, Anthony Hilton, wrote how he
"once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. 'That’s easy,' he replied. 'When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.'"
With respect to my warnings about Britain becoming increasingly fascist and how the people that lead the Brexit campaign are, in my opinion, latent fascists, the columnist Andrew Brown, whose father was a British diplomat who spent the Second World War years as a prisoner of the Nazis, writes in today's Guardian newspaper about the Leave.eu campaign. I will simple reproduce part of Brown's article in which he says
"Last week Arron Banks’s Leave.eu campaign tweeted out a cartoon so disgusting that it would have reminded my father of the newspapers he was given to read as a prisoner of war. The cartoon shows a sailing ship, representing the EU, heading over a waterfall, while behind it a lifeboat labelled Brexit escapes into the sunrise, a Union Jack for its sail. So far, so unimaginative. But in the central section of the EU boat things get vivid. Two swarthy, bearded figures, one carrying a scimitar and one a bag of money, would have been immediately familiar to my father, except that in the cartoons of his captivity they would have been Jews. Here they appear to represent Muslims. The one with the scimitar is forcing a blond Aryan young man carrying a Swedish flag to walk the plank while the one with the money bag holds it excitedly. At the front of the boat another of these figures attempts to grope the figurehead. A cannon on the afterdeck labelled “Diversity” is firing a hole in the bottom of its own ship. Oh, and a shark labelled “political correctness” is waiting to devour the figure representing Sweden when he is forced off the end of the plank. The cartoonist really does not believe in subtlety. These tropes are not just racist. They are callbacks to the particular style of nationalist antisemitism that we thought had been purged from Europe for ever in 1945. The figures in those cartoons are drawn from the same stock as those that populated Nazi papers".
I have been warning of these trends for years now, and I understand how people, before now, had difficulty taking me seriously, but the evidence is now too graphic to be denied. Britain has become seriously divisive, perhaps terminally so, and it is the fault of the British elite and their slavering poodles in the pigsty. Perhaps we will vote to remain in the EU and I will keep you up to date with the bookies predictions, but regardless of the outcome, we will never be the same country again in my lifetime. If leave win I shudder to contemplate the consequences, particularly in a nation that will be effectively run by Rupert Murdoch. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
If you demonise immigrants it is next to impossible not to breed hatred for all foreigners, because you cannot contain the ripples you have caused by throwing the stone into the pond. Immigrants are foreigners and we are now telling such people loud and clear that they are not wanted here. My comment about the type of language not heard since 1930's Germany was actually the comment of a lady on last week's Question Time who immigrated to this country over twenty years ago and she stated that she was really scared now because of the language being used as a matter of course as well as being presented as matters of fact. I persistently tell you how such people refuse to accept any restraints on their activities and now they also refuse to exercise any restraint on their language and hatred. As a result of their determination to defy any authority or respect the common decencies, they have abandoned all self-respect or self-constraint, and it is a common truism that policies decided at the top of any organisation will filter down and affect the behaviour of those at the bottom. As a result, what is certain about this disastrous referendum is that the United Kingdom will never be the same again regardless of the result because Britain is being poisoned and hatred is becoming institutionalised, and I will return to this theme in my next post as this post is getting too big. I want people to understand the type of Britain that is likely to emerge from the wreckage of this horrendous referendum if the Leave camp win, and I trust you will remember who warned you.
This morning, the Sun newspaper, the flagship paper for the Murdoch empire in Britain, came out in headlines backing Brexit. It did not do so in its Scottish edition because in Scotland it always attempts to curry favour with Scottish nationalists who are promoting the Remain agenda (Murdoch always seeks to back a winner, but more importantly he will support almost anything that will damage the British state and the British elite for whom he has a visceral loathing). In seeking to explain why Murdoch would do this two weeks before the actual referendum, the columnist on the London paper the Evening Standard, Anthony Hilton, wrote how he
"once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. 'That’s easy,' he replied. 'When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.'"
With respect to my warnings about Britain becoming increasingly fascist and how the people that lead the Brexit campaign are, in my opinion, latent fascists, the columnist Andrew Brown, whose father was a British diplomat who spent the Second World War years as a prisoner of the Nazis, writes in today's Guardian newspaper about the Leave.eu campaign. I will simple reproduce part of Brown's article in which he says
I have been warning of these trends for years now, and I understand how people, before now, had difficulty taking me seriously, but the evidence is now too graphic to be denied. Britain has become seriously divisive, perhaps terminally so, and it is the fault of the British elite and their slavering poodles in the pigsty. Perhaps we will vote to remain in the EU and I will keep you up to date with the bookies predictions, but regardless of the outcome, we will never be the same country again in my lifetime. If leave win I shudder to contemplate the consequences, particularly in a nation that will be effectively run by Rupert Murdoch. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday, 10 June 2016
The EU referendum is showing the pigsty in its true colours
With under two weeks to go to the EU Referendum the political scene is quite strange and I suspect that opinion polls are being seriously manipulated, because, despite polls showing a surge by the Leave campaign and the latest polls actually giving them a lead of 10 points, the betting odds are still predicting a 60-40 vote to remain. The average odds are still 1/3 to remain and 11/4 to leave. Because Scotland is by far the most enlightened and intelligent part of this sorry United Kingdom, Scotland is 1/200 to remain. Northern Ireland is also showing a great deal of common sense and humanity at 1/25 to remain. So, a leave majority in both Scotland and Northern Ireland is unthinkable as the bookies could never get it as wrong at such odds. As a result, there is quite a large disparity of opinion and voting intentions between Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, the opinion polls, and the bookmaking fraternity. Scottish voting intentions should not surprise people because the Scots do not share England's hatred of others and do not share their racist attitudes to foreigners, attitudes that are being ferociously encouraged by the English press and the fascist elements within the pigsty, and it is only 18 months since the Scots were themselves subjected to this kind of utterly shameless lying propaganda. We are still very acutely aware that all the promises of the British establishment were a pack of lies in September 2014, and so are very sceptical about anything a pigsty politician tells us.
If you read me during the Scottish referendum you will remember that I ignored the bookies and believed the pollsters and got it quite wrong in the end. Of course the bookies can get it wrong, but experience makes me more inclined to trust their judgement on such things. One of the issues highlighted in the press is how the Leave campaign are employing what is known as 'push' polling. This is an American form of polling that poses the question in a way that you are very likely to get a desired answer, such as "Would you vote to Remain in the EU and be swamped by two million refugees within the next two years that will include thousands of criminals and terrorists who will rape your wives and daughters and blow up all your towns and cities?" That is of course an exaggeration, but it is that type of polling that I suspect is skewing the figures.
Such is the appalling level of propaganda and blatant lying that is taking place, particularly by the Leave campaign, that two Tory MPs have, in the past two days, abandoned the Leave campaign because of their lies and racism (that is what they called it, not me), saying that they cannot continue supporting such a mendacious and despicable campaign. They are both now going to vote to remain. People from outside the UK will have difficulty believing the atrocious level of politics that we have sunk to in this sorry nation, we are really right down in the gutter. It also comes as quite a surprise that Tories can actually have a conscience as lying and racism is their default position; however, a penitent is always welcome. Today we had a young lady tell the Prime Minister on television, that she was going to vote remain despite the fact that in her opinion he has f....d the country up. That is how sickened the general public have become, that the Prime Minister can be spoken to in this way in public. What this young lady told the Camoron in this very public forum was
“I’m voting remain but nothing to do with you guys, I hate the Tories and I’m just going to say you’ve f....d every f...ing thing up in this country; you’ve screwed students, you’ve screwed the disabled, the vulnerable. I’ve heard that you want to take back the Human Rights Act and I could totally believe that, I wouldn’t put it past you at all, Dodgy Dave.” She then went on to say that she did not want to see the Conservative party given any more power because that would be the “worst thing for us right now”.
What interests me most about this encounter is that I told you recently that one of the characteristics of this Tory Party and its determination to consolidate free market neoliberalism, was its anarchic tendency to consistently undermine traditional authority, whether it was the law, traditional institutions, or the moral and ethical framework of society etc. The Camoron's confrontation with an ordinary member of the public who showed no respect whatsoever for his authority, either of his person or his office, should give him and his disciples immediate pause for thought, because what is good for the goose is most certainly good for the gander. The pigsty had better think carefully about how they conduct themselves because this was a classic case of the unintended consequences of intentional human action. Their authority is slipping and they are coming under increasing scorn, ridicule and disgust. They are being revealed for what they truly are, despicable. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
If you read me during the Scottish referendum you will remember that I ignored the bookies and believed the pollsters and got it quite wrong in the end. Of course the bookies can get it wrong, but experience makes me more inclined to trust their judgement on such things. One of the issues highlighted in the press is how the Leave campaign are employing what is known as 'push' polling. This is an American form of polling that poses the question in a way that you are very likely to get a desired answer, such as "Would you vote to Remain in the EU and be swamped by two million refugees within the next two years that will include thousands of criminals and terrorists who will rape your wives and daughters and blow up all your towns and cities?" That is of course an exaggeration, but it is that type of polling that I suspect is skewing the figures.
Such is the appalling level of propaganda and blatant lying that is taking place, particularly by the Leave campaign, that two Tory MPs have, in the past two days, abandoned the Leave campaign because of their lies and racism (that is what they called it, not me), saying that they cannot continue supporting such a mendacious and despicable campaign. They are both now going to vote to remain. People from outside the UK will have difficulty believing the atrocious level of politics that we have sunk to in this sorry nation, we are really right down in the gutter. It also comes as quite a surprise that Tories can actually have a conscience as lying and racism is their default position; however, a penitent is always welcome. Today we had a young lady tell the Prime Minister on television, that she was going to vote remain despite the fact that in her opinion he has f....d the country up. That is how sickened the general public have become, that the Prime Minister can be spoken to in this way in public. What this young lady told the Camoron in this very public forum was
“I’m voting remain but nothing to do with you guys, I hate the Tories and I’m just going to say you’ve f....d every f...ing thing up in this country; you’ve screwed students, you’ve screwed the disabled, the vulnerable. I’ve heard that you want to take back the Human Rights Act and I could totally believe that, I wouldn’t put it past you at all, Dodgy Dave.” She then went on to say that she did not want to see the Conservative party given any more power because that would be the “worst thing for us right now”.
What interests me most about this encounter is that I told you recently that one of the characteristics of this Tory Party and its determination to consolidate free market neoliberalism, was its anarchic tendency to consistently undermine traditional authority, whether it was the law, traditional institutions, or the moral and ethical framework of society etc. The Camoron's confrontation with an ordinary member of the public who showed no respect whatsoever for his authority, either of his person or his office, should give him and his disciples immediate pause for thought, because what is good for the goose is most certainly good for the gander. The pigsty had better think carefully about how they conduct themselves because this was a classic case of the unintended consequences of intentional human action. Their authority is slipping and they are coming under increasing scorn, ridicule and disgust. They are being revealed for what they truly are, despicable. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday, 9 June 2016
Thatcher's legacy Part 4
I hadn't intended developing this series of posts any further as it is threatening to become a political version of Game of Thrones, but Thatcher's legacy of inequality and the virtual enslavement of much of the British workforce has become so bad now that it is actually embarrassing some Tory MPs and threatening to be a scandal. As a result, I feel that I should continue to highlight the real consequences of Thatcher's legacy, and make no mistake, it is her legacy as it is the result of the processes she quite deliberately put into practice, and reveal the true depth of her hatred for and loathing of, ordinary working people. One of the most graphic example of the Thatcher legacy is the nature of the casualised and dehumanised British workforce, where, in a factory just 6 miles from where I live, 200 workers were made redundant with 15 minutes notice. You see, those workers weren't actually people, they were merely expendable units of production, in fact they were a nuisance, but even worse, they were a cost, and that is inexcusable. What Thatcher achieved was a deliberate and massive shift of power within the workplace with the purpose of allowing employers and managers to do exactly as they wish with no restraints. Power relations within the workplace are now so polarised that we had the case in the UK where a lady was so scared to seek time off work that she delivered her baby in the toilet, because in her workplace she was subject to a six strikes and you are out policy. In this workplace, if a worker was not considered to be working fast enough they were warned over a tannoy, because the entire workplace is monitored by cameras. If you received six black marks, or 'strikes' over a six-month period you were instantly dismissed. Strikes included periods of reported sickness, excessive toilet breaks, errors, excessive chatting, horseplay, using a mobile phone, or wearing one of 802 banned items of clothing. Now, could I be accused of hyperbole if I likened such conditions to Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia? Perhaps, but I can most certainly liken them to an Orwellian scenario. This is happening today, in modern Tory neoliberal Britain.
It is now quite usual for workers in Britain to be under constant surveillance from security cameras and have to undergo body searches at the end of their shift. What this tells us is that employers now routinely regard their workers as criminals who seek to steal and pilfer at every opportunity. Where do such attitudes come from? When Thatcher became Prime Minister she made no secret of her hatred for organised labour describing Britain's trade unionists as 'the enemy within.' This was a Prime Minister speaking about ordinary working people, many of whom may have voted for her. She banned trade unions at the government's surveillance headquarters, GHQ in Cheltenham, on the grounds that all trade union members were potential Soviet spies. She then proceeded to pass six major anti-trade union Bills designed to neuter the influence of workers organisations on any and every workplace. This transference of power into the hands of avaricious employers and managers has had quite devastating consequences. For example, 1.5 million British workers are now on zero-hour contracts, which is a form of slavery. We had an employer answering to a House of Commons committee yesterday as to why his workforce are penalised 15 minutes wages if they clock in one minute late, and why these same employees have to pass through a fingerprint security check going into and leaving their work, after being bodysearched. These employees are given a list of 802 brands of clothing that they are forbidden to wear at work. In this particular workplace, people were so afraid of losing their job if they took time off for any reason that there has been 110 ambulance call-outs in the past three years for workers who suffered chest pains, strokes, injuries, live births and miscarriages, in addition to the lady who had her child in the toilet. Any, and all of these described would have counted against the workers as strikes.
The neoliberal obsession with 'outsourcing' has handed power to a series of quite appalling employment agencies, some of whose personnel, according to female employees, demand sexual favours in return for a job. In addition, they announce that anyone can be dismissed at any time with no notice and no explanation. Now, if all that I have just described is not a state of slavery, then some enlightened person will have to tell me why it isn't. This is the end result of Thatcher's demonising of organised labour and subsequent dehumanising of individual labour. What she successfully did was deny the essence of the genius of Adam Smith and promote the notion that profit and success was the result of executive and entrepreneurial genius, rather than the result of labour. A profitable enterprise is a communal effort, but the actual value of the product comes from the labour of the workforce according to both Smith and Marx, but not in today's neoliberal universe. In this world, the individual worker has been completely dehumanised and is regarded as a thing, a cost that must be minimised as much as possible. An organised labour force is the devil incarnate and heralds the end of civilisation, and the tragedy is that much of the British population has bought into this narrative and are active participants in their own increasing slavery. You can certainly fool some of the people all of the time.
We now live in a society that demands 24 hours a day, 365 days a year business activity. Nothing, not religion, not holy days, not sickness, not pregnancy etc. is allowed to interfere with profit-making. No human consideration is allowed as any kind of excuse for a disruption in production. If a worker gets sick, pregnant etc. get rid of them and get someone else. Of course, not all workplaces are like that, but they soon will be. Thatcher did a marvellous thing for industry, if a worker has a complaint, fire him/her, simples. No need for disciplinary or grievance procedures, no need to consider a workers complaint, simply get rid of them. Thatcher had a self-confessed hatred for the public sector and between her and her successors, they have almost destroyed the public sector through competitive tendering that has resulted in increasing privatisation that then drives down costs by forcing fewer people to do more work for less pay in an insecure working environment. As I said, not all workplaces are like this, but this model is spreading inexorably and is now becoming dominant in the care sector, catering. retail distribution, transport, manufacturing and hospitality, and that covers a great deal of the workforce. In conclusion, the greatest cheerleaders for this fascist ideology are the people who will govern the UK in the event of a vote to leave the EU. They are Thatcher's most zealous disciples, and she was a genuinely bad person. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
It is now quite usual for workers in Britain to be under constant surveillance from security cameras and have to undergo body searches at the end of their shift. What this tells us is that employers now routinely regard their workers as criminals who seek to steal and pilfer at every opportunity. Where do such attitudes come from? When Thatcher became Prime Minister she made no secret of her hatred for organised labour describing Britain's trade unionists as 'the enemy within.' This was a Prime Minister speaking about ordinary working people, many of whom may have voted for her. She banned trade unions at the government's surveillance headquarters, GHQ in Cheltenham, on the grounds that all trade union members were potential Soviet spies. She then proceeded to pass six major anti-trade union Bills designed to neuter the influence of workers organisations on any and every workplace. This transference of power into the hands of avaricious employers and managers has had quite devastating consequences. For example, 1.5 million British workers are now on zero-hour contracts, which is a form of slavery. We had an employer answering to a House of Commons committee yesterday as to why his workforce are penalised 15 minutes wages if they clock in one minute late, and why these same employees have to pass through a fingerprint security check going into and leaving their work, after being bodysearched. These employees are given a list of 802 brands of clothing that they are forbidden to wear at work. In this particular workplace, people were so afraid of losing their job if they took time off for any reason that there has been 110 ambulance call-outs in the past three years for workers who suffered chest pains, strokes, injuries, live births and miscarriages, in addition to the lady who had her child in the toilet. Any, and all of these described would have counted against the workers as strikes.
The neoliberal obsession with 'outsourcing' has handed power to a series of quite appalling employment agencies, some of whose personnel, according to female employees, demand sexual favours in return for a job. In addition, they announce that anyone can be dismissed at any time with no notice and no explanation. Now, if all that I have just described is not a state of slavery, then some enlightened person will have to tell me why it isn't. This is the end result of Thatcher's demonising of organised labour and subsequent dehumanising of individual labour. What she successfully did was deny the essence of the genius of Adam Smith and promote the notion that profit and success was the result of executive and entrepreneurial genius, rather than the result of labour. A profitable enterprise is a communal effort, but the actual value of the product comes from the labour of the workforce according to both Smith and Marx, but not in today's neoliberal universe. In this world, the individual worker has been completely dehumanised and is regarded as a thing, a cost that must be minimised as much as possible. An organised labour force is the devil incarnate and heralds the end of civilisation, and the tragedy is that much of the British population has bought into this narrative and are active participants in their own increasing slavery. You can certainly fool some of the people all of the time.
We now live in a society that demands 24 hours a day, 365 days a year business activity. Nothing, not religion, not holy days, not sickness, not pregnancy etc. is allowed to interfere with profit-making. No human consideration is allowed as any kind of excuse for a disruption in production. If a worker gets sick, pregnant etc. get rid of them and get someone else. Of course, not all workplaces are like that, but they soon will be. Thatcher did a marvellous thing for industry, if a worker has a complaint, fire him/her, simples. No need for disciplinary or grievance procedures, no need to consider a workers complaint, simply get rid of them. Thatcher had a self-confessed hatred for the public sector and between her and her successors, they have almost destroyed the public sector through competitive tendering that has resulted in increasing privatisation that then drives down costs by forcing fewer people to do more work for less pay in an insecure working environment. As I said, not all workplaces are like this, but this model is spreading inexorably and is now becoming dominant in the care sector, catering. retail distribution, transport, manufacturing and hospitality, and that covers a great deal of the workforce. In conclusion, the greatest cheerleaders for this fascist ideology are the people who will govern the UK in the event of a vote to leave the EU. They are Thatcher's most zealous disciples, and she was a genuinely bad person. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
Sunday, 5 June 2016
Thatcher's legacy part 3
A friend asked me yesterday what socialism had ever done for
me, given that the past 37 years of my life have been lived under conservative
right-wing parties, which of course include Mad Tony’s and Daphne Broon’s New
Labour. If I may digress for a minute, I have been asked about my reference to
our past glorious Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Daphne Broon. A Scottish
newspaper, the Sunday Post, has a comic strip that began in 1936 called the
Broons (the Browns). The Broons are a family that live in a tenement in a town
called Auchenshoogle that is a metaphor for Glasgow. One of the family is a
spinster called Daphne who, in my opinion, bears a striking relationship to the
incompetent oaf who unfortunately
became Prime Minister of this sorry country. I am in fact doing poor Daphne a
disservice as she is a kind and harmless person, unlike the spiteful and nasty
New Labour clown aforementioned. The only thing they really have in common is
that they are both Scots.
I told this friend, who is a self-confessed extreme
rightist, that it would take too long to explain, and that it would be
pointless attempting to explain given he simply wouldn’t listen because, in
truth, he was not interested in logic and facts. He has his theories, and that is the problem
with people who ‘know’ the truth; they will never let facts spoil a good
theory. This brings me to the discussion of what socialism is, because most
people use this term without having the faintest idea what they are talking
about. I have mentioned before, I find it quite incredible when I hear people
calling Barack Obama a socialist. That is the height of stupidity and
ignorance, because rightists, but particularly Americans, utilise socialism
coterminous with Marxist and Communist. As I have mentioned in my last two posts, the
west, particularly Britain and the USA, have been rendered seriously brain
damaged by the cult of individualism. Any reference to anything collective is
regarded as socialist, smelling of Marxism, something unclean. That therefore
places people like Adam Smith, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, John Locke etc. within
the framework of socialism, and that highlights how debased the political
narrative in the west has become because all these people were united in their
description of the human being as a social being. All these people also
regarded society as an empirical fact, imposing a definite and defining imprint
on each and every individual. As John Donne told us ‘no man is an island’. As a
result, I never use the term socialist because it has no meaningful explanation
in today’s world of debased and immature debate. Indeed,
what do the Vatican and Karl Marx have in common? Their description of the human
being as a social being. As the Second
Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes tells us “The human person is by its innermost nature, a
social being,” whilst Marx tells us that “The
human being is in the most literal sense a zoon politikon, not merely a
gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst
of society”.
However, if I had to reply to my friend, I could do it quite
easily, even within the parameters of what he regards as socialist. For such
people the state is what Karl Popper referred to as a necessary evil, but that
is quite spectacularly wrong. The state is not a ‘thing’ with an existence
outwith the personnel who comprise the essence of the state and is neither good, nor evil, but
essentially reflects the policies and behaviour of the personnel in charge of
it at any given point in history. The state is not independent of human
activity and behaviour; it is an interdependent set of human institutions, an
administrative concept for the regulation and administration of any given
political entity. People can be evil and can utilise the agencies of the state
for evil purposes, but equally, people can be altruistic and concerned for the
welfare of others and can therefore utilise the agencies of the state for good.
The state can be large, small, intrusive or liberating; it can be whatever the
people directing its activities desire it to be. Two of the most dangerous
Marxists writing for the state control of such things as public works and education were Adam
Smith and Alfred Marshall. Well by today’s standards they must be considered
Marxists, even though Smith was writing 100 years before Marx. So, what has
socialism as defined by my friend done for me?
Well it has constructed, maintained
and refined public works such as roads, bridges, schools, and
social security benefits, as argued for by Smith and Marshall. In addition,
it brought good sturdy and affordable council housing for working people, even
though most of the council houses built in Britain were constructed by that
most dangerous of communist parties, the pre-Thatcherite Conservatives. It has
brought public health initiatives such as sewerage and sanitation, the
necessity for clean water supply, and most importantly the National Health
Service. It provided me and countless others with student maintenance grants,
opened up further and higher education for all who wished to access it,
provided apprenticeships, regulated working conditions, including hours of
work, holidays, pensions, works canteens, and health and safety legislation. As
is obvious, I could write a book about the benefits of state intervention in
people’s lives and how the state has frequently been harnessed for good. Since
Thatcher the state has indeed been harnessed for evil, but that does not make the
state as a collectivity of institutions essentially good or bad, it is simply a
reflection of the people in control. In addition, it is simply stupid and
factually incorrect to label the above state benefits as socialist. Such
benefits are indeed the result of collective social action, but were considered
as beneficial and necessary at different times by people who were indeed socialist,
but also by people who were, like Harold McMillan or David Lloyd George,
conservatives and liberals.
So, Thatcher's influence has been far-reaching and long-lasting, but is now beginning to run out of steam because it is founded on a fraud and riddled with contradictions. However, in its struggle to remain dominant it is descending into fascism and its whole rationale is now founded on hatred, of immigrants, foreigners in general, the poor etc. It offers no hope, only continuing misery. The neoliberal narrative is one of desperation and is manifest in the Brexit campaign, in Donald Trump and the many right-wing neo-fascist movements springing up all over the world. I ask you again as I did in a previous post, how can the Americans even contemplate electing a person who openly advocates torture? The answer my friend is written on the wind as a great man once said, and that is the real legacy of the Blessed Margaret. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
So, Thatcher's influence has been far-reaching and long-lasting, but is now beginning to run out of steam because it is founded on a fraud and riddled with contradictions. However, in its struggle to remain dominant it is descending into fascism and its whole rationale is now founded on hatred, of immigrants, foreigners in general, the poor etc. It offers no hope, only continuing misery. The neoliberal narrative is one of desperation and is manifest in the Brexit campaign, in Donald Trump and the many right-wing neo-fascist movements springing up all over the world. I ask you again as I did in a previous post, how can the Americans even contemplate electing a person who openly advocates torture? The answer my friend is written on the wind as a great man once said, and that is the real legacy of the Blessed Margaret. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
Thursday, 2 June 2016
Thatcher's legacy part 2
Within the UK as I told you before, the Tory Party has come under police investigation for electoral corruption and criminality. There are now 17 different police forces investigating over 30 allegations of breaches of election campaign spending limits and the Tories have just fought a court action to prevent Kent police investigating the South Thanet constituency election at last years general election. The case was thrown out of court. This is the party of openness and transparency according to the Camoron. This, the party that are happy to answer every and any question with regard to their election expenditure, that is, until they are actually questioned of course, then they will go to court to try to prevent being questioned. This demonstrates how the British elite are a group of people who demand freedom for their actions and do not believe that they should be constrained by the rules that they expect the rest of us to be constrained by. That is why they continually refuse to be held accountable for anything and have to be forced kicking and screaming to obey the normal laws and rules of British society. Their freedom is sacrosanct and that freedom has to be total.
As I was commenting in my last post, the modern neoliberal Tory is not a conservative and differs quite considerably from the traditional conservative concept of individual freedom. Traditional conservative thinking has always been characterised by the notion that individual thoughts and behaviour need to be constrained and regulated, by morality, law and the threat of sanctions and punishment. This is considered necessary both for the individual themselves and for the benefit of society as a whole. Conservatives have always stressed the need for moral training to regulate ‘the passions’ and for the necessity of the rule of law to restrain such passions when individual self-regulation fails. However, the neoliberal has an obsession with freedom as a lack of restraint, of a deregulated individualism where any form of regulatory control is seen as threatening ‘the free person’ and a ‘free society’. That is why neoliberal politics must never be confused with either traditional conservatism or liberalism. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued that “liberty is the silence of the law” but I will argue that is a stupid thing to say and makes no sense. This is expanding on the thinking of Thomas Hobbes who argued that
"Liberty, or freedom, signifies, properly, the absence of opposition; by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion. A freeman is he; that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to do."
That statement looks quite impressive, but what does it actually mean? Am I having my freedom impeded by being physically and/or legally prevented from killing someone if that is what I have a will to do? What if I wish to commit rape? Obviously such statements are far too ambiguous to be taken at face value, and are in fact quite meaningless. But that is the manner in which the neoliberal presents them to us; this is the Thatcherite way of speaking. Bentham actually goes on to tell us that “every law is an evil, because every law is a violation of liberty; so that government, I say again, can only choose between evils” As a result, for someone who adopts Bentham’s philosophical concept of freedom, preventing rape and murder must themselves be acts of evil. We are now straying into the realms of insanity. You see, when Thatcher tells us that there is no such thing as society, then who is to say that rape and murder should not be your right if you have a will to do so? This is the real poison of individualism, the concept that such judgements are the remit of families and voluntary associations. The Ku Klux Klan is a voluntary association. So is Al-Quaida. ISIS calls itself a family. As a result, are their definitions of morality and ethical behaviour as relevant or more relevant than the decisions of the US Supreme Court, or the European Court of Human Rights which are most certainly not voluntary organisations, indeed they are very graphic manifestations of the big bad state. If you follow this line of thought you can only conclude that Thatcher and her acolytes are actually very bad people, because you must ask the question, why do they wish to argue such things?
Anarchists argue for the abolition of the state, and the neoliberal argues for a minimal state. What the neoliberal has actually done is invert the anarchist argument to justify its position. The anarchist argues that it is the state that has created capital and that the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the state, whist the neoliberal argues that it is the state that is destroying capital and is the greatest barrier to capitalist development. But neoliberals need the state for its purposes. They do not even begin to understand the concept of individual liberty, which, as Marx tells us, can only be individuated within a social context because they continually deny that context. As a result, the neoliberal, whilst actively destroying the foundations of authority, whether that be the authority of law, of the state or the judiciary, or the moral and ethical framework of the society, utilises the institutions of the state to pursue a relentless fascist style centralisation in order to pander to corporate business interests and the financial classes. The pigsty has abandoned the sole purpose for its existence, to represent the British people who elect them, and has substituted a governmental system directed solely at the special interests of business and finance, thus the unceasing war against local government, unions, workers rights and the public sector in general. As a result I conclude that modern neoliberals from whatever party they represent are, at the same time, a form of anarchist and a form of fascist, thus my description of the modern neoliberal as an anarchic fascist. The dominant concept of the isolated individual is an anachronism, but has been promoted very successfully in modern times, despite the empirical evidence that it is a nonsense. Modern society is the product of the scientific revolution and scientific techniques in all areas of collective life. You will all be very familiar with my fondness for Adam Smith, and the key message that runs through Smith's work is that science and scientific technique is a completely social activity. Smith's argument for the wealth of nations is based on a complex division of labour that necessitates the cooperation of many people; it is necessarily a very collective enterprise, and it is not as if this is new, Smith published this in 1776. Since then the continuing empirical evidence of scientific progress highlights very graphically the poverty of an individualist philosophy. The scientific community is itself a good example of a practical and operating social structure, and no individual could possible carry out any real meaningful research except on some very narrow field. I apologise for the length of this post, but once again, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
As I was commenting in my last post, the modern neoliberal Tory is not a conservative and differs quite considerably from the traditional conservative concept of individual freedom. Traditional conservative thinking has always been characterised by the notion that individual thoughts and behaviour need to be constrained and regulated, by morality, law and the threat of sanctions and punishment. This is considered necessary both for the individual themselves and for the benefit of society as a whole. Conservatives have always stressed the need for moral training to regulate ‘the passions’ and for the necessity of the rule of law to restrain such passions when individual self-regulation fails. However, the neoliberal has an obsession with freedom as a lack of restraint, of a deregulated individualism where any form of regulatory control is seen as threatening ‘the free person’ and a ‘free society’. That is why neoliberal politics must never be confused with either traditional conservatism or liberalism. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued that “liberty is the silence of the law” but I will argue that is a stupid thing to say and makes no sense. This is expanding on the thinking of Thomas Hobbes who argued that
"Liberty, or freedom, signifies, properly, the absence of opposition; by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion. A freeman is he; that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to do."
That statement looks quite impressive, but what does it actually mean? Am I having my freedom impeded by being physically and/or legally prevented from killing someone if that is what I have a will to do? What if I wish to commit rape? Obviously such statements are far too ambiguous to be taken at face value, and are in fact quite meaningless. But that is the manner in which the neoliberal presents them to us; this is the Thatcherite way of speaking. Bentham actually goes on to tell us that “every law is an evil, because every law is a violation of liberty; so that government, I say again, can only choose between evils” As a result, for someone who adopts Bentham’s philosophical concept of freedom, preventing rape and murder must themselves be acts of evil. We are now straying into the realms of insanity. You see, when Thatcher tells us that there is no such thing as society, then who is to say that rape and murder should not be your right if you have a will to do so? This is the real poison of individualism, the concept that such judgements are the remit of families and voluntary associations. The Ku Klux Klan is a voluntary association. So is Al-Quaida. ISIS calls itself a family. As a result, are their definitions of morality and ethical behaviour as relevant or more relevant than the decisions of the US Supreme Court, or the European Court of Human Rights which are most certainly not voluntary organisations, indeed they are very graphic manifestations of the big bad state. If you follow this line of thought you can only conclude that Thatcher and her acolytes are actually very bad people, because you must ask the question, why do they wish to argue such things?
Anarchists argue for the abolition of the state, and the neoliberal argues for a minimal state. What the neoliberal has actually done is invert the anarchist argument to justify its position. The anarchist argues that it is the state that has created capital and that the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the state, whist the neoliberal argues that it is the state that is destroying capital and is the greatest barrier to capitalist development. But neoliberals need the state for its purposes. They do not even begin to understand the concept of individual liberty, which, as Marx tells us, can only be individuated within a social context because they continually deny that context. As a result, the neoliberal, whilst actively destroying the foundations of authority, whether that be the authority of law, of the state or the judiciary, or the moral and ethical framework of the society, utilises the institutions of the state to pursue a relentless fascist style centralisation in order to pander to corporate business interests and the financial classes. The pigsty has abandoned the sole purpose for its existence, to represent the British people who elect them, and has substituted a governmental system directed solely at the special interests of business and finance, thus the unceasing war against local government, unions, workers rights and the public sector in general. As a result I conclude that modern neoliberals from whatever party they represent are, at the same time, a form of anarchist and a form of fascist, thus my description of the modern neoliberal as an anarchic fascist. The dominant concept of the isolated individual is an anachronism, but has been promoted very successfully in modern times, despite the empirical evidence that it is a nonsense. Modern society is the product of the scientific revolution and scientific techniques in all areas of collective life. You will all be very familiar with my fondness for Adam Smith, and the key message that runs through Smith's work is that science and scientific technique is a completely social activity. Smith's argument for the wealth of nations is based on a complex division of labour that necessitates the cooperation of many people; it is necessarily a very collective enterprise, and it is not as if this is new, Smith published this in 1776. Since then the continuing empirical evidence of scientific progress highlights very graphically the poverty of an individualist philosophy. The scientific community is itself a good example of a practical and operating social structure, and no individual could possible carry out any real meaningful research except on some very narrow field. I apologise for the length of this post, but once again, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Thatcher's legacy, the most corrupt country in the world!
Roberto Saviano, the Italian journalist and author who wrote the best-selling exposés Gomorrah and ZeroZeroZero, and spent more than a decade exposing the criminal dealings of the Italian Mafia has written that the United Kingdom is the most corrupt country in the world. He told an audience at a literary festival that 'It’s not the bureaucracy, it’s not the police, it’s not the politics but what is corrupt is the financial capital'. I agree with him.
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it in this blog, but I have decided that the dominant ideology in the west, but in particular within the United Kingdom is what I would describe as anarchic fascism. I repeatedly write that the dominant characteristic of the British elite and the financial system they are in thrall to, is their complete refusal to be constrained by decency, concern for other people, or the moral and ethical norms that they demand that the rest of us must be subject to. They simply refuse to be constrained by any form of regulation on their behaviour, whose object is to loot as much of the national wealth of society as they possibly can and transfer as much of the nation’s resources upwards into their own personal and collective pockets. So, let me explain, as many of you may well come to decide that I am talking rubbish as I am well aware that the term anarchic fascism appears to be a contradiction in terms. I decided on this description over a period of time because I decided that their behaviour is itself a contradiction.
Without wishing to insult your intelligence, anarchy is a condition where people, singularly or collectively, refuse to recognise authority. As you will be aware, Pierre Proudhon described anarchism as a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies founded on voluntary associations. The present economic and political system that dominates the UK is the child of Margaret Thatcher whose defining approach to policy-making was described by her as ‘there is no such thing as society.’ Thatcher herself described society as ‘a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.’ Thus, Thatcher’s purpose was to deny the collective entity we know as society. Her position was self-evidently rubbish, but was very successful as she waged unceasing war against the very state that she was elected to be principal guardian of by denying any form of collective social responsibility and attacking the very institutions that make society function. As a result, we reached a situation within the UK where any form of state control over economic and financial matters came to be regarded as illegitimate and the business and financial sectors of society, openly encouraged by the British government, rejected any authority over their activities. They demanded to be ‘free’. They demanded autonomy and the deregulation of their activities and the British economy descended into a state of anarchism with respect to business and finance, but with particular emphasis on the financial sector. It was this state of anarchism that was of course responsible for the financial crash of 2007-08 and which will usher in the next.
As a result, the dominant economic neoliberalism that is regarded as holy writ in the west is a form of anarchy. However, its bedfellow, political neoliberalism is a form of fascism. That is why it is failing, because it is a contradiction and a fraud, as the political and the economic are incompatible. Again as I have written before, todays Conservatives are not conservatives. Today's Tories are a contradiction as they seek to conserve nothing but to implement radical change over everything in order to effectively destroy the traditional institutional and cultural institutions of the UK that will act as barriers to their programme of looting the national treasury and reducing the working people of the nation to a state of slavery. They may utilise the Conservative Party name, but they are not conservatives. This post is getting too long, so I will return to this theme and expand on it. I trust you will stay with me and be patient because I wish to explain how the modern Tory has a very different notion of freedom to that which we are accustomed, and their notion of freedom will ensure that the rest of us are deprived of ours. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it in this blog, but I have decided that the dominant ideology in the west, but in particular within the United Kingdom is what I would describe as anarchic fascism. I repeatedly write that the dominant characteristic of the British elite and the financial system they are in thrall to, is their complete refusal to be constrained by decency, concern for other people, or the moral and ethical norms that they demand that the rest of us must be subject to. They simply refuse to be constrained by any form of regulation on their behaviour, whose object is to loot as much of the national wealth of society as they possibly can and transfer as much of the nation’s resources upwards into their own personal and collective pockets. So, let me explain, as many of you may well come to decide that I am talking rubbish as I am well aware that the term anarchic fascism appears to be a contradiction in terms. I decided on this description over a period of time because I decided that their behaviour is itself a contradiction.
Without wishing to insult your intelligence, anarchy is a condition where people, singularly or collectively, refuse to recognise authority. As you will be aware, Pierre Proudhon described anarchism as a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies founded on voluntary associations. The present economic and political system that dominates the UK is the child of Margaret Thatcher whose defining approach to policy-making was described by her as ‘there is no such thing as society.’ Thatcher herself described society as ‘a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.’ Thus, Thatcher’s purpose was to deny the collective entity we know as society. Her position was self-evidently rubbish, but was very successful as she waged unceasing war against the very state that she was elected to be principal guardian of by denying any form of collective social responsibility and attacking the very institutions that make society function. As a result, we reached a situation within the UK where any form of state control over economic and financial matters came to be regarded as illegitimate and the business and financial sectors of society, openly encouraged by the British government, rejected any authority over their activities. They demanded to be ‘free’. They demanded autonomy and the deregulation of their activities and the British economy descended into a state of anarchism with respect to business and finance, but with particular emphasis on the financial sector. It was this state of anarchism that was of course responsible for the financial crash of 2007-08 and which will usher in the next.
As a result, the dominant economic neoliberalism that is regarded as holy writ in the west is a form of anarchy. However, its bedfellow, political neoliberalism is a form of fascism. That is why it is failing, because it is a contradiction and a fraud, as the political and the economic are incompatible. Again as I have written before, todays Conservatives are not conservatives. Today's Tories are a contradiction as they seek to conserve nothing but to implement radical change over everything in order to effectively destroy the traditional institutional and cultural institutions of the UK that will act as barriers to their programme of looting the national treasury and reducing the working people of the nation to a state of slavery. They may utilise the Conservative Party name, but they are not conservatives. This post is getting too long, so I will return to this theme and expand on it. I trust you will stay with me and be patient because I wish to explain how the modern Tory has a very different notion of freedom to that which we are accustomed, and their notion of freedom will ensure that the rest of us are deprived of ours. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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