Tory mentality

I expect most of you have seen the media reports about the Tory backbenchers who are publishing a book, 'Britain Unchained - Global Growth and Prosperity,' on their vision of Britain's problems and how to solve them. According to these intellectual geniuses the British working people are amongst the worst idlers in the world, preferring a lie-in to hard work.

I must commend this work. It must have been incredibly difficult producing a book that required such a vast amount of primary research. I mean, to reach such conclusions, the group must have interviewed literally millions of people. They must have gained first-hand interviews with all the people who prefer a lie-in, or they couldn't possibly know about it could they? I mean, how can you possibly know that people prefer a lie-in if you haven't asked them what their preferences are? They must have personally visited thousands of workplaces to personally witness workers idling and interviewed their managers and employers. This must be a work of paramount academic importance.

I mean, no-one with any self-respect would just publish a book based on suppositions and hypothetical prejudice that condemns and demonises millions of British working people whilst using such obvious garbage to justify policies that are aimed at destroying their terms and conditions of service and reducing them to levels of servitude not witnessed since the industrial revolution, without being absolutely certain, through detailed research of their hypothesis would they?

It would be interesting to discover the background of these intellectual giants, what kind of work they did before they became MP's. I am sure they must have a vast amount of the kind of industrial and business experience that would be necessary to support and produce such observations about the British workforce. I mean you don't just publish a book with such profound and potentially revolutionary conclusions on anecdotal evidence (or even worse, prejudice and a hatred of working people) do you?

I am deeply grateful to such people. As I said when I commented on the article by Simon Calder, I was under the impression that Britain's problems were structural, rooted in governmental policy based on deregulatory practices such as the refusal to regulate financial and commercial malpractice and criminality. I thought the problems lay in economic and financial gangsterism allied to political arrogance and incompetence. I thought the problems lay in a rapacious and totally selfish British elite who were determined to amass fortunes they could never possibly spend at the expense of, and on the backs of, the British working people. I genuinely thought that the same elite were moving inexorably towards sophisticated modern forms of slavery. But I must have been wrong. Our problems are human. They are the fault of a lazy and feckless population of people we call workers who actually spend their whole lives seeking ways of getting money without actually working for it. We are ungrateful for the myriad of opportunities continually being offered to actually work for as long as possible for as little as possible in order to solve the massive problems that we caused in the first place by lying in our beds all day. Enlightenment is a wonderful thing.

Your servant
DoktorKommirat

Absolute truth

I do not believe in absolutes. As a result, I do not believe in 'truth.' Obviously I operate in my everyday life on the principle that I know certain things to be true, like the fact that I cannot walk on water. This leads me to avoid trying to do such a thing in case I drown. However, this is always contingent on the fact that this is predicated on the present state of human existence and human knowledge, and therefore cannot exclude the possibility that I may indeed someday be able to walk on water. Thus, truth is a relative concept, and cannot be absolute. That humans cannot walk on water is a fact, but not an absolute truth. As August Compte rightly stated, the only thing that is absolute is that everything is relative.

One of the 'truths' that I operate by is that the human being is a social being. Humans are the product of their environment and are the results of a myriad of external influences, beginning from their birth and continuing throughout their existence. Thus, I regard the concept of the isolated individual as an impossibility. If we couple this notion of the individual, as posited by free market economic theory, with the notion that this individual is at the same time a rational being, then it becomes quite farcical. Human beings have the capacity for rationality but most certainly do not begin from there. I shall expand on that notion at another time. So what?

The so what is that the entire discipline of free market liberal economics is based on the concept of the isolated individual rational consumer, a being that does not, and cannot, exist. Humans are entirely interactive and interdependent and every decision they make impacts on other human beings in some way. That is because every human act is a social act, even seemingly individual acts such as praying. In order to pray, the human being has to understand the concept of praying; why are you praying, who are you praying to, what is the purpose of praying etc? and that is a learned concept. Thus, praying is a social act, even though it is one of the most individual acts the human can practice.

As a result, the very fundamental assumptions of our dominant economic and political theories in modern Britain are quite simply wrong. They are based on false assumptions of the human condition and human nature. If you begin from a false hypothesis, then your conclusions will be false as well. When governmental policy and national decision-making is based on false assumptions, then the result can be disastrous. That is what is the fundamental problems with our society. Our problems are at root, philosophical and ideological and all the present solutions to our national crisis will ultimately fail. The fault is not the workers, or the unions, or immigrants, the disabled or benefit scroungers. The fault is with ideological politicians and economists who are, I would argue, demonstrably incompetent.

Your Servant
DoktorKommirat  

rail fare increases, its all the drivers fault

An article in the Independent newspaper by a gentleman called Simon Calder and entitled “the answer to this problem is staring us in the face” discussed the problems of the recent announcement of rail price increases. According to Mr Calder, the underlying problems causing swingeing rail fare rises have been identified by Sir Roy McNulty as  ‘Antiquated rest-break agreements, mean many drivers spend the majority of their working time not driving trains, while replacing a station ticket machine involves at least 10 decision-making stages.’ Mr Calder concurs with this conclusion.

So, there we have the problem, the underlying causes of rail inefficiency causing trains to become what Philip Hammond who was Transport Secretary in 2011 told the House of Commons ‘eye wateringly expensive’ and describing the UK’s train system as ‘a rich man’s toy,’ have nothing to do with profiteering by train corporations, lack of investment, or any other forms of corporate exploitation, the problems are caused by the people who work in the industry. It’s the drivers and the incompetent bureaucrats. Simples! The problem is indeed staring us in the face, as is the solution; hammer all those lazy train driving bastards, get them to put in a decent days work for their pay, and put a serious boot up the backsides of all those useless middle managers who spend their days in meetings taking an hour to decide whether to have tea or coffee and five minutes on how best to replace station ticket machines. Such measures by themselves will solve all of the railway problems in the UK and put an end to the £1000 rail journey.

Such thinking neatly encapsulates the dominant neoliberal mindset. It’s working people who cause all the problems for the nation. It’s working people who wreck the economy. If we can just get to a situation where we can dispense with workers we will realise paradise. According to Mr Calder, the railways ‘are hobbled by Victorian legislation.’ I was genuinely unaware that the Victorians passed legislation that allowed train drivers to spend the majority of their working time not driving trains. I am indebted to Mr. Calder for enlightening me.

You see, according to the dominant ideology as exemplified by the Tories and New Labour, the only people who create wealth in this country are the financial and business elite. The rest of us only damage the economy by demanding wages that we don’t work for. This article was in the Independent by the way, not the Times or the Daily Telegraph. I shall return to this theme later.

Your Servant

DoktorKommirat

Hello

First Post

For anyone accessing this I have to confess that this is my first attempt at anything like this. My purpose is to comment on news and current affairs, but in particular on the dominant ideology that exists within the UK and the way it is destroying the very fabric of our society.

It is a truism that there is nothing as low as a Tory, but the Tories are not alone in their criminality as the disastrous duo of Blair and Brown have multiple sins to answer for. What I hope to achieve in the future is a clear recognition amongst people with a scintilla of intelligence that the neoliberal free market experiment has been well and truly demonstrated to be a disaster and is both practically and intellectually dead. Free market economic theory is a fraud and is based on flawed intellectual and theoretical assumptions, it is, if I may be allowed to quote Engels, ‘a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.’ I hope to expand on these themes in the future and explain myself in full, but my wife is ordering me to start the evening meal, and so, must be obeyed. As I said, this is my first post and I trust any readers will exercise patience and avoid knee jerk reactions. All you are asked to do is think, and if you disagree then I will truly appreciate your reasons why. Your servant
Dr Kommirat