Theresa May’s speech to the Bank of England shows how devoid of intelligence the political narrative in our modern world really is. She announced that the free market is the greatest agent of human progress ever created but that it must be properly regulated and operate under the right rules and regulations. This is meaningless. If any system is governed by rules and regulations you cannot call it free.
This obsession with a ‘free market’ has taken on the mantle of religious faith, a belief founded on superstition. In her speech May stated that “We should never forget that raising the living standards, and protecting the jobs, of ordinary working people is the central aim of all economic policy. Helping each generation to live longer, fuller, more secure lives than the one which went before them. Not serving an abstract doctrine or an ideological concept, but serving the real interests of the British people.” However, since this blog first began I have been telling you that the concept of the free market is exactly that, an abstract doctrine and an ideological concept. What makes May’s speech so nauseating is that she is presiding over a government whose entire policy programme is directed towards lowering the living standards and destroying the jobs of ordinary working people. A free market operating under rules and regulations is a contradiction. What a Tory means by the free market is that employers, bankers, financial institutions and the business class should be free from the rules and regulations May hypocritically claims are necessary. I repeat what I have said before, there is a world of difference between the concepts of a market economy and a free market economy.
In health, education, housing, indeed all areas of social and economic life, successive pigsty governments have sought to remove ordinary people’s rights and legal safeguards. These rights are seen as constraints on business, on profit-making and on what they continually call wealth-creation, another meaningless absurdity. What May betrays is that she doesn’t even begin to understand the very concept she worships. As I continually tell you, she is a typical example of the well-schooled but poorly educated. As her disastrous approach to Brexit daily demonstrates, she is as thick as mince. She is head of a system that systematically removed all meaningful rules and regulations from banks and financial institutions that resulted in the financial crash and that has done absolutely zero to remedy it since. She is head of the system that was responsible for the Grenfell Tower disaster and she has since been exposed as having lied persistently to the victims and the public. May and her government are in terminal decline and this is an attempt to spike the progress of the Labour Party under Corbyn, however, like her speech, it is meaningless and devoid of intelligence. What worries me is that the British Labour Party may well be actually worse in the form if its personnel. I can identify no-one in the echelons of the Labour Party who displays a scintilla of understanding or coherence of thought and vision. Amongst all of this we have the spectacle of the USA imposing a 219% tariff on British aircraft thus destroying at a stroke the cherished vision of post-Brexit free trade deals. We are indeed a nation built on sand and heading for disaster. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday, 28 September 2017
Tuesday, 12 September 2017
Perhaps the worms are turning?
At the British Trades Union Congress today there were signs that enough is enough. The public sector unions were indicating that unless the government scraps its cap on public sector pay they will organise for strike action. Significantly the head of the largest public sector union declared that if the circumstances meant that strike action would be deemed unlawful under the present legislation then that would mean that the union movement would break the law. Well said that man. The unions will have the full support of the Kommirat. We live in the most shocking climate of class war and discriminatory inequality in my lifetime in this country and it is a source of bewilderment how this has been allowed to continue for so long without significant resistance. We have a Westminster pigsty filled with the most corrupt and incompetent politicians imaginable who have inflicted a vicious programme of austerity against working people that has seen the average working person lose over £3000 per annum over the past five years whilst that same set of porcine criminals have awarded themselves twelve percent more in the past two years alone. They are shameless and devoid of any moral compass or decency yet demand that working people adhere to standards that are completely alien to the British elite who regard law and respect for others as matters for the lesser beings.
For example, why should the unions ignore the law surrounding rules governing strike action? In 2016 the government passed legislation requiring unions to be subject to rules that demand that strikes are only legal when at least 50% of the membership actually vote. If justice has to be the foundation of the law, then the majority of elected officials in the United Kingdom would be in office illegally, as would some of the members of the pigsty, as it is unusual for elections to command a 50% turnout in this country. Even at general elections some constituencies do not achieve it, but it is the norm at local elections. In addition they introduced a clause requiring that 40% of all those entitled to vote in the ballot must vote in favour of industrial action in certain public services such as health, education, fire and transport. Thus, in the event of a 50% turnout in those sectors, it would require 80% of all votes to be in favour of strike action for the strike to be legal. This is blatant class warfare and a violation of all known norms of justice and the rule of law. The withdrawal of your labour, the only resource available to a working person, is a fundamental human right, to deny it is tantamount to slavery. Clause 40 of the Magna Carta in 1215 states that "To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice". The Tories have taken us back to the Middle Ages. It was Augustine of Hippo who warned us about such legislation when he told us that "Surely we will not dare to say that these laws are unjust, or rather that they are not laws at all. For it seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all." And it was St Thomas Aquinas who told us that we cannot be bound to obey laws that are unjust because laws that violate reason are not laws, they are something else.
By its arbitrary abuse of law and reason the Tory government places the very foundations of the state in jeopardy. You are all well aware of how I quote Adam Smith who tells us that
"Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society amongst robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence, but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it".
Even the ancient Greeks understood this better than the British as Pericles told us that "Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state is not far off". So much of British law today has no authority other than the hatred and prejudice of the Tories and the British elite, and things are only going to get worse. The legislation being rushed through the pigsty to cover the Brexit process has been described even by some Tories as shameful and unacceptable. It will of course be passed. British society is in a perilous state, divided and riven with inequality and injustice. The basis of all Tory policy is hatred, of working people, of Europe, of immigrants, or foreigners in general and the poor the disabled etc. But the largest driver of their policy agenda is class, as their class hatreds are awesome to behold. Britain is descending into darkness. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
For example, why should the unions ignore the law surrounding rules governing strike action? In 2016 the government passed legislation requiring unions to be subject to rules that demand that strikes are only legal when at least 50% of the membership actually vote. If justice has to be the foundation of the law, then the majority of elected officials in the United Kingdom would be in office illegally, as would some of the members of the pigsty, as it is unusual for elections to command a 50% turnout in this country. Even at general elections some constituencies do not achieve it, but it is the norm at local elections. In addition they introduced a clause requiring that 40% of all those entitled to vote in the ballot must vote in favour of industrial action in certain public services such as health, education, fire and transport. Thus, in the event of a 50% turnout in those sectors, it would require 80% of all votes to be in favour of strike action for the strike to be legal. This is blatant class warfare and a violation of all known norms of justice and the rule of law. The withdrawal of your labour, the only resource available to a working person, is a fundamental human right, to deny it is tantamount to slavery. Clause 40 of the Magna Carta in 1215 states that "To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice". The Tories have taken us back to the Middle Ages. It was Augustine of Hippo who warned us about such legislation when he told us that "Surely we will not dare to say that these laws are unjust, or rather that they are not laws at all. For it seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all." And it was St Thomas Aquinas who told us that we cannot be bound to obey laws that are unjust because laws that violate reason are not laws, they are something else.
By its arbitrary abuse of law and reason the Tory government places the very foundations of the state in jeopardy. You are all well aware of how I quote Adam Smith who tells us that
"Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society amongst robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence, but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it".
Even the ancient Greeks understood this better than the British as Pericles told us that "Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state is not far off". So much of British law today has no authority other than the hatred and prejudice of the Tories and the British elite, and things are only going to get worse. The legislation being rushed through the pigsty to cover the Brexit process has been described even by some Tories as shameful and unacceptable. It will of course be passed. British society is in a perilous state, divided and riven with inequality and injustice. The basis of all Tory policy is hatred, of working people, of Europe, of immigrants, or foreigners in general and the poor the disabled etc. But the largest driver of their policy agenda is class, as their class hatreds are awesome to behold. Britain is descending into darkness. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday, 1 September 2017
The great never look upon their inferiors as their fellow creatures
I was reminded of the quote that is the title of this post as I read the UN Report that denounces Britain's treatment of the disabled as a human catastrophe. Those are really strong words and we should take very serious heed of them as they are an accurate condemnation of Britain's claim to be a civilised society. Adam Smith wrote the above quote in 1759 and one of the modern trends amongst academics is to denounce Smith and his friend David Hume's contentions that human nature was fixed and unchanging. Now I disagree that they actually meant what they are accused of, because what they were trying to say is that certain fundamental aspects of human nature are common throughout all of humanity throughout all ages, not that every person's nature is the same or that our nature does not fluctuate according to circumstances. Certain aspects of a person's nature are a reflection of their environment, such as the class attitudes we see embedded within British national culture. In that light he also reflects on the subservience of the poor towards those they are socialised into regarding as their betters and how we, if we did not know better, would assume that the rich and powerful feel pain more agonising than the poor and the convulsions of death more terrible. What our modern academic is doing is trying to discredit what Smith and Hume were saying by discrediting what they regard as their fundamental hypothesis.
I could fill this post with quotes from Smith that could paint what you would have to admit was a very accurate picture of 21st century Britain that would dismay you and make you conclude that we have not progressed as a civilised nation one jot since the 18th century. What is certain is that with respect to the attitudes of the rich and powerful towards their inferiors we most certainly have not. There is an underlying barbarism in the UK lurking within the halls of Westminster and Whitehall that is an accurate reflection of the schooling such people receive in the so-called great institutions of the private and exclusive British education system such as Harrow, Eton, Oxford and Cambridge. Britain is, in effect, two nations and one of them despises the other with a passion. As a result, Smith was quite correct in his observations that certain fundamentals of human nature remain basically the same. Such attitudes towards their inferiors are no different today than they were in 1759. The British elite, as reflected in the public policy of pigsty governments, loath working people and the disadvantaged and. although you are by now fed up hearing me saying it, are determined to reduced them to a condition of modern slavery. I have talked before about the Nazis description of the untermenschen, the lesser humans, and how the Tories and their allies share exactly the same opinion of the working people and disadvantaged in Britain. We are the subhumans and that is how the Tories and their allies are determined that we will remain. If you are less than a human being then you have no human rights and real human beings owe you no duties or responsibilities, you are dispensable and are in fact a nuisance that society would be better without. People have frequently taken me to task over the years for arguing that the British elite share the Nazis views on many things as we arrogantly pride ourselves on having risen above such things, but now the United Nations are officially confirming the Kommirat diagnosis, the British aristocratic and bourgeois elite are vile, venal and barbaric. That underlying barbarism had been suppressed by the civilising tendencies encouraged by people like Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine and other great writers and thinkers, but was unleashed and made respectable by the Blessed Margaret, that is why she is so revered by the great and good. She made greed and selfishness respectable but also provided the intellectual climate that unleashed the underlying barbarism that encouraged the demonization of the poor and working people and the philosophic justification for impoverishing and enslaving them.
As the political and social life of a society reflect the economic base of that society then only by transforming the dominant economic model can we effect any meaningful change. The free market neoliberal poison must be challenged and utterly defeated. In addition, those personnel who advocate it must be driven from public office. Civilisation and decency demands it, indeed, increasingly in British public life, the life of many people demands it as the free marketeers are literally killing them. Don't take my word for it, ask the United Nations. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
I could fill this post with quotes from Smith that could paint what you would have to admit was a very accurate picture of 21st century Britain that would dismay you and make you conclude that we have not progressed as a civilised nation one jot since the 18th century. What is certain is that with respect to the attitudes of the rich and powerful towards their inferiors we most certainly have not. There is an underlying barbarism in the UK lurking within the halls of Westminster and Whitehall that is an accurate reflection of the schooling such people receive in the so-called great institutions of the private and exclusive British education system such as Harrow, Eton, Oxford and Cambridge. Britain is, in effect, two nations and one of them despises the other with a passion. As a result, Smith was quite correct in his observations that certain fundamentals of human nature remain basically the same. Such attitudes towards their inferiors are no different today than they were in 1759. The British elite, as reflected in the public policy of pigsty governments, loath working people and the disadvantaged and. although you are by now fed up hearing me saying it, are determined to reduced them to a condition of modern slavery. I have talked before about the Nazis description of the untermenschen, the lesser humans, and how the Tories and their allies share exactly the same opinion of the working people and disadvantaged in Britain. We are the subhumans and that is how the Tories and their allies are determined that we will remain. If you are less than a human being then you have no human rights and real human beings owe you no duties or responsibilities, you are dispensable and are in fact a nuisance that society would be better without. People have frequently taken me to task over the years for arguing that the British elite share the Nazis views on many things as we arrogantly pride ourselves on having risen above such things, but now the United Nations are officially confirming the Kommirat diagnosis, the British aristocratic and bourgeois elite are vile, venal and barbaric. That underlying barbarism had been suppressed by the civilising tendencies encouraged by people like Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine and other great writers and thinkers, but was unleashed and made respectable by the Blessed Margaret, that is why she is so revered by the great and good. She made greed and selfishness respectable but also provided the intellectual climate that unleashed the underlying barbarism that encouraged the demonization of the poor and working people and the philosophic justification for impoverishing and enslaving them.
As the political and social life of a society reflect the economic base of that society then only by transforming the dominant economic model can we effect any meaningful change. The free market neoliberal poison must be challenged and utterly defeated. In addition, those personnel who advocate it must be driven from public office. Civilisation and decency demands it, indeed, increasingly in British public life, the life of many people demands it as the free marketeers are literally killing them. Don't take my word for it, ask the United Nations. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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