Dairy Milked

Today I haven’t been able to get a particular film out of my head: Michael Moore’s debut documentary, Roger and Me.

In that film, Moore attempts to get an explanation from then-General Motors CEO, Roger Smith, as to why he closed down several car manufacturing factories in his hometown of Flint, Michigan – costing over 30,000 jobs and financially ruining the city.  As he does this, he paints a very sad and depressing picture of how the closure of these auto-plants led to the painful collapse of Flint’s economy, community, and pride.  The lesson is simple: once upon a time the GM factories were the economic and cultural heart of the city of Flint; once those factories were destroyed though, so was Flint.

The reason this film keeps on haunting me today, is because this morning I woke up to the news that Cadbury, after four months of allegedly fighting for its independence, finally succumbed to a £12bn take-over bid from American food company, Kraft Food.

The Cadbury factory is within walking distance from my house; a house which was actually built, in the late 1800s, for Cadbury workers to live in.

The local train station around here, is proudly painted a shade of Cadbury’s trademarked purple; the local supermarkets stock special “local deals” on Cadbury’s products; tourists come from far and wide to visit the nearby “Cadbury World”; and a short walk away from where I live, the quaint and idyllic Bournville Village, where I so often take afternoon walks, simply would not exist had not Richard and George Cadbury, the sons of the company’s original owner, not bought up the old Bournbrook estate and created it.

In other words, as with Flint, Michigan and General Motors, the area in which I live is inextricably linked to the industrial goings on at the local factory: Cadbury provides jobs for people in the community, draws visitors to the area, and makes the air around our streets smell distinctly like Dairy Milk chocolate.  The idea of it being sold to the highest bidder therefore, purely for profit, leaves me extremely worried about what the future might bring.

Unlike a lot of other corporations in the world, the Cadbury brand, coming as it did from the strong Quaker traditions of its founders, was theoretically more than just about making money.  Guided by an underlying business philosophy that was driven by something deeper than the usual free-market capitalist dogmas, Cadbury purported to care for its workers, care for the local community, and generally adhere to what chief executive, Todd Stitzer recently called its unique form of “principled capitalism”. 

The ramifications of selling the business to a company who do not share these same ethical principles and underlying philosophies, could well be significant, and damning to the town in which I live.    

That said, one has to question exactly how “principled” Cadbury’s latter-day “principled capitalism” really was?  When Kraft first approached the company in late August/early September last year and began its hostile takeover, a lot of noise was made about the heritage, values, and unique position of the company both in terms of public goodwill and its ethical practices.  If any buy-out were to take place, we were told, it would have to be about more than just money.  Jobs would have to be protected, traditions maintained, ethics adhered to.  “We will continue to execute our strategy as an independent standalone company” said Stitzer, “unless someone comes along with a compelling offer, and I mean compelling.”

What he meant by “compelling”, it turned out, did not mean job protection, or a guarantee that Cadbury’s “principled capitalism” would remain in place.  All “compelling” really meant, it turned out, was Kraft raising its proposed share-price offer up ever-so-slightly, from 770 pence a share, to 850 pence a share.  A difference of eighty pence. 

Once the money was good, and all shareholders would be guaranteed a tidy profit from the sale, all that other stuff – you know, the “principled” capitalism – was thrown out the window.

Truth be told, that isn’t necessarily Cadbury’s fault.  It is more a fundamental problem with capitalism.

Under the current system of capitalism, public companies have a legal obligation to their shareholders to make them as much profit as is possible.  If I am an executive of a company and reject a highly profitable business opportunity that would make my shareholders a lot of money, I will have acted in breach of the law and against the best interests of my shareholders, even if I chose to reject that opportunity based on arguably higher principles of ethics.  Capitalism doesn’t care about rationales like that, and shareholders don’t want to hear that you are saying no to an opportunity to let them double their investment just because you want to ensure silly things like jobs, commitments to Fair-Trade, and the continued health of a particular local community.  So once Kraft increased their offer and the shareholders were offered a 850 pence jackpot, Cadbury legally had no choice but to recommend the sale go through – principled capitalism be damned.

One has to wonder about the value of an economic system like that: one which literally leaves no room for higher principles and reduces everything to the bottom-line.  That’s one of the reasons I’ve been fighting against capitalism ever since I was old enough to understand it – it’s not that its a good system gone bad, its that it is a system which is inherently flawed, and incapable of prioritizing the things that are truly important to a society if they ever get in the way of a tiny minority of people making some money.

So as with Flint, Michigan and General Motors, Cadbury unions now fear that up to 30,000 jobs may be at risk as a result of the proposed deal with Kraft. 

That was the exact number of job-losses it took for Flint to start to crumble.

Because of the amount of money needed to make the deal impossible for Cadbury to refuse, Kraft is going to be about £22bn in debt going into its new operations in Bournville.  In the past, the company have had a savage record for job-slashing and aggressive cost-cutting measures when it needed to reduce its debts: between 2004 and 2008, according to the union, Unite, Kraft shed 19,000 jobs and shut down 35 sites in order to save money and pay the bills.  That jobs at the Cadbury factory are in serious trouble, therefore, is basically beyond a doubt.

For the moment though, the factory remains open, albeit in a state of pre-emptive mourning.  It is unlikely that Kraft will shut down the place immediately, if it shuts it down at all – but what is clear is that the local community is now on edge, not knowing exactly how this story will end.  I went for a walk this afternoon, as I often do during the weekdays, and as I walked past the Cadbury’s buildings there was a look of shock and fear on the faces of workers outside.  Usually, at lunchtime, the grounds surrounding Cadbury’s are full of happily chatting people eating sandwiches and sharing jokes and stories.  Not today.  Today there are just grim smokers and news-teams.  Everywhere I look there are cameras being set up, men running frantically around with tripods, reporters interviewing locals, journalists preparing for their close-ups...  Outside the main offices, someone has attached two tiny Union Jacks to the entranceway in a futile attempt at denying the new American owners their claim.

The superstitious among you might find it interesting to note that, in late January 2009 – about a year ago today, and long after twelfth night had passed – Christmas trees were still up inside these same main offices, shining brightly into the night. 

Keeping Christmas decorations up after Epiphany is supposed to bring you bad luck.  I remember saying to friends and family at the time: if anything bad happens to Cadbury in this recession, it’s those Christmas tree’s fault.

I didn’t really believe that – I still don’t.  It’s just stupid superstition.  But I did find it interesting to note that, this year, the trees disappeared promptly on January 6th: certainly someone at Cadbury must have been thinking about it.

Yet the year they avoided the supposed “bad luck”, thirteen days later, they were sold.

Well, almost.

As yet, there has still been no official “sale”, of course – merely the recommendation of a sale by management to the shareholders: the fucking over of entire communities is not without its formalities.

But anyone who has ever watched capitalism at work, principled or not, will know that the rest is now just a rubber-stamping: it is only ever very rarely that shareholders refuse themselves the chance to make money.  Rarer still are the occasions when shareholders refuse to make money in order to save jobs and preserve a local community.

What do they care?

They got their 80 pence extra per share.

They got their 10 pence dividend.

And so, after a year of already watching one side of my local neighbourhood fall slowly victim to the recession – with once-thriving shops gradually becoming derelict and boarded up, and former restaurants and take-aways shutting their doors one night and never opening them again – I now get to watch the same thing happen all over again on the other side of the canal.

Ain’t capitalism grand?

Ain’t “principled” capitalism even better?

Technorati Tags: UK Politics,Cadbury,Cadbury Buy-Out,Kraft Food,Bournville,Capitalism,Michael Moore,Roger and Me,Flint,Michigan,Business,Corporate,Hostile Takeover

Cold-Snap Election

During the recent snowmageddon that hit the UK a few weeks ago, I wrote this sketch as a submission for last week’s episode of Newsjack on BBC Radio 7.  It didn’t get on the air, but I still think it’s funny.  So here, for your edification and entertainment is a random political comedy sketch about the snow…

Cold-Snap Election

By Daniel McKee

JUPP: The most shocking news of the last week came from Westminster, when it transpired that, in a bold political move, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a January 6^th snap election, and nobody heard him.

The news, given at an ill-attended Cabinet meeting on the evening of January 5^th, was missed by most major broadcasters, newspapers and websites, due to the much higher priority given to stories about snow. Even the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats were unaware that an election was going on.

BROWN: I think that settles the argument

JUPP: Said a victorious Brown from the doorstep of Number 10 the following morning. Though, at the time, nobody really knew what particular argument he was talking about, and so quickly went back to looking at pictures of snowmen and sledding taken on mobile phones.

Whilst some critics are calling the move “cynical”, others are praising the strategy.

ADVISOR: What Brown did was a stroke of genius!

JUPP: Said one senior advisor.

ADVISOR: He heard about the weather during a privileged MET Office briefing and went straight on the offensive. Even if voters had known it was Election Day they wouldn’t have been able to get out and vote: if they weren’t already snowed in, the majority of the schools we traditionally use as polling stations were closed. It was brilliant!”

JUPP: In total there were only thirty-six votes cast on Election Day, all in favour of Mr. Brown’s party, and all sent in by text message from Whitehall.

MANDELSON: It’s a referendum by the British people!

JUPP: Said Peter Mandelson.

ACADEMIC: It’s not even legal.

JUPP: Said one leading academic.

When the news finally came through that he had lost a General Election he hadn’t even known was taking place, a red-faced David Cameron was left almost speechless:

CAMERON: Inquiries shall have to be made.

JUPP: But there are already rumblings within the party about a new leadership race now that the Tory’s latest hopeful delivered the Conservatives their third consecutive electoral defeat since 1997.

SOURCE: It’s done him a lot of damage.

JUPP: Admitted one source close to the Cameron camp.

SOURCE: You can get away with a lot of things as a politician these days – mistresses, duck ponds, illegal and unjustified wars – but being less interesting than snow to the majority of the population? I don’t think he’ll come back from that.

 

Technorati Tags: UK Politics,General Election,Gordon Brown,David Cameron,Snow,Comedy,Newsjack,BBC

The 10:23 Overdose Protest – And Why I’m Skeptical

On Saturday, January 30th, skeptics groups all across the country are planning a seemingly very worthy protest against the worldwide scam that is homeopathy.  Specifically, they are protesting against UK pharmacy chain, Boots, and their sale of homeopathic remedies.

At first, when I heard that some mass public-awareness-raising actions were being planned in opposition to homeopathy, I was eager to join in.  Homeopathy has long seemed self-evidently preposterous to me, and the fact that it is endorsed and promoted by a supposed chemist like Boots as legitimate medicine is a crime.  The idea that a sugar pill dripped with the vastly diluted “memory” of a illness could cure you (so diluted, in fact, that most of the time there is literally nothing left of the original element) is not only prima facie ridiculous, but has been demonstrably proven as ineffective time after time in scientific studies. 

The idea of knocking some sense into the people at Boots, therefore, and letting them know we will not stand for their malicious profiteering off the vulnerable and ill-informed was appealing.  I haven’t been to a good protest in a long time, and the idea of standing up for rationalism and science against the forces of ignorance and superstition seemed as good a cause as any.

But then I heard what the actual protest was going to entail, and I completely changed my mind.

On January 30th, at 10:23am, across twelve British cities, skeptics groups intend on buying up various homeopathic remedies sold at Boots branches and then publically “overdosing” on them, to prove that there is nothing in them but sugar.

On the surface, this seems to have all the elements necessary for a successful protest – it has a cause, a righteousness, a gimmick and a visible action that will help highlight and expose the issue.  The more I thought about it though, the more I began to see that this strategy is misguided, and that it is less of a meaningful protest than it is a lame publicity stunt.

Firstly – I think the idea of protesting against the homeopathy industry by buying a whole bunch of homeopathy products is ridiculous.  Three hundred people are supposed to be doing this across Britain.  Here in Birmingham, we were told to bring ten pounds each for the occasion.  Essentially, therefore, the big plan is to fight homeopathy by giving the industry an extra £3000 from people who normally wouldn’t buy their products.  Yeah - that’ll teach ‘em!

If anything, this approach shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the economic principles which guide the decisions of companies like Boots into what they choose, or choose not to, stock.  At bottom, Boots sells homeopathic stuff, because people buy homeopathic stuff.  The aim of the protests, therefore, should be to make people stop buying homeopathic stuff through education, petition and boycott.  What the proposed strategy of the 10:23 campaign will do instead, however, is show Boots shareholders that, in January, 2010, homeopathic products at Boots did very well indeed, and earned the company at least an extra £3000!

As companies have a legal obligation to make their shareholders money, so long as homeopathic products are making Boots money, then Boots will be legally obliged to keep selling them.  Their accountants won’t care that the £3000 this month came from protesters, they will simply reflect the success of the homeopathy range this quarter and want to repeat that success again.

But I suppose this is the point of the actual protest – the cost of the remedies is a necessary evil for the big mass action that follows, which will show people how useless homeopathy is. 

You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs and though, yes, a downside to the methodology might be a momentary increase in Boots’ profits in the short-term – in the long-term, now educated by the “overdose” demonstration, people will stop buying homeopathic remedies in their droves, and the losses to business as a result of this will far outweigh the small but regrettable gain the company made one day in January.

This, however, is flawed thinking, because I don’t think that the “overdose” demonstration – though surely quirky and “newsworthy” enough to draw attention – is actually going to change many minds when it comes to people who already use, and buy, homeopathic remedies.  The reason for this, is because the idea of an “overdose” of the remedies in question – though certainly showing how harmless these sugar-pills might be – is actually disanalogous to the way that people who use these products actually take them.

The argument a skeptic really has against a person who believes that homeopathy works, is not whether or not large doses of the product would be harmful or ineffective, but about whether or not the remedy actually works as prescribed.

To the idiots who take homeopathic sugar-pills whenever they have a migraine, an asthma attack, or suffer from chronic insomnia, it will not matter a jot that we have ingested an entire bottle of the things and suffered no ill-effects. 

What exactly has that proved? 

All that they know, is that when they take the pills “sensibly”, as directed, and in the “correct” dosage: for them, placebo or no, it works.

In many ways, battling against the users of homeopathy and preaching the virtues of real medicine and science is like arguing against religious people if you’re an atheist: at some point in the argument you realize that you will never get through to these people because you are using completely different systems with which to process and analyse the available facts.  I, the atheist, am using logic and reason, and they, the theist, are using faith and belief.  I can tell them a million ways in which it is clear that God doesn’t exist, but they can tell me a million times more that none of that matters, because they have faith.

Now I’m not for a minute defending that kind of idiocy – in my opinion the theists who ignore logical argument for faith and dogma are morons, pure and simple.  But I am saying that sometimes you have to be aware of who your audience is, and work out what the best way is to circumvent their particular defences so that you don’t just spend your time banging your head up against a wall.

When it comes to homeopathy, it already seems clear that battling believers with science and reason doesn’t work.  The science and reason is already irrefutable, and has been told to them often – yet still they keep on believing. 

Why? 

Not because they have been convinced via logic and argument, but because they have logic-busting, rationale-ignoring, anecdotal evidence that trumps all science and will never ever sway: you may well say that in double blind lab tests all of this stuff is demonstrable bullshit, but when I had pneumonia last winter and took some homeopathic medicine, I got better.  So there.

Logic is closed for business.

I simply don’t think that hearing about how a bunch of skeptics overdosed on an intentional excess of homeopathic remedies will make these people any more likely to reassess their opinions than any other fact they have previously had thrown in their face.  They’ll simply shrug their shoulders, note that the protesters weren’t taking the stuff properly, as directed, and say well, it worked for me.

As I said before – on the face of it, this is a righteous battle, and a worthy idea.  It’s execution, however, is clumsy and ill-thought out, and on January 30th, at 10:23am, I will be not be participating in this protest because I believe, much like homeopathy itself, there is nothing in it.

 

Technorati Tags: Skepticism,10:23,Boots,Homeopathy,Protest,Overdose,UK Politics,10:23 Homeopathy Overdose,January 30th,Rationalism,Science

The X-Factorization of British Politics II: The Quickening

“We would have a red telephone in the middle…at anytime, someone from Number 10 could call in…”

Two months ago I wrote about what I called the “X-Factorization of British Politics” and now it seems that things are only going to get worse.

On the BBC programme, Newsnight, this week, Simon Cowell, the mastermind behind the pop-music show in question, X-Factor, revealed that in 2010 he hopes to bring a political version of the X-Factor format to our TV screens in a series of referendum-type shows leading up to the General Election.

In essence, the premise is simple: an important political issue would be presented to the voting public each week – immigration, the war in Afghanistan, knife crime, etc – and advocates from both sides of the debate – professional and public – would put forward their arguments.  The issue would then be voted on by television viewers and a “winning” position declared.

But the simple premise of the plan hides its equally simple flaws, especially when Cowell himself describes what he wants to see as a “bear pit” rather than an American-style formal debate. 

Complex issues require a serious level of argument and analysis if they are to be meaningfully discussed, and any real debate on controversial subjects must be first and foremost informed.  Hearing what “the public” thinks is all good and well – indeed, it is the essence of a functioning democracy – but hearing what an informed and educated public believe, in light of all available evidence and the substantiated claims of experts, is one thing.  Hearing what an un-informed and knee-jerk public believe, after hearing only the condensed and sensationalistic TV sound-bite versions of those issues, reduced to a simple “for or against” dichotomy is the ugly politics of mob rule.

Cowell himself knows this of course.  In perhaps a damning Freudian slip, when trying to explain his motivations for making such a show and saying that he was more interested in what the public think than what politicians think, what he actually said was: “what I’m always interested in is what the public fear…” before correcting himself and saying “…think on certain issues”.

Informed public debate on a popular Saturday night TV show would be a wonderful thing.  But after seeing Cowell’s work on the X-Factor for so many years – subtly manipulating the public into voting exactly the way that he wants them to and dividing the country up into fabricated tabloid outrages – the idea of this Cowell-conducted political “bear pit” occurring in the weeks before a hugely important election is very worrying indeed.

More on this one as it develops…

Technorati Tags: Simon Cowell,X-Factor,UK Politics,General Election,Democracy,Debate,Referendum,BBC,Politics,Media,ITV,Hell on Earth

The Next Phase Is Beginning

In case there is any doubt that the latest phase of the murderous war on terror is a propaganda battle designed to prepare us for an inevitable invasion of some kind into Pakistan, check out this story about how Blackwater, and the CIA, are already there.

Technorati Tags: War on Terror,Blackwater,Pakistan,Afghanistan,Afpak,Links,Politics

Priorities

On September 11th, 2001, just under 3,000 Americans were killed in horrific terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. 

As a result, a decision was made to go to war against Afghanistan (and eventually, Iraq).  Wars that have cost the US tax-payers nearly a trillion dollars thus far, killed over five thousand US soldiers, and slaughtered over a hundred thousand Iraqi and Afghan civilians. 

A trillion dollars, and an estimated two trillion more to cover the rest of the post-war and ongoing costs, according to economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.  Nearly two 9/11’s worth again of soldier fatalities, and over thirty-three 9/11’s worth of innocent civilians killed – and all because, on September 11th, 2001, almost 3,000 people were killed.

Yet did you know that there are an estimated forty-five thousand premature deaths in the United States each year because of poor healthcare provision?  That, on that estimate, because of extortionate costs and profit-motivated private insurers, in the eight years since nearly 3,000 people died on 9/11, 360,000 Americans died because they couldn’t afford basic healthcare?

There is no denying that 9/11 was a tragedy, but how come we have torn the world apart, murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in retaliation, pissed away a trillion dollars, and created a whole new generation of America-hating terrorists because of the outrage of 19 lunatics killing 3,000 people one crazy day in September, and yet the systematic killing over 45,000 people a year is a crime that it has taken so long to get around to fixing?

Worse – how can we justify the ludicrous waste of resources and life that the war on terror has proven to be, and yet claim that universal healthcare coverage that could save the lives of fifteen 9/11’s worth of people a year is too expensive a proposition?

As a dual UK/US citizen who has sat from the pleasantly NHS-covered shores of Great Britain and watched America faff about so uselessly to come up with a viable healthcare plan for so long, the priorities of Washington politicians truly sicken me.

30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

A couple of billion dollars more pissed away into the wind.

Expand the war into Pakistan.

Rattle sabres at Iran.

Because the 3,000 people who died on live TV will always take precedence over the 45,000 faceless, nameless annual casualties on America’s unnecessary and immoral war on itself.

Technorati Tags: 9/11,War on Terror,Afghanistan,Iraq,Healthcare,US Politics,Politics

A Change We Can Deceive In…

So President Obama has committed 30,000 more troops to the unjustified and immoral war in Afghanistan, proving once and for all that it doesn’t matter who you vote for – the interests of power and business always rule the day.

Worse: this is just the 30,000 troops that he’s telling us about. 

Who knows what the true total will be once all the private military contractors like Blackwater (sorry: Xe, as they are called today) are added to the mix? 

It’s also only the 30,000 more American troops we are talking about here, exclusive of all the other additional surges the President has demanded from all other “allies” involved in the “Coalition of the Killing” currently fighting in Afghanistan (the UK, for example, will be sending at least 500 more too).

Of course, what we’re supposed to feel about this 30,000 number, is that it shows a tremendous restraint in comparison to the gung-ho, “kill ‘em all” approach of the previous administration.  Sure, Obama’s sending 30,000 new soldiers into a war we have no business being in, but the General McChrystal wanted him to send 40,000.  Even the media got it wrong when they spent the week predicting 34,000 – Obama has undercut the General’s demands by 10,000 soldiers, and the media consensus by 4,000 – what a guy!

He also spent a very long time coming to this decision.

We are supposed to feel – as has been repeated in every media report I have read, seen, or listened to since this decision was made – that this was a decision Obama didn’t want to have to make; that he struggled long and hard with his conscience over this one, but the facts, in the end, were just too convincing to ignore…

Perhaps that idea would hold a little more weight had Obama’s long and torturous soul-seeking not ended in the entirely predictable outcome of an Afghanistan decision that completely conforms to over sixty years worth of historically consistent US Foreign Policy?

I remember a girlfriend I had once.  I knew I needed to break-up with her, but when I told her about it she told me that maybe I just needed a little more time to think about things?  She gave me the night to re-assess our relationship and said she’d be back in the morning for my real, thought-out, answer.

I knew all along that my answer wouldn’t change – I wanted to break up with the girl and the relationship was done.  But I also knew that the appearance of deliberation was important to her.  So I stayed in my room – not really thinking things over at all; just playing on my Playstation whilst she waited in her room hoping I would come to my senses. 

When we met the next morning, the illusion of deliberation complete, my decision to end the relationship carried a lot more gravitas to the girl in question – this wasn’t just a knee-jerk decision I’d come to after one or two bad dates, I’d thought about it, damn it!  It had pained me to come to my conclusions…

The whole idea that Obama legitimately wrestled with this issue is an insult to anyone actually aware of US Foreign Policy since the end of the Second World War.  Obama has simply done what every President before him has done for nearly seven decades.  Namely, whatever is best for elite power and business interests; human rights, international law, and the domestic population be damned!

Of course the next argument meant to salve my outrage is that, at the same time Obama committed yet more troops to this ridiculous war, he unveiled a timetable for withdrawal by the end of 2011.

Well, first off, excuse me for not being tremendously overjoyed at the news that this murderous and unnecessary war is now guaranteed to continue at least one and a half more years.  We could pull every single soldier out of that country today and be no less safe than we currently are – if anything, an immediate withdrawal, along with a publically made apology for invading an innocent country in the first place and the prosecution of George W Bush as a war criminal, would make us far safer, because the massive al-Qaeda problem we allegedly have now in Afghanistan and Pakistan is entirely the result of our having invaded both there and Iraq since 2001, as consecutive National Intelligence Estimates have concluded – but by committing to an escalation of the war – even a limited one – instead of a withdrawal, Obama has committed himself to both the continued occupation and massacre of a previously innocent country, and the assured radicalization of the native population into the terrorists of tomorrow; a self-perpetuating war machine.

Secondly – how exactly does Obama know that we will be out in 2011?  Escalating the war at this stage is a completely unknown variable: will our escalation be met with escalation from the other side?  Will things get progressively worse – as they did in Vietnam – until yet more troops are needed, and more pseudo-justifications for continued occupation are explored?

Let us not forget what I said above – the problem we are facing in Afghanistan now, is entirely the result of the initial 2001 invasion.  That invasion was illegitimate.  At the time – and arguably still today – there was no evidence of Afghanistan’s involvement in 9/11 (only that its alleged mastermind, bin Laden, was “hiding” there).  The Afghanis agreed to hand bin Laden over as soon as they were given evidence to support the claim that he was culpable for the 9/11 attacks.  No evidence came, and instead the bombs started falling.

If we are already justifying our continued occupation of the country on the basis of a situation that we have created ourselves, what is to stop us from staying long past 2011 if the additional 30,000 troops in the region cause even more complications that we then have to deal with?

The answer is nothing.  As always: what elite power wants, elite power shall get.  I’m sure that, if troops do stay past 2011, Obama will explain that decision to us too, with all the gravity that accompanied this one.  He will dwell long and hard on it.  He will seek advisement from experts and Generals.  He will play his role perfectly, maintain the illusion of “change”, and then – with his fabulous skill at oratory – he shall spin us the latest eloquent version of the exact same line of bullshit the Whitehouse has been shovelling out since 1945.

And even if the troops do leave Afghanistan in 2011; where will he send them to next?

I said throughout the Obama campaign that my central worry about this President – despite the obvious fact that no President in history has truly brought with them the change that they have promised – was that he was being portrayed as a dove on Iraq whilst his tremendously hawkish position on Afghanistan was often ignored. 

Obama, wrongfully perceived as the candidate for “peace”, spoke a lot about getting the troops out of Iraq – but he did so only via the argument that Iraq was a “distraction” from the real problem at hand: Afghanistan.

Obama never once questioned the legitimacy of the war in that country, and often he spoke of his desire to see attentions turned more thoroughly to it.  Indeed, he was implicitly arguing for troop escalation all along: we need to get our soldiers out of the unnecessary war in Iraq, so that we can put them where they need to be: Afghanistan.  That, my friends, is escalation.  That is taking the troops out of Iraq not so that they can go home and see their families or return to civilian life, but so that they can be re-assigned to a different – less controversial –unjustified war.

So the troops may well leave Afghanistan in 2011…but will they be leaving Afghanistan because the war will finally be over?  Because it will be acknowledged – at long last – that they were only ever causing more harm than good by being there?

No.

They will likely be leaving Afghanistan in 2011 because intelligence will tell us that al-Qaeda has now moved further into Pakistan, and the soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan would be much better served relocating over the border.  The US is, after all, already funding private military contractors in the region to fight the war in Pakistan…by 2011 the country should be nicely softened up for a full-blown invasion.

And if Pakistan won’t do, there’s always Iran nearby…or North Korea…or we could always give good old Syria a go.  You see, until we have a President who actually stands up and acknowledges that this whole bogus war on terror is a crime, our troops will never be truly “coming home”, they will simply be re-fuelling and re-focusing for the next phase of this seemingly endless bloodbath.

30,000 more troops to Afghanistan may not seem like a lot compared to the numbers already there fighting – or compared to the much higher number demanded by General McChrystal – and getting troops out by the end of 2011 might even seem like real progress.  But what Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan really means, is that Obama is just another in a long line of confidence-tricksters who have manipulated their way to the Oval Office and pursued the consistent and unchanged policies of American imperialism whilst pretending to offer us change.  It means that he endorses this war, he endorses its duplicitous justificatory principles, and the fundamental wrongs of the war on terror will not be addressed during his Presidency, if they are ever addressed at all.

President Obama committed 30,000 more troops to the war in Afghanistan this week, and by doing so he showed us that the Bush years are far from over, and that democracy in the twenty-first century is as meaningless as slogans for change.

Technorati Tags: Politics,US Politics,War on Terror,War,Obama,Afghanistan,9/11,Democracy,Foreign Policy,Troop Surge

The Sacking of David Nutt…

Check out THIS LINK to Scanner E-Zine for the first proper "The Jail Where Terrorists Make The Rules" column I've written in about six years - thoughts on the sacking of Professor David Nutt, UK drugs policy in general, why I support legalization of all drugs, despite being straightedge, and why the sacking of David Nutt points to a much deeper problem in government (that has life or death ramifications) as time after time agenda-driven policy is put ahead of science and empirical fact when making legislation...

 The Jail Where Terrorists Make the Rules was my long-running political column that I wrote, first for Smokin’ Troll online ‘zine, and then for the print fanzine, Scanner, between 1997 and 2003.  I’m now glad to announce that it is back as a regular, bi-monthly feature, over at Scanner’s online home.  Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,David Nutt,David Nutt Sacking,Drugs,Legalization,Legislation,Straightedge,ACMD,Alan Johnson,Science,War on Terror

If you liked Agent Orange…you’ll LOVE this…

Here’s some of the real legacy of our illegal and unjustified war in Iraq. 

It turns out: “Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.”

According to the Guardian’s excellent (and tragic) piece, published on Saturday - Huge rise in birth defects in Falluja | World news | guardian.co.uk - “The rise in frequency is stark – from two admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now. ‘Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs,’ [Falluja general hospital's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais] said. ‘There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours.’”

Oh, and don’t forget about the “baby born with two heads”…

Where are the poppies for the “flipper babies”?

Technorati Tags: War on Terror,Iraq,Falluja,Birth Defects,Links,Agent Orange,US Politics,UK Politics,Politics,war

David Cameron’s (Empty) Pledges

So I received a hilarious (and glossy) newsletter the other day from my local Conservative councillors here in Birmingham, and on the back of this dull piece of dross about 20mph zones and anti-social behaviour orders was the most hilarious political “filler” I have ever seen.

Entitled “David Cameron’s Pledges”, this third of a page is, I assume, meant to be the early yawning-signs of an ambitious party coming to life before a general election, but all it really is, once they are actually thought about, is a collection of empty platitudes that are as hollow as they are meaningless.

“If you save money your whole life, …you will be rewarded” goes the first one.  Well, great.  But that’s not really David Cameron’s pledge is it?  That’s the pledge of basic economics.  If you save money your whole life, the reward is all that money you saved.  End of story.

“If you are frightened, …we will protect you”

Well…I hope so.  That’s kind of the government’s job.  The State provides police, armies, social services…you know, all the things that we use to protect ourselves against the things that we fear, and these same protective social institutions have existed under twelve years of a Labour government too.  Last I heard, I don’t recall Gordon Brown saying that a re-elected Labour government were not going to protect us in the future?  Do you?

“If you want to raise a family, …we will support you.”

Yeah, because for twelve years the Labour Party have been doing their level best to dissuade us from raising our families.  Since 1997, prospective mothers and fathers have become social pariahs all across the country, spat at for wanting children, reviled for keeping a pet…  And all those various tax credits and benefits that Labour have implemented for working families (and that the Tories want to take away come 2010), they have been designed specifically not to support families under a Labour government. 

Meanwhile, let us not forget, it was eighteen years of a neo-liberal Conservative government between 1979 and 1997 that brought us to our current situation, where it now requires two wages per family to bring home the same amount of real-term money that just one wage would have brought in during the 1970s.  Ah progress, don’t it taste sour? 

“If you risk your safety to stop a crime, …we will stand by you.”

Because the running theme of the past twelve years has been the Labour government jailing and condemning those who risk safety to stop a crime?  Under David Cameron’s new government, I can only assume that this means he is condoning carte blanche for Watchmen-style vigilantism. 

“I injured my arm hitting a cricket bat into the hoodie’s skull after he terrified our neighbourhood by…gasp…riding his bike!”

“We will stand by you!  No jail!  More cricket bats!”

“If you start your own business, …we will be right behind you.”

Ignoring how sinister that sounds (right behind you…lurking; right behind you…ready to skim off our 10%), again, we have the false impression that somehow the Labour government are not right behind small businesses.

Every government in living memory has paid lip service to the idea of being “behind” small businesses whilst, in reality, helping to finance the mega-corporations that crush them.  The Tories did just this from ‘79 to ‘97, and Labour have continued from ‘97 to the present. 

The stuff about high taxation, etc is all a misleading red herring – the real reason small businesses often fail is not because of the overheads they couldn’t afford, but because of the monolithic competition they have no feasible means to defeat!

“If you risk your life to fight for your country, …we will honour you.”

Great.  Because Labour have spent the eight years of the war on terror publically spitting on soldier’s graves, haven’t they?

Any idiot can honour the dead (Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major all did it last week – callously placing poppies in “honour” of the innocent people they knowingly sent off to die in unnecessary wars to protect the economic interests of a small minority of powerful elites); the trick is keeping these people alive, not unnecessarily sending them into harm’s way.    

Yes – the war on terror transpired under Labour’s watch.  But let’s not forget, it was with the full, unwavering support of the Tories.  And as for Iraq – we would not have been there in the first place had it not been for the Tories’ original invasion back in ‘91.  A war which, technically, never ended until the 2003 invasion.

A lot of dead soldiers have been “honoured” by Conservative and Labour governments alike over the years…few have been spared their unnecessary sacrifice in the first place, and that’s the real missing pledge.

“We will reward those who take responsibility, …and care for those who can’t.”

If you’re interested in how this pledge pans out, see UK History, circa 1979 – 1997.  At its heart, the guiding Conservative philosophy is simply incapable of achieving this goal.  A more likely scenario, therefore, is: “we will reward those who take responsibility, …and demonize those who can’t.”

Remember kids: those who don’t remember their past are condemned to repeat it.  And those who are taken in by David Cameron and his empty, meaningless pledges, will be condemned to experience a brand new, 21st Century version, of one of the 20th Century’s last great living hells.

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,Conservative Party,General Election,Advertising,Democracy,Labour Party,Propaganda,Welfare,David Cameron

How the US Funds the Taliban

Some more depressing news from Afghanistan, courtesy of The Nation…

How the US Funds the Taliban

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan,War on Terror,Links,US Politics,Politics,Taliban,Private Contractors,Privatization

Close…but no Cigar…

I’m still struggling to see how the American people can be happy with a lousy and complicated (not to mention entirely retrograde, vis-a-vis abortions) healthcare bill that will extend coverage to only 96% of the population, when covering 100% through a simple, government-run, universal healthcare system, akin to the British NHS, is not only possible, but the demonstrable norm is most of the developed world?

Technorati Tags: US Politics,Politics,Healthcare,House of Representatives,Healthcare Bill,Obama,Democrats,Abortion

Evolution is a Mystery

As evolution gains another victory for sense and reason against the superstitious forces of ignorance and religion, with the announcement that the theory will soon be added to the primary school curriculum here in the UK, I feel it’s finally time to dispel a ludicrous myth that has been doing the rounds under the guise of "journalism” over the past few weeks.

"Teach both evolution and creationism say 54% of Britons" ran a headline in the Guardian on Monday, October 26th, followed by the worrying first paragraph: “More than half of British adults think that intelligent design and creationism should be taught alongside evolution in school science lessons – a proportion higher than in the US”, and for the next 24 hours, you couldn’t move online without seeing a link somewhere to this report, citing it as some kind of evidence of our intellectual downfall as a nation.

54% of people in favour of teaching creationism?  What are we – America?

Well, what people didn’t seem too keen on exploring was the actual details behind this misleading headline.  Namely, that the question within the Ipsos Mori survey which led to this supposed conclusion did not actually ask British adults whether or not they thought that creationism should be taught in schools alongside the theory of evolution.  Rather, it asked if participants agreed or disagreed with the statement: "Evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism."

Of the 973 people polled, about 54% said that they “agreed”.

So really, the headline is that the majority of people polled believed that evolution, not creationism, should be taught in schools, alongside theories such as “intelligent” design and creationism, which the wording of the question makes it appear are already being taught there, with evolution pitched as the interloper.

Maybe as well as adding evolution to the primary school curriculum, we might do well to add a little critical thinking and philosophy in there too, to prevent any further misunderstandings of relatively simple poll data?

Technorati Tags: Education,Evolution,Media,Creationism,Science,Religion,Statistics,Links,UK Politics,Politics,Schools

Remembrance

Today is Remembrance Sunday, and for the first year ever, I have – intentionally – not bought a poppy.

For those who do not know, the “poppy” which I am talking about is the red, black and green, paper and plastic representation of the flower, sold each year in the UK by the British Legion, in commemoration of those killed in war.  Started in 1921, following the end of the First World War, the British Legion is a charity dedicated to providing financial, social and emotional support to current or former servicemen and women, and their dependants, in the British Armed Forces.  The remembrance poppy takes its symbolism from the poem of Canadian soldier and physician, John McCrae, In Flanders Field:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 

The idea is simple: by wearing a poppy in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day on November 11th each year, we honour the memory of those who have died in war.  Further still: by buying our poppies exclusively from the British Legion, this exercise acts as a great fundraising opportunity to collect money and look after those soldiers injured, or otherwise in financial need, after the multiple horrors of war.

In previous years, I have grudgingly worn the poppy because, although I oppose all unnecessary wars, the idea of remembering how many people have died in war seemed as good a way as any to remind people that war is a murderous and unconscionable evil that is far too often invoked by our leaders to sort out petty power squabbles and economic battles, at great and unforgiveable human cost.  If wearing a stupid symbol on my jacket made a few people remember that war actually kills real people, and the couple of quid I threw into the donation bucket helped out some poor amputee soldier recover from their heinous exploitation at the hands of an uncaring government, then why the hell not?

But as eight long years of the unjustified war on terror have repeatedly shown me the same despicable spectacle each November – the very same leaders who knowingly send these manipulated and unquestioning young men and women off to needless and unnecessary wars, feigning grief and sorrow as they disingenuously lay poppy-wreaths at Cenotaphs for the fallen – I have finally decided that there are plenty of reasons why not.

“Remembering” our war dead means nothing if that remembrance does not also mean learning.  Learning that war is the single most terrible thing that the state can involve its citizens in; that it must only be used as a last resort, and even then, with as much protection for non-combatants and the innocent as is possible under kill-or-be-killed conditions. 

Every time I see killers in government, hypocritically wearing a poppy in remembrance of those soldiers they have essentially murdered by sending them into harm’s way for no good reason – or for all those soldier-deaths still to come, as long as our troops remain in Afghanistan – it makes me sick, and tells me that any meaning the poppy might once have had, is now gone. 

Like a serial-killer who still attends church on Sunday and kneels before the cross, these empty symbols become meaningless in the absence of meaningful action.

What does “remembrance” even mean these days?  For those who have friends or family who have died performing military service, the answer is obvious.  But then, these people no doubt grieve and mourn for their loved ones each and every day, and do not need to be told that their tears and sorrow are somehow more appropriate on November 11th than they are on any other day of the year.  For the rest of us, “remembrance” must mean learning, or else it is simply a mawkish and pointless exercise in group depression.

After the first world war, why did we remember?  Well, we remembered because there was something there to learn: by remembering those who died defending our lives, we honoured the sacrifice these soldiers had made.  Hopefully, we learned that our lives were precious; that their lives had been precious, and that no generation of people should ever have to go through that kind of death and destruction again.

Even then, however, the lessons – the poppies – were ignored.  Twenty years later, we had the second world war and yet more precious lives were lost again.

Of course, there have arguably been no more “world wars” since WWII, and certainly none with as great a death toll, both of soldiers and civilians, so perhaps we finally did learn that lesson?  On the other hand though, what has transpired in the interim decades has, perhaps, been even worse: a normalization of small-scale wars to the point that their political use is now barely even questioned anymore.

As I’ve said a hundred times: to go to war with Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks on the United States was not simply the “strategic mistake” it is acknowledged to be today, it was an unjustified and immoral attack on an innocent country which had not – as a nation – committed an act of aggression against the countries which now invade it.  It was the moral equivalent of, say, Russia going to war against Italy after a group of nineteen French, British and Spanish extremists flew planes into the Kremlin under orders from a lone lunatic who once took a holiday to Venice!

But even without all the faulty arguments which led us to war with Afghanistan, what was important was that, following the 9/11 attacks, the question wasn’t: “oh my god, why would somebody do this to us; how can we stop it from happening in the future?”, it was: “who are we going to kill for this; where are we going to war?” 

The reason for this, is because war, in the twenty-first century, is simply what you do when some foreign country is giving you trouble: you invade (or you pay others to invade for you).  So we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 the way we’d done in Iraq back in ‘91, the way we’d done in Kosovo back in ‘99; the way we’d done in the Falklands back in ‘82, and the way that America has been doing since 1945 in Korea, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, Vietnam, Ecuador, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama…to name but a few!

Year after year, following that second world war (the lapsed sequel to that infamous “war to end all wars”) our governments continue to treat the lives and limbs of our soldiers as their personal geo-political playthings, and here, in Britain, every November 11th, they put on their poppies, bow their heads in silence, and they claim to “remember”.

So this year I have decided to opt out of the empty charade. 

I honoured the fallen soldiers when I marched on London back in 2001 in opposition to the proposed war in Afghanistan; I honoured them again in 2003 when I marched with millions of other real patriots to oppose the proposed war in Iraq; I have honoured them for the full eight years of the hateful war on terror by continuing to spread the truth about our unnecessary and unjustified occupation of a country that bore no responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and I honour them still today, all these years later, as I continue to fight against these illegal and unjust wars and do my best to bring these soldiers home. 

And I do all of this without a poppy.  Because putting a pound into a charity box and pinning an empty gesture onto your lapel isn’t doing anything to help our soldiers.  Nor is standing silently for two minutes at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month every goddamn year; such “remembrance” is futile so long as we continue to treat our living soldier’s lives with contempt and disregard.

Importantly, until we also have a day of remembrance for the true victims of war – the non-combatants; the innocent corpses of “collateral damage” our governments refuse even to acknowledge, let alone record the numbers of – then our remembrance remains incomplete.  Because when soldiers aren’t truly fighting to defend us – when they are simply being used as tools by our government to carve up the world and its resources into profitable fodder for power and profit-hungry corporations – can we really call these people “heroes”?  Do they not then just become killers, or, at best, misguided and manipulated manslaughterers, with innocent blood on their hands?

Where are the poppies for the hundred thousand Iraqi civilians killed since 2003?  Why do the families killed in Afghanistan, for no bigger crime than having an unfortunate country-of-residence, not deserve to be honoured too?

I shall not be wearing a poppy this year, and I shall not be wearing a poppy in the future either, until this supposed day of remembrance becomes more than a photo opportunity for politicians, absolving their shame and culpability in the glow of blood-red flowers, and becomes a truly meaningful day of learning: no life should be murdered by the actions of a rapacious and blood-thirsty state; not a citizen’s, not a soldier’s, and not a civilian.  War is hell.  War is always hell.  There is rarely any justification for this grotesque act of human hatred, and there are never any heroes; war leaves us only ever victims.

Technorati Tags: Remembrance Sunday,Remembrance Day,Poppy Appeal,British Legion,War on Terror,First World War,Second World War,Iraq,Afghanistan,UK Politics,US Politics,Politics,Anti-War

Undercover at Royal Mail: The Army Comes to Town…

Intriguing to see the Guardian’s Steven Morris going undercover and getting a job via Manpower as one of the new Royal Mail casual workers supposedly not hired to counteract the effects of the postal strike. 

Undercover at Royal Mail: parcel basketball, scabs and yorks | UK news | guardian.co.uk

More intriguing, however, is the information passed on to me from some postal worker friends: in some branches across the country, the ARMY are making visits this week to offer “employment advice” to striking workers.

Hmmm, the government supports the intentional self-destruction of Royal Mail, mass redundancies masqueraded as “modernization” and now, when the workforce is finally used up and spat out, intends to ship all the able bodies off to Afghanistan. 

Is that what they call “balancing the budget” these days?

Technorati Tags: CWU,Postal Strikes,Royal Mail,Industrial Action,War on Terror,Links,Afghanistan,Army Recruitment,UK Politics,Politics

Moving The Goalpoasts of Modernization

The following was sent to me by postman, Adam Brazier, for anyone wanting a real insight into what has led to the current dispute between the CWU and the Royal Mail. One man’s story of what “modernization” really means…

***

MOVING THE GOALPOSTS OF MODERNISATION
By Adam Brazier

I have worked for Royal Mail for well over a decade. In that time, I’ve seen some changes, gone the extra mile, and entered into the spirit of the change I was sold. The first was what they described as ‘The Way Forward’. This tagline soon ended when they realised the nonsensical ‘Consignia’ name-change was commercial madness. If the management had bothered to ask any of us, we would have told them, when we weren’t laughing. The Consignia thing, always struck me as a clear sign of management intentions; privatisation. After all, they wouldn’t really be able to use the ‘Royal’ bit if they were in the private sector would they?

Then they invested millions in a computer system for post office benefits payments, that didn’t work. More money wasted (and one of the real reasons they couldn’t turn a profit for years). Then attention began to turn to us, the humble donkeys, who had it easy... doing all the work. The new tagline ‘modernisation’ came into being, and we were all convinced, over a period of years, by more and more ‘team talks’, ‘briefings’ and ‘huddles’. Week on week, we were sold the big new idea, along with phrases like; ‘the way the business is going’, repeated ad nauseam as justifications for every necessary evil.

Then came the time when they took away your second delivery and Sunday collections, not to mention changing mail delivery times to long to after you’ve all gone to work. The carrot on the stick, to accept taking up to half an extra workload for zero remuneration, later in the day, was the next mantra; ‘job and finish’. The concept of job and finish, was that we would accept all this, and in return, management would turn a blind eye to us getting half hour here, or half hour there, as an incentive to get the new increased workload done, in a speedy and efficient manner. The agreements were signed. We were moving towards the future and there were to be four phases.

Before the ink had dried and while we were struggling with our new workload, a new phrase came into being; ‘we just want you to work the hours you are paid’. We never heard ‘job and finish’ again, which now gets used to somehow portray us as lazy, work-shy, corner-cutters, eager to swan off down the boozer at midday complaining that we have to work our hours. Since the revision about four years ago, when we had an extra half of our workload added on top, we have had two further ‘revisions’ in our office. And each time, we get extra work, same pay (there’s been a freeze for a while now, but we understand, these are tough times). The latest revision happened to us this last spring, I willfully took on the new round, and signed the new contract, in the spirit of change which I had been sold. A month later, I took the family away and on my return, I was called into the manager’s office; “While you were away, we had some teething problems. We’ve added two streets to your walk, trialed it, and it works.” “How can it not work?” I thought, “you’re just giving me more to do”. I now deliver to going on 500 houses 6 days a week.

As well as the threat of instant dismissal if we forget to put our cycle helmets on in the early hours (‘health and safety’ or insurance claim worries?), there are other things that have happened recently. There’s a certain TV guide that we have always delivered monthly, and ever since I have worked there, we have had three days to deliver them unless they are late and it’s near the end of the month. Last month, I was again summoned to the manager’s office. A pile of these TV magazines were in front of me. It was what I had left from the day before, and was due to finish that day, a day ahead of schedule. My contract was waved at me and I was told I could be sacked on the spot, but they would let me off this time. Apparently the rules had changed, and from now on I had to deliver them all in one day, and if I did it again I would be sacked. I asked why I hadn’t been told, but apparently I had, and I must’ve not heard it. A common occurrence in our workplace. I guess the manager’s must walk down the aisles whispering our new diktats for that week. It got to the point a while ago, where I started joking to my workmates on a Monday morning; “So what’s new since last week? What are we doing differently today?”

Very recently, a new imposition came into being. If we fail to get a Special Delivery signed, we now have to phone the office by 1:30pm so they can tell the computer ahead of it’s return by the van driver. I had some difficulty remembering when I got home (probably due to being a bit tired), and last week I phoned in 45 minutes late. Yet again, I was whisked into the manager’s office and told that as a punishment, they had no choice to make me report back to the office every day at 1:30pm. My round is a couple of miles from the office and I cycle. The reason for this is apparently that for every failure to report Special (non) Deliveries, the boss gets £15 docked from his bonus. Management go to great lengths to repeatedly tell us about ‘bullying and harassment’. Maybe this is what they are on about. These constant changes in rules and regulations brings to mind my favourite Ayn Rand quote: "There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."

A few months ago, I couldn’t take the pressure and the backbiting culture of the letter sorting anymore and decided to buy my hours down. In return for cutting my hours to 30 a week, I got a pay-off and took the kids on that holiday I mentioned. I take home £200 a week (as well as being a regular Royal Mail customer too, putting a fair chunk back). I don’t consider myself lazy. Like my workmates, most days I work like a dog. We don’t have breaks. We don’t sit down at all from the time we walk in the office to the time we walk into our houses. And we definitely don’t get to sit on the internet in offices posting about how lazy workers in other jobs are. Of course, we are entitled to breaks, but if we take them, there is no way we will finish on time, and then questions will be asked, and punitive measures implemented.

What about the ‘volumes are falling’ mantra you ask? Well, we’re delivering more than ever. You’re getting more junk, more bills and many many more packages, and that’s good for the company surely? They just do to the mail volume figures what is done to crime and unemployment figures. Reassign certain things, give other things different names, and then, as if by magic, they aren’t counted in the figures anymore. Check the postmarks on your mail. All those non-Royal Mail logos are companies that ‘deregulation’ allows to make a profit for sorting, only to hand back to Royal Mail to deliver for peanuts. The internet is like a golden goose for a company like Royal Mail. I’ve always wondered why, apart from delivering the eBay packages, the management didn’t really go to town with the possibilities of the web for a company positioned like it is.

Doublespeak is also a common managerial tool. This last few months we’ve had a spate of people apparently ‘talking out of school’ where we’ve been called into meetings to be punished by being made to watch videos before we are allowed to deliver the mail due to people apparently doing this. ‘Talking out of school’ is apparently one of our number talking to postmen from other offices about working practices in our office. The line we are sold is that we have it better than other offices, and therefore ‘loose lips sink ships’. Somehow, I see this as simply divide and conquer. Each office is isolated and encouraged, by threat, not to communicate with others. And by the way, as soon as there were murmurs of this strike months ago, our boss announced in a meeting about it; “I just so happen to be reading a book on the miner’s strike at the moment, and this is the way I see this going, to the bitter end.” Dressed as an observation, I believe this was a briefing, and quite a lot of manager’s ‘happened’ to be reading that same book. The implied threat. The invisible stick. That same observation is now getting regular airplay in the media, including The Sun’s feature on how the police are being prepared to deal with us. Isn’t Mr. Murdoch a shareholder in TNT? Isn’t Mr. Mandelson too? I’m sure I read that somewhere. Funny how that company name keeps popping up as the favoured buyer. You, the public, are being primed.

A dark chapter for me was before the last general election, when, as usual, I refused to deliver the racist BNP leaflets. Something which is getting harder and harder to do, even with the CWU’s ‘conscience clause’ (this last local election my bosses words were ‘f*** that’ in response to my citing said clause). As usual, I left the leaflets on my work fitting, then one morning I came into work and someone had graffitied it with the words “You F***in’ C***!” with three swastikas underneath. I was shocked. The room span. I don’t know if you know what it feels like to be surrounded by people and not know who would do something like that, but it’s not pleasant. I told my line manager at the time. He laughed and mumbled something about it being childish. I asked him if there was anything that could be done as I’d photographed the graffiti. He told me to write a letter and he would put it on the notice board. I told him that advertising it would hardly solve the problem. I then asked him; “What about the CCTV cameras you are always tell us are watching us?” He replied with a wry smile; “They’re not on.” I lost a little bit of faith right there. I didn’t tell the union as I just felt like no-one would help me at that point, and I didn’t want to attract anymore attention to myself.

Another great moment was being put on a stage one disciplinary (three strikes and you’re out) for nearly dying, but being saved, within hours, by a lifesaving operation. This operation meant I had to take six weeks off to recover. It was the only blemish on a spotless sick leave record, but I was treated the same as if I’d pulled a sickie and just felt like some time off. Hauled in the office on ‘unavoidable’ disciplinary charges. This was after six weeks of daily phone calls asking me when I would be back in work, when I could barely move to pick up the phone.

The problem with Royal Mail is not the workforce, the problem lies with the people who’ve spent the pension I’ve been paying in for years. Those with a vested interest in running this all into the ground to get their hands on the loot before the Tories do when they get into power. Chairman Allan Leighton has gone now. He used to run the Royal Mail, the UK’s largest employer, from Canada a couple of mornings a week for a million quid while running his real businesses over there before going on the telly to tell us that we needed to get ‘significantly more motivated’ than we were. Adam Crozier seems to be doing alright. He gets bonuses for closing Post Offices. Good money if you can get it I guess. Although a practice reminiscent of making us stand by our work fittings every day, waiting to be allowed to leave and deliver the mail. Sometimes we wait for an hour, sometimes it’s half an hour. Either way, how many companies do you know that rewards inefficiency? It’s like a race to the bottom. A race to the bottom for a reason. It’s the same class of people who stand to gain in this, as the bankers and the politicians caught with their hands in the till.

And that’s why I personally think that ‘modernisation’ is simply a buzzword for preparing the company for a sell-off. It’s the same old story: Get public finances to buy all this shiny new machinery they keep talking about, while destroying public confidence. Demoralise the workforce, sideline the trade union, and get everything positioned perfectly for a bargain price quick buck for government debt, and then all the private profit can go out un-noticed once the deal is done. A deal that will miraculously see the private sector sort out all the problems and turn the company around. The old ‘the rich take the credit and the poor take the blame’ axiom. Next in line once they’ve sold Royal Mail will be the NHS, once they’ve convinced you that the ‘filthy hospitals’ need ‘modernisation’.

Do you know what the fourth phase of ‘modernisation’ is? It’s supposed to be the last phase, but something tells me that this is a permanent revolution, until it gets sold. Apart from the automated sorting machines to again increase the amount of mail we can deliver a day, the next phase is to take the postman’s bike away and stop those postal workers who use their own vehicles (at their own cost). The postmen will then go out in teams of four in vans, and be tied to those vans, returning back and forth to get mail for delivery until everyone is done. These four postmen will not take out four rounds, they will take out five, and the fifth will be split between the four in the spirit of one of the many new buzzwords ‘Flexibility’. Why? To slow down the postal service so that we ‘work our hours’ and you get your mail even later, and in an even more disorganised manner. Why? Because when they come over the tannoy every day asking if any of us want EVR (Early Voluntary Redundancy), those of us who leave, will not be replaced. Every full-timer who leaves, his or her round is ‘absorbed’ into the surrounding postal worker’s duties. The only people coming into ‘the business’ now are on 20 hour contracts. What is the end result? A part-time workforce with no rights, no pension and no union. This is what they really mean by ‘modernisation’: death by a thousand cuts. Their vision for the future is a mail service akin to working at McDonald’s. How much will your privatised ‘postman’ care about ‘the service’? I don’t know, as I doubt any of us will be working there by then.

***

For more interesting reading check out:

John Pilger: The New Statesman

Victoria Coren: The Observer

Technorati Tags: Royal Mail,CWU,Industrial Action,Postal Strikes,Modernization,Privatization,Adam Crozier,NHS,TNT,Peter Mandelson,Adam Brazier,UK Politics,Politics

Intelligence and Decency Won Last Night on Question Time…but at What Cost?

So the Question Time BNP debacle has now been and gone.  By all accounts, including my own, Nick Griffin was well and truly trounced.  He was shown to be cowardly, evasive, manipulative, disingenuous, grimly unfunny, racist, ignorant, and, surprise surprise, a homophobe as well.

All week long the BNP have, quite rightly, been demonized in the British media.  As speculations grew about exactly what questions might be asked of the racist party leader come Thursday night, the press was filled with reminders of the veritable catalogue of repugnant thoughts, quotes and deeds that might come back to haunt Nick Griffin, exposing him and his views before he’d even stepped foot on the Question Time stage. 

Another leak of the BNP membership data added to the embarrassment, exposing the charlatan methodology the party uses to fix its numbers – as the Nazi Party did before it – in order to create the false appearance of a party much bigger than it really is.

This morning, reflecting on last night’s broadcast, a smorgasbord of offensive and dull-headed sound-bites have played across the media, further exposing the hollowness and toxicity of the BNP and it’s leader: Griffin’s shady use of language in claiming that he was not “convicted” of holocaust denial; his refusal to explain his position on the holocaust on the basis that such talk would be illegal, despite Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s repeated assurance it was legal to do so; his ridiculous cartoon image of “indigenous” British people that had no basis in either history or reality; his outright admission that he was courting the support of former Ku Klux Klan leaders, with the ludicrous added caveat that this particular Klan was a “non-violent” one; his ignorant denunciation of Islam on the basis of selective passages from the Qur’an that have near-identical (and just as explosive) corollaries with passages from the Christian bible; his inability to disavow statements he has made in the past claiming that the only way to get the real agenda of the BNP across would be by first presenting a facade of electability to the British public in order to get voted; and, amongst other obnoxious incidents of evasiveness, idiocy and outright racism, the declaration that homosexuality is “creepy”.

Oh yes…Nick Griffin and his BNP have been well and truly exposed this week, and every single person in the Question Time audience and Question Time panel made sure that the feelings of the majority of the British public were made clear: you are a racist, your party is a racist party, and we reject your views and your politics of hate entirely.

But…

I’m still not sure that Question Time was the right place to do this.

The reason is: last night what I saw on TV was not Question Time.  What it was, was what I said it always should have been: a live television debate about the BNP’s legitimacy and politics, wherein their views were expressed and then routinely exposed and destroyed.

The usual Question Time format went completely out the window – although, ironically, it was only because of the BNP’s appearance on there that it was: Question Time usually spends its hour asking its panel questions about the week’s politics.  As the decision to include Nick Griffin on the panel became news in itself, the story dominated the week’s news, and thus also, logically, dominated the Question Time questions.

The facts are though (and they have been at the root of this controversy since the decision was first announced): including someone as poisonous as Nick Griffin on a show like Question Time, as if his views on the week’s most pressing issues were as valid as anybody else’s, is an incredibly dangerous game.  It absolutely gives his parasitical party of hate – self-admittedly putting on a front of false respectability in order to become electable first, and then enact their true agenda later – the appearance of a legitimacy that they not only do not deserve, but that they simply do not have as a political organization in this country.

Taking previous week’s Question Time questions: do I want to hear an unashamed racist’s opinion on Strictly Come Dancing’s Anton Du Beke calling his fellow dancer a “paki” backstage and the controversy sparked by Bruce Forsythe’s radio comments on the subject; do I want him adding anything to the debate about MPs expenses, from which the BNP have currently benefitted under the false narrative that they are an “outsider” party who can save us from “elite” expenses-swindling politicians; do I want Nick Griffin’s thoughts on how we can best cut public spending in this country and sort out the growing deficit, when I know that the BNP’s position is that “foreigners” are “coming over here” and “stealing” all our money in benefits?

No.  Because it is not adding anything to these debates other than age-old lies and propaganda; lies and propaganda that have long been rejected and dismissed as illegitimate. 

It is not simply another opinion in a wide spectrum of differing opinions, that deserves an equal hearing; it is an intentionally malicious and misleading opinion that remains as disreputable and dangerous now as it was when it was first rejected after the Second World War seventy years ago.

Now, again - and this distinction is important – I am not saying that these opinions should therefore be banned from TV and repressed entirely; I am simply saying that there is no more place for them on a show like Question Time than there is for the opinions of a man with severe brain damage who can answer questions on the politics of the day, only by linking every answer he gives to the imagined betrayals of his wife.

Should a man with weird brain damage who blames his innocent wife for all the world’s evils be allowed on TV?  Yes, of course he should.  But should he be up on the Question Time panel debating the issues of the day with prominent politicians as if he is their equal?  Probably not.

The BBC clearly began to realize this, however, for, as I said, the Question Time that was on last night was not the usual Question Time format.  All the questions were directed at the BNP and its policies, and all four of the other panellists couldn’t help but demolish Griffin and his ignorance.  Even the one “non BNP” question – about Jan Moir’s appalling Daily Mail article about Boyzone singer Stephen Gately’s death – was really about exposing more of Nick Griffin’s intolerance and homophobia; continuing the attack that reduced him to a hate-fuelled and preposterous clown rather than a serious political threat.

Now, all of this was to the good, and it made for excellent viewing: but it wasn’t Question Time, it was something else.  So why not call it something else?  Why did the BBC insist on “putting Nick Griffin on Question Time” instead of fulfilling its self-professed commitment to give air-time to all elected officials by airing a one-off special debate about the recent rise of the BNP and what it means for British politics?  The results would have been the same: racism and stupidity simply cannot hold up under scrutiny.  But there would have been none of the bad taste in our mouths about the staining of the Question Time legacy, nor the ready-made spin for Griffin and the BNP this morning where they – almost rightly – claimed that the Question Time appearance was an ambush.  Indeed, I worried as I watched Griffin get pounded time after time with truth and exposure that left him floundering and useless against the sheer force of his four fellow panellists’ denunciations, that some people might even begin to feel sympathy for the man.

With the BNP already positioned as the “outsider” party for “indigenous” (white) Brits who feel alienated by the political establishment; did the appearance of that political establishment, and the BBC, throwing away the usual Question Time format to gang up on their leader not add to that narrative marvellously?

Will it not be used for months, or even years, to come as propagandistic evidence that Griffin is some sort of courageous underdog, standing up to the system that wants to keep “people like him” down?

For someone like me; last night was like pornography.  An idiot racist was getting eviscerated by intelligence and fact in the face of his ignorance, evasion and lies. 

But I could have happily watched that same pornography in another time-slot and left Question Time to be Griffin-free late…discussing things like the postal strikes; bonuses for bankers; why the 10:10 bill was defeated in Parliament; suicide bombers in Iran, etc.  The usual Question Time fodder.

Instead of that, we had a week in which the BNP dominated the news, Question Time, and everything else. 

Sure: for most of us, it just proved what we always knew: the party is racist, disgusting and vile.  For some though, perhaps this week of exposure has been like an ongoing advert for a party they never realized existed.  A party who share their racist views; who are saying the things the other parties aren’t saying; a party who they will choose to vote for next time…

Freedom of speech should never be abandoned, and Question Time, though arguably the wrong venue for this debate, acted admirably and successfully in letting the British National Party have just enough rope to hang itself…  But only time will tell if, by doing so, it has also allowed the party to expand its poisoned message, increase its visibility and legitimacy, and simultaneously generated sympathy for its hideous party leader.

Last night we anti-fascists certainly won the battle, but the war, I fear, is still very far from over…

Technorati Tags: BNP,BBC,Racism,Question Time,Nick Griffin,UK Politics,Politics

Why Small Businesses are (Apparently) More Important than Postal Workers…

Why is it that we’re supposed to feel sorry for all these small businesses that might go under because of the postal strikes, but not for the postal workers themselves, whose jobs are equally at threat?

The answer is obvious – one set of job losses is a long-planned component of official government and Royal Mail policy, whereas the other set of job losses will come as a result of industrial action which opposes that official government and Royal Mail policy.

Jobs are clearly only worth saving when they assure no threat to power.

Technorati Tags: Royal Mail,Postal Strikes,CWU,Media,UK Politics,Politics