Time to ‘fess up’, no one shouted anti-Semitic abuse at you. And shame on your friends in the Tory press for printing such rubbish. How much did they pay you?
Here’s the video of the barracking in full.
Now go home and get your glowstick!
From Alternet. I wonder if Dan Hannan or Dougie Carswell know about this?
Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them
By Joshua Holland
Ayn Rand was not only a schlock novelist, she was also the progenitor of a sweeping “moral philosophy” that justifies the privilege of the wealthy and demonizes not only the slothful, undeserving poor but the lackluster middle-classes as well.
Her books provided wide-ranging parables of “parasites,” “looters” and “moochers” using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes’ labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O’Connor (her husband was Frank O’Connor).
As Michael Ford of Xavier University’s Center for the Study of the American Dream wrote, “In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.”
Her ideas about government intervention in some idealized pristine marketplace serve as the basis for so much of the conservative rhetoric we see today. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” said Paul Ryan, the GOP’s young budget star at a D.C. event honoring the author. On another occasion, he proclaimed, “Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.”
You can read the rest here.
Filed under Bad philosophy, Ideologies, Philosophy
Here is the final part of The Living Dead. This episode tells how Thatcher used public relations to exploit a particular memory of Winston Churchill for political ends. This episode is called “The Attic”.
Filed under History & Memory, Ideologies, Society & culture
When President Lyndon Johnson proposed his Great Society, he had a vision and a coherent plan. Contrast this to David Cameron’s “Big Society” which has been largely incoherent and possesses no real vision. It seems to me – as well as many others – that it is nothing more than a cover for the slashing and burning of the public sector.
The Conservatives haven’t been big on the idea of society or anything inherently social for some time. Thatcher once infamously asserted that there was
… no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.
I thought that I would include more of the quote than is actually remembered. I have done this to illustrate the Hayekian thread that ultimately runs through this speech and the policies of the Thatcher government. The individual in the Hayekian sense is one that has been emptied of all humanity and then re-filled with greed and alienation. Your role in this world – if you aren’t rich and wield governmental or judiciary power – is to consume and be happy. This is an update of the old maxim “know your place”.
Cameron’s Big Society takes this idea forward by imposing something he calls “localism”. But what this localism amounts to is a further atomization of society.
So here is a reminder of the big priorities of the Big Society
The key points of Johnson’s Great Society were:
There is no grand vision in Cameron’s Big Society brand. There is no mention of poverty, arts and culture (currently being slashed) or education. On the latter, university funding is being cut and free schools – far from being the saviour of the English educational system seem likely to create further division. Admittedly much of the Great Society was rolled back in Reagan’s Gold Rush of the 1980’s. In this country the welfare state was similarly shrunk though, ironically, a quasi-welfare state continues to exist for private enterprise.
The National Health Service, seen by many free-market Tories as a beast that has been fattened for slaughter, is to face the effects of the Tories social experiment. The GP fund-holding scheme will be resurrected, dusted down and given a new name: patient choice. Those who propose these ‘reforms’ are well aware that they do not use public services of any kind, so it doesn’t matter to them if a few libraries in their constituency are closed or the NHS is privatized because they don’t use the NHS either.
There is no aim to improve anything except the channels that deliver wealth to the already wealthy. Public transport will become more expensive as this government reduces the amount of subsidy that it gives to the Train Operating Companies.
When Blair appropriated FDR’s phrase “New Deal”, he divested it of meaning. Instead the New Deal was used to massage unemployment statistics. If someone was on the New Deal, they weren’t claiming Jobseekers Allowance and were thus excluded from the figures. The New Deal was as superficial as the man who dreamt up the ‘idea’.
The Tories may think that by coupling the word “big” with society this will convince people into thinking that what the government is doing is for the benefit of all. This line of thinking is delusional but then thinking isn’t what these people do best.
UPDATE @ 1632
Edited out sentence that made no sense.
Filed under Big Society, Conservative Party, Government & politics
Here is Part 2 of Adam Curtis’s documentary The Living Dead. This episode is called “You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough”. This episode is about brainwashing and mind control. The US and USSR both believed they could use a combination of mind manipulation and hallucinogenic drugs to program assassins. The program was a failure and was abandoned. This didn’t stop the wunderkinds of psychiatry from using these techniques in an attempt to obliterate bad memories from the minds of their patients.
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am not a fan of the Labour leadership and I haven’t been since Kinnock delivered that speech. This does not mean that I am against working with individual Labour members to fight the cuts. I am prepared to work with anyone who is fighting the ideologically driven cuts that this Tory-led government (whose own mandate for such cuts is dubious) is currently implementing. Indeed my local Labour MP, Andy Slaughter, is pretty decent and the local party is doing the right things (though, some years ago, I had a serious disagreement with the former Labour MP, Iain Coleman, over the Iraq invasion).
In recent weeks, the Tory press has printed stories about how unions are planning to go on strike during the royal wedding. We know why these papers have printed such stories and the word that I have in mind begins with the letters “s” and “m”. Last Sunday, Ed Miniband chipped in with his twopenneth worth on the Andrew Marr Show,
Labour leader Ed Miliband has said he is “appalled” by the idea of trade unions planning strikes to disrupt Royal Wedding celebrations.
He told the BBC such a plan of action would be “absolutely the wrong thing to do” and a “sign of failure”.
The Daily Mail led the charge with this article on 30 December 2010. They quote Mark Serwotka of the PCS union as saying,
Unless you look like you want a fight, they won’t negotiate. The Government has to see we are serious.’
He added: ‘Actions around Easter have quite an effect because so much is happening at that time of year.
‘The end of April, beginning of May would be best. The royal wedding would not be a factor in our planning but nor would it be a factor to avoid.
The wording here is vague, yet the pair who wrote this claim to have some kind of ability to see into the future as well as the hearts of men.
No union leader has actually called for strikes during the royal wedding. Yet, Miliband appears to have fallen into a trap laid for him by the Tory press by condemning the action in advance.
This article from the Press Association says,
In a warning shot to union bosses, Mr Miliband said that strikes were a “legitimate last resort” in industrial disputes, but he did not want to see them used in a co-ordinated attempt to undermine the coalition Government, insisting that this was not the way to bring about a change in power.
It’s that last sentence that sticks in the mind like a splinter. What Dear Ed seems to forget is that parliamentary opposition is limited to what the Labour front bench decides or doesn’t decide to do. What Miniband wants us to do is to submit to their [lack of] leadership. Here he summons up the ghosts of the 1980’s.
He insisted there must be no going back to the divisive and politically-driven disputes of the 1980s, such as the miners’ strike led by Arthur Scargill, which divided the nation and presented Labour with a hugely-damaging challenge to its credibility as a potential government.
The Labour leadership offered tepid support for the miners and others who went on strike during the 1980’s. Kinnock was more concerned with pleasing the Tory press than with supporting those people who had voted for Labour. It seems as though the current leader is thinking along the same lines. This comes as no surprise to us here at Nowhere Towers because of Kinnock’s endorsement of Mister Ed during the leadership contest.
So I am not against the Labour Party per se, just the leadership that has consistently failed to er, lead.
Filed under Cuts, Government & politics, Labour, Public spending