On Riazat Butt’s Guardian post on responding to vocal bigots:
CritKing
Aug 27 08, 12:25pm (about 20 hours ago)
fight fire with fire I say…
the other day I was out on my race bike training in Amsterdam (CK is a top bike racer) and a group of moroccan teenagars called me a poofter, probably something to do with tight lycra.
As CK is also quite a ladies man I stopped, and asked the ringleader how many women he had been to bed with, also adding, “besides your sisters and cousins”.
That shut him up.
Via Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub comes the sad example of Jennifer Marohasy, who doesn’t believe in global warming but still feels qualified to talk about science:
I have become curious about something. The core of the Earth is alleged to be molten. It’s also a fact that the deeper you dig into the Earth, the warmer it gets. Where is that heat coming from… surely not from the Sun. What’s the possibility that the Earth generates some of it’s own heat from geothermal processes?
Oy gevalt.
Olching at Comment is Free, in commenting on the silly Burchill/Monbiot spat the Today programme cooked up sums up nicely the reasons why why I’m a socialist and not a Green:
olching
Aug 06 08, 4:11pm (about 15 hours ago)
[…]
I think the dominant Green discourses we see nowadays are more about social control than anything else. It’s a form of capitalism anti-capitalism, one which espouses to be anti-capitalist, but is in fact hard-line capitalist in its essence. It commodifies morals and ethics, and puts a price on them (which is why we have the whole issue of pricing the poor and less well-off out of consumption rather than looking at production, exploitation, and social justice).
This new form of capitalism has largely succeeded in appropriating 1970s/80s Green thought and co-opting it into a comprehensive pecuniary-moral framework. The fact that it has largely succeeded is apparent by some right-wingers still not ‘getting it’ that Greenism (for want of a better word) that this is not a socialist plot (as some will have it), but is capitalism’s best friend. Anything socialist went out of the window in the 1980s. In fact, it was never really part of British Green issues; more so in mainland Europe, but here the social justice issue advocates were purged in favour of Green free marketeers (see the Greens in Germany as I would say the proto-example of where environmentalism lies).
So by and large Greenism is a hyper-capitalist social control model that can be applied domestically and internationally: This is why it is also imperialist. It dictates what developing countries are not to do and thereby seeks to sustain the status quo relationship between ‘the west’ and the rest .One commenter here suggested that Greenism wants to penalise only rich countries. I had to laugh so much I think I cracked a rib. But this is essentially the ‘trick’ of Greenism, the capitalist anti-capitalism: Appear to appease one side while employing the systems of the other side (put very simply). So in demanding the Green changes be implemented, the global status quo relationship is upheld. Social justice, historical context, and political issues are shunted aside for the master doctrine of climate change.
Yes, exactly.
Today’s comment comes courtesy of Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent for The Times, in the middle of a story about the discovery of Kafka’s porn stash:
Hawes, an Oxford graduate and university lecturer, emphasises his total admiration for the literary Kafkaesque genius who wrote brooding classics such as The Metamorphosis, The Castle and The Trial, and argues that these discoveries merely show Kafka as more human than the popular image.
Says Jamie: Kafkaesque is lazy enough. Using Kafkaesque to describe Kafka is bone fucking idle.
Comes from the Guardian, to Polly Toynbee’s column on New Labour’s welfare reforms:
stillthinking
Jul 22 08, 10:18am (about 2 hours ago)
My brother (now 45) has chronic schizophrenia (inherited not drug induced). He is best cared for in the stress free environment of the family home. His interpersonal skills and levels of paranoia means he is best away from groups of people and their demands such as at work. He looks odd, is utterly naive and vulnerable and his personal grooming isn’t great. He would not last 5 minutes. Any changes to his routine trigger severe migraine and violent sickness. There is also the damping effect and other side effects of his miscellaneous necessary medication. He is tired, dopey and grumpy. When the doctors try messing with his medication to achieve a lighter touch he spirals downwards again.
I think there is more though because he also seems to be a little limited in intelligence (he was in several remedial classes as a child) and EEG for his headaches which he even had back then. My mother reports being told that it showed ‘a shadow on his brain’ though nothing more was ever said about this. He writes like a child. It pains me to say all this of my own brother.
I have watched him twice descend into complete psychosis and at other times hover on the edges. Seeing him forcibly hospitalised was a horrific experience. This is distressing in the extreme for him and for our family. I cried simply writing this at the prospect of him being put through this process of re-assessment which will unleash the terrors on him and potentially push him into another massive psychotic breakdown. So to those commentators advocating these measures go on get all muscular and tough about these so-called fraudulent long-term Incapacity Benefit claimants for this is the impact you will have on our family. Hope they will all be happy.
When interviewed on Channel 4 news, David Freud, a banker, who came up with the estimates for those he thought should not be on IB, could not give a convincing account of how he had arrived at the figures when repeatedly pressed. They were simply back of the envelope estimates. He seemed to be saying that he had taken the increase in the number of people on IB and the decrease in the number of people claiming unemployment benefit and read this directly across without any further evidence.
Hope the media commentators who affect to know what’s best for others can live with their consciences knowing the enormous harm that is about to be perpetrated on people like my brother.
This will totally finish my mother off. She is nearly 70 and also caring for her husband who is in the first stages of dementia. She will have to negotiate the system for/with him as well as deal with his inevitable mental health deterioration as a result of this extra pressure and she is just not up to it. He is a poor communicator, will not be able to take in what people are saying to him and is incredibly suggestible. The best thing for him is to be kept gently stable and shielded from unnecessary stress.
THE most important thing for managing my brother is to get him to take his medication and to see the professionals involved in his case. Start bombarding him with another set of professionals pressurising him -any professional asking him questions is a pressure- and you can see the problem here.
The terrible distress that is about to be visited on our family seems to be accepted as some kind of necessary collateral damage. I would suggest that there should be some facility to seek an exemption negotiated by their carers and professionals from the routine quizzing of people like my brother.
I have been staggered at the amount of vitriol towards benefit claimants out there on the comment boards. It is quite frightening.
Indeed it is frightening. But the commenters are merely following the lead of that nice young Mr Purnell, who wants to turn the poor disabled and mentally ill into slave labour for the state.
Anyone who has a disabling physical condition, even with a job, is teetering over a chasm of poverty, as they are only working at the whim of their employer and tend to be dependent on complicated, fragile and expensive support systems. Those who can’t work are only one housing benefit screwup or gas bill from complete and utter disaster. For an nunqualified operative of a private company to overrule your own doctor’s advice and withdraw your income with no effective avenue of appeal – that virtually guarantees disaster.
As for forcing non-working people to do ‘community service’ – community service is a judicial punishment imposed for having committed a crime.
Privately employed, unaccountable know-nothings will be given the power to impose the same punishment – with no judicial process – for the crime of being sick, addicted, inadequate in some way, or just plain out of a job, whatever the reason. The mentally ill are already treated as criminals; regularly jailed physically or chemically rather than treated like human beings and stigmatised by the tabloids as dangerous unpredictables to be avoided and shunned and now the same is to be done to the poor and/or unemployed.
But why? Why would New Labour stigmatise and even criminalise poverty?
The government itself is almost as insecure as an Incapacity Benefit claimant itself, and one more bank crash away from total implosion. Aid to the poor is being cut just as it’s most needed and it’s not co-incidental. Brown and Darling certainly see the depth and severity of the coming recession, their public optimism notwithstanding; hence their desperation to cut, cut and cut some more. Knowing how bad things may get the government has certainly been planning for some time for civil disorder and mass movements of people (this from the organisers of the Jarrow march). That’s why there are all those spiffy new laws restricting protest and why the police have been given handy new toys to contain and control potentially rebellious crowds. Now comes the propaganda painting the unemployed as lesser humans. It’s easier to accept police use of their new toys on chav scum and lazy scroungers.
To have Labour, Labour mark you, the supposed champions of the poor and oppressed, cynically whipping up such hatred is sickening, though hardly unexpected, given the events of the last 11 years. The only comfort to be had is the hope that Parnell, Brown, Harman and all the rest of the jumped up town hall clerks in government will soon themselves be on the dole, picking litter for peanuts, with their tabloid friends joining them as the print industry collapses.
Oh yes, and just as a matter of interest and to show just how these things work, one of the people set to benefit from all this is the wife of the Australian prime minister. Yes, really.
Question: Which Australian company under fire for its shabby treatment of workers in Australia fled overseas and is now in hot water for under-cutting its competitors bids by escaping employment conditions designed to protect staff?
Answer: WorkDirections UK, part of Ingeus, the multinational group founded and run by Therese Rein, wife of Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.
Question: Which Australian company was found to have underpaid its workers by up to $4000 and was forced to repay them after shifting them from awards to common law contracts?
Answer: WorkDirections Australia, the Australian arm of the multinational group founded and run by Therese Rein, wife of Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.
Question: Which Australian company sacked 300-400 workers after failing to meet the standards required by the Australian Government for employment agencies?
Answer: WorkDirections Australia, etc, etc. Now, before Rudd’s chief of staff, David Epstein, the Sultan of Spin, the Master of Muck, and former chief ANiMaLS operative arcs up and unleashes the full force of the ALP’s mindless army of bloggers and Howard-haters, let it be noted that the latest confrontation between Rein’s company and its staff was revealed in the pages of The Guardian, the principal Labour daily in the UK.
The details were not revealed by anyone from the Coalition’s non-existent dirt unit, despite what Rudd’s deputy, the strident Julia Gillard, might honk, or shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan might insinuate, or mud-slinger extraordinaire Anthony Albanese might bray, nor in some crypto-fascist neo-con sheet bankrolled by aged nazi war criminals. The Guardian is a left-wing newspaper which still believes in class war, like some in the Left of the ALP, and no doubt published its story to highlight what it believes is an attack on workers and their conditions.
Rein’s company won six of 15 contracts worth more than 85 million ($A196,560,000) from the British Government under a scheme which aims to get disabled people off welfare. According to The Guardian: `’Unions and charities are furious that Mr Hain (the work and pensions secretary) has handed over the lion’s share of the first tranche of privatised services to the Ingeus group under a deal which will not include union recognition and will not safeguard jobs on the same conditions as in Whitehall.”
The competitors, mainly charities, factored in the costs of TUPE staff benefits – which cover employees when their employers are taken over – into their bids. Rein’s company had legal advice it did not need to provide those benefits and was able to undercut its competition. Charitably, and with an enviable display of the sportsmanship associated with thugs from the Graham Richardson school of “whatever it takes” right-wing Labor politics, Rein’s UK manager William Smith said the charities were `’whingers”. `’Frankly its their own fault. They should have bloody read the questions and answers documents.” Indeed. If they hadn’t been busily looking after the handicapped, widows and orphans, they may well have employed a firm of smart lawyers to look for such an edge.
Interestingly, The Guardian quoted angry and disappointed officials from two interested parties, the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations and the Public and Commercial Services Union, in its article about Rudd’s wife’s company. Stephen Bubb, the volunteer groups’ representative, said he intended to ask the UK Government whether it had decided there was no future for voluntary organisations in delivering services. PCSU general secretary Mark Serwotka said: `’Not only has the voluntary sector been used as a Trojan horse by the private sector but the Government has handed a large chunk of work to a firm which is failing and mired in controversy in Australia. The Government is giving a green light to a company who we fear will try and circumvent TUPE regulations.”
Ingeus has been given nearly half of the British governments contracts for privatised benefits. There’s more on Pathways To Work and the theft of tax money that should have gone to the poor by a government who’s handing up to 120 billion quid of it to the Aussie PM’s wife, here.