Of course you realise this means war?

World War Two means different things to different people. For some Allies it an imperialist war, for others a war of liberation. In order to bind the population to the government the two wars had to be lost in each other. Nevertheless at some points the two different interpretations came to clash, the Greeks know all about this. Having liberated themselves from the fascists the British came… and rearmed the fascists.

Different post-war settlements meant various states went part way to meet working class demands and reabsorb the organised working class in the bourgeois hegemonic system in time for the cold war. World War Two became the key reference point it is today.

Of two key arguments the first was “He’s a Hitler”. If an anti-colonial leader wasn’t obviously a communist he was a fascist, and that’s why we must go to war on… sorry, intervene in this particular country. Here’s an example, John Reid on why the Iraq war was a socialist war.

The second argument, more prevalent in the past few years has been “The rules have changed”. In this example Tony Blair was announcing to the world he was going to eff up any suspicious brown people he wanted to.

This argument has become more significant under the long-term crisis of profitability. The current depression has made it all the more urgent (from the bourgeois point of view) to reorganise the economy and society, to transfer more wealth by various means from bottom to top and prop up the general rate of profit. The current strategy is called Austerity. All checks on executive power, both democratic and bureaucratic must be removed.

This is what David Cameron meant when he said Britain is at war. Ok, so he meant “an economic form of war”. Yes war, like World War Two, only this time Hitler is planning oversight.

An aside: look how far we’ve come from the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention. Trade equals war. It’s a fundamental weakness in the basis of capitalism. Due to the nature of commodities trade is simultaneously mutual and a form of competition, the source of all conflict. When Cameron talks about bureaucracy what he actually means is oversight:

"Government can still be far too slow at getting stuff done…Consultations, impact assessments, audits, reviews, stakeholder management, securing professional buy-in, complying with EU procurement rules, assessing sector feedback – this is not how we became one of the most powerful, prosperous nations on earth. It's not how you get things done. So I am determined to change this."

Strange as it may seem, according to Cameron this bureaucracy has its roots in democracy. 

"There are understandable reasons for that. When you have lobby groups lined up to criticise every action you take; parliamentary select committees ready to jump on every bump in the road; then the rational choice is to be cautious - even over cautious. But for the sake of our country's progress we have got to cut through this".

He's also seeking to pass the parcel in terms of blame for the economic and social catastrophe he has engineered. It's not that we've too much austerity, no, the government would dish out more, if only the bureaucrats would stop pandering to 'lobby groups' and get on with it!

This is no argument for bureaucracy, but there are good reason and then there are real reasons, and the real reason Cameron is saying this is he wants to rig society even further in favour of his party and the rich.

Olympics games bring everyone together... 55% of everyone.

Still a depressing figure :

The warm glow of Team GB's best performance in 104 years and pride in an Olympic Games well received at home and abroad have led a clear majority of the British public to conclude the £9bn they cost is good value for money. 

Clearly, very few of the respondants to the poll come from East London, where rents have more or less doubled in a year. But it's interesting given the relentless, noisy and often illogical promotion this event has been given. Not everyone loves Seb Coe. The Olympics is a brute festival of corporations and states. Despite the soft-left wishing really wishing hard, you just can't square that with any kind of progressive agenda, and it shows:

Despite the success of minority ethnic Britons such as the Somali-born 10,000m champion, Mo Farah, voters remain inclined to doubt that most newcomers do anything positive for Britain.

By a narrow 53%-47% margin, the survey finds agreement for the suggestion that "More often than not immigrants … do not bring anything positive, and the likes of the Olympic-winning athletes are an exception".

Faith in the contribution of immigrants is much stronger in London, where 62% disagree with this statement, and a majority of respondents aged under 45 likewise disagree, but among pensioners there are particularly marked doubts about newcomers – with 64% of the over-65s describing the Olympians as "exceptions".

Attitudes harden further when the question switches to immigration in general. Only 32% of respondents say the Olympic successes make them "more positive (or less worried)" about it, against just 68% who disagree.

This is just one example, albeit the most pointed. This is where nationalistic tubthumping gets you, regardless of your intentions. Everyone in the mainstream wants to graft their own political outlook onto the Olympics, but some philosophies will do better than others. For David Cameron the British team's success at the Olympics proves that there is scandalous lack of competitive sport in schools (as opposed to "Indian dancing or whatever"). By that logic Britain's schools need more inclusive activities, not fewer. This is also something which he has only just noticed as, clearly, his mind was on something else when he got rid of the two-hour a week target, set by the previous Labour government.

The entire political class thinks though whimsy and daydreams (Boris Johnson wants state school sports to be just like it was when he was inb Eton - oh how jolly). We have to live with the nightmare.

Sport and class and stuff

Social mobility has been declining, most people would admit for some time.

. The interesting thing is, as class divisions have been re-entrenched, our collective ability to recognise class, especially class-for-itself, for what it is has taken a battering. When Nick Clegg is considered a communist, David Cameron says he's middle-class, and Ed Miliband stands for the squeezed middle (whatever that is, perhaps it’s something to do with toothpaste) then you know we’re in trouble.

We’ve talked a lot about how the popular culture industry, especially pop music, is increasingly becoming an upper-class paid vacation, and the worse for it. An interesting article in today’s Graun: though only 7% of the population attend private, fee-paying schools, roughly one quarter of the British Olympic team is drawn from those schools   . Further:

It is the same with many non-Olympic sports. Of the England cricket squad chosen to play this week's Test match, all seven batsmen, including two reared in South Africa, and one of the six bowlers (who do the harder work and are, therefore, traditionally drawn from plebeian backgrounds) were privately educated.

The writer’s reasoning?

Cricket, rugby and most Olympic sports, have been professionalised beyond recognition. All sports now aim to identify talent early, give it intensive practice and coaching, eradicate technical deficiencies, and encourage (not always successfully) the right diet, lifestyle and mental discipline. Sport has become an industry, using scientific techniques to enhance performance. The opportunities for raw, untutored talent are correspondingly fewer. The fee-charging schools, with their lavish facilities and full-time professional coaches (many schools employ former first-class county cricket players), were in pole position to prepare their pupils for the new era.

There is a significant paradox here. As sports became more professional – and no longer the preserve of those who could afford to play for fun – the social base of the top performers was expected to widen.

It is similar to the contradictory fact that as university places expanded, the fee system and the compartmentalisation of subjects (turning universities into sausage factories of knowledge) led to fewer education opportunities and less social mobility. This is the seeming paradox of meritocracy. The word and the concept behind it was invented by the Labour philosopher Michael Young , who used the word in a pejorative sense. Merit in a class society is a retrospective judgment. Opportunities to succeed in a career or vocation etc tend to fall to those best placed to receive them. Money, class, power, however you want to put it, is capable of opening or closing doors to you. David Cameron described himself as “sharp-elbowed middle-class”, suggesting he had to struggle to get to where he is today, which is a gross insult to those who actually struggle in life. The idea that bankers should receive bonuses because they deserve them, while teachers, nurses and dustbin men should tighten their belts is offensive to many, but this is where so-called meritocracy gets you, the idea that financial reward is the same as just desert. Put in athletic terms, in the context of our society: You and I were born on the starting blocks, while David Cameron was born in the home straight. 

Sport, like all other aspects of culture, needs to be rescued from the bourgeoisie. 

A warning from the future

To distract attention from his tax-dodging friends, David Cameron outlined what he would do if he had the majority he thinks he's entitled to. The headline story is Cameron wants to take away the right to housing benefit from the under 25s. There's over a million young unemployed, folks. That's right, if you're a middle-aged couple forget saving for retirement, you will have to support your unemployed graduate son or daughter while they do "work experience" in Poundland. Young people, if your parents are abusive or disabled or addicted or, who knows, maybe even dead... if you don't have a job, well, you're just going to have to live with it.

And, what makes it worse, is this will win votes, some votes, not all of them, but some for David Cameron. A large swathe of Britain hates the young, from university students, to school pupils, they even infants; this is the  government that has cut funding to Bookstart - a scheme that gives books to children for free to get them reading, an effective scheme that is desperately needed. Even people who weren't born at the start of the recession are being made to suffer for the good of the capitalist class.

This is the future, if we don't act, if we don't fight: David Cameron pissing in a teenager's face - forever.

David Cameron in calculated insult to logic

And all those who practice such a quaint art. From a heavily armed bunker in Chicago he said:

It's not for me to say what Greek parties should and shouldn't stand on and how the Greek elections should work.

I bet you 420 billion Euros the next word is "but..."

But it's very important that everyone is clear that...

Ha! I win. Sorry, you go on Dave...

But it's very important that everyone is clear that the choice Greece faces is maintaining its commitments and maintaining itself in the eurozone, or deciding that is not the path it wants to take... So this decision point, the Greek election, has got to become the moment where all of the right plans are put in place to secure the future of the eurozone currency.

The Euro was not good enough for David Cameron, though it's clearly good enough now for him to secure its future. Look, Greeks, stop spoiling things! Either you're going to vote for the sado-monetarist destruction of your society, or Cameron and co are going to put 'the right plans' in place to ensure it. That's democracy for ya!

Land of Chocolate

David Cameron hires a man to deal with press and public relations. He hires a man who used to work for News International as a journalist, a smart move. Communications Chief is a high profile role, just ask Alisdair Campbell: despite being given warnings about about employing this former journalist, David Cameron goes ahead. So long as he never asked said former journalist "so, is there anything I should know, anything from your past that might prove embarrassing or, who knows, maybe incriminating...?" David Cameron is not party to any crime.

David Cameron has a neighbour. This neighbour IS a journalist with News International. This neighbour is also a friend. The friend of David Cameron gets a new horse. The friend is understandably very proud and invites people round to see it. When David Cameron went round to have a ride on it he was not aware that it was a police horse lent to said journalist. Meanwhile, in a totally unconnected set of events, said journalist is suspected of bribing civil servants and police officers in return for information. So long as David Cameron never said "so, I see you have a new horse, that's interesting, where did you get it from...?" he cannot be party to any corruption.

David Cameron likes to eat, who doesn't? But he is a busy man. He has to have someone to arrange dining partners for him. Who wants to dine alone? But the people who arrange dining partners for David have a preference for Tory party donors suggest that the more you donate the better your access to David Cameron is and that £250,000 is the kind of money you need to sway government policy. So long as David Cameron never says, "hey, you've done so much for me, and you've been such good company while I've swallowed these canapes and drunk this champagne, is there anything I can do for you...?" he's not a corrupt scumbag for hire.

In other news David Cameron lives in the Land of Chocolate.

Sorreeeeee

David Cameron is sorreeeeee for comparing the families of Hillsborough Disaster victims to “a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there”.

David Cameron is sorreeeeee for telling a woman MP to “calm down, dear”.

David Cameron is sorreeeeee for comparing the Shadow Chancellor to a tourettes sufferer.

If you got the impression that David Cameron regards people other than himself as an inconvenience and irritation then David Cameron is sorreeeeee.

Monsta, Monsta!

David Cameron has pledged to fight the Health and Safety Monster (see here in the picture tidying up downtown Tokyo).

You can understand why Cameron would want to fight such a dangerous beast. Britain it seems is one of the safest places in the EU to work, at least in terms of fatalities (171 deaths last year)... curiously that’s more people dying in work each year than soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

But, look at it from another angle; let’s not forget the 1.2 million people a year who have to endure workplace related illnesses, or the 200,000 approx annual reported workplace injuries. Something's amiss. There are clearly too many people getting through the working day unscathed!

With antimonies like these...!

Who needs, um... ontology? And that's as far as I got with Historical Materialism. But seriously, a note on the contradictions of class baiting: In order to get their buddy Clarkson off the hook rightwing commentators have had to insist it was all said in jest (c'mon, any fool knows Clarkson does want to see us all shot, he just doesn't think it's practical right now). The trouble is the strike wasn't in jest, hence the 'joke' fell flat. Days ago the right was screaming blue murder about the cost to the economy, now they have to about face and dismiss the strikers as having non-jobs.

Similarly Cameron has claimed Wednesday's strike was a damp squib and, 24 hours later, obviously big.

Which is it, we're left wondering? For rightwingers it's both and everything.

Never forget

Socialism for the rich...

According to David Cameron, under New Labour we had a casino economy and a welfare society. That may have been the case (it wasn't) but under David Cameron we've got a welfare economy and a casino society... and you can have that witticism for free.

Cameron to Peasants: "don't worry, I've still got a job"

David Cameron will urge us all today to pull up our socks, pay up our debts and have a general can-do spirit about, I don't know, voting Tory or something. But, apparently:

...people want to know why the good times are so long coming.

"The answer is straightforward, but uncomfortable. This was no normal recession; we're in a debt crisis. It was caused by too much borrowing, by individuals, businesses, banks – and, most of all, governments."

It's almost like he's bothered having to explain. D'uh, it's obvious! Are they still asking about this?

But this is a gross elision of the truth. The crisis was not caused by government borrowing. The hike in government borrowing was preceded by the banking collapse in 2008. Only a fool or a liar would deny that. Which are you, David?

It is a fact the capitalist class went to the exchequer to be helped out of its crisis, a crisis it created, that is a fact. Let's not forget the Tories did not so much as put a peep of opposition at the time. Actually, the process amounted to was the public, us, you and me, taking on the sins of the elite, for we it is now being crucified... and there is no need, as UK Uncut continually demonstrate:

We are told that the only way to reduce the deficit is to cut public services. This is certainly not the case. There are alternatives, but the government chooses to ignore them, highlighting the fact that the cuts are based on ideology, not necessity.

One alternative is to clamp down on tax dodging by corporations and the rich, estimated to cost the state £95bn a year...

Another is to make the banks pay for free insurance provided to them by the taxpayer: a chief executive at the Bank of England put the cost of this subsidy at £100bn in a single year...

Either the tax avoided and evaded in a single year or the taxpayer subsidy to the banking industry could pay for all of the £81bn, four-year cuts programme.

No wonder you're grumpy. Even just judging by today's news you're stressed at work, the most fundamental cause being job insecurity; if you become ill long-term because of this you can now 'buy' treatment on the NHS with vouchers, and you thought you already bought it with taxes; you're cutting back on non-essential spending; why wouldn't you, what with seemingly permanent and overwhelming economic turmoil.

But, if you insist on feeling a little put out by the situation just remember 'our' best days are ahead of us... even if they're a long day ahead of us and, whatever you do don't strike. Workers cannot be allowed to shut down vital public services. Only the Tories are allowed to do that.

Declaration of war

A statement from David Cameron in today's Guardian feed:

There are pockets of our society that are not just broken, but frankly sick...



For me the root cause of this mindless selfishness is the same thing I have spoken about for years: it is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society.



People allowed to feel that the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities and that their actions do not have consequences. Well they do have consequences.



We need to have a clearer code of values and standards that we expect people to live by and stronger penalties if they cross the line.

If David Cameron does not have a terminally stunted sense of irony then this must be a declaration of war. Less than a month ago he was exposed at the centre of a corrupt triangle of politicians, press barons, and senior coppers. Talking about actions having consequences is rich when you take into account the spark of this conflagration, the street execution of a man from Tottenham by the police. It is doubly rich considering he is the leader of a government that is gleefully ripping up the fabric of our society, destroying the basis of communities such as Tottenham, Peckham, Brixton and so on. The looting this week pales next to the looting of the public purse by British and International financial institutions.



For a few days the lid was taken off the cauldron of our society; we did not like what was inside. If Cameron feels in any way responsible for this mess he's sure not going to admit it, let alone take any practical steps to undo the harm his goverment is doing. David Cameron wants you to forget the taste of his witches brew. Tomorrow's session of parliament will, no doubt, rush through some horrible bill, filled with authoritarian prescriptions. None of the causes will be addressed. Anyone so much as mentioning them will be hounded down (as if there's anyone left in parliament clutching a shred of responsibility toward the people they are supposed to represent). The day after that... expect nazis.

Phone Hacking Scandal: some facts

1. David Cameron has had more than 26 meetings with senior figures from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire since becoming prime minister. (For a full list of Cameron’s dinners with the media and his guests at Chequers, his private residence, go to wwww.socialistworker.co.uk)

2. Andy Coulson was Cameron’s guest at Chequers in March—two months after disgraced Coulson resigned over phone hacking allegations.
Rebekah Brooks was invited to Chequers twice last year, and James Murdoch once.

3. Brooks urged Cameron to scrap plans to give the job of Director of Communications to a senior BBC journalist. Cameron was told it should go to someone who was “acceptable” to News International. Coulson got the job.

4. The Metropolitan Police employed Neil Wallis, former News of the World executive editor, during the phone hacking inquiry. He “earned” £1,000 a day to advise Sir Paul Stephenson, ex-commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and senior officer John Yates from October 2009 to September 2010.

5. Stephenson spent five weeks recuperating from an operation at a luxurious health spa in Hertfordshire in January, at the expense of Outside Organisation—a PR firm managed by Neil Wallis. Wallis was arrested last week.

6. News International offered Stephenson hospitality on 15 occasions between April 2007 and March 2010—he accepted 14 times. In one instance, he met senior executives three times in one week.

7. Stephenson and the Metropolitan Police’s director of public affairs, Dick Fedorico, twice tried to convince the Guardian newspaper that Nick Davies’s stories about phone hacking were “over-egged and incorrect”. At meetings in December 2009 and February 2010, the Met’s representatives failed to mention that they were employing Wallis.

8. John Yates was in charge of carrying out “due diligence” on Wallis before the Met hired him to give PR advice. “Wolfman” Wallis was reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case.

9. Andy Hayman, chief of the Met’s counter-terrorism unit who ran the
investigation, attended four dinners, lunches and receptions with News of the World editors. This includes a dinner on April 25 2006, while his officers were gathering evidence in the case.Hayman left the Met in December 2007 and was soon hired to write a column for the Times, a News International paper.

10. Hayman had his phone hacked by News International. But he was happy to bug prison visits between Babar Ahmad, who was unjustly accused of acts of terrorism, and his local MP Sadiq Khan.

11. Executives and others at News International enjoy close relationships with Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the hacking scandal began in 2006, Yates and others regularly dined with editors from News International papers. Stephenson dined with company executives and editors 18 times during the investigation—including on eight occasions with Wallis while he was still working at the News of the World.

12. The MP who questioned Brooks and James Murdoch this week when they appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport committee has close links with News Corporation.
John Whittingdale, the committee’s Tory chair, is an old friend of Les Hinton, who resigned from News Corp on Friday night, and has dined with Brooks.

13. Brooks is to receive a £3.5 million severance package after resigning from News International. Two of the company’s senior lawyers, Tom Crone and Jon Chapman, will receive an estimated £1.5 million each. Colin Myler, the final editor of the News of the World, is understood to be in line for

£2 million.

14. Rebekah Brooks’s PR firm, Bell Pottinger, has previously represented the Bahraini government, Trafigura—the oil company which was fined $1 million for dumping toxic waste in the Ivory Coast—and Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator.

15. Yates is accused of securing Neil Wallis’ daughter a job at the Met.
Yates, Hayman and Fedorico are all being investigated by the IPCC over their links with Wallis.

16. Brooks reduced Gordon Brown to tears when she called to say that the Sun was to run a front page of private details of his baby son’s medical condition.
He omitted to say that afterwards he and his wife attended Brooks’ wedding, organised her birthday party and had her over to Chequers.

17. Piers Morgan, now a CNN broadcaster but formerly editor of the News of the World and the Daily Mirror, was aware of phone hacking during his time in charge of the Mirror. According to Morgan’s autobiography, “Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages.”

18. In the US, outcry at possible hacking of 9/11 victims’ phones has led the FBI to launch an investigation.

19. News Corp donated $1 million to the US bosses’ organisation, the Chamber of Commerce, last summer. Shortly afterwards, the chamber launched a high-profile campaign to alter the foreign corrupt practices act—the same law that could potentially be brought to bear on News Corp now.

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