Bourgeois adjudicator finds bourgeois advocate not guilty of anything - shock

So why are we circling round this story like a dog round some tasty vomit? Here's a clue.

Jeremy Clarkson prompted more than 30,000 complaints when he said on BBC1's The One Show that striking public sector workers should be shot. But media regulator Ofcom has cleared the programme of breaching broadcasting regulations, saying viewers should be familiar with the Top Gear presenter's "provocative and outspoken nature".

Yes, folks, you could have expected Jeremy Clarkson to say something disgusting and right-wing about striking trade unionists, just as much as you'd expect the broadcasting establishment and press to back him to the hilt... but that's missing the point. Why should we expect it? Why should people have to put up with it? Jeremy Clarkson is a symptom, albeit a prominent symptom, of the coarsening of public life. Thanks to people like him public debate has become ever more scabrous and deceitful (e.g. Clarkson, in between calling for ironic death-squads, had the gall to describe public sector pensions as "gold-plated"... last year Clarkson earned more than £2 million).

What is going to be done about this decline in public debate? Clarkson certainly hasn't given pause for thought... why would he? We need to teach the upper class yahoos who rule us some manners... more strikes more frequently would help.

But there is another dimension to this. Jeremy Clarkson has provocative and outspoken views... really? So what? I have provocative and outspoken views. Many, many people have provocative and outspoken views. Why does a supporter of the hard-right English Democrats get a free pass when, for example, a Labour party councillor is suspended for liking rambunctious facebook statements regarding Margaret Thatcher and the IRA...? A rough example, but you get the picture.

In this world coarseness, prejudice and abuse is allowed, so long as its directed downwards.

There you go peasants...

You've had your class struggle, now get back to the field. The truly distressing thing is there are no substantial concessions. You will work longer, harder and get less for your trouble; maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but someday soon, and for the rest of your life. Does anyone honestly think the Tories will stop at this? Certain union leaders I suppose... but you wouldn't be unreasonable if you felt like the light at the end of the tunnel was a train headed your way.

Well done PCS for standing up to this. The union must stand alone, yet again, and that is for shame on the other union leaders. Give the civil servants, and anyone else who wants to stand up to the Tories properly, your support.

In other news

Francis Maude's publicly funded pension is £43,825 a year with a pot of £731,883
David Cameron's publicly funded pension is £32,978 a year with a pot of £550,725
George Osborne's publicly funded pension is £32,978 a year with a pot of £550,725
Nick Cleggs's publicly funded pension is £28,404 a year with a pot of £440,000
Eric Pickles' publicly funded pension is £43,825 a year with a pot of £731,883
Vince Cable's publicly funded pension is £39,551 a year with a pot of £660,507
Andrew Lansley's publicly funded pension is £39,551 a year with a pot of £660,507
Danny Alexander's publicly funded pension is £26,404 a year with pot of £440,942

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.

You pay his wages - he advocates your murder.

And in the topsy-turvy Land of Chocolate most right-wingers inhabit that's fair exchange no robbery. If Top Gear is Britain's cultural expression of fascism I suppose we have to comfort ourselves it's ironic fascism (it's all just a joke you see, can't you take murder fantasies with a pinch of salt?). If Clarkson and co get the upper hand we'll have ironic jackboots, kitsch swastikas and self-reflexive zyklon B.

[Extra note] The point about Jeremy Clarkson's statement is not that it shows him to be a violent minded idiot, there are plenty of those in the world. Clarkson and his Top Gear cohort consistently push aggressive, bigoted language from a public platform into everyday life, acclimatising people to violence. Where does it all end? One example is Anders Breivik, the Utoya mass murderer, who was inspired and encouraged to do what he did by over a decade of bigoted mainstream language and attitude directed against multiculuralism and immigration in general, muslims in particular. Amongst other things Breivik was a Clarkson fan.


It's a small thing in the long run but you can make your complaint here.

Why do the rich keep getting richer?

It might have something to do with union membership.

Gideon Osborne's £5bn gamble to stave off recession

Really...? £5 billion to halt further economic recession...? It makes you wonder if Gideon Osborne realises the seriousness of the situation, the damage his government has been inflicting, on top of the damage caused by the banking system and stock market. What's he going to do, put it all on black? No, it seems:

Some of the £5bn extra capital investment over the next three years will go to a £600m schools programme to fund an extra 40,000 places by 2014.

Well, that's nice of him, but is this money going to Michael Gove's 'free' schools, or will comprehensives get some of the money? What else is there?

In what is rapidly turning into a full scale "game-changer" budget to stave off the impact of collapsing European economies, Osborne will also announce plans to:

• Help energy-intensive industries.

• Increase the bank levy to maintain an annual income from banks of £2.5bn.

• Place a cap on announced rail fare rises.

• Defer a 3p rise in fuel duty which was due to be introduced in January

• Remove health and safety bureaucracy from 1 million self-employed people as the next stage of labour market deregulation.

Does any of this apply to you? I suppose it would if you were a commuter or a small businessman/woman, i.e. Tory voting fodder. Also:

The chancellor may also be able to garner funds for the investment from overseas. China Investment Corporation is considering investing in the infrastructure of the UK, according to Lou Jiwei, the fund's chairman. The $410bn Chinese fund "is keen to team up with fund managers or participate through a public-private partnership in the UK infrastructure sector as an equity investor," Lou writes in today's Financial Times.

Britain's public works will be further tied up with private capital, the same kind of private capital New Labour used to fund projects that were late, badly made and expensive.

In other news, fewer and fewer people are satisfied with Tory shit served up as ice cream. There will be a public sector strike on Wednesday, not in France or Greece or Egypt but in Britain of all places, phew! What's more it has majority support: 61% of all polled, 67% of women and 79% of young people.

Call careers information. Have you got yourself an occupation?

A million unemployed kids and all Cameron and co, mofos who never had to work a day in their lives, have is gas about 'aspiration' and 'opportunity'.



They should just change Britain to Poundland and have done with it. Abandon hope or take up struggle. All out on November 30th.

Hard times

In times like these its hard not to cling to the flimsiest of hopes. The most ragged is surely the most persistent, that a Labour government will make it all better. Well Ed Balls is trying to shake that idea off.

The Shadow Cabinet has been banned by Ed Balls from promising to reverse any of the Coalition Government's spending cuts as part of Labour's attempt to regain credibility on the economy.

A mildly interesting notion; does Ed Balls run the Shadow Cabinet?

In an interview with The Independent, the shadow Chancellor said: "No matter how much we dislike particular Tory spending cuts or tax rises, we can't make promises now to reverse them. I'm clear that I won't do that and neither will any of my Shadow Cabinet colleagues."

It seems reasonable, anti-demagogic. The only problem is that pesky democratic deficit. If you are a student facing sky-high fees, if you are unemployed and facing the grisly prospect of 'the work programme', if you are a young parent watching Sure Start centres being closed, if you are a pensioner coping with mounting heating bills, if you are a public sector worker being forced to hand over a day's wages (in the form of increased pension contributions) to pay for bankers in need... if you are any of those people and more besides, who speaks for you, you stands up for you in parliament? At the moment no one does. What's wrong with the Labour Party standing up for them? What's wrong with the Labour Party standing up for them and even losing?

We have come to know the Labour Party is not an agent of change. It has accepted the broad political, ideological and economic consensus, however arrived at, whether it has been Keynesianism or Neo-Liberalism. The myth of Labour radicalism was built on the back of a general radicalisation during World War Two. The Attlee government, great as it was, merely received the movement's momentum.

What can change the situation? The proposed strike of 3 million workers on November 30th can start. Get the ballot on, win the ballot, prepare for picketing, organise a demo in town; if you are not being called out do your best to support those who are. There does need to be more action after this day however, a one-day strike of a few thousand people in particular sector is a token gesture, 3 million strikers is not a token, it's a declaration.

Public sector workers will fight and they will not be alone.