Circuses, but Less Bread 1532


The London Olympics are already achieving the number one aim of the politicians who brought them here, which is making our politicians feel very important indeed.

The media is quite frenetic in its efforts to make us all believe we should be terrifically proud of the fact we are hosting the Olympics, as though there were something unique in this achievement. If we can’t competently do something that Greece, Spain and China have done in recent years, that would be remarkable. Of course the Games will be on the whole well delivered, sufficient for the media and politicians to declare it an ecstatic success. Some of the sporting moments will be sublime, as ever.

But did it have to be in London? We won’t know the total cost of the Games for months, but it will cost the taxpayer at least £9 billion and I suspect a lot more. I also suspect the GDP figures will, in the event, show that the massive net fall in visitor numbers has hurt the already shrinking economy further.

But to take the most optimistic figure, holding the Olympics in London has cost every person in the country an average of £150 per head in extra taxes. That is £600 for a family of four. Actually it is in the end going to be well over £2,000, as of course the money has been borrowed on the never never, and taxpayers are going to be paying it off their whole lives, along with the sum ten times higher they are already paying direct into the pockets of the bankers through their taxes.

The very rich, of course, don’t pay much tax, so they are not worried.

But to take just the figure of £600 extra taxes for a family of four, the lowest possible amount, and not including the interest. Is having the Olympics here really worth paying out £600 for? If Tony Blair had approached the head of the family and said “We are going to have the Olympics in London, but it’s going to cost you £600, would the answer have been from most ordinary people: “Yes, great idea, this is that important to us”?

People are not disconcerted because they don’t see that they have to pay. There is no special Olympics tax, and they pay their taxes in a variety of ways, and individuals are not the sole source of taxation. But this is nonetheless real money taken from the people in pursuit of the hubris of politicians.

I love sport. I hate the corruption of the International Olympic Committee, Fifa and the rest; I hate the vicious corporatism and militarisation of our capital and absurd elitism of the transport lanes; the sport itself I love. But with the economy contracting, and the NHS being farmed out for profit, is it really worth £600 for a family – and many families are really struggling in a heartbreaking way – is it worth the money to have the Olympics here rather than in Paris?

Of course it isn’t. I think many of us will feel an extra pleasure watching the Opening ceremony because it is British. Patriotic pride will surge. It is not wrong to enjoy the spectacle tonight on TV. The corporate well connected and ruling classes will enjoy it in the stadium.

But after you have watched it on TV, ask yourself this question. How much more did you enjoy it than enjoy watching the Beijing ceremony, and was that margin of extra enjoyment something that everybody in the room would have paid out £150 for?

Because they just did.


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1,532 thoughts on “Circuses, but Less Bread

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  • Uzbek in the UK

    Chris Jones
    .
    The right of self determination vs globalisation is not to be confused with colonisation.
    .
    Of course societies must be allowed to decide how to govern themselves and whether or not to form a nation on its own right.
    .
    Globalisation is not about exploiting one particular society or exploitation of one group of societies by another. Globalisation is (or at least should be) about mutual benefits from co-operation both economic, social, cultural, political etc. Benefits are different. One nation benefits from cheep commodities, another from producing those commodities, one nation benefits from investments another from investing, one nation benefits from emigration another from immigration.

  • Chris Jones

    @Uzbek in the uk Your quote: “Globalisation is not about exploiting one particular society or exploitation of one group of societies by another. Globalisation is (or at least should be) about mutual benefits from co-operation both economic, social, cultural, political etc. Benefits are different. One nation benefits from cheep commodities, another from producing those commodities, one nation benefits from investments another from investing, one nation benefits from emigration another from immigration”.
    .

    …..this sounds great and i agree with it – in fact this sounds like a positive global coexistence of countries trading and co working together to improve civilisation as a whole – which is exactly what the globalists’ one world state don’t want and are trying to break down!

  • OldMark

    ‘Do I really need to point out that queues for social housing have been endless ever since I can remember (I’ve been there, sweethearts. I have the experience’).

    So do I Komodo, and in the early 80s there was briefly a glut of ‘social housing’, even in inner London. I & several of my friends post Uni obtained social housing tenancies on ‘hard to let’ estates- a designation quite common back then. Harry Enfield & Paul Whitehouse lived on the estate across Hackney Downs from where several of my friends then lived, on another estate now demolished. The lovelies in Bananarama did even better- they bagged themselves a Camden council flat in a ‘hard to let’ block just around the corner from Conway Hall & the British Museum!

    As you say though, things are much worse now…

  • Screaming Lord Sutch

    Those British women rowers are clearly on drugs – they won by almost two boat lengths clear of the rest of the field (or should that be lake).
    .
    The GB team is stuffed full of drugs cheats who have only been let back in the team to boost the medal numbers. Another well thought out compromise on values that has provided absolutely no pay-back whatsoever.

  • Uzbek in the UK

    Chris Jones
    .
    If you are referring to the US, then I agree with you. In fact I said that it is extremely unfair when ONE nation elects the government that affects lives and well beings of the rest of the world. And we (the rest) have no right to participate in those elections.
    .
    But this should not be a case to dismiss globalisation altogether but work on establishing institutions of global governance which would represent all of us and not just Americans. Gradual reformation of UN would be the first step.
    .
    Close collaboration like Globalisation needs to be regulated and checked as (like recent financial crash and all that followed has proven) markets cannot be trusted with self-regulation. Thus the need of global governance. Which again, must represent all of us and not ONE nation or selected few.

  • Screaming Lord Sutch

    You know the Olympic Spirit is dead when you have Gold medal winners who earn £200,000 a week and see cheating as an intrinsic part of their sport, i.e. Soccer, the complete antithesis of Olympic values and the spirit of the amateur sportsman.

  • Chris Jones

    @Uzbek The world definately needs strong effective global institutions i would agree – this is what the UN was supposed to be,at least in theory, and it is what the IMF and BIS/Bank for International Settlement was supposed to have been as well,as is the Haague International court. Unfortunately ,we can see now that these are all mostly corrupt,self serving and ineffective. If they can be reformed then i’d be all for it but how do we guarantee the same corruption doesnt happen again?.
    .

    I think we can assume also that many markets are deliberately made ineffective in order to bring in one global economy,which may sound quite a good prospect but could prove to be highly unstable.Stringent multilateralism and centralizing power usually broadens the impact of failure.
    .
    We are allready globalists in most sense of the word-but that doesnt mean we have to run the risk of totalitarian tyranny

    .

  • technicolour

    Monbiot’s argument – which is worth looking at for its historical perspective alone – is that the global bodies which currently determine fiscal and social policy are unelected. Therefore (he argues) we need an *elected* world body with the strength to challenge them. This would not (he argues) affect national governments, any more than they are affected already, and in a more democratic manner.

    It’s an interesting thought. But the most immediate and obvious solution is for countries to ignore the more destructive institutions.

    “Malaysia refused economic aid packages from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, surprising many analysts. By refusing aid and thus the conditions attached thereof from the IMF, Malaysia was not affected to the same degree in the Asian Financial Crisis as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.” (wiki)

    South Africa, on the other hand, fell for the IMF’s ‘golden straitjacket’ with obvious and devastating consequences.

    Israel and the US, of course, ignore the UN when it suits them. With obvious and devastating consequences

  • Uzbek in the UK

    Chris Jones
    .
    It has been known since beginning of times that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
    .
    To avoid this corruption there have been numerous arguments that first appeared in Holly books (Torah, Bible, Quran) and then throughout Enlightenment made backbone of the modern moral philosophy. The most recently as suggested by Rawls the best possible option to avoid corruption is not trust to humans trusted with power but to apply constant check on them, in form various forms. However, even this does not guarantee (and Rawls accepted this himself) ideal society, corruption will exists but its negative impact on society will be limited. If you have any BETTER ideas please feel free to bring them on.
    .
    I agree that certain economies are unfairly disadvantaged and this also is a part of the problem that in case of global governance would be gradually reduced. When for instance artificially low exchange rate of Chinese yuan stagnates exports from other South East Asian economies global governance would have acted on this. But as global governance is non-existent there is (at present) no mechanisms to resolve this without angering China or without building an alliance against China which would contradict the ideal of globalisation itself.
    .
    Totalitarian tyranny again could be avoided by placing constant checks on global governance. But for this the global governance must be legitimate, elected with all of our participation and responsible for defending interests of all of us, and not few of us.

  • technicolour

    Found this bit about Keynes’ real ideas, as summarised by Michael Meacher, fascinating:
    .
    The key to Monbiot’s proposals is a return to the brilliant innovative insight of John Maynard Keynes in 1943 in preparation for the Bretton Woods conference, which determined the postwar international economic architecture that has prevailed ever since.
    .
    Keynes’s idea was a new global bank called the International Clearing Union (ICU) with its own currency, the bancor. Every country would have an overdraft facility in its bancor account no more than half the average value of its trade over the previous five years. The system he devised gave a strong incentive to both deficit and surplus countries to clear their bancor accounts annually, ending up with neither a trade deficit nor a surplus.
    .
    Deficit countries would be charged interest on the overdraft, rising as the overdraft rose; they would have to reduce the value of their currency by up to 5% to promote exports and would have to prevent the export of capital.
    .
    Keynes’s innovation was to apply similar pressures to surplus countries too. Any such country with a bancor credit balance more than half its overdraft facility would be charged interest (or demurrage) at 10%. It would also have to raise the value of its currency and permit the export of capital. But if this was not enough and its credit balance at the end of the year exceeded its permitted overdraft, the surplus would be confiscated.
    .
    Keynes’s system would, quite simply, maximise worldwide prosperity and level the power of nations. The ICU would entail no forced liberalisation, no penal conditions on the poorest countries, no engineered opportunities for predatory banks and multinational corporations, no squashing of democratic consent. But the obvious question remains: how can the rich nations, especially the US, be made to accept it?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Komodo, re. your “mission accomplished” post, you ought to know that over the years there have been innumerable and sometimes interminable discussions on this blog about immigration, ‘race’, integration, assimilation, etc. It is not as though these subjects are absent from the public discourse, either – quite the opposite. It is not – and since around 1967, has not been – an underexposed issue or one about which people feel reluctant to discuss.
    .

    It seems to me that the tone of your initial flurry of (out-of-previous-character-hereabouts) comments on these matters was generated not so much by the rational aim of wishing to be an objective facilitator of discussion/explorer of the dialectic, as from simple emotional outrage at watching the Olympic ceremony and ruminating on the histories and demographics it evoked.
    .

    Whatever the desired effect, as well as rational discourse, much of what emerges from that type of arguably highly provocative activity nearly always more resembles the same-old-same-old can of worms than any kind of enlightenment (with a small, or a capital, ‘e’). It also tends always – and this has been a consistent feature here on this blog – to elicit personal attacks by some commentators on someone like me who is immediately identifiable by the name I use. This is really a microcosmic and sublimated reflection of what happens out there in much more brutal and bloody fashion on the streets and at work and in life in general.
    .
    Mission accomplished, then. Right.

  • Screaming Lord Sutch

    Where is Prince Bandar?By Pepe Escobar.
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NH02Ak03.html
    .
    Dunno what’s wrong with Mr Escobar in this article. He seems to think a state’s armed forces should stand aside and just allow a couple of thousand foreign mercenaries/religious fanatics/terrorists to take over a country – me thinks he’s been watching too much telly and reading newspapers.

  • Anon

    Can anyone get a message to Craig about Prince Bandar – see if he might have a few words to say?

  • technicolour

    Komodo: “if we cannot assemble into something like a nation, but remain a discordant mess” – yes, I see your attempts to spread harmony on the board. Mission accomplished, certainly, if your mission was to fulminate about skin colour and wax lyrical about the current ‘horrendous’ state of affairs re immigration while providing no concrete examples except, right at the end, a lack of social housing. Perhaps instead of blaming immigration (here reinsert facts about overall billions gained by country/general responsibility for said migrants) you should be supporting squatting, since there are currently around 300,000 long term empty houses in the UK and nearly a million empty houses in total. Hardly overcrowding. Instead, of course, the current government are seeking to criminalise squatting further.
    .
    Or perhaps you could consider spending the money currently used for, say, Trident,on building new affordable social housing for workers and people in need. Or any money on social housing instead of on penthouses for bankers. Somehow I doubt it. But then it’s easier to blame.
    .
    And yet it’s odd, because you’re really singing along with the global military-industrial ‘divide and rule’ songsheet, without seeming to realise it, and indeed while claiming to oppose it. As for ‘need nationalism be bad’ – you really haven’t done anything to prove that it needn’t. Shame.
    .

  • Clark

    Technicolour, I’ve looked, but I cannot see where on this thread Komodo “fulminates about skin colour”, except the bit about white British Empire exploiters being played by non-whites. I’ve found Komodo’s use of “horrendous”, but it refers to numbers, not any ethnic group.
    .
    Look, what point are you really making? You seem to be trying to cast Komodo as racist, but I see nothing definitively racist in anything Komodo has written here.
    .
    Are you arguing that borders of the UK (or, indeed, every country) should be opened completely? If not, a decision has to be made about numbers, doesn’t it?
    .
    I stated above that I’m in favour of there being NO restrictions on people’s movements – eventually. Right now, opening all the borders would be disastrous.

  • Clark

    Technicolour, again. On a previous thread, in the context of contraception, I think, Komodo stated a dislike for crowds. There are reasons other than racism for wanting the immigration rate kept below a certain level.
    .
    It also seems to me that you’ve been doing a lot of misrepresenting your opponents’ arguments. We generally object to “spin” in the corporate media. Have I missed something? Is there good spin and bad spin now?
    .
    I agree with all your suggestions such as shifting resources from pointless nuclear weapons to socially useful infrastructure.

  • Clark

    If all immigration for all reasons is always good, and everyone who speaks against it is always bad, then Jack Straw’s gerrymandering with postal ballots was good, and Craig and the Postman Patel blog were racist for opposing him. Please, a bit of balance.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    There are nationalisms and there are nationalisms (just as there are socialisms and there are socialisms). There are nationalisms which are fundamentally anti-colonial, progressive, inclusive(eg. mainstream Scottish and Welsh nationalism) and there are nationalisms which are regressive, supremacist and which draw on ‘blood’, ‘soil’ and constructed memories of empire and unfortunately, the latter is the manner in which, to date, most British and English nationalism has manifested politically. Some nationalisms contain elements of both and then there is a tussle for power within such movements. During various segments of C20th, Irish nationalism contained such elements, so that one had Marxists on the one hand (eg. Official IRA) and one had Fascists who went off to fight for Franco during the Spanish Civil War. One also had reactionary conservatives (eg. De Valera). It may well be possible for there to be a progressive, inclusive, anti-colonial English nationalism, but as far as I can make out, it hasn’t yet developed to any significant extent. If it did develop, it would be unlikely to be banging on about hearing ‘too many Polish voices on British streets’, imagining – and these are typical Extremist Right-wing images – Rockall stuffed with the entire population of China and and so on.
    .
    The battle does not have to be between fundamentalist IMF global capital and chauvinistic Extreme Right-wing xenophobia (as, sadly, seems to be the case in some parts of Eastern Europe, for example).
    .
    There are other ways.

  • technicolour

    Clark:

    “Technicolour, I’ve looked, but I cannot see where on this thread Komodo “fulminates about skin colour”,

    Komodo: “I can see where Burley was coming from. Neither the “stars”, nor what looked like a majority of the extras were white (as, I perhaps should remind my critics, the majority even now of the English population is)”

    “I DO care if half the actors playing industrialists are black/Chinese/Indian”

    Komodo is batting for nationalism. It is a type of nationalism which identifies being English (or British) with being ‘white’ and, at one point, ‘aboriginal’. It is a view which still identifies people of whatever nationality by the origins of their skin colour. In my view, as I have clearly said, it is a bizarre view, a divisive view and, in this context, an insulting view which ignores the actual achievements and actions of the people in question.

    “except the bit about white British Empire exploiters being played by non-whites.”

    Where is that bit? I doubt Komodo would want to pretend that he was horrified by the slur this casts on ‘non-white’ nations. Would you, Komodo?|Since you’re being discussed here, and all.

    “I’ve found Komodo’s use of “horrendous”, but it refers to numbers, not any ethnic group”.

    Well Clark, it refers to several ‘ethnic groups’. And when asked why the people who have come to this country can be seen as ‘horrendous’ in any way, there was no reply. Except, belatedly, the issue of social housing, which I have addressed above.

    “Look, what point are you really making?”

    I am engaging in a discussion and asking questions. I am not making one point. I have made several points, and asked several questions, and not just of Komodo, very few of which have been answered.

    “You seem to be trying to cast Komodo as racist”,

    Do I. I suppose someone who objects to Polish people speaking their own language in the streets might be called racist, or described as ‘being racist’. Or someone who blames the ills of society on immigrants, rather than addresses the causes. To me it is often a simplistic term which usually does nothing but effectively conclude a dialogue. But I can frequently understand its use.

    “but I see nothing definitively racist in anything Komodo has written here.”

    Right, that’s interesting to know.

    “Are you arguing that borders of the UK (or, indeed, every country) should be opened completely? If not, a decision has to be made about numbers, doesn’t it?”
    .
    I don’t believe I’ve had a chance to address that in this fascinating interchange. The fact is that decisions have been made about numbers. People are forcibly deported every minute of every day.
    .
    “I stated above that I’m in favour of there being NO restrictions on people’s movements”

    And it inspired my view of how people could imagine a nation in a positive way.

    ” – eventually. Right now, opening all the borders would be disastrous.”

    Is anyone arguing for the UK borders to be exclusively opened? I’m not even thinking about that subject. Though I am now going to imagine it over supper.

  • Clark

    Suhayl, thanks. This argument on this thread is reminding me of the radical atheists vs. anything and everything associated with religion.
    .
    Yes, English and British nationalism are, it seems, perpetually subverted by the political Right. I know, I find it a bit creepy when I see flags of St George’s Cross in people’s gardens.
    .
    It seems rather sad for the British and/or the English, that if they try to relate to any national identity, they associate themselves with empire, militarism, exploitation and racism through no fault of their own. A bit like racism, really, but it’s not inflicted by another race, it comes from a smaller group within.

  • Clark

    Technicolour, all humans have the tendency to find that which they search for. If you’re looking for racism, you will find it, because all matters are matters of interpretation. Take this for example:
    .
    Me: “except the bit about white British Empire exploiters being played by non-whites.”
    You: “Where is that bit?”
    .
    You quoted it yourself immediately above:
    .
    “I DO care if half the actors playing industrialists are black/Chinese/Indian”.
    .
    Those were the exploitative industrialists of the industrial revolution, the class at the heart of the British Empire. Or at least, that’s how I interpreted it, in the light of the following, which Komodo wrote before that:
    .
    “Were the tophatted industrialists/bankers conjuring jobs or profits from the chimneys?”
    .
    Komodo did not, as you put it, “object to Polish people speaking their own language in the streets”. Here’s the actual quote:
    .
    IF I walk through my nearest small town and 50% of the pedestrians there are talking Polish, there’s something badly wrong with national identity.” My emphasis. Note the “if”.

  • Clark

    It isn’t bad, wrong or evil to feel discomforted if surrounded by people speaking in a language one doesn’t understand. The sharing of language, and the dynamic that implies, is something humans normally take for granted, something that generations of evolution has adapted us to, in the negative sense that most of us haven’t needed to develop the ability to function in a multilingual environment, thus freeing us to deploy that brainpower elsewhere.
    .
    Practically speaking, the dynamic works like this. If the people around me are limited to to the same language that I am, I can be pretty sure that we are interacting as equals. If they want to say things I don’t know about, they have to leave my presence, or whisper, both of which I’d notice.
    .
    If I find myself in a crowd of people who have a common language, but which is unknown to me, they may well be being rude, or actually conspiring against me, and I probably wouldn’t be able to tell.
    .
    These same observations also apply to social norms and non-verbal communication.

  • Clark

    Technicolour, you wrote: “Well Clark, it refers to several ‘ethnic groups’. And when asked why the people who have come to this country can be seen as ‘horrendous’ in any way, there was no reply.”
    .
    No, Komodo’s sentence did not refer to ethnic groups or people. Here is the actual quote:
    .
    “The immigration figures are horrendous,” – My emphasis.
    .
    Figures, numbers. Not people nor groups of people. That’s a serious misrepresentation of Komodo’s position on your part. Really, worthy of a politician.
    .
    Me: “Are you arguing that borders of the UK (or, indeed, every country) should be opened completely? If not, a decision has to be made about numbers, doesn’t it?”
    .
    You: “I don’t believe I’ve had a chance to address that in this fascinating interchange.”
    .
    What’s the problem? Racists depriving you of your free will? You could have taken the chance to answer me, seeing as I had just asked. But no, you chose evasion. But you still have the chance to answer, if you wish.
    .
    You know, this reminds me of the time that a certain aggressive commenter was accusing you of being blindly supportive of Israel, and was misrepresenting your statements in order to do so.

  • Clark

    Technicolour:
    .
    Me: “but I see nothing definitively racist in anything Komodo has written here.”
    .
    You: “Right, that’s interesting to know.”
    .
    Do you think that I’m racist? Are you trying to suggest to others that I’m racist? These are genuine questions, not rhetorical expressions of outrage. I have something to say on this matter. I will write the comment now, but I will post it after you answer.

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