I learn the interesting news that David Aaronovitch tweeted to Joan Smith and Jenny Jones that I am:
“an angry and dangerous man who could as easily be on the far right as the far left”.
I had no idea I was on the far left, though I suppose it is a matter of perspective, and from where Mr Aaronovitch stands I, and a great many others, look awfully far away to the left. I don’t believe you should bomb people for their own good, I don’t believe the people of Palestine should be crushed, I don’t believe the profit motive should dominate the NHS, I think utilities and railways were better in public ownership, I think education should be free. I guess that makes me Joseph Stalin.
But actually I am very flattered. Apparently I am not just angry – since the invasion of Iraq and the banker bailouts everybody should be angry – but “dangerous”. If I can be a danger to the interests represented by a Rupert Murdoch employee like Aaronovitch, I must have done something right in my life. I fear he sadly overrates me; but it does make me feel a little bit warmer, and hold my head that little bit higher.
SteveCook: thanks, couldn’t agree more.
@Steve Cook. I think we broadly agree. I didn’t intend to imply that any lack of student curiosity about the world was due entirely to laziness, nor to shallow use of the internet. I concede that much of the supine position of many students is due to the imposition of debt even before they enter tertiary education, together with ever tightening threats upon those who merely take the trouble to think, and then reveal their thinking.
Leanard, I need to apologise. My rant was not so much directed at you as it is towards a more general disparagement of young folks today and I’m sick of it. I’m really sick of it.
Leonard it’s not just the ‘ever tightening threats’, though those too, but the fact that ‘thinking’ often isn’t even presented as an option. Summarise this book! Pick one of these multiple choice answers! Work to the exam! Questions or criticism or analysis are no longer on the agenda. True, teachers will try and sneak them in, but they have to be confident, questioning teachers – and the system does its best to weed those out too, according to everyone I know.
That’s why I left teaching.
Well said Steve, my point was about conditioning and how our universities comply with today’s pressures put upon them.
Our financial systems are unsustainable, hence all that follows is also unsustainable, dependent. Self sufficiency, self reliance in energy and food are the most important messages to bring over, if that takes some limited protectionism, so be it. I had a few interesting discussions with Colin Hines, he’s an integral part of the green new deal groups.
http://www.progressiveprotectionism.com/
OT/ I’m pleased to announce that Norfolk will have an Independent PCC candidate and that he agrees that young people had a bum deal, that they are being shunned by politicians at the behest of those who are able to vote, for them, off course. we are lucky as he is genuine and not out for the considerate monies this Government wants to spend on these posts.
If progressive thinkers want to make an impact at next years county council elections as Independents, they should also realise that the PPC elections are the best basis for an independent campaign next year. Promoting Independent PCC’s makes sense.
And let us not forget that our young people were beaten and cavalry charged and then kettled on Westminster Bridge in freezing temperatures for hours by military-style policemen in black body armour and balaclavas, simply for protesting against a broken promise not to raise student fees. And let us not forget Alfie Meadows, put on public trial for being a victim. And let us not forget that thousands of children are going to school hungry and are being abused in children’s homes, and are being given criminal records for minor misdemeanors, and are being forced into the army and turned into shell-shocked victims of war. I don’t expect many people here do forget, but.
SteveCook: sorry to hear, hope you have lots of support.
Protectionism to me sounds like a buzzword? At the moment the UK needs investment in small farming, investment in greenhouses, investment in organics. It needs to break the stranglehold of the supermarkets on farm prices and supply. It needs to encourage local shops, not to allow councils to bankrupt them through raised rents. It needs to invest in public transport. It needs to stop the rise of extreme pesticides and the increase in mass factory farming, both of which create health problems which cost society, not benefit it. After this, would we need any ‘protectionism’?
Well said Steve Cook. I also abandoned a brief teaching career due to similar disenchantment at the teaching establishments attitude towards our youngsters today.
OT: Headline on the BBC News website:
Parliament ‘closed for repair’.
Sure does need it . . .
Steve Cook, that is one of the most well considered and intelligent comments that I have read in a long time. Bravo ! It ought to be part of the curriculum, so that young people understand what is in store for them.
Steve Cook < What he said. Most eloquently.
It is government policy..
The Secret History of Western Education (Full Version)
http://undergrounddocumentaries.com/?p=1277
Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt served as the head of policy at the Department of Education during the first administration of Ronald Reagan. While working there she discovered a long term strategic plan by the tax exempt foundations to transform America from a nation of rugged individualists and problem solvers to a country of servile, brainwashed minions.
I agree with Fedup on the omnipresence of Zioliesscramblebraining, my euphemism for his usual terminology.
I was reading a book called Islam in Andalus by Ahmad Thomson and Muhammad ‘Ata’ ur Rahman, which describes some of the genocide of the Inquisition by the Spanish Catholic Church.
The last 15 years of Muslim bashing cannot be called an Inquisition. The UK solution to the rise of Islam in the Reformation was to make a caricature of Islam called Puritanism as well as to kill anyone who questioned the doctrine of Trinity.
Apparently the leading persecutors in the Spanish Inquisition turned out to be Jewish. The reasons given for this is 1/ self-preservation from the scrutiny of the Inquisition, and 2/ the desire of individuals for establishing their personal pre-eminence. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to leave Spain and ‘conversos’ were forced to eat pork and hounded to death. I am reminded of the growing collaboration between our UK intelligence services and Muslims who want to gain political status in the UK by spying and controlling the Muslims here and now in our times. UK intelligence is well aware of and 100% supports the pseudo-Jihadi activities of UK citizens like the part-qualified medic in the NHS who takes time off to fight the CIA cause of regime change in Syria.
The NHS medic is part of the new version of that neo-Puritan caricature. The modern UK Muslim is respectable, professional and moral in their outward form, and the UK state has contributed hugely to that in education and other forms of assistance. But there is a Jekyll and Hyde dimension. Ziobanker fraud pays your modern Muslim a dividend from what they stole from the UK people, to re-shape Israel’s neighbours. I do not believe the theory that Saudi and Qatar are alone in bankrolling this regime change, and I always believed that the UK was providing some of the snipers to shoot civilians in Syria to start this war.
This country has plans for Islam, and Muslims who come from other countries do not care if they collaborate in those plans. When Islam has become as unpalatable and as universal as Puritanism, it will be rejected by all rational human beings. that’s the plan. Islam is a religion of Trust, worship and compassion. That’s not the Zioliesscramblebrain version.
“Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . .”
Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society [1953].
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf
@Steve Cook – very nice post!
Only things I’d add are
* debt affects the way people see TIME; and when it’s so widespread and deep, it does so in a big way;
* debt has also gone along with a large-scale dumbing down; think only of adverts about companies giving you X Y and Z for “free”, and the notion that a “mortgage” is something you are “given”; many students don’t understand they ARE in debt;
* consumerism and debt are closely linked; the ‘Economist’ compared Google to a bank, and that’s correct in this sense;
* Britain is especially bad for personal debt; comparable houses on the continent don’t cost anywhere near as much;
* the whole reason ‘higher education’ expanded in the UK was to get young people in debt as soon as they could legally be got into debt, and into as much debt as possible; and the rulers are still pushing and pushing – e.g. promotion of “gap years” in the tabloids and on the Archers, etc.; if any young person reading this doesn’t know why it isn’t sensible to borrow a few grand to travel the world before borrowing loads more grand to go to college, please ask an older and wiser person, and hopefully they will be able to tell you
Good post Steve,I am not in the building game so I am relying on information from those who are.In the 1950s/1960s the cost of land was approx.15% of the overall price of a house,during the “boom” land was 60%+.I was told of insane prices for land £2 million and more an acre.Of course the purchaser doesn`t own the site but leases it,so when the house falls down in 100 years or so the land is returned to the original owner,nice family business if you can get it.The last I heard was that 70% of Great Britain was owned by 0.26% of the population.I wonder why this is not part of the national discourse, hmmm hmmm
@SteveCook.
No need for an apology. I didn’t take offence.
@Technicolour
I agree. Actions of the police and the powerful against students or indeed other people has made things very difficult, but this kind of repression was not unknown in the Vietnam war days, nor the poll tax era, for example.
One of the reasons for my great appreciation for Orwell is not his left, or perceived right, stance according to those whose views presume to align with his, but his tireless, lifetime campaign against the misuse and abuse of language, both by politicians and the media. Within this campaign is a plea for proper critical thinking, critical analysis and especially the ordering of thoughts, much of which has become largely absent in many universities.
Orwells essays on language, amongst which is this example:
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
focus as much on the use of cliches and platitudes as they do on the way language is abused for the sake of badly constructed arguments or the expression of mindlessly conventional thinking. A contemporary case in point is the black and white thinking regarding current discussions on many issues, whether it is rape, or the economy, or foreign policy, where adherence to a conventional view in order not to be vilified is more important than a disinterested critical assessment of world events, and it is considered taboo to introduce caveats, doubts or flexibility. Toeing the line is a requirement for membership of any broad tribal position. Thus for example, all Jews are zionists as far as some are concerned, and all palestinions are Islamic extremists to others. It is taboo to have a critical, independent view for those who insist you join one tribe or another, and this attitude is no more than a variation on the banal pronouncements by Bush, and by extension Blair that “you are either for us or against us”.
Everyone is now required to be totally for, or against, almost everything. Deviation from this position is now regarded as being a woolly-minded “liberal”, or worse, as sitting on the fence.
Proper critical thinking does not seek to arrive at a view and then find facts or justifications for it. Critical thought has no prior destination beyond perhaps a fundamental and universal morality. This disinterested position is something of a rarity in many educational institutions and that percolates through to businesses, corporations, governments and of course the press and media.
One of the reasons Orwell is a claimed ally of those from opposing political persuasion is the very fact that he tended to regard each political issue on its own merits, and not with a predisposition to judge. Whether he was right or wrong was, and remains, immaterial to those who wish to bolster their opinions with his perceived posthumous support.
His kind of critical thinking, at least in his essays, is something that is often entirely absent in modern tertiary education. There could be many reasons for this, amongst which as we’ve discussed, is the burden of debt even before a productive life can begin. Yet Orwell himself was largely poor throughout his life. So another explanation could be that material ambition, nowadays falsely described as “aspiration”, is a constant pressure and so often almost the sole litmus test of success amongst many students.
To this add house ownership, or having a decent rented home, which is now almost impossible for many city dwellers without wealthy parents, and this must be another factor in the relative lack of student radicalism. When half to two thirds of your income is spent on shelter that doesn’t leave much room for the luxury of “thinking”.
Leonard: very interesting, as Orwell always is too, of course. I think the problem with student radicalism is not that there isn’t much, but that this generation have seen universities and schools collude with the state in suppressing it. 10,000 schoolchildren walked out over the attack on Iraq; many were threatened and penalised by their schools. More recently, although individual lecturers supported the large and dynamic anti-cuts movement, which saw universities across the UK occupied for weeks, university chancellors largely did not (sorry for lack of links, am relying on memory). Students who protested saw the show trials, and the violence perpetrated by the people who had betrayed them, and those people, whose agenda it was to cut arts and humanities and other forms of free thinking, won, of course.
Zoologist: had a quick link at your link, but phew, it is hard reading. Not at all like a window pane! And not, sadly, the book I was thinking of, which was also called ‘The Dumbing Down of America’ but which had no ideological remit, simply an intent to investigate. It was very good, but it seems it has disappeared.
Those who haven’t already read it already may be interested in John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History of American Education.
It’s a shame that more radicals do not understand that home education is where it’s at.
Being against this policy or that policy doesn’t mean much without an attempt to understand how the rulers keep things in line and try to crush people’s ability to think straight – and first and foremost among the institutions by which they do so is school. Nobody is born dumbed down.
What we need isn’t ‘disinterest’, but directed honesty and clarity without self-deception.
N_
Totally agree – have you seen Patrick Pasin’s “Bye Bye Blue Sky”?
It’s not just our summer that they are taking from us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToxPiW_2RC8&feature=source_video
I agree with most of the above posts – all really good posts, btw, thanks to all who wrote them! Exacllent point, Steve, about real inflation and house prices.
I’d just like to point out though that Steve’s pal who started work in the mid-1950s was likely to have been born just before, or during the early parts of, WW2. Now, while many of that generation did well (and whyever not, after their parents went through the Great Depression and their grandparents, the even greater Depression of the 1890s and since they worked hard themselves?), equally, many were screwed by the onset of Thatcherism in the 1980s, and never recovered, mentally, physically or financially. They also worked in the days before certain protections came into force, so that their lungs, hands and much else suffered the full brunt of heavy industry. Our cities have been blighted by Thatcherism since the late 1970s and sadly, that same generation have been the targets of not merely economic madness but when described as ‘Baby Boomers’ Thatcherite-induced envy (please understand that I’m not saying that’s what you’re exhibiting, not at all) which forms part of the hatred of monetarists of everything to do with ‘The 1960s’. Just a thought.
I emailed David Aaronovitch:
On 14 April 2012 21:50, john goss wrote:
Dear David Aaronovich
It takes a brave man to go against accepted opinion, and you do it time and again. However your idealisation of NATO interests and warmongering in oil-rich countries has a downside. Just take a few minutes to read this article. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107424 and then tell me you still think the war in Iraq was worthwhile.
I have seen you argue the unarguable on many occasions but compassion is a quality you do not seem to have in abundance. So I am not expecting anything in response, if I get a response, that digresses from your total support for what others consider to be injustices.
Yours sincerely,
John Goss
His reply was:
Dear John,
This link contains the answer. And turns the question back on you. How compassionate were you about Saddam’s victims?
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iraq501/events_anfal.html
With best wishes,
David A
In response I sent him the Aaron Russo Youtube interview where Russo talks about how the Rockefellers were about to create multiple wars in the Middle East, and other seemingly unbelievable events. He did not respond to this.
yes, life is not exactly rosy for our pensioners either, what with thousands dying of hypothermia every year and thousands more having to choose between food and heating and the rise in illnesses like Parkinsons and dementia thanks to environmental pollution, not to mention the care homes and the general attitude to older people and and and
sigh.
I’ve edited my short video on ‘The Ghost of Dr David Kelly’ and it is now on Youtube. It is only 2 minutes long and needs lots of distribution. Thanks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ircl4XSoPhs&feature=g-upl
Fire-bombing a family on their way to supermarket, but no one hears/cares/minds about it, as always we don’t do body counts, when it is the Muslims/Palestinians/designated enemy of the moment we are talking about.
The perps/celebrities for the time being are facing some kind of penalty;
The three, ages 12-13 on, were arrested on Sunday. All three are residents of the Bat Ayin settlement in the West Bank.
Dozens of their friends were present in court for the hearing and interrupted the proceedings with shouts of “Be strong,” and “We’ll blow them apart.”
The three seemed unfazed by the court’s decision to remand them. Their attorneys said they will appeal the decision.
Attorneys Adi Kedar and David Halevy, said that the State’s evidence against the three was “flimsy.”
-ttp://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4273591,00.html
On goes the charade, and the debates about the planned deck chair arrangements abound, humanity remaining locked in a nightmare stasis carries on paying for the penalties of past crimes of a bunch of lunatics playing God, that to this date seems to have been a reasonable role for these to have played, so their descendant keep on playing the same game.
Hence the stagnant and immovable obstacles to human rights, and improved quality of life on this planet. The mundane rights are yet to be officially even acknowledged:
Freedom from hunger
Freedom from fear and coercions,
Freedom from elements and protected by shelter
Freedom from pain or illness
Freedom from thirst
Freedom from ignorance
Never mind all those cissy rights, they are for wimps, all we need is freedom of expression and Freedom brand, that is all: pathetic fucking slogans for pathetic fucking consumers of slogans.
@technicolour
“Leonard: very interesting, as Orwell always is too, of course. I think the problem with student radicalism is not that there isn’t much, but that this generation have seen universities and schools collude with the state in suppressing it.”
I wholeheartedly agree on this and concede I should have included this as a significant factor.
@Technocolour
yes, life is not exactly rosy for our pensioners either, what with thousands dying of hypothermia every year and thousands more having to choose between food and heating and the rise in illnesses like Parkinsons and dementia thanks to environmental pollution, not to mention the care homes and the general attitude to older people and and and
sigh.
“It’s the young”
“It’s the old”
“It’s the chavs”
“It#s the benefits scroungers”
“It’s the single mothers”
“It’s the immigrants”
“It’s the (insert scapegoat of choice here)”
It is, of course, the few……………and the rest of us
Steve, yes, agreed. It’s the system. The USA in 1971 – Nixon – comes off the Gold Standard and deregulates the banking system, Bretton Woods collapses, Heath and Co. deregulate and institute Thatcherism, basically. Ideological social engineering by the Right. 1971: The madness and inflation, house price rises begin, steeply. Yes, I remember it very well. The Oil Crisis of 1973 was merely a further event, when the UK became dependent on Saudi Arabia for the survival of its economy.
The rest is history.
Suhayl Saadi – 27 Aug, 2012 – 4:29 pm
“many were screwed by the onset of Thatcherism…blighted by Thatcherism…Thatcherite-induced envy”
In other words..it woz fatch wot did it.
A letter in this month’s Prospect magazine points out that ‘manufacturing industry only declined from 26 per cent to 23 per cent of the economy in the 18 years of Thatcher and Major: less than the decline in most other major economies during that period. The real decline, to 12 per cent came under Blair and Brown.’
Also, anyone who knows anything about Thatcher knows that she was just the better looking spokeswoman for what became known as ‘Thatcherism’. The ‘brains’ behind it all was Keith Joseph.
Sorry but I couldn’t resist.
There are some interesting comments here and I find this whole Assange-in-the-embassy thing quite fascinating. But at times the comments on this blog read like an SWP rally at CIF.
Regards
The Sperglord of Doom.