The entire purpose of this blog is to ask you to think outside the box. It therefore cuts across the lines of dogma of any group, and is formed purely by my own independent thought. As I have frequently stated, if anybody agrees with every point I make, something is wrong.
This is going to annoy both left on Greece and right on banks, and my own party on the SNP and Labour. Here goes.
The citizens of the United Kingdom gave 45,000 pounds each, every man woman and child of them, direct to the bankers in bailouts. We will be paying off that money in taxes – with vast sums in interest to the same bankers, from whom we borrowed virtual money they did not have, to give to them as real money – for generations to come. Quantitive easing gives yet more money to the bankers, cash in place of risky bonds they wish to dump.
When you add it all together including interest, every man, woman and child in the UK will pay over 100,000 pounds each to the bankers, to bail out the bankers from the mess their own extreme greed had created. Indeed it is possible to argue rationally that the payment will be infinite, as the debt incurred will never be repaid but continually rolled over, and interest payments continue.
We did not have to do this. We could have let the bad banks go bust, started new ones, and boosted the economy by spending just 20% of the money we have given the banks on crucially needed public infrastructure works – railways, renewable energy, housing, insulation, hospitals, schools etc. But Gordon Brown and New Labour decided just to give money to the bankers instead.
In Greece, the people have actually given much less to the bankers for bailout than people in the UK. It is important to acknowledge that the causes of the Greek financial collapse are different. Greece was rather a recipient of bad lending, a country which received loans it could not possibly afford. Due to corrupt networks of elite collusion embracing both government and private sector, much of this money was simply siphoned out of the country into overseas accounts in London and Cyprus. The British people are suffering from the banking collapse through being forced to bail out the bankers. Greece is more in the position of somebody in a huge house who could not afford the mortgage – except for the vital distinction that all the people in Greece were paying the mortgage, but the large majority living in sheds behind the mansion.
I welcome Syriza’s victory as an indication that people are not content just to accept the narrative given them by the mainstream media and the parties in the pocket of corporations. I hope that they negotiate hard and force the banks to take a huge haircut on Greek sovereign debt. I acknowledge their commitment to social justice. But I do hope they will be realistic with both themselves and their people on the amount of blood, sweat and tears that is going to need to go in to building a productive Greek economy. An example of Keynesian stimulus is much needed by the rest of Europe.
Gordon Brown’s bank bailout was probably the biggest single gift any politician has ever given his corporate masters in the entire history of the world. It is worth reminding ourselves just how very right wing the Red Tories are. Not to mention the fact their front bench remains littered with war criminals. I therefore have grave reservations about Nicola Sturgeon’s weekend interview indication that the People of Scotland want a Labour Government with SNP support. I don’t. I am not going to elect somebody to represent me as chief bag carrier to a war criminal.
The SNP leadership remain infected by managerialism. It is easy to convince yourself you are doing good things while not changing anything fundamental, and at the same time building a very well paid career and a personal powerbase. I don’t want devo-max, I don’t want more powers, I don’t want something “as close to federalism as possible”. I want freedom for my country. I want independence. I want to live in a country which does not illegally invade other countries, collude in torture, carry out mass surveillance of its citizens, or possess nuclear weapons. The idea of running the Union a little bit better, making it a teeny bit more humane and competent, does not interest me. Nor does dulling the edge of austerity, when it is going to behead us anyway.
Besides which I am absolutely convinced the Tories will win the election, which will make all this jostling for position look rather foolish.
What would happen if the UK said to Europe we are not holding a referendum, we don’t propose to formally leave but we are not paying our national contribution? I suppose we would be ganged up on until we paid or renegotiated or left, but as to actual enforcement?
“I am absolutely convinced the Tories will win the election”
If they do they will savage the nation to its bones.
Much as I dislike the LibDems they did keep the Rottweiler partially on a leash.
I do hope you are wrong here for once.
The Gun Has No Trigger: David Graeber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4fQEn15NgI
The Gun Has No Trigger: Nina Power
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4fQEn15NgIh
The Gun Has No Trigger: Kendell Geers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8CT_cdgiNk
The Gun Has No Trigger: Doreen Mende
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4tFU0L2TU
Habbabkuk (La Vita È Bella): This modest chronograph of Cross-Channel culpability, I suspect, is what John Goss was referring to, when he asked you, quite pertinently and politely, (John Goss26 Jan, 2015 – 6:36 pm) “Habbabkuk, when is the United States going to pay of its debt?”………. ! … http://www.usdebtclock.org/
The Gun Has No Trigger: Daniel van der Velden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzKkWXu8Kb0
An observation.
It reminds me of the suggestion I made for rolling deletion of past comments on this blog.
It seems many are all about defining, restricting others or themselves. Looking back over what other people say in order to discredit of attack them. Or maybe worrying about how this may be used to make up some story about you, used as evidence against you, or perhaps for you, to add to your glorious facebook identity…
A lot of this is structural realities we contribute to.
It’s a pretty stinky way to live. like a lot of people I meet in my own isolated fragmented local community. Always looking to pick at others for one or other reason.
The structure of blogs (particularly now) have becomes a hindrance to free expression. I made that sacrifice anyway, and I don’t regret it. But it’s to corrosive to continue in the same way for me.
Iv read a lot of interesting stuff and I won’t just disappear, But I just don’t see the particle use if this is about ideas. Normal conversations are said, ideas taken, and the words disappear. They are the past and not needed anymore in any practical way. So I assume it’s through tradition or some other motive.
Either way i’m not comfortable with it. As I think anyone who knows their conversation is being permanently recorded would be, Or shold be. Maybe some are not used to much freedom. Don’t trap yourslef.
Also I feel most on this blog have some money, contacts, support networks, Lawyers. I have some privilege but comparatively little. So it’s felt a real sacrifice i’v made. Again I don’t regret it but i’v had enough oppression to last me a while…
And Craig, I really tried to support you (maybe i’v done more harm than good) but you’ve never said a word to me.
I don’t want thanks, or to know where I stand in someone else’s viewpoint. But not even a passing comment?
Again it’s this past idea’s that get to me, that maybe I said something that ‘defined’ my character somehow. Maybe it’s just a bad assumption I make. To be clear I surly have said things that are unhelpful, stupid or made of imperfection.
The Human Gap
-What we call progress is perhaps so hectic and haphazard that world populations are utterly confused and out of step with the waves of change it causes for better or for worse. Though highly advanced in other ways, modern men and women are as yet unable to grasp fully the meaning and consequences of what they are doing. Failing to understand the mutations they bring about in the natural environment and their own condition, they come to be increasingly at odds with the real world.
Can present trends be controlled and the gap bridged before a tragic and grotesque fate overtakes homo sapiens?-
From
NO LIMITS TO LEARNING
BRIDGING THE HUMAN GAP
A Report to the Club of Rome 1978
From the dynamic GP Louise Irvine of the Lewisham Hospital campaign and a National Health Action Party candidate. She visited Greece last October, and writes today, appropriately.
What ‘austerity’ has done to Greek healthcare
Louise Irvine 26 January 2015
The shocking ‘austerity’-imposed destruction of Greece’s once proud healthcare system is a key reason Greeks have turned to Syriza, finds London GP Louise Irvine in an eye witness account.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/louise-irvine/what-%27austerity%27-has-done-to-greek-healthcare
Note the rise of HIV infection – 700%!, an incurable disease. Lack of affordability of condoms likely.
There is no room for complacency here. OUR NHS is threatened, as we know. This Greek tragedy teaches us some lessons – the easy breakdown of public systems, the shameful emigration of the professionals, the effects of the structural adjustment programmes that the IMF and World Bank impose. The latter always requires the selling off of public assets with the breakdown of social structures. There are traitors in Britain who would welcome the latter.
The BBC trumpets the deficit in Greece as 170% of GDP whereas in the UK it was over 88% of GDP in 2013. It is rising contrary to Coalition reassurances and Gideon’s hopes.
There is no room for complacency here. There are many hungry and homeless people including several million youngsters wanting homes. In some areas the average house costs 22 times the average salary.
There was a recent case of a teenager with mental illness being kept in a police cell for two nights. The assistant chief constable highlighted it as a disgrace. Eventually the child was sent to a private psychiatric hospital several hundred miles away from her distressed mother.
Mentally ill girl’s two days in police cell ‘heartbreaking’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-30917334
Another child with mental illness, a boy, ended up committing suicide on a railway line for lack of care and proper treatment.
http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Parents-popular-East-Devon-student-say-child/story-23056354-detail/story.html
What a world. What a country.
Nope, nothing to disagree with there. Can’t you even try to be contentious, Craig?
🙂
@homeneara
“Also I feel most on this blog have some money, contacts, support networks, Lawyers. I have some privilege but comparatively little. So it’s felt a real sacrifice i’v made. Again I don’t regret it but i’v had enough oppression to last me a while…”
If it’s any consolation, I’m also skint and on hard times at the moment (I’m not making it up when I bang on about my computer problems). I’m not a champagne socialist; in fact I come from a very working class background.
With regard to ‘not making a difference’, there’s now armies of paid shills and astroturfers stalking comment threads. These shills are both corporate and government (not that it makes much difference these days). Perhaps most galling are the shills from the security services, whose salary comes from the tax payers, the same tax payers that these shills are paid to lie and deceive and discredit.
I feel it’s very important for individuals such as yourself to make your voice heard, and continue to do so, otherwise the shills win. Take the Guardian, for instance: some of the comment threads there now get completely taken over by shills. Many people recognise the deception, but there’s also many who don’t. Voices like yours help to show the con for what it is. Without such voices we are in Stepford Wives land, which is just where the bastards want us.
But there again, you might be a double agent, or even a tripple agent. See, that’s the thing that comes from living in a Stasi-style state: paranoia…
Homenara –
I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of the comments on this blog. You comment on Craig, not he on you. Also, as I see it, ‘support’ isn’t really the issue so much as an opportunity to express our views regardless of whether we support him or not. Don’t take it personally!
@Mary
“What a world”
Hasn’t it always been so?
Following the two big slaughters in the 20th century, there seemed to be, in the west at least, a genuine attempt to build a better world; a sort of unspoken compact between the rulers and the ruled: no more senseless slaughter, no more exploitation, etx.
Unfortunately these ideals have now been thrown on the rubbish heap, particularly over the last 30 years.
The owners of the private psychiatric hospital group I referred to above are Advent International, an American private equity outfit. They also own Poundland and Fat Face clothing. That is true diversification!
In 2010 Lord Ashcroft bought 34% of the equity in Priory for which he paid £44m.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_International
http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/compilation-of-parliamentary-financial.html
Homeneara
I very seldom reply to comments, and generally when I particularly disagree with them! So silence is good.
Truly odious debt. Note that the usurers got their commission and flogged off the dodgy products (bond – my word is my bond – LOL)
Greek Debt Crisis: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt
Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country’s already bloated deficit.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt-crisis-how-goldman-sachs-helped-greece-to-mask-its-true-debt-a-676634.html
Sky’s poll of polls.
Sky: Labour Biggest Party In Hung Parliament
The PM tells Sky News the Tories can win a majority, but a Sky projection with 100 days to go suggests Labour is ahead.
http://media.skynews.com/media/images/generated/2015/1/26/366124/default/v2/poll-projection-1-762×428.jpg
http://news.sky.com/story/1415571/sky-labour-biggest-party-in-hung-parliament
Sick of it already? I am.
“And Craig, I really tried to support you (maybe i’v done more harm than good) but you’ve never said a word to me.
I don’t want thanks, or to know where I stand in someone else’s viewpoint. But not even a passing comment?
Again it’s this past idea’s that get to me, that maybe I said something that ‘defined’ my character somehow. Maybe it’s just a bad assumption I make. To be clear I surly have said things that are unhelpful, stupid or made of imperfection.”
Homeara, you can treat this blog just as you have done, with multiple posts, some which by their same description could have easily pasted on to one post, make it your own, just as our resident pet ‘it’, the space is free, but don’t expect to get into a deep and meaningful conversation with a fairly busy man, unless he responds to what you write here.
and think of the CO2 expenditure, posting is not without impact.
Your assumptions on people’s income are far misplaced, I have no regular income and my mother in law is in palliative care, if you know what that means. Tomorrow is my 30th wedding anniversary and we both try to jeer up some local support for ‘democracy week’,i.e we have 5 speakers in front of Norwich Forum explaining why we live in a electoral shit house of fraudulent making, in not so many words.
For that we’ll have to get out of the house and do stuff. I don’t expect any support from the national MSM or BIBIC to my press releases, just friends and those who hear about it, but we’ll try.
Yes I have friends and am doing stuff locally, because otherwise I would go bonkers, it does not just happen to you, you have to work at it, I believe ‘cultivate’ is the word to use.
Agent Cameron and his sidekick Gideon are tempering the steel and sharpening their hatchets.
Today’s headlines
Torygraph PM:I’ll Cut Benefits Cap To £23,000
D Mail New Welfare Crackdown on Workshy
@Glenn
My apologies, I forgot to thank you for the very interesting quotes you provided earlier.
The truth is out there…
Many congratulations for tomorrow Nevermind and keep going. Very sorry to hear about your wife’s mother. I hope she is in a decent loving place of care.
She’s in the N&NUH, Mary, thanks for your kind words.
“You comment on Craig, not he on you.”
Well that’s one way of looking it at. Wow….erm ok.
“I feel it’s very important for individuals such as yourself to make your voice heard, and continue to do so, otherwise the shills win”
Yes, and I put a lot of work into that effect. Over the last few years.
Is it about “me commenting on Craig” ? maybe there is some of that ‘star stuck’ in me, But actually, we are all just people. And I fight hard against this dividing persona business.
It’s not the shills that have done it for me, it’s what I feel is a lack of mutual respect despite disagreement. Engagement. But of course you are all so important.
Nevermind. Your mother in law will be in good hands I trust.
I see the N&NUH is one of BLiar’s PFIs.
Construction
On 11 January 1998, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the go-ahead for the construction of a £214 million, 809 bed, new hospital in a broadcast from Tokyo on the BBC’s Breakfast with Frost show.[2] Site work started the following day (12 January 1998). The project was the first large PFI hospital scheme in the NHS. In July 2000 approval was given to extend the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital with a second phase that included an additional 144 beds and took the project cost to £229 million. The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust pays the private PFI Octagon consortium in the region of £41 million a year.[3] In 2004, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants assessed the actual costs at £1.16 billion, or around five times the initial cost of £229 million.
Project team:[4]
Anshen & Allen (Architect)
John Laing plc (Main contractor)
WSP Group (Structural Engineer)
Hoare Lea (Services Engineer)
Serco (Maintenance/support services)
The hospital was completed in August 2001, five months ahead of schedule, and on budget.[4] The hospital won the Building Better Healthcare Award[5] for Best Designed Hospital in September 2002. The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital was also highly commended in the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award in 2002.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_and_Norwich_University_Hospital
Brown, apart from everything else, was not very good at controlling the expenditure was he. I have known humble cost and works accountants who would have done a better job. Of course, Brown, before entering politics at the age of 32, had little experience of business, manufacturing or industry like so many of the occupants of the green benches.
It says here that he was a ‘doctoral graduate of the University of Edinburgh,’ and ‘spent his early career working as both a lecturer at a further education college and a television journalist.’ Can anyone remember him as a broadcaster? I can’t. Perhaps he just wrote the stuff that is pumped out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown
What a rip off. You can see who the members of the Octagon Healthcare Consortium are here:
http://www.nnuh.nhs.uk/docs%5Ctrustdocs%5C96.pdf
I would engage with that odd statement Craig, But what’s the point. Seems you don’t like the idea of getting messy btl.
That’s for us to do, for you. There will be no fresh and loose talk from politicians. Why should I expect otherwise.
I did think of another idea last night that I may post, it’s about the Snowdens, Greenwalds, Assanges of this world, the structures they have emended themselves in, the effect that’s having on them, and us.
In short, it ain’t democratic. And it needs some consideration imo.
ps, Obviously there is a long list of historians and intellectuals to add to that list.
“But there again, you might be a double agent, or even a tripple agent. See, that’s the thing that comes from living in a Stasi-style state: paranoia…”
When making the not insignificant decision to post regular on here, to support, I posted my real name a bunch of my pictures, I have always been honest and truthful in the things I have said.
I felt for some good support that mattered. Myself I trust people, and respect them until they prove themselves otherwise, even then I don’t close doors forever. It seem to me, well just what do you expect from ordinary citizens treated in this way. ?
To be fair, it makes me feel a damn sight better about the darker spaces I sometimes go to. This kind of treatment is really not nice.
And I don’t see how it’s not blatantly clear that I don’t support any oppressive dominating structures that I identify. If the effect is the expansion of the democratic realm, and they are self dismantling, maybe some can be justified. It’s an open book I guess.