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Written by Den Dildo
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Tuesday, 28 April 2009 |
"I spied an Islamicist taking a dump facing Makkah the other day. I was sure there were bombs strapped to the evil conspirator's pajamas. Needless to say i sped dialled the local anti-terrorist unit and had him arrested and pilloried in the liberal media before you could say 'extraordinary rendition'. Naturally, I also blamed Pakistan for that and twenty-four unrelated issues."
Douglas Murray authors and commentates for himself and the Centre for Social Cohesion, a set of guys in thrall to a Nick Cohen view of the world - promoting 'greater social cohesion' by an unhealthy and extremely excluding obsession with d'Islamists out there.
Who's backing them? Why, those proper reasonable types at Civitas: Total Phillipine approval has been gained by the CSC and yet they are still frequently described as 'right-leaning' rather than the more accurate 'swivel-eyed, right-wing freedom fondlers'. I saw Mel Phillips and Joshua Rozenberg skateboarding to Starbucks in Chelmsford the other day. When they stopped she unfortunately burped and a cog fell out of her head. Josh grinned for a bit.
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'Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City' |
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Written by Al Miraaj
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Tuesday, 21 April 2009 |
Neo-colonialists; excrement in the sea; alienable human rights; leaks in prestige hotels; divided society; slave labour; debt = 107 per cent of GDP; use of precious resources for surplus activities - emirate as moribund oasis.
Appeared in early April but it's never too late to link: The Independent's Hari all-encompassing in his observations of the capitalist illusion that is the desert state of Dubai.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 21 April 2009 )
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Written by Toxik
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Friday, 28 November 2008 |
Cull is signing off in the midst of a ‘global financial crisis' that emerged fully formed from the subprime securitisation frenzy and the banks' general mania for risky assets that could be lied about to the accountants, sorry, marked to market. Capitalism will eat itself, if states allow it, which they can't as that would generate an even deeper nadir and, oh, would put the very livelihoods of swathes of decent people (and lots of bankers too) on the brink.
But that won't mean proper regulation is coming back.
To recap, during a few crazy early Autumn weeks, Bear Stearns bit the dust, Lehman Brothers effectively went bankrupt and the good bits went for sale, AIG went to the FED for a bailout, the Fed said it's going to create a Toxic Bank to deal with the shit (which is probably not going to happen), and there was flurry of UK banking recapitalization from the govt and merger and acquisition activity, which may well not happen either (Northern Rock excepted, but it would be worth £288 for every person on the planet, according to freesheet Metro). And now Iceland, Citigroup, Woolworth's, Dubai - you name it - all the borrowers who pooh-poohed capital adequacy are fucked. All this downturn finally affected global demand, in turn dropping prices - crude at $55/barrel now when it was $147/barrel in July - so the complacent have at least ruled out inflation and postponed the end of history for a bit.
So blind leading the blind, govts have to step in not really knowing what they're doing as it has been official practice to practise Greenspan light-touch regulation for some time.
"The stock of regulations must be reduced: we should trust people to make their own mistakes and learn from them. And the flow of new regulation from the EU must also be reduced: our aim should be to take back control of employment and social regulation"
D Cameron, 2005
Or as Gerrald Nicksen of Surety Management put it: "The FSA are simply jealous of us City boys and the genuine benefit we bring to ourselves, while EU regulation is there to stop Britain from being the Britain we know and cream, sorry, care about."
We were always told we should trust banks and financial wizards to make their own mistakes (How foolish of the ill-informed public. Unfortunately these mistakes have been massive and the majority of new regulation from the EU is there for a reason. Betting/hedging/speculation/offsetting is never a secure, risk-free way to make money.
Now we're in a situation where the governments really have to generate indigenous wealth rather than rely on very offshore capital and the services industry - Darling's rejigging of the numbers in the PBR will only do so much - and with the emphasis now on tax cuts, it's going to take them a lot of time to relearn.
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Engineering works scheduled – will last decades |
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Written by The Ansa Fransa
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Friday, 28 November 2008 |
The ‘just... must... make a profit...' culture overriding the social impacts of such cuts has been here for decades - just take the railways and the cuts made by Dr Beeching in the 60s.
The complete love affair with the roads and under-investment in railways, as evidenced as in Hislop's documentary on regular BBC2/BBC4 repeat at the moment, was pretty depressing stuff, all short termism to save money. Now it's the Royal Mail and other key public service providers.
Beeching is an example, as is the current Post Office predicament, of where some reform of a public service is needed but maniac cuts and distorting economies are imposed which disfigure and ruin the service in question. Tory Transport Minister Ernest Marples and his tarmac business represented no conflict of interest whatsoever, of course. He appointed Beeching and was Transport Minister for the full five years of Macmillan's last government - why wouldn't a road builder do that?
The amazing conflict of interest in this historical example was hilarious. Anyone who worked the lines during this period knows it pretty clear that there was never enough money spent and the money that was spent was on all the wrong things, Beeching should have paid more attention to that. Plus, the majority of the decisions made were not based on long-term strategy. That's why it was quicker to get to Sheffield from London in the 50s than it is today, and why you can be sure that the oedIpod soft furnishings and soft entertainment of the Virgin northwest service will never compensate for a journey that frequently diverts pasts the work to stop at every major city on the way down.
The closest to Beeching and his ilk now are those fabulous Powerpoint consultants that without any prior experience of running a railway and not wanting to listen to those persons involved in running it put their management methods to the test.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 28 November 2008 )
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Written by M Double U
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Wednesday, 30 July 2008 |
White straight-A grade Ben Kinsella's killing generated more moral outrage and celebrity opprobrium but no substance to the debate. Bloggers and columnists have been notably silent on the rush of stabbings and shootings that are mainly inflicting the under-20s, and mainly in London, dovetailing with the clear lack of political direction on the subject. Too scared to speak out? Too entranced by the sensationalist headlines? Or just too shocked to offer the usual lessons by rote? Perhaps the media's rack ‘em up approach - now with handy maps of all the postcode beefs - is a suitable response to a nihilistic development.
This is a development in youth relations that - as presented the media - is very difficult for the oldaz to get a handle on. The lack of noise betrays and portrays a generational gap, and a chasm of socio-cultural difference. Yes, we liked hip-hop G-talk and some played around with knives, had fights with rival schools and all the rest but there was no desire to take things to a grim conclusion - death and killing simply weren't in the worldview. But then there was no way of bigging a ‘soldier' up across the internet and the mobiles straightaway (or filming it), no ‘just-for-fun' stab your rival hames syndicated via Facemask, no way of mythologising what are essentially petty scraps between hormonal boys. What could be called turf wars if fighting for a shitty end of town you have no stake in wasn't such a pathetic proposition. Whatever, the stakes, even in pure notoriety terms among your mates, are much higher.
US rap, computer games, on-pitch football violence - activities played out in a virtual reality but ones where we happily suspend our disbelief have had an influence not necessarily in there direct wield but in their complete submersion in society. People double their age have known a time where all these elements were not a permanent part of life, the youngaz haven't, It's too easy, glib and simplistic to ‘blame' all or any of these for the problem; as always we have to look at the wider societal factors. One-parent families will also prove convenient scapegoats (and Jacqui and co now promise to invest in them) but clearly the phase we're going through is attracting a wide cross-section of youth, and they're not all going to be thug-life, no-father-figure stereotypes people would have us believe.
London it seems is like New York in the 70s or Rio forever - a metropolis that, but for the old pockets of conspicuous wealth (generated by gambling in a suit), is on the slide, where the drugs game is rife, districts feed off neglect and people look to monetise any opportunity, the disconnect with areas even a few miles away is acute and where kids cultivate a rebellion that is more than just posture, or just a pose. But much of this doesn't directly affect a 14-year-old and a lot of the incidents are not caused by little big men doing deals or running poverty-induced numbers, but people caught up in normal situations.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 July 2008 )
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Written by Dodger Alton
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Tuesday, 20 May 2008 |
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