Open University - Idiot Politics Session 1

Well this blog is prompted by an interesting point that bobred raised namely that in a democracy no-one is satisfied because everyone has to make compromises whereas in a dictatorship at least the one in charge is satisfied. OK this was in part I suspect a tongue in cheek remark but nevertheless it raises the question of what is the best method of government if there is such a thing or is it a case of looking for the best of a bad lot? I'm no expert but since this is my blog and not that of Vernon Bogdanor I shall put my views forward.

Let’s tackle those we know first and look at the pros and cons and see if that leads anywhere.

Democracy: In democracy the enfranchised (it would be a mistake to use a generic such as ‘everyone’ or ‘the people’ because this is almost always wrong from Greece to present day US/UK) vote their representatives into government to look after their interests, and therein lies the first problem, this structure already is fundamentally reactionary, for the enfranchised elect representatives for their own interests not primarily for the good of the majority. Thus those outside the system do not necessarily have any method of a voice for their interests. The disenfranchised can lobby for increased rights in a number of ways, they can seek to win round those already in the system to widen the scope of the franchise. This can usually take 2 forms, the genuine altruistic radical who fights for the equality because s/he believes it is correct to do so or the pragmatic rebel who believes it is necessary to throw the occasional bone to the masses in order to preserve the structure of the existing status quo. Another form of social change can be brought about by revolution, this doesn’t have to be a Russia 1917 style, it can be minor insurrection or civil disobedience or such like. Now the severity of this and the prospective success are not linked in the way one might think. In fact the effectiveness of such action is determined by how secure the ruling classes feel. Should their hold on power be strong they have many ways to avoid having to change such as politics and in a worst case scenario the military. If, however their grip on government is weak they will often try to put down any trouble in a more conciliatory way. Sometimes these mini-concessions are provided before such trouble, it is part of a strategy of social control, because the more pro-active the establishment is the easier it can shape social consciousness to prevent such rumblings below from ever happening.

Dictatorship: Now what we would assume is meant by dictatorship is a sort of inverse pyramid structure with a despot at the top who has in practise absolute power. In reality there are few circumstances where this simplistic view really holds water. Firstly one person cannot ever pull all the strings regardless of how much they might want to, they simply do not have the time. Thus what is generated is a series of mini-dictators who look after an individual area of policy, they have on a day to day basis autonomy but report to the dictator at the top on larger matters and at his/her bequest. This was certainly the case of Hitler in 1930's Germany who had such a convuluted beaureacratic structure that it was often impossible to get day-to-day things done, there was a party structure which ran almost parallel to a state structure. Whilst my knowledge of the intricasies of Stalin's time is less I suspect the MO was similar. The problem with Dictatorship is that you are dependent on the nature of a few select people, in certain matters they may be perceived to be benign, many Germans alive in the 1930's thought that Hitler did much to ease the economic situation and provide employment. However they attributed this change to him and the NSdAP rather than looking at the global economic cycle and how war-footing economies work etc.

So what's the difference, well in dictatorship people often do not have the illusion of a representative democracy, this means they have very little way of expressing their grievances but is the situation much different in a democracy? I would contend that it is simply a shift in who and how many hold the power, the actual representative side is a sham. look at Britain now, if you do not agree with middle-class neo-liberal politics and there are plenty of people who do not who would you vote for in an election, there is no real choice at the moment. [I hasten to add I sincerely hope that RESPECT will be able to offer at least some hope for this] If you take the US the way their system is structured the candidate in the presidential election who was voted for by the popular majority was not elected (and this is disregarding the Florida fiasco, the vote numbers issue is not under discussion) the way the electoral system is set out the final say rests with a fundamentally reactionary group hence the appointment of Bush. And yet where are the UN and EU election observers -if this had been in an African country you can bet your arse they'd be scrutinising the current election. Finally it's not as if this is the first time irregularities have happened in the US, and Britain doesn't even have a secret ballot so forgive me if I don't buy into the democracy principle.

Next week: Communism and Anarchy

Thinker For Hire - Modern Prologue

Christ knows why I didn't think of it before, I've been blogging for well over a year now but I never thought to upload the stuff I'd written over the last years from before I owned a computer to 2001.

I started writing 'Thinker For Hire', my 'book' back in 1997. I had left University, done a bit of teaching and then had a spell doing consultancy work for unemployment statisticians! It was at that time I came up with the title Thinker For Hire, I was unemployed but still young and idealistic with the hope that somehow what life may hold for me would be something challenging and rewarding. In those months I went thru' the mindless sloth and for the first time voluntarily routined myself. During which was included my sitting down and writing stuff, whatever I felt like, just my take on the world. I wrote a fair few pages in those months. I have not read it since and I am quite interested to know how my style of writing may have changed since then as well as the nature and depth of my socio-political beliefs.

I will transcribe the first parts at another time, initially I am going to upload the stuff that has been done since I had a computer. Most of this is from 1999 onwards, I think. It is passionate but disjointed, fragments of thought formed from things that I'd heard or seen.

A little while after that I went quiet for a while with a brief attempt to get a diary going in 2002. It wasn't until January this year that I discovered blogging and since then my writing has developed a regularity even if not an amelioration in quality!

So this is 'Red Baron - The Early Years' - judge for yourselves (Written 6th May 2005)

The Manifesto - Sept. 2001

Education

Education must be accepted as a right for all. It is not and must never be used as a privilege for any section of society. If we start with the premise that every child has the right to primary and secondary education of the highest calibre that the state can provide. When it comes to tertiary education this should take the form of Universities, Technical Colleges and Vocational Training Centres. The crucial point is to reject the previous bias in favour of academic achievement and see all forms of education and from that every vocation as equally important in the forming of a benevolent and just society. Tertiary education should be the domain of all. Should it be necessary to limit in any way the number of participants on a particular course at an institution it should be done so based on the acceptance of those with the greatest aptitude for the course in question. An applicant’s background, elements such as financial status, geographical location, parents etc. should not be taken into account.


Society

The fundamental basis of an equal and just society is its education. Students must be taught that everyone can succeed by working together and that this is the natural scheme of things. Many of the teachings of religions have similar philosophy at their cores and this is a head start in that many people already know these teachings literarily speaking, it is often the interpretation that has bastardised the principles. Society must be based on mutual respect, understanding, interest and tolerance. These rights must be for all people in the state and should extend to any living creatures where possible, it is an anathema to have protective rights for humans and yet treat animals with a different set of rules. Animal cruelty should be no more acceptable than violence against humans in a civilised society. Offenders must be severely punished for who can definitively state with impunity that it is one mind set to harm an animal but takes another to harm a human. Certain acts of animal cruelty are so incomprehensible that one thinks they cannot be carried out by the sane. The cause is more deeply rooted in a lack of community and civilisation, other people are aware of these crimes and those who commit them but there silence is a tacit acceptance of what they have done. Often in the case of animals the cruelty is carried out by the young and these is deemed by some to be high spirits or exuberance. This is however to miss the point that these youths are potential dangers and need to be stopped. An example must be set otherwise subconsciously they believe these actions are acceptable. The State must take a stand and lay down the guidelines of what constitutes acceptable conduct and those who will not conform will be removed until they are willing or able to do so.


Culture

All cultures are to be studied and welcomed as they promote the idea that humans are all different, these differences should be presented as interesting and what makes up the facets of humans as a species. Bigotry must be eradicated and no one type of culture or section of society should be promoted above another.

Industry

All industries which provide services essential to daily life need to be nationalised so as to be under the control of the state. These industries include transport (railways, buses, planes, shipping), telecom, power and fuel(electricity, gas and oil and renewable sources) council services such as refuse collection and disposal, the post office and the Media (Press, Television, Radio). In addition to this, any industry which is used by the public and where safety is a factor also needs to be under the control of the state. There are fundamental reasons that these industries need to be controlled by a state rather than a corporate body or an individual the main one is the obvious failure of a corporate body to think ethically. If a company is beholden to its shareholders who in turn are beholden only to greed then profit becomes the be all and end all of production, worker exploitation becomes necessary to cut costs and siphon more profit to stop investors from defecting to other more lucrative enterprises. Profit and safety do not mix as an organisation will never take a safety measure if there is a cheaper option. Thus we can see with the privatisation of the railways what happens when a public service is put into the open market and left to rot. Companies are not interested in rail links being a vital service from A to B, they are interested in getting as few people as possible paying as large an amount as possible. Since the railways were privatised in Britain, the number of passengers has dropped, as have safety standards but the fares have risen as have company profits as have the number of fatal accidents. Critics may say that the system before privatisation was not much better and this is partially true, but mainly attributable to a sustained lack of investment and proper management by a disinterested government. In Britain the Clapham Rail disaster under British Rail was the worst that most could remember and should have told us that there were some serious problems that needed addressing, flogging off the system to avoid having to pay into it and make it somebody else’s problem was a catastrophically short-sighted and ill-advised action and it has directly led to 3 major rail tragedies within 5 years. As a consequence of this the state no longer has control of one of the potentially most environmentally friendly and safest methods of travel. This must be addressed. Private transportation is to be discouraged excepting necessary journeys. Public transportation such as trams, trolley-buses and gas buses which are good for keeping those nonessential private vehicles off the road need to be given priority funding. Essential road users, the emergency services, parents transporting children where public transport may not be applicable, and disabled people should be given permits to travel, the rest of road users who cannot justify the private vehicle over public transport should pay high prices for fuel and road tax, and this money should be directly subsidising increasing development in public transport. The use of large lorries and transporters should be superseded by rail transportation and any large vehicles which cannot justify their existence should pay prohibitive levies so as to be priced out of the market. 
As an interim provision, the state must set up incentives for companies to use rail for distribution and transportation, this must be seen as the only viable alternative.




Business

Ultimately the same theories need to be applied to business as to society as a whole. Reinvestment should be the key objective rather than profit and greed. Workers are not subordinate to managers they simply perform a different function. Middle Managers will be where possible elected by the workers having already done the job for a period. Upper management should be chosen for their managerial capabilities but must in every case enter the firm at the working level and perform the same function as the workers for a minimum specified period, so that they may best understand the potential problems that the workforce may encounter. Should the ‘Manager-in-waiting’ be unable to carry out the task competently a minder should be assigned, as this period should make the manager respect the skills of the workforce. A financial discrepancy should not be between manager and worker. Salaries should be set based on experience in doing the job and also necessity of financial aid such as domestic circumstances. Those with dependants should be helped 




Sport

Sport should be seen by society and participants as an excellent leisure activity and way to improve the morale of those around you. Sports personalities should have salaries based on the same criteria as other industrial workers. Sports events should be available to all those who wish to spectate and any goods that are sold as accessories should be kept to a minimum and prices should be affordable. The idea that sports personalities are icons or should be paid more should be actively discouraged. Sports clubs and associations should be given budgets by the state. The larger clubs should be given a larger budget on the proviso that they are responsible for smaller clubs and youth organisations in their areas. Should they fail to do so their budgets will be cut to the level of other clubs in the area. All sports clubs are to be given equal weighting no one sport is to be considered more or less worthy than another and likewise participants will treat each other with equal respect. Areas should be given the facilities of as many differing sports as resources and interests allow.


Health

It should be everybody’s right to expect the state to provide healthcare from birth until death. Private hospitals and staff should be re-nationalised in order to stop the inequality and the current two-tier health service. The money to sustain the health service must be provided from taxes. There should be no geographical discrepancy in healthcare and all persons regardless of status have the right to be treated for their ailments as quickly and efficiently as possible. Obviously there is a medical hierarchy of disease in the sense of seriousness and this must be considered. Should there be a need to prioritise the most serious ailments must be dealt with first. Surgery such as cosmetic surgery for nonessential reasons, vanity etc. is to be actively discouraged. It is the responsibility of doctors and health professionals to err on the side of caution and ensure that diagnosis and treatment is of the highest order. 


Family

The family is the closest knit group of humans and the emotional bonds it builds up cannot be broken by the state. Likewise there is no way to artificially manufacture these emotions in humans. Families, if nurtured can provide an excellent home for the new generation and it is the state’s responsibility to ensure that not only is the family adequately supported but that this support is flexible enough to adapt based on the needs of both children and parents. Some parents want to stay at home to look after their children and this should be encouraged by the state, for both mothers and fathers. The job of looking after a child and house whether by a father or mother should be given equal weighting with other forms of work. The state should keep a watchful eye on progress but should not intervene unless absolutely necessary and the welfare of the child is at stake. Should both parents wish to go back to work after the birth of their child, this should also be considered an acceptable option and the state should have a network of facilities to allow parents to do this such as approved childcare and job-share schemes. Companies should be encouraged by the state to take a flexible line with parents and job sharing schemes, state certified crèches, work experience programs should be given state backing.


Rights

In a society where the state is promoting equality it is vital that the state ensures that this is translated into all strata of society, discrimination intolerance and bigotry are to be stamped out and those that continue to discriminate will be treated the same way as those committing violent crimes against the person. There should be no differentiation between the handling of physical or psychological damage against an individual.

Government

This is always a tricky one how can one have a government in a state where everyone is supposed to be equal? This of course depends on how one envisages those doing the governing. If one perceives those who are involved in the government as no different from those doing other forms of work then it removes the view that there is an unequal relationship. Other options are for example to have a 2nd chamber which consists of people who are given time out from their jobs to serve. These positions should be like jury service, but optional, and tenure should be short-term such as 1 year. This would enable a wide cross-section of people to become involved in government on a day to day basis and should enable people to be interested in and empowered by government. 


Advertising

Advertising should serve one specific purpose, to inform about products available. This should take the form of providing product specifications, addressing who may need the product, and where it is available. Brand names should not be mentioned unless the product is to be the only one in its field. It would be nice if advertising could be made within these parameters and yet avoid being simply dour and bland, the difficulty is that if adverts become glossy or funny the product gets remembered, not for its usage or quality but its marketing. This gives an unfair slant to large wealthy companies advertising their products, whilst the smaller producer is unable to compete. Claims that are made in adverts must be substantiated before the advert is aired and a State advertising regulator must decide whether the content of the advert proposed is relevant, in the public interest and factually based. 


Exchange Rate

The exchange rate should be artificially set so as to stop currency speculation and also to allow ‘taxation’ of ‘hostile’ countries by raising of the value of the currency. Currency should only be sold/exchanged within the home country.



Taxation

Redistribution of wealth must be the long-term goal on a global scale until some form of parity exists to empower those in the former 3rd world. This can be achieved by a percentage of income taxation, say 1% for sake of argument, being spent on balancing the status of the population. When the redistribution has been achieved internally this 1% of tax can be used for overseas aid. If this were to be done by a large proportion of countries, it would greatly speed up the process of ‘harmonisation’. Overseas aid should be to set up the necessary infrastructure for basic facilities, utilities, public services etc. A good example must be set by the affluent countries on how to manage these facilities so that these are not simply set up to be exploited by non sympathetic parties. Charging for utilities such as water consumption and sewerage, electricity supply etc. is to be discontinued as soon as these utilities are re-nationalised. The upkeep of these utilities is to be the jurisdiction of the state and therefore to be paid for through taxation. This way those most able to pay will be doing so at an acceptable rate. Income tax should encompass all the basic necessities, utilities and public services that the state needs to fund. Other forms of taxation are to be discouraged and only used where absolutely necessary. This will mean that income tax will pay for what people as a collective need and take home pay will be purely the jurisdiction of the individual or family to pay for their requirements based on taste such as food, toys, decoration. Take home pay as it currently stands is deceptive as there are a multitude of bills which then need to be paid. The key point with regard to taxation is that it must be administered fairly and openly. Government spending, in all areas other than those involving national security should be published openly and where possible workers pay slips should include the percentages of income tax used for whichever purpose. People must be informed in detail about changes in taxation and rises must be openly justified. 


Housing

Housing should be under the control of the state, the right to be a private landlord will be abolished as will the right to home ownership. This must be brought across via education that if the state manages housing it should not be necessary to own a home and this will eliminate many of the inflated costs involved with moving into a home. Homes will be provided as needed by the occupants. All citizens have the right to a comfortable home, that definition being a living room, kitchen bathroom and bedroom per individual resident, this is to include couples so that if a child is born, accommodation is already on hand in terms of an extra bedroom and thus the necessity for immediate rehousing is negated.


Human Nature

Ambition is not a bad thing per sé, if citizens succeed in their personal or professional endeavours the whole of society benefits provided this success is not based on exploitation of others or purely at the expense of others. Actions which involve the furthering of the individual at the expense of the collective are to be discouraged and through education eliminated.


The Media

The media cannot be independent, it is an anathema and this pretence should be dropped. The media must be controlled by the state for the purposes of the people. It must provide factual news reporting as well as consequential actions of events. Comment is to be encouraged from all sections of society but must be clearly labelled and, unless in a specialist publication, an alternative view should be provided. All sections of the media from paper, ink and news supply to reporters, distribution and the means to access must be controlled by the state. The State is to allow extensive criticism of its actions and is to justify its policies and plans accordingly. Investigative journalism is to be encouraged and interrogation of ministers will help hold the State to proper account. Journalists in this case are the representatives of the people, this is a responsible position and must be acknowledged as such. This criticism must be constructive ie part of a genuine effort to reform for the better. There should not be censorship as such, in that if something is not worthy of merit it can be easily refuted and should be done so in public. News selection is inevitable but emphasis must be placed on events which will affect the population first and foremost. 


Law and Order

Crimes against persons are not to be tolerated and those guilty of violent offences are to be placed in custody for mandatory sentences based on the severity of the crime. Wilful murderers will serve a lifetimes imprisonment in either penal or mental institution, the latter’s cases should only be reviewed if a cure for a medical condition can be categorically proven. Crimes against property are to be dealt with by the state but these are not as severe as those against the person. The State must decide why an individual has perpetrated a crime against property, wilful damage against amenities is to be punished by a temporary removal of the perpetrators right to certain leisure activities. These will be substituted by a period of community service based on the severity of the misdemeanour.


National Service

A period of national service is to be introduced for all persons following the end of their secondary education, regardless of gender. Suitable community work will be provided in their area, be it manual, clerical or such depending on the individual’s aptitudes where possible. Hospitals, transport systems, renovation work of public facilities are areas which could benefit from this injection of workers. All work will be paid the same amount and it is important that the education system stress how vital this period of work is both for the state and the individual. Should individuals have a preference for certain work, this should be accommodated where possible. Military service can be offered as an option should a standing army be in situ.


Defence

Defence is another grey area as a national army often leads to ambition of territorial gains acquired from ones neighbours. Should all states be agreed all national armies should be abolished and be replaced by a large UN force. Bases with these soldiers should be in every continent enough to keep the peace should it be necessary. Soldiers should be from other continents so as to have no vested interest in regional issues. The UN must be an empowered force and not an organisation that carries out the bidding of the larger nations. UN edicts should be binding and be enforced if necessary by force. However in the transitional phase where some states will remain in a capitalist structure whilst others transform it may be necessary to have an army to defend the country against the ambition of these capitalist countries. It is clear that decisions taken that displease the U.S. can lead to sanctions and military intervention and therefore any reforming state must first make the contingency plans to weather this storm until either they are able to gain complete self-sufficiency or there are enough like-minded states to order the reactionary nations, preferably within the framework of the U.N., to back-off.




Buzzwords

Progressive humanism
Utopianism
Modernist socialism
Socio-economic communism
Collectivism

Government - April 01

It is clear that the state must be the institution to make the laws, you cannot privatise the legislature. Why? Well, clearly if this process was in private hands the primary interests that would be served would be those of the controller. This would not be a helpful way to govern at least not for the majority of the population. Why is it then that there are those who imagine that one can privatise various public utilities and yet these will continue to serve the public interest?


With the state making the laws there are some factors that need to also be in place to safeguard the public good. Firstly it is important that laws being made are communicated properly, punctually and comprehensibly to the populous. The population should be given the chance to discuss the legislation and should certainly be made aware as far as possible when legislation is passed. The media is the natural apparatus to carry out this function, as if it is under the control of the state it will be able to best appraise the statutes and act as an interpreter to inform the people. At this point I am sure there are doubters who will presume that if the media is in state hands it will be bound to be biased toward that state and therefore cannot be relied upon to give an objective viewpoint or critique. I would draw the example of the BBC as part of debunking this whole argument. There are a handful of political interviewers who are well respected within the media sector and well feared by politicians, as they do not pull their punches calling ministers to account, most of these high-profile interviewers work for the BBC. As commercial television and media is beholden to its advertisers it can never be fully objective as there will always be a conflict of interest when it comes to an argument over corporate legislation. The BBC is not dependent on advertising revenue and is therefore able to afford its journalists more freedom to go ‘for the jugular’. Let us not assume that the BBC is independent, it is under state control and it would be foolish to imagine that at certain points the government has not exercised its influence in order to serve its purposes, however these occasions are, I would suggest, many fewer than in the private sector. The government of the day must be held directly accountable for its actions. If a law is proposed within a particular sector then the minister responsible for that brief must be obliged to give interview to the state media and be questioned most strongly to justify the policy, if the law is a good one, it should be easy to do so, if the law cannot be justified then perhaps it should be dropped or modified. Furthermore the same rules should govern a minister’s justification of his/her behaviour which should be subject to a stringent code of conduct. If a minister is proven to have violated this code in front of an extra-parliamentary standards committee then said minister should be dismissed forthwith and a replacement sought with immediate effect.

This also leads me to look at the whole setup of government. The bipartite system is not conducive to good government. It leads to the polarisation of politics into extremes and also means local issues are often swept underfoot for centralised political reasons. It is vital that if a person is to represent an area that they are standing for that area, they either come from or have been resident for some time in that area. It is an unacceptable practise for representatives to have multiple residences and to stand in an area in which they are not based. The state should provide apartments for the representatives when they are required for central governmental duties.


The Second Chamber
It appears to be a given in a democracy that one have a second chamber of the legislature. Let us for the moment proceed without questioning this, we must first establish what this chamber is for and then populate it with those best suited to serve out this purpose. Let us say that we wish to have a second chamber as a safeguard mechanism, an overseer of the acts of the first chamber. This would be by design a way of tempering politics and regulating the first chamber. If this is the case then obviously the first chamber must not have the appointment rights for its own regulator this must be done independently. One could say, why not let the people decide this and this idea has merit, but one must then be sure that the people are able to have a good choice of candidates. These candidates must be chosen from the people and therefore the best way to ensure competency is to educate the entire populous to have the ability to serve should they wish to do so. This is the volition approach; allow the people the ability and opportunity to help in the process of government. The other method is a more forceful one, a system similar to that of the UK Jury service be set up. This means that people would be called up to serve in the second chamber; this would be a mandatory service. There are pros and cons to both of these suggestions, the first is open to corruption and rigging to get certain people elected, apathy and disinterest in the voting procedure and a second chamber populated by people who may or may not be competent to carry out the job. It is my theory that the problem of corruption would be hard to tackle but not insurmountable if properly scrutinised, wages for those serving in the second chamber should not be an incentive as those interested in serving should be doing so for their interest in government and not in financial gain. The problem of apathy is something that would need to be tackled at an early age by education. If people are taught how there government works and how they can make a difference the procedure of government is likely to be of more interest to them. Apathy occurs where a person either does not understand the system or believes his/her input to have negligible impact. Competence is difficult to asses before someone takes up a post but if serving terms are short then it should have minimum impact should their suitability be called into question, besides it is important to give those interested a chance as they may have crucial input no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time. If people are educated as to how their government works they should be able to take more of an interest in it and it is therefore far more likely that they will be able to make a valuable contribution.

The second approach to the second chamber recruitment poses more problems. Whilst giving people social responsibility is a good thing and makes them feel part of the collective it is a fine line between this and making people feel press-ganged. The forced approach is also no guarantor for competence although under the conditions already outlined this should not be a major issue. However it is important that people feel they are willing participants in the collective and not herded into every facet of their lives by an omnipresent, omni-cogniscient state, as this would just be retreading the steps to totalitarianism.

Property – Right, Privilege or Theft? - April 01

This is a tricky one. People will feel that it is their right to choose how they live their lives and what they choose to spend their money on, and provided this does not infringe upon others they should be left in peace to get on with it. If one goes into depth though this is a difficult ethos to depend as how can one be sure that it does not infringe upon somebody else? I may feel buying a pair of brand name trainers is my prerogative with my money and I should be allowed to wear them. However if the company uses exploitative labour practises or child labour of any sort then the trainers are tainted with this morally indefensible action. Simply by buying the trainers I am offering tacit acceptance of the work practises and furthermore I am bolstering the company’s profits that they may continue to trade under such conditions. It is easy to say what I am doing is not harming anybody that I can see but those I cannot see may be a different matter. A man who lives alone in a large house with multiple bedrooms may see nothing wrong with what he is doing if the surrounding countryside contains sleepy little villages and pockets of affluence and comfort. If, however this mansion was right on the Strand in London, where large numbers of the homeless take shelter it would be considerably harder to reconcile with one’s conscience the size and wastage of the house. Now the man may say that he has worked hard to gain what he has achieved and therefore should be allowed to reap the rewards but who is to say what constitutes real work, does this man work harder than a single mother with children to feed? Does the affluent man deserve to be better remunerated because his job is a particular profession and he has more time to devote to his work than people with families. Why should those who sacrifice themselves to their work be treated better than those who may have other interests and a life outside of their job?

The simple answer is that in the corporate world those with families or other interests cannot always be relied upon to give absolute loyalty to the company. If a worker’s child is ill and at the same time his/her company is in trouble it should be to the child that s/he runs to the assistance of. One must remember that most large and profitable companies under a capitalist system will make the most of exploiting their workers in pay, working hours and conditions if it is profitable for them to do so. The greater the greed of the shareholders the more the company must squeeze out of its resources. This materialism spills over to one’s private life, capitalism makes one strive for material wealth as it is by this that you are judged by your peers. Of course this is not a level playing field as we all start out at different points and with different advantages and disadvantages. For the poor it is a major effort and achievement surviving from week to week, any further amelioration of circumstance would be a bonus, for the rich life is very different, speculate to accumulate, money breeds money etc. etc.

So by the end of one’s life, one’s material possessions show neither how hard one may have worked nor how deserving one may be of them. A man born into poverty may die with a small house, modest savings and some domestic possessions to his name. This will have probably taken his whole life to amass and he will have to have worked hard for them. Another man born into a gentrified family may die with an extremely large house, some land, 2 cars and some ostentatious assets to his name, he may also have worked hard, but he may have had a privileged upbringing, private education, been funded through University, got a job through a friend of the family, come into money through inheritance, been bailed out by his parents when his first business venture went bust etc. etc. Who therefore is the more valuable? Well, neither really can claim to have been better or worse. The point is the rich man will have had many opportunities to succeed whilst the poor man will have had few, what is more the rich man will have many chances should things not go according to plan initially whilst the poor man must stake everything and take the risk as he may not get another chance.

The Collective - March 01

Anyone who thinks that humans are innately selfish beings should ask responsible parents whether this is the case. Society in Britain throughout the late 1980s, and the whole 1990s has trained individuals to be selfish and single-minded in pursuit of their goals. The conservative government at that time welcomed the materialism and the ‘Yuppie’ culture and nurtured the idea that the only way for the individual to succeed was at the expense of those around him. They were able to use business as a principle exponent of this in that for one business to thrive it must compete with and preferably conquer its rivals in the field. We were told that collectives did not work as human nature is to be selfish, thus there was supposedly nothing we could do about it, ‘…go with the flow, it’s the genetic choice.’ This of course does not take into consideration many factors, history, anthropology, nature and genetics. Humans may not be herd animals but they are also not solitary beings, natural instinct draws us toward small close-knit collective groups within larger but looser community structures. This makes sense for the protection and advancement of the species, it is easier to gather food and carry out reconnaissance when there are still those left to look after the old, infirm and the young. Humans also nurture their young far longer than most animals, it is true that the home-leaving age of 18 is a state –defined and arbitrary one, but most parents are happy to look after their children, provided they have the means to do so, until a mutually defined time where the child wishes to leave and the parents believe s/he can survive on his/her own. There are exceptions but many of these may be the result of external forces such as lack of facilities or peer pressure.

The lack of financial stability can pose a great threat to a family unit, ultimately resulting in its demise this may well not be the fault of either parents or children. It is however within the family that such pressures may best be combated and hence children in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are tending to stay within the family home for longer. This is something that the state must look very carefully at, it is a bad thing for children to be forced from the home because parents cannot afford to keep them, however it is also detrimental for children to be molly coddled and never to learn the value of things around them. It is beneficial for teenagers and early 20s to start to strike out on their own, knowing that they have the parental safety net behind them, this enables them to take risks that as individuals they would not necessarily be able to do. Traditionally University has been the ideal opportunity for youngsters to make their initial forays into the world at large, a gap year has been taken between secondary and tertiary education leaving time for travel or employment. Unfortunately a large section of society has now been denied this opportunity due to the current prohibitive financial demands of tertiary education. It cannot be stressed enough what damage this is doing to the fabric of society, as well as creating an educational elite from the existing financial one it is forcing many of the already under-privileged into employment, purely for financial survival, at an age when few can have had much of a chance to develop ideas and dreams of their prospective futures.

War - Sept 2000

A war always stirs up feelings of nationalism and inexorably with it comes xenophobia and isolationism. It need not necessarily be due to soldiers on battlefields for as we have seen wars can be fought ‘diplomatically’ behind closed doors and yet have the same effects as the more conventional variety. Wars far from home can also provoke sentiments either of apathy or hysteria relating to the fear of who will clean up the pieces and how much it will cost. The part that America has played in many of these wars over the last fifty years cannot be underestimated.

The cold war was ostensibly a struggle between the NKVD (KGB) on the Russian side and the National Security Council coupled with the CIA on the other. All the other countries across the Northern hemisphere embroiled in this contretemps can only realistically be called subservient participants. MI5/MI6, the Stasi (The East German Secret Police - Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit MfS), the Rumanian Securitate generally worked in conjunction, if not ultimately for, their larger allies. The point is whilst a war is waged mud is slung of which some is bound to stick, under normal circumstances the general populace would be a little too shrewd to accept this information, probity appears to be significantly diluted in the case of revelations about the enemy. The cold war itself is a prime example of the powers of propaganda, all talk and thankfully no action. I know of no other example where the entire population of at least three continents were successfully brainwashed into believing spurious rumours profligated by state information sources without so much as a second cursory glance. What I find particularly difficult to understand is how both factions managed to hold their banners and proclaim to be the saviours of purest and only workable doctrine. Analysts of capitalism would hardly to state that the capitalism practised by the United States or Europe was ever true to the teachings Adam Smith or the other economists of his day. Such criticisms seem to abound in the nineties and be viewed as a la mode under a subsection that this is proof of the freedom of expression in a capitalist society. Why is it therefore that very few appear to retrospectively question the other side? There are many analysts of the USSR and many more still of ideological communism and yet their commentaries and conceivable criticisms of the Soviet version are not forthcoming. Perhaps as capitalism and the Western world appears to be triumphant over the East signified with the fall of the Berlin wall and the popular revolutions in the Soviet satellite states, the present day powers that be see no reason to resurrect the hammer and sickle by asking probing questions about its past. This is particularly poignant for if Soviet communism, or for that matter Chinese, was exposed as not ideologically true to the principles of its founding fathers there would naturally have to follow some form of explanation as to what it is that theoretical communism is supposed to be.

This would be highly risky for the status quo for the masses would be greatly interested in a doctrine that advocated an equal chance for all from an equal status at birth - a political clean slate, so to speak. This also explains the treatment of China, a country that brutally subverts dissidents as seen for example at Tiannanmen Square. If these actions were to have taken place in a smaller, weaker (perhaps more strategically positioned) country, let us hypothetically use the example of Cuba, would have provoked the “democracy” protectors who would have amassed on its borders/shores to clean up corruption and save the people from dictatorship. (Some might already say that such forces do not need an excuse and cite the Bay of Pigs scenario as evidence. I can only defer to this point. Whilst it has become fashionable and publicly applauded by the establishment to expose the horrors of foreign campaigning in the media, Vietnam and occasionally limited information regarding the debacle in Cambodia, covert operations do not fall into this category. Usually these exposés show the misfortune and suffering befalling ordinary soldiers which conveniently can be almost directly blamed upon a disgraced American Head of State. Should a plausible scapegoat not be forthcoming or when events may implicate a powerful and as yet untarnished figure, the details of operations tend to remain in inaccessible archives to gather dust. It can be the case later that the Security forces wish to rid themselves of someone who has become a burden, perhaps a little too free-willed, in this case these past scandals, normally decreed secret for the sake of ‘National Security’ will miraculously appear on the desk of the person required to use them. This, coincidentally, is supposed to provide proof of the Freedom of Information, what it more accurately suggests is that you are free to know what the state wants you to know and the occasional ‘titbit’ that it is willing to let you ‘find out’!

The Media Aug '97 - July '98

The media play a particularly malevolent part in the continuation of the Status Quo in present day society. Ironically enough it was a group of journalists who uncovered the details of the Watergate scandal, thus donating the real powers that be a patsy with whom to burden all the blame, and the American public with a villain on whom to vent their discontent. In would be pleasant, though I fear a little naive, to believe that these journalists acting on their own initiative uncovered the scoop of the century. I fear that that truth lies more in a nod and a wink in the right place allowing the floodgates to open and an unprecedented impeachment of the head of state to ensue. This cleverly took the heat off the more camera-shy, just as in the Kennedy assassinations the previous decade. The latter example proving beyond doubt that if the National Security Council / CIA wish to keep certain details quiet, their is no Freedom of Information act that will make them comply, they are ‘above the law’. Uncomfortable as it may be for the Americans to contemplate, their are many state actions in their recent history that do not add up.


The media played a large part in the covering of the collapse of the Eastern Block, and therefore were able to have a significant role in the way we back home in the West perceived the whole affair. For those of us not present in East Berlin, Bucharest, Prague or Warsaw or Moscow our opinions were shaped entirely from those events deemed newsworthy by the crews there at the time. Who decided which city to cover, which person(s) to interview, and did anybody care? I, like many others was touched by the pictures of euphoric people atop the wall and passing through the Brandenburg Gate on the 9th November 1989, but then I was only 17 and did not discover the whole story until much later. I look back on these events now and wonder why so many of us felt that history had been made and an oppressed people liberated I was too young and too far away to formulate my own objective opinion I relied on the media to provide me with the facts and thereby the basis to do so. Having only been to Berlin a couple of times I couldn’t fully appreciate the depth and complexity of the GDR problem then. I have now lived in the former GDR, in a city little changed over the six years since the demise of the state save for the rise of the neo-nazi contingent, the rise in unemployment, the rise in competitive consumerism and the fall in western subsidies. I met many people who lived much of their lives under the oppression that we in the West were so glad to see come to an end in the ‘people’s revolutions’ no matter how much blood was shed. I can only presume then that the feelings I felt when I watched the wall torn down, were the product of the media and the state in which I lived.

This is what I was supposed to believe, as a good capitalist I was meant to share the victory of the market economy over its planned counterpart and see the spoils of war, the people dancing in the streets and the end to the threat of global nuclear warfare. The actuality of this period is not for this chapter to address, suffice to say the media served its purpose in suppressing debate on the subject with alarming success. I wonder how Europe would have fared had the Eastern Bloc countries survived long enough to witness the West going through the most crippling recession since the 1950’s. The austerity many families and individuals were forced to endure during this period would not have looked out of place in Eastern Europe, how ironic it would have been if the Soviet Union had been forced to bale us out, perhaps it would have removed the West’s intolerable smugness and self-righteous manner - that in itself would have been grounds for celebration! It has been said that a bank is only as sound as its investors’ money. Whilst the investors remain confident the bank prospers, but input the element of doubt in competence or the stability of circumstances into the minds of the investors and they withdraw their money and look to safer havens, this will ultimately bring about the dissolution of the bank regardless of whether the doubt was well-founded or not. He who controls the element of doubt is a powerful man indeed especially as the capitalist economy is founded on these market principles. One has to ask the question is this situation, where uninvolved individuals can, by speculation, make or break the economies of countries, and therefore influence the fortunes of the citizens, really a sound basis for the governing of society? 


I have wanted to be a journalist/writer since the age of 18, a formerly noble profession in which I thought one could possibly aim to help try to balance the lack of equilibrium between the classes and therefore forge together the makings of a fair and just society for all. This is perhaps particularly important for a person not entirely adhering to any classes and seeking to gain acceptance or at least tolerance from any of them. The steady realisation that all is not well in society at large and notably within the media world has cut deeply, although as I will state many times I myself must confess that I do not hold the solutions to the problems. I believe that the media can function as a communication tool to act on behalf of the people and the state, it is fundamentally there to inform and allow us to have the necessary facts at our disposal in order to formulate a rounded opinion so that we may have a realistic idea as to what is going right and equally importantly what is not. The more people aware of the problems the greater the pool of knowledge within which to discuss the solutions, it is not important who is first to a story or who gets the exclusive rights etc. etc. What is important is that the news business is cleaned up once and for all and we rid ourselves of the mindless pap put out by magnates who would prefer it that we simply by their brand of drivel, shut up and stop asking questions. It is vital that journalists refuse to join the cover-up that is the ‘news’ today and start reporting the real issues, the ones which will affect us and many generations to come. Only this way can we start to address the backlog of information that needs to be supplied to all so that those with the potential intellect to answer some of our present-day concerns can start from a position of strength without having to waste time sifting through useless stories. One key change which I would suggest would be the abandoning of the pretence of objectivity, Karl Marx stated that the Press, one can safely include modern forms of media in this as well, can never be neutral as someone(s)will always control certain factors critical to its survival. Be it the printing presses, the ink, the paper or perhaps most importantly the access to information - the News Agencies.

Furthermore a journalist can never be fully objective due to them looking at events through their own eyes/ears and also using the ways of expression that they know to communicate them to other people. To bastardise a historical quote, Nietzsche once said that “historical objectivity is like a eunuch watching over the harem of world history.” I think this holds perfectly true to the current day, and serves to act as an analogy for all forms of objectivity in general. This means unless we are to remove the parts of ourselves that feel as well as the parts that judge things owing to past experiences, we can never view or explain happenings in a fully detached fashion. Now one solution is that offered by Marx who maintains that the press be in the hands of the state, which in turn is subservient to the people, thus the Media, now openly subjective, should work for the good of the people by working for the good of the state. This appears at first to be theoretical and sentimental lefty claptrap, some would say dangerously naive perhaps, there will naturally be those that disagree with such ideas, many of them with their own reasons for doing so. Others, I feel have purely been hoodwinked by the rhetoric of the Right since the collapse of the Eastern Block, they believe that the Free Press should always be the goal even if it be somewhat far off. I would strongly assert that this is in fact the dangerously naive principle, for it is far more pragmatic to recognise the impossibility of the task and therefore plan action accordingly. For those still with doubts one only has to look at who benefits from the present media set-up and how the magnates such as Murdoch, Springer, Black are able to ensure their own financial security and in addition the propagation of their political views, - it is perhaps no surprise that all the major news magnates control the right-wing press, which of course in many countries accounts for the only choice the population have, or could it in fact be the case that Murdoch is a closet communist who prints right-wing papers in a tongue in cheek fashion, or aiming to educate the people in the evils of capitalism in the method of ‘Die Welle’. The more worrying factor is the more covert control exacted over the News Agencies which supply most, and in some cases all, of the information that all the Media uses not simply that owned by the press barons, although this section of the ‘free’ Media is scant enough. When this position occurs in History it is regarded for what it is, ‘Totalitarianism’.


In my opinion one only has to look at the Pre-Second World War Press in Germany to gauge the possible consequences of the road down which we are hurtling. // Hugenberg Dates TelegraphenUnion WIPRO etc. etc. //
There are some writers and observers who have recognised the control exacted by the few over the Media which determines the opinion of the many. “At any given moment there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts” stated George Orwell, this is succinctly paraphrased by Noam Chomsky in what he chillingly calls the ‘Manufacture of Consent’. John Pilger in his book ‘Hidden Agendas’ writes, “ For us in democracies, the message of our saturation ‘free’ media is that there is only one way now, and opposition is heresy and fatalism ideal.” It is this ‘fatalism’, this ’manufactured consent’ that is the most dangerous of all the things that the ‘Establishment’ can throw at us, it is the self-censorship, we believe that as the present course is unavoidable it is best to go along with it. We stop looking for alternatives and stop forcing the decision-makers to justify those decisions. In this way Capitalism has entrenched itself far more than it should have been allowed and those now with their fingers in every hierarchical pie are going to be extremely tough to shift.

This is not to say that any would-be megalomaniac in the West necessarily has plans to do the same, yet, or moreover that s/he would be allowed to do so were they to try, however with the mechanism already in place one must wonder whether we will be able/ be allowed to check the status all the time, one slip-up and the consequences would be catastrophic.
I believe that all of us wish to express our own views to an audience, whether we feel we have the ability to do so or not. What is it that makes us lack this courage? We do not wish to look stupid and be ridiculed so we cover up our individual participation: “I have a friend who has a problem” or alternatively “hypothetically speaking, what if...?”. This passes the buck and allows us theoretically to express ourselves without fear of being exposed. What we could say if only we owned a newspaper and could employ like-minded journalists working under directives written in stone or would take the flack for us were our opinion not to be palatable. If these journalists were truly free then one would surely not take the risk of associating our good name with their potentially embarrassing views. If our opinions however were known, the rules of conduct crystal clear as was the knowledge of who is the boss how many dissenting voices would be likely to be heard? This being said what would be so wrong supplanting the individual at the top with an idea, mutually acceptable, let us call it the common good, tinkering with the iron directives and we’re almost back to Marx’s/Hegelian theory again. 



This was not entirely the case in the Eastern Block, the individual was replaced by ‘the party’ which often in reality did mean an individual as in the case of Stalin, Ceacescu, or Honecker but the difference here appears to be the reluctance of the majority of the Eastern Europeans to accept the facade allowing them therefore to read/listen/watch the media knowing that this was the state line. In the Western world this accepted line is passed off as objectivity and factual information beyond reproach. It is a great pity that the free media that set itself up in the transition period that followed the collapse of the Eastern bloc has been subsumed by the Western media machines, under the guise of market competition. The government has sold off its holding companies and thereby the presses, the paper companies, the press agencies, radio and television stations alike to the highest bidder, a process naturally favouring the affluent free-booting Western media magnates. What chance would a small co-operative of journalists and editors from Sachsen-Anhalt have in bidding against the giant expansionist Springer Verlag during one of the greatest industrial bargain basement auctions to take place in Europe. Naturally the co-op could try to continue its operation from make-shift premises but who will buy the local paper with all its advertisements and cover price twice that of the national daily with its numerous on-the-spot correspondence, regional supplements, cover photographs, exclusives and just ten pence on Mondays with extra sports section and free pull-out Royal magazine? Without State subsidies, enough newspapers must at least be sold to cover the overheads so in the late eighties and early nineties a very real opportunity to trial a de-centralised and relatively objective and independent media was sadly lost, perhaps forever. There is a slogan in East Germany the translation of which reads “I want my wall back and this time ten metres higher”. It is now put on T-shirts and sold to tourists just as the wall itself (and every other chopped up piece of slap-dash concrete in East Berlin) was. There is now a small bit of “Ost-bloc” in the living rooms and display cabinets of thousands if not millions of people all over the Western world. The symbol that was once the largest monument against the Capitalist West has in fact, in its death throes, become one of the most marketable pieces of capitalist merchandise this century. The T-shirt slogan shows that this irony is not entirely lost amongst the East Germans, though they find it less and less amusing as the subsidies fail to arrive, unemployment goes up and educational standards and prospects for the future go down.
The structure of the media is not simply built upon the whims of individuals, but rather a concept more sinister that touches on many of the situations that I have already mentioned and others that I will come to in due course.

The dawn of the 21st century heralds the widespread permeation of the Multimedia into all strata of Society, the Internet, lest one forgets was set up by the CIA to allow a continued accessing and transferral of information in the event of a global nuclear holocaust both during and after. The firm guards their secrets and technological advances as a Dragon would a cave of riches, I cannot believe that the Internet has been allowed to fall into the hands of Joe Public purely as an act of democratic benevolence. If, what the Americans say is true, the threat to the civilised world remains great, wouldn’t the CIA and the National Security Council want to hold on to this huge asset with its fallout purposes and intelligence potential? Alternatively, the explanation might be that the CIA and NSC decided that they could keep a far more covert eye on the world with Joe Public logging in every day to check his E-mail and ‘surf the net’. This is no random conspiracy theory as the American tracking stations across Europe testify to. The one in the North of Scotland is powerful enough to receive all the telephone conversations and filter through to look for keywords to monitor the activities of ‘known subversives’. As if that wasn’t enough the notorious clipper chip seems to be the final proof backing up this argument. For those new to “cyber surfing” the clipper chip was a method by which the American government planned to give themselves a back door access to all e-mail accounts and internet log-ins. This would allow them access to personal and business information rather like the post office having a quick glance at the letters passing through their hands to check for illicit material of a subversive, anti-establishment, anti-social nature. Bearing in mind most e-mail accounts have their source in the USA this would in effect have allowed the American government to scrutinise files and data pertaining to people over whom they should have no jurisdiction. Added to this it is worth remembering that not all countries have to declare such policy intentions to the public and it is therefore conceivable that some countries, at the behest of the Americans and not wishing to displease this potentially powerful ally, have implemented the clipper chip or similar such device to monitor the data of their citizens or “cyber immigrants” operating within their geographical boundaries. Whilst this may not seem life-threatening one need only look at the McCarthy era in the United States to show the damage caused by state suspicion and associations with supposedly suspicious elements. Of course nowadays many people may consider themselves too clever and devise elaborate encoding and decoding programs to protect their information/opinions, this is hardly likely to allay the suspicions of an eagerly prying state. Such themes are seldom tackled by the media not necessarily for want of interest so much as lack of proof, but the inaction the longer it continues leads us down a path foreseen by Orwell as early as 1948. 



Sometimes citizens cry out “injustice” often prompted by reports in the media and the people wait for something to be done about it, but it is no coincidence that at these points something equally gripping and possibly more moving will quickly be scheduled to divert people’s attention to events considerably further away from home. Reports of wars in Africa or Bosnia and famines and droughts across the third world will be brought back into the public eye again should people decide to recall facts such as the bombers of the Lockerbie plane still roaming free, or that lawyers are being killed when investigating or prosecuting Mafia bosses, or journalists murdered for asking too many awkward questions about the IRA or simply people questioning the unquestionable in whatever capacity. The Status Quo rolls on in the inevitable fashion of a bulldozer through a flat field, it cares little for what lies in its path and it would be folly to expect the wheels to grind to a halt to avoid crushing a blade of grass.

Politics July '98

Over the last few decades it has been ever easier to see the lack of any reasonable politics that lie in the traditional left of centre spot. What many perceived as having occupied this position since the 50’s, the Eastern Bloc or China, could under no circumstances be considered close to the ideal that they purported to espouse by anyone that really knows their Socio-Communism. However the demise of the Soviet Union and with it the other states of COMECON has had profound effects on the structure of the world and also the perception of left-wing ideology. The USA has turned it’s vitriolic attacks upon the threat of the Islamic world, in particular, Iraq. The seeming triumph of the capitalist West over the “communist” East has led also to a rise in various forms of Fundamentalism as Capitalism permeates every sector of Society and the average politics of the people and the institutions which govern or indoctrinate them veers alarmingly to the Right. One could be forgiven for thinking that there is not even any country remaining that conforms to the old ‘pseudo-communist’ order, China has been for many years America’s ‘most favoured trading nation’ and little mention is made in the media of Cuba or Vietnam. It puzzles me why the USSR with its ‘dangerous political ideology’ merited the 30 year armaments stand-off that defined the lives of most of the citizens of the Western world and the Eastern-Bloc and yet China manages to cover its political dogma with an invisibility cloak. Many of us cannot entirely complain as the Cold War perpetrated some of the most inhuman actions and politics and indoctrinated millions in both East and West alike to despise an ideal that was ultimately supposed to help them. The case of Cuba however, should not be allowed to be swept under the carpet quite so hastily; Cuba still lives under the shadow of an American trade embargo, this policy of the United States’ is in fact contra the orders of the United Nations, yet America appears willing to flout the UN regulations when it suits, and yet playing the World-wide police force when another country looks to follow this example.


The inherent hypocrisy and in some cases ‘toadying’ within the foreign policies of many Western countries is often embarrassing and sometimes downright immoral. Why is it for example that the United Kingdom handed over Hong Kong to the Chinese and yet refuses to contemplate doing the same with the counties of Ulster in Ireland? What is the difference in circumstances? The Chinese believed Hong Kong to be rightfully theirs and it was agreed that it would be repatriated long ago, although until recent times it was not clear if the British would adhere to their part of the bargain. The Irish believe all of Ireland belongs to them, all the provinces bar none. Their was no repatriation agreement, the British simply freebooted in during their military heyday, wishing to put an end to the support that the catholic Irish were providing to the Jacobite cause waging against the then monarch William of Orange. Perhaps if some settlement had been entered into then it would not be causing such problems now. What of the idea that the majority of Ulster considers itself to be British? The people of Hong Kong had the same idea, it did not aid their cause, nor persuade the British government to part with any full-citizen passports enabling the holder to take up residence in the UK. In fact it is more likely the case that there is a greater number in Ulster wishing the five counties to join the Republic, than there were pro-Chinese in Hong Kong. There is of course a violent history in Northern Ireland of terrorism and mindless slaughter, much as there has been in China - Tiananmann Square just one infamous example. So what is it that has made the situations so similar in essence but so different in outcome? I do not think it takes a genius to work out the disparity in world-wide influence that China commands compared to the Republic of Ireland. After all, only one is reputed to be a nuclear power, that same one with a vast army and general population, also called a Communist dictatorship, and yet enjoying trading status with the Western World far beyond the dreams of the former Soviet Union, such as America’s most favoured trading nation.

Britain is a country with a 50 year history of sucking up to our ‘transatlantic cousins’, a ‘special relationship’ which the United States sees fit to turn off and on as and when it suits, such as using it for bombing campaigns against targets normally far out of their reach such as Libya. Also their monitoring stations such as Menwith Hill which allow them to search all telephone conversations throughout Europe looking for keywords, presumably to keep an eye on the Communists and the genuine Liberals- let’s be frank the States has never really trusted Europe, and the sensible part of Europe has never really trusted the States. The problem is that Britain has constantly given the US a foothold with which to keep a close watch on the competition. Britain’s refusal to support any further European integration during the 1980’s must have had them laughing all the way to Capitol Hill. A way to keep Europe divided, and they didn’t even have to appear a part of it.


One of the main problems today, affecting politics, is the constant mutation of all forms of political ideology. There are no true Marxists, communists or capitalists anymore as the classical ideologies have been modernised/bastardised. This has happened to ideologies for centuries and in Western Europe ever since an unsuspecting Catholic monk named Martin Luther criticised the clerical establishment from a small town in south-eastern Germany and inadvertently created a new religious doctrine. Neither the orthodox ideas of Marx nor the economic ideas of Adam Smith are fully adhered to on either side of the political spectrum, and some might say they never have been. There is however, one ideology that through all its mutations remains terrifyingly constant - it is the doctrine of hate and jealousy, it is fascism. From Nazism to Fundamentalism it is truly the ideological Phoenix and the actions that it spawns are familiar to all generations even when the title is not. Unfortunately fascism is becoming more subconsciously accepted as order and conformity are the latest vote winners. This gives rise to a mistrust of variety or individuality and the outcasts from society - foreigners, drop-outs, drug addicts, the homeless, gypsies, the unemployed, non-conformists or romantic idealists become the universal scapegoats for the problems or the shortcomings of the have-nots. Hatred is whipped up by Right wing politicians and Armani-suited politicians who would have you believe that the foreigners are taking your jobs, smokers and other drug dependants are using up the NHS resources and all of the above-mentioned groups are responsible for the rise in crime and the destruction of the traditional family unit. The case in reality is that, in Britain as in most other economically developed countries, the foreigners are drafted in as cheap labour to do the jobs that the indigenous population would rather not undertake. This task is often the domain of the larger corporations who in Britain are able to take advantage of Draconian employer powers that after Thatcher’s dismantling of the trade unions, are exploited uncontested.

The hospital problem is equally uncomplicated, the ‘have’s’ use the NHS for the less important things but “go private” when it comes to the crunch. It is economically profitable whilst not being detrimental to the health for them to play the two systems and the government elected mostly on the whims of these people appears to mirror their lack of concern for the decline in social resources. Equally if the problem of drug addiction, by this both alcohol and tobacco, was handled more comprehensively and emphasis was put on cure for those already addicted and prevention for those who are not rather than economic profitability and fiscal usefulness, it would surely be easier to contain. I include nicotine in this because currently there are many complaints about the evils of tobacco and smokers are being forced to retreat into ever-smaller and darker corners to satisfy their addiction and I believe that nothing is being done to help those smokers who might wish to finally break free of the chain. In this respect nicotine should be classified as a class A highly addictive “hard drug” and smokers should be given the same chance for rehabilitation, provided by the state, as others addicted to drugs of similar genre such as heroin or cocaine. The cost increase in the short-term of this rehabilitation would be offset by the decrease in the medication, time and space required for the long-term treatment of cancer, emphaszema and bronchitis. The legal implementation of such a policy paper would be about a popular as a wild boar running amok during the Harrods sale and probably political suicide for the member responsible for its conception! The tobacco industry exercises considerable influence through its own profit making and tax generating potential and therefore whilst kept on side can be a good friend to an out-of-pocket government. As with all business relationships however, the right palms have to be greased. Perhaps the “Benson and Hedges” operating theatre or “Marlborough drug rehabilitation centre” would keep everybody happy. 


These are examples of the manipulation of the population by the industry magnates through the democratically elected government and the “modernisation” of language. It all leads to the same ends, namely intolerance, which is unhealthy in any society. Multi-cultural societies should be seen as potentially educational situations as there is always something that we can learn or appreciate about ourselves by looking, communicating and co-operating with those who are different from us. We Europeans should not forget that through the centuries of colonisation and civilisation of four of the world’s continents we established a metropolis/satellite relationship and “persuaded” these countries to accept out way of life as correct. They were taught through many generations that their respective colonial power be it France, Spain, Britain, Portugal, Germany or Holland was the Motherland, we really have only ourselves (or our ancestors) to blame if they have taken us at our word deciding to try to battle themselves out of poverty and famine by seeking their fortune in the lands of plenty.

It is interesting also to look at the linguistic differences in the way in which we refer to these people. For example the German word Gastarbeiter (guest worker) suggests that the person whilst being hospitably received is nevertheless expected to return home. The truth is that many of these workers in Germany, especially those from Turkey were drafted en masse as a source as a source of cheap labour with which to commence the rebuilding of the German economy post-1945, hence the largest percentage of these Turks remain in the Ruhrgebiet, Germany’s traditional industrial heartland. When they came originally throughout the forties and fifties there was no mention either upfront or in the small print that once Germany was great again they would be expected to leave. Equally the supposed huge influx of foreigners into Germany is relative in European terms. Germany remains low in the percentage of foreign per native population and is below that of both Belgium and France. The pressure cooker of the former East Germany receives a mere one percent of all refugees entering into the entire Federal republic. Now in contrast to this is the word for these people on Swedish Enwanderer which loosely translated means “wandering in” and clearly gives a different impression of how the person is to be viewed.

Philosophy - July '98

I feel that if we cannot pick holes in the arguments of past philosophers then one of two things must be the case: either we have not progressed past the ideological state in which the idea found its conception, or the point must be valid (pending the input of future thinkers) regardless of time-frame.


Control is one of the most important factors in the maintenance of modern democracies. The pretence in these societies is that any given individual enjoys the right to choose the path of his/her life and effectively regulate his/her own destiny, the facade of these rights is backed up by the society’s constitution (in those democracies that have one) which guarantees certain fundamental principles in a supra-governmental capacity, supposedly safeguarding them from the day-to-day tinkerings of an emerging dictatorship. Thus, in theory it is the constitutional right of every American to burn the flag of the United States in peaceful protest, in practise however it is ill-advisable to do so especially in Southern states as one can expect to have the aforementioned constitutional article violently beaten out of you! This is rather bizarre when one compares this with England, where there are no constitutional rights to safeguard the citizen and yet one would not expect any reprisals if one was to burn the Union Jack, excepting certain areas of East and South-East London where the extreme right-wing forces are in abundance. The tactic in a democracy is that if one goes to such ends to proclaim a freedom, the populous must at least believe that they have it, and if not then a viable scapegoat must be provided that the public can reasonably believe is subversive enough to try to thwart the benevolent State and would sink so low as to deny them their rights:- foreigners, non-conformists, teenagers, students, political deviants, social deviants (homosexuals), anyone normally marginalised, the details are unimportant. There are usually enough people pushing the right buttons for anyone feeling downtrodden to be able to take their pick from the list of suitable ‘offenders’, the ‘Usual Suspects’ as it were. This is not a new situation in Western Europe, the Jews an testify to that over many centuries of purges and pogroms as in fact can the Hugenots, the heretics, the Catholics (at the hands of the Protestants) and the Protestants ( at the hands of the Catholics). In my opinion though, the difference with contemporary nationalism is a subtlety and a slickness and an almost state sanctioned quiet arrogance that the leaders appear to possess.

The targets of these movements are becoming more and more random and it is increasingly difficult for the man in the street to keep himself out of the “persona non grata” section of society. Christian fundamentalism is “justified” as being a reaction to Islamic fundamentalism, the latter presumably using precisely the same argument. Both of these groups are no more than religious fascists and I would imagine that the one that finds it least amusing is God/Allah/call him/her what you will, and I would wager that the profits are hardly chortling in corners. If this sounds blasphemous and I an criticised for it, I suggest that one first looks at the members of these groups committing mortal sins, killing one another before we are to start blasting people for exposing idiosyncracies and injustices of it all. For the genuine religious souls who adhere to their teachings and at heart humanist ideals my sympathy and admiration goes out. I can only hope that they continue to do so and contrive that this will be the example set to the new prereligious generation, rather than the one of those who masquerade under the guise of goodness and religion. Is it really surprising that in Marx’ writings organised religion was termed “opium for the people”. It is no coincidence that most of the wars fought involve to a greater or lesser extent groups of differing religions (however slight these differences may seem to the casual observer) Northern Ireland, the Persian Gulf and the states of the former Yugoslavia are merely small contemporary selections of twentieth century conflict that is happening on our doorstep. This is unfortunately no new phenomenon and whilst many people across religious, socio-political and geographical divides may be aware of the effects, they may not pay due attention to the causes and the bigots high up in the political and religious spheres who use the fear to their advantage and to reinforce their opinions. Knowledge and mass condemnation of the holocaust in WWII leads many nowadays to believe that ‘it could never happen here, not in the civilised world’. After many such events throughout history it should come as no surprise that these crimes against humanity occur, perhaps more surprising is that they do not happen more often. By this I mean, that as such episodes of genocide have occurred since WWII and yet the international community stands idly by, it is a wonder that not more tin-pot dictators do not try their luck to call the U.N.’s bluff. The peoples of East Timor, Cambodia and Bosnia amongst others have been subjected to policies of ethnic cleansing in the last 20 to 30 years. They would argue that such policies have been happening all along in one shape or form in nearly every conflict since WW11 but the international community has either chosen not to notice or somehow the details are never allowed to reach us, and lo and behold! we return to the problems of the media.


Noam Chomsky did a study of press reports from the late 1960’s comparing those in the New York Times concerning Cambodia and the atrocities committed there and the invasion of East Timor by the Indonesians that happened concurrently. A massive amount of reports flooded in about Cambodia, including information about a mass genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge before it had in fact been committed. Sadly the same situation was true in East Timor, but the articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post had been lifted sentence by sentence from the London Times and factual information was scant to say the least. Chomsky asserted that the reason for this was clear: the Americans, at that time were rampant in Vietnam, and had promised to protect Cambodia and its people from the marauding Khmer Rouge guerillas. The Khmer Rouge, who in turn were supporting and were supported by the Vietkong, were therefore at war against the Americans by association. The necessary vilification of the “communists” ran in tandem with standard American foreign policy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. East Timor, however was attacked by the Indonesians, who were considered friends of the Western World, good arms and munitions buyers and it would therefore have been politically hazardous to upset such a lucrative trade. Many inside East Timor have probably perished trying to do just that. Those of us on the outside will never know and the status quo: the Indonesian led puppet state, Western Arms dealers (and thereby Western governments will probably never care. The realisation of the futility of the task that the dissidents, revolutionaries and those constantly banging the drum of civil rights face, will lead to most of them moving on to another worthy cause (there are after all so many) and those left fighting behind will be consigned to exist as pocket groups of subversives that the state and counter-revolutionary forces will pick off one by one.

US July '98

The media play a particularly malevolent part in the continuation of the Status Quo in present day American society. Ironically enough it was a group of journalists who uncovered the details of the Watergate scandal, thus donating the real powers that be a patsy with whom to burden all the blame, and the American public with a villain on whom to vent their discontent. In would be pleasant, though I fear a little naive, to believe that these journalists acting on their own initiative uncovered the scoop of the century. I fear that that truth lies more in a nod and a wink in the right place allowing the floodgates to open and an unprecedented impeachment of the head of state to ensue. This cleverly took the heat off the more camera-shy allowing them to continue about their sinister business, just as in the Kennedy assassinations the previous decade. The latter example proving beyond doubt that if the National Security Council / CIA wish to keep certain details quiet, their is no Freedom of Information act that will make them comply, they are ‘above the law’.

Uncomfortable as it may be for the Americans to contemplate, there are many state actions in their recent history that do not add up. The electorate seem eager to accept the state version of events and believe justice to have been done, unfortunately it merely prolongs the time-bomb as sooner or later the facts will have to be faced and dealt with. A particular incident I find disquieting is the spate of ‘Communist’ Witch-hunts at the hands of Senator Macarthy in the 1950’s, one could draw parallels here with the Stalin purges, also an example of Dictatorship getting rid of possible enemies on the grounds of a whiff of suspicion. The example in many ways stops here, for in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe there was, for good or bad, no illusion of free speech or freedom of information in spite of hollow constitutional promises as the American citizens appear to believe they have in their own country. My heart goes out to those families whose loved ones fought against fascism in the Second World War, surviving only to perish at the hands of a more subtle version of it later in the so-called civilised world.

Timor Question - July '98

If a person has access to and has read the right literature, s/he would be forgiven for thinking that the world was fully aware of the East Timor problem and the ,main question would be, ‘Why does no-one do anything?’ The illegal invasion and subsequent genocide carried out by western-trained Indonesian troops has been covered by high-profile figures such as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger who could expect to reach large audiences and perhaps stir some feelings to action. The truth, unfortunately for those who have fallen or are still fighting in East Timor, is less clear-cut, for whilst those exposing the atrocities have some sphere of influence over the intelligentsia, they have long since been dismissed by governments as irritating left-wing intellectual. It is the governments on all sides who perpetuate the situation. The Western ones supplying arms and training to the Indonesian Death-Squads and the Indonesian one continuing to violate the U.N. resolutions as well as the basic human rights of the Timorese people.

Original Introduction August '97

I realise that for any reader of these notes, they cannot realistically be called anything else, the style may seem somewhat rambling and at times possibly nigh on impossible to follow. I make no apology for this as this essay started out as a stream of thoughts over a period of time, that one day I decided to record for my own posterity, a Thought Diary if you like. It was and is fundamentally for my personal pleasure, something to look back on and provide an insight into what I was thinking when I am old and reactionary! My original intention to leave the themes in their ‘Thought order’ appears to have been rather over-ambitious in terms of readability, and I have therefore done a little constructive re-arranging to the ideas within a rough framework. I hope any reader will indulge me in the formation of the topics and not be distracted by the fashion I have chosen to link them together. I have thought hard about the ideas and wrote them whilst they came to me, when they no longer did so, I stopped as I see no reason to try to extend for the sake of protocol.

The purpose of this essay, ideally, is to express my views of the problems facing the world and those of us who live in it. I have limited solutions, but believe if enough people are made aware of the difficulties, the sheer weight of thought power and communication will enable somebody at some stage to come up with some answers. It would be a shame and a tragedy for all of us if there was potential that was never realised simply because people have been hoodwinked into believing that everything is as it should be.

My choice of title comes from the fact that in this essay’s infancy I was unemployed looking desperately for a job somewhere, anywhere, in the field of journalism. I was unsuccessful and resorted to having to solicit my language skills for a computer company. Whilst unemployed I had a little time on my hands and the concept of this essay was born, as well as the time to nature it in the beginning. Let me say that in these thoughts expressed there will be no sacred cows left, no taboos- I wish to be uncompromising and I will attack things that I see as wrong that need to be corrected, I make no apologies for my actions to this end. I believe these taboo subjects are often made so because they have been deliberately implemented to preclude debate and lead to the sort of hushed decision-making in Star Chambers that we presently see across much of the Western World, it is neither a democratic nor a constructive process. I do not intend to criticise out of prejudice, at least, it is not done consciously and I trust it will be looked upon accordingly if I have erred. I am not writing for any particular cause or purpose and because of this I would welcome criticism and debate as to the content of my ideas.

On a broader scale this is the only way that we will be able to tackle all the demons and thrash out a mutually beneficial solution for all of us Left, Right, Centre or Without. I do not believe that such a solution exists at the moment, nor perhaps ever will, and I would maintain that no one ideology encompasses the good sides without also bringing an equilibrium of evils. I do feel, however that some ideas may be closer to where we should be researching than others that should have been long since consigned to the dustbin of out-dated politics, I cannot imagine that my preferences will be mistaken but that is my business.

Thank you for taking the time to read this book, or at least thus far, my hope is that it will make you think, and through this give you enjoyment, as indeed it did for me throughout its conception.

Original Prologue August '97ish

I think it only fair and correct to give some form of background to my thinking and this involves a potted history, albeit a rather subjective one, of what has made me think and feel the way I do, where the axes that I have to grind come from so to speak. This whilst not interesting in its own right may serve to shed some light on the sources of my ideas and provide the reader with the necessary basic facts to do some further more objective delving should s/he require. I would also not wish to be accused of intentionally hiding any facts by my critics, and I apologise should it transpire that I inadvertently have done so. I am not ashamed of my background itself, I am no working class hero or local boy made good nor am I a part of the intellectual or political establishment and have as such no hidden agenda in my comments expressed herein.


I was born in 1971, living the first nine years of my childhood in relatively comfortable lower middle-class London surroundings. In 1980 circumstances dictated a shift in position for my mother and myself and we ended up on a council estate near Latimer road on the wrong side of Kensington, West London. At around this time my educational environment changed in the opposite direction from Inner London state school to St. Paul’s in a rural South West London suburb. For all but the first one and a half years of the next eight, I resided in one of the school’s boarding houses which I detested resoundingly, feeling increasingly claustrophobic as the school system became more and more intolerable. In the school’s eyes I excelled at little except playing the fool, an aptitude which I had brought with me from my previous establishment. In spite of this propensity for clowning I was unpopular and forced into an exile of my own company which upset me particularly as, during the week, there was no escaping my peers. This all lasted until at 16 I discovered a fledgling sardonic tongue, this provided me with much opportunity for reflection during numerous detentions as a result of exercising my new found prowess at less advisable moments, but it also made me more amenable to some of my fellow pupils if not the school hierarchy. 


My domestic life was substantially more comfortable in the face of standing out a little as the local kids knew I wasn’t “One of them”, I tended to keep within the safe confines of the flat, making occasional forays up four floors to another “outlaw’s” domicile. 


I was raised ostensibly by my mother with assistance from my maternal Grandmother during my early teens. My mother ensured I grew up in an erudite and cosmopolitan atmosphere, she placed importance in literature, language, communication travel and people in general. I was provided with a considerable number of books and my mother struggled to obtain the financial wherewithal to allow me to take part in school activities such as the numerous German exchanges on offer, our finances did not run to the ski trips and visits to exotic locations such as Moscow. I did not understand at the time why I was never able to accompany my fellow pupils on these trips and why we were never able to go on extended family holidays to foreign climes. I became rather embittered at my lot and jealous of my compatriots, at first blaming my mother for the lack of resources, later realising that the school catered purely for the well-off and made little or no allowances for those of us token paupers who attended on the basis of scholarships from the government or charitable institutions. In fact the school’s lack of understanding was illustrated when my half-term was extended due to my mother’s inability to come up with advance fees payment for what remained after the Assisted place scheme and Bursary scholarship had chipped away at the exorbitant total sum. It was a case of “no money, no education” and was carried out mercilessly, suffice to say the credit of other parents was never called into question in so far as I know. [Ironically enough the school itself maintains the status of ‘Charitable Institution’ a source of constant amazement and consternation to me when I look upon it’s behaviour and the way it has seen fit to spend it’s innumerable wealth, a huge multi-million pound theatre for example which it now appears is too heavy for the foundations of the sports changing rooms below it, and all this on a site which is atop a reservoir and was only intended as a temporary re-housing, the buildings being built in the 50’s to withstand 30 years of educational wear and tear.] 


It still angers me the way my mother was treated in comparison to those parents ‘in the establishment’, and it would be folly to think that this has not coloured my views on education ever since. I am however pragmatic enough to realise that I was given a lucky break and my education as a result was of a far higher standard than my family’s circumstances would normally have permitted. Having glimpsed the other side and fraternised with those supposedly ‘in a class above my own’, I realise that it is impossible to be accepted by different class but plausible to be ostracised by your own class and therefore be, for all intents and purposes, an outlaw or classless person. Perhaps this is not always a bad thing.


Aside from my schooling and domestic situation with my mother, was that with my father. I had seen my father regularly twice a month since my parents separated when I was two. My father was (and is) a civil servant, relatively comfortably-off without ever being wealthy, a kind, caring and gentle man and conscientious parent, he remains by circumstances entrenched in the suburban, middle-class commuter-belt establishment and appeared to epitomise the broken man of potential, that I always feared might also be my fate. My father had no lack of education, a love for history and a creative streak that manifested itself in a passion for painting model soldiers and helping me complete my airfix kits, but I more than once felt that perhaps he regretted not taking a more active role and made a stand for the things he believed in the way his father had done before him. [My Grandfather had done his bit for the working-class socialist cause, around and active at the time of Cable St. he took part in the marbles and mounted police incidents in Hyde Park, not particularly advisable as police brutality was rampant, had he been caught, the consequences, not least for my existence, would have been grave.] In actuality I think my father was forced into responsibility early and coped well, realising that he had other issues and indeed other people to think about rather than just his own beliefs. I treated him unfairly when I was a bolshy teenager, accusing him of selling out and letting the system walk all over him, when really he was trying to protect me from a world that didn’t give a damn, he knew that if I tried to buck the establishment it would bite me hard He attempted to warn me but my new found confidence at school led me to believe I was invincible, maturity and some experience of life taught me otherwise, and I have always deeply regretted that obstinacy that prevented me from having any contact with him for nigh on 4 years.


Leaving school I decided to take some time before what I felt would be the inevitable place at university, this proved to be a transition destined to take considerably longer than I thought, and my pride was much damaged by the rejections of every university I applied to at my first attempt. I plied myself to numerous labouring jobs which didn’t suit my more lethargic nature, I spent time working in both Germany and America, finally deciding that if England wouldn’t let me study I would take my skills elsewhere and undertook to apply to university in Germany, having finally satisfied the mountainous German bureaucratic requirements and sent my applications to Leipzig and Humbolt in East Berlin, I was informed by Humbolt some weeks later that they had arrived two days after the cut off deadline, which the university adhered to diligently, I never received a response, nor for that matter a refund from Leipzig. As fate would have it, through the persuasion of some friends in the back of a car, and having no better offers on the table, I entered into dialogue with the Head of European Languages at Goldsmiths’ college, London who informed me that I would be welcome to study German at the college and I magnanimously decided to accept his kind offer.


By this point my domestic environment had relocated to Oxford on account of my mother going to college there to study PPE in 1983. I was 15 years old and horrified at having to envisage life for the first time outside London. As it turned out when, nine years later, I was to take my place at University my sole concern was that I would have to leave Oxford and return, kicking and screaming, to London! I believe that life in certain villages is something that every city dweller should experience. In spite of my early apprehensions the village in which I resided with my mother and step-father, ten miles west of Oxford centre, holds many pleasant memories for me. It is one of the few places that I still look back on and consider home, the people were warm and friendly and no-one was borne any hostility for their various idiosyncrasies. (Mine happening to be walking along the village lanes to the only post-box in dressing gown and slippers whilst supping a cup of tea.) It is a place all too illusive in this world of ours where one may feel at ease and exercise one’s natural character without fear of reprisals. Maybe we were always seen as “city folk” but if so we were never made to feel it and due to the burial of my grandfather in the village cemetery I will always have at least some emotional links there if no longer any physical ones.


University proved on the one hand to be more rewarding than I had expected and on the other a great disappointment. Ironically it was the academic side that gave me more pleasure and satisfaction, mainly owing to the fact that save a handful of important exceptions I found the social element sadly lacking. This is not to say that there weren’t a variety of activities both social and academic to keep one occupied, simply that the people I found at University were more often than not similar to those I had encountered at St Pauls’ even though not necessarily from the same class background. What angered me the most was the apathy that those of us with open eyes encountered amongst our compatriots. It had started long before I got there but I myself noticed a marked increase during the time I spent at college. Alarmingly this attitude was not merely confined to happenings affecting others but also events which had a direct detrimental effect on the students themselves and their own studies. I found, and still find, this hard to comprehend. Whilst I was at college, grants were cut by 30%, lecturers were either made redundant or had their hours drastically reduced or were forced to place more emphasis on their research time thus allowing the opportunity for tutorials to suffer, whether they wish them to or not. Furthermore, the HEFCE lowered funding for certain courses such as demoting Languages to the same funding grade as English and History thus forcing many departments into the measures already listed. Students therefore had the value of their degree demeaned whilst the cost rose to the crippling, leaving many no options but to quit their studies or live in uninhabitable accommodation. The alternative was a spiralling bill totalling around £7000, this was the figure left despite many students obtaining part-time employment to ease the burden.


The less financially fortunate student, or rather those students without wealth and parents would face a normal week of 15 hours of lecture times and between 15 and 25 of part-time work. (This is before any research time has been calculated). Standard college estimations allotted a minimum of 20 to 25 hours of research time per week to best meet the requirements of the course. As if this wasn’t enough, a canny employer would have his/her student working the most unsociable hours “so as not to interfere with your studies or lecture times”. Yet the country still wonders why mental and physical illness as well as drug abuse, depression and the recent meningitis epidemic is rife on student campuses. Some of us were lucky enough to have genuinely understanding employers, some of the time, in those cases one had more time to deal with the unsympathetic/bordering on the criminal private landlords. The workloads set by college departments did not change from student to student meaning that those not having to seek active employment had on average between 2 and 3 working days per week longer to devote their studies. The vast majority of these students did nothing to help the cause of their embattled colleagues resulting in the grant cuts that were relatively unimpeded. This ironically led to many of the previously “safe” students to fall into the work or quit trap. The only people therefore that remained unscathed through these changes, students and lecturers alike, were those with considerable financial backing. Yet the situation worsens year-by-year irrespective of government, due to the continued apathy and “I’m all right Jack” mentality. In ten years it will have become nigh on impossible for even the comfortable middle classes to send their children into higher education without trust funds and the like, any chance the working class might have had has sadly long since perished. 


In the face of all this, protest and criticism has been and remains minimal and leads me to the conclusion that the “manufacture of consent” as Chomsky puts it, is more widespread than those left with an independent brain would like to consider. Hence, having finished my degree and been guilty myself of many apathetic moments and actions, although I would maintain that these had more to do with my inherent lethargy than a belief that all is well, I find myself needing to vent some expression and criticism. I cannot hope that it will change anything, though I still firmly believe that I people wish things to change badly enough and are willing to stand up for their neighbours as well as themselves then society and the establishment will have no choice but to listen and act under instruction. I can sit and avoid the count no longer.