Aurelian a former British ambassador who prefers to stay anonymous on the political impasse, first past thee post & all of that mainly featuring the current French farce. IMO for what it's worth I believe he is spot on while he warns of the inevitable rise of the Right if the pols don't get their houses in order.
Extract - " None of that is true today. Neoliberalism has largely succeeded in destroying any concept of a society of coherent groups, replacing it with a mass of alienated, utility-seeking consumers, compulsorily ascribed to newly-invented and marketed “identities.” Political parties these days operate like product manufacturers, targeting market segments with differential advertising. Understandably, therefore, the “consumers” of politics move from party to party as they might move from brand to brand. A fractured society will inevitably produce a fractured political system, and there are no technical solutions to that. In the end, all genuine political struggles are articulations of social struggles, by, or on behalf of, authentically existing groups. So this year we commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the crushing of the 1984 miners’ strike in the UK; the last stand of organised labour against the brutalities of Thatcherism. But what was striking about that episode was the social solidarity within and between mining communities: the men manned the picket lines and supported other strikers while the women somehow kept families together and food on the table. I suspect that for anyone born after, say, 1980, this must sound like a historical novel. The social, and even family structures have long disappeared, and these days feminists would be bused in to explain to the women that their real enemies were their husbands and the patriarchy, not the government and the employers.
The political machinery that should turn the aspirations and priorities of the people into facts has stopped working, and no amount of fiddling with dials and switches can get it going again. All the evidence is that when the existing mechanisms of a state and political system no longer produce the desired result, people will look around for alternatives. In spite of hand-waving assertions to the contrary, there is no reason to suppose that the domination of the Party will last forever, any more than any other political system has. Its own internal weaknesses, its incompetence and the fact that the Outer Party may finally be turning against the Inner Party, mean that its effective end could come in a matter of years. Yet in the case of France, certainly, there are no groups outside the existing system that have the organisation and the expertise to take and hold power: rather, they will destroy, but be unable to create. So to adapt Gramsci, the old is dying but the new may never be born. Instead, we may find a field of ruins.
This would be, of course, the opportunity of the century (at least) for a populist party of the genuine Left to arise, and the Party itself is much more afraid of this than of any alleged “fascists” on the other side of the spectrum. In France, a few brave souls like Fabien Roussel the Communist Party leader and François Ruffin (who left LFI in disgust) are trying to create a left-populist discourse, but are being drowned with derision, not least by the Notional Left itself. So the impetus will inevitably come from the Right, and it’s not going to be funny.
It would be much wiser of the Party to make concessions to populist Left ideas now, because they are not going to like the alternative when it happens. But then no-one ever accused them of being overly intelligent. I’ve become convinced, in fact, that with the machine seizing up as it has, those who make a populism of the Left impossible will make a populism of the Right inevitable ".
I am hopefully not out of line by being off topic here, but if anyone wants to gain a deeper understanding of the current ME fiasco, then IMO for what it is worth this discussion between Ex. CIA operative Larry Johnson & Ex. British Ambassador Alistair Crooke pretty much nails the why & the wherefore of it all.
For those still in any doubt that mass immigration is about big business, here's the latest press release from the Institute of Directors:
“While the number of vacancies has reduced for the 26th consecutive quarter, for those employers looking to hire the decrease in the unemployment rate means that they are still struggling to access the labour and skills they need to grow and thrive.
Businesses will welcome the decrease in average earnings by 0.3 percentage points but, at 5.1%, it remains a significant inflationary pressure for employers."
So given that there are only 898,000 job vacancies at any one time and at least 1.5 million unemployed (only people registered for benefits are counted) that means there are obviously not enough jobs for everyone and yet the business class want an even bigger over supply of labour
Starmer has certainly hit the ground running TINA style, while the mainly Northern towns & cities shithole pressure cooker finally let off some steam, giving him the excuse to crackdown on freedom of speech, while Liz Kendall threatens the disabled & Ed Balls & his frightful wife get to do some ITV morning show, which I have not seen & could not bear to watch - typically for me I become an OAP & they ban the Winter fuel allowance. 300.000 kids apparently suffering from food poverty with an increasingly stretched foodbank Britain, but Zelensky & his gangsters need the cash.
I left Newcastle- under Lyme a conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent 26 years ago due to outsourcing & my late wife's first battle with cancer, meaning I needed to earn more, so I took a salaried position in Ireland. Over the years I have visited once or twice a year & each time I have noticed the decline, rather like how you can notice how kids have grown up due to absence, which due to the changes being incremental are not seen by the parents.
I think that the rot accelerated post the 08/09 GFC which was confirmed on my last visit when I did a memory tour of old haunts mainly around the major town centre of Hanley which back in the 70's & &0's was the thriving heart of the city. Even allowing for rose tinted glasses the place is a dark shadow of it's former self which includes all of those ills that accompany that status.
In the late 70's I had a gig as a DJ in a pub within Hanley which had a very mixed clientele. First generation Jamaicans, locals. Pakistanis. Indians, members of the Gay community & one old Jewish guy. For the West Indians I would hop on a train for a couple of quid to Manchester Piccadilly, followed by a bus ride to Moss side as there was a record shop there which sold Lover's Rock. The mall was rundown & mainly empty which reminded me of the old film " Fort Apache - the Bronx " as the remaining shops post office, Off Licence & others were covered in security grilles, while there were obvious signs of addiction all around,
Back on the council estate where my parents were then living after I had left there was a line of shops - A small Tesco, a greengrocers, a chip shop, hardware shop, boutique, tv repair shop, Grocer, chemist, post office another grocer, newspaper shop & finally a small co-op - about a decade ago it had become a version of late 70's Moss side for mainly white people.
As far as I can tell none of the parties give a damn about the above which is also the case in many other places throughout the de-industrialised Midlands & North, which IMO are breeding grounds for actual Far Right movements or alternatively apathy & despair - S-O-T is apparently the capital of monkey dust or spice., which judging from what I have seen produces zombies. Of course the young don't remember that these places were once bustling with life.
Anyhow I'm going on & on like Mrs. Doyle & the above is only a symptom of the disease. I hope that there is a reset before I kick the bucket in what is likely increasingly becoming a no country for old men & women, I just hope that it won't be courtesy of a very real Far right.
If you have the time to spare or kill, or are really bored - this 8 minute video is pretty good on the present state of Hanley when I wandered around being triggered by memories. There are many others on YT featuring similar places under similar conditions -
I do personally think it's imperative to change the voting system because a) I'm sick of the whole voting for parties to keep other parties out farago and b) I think the neoliberal revolution has been so extreme in Britain and America precisely because First Past the Post has given such a strong mandate to the Thatcherites and Reaganites. If you actually look at the polling data from the 80s, Thatcher was never popular with more than about 35% of the population, she was considered to be too harsh but she kept getting in because the opposition was split between Labour and the SDP. I think a stronger economically Left wing vote on the continent has restrained their Right wing parties.
The one place PR hasn't helped so much is on the question of immigration and culture. But I'd still rather live in Holland and Denmark in high wage economies with strong welfare states and deal with those problems than Britain many places in which are teetering on total socio-economic breakdown. Large numbers of people will starve in this country before neoliberalism is done with. Because if they go to war, inflation will go through the roof and it will start to become apparent that those using the benefits system are not living the life of riley at all. Food banks have already passed the 3 million parcels mark this year.
The hand-wringing about Reform is surreal. They basically want to reduce immigration down to net neutral and to remove illegal immigrants. I don't see what's extreme about that. I personally find it an insult that a young man can come to this country, effectively break in and then be put up in a hotel and be fed at the tax payers' expense while British people sleep homeless in the streets. There are over 130,000 of these fellas here now - most of them are not from "war torn countries" - and they're costing us £6 billion a year. Money which is going straight into corporate pockets like Holiday Inn and Serco. And we also have no idea who they are or about their background. My uncle is a policeman and he calls mass immigration "free movement of criminals".
If any of this was "progressive" the billionaires and corporations wouldn't allow it.
Re the way people treat each other, I think we've all become ego maniacs now. How this came about is open to question.
Aurelian a former British ambassador who prefers to stay anonymous on the political impasse, first past thee post & all of that mainly featuring the current French farce. IMO for what it's worth I believe he is spot on while he warns of the inevitable rise of the Right if the pols don't get their houses in order.
Extract - " None of that is true today. Neoliberalism has largely succeeded in destroying any concept of a society of coherent groups, replacing it with a mass of alienated, utility-seeking consumers, compulsorily ascribed to newly-invented and marketed “identities.” Political parties these days operate like product manufacturers, targeting market segments with differential advertising. Understandably, therefore, the “consumers” of politics move from party to party as they might move from brand to brand. A fractured society will inevitably produce a fractured political system, and there are no technical solutions to that. In the end, all genuine political struggles are articulations of social struggles, by, or on behalf of, authentically existing groups. So this year we commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the crushing of the 1984 miners’ strike in the UK; the last stand of organised labour against the brutalities of Thatcherism. But what was striking about that episode was the social solidarity within and between mining communities: the men manned the picket lines and supported other strikers while the women somehow kept families together and food on the table. I suspect that for anyone born after, say, 1980, this must sound like a historical novel. The social, and even family structures have long disappeared, and these days feminists would be bused in to explain to the women that their real enemies were their husbands and the patriarchy, not the government and the employers.
The political machinery that should turn the aspirations and priorities of the people into facts has stopped working, and no amount of fiddling with dials and switches can get it going again. All the evidence is that when the existing mechanisms of a state and political system no longer produce the desired result, people will look around for alternatives. In spite of hand-waving assertions to the contrary, there is no reason to suppose that the domination of the Party will last forever, any more than any other political system has. Its own internal weaknesses, its incompetence and the fact that the Outer Party may finally be turning against the Inner Party, mean that its effective end could come in a matter of years. Yet in the case of France, certainly, there are no groups outside the existing system that have the organisation and the expertise to take and hold power: rather, they will destroy, but be unable to create. So to adapt Gramsci, the old is dying but the new may never be born. Instead, we may find a field of ruins.
This would be, of course, the opportunity of the century (at least) for a populist party of the genuine Left to arise, and the Party itself is much more afraid of this than of any alleged “fascists” on the other side of the spectrum. In France, a few brave souls like Fabien Roussel the Communist Party leader and François Ruffin (who left LFI in disgust) are trying to create a left-populist discourse, but are being drowned with derision, not least by the Notional Left itself. So the impetus will inevitably come from the Right, and it’s not going to be funny.
It would be much wiser of the Party to make concessions to populist Left ideas now, because they are not going to like the alternative when it happens. But then no-one ever accused them of being overly intelligent. I’ve become convinced, in fact, that with the machine seizing up as it has, those who make a populism of the Left impossible will make a populism of the Right inevitable ".
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-machine-stops
The German Far Left (under Sahra Wagenknecht) are surging in Germany
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNM-1Wi0eB0
I am hopefully not out of line by being off topic here, but if anyone wants to gain a deeper understanding of the current ME fiasco, then IMO for what it is worth this discussion between Ex. CIA operative Larry Johnson & Ex. British Ambassador Alistair Crooke pretty much nails the why & the wherefore of it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Vrf5c-umY
For those still in any doubt that mass immigration is about big business, here's the latest press release from the Institute of Directors:
“While the number of vacancies has reduced for the 26th consecutive quarter, for those employers looking to hire the decrease in the unemployment rate means that they are still struggling to access the labour and skills they need to grow and thrive.
Businesses will welcome the decrease in average earnings by 0.3 percentage points but, at 5.1%, it remains a significant inflationary pressure for employers."
https://www.iod.com/news/uk-economy/iod-press-release-businesses-are-still-struggling-to-access-labour-and-skills/
So given that there are only 898,000 job vacancies at any one time and at least 1.5 million unemployed (only people registered for benefits are counted) that means there are obviously not enough jobs for everyone and yet the business class want an even bigger over supply of labour
https://www.statista.com/statistics/283771/monthly-job-vacancies-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/employmentintheuk/september2024
Then there's the small matter of unemployment benefit not covering 70% of basic costs
https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit/what-youll-get
Starmer has certainly hit the ground running TINA style, while the mainly Northern towns & cities shithole pressure cooker finally let off some steam, giving him the excuse to crackdown on freedom of speech, while Liz Kendall threatens the disabled & Ed Balls & his frightful wife get to do some ITV morning show, which I have not seen & could not bear to watch - typically for me I become an OAP & they ban the Winter fuel allowance. 300.000 kids apparently suffering from food poverty with an increasingly stretched foodbank Britain, but Zelensky & his gangsters need the cash.
I left Newcastle- under Lyme a conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent 26 years ago due to outsourcing & my late wife's first battle with cancer, meaning I needed to earn more, so I took a salaried position in Ireland. Over the years I have visited once or twice a year & each time I have noticed the decline, rather like how you can notice how kids have grown up due to absence, which due to the changes being incremental are not seen by the parents.
I think that the rot accelerated post the 08/09 GFC which was confirmed on my last visit when I did a memory tour of old haunts mainly around the major town centre of Hanley which back in the 70's & &0's was the thriving heart of the city. Even allowing for rose tinted glasses the place is a dark shadow of it's former self which includes all of those ills that accompany that status.
In the late 70's I had a gig as a DJ in a pub within Hanley which had a very mixed clientele. First generation Jamaicans, locals. Pakistanis. Indians, members of the Gay community & one old Jewish guy. For the West Indians I would hop on a train for a couple of quid to Manchester Piccadilly, followed by a bus ride to Moss side as there was a record shop there which sold Lover's Rock. The mall was rundown & mainly empty which reminded me of the old film " Fort Apache - the Bronx " as the remaining shops post office, Off Licence & others were covered in security grilles, while there were obvious signs of addiction all around,
Back on the council estate where my parents were then living after I had left there was a line of shops - A small Tesco, a greengrocers, a chip shop, hardware shop, boutique, tv repair shop, Grocer, chemist, post office another grocer, newspaper shop & finally a small co-op - about a decade ago it had become a version of late 70's Moss side for mainly white people.
As far as I can tell none of the parties give a damn about the above which is also the case in many other places throughout the de-industrialised Midlands & North, which IMO are breeding grounds for actual Far Right movements or alternatively apathy & despair - S-O-T is apparently the capital of monkey dust or spice., which judging from what I have seen produces zombies. Of course the young don't remember that these places were once bustling with life.
Anyhow I'm going on & on like Mrs. Doyle & the above is only a symptom of the disease. I hope that there is a reset before I kick the bucket in what is likely increasingly becoming a no country for old men & women, I just hope that it won't be courtesy of a very real Far right.
If you have the time to spare or kill, or are really bored - this 8 minute video is pretty good on the present state of Hanley when I wandered around being triggered by memories. There are many others on YT featuring similar places under similar conditions -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNQr3VMESbI
Further to the balkanisation of the US:
Arizonans to vote on making unofficial US border crossings a state crime
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/16/arizona-cross-border-crime-vote-racial-profiling
I do personally think it's imperative to change the voting system because a) I'm sick of the whole voting for parties to keep other parties out farago and b) I think the neoliberal revolution has been so extreme in Britain and America precisely because First Past the Post has given such a strong mandate to the Thatcherites and Reaganites. If you actually look at the polling data from the 80s, Thatcher was never popular with more than about 35% of the population, she was considered to be too harsh but she kept getting in because the opposition was split between Labour and the SDP. I think a stronger economically Left wing vote on the continent has restrained their Right wing parties.
The one place PR hasn't helped so much is on the question of immigration and culture. But I'd still rather live in Holland and Denmark in high wage economies with strong welfare states and deal with those problems than Britain many places in which are teetering on total socio-economic breakdown. Large numbers of people will starve in this country before neoliberalism is done with. Because if they go to war, inflation will go through the roof and it will start to become apparent that those using the benefits system are not living the life of riley at all. Food banks have already passed the 3 million parcels mark this year.
The hand-wringing about Reform is surreal. They basically want to reduce immigration down to net neutral and to remove illegal immigrants. I don't see what's extreme about that. I personally find it an insult that a young man can come to this country, effectively break in and then be put up in a hotel and be fed at the tax payers' expense while British people sleep homeless in the streets. There are over 130,000 of these fellas here now - most of them are not from "war torn countries" - and they're costing us £6 billion a year. Money which is going straight into corporate pockets like Holiday Inn and Serco. And we also have no idea who they are or about their background. My uncle is a policeman and he calls mass immigration "free movement of criminals".
If any of this was "progressive" the billionaires and corporations wouldn't allow it.
Re the way people treat each other, I think we've all become ego maniacs now. How this came about is open to question.