Tales of cyber-neurosis
November 14, 2022 Leave a comment
It was one hundred years ago today that the British Broadcasting Company, as it was then, transmitted its first programme on the wireless, a news bulletin from London, covering, among other things, billiard scores and the foggy weather. Or it may have been a children’s programme broadcast the previous day from Manchester; records of those pioneering days are a little sketchy.
Whatever the details, when viewed from the perspective of today’s fractured and fractious media landscape it’s hard not to feel a sense of longing for the days when broadcasting was viewed as a way of “spreading culture and good sense”, an antidote to the horrors of the Great War. More recently, the internet seemed to hold similar promise, but that hasn’t really worked out either. Perhaps the next telecommunication revolution will be more successful…
October 20, 2022 Leave a comment
So it turns out that fear of the electoral consequences of ditching a second leader this year was not enough to reconcile Conservative MPs to a continuing Liz Truss premiership. After 24 hours of chaos notable even by recent standards she has gone, her 45 days in office at least giving her a place in the record books as the UK’s shortest-serving Prime Minister.
What now? We are promised an accelerated contest with a new PM before the end of the month, which the Tory Party hierarchy clearly hopes will lead to the coronation of a unity candidate, but which seems equally likely to provoke an escalation of internecine strife. The fact that the return of Boris Johnson is being talked of as a realistic option is an indication of how far from sanity conservative political discourse has strayed. Even if by some miracle someone like Penny Mordaunt emerges from the rubble at the head of a semi-united parliamentary party, it is far from clear that they will be able to either calm the markets or effectively govern the country.
The opposition, the people, and the basic principles of bourgeois democracy are calling out for a general election. Unless the first act of the next Prime Minister is to call one then this crisis will have no end in sight.
October 3, 2022 Leave a comment
Liz Truss is making good progress towards her avowed ambition of emulating Tory deity Margaret Thatcher, but unfortunately for her she seems to have skipped over the Iron Lady’s glory years, and gone straight to running into trouble with an ill-advised fiscal policy.
Opinion in the press is divided on whether this development represents a fatal blow to the Truss premiership, with liberal commentators predicting she will be gone by Christmas, while their conservative counterparts try to play the episode down as a mere bump on the road to the libertarian utopia.
My take, for what it’s worth, is that Truss will survive this rocky start, and hold on until the next election, which I think may be sooner than expected, though probably not before next summer. That’s plenty of time to do more damage, like starting a renewed round of austerity just as the country dips into recession, or carrying on a cold war with the EU over Northern Ireland. Or she could abruptly change course on either issue, who knows? We should move beyond reacting to the confused floundering of the bourgeoisie, and just get on with organising to look after our own class interests instead.
September 26, 2022 Leave a comment
Regular readers will know that I am fond of waxing nostalgic about the early 90s, when I was young and carefree, so perhaps I should be grateful that the government has chosen to stir up memories of that era by arranging a rerun of the 1992 Sterling crisis.
As I recall, that particular debacle came to a head a week or so before I took a trip to the US, somewhat curtailing my spending power, so I’m glad that this time around I’ve had my summer holiday before the pound started flirting with dollar parity. That’s about the only bright spot though, as Kwasi Kwarteng’s horribly misjudged mini-budget threatens to deepen the coming recession into a full-blown depression.
The gloomiest forecasts are predicting that interest rates will have to go up to around 6% to arrest the fall in sterling, with the resulting increase in mortgage costs set to hit the middle-class bedrock of Tory support particularly hard, so political reality suggests that Liz Truss will perform a signature U-turn and adopt a marginally more sustainable fiscal policy. Failing that, we might have a new Prime Minister even sooner than expected.
September 23, 2022 Leave a comment
So, after months of inaction occasioned by the Tory Party indulging in one of its regular bouts of internecine warfare, and a further delay for some feudal mourning rituals, today the Government finally got around to unveiling a plan to tackle the looming financial crisis.
There had been some expectation that newly-minted Prime Minister Liz Truss, free of the need to pander to the assorted oddballs who comprise the Conservative membership, would come up with something semi-sensible, a hope encouraged by the fact that she had shown some ability to recognise political reality by abandoning her “no handouts” approach to the energy bill emergency and adopting a price freeze strategy, albeit one financed by debt rather than taxes on the power sector.
Alas, it turns out that Truss, and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, are even further down the neoliberal rabbit hole than was feared. The budget presented this morning, featuring tax cuts unapologetically targeted towards the wealthy, with wildly unrealistic projections of economic growth which will supposedly compensate for the resulting deficit, has not only dismayed the mass of the electorate who are not going to benefit from the abolition of the top tax rate, but also caused panic in the financial markets, sending the pound to a 35-year low against the dollar. Commentary in the press has been overwhelmingly negative, comparing the plan to the infamous “Barber Boom” of the early 1970s, an attempt by Edward Heath’s government to kick-start the economy by aggressively cutting taxes, which ended with the ignominy of an IMF bailout.
Truss seems to be betting that this time the trickle-down strategy will finally work, and that everyone will have forgotten about all the unpleasantness by the time the next election comes around. Since that poll is at most two years away, that is quite a gamble. The stake for Truss is her premiership; if she wants to wager that on a long shot I guess she can, but the stakes for the nation are so much higher that it’s hard to view this reckless course of action with equanimity.
All is not lost though; the scale of the crisis and the obvious inadequacy of the government response is provoking a backlash, as workers are forced into action to defend even a basic standard of living. The country is set to become ungovernable unless there is a change of course; one can only hope it comes before too much more pain is inflicted.
March 19, 2022 Leave a comment
Of the many things I find unsettling about modern life, one of the more perplexing is the fact that, despite having a multitude of news sources literally at my fingertips, I often find myself unsure that I have anything other than a superficial appreciation of what is actually going on in the world, let alone why it is happening, or what I should think about it. I don’t know if things really have become more complicated in the last 20 years or so, or if it merely seems that way because of the cacophony of instant opinion that assails us at all hours these days; it certainly doesn’t help that my critical faculties are not what they once were. Whatever the cause, I have largely resigned myself to being in a more or less constant state of disconcertion, which, I tell myself, is really a manifestation of Socratic Wisdom.
This is all very well when it relates to matters that are fairly insignificant, like ephemeral cultural trends, but occasionally something comes along that is obviously more consequential, and that I feel sure my younger self would have had a strong and settled opinion about. In such cases it seems dishonourable to avoid clearly speaking one’s mind, though I can’t shake the feeling that the more critical the issue, the more important it is to acknowledge the extent of one’s ignorance.
So, what are we to make of the war in Ukraine, as the conflict enters its fourth week? Some things at least are clear; the war is an unmitigated and completely avoidable tragedy, the responsibility for which lies entirely with the Russian government, and the only reasonable demand that can be made is for a return to the status quo ante bellum. It gets murkier however, when one tries to understand how such a disaster came about, or what might happen next.
First, the causes. The Russian narrative – that the war is a defensive operation, provoked by fascist aggression against the inhabitants of the Donbas – is so obviously preposterous that it can only be construed as a signal that Moscow sees Ukraine as so far inside its sphere of influence that there is no need to offer even a semi-plausible explanation for the action. However the tone of the dominant western narrative, which implies that Vladimir Putin has simply lost his mind and launched the invasion on a whim, seems equally unsatisfactory. I think that Putin has a clear motivation – to re-establish Russia’s status as an undisputed Great Power – and a rational strategy to achieve this, by demonstrating that his forces can operate freely within the former Soviet borders, while withstanding the economic response of the West. Whether this strategy will succeed is another question of course, but it can’t be dismissed as madness.
As to what will happen next, well that’s where the uncertainty really kicks in. Without knowing exactly what Putin’s immediate goals are, it’s hard to see where he might be willing to compromise. Western media analysis has been rather dismissive of Russian performance on the battlefield, but it seems likely that, unless there is increased NATO involvement, the Russians will eventually wear the defenders down. I think they will avoid a direct assault on Kyiv, and focus on an effective blockade of the southern ports. The Ukrainian army may be able to slow this down, but does not seem to have the capacity for the sort of offensive that would be needed to expel the invaders. Putin may be calculating that, if the war drags on, the willingness of European governments to bear the direct and indirect costs of the conflict, and the associated sanctions, will begin to fray, and the Ukrainians will be compelled to agree an armistice on Russian terms.
That outcome, which would involve months more of death and destruction, is actually the optimistic scenario, as it assumes that the war does not escalate beyond the borders of Ukraine. The Kyiv government has been talking of the conflict as a clash between European liberal civilisation and totalitarian despotism, which I think is an overstatement, as Putin’s actions are in line with a long tradition of Great Power politics, albeit elevated to an extreme degree of ruthlessness. Kyiv’s position is understandable in the circumstances, but, equally understandably, European leaders have merely paid lip-service to the idea, while ruling out a direct confrontation with Russia. The temptation to whip up anti-Russian sentiment as a distraction from domestic problems may prove irresistible to some though, especially in this country, and since there is always the chance of misunderstanding when such rhetoric is flying around, the situation could become very dangerous, very quickly.
So that’s my brief analysis, for what it’s worth. I feel a little calmer for having thought about it, and better able to focus on doing what I can, which is to contribute to the relief effort. There is nothing good about war, but if the events in Ukraine remind us even a little of our common humanity, then perhaps it won’t all have been for nothing.
February 12, 2022 Leave a comment
Two issues have been dominating the news in this neck of the woods recently; the first, of little interest beyond these shores, is the continued unravelling of the Johnson government, the second, rather more globally important, is the prospect of a general continental war breaking out as a result of the crisis in Ukraine.
It had been looking like both of these stories were petering out over the last week or so, as Johnson moved to shore up his position with a somewhat reckless scaling down of pandemic-related restrictions, while President Putin’s military posturing appeared to have produced diplomatic results sufficiently impressive to allow him to avoid the risks of a hot conflict.
I think Boris has done enough to see him through the immediate storm, though the looming cost of living crisis may yet sink him as the year goes on, but the Ukrainian situation has taken an unexpectedly alarming turn, as western governments, led by the US, have ramped up talk of an imminent invasion, making it harder for Putin to back off without at least some sort of offensive action.
I’m hoping that this latest development is a finely-calibrated move by the Biden administration to limit Russian diplomatic gains, rather than an attempt to goad Putin into a military adventure in the expectation that it will be as disastrous for Russia as the invasion of Afghanistan was for the Soviet Union back in the 80s. That conflict, kindled by the CIA, may have achieved its Cold War aim in hastening the fall of the USSR, but it was an unmitigated catastrophe for the Afghan people, who, along with the rest of the world, are still living with its consequences 40 years on. A repeat, this time in the heart of Europe, doesn’t bear thinking about.
It is hard to believe that even the most belligerent elements on either side would be willing to roll the dice on such a scale, but, then again, history is littered with examples of comparable misjudgements, and events rarely follow the plan once the shooting starts. I guess we’ll just have to hold our breath, and hope that we’re soon back to a time where a clown in Downing Street is the biggest thing we have to worry about.
October 31, 2021 Leave a comment
In our last post I identified my earliest political memory as being of Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory in 1979, but that isn’t entirely accurate, since I also have a somewhat hazy recollection of the months leading up to the poll, subsequently known as the Winter of Discontent.
It’s a period mythologised by the Tories as a dark age of socialism from which the blessed Maggie delivered us, so it’s difficult to know which of my memories relate to actual experience, and which are just apocryphal tales that I’ve absorbed from the media; I would swear that during that freezing winter I played with my friends on streets cast into darkness by city-wide power cuts, but I can’t find any documentary evidence to back that up. Economic uncertainty and labour unrest were certainly at levels rarely seen since though, and, however Prime Minister Jim Callaghan may have been misquoted, it all added up to a crisis. As is often true of times of political realignment, the exact details are perhaps less important than the sense throughout society that the present arrangements are unsustainable, and that something has to change.
Anyway, I’m thinking about all this because there seems to be a general feeling around at the moment that the winter ahead is going to be a difficult one, what with the economy still hobbled by the twin shocks of Brexit and the pandemic, the health service in no shape to cope with any new wave of coronavirus, and surging food and fuel prices threatening a return to 70s-style inflation. On top of that we also have to worry about climate change, with no sign that the COP26 talks starting this week will produce any sort of plan to mitigate the looming environmental apocalypse.
Back in 1978 there was at least a powerful labour movement to give some protection to workers, and the political class of that time, though unequal to the challenge they faced, were far more serious and competent than the current administration. A decade of austerity has left millions balanced precariously on the edge of poverty, and the latest developments could push them over, with unpredictable consequences for the social fabric of the nation; “discontent” may turn out to be somewhat of an understatement.
September 11, 2021 Leave a comment
I’ve been around long enough to have lived through a good number of events that seem likely to be viewed by posterity as historically significant. The earliest of these that I was really conscious of was Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the UK General Election of 1979; I remember hearing the results coming in and, even with a child’s limited experience, feeling that a lot of what I understood about how the world worked was about to change. So it proved; Thatcher, along with Ronald Reagan in the US, and ideological allies elsewhere, went on to unravel the Keynesian settlement of the post-war years, and usher in the neoliberal decades that were to follow.
All this coincided with my early adult life, during which I received my formative political education, so it’s not surprising that I tend to think of the 1980s, bookended by the Thatcher/Reagan revolution and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as the key period in recent history, but of course to anyone under about the age of 40 subsequent developments probably loom larger.
Foremost among these might be the events of September 11th 2001, which are once again prominent in the public consciousness, due to the 20th anniversary, but also because of the recent ignominious conclusion of the western imperial adventure in Afghanistan.
Joe Biden has come under intense criticism for his handling of the US departure, mainly from those, like Tony Blair, who were responsible for expanding the “War on Terror” from a defensive strike against the likes of Al-Qaeda into a mission to forcibly reshape the world into the image of bourgeois liberal democracy, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond, but his decision to honour the withdrawal agreement negotiated by his predecessor was a pragmatic recognition that the task was impossible.
So once again it feels like the tectonic plates of global politics are moving into a new orientation, and we are left to try to make sense of what is happening, and anticipate what may develop. When I was taking my first political steps back in the days of Thatcher, I was taught to take a long view, and look for the antecedents that could explain the trajectory of events. I think this is the right approach, though my experience on the left over the years has been that we tend to use our analytical tools less to fashion victories, and more to understand defeats. I worry sometimes that the current generation of activists lacks this historical perspective; we seem to live in an era where the only thing that can capture people’s attention is what is happening directly to them, right now. But that’s probably just the old man in me grousing that the youngsters don’t pay us veterans enough respect, and envying their opportunity to succeed where we failed. I’ll be history myself soon enough, and while I may be a little irked that I’m unlikely to see the promised land, I’m sure we’ll get there before too long.
Second Life Shrink 
