our bleak future

Some of you came away from the demonstration on Saturday all hopeful and that. Then you got home and decided that the anarchists had all ruined it by being all violent and that. You got your denounce and condemnathon on, thus reinforcing the media narrative that the march was marred by ultra-violence and therefore the main problem is how violent all these extremists are.

You're wrong though. In fact, it was you guys that ruined March 26th. That's right, you bastards, peacefully walking around and then listening to Brendan and Ed on the platform, politely applauding, you ruined everything.

Because, you know what's going to happen now? This scumbag government, this bunch of thieving, lying, spiteful evil bastards, they'll get steadily less and less popular over the years. They might have a few high points, if they invade somewhere, or we pull out of the recession, but, eventually, they'll end up being incredibly unpopular. We'll have another election, and guess what, the other bunch of thieving, lying, spiteful evil bastards will win.

And by that time, it'll be too late. They'll have pushed through their latest expropriation of public assets, and they'll be gone. The process of ransacking the country and turning it over to the financial sector will be a bit more advanced. The new government of thieving, lying, spiteful evil bastards won't reverse it. Just like they didn't reverse the damage that Thatcher's thieving, lying, spiteful evil government did. It'll all stay there. It'll be there forever.

Because all three groups of thieving, lying, spiteful evil bastards worship at the same altar of neoliberal capitalism, and it's a dogma, it's a dogma that doesn't suffer heresy. You follow the words to the letter: you liberalise, you cut regulation, you privatise, you cut services, you cut taxes, you take away rights and keep people down. You do it faster or slower depending on the circumstances, but it's a process and they're all signed up.

So that's what'll happen, we'll peacefully march from A to B to various rallies, and in the end, we'll get to where Eddy M wants us to be, so desperate for an end to Tory government that we'll agree to anything to get the neoliberal Labour Party back into power.

Because you're angry. You're angry at the cuts and at the Tories. But you're not angry at the past 30 years of economic policy and you're not angry at the 13 years of Labour government. You're not angry at the whole political class for systematically turning the country - the world - over to high finance. You're certainly not going to demonstrate your anger (as opposed to your disapproval) by resisting (as opposed to demonstrating said disapproval).

And what you will end up with is another neoliberal government, managing the process of neoliberalism.

still not getting it

How is it that after 13 years, after 13 bloody years, of Labour government, some people still don't get it?

So recently we've had a few rather excitable actions which have brought down a whole heap of condemnation on the more out there bits of the far left (or are one person, put it rhetorically, "enemies of the Labour movement?"); kettling the head of NUS for basically being pro-fees and pro-education cuts, occupying council meetings in protest at Labour councillors cutting services and protesting TUC chief Brendan Barber, apparently for not calling a general strike.

Cue much wailing and moaning about sectarianism, and the "infantile ultra-left". Now, all of these people, Labour loyalists to a man/woman, stood with that Labour government for 13 years (not Porter, too young). You remember that Labour government? The one that introduced PFI to every part of the public sector, that opened the door that the Tories are walking through? The one that presided over widening social inequality, that stood by as it got comfortable with the filthy rich, that left the anti-trade union laws as they were, that sat on its hands as the financial sector took over the country, that enabled massive tax avoidance by the rich, that started the demonisation of the unemployed and the sick, that put together a myriad of plans to victimise, humiliate and attack them. Yeah, THAT Labour Party.

They stood with that Labour Party, and they supported it, they gave it money, and they tried to make all of us vote for it. That Labour Party, the one that to this day, has only one serious gripe with Tory policy, the pace and depth of the cuts. The Labour Party that to this day, has no principled objection to privatisation (how could it?), nor any serious proposal even for reducing the influence of the finance sector over public policy and economic development.

All of these people are bureaucrats in that party. That party that sat down and chose its leaders, and chose its MPs, and returned people who are, undeniably, representatives of the very same class that has brought this country to its present situation, the situation that this country is essentially at the service of international finance.

Now you say, Jack, "representatives of the ruling class", it all sounds a bit sectarian and ultra-left! A bit serious-face, ranty marxist. But until we all get our heads around the fact that our political class, our entire political class, is composed largely of people just waiting for their turn to manage the status quo - that our interests, that any radically different future for us, is off the table - we'll continue to go round and round in demented circles.

There are people essentially pumping out the message that we just need to wait until the Tories are out, and it's "our" turn again. That when Labour get back in, everything will be fine again. That the opposition should be just enough to embarrass the Tories, but not enough to challenge the heavenly capitalist democracy we live under.

And fine, you say, a Labour government is the best we can possibly hope for. It might well be. But there's a difference between a Labour government taking power over a country that's angry, seething and desperate for change, and a Labour government taking their turn after we've all patiently waited.

I don't know if the attacks on Porter, Barber and the Labour councillors were great strategy or not, whether they'll have the effect they were supposed to. But I sure as hell would prefer that Labour Party officials and union bureaucrats knew that there are people out there with expectations, grievances and the will to press them, than not. Whatever the particularities of those actions, these people are "fair game" and centrists should stop being so precious about being challenged on the actual reality of their credentials.

privatisation as a form of insanity

There's a rather clichéd definition of insanity that runs like this: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. I feel like it is completely apt for Cameron's latest public policy pronouncement, in which he basically states that the private sector should be assumed to be better unless proven otherwise.

As anyone who gives enough of a shit to check can tell you, the history of public sector privatisation argues exactly the opposite. So rubbish (for service users and workers) have these policies been that the assumption should be that they will always be terrible unless proven otherwise.

Do I really need to even list the examples? The railways, 50% more expensive than in the rest of Europe (in 2009), still subsidised and the odd (unprecedented) massive accident. The privatisation of utility companies resulted in rising levels of fuel poverty. The outsourcing of various services in our hospitals resulted in higher costs, lower wages and poorer service provision.

It's a really simple concept to get your head round. If you give a private company 100m to run a service, it wants as much of that money as possible to finish up in their shareholders pocket. If you give it to a public institution it spends every penny on the service. For the private company to turn a profit, it has to spend less on the service or charge more for it. Why, logically, would you expect it to give better value for money? Why?

tiki-taka my arse

The headline in today's "20 minutos" read "victoria sí, tiki-taka no" for Spain's just barely home win over Colombia. Apparently Spain managing to sneak a win without playing well was wholly out-of-character.

Unless of course you actually watched Spain in the world cup without a pair of red and yellow specs, your shirt off and "VILLA MARAVILLA" written in body paint on your stomach. Then, whisper it, but Marquis Vicente del Bosque's Spain are a monumentally boring team to watch.

But Spain are a magnificent passing team, I hear you cry, with Iniesta and Xavi pulling the strings and flair players like Silva, Torres, Villa! The players are certainly there, which is why it beggars belief that Del Bosque's chosen style is a brand of passing football that stylistically is about as impressive as Sam Allardyce's Blackburn.

The mere fact of keeping possession and stringing together passes doesn't make a team exciting, nor attacking. In the case of Spain their addiction to stringing together endless passes in un-threatening areas of the pitch, their abject terror at the prospect of ever doing something that might lose them the ball might make them effective but it certainly doesn't set the pulse racing.

TIKI-TAKA, the ideal that certainly describes Guardiola's Barcelona and described Luís Aragones ' European Champions, has been turned into a monstrously slow way to kill games, as opponents are gradually lulled to sleep by the TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIK-IIIIIIIIIIII-TAAAAAAAAAAK-AAAAAAAAAA of the world champions.

This was certainly par for the course for "La Furia Roja" (more, "El Pequeño Molesto Roja"), who had a world cup that consisted of struggling to overcome limited opposition, and failing to do so in the event that said opponents scored first and they were expected to chase a game, then game-killing against good teams (their semi and final were dire affairs).

Spain fans awaiting the return of some fictitious attacking, élan and flair filled national teams, will be waiting a long time. It'll feel like even longer as they watch all those pretty passing exchanges on the half-way line.

the right to starve in freedom

There is a very simple explanation for the uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East. People don't like living under dictatorships and they want political freedom. What they want are liberal democracies on the European model, where they have basic civil liberties like freedom of association, free elections, free speech and freedom of the press.

Except that's a crap explanation, isn't it? People tolerate dictatorships all the time. They spend years and years making totally logical decisions that show they aren't actually that bothered by political freedom, in fact. Not just that they can't mount the force to overthrow the guy in charge, but also that they stay in the country, they get on with their lives. Imagine yourself as a middle class person in a prosperous dictatorship. You go to work, you earn money, you can buy things and you go home and enjoy those things. Like a lot of people all over the world, you're not especially interested in politics, so you get on with your life and keep your nose clean. So, you just get on with your life. In fact, you do what most people in the developed world do when their civil liberties are threatened, which is, essentially ignore it, unless you form part of a the political motivated activist minority. It's this principle that's kept the likes of Mubarak and Ben Ali in power all these years; that 99% of the time the best thing to do personally under a dictatorship is to ignore it.

So, a lack of political freedom is a terrible thing, but if you have to live with it, you live with it. On the other hand, something you absolutely can't live with, is lacking the ability to make a living. That directly affects your ability to get by, to exist, to live in the day to day. It's no coincidence that this is happening during an economic recession. Unemployment rises, prices rise, the value of wages falls, state assistance decreases. People see other people in the same situations, and the see the people running the country continuing to prosper (because they're always prospering!). The lack of freedom, the lack of right to get angry at these bastards starts to pick at you that much more. It overcomes your impulse to keep quiet, to keep your head down, to get on with your life. Then all it takes is the realisation that we have the power to change all this.

So, their might be some people, comfortably off, who are just liberal-minded, who want a democratically elected government that will keep them prosperous. But for the majority, want they want is a change. Now a change in this sense doesn't mean that you leave the country as it is but dismantle the police state. It means that the new government needs to improve the people's lives in a material way, not just give them civil liberties.

People like this guy will tell you that political liberalisation brings economic liberalisation and prosperity for all:

"The street protests in Tunisia and elsewhere in the region are momentous not just for the Arab world but have the potential to foreshadow a brighter economic future for the globe. The protesters' basic message is not to stifle the economic aspirations of the younger gener"ation, especially one as well-educated as Tunisia's. Shackle them at your own peril.

While Arab governments correctly interpret this cry for change as predominantly driven by economic hardship, their responses are unfortunately misdirected. Kuwait is giving its citizens free food rations and a grant of $4,000. Other governments have announced that they, too, plan to allocate millions of dollars to the poor; and Arab leaders are rushing to set up a $2 billion fund to support their economies. These measures won't save them."

So this neoliberal sees Tunisia's revolution as enabling the country to better manage capitalism and create more jobs. It sees the dictatorship as "stifling the economic aspirations of the younger generation".

He goes on to recommend:

"Establish a mechanism to get uncollateralized credit for those small-business owners who, by skill or by luck, have created the most productive job opportunities. That would fuel economic growth and undermine the corrupt old boys' comfortable monopolies. And it would make room for a new generation of entrepreneurs in areas such as food distribution, machining, construction, equipment and parts fabrication, retailing, power distribution, transportation, communications—and, yes, media."

This, obviously, is a fantasy land that offers nothing to the vast majority of people overthrowing governments in developing countries. What this guy is arguing is basically that countries where a very substantial proportion of the population live in abject poverty should retain the economic system that put them there, and strengthen the neo-liberal tendency that leads to widening inequality, that is the tendency that is pushing down wages and living standards in developed countries as we speak. He's asking them to patiently accept their poverty for the time being, promising that economic liberalisation might lead them to prosperity in decades or even generations time. That is, assuming that the corruption among the dominant classes can even be dealt with, without dispossessing the existing capitalist class that enriched itself under Ben Ali. Finally, it merits fairly serious attention that no one from the IMF/World Bank/the US Treasury or the European Commission was going around telling these governments that their economic policies were a problem (the exact opposite in fact), it seems convenient that these countries are apparently too economically illiberal as soon as their government falls over.

If the hopes of liberals come to fruition the peoples of these regions day-to-day problems they will have to live with. The problems that they actually want solved above all else will have to let go, and they will have to accept that the end of the police state is all that democrats should aspire to. It is not a forecast that holds much promise. Developing world countries that have liberated themselves from oppression seldom find themselves joining the rich world as a consequence. As in South Africa, Brazil and in many other countries all over the world, populations find that they can't eat liberal civil society. That they continue to be exploited, to be impoverished, to starve and to die for the same reasons as before.

South Africa in particular serves as a model for what "peaceful transition" means in reality. Before apartheid fell there was a quite strong fear that years of racist oppression and exploitation would result in a fierce backlash by the African community toward the white population. What in fact was negotiated, by ANC political leaders desperate to end years of political repression, was a "peaceful transition" that not only guaranteed the basic civil rights and physical safety of white South Africans, but also that existing property relations would remain essentially untouched, maintaining the economic basis of apartheid.

Sure enough the result was that post-apartheid South Africa retained its social divisions, to the detriment of community relations and any attempt to heal ethnic tension. In fact, as the global economy was now opened up to South African companies, and the government ushered in an era of neo-liberalism, social inequality and poverty actually got worse in post-apartheid South Africa something that should (but doesn't particularly) shame the ANC. As far as the political mainstream is concerned this is the limits of freedom, the right to be poor under an elected government.

Any survey of economic development and poverty over the past 30 years wouldn't particularly illustrate that liberal political institutions are any more conducive to alleviating actual social problems than authoritarian ones (in fact a look at the post-soviet block would actually show you the opposite was true). The reality is that for the working classes, overthrowing a dictator often seems to offer only the right to complain about starving, rather than an end to the starvation itself. You have to wonder if that really is what people in Egypt and Tunisia have given their lives for.

neoliberals, privatisation and magic

David Cameron: "If you look at the growth of the elderly population, look at the new drugs that are coming on stream, the new treatments, if we keep the system we have now and don't make changes to cut bureaucracy and waste, I think it will become increasingly unaffordable"

Labour, Lib Dems and the Conservatives have spent decades associating privatisation with efficiency, and the public sector with bureaucracy and waste. It is such a well-worn trick that at this point nobody even asks them what the fuck bureaucracy and waste has to do with bringing in the private sector. There's no demand for statistics or proof that the private=efficient, public=wasteful idea is actually true, nor even for some sort of theory as to why it might be. It has become an unchallengeable assumption among the political class that it is true and uncontestable.

But it's a completely counter-intuitive theory if you give it even a moment's thought. Organisations, private or public always have inefficiencies, things that need to be fixed about their management structure, their ways of operating. That's inevitable. There are plenty of large, successful businesses that waste money and time on things that don't fulfil their primary purposes. That's life, we're people, not machines. There's nothing inherent about operating for profit that makes you more efficient at providing a public service for a low cost.

In fact the only difference is that operating for profit really makes is that it changes the goals of your organisation. The goal of a public institution is pretty simple. It is supposed to provide the public with the best possible service, making the best use of the resources available to it. In doing this it should make policy decisions in line with what things that are most important for its service users. So for example, the NHS is not going to spend billions of pounds on deluxe rooms for all its patients that would leave it short of money for important operations.

The goal of a private, for-profit public institution is different. It's aim is to maximise profit. Nothing else. Full stop. Maximise profit. There are no other goals. Now, this does not always result in poor service or high prices, sometimes maximising profit involves attracting clients, which means you have to reduce prices or improve service. But the overall aim of the organisation is that the greatest proportion possible of their income is profit. That is, a private institution will always actively try to take money out of the system, rather than actively trying to spend that money on care.

So, your bet, if you are a privatiser, is that the motivation to make money is so efficient, that not only will it enable the private provider to take as much money out of the system as they possibly can, that competition will make them so much more efficient that this will also reduce the cost of providing the same (or better!) service. It's a gamble that firstly there is so much fixable inefficiency in the system that fixing it will allow the companies to generate a profit, and secondly that the competition for the healthcare market will be so fierce that it will force down costs, without affecting service. Oh, and you also have to hope that healthcare companies won't take the easy way out and just take their cut from workers, patients or by reducing the quality of services.

Now there is not one case of a privatisation of a public service improving service and reducing costs in the history of this country (trains nope, utilities nope). The US system, based on this principle, is much more expensive and much less effective than its European equivalents. So, you'd have to have pretty compelling evidence to present to convince people that there was a case for it here. Which the Tories don't have and aren't bothering to make.

The logical, common-sense thing to do here, if the NHS does have massive institutional problems (also unevidenced by the coalition), would be to fix them in the NHS as it is, without trying to magically find simultaneously both money for profits, money for improvements and efficiency savings all at the same time.

Zeitgeist and other stories

Re-blogging of something I wrote in 2009 on Zeitgeist / The Venus Project:

A friend of mine recently excitedly pointed me in the direction of Zeitgeist: The Movie, a viral internet phenomenon that has conspiracy-hungry internauts all excited and dropping spam-like links like a little spider-bot army.I missed the first part, which apparently focuses on the fact that the Christian religion is a bunch of lies (fabricated from bits and pieces from preceding religions), and that therefore our current system is also based on lies.

I ended up watching the ´meatier´ Zeitgeist addendum which deals with how the system enslaves us all and what we can do about it. Now, credit to the film-makers, though referencing them, they´ve avoided the major banking conspiracy pitfalls, that is, attributing things to the Jews, the lizards, the illuminati or the Bilderberg Group.Their principal target is the major banking institutions like Citibank and JP Morgan.

It´s good that they´ve avoided this, because the idea that the enslavement of humanity is the result of banks making money out of thin air, putting us all in debt and meaning we all have to work to service debts, is a staple of conspiraloon anti-semite, ufologists. Rather than put on my amateur economists hat, I´ll let other people, just as opposed to capitalism as these Zeitgeist fellas, explain why it´s nonsense:

The booklet explains that US banks are required by law to keep a “fraction” of deposits as “reserves” in its vaults and/or a balance with the Fed, and says:

“For example, if reserves of 20 percent were required, deposits could expand only until they were five times as large as reserves. Reserves of $10 million could support deposits of $50 million” (p. 4).

This is a very misleading way of putting as it could suggest that if banks receive total new deposits of $10 million they can immediately proceed to make loans of four times this. This is not so, and not really what the booklet meant to suggest. What it means is that the banks can immediately lend out only four-fifths of $10 million, or $8 million, and that this circulates throughout the banking system leading in theory to new loans totalling in the end $40 million, bringing total “bank deposits” up to $50 million.

Please note. I´m not citing a pro-capitalist source. These people have no vested interest in the status-quo, nor in preserving the rule of elites. They aren't brainwashed by capitaism, quite the opposite in fact. It's just that they understand economics better than the Zeitgeist people (read it, in full, it´s a really good explanation). Fractional Reserve Banking, far from enslaving is, is simply a limit on the amount of loans that a bank can issue from any given deposits. It's actually a good thing that regulates the banking system.

This is really the crux of the film´s case. From the Federal Reserve fraud conspiracy (a staple of Paulianism too), we move onto IMF loans and coup d´etats in Latin America, and how the secret cabal organised those to maintain control for the bankers (who obviously control the government through campaign contributions). There´s a mixture of the true and the misunderstood in there, which gets us smoothly into the station at SECRET-CABAL-RUNNING-THE-WORLD-UNDER-LYME.

After that we throw in the ´planned-obsolescence´conspiracy that must have been doing the rounds since the beginning of the 20th century at least (coming as the EU bans old-style lightbulbs), and contains the absolutely true idea that we could do more about climate change and scarcity if humanity as a collective actually wanted to, rather than just focusing our efforts on getting by / enriching the minority.

This all ends by advocating utopian technocracy The Venus Project or as they call it a Resource Economy. Then some ideas for joining groups, spreading the word, making converts and boycotting stuff.

Fine. It´s one of the least offensive conspiracy theories I've heard. They've avoided anti-semitism or any of the more ludicrous ideas people have come up with over the years to explain who runs the world.

We are though, still stuck on several points. Firstly, not to the dredge the old man up but, "philosophers have interpreted the world, the point is to change it", it's all very well identifying the evil cabal running the world, but if you´ve no analysis of how social relationships work in society, then you're no closer to breaking them. Your research isn't (as Harry Cleaver says) putting a weapon in people's hands.

Secondly, even if the monetarist conspiracy was true (which it's not), it doesn't explain the historical presence of hierarchy and domination in human society that predates the existence of the banking firms. Feudal domination was a social relationship, just as early capitalism was, and, in reality, modern capitalism is. It's not a trick devised by a small cabal, but how our lives interact with each other, the contested relationships of power between us. Imagine we shut down the federal reserve (and I presume, though the film doesn't make it explicit, the equivalent institutions around the world). What would change? If the principle of private property persisted, we would still be divided into classes. The people who own the things we need to produce, and the ways in which you distribute them, would still be in charge. So, I would still wake up, needing to earn money to survive, which I could only obtain by working for a capitalist.

The trouble with conspiracy theories is that they're all rendered pointless by one fundamental, unarguable element of capitalism. That it is, whatever else you have to say about, positive or negative, a system of elites. It has elitism coded into it´s DNA, from the smallest company, to the largest multinational, from the political system to the culture. It's purpose is to promote elites. It does this legitimately within the logic of the system. It does this publicly, lording super-capitalists like Bill Gates or even for a time, Enron boss Ken Lay. It lays its theories of elitism out for all to see, in policy projects, in university research, through political theorists.

It has no interest in secret cabals, or conspiracies. It has no need for them. It is a system openly, and publicly, run by elites. They might go home at night and secretly dine with their illuminati, lizard-jew, Bilderberg Group friends, and laugh about how they've taken over the world. It doesn't matter to me or you whether they do or not. They are the elite, and we can see who they are and how they live their lives. People know that we live in a system of elites, that acts in its own interests, according to the logic of the society they dominate. Everyone who looks around know this. We don't need internet documentaries to tell us that we're dominated, we just need to go to work, or walk through a posh neighbourhood or have a run-in with any politicians, big businessman or even a celebrity to know that. What we need are weapons, ways of challenging that domination, so maybe we don't have to live under it forever.

All In This Together

We are all in this together (WAAITT) must be the words that come back to haunt George Osborne. They should be THE slogan on the lips of every activist for the duration of this economic crisis and this government (probably the latter will end first). They are just the perfect soundbite for any movement against the pure injustice that the Condems are about to dish out.

They are perfect because WAAITT states perfectly what a fair government would do. A government that wasn't a naked expression of privilege and entitlement would make those words a reality. They would state quite clearly that nobody should be in a position to take advantage of the British people whilst we work together to achieve economic recover. That the pain of paying off this debt should be felt equally by all of us. No, more than that, the people with the most resources should take as much of the strain as they can, to shield the vulnerable from the worst of it.

After all, a recession hurts the people at the bottom of the pile more. Those with the worst jobs, are those with the most precarious jobs, so they are more likely to find themselves unemployed. They are the ones with the least savings so they are the most likely to find themselves dependent on state assistance should the worst happen. They are the ones with the least qualifications so the most likely to find themselves out of work for the longest period (whatever their efforts).

So, a fair government would say WAAITT, and they would act on it. They would place the burden of the crisis on those best able to carry it.

This government, on the other hand, has shown that it is determined to do precisely the opposite. It is not a fair government. It will not act on the principles of WAAITT. The burden of the crisis will not fall on those best able to carry it. It will fall, almost universally, on those with the least capacity.

Their cuts to public services will affect the social groups that use them most, that is, the people with the most need of state assistance. Their cuts to benefits and attacks on claimants will effect those with the least income. Their tax rises will be based on the most regressive of principles, indirect taxation. They will claim the money they need back through VAT, a tax that falls disproportionately on the poor. Whilst having the audacity to actually lower corporation tax. They will make no effort to close the tax loopholes that the ultrarich take advantage of, as they take advantage of them themselves.

They will do everything in their power to prevent finance capital from paying for the crisis it caused. Everything it does will expose WAAITT as a lie.

And every time they do, someone should be there to expose that lie. WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER. We, the 90% of ordinary citizens whose profits don't grow in a recession. Who don't generate those profits speculating on which country's economy will collapse next. We, are all in this together.

anarchism: autonomy, pluralism and de-centralisation

20th Century anarchism, the majority of it anyway, drew principally on one main source for its ideas about organising. That source, surprisingly, was not any of its most famous adherents. As a rule whilst the likes of Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Mikhail Bakhunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon had a lot to say about how society was at the time, and how they wanted it to be, they didn't have very much specific to say about how an actual anarchist organisation should be. There's no Lenin or Trotsky to go back to and say: "this is the role of the party", "this is how we should make decisions", "this is what a united front is for" "this is how we act in the trade unions".

No, when anarchists organised the ideas on how to do it came out of working class experience. The most significant things that anarchists have ever done came not out of applying works of theory, but on generalising activities that were already happening and developing them. The main current of 20th Century anarchism was anarcho-syndicalism. Anarcho-syndicalism as a form grew out of French trade unionism at the turn of the century. In an earlier life modern Stalinist monolith the CGT (Confederation Generale du Travail) was the model for most of last centuries anarchism. (If you want to know more about the history read this article I wrote a long time ago)

The ideas behind syndicalism were simple. Form a trade union that mirrored the structure of the society that you wanted to create. The early version CGT had several main features:

1 - It was industrial and regional - unlike earlier trade unions which organised workers based on what they did, the syndicates organised them on where they worked and in what industry they were part of. The Bourses de Travail (Labour Offices) then organised them regionally.

2. They were federal and decentralised - Modern trade unions elect a permanent leadership to make formal policy and decide on union strategy. After creating the network outlined above, the CGT made sure that every group was autonomous, controlling their own funds, and that what formal policy that existed came from the bottom upwards.

3. They had mandated delegates and direct democracy - to overcome the difficulty of operating a direct democracy among half a million workers, the CGT invented a system of mandated delegates, in which workplace groups elected people to represent them in regional, industrial and national forums. Crucially, they didn't just elect people, they discussed and agreed upon (in advance) the decisions they were going to take and the things they would argue for. Finally they had the right to withdraw a delegate at any time, if they strayed from their mandate.

4. They were unaffiliated - despite electing a succession of anarchist General Secretaries, the CGT did not have a specific ideology, and did not support a political party. Each political current was free to organise within their ranks, and argue their particular ideals and policy. Directly supporting electoral candidates and political parties was outlawed in their constitutions. This was an organisation for the entire working class.

5. They made decisions - although the CGT was a pluralist, de-centralised organisation of hundreds of thousands of people, it had a functioning decision-making structure. At a workplace level it was able to agree through majority voting on the policy that individual syndicates wanted to follow. Through the system of mandated delegates they were able to create a coherent national policy that derived from the base of the organisation and could not function outside of their wishes. It wasn't a case of everybody wander off and do whatever they like, but of an organised democratic system of solidarity and mutual aid. People were free to hold whatever political views they liked, and knew they had a forum to express those views, both in their workplace and higher up the chain.

These groups used democratic and anarchist methods of organising to empower all of the members to form and act on their needs and desires. They used robust forms of decision making because their working lives were often precarious (job security? living wage? Pah!) and their class struggle brutal (kettling? Try live fire and saber charges!).

These forms of organising, taken directly from what workers did anyway, were adopted in various forms across Europe (famously in the Spanish CNT). I mention them now, not because I think they should be held up as a model for anyone to follow, (they grew up, as any form does, in particular historical circumstances) but because they outline what hard-headed organisers our anarchist predecessors were. They didn't let anything and everything go so as not to tread on anyone's toes, they made an organisation that was fit for purpose. It was non-sectarian because it's basis for unity was strong. It was autonomous and anarchist because it gave its component parts the ability to take their own decisions and direct their own resources. It was democratic because it had adequate structures for people to express their democratic opinions in an open forum. It was organised because it had mechanisms to make decisions and then stand up for them.

It was an organisation that had a clear idea of how to organise people and what for. Which is something that all organisations eventually have to do. You have to decide: is your group a social movement? Is it something aimed at organising a particular constituency and expressing as directly as possible their needs and desires? Does it have the structures to do this? Is it fit for this purpose? Or is a publicity campaign aimed at spreading a certain message? If so, is the message it spreads a coherent one? How do you come to decide what that message is and continue to hold your adherents together?

20th Century Anarchist organising was about the abolition of hierarchy and authority, it was not about the abolition of organisation, coherence or formal decision-making. Anarchy, as they said, was the highest form of organisation. It never meant, nor should it mean now, a complete free-for-all.

austere things that have nothing to do with debt

One of things that European governments are in the process of doing is presenting austerity packages as being an objective necessity in the current climate. We must cut, they say, as the national debt problem has got out of control. Even if you buy this, and many people,don't. It's interesting that only a certain range of policies has been deemed viable by European governments. The most obvious of these being "cuts". Sneaking in, barely noticed has been a rise in VAT.

Now, if you weren't aware, VAT rises are a bad thing for the poor and most vulnerable. At the flip of a switch they raise the price of everything they need to buy. Poor families spend a much higher proportion of their income in VAT rises than they do on other types of tax. It's a "regressive tax" in that makes no attempt to ensure that the wealthiest contribute more of their income than the poor do.

Notice at the same time that governments around the world have ruled out putting up taxation on income or profits. But the VAT rise indicates that they do want to raise more money through taxes. So why choose one over the other? Particularly in the teeth of cuts in public services that disproportionately affect low-income families who are more likely to be service users. Rather rubbing salt in the wounds, isn't it? Raising the prices of everything they buy, whilst simultaneously reducing their access to resources.

Is there any economic benefit to a VAT rise as opposed to raising income or corporation tax? VAT raises prices, depresses spending/demand and could be argued to be detrimental to economic growth. Income tax on the other hand places the burden on people who ordinarily spend a smaller proportion of their money on goods and services, in effect putting money back into the economy that might otherwise be left in savings accounts. A corporation tax might have a slight negative effect on foreign investment (but wouldn't if it were co-ordinated continent wide by international lending institutions), but would in any case be taking money of corporations that aren't currently investing it anyway (as growth figures show they're hoarding it).

So, why a VAT rise? Well today's news from the OECD might give us a hint. Returning to their favourite theme, "let's bully weak Eurozone countries into doing what we say", they combine a stern warning to Spain about their deficit with a statement from Moody's rating agency saying they might downgrade Spain's banks' debt ratings. Do as we say or the bear (the small banks like Caja Madrid in Spain's banking system: see pic) gets it. Let's have a little look at what they've already done:

The moves include plans to sell off a 30 percent stake in the government-owned national lottery, the partial privatization of airports, cutbacks to a key jobless benefit, tax cuts for small businesses and an increase in the tobacco tax.

So privatisation, benefit cutbacks, tax cuts (!) for businesses, indirect taxes. What do they want now?

The government says that next month it will approve a highly contested plan to raise the retirement age gradually from 65 to 67, part of a drive to shore up public finances.

But the OECD said in a report that Spain should consider raising the retirement age even further by indexing the age to life expectancy increases.

The government is considering extending the period of a person's working life used to calculate retirement pensions — it is now the last 15 years. The OECD says people's entire working life should be used in the calculation, a move that would reduce the average monthly pension.

A rise in the retirement age and a decrease in payouts might help Spain's financial situation in the longer term, but it's not going to do much to sort out the immediate debt problems.

Measures passed in recent months make it easier and cheaper for companies to lay off workers, doing away with a system that provided some of the most generous severance payments in Europe.

The Paris-based OECD said that if these do not manage to boost hiring, the government should consider broader measures to make the labor market more flexible.

The idea that making it easier to fire people will increase levels of employment is a novel one. This despite the fact that there are already various methods to hire people on a temporary, precarious basis, if business were in fact looking to take on staff. The likelihood is that cheap firing, will in fact, lead to the more obvious rise in unemployment, when companies use it to, err, fire people cheaply.

Finally this:

The OECD said that if Spain's deficit-reduction measures fail to meet targets the government should consider raising VAT taxes on some goods and services.

If "stimulating the labour market" and cutting public services doesn't work, the next step is raising VAT on the shrinking amount of consumption.

So the collective voice of the rich, capitalist nations essentially has one piece of advice: do what right wing neoliberal ideologues argue for even when there isn't an economic crisis, conveniently using the debt as leverage.

Most of these measures have very little to do with paying down debt, beyond the vague economic theory of their advocates. They are very much ideological decisions. If they were simply concerned with debt, why would they touch on things like pension reform, labour market reform and specific types of taxes? Surely ideologically neutral economic advice wouldn't distinguish between the way taxes are raised or the type of services that are cut?

The kind of pressure being put on Spain isn't actually directly related to their debt They could with equal validity decide that the best way to reduce the public deficit was levy new taxes, cut spending on the military, pull out of Afghanistan and end corporate subsidies. It's related to various problems the international financial community have with their labour market and welfare state. They are concerned with the usual neoliberal hobby horses: less rights, less public services, privatisation, less pay for more work for workers and less taxes for business. "Austere" things that have nothing to do with debt.

The crisis of neoliberalism is turning into a massive example of shock therapy for an entire continent, the dismantling of the welfare state on the pretext of resolving a debt problem caused by neoliberal policies.

Jamón Ibérico

You´ll have to excuse the lack of activity of late, between posting on the wonderful new MATBlog and moving into a new house, I´ve been a bit busy. So here´s a post that appears there too:

Madrid is the roadworks capital of the world. The just keep digging the place up everywhere you go, without distinction between rich neighbourhoods or poor. They just absolutely love opening holes in the ground, producing endless old jokes about digging for treasure. After a six week working trip back home, I got back here to discover they´d changed roads after actually finishing something for once - Jacometrezo Street. After dodging construction teams every day on the way to work for 9 months, there was something weird about the street.

Not that it was finished. Not that I could sit outside at the cafe without an accompaniment of drills and wolf-whistling mustachioed Ecuadorians. But that the street was exactly the same. Same arrangement, same traffic lights, same underground parking. Everything exactly the same. I stood about trying to work out what they´d actually spent 12 months doing. Then it clicked. What they´d done was change it from a flat, pot-hole free, perfectly adequate tarmac road to a brick road. According to the sign the Ministry for Economic Stimulus put up, they´d spent 2 million euros, countless interruptions to residents and business to change the aesthetic of the place.

The more you walk around, the more you can see that the PSOE´s 11bn stimulus has just been thrown in the appropriate directions to keep people working. No attempt to do anything of any actual use with it. Just keeping the construction industry from entirely collapsing. There´s clearly some serious pork going on, something that occasionally gets the PSOE in trouble, like with the general strike it provoked in Lebrija this February. Basically people pissed off in a tiny town near Sevilla were protesting that the state money being distributed through the trade unions was only going to members of the CC.OO and the UGT (the PCE and PSOE´s pet unions respectively).

The weird thing though is that aside from this incident Spain despite suffering a bigger rise in unemployment than all of the other countries in Europe put together, now topping the Eurozone league with 18.1% (a combination of historical high levels in the South, and the complete collapse of the two major industries, auto manufacture and construction), has experienced virtually no significant unrest. A handful of small strikes, some very specific problems in the North (related to the PNV losing the last round of elections there - largely due to extensive gerrymandering), and that aside the government has basically got a pass on the state of the place.

I read an interesting article a little while ago that shed some light on why this was. Spanish people have much bigger social networks that are insulating them from the recession. When people lose their jobs they´ve got a wider safety net based on large interconnected families. Young people especially tend to live with their parents until they´re much older.

But the flipside of this is that it becomes self-defeating circle. Employers continuously abuse the internship/apprenticeship system by hiring people just to fill regular positions, paying salaries that are impossible to live off in urban areas (often 600-700 euros a month), which people accept, because they can, which in turn means they never have any motivation to leave home and demand good housing and decent paying jobs.

Additionally, Spain, a European frontier state these days, has managed to avoid problems related to its large immigrant population (the largest group in Madrid is Ecuadoreans and nationally Moroccans), large numbers of whom came over to work in the burgeoning construction industry. The report put this down to several things. Firstly, the tendency of migrants to pack up and go home when the work dries up (one of the rarely mentioned aspects of the economic migration phenomena is that it´s self-regulating, peak migration tends to coincide with high employment), and secondly Spain´s massive black market.

Far more so than the UK, which has a fringe black market economy, small enough to be mostly contained in small enclaves. Spain has a thriving, publicly unavoidable parallel economic system, which keeps millions of people without recourse to conventional economic means afloat during the recession. Walk through almost any major Spanish city and it´s obvious; movable bazaars dot the street, brothels dot otherwise respectable streets, people wander into bars with lighters, tissues (bizarrely) or a wide variety of flashing tat to sell.

Weirdly enough all of this was supposed to disappear with European integration and modernisation. But the Spanish miracle was based on housing prices, selling land all along that massive and beautiful coast of theirs, the Marbella-zation of the whole country. The export of land got to such a point that whole communities were dominated by ex-pats to the extent that they were electing ex-pat mayors and the DWP now has a big branch in Madrid.

With that market completely collapsing (see the ITV documentary on the subject recently), Spain has fallen back on old habits; patronage, kinships networks and black markets; to keep people´s head above water.

the dog shit politics panacea

Nazis do it. Greens do it. Even socialists do it sometimes. Every day graft, listening to people, asking them what they want, and putting in the work to try and get it for them.

The dog shit politics of making sure the little things are dealt with, and that groups set achievable targets, winning things that non-activist people are actually interested in. It helps build a rapport between people and political groups, and keeps people grounded in everyday life.

Left-wing or pro-working class groups should be at a natural advantage in this arena. In the first place they´re supposed to have a deeper understanding of the forces that are behind attacks on working class communities, so should have a better understanding of how to fight back. They don´t have the big disadvantage that far right groups do, in that they aren´t trying to peddle racism and they don´t have quite the pariah status that Nazis do.

Groups that have tried taking this approach have had varying degrees of success.

The group that made it the center of its political outlook, the IWCA, had a few early victories. It established bases in two London boroughs, Glasgow and Oxford, producing creditable results in the first three places, and steadily increasing their councillors to a high of four on Oxford city council.

Over time though the number of outposts shrank, as Glasgow withered away, Hackney left the organisation and Islington went quieter (is it still functioning?) and short-lived flurries of activity in Harold Hill and Thurrock seemed to disappear over time.

The IWCA´s trajectory seemed to prove that outposts could be built and people engaged, with good day-to-day community work, but that it was difficult to expand from that kind of base and that small-numbers of activists could become bogged down in electoral work and community campaigning.

The Socialist Party, a bigger, national organisation, has usually orientated itself in its day-to-day work towards the ´dog shit´ end of politics, whether that be in the trade unions or in community work. On the other hand it does have to wear its other hat as part of the Committee for a Workers´ International, being the historical consciousness of the entire international working class and all.

Over the past two decades they built significant local bases in Coventry and Lewisham, as well as picking up the odd councillor as opponents of NHS privatisation. The SP´s approach differs substantially from the IWCA, in that rather than seeing themselves as a sort of political wing of their communities, they have their own very tightly defined ideas on policy and theory, whilst still trying to attract adherents through practical everyday work.

Although the SP have had a degree of success where they´ve applied themselves in this way, the last year or so has seen them increasingly drawn into high-level trade union work in pursuit of the real long-term project - The Campaign for a New Workers Party.

Straight old-fashioned British Trots, the SP want a bigger sea of reformist workers to swim in, in order to win them over to socialism. Yet, as their rubbish attempt to stand in the last election shows, people won´t vote for you just because a workers´ organisation is involved. Their years of community activism, just like their trade union work has been unable to propel their wider ambition, and they remain restricted to historical footholds.

Which probably goes to show that whilst community activism can build a modest platform, it doesn´t expand your organisation dramatically unless you´re actually selling an idea that people want to buy into.

Meanwhile, a handful of anarchistically-inspired groups have also been doing similar sorts of activism, trying to engage people in everyday politics in a way that attracts them to the idea of a radically democratic society. Groups like Haringey Solidarity Group argue that they can make a real difference to people´s lives through campaign work and engage people in a different kind of political action.

I heard that the people behind HSG have maintained some sort of consistent organisation since the old Poll Tax Unions, which in itself is an achivement for a community group. The question is expansion. Community work is an end in itself, and on some level you´d certainly be happy to devoting your time to improving what you can for yourself and your neighbours. But there is still the question of putting yourself in a position to challenge things.

Groups that focus on elections often get sucked into to the constant, exhausting cycle of winning and maintaining representation, to the detriment of other work. However, groups without that focus often seem to spend much of their existence looking for things to get their teeth into. Without something to campaign on, activity can often dwindle and leave the same small group of people keeping the thing ticking over until the next significant issue.

Much of the energy that was going into groups like HSG has re-directed itself into the London Coalition Against Poverty, which with a broader focus and direct action case work to get stuck into, seems to be better at keeping people involved and occupied.

In terms of sustaining a permanent large-scale organisation capable of advancing the big aims though, the municipal anarchism model still seems to have a missing ingredient that prevents it from pushing on to the next level.

Another category of ´dog shit´ activists has emerged out of the disintegration of the Labour Party in the last few years. In Barrow-in-Furness, a 1997 splinter group led by the former constituency party chair stood in a by-election and lost their deposit. Subsequently they´ve taken a number of borough council seats and currently hold four, it might be more if they hadn´t had their own falling out and lost a load of seats to another independent splinter from the group. The all-women shortlists debacle that led most of the Blaenau Gwent CLP to leave, resulted in one MP and a bundle of councillors for People´s Voice candidates in the last elections (though many of them seem to have left for independent status subsequently) and school protesters took Gwynedd council off Plaid Cymru.

In the leftie news reccently were the Community Action Party, a mash-up of various political backgrounds, which until recently held 18 seats on Wigan borough council. They´ve split (obviously) and recently formed a People´s Alliance with the local SP and the Respect Party. George Galloway even came up to shake everyone´s hand.

The trouble these organisations seem to have is that being formed over local issues, they tend to subsequently split over them. They´ve also got very limited horizons, as well as an M.O. and a structure (in most cases semi-clientalist) that limits them in that way. The lack of resources is exposed in the homely, 1997 style websites.

They´ve got a lot of advantages though. Clearly they show up out of a need, and are identified with something that resonates with their electorate. There´s a meaningful and organic connection with the communities that throw them up, rather than trying to manufacture something out of nothing (and the ¨Save our XXX¨ campaign style doesn´t work if you haven´t got the links or the issue spot on - Colchester Save Our Bus Station did abysmally in local elections a few years back for precisely that reason).

But without broadening their appeal nationally, these groups will eventually outlive either their campaign or the particular local political figure that gave them life. Longer-term, only by broadening their appeal and linking with other groups can they sustain themselves.

The groups that are currently profiting out of community campaigning (the BNP and The Green Party) have a few things in common (aside from a shared love of rural idylls :P), firstly they have a significant national organisation that can sustain local groups all year round, stimulate new groups with resources, produce professional campaign material and maintain attractive, well-used and well-updated websites. This gives the outward impression of being permanent and modern organisations. They combine an organisational focus on the ´dog shit´ stuff, with the ability to intervene on national issues and throw out ´dog whistle´ sound-bites and policies to get new people involved and build up new groups. The two things necessarily compliment one another.

No group can have a national impact without both these elements in play, and that is the key to building something meaningful and permanent.

this was cross-posted from the awesome new meanwhile at the bar blog.

What Alan Duncan says about our political class

Listening to the radio the other day, I heard Tory blogger Iain Dale being interviewed about Alan Duncan's latest gaff. Obviously he agreed that the comments were ill-advised and that perhaps Duncan might have to apologise. But he didn't get to what I thought was the heart of the matter.

Look at these two statements, the first of which was not the headline quotes that the papers ran with the next day. The second of which is Duncan's apology.

"No one who has done anything in the outside world will ever come into this
place ever again, the way we are going."

"The last thing people want to hear is an MP whingeing about his pay and
conditions. My remarks, although meant in jest, were completely uncalled
for."

The papers all lead with 'MP whinges about pay', and quite right too, it's the money shot in terms of bang for your buck outrage. That's what Duncan responded to as well, noting that nobody wants to hear MPs complain about what are comparatively generous pay packages. The phrase 'they don't know they're born' comes to mind.

But I think there's something deeper to this, somewhere buried further inside people like Duncan that contains the real reason why they make comments like this. Look at that first comment again: For people like him the salary he gets wouldn't motivate anyone whose 'done anything' to go to parliament.

What he's saying, and I think this runs fairly deep among the majority of mainstream politicians is essentially anyone who doesn't earn considerably more than an MP (or isn't at least capable of it) isn't really much cop. Basically they can written off as having any skills worthy of bringing to public life.

The problem with that is that he's basically writing off 95% of the population. All the people who actually do all the work round here are basically little worker ants who need governing by clever chaps who can make lots of money. And they only way you bring them in is by greasing the wheels. People of quality are those that are attracted by and can make lots and lots of money. Basically we're all offensively useless because we can't muster the kind of success that they can.

And that was the question that should've been asked about these remarks. How many of our political class essentially regard working people in this country as idiots because they 'can't get on in life' and wish we could have a parliament made up of 'the right stuff?

a lot can happen in forty years

"The Army's role might evolve, but the whole process might take as long as 30 to 40 years. There is absolutely no chance of NATO pulling out." General Sir David Richards, Head of the British Army, on the occupation of Afghanistan.

Interesting statement that, more for the attitude than the policy. One of the problems with saying that staying they´re for that period of time is that it sees ¨nation-building¨ as being like a treadmill. Put in enough resources and stick it for long enough and you can change the place into what you want it to be.

The trouble with these plans is that it doesn´t cede any say on things to the people that live there. It gives, for instance, 30-40 years of guerrilla warfare to the insurgents. You´d think that over time they might start getting better at it, particularly given that they´ve moved away from the suicide bomber model (which results in your terrorist dying along with your victims, rather than learning from mistakes and passing on experience to others). It doesn´t ask the Afghanis if they want that long an occupation, and whether some of them might be inclined to rebel against a long-term foreign presence.

In fact the whole idea ignores any problematic developments in the political and social life of Afghanistan. Peace is always political. For example, a lot of analysts say that in Iraq the decision to work with Sunni militia against international Islamist extremists was a far bigger part of turning around that quagmire than the surge was.

Beyond the complete disregard for what the population there might actually do or want. I´m always intrigued by the apparent need that international forces have to set up law enforcement agency and armed forces to defend their new little states. It´s weird because usually countries are able to do that sort of thing for themselves. For instance, the Taliban were able to establish an army and a police force that was completely totalitarian, all without a blue-hat in sight. And, obviously they could only possibly be overthrown by being bombed by the Americans, so it must have been pretty robust, right?

New democracies are supposed to have a broader base of support than brutal dictatorships, so why do nations set up by international diktat seem to have so much trouble?

ahhhh elections...

Now, I'm not out to criticise people trying to do stuff in solidarity with Iranian activists. But daftness is a pet hate of mine, so here goes.

Right so, today I read someone at the beginning of a very moving piece about what people have suffered after the Iranian elections reference Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the loser of the election. I've no problem with saying that per se, but is it not a little ridiculous from the perspective of your average anti-Islamic Republic type? Before the elections we were informed that Iran is a theocracy, a clerical tyranny and in general a totalitarian dictatorship.

People who pointed out that the real situation was more nuanced, with a greater degree of civil society, dissent and disagreement internal to the system were generally derided as being the useful idiots of the Ayatollahs. Now, I've no problem dealing in broad brush-strokes like. But doesn't saying that Ahmadinejad is the loser of this election actually rather endorse the electoral system out there?

On some level it means that the election was a meaningful contest between real alternatives, which was outrageously tampered with to the benefit of certain people within the power structure. Like there had been a coup d'etat to overthrow a relatively well-functioning democracy, that spent the previous 30 years electing rightful presidents. Surely if it follows that the protests are about a rigged election, then the last one Ahmadinejad went off fairly?

That's horse-shit though. Iran's is a managed democracy, where the Ayatollahs pick the acceptable candidates and pretend it's a real contest. There's no more legitimacy in all the old-school reformists lining up behind the green movement, than there is in the Ahmadinejads of this world. In fact, the Islamic Republic is probably going through one of its least brutal phases.

Why give the Islamic Republic the redoubt that they're evidently looking for - that they can just retreat to the old reformism and then we'll start saying it's a real democracy. Even if they'd decided they wanted Moussavi instead of the incumbent, it wouldn't have made any real difference. If people on the streets is a meaningful opportunity to enact real change out there, then more has to be done than insisting that they stick to the logic of legitimacy within their own system.

rubbish bloody football

Year on year I like football as an industry a little less. Every year it just gets more ridiculous as a sport and seems to be further away from the things I actually like about the game.

To explain why, I´ll have to make a bit of a confession. My football supporting life started in a way that I now find reprehensible. From the safety of the Suffolk countryside I was a miniature Manchester United fan. Now in my defence this was 1992 and I´m sucker for a redemption story. The first football I watched was the last season of the old First Division. A Manchester United side with the likes of Mark Hughes, Bryan Robson and a teenage Ryan Giggs was busy choking its best chance of the title for a quarter of a decade. I have an idea the first football match I ever watched was a 0-0 draw on ITV with West Ham United. I was 8 years old.

By the time the Premier League came around I was throwing my pocket money at United scarves, shirts and mugs. They won the league that year, redemption for 26 years of being rubbish, or sometimes just good and gutless. I remained a red for a while. Even after I watched my first live football match, a 0-0 draw between my local team Ipswich and Coventry City. Weirdly enough it was from the Director´s Box and I remember being bored shitless. The next one was a 3-2 win for Ipswich over Manchester United. It was the year Town went down, so I guess it was 1995. I was 12.

I was changed a bit by that game. Obviously in a season in which they were terrible, beating the current league champions saw them go absolutely nuts. The next time I saw Town, a scrappy 2-1 win over Charlton in a then Division One match and they became us. I´ve subsequently had the misfortune to support them for the past 12-13 years, from season ticket holder to ex-pat. I still miss it.

Not to get too poor man´s Nick Hornby on you, but what really attracted me to watching football live, as opposed to on the telly, was the feeling of standing in the old Portman Road North Stand. Partially it was the feeling of adulthood (mostly derived from standing round a load of adults who were acting as childishly as I was), but probably most of all it was the most exciting thing that happened in a town like Ipswich. You went down, and you stood together with a load of people who cared about the same thing you did. They got outraged when you did, they felt off their heads with joy when you did, they swore when you did, they sang when you did. The genuine feeling of being in a crowd is unsurpassable.

And in truth I liked the glamour of my team being little underdogs, underachieving a little bit and living off a glorious past. I swear it meant more to us when we got promoted or when we did well, because there was just us in Ipswich, a little town that people put in shitty books about shitty towns.

And now that´s completely ruined. We´re owned by a multi-millionaire or billionaire or something, and we spend his money so we can hire Roy Keane and buy big Irish centre forwards off Sunderland or Manchester United reserve teamers. We make out like this really makes us happy, but when it works it has a hollow feeling - like Chelsea fans must be familiar with - that it actually has sod all to do with us. That buying the season tickets, making noise at the appropriate moments, throwing money in the coffers by buying the 2nd away kit or the tracksuit top, paled into comparison with a guy who runs promotion events having the cash to bring Celtic rejects back from the Irish League. If we fail we get bitter, and chase club legends out of the place, forgetting that the bloke gave us the most magical night of my footballing life(play-off semi-final 2nd legal 2000 - Ipswich Town 5 Bolton Wanderers 3).

This is the reality for a wild array of different clubs. Portsmouth fans wait with baited breath for a takeover to solve all their financial problems. Notts County got enough money to pay for Sven Goran Eriksson. Who the fuck even bought Notts County for fuck´s sake. QPR have Briatore, Sunderland are throwing money at bigger clubs' reserve team strikers like water. Manchester City ain´t half of it, most of the football league seems to be somebody's plan to get themselves on telly overlooking a Abramovichesque kingdom.

So, Now I sit, watching my mediocre team, with mediocre players bought from other clubs (with all our own kids shipped out), progressing (or not) toward the premier league nirvana. The shed I used to have a season ticket in made five times the noise, and was five times the fun as the massive 25m GBP monstrosity that they moved us up the other end to build one season. A ticket for one and a half hours ¨entertainment¨ costs me 27 GBP minimum, in an occasion where any natural atmosphere is drowned out in a dreary combination of goal music, pre-game music and a preponderance of supporters who never came to contribute anyway.

Live football is not as fun as it used to be. ¨Used to be¨ being the mid-90s, so we´re not even talking about nostalgia for terraces or hooliganism here. In fact, I´d go as far as to say that it´s not even as fun as watching it on the telly.

In a few years, the people that run football are going to understand that this circus cannot sustain itself. Let's be realistic, football is not intrinsically that interesting a game. If I actually want to watch a fascinating contest of epic proportions then it ain't a patch on Cricket or the Tour de France. People watch football to watch people. To see mental geordies outside St.James' Park when some loser/idiot comes to coach them, to watch people cry when they get relegated and to watch them be unhingedly happy when Burnley win a play-off final. The people watching on the telly are really there to watch us, not the game.

And when we've all gone, everyone will wonder what the fuss is all about.

I can fix America

Helpful information for Democratic Party politicians interested in meaningful health reform: How hard is it to say the following? America pays significant more for its healthcare than any other country on the planet. Soon it will reach 20% of your entire productive effort. In exchange for this you get a health system which does not provide for a significant minority of people. Those that it does provide for worry constantly that they will keep their healthcare through periods of economic insecurity. Should they be unfortunate enough to fall sick, their insurance company will look for an excuse not to treat them, should they have been lucky enough to have passed the qualification for health insurance in the fist place.

I am a European. My country spends much less than yours does on healthcare. I have never worried about how I´m going to pay for my healthcare for one second. My healthcare is not rationed, I don´t worry about paying it, I don´t have to fill out any forms proving that I´m eligible, what care I receive is decided by my doctor according to need, without reference to how it will effect a company´s profit line. I will not die because of denial of care and my life expectancy is longer than yours.

What´s more, if I want better healthcare, I can, if I want to, pay for it. Private healthcare exists here if you want it. Most people do not feel they need it. Because I live in a capitalist country. Unfortunately, as much as I would like it have done, a state-owned public health system has not lead to the collapse of capitalism.

This situation exists across the developed world. Every single rich country (likes yours) manages to provide healthcare for the entire population without getting over excited that this will herald the beginnings of Stalinism. And they don´t just have a ¨public option¨, the government owns the hospitals, it buys the drugs, it hires and fires the doctors and nurses.

Stop fucking about. Tell the American people the simple unadulterated truth, the insurance company free version of it. Europeans love their healthcare systems, they think yours is barking and inhumane. It´s one of the things that makes us glad not to live in The USA. If you want to get this legislation passed, fuck the health insurance companies and go for it, stop mincing around. Generations of Americans will love you for it. Ask Aneurin Bevan, the founder of our National Health Service, and one to date one of the most popular British politicians of all time.

Honesty in parliament

I sympathise with the idea of independents standing in opposition to mainstream politicos whose faces have been buried in the public expenses troff. But a word of caution regarding Esther Rantzen´s mooted candidacy ... First off, if the point is that our democracy has been perverted and corrupted by the political class in this country, then surely it would be more to the point to be sending normal people with our values there, rather than politicians on an ego trip. Especially as Martin Bell´s impact on that sewer bit didn´t really go very far.

Secondly, given that the thing being debated is the abuse of public institutions, then perhaps the best choice is not someone who founded a charity that went bust four years ago (and had to be folded into Oxfam) largely as a result of paying exorbitant salaries to a companies that had 13 executive directors on large salaries (up to 90,000 GBP p.a.), despite just having 268 full-time employees (in 2004 wages took up more than half their income from donations). If I remember correctly (though I stand to be corrected) Ms. Rantzen was also on the pay roll in a consultant capacity, despite being a rich celebrity apparently doing work for charity.

Perhaps she can tell us from experience how you stop institutions set up for public benefit from being bled dry by well-meaning people who nevertheless feel the need of handsome renumeration for doing good.

celebrities and us

Britain has a unique celebrity culture. On the one hand, aside from the Americans, nobody pays as much attention to the private lives of so many individuals in the world of entertainment. Nobody has the array of magazines, tv programmes and newspaper articles devoted to the Jade Goodies of the world that we do.

For Britain, famous people are almost a sort of aristocracy, with all the attendant baggage for us peasants that implies. A friend of mine used to work for a well-known international ticket company, in their Manchester box office. One night before a gig, a local celebrity comes in, an actress off Coronation Street. Her kid's going to see some live show - Bob the Builder or something along those lines. She's shown up with no booking code, no ID, doesn't even know what postcode it's booked under (her P.A. booked it apparently). Now my friend is good at his job and a nice bloke, so he's looking for a way to help her. Not because he knows who she is, but just because. Looking for any way to identify which tickets are hers. But this woman just can't help, she's got nothing she can tell him. So she pulls out the celebrity card, his manager recognises her, and insists that my friend doles out two duplicate tickets, which he dutifully does.

Now, any normal person shows up without anyway to prove that these tickets are theirs, not even booked in their name in fact, you see them for the chancer they are and send them on their way. But no, the celebrity aristocracy, already so blessed, gets little favour after little favour, their droit de seigneur and why not, it's only a few perks. So she stands in the queue, and demands one of the staff holds her place, whilst she takes her little one to the bathroom - a wonderful service, if only they could offer it to everyone. Then walks straight past the bar queue, and gets outraged when a glass collector won't serve her drink, and so on throughout the night. "Oooh, you'll never guess who we had in this evening?"

But the downside of being an aristocrat exists too. You get all this privilege, for little or no work, and people resent you for it. In fact, we really resent them for it. Not the shrink-wrapped, perfect-world US celebrity culture for us. We hate celebrities. Pick up Heat magazine if you don't believe me, or read the gossip column in The Sun. We adore slagging these people off, we love it when they get fat, or too skinny, or make a fool of themselves, or they fail. Half the time we prefer our celebrities to be talentless morons, there to be abused by the system or to make themselves look inadequate. It's almost like the only way we can bear to be the peasants is by engaging in the time honoured tradition of fool's day, where the world gets stood on its head, and we get to laugh at the motherfuckers on top.

Maybe there was a bit of all this in Steven Gerrard's court case. Putting aside the the so-sad-it's-funny nature of the Gerrard defence (as one friend put it, "he stood up after being elbowed in the head by my friend, of course I felt threatened and had to hit him 4 times"), Gerrard admitted that he'd been up to the DJ booth to demand they change the music and couldn't understand why the bloke wouldn't do it. Now, do you and I expect the DJ in a bar to change the music on our request? We might, on occasion, put a request to them, but the general assumption is that most places put the music on that they want to play. If you don't like it, you find somewhere else. This is normal mortal land. Gerrard and his mates first insist that they get control of the music. Then they end up in a fight about it. Even if the fight is six of one, half a dozen of the other, the expectation of these petty favours that come with a modicum of celebrity is pretty common. The refusal is too. Your average self-respecting man (not fanboy) doesn't think you deserve special favours because you're lucky enough to earn a lot of money for playing a game. The world has given you plenty already. If Steven Gerrard asked me to change the music in my house, I'd politely tell him to fuck off.

Whilst the acquittal itself might seem a little weird in some quarters (or typical in more cynical ones), the situation, a member of the celebratocracy throwing their weight around and not even noticing their doing it, is all too common.

different worlds ...

One of the unexpected side effects of Obama world is that on certain things there´s a disconnect between Obama´s old mates and your run-of-the-mill political/media establishment. The recent controversy with the Harvard professor being belligerent to a cop who´d accused him of breaking into his own home reminded me of an episode of The Boondocks about snitching. Huey Freeman does a retrospective about black people being culturally inclined not to talk the police, with some clips of people shutting doors in the face of various cops. Then they cut to some white people talking about how much they luuuuuuuurve talking to the police, ¨I mean, why wouldn´t you talk to the police? I looooooove talking to the police!¨

The half of the American population that thinks like this reckons that this police officer should get the benefit of the doubt. Well, because he´s the police, and more than that, maybe he technically did everything by the book and rather than do what they would all do, which is smile and nod and laugh along, Professor Gates told him to go fuck himself. In fact, there´s a long history of this in American culture. In some quarters the LA Riots for instance were where ¨a certain part¨ of the population were insisting on their right to behave lawlessly, loot and attack police officers, not responding to an outrageous miscarriage of justice and the kind of mass policing that led to something like 1 in 3 black males being detained by the police in any two year period. The 60s riots were nothing to do with fighting racial prejudice but some shite like black nationalism or anti-white racism.

Now, if I´d been on a long trip and discover my door jammed, I´d be annoyed. I might, had I managed to break into my house and sat down, got a cup of tea, by the time a police officer summoned by my neighbours arrived, it´s possible I would see the funny side of it. I probably wouldn´t maintain my cool if the cop was treating the whole thing too seriously after that. More than that, maybe I wouldn´t find it as funny if I was from a ethnic background that has a history of persecution from the police, and if I was thinking ¨I bet my neighbours wouldn´t call the police if Mr and Mrs. Kennedy from across the road were breaking into their house.¨ And additionally, I imagine if the police were called, and did find Mr and Mrs. Kennedy sat in their house, relaxing after a long trip, they wouldn´t start throwing their weight around and demanding identification.

Now police have rules to follow, but there are following rules and following rules. Now, I would imagine upon entering a room that an easy way to identify a burglar is to see if he runs away from the police. If he´s sat around and making himself at home, he probably isn´t robbing the place. So, even if procedure is to get him out of the house, search him, check his ID and all the rest, if you´re basically aware, through your instincts as a law enforcer, that a robbery is not in progress, you do this in an apologetic way, if at all. ¨I´m sorry, I couldn´t check your ID, you know, just doing my job, sorry.¨ If he tells you to go to hell, you probably leave it. You certainly don´t arrest him.

Now a lot of us understand why this whole thing would have pissed Professor Gates off, and, because we don´t ¨looooooooooove talking to the police¨, think it´s appropriate for him to tell the police officer concerned to fuck off. Well, we might think it was a silly thing to do, but we´d understand, we´d be sympathetic and we´d reckon when the officer arrested him, it was an arsehole thing to do.

Not, in WASP world. In WASP world, everything the police does is fine. We should always be polite and helpful, because the police always have our best interests at heart, and are never just being over-officious tools. And, of course, if we do complain, and tell the police to get to fuck, they have every right to arrest us for being abusive.

To the rest of us, we wouldn´t expect to be arrested for calling a random member of the public a dick, especially if they were behaving like, well ... a dick... Not in WASP world, in WASP land, the police are sensitive creatures who need special treatment, in case their poor wittle ears catch the odd swear word.

And this is where Barack Obama comes in. Now, he´s sooooooo establishment in everything he does. So much so that he´s not been brave enough to pass anything since becoming president. But the difference with establishment African-Americans, like Obama and Gates, is that racial profiling is so prevalent that, unlike poverty, it can´t be avoided even by them. Like the right-wing Atlanticist MP Shahid Malik who got detained and searched for explosives at Dulles Airport. Hence the disconnect, Obama can´t help but instinctively answer that question, because he´s experienced it. No doubt so had Professor Gates prior to being confronted in his own home. Of course, at the time of writing the President of the United States had already apologised ... there are some lines even he isn´t allowed to cross.