Tag: capitalism

Adios Muthafucka

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It’s about bloody time but according to various news outlets Biden has finally been declared the winner. It has only been about an hour but the internet has gone wild in celebration; memes flying out left, right and centre. The laughter has begun. After four years of jokes tinged with an air of war about them they already feel more fun. People need to let off steam after four years of political bewilderment and horror. The war goes on though. Not only with Trump in the short term as he contests the election but when he refuses to concede. Trump will never concede. He might walk out but he’ll never concede, and likely there will be subtle elements of force at play when he does finally vacate the building. Even then the fight goes on. His legions of fanboys hanging on his every tweet. Waiting on the order to go out and embarrass themselves further in public. It will be interesting to see how quickly people start deserting him though. He’s going to die an embittered lonely old man.

Yet the fight goes on. In America, you now have to deal with the tyranny of centrism. The empty beliefs of people who like everything very much as it is and will withstand any attempts at change. Those foolish enough to not learn the lessons of Trump and what led to him coming to power in the first place. In Britain we won’t stop Brexit but we have to somehow deal with our own version of a government that just does as it feels, one never really held to account despite the glaringly obvious. We have to deal with an entire media incapable of upholding even the most basic tenets of journalism. And we have to deal with an opposition in the image of a centrist like Biden, one also likely unwilling or incapable of dealing with the issues which have allowed for events like Brexit and the extreme fringe wing of a political party now running a country.

This same situation seems to be repeated across the western world. When Emmanuel Macron came to power in France at the expense of the far-right Marie Le Pen, it felt like another short term sticky plaster with nothing to offer but empty charm and words. The sticky plaster can never heal the wounds of a people being left behind by an economic and social ideology that relies on them being behind. All bubbles must burst. Trump was no fluke. Brexit is no accident. Marie Le Pen will return. And then what? More sticky plasters? We celebrate tonight but the evidence will be in what comes next. That’s what it comes down to. With all that in mind though let’s enjoy this moment, that orange prick is finally gone or at least he’s not in power anymore. You know how it goes; “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap…”.

Dare To Dream Naysayer

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Here is something to amuse you on this cold November morning while you suffer from your Full Moon Halloween induced hangover. It turns out there is such a thing as linesman watch. That probably makes no sense to you, and for those who don’t know, a linesman is the person who runs along the touchline in either football, rugby or such thing and indicates whether the ball is out. Bizarrely it turns out one has become a celebrity for all the right reason recently, or at least the amusing reasons. Scottish football team Inverness Caledonian Thistle decided to replace human operated cameras with AI ones but it backfired when the AI system mistook the linesman’s bald head for the football. Only in Scotland.

While AI may stoke the fear of Terminator in you we discover the more amusing realities of a technology evidently still in it’s infancy. It is clear though how much technology is going to affect the way we work and the jobs we have. I’m no luddite, although I am cautious, but I do believe technology has the potential to set us free. It’s not work that’ll do this, it’s quite the opposite. Mass employment is not the answer but neither is capitalism’s quest for infinite profit. It offers up the possibility that we will likely in the next ten years either have to create an entire new sector of work, likely more than one, or find a way to allow people to work less and yet keep this standard of living.

It’s not impossible for people for work four or five hours a day, sharing what jobs remain. It would mean the entire redrawing of society as it would be impossible for people to continue to hoard the wealth. It would likely mean the unthinkable that things would need to be shared at little, less profits would have to be made. Maybe the concept of a profit driven society would be replaced with a people centre one. Perhaps I’m some kind of utopian idealist dreamer but we need dreams to make anything previously thought impossible possible. Throughout history the previously impossible has been made possible. Humans have proved in the past they are capable of compassion, they don’t only want to screw each over. No extreme one way or another is either desirable or realistic but perhaps a redrawing of the balance is about due. We are very capable. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise, it’s likely not in their benefit or they simply have no imagination. Let’s start imagining.

Painful Consumption Experiences

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There’s a things in marketing called paying for painful consumption experiences. I heard about this for the first time a few days ago and it refers to things like boxing, triathlons or climbing. They’re not always pleasant and we potentially suffer pain when we complete them. From a marketing perspective it would be why people are willing to pay for these things and how to make them do it. How can you convince someone to not only participate in something that will leave them in pain but actively give you money to inflict it upon them.

When we think of it that way human behaviour can be bizarre. What it does suggest is that our everyday existences lack something so basic and necessary that we will go to extreme lengths to achieve it. It isn’t that we need to experience the sensation of pain, it is the affect upon the human body that experiencing this sensation has. Can we really compare sitting in an office all day or working in retail or whatever average job we may have, to being out hunting an animal for food to survive. Can we even compare it to working in a factory during the industrial revolution. The point is that after thousands of years of feeling the intensity and adrenaline of daily survival we’re now living such safe lives that we actively go out in search of this feeling our bodies have ordinarily been experiencing all these years prior. We need it. But why?

Anyone who has done something extreme like a boxing match, skydiving or climbing a rockface will tell you it makes them feel real. It makes life feel real. They know they’re alive because they feel true existence in that moment. Partly they’re finally there in the present moment. Your head cannot be in the clouds dreaming about the future, the past or dinner when you have to be fully focused on simply getting through that moment. No wonder people hunt out that feeling. You don’t get that punching numbers behind an office screen all day, and I don’t say that critically of punching numbers it is simply an example. The truth is not everybody wants a painful consumption experience. That is also fine.

But why pay for it. Surely we could just go out and swim across the nearest lake or create our own version of these extreme survival things in the nearest woods. That involves effort to set up so it is probably a bad example but there are plenty of extreme things we can do without feeling the need to pay for them or be manipulated by marketing. We put a certain type of value on things when we pay for them. In a way that is how we can create value. If it isn’t handmade or has some emotional importance the likelihood is the other determining factor is a financial one. This is society and this is how we have become programmed to get things. If we want it we pay for it. If we want adrenaline, we’re likely going to find something we can spend money on that will give us that feeling. The marketers understand. They understand us better than we do.

An Ideological Art Attack

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Starline Social Club in Oakland has gone up for sale. I have never been to this venue, and likely won’t ever set foot in Oakland let alone this club. I only know it is up for sale because it’s sale was shared by a friend of mine on Facebook. Why this is worth mentioning is because it is yet another venue in the long list of such places that have already closed and others that will. Pubs are struggling but can invariably stay open. Numerous clubs, live music venues, theatres to name but a few examples are likely to go bust if this continues much longer. People’s safety must come first of course and a solution without some kind of financial assistance is far from clear. What the arts do need though is some kind of support.

Rishi Sunak the British Chancellor recently suggested that artists and musicians who couldn’t find work should retrain. There wasn’t any suggestion that they should be supported through this crisis, they should simply become something else. Here he is below doing his best impression of Will from The Inbetweeners.

He may as well have just uttered the ‘get a real job’ statement because clearly he was thinking it. Who needs artists when they can design images for adverts or musicians when they can be creating songs for adverts or playwrights when they could be writing scripts for adverts. How is capitalism going to function successfully if people refuse to exploit others.

More concerning is how this is playing out in the culture wars. I read recently that while the right won the economic war, the left won the culture wars but clearly both are still being doggedly fought. It is telling though that if you were going on probable likelihoods, the arts would predominantly be a theatre for left wing ideals. Are we seeing right wing governments in both Britain and the US intentionally allowing the music and arts scenes to go bust. Is this lack of support and funding simply an ideological attack? It doesn’t need too much of an imagination to make that leap. How better to attack your opponents by watching them struggle, hindering their chances of attacking you in the future.

There is one thing they seem to miss though. You can lose clubs, theatres and art venues but people will always be able to find a way to express themselves. If you try to take away their means of doing so they will simply come up with other ways. They are creative, they will be creative. And most importantly by attacking this scene they are simply entrenching anti-Conservative or anti-right wing capitalist ideals for at least another generation. People don’t forget. If pain brings out the creative, the grassroot streets are going to become a scene of colour before too long.

Boris Johnson’s Dystopian New Jerusalem

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As Boris Johnson talks about building a ‘New Jerusalem’ I remind myself of any dystopian story I have ever read. I’m not sure I want to be part of his New Jerusalem. Anyone professing to be the architect of a new society makes me instinctively cautious. Someone with his track record for incompetence and general indifference to the wellbeing of the populace is someone whose Jerusalem reeks of inevitable failure. These are the type of people who will hoard the lifejackets as the ship sinks, or who in actuality are already hoarding the lifejackets as the system sinks.

I haven’t been getting caught up in cries of fascism and autocracy by the state but this lot in power at the moment are not playing by the rules of old. If they were anarchists decentralising and creating community I would be fine with it but when they’re right wing wannabe despots in the making it is more concerning. Teachers can’t teach about anti-capitalism anymore. The police have been given draconian powers to enforce their will on the people. Powers are rarely given up once they’ve been received. The opposition exists in name only. There are real and concerning things going on in the UK at present. Once we leave the EU this power grab will only be intensified.

Talking of the ‘opposition’, only twenty of them, one of whom was Jeremy Corbyn, voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill. Officially this “authorise(s) conduct by officials and agents of the security and intelligence services, law enforcement, and certain other public authorities, which would otherwise constitute criminality”. In layman’s terms the state and it’s enforcers are now above the law. Effectively this allows the government a license to kill whoever it deems a danger to it’s existence. The US and Canada have similar laws but they specifically exclude certain crimes like murder and torture. This one rushed through Parliament omits such exclusions. Remarkably the bill extends these powers to various government bodies such as The Competition and Markets Authority, The Environment Agency, The Financial Conduct Authority, The Food Standards Agency and The Gambling Commission.

The bill allows for state actors to break the law in three scenarios – in the interests of national security, for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder and in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom. What is clear from this though is the ambiguity involved. ‘Preventing disorder’ seems as all encompassing as ‘breach of the peace’, what exactly is classed as disorder? And someone can be killed to protect the economic interests of the UK. Does this mean I can sign up for the police and kill the leaders of Brexit? But seriously if we think of the new teaching rules on sugar coating capitalism and then this, it’s clear who and what this mob represent.

Former Tory leader and Brexit Minister David Davis and former Tory Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell have even called the government out on there being a “whole series of weaknesses in (the bill), which at the end of the day will impinge on innocent people” and on the dangers of “granting such powers in a free society” respectively. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Unions such as Unite have also heavily cautioned about the dangers involved with passing such legislation. As ever the media have been silent. Not even a mention of Keir Starmer whipping his MPs into abstaining against the vote. Love or loath Corbyn, at least he was a man of integrity and one who actually acted as a real opposition. Like I said, I don’t usually get caught up in genuine despotic outcries but this is concerning and this is a system looking increasingly less capable of maintaining and standing up for itself by the day.

The Law Enforcing Law Breakers

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The British Government are on fire today. We have new Covid-19 laws, in particular one which bans more than six people being together as a group. There are some credible arguments for this but seeing as they’re not applying it to work, shops, sports and a few other financially driven things, it does suggest that while they are concerned with peoples health, they’re more concerned about money. Don’t get me wrong, I am aware of the long term damage done to people’s mental and physical health by shutting down the economy. Restructuring the economy so it was perhaps a little more sustainable and less capitalistic would probably help a lot more in the long term and this is the ideal opportunity but that’s never going to happen at present.

In regards to large changes, I would be curious of the affect of this new law on protests. As a thick line has been drawn on anything that doesn’t make money or involves the arts, surely protesting is now also illegal. After last weeks revealing outrage and ludicrous free speech outcry over Extinction Rebellion’s blockade of certain media outlets known for their rather unscrupulous approach to reporting, as well as their less than compassionate views on poor people and those in need, what would that mean for similar such actions. How do you then define a group? What if a large enough amount of individuals just happened to come together in one spot independently of each other. Anyway, depending on how long this new law is in place, there may be a lot of legal unknowns ahead.

Talking of breaking the law, while our Government is ready to come down hard on us for visiting grandma and taking too many of the children, they’re more than willing to break international law when it suits them. It appears one of the main pillars of their argument on why they should have been reelected may not be so strong after all. Having rushed through the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU just so they could say they had one in place for the election, they have decided to go back on one of the main points of agreement. Apparently their will be no customs checks between Northern Ireland and the British mainland as had been agreed so as to prevent a hard border with the south. This point was critical in getting the Republic of Ireland to agree to the deal because of legitimate fears over it’s affect on the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement.

It’s all part of the governments attempts at pushing through the Internal Markets Bill, which the Scottish and Welsh governments also view as a power grab and one which directly challenges elements of their respective devolution’s. One Welsh Conservative MP has already resigned over the issue. They knew they would never be able to come to an agreement with the EU before the election so they just agreed to anything for the sake of reelection. Now they will become law breakers on the very day they demand real sacrifices from their own people under threat of the law. If one day could ever be used to define this government it would be this one. I’m sure it’s not the first time I’ve thought that though. This is only going to get uglier. Watch this space.

Another End For Another Beginning

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After nearly five months of tears, tantrums and a few satisfied pizza lovers, the day has finally come. I can be quite a sentimental person. I enjoy ending things because more often than not it means I’m about to start something new but it doesn’t mean I don’t experience at least a pang of sadness at the letting go of something. I couple of regulars made a point of ordering tonight which was appreciated. Unfortunately I didn’t repay the compliment by being over an hour late for one and forgetting to put extra mushrooms on his pizza. I’m sure he’ll forgive me. I’ll find out at Easter if we open then. We’re probably going to be the annoying company which only bothers to open in the really busy and good times. That will drive everyone else nuts. There’s a part of me that takes pleasure in that although I’m certain I would hate it if it was the other way round. All is open though, who knows what I’ll be doing and where next Easter. I may have even finished this by then.

There have been many lesson over these five months and certainly the stress I used to experience in the early days doesn’t seem to be such a thing anymore. Stress is probably not how I would describe in entirely, of course my friends would, but I would suggest there was a bit more anger involved as that ambled about without any sense of urgency. There was definitely something of the Gordon Ramsay about me. Now I just get on with it, if I’m late I’m late and if I’m on time I’m on time. Well more or less. Also in five months, let’s be honest you just get better at things.

It seems longer than five months. We are Lockdown Pizzas because we were born in lockdown. Cheesy bastard. Early April to be precise. Time must have been going slow these last few months then. We only started making them for some fun, everywhere else was closed and we had all the ovens with the bakery. We dreamt of making a thousand pound a night minimum as people would be desperate for something tasty in lockdown. We never made that of course but we did scare all the other takeaways into re-opening. What began as a few weeks of fun became a five month old trip. It was a crash course. Thankfully not a car crash.

And now we call time. As was always going to be and as could only be. It has been emotional. It has been intense. Goodnight sweet pizzas. Good morning something else.

An Unmasked Scumbag

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It’s confession time. I’ve not been wearing a mask. I’ve been into shops, supermarkets, even the little grocer that demands you use hand sanitiser if you want to come in. Okay the last one I barely took two steps in the shop and the guy just got me what I wanted but still I’ll include it. So far nobody has said anything and I suspect they probably won’t either. When I was in Sainsburys they played some rather conflicting messages which actually weren’t conflicting over the tannoy; “It is mandatory to wear face masks in store” followed by “Please be aware of those whose with conditions which may not be immediately obvious”. I did wonder if I should use that as an excuse were someone to challenge me but I can’t help feel it would be slightly disrespectful to people with genuine reasons for not wearing masks. So far I haven’t actually seen a single person not wearing one. I won’t deny I felt like a total pariah and imagined everyone’s eyes were surely on me, judging me. Like everything people were probably too involved in their own worlds to even notice and for this reason loads of maskless faces probably went past me but I couldn’t stop thinking about my own to notice.

This isn’t some protest. This has nothing to do with civil liberties. In truth I find peoples objections for wearing them on those grounds absurd. We live in an economic system which robs us and subtly enslaves us each and every day, and people take umbrage with having to wear a mask. It’s stupid and if you read between the lines you’ll just discover right wing libertarian propaganda. I on the other hand am forgetful and lazy. I don’t have a mask with me and I refuse to buy those cheap ones which break after five minutes and end up in a landfill. There was talk about six weeks ago of the environmental damage already obvious from one use face masks and PPE but that seems to have been brushed under the already bulging carpet. It always comes down to money, profit and ease but why can’t people just be persuaded to spend the same amount of money on one reusuable mask as they do one pack of ten ultimately disposable ones. We’re unable to use a washing machine and look after ourselves again. And none of that even goes into the socioeconomic arguments of how something deemed mandatory with added stigma should never cost money, even if just three pounds.

I actually have a face mask. A friend gave me an old sleeve of a tshirt and it works perfectly. When I finally remember to take it with me I’ll just use this. At the same time while I appreciate their use I find it frustrating that it has taken us six months to make it some kind of necessity. In those six months the virus was rampant and we start using them once it has died down. There will be reasons for this such as prioritising their use for nurses but with such flip flopping of advice, delays in making decisions and even once a decision was made, not having it come into affect until two weeks later; it is understandable why people are sceptical or just simply confused.

I am an ignorant arsehole for not wearing one despite the fact it makes total sense that they must help slow the spread of this virus. Surely that is undeniable even if it is minuscule. There is also a part of me that continues to feel it a necessity not to do something if the norm is to do it through fear of the wrath of my vigilante peers. It isn’t an attack upon my liberties to have to wear one but it does feel that just ever so slightly if I’m being judged by people, or guiltily imagining I am, by people who a week ago didn’t wear a mask but now do because of some government law that isn’t actually a law, it’s all about the wording with this lot, that I just want to give the finger to them all. At the same time there’s probably an argument for me to just grow up and wear a mask because the rest of this nonsense is all in my head and to wear one may just help protect someone I care about or someone somebody else cares about. It shouldn’t be so difficult really. But it still is, even though I actually don’t care either way whether I wear one or not. Maybe I should just go find that sleeve mask and be done with it. Let’s not have a series of pieces which just devolve into me having an argument with myself and result in nothing bar hypocrisy and flawed rationale on both sides. Let’s be honest, nobodies right and everybody’s wrong.

Desire All

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I’ve been fantasising again about running away and living a life of adventure. I should probably be clearer there, I daily fantasise about running away and living a life of adventure. It’s a tricky one coming from a life of seemingly constant travel to one in which I’m now in one place for three months shy of a year. It’s not that I’ve never stayed this long in one place. On two separate occasions I went a year, but they were in slightly more exotic places, Ibiza and Athens. There are times I wonder why I left either of them but I know why. It’ll probably also be why I leave here too. The problem though is that when I’m constantly on the move I start to find myself craving some stability and a home. It’s like I want the opposite extreme of whichever extreme I’m currently living. I share this not because I like to share, although I clearly do, but because I know I’m not alone in this kind of thing. We do this, we all do this. Maybe not to such extremes or perhaps a different type of extreme, but we all desire what we don’t have.

The question then is what hole are we trying to fill when we decide to fulfil our desires. I say this not just in the sense of running off and finding a boat to an exotic land, but I, we, buy things too. We desire and consume stuff, just lots of random stuff, and this must be for a reason other than because either we need it or we’re zombies who’ve been bitten by capitalism’s contagion. Sorry about the alliteration, I’m fallible. The point is though that there must be something we’re searching for other than the obvious; the adventure or the new t-shirt. Have they found a way of hacking into our inner selves and discovering that we have empty spaces which need filling. Or has life and the world we live in created these holes that we’re constantly trying to find answers for.

Desire is not a new thing. People in huts a thousand years ago desired something more so they sailed the seas and invaded countries. There may have been necessity and survival in a way very different to our own but there was still desire too. People have always craved jewels, there were wars fought over nutmeg, people killed for love. There is something natural about desire then, it’s about improving our own circumstances and making our lives better. It’s that drive that makes things better through ideas and inventions. Yet we are told by Eastern Philosophy to be objective and tame the desires within.

Ultimately these desires lead to suffering. I don’t doubt the Christian Bible will say something similar, as will the Koran. So is one right and the other wrong? Life is never so simple. We can use our desires to improve our worlds we live in, to help us strive, but if we can’t do anything about it then we will only suffer through our desire. If something is out of our control what is the point of allowing desire to take over. We must learn to be more objective, just be careful not to desire it, although it must be in our control so surely that’s fine. I was going to suggest it’s a crazy minefield with no answer but that all seems pretty simple and straightforward to me. Now then, that palm tree I was thinking about, I’m sure that’s something within my control…

To The Ramparts Lads

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This virus has seemingly thrown everything that we know in a blender and regurgitated nothing but confusion. People have seen what was once sure to them destroyed, panicked and hidden away in fortress’ made of toilet roll. I just read that as a result of an expected lack of applicants universities will be sharing out places equally amongst themselves for next year. Obviously the best will still get the best and so on but importantly none will be left behind and risk closure. This reminded me of a theme that seems to be spreading about how in times of crisis our nation states and governments who once firmly espoused and embraced free market capitalist economics are finding themselves surviving this pandemic not through the free market but through embracing more socialist methodologies. This first arose with governments protecting the wages of people forced to down tools with the help of this mythological eighty percent everyone is talking about but has never seen. The usual ignorant trope about who is going to pay for all the generosity is in normal circumstances bullshit but unfortunately here it becomes relevant; if nobody is working at all eventually the money and produce will run dry. I don’t class this generosity as socialism though, it may be a social support to the people but could equally be seen as a short term injection into the economy so as to protect it in it’s current form.

Regardless clearly free market economics doesn’t work when the perfect circumstances for it are not in place. The moment this happens people start to rely on the state and the state starts to tighten regulations and legislations. If the free market we are led to believe as the only possible existence clearly only works in certain exact circumstances, and even then clearly not for everybody and at the expense of many, then perhaps we’re currently living in the wrong circumstances. Perhaps we should be looking at a more robust economic system that can withstand crisis and not rely on – cough cough – handouts. Some would argue that another system would not work in these societies we’ve created but if we’ve created these societies we can create others. These may support other economic models and not free market economics. Free market capitalism would not be viable just as more equal economic models apparently aren’t now. It all depends upon the prism you view it through and the foundations you rely upon. All that is clear though is that the very economic model that usually vilifies handouts requires them when the perfect conditions for it’s existence are not met. Perhaps it’s time to stop relying on something so flimsy for something so important. If a new society needs to be created, well then, a new society it is.