Tag: neoliberal

An Unmasked Scumbag

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

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.

An Opportunity Lost?

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The more I think about it the British General Election back in December was an even bigger loss than I thought at the time. Don’t get me wrong I was pretty desponded, as the annuls of this blog can attest, but this is a deeper realisation. At the time it was clearly a missed opportunity. The Labour manifesto was in places a sensation, an attempt to strip back years of neoliberal skullduggery and corruption. It was relatively radical by an measure of what depths British politics has sunk to, we were going to have drastic and crazy levels of social welfare in line with Germany and France. Perish the thought. Apparently that was going to be Communism in the heart of Europe, well the departing heart of Europe. This realisation that we were instead about to be dragged out of Europe and forced onto our proverbial knees by an aggressively self-serving United States. To sit by as those supposedly negotiating and supposedly on our behalf pretended they were going to act tough even though they had already admitted they had put all our eggs in the Yankee basket. The neoliberal con was about to have it’s one last job before going into retirement. Of course I was despondent.

And now as the world has descended into whatever we can call this shit show, it is beyond doubt that there will be lasting effects and change coming out of all of this. Nobody who says they know really has any idea because it genuinely is all open. All open in the way that power still holds all the cards even though they’re blank. Depending how long this goes on for will depend on how your average persons view of the world changes in an open compassionate way, and that means a lot of suffering I suspect. Right now after a month of this it’s far from long enough to have any lasting change and I must point out I’m not a believer in ends justifying means or innocent people suffering. I don’t want the world necessarily to change for the better if it means innocents dying. Anyone who believes this misses the point. But had power not been this corrupt bunch of self-serving scumbags then at least this rebuild may have been done with someone other than their own and the tax dodgers interests at the top of the pile.

What an opportunity. We thought it was going to be bad having five years of a majority government of some of the worst Tories in my lifetime calling the shots. Now these people will rebuild what comes out of this and I am not looking forward. Boris is no hero despite what the media are attempting to convince you, and I doubt he had an intensive care bed epiphany about the value of the NHS and freedom of movement despite his foreign NHS nurse holding his precious little hand throughout. Imagine the vitriol had Jeremy Corbyn been in charge, there is simply no way his government would be getting let off as easily as this current mob. They would most likely blame him for the state of the NHS despite only being in power for a few months after ten years of Tory austerity and ideological cuts. We could be about to move into a period of rebuilding society and the economy with people being put first, the whole populace, not the depending on bank account version. So it is a missed opportunity, but is it a lost opportunity? This is only something time can tell. We’ve certainly not made it easy on ourselves though.

With Crisis Comes Change

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

And just like that the attacks have begun. The government has been accused of all things recently, ‘inept‘ being an unfortunately common one when it refers to their response to a pandemic. Generous certainly isn’t one despite their attempts at passing off a £330 billion pledge to businesses and small businesses as some kind of benevolent offering to their subjects. The fact people are going to have to pay it back, and at a higher rate in line with inflation, suggests they vary considerably to the charitable offering made when the banks were bailed out during the last recession. We’re all in this together apparently but don’t forget nothing is for free, unless you’re part of the international banking cartel or have friends in high places.

But back to the attacks which I managed to digress from almost immediately after raising their existence. There has been a lot of talk about governments using current events to push through legislation they would have previously been unable to. Milton Friedman, the father of Neoliberal free-market economics, and the man therefore responsible for this shit show of a world economy, suggested it was. “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around”. It appears some of these ideas that have been waiting around are being given their moment to be pushed through. In the US Trump has been suggesting payroll tax cuts which will destroy social security. In Israel proposals have been pushed through to monitor peoples phone much more easily using legislation usually reserved for post terrorist attack hysteria.

And now in the UK the government are attempting to push through the Civil Contingencies bill which will give police and immigration officers more powers to detain suspected carriers of the virus “to take them to a suitable place to enable screening and assessment” for an as yet unspecified amount of time. If someone is clearly ill and a danger to those around then it is fair for them to be taken somewhere they can get help and prevent them from harming others but this bill is dangerously ambiguous. Throw in the rather alarming length of two years that it will be in law, considering very worst case scenarios for this virus stand at eighteen months, and considering it could simply be put up for renewal each month as it’s required and the cocking of your head starts to feel justified.

This bill like everything currently in Parliament is being pushed through without debate and without being voted on. In times of crisis we need to strengthen democracy not weaken it, and certainly not use it as an opportunity to empower and enrich those already holding a disproportionate amount of power and wealth. It may be worth keeping an eye on what isn’t reported or perhaps what is whispered between the hysterical shouting. You may just start to spot a few new ideas that look as if they’ve suspiciously had a layer of dust blown off them. There’s nothing like a little crisis for some change after all.

Wild Eyed Crazy Bernie

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It’s good to see Bernie is doing well in the Democratic primaries. He came second to Buttigeig in Iowa by less than a thousand votes but has won the next two in New Hampshire and Nevada. Today sees South Carolina before Super Tuesday on well Tuesday of next week. I don’t care what people people say, for anyone familiar with Sky Sports’ sensationalising of football, Super Tuesday sounds ridiculous and merely highlights through which prism we view the world now. I think I understand how their voting system works although I will admit there is probably bits I miss out on. They get votes in each state which leads to getting delegates and super delegates based on their share of the vote to represent them at the Democratic national convention or whatever it’s called, the one with the most wins will get the pleasure of going up against the big bad wolf Trump. I wonder how may Supers they can fit in that contest especially if it ends up being crazy Bernie the wild eyed Socialist running.

Having recent experience of elections and what turned out to be the inevitable disappointment of losing, Bernie going up against Trump makes me nervous. It is impossible to deny the parallels with British politics of recent times. The populist Socialist Corbyn against the populist right winger Johnson. Despite the fact anyone with any sense could see the folly of voting for Johnson and only three months down the line it’s already seemingly falling to pieces, although the same was said about Trump, the establishment and their media did anything and everything they could to keep Corbyn from coming to power. Better the devil you know who does your bidding than the devil you don’t who wants you to pay some tax. For this reason I am nervous then. Even publications like the Economist who I am finding myself starting to trust are focusing a little too much on unelectable Bernie. I have seen the power of the media in the UK and don’t doubt for a second that despite the partisan nature of American politics they would do anything in their power to prevent Bernie from coming to power, even if that means another four years of Trump and four years of him knowing he doesn’t need to worry about being re-elected. You can even see the parallels within the American Democratic and British Labour parties as those who hold the power try frantically to repeat their success of last time when they got Hillary Clinton in with the self-defeating behaviour of many within Labour who would rather their own party were not elected than one led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Politics and power is dirty. I am not American but their politics affects so much of the world and is covered so much in our own media that it is impossible not to take an interest. I hope I am proved wrong because I would love to see Bernie in The White House and Trump back in the penthouse of one of his failing towers, but we’ve already had a trial run for this exact situation and it didn’t end well. If you repeat enough times how unelectable someone is he may just end up being so. We had turkeys voting for Christmas, will they be voting for Thanksgiving this time around?

Change

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

This time next week I’ll most likely be standing in a polling booth. We have our general election next Thursday and it is not too unacceptable to be liberal with the superlatives when describing how massive it is and how it has the potential to shape the future in so many different ways. It is probably also an opportune moment to mention I’ll be putting my theoretical belief in anarchism aside, theoretical because I don’t do enough in life to allow it to become practical, and participate in what is probably a momentary denial of the pointlessness of this whole charade.

This election is massive because we are are standing at a t-junction. Neo-liberalism has done it’s proponents well these last forty years as big business and the wealthy have cemented their authority and wealth but theres not much left to ring out of everyone else who has been left behind. We are faced with the choice between turning right at the junction and electing the Conservatives who wish remove us from the European Union, an organisation I’m not necessarily fond of as it represents the tyranny of centrism, but moves us closer to being a tax haven bent over a table with an American dick up our arse. Turning left and following Labour as together we take a step back to a time before a neoliberal agenda sold everything but which probably should be left in the annuls of a grey and failing 1970s. It does however represent an inclusive compassionate agenda which does actually seem to give a shit about the people of the country and not just as tools to retain power and maybe I am being unfair with the 1970s comment as I agree with many of the policies but perhaps it’s time to look forward, readdress our relationship to capital and left wing notions of full employment and actually revolutionise how we live our lives and exist of a daily basis. We need something radical now more than ever. Something is very wrong, we can all see and feel it and it’s one of the reasons people are going and doing extremes like voting for populists and Brexit. People are rightly pissed off and it’s just unfortunate they don’t realise all they’re doing is voting for the wolf that has already bitten off their legs while convincing them it must have been that racist anti-racist sheep who couldn’t possibly be trusted with his own wool and refuses to give up the self-determining shears as he eyes up your starved withering free arm. The choice of continuing the nightmare that has happened or the fear of one that may happen.

That is why this is such a massive election. Much can and will change because centrism doesn’t work, it just makes everything pretty and people have had enough. However, is that enough and are people really ready and willing for the change in themselves that will be required for anything worthwhile to genuinely actualise. It is unfortunate that people have seemingly lost their sense of direction at this most crucial of moments. It is also debatable whether they ever had it in the first place.