I was signing up to an online donations button for The Slog yesterday. There are plenty of them out there, and just as many problems in dealing with them. This project would, I thought, take me a couple of days max to complete. Five weeks later – after trawling through gallons of bullsh*t, misleading terms, hidden agendas and spam – I’ve finally settled on one that looks OK. I’m holding the applause until I’ve seen it in action, but this one at least seemed able to cope with the fact that I am a native of one country living in another at the moment. The others simply couldn’t deal with it: ‘telephone number inappropriate’ was my favourite, but there were other glitches involving post codes, nationality and so forth. In the end – even with the one I’ve chosen – I wound up using my name in French (Jean Garde) to keep the red asterisks from turning on.
I find their inflexibility, in a world these people insist is global, sweetly ironic: “Yes it’s a global world but I’m selling here, so will you for Chrissakes sit still“. As life gets more and more about Big ordering Small around, it has become our duty to consume. That’s nothing new, but these days we are not allowed to say no: sooner or later, the download will creep under your radar to take its rightful position in All Programs, whether you like it or not.
Earlier today the weekly Adobe Doo-dahdiggleydong update flashed onto my laptop screen, and this time I read the guff about why it would be a good idea to download it. None of it involved things I would ever do, so I ticked ‘no’ and moved on. By lunchtime, I gave in to the inevitable and let it in: it was the only way to get any work done. Afterwards, Adobe brought up a screen explaining that I could, at last, wave my willy in 3-D at Facebook users via the medium of Twitter and still be home in time for tea. That’s not on my must-do-before-I-die-list, so I closed the page. Firefox crashed.
There used to be an advertising line, ‘Things happen after a Badedas bath’. It’s the same with Microsoft and Downloads. My work gets interrupted or lost because something I don’t want is being forced into my life. Welcome to Twenty-first century monopolism.
The forced nature of giving up space on one’s hard drive or parting with money is rapidly becoming obligatory. By the time they’ve finished, not doing what they ask will involve either the death penalty, or being named and shamed by the Daily Mail. On a macro scale, in Cyprus it’s your life savings; at the median level, it’s paying taxes to people who waste £2 in every five. On a micro basis in, say, middle class Athens, it’s being cold and too poor to buy wood or turn the electricity on, the latter having been double-taxed because not enough payers were willing to mop up after Venizelos and his crew last time around.
We need, all of us, to think harder about the sheer lunacy of this. We elect people who break promises, break the law, and then break the bank. So they reduce services and create more unemployment, while explaining why – because you live in a nice house – you need to pay them more blackmail money than someone living in a Council flat. Then four years later they come back again and insist that we couldn’t do without them. And by voting for them, we agree.
We’re six paragraphs in tonight, and already I sound like Malcolm Stahlhelmet the Haringey radical. I like being creative about problems, I like debating, and I think reform for reasons of socio-economic effectiveness is a good thing. But radical, moi? You have to be kidding: I supported gay and female liberation, I once joined the SDP, and I never drink coffee any more. That’s the sum total of my credentials for being labelled Che Sloguevara. If I sound like a radical, then there must something very, very bad and profoundly dysfunctional out there.
And there is: it’s called the forced adoption of a perverted capitalist, crypto-democratic form that dilutes cultures, ruins communities, bankrupts Nation States, and removes all our liberties one by one – just so 3-5% of the population can get filthy and undeservedly rich. Think Jeremy Hunt, and you have the archetypal greedy bastard in one. Think Wolfgang Schäuble, and you have the mad control-spook in one. Think Angela Merkel, and you have the Stalinist power-accumulator in one. Think Evangelos Venizelos, and you have the corrupted collaborator in one. Think Bob Diamond, and you have the bare-faced sociopathic liar in one. Think Rupert Murdoch, and you have the entire set…all in one.
But these appalling excuses for humanity have always been around. What makes me radical today is that those who should be opposing them are high in flim-flam but low in courage. Like it or not, there is no way anyone can seriously look up at those claiming to be in opposition to the dictatorship axis of ISP, CIA, EU, GOP, GCHQ or PRC and say, “Yep, that’s the antidote”. Barack Obama, David Cameron, Francois Hollande, Ed Miliband, Julia Gillard….er, no.
Earlier today, I posted along the general lines of saying very emphatically that Nigel Farage is not the George who will slay these dragons. I wasn’t surprised (or upset for that matter) about the number of people accusing me of a blind spot about the bloke, because based on previous form it was all I could expect. This time, however, I was struck by the number of threaders – not all of them regulars – who made a point of saying “What other hope is there?”, “I’d vote for anyone rather than this lot” and other sentiments along those lines. The key word here, it seems to me, is desperation.
Now desperation I can understand and, to an extent, accept. But in being desperate, people must vote for Nige with their eyes open, as to do otherwise is to invite yet another disappointment. In their own time, Blair, Cameron, and Clegg have all let down people who saw in them something fresh. Vote for Mr Farage if you must, but this is what you will get: a commonsense chap who sees all the daftness we have endured for the last thirty years, and wants a return to calling a spade a spade, working for a living, being businesslike about exports, etcetera and so forth. But what you will have to have as an obligatory banded pack offer with that is the fish-eyed sociopathy of the Hunts and the Fallons and all the others with their tongues playing at Mr Murdoch’s bottom.
Above all, don’t expect Nigel Farage to tackle the deep-rooted cultural issues we face. Frankly, he doesn’t have the intellect or the interest to do so. You want a more diverse way of raising capital than the Bourse system? Don’t vote for Nigel – he was part of it. You’d like a return to risk in the arts? Don’t vote for Nigel – he’s a bums on seats man. You prefer a balanced life as opposed to a 60-h0ur week running up yourself? Don’t vote for Nigel – if you’re not a budding Alan Sugar, he thinks you’re a wimp. I don’t say that Farage is more of the same: he’s just a more narrow-minded more of the same.
Still, nihil desperandum people. One day, UKip will go down in history as the Party that raised Britain back to its rightful global role. It’s true. Straight up. Bloke down the pub told me. Ever such a nice bloke he was. Nigel I think his name was.
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