Black is white and red is green and oh no it isn’t
Today’s media highlights are an object (perhaps abject) lesson in how the Establishment and its commentariat express opinions and concerns that are either antithetical (or of no interest) to the citizens without whom all of them would be unemployable.
The Telegraph tells us that the Conservatives “must sell business to the masses” and how today at Conference the Prime Minister will list as a Tory achievement “that profit is no longer a dirty word”. I suspect the masses would buy business if they had any money to spend…but to be serious about it, they buy into business perfectly well and have done for decades: it’s not profit they despise, but profiteering and cheating. The Michael Fallons in the Party are inventing a solution to a non-existent problem….because like all ethically bereft financial folk, he wants a free hand – without (as Prince Andrew remarked three years ago) “A lot of journalists poking their noses into things that don’t concern them”.
Conference also told its Faithful that HS2 will deliver 25% more to the economy than was originally thought. This would be a reasonable contention if anyone thought it could deliver anything in the first place. But the audience lapped it up – except of course for those Shires folks whose land it will go thundering through on its way to…..Birmingham, God help us. A glimmer of reality was available to these Goons in the shape of new data showing that former Tories have given up on the Party because of Gay Marriage…..and HS2.
However, word reaches Slogger’s Roost from the Gathering that the Toryboys are more in evidence than ever before…sociopaths all in their little world of Blackberries and Ipads, strutting about and organising fringe meetings where really rather eminent Ministers express concerns that “democracy isn’t serving business the way it should”. Give me strength.
The Conservative Party has always been the Party of business, but over on The Other Side Labour can’t make up its mind what it is the Party of or for any more. The main thing concerning Hacksville and the Daily Mail is whether ‘Red Ed’s’ Dad was a Commie who hated Britain. Again, most people couldn’t give a chuff about his Dad: they don’t think Miliband is Red anything, they think he’s a useless and ineffectual Labour leader who simply isn’t Prime Minister material. I can’t think of anyone at Westminster who is, but I wish Labour would find one – not because I support Labour, but because this country needs a real Opposition, and fast. The current Party Opposite is a slave to focus groups and run by tedious technocrat bullies like Jack Dromey and Ed Balls. It’s not only out of touch with its supporters, it no longer knows whoTF they are.
In the US, most media continue to treat the ‘Shutdown’ in Washington in terms of all its dire ramifications and the technicalities of what might happen next, and when default might be a reality. But for the poor on food stamps, the squeezed middle on zero investment income, and the entrepreneurs being squashed by crooked banks and multinationals, the farce is simply more of the tosh emitted by an élite confused and blinded by having it head up its arse in search of more money, new scams, sillier derivatives and bonds backed by trouser turnups.
What nobody is viewing the Shutdown as is a rehearsal – even though that’s exactly what it is. The first large coupon interest payment of $31bn is due to be paid on November 15. If the debt limit is not raised by then, the Treasury is likely to fail to pay bond interest and will be in technical default. But we all know a deal will be reached before then, and that’s what thinking Americans don’t like: politicians paid to solve the underlying problem showboating their way through yet another media-inflated ‘crisis’.
Bizarre as it may seem, this allegedly about-to-default America is still attracting debt investors at idiotically low rates. Investors know the US is going broke, but they figure it’s heading that way far more slowly than Europe. But one day in the not too distant future when rates do rise, America will go broke. Then nobody will have anything to invest in. So yes, this is a rehearsal. But let’s stop treating it as if it was the Premiere.
Yes but ah but um, er fine….but what do the citizens get worked up about, if anything? Setting aside Wayne and Waynetta whose horizons do not stretch beyond the next Napoletana pizza, I think it’s pretty obvious actually. In countries throughout the western world, they worry about different cultures being granted the right to immigrate when their home jobs market is already overcrowded. They fret about the declining rights of the majority and silly pc about Gay Marriage and Islamism. They’re concerned about the financial crisis that never seems to end, and which all those in authority seem clueless to sort out. They see their pensions getting hammered and bank deposits being stolen, and they fail to grasp how or why the world has turned upside down and back to front. All they know is that is has, and it terrifies them.
Nobody in the political or bureaucratic class anywhere is addressing these concerns with any honesty at all. In Greece, the citizenry is turning to extreme ideas from the past, because nobody running things is offering them fresh ideas for the future. This too will turn out to be a rehearsal for later events in France, Spain and Britain unless somebody gets a grip on things. I was sent an interesting article by a loyal Slogger yesterday. It contains this excellent observation: ‘Is it ever acceptable to tell a lie? If you believe the answer is “no” then this is an area in which you disagree with our political class.’
I hate to make this observation, but history tells us that when things get this far out of kilter, what tends to clear up the mess is a major war. I cannot conceive of how that could happen in the 21st century and not be devastating for the entire human race. But then, I’m still waiting for some answers to allay my concerns about an obvious pack of lies we’ve been told about Fukushima for the last two years. People who lie always have a hidden motive, and increasingly these days it involves profit, saving face, social order, or all of those things.
Samaras lies about Golden Dawn’s guilt to stay in office. Obama lies about the unemployment figures to stay in office. Osborne lies about the economy to stay in office. Great Western lied about the Paddington Rail Crash to stay out of jail. Bob Diamond lied about Libor for the same reason. Boris Johnson lied about taxi emissions to help his chum turn a profit. And the entire Westminster class is keeping quiet about the CoOperative scandal for all three reasons suggested earlier. Greater loathing hath no body of men that they should lay down their citizens to save their lives.
This is the wrong way round. It is not as it should be. And only violence now, I’m afraid, is going to change it.
The Slog 