Hope and change and all that

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I've been around long enough to see the miners strike, the 80s riots, Wapping, the poll tax, the post-communism lull of the mid-90s, the first Reclaim the Streets May Day protests of 99 and 2000, and then the dark days after 9/11. A decade later to feel the thrill of the student and march for alternative protests in 2010-11. Despite everything, I've never felt more optimistic. Its true the movement for change is stratified between educated, more middle class activists and those who are masked up or just surviving. The unions have never been more left, but their power is finite. And yet, there are grounds for unity across a broad range of movements in a way there hasn't been in the past. All the old schisms don't matter anymore.
The most important thing to recognise is that neoliberalism is crumbling, the ideological hegemony is breaking down. After that goes legitimacy. Once legitimacy begins to crack - see the US after Ferguson and Eric Garner, or the UK now with politics in the gutter - change becomes possible, as well as reaction. We must look for ruling class splits, the decline of hegemonic institutions like the Tories, and the fracturing of imedia's hold over people.
The problems are piling up. The danger is like 2008, when the world teetered, the absence of organised anti-capitalist movements meant nothing happened and the elite reorganised.
They've got no answers. The alternatives have already been proposed. All it takes is a Podemos type movement to begin to present an organised alternative. If anyone of these movements can get a taste of power, and then hold on to it, as has happened in Latin America, a new world will open up. Will it come to Britain? It could. There's more up for grabs than at any time since 1979 when neoliberalism triumphed. Some kind of socialism or revolutionary democracy needs to be rehabilitated so people can believe in an alternative. Out of that comes hope.
The Arab spring shows what can happen when a revolution fails to decide on - or achieve - its goals. Reaction. That is the warning. But revolutions are like earthquakes - first the main shock, then the after shock. The after shock of 2008-11 has yet to come.

Myleene and Angelina Jolie's 10 point plan to save Labour

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Mansion-class celebs are coming for Labour. First there was Myleene Klass’s ITV sofa assault on Ed Miliband’s property tax plans — “You can’t just point at things and tax them!” — to which a frozen Ed failed to answer “Yes you can if it’s a house!”
Then Hollywood royalty waded in on the row. Angelina Jolie (net worth with Brad £269m) told Channel 4’s Jon Snow that she may — shock, horror — decide not to move to a Marylebone mansion if Labour decides to tax it. “That might put me off.”
With Myles and Angie on his case, Miliband’s no-balls shadow chancellor is quaking. In an Evening Standard column Ed Balls admitted that plans to tax £2m-plus properties “are not popular with everyone but we but we are being clear about where the money is coming from for our health service.”
Let’s face it, if you put Myleene and “Tomb Raider” Angelina into a ring with the two Eds for gloves-off fisticuffs, there’s little doubt about who would end up face down on the mat. These high-net worth stars, known for their humanitarian leanings and constant use of the pages of Hello! to show off their fabulous lifestyle, have now jumped to the defence of the hard put-upon pluto-grannies from this tax thingummy.
And to save the Eds from a further pasting, Myles and Angie have got together to have a go at rewriting the Labour manifesto to make it more celeb-friendly. Truly, with Brangelina serious about getting a “foothold” in London — and she being “responsible about money” — who better to give advice on economy policy?

So here is their 10-point plan to remake Britain:

1. Poor people should stop complaining. It’s within their power to become who they want to be. All you need is hard work, expensive education and high-powered pushy parents. Go for it!

2. Celebrities pay a lot of tax already (well, the ones not smart enough to use tax-avoidance schemes). The least we could do is give them their own lane on the motorway to drive their hot wheels past adoring fans. If it’s good enough for Kim Jong Un...

3. Elections will be fought out in an X-Factor cum Bake Off — that’s right. Sing or bake, or both. The public decides. Digital democracy at work.

4. Politics is boring and turning people off. From now on, PMQs will be replaced with a Klaas and Jolie masterclass in economics, including priceless advice on how to disburse your millions across the world and stay ahead of the taxman.

5. The British royal family needs a makeover, so let’s have a TV vote for who should be the next Queen. (Hint: someone younger, beautiful with a string of hit songs and/or movies).

6. Most NHS costs can be reduced by healthier lifestyles — its strictly seaweed from now on. Jolie-Klass TV will offer tips to the nation on healthy eating and daily workouts. Get out the lycra and get with the programme.

7. All school uniforms will be from Littlewoods and M&S, with free Baby K Clothes for nursery age toddlers — royalties to Myleene. Kerrching!

8. Most life lessons can be gleaned from a careful viewing of Lara Croft, Mr and Mrs Smith, Maleficent and The Tourist. Compulsory movie classes in schools from age five and school assemblies will learn to sing the Hear’Say back catalogue.

9. Free acting and classical music lessons for offenders to encourage rehabilitation with inspiration from Myles and Angie. A lucky few will get places on the Ex-Con Factor, hosted by Andy Coulson.

10. No more politics of envy. You are beautiful and talented — not as beautiful or talented as us obviously, but everyone can aspire to be the best.

There you go, Ed. Alternatively you could just tell these millionaires that if they don’t want to pay their tax, they are welcome to leave. I hear Malibu is lovely this time of year — they can be happy knowing we’ll find a socially useful way to occupy those empty mansions.

Interstellar dreams, the Rosetta landing and where is Christopher Waltz?

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It's not every day that there is a story of human achievement that makes you proud to be a higher simian.
The Rosetta probe travelled 6 billion miles and landed on a comet that orbits the Sun at up to 135,000kmph. That's precision! It bounced, and its not getting enough sunlight to power its batteries, but hell, they did it - a decade after takeoff from earth.
And it's especially pleasing that the remarkable landing of a robotic probe on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a European Space Agency triumph.
Most of the time when I think about the human race its our pathological species-and-habitat-destroying rush to cataclysm that leaves Nature no choice but to declare, right, it's pestilence and flood for you lot. Rather like the scenario in Interstellar.
Rosetta's comet landing coincidentally happened in the same week that Christopher Nolan's galactic smash hits our screens – or was it a fiendish bit of scheduling by the distributors? The film is a return to the golden age of space fiction with a massive nod to the big daddy of space epics, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Nolan and his writer brother have said how important films like Space Odyssey and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters were in their own love affair with the genre. As children they recreated Star Wars and filmed it with the basic equipment at their disposal.
No wonder that Spielberg was initially lined up to work on the movie, until he dropped out and Nolan took it on.
Interstellar combines the eco-apocalyptic with the soaring thrills of going where no Hollywood stars (Matthew McConnaughey and Anne Hathaway) have gone before. The comparison with Space Odyssey is revealing. In Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's breakthrough epic, we are in the full flush of an optimistic space age – the movie was released a couple of years before Neil Armstrong strolled on the Moon.
By contrast, Nolan's crew head for a black hole to save the planet from ecological destruction - or rather, they've given up on Earth and are looking for a new home. McConnaughey is a farmer who was once a promising pilot but discovers a secret Nasa base where a save the world suicide mission through a black hole is being plotted.
The threat in Interstellar is extinction and human frailty. In Space Odyssey it is a homicidal computer - again, the twist in Nolan's film is that the intelligent robots are friendly and the only reliable partners for the astronauts when their fellow space explorers keep letting them down.
Some have criticised the film for reinforcing the idea that there is no solution to man's destruction of the environment - the answer is to leave this dustbowl planet behind and start again. It's a fair point but it certainly provides the dramatic impetus for the mission.
It's also noticeable how American this project it - the rest of the planet seems to have collapsed back to subsistence. Only a secret Nasa holdout is capable of launching a mission to find an exoplanet capable of supporting life.
When the astronauts do find a new planet, the Stars and Stripes are ubiquitous. It's as if Brit Nolan wants to make Americans feel great again in an age when most assume the US faces terminal decline as a global power (despite still having military bases in every continent).
Space Odyssey doesn't have this nationalistic overtone (both Clarke and Kubrick were wary of such sentiments), while Spielberg's Close Encounters features an overtly international project to welcome the ETs to Earth.
In a sense, Nolan takes us back to the frontier mythology of a few brave men - and one woman - who are prepared to go into the unknown and found a new colony. Yes, McConnaughey does keep saying he's doing it for the people back on Earth  - not just the Americans - but then what's with the 19th century flag in the dirt symbolism?
There's one (possibly two) miscasts in Interstellar - I just can't accept Matt Damon as a brainy scientist - surely he's the one who kicks ass in Bourne and such like? No, the part of Dr Mann was made for someone (a) not American (b) European and (c) Christopher Waltz.
And as for Michael Caine as a professorial English Einstein, well, okay, we can go with that. Fundamentally, it's all far too Anglo-Saxon. Yes, there is a black astronaut - the excellent David Gyasi - but ne'er a funny accent to be heard.
But that aside, I fell totally in love with the aesthetic 70s-ness of the film - a return to the golden age of sets and effects that you can almost touch and feel. Everything from the creaking farm, to the retro space suits and the fabulous blue-screen consols in the space ship, and all those Star Wars-style dirty white panelled ship interiors. Even space itself looked analogue.
The curse of CGI is banished, and as someone else may have said, Gravity may have been mind-blowing for pure adrenalin and 3-D effects, but it was weightless and insubstantial compared to the huge reach and scope of Interstellar's visual and spiritual-journey ambitions. Not since Carl Sagan's Contact has a space movie felt like it has the philosophical gravity to explore the ultimate questions of What's Out There and Are We Alone?
And then there's the climax, when we follow the hero over the event horizon into the fifth dimension - I think, if anything, it beats Space Odyssey in its leap into the utterly alien and yet familiar time-space multi-verse. It is something to behold.
Images and sensations from the movie have come back in flashes in the days since I saw it. Like, does love have an evolutionary purpose to preserving the species? What is the true role of gravity in the universe? And what happens to us when the food starts to run out? What are we prepared to do to save the species - or ourselves?
Interstellar asks these questions and imaginatively answers them while taking us on a jaw-dropping journey. That counts for something. It's Nolan's best film since Dark Knight and his most ambitious since Memento.
But back in 2014, the ESA takes the crown for Rosetta, and Nasa does best in Hollywood.

Let's crowdsource our democracy - a mass Parliament of the people

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Left of centre thinktanks have told Ed Miliband he should adopt radical devolution as the theme of his election campaign for 2015. I say let's go further, much further.

Democracy has been spreading round the planet for more than a century, but in recent decades the ability of the representative democratic system to govern for the people has been found wanting. Officially, the majority of countries are 'democratic,' but unofficially most of us feel like we are governed and controlled by an unaccountable elite.
That is because representative democracy is merely an outgrowth of the model of aristocratic rule brought in by Britain and the new American republic in the 18th century, a system designed to keep power out of the hands of the people. The rulers and thinkers of the 18th century said this explicitly.

As James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States constitution, explained: “Pure democracy is the most vile form of government...such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

The system that is now universally described as democracy is misnamed. Representative democracy delegates power to elected officials and professional politicians who are not accountable to the people who elected them on a day to day basis. Other interest groups - including business, lobby groups, foreign governments, senior civil servants, military and political party elites have far more influence over our 'elected' leaders than we do. We only get to vote them in or out of office every four or five years. This is not democracy - and it was never supposed to be.

But if our politicians are too often unfit to govern, and come from a small class of privileged out of touch families, is it not time to put ordinary people right into the system of government and legislation? I propose a new People's Parliament be created to exist alongside the existing representative Parliament. It would be made of a large selection of ordinary members of the public. Members of the People's Parliament would not be elected. Instead, a random selection process, with some possible representative fixtures to reflect the broad population such as 50% women, would be instituted. Why random rather than elected? To prevent the same self selecting group of careerists and professional political types from running (and ruining) the country. It cuts out the need for expensive, time-consuming elections, which favours those of deep pocket, and instead uses the same principle as the jury system, which has served us moderately well for centuries.

I propose that across the country, 9000 people would be chosen, 300 from each constituency, to serve one year in this new assembly. Those selected would be given 10 days off work a year, and paid to attend local assembly meetings and hearings. Volunteers from the 300 would be able to take up co-ordinator roles, to call witnesses, civil servants and members of the public to meetings to discuss government policy and issues of the day. Members would serve for one year only, with a possible option to serve a second year for the sake of continuity in the work of the people's Parliament. This way its members, either remotely online or in person, could make their decisions based on being informed about the issues. However, even if they do not attend, they would vote on all legislation. The people could watch these assemblies online or on TV (well, some would chose to do so).

The People's Parliament would have equal powers to our elected politicians. There is the question - a critical one - of who brings forward legislation. Currently the government is responsible for most legislation, but if it was up to popular proposition and members of the People's Parliament to bring forward legislation, the old party system would lose its monopoly on power. As in Switzerland and in some US states, if enough people outside Parliament sign a petition for a proposition, it should be put before Parliament.

Big media outlets will, of course, influence the public and politicians and could likewise influence the new members of a People's Parliament, but at least they would be deliberating without being controlled by party leaders.

Both the existing (not very) Representative Parliament and the Direct Democracy Peoples Parliament would deliberate on laws and policy. When it came to the vote, they would both vote and the votes would be combined. If there was a split vote, the vote of the People's Parliament, as the more representative model, would hold the casting vote.

Members of the PP might have a say in electing the Prime Minister and cabinet from the current Parliament - although for practical reasons, this might be limited. It would be too easy for deadlock to take place if the PP voted against the formation of a government from the majority party in the elected Representative Parliament. Members of the PP would not be able to serve as a member of the Government executive while they were serving for the People's Parliament. Currently, by contrast, over 100 members of our elected Parliament are actually serving in the executive, or waiting for their chance to do so, so don't represent their constituencies at all.

The Lords would of course have to go. The PP would be the new Lords - of the people.

Because members of the People's Parliament serve only one year (or optionally two years), they would not be subject to corrupting influences - and there would be too many of them to corrupt anyhow. They could not be tempted by an offer to join the government.

There is of course, the possibility that the PP and the Commons could end up in loggerheads in the way that the Congress and Senate are often deadlocked in the US. In this case, perhaps a provision would be needed for the People's Parliament to call for a general election to break the gridlock. However, Switzerland manages to combine representative and direct democracy successfully, with the latter enhancing the former.

I would suggest that no one could serve in the PP more than twice in their lifetimes. There is, of course, nothing stopping them from turning 'professional' and standing in the representative Parliament. Ideally, resources allowing, this 9000 number would be increased over time, to perhaps 90,000 people (3000 in each constituency) so that the People's Parliament was even more representative of the population.

One could argue that rather than have this half way house of semi-direct democracy, we could move entirely to a digital direct democracy system where the people are able to vote on all legislation and by petition of a minimum number of signatures (50 or 100,000 as in Switzerland) bring forward laws, as happens in US states with the proposition system. Perhaps the PP could be combined with an element of direct democracy, such as in proposing legislation, or even referenda on big issues - again, something that happens in Switzerland.

The argument for the People's Assembly is that democracy is deliberative and the 9000 can look at the issues in depth. Also, by allowing it to sit alongside the existing system, it would be less revolutionary and threatening to the existing order (addressing the fears of modern-day Madisons). This is a practical proposal that the professional politicians would find hard to argue against. They should, truly, support it - unless they really favour the current system of disguised oligarchy.

However, if we could move toward direct democracy, I would favour it, but I don't think it's practical for everyone to vote on all legislation effectively, without a mediating group of ordinary people who can do this more deliberatively, hence the need for a popular parliament.

How do we get there? I don't actually know, since this needs to become a popular demand. Perhaps it is pie in the sky - paralysis, gridlock, the fear of ineffective government would mitigate this ever coming to pass. But my ideas are just a starting point and they draw on a wide range of direct democracy experiences around the world.

The foundational principle behind this idea is that the combined wisdom and good sense of many thousands of ordinary people is inherently superior to that of a few hundred professional politicians who each have a huge personal and political stake in the preservation of the existing order. With digital technology, we have the means to make this happen. In the long run, it is probably inevitable. We are no longer a society with a small politically literate middle class and a wider population dominated by deference, although each country is different in this respect. In some religion or tribe is still very important. I don't say every country is ready for this, but then again, the representative system is clearly not able to cope with the new demands of democracy either, as seen in Ukraine and Egypt.

People tend to focus on issues of policy, rather than on the system of government that rules us. But rather than keep on electing disappointing politicians who let us down, let's create a system of crowdsourced democracy (to use the digital jargon) that genuinely brings about 'rule of the people'. After feudalism, monarch, dictatorship and elected oligarchy - let's move to the system that actually gives power to the people. Are you ready for it?

Vodafone and the telecoms octopus - a monstrous, inhuman bureaucratic machine eating my mind

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I have been on the phone to Vodafone "customer services" and PremierPlan insurers all morning. I am three months into an insurance claim. It took a month and two hours today to get Vodafone to release the IMEI (ID) number for my old phone, which I lost in Oman. But that wasn't the end of it, oh no. The insurer also wanted proof of use or proof of banning. mmmmm.
This is my worst yet experience with modern corporate services and the nightmare of bouncing from one provider to another, with each one demanding yet more and more proof of security, proof of usage, proof of life etc. Each time I think I am getting somewhere they ask me for something else.
Sorry sir, we can't provide you proof of usage because you have not used the phone in the last three months.
Yes, that's because I lost the phone four months ago and have been trying to claim insurance on the phone for the last three months.
I hear what you're saying sir - thick Scottish policeman-type burr - but we do not keep records beyond three months sir, and you have not passed DP security. (That's data protection to you). DP demands they keep data for three years but not when it's you asking them for data, then they are buried in a silo as deep as hell.
The Vodafone button pushers would no doubt demand the ID of an old lady before agreeing to call an ambulance for her ongoing heart attack. Stalin's NKVD had nothing on these guys. These people are so versed in the practice of bureaucratic security that there is nothing you can do to reach the end of the endless tunnel of despair which they exist in. Not this way, no, not this way, that way, yes, no this way, that way, stop, go, backwards, no, you did not register, you do not pass Data Protection. How do we know you are who you say you are? Just ask me. I was a customer with you for 13 years. But we don't know that. Terry Gilliam, eat your heart out.
If you continue to talk over me sir I will terminate the call.
My crime is that I did not 'register' the phone that they sold me. This means that the phone does not exist on the Vodafone system, even though they provided this handset. I have been trying to register this handset with Vodafone and with the insurer for the last four hours. Once registered I can then blacklist it. Following? A nice Indian man at Vodafone contracts has just told me he will email me proof of usage for the phone. I hope this will satisfy the insurer. He will also blacklist the phone.

I am not there yet. There is more to be done for this insurance claim, which began in December. I will never, ever, ever take out an insurance policy on a phone again. If I lose this one, I will go back to using a string and a plastic cup with a hole in it.
I am not sure whether Vodafone or Phones4U Premier Plan are the worst culprit. I am not a little old lady but I don't spend my waking hours trying to remember exactly when I last topped up my phone a year ago, or remembering old security pins, oh I must register my phone with the evil corporation that sold it to me. This is my crime, for which I am now paying.
They don't seem to have any sense of duty to customers to do simple things like register a phone WHICH THEY SOLD. Nightmare.

Update 24 hours later...no email from Vodaphone, no proof of use. Back to square one.

Crimean War II now unfolding

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Crimean War 2 in 2014 anyone? I was kind of expecting this but it's unfolding very quickly. It is the centenary of WW1, when apparently local events in south-eastern Europe spun into a major war. For some time I have been expecting a major conflict to break out.
Surely this is going to end in bloody conflict. But of course our wise political leaders knew this when they supported the armed overthrow of an elected government by 'protestors'.
Look at Syria today - that is likely to be Ukraine in the not too distant future. At the moment it seems unlikely that the West will be sending troops in to defend Ukraine or fight Russia, as they did in 1854 when Britain and France came to the defence of Ottoman Turkey in the first famous Crimean War.
In the run-up to this revolution against the Yanukovich government, I noticed a very clear political agenda at work in UK reporting and political responses to the events, which, as in 2002 in Iraq, the media is loyally repeating and reinforcing. The protestors used violence to attack police and destroy government buildings but western sympathy and traditional anti Russian suspicions blinded people to the dangers and also the dubious nature of some of the protesters, Reports ignored the protest groups' violent antics and the surprising restraint - until the final days - from the elected government of Ukraine. The Right Sector is an openly neonazi organisation, but somehow that deserved little or no comment because they are 'freedom fighters'. This is where reporting fails in its job to inform the public. How long would the UK or US government put up with mass occupations of public space? Certainly not three months.
Realistically, we cannot honestly expect Moscow to do nothing when the government of their near neighbour is overthrown with the support of the West? Remember Newton's third law - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
What is galling is that nothing has been learned since Syria - the west told Assad (who, unlike Yanukovich, was not elected) that he 'must go'. That is not a policy, that is the rhetoric of war - especially after the brutal end of Libyan dictator Colonel Qadaffi. And, lo, it led to war. In the case of Ukraine, Yanukovich did not have the kind of military backing enjoyed by Syria's Assad, nor the ruthlessness (after all he did very little against protestors for 3 months). But Putin will not be a walkover like the ex-Ukrainian president. He will be preparing to give the western Ukrainians and their western backers a bloody nose. A reckoning cometh, and it will probably start in Crimea.

The Housing bubble and a Dollar crash prediction

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I don't truly know if the predictions of a US dollar crash are true, but this comment has some internal logic to it:

Rising house prices won't make you rich (at least not for the average person), and housing bubbles are almost certainly not a sign of a healthy economy. In this particular case it's a really bad thing.
This isn't about Tory vs Labour, rent controls, building more homes, immigration, or whatever. This chaff is peddled by the media to keep you bamboozled, sedated, or angered by some arbitrary distraction. To understand what is going on first you have to take a giant step back, and observe what has happened to the global economy since 2008.
Various rounds of QE have thrown trillions into economies to get them 'moving' again. Without even getting into the 'logic' of solving debt problems by creating significantly more debt, let's just consider where this money came from, and where this money went.
The origin of the money used in QE is increased government debt. The form of this money is government issued bonds, often ending up in countries like China. Except there is a problem. QE means our debts have become colossal and we are having difficulty paying the interest, hence the cuts we experience. Interest rates are also at record lows which implies we will have extreme difficulty servicing this debt when interest rates inevitably rise.
(And yes I'm talking about housing here, please bear with me).
Before we return to bonds, where did all this money from QE go? Governments gave it to bankers to gamble on the markets. After all, the banks just about tapped out their mortgage scams by 2008 (causing the crash), what else could they do with all this money? The net result is that banks (and other speculators) have massively inflated the markets. Even banks realize this is untenable and some of them are sitting on vast amounts of QE unable to do anything with it. They daren't lend it, and they daren't speculate with it.
What does this mean?
Consider a speculator. Where are they going to put their money? Bonds are looking dodgy given the size of government debts. The markets have been pushed up about as far as they can go. So investors put their money into land and property (and anything else they can think of). This has led to numerous property bubbles all over the planet, not just London.
It's very important to realize that no new wealth has been created here. No jobs, no businesses, no production, no construction, nothing. Basically governments, banks, and other speculators have all been playing silly buggers in a desperate attempt to perpetuate this whole epic saga as long as possible.
Governments, banks, and the media, will all tell you that we recovered from the crash, the economy is growing, growth is good, and blah blah blah. The truth is that WE ARE STILL IN THE 2007/8 CRASH!!! Except we didn't just hit the pause button with QE. We doubled and tripled our debts without addressing the root cause of the crisis, and now it's monstrously worse than in 2008.
As a direct consequence of this extraordinary behaviour, the American dollar WILL FAIL as the world's reserve currency. We are literally watching history in the making, events more significant than landing on the moon.
Or to put it a different way, in an attempt to solve the 2007/8 crash we responded by making the BIGGEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND (from taxpayers to the banks that caused the crash).
So you see why rising house prices aren't making you rich? There is no new wealth here, only a whole load of new debt. It's a zero-sum game at best. Obviously you can make a lot of money in this environment if you're in a position to buy and sell houses. But most people can't given they actually have to live in their house, and will still be living in their house when prices start falling.
What happens next?
House prices are going to keep rising, and probably by a large amount. Investors will not want US bonds given the US debt is looking untenable. China is getting nervous, slowly pulling out and looking for an alternative global reserve currency. The markets are already starting to fall. One of the next best places to invest cash is property...
Bottom line, if you're poor and living in London then you're screwed. Outside of a housing bubble zone you'll be much better off in terms of stability.
Regarding the global economy, watch out for the collapse of the US dollar. It's impossible to know exactly what will trigger this, but when it happens it will be rapid and catastrophic, as the now amplified 'suspended' 2008 crash implodes the entire economic system.
Here in the UK the result will range from bad to hideous, depending somewhat on faith in the Euro and Sterling.

Breaking Bad to Benefit Street

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Benefits Street has inevitably touched a nerve. I saw a bit and found it compelling - not as an indictment of welfare or the people on the street but as an indictment of society as a whole.
Charlie Brooker's column sparked some interesting comments, like the one I've quoted in full below. We are in a conundrum. The problem thus far with attempts at replacing 'irrational' capitalism is that we have not found a way to overcome 'irrational' human urges by the powerful few to game every system designed to create more fairness and a better life for all. The media would have us believe the problem is Benefits Street - poor people 'gaming' welfare. But the rich are gaming the system to the tune of billions. So too are bankers, who charge us billions for the free creation of debt money, which we guarantee anyway.

The more we look at ourselves as a specie, the more we can see that as intelligent apes, we are not primarily 'rational' even though we have the capacity to be rational and, more importantly, selfless. The problem with appeals to rationalism is that they need not be ethical. Secular enlightenment produced imperialism, justified slavery and the right and left wing atheist dictatorships of the 20th century.
All human societies require rules - legal or religious - that bind human behaviour and prevent abuses. Totalitarian dictatorships allowed unlimited abuse by leaders who were, in the worst case scenario, acting out a kind of Walter White version of will to power. Breaking Bad's White claimed to be doing it for his family, Hitler did it for Germany, Mao and Stalin did it for the new socialist state they had built.

Sometimes I just yearn for the all powerful priest-king who can rule for the benefit of all, and punish the greedy wrongdoers, while ensuring everyone is part of the plan. Why? Because I actually think we are often happier knowing a father (or mother) figure is there to keep an eye on things, and to ensure justice prevails. Mythical rulers (even bad ones) give us a sense of belonging and meaning, being part of a community.

Our system of 21st century capitalism adheres to a form of competitive savagery, something that in the past was exercised through inter-tribal war. But such wars, although apparently common, were a million miles from the total war of modern times. Meanwhile our more gentle and communal nature was exercised within and amongst friendly communities where everyone was part of a kind of extended family (see David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years.) More than 90 per cent of human history saw us live as primitive communists, sharing the little we had. War and debt (and the trading of slave captives) changed that, starting some 6000 years ago.

Capitalism and imperialism have spread an alternative idea of our 'true' natures, built on the self-justification of gentleman pirates and merchant adventurers. Darwinian science has been used to try to show that this is our true natural state.
Our rulers need to continually reinforce the idea that rather than being a community or a group of communities, as nations we are involved in a global competitive race in which success is measured in GDP growth and corporate profit. That is true, as far as it goes, but the measuring is now decoupled from human welfare.
How do we recreate human sympathy for our fellow man and woman, including those on Benefit Street? Can we afford to care for others in a planet of 7 billion, in a globalised economy? The newspapers and the Tories demonise migrants and welfare claimants - divide and rule - while imposing permanent austerity. Hate and fear must be stoked, in Britain as in North Korea.

*****

"The "hard truth" is that the state has effectively declared war on society for the benefit of the rich. While the rich are protected (given open, free and unlimited access to all the best that our civilization has to offer; free to exercise their money power without responsibility or restraint), the rest of us are lectured about the virtues of personal responsibility and austerity.
However, if we really want to understand what is happening, not only to UK but in the capitalist world in general, then we have to look beyond monied individuals (who should nevertheless be held to account) and look at the whole picture.
As a world economic system capitalism is inherently and increasingly crisis prone: that's its “natural” state. In fact, since the 1970s the rate of crises has speeded up with crises regularly occurring throughout every decade. So, what does that mean for contemporary capitalism and the future of the welfare state.?
According to David Harvey: A crisis is “(a)n irrational, rationalizer of an irrational system; the irrationality of the system right now being masses of capital and masses of labour side by side in the midst of a world that is full of social need.
How stupid is that?
The rationalization that capital is looking for is the re-establishment of the basis for the extraction of surpluses: to re-establish the profit rate. The irrationality in which they (capitalists) are going about this is to actually suppress these possibilities by suppressing labour and suppressing the circulation of capital.
As socialists there is another way of rationalizing; the big question is how to take all that equipment and all that labour and put it together so that it meets human need? That is the rationality that we should be looking for right now, at a moment of crisis, at a moment of opportunity to think about the transition to socialism”.
Make no mistake, austerity is a class project the aim of which is to roll back the advances made by working people for the further enrichment of the ruling class. Austerity isn't intended as a short/medium term measure, it is, as Cameron said, forever.
Surrounded by the opulence of the Guildhall’s grandest room, Cameron addressed 900 rich and well-pampered guests enjoying a sumptuous banquet, courtesy of the City of London Corporation. He used the annual speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet to declare that the devastating austerity being imposed by his government will be “permanent.”
Chancellor George Osborne’s Autumn Statement announced further billions in spending and welfare cuts. The “recovery” hailed by Osborne is actually the slowest in more than 100 years, with the economy more than 3 percent smaller than before the 2008 crash.
The UK economy has only been able to remain afloat through a guarantee of cheap money via the £375 billion of quantitative easing that been made available to the banks. This could rise to as much as £425 billion.
Through the progressive commodification of the means of social reproduction (education, health, welfare, etc.), the neoliberal state has engineered a social catastrophe. The goal is to finally destroy what remains of the Keynesian welfare state that emerged during the long post war boom, and replace it with a neoliberal "workfare" state.
Whereas the role of the state in the Keynesian model was to try to extend the social rights of its citizens, the "workfare" model is concerned to provide welfare services that benefit business, both national and international. The net result is that the needs of the individual/society will take second place to capital accumulation forever.
Permanent austerity is a class project under taken by states on behalf of the rich. It is class war pure and simple.