Jab, Jabber...

Well, there we are, then: quadruple-jabbed, Covid-wise. I haven't had so many vaccinations in such a short time since I was an infant, but I know it's worth the short-term achy shoulder thing that all injections tend to leave. What else has happened today? Well, personally, not a great deal; just been arsing around not doing a great deal and trying to ignore the politics for a few hours.

Read an interesting review of a new history of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" - by Glory M Liu: "Adam Smith's America" - in [last weeks, natch: I told you I'm still catching up with stuff] New Statesman, that opened my eyes somewhat to the man and his philosophy; for philosopher he was, no economist he, as the concept & term for such had yet to be invented when he wrote the oh-so-influential tome. It turns out that most of the presumptions about and interpretations of his work have subsequently become, meme-like, 'his work', in the eyes of those politicians and modern economists who seek to rule the roost over the world and the poor saps - us - who inhabit it.

At its heart, modern economics believes in the organic, self-governance of 'the market'. Recent, and not so very recent, events would rather lend the lie to that one, and when the scales of 'orthodox' economic thought are scraped from the eyes, the chimera that was that 'orthodoxy', at once, like the emperor's new clothes, vanishes in the clear light of day. On Radio Four this afternoon, a discussion was had about the UK manufacturing industry - such that it is these days - and the consensus seemed to be that the nuts and bolts side of British business has always been Cinderella as far as recent governments have been concerned, with their chopping and changing from one policy U-turn to the next. But I'd go further: the rot set in under Thatcher's multi-term regime.

Fiscally conservative, she might have been, but she effectively dismantled UK industry in the pursuit of a service-and-finance-business-led economy, which she and her government bankrolled by effectively selling off the family silver through large-scale privatization of formerly state-owned entities. The concomitant legacy of British manufacturing's decline, and the parallel dismantling of the Welfare State, is plain to see; and the reasons for the continuance of this despoliation are as many as there are bankers and financiers, wealth/fund managers and market speculators, within the ranks of this and previous Tory governments.

The self-styled 'natural party of business' cannot even begin to understand business, when there are no real businesspeople at the heart of its government. The problem that Thatcher created was that financiers and bankers were elevated well above their service status: i.e., actually serving and enabling, rather than controlling, business and the state. Anyway, the very concept of service should really be at the forefront of their minds as public servants, and most particularly today: Armistice Day. A right and proper ordering of merit needs so badly to be re-established in this country, before we teeter over the edge into chaos for good, dragged into the mire by a cabal of self-serving crooks and charlatans. Oops, I did say I was trying to ignore politics, today, didn't I? Seems to be impossible these days...