All Aboard, if You've Got the Right Ticket, that is...

-

One of the saddest litanies, constantly trotted out at PMQs by the Prime Minister, is that Labour left office last time, having bankrupted the country. That was thirteen years ago, and no, Labour didn't leave the country bankrupt. Gordon Brown sold off the Gold Reserve back in the early years of the century - and made a bloody good profit on the trade - probably foreseeing the way the world economy was headed: away from coffers of bounty as the basis of trade and currency, and towards something rather less tangible, but no less useful in trade. Consider the state of the economy in the years since under Tory misrule. This government's idea of 'rescuing' the Health Service, and public services in general, is to employ bloody consultancy firms at massive expense to the public purse, rather than employ direct labour and expertise at sensible and guaranteed salary and pension levels: to whit, Deloitte, et al.'s little gravy train of three-grand-a-day [and the rest] individual consultancy fees to do fuck-all: and yes, it's still going on.

How a government such as this bunch of wealthy scroungers has the brass neck to accuse the opposition of being spendthrift, when they wilfully piss money in bucket-loads into the bank accounts of their frankly useless mates, is beyond risible: it's downright immoral, if entirely understandable, given who and what they are and represent. We apparently can't afford proper pay for our NHS staff, but the resources available to private consultancy to fill in the gaps left by such underfunding appear to be endless. And who pays either way? We do. Not them. Time to face up to the reality of the rule of the Übermensch NeoCons and stop buying into the myth that we can all somehow ultimately benefit from aspiring to be like them: they just won't fucking let you. Simple as that: it's their club, and you ain't getting membership, period. We really do need a new way of doing things in this country and the world generally: and it could just be that it's the old, slightly socialist, largeish-state way that fits the bill nicely...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more