Thoughts on Compassion and Politics

It struck me recently that when times get tough, people grow harder. Following the recession, the UK has shifted to the right and it's now considered OK to talk about foreigners as a swarm, whereas ten years ago this kind of talk would have sounded vaguely 'Third Reich.' It seems that it took the picture of a small child washed up on the beach to reawaken a bit of humanity in the world's fifth most prosperous nation. In the nineties politicians talked about 'education, education, education.' Now all we hear from them is 'immigration, immigration, immigration!'

When the proverbial brown stuff hit the fan, people were angry at bankers for being so reckless and greedy. They were also angry at politicians for wasting our public money on duck houses and moat-cleaning. In short, there was an opportunity for a return to the less selfish values of the fifties and sixties post-war dream. What happened instead was those at the top and their tabloid messengers found a handy scapegoat for all this public anger. Most were willing to have their ire channelled in the direction of, er, The Channel.

Firstly, let's face it, who sold the weapons to myriad dictators and volatile groups in the first place? Is it any surprise that when weapons are used for their intended purpose that people tend to flee to wherever they might think is safe? It's a testimony to this country that we are viewed as tolerant enough for people to want to come here.

Then there's the economic argument. People say we are bursting at the seams and that the country can't take any more. Then in the same breath we hear about a pensions crisis, where the baby boom generation are reaching old age with an insufficient workforce to support them in their time of dotage. Now what exactly is the truth?

It sometimes seems to me that the country goes in thirty year cycles. The nineties seemed like a rerun of the sixties with a more social ethos prevalent. UK workers were cushioned by a minimum wage for the first time for a start. However, wind on twenty years from the sixties and we get... the eighties – pure undiluted capitalism in all its pomp. In short, you are here.

This made me think about my place in the world. After all I was brought up with the values of the pre-eighties era, and this can make it pretty hard to succeed in the post-eighties era. Just how hard-nosed do you really have to be? It's often been said that psychopathic traits are more common in the boardroom than in an average cross-section of the population. Thus, it will be much easier for somebody who's been brought up with the notion that 'there is nothing wrong in taking somebody else's slice of the pie if they are weaker' to adapt to life in the modern world.

But politicians can't all be corrupt, self serving individuals, can they?

I would say 'no,' but I think what happens is a scaled up version of what I have observed locally for many years.

A number of villagers disgruntled by the decisions being made by their 'representatives,' decided to join 'the board' as I shall call it. I heard phrases like, “I'm a little bit stronger than you and will stand up to them without being forced off.” It appeared to me that these no doubt well-meaning folk eventually became part of the establishment, defending the kind of decisions that they had once despised when standing at the bar of the local pub.

It would seem that every organisation has an unwritten code concerning how one is supposed to act. Locally I observed that quaintness and protecting people's property prices seemed to trump providing employment and retaining public services virtually every time. I wondered if those who had joined the board at the time felt that this was expected of them and that it was simply part of what they were there to do.

The status quo at Westminster seems to be to keep the elite happy and the public content with as little as possible. This way the rich don't have to start paying taxes or anything depressing like that. There clearly won't be any scaling back of all that arms distribution any time soon either. Consequently, we will continue to see desperate people heading our way and plenty of traditional Daily Mail and Sun headlines for years to come.

The Recession Part II - St Paul's Cathedral Protest

You may not want to read my blogs any more as according to the Daily Mail I am apparently now a member of a 'pot-smoking rabble'!

This is the term used by the paper to denigrate those who protested at St Paul's cathedral against the crazy system that I described last month, conveniently labelling the wide spectrum of views as 'anti-capitalist'. I would use less emotive terms such as 'anti-greed', 'anti-poverty', 'anti-corruption', etc. myself.

I was impressed by those members of St Paul's clergy who supported the protest, and disappointed in equal measure by those who didn't. After all, the Christian faith is supposed to be against amassing riches while others suffer (nb: FSTE directors give themselves a 49% rise while it's more cuts for the rest of us!).

So, as the only people currently respresenting my view are the protesters, I turned up at the Bank of England with a friend of mine to add our support. We soon discovered that the protest had already been moved on, presumably as St Paul's cathedral was a less sacred place to have a protest than the financial district!

Upon arriving at Sir Christopher Wren's most famous building (I visited the Westcountry village of East Knoyle, where he lived, during one of my cycling trips earlier this year), we found the protest to be hemmed in by a ring of officers. They said that there had been violence and that we may not get out again. The 'violence' turned out to be one minor skirmish. In the same way that football hooligans have nothing to do with football, I imagine a similar thing was true here.

Once inside the ring, all I observed was a crowd of clued-up, generally quite intelligent people peacefully waving their banners. There was not a fight or a 'jazz cigarette' in sight. We stayed for around five hours and then left without any aggravation whatsoever.

I was only present for the first day of the protest, but I admire those who gave of their time to stay at the site (cue comments about people not having jobs, but then just who is it that is cutting the jobs?).

So, did the papers take any interest in what anybody there had to say? Er... no! The Express was busy having a rant against the French (xenophobic headline guaranteed every day or your money back!) and the rest were trying to denigrate the protest any way they could, most notably by stating that a thermal image revealed all but one tent to be empty. I later heard that this kind of imaging isn't reliable anyway, and panellists on 'Have I Got News For You' even joked that poking the tents with a large stick would have been more decisive. My friend actually went back for several more visits to find the protesters to be anything but 'skulking indoors'.

Now, has anybody been watching TV illusionist, Derren Brown's latest series?
In one episode he demonstrated how a crowd of ordinary people can be whipped up into a crazed frenzy against an individual (or 'individuals'). Whilst being very uncomfortable viewing, it proved a salient point. Many people shape their opinions from the media/papers, but when reading the headlines I often think that they are trying to stir us into this kind of thinking every day, misdirecting our thoughts away from the real cause of the recession and associated problems and onto other targets of their choosing.

With the emergence of results of a recent survey showing that British people now blame the poor rather than the disgusting behaviour of bankers (watch the documentary 'Inside Job', recently shown on BBC TV, if in any doubt), it seems that these papers are achieving their goals.

We often pride ourselves on being democratic in The West, yet how could anybody say that what it happening in Greece is democratic? The country is now being controlled by more powerful nations and ultimately banks. Quite where the wishes of the people come into things, I have no idea. As ever, money is power, and votes seem to change very little.

We all know how a game of monopoly always ends, so crazy as it may seem, it might even be possible to statistically calculate a date by which point one corporation and ultimately one person will own the whole world. That's unless we can put the brakes on the way things are going. All the while we continue to go down this road, politicians randomly clutch at straws as to how to get out of this mess, never once questioning the very system itself that makes recessions inevitable.

Well, while several people I know struggle to keep their houses and many more complain about not being able to afford basic provisions, I for one am glad to have at least done something, however futile, to challenge things.