Rss Feed Tweeter button Facebook button Delicious button

Skip to content

Tuesday, May 22nd 2012


UK DK @ CP HQ: PCPs

Even their interior designer does not think much of the Tories!!

I have no doubt that you share my bone-shivering outrage and anger and also fist-clenching teeth-grinding mouth-foaming hair-splitting frustration at the failures of the police in both Ireland and England to kill any atheist communist students over the past 20 years or so. It has not been like they have needed a reason. The last dead student I can think of was the Blair Peach, who they made a film about, The Blair Peach Project, but since then not a single student has even been hanged. And now, this week, we have seen where it all ends up. With mass carnage and destruction of property, which, let me remind you, is much more costly and valuable than people: One fire estinguisher lobbed from the top of a building costs £600 to replace. That is the price of at least four students’ lives, or one policeman, or seventeen taxi drivers, or a handjob off Duncan Iain Smith. And this is ironic, because if Duncan Iain Smith hadn’t been so busy making money all his life, he could have gone to the University of Joined Up Thinking, where he would have realize the illogic of his policies and then have close down all universities so there would not be students at all and we would not have them throwing fire estinguishers off buildings. The world truly does revolve in circles, doesn’t it? But not around the Sun.

The problem as I see it, and therefore as it truly is, is that for 30 years the governments of Europe has been widening the access of universities to all and sundries, including the working classes, who would otherwise be on the dole unemployed, which would have meant them sleeping in until 11 o’clock, sitting on the sofa all day, smoking roll-ups, and watching TV, without making any useful contribution to society and being paid to do it, all of which add up to major negative PR for the government. So instead the governments decide to send them all to college, which was cheaper, provide jobs also for teachers of art history, philosophy, Business, Music, smoking roll-ups, and so on, getting both students and teachers off the settee/dole, reducing thereby negative PR, and also making it look like society was investing in the future, because as everyone knows, education is the key to making society competitive, to compete with foreing other countries in the global marketplace, even though they have no education systems abroad, only prisons and maquiladoras, which is the Spanish word for Italian hat. of course, this policy was all very well and good while we was able to espand the deficits and buy cheaply from slaves, but when the economy went bellies up all of a sudden, the governments panicked and decide they must cut everything everywhere, including dole, pensions, education, and so on, without no understanding of how the jigsaw fit together or how one back hand shakes with the other.

So now the Tories and Liberal Cleggs are decide to make students pay for their education with the result that those who cannot afford it will go on the dole and add instead to the unemployment queues where also are being cut the social welfare and benefits of the indolent, i.e. those too proud to become students, with therefore no net gain, numbers of unemployed having increased and numbers of students paying fees having decreased.

Protecting property and privilege. About time too! (3.50 p.m.)

But in Ireland also there was kerfuffling in the streets last week when the students try to occupy the unoccupied department of finance (which have no money anyway) and the police had to move in on horses, which as you know were invented in Spain, in order to trample all over students’ rights. Also their lefts and middles. This was really a training exercise for the Gardai, who realize that everyone likes to see students getting their heads batched in and they will have no sympathy for them. It was a hole different story last year, of course, when farmers occupy the European Commission offices in Dublin. On that time, the Gardai actually made them all cups of tea and went to Brown Thomas and did their shopping for them while they were up in the capital. But this is because (1) most gardai are the children of farmers who have moved to the big city to make something of themselves, (2) everyone loves farmers, and (3) there was not the need then to get some practice in smashing heads because the government did not espect civil war. In previous occasions, the Gardai have had to travel all the way up to Mayo to practice assaulting people, and there is no urban environment in Mayo, only fields and sheep carcasses, which is not good practice for protecting the Winter Palace (if they have one in Ireland, I don’t know). Thus therefore the Gardai had not had no proper live exercise in an urban environment for a good five years, when they disgraced themselves by rioting, or even longer ago when English fascists came to Lansdowne Road and receive a good kicking which even had Sinn Fein cheering the Gards on. But which was a big disgrace. I know for a fact that some Gards were weeping openly as they bringed their batons down on the heads of the poor BNPs.

But the rock-hard bald pate of a fat English social inadequate is no replacement for a seething mass of lank-haired spindly torsos sitting self-righteously in the middle of Merrion Row practicing the passive resistance with indignation and rucksacks. And this is why the obvious solution hits you between the eyes like a plastic bullet fired by a lady. Aiming at your groin: The stupid inbred idiot Tories have missed a trick here, which is paying the students to be full-time employed practice targets for the police. This is perfect! Think about it. It would turn the students into useful members of society, keep them off the unemployment rolls, it would also save the costs of sending them to university, and it would simletaneously give the police a chance to practice their repression techniques for the forthcoming civil war, when they will need them to use against proper people such as pensioners, servants, farmers, union malcontents, office workers/drones, and women. It also means the government does not have to resort to the army to do the job properly, when they should be off abroad killing foreingers and keeping the peace there.

I notice, inthedentally, that a lot of people are commemorating the Poppy Day over there in British Isles. Of course, we in Spain have no such nonsense, since we were not stupid enough to get involved in the World Wars in the first place. Beside the which, we was learn long before the rest of Europe the importance of having a volunteer army of professional killers rather than a conscript army made up of insubords and hoi pollois. What are you doing when you train the working classes how to use weapons if not producing your own esecutioners? Far better to have an army loyal to the state, with an officer class entirely from your ruling families, willing to come home if need be to brake the strikes, teach the unions a lesson, and govern benighnly, like the way Franco did. It took Great Britain two world wars and several labour governments to realize this. And the price they had to pay for that was the massive welfare state, with education and health for everyone, regardless of their class, health or stupidity. Is precisely which is what has got them into this mess in the first place!

I am only saying.

Besos

Manuel

Discussion

We welcome and encourage lively discussion from the public about articles on Irish Left Review. You can leave a comment using the form at the bottom of the page. Please read through the existing comments before posting your own.

No comments so far

Leave a Comment

(required)

(required, will not be published)

Sins of the Father

Sins of the Father:

Tracing the Decisions

That Shaped the Irish Economy,

by Conor McCabe

from The History Press

Now Available as an e-Book.

Subscribe by Email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner



Irish Left Review on Facebook

Best of the Web

  • 97% Owned | Documentary on Money

    This looks good…

    When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it’s essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked - questions like:

    • where does money come from?
    • Who creates it?
    • Who decides how it gets used?
    • And what does that mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when money and finance breaks down?

    97% Owned is a new documentary that reveals how money is at the root of our current social and economic crisis. Featuring frank interviews and commentary from economists, campaigners and former bankers, it exposes the privatised, debt-based monetary system that gives banks the power to create money, shape the economy, cause crises and push house prices out of reach.

    Fact-based and clearly explained, in just 60 minutes it shows how the power to create money is the piece of the puzzle that economists were missing when they failed to predict the crisis.

    Produced by Queuepolitely and featuring Ben Dyson of Positive Money, Josh Ryan-Collins of The New Economics Foundation, Ann Pettifor, the “HBOS Whistleblower” Paul Moore, Simon Dixon of Bank to the Future and Sargon Nissan and Nick Dearden from the Jubliee Debt Campaign, this is the first documentary to tackle this issue from a UK-perspective, and can be watched online now.

    No comments »
  • Greek leftist brings message to Europe - “Let’s talk”

    “The first reason we are taking this trip is because we want the governments of these important European Union countries, France and Germany, to see what we stand for: what is being transmitted in Europe about us is not what we represent and want,” Tsipras told Reuters at the office of his SYRIZA party.

    He will not be meeting government officials, but will see fellow leftists in France and Germany, including former French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon and Klaus Ernst and Gregor Gysi of Germany’s The Left. He will hold news conferences in both capitals to get his message to a wider audience.

    “We are not at all an anti-European force. We are fighting to save social cohesion in Europe. We are maybe the most pro-European force in Europe, because its dominant powers will lead the union into instability and the euro zone to collapse if they insist on austerity,” he said.

    While he repeated his assertion that the terms of a 130 billion bailout agreement Greece signed with international lenders in March are now a “dead letter”, he said that if he comes to power he will seek a new policy mix to keep Greece in the euro.

    “Yes, we do want Europe’s support and funding, but we don’t want the money of European taxpayers to be wasted. Two bailouts in a row went into the dustbin, into a bottomless barrel. If this continues we would need a third package in six months. Europeans and their leaders must realise this,” he said.

    No comments »
  • Damien Dempsey calls for a No vote in the 31st of May Fiscal Compact Treaty Referendum

    No comments »
  • Mandate: Vote No to the Austerity Treaty

    No comments »
  • Étienne Balibar: ‘Ejecting Greece from the eurozone would be a moral failure for Europe’ - video

    French Marxist philosopher Étienne Balibar discusses European identity amid the financial crisis. Using ideas explored in his 2002 book Politics and the Other Scene, he argues that the continent still has some way to go to rid itself of xenophobia.

    Guardian Comment is Free Video Interview

    No comments »
  • Greece: when the lights go out

    Ireland is not Greece, Michael Noonan has said. The two countries are so far apart that the only thing that reaches us is feta for our fancy salads. Yet, Phil Hogan is planning to use details from electricity bills to go after those who haven’t paid their household charge, just like they tried in Greece. Let’s see how that goes…

    The desperate cunning scheme to get Greeks to pay property taxes by bundling them with electricity bills didn’t last long. You guessed it, people stopped paying their electricity bills and now it looks like the power company - which had to be bailed out last month - has stopped even trying to collect the levy.

    No comments »
  • Greece: heading for the exit? | Michael Roberts

    There is a way out of this. But it’s not on the basis of the pro-banking, pro-capitalist policies of the Euro leaders. Greek state finances would be fine if the richest Greeks paid taxes and did not spirit their money offshore to buy property in Kensington, London or Monaco, with the connivance of Greek banks and politicians granting their wealthy friends and multinationals all kinds of tax advantages and favours that have diluted tax revenues to the point where there is not enough in the kitty to maintain public services.  According to the Tax Justice Network, over a trillion dollars lie in offshore banks and companies in tax havens (not all Greek money of course).  Recover this money and governments could not only reduce their debts but pave the way for a lowering of taxes across the board to encourage investment and growth and increase spending power for the majority.

    Capital controls, public ownership of the banks and major corporate sectors to organise a plan for investment and growth: this is not just an alternative programme for Greece but for all of Europe.

    No comments »
  • On ABC Radio National, PM program: ‘Stupendously idiotic’ policies for Greece can’t work.

    Good answers….

    MARK COLVIN: Well it’s being imposed effectively from Germany, isn’t it? What are the chances that Germany is going to have any patience with a Greece which has failed to form a coalition, which is going into uncharted territories, as you say, with a new election?

    YANIS VAROUFAKIS: It’s like asking the question, what kind of patience am I going to have with gravity? It doesn’t matter.

    (sound of Mark Colvin laughing)

    Gravity is a law of nature and I cannot do anything about it. Similarly, Germany at some point, and I think that that point has already come, Germany will realise that it is absolutely impossible to, for a country like Greece, or for Spain for the matter, to exit this debt deflationary spiral, through cutting. This cannot be done even if every single Greek and Spaniard and Italian wants to do it.

    Even if God, his angels and, you know, every good man and woman on this planet wanted to implement this German prescription on the European periphery, it cannot be done for the same reasons why I can’t fly without an aeroplane.

    MARK COLVIN: So what’s the alternative? Where’s the money going to come from for pump priming?

    YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, I don’t think we should have pump priming. What I think we should have in Europe is a little modicum, tiny whiff of rationality.

    No comments »
  • Video: David Graeber and David Harvey in Conversation

    David Graeber and David Harvey discuss their new books, Debt: The First 5000 Years, and Rebel Cities, respectively.

    25 April 2012 at The CUNY Graduate Center

    No comments »
  • Choonara, McNally and the US rate of profit | Michael Roberts

    As readers of my blog will know, ad nauseum

    Oh go on then, say it again, once more with feeling….

    I think there has been a secular downtrend visible in the US rate of profit, but there is also a profit cycle in the US capitalist economy that lasts from trough to trough about 32-36 years.  I reckon that the last peak year of 1997 set the marker for the end of the ‘neoliberal’ up phase from 1982.  The down phase then began to exert pressure on the US capitalist economy.  It forced an even bigger switch from productive investment in manufacturing, transport and communications into financial and property sectors to maintain profits through the expansion of what Marx called fictitious capital, or credit.  That laid the basis for the crisis in 2007 and the ensuing major slump.  In that sense, Marx’s law of profitability did operate to cause the crisis.  The great up phase in profitability after 1982 had finished in 1997, some ten years before the Great Recession.  We are still in the down phase, which will last for at least another three to seven years, on my reckoning, in what is really a long depression like the 1880-90s in the US and the UK.

    But remember the data for these arguments are for the US only.

    No comments »

Link Archives »

Authors