...And Another Thing...

Thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn

Last week Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected leader of the Labour Party. Few in the media rate his chances of winning a general election, which is the sole objective of politics in a system of elective representation. It is also the antithesis of anything approaching actual democracy.

Now, before we go any further, I should declare my allegiances. I am a member of the Green Party. I don't necessarily believe in everything that the Green Party stands for, but I do believe that in a system of elective representation, where the only choice is to which pre-approved candidate you hand over your decision making proxy, the only power that a citizen can reasonably exert is to vote out the current government. And then vote out the government that replaces them. And the one that replaces them. And keep voting them out until we get an administration that we actually like. I vote Green because they are the party at the furthest remove from the mainstream parties (without actually becoming deranged) and so furthest removed from the homogenous Lib-Lab-Con hive-mind. Power corrupts, but Westminster corrupts absolutely. When the Greens get in, I'll probably vote them out too.

I despise the Tories as much as the next person (I grew up with a soul in the 1980s), but I think I despise the Labour Party just that little bit more. Hating a Tory is like hating a shark for doing what is in its nature to do. Under Tony Blair, the Labour Party expended great energy telling the British public how dangerous sharks were, how they needed to be protected from sharks, and then gave the contract for constructing shark defences to a consortium of Great Whites. Hospitals and other Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects signed off under New Labour will end up costing the public purse ten times what would have been spent using only public money. Then, Tony Blair was always a Tory in sheep's clothing. He was so good at being a Tory that one of his dead skin cells became the next Conservative Prime Minster.

What politicians don't seem to have worked out is how angry people are. The governments of the world bailed out the banks involved in the subprime mortgage scandal, failed to bail out any of their victims, and then used the doctrine of Disaster Capitalism (see Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine) to asset strip public resources and public finances of anything that is of benefit to the public. People are understandably angry at how even richer the 1% became in making everyone else poorer. When their only form of redress is to occasionally get to vote on something that is ultimately meaningless to them, they are liable to make irrational choices. We saw this in the EU elections of 2009 and 2014, most council elections since the 2008 financial crash, the 2016 EU Referendum and, of course, the election (and re-election) of Jeremy Corbyn to leader of the Labour Party. It's the same reason why Donald Trump is so unaccountably popular, because people are looking for any alternative to the political elites that drove us into this ditch. I suspect that many God-fearing Americans would vote for Lucifer dressed as Rocky Horror's Dr. Frank N. Furter, so long as he wasn't part of the D.C. elite (or a woman, for that matter).

Which brings us back to Jeremy Corbyn. No, he probably can't win a general election, but then Jesus Christ could be leader of the Labour Party at the moment for all the difference it would make. So long as the SNP continue to dominate in Scotland, Labour can't possibly win, because (and here's the thing), England is a Conservative country. Labour may have pockets in London, some strongholds in the north of the country, but the principle colour of England is blue. British media commentators, however, are overwhelmingly on the left, which is what happens when you are successful and well off, and every minute of every day isn't a constant battle to survive. It's easy to be liberal when you don't view every other human being else as a potential rival.

The media also tends to be a self-reflecting surface that can only view the world with reference to its own reflection. Jeremy Corbyn is not a slick media operator like Blair or Cameron and that makes him a bad politician in the eyes of the Westminster media bubble (most of whom have long since succumb to full blown Stockholm Syndrome). I don't really care what Corbyn or any politician has to say. I tend to mute any politician that appears on TV, something I advise everyone to do. It's irrelevant what a politician says, as it's usually empty rhetoric, or a distortion or oversimplification of the truth. By hitting mute, only their body language remains, stripped of any context. Then you get an idea of what the one speaking wants you to think, like being able to filter out a magician's misdirections. A politician should be judged on what they do, not what they say. By this measure, Jeremy Corbyn is doing better than most.

I take my definition of socialism from Bertrand Russell, as modified by George Orwell, as modified by me. Socialism is the belief in three things: freedom of choice, equality of choice, and social justice. If you believe in those three things then you are, I'm sorry to say, a Socialist. At least Jeremy Corbyn is honest about his socialism. I'm still unlikely to vote for him, but less unlikely than any Labour leader in living memory. Which is progress of a kind. I'd have immersed my scrotum in sulphuric acid before I'd have voted for Blair: But then I had Blair pegged as a dangerous narcissist from the moment I became aware of him (and I never get tired of saying, I told you so.)

It is possible to change the world without being in government. If Corbyn's "kinder politics" forces the Tories to adopt more left of centre policies to even give the illusion of possessing some modicum of humanity, then it's a step in the left direction. Where there is little prospect of power, honesty can flow a little more freely. Though the way things have been going of late, the country might yet make Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister out of mere spite. Now that would be a change.

And Another Thing... Never Say Never Again

"No wonder the country's fallen apart, no one says 'forsooth' anymore."

                                                                                                Mark Steel

I love the English language. It is probably the most versatile language in the world. And not because it is the language that I speak, but because it is the convergence of a nexus of older languages (Saxon, French, Greek and Latin), liberally sprinkled with myriad words from other languages (Sanskrit, Arabic, Urdu, German, Yiddish, Spanish etc) to swell its vocabulary to well over a million words. It is elastic and it is constantly evolving. The English of Shakespeare is different to that of Chaucer; the English of Mary Shelley different to that of Alice Walker. It had myriad dialects and variations, with a kaleidoscope of shades of meaning. The idiom of Jane Austin is drastically removed from the slang spoken in African-American ghettos, yet they remain essentially the same language.

English is also a rare example of a working class victory, with the dialect of the serfs having usurped the French spoken in the forts of knights and kings, absorbing and overpowering it in the crucible of the Medieval marketplace. And even after China becomes the dominant economic force in the world, English will probably survive in one form or another (being the language of international business), as a mishmash of English and Chinese. It started life as Anglish and will probably end up as Panglish.

That said, I believe that there are certain words that should be given special protection and only used in certain circumstances. The words ‘genius’ and ‘tragedy’ are two examples. The constant need of journalists in the English speaking world to sensationalise every trivial event has come to mean that these words are far too often abused. Lionel Messi, for example, is certainly a very talented footballer, but he is not a genius. Michelangelo was a genius and no matter how much spin Messi may be able to generate on a football using boots specially designed for that one purpose, at the end of the day all he’s done is score a goal. If you’re impressed by that, go to the Accademia in Florence and take a look at Michelangelo’s David: It’ll blow your fucking mind.

And this isn’t snobbery either. I’d say Newton was a genius, but not Einstein; James Joyce, but not Shakespeare. I can’t exactly define why I think this, but I think that it has something to do with Newton and Joyce having a fine grasp of complex ideas, while Einstein and Shakespeare seem to have guessed and hoped for the best. I suppose that I associate genius with the action of having a grasp of what it is that you are doing, rather than taking a leap of faith. William Blake attacked men like Newton for trusting to reason rather than belief, yet to me reason is what makes Newton a true genius. However, this theory is open to debate (like any good theory) and I’m not entirely convinced by the weight of my own argument. Einstein and Shakespeare are still godlike to me. And I’d always considered Bob Dylan to be a genius, but given that he has always claimed that he has no idea where his lyrics come from, I have just rendered him ineligible for consideration.

The word tragedy is believed to come from ‘tragus’, the Ancient Greek word for goat. Tragic plays developed from songs composed during festivals to the god Dionysus, when goats were sacrificed as an offering to the god of wine, theatre and fertility (amongst his other patronages). From these songs came the great tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, where the tragic hero’s fate is already sealed by the gods long before he was born. The classic tragic hero of course is Oedipus.

Two and a half thousand years later and now every time some teenager dies of a drug overdose or a soldier is killed by an IED in Afghanistan, it is referred to a tragedy. As sad as these events are, they are not tragedies, but statistical probabilities. We should perhaps not refer to them in such cold and unemotional language as ‘statistical probabilities’, but to resort to the opposite extreme is just as ludicrous. Unless it was prophesised by a soothsayer that such deaths would occur and the victim’s parents had done everything in their power to send the victim away at birth and prevent the event from coming to pass, then they are not tragedies. If you want to read a true modern tragedy, read Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History', where the victim's fate is declared during the novel's first sentence.

It barely needs to be said that when our forces kill civilians during drone attacks, these deaths are put down to ‘human error’, or, as George Bush I said of the ‘accidental’ bombing of an Iraqi fallout shelter filled with woman and children during the First Gulf War, a ‘PR disaster’. We don’t mean to kill civilians and so no one should make a fuss when we do, as if carelessness is any less a crime than directed terrorism. By application of the word ‘tragedy’ to the deaths of our own troops, we can gloss over the very real truth that their lives are worth as little to the architects of the War on Terror as the hundreds of thousands of ‘non-combatants’ that have been killed by ‘our’ side.

(As an aside, we should always be suspicious of words like ‘non-combatant’. They are the Orwellian equivalent of phrases like, ‘Don’t think of an apple’. The first thing one does is think of an apple because the clause, ‘Don’t think of an apple’, contains the sub-clause, ‘Think of an apple’. Similarly, ‘non-combatant’ contains the sub-clause, ‘combatant’, immediately planting doubt in the reader’s mind as to just how non-combatant these so-called ‘non-combatants’ are. Politicians are practised distorters of the English language and should be guarded against at all times. Our first defence against their dissemination should be simply to turn them off and judge them purely in terms of what they do, not what they say. Our second line of defence is to always to ask the question, ‘What are you really up to?’.)

However, the word that is misused by more people than any other, the one that really gets my tragus, is ‘never’. I hear it being abused in one form or another on a weekly, if not daily, basis, in some form as thus: “I’ve never had chips since last week.” It makes me want to scream: “Well then you have had chips! LAST WEEK FOR A START!!!” ‘Never’ is an adverb meaning at no point in the past and at no point in the future and is in fact a contraction of the adverbial phrase, ‘not ever’. If you say, “I’ve never been to Rome before” while you’re stood ouside the Coliseum, that’s just plain wrong. However, if you say, “He always wanted to see Rome, but he never got the chance” over the grave of your recently deceased father, well that is correct (but not indicative of a tragedy).

I’m as guilty of misusing ‘never’ as many other people, but I’m trying to consciously replace it with ‘haven’t’ or ‘hadn’t’ or some other appropriate word or phrase. There is a certain laziness creeping into our language, with verbs like ‘do’ and ‘got’ replacing more descriptive phrases, even among the academic community. Sentences like, ‘We’ve made a series of calculations’ are being pushed out by more simplistic phrases like, ‘We did the sums’, as if we’re all still in primary school. The shades of meaning in our language are being lost in favour of extremes. What will we do when a true genius comes along or a true tragedy takes place? How will we be able to convey the state of something not ever having taken place when we have disabused our once noble language of all meaning? And does anyone else care?

Like the Newspeak of Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-four’, the loss of descriptive language robs us of the ability to express complex ideas and emotions, which is all the more essential as we become isolated from each other through the loss of common experience. Technology was meant to bring the like minded together and yet it seems more and more to me that its real purpose is to divide and to subdue. All the more reason to protect from cultural erosion the keystones to effective communication. 

And Another Thing... Future Forward

In many ways, the successful Facebook campaign to elect Rage Against the Machine UK Christmas Number One was the ideal coda to 2009. This was, after all, the year of the technological revolution. It saw Barrack Obama inaugurated as the first President of the United States to be elected through internet campaigning and fundraising, while in Iran pro democracy rallies were organised via Twitter. In the UK, social networking came into its own with instant campaigns launched against bad journalism in The Guardian and the Daily Mail. In fact, 2009 was as much the year of technological evolution as revolution. The year technology moved away from being a force for apathy and became a tool for social change.

Catching up over Christmas and New Year, it was amazing to discover how many people I knew had actually bought ‘Killing in the Name’ on download. Even those who didn’t admitted it was only because download technology baffles them. The British media was typically cynical of the campaign. It’ll never work, they said. It’ll make no difference and anyway, Sony owns the rights to both singles, so Simon Cowell wins either way. They seemed to have missed the point. They always do.

Like the protestors on the streets Seattle and London and Copenhagen, people bought ‘Killing in the Name’ over X-Bot 0.8 for a variety of reasons. Partly it was good old British belligerence, the chance to knock the wind out of X factor and it’s vacuous, self absorbed panel of experts (with “experts” in inverted commas slightly bigger than the observable universe). What the media failed to appreciate is that programs like X-Factor are self perpetuating, existing solely to generate income for companies and individuals that are already far too bloated and pompous. For them to persevere they need to be seen as omnipotent and invincible.

Bringing an end to X-Factor’s four year domination of the Christmas number one spot may seem like a small victory, but its implications are far wider. This Christmas you can count on there being three or four challengers, which may divide the anti X-Factor vote, but they will also likely split the X-Faction. Most people at most times act like sheep, they vote for the likes of X-Factor because in a life that is largely unfulfilling they want to feel part of something successful. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. Failure is a deeply unattractive quality and if we can knock this year’s winner down to number four or five, 2010 will be the X-Factor’s final year. Good riddance.

Simon Cowell, one of the most vain and truly unpleasant people on the planet, says he wants to do a political version of X-Factor. He’ll fit in well. Again, the media bemoan the fact that more people vote for the likes of X-Factor and Big Brother than vote in general elections, but in reality they are far more alike than is generally acknowledged. X-Bot A or X-Bot B, Tory or Labour, Obama or McCain, the same ruling elites ultimately win.

Whoever profits from ‘Killing in the Name’ reaching the top spot is irrelevant. As 2009 showed, technology and social networking allow the majority to wrestle back the reins of power from the oligarchs who have hitherto owned our planet. We should be under no illusion that the result of this year’s Christmas number one contest resonates wider than the music and betting industries. I imagine its implications being discussed in hushed tones in the halls of Westminster. The result is a hammer blow in favour of democracy and for the reclaiming of public spaces back from private corporations who seek to own our very souls. Yet they have created the weapons of their own destruction.

X-Factor, Big Brother, the Facebook campaign etc., all demonstrate one important conclusion: People are far more likely to participate in ‘democratic’ processes if it is made no more difficult than pressing an on-line button or sending a text message to a premium rate phone line. With enough safeguards put in place, there is no reason why the process of electoral voting cannot be devolved to the internet, with ballot cards containing unique network keys. There would be abuses, sure, but plenty of abuse goes on in the present system anyway. Moreover, we do not live in a democratic society, but under a system of elective representation, which is a very different thing. Virtual networking changes this, with key referendums able to be held online. Finally, to establish a fairer, more equitable society, we need to move away from the tradition of party politics, which has failed us time and again, and elect more independent members of parliament. If we can beat the somnambulistic dirge of some primetime, Saturday night ITV show, using a seventeen year old song, with no advertising and no physical release, then imagine what we could do if we set our minds to something serious. 2009 saw the relevance of technology finally shift into first gear. Bring on 2010: Let’s not lose the momentum.

And Another Thing... Question Time?

So I guess you’re all wondering (or rather, in my sad little world I imagine you’re all wondering?) what I have to say about Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. Well strap in people, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

I think I’m in love with Bonnie Greer. Of all the people involved in the build up to Thursday’s edition of Question Time, including Nick Griffin and the BNP, the three major political parties, the BBC and the anti fascist lobby, she is the only one to come out of this with any credibility. At least she attempted to debate Griffin on his myopic world view and correct his basic schoolboy errors, but in the era of the sound bite in-depth political analysis is rarely permitted. Still, I think Nick was quite taken with our Bonnie. She said later that she’d had to restrain herself from slapping him. He’d probably have enjoyed that.

Greer also came off well because she was the only non-politician on the panel and therefore the only one of the quintet afforded the luxury of honesty. For everyone else it was bullshit as usual. Liberal Democrat MP, Chris Huhne, fell into the same trap that sadly most Lib Dems fall for on Question Time (even the usually excellent Vince Cable). They accept credit for any party political success, while distancing themselves from any unpopular policy, claiming they have always been opposed to whatever it is. You can’t have it both ways and you end up looking frankly ridiculous. Besides, he was largely a spectator. And why weren’t the Green Party invited, given that they are the only political party to have a declared policy for tackling the BNP?

I’m not sure, but I think Jack Straw maybe a genius. After all, it takes real talent to be on the same program as the leader of the British Nationalist Party and still be the most pathetic person present. Jack is the Les Dawson of politics, he’s so inept he must be doing it on purpose. He even managed to make the most idiotic statement of the evening by positing that unlike the BNP, the three main political parties have a moral compass. Oh I’m sorry Jack, when did you start using that then? Where was your party’s moral compass when you were lying about Iraq’s chemical weapons, fabricating evidence and leading the country into an illegal invasion (if that’s not a tautology)? An invasion which left at least 100,000 Iraqis dead, an estimated 5 million Iraqi children orphaned, as well as being a catalyst for the London Underground bombings which killed 56 people. Oh and then there’s all the British service men and women who have died on active duty in that country and the small matter of transforming a fringe terrorist organisation into a major global force. Maybe if you wiped some of the blood off you would see that what you think is a compass is in fact a medal from Dick Cheney for services rendered to the oil industry.

Nor should we let the Tories off the hook here. Never EVER forget that within a month of the Halabja gassings in 1988, the Tories were in Bagdad offering Saddam more money and more aid. When the Tories inevitably regain power after next year’s general election, let’s be sure to remind them of that fact every time Iraq is mentioned.

Which brings us to Griffin and the BNP. Or as I call them, simpletons. By which I mean, people who take a highly complex, interconnected global society and reduce it to a series of false dichotomies like black and white. Still, Griffin’s appearance did cause me this weekend to take a long, hard look at myself. Literally. I’ve been staring at my skin intensely and I have reached a staggeringly exhilarating conclusion: I’m brown! Granted, a very pale shade of brown, but still brown. Now, for someone born in Scotland, of Irish ancestry and who rarely leaves the house during daylight hours, I should be the whitest person in the country and yet I am brown? Which should come as no great surprise really, my ancestors were Africans, as were everyone’s, millennia of migration and evolution have lightened my skin tone, but it cannot diminish my true nature entirely. On the rare occasion when I do venture out into sunlight, the melanin in my skin darkens my complexion and I achieve colour balance with my ancestors. Not only are there no people coloured black or white in the world, the colours black and white do not exist in the natural world, period. Look at anything black closely and you’ll see it is in fact a darker shade of another colour. To pick one glib example, consider Guinness. What colour is it? Black? Wrong, it’s a very dark green. The same is true of the colour white.

If Jack Straw is Les Dawson, then the BNP are the Spinal Tap of British politics. They’re not meant to be treated seriously, they’re meant to be pointed towards and laughed at. Griffin makes much capital out of the fact that white indigenous people are being usurped by immigrants, but he seems sketchy on who these indigenous people are exactly. At one point he made reference to the Maoris and how no one would argue that they are not an indigenous people, yet the Maoris only arrived in New Zealand a couple of hundred years before Europeans, so yes, I would have to take issue that point. The Australian Aborigines have a greater claim, as do those descended from the Mongols that crossed the Bering Strait into the Americas, but the routes both those peoples used were so treacherous that they essentially remained isolated until ships were built that could travel vast distances from Europe. No such claim can be made for the British. The country has been a multicultural society for millennia, what with the Picts and the Romans and the Vikings and the Saxons and the Normans all variously taking their turn at trying to tame this land. Griffin speaks of Great Britain as if it were a static nation prior to the 1950’s. The planet Earth has existed for 4.6 billion years. The country of England as we know it has existed less than a thousand years, Great Britain a little over four hundred years, and the UK barely a century. Good news Nick, it turns out the people you wanted to protect don’t actually exist in the real world. The ‘indigenous’ population of Great Britain is in continual flux, exactly the way it always has been. Why don’t you put your feet up, have a cup of tea (that traditional British drink direct from the Indian sub-continent) and chill the hell out.

And then there is the attitude of the anti-fascist groups. Now don’t get me wrong, as long as fascism exists then there need to be organisations that can meet them head on, one of the many reasons I will be voting Green next year. But really, there is such a thing as overkill people. In the weeks and months leading up to this event, I have received a series of emails from the Hope Not Hate campaign calling for action to be taken to get Griffin banned from appearing. All too often these emails descend into the same pejorative language as used by Griffin and his ilk. Fascism is no way to fight fascism. And if you’ve read ‘The Discriminating Individual’, my essay on race and racism, you know what quote is coming next. All together now:

He who fights dragons too long becomes a dragon himself

And yes, I am repeating myself, but I find I have to because we don’t seem to be learning. So listen up, because I’ve got a lot of other projects to be working on and I don’t have time to be stopping every five minutes waiting for those slow on the uptake to catch up. STOP BOOING THE BNP! Don’t you understand that they like it, it gives them an inflated sense of self importance? It also gets them off. Think about that: Every time you shout at a member of the BNP, they become sexually aroused. That should be incentive enough to quit.

Don’t boo, turn up at BNP rallies and laugh at them and they’ll soon go crumble into dust. You only had to watch Griffin’s disingenuous performance on Question Time, his answers filled with hypocrisy, half-truth and ill judged humour, to recognise what a sad deluded little man he is. As a student of body language, it was far more enlightening to watch his facial expressions and listen to the cadences in his voice than what he actually said (I rarely listen to what politicians say, it saves a lot of time and effort if you just assume they’re lying). You can tell Griffin doesn’t believe half the things he’s saying and the other half are so ludicrous that quarter of hour’s serious debate would set him straight on a number of issues. Sadly, only Bonnie Greer even tried. For the political triplets it was time for some much needed blame shifting. “Look,” they seemed to say, “we know we’ve supported the invasion of other nations, mismanaged the country’s fiancés, mortgaged your children’s future to the banks, colluded in rendition and torture, broken countless manifesto promises and taken the piss on our expenses forms, but that guy’s a racist!”

In fact, the saddest thing about Thursday’s performance is just how much Griffin came across like any other politician, which was probably why the program format was changed to concentrate on the BNP. If the program had followed its usual format then the difference between the four elected representatives would have been virtually indistinguishable. Not in policy, but in the level of political spin each employs to conceal any lack of actual substance. The program was largely a character assassination, but no one should have been surprised by that, Griffin was never going to be treated fairly by the BBC, not because he’s fascist, but because he a member of a fringe political party and anyone who has studied the BBC knows how much it panders to the established order. There is a urban myth that the BBC is somehow a lefty liberal corporation, but in terms of news media, the opposite is very much the case, easily demonstrated by the BBC’s role as chorus to the government’s attempts to build a pro-war consensus (see ‘Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq’ for more in-depth analysis).

900,000 people voted for the BNP in last year’s European elections, a sad reflection on the state of education in this country. To vote BNP is to lay bare a complete lack of knowledge of physics, astrophysics, chemistry, biology, history, natural history, evolution, genetics, as well as myriad other subjects. Again at the risk of repeating myself, countries generally get the government they deserve and if people in our society see the BNP as a viable alternative then it is we as a society that have failed and it is for us to do something to redress that, instead of trying to sweep them under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist. The BNP are dangerous, but not terribly so. Far more concerning is the prospect of a greedy, lying, murdering, narcissist becoming the EU’s first President. Griffin is all talk, but Bliar is actually dangerous and the only fit place for him is a cell in the Hague.

And yes, a British population of 70 million is a worrying prospect, but I think by that point we will have far more pressing matters to deal with. The myopic self-centredness of the British media rarely seems to connect a British population explosion with a more general global explosion. It is said that if the rest of the world consumed the same amount of resources as the USA we would need three more planets to meet the demand. So what then happens when China again becomes the dominant superpower? We’re about to find out.

Every time I hear about the supposed Islamification of Britain, I have to seriously ask if these people have ever been to Britain. As Aussie comedian Brendan Burns says, Britain hasn’t even adopted Christianity yet! Griffin accuses Islam of being a violent religion which oppresses women. In other words, a religion. After all, the Old Testament condones murder, rape, theft, paedophilia, slavery, drug use and genocide (all within its first five books), but most Jews and Christians ignore these anachronisms, as do most Muslims of the more violent sections of the Quran. Griffin and the BNP want to stem the tide of immigration and preserve Britain’s unique character. I’m sure the Saxons said the same about the French in 1066. Besides, it’s too late. One in ten relationships in Britain are already classed as ‘mixed race’, whatever that means, and that number will only increase. Short of wholesale genocide, that level integration can never be reversed. Britain is changing just the way it always has and I for one take comfort from that. The only immutable force in the universe is change itself. Get over it.

And Another Thing... Banking As Usual

Hi. You don’t know me, but I am one of the 2.5 million people currently unemployed in this country. I suspect that my story is little different from most anyone’s, except that the government QUANGO I was employed at was shutdown, not for economic reasons, but because the Department of Health decided that a badly managed, three tier complaints system would be better handled by abolishing the middle tier. That’s another story for another time.

I have applied for some jobs, done some temping to make ends meet, but even that seemed to have dried up and so I needed to claim Jobseekers Allowance. Due to the high volume of new claimants, it was two weeks before I was called to interview, and two weeks beyond that before I heard that my claim had been successful. And in the interim the fun started.

I called my credit card company, Halifax, a few days before I was due to make a payment and explained the situation to the guy at the call centre. He was very nice, but very well trained, and informed me that as my case had not yet been sent to the Debt Recovery Department, there was nothing he could do to put my account on hold and avoid incurring charges for late payments. He did put a note on the system, but I would have to default and someone would be in touch.

Halifax, it should be said, is part of the Bank of Scotland, which is a subsidiary of the Lloyds Banking Group. The British government now holds a 43% stake in Lloyds, following its receipt of a slice of the £37 billion government bailout arranged at the end of last year. As better people than me have already stated, the government could have given that money to the banks’ customers to help with their debts, while still stimulating the economy. The net result to the banks would have been negligibly different than the one the government actually chose. Instead, they handed it straight over and the banks put it in their back pockets. Funny that there’s always enough money for invasions and for bailouts, but never enough to reduce the biggest gap between rich and poor in Western Europe.

So the next thing that happened was that I received five automated phone calls from the Halifax in two days. The first one I hung up on, assuming it was a scam. Yet no matter what I did to disconnect the call, each time I pressed for an outside line, there was the same electronic voice carrying on regardless, an unstoppable machine, like Arnie in Terminator. She even managed to somehow leave a voicemail message, which signed off, “We will call again later.” I’d half expected to hear, “I’ll be back.”

A couple of hours later and she was back and I was bored, so I decided to indulge her. I followed the instructions, which didn’t ask for anything too personal, a multiple choice question about my date of birth, and agreed to make a payment within fourteen days. No problem.

Two days later and she called three more times. Exactly the same damm phone call, making the same damm request for payment. If I was merely flabbergasted before, now I was simply annoyed with her damm cheek and the cheek of the Halifax and Lloyds in general. So I agreed to make a completely different payment, forlorn in the hope that my paradoxical payment promises might cause her head to melt.

Then, finally, a call from a human being. Another nice guy, who was genuinely helpful. I expressed my unhappiness at the use of their automated phone calls, explaining that while I may not feel intimidated, I am not elderly, or of reduced faculties, persons for whom these calls could seem sinister. Moreover, after a standard of acceptability is established, however sleight, this leaves the vulnerable open to future scammers. If one automated call is ok, why not them all?

Joel Bakan, in his book and movie, ‘The Corporation’, presents his thesis on why corporations are essentially sociopathic in nature, valuing profits and the interests of their stakeholders over the good of the planet and the people living on it. Society has a duty to protect the vulnerable and this is a highly anti-social method of communication, granted not to the extent of an oil spill, but it all adds up. The guy sympathised, telling me that they’d only been told they were starting automated calling two weeks before commencement (although I‘ve seen comments on forums from 2007 that make reference to them. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt).

As I had had some money through in the meantime, I tried to make the necessary payment, at which point I discovered an even more irritating problem. The payment was declined and when I checked my account, I discovered that my overdraft hand been decreased by £260 with neither consultation nor information. Now, because I was a three year temp at my last job, I got paid weekly, had a lot of expenses at the time and was consequently never out of my overdraft. As I wasn’t making them enough profit, my bank, The Co-op, decided to start reducing my overdraft limit at the beginning of each month. I wouldn’t have minded so much if it hadn’t been the bank that sold me, with moderately aggressive insistence, a bigger overdraft increase than I’d wanted to take.

When I rang The Co-op I was informed that the six month agreement had come to an end, they don’t send out letters informing clients that this period is ending, and it is the customer’s responsibility to get in touch and renegotiate the terms of the agreement. This from the bank that writes to you every time someone scratches their arse at head office. I’d had three letters from them that week, all claiming to contain important information and every one of them a forest depleting dud.

Being unaware I was supposed to ring, they had made the reduction and charged me £40 in over-limit fees, for being three days overdrawn, although I did get half of this cancelled, as a ‘goodwill gesture’. Despite some arguing, it seems I was only entitled to £20 of goodwill. My overdraft was reinstated to its former glory, minus the £20 reduction. I was charged a further £20 in ‘administration fees’ for the privilege. Including the subscription fee I pay each month for the privilege of having an account (must be why they call it a Privilege Account), the Co-op made £104 from me in a little over a month. You can see now why they don’t notify the likes of me that our agreement is nearing its end.

A legal ruling last year declared that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) had the power to cap the amount banks can charge their customers in over-limit fees and other ‘administration fees’. Eight banking groups had sought to censure the OFT’s powers through legal restriction. The OFT has stated that it believes that anything over £12 is excessive, but the appeals process is likely to drag on for some time. Despite this, most banks are now complying with the OFT’s directive. It may be an altruistic admission of defeat, or an attempt to induce amnesia, should they ultimately loose the legal battle. We will probably never know. The Co-op is one the few banks still persisting with excessive charging. What is it they know that Halifax, the Abbey and Natwest don’t?

This, as I tried to make the woman on the phone understand, is supposed to be, ‘The Ethical Bank’. What made me angry was that I hate advertising and yet I fell for that slogan. Maybe it would be more truthful to have the strap line, ‘The Co-op, more ethical than your average bank’. But then, when was advertising ever honest?

The Co-op girl was far from helpful. I have worked in call centres and have used what is known as the broken record technique many times (the technique by which you repeat the same thing over and over again to a tricky complainant until they get bored and go away), so maybe this was karma catching up with me. “Is there anything else I can help you with?” she said in that rising intonation that suggests you have succeeded in been helpful in the first place.

Look, I don’t wish to sound like I’m moaning, I am in relatively little debt, and while money may be tight for now, I am blessed with generous friends and family (Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you.). I am certainly a lot better off than many people in this country and in this world. What I am though is an aspiring writer and a student of life and wheresoever I find myself how can I not comment on the things which I observe? How can I not point out the absurdities I see in this increasingly topsy-turvy world?

The government made a very good show of calling the banks to task. Some practices that should have been illegal a long time ago have finally been outlawed, but ultimately the status quo has been preserved. It has been my observation that capitalism is the creative art of siphoning money to the rich from the poor, which I know makes me a wishy-washy, lefty-Liberal, but you know what? I’m ok with that. In a 'democracy', society is whatever we say it is. I offer the not too unreasonable suggestion that we should protect our vulnerable citizens from irresponsible practices like automated calls (literally, cold calling). Besides, we bailed out these people (our grandchildren will be paying for it) and yet I have not heard much in way of explanation of how this is all to be prevented from happening again. And after all that money, haven’t we purchased the right to at least speak to a human being whenever we like? I do most of my banking online, but when I want to speak to someone, when I proactively ring to try and come to an arrangement, shouldn’t I be able to speak to correct person, first time? Or am I just being unreasonable? You can tell me. I can take it.

I thought that if I wrote an article about my finances and how they relate to the global economy, some national paper might appreciate the irony and publish it for a small fee. After all, if I’m going to be paid for doing anything, it may as well be for something I’m good at and something I am passionate about. As for you, you can do something as well. Sign the online petitions listed below. If you bank with the Lloyds Banking Group, write to them to ask them to discontinue the practice of automated calling. You could also write to the Co-op, but then you would just be following my agenda. Whoever you bank with, write and ask them what measures they have taken to prevent another fiasco from happening, like the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. Change and progress are inevitable, yet they sometimes need a shove in the right direction. I am writing to my own banks and I shall ll let you know how I get on.
 
Letters

Halifax,
Customer Relations,
PO Box 548,
Leeds
LS1 1WU


Dear Sirs,

Ok, I admit it, the other Thursday I spent two hours in the bath reading the rather excellent book, ‘Leviathan; Or the Whale’, but was it really necessary to leave me five automated messages on my answer phone during that time? Was it then necessary to leave another five the following day? I know I owe you money, I know I was late making my credit card payment, but doesn’t ten calls in twenty four hours strike you as overkill? And yes, I am aware that I was late with my payment last month too, when you rang me three times in one day. However, on that occasion I agreed to make a payment within fourteen days, yet still you rang me three more times two days later. If I fail to make a payment this month can I expect fifteen calls?

I wouldn’t mind, but I did actually go to the trouble of proactively ringing you before my payment was due to explain that I had been made redundant and was waiting for a Jobseeker’s Allowance claim to be processed. I was fobbed off, told there was nothing you could (would) do to come to an arrangement and that I would have to default and then someone would be in touch.

Now correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t the Halifax part of the Bank of Scotland, which is a subsidiary of the Lloyds Banking Group? Doesn’t the British government now own a 43% stake in Lloyds, following it’s receipt of a slice of the £37 billion national bailout arranged at the end of last year? Funny that when you mismanaged your finances, the government stepped in to underwrite your incompetence. I owe you £60 and suddenly that warrants electronic harassment. Our children will be paying for your financial mismanagement, if not our grandchildren, the least you could of done was write off your customers debt for a month as a act of appeasement. Instead, as I have titled an article on this issue, it’s ‘Banking as Usual’.

Joel Bakan, in his book and movie, ‘The Corporation’, presents his thesis on why corporations are essentially sociopathic in nature, valuing profits and the interests of their stakeholders over the good of the planet and the people living on it. I strongly object to your use of electronic calls (literally cold calling), because of their intimidatory nature and the effect they will have on your more vulnerable customers. I have worked for a number of years in NHS complaints and I can only imagine what effect these calls have on the elderly or mentally ill. Moreover, how can you ensure that using this form of communication will not leave those vulnerable customers open to exploitation by scammers? I appreciate that you do not ask for any personal information beyond a date a birth, but by using this method of communication a level of acceptability is established. If one automated phone call is ok, then why not them all?

I am not only a Halifax customer, but a member of the public. I and everyone else in this country bankrolled the incompetence of the Lloyds Banking Group. Your customers have at the very least bought the right to speak to a human being when required and not to be harassed and harangued by some electronic harpy. I have started a campaign calling for this anti-social practice to be banned. Moreover, its introduction (which I am told by one of your employees was introduced with two week’s notice to staff) is further evidence to support Joel Bakan’s theory. Your organisation seems to have learned little, if anything, from last year’s financial crisis and I would like to know what procedures you have put in place to prevent such catastrophic meltdowns in the future. I consider myself to be fairly well read with regards to current affairs, yet I am still to be convinced that you have taken adequate steps to address this problem. Certainly when your staff do not know how to resolve problems that are presented to them, it is hardly surprising that we’re in this mess.

As well as the general issues I have raised, I would appreciate answers to the following specific questions:

• What is the rationale in using automated calling?
• What action has been taken to ensure that customers are not bombarded with automated calls and vulnerable customers are given adequate protection?
• How many automated calls are made to a customer before this triggers a call from a real employee?
• Is there an option to opt out of this practice?  What action will you be putting in place to ensure that customers in financial difficulty can inform the right department first time and agree a payment scheme?
• What measures has the Lloyds Banking Group put in place to ensure that the kind of financial mismanagement revealed last year (i.e. subprime lending and the buying of toxic assets) is avoided in future, which would, I assume, require further public investment?
• As a 43% stakeholder, how much of your day to day business does the government oversee?

I look forward to a timely response.

And Another Thing... Oxford Road

[From the throng a loan voice ballardises] Oxford Road, Oxford Road, everyone’s got their head down bowed...

“The sixteen fifty two service to ^{Middlesbrough} is delayed by approximately fifty two minutes. Last North Western would like to apologise for the delay and for any inconvenience this may cause you.”

Anyone who thinks that capitalism is the greatest thing ever never spent any time commuting by rail. Here I stand, waiting for a service that is now delayed longer than the length of my actual journey. Being rush hour, that means a platform full of pissed but resigned faces. Buddhism should be adopted as the religion of British rail commuters, for to travel by train in this country is to know that life is suffering. For those of you still clinging to Roman-Christian tradition, may I recommend a timely prayer to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.

“The seventeen nineteen service to ^{Blackpool North} is delayed by approximately twenty eight minutes. Last North Western would like to apologise for the delay and for any inconvenience this may cause you.”

That’s me. This tends to happen every three or four weeks, but despite what the board may say the train is never actually ON TIME. In Switzerland, in Holland, in Belgium, trains leave to the second of their schedule. In Britain when the train is timetabled to leave it has yet to even shuffle into the station. Despite this reality, the Office of Rail Regulation reckons that 88% of trains run on time. It makes you wonder how late a train has to be before it is “officially” late (“Delayed,” as if held up by a Tyrannosaurus on the track). The one time I ever experienced a train arriving on time (it was actually early), it didn’t move for over an hour. Unlike the continent, timetables here are aspirational; they tell you when the train might arrive at your destination if it were travelling in a vacuum, unencumbered by passengers.

“The seventeen nineteen service to ^{Blackpool North} is delayed by approximately twenty nine minutes. Last North Western would like to apologise for the delay and for any inconvenience this may cause you.”

And this is why my initial statement holds true. Governments attempt to sell us this lie that privatisation is the only viable way to run the world. Yet the British railways are the epitome of the private sector, where service is sacrificed in favour of profitability, where figures are massaged, equipment is broken or obsolete, and where incompetence is almost always rewarded.

“Please do not leave your luggage unattended. Unattended luggage may be removed or destroyed by the security services.”

Yet still they can’t resist telling us off for they know no shame. Besides, only the dumbest of terrorists would blow up a train: Who would notice the difference? Welcome to _Britain under ^{New Labour}. Please remain fixed on external threats while we rob you blind. It’s not terrorists you need to worry about, it’s someone losing it waiting for the “delayed” sixteen fifty two service to ^{Middlesbrough} and going on a tri-platform killing spree.

“Can I have your attention please on _{Platform Three}. We are sorry to announce that the sixteen fifty two service to ^{Middlesbrough} has been cancelled. Last North Western would like to apologise for any bloodshed and the inconvenience this may cause you.”

That’s not too annoying is it? Apology after apology after apology, an infinitely looped electronic slap in the face, with nary a hint of remorse or shame or reassurance of how things might improve for the future. Nor any offer of compensation for the time you had to make up after being delayed Monday morning. When the rail operators fail to provide the advertised service, who pays the fine? And yet there’s always someone before, during and after my journey checking to ensure that I have a valid ticket, because failure to pay for this abuse would be a criminal offense. In fact this very station has spent thousands of pounds installing a ticket barrier which serves purely cosmetic purposes, accepting any ticket valid or not. I went through it with a tram ticket the other day, just to see if it would accept it.

“_{Platform Two} for the seventeen thirty service to ^{Blackpool North}.”

Finally. Around the corner it comes and what a surprise, three carriages. Yesterday there were six. Why the discrepancy? Who knows. My theory is that rail operators employ Dungeon Masters to throw six sided dice when making that decision. I do know that the companies don’t own the carriages, they hire them for millions of pounds a year, so draw your own conclusions.

Three carriages, but it could be worse. Sometimes the next train is cancelled and the few people who would hang back join the scrummage for the doors. I would opt out too but I’ve grown adept at this and can usually judge where to stand so the doors stop right in front of me. Besides, I couldn’t get out now if I wanted to. I’m surrounded.

Here we see the microcosm at work. Cooperation supplanted by competition, every man for himself with no women and children or elderly permitted first, as the few lucky ones scramble on to an already overladen carriage and squeeze into the corridor. It’s amazing how many people can be shoehorned into such a short space when motivated by the desperate desire to just get home. The late great Linda Smith once observed that rail journeys in this country are now like the one made by Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago, with parents throwing their offspring on to “knackered rolling stock... ‘I’ll never see Pearly Oaks, but my child might’.”

I have a piece of advice for those of you who find themselves running thirty seven minutes late on a train that is meant to take twenty six minutes, but rarely takes anything under thirty, shunted into a corner by six carriages of passengers squeezed onto a three carriage service, hemmed in, hot and airless, every nook and cranny filled with human cargo, like some tableau of the transatlantic slave trade (Tableau being apt, given the customary stop in the middle of nowhere outside some unspecified field for no adequately explained Reason^*), wondering all the time how no one dies of heat exhaustion on balmy days like these, and wondering too why you’re paying higher fares than any rail passenger in Western Europe. My advice to you is this: Always carry a copy of Barber’s Adagio for Strings for just such occasions. Those soaring strings are the only way to survive the rising stress levels from a twice daily demonstration of privatisation in action. Your leaders would have you believe that the bankers are the exception, but commute for one month and you’ll see that they are very much the rule. What we need is a rail passengers’ strike, a day of national prayer, affiliation to Buy Nothing Day, anything. Something.

I pull into my station seventy minutes late. And you know the worst thing about being “delayed”? Less time to recover before being compelled to do it all over again.

In my dreams I dream of working from home...

Notes
*A mate of mine recently missed going to the Liverpool/Real Madrid match as his train home from work was “delayed” two and a half hours on one of these mystery stops.

And Another Thing... Notes on an Election

Douglas Adams once observed that the job of a president is "not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it." He was talking about a Galactic President (this was in ‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ after all), but it seems obvious to which office he was referring. The role of President of the USA is largely symbolic, anyone who has ever watched ‘Yes Minister’ or read ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ will take note of the sobriquet, ‘Most powerful man in the world’ and instantly recognise how much power that role really carries. As Sir Humphrey Appleby reminds us, always dispense with the tricky part in the title.

Noam Chomsky compares the President to the British Queen. Each year, he observes, the Queen attends the state opening of parliament and makes a speech, outling her government’s legislative program for the coming year. However, no one asks if she agrees with, or even understands, what she is reading. The ritual is merely the remnant of an antiquated political system, long in need of reform.

Now, laughable as it is to describe as democratic a system in which two of the three legislative branches are unelected, the British system does hold an advantage over its American counterpart. The Queen may annually serve as mouth piece to the government of the day, but at least it can be said that the people who compose that speech are, for the most part, elected representatives. Inversely, most US campaigns are bank rolled by rich, powerful men, who then take up key positions in the incumbent administration and dictate policy. The President, as the only elected official in the White House, serves as Town Crier, dressed in the uniform of a higher office to lend him a false air of authority. At no other time in the modern era has this been more true than during the preceding eight years.

Of course even a Town Crier requires basic motor skills, like the ability to read aloud while simultaneously ringing a bell. Even this, it seems, was beyond the skill base of George W Bush, as his bumbling cowboy stance shuffled from one unmitigated disaster to the next, committing so many crimes against the English language in the process that, like the results from an astronomical satellite, satirists will be pouring over the data for decades to come. But then a transmitter is only as good as the programming it broadcasts and in this regard Bush has been done no favours. Neo-conservatism (a neologism which attempts to mask avarice with ideology) would be terrifying if its proponents weren’t so incompetent. Iraq, Guantamo, Katrina, the failure to catch (or even, it would seem, attempt to catch) Bin Laden, global warming, the doubling of the national debt, and the sub-prime lending meltdown, it is hard to maintain a belief in conspiracy when the conspirators are so shambolic. The Dubya Years would have been hysterical, if only so many people hadn’t died as a result of them.

Yet if ‘President of the United States of America’ is largely an affectation, it can still serve as an important symbol in a country as dependent on symbolism as the U.S undoubtedly is. Flags, anthems and triumphalism are substitutes for any real political will, yet the cult of personality the President instils did take that nation to the Moon. It also took it to Vietnam, and Chile, and El Salvador, and Iraq, twice, to name but a handful. Internationally, the President’s election is seen as a barometer to America’s current direction. When Bush was re-elected in 2004, the Daily Mirror asked, ‘How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?’, and America’s standing on the world stage plummeted. Barack Obama’s election has prompted almost universal jubilation around the world, as much a damming indictment on the policies of the last decade as it is a celebration of the first African-American President. Indeed, the world should take hope not from whom Americans have elected their Commander in Chief, but from their final (and, one hopes, ultimate), rejection of the neo-conservative, pseudo-fascist, consensus.

I was a jubilant as everyone else the night Obama was elected, but I know my political history and remain sceptical. I remember the euphoria we all felt upon Nelson Mandela’s release from Robben Island in 1990 and his election to President of South Africa four years later. I also remember the Structural Adjustment Policies that the World Bank and IMF imposed upon that country in return for granting loans to the ANC. Utilities were privatised and prices hiked, leaving basic amenities beyond the reach of the average poor South African. Like all revolutions (cf. American, French, Russian et al.), the top two tiers of power switched places, while little changed for the majority. And yes, I remember the words of Ghandi (or at least Ben Kingsley), that it better to be governed badly by your own people then governed well by a foreign power. Yet as bad as apartheid was, at least people could afford water.

Still, I am moderately optimistic regarding Obama’s Presidency. This isn’t 1997, when I can remember seeing Tony Blair on the news and having a moment of awareness that he was to become Prime Minster of Britain. In that instant, I realised the country was in deep trouble. With his every breath, Bliar managed to exceed even my low expectations.

I don’t expect America’s hypocrisy regarding Israel’s behaviour will change, it will continue to receive billions of dollars in military aid, and the blockade of Gaza will continue. Hundreds, thousands will die, but then 500,000 Iraqi children under the age five died during Bill Clinton’s Presidency and Madeline Albright, the woman who declared those deaths a worthwhile price for peace, is currently a national security adviser to the President Elect. Similar support will also continue for Egypt and Saudi Arabia, those twin bastions of freedom and democracy. Yet we will certainly see Guantanamo closed and the prisoners there released, or sent for trial in a recognised court on the mainland. One of the darkest chapters in American history will end on that day. We should also see US troops leave Iraq, universal healthcare, one of the pre-requisites of even a dysfunctional democracy, pushed to the fore, and conservation and global warming finally becoming federal issues.

In the words of Churchill, "We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead." This presidency will not be significantly better than any other, no parity will be established between the myriad minorities that make up the United States. Yet Obama’s relative inexperience, touted as his greatest weakness, will prove his greatest strength. He is less mired in the bureaucracy and corruption of Washington and more likely to push forward with his own agenda without being brainwashed into subsidising corporations with money fleeced from the very poorest.

So in summary, I am hopeful, which makes Obama unique amongst politicians in that he is the first in living memory not to fill me with contempt. That said, I end this article with the words of one of Obama’s predecessors, Thomas Jefferson: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." There is hope here, but let’s try to maintain a sense of perspective.

And Another Thing... When in Doubt, Blame it on Anti-Americanism

This week saw the welcome return of two totems of left wing politics to the British airwaves. On Monday, John Pilger’s first feature length documentary, ‘The War on Democracy’, was given its network premier on ITV. And on Tuesday, Radio 2 broadcast an hour long special on the life and times of Bill Hicks. This column is named in deference to the Hicksian diatribe and it would appear that, thirteen years since his untimely passing, Bill’s popularity is greater now than ever. In the past, both men have been accused of committing that most heinous of thought crime: Anti-Americanism. But as I will demonstrate, this is a fallacious charge, which grants the accuser immunity from having to defend the indefensible.

Anti-Americanism is a peculiar phenomenon. Noam Chomsky observes that if someone were to criticise the domestic or foreign policies of Denmark, they would not be accused of Anti-Danishism. The term is meaningless. You can locate the terms anti-American or anti-Americanism quite easily on Dictionary.com. Search for similar adjectives relating to any other country on Earth and you will draw a blank.

The reason why this is so is because like Communism or Catholicism, Americanism describes an ideology, a world view quite independent from the nationality of the person who advocates it. Americanism is Capitalism, re-branded. As Pilger’s documentary reminds us, successive US administrations have sought to export their own brand of democracy to Latin America for almost as many years as that country has been in existence. What this has meant in practise is the overthrow of democratically elected, leftist governments, who wish to run their own countries for the benefit of their populations, in favour of dictatorial regimes who arbitrarily arrest, torture and execute thousands. Economies are prised open to free trade, which is only free in one direction, and utilities are privatised and sold off to the highest bidder.

Indeed, Pilger’s one hundred minute long ‘The War on Democracy’ was oddly unencumbered by commercial breaks. One assumes that most companies don’t wish to be associated with someone so critical of US foreign policy, because they may appear to be in agreement with Pilger .

Of course the CIA and government representatives have standard excuses for these ‘interventions’ inside the borders of other nations. America is under attack. We have to invade to protect out interests. We’re doing it to protect your freedoms. These are hollow and, frankly, piss poor, excuses. The US now spend more on weapons and ‘defence’ each year than every other country in the world combined. Even the rise of fundamentalism is no serious threat to US interests. Given the choice between the draconian policies of the like of Taliban led Afghanistan, or the shiny, glitzy world of western capitalism, there is only ever going to be one winner. Mobile phones, MP3 players and internet porn are of greater influence than any of the major religions, because they exist in the here and now. Studies show that as a country industrialises, adherence to religious practises declines. Only one nation bucks this trend. The United States, it would seem, is the only fundamentalist religious country in the developed world.

Looking back on the twentieth century interventions of the US, a common pattern emerges. There is a new government. It wishes to close its borders to trade and use its resources to increase the quality of life of its population. Yet this is anathema to American corporations and so that government must be overthrown and a leader sympathetic to US interests installed. We see this time and time again in Chile, Indonesia, Vietnam and Iran, to name but a view. Naked profiteering is dressed up as protection from pseudo threats to our way of life, as if we all lived the same way anyway.

Now, through sheer coincidence, the two documentaries that were broadcast this week, were aired in the correct order. Having reminded us of the misery and wanton destruction that US foreign policy visits on poor, defenceless nations, it was good to also be reminded that America has produced more than it’s fair share of genius. In comedy, timing is everything and Bill Hicks was a grand master at it. America has given us Bob Dylan, John Steinbeck, Nina Simone and Heather Graham (mmm, Heather), to name just a handful of my favourites.

The fallacy of anti-Americanism is that it attempts to equate disapproval of state sponsored terrorism with hatred of an entire nation, in the same way that opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine is equated with anti-Semitism. Undoubtedly there are people who do hate the United States and everything that it stands for. However, more often than not anti-Americanism is invoked as a way of not engaging on the issues. The problem is that that people have been told about the importance of freedom and democracy for so long that they’ve come to believe in these principles. Of course, America is not a democracy, no country is. A democracy is a utopian state where the population has an equal say in its running. The US system is one of elective representation, as are most so called democracies. Having your say and deciding who, from a pre-approved list, makes you decisions for you are not the same thing.

The myth of democracy though is powerful and people are prepared to go to great lengths to defend it. What we are seeing with Dubya’s administration is little different from previous presidents. Even the Clinton administration committed atrocities. It is merely that the people who currently laud it over the planet have gotten away scot free, so often (there were at least two men in Dubya’s first administration who were indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal), that they have become cocky and arrogant. The pretext for war this time was so thin that most well rounded people saw through it in an instant. A million marched on the streets of London, but public opinion matters little in Britain. In the US, where it means everything, public opinion is carefully modulated. The accusation of Anti-Americanism is a potent weapon in a country which places so much importance on the idea of nation. The rest of the world is charged with being jealous of America’s affluence. Anti-Americanism is irrational and it is futile to try and engage with people guilty of it. Moreover, this epidemic is on the rise, as if anyone is surprised by this. And of course anti-American = hatred of the west, so the more people who apparently hate the west (including its own population), the less we are required to engage with them, because they are behaving so unreasonably. Disengagement accelerates the process by which you can take whatever you damm well please.

There is another word, like anti-American, which has no international equivalent. Un-American. It implies that there is a certain mode of behaviour that a US citizen is required to adopt, which should tell you all you need to know about what the people who use that term really think of freedom. But if to be un-American is to practise the eternal vigilance that Jefferson warned us was freedom’s price, then two of the most un-American men who ever drew breath were given airtime this week. Bill Hicks called TV Satan’s glory box, because the role of the US media was to spellbind its audience and coax it into intellectual somnolence. “Go back to bed America,” he mockingly intoned, “you are free to do as we tell you.” What, I wonder, would he have made of Fox News? In Britain, the media is less manipulative, but still heavily weighted towards the establishment. It was good to see this week that two important voices of dissent were allowed to be heard up where they belong. We probably need to hear them now more than ever.