Will Hutton has an article in the Guardian in which he argues that the recent decline in the growth of life expectancy in the UK (and its decline in some parts) is down to what he describes as 'shit-life syndrome'. This is the state where life is reduced to an exercise in mere survival as a result of the economic and social oppression lined up against those suffering the condition. And, as he points out, those suffering are not just those on the economic and social margins of society. In the UK, as in the US, the syndrome is spreading.
The reasons for this can be debated. I engaged in such argument in my book The Courageous State. In that book I argued that we live in a world where those with power do now, when they identify a problem, run as far as they might from it and say the market will find a solution. The market won't do that. It is designed not to do so. Those suffering shit-life syndrome have, by default, little impact on the market. That's one of the reasons why they are suffering the syndrome in the first place. That is why so much of current politics has turned a blind eye to this issue.
And they get away with it. That's because the world of make belief advertising which drives the myths that underpin the media, and in turn out politics, simply pretends such a syndrome does not exist whilst at the same time perpetually reinforcing the sense of dissatisfaction that is at its core.
What cures shit-life syndrome? Let's not beat about the peripheries on this. The time for that has gone.
Decent homes would help beat shit-life syndrome.
The security of knowing you can eat would help as well.
As would knowing that there's a chance that income will cover outgoings.
The availability of affordable credit at a time of crisis would be of value.
Meaningful work would be transformational.
Access to society - which can simply mean transport and the means to partake - is also key.
Knowing the planet might survive would be of value.
Believing in a future is key.
These things are not unreasonable expectations. But we are failing to organise our society to deliver them.
That is a choice.
It's the wrong choice.
We need to transform our choices. Thes needs have to be met. Not to extend life. But to make life worth living. It's unacceptable that it is not. And the evidence that it is not for too many is now all too clear.
And whilst this goes on our politicians argue about Brexit which they know will make things worse.
We don't just suffer shit life syndrome. We're also suffering shit politician syndrome. And both are crippling.
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We elected them, the shit politicians, I mean. So the shit politician syndrome is really a symptom not a syndrome. If people led less shitty lives constrained by the chains of neo-liberalism then they would elect less shitty politicians. Just to take one obvious example which is that lack of a consistent carbon tax on aviation fuel which means those of us who can afford it, from holiday makers to government-funded Non Governmental Organisations, are constrained from travelling in Great Britain and incentivised to travel abroad and see how much better things are on the other side of the water.
Those with shit lives aren’t travelling abroad anyway, and often can’t afford the regressive charge of a passport, and just get to see how much better the other half are having it. And so long as they form less than half those who can get out and vote it will not change.
These sort of imbalances will only change when those with shit lives form a majority at an election or referendum, such as the one on EU membership, where the shit politicians got instructed to be less shit. And the reaction of the politicians – to actually try and shit on the result. You could not make it up.
First you have to realise there is a choice
No-one to blame for the shit politicians but the shit electorate. We need to be looking in the mirror more often when it comes to apportioning blame.
I don’t entirely agree
I happen to think people can be fed and buy bullshit if enough weight is put behind it
Why don’t you stand? If you have the answers and want to make a difference then why not?
Because I am not think I am temprementally suited to a life at Westminster
“Because I am not think I am temprementally suited to a life at Westminster”
Isn’t this true for most normal people who just want to get on with their lives quietly and privately?
We get the ambitious loud mouthed chancers who want attention, fame and power. Showbiz for ugly people as they say. There are exceptions, but they tend not to go far.
I agree Richard. It’s far too simplistic to blame voters. Historically, snake oil salesmen have always been a part of the political process. But as the 21st century rolls out we’re talking a whole new ball-game. To misquote James Carville’s contribution to Clinton’s 1992 campaign: “It’s the marketing industry, stupid!”
Impossible to put a figure on it but I’d guess about 90% of the total adult population have absolutely no idea how their opinions and choices are being sub-consciously pre-formed by media in all its evolving guises. It’s a hugely sophisticated and effective weapon in the arsenal of those with deep enough pockets to pay for it – hence largely the Republican/Conservative lobbies who take instruction from their industrial and financial puppet-masters. More than at any previous epoch all one has to do is quite literally ‘follow the money’.
The implications are obvious. Until the current economic paradigm (ideology) self-destructs – at heaven alone knows what cost to people and planet – it’s logically unrealistic to expect radical change. It WILL get worse before it gets better. Yes, as Osho said: ‘one should be realistic and plan for a miracle’ – and maybe if enough people do peaceful change can eventually be brought about, maybe within the next couple of generations. But, sadly I’m not optimistic. The baddies will continue to throw sufficient crumbs of addictive sugary cake to the plebs in an attempt to mitigate their excesses and keep the pitchforks off the streets, but they’re firmly in control and tightening their grip year on year. I truly believe it’s an unprecedented time in modern history.
Back in 2005 Warren Buffet summed it up: ” “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” In that same year George Carlin famously delivered a more prophetically polemic message to his audiences – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXhZyAOuyhE. Well worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time (IMHO).
Should a progressive government be elected – here or elsewhere – it will only be a matter of time before the neo-libs will manufacture its demise within public opinion. Just see what’s happening in Latin America. And while of course I have nothing but disgust for the politics of Erdogan, the US will not tolerate even one of its own ‘caste’ departing from the script, with devastating implications for the Turkish population. They simply don’t care. It’s all just so much ‘collateral damage’.
I so wish I could be more optimistic. Unless we all consciously face up to the stark reality of this genocidal rape of our societies and planet, and fully understand the true nature of what this small minority of sociopathic fascists are up to, then unknowingly we too can be sucked in to their marketing vortex.
Well, that was cheerful for a Sunday evening, wasn’t it? Barista – un grande caffè corretto per favore!
Realistic, I’d say
But I’ll skip the coffee tonight….
Oooh Bill!
I feel your understandable frustration. I share it.
But you are being a bit hard there on Mr & Ms Elector. Our rulers divide and conquer us in order to make us make the wrong choices which makes them the (political) shits that they are.
I call upon all progressives to remember this. The last thing the people of this nation need is the Left looking down their noses at them as the Right abuses, confuses and misleads them. All we will get back is defiant indifference from the people we are trying to help. That White Van Man is proud of the fact that he is trying to work and provide.
We progressives/Left need to keep our compassion for those who are being manipulated. Is it not compassion for our fellow man that is meant to drive us in the first place?
Without compassion, the only thing left to drive us is the lust for power alone and remember what that can do to even people with moderate progressive ambitions – history is full of insights.
We are here in the aim of providing relief from a shit life and shit politicians – not to deliver yet more judgement to an increasingly and deliberately agitated populace.
Very well said
I agree Pilgrim. Talking to my neighbours they have been aware for a long time but felt that voting made little difference as all parties delivered essentially the same results. All that differed was the rhetoric. And they were entirely correct. They are more aware that Labour has shifted and is contemplating policies (housing, jobs, public services) that are more in line with the needs of their family and friends. We saw this in the last General Election. I guess, however, that time will tell.
It strikes me that you would make a very good politician PVSR
I’m in Surrey. Locally we have the family Elector to blame for handing authority to Gove, Grayling, Hammond, Hunt and Raab. Perhaps it’s coincidence I’m lacking in compassion. Perhaps.
politicians,have you seen them, do we seriously think they GAF about the plebs ? we live in a two party state with nothing to choose between the two of them,plenty of promises from the liars,but nothing ever changes,its the system which is at fault, the supposed democracy does not work and hasn,t for quite some time,we need the whips gone and independent mp,s answerable to there own constituents .
I think you’re wrong about their nothing to choose between the parties these days
But not as much as I would wish for
Yes, Bill, but let’s start with shit FPTP which means most votes count for nothing and a few swing constituencies decide the election and that small parties have no chance of getting a substantial number of candidates elected, that the 3 major parties are shit parties whose main interest is in gaining power, staying in power and enacting policies founded on political dogma rather than evidence or social needs. And that they are full (at the top) of shit ex-public school oxbridge boys who have been brought up in a kind of educational apartheid, (as suggested by Danny Dorling) segregated from the hoi poloi and who exhibit a number of psychological symptoms that make them unfit for leadership (Robt Verkaik: Posh Boys). And don’t get me started on the HoL, the Monarchy, the corrupting influence of honours and the ever beckoning revolving door leading to plum sinecures and not forgetting the big donations from big business and other wealthy donors who only do so because they expect something back in return. I’ll stop now as the sun is shining and some work needs done in the garden.
“We need to be looking in the mirror more often when it comes to apportioning blame”.
First-past-the-post means that my MP has already been in his ‘safe’ seat for over 20 years. He has said he will stand down at the next election but there is every chance that he will be appointed to the Lords so, whatever his strengths and weaknesses, he will not be gone. Most parliamentarians appear to have little understanding of science (climate change for instance) or, in my view, economics. Worse, they do not know how to use evidence properly. Further, MPs who are subject to the whipping system are forced to over-ride the promptings of logic and of conscience from the beginning of their parliamentary careers. That said most of the televised parliamentary committees appear to be an improvement – yet party loyalty (or was it ignorance?) meant that the committee considering the proposed expansion of Heathrow did not seriously consider climate change in its deliberations.
And — yes — I am involved with a party (the Greens) but the climate won’t wait until there is a Green majority.
Just managed to get a WiFi connection in the French campsite I’m in. Terrible cricket news but I read the Will Hutton article and wondered whether RM would comment. The news we get about the state of France in the UK media often suggests the place is on the verge of collapse. The reality here is very different. Beautifully kept villages and towns oozing with a feeling of civic pride. Small bakeries still operating in villages presumably run by families who feel an obligation to society and don’t expect to be paid enormous amounts. In England village shops are closing down and the one in my village is run by volunteers. Whatever problems the French have is not about shit-life syndrome and the exodus of the French to London must be to do with the Gordon Gekko syndrome because if I lived here I wouldn’t be rushing northwards across the channel. And another thing, all we get from the French when we’re shopping is smiles and courtesy.
Enjoy the holiday
The smiles may be pity, by the way…
I did wonder if it was pity.
It was worse in the 70s that was grim. Football violence & punk rock explosion in 77 was a youth rebellion against our leaders, unemployment and the sense of no future
Were you there?
It’s complete nonsense to say we had no sense for the future
I can recall no young person thinking that at the time
Yes of course.. in the north east. You clearly wernt on the terraces or part of the punk movement. It was grim. Inflation sky high, rubbish not collected, power cuts and high unemployment. As I say that was the roots of punk rock and trouble at footy matches.
This is pure political nonsense
There was nothing like the current sense of desperation, at all
It’s pretty clear you didn’t feel it in the 70s. The working class did. Do some research!!
The working class always do
It has got much worse for them since then
Despite all the guff that’s written about the seventies I thought it was a pretty good time. I was in my30s with a young family. I helped at a youthclub in the evenings. We could afford camping holidays in Scotland and Wales. It was a good time. The Labour government were struggling against a backdrop of rising oil prices but no one was starving or living on the streets or using foodbanks. The only ones really complaining were idiots like General/Colonel Stirling who was claiming the country was ungovernable and we should have a military coup.
Career opportunities by The Clash captures the mood of the youth in 1977..bleak and angry
Maybe you aren’t familiar with the opportunities that existed then
I think many would like them now
Richard,
I forgot to add on the last thread, I bought your book, ‘The Joy of Tax’ the other night to answer my own question. I assume within its pages, I will find why you are attacked by a particular section of Rightists. Thanks for your efforts. Don’t spend the proceeds all at once!
On this one thread, I do have to say Jamesc is sound and making fair/ evidence based comments. Even down to the Clash roving around grotty South London. Country divided, of course, and by 1983 about to get much worse. Enemy within then, Trade Unions: enemy within now, City of London, this has to be the historical and political focus for Labour. The young need to be reminded that the Tories and Blairites have only stagnation in store for us.
The only macro economics the Left will soon need, is a resurrection of the 1960s ‘Plantation Economics School’. Call it ‘Neo Plantationism’. Not so much, how do you achive devolopment from an ex-colonial, single crop island, but now, how the NeoLibs slammed development and progress into reverse at the old centre. What four cords can capture that?
Jamesc, so many songs to choose from to support your thesis from 1976 to 79 and from 1979 to 89. I’ll go first, year: 1984. I liked the fact that, as a younster, this one thought he was The Clash when he walked on stage 🙂 One great EP IMHO.
‘The factories are closing and the armies full, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ve come to see, that in the land of the free, there’s only a future for the chosen few’. That’s how I remember it.
“The factories are closing and the armies full, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ve come to see, that in the land of the free, there’s only a future for the chosen few”…Billy Bragg, who got rich through protest and is still preaching from his multi million pound house in the country
..contrast that with the true musician from the left, Chris Dean (The Redskins) now living with his mum after getting disillusioned with politics, the labour party and the music industry pretty much all at the same time..RM listen to “Neither Washington nor Moscow” and tell me the 70s/early 80s were abound with opportunities
The 80s were not
You previously wrote about the 70s
The 70s very grim, I left school in 1979 there was nothing other than scrambling for a YTS. If you were lucky it might have got some training it led to something but 8 out of 10 times there was zero training and you were a cheap labourer… I subsequently learnt ( after going to uni in my early 20s) that the term stagflation was coined during that era.
In Scotland we have shit media
https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/a-tale-of-two-rallies/
and then
https://www.arcofprosperity.org/how-not-to-campaign-in-scotland/
We certainly seem to be good at electing shit politicians. But perhaps that’s because shit politicians are happy maintaining – and being maintained by – a shit media. And because shit politicians know that failing to have critical thinking as a central pillar of education means that voters don’t have the capacity to recognise shit policies when they see them. Anyway, politics is boring as shit, and shit politicians are more than happy to keep it that way.
I won’t start on about shit economists. You’re good at that, Richard.
Bill Kruse
I am not saying you lack compassion. Not at all. And I have had many a dark night being angry with people for not seeing what is happening myself. All I’m saying is to remember that we all have compassion. It is in us. We are being purposefully divided because it makes the British people easier to manage.
We human beings did not get to where we are by just competing with each other as the neo-libs tell us. We also got where we are with a lot of empathy, understanding, shared needs and values with others – even kindness.
Peter Smith
I wouldn’t last 5 minutes in politics. And even less than that. For a start I’m ginger. Well – grey/ginger now.
That’s the worst excuse I have heard!
Ha Ha Ha!
Well, I’m not particularly photogenic either.
I have so many skeletons in my cupboard that the Daily Mail would have me for breakfast. I’d be too working class for the middle class and too middle class for the working class. I tend to divide those around into supporters and opponents.
My effect on other sophisticated or shit politicians would be that they would just work around me. I would get no where in a political party set up at all because I just do not know how to work the party networks in that way. I’d find it very frustrating I think.
Reaching out to voters is one thing, but having to continuously argue with fellow politicians within a party to agree policy would just drag me down.
I so agree with the last comment
I learned that in university
Pilgrim: ” We are being purposefully divided because it makes the British people easier to manage.”
Worse than that, I think, as surely the point of marriage is to isolate individuals within the tribe and so weaken it. You can bully an individual with a mortgage a lot easier than you can someone who’s the member of a supportive tribe or commune. Witness Thatcher’s war against the unions, that was a tribal war. Further, our so-called education seeks to infantilise us by putting us in an environment where we can’t mature. There’s a book about this now “Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children & Families from the Torment of Adolescence — by Robert Epstein.” There’s more arrayed against the common man than might be apparent. In many ways we are already divided, already conquered. We have been for centuries.
Bill – yes – agreed – but at the moment do you not think that the ‘divide and conquer’ is being ramped up – even more rampant?
And this is because (I think) of blogs like this which capture the alternatives that people are thinking about because slowly (very slowly, painfully slowly) the scales are peeling away from their eyes.
Divide and conquer is being ramped up because our rulers are scared Bill. And that is a good thing in many ways but ‘they’ will make a fight of it.
Remember one thing: Neo-liberalism and the capitalism it spawned is an ideology that has within it its own seeds of destruction. Marx knew, Ricardo knew, Adam Smith knew it of the capitalism of their time. Those weaknesses still lurk and are more self evident today.
All ideologies (Left or Right) that are applied in an unquestioning, rough way come to a bad end. This one will too.
Returning to the possibility that you might stand for Parliament. We desperately need someone on the Westminster stage that tells it how it is. Why is everything boiled down to the dictates of party politics. Time to tell the buggers that the king has no clothes. If you change your mind Richard, I will happily knock on doors for you.
Thanks
But it really would not suit me
Westminster is not much of a place for thinkers
And summer fete opening is not my style
The single most important issue that will address the problems we face as a country is the extent of inequality that is fostered by the ruling classes networks that have developed to keep them as the ruling classes. Foremost amongst these are the cesspits of class distinction, public schools, that foster the notion of inequality from an early age of the pupils at such institutions.
This inequality starts at the public schools. A network of privileged institutions that are favorably looked upon by way of charitable status and being only open to those with wealth, thereby keeping access to them restricted to the ruling class.
Whilst the final object is to have them closed down all together it would signal their demise in the first instance by removing their charitable status and having an increased tax rate of well over several hundred percent on their tuition fees.
Agreed.
The shit politicians are planning another ruse to keep dumping merde on us: the stories about a ‘breakaway’ party just won’t go away. The Guardian, of course, is excited by the prospect, if not actively involved in the gestation of a new party, variously described as ‘centrist’, Macron-style, ‘anti-politics’.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/20/prospect-new-uk-party-grows-westminster-political-cracks-brexit
Don’t they ever learn?
No…..
What we actually need is a truly radical left of centre party
Agreed – but we need to rethink the dimensions of Left and Right. Those of the 70’s/80s are no longer helpful for the 2020s/30s
Totally agreed
I got involved last year with a group of politicians/wannabe politicians who were trying to set up some form of group that could topple the local Tories who are dug in like Ticks where I live.
I had to walk away in the end because even though there were some very well meaning people not one of them had a clue about economics let alone politics.
All I heard was:
1) Things were bad and needed sorting out (no arguments there).
2) But the answers they had were still the same old ideas regarding the economy – totally orthodox economic mythology.
All these people were doing was setting themselves up to fail – they can visualise what they want but would only run fast and headlong into the orthodox quick sand…….and then what?
I asked myself what people who knew so little thought they were doing? Did they have the right to have go given their ignorance? Shouldn’t people be qualified to be politicians in some way? Especially about a fundamental issues such as economics which needs new ideas and brave ideas so urgently.
I made my excuses and left them to get on with it. Whatever ‘it’ was. And I when I reflect I still don’t know how they are going achieve what they want without some fundamental rethinking of what they think they know.
It is time to petition HM the Queen to dissolve the government.