I seem to be out of stock when it comes to words this morning.
There might be a delivery later today.
If not, I am hopeful for tomorrow.
Apologies.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Even the Lord rested upon the Saturday.
Trying to do seven days could be seen as , you know, a bit presumptuous . ( wink)
Is that a nod is as good as, etc?
OK I’ll kick off with some random stuff from the news.
Zac Goldsmith – ally in an unlikely place? Enemy of our enemy is our friend?
He’s doing a good hit job on Sunak over the environment.
He said the UK had “visibly stepped off the world stage and withdrawn our leadership on climate and nature”. He wrote: “Too often we are simply absent from key international fora. Only last week you seemingly chose to attend the party of a media baron rather than attend a critically important environment summit in Paris that ordinarily the UK would have co-led.”
Sometimes tory infighting is good for raising the climate crisis to the news. I’m no fan of Goldsmith but on this he’s spot on.
We all need a rest sometimes!
If you need something to get you going again listen to Michael Howard (architect of water privatisation) at about 7:35 on Radio 4 on Saturday.
Have a restful weekend.
Thanks
Good for you I say.
But I’ve just been informed by Compass that 44 year long party member Neal Lawson has been removed from the Labour party this week because of a Tweet in 2021 about the ‘grown up politics’ of cross-party working.
By all means recharge your batteries because the Age of Outrage is upon on us and it seems that Labour(ed) and the Tories think all of this is just normal, fine , OK.
Something dark and controlling is increasing its grip on us – that’s what it feels like to me. Somehow we have managed to import a U.S. style two-party good cop/bad cop capitalist democracy and I’m really disappointed and scared.
Me too
Going birdwatching now
You do that Richard – watch them whilst you can I say and of course relax.
Just an aside: I only ever used to read Twitter from your links but now when I click on them I’m told that I have to sign up! Does this happen to anyone else?
So much for those early utopian dreams of the internet eh?
I can’t answer that I am afraid….
@PSR
“Just an aside: I only ever used to read Twitter from your links but now when I click on them I’m told that I have to sign up! Does this happen to anyone else?”
Yes, in the last couple of days I have had this too.
I only read tweets from Richard’s sidebar too, but this morning they were asking me to sign up. Just now they’re saying something has gone wrong, please try again.
They really want you info don’t they.
Twitter does seem to be having a bad day
According to the site Downdetector Twitter is having a bad day. This seems to coincide with Musk’s decision from yesterday to require everyone to now login to see tweets.
He says it is a “temporary emergency measure”.
“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Mr Musk said in a tweet.
He added that hundreds of organisations or more were scraping Twitter data “extremely aggressively”, affecting user experience.
Mr Musk has previously expressed displeasure at artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, using Twitter’s data to train their large language models.
https://www.straitstimes.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-now-needs-users-to-sign-in-to-view-tweets
Interesting that having done this Twitter now isn’t working at all for some! AI getting it’s revenge!
The man doth moan greatly
My feeling too. These are dark times, and there doesn’t seem to be anything positive on the horizon. Feels like a critical moment in history, a sense of an ugly storm building.
Can’t believe the news about Neal Lawson, speaking as a Compass supporter. There is no way that he is at any kind of extreme position. Does not suggest that current Labour have any interest at all in PR.
They seem to be trying to alienate all sections of the Left. Just whom are they trying to appeal to?
I wish I knew.
They think the public will like them for being ‘apolitical’.
They will point to the polls to confirm that.
But they aren’t liked. They’re just ‘not as bad as’, which is very different.
They will realise too late.
Well, if no one else is going to say it, I will:
Laboured are trying to appeal to their backers who as far as I am concerned are the same people who could not tolerate Corbyn nor Miliband or anything that might constitute a people’s popular response to 2008’s financial crash.
The Tories only got in in 2010 because of typical voter dissatisfaction with a government after a major economic shock that had been authored many years previously by Thatcherism and tolerated and co-opted by Labour.
Now, the wheels are coming off the Thatcherite train one by one and the answer now is going to be command and control by markets for markets with the social order being the capital order with all the benefits of any output accruing to capital. And government is already in its back pocket.
In plain English this means nothing but established economic orthodoxy now tinged with an authoritarian streak to dissuade a common movement for change as voters of most political persuasions perceive (at last maybe) that they have been had.
What we are going to get instead is the anti-epiphany of Neo-liberalism, plus its shadowing partner – Fascism.
To me Labour are tied up in knots. They are a confused mix of Ordo-liberal and Neo-liberal ideas with most of the Ordo stuff being perverted by the cunning of Neo-liberalism (for example the favouring of state regulation under Ordo-liberalism, but its toothlessness being the result of Neo-liberal tinkering).
Again, in plain English, Labour are actually incapable of putting anything right in my view but that it is likely who we will end up with at the next election in 2024.
I think that I should mention Wolgang Streeck who wrote ‘How Will Capitalism End? in 2016 during the emerging clash with capitalism and democracy. Whilst noting in his end chapter the growth of heterodox economists and sociologists developing new models together, he lamented (p.251) what was being taught in university economics and business courses – ‘that society exists only as a grandiose opportunity for utility maximisation by those capable of making the most rational choices’.
For ‘utility maximisation’ read ‘exploitation’. That is the age we have now entered in my view and it seems that we might be on our own for now at least. I don’t think politics is going to come to the rescue.
Maybe an opportunity to rest and reflect on the tremendous success of the “Crap” report. Have a good weekend
Your report on the scandal taking place in the UK water and sewage industry hit the nail in a very big way ideologically! In your previous post “2 million and rising” I asked what is the point of the Labour Party which may be best placed to tackle this scandal by nationalising the industry but under Starmer’s leadership doesn’t so far appear to recognise the logical necessity to do so. Your response to my question was “none” there isn’t currently much point to the party’s existence. I agree and also think there isn’t much point to any of the other parties in the UK with the partial exception of the Green Party.
Such a point of view like mine needs explaining and this is where ideology comes in. Human society has reached a stage where the bulk of our transactions taking place require the use of money. This has resulted in free market production where always the aim of businesses is to ultimately gain more money than what you put in. This of course removes uncertainty always the big bogey-man in life. This, however, also provides the incentive to always focus on keeping input costs down and the temptation or pressure to free-ride wherever possible (not pay the full costs in order to maximise a profit). Most notably the obvious costs sufficiently not paid are polluting the planet (to the point of endangering it!), not paying the costs of keeping the business’s workforce and their family’s healthy, and not paying to educate the skilled workers businesses increasingly required in a complex technical world.
Clearly the water and sewage industry scandal has been made possible because the recipients of their services are captive, they simply can’t choose to go elsewhere in the free market. This is true of healthcare and education for the bulk of a country’s population because free market businesses want to keep input costs down (especially wages) as I’ve explained above. This can only leave the state to compensate for the “free-riding” of private businesses because the bulk of the population don’t have the level of incomes to go elsewhere.
This explanation is obviously an ideological one and highlights the flawed thinking of market fundamentalist ideologues such as Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and most mainstream economists. It’s taken a stink in the water and sewage industry and an explanation for it to reveal the irrationality of thinking amongst the leaders of the UK’s political parties especially the Labour Party who ought to understand why above all else they should focus on “free-riding” to structure their policies.
The French riots are interesting. Is it possible the same could happen here with the massive discontent, cost of living etc?. We saw this on a smaller scale in 2011 but now it could be a tinder box especially as the Met and other police forces are being encouraged to be more brutal with protests etc..
Won’t be long before there’s rioting in the Labour Party unless the members start controlling their “rogue policeman” Keir Starmer who increasingly appears to be a law unto himself, breaking pledges, executing persistent u-turns, ignoring party policy, and worst of all persecuting those he thinks will object to his behaviour. If all that isn’t bad enough nobody who takes their politics seriously knows what the party really stands for anymore especially in dealing with the serious issues confronting the country like for example the water and sewage scandal!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/01/rightwing-illiberal-labour-mp-jon-cruddas-condemns-keir-starmers-witch-hunt
I agree about Labour(ed).
What we need is a roll-call of their advisors, then an exposure of their backgrounds and links and then we need to harass them daily from that point forward, making sure that everyone knows who they are what they stand for and who they might actually represent.
These ‘political advisors’ are a source of trouble and unaccountable power.
An unusual situation for your usually prolific self. I hope it isn’t a sign of some problem, I am still trying to shake off a particularly persistent summer cold (thankfully not Covid).
In case a bit of reading might prompt thoughts, I picked up on this report from the Resolution Foundation today which you might find provocative (I’ve only read the Executive Summary so far). https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/reports/tax-planning/
I just needed a break this morning
It is weird pastime to wake up every morning and think I might write two or three blogs before breakfast, often on subjects of which I am unaware before I woke
So this morning I took the time off….
Good bird watching
How corrupt and rotten is the UK?
“UK water giants recruit top staff from regulator Ofwat”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/01/exclusive-uk-water-giants-recruit-top-staff-from-regulator-ofwat
I seem to be in that one too…..
Words on the Wind
Wallace Stevens, American poet, said: “… if we desire to formulate an accurate theory of poetry, we find it necessary to examine the structure of reality, because reality is the central reference for poetry. ” Here’s a stanza from his ‘Thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird’
‘I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.’
He also said, “Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully”. Quite tantalizing, eh?
Is it about the presence of absence; how can that be? Perhaps it is not the subject or object of perceptions but their beginnings or endings, the fleetingness of perceptions, that persists. How? Because they embody the perceiver in the act of perceiving, they are snapshots of what it feels to be alive in that perennial cascade of fleeting moments before entanglement in words.
Absence cannot literally be, except when captured, as a recollection of what once was or maybe longed for again; fleetingly tangible, achingly familiar.
I made a little poem out of the above, rearranging the bits until they composed a picture, a gift to cast down the years to my grandchildren’s grandchildren should they ever exist as I once had, so we may share;
“The ineffable presence of absence,
lingering again like a curlew’s hastening call,
fading to a whisper
across a marsh at dusk.”
I recall there was a curlew that I heard at Nethertown 75 years ago, sounding like this: https://www.rspb.org.uk/globalassets/images/conservation-projects/curlew-sounds/curlewsounds-rington.mp3
Perhaps the only gift worth casting down the years is the prospect of a sustainable future.
I like your conclusion
Last year I had the privilege of watching 30 curlew fly over me: an amazing sight
David Byrne says:
Richard, good to see that you made the i paper this weekend: The Opinion Matrix, Utility Companies “Rip-off water industry must go public” (Daily Mirror)-Richard Murphy.
This scandal of Thames Water has a long way to run. And our corrupt politicians in recent years cannot argue innocence.
When one peruses the works of Brett Christophers-namely “ Rentier Capitalism (2020)” and “ Our Lives in Their Portfolios (2023)” the unscrupulous methodology of gross financial exploitation is exposed. In the case of infrastructure, ownership and management is a cash cow.
The solution is nationalisation with minimal compensation.
Agreed
Richard,
We will have to make you an honorary Canadian – it is a national holiday here – Canada Day!
🙂
Even on a No Blog day it’s been interesting reading. Maybe you could have a regular day off and simply rely on your loyal readers to provide the copy!
🙂