This is my column in the National this morning:
Many of these columns have a decided Scottish twist. This one is more general.
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Good column – personally I preferred Dave Allen to Max Bygraves – perhaps that is a generational thing.
In the case of economic narratives/stories – they have to be grounded on some reality. “First we will assume a perpetual motion machine” tends not to get you very far in engineering.
The utter/complete failure of the current crop of politicos (Tory1, Tory2, LDems, Greens) lies in their unwillingness/incapacity to deploy epistemology – what do I know, why, why is it valid etc etc. The neolibtards (neoliberal retards – for that is what they are) have like the second hand car dealers they are, sold dodgy economics for decades. All nicely polished and delivered to, frankly, a not very bright/unquestioning political class. Sure, the political class question some stuff, but the core stuff they leave well alone – it never occurs to them that it could be nonsense – or based on a category error (Judt’s observation on Hayeks “Road to Smurfdom” – I refuse to even give it the dignity of its correct title, it is such a pile of trash). Thus we end up with systems and a political system based on utter fantasy & a population via neolibtard policies being gradually turned back into the serfs that they originally were (ref: Varoufakis’ recent observations on the matter).
Thanks
And was it Max Bygraves? I just remember the line
Yes.
The ghost of Margaret Thatcher haunts our politics. For some she provides an origin story. Real political may require that ghost to be exorcised.
My Thatcher narrative:
Thatcher’s father, Alf Roberts, was a Methodist preacher. I wonder how many times she heard the story of Jesus’s admonition from her father’s pulpit:
“Render therefore *to Caesar that which is the taxpayers’* and to God those things which are God’s.”
I suggest *never*. Rather, Alf Roberts preached on the text:
“Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God those things which are God’s.”?
Official tax-collector Matthew (22: 15-22) records the simple answer given by Jesus when He was asked about paying taxes, just as did Mark and Luke.
When given a Roman coin, as used to pay tax to Rome, “He asked, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” The mark on the coin was that of Caesar; it was the mark of his property.
“Therefore give Caesar this money; it is his.””
As then, so now in this Christian State. Allegedly.
I admit that is a little cryptic
Your conclusion is?
I think the continuing legacy of Thatcher is primarily that of Monetarism coupled with the failure to understand a very fundamental part of the country’s legislation that the government can create money from thin air. Certainly Starmer and Reeves are clinging on to this legacy like grim death!
There was a line in The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers where the English Hero suspects the German ‘Baddy’ of actually being English because of the way they understood each other.
I was also amused to hear an interview on Radio 4 with someone whose parents ran Glyndebourne (Opera House in Sussex) who said that when he was small he never understood why his friends didnt have Opera Houses in their gardens.
So what does this mean, well we all have different backgrounds, different experiences which can make it very difficult for others to understand what we are on about, or for us to understand them. Or of course very easy.
My response when the IT helpdesk asks me something like ‘Have you cleared the cache’ is to reply that its a bit like me asking you to do a cold start on a triple expansion engined steamship (Yes, I have done that job!)
So we need to think how we can get our message over, what will our listener understand? rather like a friend of mine who was trying to teach arithmetic to a teenager who hadnt done well at school. He wanted a job in a local fish and chip shop, so my friend set him to work out what money he needed to ask the customers for, adding up items from the menu and then sorting out how much change he would have to give them.
That’s the challenge how to get others to understand our point.
Is the austerity decade 2010-2019 a matter of opinion, I wonder?
There do seem to be two different stories – 1) that we had it and it hurt and 2) what austerity, government got bigger and it hurt
Only an idiot could ask the question
I block idiots
The party line of the current Conservative government is that every problem we are facing now, whether it is high interest rates, the problems of Brexit , immigration, housing or the financial problems of local councils, is the fault of Labour and the left. As Michael Gove said last month re Birmingham council’s bankruptcy: ‘“I think it important for us to recognise that the intervention in Birmingham, and our [previous] interventions in Sandwell and Liverpool, have all been interventions in Labour-led local authorities in which comprehensive mismanagement extended back over years,” .
Nothing to do with drastic cuts in central government funding, then.
They are paying lip service to the idea of levelling up, without mentioning that a good deal of the inequality they are pretending to fix was in fact deliberately caused by them, in many cases within the last 13 years. So does seem as if in certain quarters, ie the Conservative party, the decade of austerity is becoming a matter of opinion. I think the commenter you are testily blocking believes we had austerity and it hurt, rather than option 2.
That’s clearly your opinion and you’re entitled to have it, but you have to wonder how much of your view is based on the stories you choose to believe. Compared to the other ways of forming opinions of course.
It’s quite amusing that you think yourself above such things
Fur a troll that is very good
Michael Laudrup – now we’ve moved on to Danish footballers!
Thanks for letting me know
Two articles helping explain why the Labour Party is a joke under Starmer and Reeves:-
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/13/the-guardian-view-on-the-austerity-delusion-economies-cannot-cut-their-way-to-growth
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=61220
Bill Mitchell points out that it was Callaghan who started the rot 47 years ago in 1976 although it was Harold Wilson who made Dennis Healey Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1974 and Callaghan who under Healey’s recommendation sought out the notorious IMF loan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Healey
The “1976 IMF crisis” was the crisis that never was, based on information provided by Treasury officials about the Balance of Payments that turned out to be completely false.
Within a year of the loan being secured it had been paid back, something that never would have happened if it had been really needed.
This was all widely known at the time but since then the Media have done an excellent job in removing it from national memory
The only question was, had the Labour party been the victim of a conspiracy or a cock-up.
Given the atmosphere of the 1970s and the well documented attempts by the far-right to organise secret armies and coups against the Labour government, conspiracy has always seemed the most likely cause.
In case you think that such an important element of the Neo-liberal foundation story could not be based on such an enormous lie. try looking up in the London Review of Books, Ferdinand Mount’s account of what really happened in 1984 when the British people were told the complete whopper that Margaret Thatcher had “hand-bagged” the Europeans and won a massive rebate on Britain’s contribution to the EU budget.
In the reality the rebate was due because of the decline of the British economy under Thatcher and would have been much larger if Thatcher had not insisted in getting involved in negotiations and then made a complete mess of it.
Mount says that Thatcher was in tears, so her aides and her supporters in the UK press decided that the only thing they could do was to lie and turn reality on its head and claim it was a triumph.
It is worth knowing that Mount was one of Thatcher’s closest aides at the time and remains one of her great admirers.
The following weblink explains the argument in detail why nobody in their right mind should vote Labour expecting anything much different than the previous Tory incompetence. It also smashes Monetarism (the ideology both the Conservatives and Labour are currently operating on) into fragments:-
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=51050
I just wish that one day I might get to the end of one of Bill’s posts
“I just wish that one day I might get to the end of one of Bill’s posts”
I agree but I still bother reading him now and again because he makes a good effort at leaving no stone unturned to explain what is complex subject matter.
See page 5 (8) of the following archived cabinet meeting in 1976 which indicates a complete lack of understanding about living with the effects of a floating currency.
http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-128-59-cm-76-8.pdf
Clearly achieving economic success by voting for the Labour Party is very much a hit-and-miss affair! In the mid 1920’s Philip Snowden the shadow Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted to support Churchill in a return to the Gold Standard despite the high levels of unemployment!
https://spartacus-educational.com/Gold_Standard.htm
Thanks
If you’ve not read Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling, I think you’d like it.
Your point about the search for identity is at the root of all good stories.
I think we’ve been scared into not being ourselves.
And what is our true self? We are a caring, cooperative creature. Few creatures invest as many years as we do in raising their young. A deer is born ready to run. A baby human is helpless. If caring and cooperation weren’t part of our nature, we wouldn’t survive as a species.
But we’ve been encouraged to believe that caring and cooperation are things we can’t afford, even though they are the very reason we have survived for so long in the face of much bigger, deadlier beasts.
We are puny little creatures, physically, but our ability to communicate, empathise, create, care and cooperate have made us all powerful.
We are no longer afraid of the big bad wolf. We can shoot him dead in a second.
We have cared and cooperated with each other for millennia, to find food, mate, build shelter and solve political problems.
We have also found a way to kill each other instantly on a global scale. A tragic testament to our instinct to care for our own tribe, at the expense of another.
Caring and cooperation is the true story of our success.
Without that, we would still be wandering the forests and the grasslands trying not to be killed by more powerful primates and lions.
But we have – for many, many years – been encouraged to believe that we can’t afford to care and cooperate unless it generates a profit.
We have placed a price tag on being who we really are.
We aren’t born to charge interest and seek a profit.
We are born to care and cooperate.
It’s time to rip the price tag off.
It’s time to care and cooperate so everyone can survive and thrive.
It’s time to be who we really are.
Thanks
The only story Scots need to understand is that they are the junior partner in a relationship of unequals and that the dominant partner is run by an elite that can’t be trusted. Not just a Tory elite, but Labour also.
Here’s Starmer taken to task for some entirely customary English disregard for the rights of others, for international law, and relations with neighbours
https://youtu.be/YthMGb8wu6Y?si=XJot1XBvmRQFsDyP
Until English exceptionalism is retired for good Scots should expect continued bad faith of the kind shown here.
Yet again Robin McAlpine comes up with a story worth sharing
https://commonweal.scot/cmon-the-broken-people/
Thanks
It is good