I know, I know, you never thought you'd hear me bigging up the rozzers (though I did once have a letter in the Guardian supporting the Metropolitan Police Commissioner's decision to target bourgeois drug-users).
Today, I'm fully behind An Garda Siochana, the Irish police, in their call for off-duty officers to join picket lines today, for the General Strike. Police forces aren't allowed to strike in most places (though the putative effects can be seen in the Robocop films), and they're normally very rightwing people indeed (during the Miners' Strike, they pretty much came out as Thatcher's shock troops of capitalism.
A General Strike is a very big thing - the UK hasn't had one since 1926, and that was a failure. Ireland is on strike because the government's solution to the recession is to massively cut public sector pay and investment. The unions' point is that - like the UK, and as Cameron isn't saying - we're massively in debt because the banks destroyed the economy and the state has had to rescue them. Neither government has overspent on health, education, welfare etc - but hundreds of billions have had to be handed over to the banks to keep the economy from total, 1930s-Germany style collapse.
It's worse in Ireland for cultural reasons. After 60 years of being Britain's poor, Catholic, potato-farming neighbour, a small and greedy élite who controlled business AND politics decided that it was time to get seriously rich, and leave everybody else behind. In a country of 4 million people, almost half of which live in Dublin, the effects were horrendous. Regulation disappeared, banking became a secretive and corrupt free-for-all, suitcases of cash (literally) were shuttled between businessmen and politicians, including at least two prime ministers, property prices rocketed and interest rates plummeted. Businesses were tempted in with low-or-no tax rates, and everybody thought that the future was rosy.
Only - the banks had been trading recklessly, and on the side. Dodgy deals and stupid deals meant that the banks owed many, many times more than the entire economy was worth. If everybody believed that everything was fine, this charade could keep going - but as soon as the banks realised that all the other banks were lying too (over CDOs, sub-prime lending etc. etc. etc.), the party was over. They stopped lending to each other and devalued their holdings.
Why not let these banks go bust? Even in the big economies, many of these banks were 'too big to fail'. In Ireland and Iceland, the effect would have been utterly catastrophic. What's gone wrong is that public spending on the people's needs has suffered massively - while the banks continue on their merry way. 'Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor' is a cliché now, but it's what's happened. Bankers have taken our money and appear to feel that they've won, and bear no responsibility for us. They don't use state hospitals, libraries, buses and trains, so they won't suffer.
So I say again - congratulations, Garda Siochana. Welcome back to the proletariat.
8 comments:
Ya forgot to mention Ol Gordy, who lauded and feted the bankers, invited them to dinner and gave 'em knighthoods while the cash rolled in. No more boom & bust... All those Scottish banks should have been allowed to fail, you're right! And Northern Rock as well. Unfortunately it would have put too many Labour voters on the dole & we can't have that, can we?
Who's Ya?
What's an ol Gordy?
Why use feted and 'em in the same sentence?
What are you waffling on about?
Now now. Anonymous is right - New Labour (not Labour) was utterly captivated by the markets and a vision of a UK where public services felt free because they were funded by the (minimal) tax paid by a rampant financial sector rather than us peasants.
I do think some of those banks should have been allowed to fail, though in a managed process in which depositors were protected and shareholders had to pay. Do that, and the staff stay, because the investment bankers are actually a small number - it's retail banking, with those pesky cashiers and so on where the serious jobs are.
Northern Rock did fail: it's a zombie state bank. It wasn't really an investment bank, it just behaved like one, which was its downfall. The mutual model was a strong, sustainable and proud one which was shamefully dumped when people got greedy. We need them to come back.
Do the BNP have policies (other than the obvious racist twaddle)?
Yeah. Single out Gordon Brown for blame. Claim the banking crisis was due to 'Scottish' banks implying both that it was a 'foreign' problem and Brown helping his own. Pretend that the banks were propped up to save Labour voters jobs (i.e. not proper, English, people) etc, etc...
Basically everything that anonymous said
What on earth is going on here? V, you got some crazy mo fo readers over here.
I was just going to make some silly comment, but I'm going to very calmly move away.
The banking crisis was the work of the Lizard Men!
(not the Scottish).
I doubt that's the real Jim Corr. He'd throw in words like New World Order, of which I'm obviously a part for laughing at him. I'm clearly a Bilderberg Conspiracist.
'A reader': yes, you're right. The blaming the Scots thing is an interesting new development. People have moaned for years that Labour is a Scottish plot, but they've only just noticed that Scotland had a powerful banking system - a quirk derived from the intricacies of the Act of Union leaving the legal systems separate.
The BNP has policies: everything's the fault of the Jews. No wait, that used to be their policy. Now it's the fault of the Muslims. Oops. That doesn't work. It's the Scots and the Multicultural London Elite or whatever the current code word is.
What their policy on the PSBR is, I couldn't say. Nor could they.
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