Sailing into choppy waters

It's the Comprehensive Spending Review today, in which the Tory and Liberal Democrat government institute nakedly reactionary social and economic measures under the guise of dealing with the deficit. The poor, the weak and the hardworking will suffer. The rich and their businesses will not. Organisations like the BBC are being punished for their (relative) independence and for offering an alternative to the world of Fox News, while Murdoch and his friends will be rewarded for their loyalty.

Are massive cuts in welfare, environmental protection, education, housing, transport, the arts etc. justified? Not if you ask Nobel Prizewinner for Economics, Joseph Stiglitz. He, like virtually all expert economists and most government, thinks we should be boosting the economy, not sacking millions of people.

Still, what does he know? Abolishing the state worked brilliantly for Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship (as long as you don't look too closely). Until it didn't.

Just a little longer

I'm not a vindictive man. Well, I'm not usually a vindictive man. OK, sometimes I can be non-vindictive. Now is not one of those times. I just noticed that Margaret Thatcher has broken an arm. That's what happens when a woman in her eighties greets the BNP's victory with the traditional stiff-armed salute.

Before you all start whinging about how cruel it is to take pleasure in the pain of an old woman, I should point out that she is the most damaging, actually evil individual every to take control of this country. I have mixed views on Oliver Cromwell even though he massacred thousands of Irishmen in cold blood. I don't have the slightest tinge of sympathy for Thatcher. Brought up to despise anyone poor, foreign, or who saw the world differently, she allowed her personal prejudices to develop into an ideology which simultaneously yearned for the past while encouraging her friends to make money by making the world worse - culturally, educationally, enviromentally, politically. She supported Apartheid South Africa, despised the working classes, took tea with Pinochet and never met a fascist or hereditary despot she didn't like. She literally denied the existence of community ('there are individual men and women, and there are families') and did her best to destroy the organic communities which grew out of stable employment.

Her lessons that greed, selfishness, wealth, consumption and individualism are the only standards by which success should be judged is at the root of our atrophied education system, our stunted NHS, our poor public services, our low-tax, low-pay economy, our awful railways and clogged roads: Blair and Brown are her spawn, the reason why there's no space in the current political system to discuss collective effort for collective gain.

I haven't the space and time to cover her crimes against humanity - but I do think that any minor bit of pain and suffering is nothing compared with what she's done to us. When she dies, I'm holding a massive party. Every year, I'll visit her grave to make sure she's still dead, and water the wreaths with poison.

Cutting back on the luxuries

I watched David Cameron's speech about the economy yesterday and agreed with his main point: that 'spend spend spend' is not the way to get out of a recession partially caused by rampant consumerism. Inspired by his message of hair-shirt self-denial, I invite you all to join me in promising to never again indulge in high-end accessories and decor, particularly those retailed by Smythson of Bond Street (director: one Samantha Cameron - gifts available under £100) and Osborne and Little, the source of Gideon 'George' Osborne's wealth. 

Unless, of course, you think that Mr. Cameron's point is that government should stop spend spend spending money on poor people (public transport, infrastructure, the environment) so that the rich can pay even less tax, and so that Cameron's gloriously retro monetarist/small government/Friedmanite plans can be implemented. Naomi Klein's latest, The Shock Doctrine, points out that disasters are merely opportunities for these bastards to seize power. If you don't believe me, watch Niall Ferguson's appalling recent documentary, The Ascent of Money. Sponsored by a tax haven (!), he praised the Pinochet dictatorship for its embrace of monetarism, repeatedly referred to Allende's 'communist' 'regime' (e.g. its democratically-elected socialist government), but couldn't find enough time to discuss the thousands of deaths, torture chambers etc. etc. etc.