Support your local sheriff

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.

Rhyme crimes

I've just received The Stuffed Owl, a brilliant anthology of bad poetry by lots of proper poets - Wordsworth etc. I shall use it for teaching purposes.

As we're in the middle of a financial crisis, I thought I'd share with you Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton's 'Financial Note', which is a shockingly poor response to an earlier series of bank failures.

A fortnight ago, a report about town

Made me most apprehensive. Alas and alas!

I at once wrote and warned you. Well, now let that pass

A run on the bank about five days ago

Confirm'd my forebodings too terribly, though,

I drove down to the City at once: found the door

Of the bank closed: the Bank had stopp'd payment at four.

Warrant out for McNab; but McNab was abroad:

Gone - we cannot tell where. I endeavour'd to get

Information: have learn'd nothing certain as yet-

Not even the way that old Ridley was gone:

Or with those securities what he had done:

Or whether they had been already call'd out:

If they are not, their fate is, I fear, past a doubt.

I gave quite an impassioned lecture about the recession and banking crash last week. Mojo Nixon summarises my feelings rather more succinctly. Wish I'd seen this in time to include it…

Picture this

A couple of pictures. One of the aftermath of all our Map Twats days out. The other is of a postcard I bought recently from Left on the Shelf, my favourite leftwing book and memorabilia shop. It seems strangely up to date, leaving aside the design of the old job centres. I also bought a Wapping-era 'boycott The Sun, News of the World and The Times' mug for using in the Media office. 

The power of blogging?

Is Robert Peston the man who broke banks by blogging discussions about solutions to the banking crisis on his BBC site (he's the BBC Economics Correspondent)? The Daily Mail thinks so, but that's because it a) hates the BBC, b) is the world's worst newspaper and c) has no understanding of economics or the real world. If a single journalist can cause panic in the finance market, then the system is even weaker than we thought…