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roduction to me recommending her article in monday s guardian which is really a condensed version of her new book unjust rewards the book and article see toynbee interviewing lawyers bankers and other such parasites to examine their opinion on society taxes and the poor the results appear to go beyond what were already pretty low expectations how much we asked our group would it take to put someone in the top 10 of earners they put the figure at 162 000 in fact in 2007 it was around 39 825 the point at which the top tax band began our group found it hard to believe that nine tenths of the uk s 32m taxpayers earned less than that as for the poverty threshold our lawyers and bankers fixed it at 22 000 but that sum was just under median earnings which meant they regarded ordinary wages as poverty pay one banker bearing a distinct resemblance to mr scrooge said people don t starve in this country it s ok compared with other countries here you don t go hungry because you can just go and get money for free some thought benefits already too high one banker said he thought a family of four receives say 3 000 a month in their hands and they re somewhere miles up north they re not going to earn that sort of money so where s the incentive for them to go out to work in fact a family of four would in 2008 receive a net total of 1 328 a month whatever the poor didn t deserve it masters of the universe our groups might be but their outlook was pure daily mail single people get pregnant and get a flat and more money you just see everybody pushing prams then they ll get more income and a little flat that they can stay in for life there was much talk of the perverse incentives for single parenthood with one banker complaining that the 18 year old mother on benefits doesn t get that much less money than another 18 year old working in a shop it didn t seem to occur to this speaker that the shop worker s pay might also be too low they were contemptuous of anything that gave extra money directly to poorer people this thing of giving pregnant women 200 for dietary supplements like as if they ll really spend it on fruit most were adamant along with this banker we don t think just chucking money at the welfare state is the answer i d like to think this victorian and ignorant attitude was merely a statistical anomaly a sampling accident which meant that polly had accidentally ended up interviewing patrick bateman however after three years at warwick the views expressed sound only too familiar as with hard times it looks like toynbee has again done us a favour in exposing in detail a murky and despicable aspect of modern british society 1 comment filed under politics and power tagged as guardian investment bankers investment banking lawyers polly toynbee august 4 2008 3 31 pm the problem with the police time for climate camp the police are insisting that their raid on the climate camp at kingsnorth in which they confiscated rope and board games was carried out in the name of preventing lawbreaking and that they are only too keen to police lawful protest they have no desire to intimidate and scare people off whilst this may be true for some of them the reality is that their actions are likely to mean that some people are less likely to turn up particularly if this were to be their first time at an event like this the actions also point to a broader structural problem with the police at such events whilst the confiscation of items like rope was probably carried out to look effective it s a camp site there s rope there it is highly likely that the law will be broken this week with or without the disabled access ramps which have been seized i am of the opinion that if the law favours those who pump carbon dioxide into the air at unsustainable levels then the law is wrong and should be ignored more to the point if the state authorities aren t going to prevent companies and corporations from pursuing projects which cause great harm as a new coal plant from e on would then it is the responsibility of citizens to do so the problem with this is that if the police are only ever going to uphold the strict word of the law then they will become tools of the state and of the unjust laws that state is pursuing the police will stop us from shutting down the kingsnorth power station because whilst they support lawful protest they do not support unlawful action i realise that they are not allowed to do anything else their task is enshrined hence it being a structural problem laws which fail to ensure security and quality of life are not worth following or upholding a few protestors might be unsettlling in the short term but they are nothing compared to what the effects of allowing e on to legally build their coal plants would be nazi germany gave us a stark example of how ignoring the law can be an absolute moral duty a duty which many sadly failed to carry out whilst i m not saying that we are in such a situation it does help to remember that the law is not immutable and that the rule of law is not an absolute concept breaking the law won independence for the colonies it carried the civil rights movement forward and it ended the vietnam war unjust laws should be ignored how else can we ever build respect for proper laws if they have no moral and utilitarian content then they have no purpose beyond testing our subordination if the government won t shut down e on then ordinary people have to do it if the government decides to renege on it s duty to protect its citizens then its laws cease to have relevance and purpose the police will insist that they are only doing their jobs but this is an argument with little real content the evening standard will scream that we are terrorists and fabricate stories to show the world that we can t be trusted but they will as usual be wholly wrong we are simply people who have recognised that their government is failing to protect them and that if they do nothing about it then it is up to ordinary citizens to take over the reins come join us edit my girlfriend trying to enter the camp at the moment has just told me that the police have formed a line across the entrance and are not letting people food bags in i m sure they will soon stop this particular distraction like so many other small irritations it forms part of the project of making it harder and harder for us to camp and to act what they will realise as they did with faslane is that our resolve to make life harder for their system goes far beyond anything they ve got edit edit maybe they re keeping them out because arthur scargill s speaking this afternoon they don t want a whole new generation of trade unionists to fight 2 comments filed under climate change direct action tagged as civil disobedience climate camp climate change direct action edo evening standard government kingsnorth law nazi germany police rule of law the state august 3 2008 10 08 am corruption and leaders why commentators miss the point obama too thin during the slow news period which characterises the british summer we re treated to an increase in the amateur kremlinology that passes for journalism in today s news on demand culture a quick glance at today s times shows up articles on how obama may be too thin for us voters on how to interpret the books that tory mps are reading on their holidays and on boris johnson s distant blood relation to the royal family not online yet this fascination with the lives and personalities of our politicians is perhaps symptomatic of the representative system we live in what is interesting is how it translates into a facination with personal scandals political conversations have become dominated by shock and outrage at the latest corruption or sex scandal whole books and careers are dedicated to exposing and condemning such activities there s nothing inherently wrong with condemning politicians or indeed anyone for blatant disregard for moral conduct however when we focus on the personalities there is an implication that our political system would be fine without these corrupt politicians such thinking obscures the fact that such problems are a natural sympton of the society we live in the latest scandal is always shocking commentators are appalled that blunkett used ministerial privilege and that ian blair gave the contract to a friend when it happens constantly as it has over the past fifteen years the problem is presented a downturn in moral conduct in modern society and poor delegation by those appointing the offenders boris johnson who has been involved in his fair share of scandals was quick to fire ray lewis because of financial misconduct to show that there can be no impropriety under his watchful eye this is highly misleading if the likelyhood of being found out were a sufficient deterrent then corrupt practice would be a thing of the past instead malpractice ranging from a councillor skimming a few quid to berlusconi rearranging a country s legal system to suit himself is endemic this is not because of a few bad eggs new labour and the tories before them have shown that payoffs and privilege can corrupt an entire government to find the answer we have to go back to lord acton and his observation that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely and to the namesake of this blog percy shelley who said that power like a desolating pestilence pollutes whate er it touches when individuals rise to the top of the hierarchy there is a feeling well explained by c wright mills in the power elite that they occupy a higher plain than those below them their actions are inherently justified those around them are doing it anyway it s the way things are done at the top why get left behind such arrogance peaked with richard nixon who famously insisted that when the president does it it s not illegal we can criticise these people all we like but the reality appears to be that they are products of an elite plateau which teaches its members that they are special and that they are powerful power corrupts and people start believing their own myths barack obama was criticised this week for being arrogant assigning such a term to any man who believes they have the capacity to be president of the usa is an impressive way to understate a situation if we insist on having humble loyal honest and moral leaders then we are begging for deception the powerful are rarely any of these things and never all of them our political system elevates some individuals into positions of great power and from here they can and will do terrible things whenever we are shocked at the individual we have missed the point the focus should not be on achieving a system of pure leaders but on abolishing the hierarchies which produce corruption and contempt for the voters anything else is a waste of time a red rag which directs attention from the structural problems of modern society it creates an obsession with personalities that has little or nothing to do with making the world a better place we should criticise corruption but through a broader critique of the system which produces it the andrew marr show assured us that all may not be lost he s a heavy smoker which apparently plays very well 2 comments filed under politics and power tagged as barack obama boris johnson c wright mills conservative party corruption david blunkett hierarchy ian blair journalism kremlinology lord acton new labour percy shelley political systems power ray lewis representative democracy richard nixon scandals silvio berlusconi the power elite the times august 2 2008 1 25 pm not with a bang but a whimper i ll write a proper post on this later today but there s a superb article in yesterday s guardian by andrew simms examining our proximity to the fabled tipping point for climate change and the potential to shift our economy into reacting to the greatest threat humanity has faced in recent history the concentration of carbon dioxide co2 in the atmosphere today the most prevalent greenhouse gas is the highest it has been for the past 650 000 years in the space of just 250 years as a result of the coal fired industrial revolution and changes to land use such as the growth of cities and the felling of forests we have released cumulatively more than 1 800bn tonnes of co2 into the atmosphere currently approximately 1 000 tonnes of co2 are released into the earth s atmosphere every second due to human activity greenhouse gases trap incoming solar radiation warming the atmosphere when these gases accumulate beyond a certain level often termed a tipping point global warming will accelerate potentially beyond control faced with circumstances that clearly threaten human civilisation scientists at least have the sense of humour to term what drives this process as positive feedback but if translated into an office workplace environment it s the sort of positive feedback from a manager that would run along the lines of you re fired you were rubbish anyway you have no future your home has been demolished and i ve killed your dog the challenge is rapid transition of the economy in order to live within our environmental means while preserving and enhancing our general wellbeing in some important ways we ve been here before and can learn lessons from history under different circumstances britain achieved astonishing things while preparing for fighting and recovering from the second world war in the six years between 1938 and 1944 the economy was re engineered and there were dramatic cuts in resource use and household consumption these coincided with rising life expectancy and falling infant mortality we consumed less of almost everything but ate more healthily and used our disposable income on what today we might call low carbon good times a national savings movement held marches processions and displays in every city town and village in the country there were campaigns to holiday at home and endless festivities such as dances concerts boxing displays swimming galas and open air theatre all organised by local authorities with the express purpose of saving fuel by discouraging unnecessary travel to lead by example very public energy restrictions were introduced in government and local authority buildings shops and railway stations this was so successful that the results beat cuts previously planned in an over complex rationing scheme the public largely assented to measures to curb consumption because they understood that they were to ensure the fairest possible distribution of the necessities and comforts of daily life there is no point in postponing action until the economic downturn has levelled out if we don t change our lifestyles now we ll look back on these as the glory days leave a comment filed under climate change tagged as andrew simms climate change economics the guardian tipping point july 31 2008 9 23 pm israel does what it wants dion nissenbaum on the relative impunity enjoyed by israeli soldiers in the territories ...
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