Manufacturing is the priority

An apparent sub-plot to the financial crisis, the future of the american ar industry is of greater importance in the long term than the economic impact of the current recession. The financial crisis is a wake up call – because it is better to stop now before the debt situation gets even worse. Refreshingly, it sweeps away much of the vapid optimism about liberal progress, free trade etc. The agenda of world government is partly revealed in Gordon Brown's calls for governance of the financial and economic sphere. We get down to brass tacks.

Yet a short-term consequence of this crisis is the meltdown in the US car industry, All three US manufacturers could close with a loss of 300,000 direct jobs and apparently 2.5 million indirect jobs. Whole states will be decimated in economic terms and national employment would rise to 10%. The future of the US as a manufacturing country hangs in the balance: this impacts on the viability of the US as a great power because scientific and technological advances are stimulated by a healthy manufacturing sector. America is a country where the ideology of internationalism is not as dominant as here and popular feeling is voiced more strongly than in Britain, where there are not the political and media diffusion of power to challenge the established view that manufacturing is not necessary. That this is the establishment view is evidenced by the Rover crisis, where no major party would dare raise the issue of saving the company by British finance. Instead, we practically gave it to the Chinese, who fleeced it for its research and development portfolio, so hastening their march to industrial and technological supremacy. I am not blaming the Chinese; they are simply advancing their own interests by legitimate means; however, we are allowing ourselves to become weak. The ideology of facile internationalism is the the opiate that makes industrial suicide palatable.

Bernardos demonises adults

Bernardos video on adults' attitudes to children paints a supposedly damning picture of adult's humanity to child. I can't help but be suspicious however as to the questions asked. It sounds like there a conflation between children in general and children involved in social disorder and/or criminality. The real comments made by adults are taken out of context. For example, “More than a third of the adults they questioned agreed with the statement that the streets were "infested" with children”, suggest Bernardos. I note here that the only word in quotes is “infested”. So what was the original question? Other quotes offered by the Bernardos film: “they wander in packs”; “vermin”; “to hell with their human rights”. Well, many people may vent their feelings in relation to violent or anti-social children; did they actually say this about children as a class? The advertisement is very ambiguous. It uses real quotations, but is a dramatization of a fictional incident where adults, indulging in these comments, work themselves up to go about shooting children.

http://www.barnardos.org.uk/ for the video.

The dramatisation bears no relation to what is happening in Britain today; there are no shooting gangs. That I have to say this is itself incredible but here we have a major, state-funded charity, in all seriousness and moral indignation, peddling this ridiculous picture of the world. Not only is it ridiculous but it is quite vicious in that it seems to suggest that all adults who complain about children are about to murder them; it is sentimental in that children are portrayed uniformly as victims of adults.

The Today programme took it seriously; maybe they felt that they had to be objective. They conducted an interview with teenagers who were shown the video. Surprise, surprise, the youngsters felt victimised and misunderstood; as one said, “just because some children misbehave, it doesn’t mean we should all be shot”. Of course it doesn’t but these impressionable children were swayed by the video; they felt they were victimized by malicious adulthood because they were young people. This is the picture Bernardos wanted to paint and why wouldn't the more naïve among us be taken in by it? The Barnardos video is close to an incitement to misbehave in that it reinforces the impression among those sections of sociey who refuse to accept that they are answerable to anyone of any age that none of it is their fault or responsibility; it is the fault of society, of adults. Responsible, moral children meanwhile are left unprotected. Bernardos is supposed to be a respectable national charity, whose brief is to “protect children”? Most people in this country believe that charities have a neutral agenda, but a look at the Bernardos website betrays its leftist bias.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7732000/7732723.stm. The excerpt is from 8.45am.

This is an example of a charity with an agenda manufacturing a problem by grossly distorting reality.

Many “children” being referred to will in fact be teenagers who if not wise enough to be seen as adults are closer to adulthood than childhood. Many children will have the rights of adults in that you can't handle or restrain them when they misbehave; and if you say boo to them, they are liable to threaten you in return. Not all children, Bernardos would say; well, of course not, but clearly some of them. This is Bernardos' trap.

The most prevalent assumption seems to be that there is an absolute divide between adults and children; on the contrary many adults have children, and most children live with parents. This absolute divide that Benardos posits mirrors the marxist divide between bourgeois oppressors and oppressed proletariat, which itself became the template for radical feminism and black rights: for bourgeois and proletariat, read men and women, black and white. It is the assumption behind political correctness, which is why the rules of political correctness are so selective and unfair. Now we have oppressor adults and oppressed children – and never the twain shall meet, except in inter-generational revolutionary conflict.

This is false since most children are brought up by adults who love them, provide for their material well-being and formation. Youngsters need guidance from adults; they take their cues from the attitudes and behaviour of their parents. Empirically, something not covered by the Bernardo's visits, problem families lead to problem children. Let us not forget that the usual victims of youth violence are young people themselves: playground bullying, stealing mobile phones. I remember one incident a few years ago at a bus stop when a number of youths surrounded another youth for his mobile phone: no adult at this crowded bus stop was doing anything to help the young teenager,who was frightened; I asked them if everything was alright, because I was unsure if this was not just pranks among friends; one of the perpretrators said don'be a hero; as they were all about 12, I was courageous enough to look him in the eye and say “I wasn't talking to you”, which shocked him into silence. The victim then begged me, “leave it, don't interfere”; he was clearly frightened, but it was enough to confuse me: would I make it worse for him the next day​? did they all know each other? The bus came and the gang of children got on the bus, as did I; they were jumping up and down laughing and in their hands was the other teenager's mobile phone. They got off the bus the next stop. None of us adults managed to prevent a mugging and a humiliated child. They were all about 12 or 13, I would estimate; had they been 15/16, would I have interfered?

This incident demonstrates the fallacy of Bernardo's portrayal. I suspect that in general, we should conceive of young people less as a class separated from older people; more as putative adults, whose closest ties are to their parents, teachers, older and younger siblings. Rather than emphasing horizontal stratification based on supposed alienation and oppression, we should encourage vertical integration among the generations. This makes sense because, rather than being an homogenous group with common interests, children often pray on children. They need protecting and adults are meant to protect them: to allow children to push the boundaries but keep them broadly inside the pale of good behaviour. The real inhumanity is when we adults step aside.

Bernardos is state funded and as state aid always ends up as state control, we must suspect that the perspective of Bernardos is left-learning liberal in orientaton. One of the major mistakes of the left this century is the belief that if someone commits a crime, it is because he is alienated by society, that the responsibility lies with someone else, probably the victim or the class/race/sex/age group to which he belongs.

The failure of our capitalism, not theirs

13/11/08
As announced on the BBC Today programme, Bush will defend free-market capitalism today. Nothing wrong with this economically as long as it pays its way; but our capitalism (i.e., in the west except Germany) is consumption-driven and debt-led; to keep ourselves in the race militarily and scientifically, a manufacturing base is needed. That is the inconvenient fact. As ever, our leaders defend this discredited form of Capitalism by saying “it increases growth and pulls more people out of poverty” – these are the justifications Bush has used. Compared to Socialism, I’m sure he is right; but Socialism is the straw man, the defeated enemy of the 20th century; the real question is what form of Capitalism we will have in the future.

“It increases growth and pulls more people out of poverty”. Well, let’s look at this: we have seen Gordon Brown increase growth by allowing unrestricted immigration and boasting about GDP growth more people means a bigger economy unless per capita wealth goes down; per capita income hasn’t increased so people are not better off. As for “lifting people out of poverty”, well it is the Chinese form of Capitalism which is lifting their people out of poverty, albeit perhaps more quickly than if the West were less profligate in spending more than we earn; meanwhile, it is our form of Capitalism which is slowly impoverishing us. There is nothing wrong with us buying Chinese goods in moderation; it is the scale of the trade balance which is so destructive on the balance of power in the world, our ability to pay our way and, ultimately, to maintain our military capacity.

I would also question how the vast surpluses held by China are helping Chinese peasantry given the practical difficulties that generally obtain when large amounts of money are channelled quickly into development projects. We know that a lot of the Chinese surplus is in Sovereign Wealth funds and invested in the West. The sheer scale and speed of wealth transfer from west to east, I suspect, leads to diminishing returns in the battle against poverty.

Lastly, we see that defenders of an unconditional pure-free trade policy (in a world where import tariffs are very common) gloss over how we disadvantage ourselves in relation to our competitors; in the final analysis their justification for it is based not on how it benefits their own societies, but how it benefits others. The Bush presidency created a lot of jobs in China; what about jobs for Americans? That is, jobs that pay well because they create wealth for their society rather than channel it around. We are lifting other people out of poverty, supposedly, but a smaller deficit would probably have a similar effect; what is certain is that we have been gradually impoverishing ourselves. The financial crisis is payback for our profligacy and debt-fuelled optimism.

Michael Gove and Barrack Obama: liberal progressives

One of the most depressing articles I have read in a paper recently was Michael Gove’s in the Telegraph on Sat 8 November [link], expressing ideological solidarity with Obama. Depressing because the conservatives are meant to be the opposition to the liberal consensus. Gove is in charge of the education remit and the conservatives’ plans on vouchers for schools is one of their few reasons they have given so far to support them; the alarm bells started ringing when he talked about McCain fitting in with the moder conservative party because of e.g., liberal immigration policy and being an unabashed neo-conservative. Ironic that a policy of violating the sovereignty of others is seen as consistent with failing to defend your own; how bringing democracy to others means holding the views of your own people in contempt; immigration has been the top concern of British people in polls, with 70% saying there is too much; but enough, I digress …

The wider point to consider is how readily Neo-Conservatism sits with left-leaning liberalism; though Neo-Conservatism is often seen as an ideology of the right, do not forget that many conservatives opposed the war; and much of the left supported it. Think of Neil Ferguson and his half-baked arguments in “Colossus” (history, supposedly); Tony Blair and his doctrine of liberal interventionism, Christopher Hitchens; Thomas Friedman, with his flat-earth liberal optimism about the effects of globalisation and free trade. Be aware that David Frum is arguing that the Republicans should move away, Cameron-like, from social conservatism.

“Neo-conservatism” is really a progressive philosophy, version of internationalism whose proponents, unlike the traditional left, find the rest of the world lacking in its capacity to organise the path of progress to liberal utopia, in which they and their left-wing opponents have placed their faith. They therefore seek to reform the world by extraordinary means. The stated objectives of the neo-cons are much the same as those of the liberal-left: having gained control of the west, they seek to export their internationalist ideology to overthrow traditional structures of problem societies and create a new modern order based on rational virtues. This is the same project ultimately that was pursued by the Jacobins of the French Revolution. Remember that “Liberty” (as they conceived it) was part of the revolutionary agenda – it wasn’t just Equality and Fraternity.

BBC Empire: don't discuss the birth rate

Today Programme, Friday 7 November 2008
Edward Stourton ws interviewing an economist on the effects of an aging population on our society over the next 20 years. He was saying that they would be immense. Intriguingly, Stourton offered two solutions: 1) more immigration; and 2) a change in work practices. Bravely, the economist said that the scale of immigration needed to solve the problem would be so great as to be unrealistic and that even at current levels it was causing social problems. They then concentrated on work practices, which seems to have some mileage.

The elephant in the room here is the declining birth rate and the proposal that we try to increase it. Why is this rather obvious alternative not even mentioned? This is not a left/right issue as the right have tended to ignore it; and in spite of 80’s feminism, many on the left admit that it would be beneficial to increase the birth rate. Polly Toynbee said that many women would like to have more children; a minister implied that we had a duty to have more children; left-of-centre think-tank noted that women in their 20’s were not having children.

The BBC as far as I am aware did not pick up on the pro-natalist report published by the Sky broadcaster, Colin Brazier for Civitas http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/CivitasReviewAug08.pdf. So why we are so afraid of promoting something that many see as beneficial for the women of our society and good for society in the round?

tax cuts to help the middle classes

On the subject of tax cuts, helping small businesses is a good idea - I agree with Cameron for that, but, given the fiscal circumstances, a rise in the top rate of taxt to 42%-45% would be part of a new just dispensation after the years of neo-liberalism; it would also be prudent politically, because you cannot keep expecting ordinary people to take the hit in the name of freedom or or capitalism. Let the rich take on some of the burden, which at the moment is taken by the middle classes. We live in a society where the underclass can live happily on benefits, the elite are cushioned from the disfunctionality of the welfare society, but the ordinary, hard working people are being squeezed. An increase in top rate of tax will help our borrowing requirement and redistribute the burden at this time of trouble.

The conservatives need to get on the right side of this issue. Drip-down economics is part of the ideology of doctrinaire economic (neo)-liberalism. If Brown raises taxes, it will deal a heavy blow to the tories.

Conservative cowardice

There is much talk of a snap election in Spring 09 with the tories having the jitters and labour given new hope. First thing to say is that four years is long enough for any government to carry out their policies for which they were elected, as shown by the fact that successful governments go to the people after this period; the five year gap is for governments who are seen as past their prime, whose failures are reflected in their poll ratings, who hang on for that very reason, that they know they have lost their popular mandate. We saw this with the Major government and until the financial crisis, it was as equally apparent in the labour government. How long, we opined, will this tedious business continue: failed policies, discredited ideology, the endless waiting for a change of government. Now we are not so sure. We all thought 2010, but no. The seeming success of the financial crisis has given the tired ideologues of the Gordon Brown regime fresh impetus. The spin and downright mendacity continues with wilder abandon, the odious Yvette Cooper, virtually unchallenged, filling every Radio 4 programme (the BBC supports you, Prime Minister) with the mantra that the banks got themselves into a mess, and it is the benign Gordon Brown government that is getting them out of it.

Meanwhile the Tories, previously coasting so uncontroversially to victory, are now afraid they will lose. No wonder, because on nearly all the fundamental ideological issues where clearly the government has been on the wrong side, the conservatives deliberately refused to distance themselves: the green debate and energy supply (currently being sabotaged by the government), immigration, debt, the over-reliance on the finance sector. Where has the opposition been? Such cowardice deserves another labour victory, even if the country does not.