today : pre-decadial tension

I thought of you
When they closed down the school
And the hospital too...

today : My Xmas message to the world

It's time to stop looking backwards. It's time we woke up. Nothing ever gets better when people cling onto old ways, old habits, old advantages. Some people will never change. They'll never learn from history and keep repeating the same old errors. They are too scared to jump out of their cosy little lives and actually try to effect change for the better. Or worse, they don't care about better at all. They don't care about the future as long as they're cocooned inside their accrued wealth and power.

So my Christmas message to the world is to keep the pressure on. Don't let them get away with their lazy, selfish small-mindedness. If you have to get out on the streets then why not do it? If you have to stand up and say you disagree, then why not do it? If you can change some slight thing in your own life and those of people around you then why not?

You don't have to take this crap. But you also don't have to sit back and relax.

If you live in a places where voting works, then vote old, backward-staring people out. Stand for office yourself even. If you don't have a vote, or it changes nothing then you might have to be a bit braver. But why not do it? Who else will try and make things better for the next generations.

If we do nothing they and we will be worse off, more oppressed and less free. The opposite of progress.

today : Merry Christmas, your arse!

This year it took me until 9th December to hear Fairytale of New York. Which is quite a feat, as to only really encounter Christmas in December is rare these days. Hearing it played around is the unofficial start of the Season of Peace and goodwill to men. Needless to say it was in the supermarket, and then on Dec 10th I heard it played on the radio. Avoiding it for so long maybe had something to do with the recent snow, that kept me indoors for more than a week, and also the fact that I haven't really visited any shops. All my Xmas shopping has been done online this year and is already completed. How convenient.

As I say year on year, it's a brilliant song and is in some ways too good for endless Christmas repetition. You wouldn't really want to hear the Lachrymosa from Mozart's Requiem every day for two months in the supermarket, in the local shop, on the radio or at the mall would you, or Strange Fruit, or Miles Runs The Voodoo Down, or Supper's Ready or The Drunkship of Lanterns, or anything else for that matter.

And just in time for the season of goodwill to all men, there are more presents from our friend Gideon the Baronet, and his elves.


Gift number one
Hacking away at council services. The biggest cuts 'in a generation' i.e. since the last time the Tories were in charge.


Gift number two
'Efficiency' savings in the NHS - which in reality is reversing all of the recent infusions of cash into our most beloved public service. Something that hasn't happened in 'a generation' i.e. the last time the Tories were in charge.


Gift number three

Abolishing EMA.


Gift number four

Abolishing the individual living fund for severely disabled people. We're all in this together, it seems.


and more help for the disabled




Merry Christmas, your arse, I pray God it's our last

today the snow came

This photo was borrowed from here, a nice blog about where I live.

today : spirit of 68

I've enjoyed seeing students on the march in the past few weeks. I don't like individual police getting hurt, but smashing windows can make a difference. If it didn't then the establishment wouldn't make such an effort to condemn when a brick gets thrown, or someone spray paints slogans on a police van.

I don't know the motivation of every protestor but it is clear that the ConDems don't get it. The issue is deeper than simply the workings of whatever loan scheme. Youngsters rightly are angry that their parents' and grandparents' generations got it so wrong. Peoples' parents came out of University and were afforded the opportunity to build a stable and comfortable life. Now, many graduates are facing the possibility of never being able to put down roots. Housing costs and restrictive mortgages mean that house ownership seems like a faraway dream. Graduate salaries are flattening out, and they're constantly being told that they can't rely on a lifelong career. They look around the world where there are opportunities but even then they were let down by a system invented and run by their forebears. Whilst everyone in Europe and the Far East was learning English there was no focus on languages in British schools. This makes the EU labour market unbalanced. You were never prepared for a world where your job might be in Germany or Macedonia or China. They told you your Sats results were crucial, then your GCSEs, then your various A levels and finally your degree. You work hard, you believe them and you follow the path. Finally it spews you out into a world where there are no jobs, no mortgages and all you have is a big pile of debt.

When you're 18 or 19 you know that the nearest you can start actually living like an adult is somewhere way past 30. I remember being 18, and 35 is literally a lifetime away.

And whatever they might say, the Libdems lied. They made a solemn pledge about tuition fees but went back on it almost immediately. Why shouldn't intelligent young people feel angry and dissatisfied? Their elders, betters and leaders duped them again. What kind of an example is that?

I never understood political pledges as an election tool. Firstly, nobody ever believes them in the first place and, as the Dems have discovered, circumstance means that sometimes you are squeezed into breaking them. You end up looking hollow and unprincipled.

today : I give out some plaudits

Hurrah for George Osborne. We know we can trust Gideon the Baronet to be 'fair' and look after our interests. That's why, after running on an election promise of dealing with the amoral, greedy rich, he's put the brakes on regulating bank bonuses under the guise of needing to do things Europe-wide. Pretty generous of someone who has long been a declared Euro-sceptic. Oh, and the heir to an Irish baronetcy has also given the Irish 7 billion of the quid he's slashed from our public services and welfare.

Hurrah also for Eric Pickles, who has told councils that they must celebrate Christmas as a Christian festival. Yet another declaration that isn't needed but so kind of him to make Daily Mail readers feel good about themselves. So Birmingham has a Winterval event that encompasses Xmas, Eid, Divali and Hanukkah. Does that mean that the politically correct police go around fining people for going to a Christian Church and singing carols? No, it means that the council only has to put up one set of lights and can never be accused of ignoring or marginalising any group in it's huge and diverse population that has a religious festival around December (that's most religions, btw)

But the biggest hurrah is for Michael Gove. Not only has he proved that you can get to the top of politics, despite being half-man, half Atlantic Cod, but he has finally solved all the problems in the education system by the simple measure of making everyone do what he and his cronies did at school. That's a great relief for the poor and educationally disadvantaged. They'll now be able to finally learn all the Latin and Greek they've been hankering after for years, and be tested on Thomas Hardy novels only by yet more proper fashioned exams, instead of that annoyingly inclusive namby-pamby broad-based teacher-led assessment. To help with the Greek and Latin lessons Gove has also made sure that they will be conducted in broken down, semi-derelict and ruined buildings, just for authenticity. Oh, and he's going to solve all disciplinary problems by turning a few soldiers into teachers. That'll sort everything out in about 6 months and everything will be okay. What a relief.

today : two brains (no) good

Hurrah for David Willetts, the Universities minister, whose considered first response to the recent student protests was to demonstrate how supportive and in-touch he is with his minsterial constituents.

His opinion? Not even to acknowledge the validity of the protest or to argue the case for raising fees, but merely the suggestion that most of the students and school pupils protesting the tripling of fees were confused and didn't understand the policy change. Such confidence in the young people of the nation is exactly what a Universities minister needs. Surely they can sleep safe in their halls knowing that the man in charge of their educational futures is such a sympathetic, understanding and respectful character. Willets (who went to a private school and then Christ Church Oxford) , is clearly down wiv the kids.

He does understand the concept of confusion, though. Perhaps it was confusion that led him to lie to a select committee in 1996 and having to resign from government.

today : I apportion blame

Again we have a complex economic story. Who truly understands it? Not the newspapers and their £300 per person they reckon we are going to give to the Irish. Not even the economics reporters. Maybe they do understand it but can't really explain all the nuances in a 2 minute report. Certainly not any of the people who are vox-popped on the street and asked about a situation that could keep economics professors awake at night.

Perhaps not even the Irish government.

But one thing is for sure. Follow the trail back to its source and you get to the banks again.

today : who are the Royal Watchers?

9 hours into the royal engagement story and everything is as you would expect. There is only one fact to report and the news people are doing their best to spin it out as much as they can. One question intrigues me. Just who are these people who brand themselves 'Royal Watchers'?

When I was a mere teenager, I had a pal whose mother was obsessed with the royals. It was around the time of the Charles and Diana wedding and she'd been completely overcome with it. I, a staunch republican, was once more or less frogmarched from their house for suggesting that the tyranny of the monrachy should be overthrown. Apparently, my standpoint had caused actual tears. Things were never quite the same. Nowadays I am still a republican but am more sanguine towards the actual people. Then, asking why we should fete and look up to Diana, possessor of precisely no O levels, at a time when the rest of us were desperately caught up in the scramble for exam grades, was one of the things that set my friend's mother off. Of course, I'd simply driven a wedge into the faultline of the poor woman's hypocrisy, but on reflection I could have kept my counsel, realising that her obsession was beyond logic. These days I possess no particular liking of the royals. But neither do I harbour any malice towards them as people.

What continues to baffle me are the snoots who appear out of the woodwork each time there is a Royal story.

They teemed across my TV screen today. Hour after hour I was assailed by women in twin sets with double barrelled names and ski-holiday tans; and men with comb-overs, tweed jackets and dubious dental hygeine.

There must be a specific path set out for them. If you attend a minor public school and are just not quite characterful enough, or well-bred enough, or pretty enough, or clever enough, to become barristers or editors or PR people, then I imagine the careers advice is to become a Royal Watcher. Except none of them actually brought any insight or knowledge to the role.

They are (along with much of the current Cabinet) the best example of how a private education can go a long way. Teach people that they are superior beings and it doesn't matter how thick/useless/lazy they are; they will breeze through life with a brash unself-awareness, somehow convincing everyone that they are worth something when, if you scratch one billimetre beneath the surface, they pretty much aren't.

It is these people who have infested my TV and radio for the last 9 hours, telling me that Kate Middleton is a naturally beautiful woman with lovely teeth (always a measure used by the upper classes - without shame they assess their women as bloodstock). It was one of these people who commented that it would be controversial that Kate is a 'commoner' marrying into a blueblood dynasty - the inference that she might contaminte the bloodline with dangerous mediocrity. When was the last time you heard someone referred to as a 'commoner'? Somewhere around 1788, perhaps.

today : that's the sound of the men working on the chain gang

Nothing wrong with helping the long-term unemployed gain work experience and the confidence to re-enter the job market. It's quite easy to get a caught up in a whirlpool of low self-esteem while the waterfall flows over you.

But, as always, the Tories give themselves away with their rhetoric. In the past six months it has been a relentless barrage of negativity fired at the most vulnerable. It's a blatant attempt to create an orthodoxy of division and blame in order to justify their all-out attack on the poor. Anytime anyone points out that the rich seem to be getting richer they jump up and bleat on about class warfare. The real class warfare is in slashing investment, hacking away at the poorest in society, wilfully destroying jobs in vulnerable areas and continually attacking the poor for being poor.

And now the unemployed are to be put to work picking up litter and cleaning graffiti for their £65 a week. This appeared in the press. A Coalition source said: ‘We cannot go on allowing tens of thousands of people to wilfully avoid getting a job. Some go to great lengths to sabotage all efforts to help them find work. That is partly why the welfare bill has gone up so much and it is why hard-working taxpayers get so angry. ‘Some have been out of work for so long that they are literally incapable of obtaining or holding down a job. They have lost the discipline and all sense of work ethic. ‘This programme is designed to address that. It is not intended to apply to people who have genuinely tried to find work or who genuinely cannot work. Some people have simply got out of the habit of working. Hopefully this scheme will help them get back into a nine-to-five routine. ‘But is it meant as a sanction? Yes – and we are convinced it will have an effect. ‘All research shows that when sanctions are applied to those who can work but try to avoid it, they soon get the message and get off their backsides.’

The first thing that is worth pointing out here is that something like these measures already exist. Long term unemployed people are compelled to attend job-seekers training courses. I know, because I taught a bunch of them basic skills (and in the process managed to help a few get a job). If they fail to attend the training then their benefits are compromised. So all that's changed is that instead of endeavouring to help people, the Coalition has decided to declare this kind of thing as a sanction. The inference here is that people should be punished for being poor. An orange jump-suit and a shackle away from a chain-gang.

As with the relentless drive to demonise the disabled. At best this is merely a way of justifying what is really an easy choice for amoral politicians. It's easy to demonise the poor and voiceless as you attack them, just as it's easy to kick someone while they're down. At worst it is an expression of their hatred and contempt for the poor, disabled and voiceless. All evidence from the past suggests that they really do despise the poor and relish the opportunity to attack and undermine them. Remember that these are the people whose ranks include George Young (current Tory leader of the house) who described the homeless as the people you step over on the way to the opera.

today ...and the Daily Express

here

today : and the Mail on Sunday duly delivers

text quoted from here

The feckless unemployed will be forced to take part in a punishing U.S.-style ‘workfare’ scheme involving gardening, clearing litter and other menial tasks for just £1 an hour in a new crackdown on scroungers.

And if they fail to turn up on time or work hard they will be stripped of their dole for three months.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith will tomorrow unveil ‘compulsory community placements’ in an attempt to stop people living on benefits for years without bothering to look for work.

The ‘Workfare UK’ project will be targeted at tens of thousands of people suspected of sabotaging attempts to make them work.

The measure is a key part of David Cameron’s drive to slash Britain’s annual £192 billion welfare budget.

But Labour MPs condemned the scheme. One said: ‘This sounds like slave labour.’

The scheme is also likely to run into fierce opposition from some Liberal Democrat MPs.

Under Mr Duncan Smith’s anti-scroungers blueprint, employment office chiefs will be given the power to order the long-term jobless to take part in four-week mandatory work schemes.

Instead of receiving their usual £65-a-week Jobseeker’s Allowance for sitting at home doing nothing, they will get substantially less – and will have to clock on and off on time and work flat out.

The Government has not decided how much people on ‘community placements’ will be paid but it is understood the figure will be between £30 and £40 a week – the equivalent to £1 an hour, one sixth of the minimum wage.

They will also be expected to look for a ‘proper job’ for when they complete the scheme. Each participant will be expected to spend at least 30 hours a week on their specified ‘work activity placement’.

If the unemployed fail to turn up on time or work hard they will be stripped of their dole for three months

A Coalition source said: ‘We cannot go on allowing tens of thousands of people to wilfully avoid getting a job. Some go to great lengths to sabotage all efforts to help them find work. That is partly why the welfare bill has gone up so much and it is why hard-working taxpayers get so angry.

‘Some have been out of work for so long that they are literally incapable of obtaining or holding down a job. They have lost the discipline and all sense of work ethic.

‘This programme is designed to address that. It is not intended
to apply to people who have genuinely tried to find work or who genuinely cannot work.

Some people have simply got out of the habit of working. Hopefully this scheme will help them get back into a nine-to-five routine.

‘But is it meant as a sanction? Yes – and we are convinced it will have an effect.

‘All research shows that when sanctions are applied to those who can work but try to avoid it, they soon get the message and get off their backsides.’

The projects will involve all kinds of work, from gardening to clearing litter, repairing vandalised bus stops and buildings and street cleaning.

There are an estimated five million people stuck on various kinds of out-of-work benefits in the UK. Britain now has one of the highest rates of workless households in Europe, with 1.9 million children living in homes where no one has a job.

The proposals are part of a Government White Paper on welfare reform which will herald a bonfire of dozens of complex benefits, to be replaced by a more straightforward single Universal Credit.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327385/1-hour-clear-rubbish--new-IDS-blitz-workshy.html#ixzz14ahyZ7HA

today : I continue to be a lazy scrounger

It already started when the coalition was installed. The chipping away, the cynical stories relentlessly in the lap-dog Tory media, the repeated statements made in an attempt to coin an orthodoxy of opinion, the unfiltered, unbalanced think-tank reports.

But it will get worse. At least once a week there will be a planted story in the media, a minister making some statement or even better, the single news reports focusing on individuals.

The uncomfortable truth is that there is a section of people who exploit benefits. Mainly, these are people who commit straight up fraud - the people who claim to be unemployed but work cash in hand, or those who put on an elaborate charade of disability in order to get DLA and a car. But for the vast majority, benefits are a port of last resort. Almost everybody who claims welfare has to grit their teeth and put aside their personal pride in order to do so. Go to the Jobcentre and just hang out. You can feel it in the air - a sense of bitterness and reluctant defeatedness that just hangs there.

Yes, there are some who get trapped into it, and can see no way out. Children of parents who have been brought up feeling keenly their place at the bottom of the pile. There are also some who end up marginalised and caught in the habit. Quite a few are trapped by the system itself - the fact that going back to work will actually make them poorer.

And lets not get mixed up here. People who live on government benefits don't live but survive. When I worked with the unemployed many of the people walked to and from my literacy classroom to save a few pennies on bus fares. The ones who are (and will be) trumpeted in the Express and the Mail are a tiny minority. Even then, I would defy any tutting Mail or Express reader to swap lives or incomes with them. The amount of people making themselves rich from defrauding the system is absolutely tiny.

At the moment, I'm one of the ones who has to survive on benefits. I'm one of those ill/disabled people who you might think, if you saw me, was perfectly capable of working but is just lazy. I'm not - I have ongoing chronic pain issues that you can't see. I don't screech all day or go around with my operation scars on display. I've seen it from all sides. Not only have I had well paid employment, but have also worked closely with the unemployed and disabled. I'm honest and try and make my way. I've paid a stack into the system and now have to draw on it.

I'll be swept up in the broad attacks built from little stories. I claim housing benefit, but I'll be lumped in with the very very few who live in central London and claim against extortionate rents (why not fix the whole London rents issue by doing what New York does and have a rent control policy?). Consequently nobody will stand up for me. When the cuts bite I'll actually be about £90 per month worse off. That's about three weeks food shopping per month. That's about half my utility bills I won't be able to cover. But I will be branded some kind of scrounger.

I claim DLA too - a double whammy. I get ESA - a triple whammy (this will be slashed along with most other things). The DLA claimants who run marathons or dance the tango are always front page news, but the subtext is always the same: disabled people are scroungers. Unemployed people are scroungers. Ill people are scroungers. Why should we pay for their laziness?

today : in my dark cupboard with my great big cake

today : blame Canada

Now the Tories are in, and doing the same old things, there is a temptation to will the economy to tank, to wish them to screw up so I can not only see them tipped out of power again, but to enjoy it. A bit like the extra relish you get from a four nil victory, that's not just a victory, but leads to the opposition manager being sacked.

But I also know plenty of people who are teetering financially, and if Osborne's gamble fails, will take a pretty nasty hit. Because to will failure on Tory policy is to will people out of work and to will people into living on the streets. So I really want everything to be okay.

Except it won't be. I talked before about the intellectual basis of Osborne's cuts and I am reminded of Thatcher. She, of course, had many qualities. I cannot but admire the way she went back to work the day after the IRA tried, and almost succeeded, in blowing her up. It takes a strong and wilful person to carry on in such a situation. Likewise her willingness to be disliked and apparently not care. But, of course, she was wrong on almost all policy issues, morally suspect in consorting with likes of Pinochet and heartless in face of the suffering of her own people. The same qualities that I could admire, unfortunately sprang not from a Churchillian resolve and vision, but from being blinkered and, frankly, a bit thick.

She, of course, was seduced by the Monetarist vision poured into her ear by Keith Joseph (shamefully, he was my MP). And I am always extremely suspect of anyone who proffers an evangelistic position on anything. There is certainty of vision, and then there is a kind of swivel-eyed adherence to ideology that appears to ignore doubt. I have never known an intelligent person who didn't question or moderate their opinions by reflection and engaging in a dialectical process with alternative viewpoints. I have, conversely, known many, many very stupid people who are absolutely certain of their own correctness.

Osborne and his people seem to have been seduced by what happened in Canada in the 1990s. A massive deficit reduction programme, with a goal of balancing the books within a few short years not only got Canada out of a financial hole, but counter-intuitively, the economy grew at the same time.

As with all situations, Canada's economy at the time was subject to very specific conditions. To extrapolate a template from what happened is risky at best and folly at worst. But isn't this what all ideologues do? They constantly try to find a magic solution, a simple set of rules that solves or explains everything. Always, it ends in tears. Whether it's Stalin bolting his own notions onto Marx and coming up with the Soviet nightmare, or a free market, light-touch regulation of financial institutions leading to a collapse of the banking system.

today 80s music fest continued

there's a good argument that this song was the first ever goth song.













this is possibly my favourite song of the 80s. How I adored ice queen Susanne Freytag. I saw them play live and she never cracked a smile the whole time.

today : feels like the 80s again

tonight I switched on the TV. Newsnight was going on about the Tories slashing public services and then Heaven 17 were on Jools Holland's show.

It was like the 90s and 00s had never happened. So I decided to have a small 80s music fest.

Starting with these gems:

today: The laughing gnomes

There are many things I could write about the 'cuts' that happened this week. I'll quickly list them.
1. The Tories sudden antipathy towards the IFS - long used by them as the analysts of choice and tool to beat Labour with, but now peddlers of nonsense.
2. The utter lack of an intellectual justification for their actions. Osborne : "We have to do this.", Questioner: "Why?", Osborne : "Because it must be done"
3. The obvious fact that the speech itself was full of obfuscation and structured like all budget speeches with the clear and coherent parts all about handouts and the detailed and long-winded parts all about the bad stuff. 4. The lack of detail.
5 The fact that the lack of detailed plans left the teams of journalists and correspondents floundering. At one point in Osborne's speech Nick Robinson posted insightfully: "7 Billion in cuts is the same as £10000 less for 7 million people." Perhaps they could have got Rachel Riley in instead.
6. The way the TV companies all produced logos and graphics on the 'budget day' model for something that was not a budget, and looked a bit daft. Thursday morning: Louise Minchin sent to talk to 'poor' people at Dickensian market in East London. The best she could come up with was a fruit stall holder who told her that people spend about £3 a week on fruit and after the cuts might only spend £1 a week. A point Louise reiterated at least three times.

But the thing I noticed most was something that Alan Johnson pointed out in his rebuttal speech, but didn't hit hard enough on. It was the sight and sound of Tory MPs and Minsters cheering job cuts, cheering slashes in public services, cheering austerity and poverty, cheering benefit cuts.

It gave them away. At no point was there a single note of regret. No notion of 'we have to do this but it gives us no pleasure to throw half a million dedicated public servants out of work'. No mention that some people will be badly affected but it is a painful but necessary choice.

They enjoyed it. They revelled in it. They celebrated it. Whilst telling us all we must take the pain, Gideon Osborne - future 18th Baronet of Ballintaylor (worth 4 1/2 million), Cameron (worth 4 million - set to inherit up to 30 million) and Clegg (worth a couple of million with family wealth of several million more) were, and remain, gung-ho.

It was if the whole party had been waiting desperately for the last 13 years, swelling up with the pressure that builds and builds when you are constantly denied the chance to kick the poor in their pasty, subservient, worthless faces. And they couldn't help letting it all out in a smug tsunami of arrogance and guffawing cruel stupidity. Like bullies pissing on a cripple and sticking the video on youtube.

It not only shows the Tories in a poor light, and, as Johnson pointed out, caught up more in their ideology than any notion of patriotism or reality, but also does politics itself no good. We have MPs who have apparently cleaned house on their own scams and fraudulent behaviour, happily laughing in the face of the ruin of millions. The fact that nobody in their own ranks thought to brief them about how such behaviour would look says an awful lot about how remote and ideologically driven these children of Thatcher really are.

today : "The Bonnie Lassie" says 'Awa an bile yer heid, Auldjin!"

Today's guest blogger is "The Bonnie Lassie" who relates an unusual blue-badge parking incident.

I also have had some hassle so to speak from members of the public sticking their noses places its not wanted! I parked in a disabled bay and put my badge on the dash and after locking my car realised there was this elderly man watching me from beside his car (also in a disabled bay). While I was walking past him he mentioned that did I know I was parked in a disabled bay to which I replied 'Of course I do and my badge is on the dash'.....tried to continue on my way and he stopped me again and said 'And you do know young lady,you are not meant to use someone else's badge to park there'.
'It's not someone elses badge it's my badge'.
'And whats wrong with you that gives you a right to have a blue badge?' he asked!!! 'What would you do if I called the police on you?'
To which I replied 'Laugh at you for making a fool of yourself!'

This got my back up and I told him in no uncertain terms that he was neither my consultant nor my GP and I didn't need to justify myself to HIM why I was entitled to a blue badge, but if he must know I suffer from Severe Bilataeral Talipes with Pes Cavus, and I've had it since birth!! I then added that he was just a bitter old man, whom, just because time wasn't on his side doesn't have the right to question anyone else about their disabilities and he should wind his neck in and mind his own business!!!

When I got home to my mum I was so distressed that I wanted to hand my badge back there and then! My mum being my mum called the police as I had noted the mans reg number and they came and took a statement from me and paid the old man a visit! He was still protesting to the police that I am not disabled and I shouldn't have been parked there as I was young and fit!! To which the police replied 'Have you never heard of someone being born with a disability,which this young lady was and she suffers from quite a painful deformity of her feet'......The old man never replied after being told that and to keep his opinions to himself as I could have had him charged with breach of the peace for putting me in an unnecessary state of alarm!!

Happy Days haha!!!

today : my life is shit and I need someone to blame

It increasingly looks like the American Democrats will suffer a bloodbath in the upcoming midterms. I guess this is to be expected. Everywhere people are frightened about being poor.

But what happens in America always interests and amuses me. Their politics is so messed up that they really cannot see that they are consistently undermining themselves as a power. It seems that Americans are like Liverpool fans. Once, a long time ago they ruled the roost and perennially expect that they should continue to do so by default. But the world has changed since they were on top. Okay, so Liverpool have done well in the Champions league in the past decade, but that's a cup competition. Any team or country can shine in a cup competition, or in an individual area of business.

The story of the the midterms is that a mature Internet has fragmented the narratives of politics. This has always been the case to some extent in the USA because it is such a huge, geographically, culturally and economically diverse country. But the less people get their news and information from central sources, the more localised things seemingly have become. Localised to the point of reconfiguring communities outside of geography - meaning that people with similar opinions can form together and campaign more easily. Shazam! The Tea Party, connecting together confused, disappointed, bitter people everywhere with other confused disappointed and bitter people. It looks to me like the Tea Party (although much more complex than I'm portraying, and with some agenda driven people behind it) could easily be renamed the 'My Life Turned Out Shit and I Need Someone To Blame Party' - a party whose membership are almost entirely campaigning against stuff rather than for it.

This does diminish the power of the Metropolitan opinion formers and media. They grow ever more irrelevant to the discourse. Even when that discourse is riddled with prejudice, inaccuracy and selfish short-sightedness.

American politics has also suffered from the lack of balanced voice. One warning Brits can take from watching the USA is that to destroy the BBC would leave us open to anti-democratic Fox News-style broadcasters; 'news' channels that exploit freedom of speech to relentlessly and cynically push the agenda of their owners. In Fox's case, of course, this is Murdoch, whose only interest is in creating more wealth and power for himself and his companies. A 'News' channel is just one of his any means necessary.