Just to let anyone reading this know, I have a new Wordpress site:
http://mightyalz.wordpress.com/
It's slightly flashier and allows me to put my videos up as well....
Ciao.
Thursday 29 December 2011
Tuesday 30 August 2011
Why the rich are better than us and we deserve to suffer for them...
I know a lot of people were getting a bit jittery about George Osborne's Swiss Tax deal, designed to puncture a hole in the super-rich's tax haven shield in Switzerland. In his own words, "We will be as tough on the richest who evade tax as on those who cheat on benefits. The days when it was easy to stash the profits of tax evasion in Switzerland are over." Wow, well that IS tough, seeing how much abuse they've given (and are going to give) benefit cheats - who, let's be honest, by taking £1 billion out of the budget each year compared with the £15.2 billion lost through tax-dodging, are definitely in the same ball park - I'd say there's a lot of rich people shaking in their £200 boots. Has George finally started listening to UK Uncut and taken a decidedly leftist attack?
Hmm...nope.
The Financial Times has highlighted a few problems:
“First, evaders will still pay less than if they had gone by the law. The withholding tax on investment returns is below the top rate in the UK - by a quantitatively marginal but symbolically significant difference. The one-off levy, too, is unnecessarily forgiving for principal that was not taxed when it was first earned."
So, the rich are still paying less than the rest of us. I suppose this is "better than nothing"...
“Second, this is an anti-evasion measure that seems all too easy to evade. The one-off tax will only be levied on accounts still open after May 2013. That is plenty of time for evaders and their Swiss bankers to discuss where it might make most sense to place the money next. Lichtenstein, which has a less taxing agreement with the UK, is being mentioned, but there is an abundance of other tax havens."
Ah, good. So unless any of the big tax-dodging companies have heard of any other country than Switzerland, this is a water-tight clampdown...also, assuming that they're all lazy bastards who won't get around to doing anything with their balance sheets until 2013...
“Third, though the deal is not presented as an amnesty, it is hard to spot the difference. To let account holders who can keep not declaring their accounts settle their tax liabilities by paying less than regular UK residents smacks of permitting some people to pay their way out of obeying the law.”
Well, this is of course the crux of the matter - this is one law for the rich and one for the, uh, less rich.
Basically, this is just a bone thrown to the rabid dogs (i.e. sane people) who want to see some action taken against the tax-dodgers, but without any real substance to back it up.
It all goes back to the great neo-liberal ethos which has bascially become a superstition - if you do anything overly nasty to the rich, they will bugger off. And that is, in some way, a bad thing and will be, in some way, bad for the country and economy.
But it's more than that - it's an almost childish admiration that the likes of Cameron and Osborne have for the super-rich. Its almsot like a desire to be able to say "Look! My country's got more billionaires than your country! Suck my Prince Albert!" Or something. To be honest, I don't really understand it and I know a lot of people, both on the left and right, don't. The FTSE 100 paid a total of £5 billion in corporation tax in 2010, which is less than the amount of tax taken from Tobacoo duties. Looks like they might want to back-track on all those anti-smoking ads. Afterall, big business is much worse for your health. Anyone remember that notorios statistic about Barclays paying only £113 million in corporation tax in 2009? Yet, of course, if we push these people too much and try and make them, y'know, obey the same law as the rest of us, they'll all leave and it'll be the end of the world. So every other part of the economy - even those groups that generate more tax revenue (and let's not forget not gambling away all our money resulting in us bailing them out and leaving the actual taxpayers £131 billion in debt) - are going to suffer instead. The rest of us are expendable.
Osborne's decision to scrap the 50p top rate of income tax is just typical of this - either he's a complete moron, or he's totally in thrall of the big boys. Or both. Apparently, the 50p rate of tax is only producing marginal returns...according to the Independent, the difference between a 45p tax and 50p tax might be only £750 million a year.
Ah right.
Wait, what?
£750 million?! Danny Alexander described cutting the 50p tax as "living in cloud-cuckoo land" and it's not hard to see why. For example, Osborne is planning to cut £670 million from the budget for the Department for Education. He is also planning to cut £535 million from the Department for Work and Pensions. So while these cuts are desparate and necessary, a sum of money greater than either of the budget deficit in either department is "marginal"? Like I said, either Osborne's a moron, or he's completely in the pocket of the super-rich. There's simply no other way to justify this. Even by neo-liberal standards, this is a totally irrational move, as many have been quick to point out. It's not even an ideological move - it's really just pure corruption. It's one step removed from the kind of Mafia-like oligarchy that's been ruining Russia since the collapse of the USSR.
To be honest, the reaction in the government has been so strongly negative - both from Conservatives and Lib-Dems - that I can't see it actually being pushed through. But the fact that Osborne actually saw this as a good idea is what makes it so scary. If I was in the cabinet, I'd be pushing for a vote of no-confidence. It's not like there aren't enough talented economists in the cabinet as it is - Vince Cable's proposals, such as a land tax (which would close one tax loophole - you can't exactly move a plot of land to the Caimen Islands, can you?) have been much more sensible, at the very least.
But this is missing the point really - Cameron and Osborne have not, and have never, had any intention of penalising the bankers or the super-rich for the financial crises or for engaging in even the slightest amount of Robin Hood taxation. That's just not their ethos - they are a group of fundamenalists who are going to cling to their "we need the rich" idiom and drag everyone else down with them just so they don't have to admit that it's not actually true.
It all goes back to Mervyn King's now-legendary summation of the financial crisis: "Now is the period when the cost is being paid. I'm surprised the real anger hasn't been greater than it has."
When you have a government which is protecting the people who caused the financial crisis in the first place and making the rest of suffer for it, you have to ask - is the government insane and corrupt...or are we insane and corrupt for voting them in?
Hmm...nope.
The Financial Times has highlighted a few problems:
“First, evaders will still pay less than if they had gone by the law. The withholding tax on investment returns is below the top rate in the UK - by a quantitatively marginal but symbolically significant difference. The one-off levy, too, is unnecessarily forgiving for principal that was not taxed when it was first earned."
So, the rich are still paying less than the rest of us. I suppose this is "better than nothing"...
“Second, this is an anti-evasion measure that seems all too easy to evade. The one-off tax will only be levied on accounts still open after May 2013. That is plenty of time for evaders and their Swiss bankers to discuss where it might make most sense to place the money next. Lichtenstein, which has a less taxing agreement with the UK, is being mentioned, but there is an abundance of other tax havens."
Ah, good. So unless any of the big tax-dodging companies have heard of any other country than Switzerland, this is a water-tight clampdown...also, assuming that they're all lazy bastards who won't get around to doing anything with their balance sheets until 2013...
“Third, though the deal is not presented as an amnesty, it is hard to spot the difference. To let account holders who can keep not declaring their accounts settle their tax liabilities by paying less than regular UK residents smacks of permitting some people to pay their way out of obeying the law.”
Well, this is of course the crux of the matter - this is one law for the rich and one for the, uh, less rich.
Basically, this is just a bone thrown to the rabid dogs (i.e. sane people) who want to see some action taken against the tax-dodgers, but without any real substance to back it up.
It all goes back to the great neo-liberal ethos which has bascially become a superstition - if you do anything overly nasty to the rich, they will bugger off. And that is, in some way, a bad thing and will be, in some way, bad for the country and economy.
But it's more than that - it's an almost childish admiration that the likes of Cameron and Osborne have for the super-rich. Its almsot like a desire to be able to say "Look! My country's got more billionaires than your country! Suck my Prince Albert!" Or something. To be honest, I don't really understand it and I know a lot of people, both on the left and right, don't. The FTSE 100 paid a total of £5 billion in corporation tax in 2010, which is less than the amount of tax taken from Tobacoo duties. Looks like they might want to back-track on all those anti-smoking ads. Afterall, big business is much worse for your health. Anyone remember that notorios statistic about Barclays paying only £113 million in corporation tax in 2009? Yet, of course, if we push these people too much and try and make them, y'know, obey the same law as the rest of us, they'll all leave and it'll be the end of the world. So every other part of the economy - even those groups that generate more tax revenue (and let's not forget not gambling away all our money resulting in us bailing them out and leaving the actual taxpayers £131 billion in debt) - are going to suffer instead. The rest of us are expendable.
Osborne's decision to scrap the 50p top rate of income tax is just typical of this - either he's a complete moron, or he's totally in thrall of the big boys. Or both. Apparently, the 50p rate of tax is only producing marginal returns...according to the Independent, the difference between a 45p tax and 50p tax might be only £750 million a year.
Ah right.
Wait, what?
£750 million?! Danny Alexander described cutting the 50p tax as "living in cloud-cuckoo land" and it's not hard to see why. For example, Osborne is planning to cut £670 million from the budget for the Department for Education. He is also planning to cut £535 million from the Department for Work and Pensions. So while these cuts are desparate and necessary, a sum of money greater than either of the budget deficit in either department is "marginal"? Like I said, either Osborne's a moron, or he's completely in the pocket of the super-rich. There's simply no other way to justify this. Even by neo-liberal standards, this is a totally irrational move, as many have been quick to point out. It's not even an ideological move - it's really just pure corruption. It's one step removed from the kind of Mafia-like oligarchy that's been ruining Russia since the collapse of the USSR.
To be honest, the reaction in the government has been so strongly negative - both from Conservatives and Lib-Dems - that I can't see it actually being pushed through. But the fact that Osborne actually saw this as a good idea is what makes it so scary. If I was in the cabinet, I'd be pushing for a vote of no-confidence. It's not like there aren't enough talented economists in the cabinet as it is - Vince Cable's proposals, such as a land tax (which would close one tax loophole - you can't exactly move a plot of land to the Caimen Islands, can you?) have been much more sensible, at the very least.
But this is missing the point really - Cameron and Osborne have not, and have never, had any intention of penalising the bankers or the super-rich for the financial crises or for engaging in even the slightest amount of Robin Hood taxation. That's just not their ethos - they are a group of fundamenalists who are going to cling to their "we need the rich" idiom and drag everyone else down with them just so they don't have to admit that it's not actually true.
It all goes back to Mervyn King's now-legendary summation of the financial crisis: "Now is the period when the cost is being paid. I'm surprised the real anger hasn't been greater than it has."
When you have a government which is protecting the people who caused the financial crisis in the first place and making the rest of suffer for it, you have to ask - is the government insane and corrupt...or are we insane and corrupt for voting them in?
Tuesday 9 August 2011
Responses to the Riots reveal the Prejudices of the Liberal Left
This morning the FTSE100 fell in early trade to 4,866.48, meaning the onset of a new stock market crash and no doubt international economic misery from us all...
But who cares about that?! People were smashing stuff up in London, Liverpool and Birmingham last night!
No, more than usual!
There is a tendency here to try and politicise the riots that began in Tottenham and tore through Hackney, Brixton, Croydon and on to Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol.
Riots don't happen out of the blue I'll give you that. But if ever there was a case of oppurtunism, the Tottenham riots were just that. On the back of a perfectly legitimate, peaceful demonstration outside Tottenham police station, a series of gangsters and thugs have taken the oppurtunity to go on a rampage around the country, looting and pillaging. Naturally a lot of people are "having opinions" on why this is happening.
The view being taken by a lot the various left-liberal and horribly middle-class commentators (not to mention Ken Livingstone) takes these riots from a high structuralist perch. These riots are not a response to specific policies or, really, even a specific incident (the shooting of Mark Duggan can't possibly still be relevant) so we're basically having to take it as read that this is general response to the socio-economic circumstances that they find themselves in. Well, duh. That's why they're expressing their anger in the form of looting local shops and smashing uo the houses of people often in exactly the same situation as they are? Yeah, wow, power to the people!
The stance being taken by a lot of political commentators is simply patronising. Who is Dan Hodges to say "Our streets are aflame. Now black Britain will be allowed its say"?
Sorry, because black people are such a bunch of ignorant savages that they can't express themselves except through violence?
It's also this idea of mass movement someone signifying political legitimacy. There are robberies and shootings all the time in these same areas of London, but I rarely see these same people being hailed as an political commentators. But when they all gang together to do exactly the same thing on a larger scale, it's a folk movement!
The only thing I'd say this really proves is that the poorer areas of London have given rise to gang culture. That's clearly the case. And that needs to be addressed - but the people who are trying to defend the actions of violent thugs due to their circumstances and the policies of the government are on a par with defending Anders Behring Breivik's shootings as the inevitable cause of Islamic immigration.
If I see some graffitti, or banners or any example proving a politicsed intent from the rioters then I concede a political intent. But to try and categorise a group of thinking, reasoning people as being a mindless reactive mass who can only express themselves on the most base level to circumstances beyond their control is actually the most insulting macro-sociological attitude to take and completely ignores the input of individuals, completely ignores the plight of the victims and is an enourmously patronising high-on-a-pedastal attitude from a bunch of pseudo-liberal commentators who of course would never stoop to that level themselves...
In a way, I'd prefer it if they did just want to nick a widescreen TV. At least that proves some kind of individual motivation.
But who cares about that?! People were smashing stuff up in London, Liverpool and Birmingham last night!
No, more than usual!
There is a tendency here to try and politicise the riots that began in Tottenham and tore through Hackney, Brixton, Croydon and on to Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol.
Riots don't happen out of the blue I'll give you that. But if ever there was a case of oppurtunism, the Tottenham riots were just that. On the back of a perfectly legitimate, peaceful demonstration outside Tottenham police station, a series of gangsters and thugs have taken the oppurtunity to go on a rampage around the country, looting and pillaging. Naturally a lot of people are "having opinions" on why this is happening.
The view being taken by a lot the various left-liberal and horribly middle-class commentators (not to mention Ken Livingstone) takes these riots from a high structuralist perch. These riots are not a response to specific policies or, really, even a specific incident (the shooting of Mark Duggan can't possibly still be relevant) so we're basically having to take it as read that this is general response to the socio-economic circumstances that they find themselves in. Well, duh. That's why they're expressing their anger in the form of looting local shops and smashing uo the houses of people often in exactly the same situation as they are? Yeah, wow, power to the people!
The stance being taken by a lot of political commentators is simply patronising. Who is Dan Hodges to say "Our streets are aflame. Now black Britain will be allowed its say"?
Sorry, because black people are such a bunch of ignorant savages that they can't express themselves except through violence?
It's also this idea of mass movement someone signifying political legitimacy. There are robberies and shootings all the time in these same areas of London, but I rarely see these same people being hailed as an political commentators. But when they all gang together to do exactly the same thing on a larger scale, it's a folk movement!
The only thing I'd say this really proves is that the poorer areas of London have given rise to gang culture. That's clearly the case. And that needs to be addressed - but the people who are trying to defend the actions of violent thugs due to their circumstances and the policies of the government are on a par with defending Anders Behring Breivik's shootings as the inevitable cause of Islamic immigration.
If I see some graffitti, or banners or any example proving a politicsed intent from the rioters then I concede a political intent. But to try and categorise a group of thinking, reasoning people as being a mindless reactive mass who can only express themselves on the most base level to circumstances beyond their control is actually the most insulting macro-sociological attitude to take and completely ignores the input of individuals, completely ignores the plight of the victims and is an enourmously patronising high-on-a-pedastal attitude from a bunch of pseudo-liberal commentators who of course would never stoop to that level themselves...
In a way, I'd prefer it if they did just want to nick a widescreen TV. At least that proves some kind of individual motivation.
Monday 1 August 2011
Good old-fashioned intrinsic values...
One of my favourite ways to spend a nice day of living on the dole in Central London is to head down to Denmark Street and casually peruse the guitar shops. Now, I have never owned a guitar costing more than £200 and so it's a real novelty for me to go in there and play the endless amounts of exquisitely produced guitars that play like elixer of the Gods (in guitar form). There is an upward correlation between price and quality of course - a guitar costing £500 plays better than one costing £100. Like, duh. However, if you're really itching for it you can find that price steadily increase to £800, £2000, even pushing £10,000 and of course you can buy guitar costing considerably more from specialist dealers. The problem is that the cost/quality correlation flatlines around about the £1000 mark. I'm not basing that on any particular survey or even experience of playing. It's just that it's simply impossible for it not to - because they're just guitars. And, excusing a few daft gimmicks such as those self-tuning guitars that are all the rage with tone-deaf imbeciles, there is only so much you do to improve the playing and sound quality of guitar before it's just basically becomes perfect.
Guitars that cost the price of porsche then become purely assets with no intrinsic value - but abstract factors such as brand name still add flexibility in price; often, even this isn't an issue. There are a number of factors...one is that enough people simply believe in the price/quality correlation to assume that, somehow, a guitar costing £10,000 must be better than one cost £1000 grand. One might call this gullibility, but it's also not an unreasonable expectation. Another factor is status of wealth - this is a trend which is, thankfully, dying down a bit with the onset of austerity, but that nasty hangover from the 80's which says that those with the money to afford it should actually buy the more expensive option simply because it is more expensive, is still prevelant. Some idiots might see this along the same lines as investing in the housing market - but, of course, it's not because, with a few very rare exceptions, guitars generally lose value once purchased and rarely gain.
What I'm trying to really get at here is that the 21st century is a society where money has become meaningless - intrinsic value, materials which are actually inherintly valuable to their owners, has become a distant memory. A painting sold at auction can go for millions of pounds, but it's not actually worth that, is it? It's only worth that according to the social-historical reasoning of a few experts who have deemed it worth that particular sum. If I was to go and draw a smiley face on it, it's still a painting, but it would suddenly crash in price. Which is nonsense in economic terms (not that I'm promoting the defacing of art, which should have social value beyond financial value).
The lack of physicality in the economy has really hit home since the banking crisis where banks' balance sheets were loaded with non-existent toxic assets based on the income from debtors who simply didn't have the physical means to pay them back. In this age where paper and metallic forms of money are giving way to the age of PayPal, this problem will only accelerate. Money is just a series of shapes on a screen.
The death of intrinsic value has really accelerated since the war, when Keynes was hailing the rejection of the gold standard as providing new horizons of economic freedom. Money has since become more and more detached from reality. Since Nixon took America out of the gold standard (the "Nixon Shock" of 1971) mainly for the purposes of being able to pay to kill endless amount of people in Southeast Asia (see, some good came out of it!) US debt has been able to climb steadily into more abstract heights. As of June 29, 2011, the Total Public Debt Outstanding of the United States was $14.46 trillion - if the USA were still using the gold standard, and using the current rate of US$1500/oz this would amount to approximately 272,231 metric tons of gold - seeing as how, of 2009, the total amount of gold ever mined by human kind equals only 165,000 tonnes, this shows how far gone these kinds of figures are. Gold was a useful stop-plug for this kind of insane financial skyscraping, but, then, most of the world would probably be bankrupt if we had stuck with it.
Now, the notion of the instrinsic value of gold is one which kind of boggles my mind as well. The official line all the smart-arses use for the gold's instrinsic value is that it's so unreactice. This essentially meant, when it was probably first used in around 4,000 BC, that it was a case of "ooh, shiny metal stay shinier than other metals for longer!" This has somehow developed over millenia to put gold as the base level for international trade - but of course, it's not really that useful for anything. It's used in electronics due to high conductivity and, well, jewelry. That's pretty much it. Not useless, but hardly the greatest substance under the sun - essentially it's just a form of unaligned currency that happens to be valued highly pretty much everywhere. But eventually, people are going to snap out of the gold hazed miasma to realise that what they've been hording for all of history is, essentially, big shiny worthless lumps of metal.
The abstracting of money to the point where it loses touch with reality has historically resulted in massive public backlash leading to extremist tendencies - Hitler's rise to power was partially fomented by the collapse of the Germany economy in nonsensical levels of hyperinflation and national debt; in his own words, "The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all." When the populace feel lost in an economic whirlwind of meaningless figures, people who claim to cut through all the crap, like Hitler, start to seem much more attractive and sensible.
The decline of physical wealth and physical currency is not as progressive an idea as it might appear - it's that great postmodern horror story in which some bored, amoral clerk somewhere decides to stick a few zeros on the end of a transfer and suddenly a million quid has appeared out of nowhere. Inflation goes to hell, but a computer doesn't account for inflation. It just knows there's more of something than there was before. It's this kind of spectral financial manipulation which lead to the crash and which tore a hole in the global economy. It's this kind of thing which is driving Greece, Italy and Portugal to bankrupcy - and the reason are getting so pissed off is that none of the money that being thrown around is real. All it would take be someone to hit the "delete" key and suddenly all those bonds and loans would just disappear. It would completely screw up the international economic system, but a lot of people would argue that it's screwed up anyway.
So let's not all get hooked to our credit cards and internet banking and remember that there is real security in owning physical assets and currency. It's not perfect, but it's more reliable than ethereal number crunching. Adding more zeros to something, whether it's a guitar, or a painting, a car, a plane, or a solid gold skull, doesn't mean it's really worth anything. It's just another fickle asset to be passed around among consumers, until another meaningless set of numbers somewhere makes it suddenly worthless. Items of intrinsic value are becoming a very rare commodity and, sadly, perhaps the only thing in this world which has genuine intrinsic value anymore is mostly owned by a small group of royal nutters in Saudi Arabia...
Guitars that cost the price of porsche then become purely assets with no intrinsic value - but abstract factors such as brand name still add flexibility in price; often, even this isn't an issue. There are a number of factors...one is that enough people simply believe in the price/quality correlation to assume that, somehow, a guitar costing £10,000 must be better than one cost £1000 grand. One might call this gullibility, but it's also not an unreasonable expectation. Another factor is status of wealth - this is a trend which is, thankfully, dying down a bit with the onset of austerity, but that nasty hangover from the 80's which says that those with the money to afford it should actually buy the more expensive option simply because it is more expensive, is still prevelant. Some idiots might see this along the same lines as investing in the housing market - but, of course, it's not because, with a few very rare exceptions, guitars generally lose value once purchased and rarely gain.
What I'm trying to really get at here is that the 21st century is a society where money has become meaningless - intrinsic value, materials which are actually inherintly valuable to their owners, has become a distant memory. A painting sold at auction can go for millions of pounds, but it's not actually worth that, is it? It's only worth that according to the social-historical reasoning of a few experts who have deemed it worth that particular sum. If I was to go and draw a smiley face on it, it's still a painting, but it would suddenly crash in price. Which is nonsense in economic terms (not that I'm promoting the defacing of art, which should have social value beyond financial value).
The lack of physicality in the economy has really hit home since the banking crisis where banks' balance sheets were loaded with non-existent toxic assets based on the income from debtors who simply didn't have the physical means to pay them back. In this age where paper and metallic forms of money are giving way to the age of PayPal, this problem will only accelerate. Money is just a series of shapes on a screen.
The death of intrinsic value has really accelerated since the war, when Keynes was hailing the rejection of the gold standard as providing new horizons of economic freedom. Money has since become more and more detached from reality. Since Nixon took America out of the gold standard (the "Nixon Shock" of 1971) mainly for the purposes of being able to pay to kill endless amount of people in Southeast Asia (see, some good came out of it!) US debt has been able to climb steadily into more abstract heights. As of June 29, 2011, the Total Public Debt Outstanding of the United States was $14.46 trillion - if the USA were still using the gold standard, and using the current rate of US$1500/oz this would amount to approximately 272,231 metric tons of gold - seeing as how, of 2009, the total amount of gold ever mined by human kind equals only 165,000 tonnes, this shows how far gone these kinds of figures are. Gold was a useful stop-plug for this kind of insane financial skyscraping, but, then, most of the world would probably be bankrupt if we had stuck with it.
Now, the notion of the instrinsic value of gold is one which kind of boggles my mind as well. The official line all the smart-arses use for the gold's instrinsic value is that it's so unreactice. This essentially meant, when it was probably first used in around 4,000 BC, that it was a case of "ooh, shiny metal stay shinier than other metals for longer!" This has somehow developed over millenia to put gold as the base level for international trade - but of course, it's not really that useful for anything. It's used in electronics due to high conductivity and, well, jewelry. That's pretty much it. Not useless, but hardly the greatest substance under the sun - essentially it's just a form of unaligned currency that happens to be valued highly pretty much everywhere. But eventually, people are going to snap out of the gold hazed miasma to realise that what they've been hording for all of history is, essentially, big shiny worthless lumps of metal.
The abstracting of money to the point where it loses touch with reality has historically resulted in massive public backlash leading to extremist tendencies - Hitler's rise to power was partially fomented by the collapse of the Germany economy in nonsensical levels of hyperinflation and national debt; in his own words, "The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all." When the populace feel lost in an economic whirlwind of meaningless figures, people who claim to cut through all the crap, like Hitler, start to seem much more attractive and sensible.
The decline of physical wealth and physical currency is not as progressive an idea as it might appear - it's that great postmodern horror story in which some bored, amoral clerk somewhere decides to stick a few zeros on the end of a transfer and suddenly a million quid has appeared out of nowhere. Inflation goes to hell, but a computer doesn't account for inflation. It just knows there's more of something than there was before. It's this kind of spectral financial manipulation which lead to the crash and which tore a hole in the global economy. It's this kind of thing which is driving Greece, Italy and Portugal to bankrupcy - and the reason are getting so pissed off is that none of the money that being thrown around is real. All it would take be someone to hit the "delete" key and suddenly all those bonds and loans would just disappear. It would completely screw up the international economic system, but a lot of people would argue that it's screwed up anyway.
So let's not all get hooked to our credit cards and internet banking and remember that there is real security in owning physical assets and currency. It's not perfect, but it's more reliable than ethereal number crunching. Adding more zeros to something, whether it's a guitar, or a painting, a car, a plane, or a solid gold skull, doesn't mean it's really worth anything. It's just another fickle asset to be passed around among consumers, until another meaningless set of numbers somewhere makes it suddenly worthless. Items of intrinsic value are becoming a very rare commodity and, sadly, perhaps the only thing in this world which has genuine intrinsic value anymore is mostly owned by a small group of royal nutters in Saudi Arabia...
Friday 8 July 2011
Nothing Lasts Forever, Rupert...
Apparently, it has just been revealed in the New Statesman, that Rebekah Brooks said that the phone-hacking scandal would end with Guardian editor "Alan Rusbridger on his knees, begging for mercy". God, Alan Rusbridge must be feeling so damn smug and superior at the moment.
And with good reason - the Guardian has spent the better part of ten years trying to bring down the Murdoch papers and expose their corruption and dirty-dealings - he should be giving himself a big pat on the back, as should Chris Blackhurst. These guys have been the main vanguard pushing the phone-hacking scandal and it's finally having crashing consequences.
The News of the World is gone. Well, is this a bad or a good thing? On the one hand, it shows Murdoch and Brooks are scared and that it's all starting to hit home for them. And it won't hurt not to have the NOTW's right-wing, sensationalist drivel polluting our media waters. Yes, it's a 168 year old institution, but, according to a restrospective in the Guardian, it has always basically been what it is. So I don't think we should be sad to see it go. And although I have some sympathy for the journalists who lost their jobs, I would say that everyone of them did know what the NOTW and although they perhaps didn't deserve to take the blame for this, ignorance is also not an excuse for them anymore than it is for Rebekah Brooks. I mean, they did choose to work a the NOTW afterall. Have a bit of integrity - if you're all so honest and decent and work for a proper newspaper. Still, the fact that they're gone and Brooks is still in place is a sham and it's still hard to see why Murdoch is so keen to keep her - she'll almost certainly be gone with a week, I'd say.
David Cameron must be pretty peeved at Alan Rusbridger himself - now that Andy Coulson's gone down himself. In a press conference earlier today he once again spouted that stomach-churning adage, "We're all in this together" and tried to spread the infection a bit thinner by implicating the news media as a whole - a not-so-subtle attempt to divert attention away from his negligence (or worse) in hiring Andy Coulson as communications director. But this is not a case of mass-corruption - even if these practices are not solely confined to the Murdoch press, you can't start getting accusatory when there's no evidence, unless you're just deeply paranoid. This is News International's problem and you're implicated, Davey boy. Suck it up, man.
And then we come to the dark lord himself, Rupert.
I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point in the near future, Rupert kicks his son, James, off his position as chairman of NI, particularly if the hacking scandal reaches more extreme heights. It's just the kind of almost comically ruthless thing he could and would beautifully cement his image as real-life Mr. Burns. In an earlier episode of the Simpsons (sadly one of Murdoch's own cash-cows), Bart and Homer watch a film in which an evil supervillain cackles hysterically while poisoning McBain. Bart says, "that is one evil dude" and Homer replies, "Don't worry, boy, there's no-one that evil in real life." The scene then switches to Mr. Burns also cackling in an evil manner. Well, you could just as easily cut again to Rupert Murdoch as he cackles while watching striking workers getting their heads beaten by riot police.
The problem with Rupert is that he is such a self-confirmed "evil bastard". He has spent decades revelling in his untouchability and playing into his dark overlord image (just see his guest-spot in the Simpsons) that it looks like it's all going to backfire.
Because, now, basically everyone hates him. Anyone with a moral consciences has always hated him, the left hate him for his politics, the right hate him (begrudgingly) for his monopolising the media, the politicians hates (again, begrudgingly) for his domination of them and now even the mindless masses who read the Sun (seriously, I don't know anyone who does) are starting to hate him for the same reason they get morally outraged at every piece of drivel he puts on the front of his papers. Even people who have no idea why they should hate him, know that he is generally thought of as a figure of justified hate.
And because it's not an undefinable group of, say, "bankers" or "politicians", but one singular amoral king of the hill, there is an easy focus for everyone's bile, anger and retribution. It's all leads back to this one man. Perhaps the best way to emphasise the kind of contempt he can generate...legendary dramatist Dennis Potter summed it up best, "the enemy in question is that drivel-merchant, global huckster and so-to-speak media psychopath, Rupert Murdoch... Hannibal the Cannibal...." - after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, the ever sardonic Potter named his cancer "Rupert". He's a figure of almost total vilification and he's never cared one iota, because he's been "untouchable".
The best thing, though, that comes immediately from all this is that the Murdoch brand may become a genuine cancer. With the NOTW gone and the Sun staff threateningly industrial action over the NOTW sacking, the power of Murdoch to influence politicians is just going to decline as it is realised that being associated with the Murdoch mafia is not actually going to do them any favours. And so the decades of politicians living or dying under Murdoch's greasy thumb might soon be over...here's hoping.
And the best thing that could ever come out of this is that it might show people like Murdoch that they are not untouchable and that they cannot lead these amoral, corrupt, egotistical lives without facing the consequences. You do not deserve the power you have.
We cannot let this story be buried, the campaign to crush the Murdoch empire, to crush corruption and the media monopoply must continue.
Let's cut out the cancer.
And with good reason - the Guardian has spent the better part of ten years trying to bring down the Murdoch papers and expose their corruption and dirty-dealings - he should be giving himself a big pat on the back, as should Chris Blackhurst. These guys have been the main vanguard pushing the phone-hacking scandal and it's finally having crashing consequences.
The News of the World is gone. Well, is this a bad or a good thing? On the one hand, it shows Murdoch and Brooks are scared and that it's all starting to hit home for them. And it won't hurt not to have the NOTW's right-wing, sensationalist drivel polluting our media waters. Yes, it's a 168 year old institution, but, according to a restrospective in the Guardian, it has always basically been what it is. So I don't think we should be sad to see it go. And although I have some sympathy for the journalists who lost their jobs, I would say that everyone of them did know what the NOTW and although they perhaps didn't deserve to take the blame for this, ignorance is also not an excuse for them anymore than it is for Rebekah Brooks. I mean, they did choose to work a the NOTW afterall. Have a bit of integrity - if you're all so honest and decent and work for a proper newspaper. Still, the fact that they're gone and Brooks is still in place is a sham and it's still hard to see why Murdoch is so keen to keep her - she'll almost certainly be gone with a week, I'd say.
David Cameron must be pretty peeved at Alan Rusbridger himself - now that Andy Coulson's gone down himself. In a press conference earlier today he once again spouted that stomach-churning adage, "We're all in this together" and tried to spread the infection a bit thinner by implicating the news media as a whole - a not-so-subtle attempt to divert attention away from his negligence (or worse) in hiring Andy Coulson as communications director. But this is not a case of mass-corruption - even if these practices are not solely confined to the Murdoch press, you can't start getting accusatory when there's no evidence, unless you're just deeply paranoid. This is News International's problem and you're implicated, Davey boy. Suck it up, man.
And then we come to the dark lord himself, Rupert.
I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point in the near future, Rupert kicks his son, James, off his position as chairman of NI, particularly if the hacking scandal reaches more extreme heights. It's just the kind of almost comically ruthless thing he could and would beautifully cement his image as real-life Mr. Burns. In an earlier episode of the Simpsons (sadly one of Murdoch's own cash-cows), Bart and Homer watch a film in which an evil supervillain cackles hysterically while poisoning McBain. Bart says, "that is one evil dude" and Homer replies, "Don't worry, boy, there's no-one that evil in real life." The scene then switches to Mr. Burns also cackling in an evil manner. Well, you could just as easily cut again to Rupert Murdoch as he cackles while watching striking workers getting their heads beaten by riot police.
The problem with Rupert is that he is such a self-confirmed "evil bastard". He has spent decades revelling in his untouchability and playing into his dark overlord image (just see his guest-spot in the Simpsons) that it looks like it's all going to backfire.
Because, now, basically everyone hates him. Anyone with a moral consciences has always hated him, the left hate him for his politics, the right hate him (begrudgingly) for his monopolising the media, the politicians hates (again, begrudgingly) for his domination of them and now even the mindless masses who read the Sun (seriously, I don't know anyone who does) are starting to hate him for the same reason they get morally outraged at every piece of drivel he puts on the front of his papers. Even people who have no idea why they should hate him, know that he is generally thought of as a figure of justified hate.
And because it's not an undefinable group of, say, "bankers" or "politicians", but one singular amoral king of the hill, there is an easy focus for everyone's bile, anger and retribution. It's all leads back to this one man. Perhaps the best way to emphasise the kind of contempt he can generate...legendary dramatist Dennis Potter summed it up best, "the enemy in question is that drivel-merchant, global huckster and so-to-speak media psychopath, Rupert Murdoch... Hannibal the Cannibal...." - after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, the ever sardonic Potter named his cancer "Rupert". He's a figure of almost total vilification and he's never cared one iota, because he's been "untouchable".
The best thing, though, that comes immediately from all this is that the Murdoch brand may become a genuine cancer. With the NOTW gone and the Sun staff threateningly industrial action over the NOTW sacking, the power of Murdoch to influence politicians is just going to decline as it is realised that being associated with the Murdoch mafia is not actually going to do them any favours. And so the decades of politicians living or dying under Murdoch's greasy thumb might soon be over...here's hoping.
And the best thing that could ever come out of this is that it might show people like Murdoch that they are not untouchable and that they cannot lead these amoral, corrupt, egotistical lives without facing the consequences. You do not deserve the power you have.
We cannot let this story be buried, the campaign to crush the Murdoch empire, to crush corruption and the media monopoply must continue.
Let's cut out the cancer.
Tuesday 5 July 2011
The Murdoch Media - the Modern Mafia?
Dig that alliteration, the News of the World's been caught again! And this time it's actually gone for some real criminal intent!
The only thing which outrages the public more than a, to quote the Sun, "serial child-sex beast" is a serial child-sex beast's victim's phone being hacked into by seedy a private investigator working for a multinational media corporation. That's the big difference here. The public has no problem with the personal abuse of "celebrities" or the rich and famous. I don't think it's justified, but everyone else apparently does and, as the tabloid and lifestyle mags show, there's a real sadist culture when it comes to unpleasant tales of the rich and famous. As such, when the phone-hacking of the likes of Hugh Grant, Sienna Miller and the Royal Family came to light, no-one really went mad about it since they're, somehow, getting their just desserts for having the nerve to be well-known. This is another issue to discuss, but the point is that now that the phone-hacking centred on a dear, sweet, innocent, cute, etc. member of the public who was murdered by a serial child-sex beast (that could be such a great B-movie title), the outrage will really come to the fore...she doesn't deserve it like the rest of those rich scum!
Well, it's not hard to be outraged - it's pretty textbook on the outrage front, even if you don't normally care about these kinds of functionalist histrionics. There's absolutely no defence for the NOTW in this case, they've gone and perverted the course of justice and misled the police and prolonged and manipulated a murder case. Someone should go to jail.
Well, Glenn Mulcaire's already gone down for six months. This is pretty much irrelevant, since he's just a tool of the trade. Clive Goodman went down for four months. Meh. James Weatherup was arrested, but nothing seems to have come of that. And that's it. These are just News International's vestigial tails, lackeys who can be thrown into the firing line when they're asked for blood. Otherwise, no-one of any real power has been seen with their head on the block and it's a scam.
Like I said in the title, they've become like a crime syndicate. They can send out their mugs to do their dirty deals and get fresh victims and then toss them off as fall guys and cover their tracks so no-one can find the route back to the Godfather, Murdoch, or his consigliere, Rebekah Wade.
The Press Complaints Commission and its Tory peer head, Peta Jane Buscombe, have been utterly impotent. It has so far failed to do a single thing, beyond issuing lame, unthreatening, powerless "edicts" and according to the Daily Politics, Buscombe is today, "not happy". Oooh, I'll bet Wade's just shaking in her polo boots...David "Mr. Rebekah Wade" Cameron has been irrelevant, as has Justin Hunt who's giving Murdoch another pat on the back by allowing his buying of BSkyB to go ahead.
Perhaps the Guardian and the Independent have been the only ones to really gain any boost to their reputation out of this out of this - it's hardly surprising that they've been jumping at the opportunity to tear down another wall of the Murdoch empire, but on top of that it's really allowed them to take the moral highground and with good reason. After all, neither paper has had to resort to illegal tactics to get the dish and it's not as though their sales are slumping and they're very keen to emphasise this. I think it's a good thing, because - at least for the time being - it proves that a paper and its journalists can maintain an ethical compass, that it's not a matter of making a fast buck by any means necessary.
Personal morality should not be dismissed. It is not enough to say that the public want it and therefore anything goes or that the press are just part of one big rat race (with the cheese being sales and mild, totally ineffectual electric shocks being the PCC) and so journalists need to resort to dirtier and more suspect tactics in order beat the competition.
Still, the big question here is that if the the Press Complaints Commission, self-regulation and personal ethics can't prevent the press undermining the law and society, then what can be done. How about statuatory regulation? Then we let the politicians decide what the media can and can't print?
Like the bankers, the media essentially hold the government at ransom - but they also hold liberals and progressives at ransom, too. While none of us would mind if the bankers had their every move followed and kept in line by white-collar cops, the thought of state-regulated media is a far more dangerous and risky notion; no matter how much we rant and rave at the government, if they turn around and say, "well, do you want us to sort it out, then?", we all just cringe and say, "Um, actually, uh..." If we do that, then it's a blanket thrown on all the news media, not just the corrupt media like News International and that's a very scary prospect.
So what can we do? We could all stop buying the Times, the Sun, the NOTW, stop watching Fox, stop reading the Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal, Caribbean Life, Papua New Guinea Post-Courier...etc. And so force Murdoch into bankrupcy! All we need is to convince about 3 billion people to do that and there would no problem!
Still, the Milly Dowler case is important - by perverting the course of justice, there is a straightforward legal case to bring against the people in power and so Murdoch might not be untouchable if it can somehow be proved that he was consciously in on it. This is all that needs to be lobbied for - genuine legal reaction to the breaking of the law. This can't just be a matter of outrage from the government, this isn't just a case of the kind moral disgust that the NOTW and the Sun like to splatter over their pages - this is real, straightforward, unambiguous law-breaking. And Glenn Mulcaire was hired to do this and so those who hired him should be punished the highest level to prevent it happening again. But because it's so many levels of authority heading back to the big boss man, with so many levels of "deniability" and so many people good at covering up the evidence that the Godfather might still be pulling the strings for some time. Still, if the consiglieri goes down, I'll be happy...
In spite of everything, there's going to be a lot of public outrage and perhaps a nice bone for Jeremy Hunt to throw would be to stop the BSkyB takeover? Not too much to ask is it? At least it might show that we're a few steps away from being totally at the thrall of the Murdoch Mafia...
The only thing which outrages the public more than a, to quote the Sun, "serial child-sex beast" is a serial child-sex beast's victim's phone being hacked into by seedy a private investigator working for a multinational media corporation. That's the big difference here. The public has no problem with the personal abuse of "celebrities" or the rich and famous. I don't think it's justified, but everyone else apparently does and, as the tabloid and lifestyle mags show, there's a real sadist culture when it comes to unpleasant tales of the rich and famous. As such, when the phone-hacking of the likes of Hugh Grant, Sienna Miller and the Royal Family came to light, no-one really went mad about it since they're, somehow, getting their just desserts for having the nerve to be well-known. This is another issue to discuss, but the point is that now that the phone-hacking centred on a dear, sweet, innocent, cute, etc. member of the public who was murdered by a serial child-sex beast (that could be such a great B-movie title), the outrage will really come to the fore...she doesn't deserve it like the rest of those rich scum!
Well, it's not hard to be outraged - it's pretty textbook on the outrage front, even if you don't normally care about these kinds of functionalist histrionics. There's absolutely no defence for the NOTW in this case, they've gone and perverted the course of justice and misled the police and prolonged and manipulated a murder case. Someone should go to jail.
Well, Glenn Mulcaire's already gone down for six months. This is pretty much irrelevant, since he's just a tool of the trade. Clive Goodman went down for four months. Meh. James Weatherup was arrested, but nothing seems to have come of that. And that's it. These are just News International's vestigial tails, lackeys who can be thrown into the firing line when they're asked for blood. Otherwise, no-one of any real power has been seen with their head on the block and it's a scam.
Like I said in the title, they've become like a crime syndicate. They can send out their mugs to do their dirty deals and get fresh victims and then toss them off as fall guys and cover their tracks so no-one can find the route back to the Godfather, Murdoch, or his consigliere, Rebekah Wade.
The Press Complaints Commission and its Tory peer head, Peta Jane Buscombe, have been utterly impotent. It has so far failed to do a single thing, beyond issuing lame, unthreatening, powerless "edicts" and according to the Daily Politics, Buscombe is today, "not happy". Oooh, I'll bet Wade's just shaking in her polo boots...David "Mr. Rebekah Wade" Cameron has been irrelevant, as has Justin Hunt who's giving Murdoch another pat on the back by allowing his buying of BSkyB to go ahead.
Perhaps the Guardian and the Independent have been the only ones to really gain any boost to their reputation out of this out of this - it's hardly surprising that they've been jumping at the opportunity to tear down another wall of the Murdoch empire, but on top of that it's really allowed them to take the moral highground and with good reason. After all, neither paper has had to resort to illegal tactics to get the dish and it's not as though their sales are slumping and they're very keen to emphasise this. I think it's a good thing, because - at least for the time being - it proves that a paper and its journalists can maintain an ethical compass, that it's not a matter of making a fast buck by any means necessary.
Personal morality should not be dismissed. It is not enough to say that the public want it and therefore anything goes or that the press are just part of one big rat race (with the cheese being sales and mild, totally ineffectual electric shocks being the PCC) and so journalists need to resort to dirtier and more suspect tactics in order beat the competition.
Still, the big question here is that if the the Press Complaints Commission, self-regulation and personal ethics can't prevent the press undermining the law and society, then what can be done. How about statuatory regulation? Then we let the politicians decide what the media can and can't print?
Like the bankers, the media essentially hold the government at ransom - but they also hold liberals and progressives at ransom, too. While none of us would mind if the bankers had their every move followed and kept in line by white-collar cops, the thought of state-regulated media is a far more dangerous and risky notion; no matter how much we rant and rave at the government, if they turn around and say, "well, do you want us to sort it out, then?", we all just cringe and say, "Um, actually, uh..." If we do that, then it's a blanket thrown on all the news media, not just the corrupt media like News International and that's a very scary prospect.
So what can we do? We could all stop buying the Times, the Sun, the NOTW, stop watching Fox, stop reading the Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal, Caribbean Life, Papua New Guinea Post-Courier...etc. And so force Murdoch into bankrupcy! All we need is to convince about 3 billion people to do that and there would no problem!
Still, the Milly Dowler case is important - by perverting the course of justice, there is a straightforward legal case to bring against the people in power and so Murdoch might not be untouchable if it can somehow be proved that he was consciously in on it. This is all that needs to be lobbied for - genuine legal reaction to the breaking of the law. This can't just be a matter of outrage from the government, this isn't just a case of the kind moral disgust that the NOTW and the Sun like to splatter over their pages - this is real, straightforward, unambiguous law-breaking. And Glenn Mulcaire was hired to do this and so those who hired him should be punished the highest level to prevent it happening again. But because it's so many levels of authority heading back to the big boss man, with so many levels of "deniability" and so many people good at covering up the evidence that the Godfather might still be pulling the strings for some time. Still, if the consiglieri goes down, I'll be happy...
In spite of everything, there's going to be a lot of public outrage and perhaps a nice bone for Jeremy Hunt to throw would be to stop the BSkyB takeover? Not too much to ask is it? At least it might show that we're a few steps away from being totally at the thrall of the Murdoch Mafia...
Saturday 25 June 2011
Who says there's a "correct" way to talk?
Yes, I'm drunk. Think how I'd sound if I was sober. Anyway...
Just watching Michael McIntyre's comedy roadshow and it occurs to me that much of his comedy seems to revolve around, basically, how the working-class (or at least, people with accents) are essentially scum for not sounding like he does. Not in so many words of course - and he gives the modern "oh yes, I'm being ironic" wink to the audience - but there's certainly a class-based contempt when he ridicules Blackpool regarding its plebishness.
Later we have have Miles Jupp, who has an even more extreme variant - his entire act seems to revolve around the one gag of how he speaks..."properly", apparently. I get it, it's a joke - and sure, I found it pretty funny, but, like I said, I'm drunk - but it is emblematic of a larger problem - this notion of a "correct" way of speaking.
How is it, after centuries of suffrage and the seeming breakdown of class distinctions, Britain is still obsessed with ideals and, particularly, ideals of language?
Let's examine one big freaking signifier, kids - the UK still has a monarchy. Now, if you needed more proof regarding this idealism of class that we have in this glorious nation of ours, there it is...we are one of the few first world countries on the planet where we have an official government-sanctioned symbol of our acceptance that certain people - due to blood, wealth and breeding - are inherintly superior to others. And it is called the Queen's English, isn't it? That perfect mode of speaking we all aspire to...if only we could throw off the shackles of words like "shite" or "bairn" or "knees up mother brown" that keep us such simple country folk and prevent us aspiring to the heights of investment bankers or missionaries...
The point is...regional accents are not the "wrong" way of speaking - the ruling classes have always been a minority and language is the ultimate folk art. English has only had this standard set by the likes of upper-class linguiusts like Samuel Johnson who have set an ideal of language according to royal precedent. When Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales, notions of a "correct" English were unheard of and, as such, we have an amalgamtion of English according to his own interpretation -
"When that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour,
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne"
Isn't that freaking awesome?! It's like Jazz - and I get it, I compare far too much stuff to Jazz - you take what is the basis, the basic melody perhaps whether it be "Basin Street Blues" or "When The Saints Go Marching In" and you improvise...English has a certain amount of set characteristics and similarities which have been forced into one set template over centuries of homogenisation, but it can still be used as a tool for development, offshoots and idionsyncrasies.
English has always been fluid and "dialect" should not be considered a pejorative term - the unique nature and individuality of accents is far superior to the bland recieved pronunciation forced upon us by the upper classes and the media. But, of course, as more and more people identify themselves as "middle-class", more and more people frown upon accents and dialects. And this is a real tragedy. The likes of Mark Twain, Brendan Behan, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill and, like, whoever, have been praised for using the vernacular in their writing and have been called the greatest writers of all time and yet people still ridicule and lambast those who use of regional accents, all around the world. It's horrible, hypocritical and classist (is this a word? If not, then it proves my point even more adroitly)...
So to, like, conclude - you should be proud of your accent. It's not bad language - there is such a thing as bad grammar which is completely apart from this - it's better than the bland shite that is "recieved pronunciation", which should henceforth be referred to rather as "generic pronunciation".
Just watching Michael McIntyre's comedy roadshow and it occurs to me that much of his comedy seems to revolve around, basically, how the working-class (or at least, people with accents) are essentially scum for not sounding like he does. Not in so many words of course - and he gives the modern "oh yes, I'm being ironic" wink to the audience - but there's certainly a class-based contempt when he ridicules Blackpool regarding its plebishness.
Later we have have Miles Jupp, who has an even more extreme variant - his entire act seems to revolve around the one gag of how he speaks..."properly", apparently. I get it, it's a joke - and sure, I found it pretty funny, but, like I said, I'm drunk - but it is emblematic of a larger problem - this notion of a "correct" way of speaking.
How is it, after centuries of suffrage and the seeming breakdown of class distinctions, Britain is still obsessed with ideals and, particularly, ideals of language?
Let's examine one big freaking signifier, kids - the UK still has a monarchy. Now, if you needed more proof regarding this idealism of class that we have in this glorious nation of ours, there it is...we are one of the few first world countries on the planet where we have an official government-sanctioned symbol of our acceptance that certain people - due to blood, wealth and breeding - are inherintly superior to others. And it is called the Queen's English, isn't it? That perfect mode of speaking we all aspire to...if only we could throw off the shackles of words like "shite" or "bairn" or "knees up mother brown" that keep us such simple country folk and prevent us aspiring to the heights of investment bankers or missionaries...
The point is...regional accents are not the "wrong" way of speaking - the ruling classes have always been a minority and language is the ultimate folk art. English has only had this standard set by the likes of upper-class linguiusts like Samuel Johnson who have set an ideal of language according to royal precedent. When Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales, notions of a "correct" English were unheard of and, as such, we have an amalgamtion of English according to his own interpretation -
"When that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour,
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne"
Isn't that freaking awesome?! It's like Jazz - and I get it, I compare far too much stuff to Jazz - you take what is the basis, the basic melody perhaps whether it be "Basin Street Blues" or "When The Saints Go Marching In" and you improvise...English has a certain amount of set characteristics and similarities which have been forced into one set template over centuries of homogenisation, but it can still be used as a tool for development, offshoots and idionsyncrasies.
English has always been fluid and "dialect" should not be considered a pejorative term - the unique nature and individuality of accents is far superior to the bland recieved pronunciation forced upon us by the upper classes and the media. But, of course, as more and more people identify themselves as "middle-class", more and more people frown upon accents and dialects. And this is a real tragedy. The likes of Mark Twain, Brendan Behan, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill and, like, whoever, have been praised for using the vernacular in their writing and have been called the greatest writers of all time and yet people still ridicule and lambast those who use of regional accents, all around the world. It's horrible, hypocritical and classist (is this a word? If not, then it proves my point even more adroitly)...
So to, like, conclude - you should be proud of your accent. It's not bad language - there is such a thing as bad grammar which is completely apart from this - it's better than the bland shite that is "recieved pronunciation", which should henceforth be referred to rather as "generic pronunciation".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)