I don’t get it.

Whenever housing is mentioned, a national programme for the building of council houses for rent, once again, is a very popular idea. So much so as to be widely considered a no-brainer. And it is, isn’t it? Proper public housing, that is, not houses owned by private developers and called ‘social’ to make it sound reasonable.

Housing supply is inadequate for the demand, by the numbers, the type and affordability – actually affordable, relative to wages. Prices are high. Deposits alone can be more than the total cost of the two-bed flat I bought in the mid-eighties. This market means rents are also high. Work is precarious, pay is too low and life’s basics are expensive. Anyway, we know this.

There are the usual and perfectly valid supply/demand concerns over such issues as negative equity, preservation of an older home-owning voter-base, protection of asset values, rising interest rates, the ‘freedom of the market’ and so on. But they should not be prohibitive: two wrongs don’t make a right and to sacrifice the young and the poor for the sakes of flawed socio-economic ideology and the selective protection of vested interests is still a dereliction of State responsibility. It is cruel and unnecessary.

Government borrowing is cheap. The merits of a government borrowing to invest in the things that Society needs has broad, authoritative consensus. But we know that, too.

If our government borrowed to build council houses to own and rent, whether directly or through permitting local authorities, the state/local authority would become the landlord. No only would people living in them feel more secure which means less stress but the housing benefit bill would be smaller, having cut out the private profit bit and the rent paid by the majority would be a return on the investment, in perpetuity. It would be an investment that more than paid for itself. Win-win. I don’t get why this is not happening.

***

It didn’t take long for social housing to fall back off the agenda – Natalie Bloomer, Politics.co.uk

High Tide

’”A rising tide lifts all boats” but others will run aground’
And if you have no boat, at all, eventually, you drown.

Conservatives: You down there: where’s your boat?
Libertarians: You’re gonna need a bigger boat. We have armbands to let.
Corbyn’s Labour: There will be only one boat.
Brexiteers: Come on in; the water’s lovely!

 

Hugh Muir on Capitalism: “a ‘better model’ is needed”. A better aphorism wouldn’t go amiss, either. And not the one about ladders.

His story

On her back; on her knees
At the sink in bare feet
On a pedestal, silent, please
Dangerous angel
Too frigid; too bossy; too keen
Was his story; his glory
His magical chattel
From baby to wife
To invisible burden
Embattled; embargoed
Her scorn and her fury
Her life
As she rattles the bars
And beats hard on the ceilings
Deducing his god rod
Confuses his yardstick
The fairer sex feeling her Mars
As she’s peeling his story
Unsealing her future
In all types of footwear
And favourite bras.

Austerity is

Austerity is
Not just a long-term economic plan
But a ritual state of mind

A thin-lipped severity
My way the highway
And Protestant hot

Rites shot right through
With a missionary zeal
The taint of antiquated glue

*~*

Dinosaurs need for the Earth to be flat
Lest a curve or a slope puts them onto their backs
So their lumbering carcasses bury their heads
Which is why they don’t know they are already dead

Magic Money Tree

Magic me a money tree
So I can eat its nimble fruit
A bonsai for my patio
Would be so cool and look so cute

I promise to be sensible
About the purposes it feeds
I won’t create an orchard
For a harvest of gratuities

I will not squander its supply
For quantitative daily ease
Nor let it grow unwieldy
Like a beanstalk or an eager weed

I’d spend it on posterity
For ethical prosperity
With vision, tangible and wise
I’d build a life that’s worth the price

Just send a little cutting
And I’ll nurture it with love
Let me feel the sunny uplands
Like the canopy above

 

 

 

this brand of Conservatism

Why on earth would anyone still vote for this brand of Conservatism?

Demonstrably they are false economists. Look around at the ‘strong economy’ they say they are building: it is borne by an insecure, impoverished, paranoid and divided population. They have belittled society by dividing and stripping it of resources and by acting too much on the behalf of those who need the least support but often the tightest regulation.

They show little respect for Democracy and Justice, act as though history were a blueprint and have no reverence for constitutional complexity. They are hollow and shallow. They are feudal, cynical, selfish, short-sighted opportunists who undermine the sensible and wonderful to promote the insidious and entropic. Their worldview is neither ethical nor sustainable.

Voting for this brand of Conservatism is actively choosing a trickle-down cap on aspiration and cohesion that will take out those who believe it will preserve them as surely as it is busily taking out those who already know it won’t. It is actively choosing the most unnecessarily precarious future.

If seven years of manifest incompetence and arrogance have not made this clear, then the Tories’ stubborn la la la fingers in their ears response to the consequences of impending Brexit and the utter vulgarity and horror that is Trump should have made it so, by now.

If Theresa May can keep calm and carry on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, now, how ethical will she be when our well-being is outsourced? When it is determined by our fear and another’s favour?

If she can hide behind robotic refrains and dispatch pre-programmed proxies because she is too busy micro-mismanaging our affairs – affairs that she treats as though we were a ‘bloody difficult’ inconvenience – how available and accountable will she be when Humanity and the very Planet requires our express solidarity and cooperation?

Perhaps she is so robotic because she is still trying to convince herself. Maybe the only way she can get through this hell she is making is to keep going, pretending that she knows what she is doing. Perhaps this whole can of conservative Brexit-election worms is making her ill and too panicked to risk the exposure; to endure the scrutiny. Perhaps…

However, if she can set her political compass to obeying Paul Dacre’s twisted mind and petty soul, how strong and stable are her principles? If her policies are to be founded on values with such missionary zeal, which is her true north: her parochial Christian devotion or the rabid Daily Mail?

May is an algorithmic marionette, bid to outsource and she asks that we come unto her through flawed notions of patriotism, kippered fairy tales and a blind but absolute trust in her and her team of strings.

If she can so readily and consistently outsource Maybots to represent the interminable vagaries of her puppet mind while she scurries about, micro-managing everything into socio-economic straitjackets, will she not also outsource and shrink our prosperity, our sovereignty and our dignity to Luck and the good or bad grace of others? Of course she will. It’s the Will of her People.

 

with great responsibility came humility

I always believed that with great responsibility came humility. I am so naive. I thought that to serve in public office was both noble and an honour; that to be in the Government, bestowed with making laws and policies that determine the quality of life of the millions of one’s country’s people, was such an enormous privilege that one would be devoted to justifying it. I thought it required integrity and reasonable measures of wisdom and competence. Even more naively, I actually assumed that, simply by mere virtue of achieving and holding such a privileged position, on a personal level – the generous income, the security of an ample pension, the opportunity of network – it meant that they would have a persistent, collective sense of “there but for the grace of…” and act on it.

Funny how

Funny how the will of just over half of the electorate, on one specific day, translates as an overwhelming majority, signifying the fixed and absolute will of the people. Funny how Parliament cares so much about respecting the will of the people.

Funny how the will of the people for a well-resourced, easy-access NHS, free at the point of use, is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for affordable (free at the point of use), compassionate, dignified and accessible social care is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for a decent, guaranteed state pension and a dignified old age for all is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people to have justifiable rights to end their lives and receive assistance to do so is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for state ownership and control of an affordable, reliable, interconnected railway system is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for local authority-run libraries, pools, parks and recreation is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for a national network of local, comprehensive post offices is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for state investment in council/social housing is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for a visible police presence and 24/7 local stations is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for a national programme of ‘green’ investment and jobs is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for personal privacy and data security is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for a fair and responsible tax system is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for a reliable, liveable income is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for a compulsory national school curriculum is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for local state schools to be so good as to be the first choice is not respected.
Funny how the will of the people for even a simple, weekly rubbish collection is not respected.

What do you mean: not everyone wants those things?

From not being reliably good at football, any more, to being the actual football.

The hardest Brexit. Freedom to be buffeted by whim and wind. Sacrificing goods, capital and services because of some people’s scapegoating resentment and fear of… people. There’s no strength or honour in that.

Theresa May and her Brexit dullards are leading us into a wholly reckless period of unforced instability, expense and acrimony. At home and abroad. Not only is a fresh plebiscite vehemently denied but the parliamentary vote that, mind-bogglingly, actually had to be fought for, is now rendered almost pointless. This is because it will come after the invocation of Article 50 and so reduces the choice of MPs to either a crappy deal or no deal at all – an abyss; Hobson’s choice, at best. There is a lot of careless assuming going on that Article 50 can just be reversed but this is optimism without good cause: no voice with the authority to do so has, as yet, permitted this. If Article 50 is to be invoked, at all, Parliament and the Public need to be on the same page.

Government’s approach to Brexit is a wet dream for the knows-jack-shit that is Ukip with all the potential for socio-economic suicide for Britain. Labour’s strategy is to rightly try to avoid a race to the bottom but by pointing at some of the very real race-to-the-bottom flaws in May’s plan and then voting for it anyway. ‪The Lib Dems’ approach, albeit the best, is being squandered because they are still a widely unforgiven, oppositional shell of their own making and may not have sufficient time to recoup effectively.

We now risk feeling quite alone in a precarious and rapidly shifting world; the smallest partner in most meaningful circumstances; the one with the most urgent need and the least clout. Prey. Prey to allies and foes, alike – from country to corporation. What then of our rights and ethics? What then for our economy and society? For our environment? What then of our integrity? How does such a reckless course not lead to even less sovereignty and our democracy being further undermined?

Leave behaves as though Brexit were a rebirth into that golden age when ‘Global Britain’ captured half the world under single governance and imagined having claim to the benevolence of the Sun. Remainers tended to think that Britain was pretty global, already and that it was also already in the sunniest position, both practical and possible.

From politicians, Media and Public, understanding is trailing at an unhealthy distance behind the decision-making. From referendum build-up, to campaign proper, to the vote, to the ‘plan’, to the A50 trigger, to the now meaningless final vote in Parliament: everything has been done in the wrong order. If Brexit is not a catastrophe, it will be more by sheer luck than by good judgement.

Britain lurches from not being reliably good at football, any more, to being the actual football and yet Brexiteers act as though we were the referee. By the time reality bites and Leave voters realise the folly of their hubris and hopium, it may well be too late.

Scary is what happens in the unknowable space before and until they do. What will it take to reach that critical mass of enlightened consciousness and rebalancing of Will? What will have to have happened? What will have filled that vacuum? Will it be bearable? Will it have been worth it? I have my doubts.

Reality bites

Now they’ve spoiled the share
They want us to share the spoiled
Reality bites