When I read this New York Times article opening paragraph
LONDON — Inside a dormitory now known by students as H.M.P., for Her
Majesty’s Prison, trash piled up in shared kitchens. Students washed
their clothes in bathroom sinks. Security guards stalked the gates,
keeping anyone from leaving or entering.
just now, my memory flashed back to a Wembley Matters blog post by Martin Francis from four years ago, when I was still a Londoner and Web Logging and commenting on behalf of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group in the Internet guise of 'Dude Swheatie of Kwug':
As another student accommodation block opens on Olympic Way. Wembley,
readers may be interested in the decision of a panel deciding on an
Award for Student Accommodation, sponsored by Property Week.
There were due to be more than 2,500 student units around Wembley Stadium whenI last checked.
The Panel refused to nominate a winner and wrote the following to the organisers:
Awarding panel concluded: "Unless all students have access to safe, affordable accommodation, at every institution and the means to pay for it, there is no cause for celebration, nor the ability for us to award a for-profit sector failing so many of our peers."
I commented then at the foot of that Wembley Matters blog post:
Of course, that was years before Coronavirus began to hit around the globe, but I would argue that all this emphasises the sheer stupidity of basing international economies upon the an ideology that venerates privatising public services, cutting taxation for the wealthy, and treating renters as criminals to be coerced into modern slavery.
The MailOnline -- and BBC Gardeners' World -- report:
Hypocrites! Alan Titchmarsh blasts green campaigners who block pave
their gardens or swell their carbon footprint by eating out-of-season
fruit and veg
He said saving planet is not matter solely for land management and industry
He took aim at those who may criticise the Government for not doing enough
Titchmarsh, 70, also attacked those who buy fruit in the winter months
Alan Titchmarsh has criticised green
activists who lecture others about the environment but then block-pave
their own gardens or buy imported strawberries in January.
The
TV gardener said saving the planet is not a matter solely for
agricultural land management and industry, but for individuals who can
do more to 'make a difference to the health of planet Earth'.
'Those
of us who cherish that bit of land that comes with our houses have a
duty of care that is every bit as vital as that incumbent on the owners
of vast estates,' he told BBC Gardeners' World magazine.
He took aim at those who may criticise the Government for not doing enough to curb global warming and climate change, in particular Extinction Rebellion protesters, yet do not do enough themselves domestically.
'I hope that none of the Extinction Rebellion protesters has a block-paved front garden,' he said.
Note the difference between the headline's "green campaigners who block their gardens" and Titchmarsh's, "I hope that none of the Extinction Rebellion protesters has a block-paved garden."
Alan Titchmarsh's income is largely built around his persona as gardener and TV broadcaster, and he has gone on from that to fronting advertising for Sun Life Funeral Plans https://www.sunlife.co.uk/funeral-planning/funeral-plans/
Sun Life Guaranteed Funeral Plan is fronted by Alan Titchmarsh who says it's
"One of the most affordable ways to cover a funeral."
We might ask how much he is making from that promotion in addition to his income from BBC broadcasting that notoriously showers high salaries on presenters.
I would add that a great many Extinction Rebellion younger supporters have not been taught gardening as a basic skill but they do realise that government policies have let climate crises fester.
We live in the legacy of how the robber barons and Enclosures Acts that helped carve the way to capitalism in which people lose touch with the land. As people have lost touch with the land, we have become more dependent upon others' produce via an increasingly global market, and that was one of the driving forces of the Industrial Revolution going hand in hand with British colonisation of other lands and import-export arrangements.
If capitalism is the root cause, ecosocialism is the antidote
I especially welcome the comment below from 'Unknown', and point out that comments submitted anonymously are not altogether ruled out for their anonymity:
I remember Alan Titchmarsh writing in the Radio Times about a decade ago
questioning the science of climate change, trotting out the tired old
cliche that weather has always been variable. He and others in high
profile positions (eg David Bellamy) who have questioned climate science
over the years have done more to damage our chances of keeping global
warming to a safe level than any number of XR activists who might buy
fruit out of season or have a paved front garden.
Google search link "alan titchmarsh" "climate change denial"
The following search link was created by using keywords "alan titchmarsh" "climate change denial"
NB: Use of all lower case letters as above in a Google search is quite acceptable, even when using 'proper names'; and quotation marks are a handy device for ensuring that the exact phrase or name combination is located.
(This blog post includes link to a February 1975 BBC radio interview with Margaret Thatcher on the Jimmy Young show, on Thatcher becoming Tory Party leader. It should be noted regarding references to the then Labour Government, that the Conservatives' Edward Heath had lost a 1974 General Election, and been replaced by a Labour Government led by Harold Wilson. Wilson stood down as PM in 1976, and was replaced by James Callaghan without a General Election taking place again till 1979.)
The
US and UK share an ideology of 'free-market' fundamentalism and
competitive individualism. More widely called 'neoliberalism' these
ideas were introduced, respectively, on both sides of the Atlantic by
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
Earlier
this year, Angus Deaton, professor of economics at Princeton University
and a Nobel laureate, launched a five-year review on the subject of
inequality. Sir Angus, who is teaming up with the Institute for Fiscal
Studies, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, a charity, intends
the review to be the “most comprehensive scientific analysis of
inequalities yet attempted”, examining not just the gaps between the
rich and poor, but also differences in health outcomes, political power
and economic opportunities in British society and across the world.
Personally, I have some major issues with the neoliberal language of "incentives." .....
Equality/inequalities, and the Social Model of Disability
Writing in July 1984 piece entitled 'Equality is Doing What Comes Naturally', Huw Richards wrote:
The American constitution proclaims the equality of all men to be
self-evident. However it took until the Civil War to decide that ‘all
men’ includes black men. And the battle continues today to extend
constitutional equality to women - with the Equal Rights Amendment
tantalisingly short of getting enough support to become law. Indeed
White House opposition is one of the major forces against the Equal
Rights Amendment. The election of Reagan was a major defeat for
supporters of equality; for the first time since well before the Second
World War a US administration came to office openly rejecting equality
as an objective.
It’s a shift paralleled in Britain. Twenty years ago Prime Minister
Harold Wilson was saying: ‘All children have the right to a start in
life, but not a flying start’. Today the job is held by Margaret
Thatcher who believes: ‘Opportunity means nothing unless it includes the
right to be unequal’.
"Call us 'equal'? Call us 'proud'?
Call yourself a liar;
No matter what the people do,
They set the targets higher."
I should note regarding the song's
"Someone's got to lead the blind
And see that the cripple rises"
terminology that that song was also written before the Social Model of Disability could draw attention to the true barriers to disabled people's equality and inform the language around disability.)
Andrews later quipped in solo concert that took place in London before the Conservative Party ousted Margaret Thatcher as their leader, "I tried to warn people about her, but Jimmy Young would not play the record."
'Incentives', participation and disability
The Social Model of Disability draws attention the the physical, social and economic barriers that obstruct disabled people's participation in society, as does this recent Disability News Service account regarding the situation of a disabled person who might otherwise be portrayed as "a burden on society":
Anne Novis (pictured, left, holding a consultation document on the proposals), who chairs Inclusion London,
and received a commendation from the Metropolitan police only last
month for her work as an independent advisor to the force, said she was
likely to have to quit both those voluntary positions if the council’s
proposals went ahead.
Because she was left some money when her
mother died, Novis will be hit hard by the reduction on the cap in
charges. She is set to lose support worth £3,500 a month.
She said: “If that is removed as proposed, I will have to pay for all my care, an impossible request if I am to live.” [Continue reading at https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/councils-planned-care-charge-rises-could-prove-fatal/]
Financial incentives clearly fit into a capitalist system and its ideology. Anne Novis, like many disabled volunteers regardless of our politics, volunteer as a means of participation in society: "No-one is an island entire and of itself." In my personal experience as a disabled volunteer and jobseeker, I found that cuts in public spending and shifts in government priorities were a major determinant of the outcomes for my career advancement.
As an example, I was praised for my "endless patience with slower learners." I was a Basic Skills Learning Support volunteer in 2004 in a non-statutory funded Computer Club for adults with learning difficulties, and a slower learner myself. As a child I had struggled to achieve basic literacy, to the point of being hit by child rheumatism before I was given extra tuition at school and home access to Encyclopaedia Britannica in a middle class family. So, mine had not been the kind of "flying start" that Harold Wilson had objected to in 1964, but helped lead me to literacy behaviours and skills.
By the same token, the purchase for me of a home PC in 1998 after my experience of Training & Enterprise Council-funded access to computer skills training had proven inadequate with my much slower learning pace and no home access to a Windows PC, gave me a relatively 'flying start' to Windows Computing that I passed onto other disadvantaged learners from 2004 to around 2010 as a one-to-one teacher of such skills to other disadvantaged learners.
Yet the Learning & Skills Council London Central that "[existed] to help make England better skilled an more competitive" was ignorant of the learners to instructors dynamics of supporting pre-literate adults and prioritised promoting National Vocational Qualification Levels 2 and 3 outcomes toward implementing London 2012 Olympics, at the expense of NVQ Level 1 take up, and so that Computer Club ran out of non-statutory funding and cuts in statutory funding for paid staff.
(Learning & Skills Councils had replaced Training & Enterprise Councils.)
That and further cuts denied me opportunities to advance, and in 2018 I retired after having been a claimant of Employment & Support Allowance since 2009.
The financial incentives argument in a world of diminishing resources gives rise to increasing narcissism
Before I close this article or its drafting for now, I shall give brief mention to forest fires in the Amazon, the 'war of words' between world leaders arising from that, and how consumer action might be an antidote to the narcissism that seems to be worshiped in a commercial advertising sponsored media society.
Thinking of including an image of Amazonian forest fires, I just keyed into the advertiser-sponsored Google search engine the keywords
amazon forest fires
and the search engine suggested
amazon fire stick
a technology pioneered by one of the world's wealthiest men, Jeff Bezos, founder of Internet based company 'Amazon'. That incident in itself heps to highlight the interplays between the framings of 'opportunity' and capital. Before I entered uni in 1993, Windows(R) personal computing was not as mainstay as it had become when I entered training for NVQ accredited Microsoft Office skills training in 1997. Now, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is one of those popularising a view that the world has never been better, and getting heard.
Gates is clearly not a claimant of the UK's 'digital by default' run Universal Credit. But to return to the matter of forest fires raging in the Amazon, the lungs of the world.
A 'war of words' has erupted. In such circumstances, ultimately, perhaps a closer look at the root causes of Amazon deforestation, followed by consumer action, is the most powerful thing we as consumers can do? As has been reported, a major source of the Brazilian urge for deforestation is palm oil cultivation Few people read the small print regarding ingredients of palm oil products such as those produced by Procter & Gamble. Similarly, an ingredient in many supermarket bought biscuit packets is also palm oil, as I've noticed only through reading the small print ingredients lists on the packets. We live in a global market in which the source of origin of, say, beef products is obscured, as I reported recently. We should examine the link between the global cattle feed industry and Amazon deforestation. And take consumer action! I close with a link to an article regarding matters of rising inequalities, and how the 'entrepreneur' role in neoliberal capitalism ties in with narcissism.
Anyone, Mrs Thatcher believed,
who rides a bus or a tube after the age of 30 is a failure. She
envisaged a car-owning democracy and herself was carried about like a
four-wheeled Queen of Sheba. Clement Attlee, the PM who brought in the
post-war welfare state, was often seen going to work on the Underground
from Stanmore to Downing Street. Don’t expect to see Theresa May sitting
next to you on the Northern line.
He says many foolish things, but among the most foolish
is the view, expressed by Boris Johnson, that society is like a packet
of cornflakes (echoes of Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates): shake it and
the genetically gifted cornflakes will rise to the top. Like Boris.
Wilkinson and Pickett (with the usual supporting barrage
of graphs) see it differently. “The belief that people are genetically
endowed with substantial differences in intelligence and ability, which
determine where they end up in the social hierarchy, is almost the
opposite of the truth,” they tell us.
We’ve
never had it so good but Heaven knows we’re miserable now. A follow-up
from the authors of The Spirit Level asserts that inequality is to
blame, says John Sutherland
02 August, 2018 — By John Sutherland Those who reach the peaks in an
entrepreneurial society, like those of the US and UK, they assert are
quite likely what they call “snakes in suits”. Entrepreneurism has
created “an epidemic of narcissists”. What do narcissists lack? Empathy.
Narcissists, like snakes, are out for themselves. Try stroking one.
Oddly, Wilkinson and Pickett don’t mention the
sociologist who pioneered the techniques they use. Why, asked Emile
Durkheim (definitely a top cornflake), are Catholics less prone to
suicide than Protestants?
A moment’s thought supplies answers – look,
for example, at the families coming out of Our Lady of Hal church, in
Arlington Road, on a Sunday.
The biggest causal factor in suicide was what Durkheim called anomie. Rootlessness.
Why is there an epidemic of self-harm, gloom and suicide
among today’s young – even that privileged elite at university?
“Deracination”, loss of community. We live in lonely crowds.
“Human beings are more fundamentally social animals than is often recognised” assert Wilkinson and Pickett.....
[Continue reading at http://camdennewjournal.com/article/unhappy-talk-spirit-level-authors-are-back if you so desire.]
In conclusion to this blog posting, I believe that in the 'global village', we are all connected and the fate of the world depends on our taking that reality on board and acting upon it.
