Friday 31 July 2015

Further to my reading of books on economic theory: Austerity is not just immoral- it is factually untrue.

Keynesianism arose out of an attempt to explain the Great Depression of the 1920s, an event that has so many parallels with the present-day recession. 
Most of us nowadays assume that people understood that the Depression was causally linked to the Wall Street crash that preceded it, but apparently Chicago School monetarist theory sees no such connection between these 2 events, and in fact, has no explanation at all for the crash.  This is because the Chicago school of neo-classical liberalist economics is based on a belief that markets are automatically self-correcting and stable. It has no explanation for financial crises or mass unemployment.  In fact, this school of economics believes that unemployment is a choice, and that market prices always correct themselves in accordance with laws of supply and demand, and that, when high levels of unemployment occur, the price of labour simply has to fall to its correct level, and the prices of commodities will also fall to meet the market condition of lower incomes.  This school of economics concerns itself solely with so-called supply and demand, (a concept that goes back to a medieval economist called Ricardo) and does not even take into account the behaviour of the stock market in the economy. It is based primarily on abstract numerical models which have no relation to actual reality.
Keynes, on the other hand, believed that if economics could not explain what happens in the real world, then it has no value.  All his work was an attempt to understand, predict and ultimately regulate how economies actually work in reality, not as some pure mathematical model.  He realised that the way people behave when investing on the stock market has a profound effect on the macro-economy, and makes it inherently liable to crisis and crash if left unregulated.

To look back at the Depression of the 1920s again, 2 other causes were, first a private property market that was based on market speculation, rather than actual demand for housing, which ultimately caused the building industry to implode, and take a large part of the economy down in a crash. This in turn caused people to stop spending money or investing money at all, which triggered a downward spiral in the rest of the economy, which turned into a depression.  The property market played a huge part in the present-day recession, and although it’s worked in a different way today, there are startling similarities in the triggering of the banking crash. 
Secondly, in the 20s, as in the present-day, a massive gap grew between the wealthy few and the poorer many – with the top 24,000 families in the 20s having 3 times the income of the bottom 6 million. (I believe the disparity is far greater today) This is not a moral issue- although that is also in there - it is a problem because it is bad for the economy.  The money gets directed away from the wider economy into financial speculation and conspicuous consumption – none of which actually help any economy.  Easy money on the stock market creates a momentum which is inherently liable to boom and bust.  It was therefore inevitable that there would be a major crash.  If you factor in that most of the super-wealthy are not even paying taxes to their host countries, then we can see that virtually none of their money is doing anything useful in the economy as a whole.  Monetarists tell us that these super-rich are helping to keep the economy going through the “trickle-down effect”, but most of their money is being taken out of the effective economy by being invested back into the stock market or in property, rather than doing anything useful to create jobs and wealth in society as a whole. 
Keynes pointed out that the less money people spend, the less demand there is, output falls and unemployment rises, which then causes less money to be spent, and so on, spiralling down. So we are being told that tightening our belts and creating mass unemployment is a necessary step to getting the economy back into a healthy state, when it is precisely the opposite of what is needed.  He called this ‘the paradox of thrift’.
Keynes’ argument that the best way to bring an economy out of a depression was to create public projects which would give jobs to people, has been derided in recent decades. “Spend your way out of a crisis” is one of those phrases that is spoken with a scornful curl of the lip as typical left-wing, economic mismanagement. What he actually advocated was that if key areas of the economy were in public ownership, then they would be run for the purposes for which they were created, rather than simply as a means to make a profit.  This would have a stabilizing effect on the economy and make it less liable to shocks and crashes.  Hence, public utilities and infrastructure should be in public ownership, primarily to provide specific services - railways, postal systems, gas, electricity, water etc – and secondarily, to provide employment.  They are NOT there to make a profit. Any profits are ploughed back into the business, not hived off for investment in the stock market or for paying grossly large salaries to a minority of executives. This in turn helps to protect the economy from instability. Publicly owned services are a vital part of any healthy, stable economy and selling them off to private companies not only makes important resources, like health and education, dependent on the ability to pay for them,  it brings them into the same instability–generating sphere as the private sector. It is not just morally wrong – although it is that too- it just plain bad economics. If we don’t reverse the trend to privatize everything in the public sector, the economy will become more and more unstable and the so-called recovery will continue to be an illusion for the majority of the population. 

This government is one of the most irresponsible in its management of the economy that we have had since the Famine in Ireland in the 19th century and the infamous Corn Laws. And yet they have conned everyone so successfully into accepting their childishly deluded austerity argument that even Labour felt it had to join them in that.  Just because something makes sense and feels right does not make it true. You cannot run the economy on the same principles as a household budget - the concept is childish drivel.  Austerity is not just immoral- it is factually untrue.  

Monday 27 July 2015

As part of my attempt to get better at writing poetry to prompts, a tree theme came up at a recent poetry reading in Second Life- so I decided to write a tree poem.  A poet friend of mine, John Lanyon, described how he deals with prompts, by finding what resonates in him with the subject matter, and I found that I had a dear friend who always seems like a wonderful oak tree to me. So here it is: 

Portrait

You are like an oak,
Your roots sinking deep
Through the rich darkness,
A great toe, seeking the foundations,
Flowing honeyed sunlight
Into solid rock,
A million filaments gathering
From below, to above
Where scented, bee-filled foliage
Breathes and reaches.

Somehow, at summer’s end, the light
Becomes blessed and golden
Filling your so hard-won length
With grace and strength,
Even as the musky sweetness
Of the first yellowing leaf
Drops lightly to the forest floor.



Here's another poem with a tree-sh theme, very much composed in a moment of interaction with another person during a very intense weekend workshop. not sure if it stands up out of context- but I kind of like it anyway. 

Acceptance – poem of a moment

If I allow this into my two
Open arms, to hold
Ever so lightly,
Will it become me? Or not?

Does the tree, in whose branches
The lowering sun expands
And mellows into redness,
Ever own the sun it holds?
Or does the sun’s light turn
Green and liquid in
Those sappy veins,
While the red sun looks on
Wishing it could be in there? 

Flippin' writing competitions!!!

Is it just me? 
This is the second time I've done this: I saw a writing competition and wrote something specially for it - normally I only write what comes to me and i'm hopeless at writing to prompts. But ok- I decided to try it. Then I went back to the website that I was sure had called for the submission, and bugger me! there was no such competition! Even after trawling through all the websites I've saved in my writing and competitions folder, I still couldn't find it. This time I actually wrote it down on a piece of paper by my keyboard where I write down reminders, struggled to write 2 poems on the subject of Space and Aliens for 9-13 year-olds - one I'm quite pleased with and one that is very silly but lots of fun - then, again, went back to the publisher that I'd noted as running the competition, and no sign of it!! I think my brain went to space and got lost somewhere!!!

Anywhere, out of sheer frustration I'm publishing the poems here, lol.  As they are unlikely to see the light of day anywhere else, even if I had remembered who the heck was doing that comp. 
This is the one I'm quite pleased with: 

 SPACE

The sky at night is
so
big
I don’t know how to
think
about
it.

The stars are beautiful but
they
go
on
forever,         and we’re
just
here

How can something
have
no
edges?
My head won’t
hold
it.

I’d rather feel the stars
are
angels,
Or kind ancestors, smiling
down
at
me.



And here's the silly one 

A VERY SILLY POEM ABOUT SPACE TRAVEL

When Humans set off for the planet Zog
At the other end of the Universe,
They accidentally took another bod
Along on the ride in the rocket.
A green, shiny spider with multiple eyes,
And a mark like an H on its back,
Came in, on a cargo of pies,
They’d brought for a special snack.
It made a nest in the back of a sprocket,
And started to lay lots of eggs.
And as they voyaged across billions of miles,
Lots more spiders began to grow big.
They landed on Zog and opened the doors,
And came out into sunshine and air.
A crowd of Zoggans had gathered around
To greet the arrivals and stare.
They thought the Earthlings were really smart,
Green and shiny with marks on their backs.
But when they spoke to them and tried to be friends
They didn’t get one answer back.
Other things came out of the ship,
Large and squishy with things on their heads.
They blundered about and stepped on things, then
The Earthlings began to spin webs.
“That’s very rude!” the Zoggans shouted,
“You can’t just set up in any old place!”
They buzzed and squeaked and raged and pouted,
But the Earthlings just spun webs and ate.
It was all going wrong, the Zoggans were nice,
They tried very hard to be friends,
But the Big Things trod on the Queen’s palace – twice –
And it took them ages to mend.
The Earthlings spun and ate all the food,
Their webs were draped every which way,
And though they were green and shiny and cool,
They had absolutely nothing to say.
And the Big Things had no remote controls,
No-one could switch them off.
Where they’d been walking, nothing was whole,
They broke everything, though they were squishy and soft.
The Zoggans held a meeting and got very cross,
They really wanted to be friends,
“But they keep catching food to scoff,
And their robots are just plain hopeless,” they complained.
Then they saw the Big Squishy Things
Bending right down over them,
With things on their eyes to make stuff look big,
And the Zoggans began to scream.
But one wise old Zoggan said “Hey!
‘I think we’ve been getting this wrong,
‘We thought the people were shiny and green,
‘But it’s really the Big Squishy Things!
‘We wanted them to be like us,
‘With hard outsides and multiple eyes,
‘And they’ve been doing the same to us,
And it’s been a terrible mistake.”
So all the Zoggans ran round in a rush,
And formed themselves into rows,
And as the Humans looked down at them,
They spelled out the word “HELLO.”
So the green shiny ones became cute pets
That everyone wanted to have,
And the Earthlings stopped stepping on things,
And they had a big party and were glad.



Wednesday 15 July 2015

The Labour Party seems to have no sense of direction.

I’ve just posted on Facebook that I have joined the Labour Party for the first time since 1984 in an attempt to have some influence on their choice of a new leader.  I’ve heard that Jeremy Corbyn has a few actual left-wing opinions, so I thought I’d support him in the hope that even if he doesn’t get in, at least he may make the Labour Party sit up and take notice if he gets enough support.  After decades of Blairism, where the party moved to the right of Margaret Thatcher – and I don’t mean that purely rhetorically, Blair/Brown actually did implement policies that Thatcher felt she’d never get away with – they now seem to have no sense of direction at all.
We saw the SNP take over in Scotland mainly, as far as I could see, because they offered a programme of good, old-fashioned socialist policies that used to be the stock-in-trade of the Labour Party.  Yes, they played the nationalist card, but when people were interviewed about why they supported them, both during the referendum and during the election campaign, they mostly said they were voting for fairness.  Essentially they wanted an end to the austerity policies of Cameron’s government that are currently retarding our recovery from the recession (and that have already wrecked the Greek economy). They saw a chance to get a fairer deal by breaking away from England.  I still have mixed feelings about whether Scotland should have gone independent, but I whole-heartedly approve of Nicola Sturgeon and other SNP MPs, like Mhairi Black.
So- in my naiveté – I would have thought it was quite obvious to the Labour Party that if they want to have a hope of regaining any credibility, they should adopt- or re-adopt – a proper left-wing programme and stop shilly-shallying around trying to be just a soft version of Cameron’s Tories.   
Apparently not.
Apparently, within the Labour Party, the hot debate is around whether they lost the election because Miliband was too left-wing.  From my perspective Miliband was not at all left-wing, he was just another version of Blair, but not as plausible-seeming as Blair was.

All this leaves me genuinely puzzled.  OK. I admit it leaves me angry and frustrated, and I want to jump up and down and scream “You bunch of numpties!” But I know that’s not a grown-up way to conduct a debate.  And I really do want to understand what goes on in the minds of the long-time party members.
When I posted on Facebook that I’d re-joined the Labour Party, I had a response from a guy who I don’t know that well, but he is a mate – which completely exemplified the kind of attitude that baffles and frustrates me about the Labour Party.  Apparently he thought Jeremy Corbyn was an example of the “loony left” and if he was elected as leader it would guarantee another Tory victory.  My friend even claimed that Tories were joining the LP in droves, just to get Corbyn elected for that reason – which left me wondering if my friend thought I was one of them. 
He did point out, quite accurately, that in England the Greens were offering the same kind of leftist programme as the SNP, and they did not do well in the election.  But considering the Greens were barely allowed a look-in on the media coverage of the election, it’s actually to their credit they did as well as UKIP, who had constant, adulatory coverage before and during the election campaign.

So- do I just live in a private universe where I see everything in a weird idiosyncratic way, because I am basically mad?
Maybe, but there seem to be a lot of other people in that universe with me. Not only do I meet people all the time who quite spontaneously express opinions that are the same kind of left-wing as me,   but I also read things in main-stream, respected newspapers, that express opinions that seem well-thought, supported by evidence, and not at all loony, but are totally left-wing. Not calling for revolution or anything daft, just good old-fashioned left wing. Like this, for example, by a journalist who is far too young to remember pre-Thatcher politics, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/14/left-reject-eu-greece-eurosceptic
My LP friend described Tsipras as an opportunistic demagogue and supported what Germany and the IMF have just done to Greece.  But even Channel 4 news were asking what the implications are for democracy when an elected government is overruled by an outside power.  What exactly is loony about these opinions? To me, they seem like common sense. And Channel 4 is by no means a leftist channel. The mistake Tsipras made, surely, was in expecting to be able to conduct a rational debate with people who were genuinely interested in trying to help his country out of a mess. Not at all a demagogue.

I can only assume that LP members who remained loyal throughout the Blair years, or who actually joined the party during those years, have simply forgotten (or never knew) what the Labour Party was created to do – represent the interests of the working class, fight for justice for the less well-off sections of the population, you know, that kind of thing. (And, in my understanding, that means managing the economy to ensure some kind of stability by keeping large sections of it in public ownership, so as to avoid the kind of recession we are now still experiencing with its high unemployment.) 
But I don’t see anyone in the LP challenging the neo-liberal, monetarist policies that not only caused the financial crisis, but are still strangling any real recovery by so-called austerity. Austerity-lite is no real alternative.

I recently read a book by a leftist political activist from my youth – Tariq Ali – putting the case very eloquently about this. I assume he also would be seen as ‘loony’ by the mainstream, right-wing/centrist thinkers of the Labour Party.  But his arguments are clear and intelligent – but then I would say that as he was just confirming observations and conclusions that I had come to on my own.

But, I ask you, where are the spokespeople for the politics that are currently accepted within the party? Do they have a real philosophy, or are they really what they seem-  a bunch of hit or miss ideas based on what they think people will vote for but allowing the Tories to set the terms of the debate every time? Who do they think they are speaking for? Do they really think the British public only read the Mail?  I know my friend, and other LP members, believe in fairness and justice, they really do, but do we hear any of them challenging the frightening prospect of TTIP being passed by the EU?  Why are they happy to see large sections of the Health Service sold off to private contractors? Why, even now, do none of them challenge the current thinking on public housing? Why, OMG WHY, has Harman basically supported the abolition (by sleight of hand) of tax credits in the latest budget?

I AM angry about this, and really do have to fight hard not to call my mate a total numpty, for thinking it’s loony to be properly left-wing, but mainly I am genuinely puzzled.  I just don’t get it.  


Postscript:  

Since I wrote this, I’ve had more opinions sent to me on FB about Jeremy Corbyn, and it seems to me that this guy is really loathed by the Labour Party and so does not have a hope in hell of being leader. I can see there was no point in my joining them, they are the same party that I have not voted for since the first time Blair got in, and have no credibility for me at all. I will try to work out how to stop my membership and donate the money to the local food-bank, where it will do more good. 

Post Postscript: 

I went and looked at how to unsubscribe from the LP and can't work it out, but I am on a cheap rate, as a pensioner (uurgh!) so I reckon they need the money too. At the end of the day, what I really want to see is a renewed and re-committed LP in power. 

Friday 10 July 2015

Helping and being helped - caring for my Mother

Being in the situation of being a carer, especially since a bit of a crisis towards the end of last year, when everything got so much more difficult, I have been trying to write something about being offered help, and all the complexities around that.  Not finding it easy to be very coherent, but here’s a few thoughts I’m trying to put a shape on.

Obviously, the main point is that I am the helper most of the time.  It’s not easy being the helpee, when you are depending on others for all sorts of things you used to be able to do for yourself.  In the past I had the experience of actually being abused by a disabled partner, who took out on me his frustrations at being so dependent.  I suspect this is a lot more common than people let on – none of us wants to complain when we know the disabled person has so much more to deal with than we do.  I know that, for me, the lesson I have learned from this experience is that if I ever become disabled myself, I am quite sure I will find it unbearably frustrating not to be able to do things for myself, but the challenge of that is to be able to bear the disability with dignity, and to give one’s care-givers their dignity too.  

But it’s the others outside the situation who want to help, or who I need to help, to be a bit of support for me, give me a break, that I want to write about. 
The point is that not all the help that’s offered, or available, is actually helpful.  I’ve always known I’d reach a point where I’d need professional care-givers to come in and help me out with my mother. I’d started this before it was strictly necessary, with the plan that I’d have something in place when an emergency struck. It also meant that my mother would be used to having strangers in her house and have learned to accept them, as I know this can be difficult.  I didn’t expect it would be so difficult to find this kind of help.  But when the emergency struck, the care company I’d been using chose that moment to fall apart.  
You’d think that, as at that time I was being woken up 3 or 4 times a night by my mother calling me to help her, and having to physically lift my mother during the day in order to transfer her from bed to chair and back, that I’d really need as much help as I could get, whatever was offered.  Yes and No.  What I actually needed was very different from what was offered. I needed, above all, to know that if people were coming in to do something that they would turn up at the specified time and not at some random time that could occur within a window of around 3 hours.  This was what was on offer from the NHS Care Team, who are amazing people but so overworked that they are never able to plan anything to specific times.  So, lovely as they were, they were no help at all.  In fact, when the NHS sent an OT to see what they could offer, she was worse than useless. Her whole remit seemed to be to tell me what they couldn’t do - mainly, actually lift a patient.  When she got to the point of telling me that the £1000 special electric bed I had just bought for Mother would not have the right mattress and she’d inevitably get bedsores, I had to just shut her up and get her out of the house.  And then burst into tears.  So much for the NHS.
I’ve written elsewhere about the difficulties of having to cope with having carers coming in - the need to keep track, and make sure everything is set up for them when they come. Of the difficulties of having family members taking over while I go away for a few days’ break. It means that for everything I do that requires carers to come in and help, I need to do a cost-benefit analysis – not money cost, though that is a factor, but cost in terms of the mental effort it takes to set up the carers and keep everything going with them. I had 2 care companies providing all I could cope with – one was unreliable, but flexible in terms of hours etc. The other was totally reliable but insisted on a minimum time of one hour per visit, which was quite unnecessary but at least they came when they said they would and there was consistency.  But they were unable to provide a carer on weekends, which is when I needed them, as well as Wednesdays. Sigh! It makes me want to give up on this article just thinking about all this.  It’s tedious.  

I now have the weekend care-givers I need, so I get both Saturday and Sunday off each week.  This means I have to plan Mum’s meals in advance, buy the right stuff and have it out of the freezer, ready for the carers to prepare for her.  I’m usually pretty organized about advance planning of meals anyway, but, today, I’ve had to do a weekly grocery shop in between helping Mum have a shower, cooking lunch and getting ready to go out for the evening to a dance class I’ve recently got back to.  Plus adding a break or two in there and time for a shower for myself. The kitchen is a mess with dishes unwashed from lunch, and if I don’t get them washed before I go out later, they will still be there tomorrow when the carer comes.  I’m like most women, in that I don’t want to leave a mess in the kitchen for the carers, even though I know they’d be only too happy to clean up for me.  Hmmmm, maybe I’ll leave the dishes for them.  This time.

But then there’s friends and neighbours, right? They want to help, don’t they?  Well- true to some extent.  Having friends to come in to sit and have a chat and cuppa tea with Mum is nice, and I wish some of her old friends would remember she’s still here and drop in more often from their busy, active lives. Having friends to come and help Mum to the commode is not really something most are prepared to do.  ‘It’s a boundary too far for me,’ as one of my friends, who used to come in and make lunch for Mum said to me.  
Also- having volunteers to come in and help means that they will only come when it suits them.  So I’d have to call them up each week to see if they were coming. This is way more trouble than having a paid professional who can be relied on to come in without prompting. 

So- what I’m trying to say is that, much as help is needed, it isn’t always as easy to accept as the people offering, or suggesting, it think. 
Recently a friend of mine expressed frustration with someone she knew who was looking after a partner with Parkinson’s and who would never accept her offers of help.  I understood this. When you are completely overwhelmed you just don’t have the spare capacity to factor outside help in.  I have only been able to arrange extra care sessions in the past couple of weeks because things had settled down a bit and I suddenly realized I was  going crazy because I was unable to take part in activities that were important to me. But I had spent so many months in emergency mode, just getting through each day as best I could, that I’d lost the ability to relax and step back from it all.  I was lucky that the reliable care company had just got a new member of staff who could work weekends. Even more lucky that Mother liked her immediately.

I’d like to say to those of you who would like to offer help to a friend or neighbour who’s struggling with a disabled or sick family member, do offer help. Don’t be offended if the help is turned down.   Just keep in touch and think of specific things you can do.  Like – doing some grocery shopping for them, or just calling by to chat.  Don’t expect your helpee to be able to drop things without prior notice, to go out somewhere.  Even when I don’t need to get someone in to look after Mum I am quite tied to a routine which is only slightly variable.

Above all - PLEASE DO NOT lecture your intended helpee on her inability to accept help and imply that she has some kind of psychological problem for turning down your kind offer.  This really is the lowest blow, and can really hurt if you are already feeling crap about yourself from exhaustion and the feeling that no matter what you do, it will never be enough. 

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Poem out of a conversation with my niece about her spiritual searchings

The Bee-Trail

My whole life has been a coming home,
Each brand-new landmark
A familiar bee-path
Already known.

We are all born from God,
Our fresh new minds already imprinted.
Each painful step on the Path
Sings the Land back from the Dream.

Pray that next time you won’t get lost,
All the aching, striving, wanting souls
Who are eating the Earth, are
Only wandering in search of their lost breadcrumb trail.