The press lap this stuff up and go on (and on, and on) about ideological battles (when they wouldn’t know an ideology if it smacked them in the face), personal positions (when it doesn’t really matter who’s nominally “in charge”, since the capitalists always win, and “austerity” — when the kind of austerity we’re living through would be heaven to most people in the world.

So much garbage; so little thought. I listened to John Humphries savage Ed Milliband (with contemptible ease) on Radio 4 this morning — there was not a single idea talked about, not a single analysis, not a single debating issue.

You know, I just think that our public discourse is now dominated by unutterably stupid people who should think themselves lucky to be able to eat, since they do no productive work.

Come back Michael Foot, Jo Grimmond, even Ted Heath (but for heaven’s sake not Thatcher). We’ve only had fools since those times.

Jaded and sick, I’ve been hanging on.  But my own little self is irrelevant,  I think there are more people in the mental health “community of experience” who know more about important stuff than 99% of the “public” figures out there.  So let’s try to produce a “plan for people”, without dogma, politics and special pleading.  It’s time the madhouse started running things!  So I appeal to all of you — think new thoughts, tell someone, discuss things, write them down, and send them to your best contacts — even here, if that’s best for you.  Just don’t sit and moan  –  that time is long gone, and it will never return.

Capital is just accumulated money.  As with gravity, the more that accumulates, the greater its pull.  Only with capital can you undertake big projects — like public works, factory construction, infrastructure, etc. which make society work.  You can only get capital by taxation if you have a willing population, and populations are only willing to be taxed a lot when they have high possibilities of income growth. Most capital is in private hands, though.  Marx’s additional analysis is that the value of income is related to the value of the labour (it’s a useful tautology).  Our incomes can only be increased by tapping into capital works (public or private, it doesn’t matter, except that public works require higher taxation) and increasing the efficiency of production or the rarity of the product, preferably both.  This requires innovation in both systems and research and development.  It requires an education system dedicated to an intelligent (i.e., properly educated in adaptability and thinking, as well as knowledge) population, as opposed to a “trained” population, each of whom can only do one or two things or processes.

This stuff should be child’s play for economists, you would have thought — but 90% of them have been completely corrupted by the noxious idiocy of monitarism or the unctuous falsities of Keynesianism (both of which are good for short fixes in mildly distorted economies, not in big catastrophes like we’re living in at the moment).

So let’s start by looking at where the capital piles are, how we can lay our hands on them, and how we can stop the Brigand-like hedge funds from screwing up socially beneficial plans.

I don’t see, for instance, why a Research and Development Tax should not be paid for by every UK capital holder, whether UK or Foreign.  The money could be funneled through our universities, hospitals, businesses, institutions and government at all levels to hire smart people to develop ways we can earn an income which we can then use to help out the parts of the population who are not — and who will never be — self-sufficient.

But hey, who the hell am I anyway?

Me -- trying to explain stuff.

And it’s not, you know.  There is no evidential value in democracy.  You can’t vote to change the Laws of Gravity.  Nor can you say that half-assed economic theories are like physics — hard, factua, predictive.  Economics is just another bloody religion.  Once you stop believing the dogma, you can see that it’s based on nothing.  “Supply and demand”, people will say, but no-one can actually define the axioms.

You would think that politicians and other public servants would be able to fall back on shared rational morality as a basis for getting society to work well together.  But of course Kant’s really simple (and non-religious) ethics are never taught anymore bacause some goofball misinterpreted them a century ago.  (Basically, just forget about Kant’s “Categorical Imperatives” and use instead the universalisation rule in the Critique of Practical Judgment (if everyone did what I choose to do, what would be the result for me and the future society?).

Ah, well.  Peace and Love, Sisters and Brothers.

Support truth, not party.

Anyway, as the political season begins to return — a year and seven weeks before the Mayan apocalypse (won’t the weeks leading up to that nonsense be fun?), I’ll try to follow events a bit more actively than I have in recent times.

Or maybe not.

JF

Categories, just categories, names, just names

But I have Duties. dammit!

I try every day to be grateful, to be productive, to do something worthwhile, to smile. But these days, I fail all the time.

I really will try to get back to you, I’m so very sorry.

Jim Friday
the admin guy

Thanks to alan parsons.

Since this is a business government (trying to get a grip on “growth”), the government will deal with businesses (i.e., the doctors) as the key people to stimulate growth. They will do that by re-hiring some of the experts thrown out in the changes — but not as employees, rather as little businesses. These little businesses will have specialisms — like procurement of imaging equipment, or provision of caring staff, data management, etc. And there will be hundreds of them, up and down the country, all needing to hire people at lower costs and more realistic conditions than in the present system.

They’ll do the same with education, the law and security, too.

The old nursing unions and Royal Colleges will decline; consultants in hospitals will set up micro-businesses within each Trust; private health will flourish. But the NHS will still be free at the point of delivery, though this does not mean that the would-be costs can all be met. We will have rationing, which is OK as long as people are given more of a chance of taking care of themselves. Terminal illness care will have to improve, for example, but why can’t GPs authorise patients to arrange their own annual health checks (at one of the “little businesses” who will send their bill to the GP), their own medications (at some fixed flat charge for everyone not on means-tested benefits), injections for travel, emergency care (via decent Ambulance and other services, who again, will bill the GP)? So long as we can, then we should.

If any of this stimulates our economy while treating most people’s health problems — then good. I’m tired of time-serving medical staff who can’t be bothered to care for patients properly. I’d be happy being nursed by a partly-literate teenager on minimum wages, so long as they showed genuine care. The age of graduate nursing is probably over. I have nothing against graduates, but as a recent study showed, “Caring contact” declines in direct ratio to education and training attainment. You can’t teach someone how to nurse, if they don’t know what it is to care.

I can understand that professional economists would be interested in such figures.  They mirror the ease or otherwise of putting forward non-statist solutions to problems of resources — especially resources involved in meeting all people’s needs for health, food, education, transport, utilities, etc.

What strikes me is that the best way of looking at this graph is as a challenge — to educate countries who know too little of market-based benefits, as well as those countries who know too little of cooperative central provision of certain social goods.

Media and politics seem determined to show divisions all the time; educators are mostly crap, and media folk are largely hungry, ignorant savages.  Nobody listens to moderation any more; it’s dull.

But mutual understanding is the future, and it’s gonna take longer the longer we delay starting.

No Vision? Just act! Stupidly.

Frodo -- My friend for 13 years

The Liberal Democrats nearly died on Thursday, or at least the initial processes of death set in. I’ve been a “Liberal” since 1968. I don’t believe the Liberal Democrats did anything wrong in joining the coalition. Nobody else seemed able or willing to tackle the Greek-inspired pressures on our economy that arose during the election. Though Clegg is to be praised for his bravery in leading this, where were the Liberals who should have tried to explain this complicated set of circumstances to the people and the filthy media? We used to be expert at that kind of stuff. Now, any effort may be too late. “Image” sticks hard, and the brand name becomes tainted.  It has happened before, when the Liberals split in the 1930s and almost died.  If they split this time, it’ll be curtains.

I would rather have my dog back now, than see the Liberals survive.  That’s how close they are to demise.

WHAT???

0.0013% of the population get £30 or so more a week (and they will have been in work, paying National Insurance) than healthy people.  So what?  Has Cameron considered the reasons people become alcoholics or drug addicts or obese?  Is it all “moral weakness”??

My brittle and severe Bipolar 1 went undiagnosed for 20 years.  Without medicines, the only way I could cope was by trying to dampen down highs and smoothe out lows with booze.  Of course it doesn’t work and I became an alcoholic.  I stopped many times — 2 years here, one years there, usually just a few months — before I finally used AA to kick it nearly five years ago.

But I worked most of the time, when I could, and I didn’t even know that I could get out-of-work benefits until the mid-90s.

Indeed, many thousands of those who could claim benefits of all kinds, never do — through pride, ignorance or general disorganisation.

I’ve paid taxes since I was 14 — 50 years worth.  I don’t feel guilty claiming the benefits I get.  I can’t do paid work any more because my judgment is very unreliable, and the medicines don’t really control all my delusions and extreme moods.   But, I am profundly grateful to the British Social Model which allows me to survive (if I’m frugal) on the benefits I get.  And I try to “give back” by voluntary (sedentary) work with mental health services, educators and charities — places which can monitor my activities and tell me when I’m not too well.  Indeed, I’m part of the “Big Society”, as are most people I know.

The mob out there who seem to want to throw disabled people to the dogs, just because they have been desperate to find a way out of their mental anguish — that mob is not British; that mob is bitter, twisted and selfish.

And Mr. Cameron is a great disappointment for stooping to such a level.  For a man who has been through his own personal catastrophes, I would have hoped he could have been reasoned, rather than populist, about the stupid DWP statistics which his government pumped out to feed the tabloids.

Deplorable.

Admin Guy