Jonathan Pie says that the number of people who are deemed to be in extreme poverty in the UK has skyrocketed recently. His critique is aimed at that UK Tory government’s policies that favor the wealthy and hurt everyone else, but much of it applies to the US too.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
“How does this happen?”
A couple of nights ago, Stephen Colbert announced that Taylor Swift is now a billionaire and his audience applauded. Until the world stops celebrating obscene wealth this will keep happening. Even if TS is truly as nice as her PR people want us to think she is, nobody should have that much money (and the power that automatically goes with it).
‘Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Lord Acton
What smacks my gob (among many other things) is watching TV ads in which already-rich arseholes peddle gambling sites, or some clothing or perfume tat, just so they can become a bit richer, and poor slobs can become a bit poorer because they like the arseholes.
Can’t help thinking of John Lennon. Super-rich fucker becomes a bit richer by writing a song with the line “Imagine no possessions”. Laugh or cry. Or both, bitterly.
Eat the rich.
I hope the British royalty have been spared this terrible fate….
Matt G @3: The British (and Scandinavian, and Dutch, and others) royalty are leeches. The corporate system we
livesurvive in (well, some of us survive) is an Alien facehugger.This just in from the UK home sec Suella Braverman:
Relax, Rob.
100 years from now, nobody will be quoting your lyricism.
Also, not like he grew up rich. Something to do with his talent, perhaps.
(He also wrote “Happiness Is a Warm Gun”, and he preached peace? Pah!)
Super-rich fucker becomes a bit richer by writing a song with the line “Imagine no possessions”.
Is that really worse than, say, a super-rich fucker becoming a bit richer by singing songs with no memorable message?
@ 6 John Morales
*facepalm*
Wait ’til you learn about Johnathan Swift. He proposed eating Irish children!
@ 6 Morales
Lol. What an idiotic claim. (It’s been half a century):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_(John_Lennon_song)#Performances_and_cover_versions
Silentbob, heh.
Your caperings, facepalming, eye-rolling and general exultations over your little conceits are pronounced, today.
Let me rephrase the essential message: John Lennon was not a nobody.
He is part of cultural history.
And yes, he wrote lyrics to songs that expressed sentiments.
(You know, like Johnathan [sic] Swift did, except he wrote prose — and he is remembered too)
It’s idiotic to claim that in 100 years, no one will be quoting Rob Grigjanis’ lyricism?
[Holms, bub there thinks that (a) I referred to Lennon and (b) I was being literal with my alliterative pah. Because, you know, I don’t get irony or sarcasm]
Sbob is the one that didn’t get it. My #11 was prodding him for that misunderstanding.
John @6:
True, but if they have any sense, they’ll be quoting Steely Dan’s response to Lennon’s nonsense.
Good point about celebrities adding pennies to their fortunes hawking stupid stuff. Currently there are competing brands of home fragrance systems with competing celebrities (or significant others of celebrities) hawking them. Whenever I see the ads, the first thing I think is that we don’t know what mix of chemicals these systems are spewing into the air. Pets and their people both are being exposed to…what? Have these scents been tested?
Also, am just astounded by the notion that anyone could believe people want to live on the pavement in England--a country that’s often cold and damp. Clearly the Home Secretary’s just setting up a scenario to blame the people who are falling through the cracks in droves for their own desperation. And she adds a bit of xenophobia to spice up the claim and get people angry at immigrants.
Here is some related commentary from Paul Krugman:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/opinion/columnists/israel-irs-national-security-hostages.html
In short, if you make the grift big enough, people will not believe the truth behind it because they will refuse to admit that the proponents can be that awful. To wit: Cutting taxes on the rich and corporations will make the lives of everyone else better. Lowering tax rates will increase revenue. Reducing the social safety net will make people’s lives better. More guns will make us safer from gun violence. It’s like they heard Mies van der Rohe say “Less is more” and thought he was a mathematician instead of an architect.
Jimf @ 16
There are still millions of blue-collar voters who do not get how badly they have been betrayed by the Republicans they are voting for so, yes. Using cognitive dissonance to screw people is a very effective tool.
And in Britain the disconnect between reality and propaganda manages to be even worse, although the opinion polls imply people are waking up.
If Labour introduces a modern voting system the tories are done (no, Labour will postpone it again just like Tony Blair did and the Tories will come back, worse than ever).
@17:
Sadly, that may not matter, since Labour are so utterly paranoid that if they display the slightest policy difference from the Tories the right-wing press will round on them and they’ll lose again, that they are essentially destroying themselves as an independent platform. “Look! We won’t do a single thing differently to the Tories! We’ll just do it better somehow so vote for us because you hate them!”
@17 birgerjohansson
in Britain the disconnect between reality and propaganda manages to be even worse
I didn’t think that was possible. Are you implying that the Tories are worse than the Republicans? Is Labour as ineffective against this crap as the Democrats?
Cognitive dissonance? I believe the GOP voter base has been (excuse the term) groomed for many decades. We can start with the ill will toward Nixon, Watergate, and Vietnam which was shared across party lines. Reagan then turns this into “The government is always the problem and never the solution”. Then comes Gingrich who set new standards for team politics as Fox News ramps up. Then we have G W Bush who raised the bar on incompetence, except in the areas of propaganda and misdirection (WMD? “Patriot” Act? “Swift Boating”?). Remember, this was the numbnuts who wanted to turn Social Security into a private scheme, right before the crash of 2008. We follow this with the racial animus toward Obama, and finally, TFG turns up the heat and gets the brew to a full boil. And here we are.
@birgerjohansson , 17:
Er… how old are you? Do you remember the olden days… May 2011? The referendum on alternative voting? The public were consulted on whether they wanted to change the voting system. Having that referendum was a condition of the Lib Dem/Tory coalition, and David Cameron delivered it in full. And on a turnout of just over 42%, the result wasn’t even close*. More than two-thirds of voters rejected changing the system. That’s not even 13 years ago. I can’t see ANY rational justification to even start discussing it again for at least another… 15 years? These things are usually framed as “once in a generation”, and we’ve DONE that. Did you forget? And if you’re here in the UK -- tell me you voted, please.
* you could make a case that Cameron only gave them a referendum because he knew the “correct” answer would win. And he was correct. And you could make a case that feeling his oats after that victory was what led him to try to silence the worthless shits on the extreme Eurosceptic right of his party by giving THEM a referendum on EU membership, another referendum where there was an obvious “correct” answer that anyone with any sense would recognise. But he’d miscalculated, and the rest of us have been paying ever since.
Two questions, two answers:
1. Yes, I think they are. They’re at least as evil. They’re not remotely as competent. The last vaguely competent PM the UK had was David Cameron. But they are definitely evil -- Braverman, the likely next leader, is brown female Hitler, comfortably the most appalling Home Secretary of my lifetime. She make Priti Patel look like Ghandi.
2. Not any more, I think -- Starmer is cautiously getting a grip. Under Corbyn, though, Labour were worse than the Democrats. The leadership looked like it was actively trying to lose elections under him. Starmer seems to at least want power, Corbyn NEVER did. Never forget he was the joke candidate in the leadership election, put there only because someone thought, with MINUTES to go before nominations closed, that there should be at least one name on the ballot from the loony left, because all rest just looked too smooth and, well, competent. Like politicians instead of approaching-retirement-geography-teachers. Also, part of the reason the Democrats are ineffective is that, to an outsider’s eyes, they’re barely distinguishable from the Republicans. No Democrat will ban guns, no Democrat will abolish the death penalty, no Democrat will fully socialise healthcare, no Democrat will do anything to reduce the level of incarceration in the US -- no Democrat will do anything to make the US look like something approaching civilised. They’re clearly just as dependent on the rich as the Reps, and just as protective of their interests. It’s a feature of the system. Labour in the UK, while having to work within a system, is still basically committed to making things better for poorer people, not richer people, crudely.
And don’t forget that Blair’s barnstorming win in 1997 was achieved with the promise of sticking to Tory spending plans for two years -- which they did. It’s not a bad idea, per se.
@20: In fairness the AV system on offer in 2011 was about the worst possible form of PR anybody has ever managed to come up with -- it was so bad, even long-time proponents of AV voted against it -- and so it doesn’t necessarily fairly represent people’s attitudes to changing the electoral system in general. On the other hand, while you might be able to come up with a decent number of people who want to get rid of FPTP, getting them to agree on what should replace it is another kettle of fish.
Not that it matters, because Labour is not going to do away with FPTP anyway. They’d rather play winner-takes-all, even if it means they lose most of the time.
Quite possibly. But again -- don’t blame Labour for that. That one is squarely the responsibility of “I agree with Nick” Clegg, the Lib Dem
scumbagleader who now does PR forFacebookMeta, as though being a politician wasn’t sinking low enough.Oh yeah, no disagreement about where the blame for that one lies.
@20 sonofrojblake
Don’t forget that to Democrats (at least), there are effectively two sections of the party. The first part, which gets most of the headlines (and major donor money), is the (take your pick of names): corporate/Wall St. Dems, Clinton wing, DLC, “third way”, etc. I believe your description applies to them. The other section is the progressives led by Bernie Sanders (not a registered Dem but rather an independent who caucuses with the Dems) and includes notables such as AOC, Tlaib, etc. That section genuinely does want to make things better for the poor and middle class, pushes for national health care, protections from guns, free public university tuition, and the like. For the record, I am a registered Democrat. This allows me to vote in the Democratic primaries in my state where I mostly choose the progressive candidates.
“The other section is the progressives led by Bernie Sanders (not a registered Dem”
I’ll regards them as part of the Democrats when, and only when, (a) they’re all, er… Democrats (see above) and/or (b) one of them is President. Until then, they’re the equivalent of Corbyn -- sideline moaners.