About Me

I write about the stuff I am thinking about. I am not a journalist. The only line here I take is my own, and that changes as I learn. As it should. It is my thoughts and they are occasionally wrong, often written in a hurry, and entirely subjective. The typos generally stay and I edit when I can.

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2012 (28)
2011 (759)
2010 (13)
2009 (1)
 

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize

Shortlisted_badge


Grinning a lot, and can't tell you how chuffed I am. Which is probably not a good sign considering it's a writing competition. I am now going to attempt to add the badge. 

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Orwell Prize longlisting

I got word today that this blog made the longlist for the Orwell Prize 2012.

I submitted it at the last minute, because quite honestly I don't enjoy reading back through it. Not because there aren't posts in here that I am very proud of(there are), but because of the journey I undertook while writing it. I started the year believing I witnessing an an 'anti-cuts' movement which could help fight the planned economic and social changes which will do so much harm to people and places I love. Instead I spent a year finding out why it was safe for the government to hit us so hard.

I learned more about the complex way power is maintained by meeting media circles and organisations, groups and individuals describing themselves as 'the left', than I thought was ever possible. What I learned was occasionally unpleasant, and the word 'class' returned to my vocabulary and identity. To be blunt, this blog was the record of the remaining illusions I had about our democracy, shattering around me.

It was written while I watched our political system strangle our ability to respond to the most enormous economic and social changes we have ever seen.

I blog now at www.defytheeconomy.wordpress.com. That blog has improved for the shedding of a few illusions. 

If you skip through the posts concentrating on Labour and the centre left, it is much more interesting. Most of the last two months of posting here was to share a link to something else. I am really thrilled this blog was longlisted for the Orwell Prize, and hope that in and among those posts(if that is why you are reading) you find some that you enjoy. Excuse the punctuation, stream of consciousness style and typos, I write in a hurry and I probably need an editor, but I mainly write to sort out the ideas spinning in my head.

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I blog here now.

...this blog was done and dusted last year. Sorry it got so bogged down with irrelevant lefty politics. The new one is here. Much improved.

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Sorry I know was last link...


..but after every such a long time there was a victory. The Lords defeated the proposals to make single parents pay for using the CSA. Again, that unelected hereditary abomination has to act as a check and balance because there is no parlliamentary party functioning.

It doesn't change things for the tens upon tens of thousands of women who just have been forced out of work. Doesn't help those who are reducing the deficit by being raped, beaten, controlled. It doesn't give women back a means of earning their financial autonomy after being trapped for our political parties to kick when they need to detract attention from something else.  But it's something after a soul destroying year of finding out why it was such a good idea to target working class women first, hardest, and repeatedly. After their careers have been taken, after their ability to pay their bills by working was taken, the domestic violence services that protected them went, someone thought it was probably not nice to charge them for trying to access money from their childs father. See, all is well with the world.

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It occurs to me..

..this entire years blog was a waste. I thought that Labour presented the biggest threat because I underestimated the electorate, I thought they would be our next government, and soon.  Like Ed Miliband did. And that the lefty politics I got bogged down in, was where change would come from. I could have been writing about cabbages for all the relevance it had to anyone else.

Fitting week to end this blog given the completion of Labour's triangulation on disability, skillfully offered up alongside the message that they weren't going to reverse any cuts. A statement predicated on the idea that anyone believed they were. Because we are all that dumb. Cue Labour poppet Jones expressing shock and condemnation at this wholly unexpected 'surrender', Sunny Hundal pondering why Labour keep repeating the same argument about welfare. Safe to let the word 'benefits' on Liberal Conspiracy now that the tragic death of Helen and Mark Mullins luckily coincided with a planned Labour triangulation on disability, and most of the last lot of welfare and social care 'reforms' are through safely. Now a master of the triangulation and cover for slashing welfare which drove him to vote Lib Dem. Neither have the abililty to understand the gravity of what has taken place.

Some advice to Labour. If you are going to continue to manufacture the appearance of relevance, you are going to have to increase the hiring pool, Rowenna, Owen and Twundal can't do it on their own. In a pattern becoming familiar, the only effective opposition to these cuts came from an undemocratic clergy whose christian values are not about bigotry and increasing political influence and from peers sitting in the blue part of that house.

I daresay a few are questioning Miliband's emphasis on copying the astroturf techniques he imported from the US, common sense should have told him they would lose effectiveness quite quickly. This years Netroots will be quieter without Luke Bozier leading the charge against the cuts, and Telegraph trainee Jennifer Mahoney to send out the right message, not that Ed as our Progressive Champion ever sold. Am guessing quite a few of those progressives will be eyeing up their prospects on the right as polls show Labour have charged headfirst into irrelevance. Dan Hodges can smirk away from the warm offices of the Telegraph as his ex colleagues ponder how to sell the situation.

Watching Labour implode under the gaze of a smart electorate was quite interesting, and I think things are about to get too interesting to be bogged down in 'what the left are doing'. An education though. Unelectable Labour means a new normal of hung parliaments, austerity, and coalitions. In the context of a global neo liberal clusterfuck. Or Conservative hegemony. Our very own fiscal compact.  Lord Owen is busy plotting himself into relevance with Labour to 'topple this coalition', according to today's Telegraph.. Ir is now apparent that the threads unfolding beyond Westminster are altogether darker than cuts to local libraries, and Westminster offers no viable political solutions to our problems at present. Occupy is reassuring, but none is likely to appear any time soon. Now we need to buckle in and try and weather the coming storms, the left will be too busy to notice. We could be decades away from a real viable political force with a credible economic and social policy alternative. Everything is as it should be. At least everything is a bit clearer than this time last year.

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This...

--...is brilliant!

PS Will get round to writing that post, been busy. V.

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Going into business..

Rainbow Triangulation Solutions. Political veneers for 'responsible' capitalism. We use epoxy resin which gives us unlimited colour combination possibilities. So thin you need a micrometer to measure. Custom order. Unthreatening but patriotic pink and cream stripe Liblabconservatism? We can do it!

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