In the previous thread, mr mongoose posed the question: what is politics for? So I've been picking away at that in my head since he posted it. mr inmate's response was a combination of learned helplessness and weary cynicism. mr bungalow bill took us back to Auden's September 1st 1939, "clinging to their average day........children afraid of the night, who have never been happy or good."
I suppose, having inherited the hosting of a political blog, I should have a go at answering that huge question - what is politics for? Apologies to those who know all this stuff already. It might be of most interest to our overseas readership and those ishmaelites who don't pay much attention to this stuff (and who, indeed, can blame you?)
As Wiki defines it: Politics (from Ancient Greek πολιτικά (politiká) 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources. (And yes, I do bung Wiki a fiver when they ask for it).
Politics reflects the complexity of the society in which you live and the method of its governance. Parliamentary democracy is particularly complex, as it is representational, not Athenian. Athenian democracy, developed from the fifth to the fourth century B.C., is often cited as the precursor of Western democracy - but it is pretty much wholly unlike our system: all adult male citizens - the dēmos - had equal political rights, the opportunity to participate directly in politics and were required to take an active part in government. Which meant that 70% of the population had no political rights, being women or slaves (much the same thing, really). Other popular forms of government outwith the nations known collectively as the West are oligarchies (a power structure where a minority rules) and autocracies (dictatorships or absolute monarchies).
Prior to the Reform Acts of the nineteenth century, a few boroughs gave the vote to all male householders, but many parliamentary seats were under the control of a small group or sometimes a single rich aristocrat and British politics was very much a rich man's game. Through a very long process of struggle and reform, the franchise was extended to all British citizens, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18, unless you are an offender detained under the Mental Health Act or a convicted serving prisoner. This ban was challenged by three convicted prisoners in 2001. British courts rejected the challenge and one of the prisoners, John Hirst, took his case to the European Court of Human Rights. In Hirst v United Kingdom (No 2), the ECtHR ruled that the UK was in contravention of Article 3 of Protocol No.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that signatory states should "hold free elections under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people." The central element of the ruling was that the blanket ban on prisoner voting was indiscriminate and disproportionate. No subsequent government of any political colour has rescinded the ban, but a sort of compromise was reached in 2018 that allowed prisoners released on temporary licences to vote. I don't suppose Putin's prisoners are allowed to vote, either. The ECtHR has stopped nagging about it, though.
In Britain, General Elections are held every 5 years or less, at the whim of the Prime Minister - as in: Well Done, Sunak. Individuals can stand for election, but the majority of candidates will have been sponsored by a political party. The person who gets most votes gets to be the Member of Parliament for that constituency. This means that many, many people are not represented by someone whose views they espouse.
Complicating the picture is Devolution. I have two M.P.s. My Westminster chap, Alistair Carmichael, and my Holyrood chap, Liam McArthur. The election cycles of Westminster and the devolved nations are not contiguous. A further complication is local government - each local authority has its own little government, known as a Council, to order the administration of local matters - things like Planning, the maintenance of Roads, Lighting, removal of Waste, Schools, Social Services, and, in Orkney, the maintenance of a Quarry and a Harbour. They are not necessarily very good at these things - remember Aggregate-Gate, when Orkney Islands Council bought and shipped in tons and tons of quarry stone for spite because they weren't allowed to extend the quarry they owned? They never did sell it all, and last I heard, they were having it all pulverised as road dressing. Or Bingate, when thousands of bins were ordered which couldn't be used because they were the wrong size for the bin lorries? And as for Planning - they seem to exist to oppose the building of new houses and extensions to existing houses. But Angela Rayner pledged this morning to sort them out and remove these blocks to her programme of expansion of house building in Britain. Then you have Trade Union politics, which also holds elections to appoint people to represent members in their trade unions. It is very, very bureaucratic - worse than the Labour Party, with an abstruse debating structure to decide on their policies.
So, to answer the question of what are politics for - it seems to me that politics serves to support an intricate network of career opportunities for people who don't want to work for a living and are too ugly for show business. We're talking jobs, here. Lucrative jobs. With perks. Expenses. Free holidays. Corporate hospitality at the football. Free clothes and specs (until the other day when Sir Keir was finally shamed into saying we'll buy our own clothes). Free accommodation in Downing Street or an allowance towards maintaining a second home. Free or subsidised food and booze. SPADs (special advisor, a temporary civil servant supporting Government ministers),
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| Former Conservative Leader William Hague and SPAD |
totty (an offensive way to refer to people considered to be sexually attractive), free wifi to watch tractor porn in the House of Commons and lots of other sexual opportunities.
Talking of sex and politics, in the Yorkshire village of Shiptonthorpe, population 503, a woman standing for election as a ward councillor in 2022 (average salary £34,762 - more in London), received a nasty anonymous letter. She destroyed it, but remembers that "it said the only way I would ever get anywhere within politics would be if I was to perform unspeakable things to men."
I wish they wouldn't do that. If they don't say what these unspeakable things are, I'm left to imagine the worst. What could they be? Fisting? Coprophilia? With or without a glass topped coffee table? Golden Showers? Maybe there's worse things that I've been too sheltered to have even heard of.
This woman, anonymous because the BBC wants to protect her privacy, despite telling us that she was an election candidate for tiny little Shiptonthorpe, so I dare say the locals know fine well who she is; subsequently received three further nasty letters. Humberside Police confirmed it received a report of the letter. “Inquiries were carried out at the time, including reviewing CCTV.....However, the content of the alleged letter was unavailable and subsequently no further investigative opportunities were able to be obtained."
This woman, anonymous because the BBC wants to protect her privacy, despite telling us that she was an election candidate for tiny little Shiptonthorpe, so I dare say the locals know fine well who she is; subsequently received three further nasty letters. Humberside Police confirmed it received a report of the letter. “Inquiries were carried out at the time, including reviewing CCTV.....However, the content of the alleged letter was unavailable and subsequently no further investigative opportunities were able to be obtained."
We know that the police don't detect anything. They wait for people to tell them who did it, so no surprise there - but CCTV? Were they looking for somebody writing in a furtive manner, m'lud?
Snide old BBC referenced the 2023 film Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Colman, the dramatisation of a spate of anonymous letters received by the inhabitants of the small town of Littlehampton in the spring of 1920. Turned out that the recipient of the vilest, most sexually inventive letters was actually the author of the said letters.
Whilst I'm mentioning the iniquities of the Beeb, it has been all over the Mohamed al-Fayed sex story like a rash. They've really gone to town on this one - documentary, podcast, constant mentions on all the news programmes on all their channels, live, i-player and radio. You can just hear the Corporation's collective sigh of relief - no, he never worked here.
Back to politics. I was trying hard, this morning, to pay attention to Martin Geissler interviewing beardy slab-faced Ian Murray, Secretary of State for Scotland, at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, when I became increasingly distracted by the busy background scene of delegates, members, press, accessibility stewards and other staff hobbling backwards and forwards and up and down the stairs. Big, like elephants, as mr ishmael would have said. And incredibly badly dressed and T-shirted.
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There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps
please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr
Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux
https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4
At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.
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| The Ginger Growler- John Prescott in a skirt. |
23 comments:
In order to answer the question: "what is politics for?", it is necessary to first address the issue Marx wrote about. Namely, the fundamental inconsistency between "democracy" and "western capialism".
Marx wrote that the capitalist will seek to allocate capital so as to increase the stock of capital via the generation of "surplus" (ie profit from the value created by workers less the proportion of the surplus given to the workers in wages). The workers, which are the majority of the population - the "demos" if you like - have no say on the allocation of the surplus or the capital. The capital and surplus are reserved for the benefit of the owners of capital, the minority of the population known as capitalists.
Marx insisted, some would say proved, that this is an inefficient economic system, if the objective is to maximise the wellbeing of the population in general. IE fundamentally anti-democratic.
In the UK, the socialist party, the party of the workers, of Marx if you like, currently the Labour party, have no qualms about accepting freebies from capitalists (free clothes and Taylor Swift tickets being the tip of a very deep iceberg). And why are those freebies being give to the politicians? Of course to further the objectives of the capitalist which by definition are at the expense of the workers.
So there we have the answer to the original question. The purpose of politics in the West is to present to the majority the acceptable face of the capitalist. A mask if you like.
A fundamental inconsistency and a cynical lie.
Thank you, mr mike, an admirable summary.
But that isn't the obective, mr mike. No capitalist ever got out of his silken bed to maximise the wellbing of anyone but himself. If indeed capitalists do do that. I think proper capitalists are games players. They are about winning and the cash is just a scoreboard.
And what is this evil capital? Capital is savings. Capital is spending and enjoyment foregone on grounds of thrift and being careful. Or at least it used to be when money was real. Now that money is just digital dots, I am less convinced that the institutional capitalist's reward is justified by what is becoming a rather convoluted risk equation.
Politics is the distribution of someone else’s wealth, pure n simple. Politicians are in the unique position, without creating goods or services, to move that wealth around, to receive favours from the capitalists in return for contracts of phenomenal amounts of money.
In the distant past govament had only tax money to spend, but, since (((they))), the wandering tribe, convinced govaments that (((they))) alone would create money, politicians have been dancing to (((their))) tune, and the taxpayers paying interest to (((them))).
As we saw during both the so called ‘pandemic’ and the so called ‘banking ‘crisis’ of 2008, money could be found in an instant, no problem whatsoever. Those benefiting were Bigpharma, bankers, politicians an their mates; the workers? the taxpayers? nah. However the biggest winners were those collecting all the interest owed on all that ‘borrowed’ money. (((Them))).
It’s not just learned helplessness mrs I, the politicians are gaming a system created by (((them))), our only part is paying back the original loan, plus interest. We, Homo sapiens, refuse to see the game.
I watched Two Tiers Kier's speech today - so you didn't have to - and the sausages howler apart, it passed me by and left almost no impression whatsoever. Just the heckler was noticed. TTK made an in-joke about the 2019 conference so that his entourage - the in crowd, the camp followers, the true believers - could have a secret titter. It is now them versus us. That's apparently what politics is for.
Thank you so much for watching Sir Stammerer's speech for me, mr mongoose - and it is great that the British Government is putting its back into getting the sausages back from Gaza - nearly as excellent as when Gordon Brown saved the world.
There appears to be some upset, mrs i, inside the People's Party. Not only has TTK (with baffling stupidity) used his "mate" Ali's flat for his lad's "GCSE revision" but has also used it to make several of the various videos put out my himself over the last few years - including during lockdown. There is even rumour of Ugandan recreations with person or persons not to be speculated about here. Not me, your honour, I know nothing and seek to imply even less than that.
I wonder with the climate antics unravelling - Germany about to be in flames a la 1925, Mad Millitwat yelping his life away everywhere one looks - are TPTB going to try and make a break for it this autumn. Burn the bugger down and just take control in Europe and the US? Would they dare? Plenty of folk think that next year will see the collapse of several country's finances. It will be too late then.
Mr mongoose: the imminent collapse of the Western financial house of cards is why they are propelling the West to all out war in Europe and the Middle East, not to mention against China.
Again, to paraphrase Goering: if I hear a mention of freedom and democracy, I will reach for my gun.
Poor me being just a phantom engineer, mr mike, I have often felt that there is something about the mad money system that you know and I don't. All I have ever done is help people make a frying pan for 2 quid instead of 3 quid. I thought I was being helpful.
You obviuosly went to the wrong type of school, Mr mongoose - not one of those high fee, snobby kind of places. There you would have learned how to move bits of paper from one side of your desk to another - like an accountant, lawyer or human resources manage. God forbid, you may have become a politician, or if you were born in the right sort of bed, a hereditary, and then you wouldn't have even needed to move the paper.
I see mr Mike that we are at last beginning to understand "what is politics for"- the movement of taxpayers money to the preferred party honchos and donors.
It is, if I may say so, why the Ukrainian nastiness is so popular with our "politicians". Famously, that political genius Hunter Biden revealed the game with his "10% for the big guy" e-mail comment
Mr cascadian: Ukraine is but a mere microcosm. The West in general, of course led by the UK, has been raping, plundering and stealing in the name of democracy for centuries. Just in the case of the UK, consider India (the East India Company), China (the Century of Humiliation), Burma, Africa, the Caribbean...
Of course, the jewel in the crown, the largest country on the planet, and the richest in resources, that is Mother Russia, continues to illude the colonial imperialists. For centuries, Europe has combined to conquer Russia. Napoleon, even WW2, was a coalition of European forces aimed at Russia, with WW2 in particular being in part funded and supported by America and Europe.
The Ukrainian adventure, again supported by America and Europe, is just the latest attempt to fail.
As you correctly note, this is all about money. Actually it is more fundamental: it is the western capitalist's failing attempts to grow their market share at everyone's expense, as Marx predicted.
Apologies, Mr cascadian, it was me replying.
Lots to unpack there Mr Mike, but we seem to be in general agreement that the psycopath politicians are willing to provoke tremendous damage for their personal benefit.(If I have read your comment correctly?)
I incline to Mark Steyn's view that the wailing and gnashing of teeth related to the supposed "rape and plunder of raw materials" in former empire countries is a case of recent liberal/woke self-loathing. Most of the mentioned countries (minus China) pine for the order and infrastructure that the empire bestowed. Note I am NOT saying that exploitation did not occur, of course it did. The unanswered question-was it a fair trade?
As to Russia, who cannot be over-joyed to see them taking on the entirety of Europe and a geriatric USA and daily giving them a sound thrashing. Europe has set itself back a half century and will have a tough time recreating once-thriving economies formerly based entirely on cheap Russian energy. Ukraine will be a pauper non-entity, much like1950s Britain.
It was good to hear Mr Putin announcing a new nuclear strike deterence policy today-lets hope that stops NATO/EU farting in church.
Mr cascadian: We are in agreement, but I have to disagree with Mark Steyn's view, which is the apologist view in Britain. The genocide of the indigenous Americans by the colonialist settlers, of course applied to Canada also. No amount of "whitewashing" can disguise this.
Recent calculations of the British Empire's (East India Company, supported by the British Army) exploitation of India is in the trillions in current value (the currency hardly matters).
Just Google the "Amritsar Massacre" - hardly a hearts-and-mind exercise.
Good morning Mr Mike, no indigenous genocide in Canaduh, honest, not invent, no whitewash. I will leave it at that, as Mrs Ishmael would wish.
As to the Amritsar Massacre, I would counter with the closer-to-home Peterloo Massacre, not the same scale but that's how the empire dealt with these issues-do not expect me to approve of it.
Wiki begs to differ, Mr cascadian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples
If you wish to be mis-informed by the phoney UN truth and reconciliation nonsense and "cultural genocide" Mr Mike that is your prerogative.
The plains of North America were a pastoral paradise of buffalo, hardship, tribal conflict and early death. One cannot blame the plains people for fighting back. Who would not? But they were outgunned and doomed. Was it right? No. Was it wrong? Plenty of it. Was it inevitable? Obviously.
The most disgraceful societies on the face of the earth are two of the oldest. India and China have been, and are, and in the words of Professor Amy Wax, shit-holes. They are the most racist - among themselves, the most unequal, the most ferociously wicked of any on earth. And they have had longer to learn than us by a thousand years at least.
What do we want? Penecillin or the Sentinelese 30-years-and-dead zoo beyond the ocean. "It's their culture, innit." No, bollocks. We have progress and troubles enough keeping that on track.
That wickedness happens is true. Of course, it does. Hang the fuckers when you can catch them but let us not sit moiling in misery, wringing our hands because western civilisation gave the world the rule of law, medicine, science, engines, power, TV, IT, rayon, anti-histies, rockets to the moon, dead white scientists by the thousand, and Masterchef.
All that mr mongoose said.
Since "truth and reconciliation" as it relates to residential school deaths in canaduh has popped into the conversation, this tweet may be of interest. We have arrived at a point in canaduh where an MP has proposed a bill to penalize anybody who "denies" that these allegations are unproved.
Remember these MPs are so well informed that they stood and applauded a nazi in the House of Commons.
In summary they are attempting to suppress inconvenient free speech.
https://x.com/jonkay/status/1840021728698773981
Formerly links I have posted were not accessible I will copy paste the comments attached to the video or you may wish to seek out Jonathon Kay on twitter/X
Jonathon Kay
amazing how we went from “truth & reconciliation” to “don’t ask about those 215 graves or we’ll send u to jail.” Hard to imagine anything more corrosive to *actual* reconciliation. And it’s turning orange shirt day into a farce (insofar as our surfing PM didn’t get that job done in tofino)
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Leah ProudLakota (she/her)
@LeahGazan
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Sep 26
Today, I tabled Bill C-413 to help combat Residential School denialism.
In honor of Orange Shirt Day, I extend this gift to survivors and their families on behalf of myself and all my colleagues. May you find justice and healing in the protection of your stories.
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