Put the Labour Party out of our misery, please

From The New Statesman:

The tighter household benefit cap (cut from £26,000 to £23,000 in London and £20,000 elsewhere) was similarly crafted with the “welfare party” in mind. The speed with which Labour endorsed the measure reflected how Osborne has moved the political centre of gravity to the right. Shadow cabinet ministers told me that they had moral objections to the policy but believe they cannot allow themselves to be outflanked by the Tories again on such an emotive issue.

Good Lord. What the Hell?

Are Labour really as awful as all that? I'd have thought hungry kids in rags getting shovelled out of their homes by bailiffs would have been precisely the sort of thing Labour would have wanted to be 'outflanked' on?

Because it is just the sort of stuff that drives home to people what these polices mean to the people affected by them.

Almost everyone opposes $26000pa handouts when it is just a number. Most of us don't actually want to see degradation and hardship that it means, however. Why we continue to allow the right to define this as an issue of 'benefit scroungers' and not an issue of insuring all Britain's children are well looked after is beyond me.

Is the only 'strategic vision' possessed by Labour really the desperate desire to avoid negative headlines in the Mail and Sun? Truly pathetic.

The current Labour PArty, transported back to the late 80s, would have endorsed the Poll Tax because they feared being 'out flanked' on it. This is the same issue. We've got a budget that will pauperise children and reduce the income of the working poor by $2000 a year. And Labour are endorsing these cuts, rather than using them to fight back against this colostomy bag of a government? Are they too craven, or to unprincipled, or just too thick to make a fight on it?

I'd vote Lib Dem, if I could find one.

Only joking.

But I can't think why anyone would vote for anything so un-utterably useless as the current incarnation of the British Labour Party. It would seem Ed Milliband - who suddenly seems like a colossus in comparison to the pretenders to his throne - took the party's spine on holiday with him. He's been criticised for that. But you can understand why he would do it. I couldn't want to be around such a bunch of repuslse, supine sell-outs either.

Making Work Pay, George?

I do wish people would make up their minds.

Half of George Osborne's budget seems to consist of ideas nicked from Labour's manifesto.

A few weeks ago, we were told these policies were at best likely to be totally ineffective, at worst wildly irresponsible, veritable communism, class warfare, the politics of envy and pandering to the voter base. Now here we are, with the Times and the Mail and the Sun and Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, cheering on virtually the same policies as brilliant.

But brilliant this budget is not. The Daily Mail, in same moment of madness, has published this rather telling summary of how the measures will affect different groups of people:
















Paltry increases for some, and a whopping hit for the working poor. The only thing worse than this budget is Labour's response to it.

China Crisis

I've been predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy for a while now, and it seems I might finally be proved right:

Minutes after opening, the Shanghai Composite Index fell by just over 8%. while the Shenzhen Component was down almost 5%.

Within ten minutes of trading, more than 1,000 shares across China’s two stock markets had dropped by the daily limited of 10% and had their shares automatically suspended. About 1,400 companies, or more than half of those listed – filed for a trading halt in an attempt to prevent further losses.

China’s securities regulator said there was “panic” in the stock market with irrational selling off increasing and “leading the stock market to a situation of intense liquidity”.

 This lends itself to some impressive visuals:

And some Doom Filled Graphs With Big Arrows and dramatic text in case you miss the significance of the Big Arrows

Whether this does develop  into a proper crisis, as opposed to a bit of a wobble in an overall upward trend remains to be seen; though there is a whiff of genuine panic, and even some moderate concern expressed on National Radio.  If this is the real thing, then it puts all the excitement around Greece into perspective: Greece, profoundly, doesn't matter.  It's a small country, a long way away.  Even for the Eurozone countries, its only a minor nuisance.  To the rest of the world, it's a soap opera.  China going to the dogs, on the other hand, is the complete works of Shakespeare and Wagner getting played simultaneously on the same stage: a bit too much to take in, even for those who can claim expertise.  Suffice to say, Chinese demand keeps our economy ticking over.  Chinese supply keeps our lifestyles comfortable (our meaning New Zealand, and the rest of world).

If either part of that equation is jeopardised, and we'll feel it, massively.  If both are affected, we'll be staring into an abyss that makes the situation in Europe seem like a light farce.

But on a lighter note, many may not know (and few care) that China Crisis were / are a somewhat obscure New Wave British band.  While I don't think I've had cause to think of them in about 30 years, that has not detered them - Wikipedia informs me they are still going.

Here's one of their songs, to while away a few minutes while we wait to see just how doomed we are.

The artful dodger

Greedy Tories raking it in, as usual, courtesy of Channel 4 News:

Chancellor George Osborne's family business made £6 million in a property deal with a developer based in a tax haven, a Channel 4 News investigation has found.

Wallpaper firm Osborne & Little teamed up with a secretive corporation in the British Virgin Islands, to draw up plans to redevelop its former London headquarters into housing.

The companies jointly applied for planning permission for around 45 flats and houses, and once given the go-ahead, Osborne and Little sold its site to the offshore firm for £6,088,000.

A legal expert shown contracts obtained by Channel 4 News said Osborne & Little must have known the developer was based offshore, and had the potential to avoid millions in tax.

At the time, the Chancellor was the beneficiary of a family trust that owned at least 15% of Osborne and Little, so would have personally benefitted from the sale.

Now, it must be noted that the article goes on to state that "There is no suggestion the Chancellor, or Osborne & Little avoided any tax in the deal, or that they or offshore property developer Nightingale Mews Inc. did anything illegal."

Of course, I'm sure it's easy to do nothing illegal when you get to write the rules.

Just look at the man.  He must be guilty of SOMETHING.

Dickens, even if he'd had the imagination to envisage such character, would have decided not to include him in any tale because he would have seemed to grotesque.

EvilRihannaSexistVideoGate

I haven't seen it, of course, but I reserve my right to express my opinions categorically before seeing it.

But as there aren't enough things for us to worry about in the world, we might as well take a few minutes to get upset about a pop video.

Is it:

a) an artistic statement with a strong feminist pedigree challenging conventional notions of acceptable female behaviour and allowing a woman to defy patriarchal stereotypes and resists the sexualised objectification of her body according to those paradigms and thus act as a nexus for resistance to misogynistic repressive gender prejudices, effectively decolonising her body in an act of reclamation of both her sexual and racial integrity from a racist and sexist patriarchy?

b) a negative example of the issues around intersectional oppressions, where Rihanna's racial identitiy as a coloured person visiting violence on a white person breaches the notion of solidarity with another female, posing questions as to the viability of a feminist movement in a society where class and race are still significant barriers to advancement, possibly more so than sex is?

c) a cunning appropriation of and satire on the misogyny and violence typical of mainstream media, in which male-on-male violence is the stock in trade, raising questions about the viewer response by confronting the audience with the hypocrisy of a situation where male-on-male violence is celebrated, but female-on-female violence and criminality is deemed troubling and somehow wrong?

d) Mostly just a bit of attention seeking by a third rate celebrity who - like most other pop stars - will do pretty much anything to claw even more money into her already bloated coffers. Rihanna's videos are not advancing any message, merely Rihanna's bank account. Controversy sells, so she is controversial. She's Fox News and the Daily Mail.

Worth reading

I won't try to put into my own (white, privileged, middle-class) words what Gary Yonge manages to express so eloquently in his own.

It's long, but worth reading.

Evilracistflaggate

It has been brought to my attention that the all powerful, many tentacled Doom Hydra of the Left has - rather than claiming complete eternal power - decided to make kids toys politically correct

Why the hive-minded hordes of left-wing attack drones (of which hordes I am a proud member in good standing) have decided to do this, rather than seizing the levers of power and sending our enemies to the guillotine is not made clear; but I am sure our leaders know what they are doing.  The battle for the future starts now, and it seems the battlefield will be the appearance of little toy cars.

Obviously, our opponents will not expect this and will swiftly be outflanked by this deft thrust, a daring assault comparable to Lee's march to Gettysburg.  And we all know how that ended.

An appropriate comparison, for I am thinking about what can only be called Evilracistflaggate, the huge fuss that has blown up around the use of the 'Confederate' flag, following the horrid events in South Carolina.  'Confederate' in inverted commas used because flag we commonly think of as the Confederate flag - the Starry Cross - was never the flag of the Confederacy.  It was used by General Lee's Army of North Virginia, but the design most of us recognise as the 'confederate flag' is just a detail from the second and third flags adopted by the Confederacy. The second one had a big white bit as well as the 'starry cross' and the third one had a red stripe.

(One wonders if things might have gone better for the Confederates if they had spent less time worrying about the best bit of cloth to die under, and more about winning wars.  Probably not.)

The Starry Cross, it seems, has suddenly become as socially unacceptable as anti-Semitism and owning people.  Totally reliable and unbiased sites like kotaku.com assure us that America is losing its mind in a rush to remove the flag from absolutely everything, ever, even things it might actually be appropriately displayed on:

Today, Apple decided to start yanking games that use the Confederate flag in any way (via TouchArcade). For example, you can now no longer buy the strategy iOS games Civil War: 1862, Civil War: 1863, Civil War: 1864, and Civil War: Gettysburg, which, as you might guess, use the Confederate flag because they’re video games about the Civil War.

Meanwhile. it seems, the evil liberals and PC leftists (is there any other kind?) are busy trying to take toys from children and re-write pop culture history by deleting the Starry Cross from General Lee - no, not the real general Lee, things haven't got that bad yet - but the car in The Dukes of Hazard:

Warner Bros, which owns the licensing rights to the 80s series, announced Wednesday it will no longer manufacture miniature replicas of the souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger, which featured a giant Confederate battle flag painted on the roof. ‘Warner Bros. 

Consumer Products has one licensee producing die-cast replicas and vehicle model kits featuring the General Lee with the confederate flag on its roof — as it was seen in the TV series,’ the company told Vulture. ‘We have elected to cease the licensing of these product categories.’

The snag here is that neither Apple nor Warner Bros are actually far left revolutionary communist-gay rights-environmentalist-PC-feminNAZI collectives that the howling madpots of the right seem to think.

They ARE capitalist enterprises intent on making a profit. If they decide to drop or change a product, its down to their desire to protect their brand and maximise their profits. The forces driving these decisions are profit related, and nothing to do with 'the left' or some supposed politically correct agenda. If you want to blame anything, blame market forces, which are all about shifting product and profit. I guess there is no profit to be made from sanity and accuracy.

Which tells you everything you need to know about capitalism.

(For what it is worth, I'd agree the Apple decision to remove the Confederate flag from civil war computer games IF it would have been correct to show it there (i.e. for Lee's army) is barmy. But I think it often gets used inaccurately, as a symbol many of us associate with the Confederacy.  I doubt many people would recognise the first flag of the Confederacy, the historical 'Stars and Bars' and the other two would only be recognisable because they contain the 'Starry Cross' as a element.  So changing it might actually just be making things a bit more accurate and correcting the assumption that the 'Starry Cross' was the flag of the Confederacy. Surely we're all in favour of historical accuracy?)

And it seems that the vile liberal-communists aren't just intent on banning cars and pixels, but films a well.  Truly, first they came for the General Lee, then they came for Scarlett and Rhett:

When it comes to the Left, it is always only a matter of time before they show their fascist colors. We’re seeing it all over the place in a media frenzy that began with a cause I agree with (removing Confederate Flags from state capitols) into what is now a full-blown mob waging a bullying witch hunt to completely memory-hole the flag. 

Wednesday, the thing that you believe could never happen, did happen: a New York film critic has called for the banning of The Greatest Movie Ever Made. 

In just three days, the left’s mob mentality took us from removing the Rebel Flag from a state capitol to banning “Gone with the Wind.”

Only, of course, it is not as simple as Breitbart would like to make out.

The critic in question, Lou Lumenick, is not actually calling for Gone With The Wind to be banned. He is simply wondering if audiences should pay more attention to the racism and slavery that underpins the movie, rather than venerating it as a quaint and charming piece of romantic melodrama.

Of course, the howling hate mob of the right - the true enemies of rationality, sanity and reason - deliberately misrepresent this, because truth is poison to them.  The tragedy of South Carolina has prompted some people to wake up to the hatefulness of some of the things too often taken for granted.  That's progress.  The right doesn't like progress and stirs up a vicious cauldron of lies about it, blaming everything on this cabal of leftist witches and demons; witches and demons who seem to be all-powerful, but mysteriously interested only in using this power to achieve petty ends.  No flags on cars - that'll teach the Right!

A part of me wonders if this is a deliberate ploy to move the debate away from where it really should be - the easy availability of guns - onto something (anything) else.  Because flags, sanity and honesty are far less important to the right than every racist lunatic being able to get his hands on a firearm.