Introducing...................

CAREERISM AND POLITICS:
WHY IT IS BAD FOR ALL OF US
The notion of an individual’s ‘political career’ is so wrapped up with the way we do politics in the UK that for the most part it is taken for granted, and goes unquestioned. In a democracy it should be a fundamental truth that we vote for a set of policies we approve of, and not ‘someone’s career’, yet too often in practical terms it is really the latter which gets most consideration. The politican’s career comes first; the good of the country a poor second. Yet I do not vote for someone’s career, and I suspect you do not either.This is important because it means that career-politicians are afraid to risk unpopularity over a number of vital issues or to offend powerful interest-groups. The list of subjects which career-politicians have ‘ring-fenced’ as untouchable is so long that it cannot here be covered in any detail, but a brief mention of groups who cannot be offended at any cost would include motorists, tax exiles, media tycoons and their editors and, above all, bankers. In particular, their generation-long failure to oversee the banking and financial services sector adequately is something whose consequences will be with us, to put it mildly, for some time to come.Another failure is their seeming lack of ability to talk any sort of sense whatsoever on the issue of ‘recreational drugs.’ Indeed, one would be tempted to say they talked a load of nonsense; yet even their nonsense has lacked any sort of consistency. THIS IS AN ISSUE WHICH HAS NEEDED ACTION FOR THE BEST PART OF A HALF-CENTURY, YET ONE WAY OR ANOTHER CAREER-POLITICIANS (OF ALL PARTIES) HAVE AVOIDED IT WITH A FORM OF OMERTA WHICH WOULD DO THE MAFIA PROUD.

A PARADIGM SHIFT IS NEEDED In science, whenever one set of assumptions or ‘laws’ are swept away and replaced by a new set of propositions, this updating process is often referred to as a ‘paradigm-shift’. This is now urgently required in UK politics. For what we have at the moment is a mock-adversarial system which generates a lot of sound-bites and fury, but precious little in the way of enlightenment. All the main parties are based around the same set of principles, which, broadly speaking, aim to serve the interests of the business and financial sectors within a globalised free-market arena. Any other interests, such as the provision of social services (health, education, police etc) are purely secondary. THERE IS NO LONGER A DEBATE ABOUT ANY OF THIS, AND THE THREE MAIN PARTIES IN UK POLITICS ARE MERELY HANGOVERS FROM AN ERA WHEN THE REWARDS TO LABOUR AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH WERE STILL QUESTIONED. THOSE QUESTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN ASKED FOR A VERY LONG TIME.
THE POLITICAL SYSTEM ITSELF NOW NEEDS UPDATING.

WORLD ECONOMY IN CRISISIt is our firm belief that the global economic system - sometimes referred to as 'globalisation' or just plain 'capitalism' - is now entering a very dangerous and volatile era. To many people this will be an outrageous idea. Capitalism, after all, has been responsible for elevating population masses from the mire of agrarian/feudal societies into levels of wealth and luxury which would have been unimaginable all those centuries ago. That is, of course, for most people fortunate enough to be living within the world's developed economies. Capitalism has had many heroes. All those entrepreneurs who helped to kick-start the Industrial Revolution, all those north of England mill-owners, deserve their place in its pantheon of honour. But the phenomenal growth of the UK, the first industrialised nation, followed quickly by others in western Europe and north America, was only made possible by a unique set of circumstances. The first of these was slavery, which delivered cheap labour and raw materials for all those mill-owners; the second was colonialisation which repeated the trick, though on a slightly more humane basis, in other parts of the world, notably in India and the Far East. The basic transaction of the capitalist system is to sell on a product or service for a greater monetary value than was required to produce it. Since, ultimately, the only production cost can be the value of labour, slavery was the most profitable system for capitalism. Now that slavery is no longer widely available, the next best system is a low wage economy. All free-market governments therefore tend to pursue policies which keep wages low since the capitalists domiciled in their territory are the only source of wealth. However, since capitalism is also a competitive system, where the interests of individual capitalists have been too closely identified with those of Nation-States this has led to trading rivalries which have, in the past, been the major source of war and conflict. Since the end of the Second World War, however, and particularly since the modern era of globalisation dating from the 1980s, the character of the entire capitalist system has been transformed. The most fundamental change has been the willingness (up to now) of all nations/trading blocks to accept the dollar and pound sterling as universal trading currencies despite witnessing the USA and the UK both become serious debtor-nations. The second change has been the expansion of the credit-base, especially since the 'big-bang' and other financial reforms of the 1980s. As a result, debt permeates every level of British and American society : personal, corporate and governmental. Indeed, the expansion of credit has vastly outstripped the productive growth of those economies. There are now signs that a fundamental shift in the world economy is taking place. Emerging economies like India and China are bidding up the price of raw materials and energy, notably oil; whereas Russia, a country rich in oil, is reasserting its position on the world stage. This will inevitably lead to inflationary pressure on many items, particularly food, demand for which is constantly growing. The west, meanwhile, after enjoying the benefits of cheap imports from the east for several decades, will now begin to feel the downside of globalisation. This will put a strain on the world's monetary trading-systems greater than anything ever before experienced. The problem facing the USA and UK is that they are now reaching the limits of their debt-fuelled lifestyles. What has happened in these economies is that their elites, mainly in the financial sector, have grown so obscenely wealthy that the rest of society beneath them has fractured. All the available evidence in the modern era shows that where societies grow more unequal, then the rate of violent crime begins to rise. This is especially true of the modern era because mass media enables people to compare their positions against one another, which was obviously not the case in Victorian times or even in the first half of the 20th century. As a result, the UK now has an epidemic of violent crime and a set of career-politicians who haven't a clue how to deal with it. Indeed, the career-politicians have made the problem worse because in their haste to boost the economy they seem to have forgotten to build enough prisons.
Prisons, of course, are just a temporary, short-term palliative, and while more of them will be needed over the coming years, they can never provide a solution. What is needed is a fundamental re-examination of the way our society operates. Why is it producing so many dysfunctional individuals? Why does our society not work for a wide sector of the community?
UK SOCIETY NEAR TIPPING-POINT You would need to have been holidaying on Mars (or just very rich and isolated) to know that the 'public space' within the UK has vastly deteriorated over last few decades. We're not just talking about the presence of a few more yobs and drunks in our town-centres in the evening, growing though that problem is, but in a severe undercurrent of criminality and violence. And no, this isn't all in our heads, as a lot of career-politicians like to imply. It isn't just a debate over statistics, either. The manipulation of statistics in this arena for the purpose of political 'spin' has been notorious. The Police, working to the limits of their resources and hamstrung both by the requirements of 'political correctness' and layers of unnecessary bureaucracy, would not be human if their attentions towards those at the lower end of the social scale have been less than 'vigorous'. As a result, a lack of authority in certain areas has become standard practice and violent, anti-social behaviour has become the NORM. This society now produces a large number of individuals who are - for want of a better word - 'feral'. These are individuals who lack any notion of morality or empathy towards others, and they are highly dangerous. Sadly, this problem has been neglected for so long that it has become an inter-generational phenomenon, placing UK society in particular in great jeopardy and perilously close to a 'TIPPING POINT'. WHAT CAN BE DONE?The reasons behind this fracturing of UK society are long and complicated. We cannot go into them here, though we will attempt to discuss them on our various alternative sites and blogs. It is the purpose of this site to propose a possible solution. Because what should be painfully obvious at the moment is that CURRENT STRATEGIES ARE JUST NOT WORKING. Indeed, when it comes to 'drug-related' crime they are actually making THE SITUATION WORSE. So, what can be done? Unfortunately, anything which is likely to emerge from conventional politics, such as directing more resources towards policing and prison-building, is simply going to take too long to have any impact. A classic case of too little, too late. And this, of course, assumes that there will be a consensus and a political will to pursue such policies in what is likely to be a time of prolonged economic downturn. It is a safe assumption, too, that no career-politician in the UK is going to propose any measure which radically affects thedistribution of wealth. Any measure which threatens the status-quo is not likely to succeed. THE ONLY POSSIBLE SOLUTION IS A FREE-MARKET SOLUTION, AND WE HAVE IT. IT IS CALLED SOCIAL CONTINENCE.

FIVE GOOD REASONS WHY ALL 'RECREATIONAL' DRUGS SHOULD BE MADE LEGAL:

1. The price of drugs will fall. Excess profits will disappear. A ready supply will be available. Addicts will not have to mug, rob or murder to get their "drug money". Most important of all, a legalised supply of recreational drugs will mean we stop subsidising the activities of career-criminals and the coffers of 'narco-states' and international terrorists.

2. The quality of the substance will be guaranteed. No more deaths from contaminated drugs, or passing on HIV or hepatitis through infected needles. There will be somebody to sue.

3. The silly illicit glamour attached to drug-taking will disappear. Whatever is forbidden always attracts the perverse side of human nature. (Remember the fiasco of Prohibition in the USA.) Instead, taking drugs will increasingly be seen as a fairly stupid thing to do.

4. The retailing and manufacture of drugs can be taxed, bringing in much-needed revenue and helping to fund more realistic systems of law and order (eg Social Continence).

5. Society will stop wasting resources on trying to prevent victimless crimes. In a free-market democratic society it is a logistical impossibility to stop people taking drugs. You might just as well have a law against the tide coming in ("The King Canute Tendency"); or indeed, have a law which tries to prevent masturbation!
But then again, when it comes to the stupid so-called "War on Drugs", there's more than enough W*****S already!