EVERYTHING UP, BUT SOME THINGS DOWN Thursday, Nov 15 2007

Situation report on our marvelous global economy – particularly as it applies to Britain.
Petrol prices up. Food costs rising. Home heating bills going crazy. Well, it had to happen, didn’t it? After all, you didn’t really believe the lie about cheap food and fuel forever?
But you did believe it for long enough. Long enough for supermarkets to get their monopoly. Long enough for previously nationalized industries to go private to keep the fat bellies of the super rich.

And of course, wages rose in kind …

… so we all became affluent, and were able to buy our luxurious houses and take out our fat private pensions.
Except those pensions are not as fat as they were supposed to be. And those houses went up, up, up in price and turned you into a wage serf.

But never mind.

The pension and mortgage funds had your money just long enough to make everyone believe the con that new super capitalism was thriving, even though it was bolstered by the inflated mortgage and pension you were buying.
So you’ve got nothing but yourself to blame now that petrol is going up, food is going up, and heating bills are going up ….
Oh … and as house prices are about to come down.
Now that will put us in a whole new negative equity …

© Anthony North, November 2007

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SHAME IN THE CITY? Monday, Sep 3 2007

City workers have rewarded themselves this year with bonuses worth £14billion, leading to many UK politicians, trade unions and charities criticizing the sheer greed of our financial institutions.
Following soaring stock markets and many takeovers, it seems our new brand of super-capitalism is doing so well that traders can pay themselves so far over the odds that non-millionaires are being viewed as paupers.
Of course, the reality of the success of today’s capitalism lies elsewhere. It lies in the ability of big business to con the ordinary person that he needs inflated pensions funds and high mortgages.
For rather than trade fuelling the success of today’s capitalism, it is the average man in the street, his hard earned salary propping up a system that would collapse over night without him.
There should be shame in the city. Not inflated bonuses. And, of course, an admission that the entire system is a con.

© Anthony North, September 2007

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NO SUPER CASINO, THAT’S SUPER Sunday, Jul 15 2007

It is hard to explain my relief that Brownski has decided against the Super Casino. So many conflicting thoughts sweep through my head. My relief has nothing to do with gambling – there are plenty of gambling opportunities in the UK as it is – but with the obvious implications of such huge casinos in Britain.
Of course, let’s not give Brownski the credit for this. First of all, we must worry about his sheer power to decide such a thing by himself. Then we must also remember that he was a major player in the government that agreed it in the first place. It strikes me like a simple goodwill gesture to con us he’s a nice bloke. Don’t believe it.

BIG VERSES SMALL

So why am I against the Super Casino? First of all, there is my reluctance to go for anything big, and the government’s increasing need to get rid of the small. This view is fuelled by big business, who claim the ‘big’ option leads to the most cost effective efficiency.
This may be true – to a point – but the obvious spin-off is that obligation to the customer declines. In a sensible world, a good business is one where a consumer has real power and influence over the business.
Only in this way does a business feel the need to look after the customer. But if they’re big enough, an individual customer can do them no harm, and the bosses are too remote for the customer to have an input. The ‘small’ requires observance to the customer; the ‘big’ means they don’t have to give a damn.

ORGANISED CRIME

A further problem with the ‘big’ is that it becomes more attractive to organized global crime. And this is particularly so in a business that is traditionally associated with such crime in the first place.
One of the great successes of the British Police is their ability to keep out of the country the worst effects of organized crime. Here, such a practice is on the small scale and ad hoc. But as soon as big casinos are thought of, Mafia is straight there to take over. Just look at Las Vegas to see how it works.
This relationship between Mafia and big business can be seen at work in every country where capitalism takes off in a big way. For always, before super-capitalism breaks out, you have a crimewave as Mafia organizes itself before disappearing into the capitalist woodwork.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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