Kagey

For many years having been of the school of loonies…of the Lunatic Left, the Loony Enviro Faction or just the plain Misguided and Unrealistic the last few weeks have been quietly satisfying.

Not because I take any pleasure in observing the turmoil striking the financial community but because perhaps right now ‘the system’ that is based on continued growth looks … well, unrealistic.

I even have some sympathy for the traders who are at this time the focus for so much anger. The market just does what it does and the germ of this particular crash was in the crash of the twin towers. It was then that with the global economy on the brink following 9-11 that the US government pumped in heaps of cash and said to a shocked America ‘go shopping!’

With the wholesale cost of money cheap and bundles of it sloshing around the markets just looked for innovative ways to sell it. While the gravy train rolled along Bush, Blair, Brown and the rest were happy to look like masters of the Universe.  Now that the inevitable bubble has burst their solution is offer the same remedy; to pump more borrowed money into the system. To perpetuate the notion that business as usual is sustainable or even possible.

Now for some time many of us have maintained that continued growth in the global economy is just not possible. The environmental constraints that having only one planet places upon the system makes a bigger crunch inevitable. Economies like the US, Britain and the developed world consume the potential of 3 planets to sustain their lifestyles so we’re already in deep debt to the world’s poor and the ecosystem as whole. As the competition for the earth’s resources like oil, timber, fish and even water and soil becomes focused on diminishing returns then the holes in the free market system will become un-pluggable with more monetary debt. There is no buy back on extinction.

In the coming weeks much will be talked about the economy and much less about the environment. In fact there is something of a trend to say that in these times of troubled finances we can less afford to make the environment a priority. We ignore the signs of an imminent collapse in the ability of the earth to support our way of life with peril. And the signs are writ large.

It’s time to ask, just who is running the asylum!

In what can only be described as the PR coup of the day Peace and Justice heavyweights Gandhi and Luther-King have agreed to help the Conservatives develop an election winning ‘feel good’ strategy. “We’re confident that with Mat and L.K. on the team we can deliver a social justice package that supports our plans for continued economic growth.” said a beaming David Cameron. “Thanks to the generous help from our major donors they’ll be joining Sir Bob Geldof and Zac Goldsmith in creating the dream green ticket.”

Last night Labour were said to be in talks with Bono but a spokesman said, “as Mr Blair has God as his council we can afford to be choosy.”

I jest but if Martin Luther King were alive would he be ‘advising’ a right wing political party on civil rights? I don’t think so. Ghandi wouldn’t recognise this Labour government as having a socialist heart either.

Sadly today’s heroes have been reduced to consultants to help sell the ‘Green Wash’ of political parties and we can only look on with cynical acceptance as the corporations snap up the ethical brands we once thought were beyond their reach.

When President Bush announced following 9/11,”you’re either with us or agin us” I thought how crass and simplistic? Yet as icons like Anita Roddick roll over I’m beginning to wonder just who is on our side?

Ecologist Editor, Zac Goldsmith joins Conservatives

Cadbury buy Green & Blacks

Body Shop sells out to Loreal

Geldof Advises Conservatives

 

If Thatcherite policies were flattening our manufacturing industry a new saviour was on the horizon, the Leisure Industry.

Slick business analysts predicted a boom in free time and that the new business opportunity was in ‘Leisure’. At that moment most of us were desperately trying to keep afloat as the arse fell out of the only economy we knew but we were assured that that this was just a short painful readjustment. In 1980 we were at the dawn of a new era.
Making stuff was a task for the third world and our service industries would soon take up more than the slack. Once the economic conversion was done the workers of our modern economy would have far greater wealth and more importantly increasing time to spend it. Retirement ages would steadily fall, as would the working week, 50 would be a good age to plan for retirement and a life of healthy pursuits and leisure. Those still working could expect a 30 hour week.

Prepare for Leisure!

In 1980 a start on the property ladder, a two bed terraced in central Reading, Berks would set you back circa£11,000 a new well appointed hatchback car c£3,000. A minimum 40-hour week was still a norm and a mortgage no greater than two and half times your annual wage.

25 years later the same property costs c£160,000 and the hatchback c£8,000. In practice the 40-hour week has increased considerably with many skilled and unskilled people citing 50 hours now being a norm. It’s now also probable that you will borrow four times you annual salary to get on the property ladder.

The corporations have squeezed the last penny from the cost of production from often poor developing world producers to make commodities from clothes to cars and food cheaper in real terms than ever before. While these cheap trinkets create an illusion of wealth rocketing property prices have made slaves of us all.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Money Trick credit Socialist View