Back to the future

19 August, 2013 (20:13) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

What’s got me all along, all through this wretched recession, has been the approach to getting out of it. All along, the target has been to get back to where we were before. Few politicians in the West have had the courage to say that maybe our strategy ought to be to head to a new place.

Instead, signs and portents gather: there were even shooting stars in the sky to signal the way ahead. Or back. To exactly where we all started. Soon, property prices will rise; sales will fuel growth; company profits will increase; the banks will be able to lend again; homes will be built and sold with the help of our Government-backed lending schemes; banks will lend and therefore make more money.

Anybody else spot where all this is heading?

Correct. The model of capitalism adopted by the west has at its heart a cycle of boom – and bust. An economic model with its foundations built on the shifting sands of growth will always be vulnerable.

Gordon Brown famously signalled an end to boom and bust. Unfortunately, he did so while handing ever more power to the private sector and betraying every principle the founding fathers of his party ever stood for or fought for or believed in. And surprise, surprise: the model dear Gordon espoused didn’t end boom and bust at all. It ended only in bust with a capital B. No, it wasn’t his fault or his party’s fault. But it was the fault of the system he and his party defended and assisted. What an achievement!

But not even the biggest bust of all time was enough to make people think: “You know, maybe this isn’t working….” Of course it wasn’t enough. How can the law-makers, the bonus-grabbers, the dividend-spenders notice the way the system hurts people when their snouts are so deep in the trough they have no view of what’s going on around them?

I can’t even see the sodding trough, so I can see what’s going on. A rising tide of unrest all over the world, that’s what’s going on, and it will never recede now. More people than at any time since the Second World War have a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, and they will be heard.

Perhaps the West will save itself – after all, what is wrong with making stability and ease our target? What is wrong with making sustainability the driver of our economic targets – creating a stable system in which people need not feel their jobs will disappear to another continent so that a few hundred shareholders will get bigger dividends next quarter? If we work together rather than fight each other for growth, there could be jobs on both continents – and not having to transport goods so far might even help the environment too.

As ever, those of us on the left who advance an ideal based on service, resource and sustainability will face the old non-arguments: nothing will be done without a profit motive; nothing will be done well without a profit motive.

We’ve been told that for years. It is the accepted truth on which the West is built, the truth our children are taught, the rock on which any dream of decency will always founder.

And who’s telling us this “truth”?

Would it be the same politicians and business people as, for example, those permitting the energy companies to put up their prices all the time? The same people who sacked tens of thousands so they could pay cheaper wages to foreign workers? The same people who stuck their noses in the public finance trough when free market capitalism bit them in the arse? The same people who own the media which reports the “truth”?

It remains a fascination to me that people believe we must bend our knees before the profit-makers, the entrepreneurs, because without their wealth creation, nothing would ever get done…

Was slavery abolished for profit? What profit motive ended child labour in the west? Did we fight Hitler for profit? Did we oppose apartheid because doing so would make us money? Did Fleming invent penicillin for cold hard cash? Did we fight racism to get our hands on a few extra quid? Do we demand an end to prejudice against gay people because doing so makes us pink pounds? Did people march against Oswald Mosley, the National Front, the English Defence League because they were being paid to do so? Did tens of thousands oppose the Iraq War because they were promised a fiver if they went on the demonstrations? Did women risk tubes being shoved down their throats by brutal prison warders in the cause of universal suffrage because winning the vote would make them richer? Were the pioneers of the trade union movement being paid to win justice for working people?

If you want to get Biblical about it, did Christ throw the money-lenders out of the temple because somebody else had made him a better offer?

Please remember that as we fight for fairness and justice, the arguments against the decency we believe in are being advanced by people with only their bank accounts at heart – look at the list above, to which we could add a dozen things every day, and remember all the advances that have been won not for money, but because they were right.

The great escape

At Fraser Towers, the war goes on. The soundtrack to The Great Escape echoes around the garden as my wretched collie dog constructs ever more elaborate escape schemes. I swear she’s building a glider on top of the garage.

Every day this week I have been out and about constructing barricades, watch towers and barbed wire strongpoints. Every time I turn my back she appears on the wrong side of the defences, tongue lolling, tail wagging, while I do my impression of Yosemite Sam.

It’s not as if she’s particularly confined – the garden’s huge and she’s never tied up. But this is not enough for her, oh no. It is the world beyond that draws her inexorably.

Today, I posted an army of thousands – alright, the boys and I – at strategic points around the perimeter fence, strode into our field and summoned the hound. The cunning plan would reveal once and for all her final – surely her final – point of escape. I scanned the horizon, the boys patrolled their designated guard positions. I turned through 360 degrees and leapt like a salmon: there she was, sitting patiently behind me.

As I produced a hammer and a handful of nails from my pocket in order to nail the bloody dog to the ground, I was aware of voices in the distance. The boys. “Dad, dad, look where she got out!”.

I turned and looked at two laughing boys and the field gate that I – me, myself, I – had left wide, yawning open behind me.

Make a date

Now you all know where you need to be on Saturday at 3pm: in the acoustic tent at the Cornwall Folk Festival at Wadebridge to pay attention to Brother Tony Hazzard. I’ve been lucky enough to hear two new recordings of his in recent weeks – The Spice Trader and Journey’s End – and believe me, the good brother still has so much new to say as well as a fantastic back catalogue of great songs. Treat yourselves.

 

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