Offence: the only form of defence

Anyone else noticed how the word “defence” when linked with words like “policy”, “ministry”, “government” and “industry” appears to mean something completely different? You and I would assume that “defence” referred to what we did if we came under attack from someone, so it’s funny that so much of what the defence industry produces and the government spends on defence seems to be concentrated on offensive weaponry.

And it’s strange that so much of defence spending by the UK and US is swallowed up by offensive operations and invasions. UK government ministers have previously suggested that the military operations in Afghanistan are intended to defend the UK mainland from terrorist attacks. Forgive me for my naivety, but I always thought the only way to defend yourself from terrorist attack was to stop terrorists from blowing up things on your home soil.

If a government was serious about defence, it would spend money on soldiers, the navy and airforce to protect its territory rather than engaging in military adventures on foreign soil. It should come as no surprise that regimes such as those in Iran are actively seeking to develop nuclear weaponry capability given that the UK and US governments have placed such a heavy emphasis on the “defensive” aspects of their own nuclear missile systems. You can’t blame countries like Iran for believing that having nuclear weaponry acts as a “deterrent” to attack from enemies when that’s exactly what the US and UK have said for the past 60 years.

“Increased Competitiveness”: a blessing and a curse

How come when business people and those in the government talk about the need for “increased competitiveness” they invariably mean more money for those at the top of the pile and lower wages for the people at the bottom? So, in order to keep the top people in an era of increasing competition, we need to reward them with more money and lower taxes while to maintain competitiveness and slash costs, we need to cut the wages of workers. Doesn’t seem like a viable system to me, more like a vast con job visited on the majority by a very small minority.

A modest proposal for electoral reform

It seems to me that the current electoral system, whether it be in the UK, US, Ireland, Germany, France or Spain, has become outmoded and outdated. It should be obvious to all and sundry that governments incline disproportionately towards certain groups in society at the expense of others. Those groups tend to have a greater sway over the politicians than others. In most modern democracies, those groups are pretty much the same. For the most part, they consist of the wealthy, business lobbying groups, the financial sector and the military-industrial complex. I hope I am not being too presumptious when I suggest it might be fairer on us all if the governments of our modern democracies introduced a voting system which more accurately reflected this state of affairs. In a modern capitalist society, we can all see the value of “shareholder democracy” where those who hold the most shares are, quite rightly if one believes in capitalism, given a greater say and influence over the decisions affecting a business.

I propose that we merely extend this principle to the electoral system. Business leaders should be entitled to more votes than, say, a dustbin collector or street sweeper and CEOs of financial powerhouses should have even more, irrespective of whether they actually live here or not, given the power they have over our politicians. The main reason I think this would be worthwhile pursuing is that it would enable all of us to more accurately gauge the power certain people have over the political process compared to others. It would make things more transparent to us all. As a result, we could also do away with the messy and grubby world of behind the scenes lobbying because politicians would, under my proposal, be far more open about who they were talking to and the decisions they were making on their behalf if it was glaringly apparent to all of us that the individuals they were talking to represented, say, the equivalent of 50,000 votes from nurses or teachers.

There are some, I’m sure, who would be inclined to dismiss my proposal because of the upheaval it could cause. In addition to the process involved in calculating the voting values of particular individuals and their positions, we would also have to introduce a very clear, consistent and transparent system for those who might find themselves moving up and down the voting value table. And I agree there would be some work involved in putting this system in place. You could also argue this is a waste of time because it’s the way the system works already.

But think of the value to everyone of finally having an open, transparent political process which so demonstrably succeeded in showing people the true value of their vote. Isn’t that a price worth paying?

The Anger Of The Powerless

One thing no one can have failed to notice during the current economic crisis is how angry people have become. Another thing I’ve noticed is how unfocused that anger is. One day, it’s the bankers to blame. The next day, we’re angry at the politicians. The day after, we’re shouting about workers in the public sector having it easy. There’s a lot of rage out there but very little direction behind it.

What does this mean? I think it suggests we’ve become so infantilised by modern capitalism that our only response is, like most toddlers, to scream and shout when we feel powerless and boy do we feel powerless. But also like toddlers, we are easily distracted. Why is this? Because we have no obvious frames of reference of our own by which to judge what is going on and to decide what’s the best to do about it. As a result, governments are making huge decisions on our behalf which offer little, if any, positive outcomes for the majority of people they supposedly represent.

We’re being told these things are good for us because they are good for the banking sector and governments are doing their best not to explain any further or to present us with any possible alternatives. This is partly because they can’t bear to contemplate them either but also because they don’t want us to dare to choose something different.

Without any options or choices except those presented to us by governments and their friends in the banks, it’s no wonder we’re reduced to a state of impotent rage and so many of us lash out at anyone and everyone. This is what it means to be powerless and not in control of your life or destiny, just as it is for a toddler. Shout all you like but nothing will change.

As Michael Jackson said, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white

Okay, so here’s a very simple question: Why does everyone refer to President Obama as America’s first black president? Do they think he’s black? I can understand why they call him African American because he most assuredly is, his mother was American and his father was African. That’s incontrovertible. But black?

His father was a black man but his mother was a white woman – by that measure if you’re going to call him a black man by virtue of having a black father, you could just as easily call him a white man because his mother was white.

So if we’re looking to take away positives and counter attempts by those who seek to sow division by insinuating Obama’s heritage is somehow less worthy than say Ronald Reagan’s or George W Bush’s or Richard Nixon’s (all very white Republican gentlemen), we could say that what may well make Barack great is not that he’s a black president, but that he’s a black and white president. And the very first one at that.

Why is “idealist” a term of abuse?

When I was younger I became accustomed to being dismissed as an “idealist” for some times daring to suggest that people could try and build a fairer system to live in. God knows how many times I found my arguments countered with the retort that I wasn’t “living in the real world”. The corruption of socialism and communism when both systems were adopted in different parts of the world in the last century provided a perfect riposte to anyone who dared to suggest either provided a path to a potentially better world than the capitalist orthodoxy which had governed the affairs and commerce of people since the 1700s.

Of course, in many instances, the so-called communist and socialist societies were nothing of the kind. Be that as it may, if there is one thing I have never been able to accuse anyone on the capitalist side of the argument of being it is an idealist, purely because there are no ideals, that I can see, in capitalism. What is an ideal capitalist society? I don’t know. I begin to wonder if there is such a thing.

How can you have an ideal society based on the premise that people will act from purely selfish motives in pursuit of material reward? How can a society that entrenches the division between wealth and poverty be ideal? People say capitalism works because it is based on human nature, but what does that say about human nature? And is it really so wrong to try and change how people think and react?

For something which is portrayed as such a dynamic economic force, capitalism is a remarkably passive phenomenon. The market sets the rates and the rules and humans bow down in obeisance to it. The market decides whether something is viable or not – it is not up to us to decide what can and cannot be done or how the world can be made a better place. Really? How exactly does the market make these decisions? What are its ideals? Don’t know? Join the club.

So if you want to know why idealist is a term of abuse for so many believers in capitalism and the free market the answer is really quite simple: it’s something they can never be accused of themselves.

And the winners in the recession are…

Ordinary people may be losing their jobs, pensions and houses, but there are two groups who are seeing a big rise in the current economic climate: investment bankers who stand to share record bonuses this year of as much as £6bn…and criminals. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised given that both groups are united in their inability to relate to the plight of normal people and enjoy a blind sense of entitlement to their own ill-gotten gains.

As surely as night follows day (or day follows night, depending on where you’re standing), crime increases as employment decreases. In a country like Ireland, which has introduced a recruitment freeze on the police force, we are faced with the idiotic situation of experiencing a reduction in police numbers as crime surges.

I sincerely hope the government’s plans for dealing with the huge debts in our banks through NAMA are better thought out, but I have my doubts. And I wonder if the UK’s announcement of an extra £30bn investment of tax payers’ money into Lloyds and RSB will be any better. Still, anything to avoid a proper nationalisation where the people have a say over the investment of their money into failed banks. Much better to nationalise the debt and leave the banks free to carry on regardless.

What do you own?

Looking back on the golden age of consumerism, it’s not hard to see why so many people were so easily suckered. The gray spectre of communism which had overshadowed the world for the second half of the century had been vanquished, socialism was on the wane and global capitalism was on the march.

Suddenly, ordinary people were able to buy houses, cars, TVs, stereos, computers, furnishings, pretty much anything they wanted. And they didn’t have to wait until they’d saved up to do the buying because whatever they wanted, they could walk into a shop and get today. They didn’t need money because everyone was willing to give them credit to buy all the things they saw advertised on TV and in the newspapers. Nearly anyone could walk into a car showroom, sign some papers and drive away with a brand new car.

Not surprisingly, everybody laboured under the delusion that they owned lots and lots of stuff but then the credit crunch came, the banks turned off the credit taps and it became all too apparent that the only thing people owned was debt. Lots and lots of it.

All of those things which consumerism had taught us were visible confirmation of wealth and prosperity suddenly became a way to measure our level of indebtedness. Property developers went overnight from owning banks of land worth millions or billions to people saddled with barren plots of wasteland worth a tenth of their value. Ordinary people who had been encouraged to turn the dream of owning their own home into investing in the property market saw their primary “asset” plunge in value and turn, overnight, into a liability.

We were fooled into helping to fuel and grow the ‘boom’ of the first part of the 21st century with rising levels of debt. Here we are in 2009, not so proud owners of massive amounts of personal debt. But if you thought things couldn’t get any worse, ask yourself this: Given those record levels of personal debt, how come the people have been hit with the sucker punch of taking on the banks’ debts as well?

Why are the people fighting among themselves?

Here’s a question: If someone was bashing your neighbour around the head with a stick would you

a) join in

b) help him to fight off the attacker?

I ask because it appears that in many Western economies large numbers of people are opting to join in. Here we all are mired in a desperate economic situation wrought for the most part by the banks and investment houses (and paid for by the general populace), and yet the main gripe most people seem to have is with what workers in the public sector are getting. In Ireland, for example, there appears to be a particular relish in people working in the private sector who have taken pay cuts or lost their jobs in calling for their counterparts in the public sector to pay up for the misdeeds of the banks and property developers. In the UK George Osborne has proposed a pay freeze for the vast majority of public sector workers.

There’s something patently ludicrous about people who have suffered so much during the current economic disaster doing their utmost to drag their public sector colleagues into the hole they find themselves in when what they should be doing is joining forces and holding the politicians and bankers to account for the reckless behaviour which put them there in the first place. It’s almost as if they would get more satisfaction from seeing ordinary people like themselves suffer than do anything to hold the people at the top to account.

It really is something when the debate is framed in terms of public sector employees giving up the good things they have – better terms and conditions, pensions, holidays and union protection – in favour of the same rubbish conditions, worthless pensions and job insecurity that people in the private sector have found themselves foisted with. Surely the two groups should be making common cause to improve the terms and conditions, job security and pensions of all workers?

New approach to motherhood could stop rise in Down’s syndrome

I was disturbed to read earlier this week that the incidence of diagnoses of Down’s syndrome in foetuses scanned in the womb and children born with the condition in England and Wales had increased by 71 per cent from 1989/90 to 2007/08. The two main causes were improved diagnostic techniques and the fact many women were choosing to have babies later in life.

While there are many reasons why women find themselves in the position of delaying motherhood until much later in life than they did in the past and they are, in and of themselves, no cause for condemnation, the fact is there is an effect which is the substantial increase in the likelihood of a baby being born with Down’s syndrome.

Except for the fact that despite the increase in diagnosis of Down’s syndrome, fewer babies are being born with the condition because more pregnant women in this situation are choosing to abort their foetuses – 92 per cent in fact. Without those terminations, there would have been a 48 per cent in the numbers of births of children with Down’s syndrome.

What are we to make of a situation where foetuses are being aborted because they are diagnosed with Down’s syndrome but they would be far less likely to have the condition if their mothers were younger? For my part, I feel sadness at the hardship, pain and distress women in this position suffer (as well as sorrow at the ending of potential lives) as a result of what might be described as an accident of timing.

The far from startling fact is that, in many cases, women aren’t choosing to have children later in life but being forced to do so by outside pressures, be they economic or social. It’s only right that we should be doing something to help women have children at an age that is better suited to developing a foetus that will grow into a healthy baby.

For example, we might try to make it easier to balance motherhood with work so women don’t feel they have to hold on to their careers for as long as possible before trying to have children. Or we might seek to attach an economic value to motherhood which essentially rewards women for having children earlier in life rather than viewing it as an economic cost.

But I don’t think we should be wasting time and effort on trying to buck nature by devoting research to help women achieve motherhood later in life. That would only serve to entrench a situation that surely we would be better placed reforming instead. Whatever the solution, I feel certain that if the positions were reversed and it was men that gave birth, we would have already arrived at it.