Far Right Supporter of AfD, Trump, Farage et al Slaughters Five in Magdeburg

When a car ploughed into a crowd at a German Xmas Market, in Magdeburg, killing five people, including a young child, and injuring more than 200, the media immediately assumed the perpetrator was an Islamic terrorist, though they never openly claimed that to be the case.  The various right-wing populists, were even more overt in their presumptions on social media, and that was amplified when the new came out that the driver was a Saudi doctor.  But, they were all wrong, as Owen Jones has set out in this video.

Yet, even more than a day after the slaughter undertaken by this far-right fanatic, the mainstream media have failed to elaborate these details, despite extensive coverage.  On the day of the attack, Sky News, maintained almost blanket coverage, even though nothing was happening, but, now, when its clear that the attacker was a far right, anti-Muslim extremist, who supports the likes of the AfD, Trump, Musk, Farage and co., they have suddenly reduced their coverage.

Yet, the coverage they and the BBC have provided, has not only failed to set out the political nature of the attacker, as a supporter of the far-right, but has positively hidden and obfuscated those facts, which flatly contradict the line it was pursuing initially.  Now they talk about the aims and beliefs of this right-wing terrorist being "unclear", whilst they attach this to repeated statements about him being a Saudi, and being "unhappy with the treatment of Saudi migrants to Germany", again for the casual listener, suggesting some kind of Islamist pro-migrant basis for his actions, whereas the opposite is the case, as his repeated social media statements attest.  To the extent they have noted that he is an ex-Muslim, they have also worded his views in terms of him being "Islamophobic", which in the welter of other comments and obfuscation, can be misheard, or misunderstood by the general viewer.

If this had actually been an attack by some Islamist terrorist, as they first assumed, then, we would have been treated to an endless stream of his previous social media comments in the most graphic detail.  But, this is now symptomatic of the outright distortions and even lying of the mainstream media, in the West, when it comes to reporting on what is happening in the Middle-East, to an even greater extent than in relation to his biased reporting when it comes to the war in Ukraine and elsewhere, as western imperialism gears up for WWIII.

The extent of that in relation to the biased reporting of the BBC in relation to the Middle East, has again, been set out by Owen Jones.  The existence of a "free press", in western societies, is still a benefit for workers and socialists compared to the lack of such rights in various authoritarian states in Eastern Europe, and in The Middle East.  It means, for now, that we can write about these activities without the threat of a midnight knock from the secret police.  But, a "free press" does not at all mean a truthful press, nor an accountable press, let alone any kind of equality.  The mass media is owned by billionaires as a plaything, but they also own and control the platforms upon which social media exists.  They can control the algorithms to direct readers to or away from certain ideas, or remove and ban content altogether.

In the analogue age socialists used to insist on using the freedom of the press to create our own workers press; we needed to have updated that with the demand for a workers broadcast media in the age of the TV, but, now, in the digital age, we have the opportunity to step over that and demand that we create our own workers digital platforms, our own search engines and so on, with algorithms designed to direct readers to socialist ideas that expose the reality of the exploitation of workers across the globe, of our common interests as a global working-class, and particularly, now, our interest in resisting the steady march to war that imperialism is, once more, engaged upon.

Mad Dogs and Media Men

Its Summer, according to the calendar.  As with every season, the media, however, never seems to have experienced one before, and so has to report it, in apocalyptic terms, using its normal range of superlatives.  So, day after day, we have reports of a killer heatwave, linked to climate change.  Of course, that is a bit of a sick joke, here, in Brexit Britain.  Its been so cold and miserable for days.  Yesterday, my wife and I managed to get out for a few hundred yards, on our daily walk, before being caught in a rainstorm that caused us to return home like drowned rats, and, today, although we did manage our normal walk, it was so cold that I wished I'd taken gloves.  Back in the house, its so cold, made worse by the miserable wet weather, and grey sky outside that I even considered putting the heating on.

Of course, its this thoroughly miserable weather, even in Summer, in Britain that led millions of people to go to Spain, Italy, Greece and other warmer climes for their holidays in the first place, though the idiocy of Brexit has made that, now, much, much harder, whether its delays at ports and airports, or the restrictions of 90 days in 180, for the retired who, previously used to be able to enjoy long stay holidays.  The media have little to say about the appalling weather in Britain, instead complaining and catastrophising the hot weather in Europe that most British people have always looked forward to as a respite from the British Summer.

Is their climate change?  Undoubtedly, as nearly all the scientific evidence suggests.  Is it largely caused by the effects of carbon emissions from industrialised societies, again, almost certainly yes, according to all the science.  Does that explain or justify the catastrophising, and apocalyptic reporting of the hot Summer weather in the Northern hemisphere, in those countries lucky enough to usually get decent weather?  No.

As the scientists have always said there is a difference between climate change, as  along-term phenomenon, as against, what the weather might do, in any country, on this or that day, week or month.  People, have always gone to the Mediterranean countries in the Summer for their holidays, to get that decent hot weather.  Its Summer, and that is what you expect, at least if you don't live in miserable Brexit Britain.  Most of us have been in Spain, or Greece, or Italy, when the Summer temperature is frequently above 40 degrees.  Its what we go for!  If you look at the media reports, its as though this decent hot, sunny weather is not what you'd expect.

Of course, the media report the record temperatures, but those record highs, are usually only at most 1 degree higher than the previous record high temperature in the same locations.  For most of us, we would not even notice the difference.  You'd certainly notice the difference with the miserable, cold, damp weather, in Brexit Britain, but, again, that's why millions of Britons gave up on it, and went for the sun in Europe.

The reports also infantilise people talking about the danger from the extreme heat, but, extreme heat that is usually only a degree higher than the usual temperatures in those countries, at this time of year.  Noel Coward sang about "Mad Dogs and Englishman Go Out In The Mid-day Sun", and the ridiculous thing is that the media reports about this killer heat, in various places, sees video of people out in the open, exposing themselves to the full glare of the heat!  Its like running news stories about the danger of being run over by a bus, and showing video of it of people playing chicken, to back it up.

Anyone with a modicum of sense, is able to enjoy the hot weather without risking death.  The people who live in the Mediterranean countries have always organised their lives accordingly.  But, the media as with everything else have a narrative of climate change, and so have to make even a bit of hot weather into a saga, and new apocalypse, just as last year, a few hot days in Britain, that amounted to the whole of Summer, was accompanied by similar superlatives, talk of drought, and so on, which within a couple of days, was dropped from the news, as the normal, miserable wet British Summer weather returned.

The world needs to address the long-term issue of climate change, which will require a lot of investment, particularly in poorer countries, and which is unlikely to happen so long as capitalism exists.  The answer does not lie in a Malthusian catastrophism, and anti-industrialism, however.  But, the media's attempts to catastrophise the weather, acts to undermine the actual narrative about that climate change as a long-term phenomenon.

Journalists and Nurses

 Yesterday, I commented on the reports that Boris Johnson had been paid £1 million for giving just four speeches in a month, at a time when the Tories are refusing to pay nurses a decent pay rise, and complain that to do so is unaffordable.  I pointed out that these statements are routinely trotted out on Tory TV, with little or no challenge from the news readers and presenters, many of whom have been Tory student leaders when at university, and appear to have a revolving door into jobs as Tory advisors, press officers, and MP's.  But, a look at the earnings and wealth of those TV news readers, itself, even of the less well known, shows why they clearly know where their interests lie, when commenting about he travails of workers doing arduous jobs which pay only a fraction of what they earn.

Last night, I was watching Sky News' Press Preview, on which the odious Carol Malone was taking part.  Most of the journalists know that attacking nurses is probably not a good plan, because of the level of support they have amongst the public.  As I said, yesterday, polls frequently show the public thinking that its wrong that footballers earn more than nurses.  But Malone's main attribute seems to be that she has a big mouth that she uses to be as obnoxious as possible, rather like a US shock jock.

According to this site, she claimed in 2012, on ITV's This Morning that the death of six kids in an arson attack was partly the fault of the family itself, because they were on benefits, which provoked the anger of neighbours!  ITV had to apologise.  Similarly, in 2009, in a News of the World article, she claimed that immigrants are given free cars!  The News of the World also had to retract the story and apologise.

A Woodward or Bernstein she clearly isn't, and she appears to be one of those celebrities whose claim to celebrity is that they are a celebrity, a fiction maintained by those same TV companies and newspapers that invite her to contribute, no doubt in the expectation of some sensationalist outburst to boost their ratings.  She has appeared, like many of these newsreaders and pundits on a range of other "entertainment" shows, like Celebrity Fit Club, and Celebrity Big Brother, as well as Loose Women, and so on.  Its not despite her obnoxious and fallacious views, like those detailed above that Sky and others invite her to spout her bile, because of it.  She just makes the more tamed down anti-working class views of the Tory media appear more balanced.

last night, she was spouting that nurses were paid an average salary of £32,000 a year, and that the government had made them an offer they should accept, because it is not professional for them to strike, and was claiming that as people die, the current support for nurses would evaporate.  Well a look at the reported $500,000 a year income of Malone for all of these pretty useless contributions to the sum of all human knowledge, puts that into context.

We could ask what is Carol Malone worth, which if looked at in terms of her personal fortune appears to be a reported $4 million, but if we ask what is she worth to society, then especially compared to a nurse or a rail workers, or a postie, the answer is bugger all, if not a negative value!!!

£1 Million For Four Speeches, But Tories Won't Give Nurses a Pay Rise!

Yesterday, it was reported that Boris Johnson received £1 million in fees in about a month, just for giving four speeches.  Yet, the Tories won't pay nurses, and other workers enough to ensure that their wages are not savagely cut in real terms, as the inflation the government and Bank of England have created, bites into workers' pay packets.  Of course, Johnson is just the tip of the ice-berg, and a recent easy target for the media to highlight.  In reality, lots of Tories and their supporters pull in much more than that, especially from their ownership of shares.  But, that they now even refuse to talk to the nurses they had everyone clapping for just a few months ago, shows just how brazenly hypocritical they are.

The level of support for striking workers presents a problem for the Tory media, because it can't be too strident in its hostility to workers, because the reality is that strikes are now so extensive that nearly every household in the country has someone living in it who is, has been, or shortly will be on strike.  And, for those that don't, many will have people who have already had pay rises bigger than those being demanded by public sector workers, as private companies compete to get labour, with workers shifting jobs getting an average 14% increase just from doing so.

So, the media tone down their hostility, and leave it to selected vox pops to do the dirty work.  They get individuals who complain they have not had a big pay rise to come on to complain, as though if all other workers put themselves in the same boat that would in any way benefit them.  Then they have people whining about not being able to get to a birthday or Xmas party or some such like, as though that is more important than a nurses kids having the heating on, or food on the table at Xmas, or they have people claiming they are sympathetic, but nurses shouldn't strike because its contrary to professional ethics, and against the interests of patients needing treatment.  Presumably, then they would be quite happy if all nurses to avoid such a conflict with professional ethics simply all left the job to get better paid work elsewhere, so that the NHS would collapse, and no patients would get seen to!

In the past, there has been lots of polls done about people saying that nurses should get paid more than footballers.  Its a pointless exercise because the polls have no power to change anything, and so long as people are prepared to pay upwards of £1,000 for a season ticket, billionaires from across the globe are prepared to turn clubs into their private playthings, and TV companies will pay billions for rights to show matches, footballers will continue to be paid millions, and nurses won't.  But, when looking at the media response to strikes, and the claims about affordability and so on, those kinds of comparisons are useful, about just who gets paid what, and how important the labour they provide is.

The BBC has always been the propaganda arm of the British capitalist class and its state, and continues to be so simply supplemented by the rest of the Tory media.  Its only necessary to look at the range of past BBC and other journalists that were Tory student leaders, and who take up jobs as Tory press spokespeople and so on, to get the lie of the land.  The BBC has always been keen to ensure that in its selection processes, it always ensures that its journalists are safe for capitalism.  That's not too hard given their usual family background, their time spent in the top universities along with the rest of the kids of the ruling class, and the lifestyles they enjoy, subsequently, whilst not that of a billionaire, leaves them comfortable enough to know which side their bread is buttered on, when considering their response to other workers and their pay.

Take one of the BBC's less well-paid, front of screen presenters, Carol Kirkwood, who is one of several Weather presenters.  Although her salary does not appear in the BBC's list of salaries above £150,000, leading to the assumption that she is paid less than that for presenting the weather, her total income is estimated to be around £300,000 a year, with a net worth of around £4 million.  The rest of the income comes from the fact that TV presenters, in the age of mass media, and 24/7 News have been turned into celebrities, who, even back in the day of Angela Rippon on the Morecambe & Wise Show, earn money from appearing in all sorts of roles.

But, especially given the fact that, not only are the BBC's Weather forecasts usually wrong, for much of the country, the job of a weather presenter is basically to stand in front of a green screen, with a button, and read out a script.  Did I really need several such presenters, over the last few days, paid these mega bucks to tell me that it was bloody cold outside, which I could see by looking out of the window?  Is that something we should be happy about paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for, as against claims that we can't pay nurses, or train workers even enough money to live on?

A list of the top BBC presenters salaries is given here.  Some of them, in the last year received pay rises of £100,000, and most received pay rises of around 10%.  The pay rises, in many cases were themselves more than many workers receive in total as wages, and, of course, these are only the figures for what they were paid for those presenting jobs, and not what they obtained from associated activities, appearing on other programmes, writing in journals and so on.

Now, I'm not saying that these workers should get paid less, the result of which would be only that the BBC and other media companies and so on made more profits, that, in the case of listed companies would go to provide even bigger dividends to shareholders the richest of whom already obtain far more than anyone else, but its worth remembering whenever we are told that nurses or train drivers can't be paid a decent wage, or get a pay rise to cover inflation, that the job of a train driver, nurse, teacher or postie is probably far more vital than being told what the weather might possibly do today.  Its certainly worth bearing in mind when listening to discussions about ordinary workers having to strike to get a decent pay rise.

Now, About That Drought

When, a few days ago, the media started assailing us with tales of impending doom from drought, did they not have access to the seven day weather forecast?  

After three or four days of weather that most would recognise as Summer weather, as the sun got his hat on and came out to play, we are now back to the kind of Summer we expect in more recent times, in Britain, in which we see grey, heavily laden skies, cool temperatures, and rain.  Indeed, in some places, so much rain that with flood plains built on, and new houses lacking gardens of any size, it leads to flash floods.

Never mind, no doubt the sensationalist media will be able to replace its apocalyptic stories about drought, now, with similarly apocalyptic stories about floods, until the next story comes along that can be described in the same kinds of unjustified superlatives and exaggeration that makes up for any kind of longer-term assessment and analysis, but which sells papers and increases audiences.

In Defence of a Tory Minister

Yesterday, the media was full of outrage at the comments of Tory Minister, Rachel Maclean, for saying that, in response to sharply rising inflation, workers should work more hours or get a better job. Like most, on hearing the comment, I thought it was just your typical out of touch Tory, blaming workers individually, as with another who had apparently said they needed to learn to cook. However, later, I heard the full comment from Maclean, and what she actually said was nothing like the media headlines.

Maclean did not say that the immediate answer was for workers, individually to work more hours, or to move to a better paid job. In fact, what she said did not relate to action that workers, individually, or collectively, should take as a solution at all. What she talked about was action that the government needed to take, in order to provide a long-term solution, so that it became possible for workers who were working part-time, and so on, to be able to work longer hours. Given that we have still 1 million workers working on zero-hours contracts, such an ambition is not at all a bad one for a government to set itself.

Similarly, given that large number of workers on zero hours contracts, many working only a few hours a week, and given the large number of other workers in unskilled, low paid, and insecure jobs, it is not at all a bad ambition for a government to set itself that it should create conditions in which workers are able to move out of those precarious, low paid, demoralising jobs, and into better paid ones. As a long-term solution to falling living standards, at least within the bounds of capitalism, that is precisely the way forward, as against simply tying workers further into conditions of degrading dependency, relying upon state welfare payments to boost their incomes.  Whether the Tories policies, in general, and its idiotic Brexit policy, in particular, does that is another matter.

That the media made such a meal of these false headlines is not surprising. Its typical of the way it operates. Firstly, many of these journalists and newsreaders are very highly paid, but the journalism tends to be very lazy. Secondly, it is a media that relies upon sensationalism. I have noted before its necessity to describe everything in superlatives, as “the best”, “the biggest”, “the most”, and so on, even though its clear that these labels are invariably exaggerations. I had to laugh, yesterday, when I was watching an old Dave Gorman episode, in which he dealt with exactly that phenomena. But, there is another factor at play, here.

As I have described recently, the fact is that we have completely different conditions, now, than those that have applied for most of the last 40 years, other than for a few years after 2000, and prior to 2008. As I wrote the other day, in the US, there are now 2 vacancies for every unemployed worker, and the latest data now shows that, in Britain too, there are more job vacancies than there are unemployed workers seeking to fill them. So, as in the 1950's, and 60's, we have conditions, already, where it becomes possible, at least for some workers, in the right places, and with the right skills, to decide, yes, to simply move to another better paid job. That has already been happening in the US, where the “quit rate” has been rising for some time, as workers realise they can just move to better jobs.

And, this relative shortage of labour is manifesting in incomes too. The latest employment data from the ONS, shows wages rising by 4.2% in the three months to March, and of course, the media again focussed on the fact that this was lower than inflation, meaning that real wages were falling, according to the media by 1.2%. The 4.2% figure was again, higher than the predictions, but also does not tell the real story. Add in bonuses, and other such payments, and wages rose by 7%, in that period, which was actually ahead of inflation to that point, meaning that real wages were rising.

The inclusion of bonuses and other such additional payments is important, precisely because the shortage of labour is first manifest in the need of companies to recruit and retain workers, and that is first done by all sorts of such bonuses to attract workers, or to deter them from leaving, rather than actual rises in hourly wage rates. Only as the shortage of labour intensifies, and workers begin to sense their increased strength and bargaining position in the economy, and as annual wage bargaining rounds get underway, does it manifest itself in much higher hourly wages, reduced hours, better holidays and so on.

So, the last thing the bourgeois media want, at the moment, is for workers to understand that conditions have changed in their favour. They want workers to continue to believe that they are stuck in their current jobs, and have to accept their current low wages and poor conditions, limited hours and so on. That is why they had to interpret Macleans words in the way they did. And, similarly, it suits a timid trades union bureaucracy to perpetuate the idea of a weak bargaining position of workers that only allows them to organise rallies to try to mobilise “public opinion” in support of higher minimum wages, rather than actively organising, and demanding strikes for better wages, and a General Strike, for a decent minimum, monthly wage of £2,000.

Porn, Moralism & Hypocrisy

The latest bit of trivia to grip opportunist politicians and journalists is an accusation that a front bench Tory MP watched porn on their phone whilst in the House of Commons.  Really?  We have the potential for global conflicts to turn into WWIII, and the end of humanity, we have inflation that continues to soar as a result of years of money printing, and the idea that everything can be fixed by resort to the Magic Money Tree, along with the effects of NATO's economic war against Russia, pushing energy prices into the stratosphere, we have a huge list of drugs that are now not available as a result of Brexit and other disruptions to the supply chains resulting from lockdowns, and this is the most important thing they can focus on??

But, the moral hand-wringing is wholly hypocritical.  All news channels have made a story of it, but it was probably most hypocritical in the prudish attitude from Channel4 News, given that from its inception, Channel4 has relied on soft porn to boost its ratings.  An early example was Eurotrash, and one of the latest is Naked Attraction, a programme whose only purpose is to have members of the public put their genitals on full public display.  It would be interesting to have asked the Channel4 journalists how they feel about working for a channel where its not a question of merely watching porn as a passive activity, but of being ana active pornographer, peddling soft porn for ratings.

Moreover, the assumption is made that its only men who watch porn, and so the issue is conflated with misogyny.  In fact, all data suggests the opposite, and that at least as many women watch porn as men, and why wouldn't they?  After all, watching porn is not illegal.  And, again, the hypocrisy of Channel4 is exposed in that regard too, because, not only is it the case that women watch porn, but they also make porn too, as Chennel4 illustrated in their series - Mums Make Porn.

Watch live House of Commons coverage and you will see nearly every MP fiddling with their phones, and there is no reason why watching porn on the phone is any different to watching cat videos, or playing Candy Crush.  The issue ought to be MP's not paying full attention to proceedings, and like the majority of the population, it seems, being only separable from a screen by surgical procedure.

The data shows that at least half the adult population watch porn at some point and to one degree or another, and that is just those that actually admitted to it, meaning the real figure is much higher.  Another report shows over more than 50% of women watching porn, and 40% making their own.  Many of us who grew up in the 1950's and 60's thought that we had done away with all of this prudishness and priggishness, exemplified by Mary Whitehouse and her reactionary crew, but it seems that the reactionaries are back with a vengeance in this regard, as in others too, at least in so far as they can use it for short-term, opportunism.

Thank Goodness For Amazon Prime (Other Non-State Media Is Available)

A very old bloke has died.  From all accounts a bit of a racist and colonialist.  The capitalist state's propaganda arm, the BBC, has done its normal job of giving an impression of North Korean media, with wall to wall coverage of paint drying, and avoidance of any critical views.   As with the media's coverage of COVID, and compliance with Game Theory, all the other main terrestrial channels followed its lead.  Thank goodness for non-mainstream terrestrial channels, and Youtube.

Freesat and Freeview at least allowed viewers to escape all of this nonsense, by watching old dramas, comedies, detective series and so on, or the exploits of salvage hunters, car restorers, or documentaries.  Amazon, Netflix and others have provided a range of films and other programmes for a small subscription.  Thank goodness for them over the last year, as we have been locked up in our homes, and locked out of workplaces and venues for leisure and entertainment.  They at least enabled us to avoid wall to wall state COVID propaganda, now supplemented by state Monarchist propaganda.

As the development of herd immunity starts to fade COVID into the distance, the media must have thought their prayers were answered.  What would they do when they could not fill the screens and column inches with hysterical stories about COVID?  Then along come two answers at once.  First, violence returned to the streets of Northern Ireland courtesy of the inevitable results of Brexit, and for good measure, a prominent royal personage pops his clogs.  The latter will be a news story for longer than you might think possible, as all the period of mourning, then funerals, then memorials and so on are stretched out, but even the media and the state can only stretch it out so long.  A return of violence in Ireland offers the media a much more viable cornucopia.

"The Troubles", were a font for the media back in the 1970's, 80's and 90's, when it was not as large as it is today, and when 24 hour news channels did not require constant feeding with sensationalism.  Having fed off and fed into the cesspool of nationalism that created media figures such as Nigel Farage, or Baroness Fox, the media created a continued feeding ground for itself with Brexit.  Its role was very much like that of the press tycoon in the Bond film, "Tomorrow never Dies", which itself borrows from the idea presented in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane", about press baron Randolph Hearst.  The violence in Northern Ireland is direct consequence of the Brexit that the media fostered with all of their fawning over nonentities like Farage and Fox, in the previous ten years, and more.  No wonder there was a sparkle in Jon Snow's eyes when he interviewed a pundit from Ireland, on Channel 4 News, and asked expectantly, whether, with the Summer coming, and with all of the frustrations  of a year of lockdowns and lockouts, we could expect a much greater level of communal violence in the province?

Did someone mention bread and circuses?  Well Brexit is making the bread supplies more difficult, and increasing its price considerably, but circuses there are aplenty.

Media Hypocrisy

On last night's Channel4 News, they carried a very good report on how our kids futures are being utterly destroyed as a result of the close down of schools, which by the time it ends will have deprived them of two years of academic study.  Of course, its being put in terms of exam performance, but that is a minor issue.  The real issue is the fact that they will have lost 2 years of education, amounting to around 16% of their normal education.  Its like sending out a new car from the production line without the wheels.  Of course, as I wrote a while ago, that could be remedied by having all current students stay in school for another two years, to recoup the lost learning, but we all know that is not going to happen.  This means, therefore, that all these future workers will be permanently damaged in theri earning capacity, their labour-power will always be worth less than that of other workers that have not had this deficit in its education and skills, the education being an increasingly important component of that.  But, it also means that British industry will also suffer in its already abysmal level of productivity.

The news report, showing how this, of course, affects the poorest sections of the working-class most, was extremely relevant, and hard hitting.  But, it again shows the hypocrisy of the media.  Who is it, after all, that from the start has been demanding there be an idiotic, unnecessary blanket lockdown of all social activity, including of schools, colleges and universities?  It is the media that a year ago jumped on the COVID news story and turned it into a moral panic, which required that knee-jerk, badly considered measures be adopted, measures which always had to be the most visible, the most extreme, so that those implementing them could protect themselves against charges of not acting soon enough, boldly enough, and so on.  But, the idiotic nature of those measures has been demonstrated throughout, because, having been badly thought-out, they inevitably brought with them contradiction after contradiction, confusion after confusion, which simply led to even greater levels of idiocy.  Now we have a government proposing to jail people for 10 years for not telling the truth about where they have been on holiday, and a bankrupt Labour Opposition that has failed to even challenge them on it!

The policy of blanket lockdowns was idiotic, and the consequences of it have also been idiotic, as well as having made the situation wore rather than better.  The lockdown failed in its prime purpose which was to prevent increased deaths from COVID.  Instead after a year of lockdowns of one sort or another, we have had deaths over the Winter so far, far exceeding the deaths from it, at the start of the lockdowns.  The current lockdown which began in December, has seen the number of COVID deaths rise even during its own operation!

Of course, as I wrote a while ago that has to be drilled down, because a large number of those deaths are not from COVID at all, but people who died WITH Covid, i.e. people who became ill from some other cause, and died from that, but who also later contracted COVID, most of them contracting it having gone into hospital for treatments, as happened, for example, with Captain Tom, who contracted pneumonia, and then later contracted COVID after being treated for it by the NHS.  In fact, more than 25% of people being treated for COVID in hospital, are people who contracted it after they went into an NHS hospital for some other purpose.  Add in the number infected with the virus whilst supposedly being protected from it by care homes, or by other social workers in their own homes, and this accounts for the large majority of people that have died or become seriously ill from it.

The lockdown strategy simply slowed the rate of infection, meaning that the virus was abroad in society for longer, giving it time to mutate, and mutate it inevitably has.  We now have a series of mutations, some making it more contagious, some making it more resistant to antibodies, and now some like the second Kent variant both more contagious and more resistant to antibodies.  That was an inevitable consequence of a lockdown strategy.  It has narrowed the window of possible strategies for dealing with the virus.  What could have been dealt with effectively with a strategy of focused protection, isolating the 20% of the population at serious risk from it, has now been made much more complex, though the only possible strategy that all this is leading to is that of focused protection, because of vaccines lack the capacity to protect the vulnerable, and increasingly fail to stop even infection, the only possible strategy becomes one of focused protection, until the virus has run its course, and the 80% of the population not at serious risk develop herd immunity, and its further transmission is stopped in its tracks.

But, the calls to close the schools, which the media also were prominent in pushing was even more idiotic.  We know that children are unaffected by the virus, and so, other than for those who have some underlying condition that might have made them susceptible, or who live in households where there may be someone who is susceptible, there was absolutely no reason to deprive them of the education they require, and indeed that society requires them to receive.  Nor is there any indication that teachers or school staff are at any greater chance of becoming seriously ill or dying from the virus than any other group of workers.  Why would they?  And, the majority of teachers are in those younger age groups also not at serious risk from the virus.  Those who were in an at risk group could simply have been put on permanent sick leave with full pay, and the teaching unions could have demanded workers control over the school to implement safe working practices.  Its impossible to employ any labour movement measures, of course, if workers are not in work!

Instead, we saw a clear example of the contradictions and idiocy that came from an ill-thought out and idiotic strategy of lock down.  Some kids were allowed to stay in school if their parents were vital workers, but what constitutes a vital worker?  The NHS nurse can't do their job unless other workers produce the medicines, the bed linen, the cleaning products, not to mention the electricity that a hospital requires to function.  All of them require petrol for their cars, drivers on public transport, mechanics to service vehicles and so on.  The whole point about capitalist production for the last two centuries is that it is based upon a total social division of labour, so that no part of the economy functions on its own.

Then we had the idea that kids could be educated at home, the idiocy of which was demonstrated in the Channel4 News programme.  Its not that the idea of home education via the Internet is itself an idiotic idea.  Its not.  In highly technologically developed Singapore, it is already largely a reality.  The point is that it is idiotic if you do not already have in place the kind of highly developed technological infrastructure that a modern economy like Singapore has, and where every household has access not only to computers, but to an efficient, ultra-fast, and reliable broadband infrastructure.  Without that, what you get, as the Channel4 News report showed, is the more affluent families providing for their kids, and the rest being discarded.

Nor can you simply go from school based learning to Internet based learning overnight, because the two things are completely different, and require different methodologies.  The latter is undoubtedly more efficient, but it requires huge amounts of fixed capital and investment in the right kinds of workers to bring it about.  We've seen this kind of arse about face policy making repeatedly.  Take something like planning policy.  Years ago, it was decided that it would be a good idea to discourage car ownership.  So, when new housing estates were developed, planners encouraged builders to reduce the amount of front gardens, and drives available to houses, so that it would discourage households from having more than one car.  The roads on estates were also made narrower.  What was the consequence?  People continued to have multiple cars per household, but now they had to concrete over whatever front garden they had to accommodate them, which encourages rapid water run-off, which increases potential for flash-flooding.  They also just littered the street with the cars they could not fit on their front gardens and drives, which leads to the narrow streets becoming blocked, which prevent access by emergency and other vehicles, like buses, council refuse trucks and so on, and it inevitably leads to conflicts between people as a result of all these difficulties.

Or take cycling.  Councils have been told to encourage cycling, but rather than build physically separated cycle paths, we have cycle lanes simply drawn with paint on to existing roads, which mean they are a death trap, not to mention the fact that in many places, the roads themselves are full of potholes and grids that are lethal.  Both these examples are instances or arse about face policy formation, because they impose the restrictions before providing the necessary measures required to provide the desired alternative behaviour.

The media created a moral panic over COVID, and then on the back of it insisted that governments impose the harshest, most comprehensive blanket lockdowns, as a knee-jerk response.  Now as the inevitable consequences of those idiotic policy decisions become manifest, the media, of course, finds new stories for itself complaining about the inevitable consequences of the very actions it insisted governments had to take in the first place!

Exponential Rise in the Wrong Use of The Term Exponential

I would like to say that its only people like Sonia Sodha who use the term exponential incorrectly, but, unfortunately, it isn't.  Sodha is one of those journalists whose method is to simply repeat ad nauseum badly understood, ill conceived and overwhelmingly vague mantras, without any facts to back them up, or any rational argument in support of them.  Indeed, whenever she is presented with facts to contradict her wild, vague statements, she simply ignores them, and again repeats her unsupported assertions.  Her comments, for example, on Sky News's Paper Review about an "exponential" growth in COVID19 cases and deaths, is a case in point.  But, there is not an "exponential" growth, as a look at the meaning of the term exponential - which you would think a highly paid journalist, and even leader writer for the Observer would first do - shows.  Sodha uses the term "exponential" simply to mean that the number of cases is increasing a lot, which in itself means nothing.  But, she is from from alone in that.  Many proponents of lockdowns use the term "exponential" wrongly all the time.

Its quite likely that the growth of infections of COVID19 have, in fact, been more or less exponential, because, given that 90% of people who contract the virus are asymptomatic or have symptoms not bad enough to seek medical attention, they never get tested.  So, they have continued to spread the virus amongst others in the population, 90% of whom are similarly asymptomatic and so on.  That is why the so called r number is a complete fiction, and why, although the lockdown may have slowed the spread of the virus somewhat, during the Summer, its main effect was to stop the spread of the virus to the vulnerable 20% of the population.  But, that could have been done far more effectively, and without destroying the economy, simply by ensuring that the 20% of the population at risk were isolated from it.

The main reason that the rate of infection and the number of deaths has risen since the lockdown has been lifted is purely and simply because, all of those older and more vulnerable members of the population again came out of lockdown, and started to go shopping again, went into town centres and pubs and restaurants, and started to mix with their children and grandchildren again, and so began to fall prey to a virus that had spread silently amongst the younger population in the intervening period.  Its only these older and more vulnerable people who become ill, and as more of them became ill, so they went to get tested, so that the number of positive tests also increased, and that is the same reason for the increase in hospitalisations and deaths.

But, its also clear that even against the much higher recorded number of infections, hospitalisations and deaths have not increased "exponentially".  look at the chart provided by Sky News.  It shows daily reported infections, and daily deaths.  The highest number of deaths per day was back in April, a month after the lockdown had started.  On 10th April, there were 1122 deaths, whilst the number of reported new infections was 5706.  Compare that with the 137 deaths reported on 14th October, as against the 19,700 infections reported on the same day.  Not only is the current death toll of 137, which the media has got worked into a frenzy over, only a little more than 10% of the number of deaths on April 10th, but it is on the basis of reported cases that is 4 times greater.  In other words, on a comparative basis as against infections, the current mortality rate is just 2.5% of that back in April!

If we measure the daily mortality rate on 10th April, it was 1122:5706 = 19.66%, a shockingly high number, though still some way off the 90% mortality rate of something like Ebola.  Of course, the truth is that this 20% figure is totally bogus.  Back in April, very little testing was being done so that the 5706 figure for new infections was probably out by more than a factor 10, not just because 90% of infections are asymptomatic leading to no testing, but also because even fewer tests were don then than now.  So, the true figure then was almost certainly less than 2%.

If we take the situation, now, this fact that 90% of infections go unreported, then the figure of 20,000 new infections on 14th October, means that the true figure is likely to be around 200,000.  Even based on the reported infections, the mortality rate has fallen to just 137:20,000 = 0.685%.  But, take into consideration the likely real number of new infections, and the current mortality rate falls to around 0.07%, or less than the mortality rate for flu.  Indeed, currently there are indeed, more people dying from flu than are dying from COVID19.

As the graph shows, deaths from flu exceeded those from COVID between January and March.  Flu deaths as usual declined, in the Summer.  Now moving back into Winter, flu deaths are again exceeding those from COVID, and have been doing so since the middle of June.  In fact, the only time that COVID deaths have exceeded flu deaths has been during the height of the lockdown!  Moreover, this overstates the truth in relation to COVID v Flu.  The reported COVID deaths are those where COVID is mentioned on a death certificate, i.e. the person who died had the virus.  But that does not at all mean that COVID was the cause of their death.  They could have been hit by a bus.  The figures only indicate who has died within 28 days of having been tested positive.  But, the mean average age of death of these people is now 82, up from 81 a few months ago.  The average life expectancy in the UK, is currently 81.16 years, which is lower than the average age of the people dying from COVID.  In other words, its highly likely that many of the people who have died "with" COVID, did not die "from" COVID at all, but simply from old age, and the various conditions that go with it!

What is more, if you then separate out all of these old people, many of whom were going to die anyway, and then look at the number of people under 60 dying from COVID, and compare that with deaths from flu, a completely different picture emerges.  Of the total 40,000 plus people who have died "with" COVID, only around 400 people are people under 60 who also do not have other underlying medical conditions.  That is because COVID 19 is a virus that almost exclusively targets the elderly.  Currently, if you are under 60 you are approximately 5 times more likely to die from flu, which targets across the age range, and often affects the young more seriously than the old, and if you are under 40, you are approximately ten times more likely to die from flu than from COVID19.

Or take another metric.  Around 165,000 people die from cancer in the UK, each year, or around 450 per day.  That is four times the number of people dying from COVID19.  Yet, despite the fact that death from cancer is a far greater existential threat to the population than is COVID19, it is cancer patients who have had their appointments and surgery cancelled, in order to provide resources for COVID!  Perhaps that is why UK cancer specialist, and world authority on cancer, Dr. Karol Sikora, signed the Great Barrington Declaration. 

If we look at the high number of COVID deaths back in April compared to today, despite the fact that the number of recorded infections then was only a quarter of that today, and we might expect the proportion of actual infections to remain somewhat similar, being approximately ten times more in each case, it is fairly obvious why this discrepancy arises.  Firstly, back in April when the number of deaths was at its highest, nearly all of those deaths was of old people in care homes and hospitals.  That in itself makes a mockery of the argument in favour of lockdowns.  Who is more locked down, who should be more protected against infection than someone in a care home or a hospital?  But, of course, those institutions did not provide that protection, because instead all the attention was on limiting the spread of infections amongst the general public, whilst little or no attention was paid to putting in place focused protection of the 20% of the population actually at risk.

Secondly, as is the case with all exponential growth of viruses or bacteria, at a certain point the exponential growth stops, simply because the population into which it can expand is exhausted.  This is also what happens with financial bubbles, when the number of bigger fools runs out.  The lockdown may have slowed the exponential growth of infections during the Summer, but didn't stop, it, and so the fact that a larger number of "reported" infections, today, has resulted in a much lower number of hospitalisations and deaths is just a reflection of this fact, that in reality, we almost certainly have a much larger number of people who have actually previously been infected with the virus, and who were asymptomatic, and now have immunity against it, than the official data is reporting.  The official data is necessarily wrong, both because of the inadequacy and unreliability of the tests and testing, and because 90% of those infected are never tested!

Hospitals acted as super spreaders of the virus; they failed to protect their own staff or patients; they brought back elderly staff putting them at increased risk; they failed to establish isolation hospitals or wards; they failed to provide adequate PPE, and so on.  They infected large numbers of people who came into hospital with other illnesses.  They sent old people infected with COVID, knowingly back to care homes to die, where, with those care homes also not having proper measures in place, those old people then spread the virus through those homes, killing many more people.  So, its no wonder that the mortality rate was much higher then than it is now.

Yet, the media still refuse to tell the truth.  They bang on about the number of deaths from COVID, but refuse to compare it now with April, when it was ten times higher.  Instead of giving the facts about the ratio of flu deaths to COVID deaths, they quote a statistic that only covers the period when COVID deaths exceed flu deaths, i.e. during the Summer, and so on.  And, the latest distortions comes in relation to the position relating to hospital admissions and occupancy.  The media said nothing about the fact that the white elephant Nightingale hospitals remained as good as empty barns having been opened with great fanfare.  They said nothing about the fact that as a result of telling people to stay away from hospitals, as well as scaring them shitless, because they were about to be overrun with COVID patients, in fact, during much of the period, occupancy in most hospitals fell to around 40%, meaning a huge waste of resources.  Now they are saying that hospitals are again about to be overrun, and they make the implication that this is due to COVID, when it isn't.

They seem to have conveniently forgotten that every Winter, the question is asked as to whether this will be the year that the NHS collapses because of being able to cope with the inundation of patients due to  seasonal flu and other, illnesses that flourish during the Winter.  Anyone who has been to an A&E knows that they had already essentially collapsed years ago, long before COVID19, as thy were incapable of dealing with the numbers of people coming in to them, who were faced with waits lasting into days rather than hours.  The usual condition for hospitals has been to have occupancy rates of over 90%, long before COVID.  So, to tell us that hospitals are facing such rates now, and that they may not be able to cope over the Winter, and to then try to blame that on COVID is thoroughly dishonest.

According to the Department of Health around 680 people are being admitted to hospital, per day, with COVID symptoms.  A total of 4,650 are currently in hospital with the virus, and of these 516 are on ventilators.  In total, 150,000 have been in hospital with the virus.  A look at the numbers shows that, despite the much higher levels of recorded infections today, compared to back in April, this is a fraction of the numbers hospitalised back then.  Its about a fifth.  But, as I've reported previously, in an average year, the NHS takes in 16 million hospital admissions.  The idea that, even 150,000 COVID patients should put a dent in that capacity is ridiculous.  It represents just 0.9% of the total admissions.  Of course, some COVID patients will require intensive care, and this may be a higher proportion than for overall admissions, but the number requiring intensive care for things like the seasonal flu is likely to be a far greater factor.

The fact that the NHS is falling over, yet again, during a Winter Flu Season is nothing new.  It is not a reflection on COVID 19, but on the fact that the NHS is pretty crap, has been crap for years, and has been made much worse as a result of ten years of Tory austerity, designed to inflate the asset prices of the rich.  Its not the fault of the workers in the NHS that its crap, they do he best and more they can given its limitations, but the fact remains that, as an institution its performance has been abysmal, and it is not designed to meet the needs of workers in the first place, so its no wonder that it doesn't!

Lifelong Labour Voters

In the media postmortem on the election two memes were purveyed. First, Labour lost the election because it lost the votes of the working-class, and second, Labour lost because many life-long Labour voters could not bring themselves to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. 

In actual fact, as I have set out before, its quite clear that many of these “life long Labour voters” were nothing of the kind. There have always been reactionary workers, and reactionary sections of other exploited classes. I'm sure that there were plenty of slaves who complained that Spartacus was a dangerous revolutionary with ideas above his station, for suggesting that people ought to be free. There were certainly plenty of serfs who thought that it was necessary for the peasants to know their place in society. In the French Revolution, much like today, there were whole geographic areas of the country where backward sections of society dominated who were hostile to the revolution, and the same is true about rural areas of Russia in 1917, until such time as the landlords returned, and they remembered the reality of that oppression. In Britain, too, as agricultural employment declined, and industrial employment increased rapidly, the industrial workers rapidly became far more radical than agricultural workers. Today, it is young, better educated workers in the new technologically driven industries that dominate the economy that are more radical, and older, less educated workers, who have seen the old industries decline, and their employment prospects disappear along with it, that occupy that position of the reactionary tail dragged along behind the mass of the working-class. 

The idea that Labour has lost the support of the working-class is premised on the idea that the working-class is only those workers who work with their hands in those old declining industries, rather than what it is, which is anyone who must sell their labour-power in order to live. The reality is that the working-class is bigger than ever, and 80% of it now works, not in those old declining industries, but in service industry. Some of that service industry is, indeed, comprised of low paid, unskilled work, such as in fast food restaurants etc., but a large part of it is in high value, high skilled employment, such as in technology industries, in media production, entertainment, computer games production, alternative energy production, medical science, space science and so on. The majority of the working-class, employed in these industries, is young and better educated, it is concentrated in cities. That is where also the support for Labour is concentrated. 

Labour must focus on the future of the working-class not its past. It must concentrate on building its support and a mass social movement in those cities, and drawing in this new, vibrant progressive working-class. If it looks backwards, as sections of the Labour movement attempted to do during the election campaign, it will go into terminal decline. 

The other meme purveyed during and after the election was that “lifelong Labour voters” could not vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Yet, in 2017, huge numbers did. In 2017, with Jeremy Corbyn as Leader, Labour came within a fraction of winning the election, and had the largest increase in its vote since 1945. The idea that these voters could not vote for Labour, under Corbyn, is, therefore, obvious rubbish. The other night, I was watching an episode of Dave Gorman's “Terms and Conditions Apply”, which ironically, brought these two things together. 

In part of the show, he sent out one of the team to question members of the public. The basis of the questions was “nostalgia”. They appeared in a town centre, much as happens with the Vox Pops, and told people that research had shown that more intelligent and creative people were better at remembering things from the past such as popular TV shows. People were reminded of the names of a series of well known shows, and as they did so, the members of the public nodded along, affirming their recollection of these things from their past. Then the questioner threw in a number of shows that were completely made up, and still the members of the public affirmed that they recalled them. The questioner even prompted them to remember cast members of these non-existent shows, which the members of the public, in most cases, also affirmed. A similar thing was done with non-existent catch phrases from the non-existent shows, and with non-existent theme tunes to the non-existent shows. 

Dave Gorman - Terms and Conditions Apply Episode 4

What it demonstrates is the ability of people to completely delude themselves about their past behaviour, and their recollections of the past. But, it also demonstrates the hypothesis developed by Milgram. Milgram was anxious to understand why it was that so many people were prepared to go along with the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. It was not that all these people were evil, or even that it could all be explained by the oppressive nature of the regime itself. It comes down to a natural human tendency to want to conform. 

A number of experiments on this have been done.  Michael Moseley for example in his series A Secret History of The Brain, for example, did experiments asking people to give up seats on buses, and so on. Milgram's experiment invited subjects to press a button that applied an electric shock to people being asked questions, every time the person got the question wrong. They were told that this was okay, by someone who was presented as being an authority figure. They were also told that the electric shocks got stronger the more questions the person got wrong. Even when the shocks were strong enough to kill the recipient, the subjects continued to comply and press the button. 

In reality, no shocks were being applied, but the subjects didn't know that. In a further experiment, because it was felt that subjects might guess that they would not be expected to kill someone with an electric shock, animals were used in place of people. Still the subjects continued to apply what they thought would be fatal electric shocks, and this was simply a result of a strong desire for compliance and willingness to accept the word of an authority figure. 

If we look at the election, and the media coverage around it, for months the media have used vox pops in town centres where this message that “lifelong Labour voters” could not vote for Labour, or for Jeremy Corbyn, even though that is exactly what they did in 2017 in very large numbers. In 2017, the media attempted the same thing, but they obviously had not had enough time for that strategy to work. Massive rallies in the Summer of 2017, following on from the massive rallies in 2015, and 2016 during the Leadership elections also contradicted, for all to see, the media message, in a way that was not possible in the Winter of 2019. 

Its no surprise then that people, having watched others like them appear in totally unscientific spurious vox pops, in town centres, week after week, and, during the election, day after day, imbibe into their consciousness that this is also what they have always thought too. Its not to say that those who do so are stupid, because it is natural human behaviour to conform that has evolved over the course of human development as a means of survival. The media is in the hands of a tiny section of society, and so if it employs these strategies, it is not surprising if they have an effect. 

Yet, the truth is that the strategy did not work as effectively as is suggested. The reality is that the majority of people voted against Brexit, and voted for parties calling for another referendum or revoke, and the majority of those who did so voted Labour. In the big cities, throughout the country, where the populations are younger, and where those younger generations get their information from the internet rather than broadcast media, Labour did well, and in many places increased its vote. So, a further strategy has had to be applied of telling everyone that Labour's performance was particularly dire, and the worst since 1935. In fact, it wasn't. Labour's vote share of 33% was higher than the 27% it secured in 1983, it was higher than the 30% it secured under Kinnock in 1987, and more or less the same as the 34% it secured under Kinnock in 1992, when it was expected that Labour was going to win. A large part of the poorer showing of Labour in terms of seats comes down to the fact that Labour was wiped out in Scotland, but Labour only had six seats to begin with, whereas back in in the 1980's and 90's, it was dominant in Scotland. Labour lost those Scottish seats long before Jeremy Corbyn became Leader. 

Again, this shows why it is necessary to break the monopoly exercised by the Tory media, and to build a progressive Labour movement media to confront it. We should devote considerable effort into producing a labour movement cable/satellite channel, providing both news and entertainment, along with internet channels. With some modicum of determination we can make this into a competitor to the Tory media, because, in the end, it is workers who produce the content already, and it is we who have the necessary talent. More importantly, we are many, they are few.

Tory Media Trolls

Yesterday, the Tory mainstream media could not believe their luck.  They were able to fill their programmes by endless loops of Dianne Abbot fluffing her lines on LBC.  But, the fact that they could talk about nothing else, and avoided discussing the substantive issue about the cuts in policing, and consequent rise and crime, and Labour's plans for reversing it, shows that the media are not fit for purpose, when it comes to reporting news.  Over the last thirty odd years, they have become so obsessed with the cult of personality, often their own personality, as news readers have become overpaid entertainment celebrities, that they now live in their own closeted bubble, a million miles removed from the lives of ordinary people.  Their reporting of incidents like that yesterday reduces them to being little different from annoying internet trolls, who pick on any small, irrelevant details that they can blow up into a controversy.

The fact about Abbott's fluff of her lines was actually set about by Abbott herself.  The media, anxious to promote their own celebrity profiles tried to present the incident as Abbott not knowing the figures.  Michael Gove, went as far as to say that it showed that Labour's policy had collapsed on first meeting with reality.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The policy clearly had been though out, because the details, including the costing had already previously been set down on paper!  Moreover, on the basis of that detail, Abbott had already given six interviews that day, where she did not fluff the figures.

Abbott clearly made a mistake in the interview with Ferrari on LBC, by first saying that the cost of employing the additional 10,000 police would be £300,000, when she meant to say £300 million.  She then did what all of us have done at some point in the past, when under pressure, which is to get flustered, and did a deeper hole.  So, what, it simply proves that Dianne Abbott is a human being just like the rest of us.  That should hardly be news, let alone news that dominated reporting for most of yesterday.

Of course, for the media it is much easier to focus on such trivia than have to themselves actually do some research so as to get a deeper understanding of the issues on which they are reporting.  Its much sexier for them to reduce politics to  nothing more than a beauty contest, or a version of some reality TV show, with opinion polls to tell us who will be thrown out of the House next.  Its no wonder that many serious people now look to social media for their information, rather than the trolls of the mainstream media, who seem more concerned with their own personality cults, and celebrity than with actually doing the jobs they are paid for.

It shows why a priority for Labour and for the TUC is to create their own media.  We have the resources, we have the personnel and talent to produce both news, sport and entertainment that would far exceed the dross that the current channels and newspapers provide.  But, Alistair Campbell was also right yesterday, in that we have to realise just what the Tory mainstream media is like, and we should not give them the opportunities they had yesterday.  Watch any of the Politics Programmes, and you will see that it is not a level playing field.

Neill, Murnaghan etc. all have their computers sitting on a desk in front of them, providing the detailed data on the questions they are going to address to their victims.  No one is going to be able to keep in their heads all of the data on detailed questions they are going to be asked, and nor should they need to.  But, as well as having our own media as the first place we go to in getting out our stories, we should ensure that whenever our spokespeople go into bat, they too have their own technology to be able to have those facts at their own fingertips.

In the end yesterday's events come down to this.  Dianne Abbott gave seven interviews, and in only one did she fluff her lines, whilst the details of the policy had already been set out in writing.  It simply showed that Dianne is not a robot.  At the same time, we have no idea how many fluffs Theresa May made yesterday, because she is being studiously kept closeted away from real people and real life.  And the reason for that is clear, in PMQ's, she like Cameron before her never answers the questions that have been put to her, and instead simply parrots endlessly a series of soundbites, and prescripted supposed jokes.  Every time she is thrown something she is not prepared for, she flakes.  So much for the supposed strong and stable leader.

Its why she refuses to enter into a direct debate against Corbyn and the other party Leaders on TV.  To coin the phrase used by her idol Thatcher, she is frit.

Trump, Putin, Hacking and US Elections

The weekend US political programmes continued the meme about Russia hacking the Democrats e-mails, as well as intervening in the US elections in a variety of other ways, such as the support for fake news websites and so on.  What a load of hyperbole and hypocrisy.

Did Russia hack into e-mails sent by Hillary Clinton and other Democrats?  I don't know, possibly, even probably.  But, so what?  No one claims that Russia actually hacked into US voting machines, so as to rig the result of the vote.  The issue for US workers was not that Russia or someone hacked into the Democrats computer systems, but that the Democrats' apparatus acted to undermine Bernie Sanders so as to support the doomed candidature of Hillary Clinton!  Whoever uncovered that underhand, bureaucratic and ultimately disastrous course of action by the Democrats establishment did US workers, and Democrats supporters a big favour.  Its that activity by that establishment that US workers and rank file Democrats should be concerned with, not some wild goose chase over who may or may not have been responsible for hacking.

What this overblown hacking scandal does is to divert attention for the benefit of the US establishment, both Democrats and Republicans.  It diverts attention from the question of how a buffoon, a racist, misogynist, narcissist like Trump could become elected to the most important position in the world.  It diverts attention from the collapse of the political centre, which ruled the roost for the last thirty years, but whose policies have brought the economies of the US, UK and EU to a position of severe financial crisis, as asset price bubbles have been inflated, at the cost of restraining economic growth, and have only been able to prevent the bursting of those financial bubbles by ever more extreme monetary intervention, again at the cost of the real economy.

After all, such hacking is nothing new.  The US has admitted hacking Angela merkel's mobile phone, for example.  The US is the world's leading technological country; most of the world's computer and communications systems are driven by software produced in the US; and US companies also own and control most of the hardware.  If any computer hacking for national strategic advantage is taking place, it is far more likely that it is the US rather than Russia that is able to be undertaking it.

And, of course, that would only be a modern version of the interference in the economies and politics of foreign countries that the US has long undertaken, just as the UK and other imperialist powers undertook such action in the past.  The US, via the CIA, for example, organised a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran, in the 1950's, just as they organised a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Allende government in Chile in 1973.  The US overtly intervened in the affairs of Latin America, and even more visibly in Vietnam.  In the 1970's, it said openly that if the Italian Communist Party was elected to government, the US would destabilise the country.

I do not doubt that Russia probably did hack US computers, but it is small fry compared to the way the US has interfered in the affairs of other countries in the past, and no doubt the present too.  The same is true about the complaints about fake news, and the propaganda activities of RT.  Again, it is small fry compared with the capacity of huge US media companies such as Fox to spread lies and disinformation, not just during an election period, but as a steady, continuous drone that continues hour after hour, day after day, year after year.  And, US officials have made no secret that billions of dollars was pumped into countries such as Ukraine and elsewhere, where the so called colour revolutions took place, to create and finance movements hostile to the existing regimes, and favourable to the US.

And watching the coverage over the weekend, and last week the problem for the US establishment becomes clear.  A range of intelligence agencies come forward to offer "proof" that Russia was responsible for the hacking, but these are the same intelligence agencies that gave "proof" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready to be fired off within 45 minutes.  Watching some of the coverage over the last few days, it reminded me of how embarrassed I felt, for Colin Powell, back in 1973, watching him set out a case using grainy, meaningless satellite photos, backed up with cartoon drawings of what Iraqi WMD facilities might look like.  Anyone watching that presentation back then, with an ounce of intelligence, would have known that no real evidence existed for Iraqi WMD.  Yet, politicians and others in the US and UK, assured us on the basis of this stuff that it was undeniable, and took us into a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqis being killed, tore the country apart, and destroyed its economy, and which opened the door for the growth of Islamist extremists across North Africa and the Middle East.

Today is even more dangerous.  Every day, the news media, itself having been turned into an entertainment industry, and in search of sensationalism to boost ratings, goads and drives politicians to provide them with a new story, a new spectacular event to cover on their "shows".  "What are you going to do about this attack by Russia?", the media ghouls ask.  Iraq had no WMD and no capacity to strike back at those that declared war on it.  Russia does have WMD.  It has lots of them.  If the media keep goading politicians into providing them with some new sensational story, by attacking Russia, they should bear in mind that they will be vaporised in any resultant nuclear blast along with the rest of us.

Profit, Rent, Interest and Asset Prices - Part 9 of 19

In the value-form, value is always expressed as a quantity of some other use value (relative form), or conversely a quantity of some use value is expressed as a value (equivalent form), or in the form of the universal equivalent form of value, money, as a price. So, for example, a metre of linen, a use value, may be expressed as £1, a quantity of value. In fact, what is being expressed is the value represented by a metre of linen, the labour-time required for its production, in its equivalent form as a certain sum of money. But, capital is not a thing, and reflecting its nature as self-expanding value, it is itself expressed as an amount of value, in its universal equivalent form, a sum of money, whether this capital-value is itself actually a sum of money-capital, or as above a machine or some other commodity.

And that is one reason that expressing the price of money is itself irrational. The price of £1 can be nothing other than £1, because price is only value expressed in money. The rate of interest then cannot possibly be a price of money. The rate of interest is not a price of money, but a price of the use value of money-capital, or of the money equivalent of some other form of capital. Unlike say yarn, or linen whose use value is expressed in terms of some physical quantity, the use value of capital can only be expressed as some sum of value, because the use value of capital is its ability to self-expand, to change from one sum of value to some greater sum of value, i.e. its ability to earn the average rate of profit. What is being bought is the ability for such self-expansion.

“What the buyer of an ordinary commodity buys is its use-value; what he pays for is its value. What the borrower of money buys is likewise its use-value as capital; but what does he pay for? Surely not its price, or value, as in the case of ordinary commodities. No change of form occurs in the value passing between borrower and lender, as occurs between buyer and seller when it exists in one instance in the form of money, and in another in the form of a commodity... But this is only possible as long as the money acts as capital and is therefore advanced. The borrower borrows money as capital, as a value producing more value. But at the moment when it is advanced it is still only potential capital, like any other capital at its starting-point, the moment it is advanced. It is only through its employment that it expands its value and realises itself as capital. However, it has to be returned by the borrower as realised capital, hence as value plus surplus-value (interest). And the latter can only be a portion of the realised profit. Only a portion, not all of it. For the use-value of the loaned capital to the borrower consists in producing profit for him. Otherwise there would not have been any alienation of use-value on the lender's part. On the other hand, not all the profit can fall to the borrower's share. Otherwise he would pay nothing for the alienated use-value, and would return the advanced money to the lender as ordinary money, not as capital, as realised capital, for it is realised capital only as M + ΔM.”

(Capital III, Chapter 21) 

So, Marx has established the basis upon which the value of commodities can be objectively determined in terms of the labour-time currently required for their reproduction. On this basis, he is also able to determine the value of the commodities, which comprise capital, i.e. the value of the constant capital, and the variable-capital. On that basis the cost of production is objectively determinable. Moreover, because the value of labour-power is inextricably tied to the normal working-day, which is thereby also objectively determinable, the amount of new value created by labour, during that working-day, is also objectively determinable. As the surplus value, is the difference between this new value created, and the value of labour-power, the mass of surplus value is also thereby objectively determinable.

Now, on the basis of all these objectively determinable quantities, it is also possible to then objectively determine the relations between them to arrive at a rate of surplus value, and a rate of profit. As outlined above, although it is not possible to determine, in the same way, the rate of interest, the determinants of that rate of interest, the demand for and supply of money-capital, are objectively determinable, and the bounds within which that rate of interest can extend are thereby set.

Having established all of these objective bases upon which these values and proportions are established, its clear then why Marx also wants to determine rent in similar objective terms.

Back To Part 8

Forward To Part 10

Traingate - The Tory Media Just Don't Get It

The Tory media have seized upon the CCTV images released by Virgin Trains to try to once again smear and undermine Jeremy Corbyn.  In fact, all they have done is to further undermine themselves, to illustrate just what is wrong with the mainstream media, and to show that they just don't get it. Like the establishment politicians that belong to the same elite, they just have not understood that the world has changed.

Like everyone else interested in politics, I watch all of the mainstream programmes like Newsnight, Marr, Murnaghan, Dateline, Peston, and the nightly Press Previews.  But, all these programmes indicate what is wrong.  They are all programmes where very highly paid, middle class journalists invite others, from within their own elite bubble, to come along and confirm their own middle class prejudices.  Often those invited on to the programmes are simply other journalists from within that bubble.  Its a bit like what happened before the Iraq War, when information from one intelligence service was passed on to another, which was then picked up by another and so on.

So, the British government and intelligence services justification, after the event, was "We were not alone in believing that Saddam had WMD".  The trouble being that the basis for believing that was that it was based on what others thought, and what others thought was simply wrong, and unfounded!

And that illustrates another problem.  Despite being extremely highly paid, most of the journalists from within this bubble appear to be extremely lazy and ill-informed.  Why would you go out and actually do real research, when you think that is a bit beneath you, and there are lackeys to do that, and when all of the others within your elite, in any case, confirm your beliefs without having to go out and do tacky things such as obtaining evidence.

A case in point has been the claims of entryism into the Labour Party.  Any journalist worth their wages should know that the claims are ridiculous, because the numbers of people involved in the sects are miniscule, and when it comes to the larger scts like the SWP or SP, that may have several hundred members, they are actually opposed to such entryist work, and too busy trying to build their own parties.  Yet the mainstream media continue to talk as though all of the tens of thousands of people that have joined the Labour Party can be accounted for by such sects!  The same is true about the kinds of people they invite on to their programmes when they want a token representative of views outside their tight spectrum.  For example, they invite along Ben Chacko from the Morning Star.

Thirty years ago, there might have been some justification for inviting along representatives of the Communist Party, but the well paid journos don't even seem to have noticed that the Communist Party split into the Communist Party of Britain, an insignificant rump of Stalinists, and the CPGB, an even less significant group of politically more healthy individuals, which by their own account amount to only about 40 people!  Of course, inviting on people like Chacko, whilst demonstrating that the elite simply do not have a clue what is going on in the world around them, also enables them to continue to present a world as they continue to see it, rather than as it actually is.

The problem for them is that, not only has the world moved on, and no longer conforms to their view of it, as it might have been 20 years ago, but the world has moved on in terms of people's ability to understand and view that world, not filtered by the lens of the mainstream media, as they were once forced to do.  Many people not involved in politics simply graze the mainstream media for news, and so the attempts to smear Corbyn are unlikely to have much impact on them.  But, for anyone who is interested, the mainstream news is almost a source of annoying entertainment, a bit like all those programmes about anti-social neighbours.  Its somewhere you go to just confirm your own belief of just how bad and biased the mainstream media is; its somewhere you might go to graze news stories, before going to search the Internet, for the real story.

So watching the Press Preview programmes on Sky and BBC News last night, and watching the discussion of #Traingate on Newsnight simply illustrated that point.  The really annoying, middle class journalists they had on simply followed the newspaper headline writers in lambasting Corbyn, finding him guilty without trial, and without any attempt to provide a balanced account.  They took the account provided by Virgin Trains, that there had been empty seats on the train, as good coin. They, of course, came out to say that Corbyn supporters would attack them for having criticised their man.  But, that was just inoculation on their part, trying to immunise themselves from the inevitable criticism in advance.

The fact, is that, earlier in the dayc others who had been with Corbyn on the train had explained the CCTV pictures.  Some seats had kids sitting on them, who could not be seen; others had bags and other bits of luggage deposited on them, and so on.  Yet, the journos seemed unaware of any of this information, as they rushed to accept the Virgin account, and smear Corbyn.  Nor did they mention that the TSSA, whose members are employed on the railway, had come out to defend Corbyn's account.

But, demonstrating that the Tory media simply do not get the way the world has changed, they also seem to have simply missed the other decisive point.  It is that Corbyn was not alone in sitting on the floor.  There were lots of other people on the train doing the same thing, with no connection to Corbyn.  So, if as Virgin claim, there were plenty of empty seats, why were all these other people sitting on the floor as well?

In years gone by, it would not have been possible to know this, and to check the biased information that the mainstream Tory media feeds us everyday, but today it is.  Many of those other passengers on the train who also had to sit on the floor have already come forward and tweeted their own accounts. In fact, many had done so yesterday, but, once again, the mainstream media ignored it, because it does not fit within their version of events, and the narrative they wanted to create.

And, of course, there was no shortage of Blair-right representatives happy to come along to chip in their three penn'orth, to show that this just illustrates that Corbyn and his team are just not up to the task of managing the media.  This from those Blair-right spin doctors who brought us the "Mrs Duffy" incident, and who then compounded that by having Gordon Brown make a grovelling apology rather than use the opportunity to make a spirited opposition to bigotry; this from the same professionals who advised Ed Miliband to produce the "Ed Stone"!  But, of course, the political memory of these people is like that of a goldfish.  They come to each event as though it was unconnected to the past, and throw out their soundbites with only concern for scoring immediate points without any regard for the collateral damage.

How Do These Journalists Defend Their Huge Salaries?

I have just been watching BBC's "Dateline London".  The discussion not surprisingly included the challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party.  Iain Martin, Editor of CapX, commented that the Labour Party was dead, not unusual for a right-wing Conservative to claim, but then went on to claim that the Labour Party had been taken over by the SWP!  Sitting next to him was Polly Toynbee of the Guardian, who did not challenge this ridiculous notion.

It would be tempting to think that Martin's claim about the SWP was just the same kind of propaganda as his claim that the Labour Party itself was dead, but I don't think that is the case.  I think it simply reflects that a) these journalists and other pundits from that milieu, find themselves in a world that they cannot understand that the only way they can try to understand events, is to make up these ridiculous fantasies, to believe in b) they are incredibly ill-informed, but get away with bull-shitting their employers, and anyone silly enough to buy the things they write, and c) they are obviously incredibly lazy, because even five minutes research on the Internet would disabuse them of the utter bollocks they espouse.

It would take less than five minutes, for example, of online research for their to find out from the SWP itself that it utterly opposes any activity within the Labour Party, and has done so for decades. A similar amount of time would disabuse them of the notion that the Socialist Party of England and Wales has any such interest either.  If they don't believe what those organisations themselves have to say on the matter, they only have to read some of the other discussion on the Internet in any number of left-wing forums, where other left-wing groups criticise the SWP and SPEW, for their sectarian attitude towards the Labour Party, and failure to relate to it, and its members.

Either these journalists know that to be the case, and they are simply lying in order to spread disinformation amongst the wider public, to justify their own anti-democratic positions in relation to the Labour Party and its members, or, and I think this is more likely to be the case, it is simply easier for them to believe that this is the case, because it fits their preconceived world view, and is the only way they can rationalise the fact that the vast majority of the Labour Party, stands in opposition to it. And, starting from that preconception, they are too lazy to bother with even the most basic checking of facts.  In fact, they are just as bad as those bigots I referred to in a previous post, who are not just wrong in their interpretation of facts, but bigots precisely because they do not want to allow the facts to get in the way of the preconceptions.

But, the claim is, of course, as anyone on the left knows totally ridiculous for other reasons.  At its height in the 1970's, the SWP had no more than around 3,000 members.  The Militant, now the Socialist Party, claimed around 10,000 members, but in reality it was probably no more than 5,000 at most.  In both case, the numbers that were really active was much smaller.  But, today both organisations number their members in hundreds not thousands.  At best together both organisations, along with other such sects might total around 3,000 members.  So, how on Earth could organisations that amount to no more than 3,000 even if they were all members of the Labour Party, which clearly they are not, because the SWP and SPEW reject activity within the Labour Party, have taken it over.  How on Earth could they outweigh the half million people that have joined the Labour Party as members, or registered supporters?

It is clearly nonsense.  Moreover, we all know that these right-wing journalists have connections with the secret services that have their own agents working in the various sects.  Some of those journalists have themselves worked for the secret services in the past, some went on to be novelists, writing spy stories.  So, if they don't trust what the sects say themselves about their own activities, don't trust what others on the left say about the activities of these different sects, why don't they just ask their friends in Special Branch or MI6, for the information?  They would confirm to them that they are talking bollocks.

If these very highly paid journalists are so out of touch, so badly informed about the world they live in, and the things they pronounce upon, with such apparent knowledge and authority, its no wonder that they are completely lost when it comes to understanding what is going on, and continually get things so wrong in what they think is going to happen.  We are often told that the problem with the Internet is that it will always require professional journalists to do all of the objective checking of facts, the research and so on that everyone else relies upon.  But, its increasingly obvious that those supposed professional journalists, with a few honourable exceptions have been very far from doing any objective research and analysis.

Its no wonder that the number of people buying newspapers has continued to decline.  Yet, these journalists continue to get their employers to pay them huge salaries, way beyond what any ordinary worker could expect.  And a completely incestuous world is created by those journalists, as one set of journalists, as with Dateline, then invite on, as their authoritative sources, other journalists, who pump out this unsourced, ill-considered garbage as though it was gospel truth.

Its no concern of mine whether the owners of the newspapers and journals that employ these hacks, are getting screwed royally in paying huge salaries for a load of bilge, but if I were the owner of one of those publications, I think I would rapidly be showing them the door until such time that they could show they were worth their coin.