Minor tweaks and reforms ongoing, just to make the life of anyone who cares that little bit easier. On the right, there is a 'page' section, which can send you to archives of themed pieces.
Because I care.
Friday 9 December 2011
Wednesday 7 December 2011
New feature
Just because I love the word 'widget', I've added a little feature where you can click the box(es) under each post that reflect what you thought of them, if you can't quite be bothered to write a comment.
Give 'em a go. I dare you.
Some guy said you couldn't. Prove him wrong.
Give 'em a go. I dare you.
Some guy said you couldn't. Prove him wrong.
The Tale of Cameron's Cunning...
...Or, how the Pearls and Handbag are coming back to haunt us in more ways than we thought.
In a leaked cable around this time last year, it emerged that William Hague described himself, George Osborne and David Cameron as 'Thatcher's children'. Putting aside, if at all possible, the disturbing image of this terrifying and repulsive family (note to self: clean mind with bleach later), it is clear that several elements of truth have emerged from this out-of-the-blue maternity claim. It is certainly enough to make 2010's intake of the New Right giggle with glee, and make the Left grow a goatee for moral support while reaching for a copy of Das Kapital in the vain hope that, while worn in the jacket pocket, it can stop the myriad bullets of privatisation that are whizzing our way.
Some of this Thatcherism (and please, for the sake of sanity and all that is holy, let us please assume that Hague was speaking figuratively) is fairly explicit as Cameron bids adieu to the Royal Mail, the NHS (if some have their way) and anything along the lines of Union authority or money for the public sector. However, what is slightly more worrying is the stuff that isn't immediately noticeable; the wave of 'stealth Thatcherism', if you will, that is slowly creeping over us. The Big Society, sold to us in its vague, vague terms of 'self betterment', 'get the chance to do it yourself' and 'communities coming together', is a beast that masquerades under the cloak of 'empowering' (a term that I am, frankly, always slightly dubious of, despite the fact that at my school's open evening, at which I was helping, I said it so many times that I started to sound like a tiring and cheesy feminist rally, if such a thing could ever possibly exist). Perhaps it is. Perhaps there are people who really do enjoy organising their own sewage cleaning, and feel better for it. However, I can never quite shake off the feeling that the Big Society is just another Government ploy, another way for them to rinse their hands of people's lives, another way to disassociate themselves from any responsibility when things go wrong, while leaving them able to claim credit for success. It's the underhand, smiley re-emergence of the laissez-faire of yesteryear, "rolling back the frontiers of the state" in a cunning, brilliantly intelligent, gloriously Tory political master-stroke which allows Cameron to reap the crops that he did not sow. Thatcher would be proud.
And now, just as an afterthought, I'm going to embark on a brief dalliance which is sure to set some people a-tutting and which pre-emptively invokes Godwin's Law. I'm drawing on the Nazis. Now, before I jowls start quivering with rage, I will hastily point out that I'm not completely conflating the right-wing ideology of Conservatives with the right-wing ideology of a barking mad Austrian chap. Just hear me out. One of the reasons that the Gestapo were so effective was that Himmler engineered its methods in such a way that they had to do relatively little. Ordinary people were turned into informers through a mix of fear and duty, leaving the Gestapo as a mostly administrative body, sifting through the huge weight of reports that people filed on their friends, neighbours and family. Society was snitching on itself.
Wait wait wait wait wait... Government stepping back, leaving responsibility to the people of a society to do the job themselves? Familiar, much?
Sorry, Dave. When it comes to originality, you're 70 years too late.
In a leaked cable around this time last year, it emerged that William Hague described himself, George Osborne and David Cameron as 'Thatcher's children'. Putting aside, if at all possible, the disturbing image of this terrifying and repulsive family (note to self: clean mind with bleach later), it is clear that several elements of truth have emerged from this out-of-the-blue maternity claim. It is certainly enough to make 2010's intake of the New Right giggle with glee, and make the Left grow a goatee for moral support while reaching for a copy of Das Kapital in the vain hope that, while worn in the jacket pocket, it can stop the myriad bullets of privatisation that are whizzing our way.
Some of this Thatcherism (and please, for the sake of sanity and all that is holy, let us please assume that Hague was speaking figuratively) is fairly explicit as Cameron bids adieu to the Royal Mail, the NHS (if some have their way) and anything along the lines of Union authority or money for the public sector. However, what is slightly more worrying is the stuff that isn't immediately noticeable; the wave of 'stealth Thatcherism', if you will, that is slowly creeping over us. The Big Society, sold to us in its vague, vague terms of 'self betterment', 'get the chance to do it yourself' and 'communities coming together', is a beast that masquerades under the cloak of 'empowering' (a term that I am, frankly, always slightly dubious of, despite the fact that at my school's open evening, at which I was helping, I said it so many times that I started to sound like a tiring and cheesy feminist rally, if such a thing could ever possibly exist). Perhaps it is. Perhaps there are people who really do enjoy organising their own sewage cleaning, and feel better for it. However, I can never quite shake off the feeling that the Big Society is just another Government ploy, another way for them to rinse their hands of people's lives, another way to disassociate themselves from any responsibility when things go wrong, while leaving them able to claim credit for success. It's the underhand, smiley re-emergence of the laissez-faire of yesteryear, "rolling back the frontiers of the state" in a cunning, brilliantly intelligent, gloriously Tory political master-stroke which allows Cameron to reap the crops that he did not sow. Thatcher would be proud.
And now, just as an afterthought, I'm going to embark on a brief dalliance which is sure to set some people a-tutting and which pre-emptively invokes Godwin's Law. I'm drawing on the Nazis. Now, before I jowls start quivering with rage, I will hastily point out that I'm not completely conflating the right-wing ideology of Conservatives with the right-wing ideology of a barking mad Austrian chap. Just hear me out. One of the reasons that the Gestapo were so effective was that Himmler engineered its methods in such a way that they had to do relatively little. Ordinary people were turned into informers through a mix of fear and duty, leaving the Gestapo as a mostly administrative body, sifting through the huge weight of reports that people filed on their friends, neighbours and family. Society was snitching on itself.
Wait wait wait wait wait... Government stepping back, leaving responsibility to the people of a society to do the job themselves? Familiar, much?
Sorry, Dave. When it comes to originality, you're 70 years too late.
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