Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: London's Burning

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  • giovanni tiso, in reply to Danielle,

    I'd like to note belatedly that if you start liveblogging the apocalypse again

    In two weeks and then again three weeks after that.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic, in reply to Sacha,

    Via Mr Grigg, an inter-generational analysis. Warning: some content may upset boomers.

    It's not so much the boomers, but rather those who sold out and became what they rebelled against, which has considerable overlap but not one and the same. A lot of neo-cons, boomer or not, fall into that category.

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Rich Lock,

    I know the Walworth road pretty well: I used to live at the Camberwell end and my girlfriend (now wife) at the Elephant end.

    I lived (i.e.: squatted) on Rockingham Estate in the Elephant, and briefly in a little estate just off the Walworth Road, with a mad Italian Manc called Tony.

    Remember Pizza Castello? Their 75p garlic pizza bread sustained me through some lean weeks.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso, in reply to Kumara Republic,

    A lot of neo-cons, boomer or not, fall into that category.

    I might quibble there - maybe you mean neoliberal? Neoconservatism is quite a specific ideology which has few supporters outside of the United States.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Rich Lock, in reply to Russell Brown,

    GF lived on the Rockingham.

    If Pizza Castello is the place I'm thinking of, it's where we had our rather disasterous (non-) first date. A tale for another time, though.

    Sadly, it now appears to be gone. Google streetview shows a building site, and there's some chat here about them moving out and castle house being demolished.

    back in the mother countr… • Since Feb 2007 • 2728 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic, in reply to giovanni tiso,

    I might quibble there - maybe you mean neoliberal? Neoconservatism is quite a specific ideology which has few supporters outside of the United States.

    Those too.

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    Meanwhile CNN sternly tells us that the always reputable UK press have worked out it's about the rich and 'Respectable' too - all 7 of them - in a particularly odious roundup of the right-wing media's new side-stepping talking point:

    Reporter Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Daily Telegraph: "Here in court, as David Cameron condemned the 'sickness' in parts of British society, we saw clearly, for the first time, the face of the riot: stripped of its hoods and masks, dressed in white prison T-shirts and handcuffed to burly security guards.

    "It was rather different from the one we had been expecting."

    He added of the defendants at Highbury Magistrates Court in north London: "Most were teenagers or in their early twenties, but a surprising number were older.

    "Most interestingly of all, they were predominantly white, and many had jobs."

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Lucy Stewart, in reply to Kumara Republic,

    It's not so much the boomers, but rather those who sold out and became what they rebelled against

    Which every generation does, one way or another. It's not like the boomers are special in that regard. (In precisely how they took advantage of the following generation, sure, but in that they decided they quite liked being the ones with the wealth and power and would like some more of it and for those young people to stop complaining - not at all.)

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report Reply

  • andin,

    It’s not so much the boomers, but rather those who sold out and became what they rebelled against

    Which every generation does, one way or another.

    No that would be a individual who does that. Please try not to extrapolate out erroneously.

    they decided they quite liked being the ones with the wealth and power

    again this is an individual track not a generational one. Name the people who fall into this category and we might be getting somewhere.

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Lucy Stewart, in reply to andin,

    No that would be a individual who does that. Please try not to extrapolate out erroneously.

    I really don't see your point. These aren't trends that *matter* on an individual level. They're trends that matter on a voting-patterns, society-wide level. One person who protests for a fairer society at twenty and protests capital gains taxes at fifty is unimportant. It's the shift *across the group as a whole* that changes things.

    Unless you're arguing that the boomer generation didn't benefit from a strong welfare state and free university education only to implement policies which are slowly denying those things to their children and grandchildren when they became the government?

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    It must be hard for people who don't fit the stereotype to read the word "they" used about any group that they're a part of. But we all experience that from time to time, and taking a collective view of human behaviour nonetheless helps us understand what's going on.

    Rioting in particular would make little sense to see as an individual phenomenon. And whose collective interests are benefitted by doing so?

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    Meanwhile dim Paul Holmes wails "who could have known?" while describing some of the dots he can't seem to join, including Britain's past glories.

    So I'm reading about this entire other world, this world of beautiful dreams and beautiful houses and estates and balls and good manners that Hitler swept away, and then I've turned on the television and seen all week the ugliness of young British thugs tearing the backside out of half a dozen British cities.
    Like everyone, I don't understand it. Why are they doing this, smashing the shops and now each other, destroying the livelihoods of decent people in furious rampages organised by the miracle of the text. Are they so disaffected? Do they not feel they have a stake? Are they so badly educated? Is it racist, all of this? How can you tell, with their balaclavas and hoodies? Young hoodlums lighting massive fires simply to watch buildings burn. I mean, it is so catastrophically un-British. Or is it? They've lived for a long time with soccer hooliganism and lager louts in the UK.

    And of course, the kids are so mobile they're very hard to police.

    Mind you, who would have thought the British police would have so much riot gear available to them? I doubt anyone could have foreseen how widespread and tinder dry the hostility in the inner cities had become. Maybe the kids are just bored.
    ..

    And perhaps the old ways were the right ways. Perhaps they should shoot the thugs in the city streets.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Lucy Stewart, in reply to Sacha,

    And perhaps the old ways were the right ways. Perhaps they should shoot the thugs in the city streets.

    I thought it was more traditional to ride them down from horseback, but, you know, whatever works.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic, in reply to Sacha,

    Meanwhile dim Paul Holmes wails "who could have known?" while describing some of the dots he can't seem to join, including Britain's past glories.

    To cut a long story short, Holmes thinks no true Scotsman, oops, Londoner, goes on a burning spree - the sentence "it is so catastrophically un-British" was telling.

    in a particularly odious roundup of the right-wing media's new side-stepping talking point:

    Come to think of it, the said "right-wing media" seemed to be playing the No True Scotsman card in that CNN article. Same thing happened with Anders Breivik. Pattern, anyone?

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    But I’m serious. It seems to me that Western capitalism is in crisis, because the logical outcome of it is finally coming to fruition, that the means of production have mostly moved out, and it’s now mostly uncompetitive and stagnant.

    I suspect Western capitalism is probably less in crisis at the moment, than it was just before/at the beginning of the Great Depression. Sandwiched between two world wars we may never see such a darkness over western society. Perhaps if our current economic recession goes into full blown decade long depression, into which flows the first serious impacts of peak oil and climate change for 'ordinary western' folks.

    And culturally, I don't think anything happening at present is anywhere near the challenge of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the context of the cold war, the continuing death of colonialism, rise of new imperialism, counter culture, sexual and drug liberalism, civil rights, anti-Vietnam, and at stages, the collapse of the education system under revolting students makes London look like only the first step.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Kumara Republic,

    Holmes thinks

    You're exaggerating

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Kyle Matthews,

    I suspect Western capitalism is probably less in crisis at the moment, than it was just before/at the beginning of the Great Depression.
    ...
    And culturally, I don't think anything happening at present is anywhere near the challenge of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

    I'd say it's a different but significant systemic crisis/challenge, especially if you take in the unrest in other places like the middle east over similar factors like poverty, food prices, youth unemployment and political disengagement. What did you make of the Will Davies article that Stephen linked to?

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic,

    Even FranO has her standards.

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Kumara Republic,

    Great read. Love when people like her connect their life experiences with what's going on - tempers the gung-ho extremism.

    In the context of Key and chums preparing to slash benefits in the name of reducing 'dependence', O'Sullivan talks about his mum and her's both raising families alone in 1960s New Zealand:

    Like [Key's mother] Ruth Lazar, she was of an independent stripe, too proud to throw herself on the state's meagre mercies.

    But we also had many advantages. Mum owned her house outright - it had been bequeathed to her by her father, who had been a farmer before moving to town.

    She made our clothes, took in sewing for relatives and female friends, covered most of our quarter-acre plot with a vegetable garden and was back in paid employment at a local lawyer's office before I was 10.

    But the introduction of the DPB has changed the game. Numbers have flourished as a result of the mentality that says "it's better for the children" to split rather than stick in loveless or difficult marriages.

    But times have also changed.

    At the time my mother - and Key's - took charge of their families, jobs were plentiful. It was also not the norm for both parents to work, so there were also plenty of stay-at-home mums happy to earn some extra dollars by caring for other people's children.

    If solo mothers are forced back to work please ensure after-school care is available so they can contribute safe in the knowledge that their children are being cared for.

    Otherwise we simply embed the kinds of pervasive inequalities that have led to too many of Britain's youth being ostracised from society.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    I suspect Western capitalism is probably less in crisis at the moment, than it was just before/at the beginning of the Great Depression.

    Not sure about that. The option of war has been a constant feature of the system, as a way of stimulating production when the natural tendency towards imbalance becomes excessive. But the kind of wars that major powers get into now just don't cut it either as excuses for rationalization of production, nor as ways of controlling internal unrest.

    Also, the existence of major non-Western rivals who are militarily unassailable has meant that the ridiculously high incomes enjoyed by quite a lot of the population just can't be sustained.

    I hope this will actually lead to a realization that those ridiculous incomes didn't really make the societies much happier, that all kinds of excess can be done away with without really losing much at all, that being a low wage economy really isn't that awful if people are enjoying good lives, which mostly comes about through a more fair distribution of the social production.

    I'm not arguing that we should aim to be low-wage. I just think it's been happening, and it will continue to happen, and *that* is the challenge that is new. That is the crisis that has to be overcome. If we manage to do it without war this time, my faith in humanity will be restored.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    The Chinese seem to be taking some pleasure in tossing net freedom back at Cameron:

    We may wonder why western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet.

    They are not interested in learning what content those nations are monitoring, let alone their varied national conditions or their different development stages.

    Laying undue emphasis on Internet freedom, the western leaders become prejudiced against those "other than us," stand ready to put them in the dock and attempt to stir up their internal conflicts.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg, in reply to BenWilson,

    Also, the existence of major non-Western rivals who are militarily unassailable has meant that the ridiculously high incomes enjoyed by quite a lot of the population just can't be sustained.

    Crucially, yes. The before and after of 1929 saw the power base in the same geographic place. The ructions of the last 4 years has seen, or is concurrent with an increasing shift in the fulcrum east.

    It bemuses me when Western observers and commentators continually talk of the global financial crisis. The ripples - stock fluctuations and the like - flow east, but are viewed in large parts of the world with almost detachment from what are somewhat good times economically. From Indonesia north, with the possible exception of Japan, Asia isn't in crisis, quite the opposite.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson, in reply to Simon Grigg,

    Asia isn't in crisis, quite the opposite.

    For many people I know, it's the place to be.

    From Indonesia north, with the possible exception of Japan, Asia isn't in crisis, quite the opposite.

    And Japan's crisis is very similar to the Western one. Unsustainably high incomes leading to unrealistic expectations of constant growth, whilst at the same time being uncompetitive. It's a crisis they've been in for quite some time.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • DexterX, in reply to Steve Barnes,

    Hmmmm Butt Joints

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1224 posts Report Reply

  • DexterX, in reply to BenWilson,

    Unsustainably high incomes leading to unrealistic expectations of constant growth, whilst at the same time being uncompetitive. It's a crisis they've been in for quite some time.

    This is a bit broad and unconnected, what is or where would you set an unsustainably high income and who gets paid it.

    In the context of Key and chums preparing to slash benefits in the name of reducing 'dependence

    Deepening the recession is the only way to get out of the recession – refer GST increase. The slashing of benefits will help foster the recovery in the longer term, it will work the same way that throwing human sacrifices into the volcano, time and time again, made it rain and stopped the crops from failing. Eventually you make a human sacrifice and it rains.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1224 posts Report Reply

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