A2Z 2020 Challenge

V is for Vlogging – is it the Future or the Devil?

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Spoiler Alert!

If you are a Blogger who thinks that Vloggers are the spawn of the Devil then I must warn you that this post contains a Vlog post – by yours truly – but fear not, I am not going to become a regular Vlogger, this guest appearance is only in the interests of exploring the difference between the two phenomena – Blogging and Vlogging…

Appearances

Have you ever wondered how your favourite Bloggers look? In some cases, (including myself) they do provide a thumbnail or even a proper picture of themselves such as the writers Sharon Cathcart or Sarah Zama. I have a confession to make – my thumbnail is at least a decade old but I feel it strikes the right note – so it stays – if you want to see me now you will have to watch the Vlog… But there are others – and I am not criticising – such as my most faithful visitor, commenter and my mentor for promoting this blog – Frédérique at Applique Patchwork Quilting who remain a mystery. Frédérique has become a voice without appearance in my head and it is strange that we should apply that term to written words and that is one of the things that I want to explore by comparing blogs and vlogs.

Crossover

My first post in this A to Z 2020 Challenge was about Alistair Cooke and I suggested, that because he first wrote down and then read out  his iconic “Letter from America”, Cooke should be considered the prototypical Blogger and in recording his blog he made crossover to broadcasting – first Radio and later TV with his series “America”. Vlogging is the screen crossover child of blogging for the generation who hardly watch TV but get a lot of their screen leads from YouTube.

What is a Vlog?

Just like its progenitor, the Blog, the Vlog is, at its simplest, a dated video post. Like blogs, vlogs have many uses, diary, business tool, marketing, educational, documentary, political message but they differ from blogs because they each have different strengths and weaknesses.
Vlogs are visual and their authors (if blogs can have a voice, then videos can be authored) have to be seen – so not for the shy and self-conscious. in fact vlogs have been analyzed for “personality traits such as Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience.” (Wikipedia) Since we humans learn in so many ways, then for some, video is a far more effective way to learn (or just be entertained) whereas others learn (or enjoy) the written word better. Surely the vlog conveys much more than the words that are spoken – the non-verbal cues are equally important and anyone who hs watched a nerd with a personality void give a video post about something technical will know what I mean. Text is notorious for being unreliable at conveying tone – short texts between people in particular but at least with a blog, we have longer pieces in which to develop our message and over the course of following a particular blogger, we get to recognize more accurately their “voice” and their stance through the choice of words, content and style.
This post has already included several links to other parts of the internet and this is more difficult to do on a vlog or indeed TV broadcasting – how many times following a TV programme – even drama, have we heard over the credits – “If any viewers have been affected by the issues raised in the programme – please go to our website for links to support you…” On the other hand a blog is limited to still photos or embedded videos to show the reader things with a flow – but then again – you can always go back to that link in a blog.

The Best of Both Worlds…

Perhaps the most effective way of managing content, if neither blogging nor blogging conveys everything you need to say, is a combination – a blog with a vlog embedded – that way you can put all the links, the carefully polished words into the blog whilst including the more emotional, personal, non-verbal communication into the vlog element.
To test this, I am going to take a leap into the dark, or considering that I will reveal myself, warts and all, a leap into the light by posting a vlog right here…

And Frédérique, there is something especially for you…


So there it is – Hit or a Miss? You decide…


You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter



U is for UB40

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!


Two days ago I said how important music was to me (and it’s still not too late to join the game ) – not only listening to the music itself, but the musicology – the story of where the music came from, the influences, the writers, composers, and even the producers and my relationship to the music of UB40 typifies how music has changed for me and I suspect lots of others.

When I met my partner back in the mid 80’s, I did not like spending money on myself, so she made up for that on birthdays and Christmas by buying me lots of music! UB40’s “Labour of Love” was one such (vinyl) album and featured the chart-topping “Red, Red Wine” – a cover of the 1967 Neil Diamond song but in the 1968 reggae styled version by Tony Tribe. This album gave rise to the idea that all UB40’s songs were covers but this is not the case yet the band with a very mixed ethnicity make-up, was very influenced by Ska, early Reggae and Lovers Rock. By the time they hit the big time and went to Jamaica, they were looking forward to meeting their musical roots who in turn were looking forward to the band which had given their careers a much-needed boost!


Named for the form issued to unemployed people applying for the dole, the members of UB40 hailed from Birmingham and were all unemployed when they formed up and indeed – their first album was called “Signing Off” to signify that they no longer needed to claim unemployment benefit. But all of these details had to wait for the internet to develop before I could become aware of them.

Meanwhile, CD’s came and went and now we have Spotify as my default way to listen to music. Now I have more musicology on the internet than I know what to do with, concerts on TV, access to many groups whole back catalogues yet I still have that first UB40 vinyl album given to me by my beloved – and hey! Guess what? Vinyl records are back and we can again dream of affording a bigger and better hi-fi system,  maybe with exposed valve amplifier – nah! Just play me UB40 on any tinny device and you will find me singing along.

T is for Trust…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Do you trust your Politicians?

In a democracy, we choose people to represent us in doing the job of managing our country because the knowledge, processes and institutions involved in running a country are beyond most of us. In an ideal world, politicians would be elder citizens who have worked in the “real” world and bring a variety of experiences to the table. Too often, we get instead, a class of professional politicians who have never done a day’s work outside the bubble of government.

We have to place our trust in the politicians we elect and under the stress test of the present Covid 19 crisis, many governments are being found wanting, many are taking the opportunity to seize power in a more authoritarian way under cover of the crisis yet some governments, many led by women, are doing much better than others.

Sex and Trust

I am fascinated by the part that instinct plays in the human way of life. We must spend something like 21 years raising a family so the power of sex and love must glue us together for the duration through what, for most couples, is bound to have some ups and downs. Yet is said that infidelity on the part of men is down to their instinct to spread their seed wherever they can, and before the advent of genetic testing, men (and women) could mostly get away with this. However trust, once broken by infidelity discovered, is hard, and for some, impossible to rebuild. Women are often portrayed as the opposite of wild oat sowing men – faithful nest-builders yet not only among humans but also among some birds, has it been discovered that certain females partner up with good providers – first of nest-building materials and then food for the chicks. However the female then secretly mates with a more “fit” and showy male thus getting the best of both worlds…
In some bird species, such as the Bower Bird, it is the quality of the nest building and decorating which is the criteria for selection of a mate by the female whilst for others, it’s all about the Peacock plumage. How does this relate to trust in politicians?

“Male” and “Female” Values in politicians.

In an article by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in Forbes, she writes about how the countries which have the best response to the corona virus crisis have one thing in common – women leaders! Iceland, Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand, Finland, Iceland and Denmark all have women Premieres and all have had better responses to the crisis than say Britain, the US, Brazil, India or Russia where right-wing politicians are consolidating power and wielding it unwisely at the cost of the lives of their citizens. Taiwan has had an exemplary response to the virus – a fast, testing and tracing based response by Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan (which was lost to the world because the WHO is China leaning and wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of Taiwan or the warnings it issued about what was happening in China let alone report on its successful strategy!).
Iceland is a large island with a small population and a pioneer of whole-population genetic testing (which revealed lots of infidelity-produced babies that led to many divorces in Iceland) and so tested its entire population under the leadership of Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, and “will become a key case study in the true spread and fatality rates of COVID-19” according to Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. Avivah goes on to suggest that for years, research has shown that the leadership styles of women have much to recommend them and points us to an article on 7 Leadership Lessons men can Learn from Women.

Are men led by the instinct first to reproduce and then to grasp power – the biggest and best tail feathers? Are some women seduced by the Donald Trumps of this world with their bright orange colouring and big towers? Are all women consummate nest-builders and faithful partners? How much are we driven by instinct to the detriment of common sense? These are the things that keep me awake at night – but on the evidence of the present crisis, whatever drives the women premieres in whom their people have placed their trust, seems to be working much better than the countries where men are the chosen ones…

S is for Sugar – A music game for our times…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!


If this blog is to reflect its creator, then there has not been enough Music present! The following is a game I invented for long car journeys but it could be played in the present social isolation, by text, on Zoom or even in the comments of a blog…


The game is really word association but in the form of song titles, lines from songs or the names of bands. you go round the circle sparking off the last person’s offering, no repetition though you could have a line from a song whose title has previously been used. For me, it’s not about keeping score, but if you are really competitive, then it’s negative scoring – you lose a point for getting stuck or for an incorrect challenge so it is the one who has the least negative score who wins! Yes, you can challenge if you cannot see the association of another’s song with the previous one. Enjoy! I will start with The Archies classic hit…

A:- Sugar, Sugar
B:- Brown Sugar
C:- Brown Girl in the Ring
A:- Hurricane
C:- What! How does that follow?
A:- It’s Dylans song about a boxing champion who performs in the ring!
B:- Okay so then I’ll go with Blow the Winds Southerly
C:- Weather Report 
A:- A Change Is Gonna Come
B:-Better be home soon… 
C:- I don’t know if that’s tenuous or very clever! Home Sweet Home
A:- My sweet little Alice Blue Gown
B:- Tupelo Honey
C:- Honey Child
A:-Sweet Child of Mine
B:- You must have had the cutest little baby face
C:- Baby Love
A:-Love to Love you Baby
B:- Love is the Drug
C:- Cocaine
A:-I’m Waiting for My Man
B:- Brotherhood of Man
C:- He Aint Heavy He’s My Brother!


And so it goes! Please comment starting with your response to the last song above or following that, the comment before yours…



R is for Remembrance – Photos for the purpose of –

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Why do we take Photographs?

Every photograph is a “snapshot” of a moment in time but I think we take them for many different reasons – though it can be for several reasons at the same time. Perhaps too, it has to do with the kind of photographer you are – do you make your living from photography, are you like me – a keen amateur or do you just take pictures on your phone (because who needs an actual camera these days). I do have an SLR with a choice of lenses but I too take pictures on my phone because taking out my SLR – in its bag with all the accessories – that makes it a photography trip and the rest of the time I still have my phone camera. So! Right there is an implied difference – when I take my “proper” camera I hope to achieve some more considered? artistic? special? pictures. Yet all of these things, I have achieved on my phone too. So it must be the intention, the sensibility with which I take the shot that matters.

I take pictures when I am surveying buildings to remember things when I am drawing them up on the computer, I take arty shots, funny shots, I take pictures on holiday or days out with my partner in order to remember the day. (Before we all had cameras, we bought Picture Postcards for the same reason…) I have taken pictures as evidence following a car crash and I take pictures of objects such as the brand of coffee I want my grandson to buy for us whilst he is doing our lockdown shopping or to remember them for later – visual notes to self.

Some of these uses are only economically possible because of digital cameras. My first camera – a hand-me-down from my father, I used to, like him, take coloured slides and they were expensive to get processed – even at 12 to a roll, so I composed my pictures very carefully and almost never got a disappointing result. Noe I can pop away like a pro at a fashion suit but the lack of care means I can take a hundred pictures and none of them might be right. But going back to the abstract uses of pictures such as remembrance – how often do we look at the photographs we have taken, we don’t tend to print them out but must look at them on some kind of electronic device and yet that makes it easier to share them with others – you don’t have to invite them round for a slide show of your latest holidays…

If you take a picture – primarily to remember something or somewhere or someone, is it just you the photographer’s memory or can you share it with another as a memory? Even for the one you are with it can have a different connotation. ME: “Smile so I can have a record of you at this charming café in this lovely seaside town.” PARTNER: “OK but you have to let me check it!” ME: Snap “Okay – here it is…” PARTNER: “Oh my God, that sunshine shows up all my wrinkles – no you’ll have to delete that!” ME: “Yes but it’s just for us to remember today by.” PARTNER: “Well if you must – but don’t you dare put it on Facebook!” And if there was a photo deemed fit for Facebook – would it be a memory for the people who saw it – no – it would be something else even though it might trigger memories about the person or place or object featured in the viewer. And if a photo doesn’t trigger memories, it may trigger emotions and perhaps that would then make it Art – but that’s another story.

So to summarise – here is a list of all the things I can think of, that a photograph can be:-
An Aide Memoire
A Record
Reportage
A Note
Evidence
A Work of Art
A Stimulus
Pornography
A Missive

My original idea for this post was to choose three pictures I have taken which I would keep purely for Remembrance and to challenge readers to do the same but then I got thinking about all the multiple roles that a photograph can have but before I present my selection, I can’t resist putting a couple of questions out there…
Selfies! What’s that all about? And Instagramming your meals – who is that for? And so many pictures of pets? Well I guess I know the answer to that one to be fair.
So here are my three pictures and PLEASE choose three of yours which you would keep for the memory (though they may also be beautiful or informative) they don’t have to be the ones that if your house were burning you would grab on the way out – just ones that are full of memories… Post them and send a link in the comments – thanks!

Or you could join my Linkz party (first time I’ve tried it…)
https://fresh.inlinkz.com/p/e9640b6c724d4424b5f4bebe30e6bf78




Q is for Quality of Life…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

The current crisis has changed the lives of almost every person in the whole world and the following are fictional responses, imagining those changes (albeit with some research) and especially changes, for better or worse, to the quality of life…


Susan, Sex Worker

My working name is Susan and I am a sex worker according to my key worker, a prostitute if you are the pigs, a tart if you are a punter, and I am a drug addict. I got to do heroin because I can’t face working the streets without it and I work the streets because I need to buy heroin. Dealers know this and use it against me and the other girls, they let us have the first score of the night for free but then we have to pay back double plus the next score so we are playing catch up all bloody night. Then when we are ready to finish, they give us some bad shit that makes us feel so ill we need to work again for one more score – bastards.

But things are different now – what with the virus. The week before lockdown, the dealers were selling cheap – afraid they wouldn’t shift their gear – that meant we had an easier week. But when lockdown began the police were all over us girls on the street and we couldn’t go out without risking being locked up properly overnight – not good when you’re dying for a hit. The dealers wouldn’t come out either ‘cos the police were everywhere and stopping cars all the time. Then there was the boyfriend – pimp some would call him, since he was always pushing me out the door to work and score for both of us. After two days without drugs he chipped – not without givin’ me a black eye first – I think he went back to stay at his bro’s so I don’t have to fight with him no more – good riddance!

I can go to the pharmacy in town each day for my methadone but for a few days I was starving for food. I thought about it and then I rang George. George is a punter who I used to visit at home and he is 65 and he give me a home for now and food. Of course we do the business but now I am there all the time, he don’t want too much. Maybe once a week was enuff anyway – I think he is more glad of the company – he can’t go to the pub no more and I don’t mind him neither, an’ he has loads of books which I like. I do the shopping for us – I go out each day for the methadone which I often used to throw up ‘cos I’m bulimic but my life is less stressful than for as long as I can remember so I mostly keep it down.

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 1
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 7 

Freddie, 6 year-old boy

My brother and I live in Stevenage, which is in Hertfordshire, with our parents and during the week, our nanny. Daddy does something with money – I don’t really understand and Mummy is a lawyer but I don’t really understand what that is either. They have explained but I can’t tell them I don’t understand ‘cos then they’ll think I am stupid and they are very strict about being clever at school. Usually, we go to school in the week and our nanny – she is called Jane, she takes us and picks us up and stays with us till Mummy comes home. Jane lets us sing on the way home but we are not allowed to sing at home. We made Rainbow paintings on our last day at school, but we got into trouble because we drew a rainbow on the driveway with chalk, like we saw other children do on the TV. Mummy made us wash it off and Jane and Mummy argued. Jane is fun and now she is teaching us at home because we can’t go to school because of the virus and although Mummy and Daddy are home all the time – they are still working and we mustn’t disturb them. I miss going to school and seeing my friends. We still get to sing when Jane takes us out for exercise – everybody is allowed to go out to exercise for one hour a day. This is the best bit of the day!

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 7
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 6

James 85 year-old in a Residential Home

I am afraid for my life – more even than during the Blitz. My parents wouldn’t let my sister and I be evacuated as we lived just outside London on the hill above Greenwich and when we came out of our shelter after the all-clear, we could see London burning and once a bomber crashed in the High Street but never was I as afraid as I am now. Last year I had a leg amputated which is why I am in here but I was doing okay till this Covid 19 thing. I needed help going to the toilet and in the shower but the staff at this home were kind and brilliant. Now though, they are doing the best they can but still, 12 people in the home have died of the virus and the staff haven’t got all the equipment they need to keep themselves safe or therefore me. I try to call on them as little as possible but sometimes I have to. I know they always liked to help me before because I don’t have dementia, like lots of the residents, and they could have a proper conversation with me – but now they are stressed and afraid both for themselves and for me. I watch the television and I understand what is going on, I may be 85 but I’m not stupid, and it’s obvious that everyone in residential homes has been abandoned – they are not even counting the deaths in homes – only those who die in hospital. The government says that that is how all countries are measuring the course of the disease but it feels like we just don’t count any which way…

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 8
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 2

Glen, 10 year-old boy.

We had to sleep on the street last night because Mum can’t work and the landlord threw us out of our flat – Mum told him the government said he wasn’t allowed to but he told her to fuck off and he nearly hit her. Today we went to a hostel and we have got a place to sleep tonight but it’s horrible and we are not allowed to be there till this evening. We sat in the town centre but the police wouldn’t listen to mum when she said we were homeless and told us to move somewhere else. So we are now sitting by the river where there are no police but people keep giving us funny looks ‘cos of all the bags we have with us. I’m hungry…

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 5
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 1

George, 65 year-old

I have been furloughed because of my age and my partner Jane’s age and our health. I am pre-diabetic and she has COPD so we are especially vulnerable to Covid 19. My job is such that there is nothing I can do to work from home and I am unlikely to get paid again till this is over though, and for people our age, self-isolation could go on a long time. In the old days, at 65, I would have been receiving my state pension but now I have to wait until next March. We are saving a lot of money, no commuting costs, no going out costs at weekends (I only worked four days a week anyway so we had long weekends) and we are eating less. Even things we might like to buy, like plants for the allotment we started last year, we cannot, because garden centres are closed. Still, we are lucky, we did equity release recently so we won’t run out of money, whatever happens. Our daughter and grandson do the shopping for us each week which I miss because I like to cook and I like to do the food shopping. Jane likes to shop for clothes – she even bought me some new trousers online because I needed some – at least you can still get some things that way…
We thought it would be really difficult spending all our time together instead of three days and evenings, but it is like both of us are retired now, not just Jane who was already retired and we have proper togetherness most of the time and the time seems to fly by – so much so that it would be hard to keep track of the days if we weren’ keeping a diary. Of course, we have our moments, such as when I spend too much time blogging and not enough talking together, or we just get a bit fed up at the things we miss doing and the people we can’t see. But on the whole, we know we are lucky to be alive and to have each other and our health – fingers crossed…

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 7
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 8

P is for Pandemic Dramas…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Déjà vu

I haven’t been to America but I always imagine I would be constantly beset by déjà vu – so much have we seen on screen – tv and films. I find it is much the same with the present crisis, there have been so many films set in a post-apocalyptic world following a pandemic. So here is a personal and very partial selection.

Friends tell me that Netflix’s new docu-drama series eponymously named Pandemic, bears a striking resemblance to current events but not having seen it yet – for me, the classic series is the 1975 The Survivors in which feral survivors fight for survival in a body strewn world. The credit sequence in black and white begins with a scientist dropping a flask in some Porton Down like place and then passport stamps chart the progress of the virus across the world intercut with shots of the airliners carrying the people spreading it.

Even earlier from 1972, The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, which I saw when I worked as a projectionist at the Ritzy Cinema, Brixton (best ever job),
might be the one of the sources of zombie movies – Heston plays the sole survivor of a plague and desperately searching for a cure…

Another “search for a cure for out of Africa/ animal crossover/ conspiracy” movie is 1995’s Outbreak – an edge of the seat killer virus thriller also given the full Hollywood star treatment.

Twelve Monkeys also contains star performances from Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt in a time-traveling meets virus conspiracy theory. But though superbly if complexly made by Terry Gilliam, this was inspired by an odd, shortish film form France, made up of a narration over still photographs La Jetée. Twelve Monkeys takes a couple of viewings to fully grasp it (but worth it because of the superb performances) but if you get the chance to see La Jetée – don’t miss it.

Finally, a very European film (read too slow and not enough action for most American audiences) -2017’s Bokeh. Filmed in Iceland, a young American couple find that everybody else, seemingly in the whole world, has vanished and the film charts the gradual breakdown of their relationship under the pressure of being “(If) you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy…”


O is for Oxford

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!


Oxford – The Bridge of Sighs


Oxford is my city of birth and this photograph is from my last visit in 2017 to meet up with school friends. Due to the wonders of the internet, we have been connected by a Yahoo group for over twenty-five years. We used to meet up in Oxford and play the current boys at cricket, but now the youngest of us is 65, that doesn’t quite work! We should have been meeting up again this month but Covid 19 has put paid to that. So this photograph is a reminder of the last time but also of growing up in the iconic city. There is something special about growing up in a place that so many people visit, recognize, attend university at – it is yours but it is everybody’s…
Although this is called the Bridge of Sighs due to a resemblance to the bridge of that name in Venice, it actually bears a closer resemblance to the Rialto Bridge – also in Venice. It is part of Hertford College.

N is for Neo-Liberalism…

humanist55

This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!


What the heck is neo-Liberalism and why should I worry about it?

Don’t worry – it’s not so long ago that I had to look it up because I had seen it mentioned in so many articles as if it was a given that everyone understood. Sadly it is not and the people who espouse it do not want you to know about it, because it is not a good thing!

You can find a full definition of neo-liberalism here but in a nutshell – it is a revival of 19th-century ideas about free-market economics – that allows the market to determine economics – government should not interfere – in fact, the government should de-regulate wherever possible as regulations just get in the way of productivity. This is sometimes called laissez-faire capitalism.

De-regulation

Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan (or more probably his advisors) became taken with the works of Friedrich Hayek on neo-liberal policy and it has dominated British and US not to mention European and many other countries’ politics ever since. I say politics rather than policies because neo-liberalism is a favourite of the right-leaning political parties – for which you can read – “supporters of the rich”.  Even New Labour under Tony Blair went so far as to embrace it, because superficially, it doesn’t sound unreasonable. Look at the butter mountain of Europe – a result of governmental interference in the form of agricultural subsidies. Let the market sort out the price and if farmers can’t get the price they need for butter – let them grow what the market says it really needs instead. Who in their right mind wants unnecessary paperwork due to overbearing bureaucratic governance? Ditch those pesky regulations!

However! It is the de-regulation of banking – allowing banks to have both a lending branch and an investment (gambling on an unimaginable scale) branch with only their own promise that they would keep the two halves separate. Another story, but that is what led to the financial crisis of 2008. De-regulation in neo-liberal terms means removing all the regulations that restrict how the rich can get richer – pesky things like worker’s rights, health & safety, environmental protection – can you see where this is leading? Well for Britain it led to Brexit, softened up by stories penned by our now Prime Minister, about the EU calling for Straight Bananas (a complete fiction), the Europhobes who hate all those great areas of regulation which have built up in the EU, sold Brexit to the public on the strength of “taking back control”. The only people taking more control as a result of Brexit, are the rich supporting right.

Austerity

The greatest tool in the arsenal of neo-liberals which they tell us is for our own good but which is really another self-serving ruse of the rich, is Austerity. Who would not agree that being in debt is a bad thing and that the answer to debt is to tighten your belt and spend less? This might work for an individual, but it does not work in the same way for businesses or nation-states. When a government borrows money to spend on an infrastructural project such as a new motorway, a lot of that money comes back straight away in the form of tax from companies and workers and in the long run, the project creates greater productivity for the country and that allows the debt to be repaid. But this is against the neo-liberal agenda – it is tantamount to interference in the market by the government. If a motorway is really needed,  the market will spot the opening and a consortium will be formed to construct it. Austerity decrees that we save money by cutting spending so the funding to local government is cut forcing them first to become more efficient and then to cut anything which is not absolutely essential. Collecting waste is essential, support for drug or alcohol dependence is not so facilities for them are closed. In the short term, this does not create problems except for individuals, but the long term impact on health services and broken families and damage to the next generation and cyclical problems – you get the picture – costly…
Then there is the stealthy theft of the NHS – it goes like this – first you starve it of cash till it creaks at the seams, then you sell the parts that can make money for private companies (market forces right!) to your rich mates. Result – the underfunded NHS was totally unequal to the task of fighting Covid 19 as it is well into the starvation phase.

The great choice

One of the great lies of Austerity has been exposed by the Covid 19 Crisis. Tories derided Labour plans for increased spending on social welfare and infrastructural development. “There is no Magic Money Tree” they said. Now they are proposing borrowing our way out of the crisis at levels not seen since the Second World War. They are doing some complicated shenanigans with the Bank of England which, however, they deny it, amount to MonetaryFinancing which amounts to a magic money tree. Most people in the Tory party would like to see a return to the good old days of neo-liberal free-for-all which in the wake of Brexit, offers rich pickings for those who have plenty of money already (money comes to money). There has never been a time more urgently requiring the very opposite. Austerity was wrong before the crisis and it will be worse still afterward. We must not be persuaded that the only way to pay off the debt incurred is to tighten our belts for generations to come.

What are the alternatives?
An organization called Sovereign Money has detailed the problems that led to the 2008 financial crisis and what they propose by way of a solution remains valid in the recovery after Cocid 19 – if not more so. They say that there are two sources of money in the economy – money created by banks when they lend money – and money created by the Bank of England on behalf of the government which up to now has been a tiny proportion. Because austerity led governments believe consumer spending is the way forward, they have been happy to see banks lend to individuals which has led to repeated housing price rises (bubbles). At the same time, the banks have not lent freely to businesses – the real economy.

Now that the virus has shut many businesses down and locked-down debt-ridden individuals in enforced unemployment, more of the same must not be an option. The government must use its power to create money via the banks and must return to the real purpose of governance which is to take meaningful decisions about the post-virus world.

You can find much more detail at Sovereign Money – I have only offered a signpost but I urge everyone to quaint themselves with the issues and not allow us to be marched blindly into the same old problems that suit a small minority of the already rich.

M is for Money…

humanist55

This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Where is the money going to come from to get started again?

Individuals, businesses and governments are all moving from the “How can we possibly afford to stop working?” to “How can we possibly afford to start working again?”. Here in the UK, at the daily Press Briefing given by the representatives of government flanked by special health advisors, the awkward questions asked by the press are now including, amongst those on the competency of the UK government to manage the amount of testing required and the supply of personal protection equipment, new and urgent questions on how the government may be starting to envisage how we will restart the economy. There Is some suggestion that the government does not trust us with transparency in this matter for fear we will think its all over and rush back to normal life too soon. Or perhaps they just haven’t got a clue yet…

Largest amongst the issues to be faced is the question of where the money is going to come from and although I am writing from a UK perspective, many of the points will apply across the world. Before I begin, I know I am a day in late posting this challenge piece but in my defense, I only found out about this on the first day of it – those at A to Z 2020 Challenge HQ recently asked the question “Are you a pre-planner or a ‘pantser’?” Necessarily this year I am a seat of the pants writer which at least means that I can react to current circumstances and indeed make them my theme for the challenge. The subject of Money and how we shall find enough to exit the crisis is a big one and needed a lot of research – I have tried to boil it down but there will be links to articles if you want to go deeper.

War Debt

Many governments and others are referring to the struggle to contain Covid 19 as a “War” because it helps to conjure the spirit that is needed from everyone to “defeat” the tiny, invisible, senseless thing which is a virus. Economists are now starting to talk about the cost of the crisis to our economies, in terms of productivity lost, unemployment created and of course the borrowing which will be necessary to get things started, so my question is, if all the countries in the world are facing the same situation, then who is going to lend money to who in order to fix things.

One precedent is what has happened in actual wars – the World Wars for example. Britain had to borrow a lot of money, mainly from the US or in the case of the Second World War, the US and in a smaller amount, Canada. In 1945 alone, the UK borrowed 4.33 billion dollars and 1.93 billion dollars from Canada the following year. Suffice to say that the total repaid amounted to twice that which was lent and the final repayment was as recent as 2006. We may have a “special relationship” with America, but it does not come cheap. Furthermore, that war helped cement the Dollar as the world’s leading currency and saw US influence consolidated around the world – facts which are still pertinent in the crisis of today. Whilst Britain floundered under the weight of debt and the need to rebuild its shattered economy after the war, America, increasingly obsessed with fighting the spread of Communism, made satellites of the “frontline” countries using the Marshall Plan to rebuild European countries equally shattered economies in exchange for hosting military bases.

There is another way of raising money to fight wars which may become significant in solving our present crisis, the issuing of the enchantingly titled “Gilt Edged Security Bonds” – so-called because the certificates have a gilt edge to them. This is a way of borrowing money from private investors, individuals, pension companies and the like. Invented by the British as early as 1694 when King William III borrowed 1.2 million to fund a war with France, gilts are low yielding in terms of interest paid but they are very safe hence their attraction to pension funds. King William could not raise the money for his war from taxes and neither will governments following the Covid 19 crisis since the money they will be dispersing to help businesses and individuals, needs to be spent on producing and consuming, there would be no point in just taking it back as tax. There is a really good chart of all the ways governments can raise money here, at Positive Money – an organization for monetary reform – more of them later.

What do we know about the UK Exit Strategy?

The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Riki Sunak unveiled a plan for £330 Billion which he described as an intervention in the economy “on a scale unimaginable a few weeks ago”. This is indeed true since the Tory party have predicated their policies on Austerity, beating up the Labour Party for years for their level of the national debt – before running up even higher levels themselves (which they predictably kept quiet about). Austerity is the central plank of neo-Liberalism which will be the subject of my next post – a sort of part II to this one. But meantime, the £330bn is actually government-backed loans – however, the loans will actually be issued by the banks. If the loans are defaulted on, the government will, then, and only then, have to shell out – so not quite as magnanimous as it first appears. There will be further offers of support from the government and some will require the government to borrow, either from the markets or by issuing gilts and of course, the Bank of England can always print money, “quantitative easing”, as they did after the 2008 financial crisis.

The Big Choice

The scale of the current crisis in financial terms makes the 2008 financial crisis look small by comparison – we are talking levels of borrowing nearer to that of the war, and our government(s) might be tempted to assert that all this has undone the savings from years of austerity and that we must tighten our belts once again, for the long haul. This is not the only choice and so tomorrow I will look at why austerity is an ideological position and what other choices there are…