I came to Coventry to do two things. To see George's Left Hook and to visit my grandparents and cousins.
"If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear"- Mark Twain
(And so with a quote from an American writer began my evening with George Monbiot, Guardian Columnist and Environmental Activist, along with 40 or so other people in the Warwick Arts Centre. In the first part George would, he told us, begin with a statement that would begin a discussion, even a debate, over it. The second part was open to audience statement and questions that would be given the same treatment. Ever since his name was dropped in a lecture I've been reading and watching video clips by him and about him. You could say I was excited to meet him. You'd be right but for me it was different. I've met famous writers before and then I felt nervous. This was the first time I was excited by the presence of a writer.)
George began his statement that first referenced Milton Friedman, Noami Klein and Pinochet. Noami Klein is known for her book 'The Shock Doctrine', which is about the rise of disaster capitalism. Milton Friedman was 'an ambitious and charismatic man on a mission to fundamentally revolutionize his profession' within the University of Chicago's Economics Department. General Augusto Pinochet was a Chilean dictator who led a coup d'état in 1973 overthrowing the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. The premise for 'The Shock Doctrine' is that 'there are people with power who are cashing in on chaos'.
Friedman and others of the Chicago Economics Department developed an idea to get unpopular polices through on democratic terms. Wait for a disaster that puts people's safety in danger than push the unpopular policy through as quickly as possible. When the invasion of Iraq occurred the government sent in their crack team of economists alongside the soldiers issuing flat taxes to the people. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) calls this 'structural adjustment'. After the hurricane New Orleans began a process of 'reform'. In order to make sure that the unpopular policy stays within policy the structural adjustment must happen within 6 to 8 months because after that any adjustments made become hard to change. The Shock Doctrine is being applied in Britain now.
(That was George's statement. After a moment of absorbing that statement George then began to take questions from the audience.)
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Wouldn't the left-wing take the same opportunities?
G. Yes your right, but I would argue that the left-wing does it for the greater good
Economics seems to be hi-jacked. What went wrong with economics? To me it seems that economics is taught rather than open to challenge and questioning. Do the economists bare any responsibility?
G. Economists live on a different planet. Their worldview, to them, goes above the psychological, the biological. You know the well known phrase "if the model doesn't fit the world than it's the world that's wrong", well that's the attitude. The amount of corporate sponsorship and support who sit on research councils is disturbing. Look at the composition of review councils. What I don't know is to what extent does this affect things? What they are saying is "sack this world and let's elect a new one".
Personality types plays a great role- people who want to go into Business Schools are usually those who want to go into Big Business.
G. What I don't like about Business Schools is the speed at which students are expected to make a choice about which career you go into. Few people know what they really want to do and then say "well then to get there I'll do that then that then that". There's more to life than knowing what work to do, like pursuing our passions and our loves. The purpose of these University's is to turn people into corporate drones.
First I'd like to thank you and 'The Guardian' for being a voice of sanity. Isn't true to say that Labour continued the economic model of the previous Tory government and so now there's an inability to challenge the given consensus?
G. What happened with Labour and the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was a real shock. The Walsgrave hospital in Coventry, for example, which was to have been refurbished at a cost of £30m, was instead knocked down and rebuilt at a cost of £330m, solely in order to make the project attractive to private companies. It is like the book 'Ghost' by Robert Harris (that was made into a film by Roman Polanski) where a left-wing Prime Minister was implanted by a Secrect Service agency. I don't believe that literally but it's a metaphor for what is happening. When Blair was Prime Minister he did something much more damaging than push the right-wing agenda further than the right-wing he destroyed hope in political alternatives. He turned the Worker's Party into the Boss' Party.
What do you think of the global phenoemon of this right-wing leaning?
G. I believe that what is happening is that a transnational elite is emerging. The rich countries are holding the poor countries to ransom. When I wrote 'Captive State' I made a mistake. It should have been called the 'Re-captured State'.
Three more people asked questions one after another. One of them was me.
-That's quite a gloomy picture you paint and it's powerfully argued. But there's only a handful of us here to listen to you. I would think most people outside this room simply don't care. Where do you find the hope in this situation?
-With the lack of an alternative exactly what alternative is there?
-Do you think that our inability to respond to these big challenges stem from a desperate lack of imagination?
G. Your right, it is a gloomy picture, but there are hopeful signs. UK Uncut have been making a lot of noise and a lot of good points. So good in fact that even 'The Daily Mail' has agreed with their points and even has their sympathy. It seems to me that there is an enormous anger from not only the working classes but from the middle classes who have realised what the government has been spending their money on. We see that the student protests have been continuing involving many different varieties of causes but what we haven't seen is a unified message. What there needs to be now is a call for a new agenda and a list of specific targets of spending that could be cut instead of the ones the government is proposing.
(That was the end of part one. During the interval George took scraps of paper with people's questions, about any subject they wished to talk about, in order to have them answered in the second part. "And to censor out any questions you don't wish to answer" said a women in the front row to which George ruefully smiled.)
(In the second part a whole new, but not entirely unrelated, set of questions began.)
George, how can such a smart chap as yourself put the climate change blame on us Westerners without acknowledging the huge population in African countries. They simply don't have the family planning necessary in place.
G. Population control is a problem but the population in most African countries are not the ones consuming on an industrial scale while emitting CO2 gas into the air. What most Western countries do is try to transfer responsibility on to other countries. In this case it's the rich pointing to the poor. David Satterthwaite of the IIED showed that populations are rising by people who are not environmentally responsible. Paul R. Erlich in 'The Population Bomb' he uses the formula I= PxAxT(where I = Environmental Impact, P = Population, A = Affluence, T = Technology), but I would change the P for a C to stand for Consumers because it's consumers that have the most environmental impact. In terms of world population the amount of consumers is about 2 million. There is some good news in that the population will stabiles in around 2060 to 9 to 10 million people. However that's still too many in environmental terms. We Westerners have got to show willingness to change.
George takes four questions one after another.
-Although runaway climate change is a big issue I actually think a bigger issue is peak oil since the WikiLeak documents concerning Saudi Arabia.
-Shouldn't these crises be seen as an opportunity rather than a problem?
-I would say that it's not in the interest of corporate capitalism to provide a political alternative.
-On the subject of corporate capitalism David Bohm has written about end of world scenarios and one that I find very interesting is the idea of Zero Growth. There doesn't seem to be a lot of time left for change so what can we do to make an impact in a hurry?
G. The government has never had a contingency plan for peak oil. Whenever anyone in the government is asked what is their contingency plan if the oil runs out they say "but it won't run out". No-one in the whole infrastructure has a clue of what they are doing, well what are they doing? They've got to be there for something. There has never been any real analysis into the possibility of peak oil. In every major situation the British government has always done it's own analysis but for this situation they have realied solely on outside analysis. You can tell a lot from a government about what they don't look at. The dates of resource depletion has been gotten wrong by environmentalists (I almost said the only thing). We have often underestimated the huge amount of unconventional oil that are out there.
My name is Richard Lemarr, yours is Monbiot, you asked us only to write our Christian names on the question slips, my question is: what do you think about multiculturalism?
G. When David Cameron is talking about multiculturalism I believe that what he is really talking about is Islam and I don't know why he doesn't just come out and say it. The narrative goes like this "For too long we have been too tolerant on Muslims and it's time they learned how to act in this country." There was a Dispatchers program last year on this very subject entitled 'Britain's Islamic Republic'. I find Cameron's talk of multiculturalism worrying because it seems to be done in genocidal terms.
Is multiculturalism really the right word. I think nationalism defines aspects of British culture more accurately.
G. I think you're right. If you see the way the Arab Israelis are treated by the Palestinians at the moment they aren't really talking about multiculturalism as much as they are about nationalism.
I'm going to try to make an even more controversial point just to spark a bit more debate. I read a book by David Willetts 'The Pinch: how the baby boomers took their children's future- and why they should give it back' and apparently I've been very lazy indeed and owe a lot of money.
G. It's a very interesting book. Will Hutton wrote an article recently about who, and how, those responsible for the major problems of the financial system.
How do you like putting your pension on a Casino?
G. Fundamentally Willetts' book was right in that the baby boomers found themselves in extremely lucky circumstances. Will Hutton makes the point that the way the boomers kept growth stable was through downsizing companies and outsourcing problems. Technologically speaking there has really been little change since the 1960s. All the new technologies we get today aren't really new technologies but simply the same technologies improved. A prime example of this can be seen in mobile phones. They used to be big and clunky but now they're small and slim. The period between the 1900s to the 1960s there has been a more profounder change in technology. Think of the program 'Life on Mars'. Britain back then looked different, a little weird, but not so different that we wouldn't be able to function within it. If you tried to make the same program but set at the end of the 19th Century it would be incomprehensible to us because of the social grammar. It would be like learning a whole new language. To keep up growth governments will damage the terms and conditions of the work contract to achieve it. It's a vampire economy that rides the back of previous innovations hoping it would strong enough to keep it going without having to do much.
There's a very crash and burn mentality about in politics such as the government reinventing the jobs role after the death of big government.
G. There's an interesting cycle that seems to happen. At the beginning of the 20th Century capitalism was bailed out by socialism by means of a redistribution of wealth. There was a post-war period where there seemed to be a lucid moment of sanity before people started spending and carried on with business as usual. You could say the ultra capitalist cuts it's own throat while the non-capitalist mops up all the blood and patches it up before the Pinochets of the world rise up against it. It's a weird cycle.
With that the end of George's Left Hook approached. But George was still in the building and for people needing answers the issues are never over until they get them. I offered to buy him a drink but a man in a suit got there before I could and in the bar of Warwick Arts Centre a smaller group of us pulled two round tables together. The conversation continued.
The man in the suit, about 40, sitting next to me wanted to talk about Fractional Reserve Banking.
"Yes, I've been meaning to write about Fractional Reserve Banking for a while but haven't yet partly because it's called Fractional Reserve Banking"
The man next to me said that "there's a core of fairness in British people and if they could see what the banks have been doing in clear terms than I would think the majority of them would be so shocked that they would reform them instantly. People need to realise that these banks are actually allowed to do FRB because it helps to drive consumerism. It's a purely mathematical system based on projected earnings."
A student of Warwick University, in his early 20s, who earlier likened corporations to (if I remember correctly) a sociopath in that they are not morally only 'good' or 'bad' but only act in such ways because it is their nature, mentions that it seems to be the religious groups who are doing a good job of looking after their money. Take the Islamic usury policy which is much more of an Old World notion of money. He also mentioned, I think, the Christian Terry Drew Karanen was mentioned concerning economic truths. There was also something about gold standard. Malcom Gladwell's Black Swan was also mentioned.
"There's a whole raft of fundamental truths that need to be questioned" said the gentlemen next to me. "FRB is basically fraud. It comes from gold merchants lending money due to reserve. After a while the merchants noticed that they could charge any interest they wanted because none of the customers knew how much reserve there really was. They would lend out £5 and charge 5% interest when it was paid back- that's £50 from nothing! We're building a huge pyramid scheme and there's a big bill for whoever ends up paying it. It's exactly what happened during the Wall Street Crash"
Another chap, in his late twenties wearing a black hooded coat, said: "Can I ask a stupid question? If you can raise £50 from nothing than why is that so social bad? With that money you could buy more doctors, more art centres, etc...
The gentleman next to me said: "Government created the money and they given the bonds to the commercial banks. Commercial banks now need more taxes in order to keep going. Initially you're right you could buy more doctors but you couldn't keep them on unless you make some of them redundant or lower their wages so in the end you actually lose out more. Banks are massively bigger than what they were and their vacuuming the people."
A man on my other side, I believe it was Mr. Lemarr with a notebook, asked George if he had a thick skin and wanted to get into bed with the police. Alongside this I noted that he had has death threats and asked if he thought any of us was going to pull a knife on him.
"I do my best to try to ignore them, and let it get to me, but really what I most want is to have a proper conversation with these people. That Brenden O'Neill article did get to me a bit but you just have to ignore the insults."
Our conversation then went on to the current protests in Cairo and the role Facebook played in it.
"Social media," George said "is good as a bulletin board. Malcolm Gladwell made a good point, good for Malcolm Gladwell that is, that the Facebook messages were written by English speaking people who were writing messages of support. So we'll have to wait and see what emerges in the next month. The Internet looked like such a wonderful gift. Finally those columnists were knocked off their perch and everyone was talking. But so many people use it like a upset monkey throwing shit at people."
The man in the black hood jumper asked "if John Smith were still alive do you think he would have made the same decisions as Tony Blair?"
"I honestly do not know" says George "I do feel sure that he would have at least hesitated before making them but Blair never did. What Blair had a great talent for was understanding power. He knew how it worked and he knew how he could get it. The City disciplines it's politicans"
He made mention of Nicholas Shaxson's 'Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World' before leaving to catch the train.
At the bus station I had a lot of big thinking to do about what I had just heard. On the Bus Stop glass were posters for Warwick's Economic Summit happening between the 18th-20th of February that has various sponsors including Warwick Economic Department, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays Wealth.
I had an awful feeling that I had experienced something that was going to change my life dramatically.
Right, it's about time a cleared some mysteries about myself and raise a few flags for myself. I am about to paint a picture that will probably be personally painful not only for me but for my family however I have gone through too much shit and have stayed far too quite for anybody's good only for this opportunity to have a effectively positive influence go to waste- I've got enough regret, I need no more.
Here it goes.
I was born in Coventry.
I was born in Walsgrave Hospital at 7.25pm on Friday 31st weighing 7 pounds and 3 ounces.
My cousins were born in Walsgrave Hospital.
Simon Todd was born there.
Daniel Todd was born there.
Becky Todd was born there.
Sophie Todd was born there.
Louis Todd was born there.
They all live in one house that is stuffed with toys and clothes.
It has holes in the walls and mold in the bathroom.
My Granny, Grace Todd, worked in Walsgrave Hospital for 30 years before retiring as a cleaner.
My other Grandma, Ruth Reckitt, used to be a teacher.
My mother's, Katherine, side used to own Reckitts Blue a manufacturer of a laundry whitener.
My other cousin, Susanna Reckitt, is studying Economics. She is studying it at Cambridge.
Her father, Mark Reckitt, used to work for Cadbury before it was taken over by Kraft and was made redundant.
My Uncle and Aunt, Jack and Margret Reckitt, used to work in some line of insurance. They are now based in California learning how to make wine.
My mum's sister, Polly Wilson, works as a University Lecturer for, I believe, Bristol Uni. She has a husband, Mark Wilson, and two children, Heidi Wilson and Emily Wilson.
My Uncle George Todd works the night shift at B&Q. He lives with my grand, his, parents.
My father, Ian Todd, works as an administrator for a church of england church St. Paul's.
About a month ago I made a speech for the English Literature Society. My friends were surprised, confused, interested, unhappy and upset at what I said.
500000 people who signed an online petition including Rachel Johnson, President, Save England’s Forests, Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate, Tony Juniper, Special Adviser to the Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project, Bill Bryson, president Campaign to Protect Rural England, Lloyd Grossman, chairman of the Heritage Alliance,
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury (++ Rowan Cantaur),Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Michael Perham (+Michael Gloucestr), Rabbi Dr David Goldberg, Emeritus Rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, Mr Farooq Murad. Secretary General, MCB, Dame Judi Dench, actor, Annie Lennox, singer, Anthony Gormley, artist, Tracey Emin, artist, Gavin Turk, artist, Geoffrey Hill, Oxford Professor of Poetry, Baroness Young of Hornsey, Caroline Lucas, MP for Bright Pavilion and leader of the Green Party, Ken Livingstone, London Mayoral Candidate (Labour), Mark Constantine, co-founder, Lush Ltd, Lily Cole, model and actor, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, chef and campaigner
John Houlihan, Chairman, British Mountain Bike Orienteering, Oona King, working peer, Trudie Styler, actress and producer, Nick Jones, founder, Soho House Group, Julian Barnes, author
Katherine Hamnett, designer, Camila Batmangheilidjh, founder, Kids Company, Tim Smit, CEO and co-founder, Eden Project, Rob Hopkins, co-founder, Transition Network, Trustees of the Natural Beekeeping Trust, Rosie Boycott, broadcaster, Gillian Anderson, actor, Gordon Roddick, philanthropist, Wayne Hemingway MBE, designer, Dame Joan Bakewell, writer and broadcaster
Giles Coren, writer and broadcaster, Tracey Marchioness of Worcester, Ben Fogle, expeditionist and broadcster, Dylan Jones, editor, GQ magazine, Sue Perkins, comedian and broadcaster, Richard E Grant, actor, Lisa Bilton, Mothers4Children, Stephen Bayley, author, Alex James, broadcaster and farmer, Kathy Lette, author, Edward Whitley, Whitley Fund for Nature, Anne Robinson, broadcaster, Rachel Billington, author, Christopher Simon Sykes, author, Lady Helen Taylor, Bill Amberg, designer, Susie Forbes, journalist, Henry Porter, journalist, Rowley Leigh, chef, Camilla Woodward, philanthropist, Ben Elliot, co-founder, Quintessentially, Joanna Trollope, author, Ronni Ancona, comedian, Dame Vivienne Westwood, designer, Katherine Hamnett, designer, Lord Roy Hattersley, politician, author, journalist, Jonathan Porritt, Founder, Director Forum for the Future, Lord Clark of Windermere (former Chair of the Forestry Commission), Claire Tomalin, author and biographer, Kevin Gopal, editor of the Big Issue in the North MP, New Economics Foundation, Paul Fisher, editor, Cotswold Water Park Life MP, Andy Harries, Chief Exec, Left Bank Pictures, Michael Frayn, playwright and novelist, Annabelle Bond, expeditionist, Ranulph Fiennes OBE, adventurer and writer, Stanley Johnson, author and politician, Dr Robert MacFarlane, author, Eugenie Harvey, UK director, 10:10, Trustees of the Women’s Environmental Network, Charley Boorman, adventurer, writer, actor, Richard Briers, actor, Foragers Pub UK, Andy Goldring, Chief Exec, Permaculture Association, Leo Johnson, Sustainable Finance Ltd, Dr Richard Lofthouse, Editor, Oxford Today, Ian Beacham, Editor in Chief, Best of British and Vintage Tractor and Countryside Heritage, Dr Jerome Lewis, co-director of cultures of Sustainability, UCL Environment Institute, Toby Gardner, NERC Fellow and Darwin College Research Fellow, Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Dr David Humphreys, senior lecturer in Environmental Policy, the Open University, disagreed with the government's plan to change the ownership of 258,000 hectares of state-owned woodland.
Caroline says: "We teach our children honesty".
I worked for The National Trust for one summer. There was a meeting I attended where they were trying to find ways of getting more people to visit their estates. After some discussion they unveiled their plan. An advertising overhaul re-branding it's image in new fonts.
Reading books in Costa Coffee I hear one staff say: "All she comes out with is excuses. She said to me that "sometimes if there are too many customers she'll just run out to the back and hide". I don't like all my customers, but for your management to do that- it doesn't leave a good impression". Around Christmas Costa Coffee was short staffed and an exasperated employee said the management "didn't know what they were doing".
New property is being developed: the slope by The Welsh Books Council, by the roundabout opposite Morrisons, the car park by the Council Offices, by Pengliais Hill, in the corner of Rosser. A new car park has just been opened by the Hospital.
In the bins behind Cwrt Mawr Bar there is a microwave that has been PAT tested in the year 2010.
Over the river a sign stands at the bottom of a street, a Neighbourhood Watch sign. It's picture is of a single eye.
On my way back from Coventry to Aberystwyth I overheard a couple on the train talking about working, I think, the Job Centre. On was telling the other how one man wouldn't have an interview because he was always angry and would never finish it. They went on to talk about applicants who lie on their applications: "You can't follow up every one. You've no time. But you can't doubt all of them. But you can't believe all of them. The ones who lie know what answers they need to give."
The Bees are suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder.
SOURCES TO BE USED
The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. HB.95.K6
Pinochet in Piccadily, by Andy Beckett. F.3101.P56.B3
Monetary vs Fiscal Policy: A Dialogue between Milton Friedman and Walter W. Heller. HG.538.F9
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, by Slavoj ZiZek. HB.501.Z8
The State We're In, by Will Hutton. HC.256.7.H9
Heat, by George Mobiot.
UK Uncut as reported by 'The Daily Mail'
Kraft as reported by 'The Daily Mail'
"If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear"- Mark Twain
(And so with a quote from an American writer began my evening with George Monbiot, Guardian Columnist and Environmental Activist, along with 40 or so other people in the Warwick Arts Centre. In the first part George would, he told us, begin with a statement that would begin a discussion, even a debate, over it. The second part was open to audience statement and questions that would be given the same treatment. Ever since his name was dropped in a lecture I've been reading and watching video clips by him and about him. You could say I was excited to meet him. You'd be right but for me it was different. I've met famous writers before and then I felt nervous. This was the first time I was excited by the presence of a writer.)
George began his statement that first referenced Milton Friedman, Noami Klein and Pinochet. Noami Klein is known for her book 'The Shock Doctrine', which is about the rise of disaster capitalism. Milton Friedman was 'an ambitious and charismatic man on a mission to fundamentally revolutionize his profession' within the University of Chicago's Economics Department. General Augusto Pinochet was a Chilean dictator who led a coup d'état in 1973 overthrowing the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. The premise for 'The Shock Doctrine' is that 'there are people with power who are cashing in on chaos'.
Friedman and others of the Chicago Economics Department developed an idea to get unpopular polices through on democratic terms. Wait for a disaster that puts people's safety in danger than push the unpopular policy through as quickly as possible. When the invasion of Iraq occurred the government sent in their crack team of economists alongside the soldiers issuing flat taxes to the people. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) calls this 'structural adjustment'. After the hurricane New Orleans began a process of 'reform'. In order to make sure that the unpopular policy stays within policy the structural adjustment must happen within 6 to 8 months because after that any adjustments made become hard to change. The Shock Doctrine is being applied in Britain now.
(That was George's statement. After a moment of absorbing that statement George then began to take questions from the audience.)
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Wouldn't the left-wing take the same opportunities?
G. Yes your right, but I would argue that the left-wing does it for the greater good
Economics seems to be hi-jacked. What went wrong with economics? To me it seems that economics is taught rather than open to challenge and questioning. Do the economists bare any responsibility?
G. Economists live on a different planet. Their worldview, to them, goes above the psychological, the biological. You know the well known phrase "if the model doesn't fit the world than it's the world that's wrong", well that's the attitude. The amount of corporate sponsorship and support who sit on research councils is disturbing. Look at the composition of review councils. What I don't know is to what extent does this affect things? What they are saying is "sack this world and let's elect a new one".
Personality types plays a great role- people who want to go into Business Schools are usually those who want to go into Big Business.
G. What I don't like about Business Schools is the speed at which students are expected to make a choice about which career you go into. Few people know what they really want to do and then say "well then to get there I'll do that then that then that". There's more to life than knowing what work to do, like pursuing our passions and our loves. The purpose of these University's is to turn people into corporate drones.
First I'd like to thank you and 'The Guardian' for being a voice of sanity. Isn't true to say that Labour continued the economic model of the previous Tory government and so now there's an inability to challenge the given consensus?
G. What happened with Labour and the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was a real shock. The Walsgrave hospital in Coventry, for example, which was to have been refurbished at a cost of £30m, was instead knocked down and rebuilt at a cost of £330m, solely in order to make the project attractive to private companies. It is like the book 'Ghost' by Robert Harris (that was made into a film by Roman Polanski) where a left-wing Prime Minister was implanted by a Secrect Service agency. I don't believe that literally but it's a metaphor for what is happening. When Blair was Prime Minister he did something much more damaging than push the right-wing agenda further than the right-wing he destroyed hope in political alternatives. He turned the Worker's Party into the Boss' Party.
What do you think of the global phenoemon of this right-wing leaning?
G. I believe that what is happening is that a transnational elite is emerging. The rich countries are holding the poor countries to ransom. When I wrote 'Captive State' I made a mistake. It should have been called the 'Re-captured State'.
Three more people asked questions one after another. One of them was me.
-That's quite a gloomy picture you paint and it's powerfully argued. But there's only a handful of us here to listen to you. I would think most people outside this room simply don't care. Where do you find the hope in this situation?
-With the lack of an alternative exactly what alternative is there?
-Do you think that our inability to respond to these big challenges stem from a desperate lack of imagination?
G. Your right, it is a gloomy picture, but there are hopeful signs. UK Uncut have been making a lot of noise and a lot of good points. So good in fact that even 'The Daily Mail' has agreed with their points and even has their sympathy. It seems to me that there is an enormous anger from not only the working classes but from the middle classes who have realised what the government has been spending their money on. We see that the student protests have been continuing involving many different varieties of causes but what we haven't seen is a unified message. What there needs to be now is a call for a new agenda and a list of specific targets of spending that could be cut instead of the ones the government is proposing.
(That was the end of part one. During the interval George took scraps of paper with people's questions, about any subject they wished to talk about, in order to have them answered in the second part. "And to censor out any questions you don't wish to answer" said a women in the front row to which George ruefully smiled.)
(In the second part a whole new, but not entirely unrelated, set of questions began.)
George, how can such a smart chap as yourself put the climate change blame on us Westerners without acknowledging the huge population in African countries. They simply don't have the family planning necessary in place.
G. Population control is a problem but the population in most African countries are not the ones consuming on an industrial scale while emitting CO2 gas into the air. What most Western countries do is try to transfer responsibility on to other countries. In this case it's the rich pointing to the poor. David Satterthwaite of the IIED showed that populations are rising by people who are not environmentally responsible. Paul R. Erlich in 'The Population Bomb' he uses the formula I= PxAxT(where I = Environmental Impact, P = Population, A = Affluence, T = Technology), but I would change the P for a C to stand for Consumers because it's consumers that have the most environmental impact. In terms of world population the amount of consumers is about 2 million. There is some good news in that the population will stabiles in around 2060 to 9 to 10 million people. However that's still too many in environmental terms. We Westerners have got to show willingness to change.
George takes four questions one after another.
-Although runaway climate change is a big issue I actually think a bigger issue is peak oil since the WikiLeak documents concerning Saudi Arabia.
-Shouldn't these crises be seen as an opportunity rather than a problem?
-I would say that it's not in the interest of corporate capitalism to provide a political alternative.
-On the subject of corporate capitalism David Bohm has written about end of world scenarios and one that I find very interesting is the idea of Zero Growth. There doesn't seem to be a lot of time left for change so what can we do to make an impact in a hurry?
G. The government has never had a contingency plan for peak oil. Whenever anyone in the government is asked what is their contingency plan if the oil runs out they say "but it won't run out". No-one in the whole infrastructure has a clue of what they are doing, well what are they doing? They've got to be there for something. There has never been any real analysis into the possibility of peak oil. In every major situation the British government has always done it's own analysis but for this situation they have realied solely on outside analysis. You can tell a lot from a government about what they don't look at. The dates of resource depletion has been gotten wrong by environmentalists (I almost said the only thing). We have often underestimated the huge amount of unconventional oil that are out there.
My name is Richard Lemarr, yours is Monbiot, you asked us only to write our Christian names on the question slips, my question is: what do you think about multiculturalism?
G. When David Cameron is talking about multiculturalism I believe that what he is really talking about is Islam and I don't know why he doesn't just come out and say it. The narrative goes like this "For too long we have been too tolerant on Muslims and it's time they learned how to act in this country." There was a Dispatchers program last year on this very subject entitled 'Britain's Islamic Republic'. I find Cameron's talk of multiculturalism worrying because it seems to be done in genocidal terms.
Is multiculturalism really the right word. I think nationalism defines aspects of British culture more accurately.
G. I think you're right. If you see the way the Arab Israelis are treated by the Palestinians at the moment they aren't really talking about multiculturalism as much as they are about nationalism.
I'm going to try to make an even more controversial point just to spark a bit more debate. I read a book by David Willetts 'The Pinch: how the baby boomers took their children's future- and why they should give it back' and apparently I've been very lazy indeed and owe a lot of money.
G. It's a very interesting book. Will Hutton wrote an article recently about who, and how, those responsible for the major problems of the financial system.
How do you like putting your pension on a Casino?
G. Fundamentally Willetts' book was right in that the baby boomers found themselves in extremely lucky circumstances. Will Hutton makes the point that the way the boomers kept growth stable was through downsizing companies and outsourcing problems. Technologically speaking there has really been little change since the 1960s. All the new technologies we get today aren't really new technologies but simply the same technologies improved. A prime example of this can be seen in mobile phones. They used to be big and clunky but now they're small and slim. The period between the 1900s to the 1960s there has been a more profounder change in technology. Think of the program 'Life on Mars'. Britain back then looked different, a little weird, but not so different that we wouldn't be able to function within it. If you tried to make the same program but set at the end of the 19th Century it would be incomprehensible to us because of the social grammar. It would be like learning a whole new language. To keep up growth governments will damage the terms and conditions of the work contract to achieve it. It's a vampire economy that rides the back of previous innovations hoping it would strong enough to keep it going without having to do much.
There's a very crash and burn mentality about in politics such as the government reinventing the jobs role after the death of big government.
G. There's an interesting cycle that seems to happen. At the beginning of the 20th Century capitalism was bailed out by socialism by means of a redistribution of wealth. There was a post-war period where there seemed to be a lucid moment of sanity before people started spending and carried on with business as usual. You could say the ultra capitalist cuts it's own throat while the non-capitalist mops up all the blood and patches it up before the Pinochets of the world rise up against it. It's a weird cycle.
With that the end of George's Left Hook approached. But George was still in the building and for people needing answers the issues are never over until they get them. I offered to buy him a drink but a man in a suit got there before I could and in the bar of Warwick Arts Centre a smaller group of us pulled two round tables together. The conversation continued.
The man in the suit, about 40, sitting next to me wanted to talk about Fractional Reserve Banking.
"Yes, I've been meaning to write about Fractional Reserve Banking for a while but haven't yet partly because it's called Fractional Reserve Banking"
The man next to me said that "there's a core of fairness in British people and if they could see what the banks have been doing in clear terms than I would think the majority of them would be so shocked that they would reform them instantly. People need to realise that these banks are actually allowed to do FRB because it helps to drive consumerism. It's a purely mathematical system based on projected earnings."
A student of Warwick University, in his early 20s, who earlier likened corporations to (if I remember correctly) a sociopath in that they are not morally only 'good' or 'bad' but only act in such ways because it is their nature, mentions that it seems to be the religious groups who are doing a good job of looking after their money. Take the Islamic usury policy which is much more of an Old World notion of money. He also mentioned, I think, the Christian Terry Drew Karanen was mentioned concerning economic truths. There was also something about gold standard. Malcom Gladwell's Black Swan was also mentioned.
"There's a whole raft of fundamental truths that need to be questioned" said the gentlemen next to me. "FRB is basically fraud. It comes from gold merchants lending money due to reserve. After a while the merchants noticed that they could charge any interest they wanted because none of the customers knew how much reserve there really was. They would lend out £5 and charge 5% interest when it was paid back- that's £50 from nothing! We're building a huge pyramid scheme and there's a big bill for whoever ends up paying it. It's exactly what happened during the Wall Street Crash"
Another chap, in his late twenties wearing a black hooded coat, said: "Can I ask a stupid question? If you can raise £50 from nothing than why is that so social bad? With that money you could buy more doctors, more art centres, etc...
The gentleman next to me said: "Government created the money and they given the bonds to the commercial banks. Commercial banks now need more taxes in order to keep going. Initially you're right you could buy more doctors but you couldn't keep them on unless you make some of them redundant or lower their wages so in the end you actually lose out more. Banks are massively bigger than what they were and their vacuuming the people."
A man on my other side, I believe it was Mr. Lemarr with a notebook, asked George if he had a thick skin and wanted to get into bed with the police. Alongside this I noted that he had has death threats and asked if he thought any of us was going to pull a knife on him.
"I do my best to try to ignore them, and let it get to me, but really what I most want is to have a proper conversation with these people. That Brenden O'Neill article did get to me a bit but you just have to ignore the insults."
Our conversation then went on to the current protests in Cairo and the role Facebook played in it.
"Social media," George said "is good as a bulletin board. Malcolm Gladwell made a good point, good for Malcolm Gladwell that is, that the Facebook messages were written by English speaking people who were writing messages of support. So we'll have to wait and see what emerges in the next month. The Internet looked like such a wonderful gift. Finally those columnists were knocked off their perch and everyone was talking. But so many people use it like a upset monkey throwing shit at people."
The man in the black hood jumper asked "if John Smith were still alive do you think he would have made the same decisions as Tony Blair?"
"I honestly do not know" says George "I do feel sure that he would have at least hesitated before making them but Blair never did. What Blair had a great talent for was understanding power. He knew how it worked and he knew how he could get it. The City disciplines it's politicans"
He made mention of Nicholas Shaxson's 'Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World' before leaving to catch the train.
At the bus station I had a lot of big thinking to do about what I had just heard. On the Bus Stop glass were posters for Warwick's Economic Summit happening between the 18th-20th of February that has various sponsors including Warwick Economic Department, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays Wealth.
I had an awful feeling that I had experienced something that was going to change my life dramatically.
Right, it's about time a cleared some mysteries about myself and raise a few flags for myself. I am about to paint a picture that will probably be personally painful not only for me but for my family however I have gone through too much shit and have stayed far too quite for anybody's good only for this opportunity to have a effectively positive influence go to waste- I've got enough regret, I need no more.
Here it goes.
I was born in Coventry.
I was born in Walsgrave Hospital at 7.25pm on Friday 31st weighing 7 pounds and 3 ounces.
My cousins were born in Walsgrave Hospital.
Simon Todd was born there.
Daniel Todd was born there.
Becky Todd was born there.
Sophie Todd was born there.
Louis Todd was born there.
They all live in one house that is stuffed with toys and clothes.
It has holes in the walls and mold in the bathroom.
My Granny, Grace Todd, worked in Walsgrave Hospital for 30 years before retiring as a cleaner.
My other Grandma, Ruth Reckitt, used to be a teacher.
My mother's, Katherine, side used to own Reckitts Blue a manufacturer of a laundry whitener.
My other cousin, Susanna Reckitt, is studying Economics. She is studying it at Cambridge.
Her father, Mark Reckitt, used to work for Cadbury before it was taken over by Kraft and was made redundant.
My Uncle and Aunt, Jack and Margret Reckitt, used to work in some line of insurance. They are now based in California learning how to make wine.
My mum's sister, Polly Wilson, works as a University Lecturer for, I believe, Bristol Uni. She has a husband, Mark Wilson, and two children, Heidi Wilson and Emily Wilson.
My Uncle George Todd works the night shift at B&Q. He lives with my grand, his, parents.
My father, Ian Todd, works as an administrator for a church of england church St. Paul's.
About a month ago I made a speech for the English Literature Society. My friends were surprised, confused, interested, unhappy and upset at what I said.
500000 people who signed an online petition including Rachel Johnson, President, Save England’s Forests, Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate, Tony Juniper, Special Adviser to the Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project, Bill Bryson, president Campaign to Protect Rural England, Lloyd Grossman, chairman of the Heritage Alliance,
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury (++ Rowan Cantaur),Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Michael Perham (+Michael Gloucestr), Rabbi Dr David Goldberg, Emeritus Rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, Mr Farooq Murad. Secretary General, MCB, Dame Judi Dench, actor, Annie Lennox, singer, Anthony Gormley, artist, Tracey Emin, artist, Gavin Turk, artist, Geoffrey Hill, Oxford Professor of Poetry, Baroness Young of Hornsey, Caroline Lucas, MP for Bright Pavilion and leader of the Green Party, Ken Livingstone, London Mayoral Candidate (Labour), Mark Constantine, co-founder, Lush Ltd, Lily Cole, model and actor, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, chef and campaigner
John Houlihan, Chairman, British Mountain Bike Orienteering, Oona King, working peer, Trudie Styler, actress and producer, Nick Jones, founder, Soho House Group, Julian Barnes, author
Katherine Hamnett, designer, Camila Batmangheilidjh, founder, Kids Company, Tim Smit, CEO and co-founder, Eden Project, Rob Hopkins, co-founder, Transition Network, Trustees of the Natural Beekeeping Trust, Rosie Boycott, broadcaster, Gillian Anderson, actor, Gordon Roddick, philanthropist, Wayne Hemingway MBE, designer, Dame Joan Bakewell, writer and broadcaster
Giles Coren, writer and broadcaster, Tracey Marchioness of Worcester, Ben Fogle, expeditionist and broadcster, Dylan Jones, editor, GQ magazine, Sue Perkins, comedian and broadcaster, Richard E Grant, actor, Lisa Bilton, Mothers4Children, Stephen Bayley, author, Alex James, broadcaster and farmer, Kathy Lette, author, Edward Whitley, Whitley Fund for Nature, Anne Robinson, broadcaster, Rachel Billington, author, Christopher Simon Sykes, author, Lady Helen Taylor, Bill Amberg, designer, Susie Forbes, journalist, Henry Porter, journalist, Rowley Leigh, chef, Camilla Woodward, philanthropist, Ben Elliot, co-founder, Quintessentially, Joanna Trollope, author, Ronni Ancona, comedian, Dame Vivienne Westwood, designer, Katherine Hamnett, designer, Lord Roy Hattersley, politician, author, journalist, Jonathan Porritt, Founder, Director Forum for the Future, Lord Clark of Windermere (former Chair of the Forestry Commission), Claire Tomalin, author and biographer, Kevin Gopal, editor of the Big Issue in the North MP, New Economics Foundation, Paul Fisher, editor, Cotswold Water Park Life MP, Andy Harries, Chief Exec, Left Bank Pictures, Michael Frayn, playwright and novelist, Annabelle Bond, expeditionist, Ranulph Fiennes OBE, adventurer and writer, Stanley Johnson, author and politician, Dr Robert MacFarlane, author, Eugenie Harvey, UK director, 10:10, Trustees of the Women’s Environmental Network, Charley Boorman, adventurer, writer, actor, Richard Briers, actor, Foragers Pub UK, Andy Goldring, Chief Exec, Permaculture Association, Leo Johnson, Sustainable Finance Ltd, Dr Richard Lofthouse, Editor, Oxford Today, Ian Beacham, Editor in Chief, Best of British and Vintage Tractor and Countryside Heritage, Dr Jerome Lewis, co-director of cultures of Sustainability, UCL Environment Institute, Toby Gardner, NERC Fellow and Darwin College Research Fellow, Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Dr David Humphreys, senior lecturer in Environmental Policy, the Open University, disagreed with the government's plan to change the ownership of 258,000 hectares of state-owned woodland.
Caroline says: "We teach our children honesty".
I worked for The National Trust for one summer. There was a meeting I attended where they were trying to find ways of getting more people to visit their estates. After some discussion they unveiled their plan. An advertising overhaul re-branding it's image in new fonts.
Reading books in Costa Coffee I hear one staff say: "All she comes out with is excuses. She said to me that "sometimes if there are too many customers she'll just run out to the back and hide". I don't like all my customers, but for your management to do that- it doesn't leave a good impression". Around Christmas Costa Coffee was short staffed and an exasperated employee said the management "didn't know what they were doing".
New property is being developed: the slope by The Welsh Books Council, by the roundabout opposite Morrisons, the car park by the Council Offices, by Pengliais Hill, in the corner of Rosser. A new car park has just been opened by the Hospital.
In the bins behind Cwrt Mawr Bar there is a microwave that has been PAT tested in the year 2010.
Over the river a sign stands at the bottom of a street, a Neighbourhood Watch sign. It's picture is of a single eye.
On my way back from Coventry to Aberystwyth I overheard a couple on the train talking about working, I think, the Job Centre. On was telling the other how one man wouldn't have an interview because he was always angry and would never finish it. They went on to talk about applicants who lie on their applications: "You can't follow up every one. You've no time. But you can't doubt all of them. But you can't believe all of them. The ones who lie know what answers they need to give."
The Bees are suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder.
SOURCES TO BE USED
The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. HB.95.K6
Pinochet in Piccadily, by Andy Beckett. F.3101.P56.B3
Monetary vs Fiscal Policy: A Dialogue between Milton Friedman and Walter W. Heller. HG.538.F9
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, by Slavoj ZiZek. HB.501.Z8
The State We're In, by Will Hutton. HC.256.7.H9
Heat, by George Mobiot.
UK Uncut as reported by 'The Daily Mail'
Kraft as reported by 'The Daily Mail'
Just a few 'overheards' from the occupation that should be noted down:
ReplyDelete'the bouncers have got my shoes.'
'the bouncers have got your shoes.'
Dan looked dumb.
'The numbers become reality.'
Dan left.
.
'What if a person thought that there was something inherently wrong with exams? What would happen to that person?'
'I don't know.'
'You're about to find out.'
.
'You need I.D. for your shoes mate.'
'I don't have I.D.'
'Then you won't get your shoes.'
'I don't want shoes!'
.
'This isn't to do with all of this. We're just concerned with your health.'
.
'This is political and you won't dissuade me out of it.'
'I'm not trying to dissuade you.'
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'Did anyone think that today's protest wasn't really a protest?'
'It was a non political protest.'
'But protest is always inherently political.'
'Well, I suppose...'
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'Listen, I may disappear, become invisible. If that happens I don't want you to worry because I will be in safe hands.'
'Shouldnt you let your parents know?'
'I wouldn't worry about that.'
'But I do worry.'
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'Do you really think you are prepared to take on an unarmed man?'
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'I've been throwing books, placing them, in the woods by the hill.'
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'It's like a smooth ball of spirals getting smaller into the middle before getting bigger and connecting onto the other side.'
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'I am astounded with what I have gotten away with.'
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'At some point you are going to have to make a decision and if you hide away your emotion at that time then you will be making a dishonest decision.'
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'Out of all of my tutors the only one who has political is the one who takes the utopian sixties model.'
.
'I think you're being very hard on yourself.'
'I don't think so.'
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'You say to me that there is a continuity in the English Literature Course, but I don't really see the connection between the English department and the business department. Yet here you are teaching utopian sixties in the business department. I don't do business but I don't think they read many books.
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Another and,in my opinion Better version of this blog can be found here: http://whatihavegottenupto-thebookspy.blogspot.com/
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