If we care to raise our eyes for a minute from a choice between sociopaths and the destructive determination of Remainers, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the abject failure of wealth to trickle down is hurtling towards a push v shove moment. The comfortable may vote Tory and the desperate Labour in the hope that this can be avoided, but it cannot. The squeezed middle may yet, in time, usher in an era of practical pragmatism as an alternative to ideology. But don’t hold your breath.
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A litre of diesel in England costs £1.32, or thereabouts. In France, the price has crept up again to €1.48. The tolls driving from Calais to Aquitaine cost me a whopping €107, and the fuel €95. For the French in general (beyond the metropolitan citadans and bobos) this kind of tax-driven inflation isn’t funny: more than any other factor, it explains the rise of the Gilets Jaunes – neither Right nor Left, just fed up of tax injustice.
While all this is going on, meanwhile, both the eurozone and British banking systems are forging ahead with the dash from cash to smart digital payment. In both countries now, it is however obvious that the Squeezed Middle (to lower middle) folks are moving more and more into what one might call mild tax evasion – coughing up for the main income sources, while looking for new ways to “keep up” with real inflation. Such, of course, depends on being paid in cash.
The political, fiscal and financial classes may well already be aware of this tectonic clash waiting to happen, but if so they show zero awareness of it: a central plank in Boris Johnson’s leadership bid is to further reduce tax rates for the top earners, and here in France Macron is already gearing up his team for a re-election campaign basically along the lines of “more of the same”.
It isn’t just that the squeezed middle is a broad spectrum of the populous; it’s also that those artisans and odd-job people working sur le noir are also paying higher gas, electricity and travel prices too. A large sector of the ‘middle’ consists of baby-boomers pushing 70 who have more need than most for home services. When my tractor lawnmower was being repaired last month, I paid €180 to have the grass cut. Other suppliers charge more. I spent the winter before last in Goa because the flight (return) plus accommodation was less than the EDF electricity bill for October to February.
Over the last seven years in the US and Europe, there has been a massive shift to part time, short contract and zero-contract “jobs”. Politicians throughout both regions love to talk job stats on a purely quantitative basis, as if all jobs were equal. They aren’t, but the failure of most media news anchors to nail the heads of our “representatives” on this issue is truly pathetic: the idea that a married woman getting a beck-and-call limited hours job as a care home assistant on slave-wages is equal (in gdp terms) to the job-loss for a middle to senior marketing person being paid £70,000 a year is utterly ridiculous. As I have written before, while the suppliant liberal press make a song and dance about fake news, fake data is a far more important issue.
Not only are inflation rates manipulated downwards by the dishonest and unrepresentative choice of items in the ‘basket’ being used by statisticians, when it comes to “unemployment”, in 2019 it’s all down to how you define being jobless.
The OECD’s figures for the US, UK and EU in terms of ‘participation’ in the labour force show levels of such employment spookily similar at 73-78%. So calling it roughly three quarters, there is an enormous anomaly between those numbers and the officially stated “rate” of unemployment. Bear in mind that these figures are for 18-64 year olds, and so only a tiny proportion of the non-participants are retired on private pensions or post-tax acquired wealth.
The reason for the disparity is plain to see: in a leap of logic only possible if you are a bureaucrat, when the unemployment welfare period of entitlement comes to an end, those by law no longer receiving it are assumed to be back in employment. In the real world, unemployment rates recorded at 1 in 14 are closer to 1 in 6.
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For those “reformers” in the West busy privatising, bourse-developing and quantitatively easing, everything in the garden looks just fine. But those citizens (say) retired on a level of capital paying close to no return thanks to Zirp, or unemployed with little access to welfare, or employed but working unsocial hours on very low pay, or loosely self-employed with little or no security, are in bad enough shape already.
The hope of Powers that Be looking for a way out of their neoliberal dilemma is that those social groups will (a) continue to consume and (b) pay their taxes, at the levels required. This seems hardly likely: and when the black economy has been blocked off thanks to smart plastic being the only legal form of payment, such will be absolutely impossible. “Aha,” they smile, “That’s OK, we just press a button and sequester their bank funds”. This ever so slightly misses the point: chances are, there won’t be any money in the account, given that they’re mired in plastic debt.
‘Piggy in the middle’ was a kids’ playground game in the 1950s. Today, the pigs are on either side, squeezing the middle….but the ‘squeezers’ come in multivariate forms: bankers and government treasuries, Remainers and Leavers, Alt States and political classes, global monopolists and artisan suppliers, durable manufacturers and energy combines, and in a less physical (but no less alienating) sense, neoliberal and collectivist ideologues. I have felt disenfranchised by this last group for the best part of forty years, and there are millions of voters like me.
One day not too far away, the alienated “middleish class” will no longer be happy permanently stuck between wealthy Left-liberals engaged in 24/7 pc virtue-signalling, and the ever more bombastic Right demanding that government pay more attention to the fears of ordinary people.
Making the political Executive slaves to the whims of The People is every bit as dangerous as letting the twin elements of the genuine fascist State (totalitarian ideology and monopolist business) drive a giant combine harvester through our freedoms. Both the governors and the governed have to take equal responsibility, dump fear of the unknown, share far more of the power available and behave in a manner conducive to the creation of a stable, fulfilled society – to the maximum degree possible, given the nature of the soi-disant species Homo sapiens.
In the meantime, the three regions are obsessed with Trump, Tory leadership farces, Macron, Brexit and Italy. These remain what they’ve always been: symptoms of a disconnection between citizenry and élite. More and more, I sense the need for a pressure group comprising a unity of youth, the retired, the impoverished and the deprived. But culturally and historically, the timing is wrong: there are too many people looking in vain for extreme solutions and genuine Messiahs.
So who’s controlling WordPress nowadays – the thought police?
My post has evaporated.
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History may agree that the Solution to Stuck in the middle is actually finding the art of Leadership .
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@alison; spot on and also your meaning of sociapath. Must be my age age also.
rtj; barter may be the coming thing. Reciprocal favours have always been the way of things amongst country dwellers in my neck of the woods. The internet may greatly facilitate barter but bear in mind that tptb hate it as it provides some level of personal and collective autonomy and is un-taxable.
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VAMPIRE WEEKEND
Say no more …. enjoy
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Re Cashless society, apparently there are at least 1.5 million people without bank account. Also, banks are closing down peoples’ bank accounts at a rate of knots with their anti money laundering rules. Very difficult for them to open an account elsewhere and they will simply refer to Terms and Conditions if asked why. In these circumstances, a Subject Access Request is needed to get information from them. They have to comply under GDPR data provisions
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No cash or free speech.
Proposed Government white paper on Internet Censorship Policy:
Online Harms consultation ends midnight tomorrow. Follow the video to grasp the consequences of what the government will allow you to say.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/community/forums/topic/censorship-policy-online-harms-consultation-ends-midnight-tomorrow/
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How big is your lawn, John?
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Very extremely massively hoooooge. JW
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@A Kearsley Lad
With regard to the headlong (banker’s) dash towards a cashless economy I offer the following hopeful thought: once people realise that their every financial move is being recorded, analysed and ultimately taxed by the Gubmint (aka Big Brother) there will arise an informal arrangement between peoples whereby precious and semi-precious metals in small amounts will be accepted in a mutually agreed exchange rate, entirely unencumbered by Whitehall diktat. These small pieces could be referred to as … ooh, I don’t know, “coins” for example … and essential freedom could thereby be maintained.
One things for sure – until an acceptable means by which MPs may receive their brown envelopes stuffed full of recompense has been agreed – cash will rule.
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Hooray Twitter button working.
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Car share Hugh Guru?
For people who have to get where they need to go at a definite time & with certainty (i.e. most peopl) that idea is of less use than the 1960/70’s UK government information film advice of making a shelter out of a strong table in the event of a nuclear war.
Russell
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Another benefit for the ‘elite’ with a cashless society is that they know exactly what you have been spending your money on and where you have been, how much ‘money’ you may have and how to nobble you. I can’t see them getting away with it, although they will certainly try – remember how India tried it a couple of years ago when they made the 50 Rupee note illegal? They may get away with it in the UK but I can’t see the freedom-loving US letting it happen.
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France travel is very expensive, but one possibility might be car share, like blablacar.co.uk which works very well on major routes. Now theres a thought.
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Welcome back to La France Profonde!
Did you get to vote for the next Tory leader?
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It’s a cliché I know but surely it’s becoming clearer to all that our political solutions amount to no more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. They won’t help: the liner is going down anyway unless our political system is thoroughly reinvented. If nothing else Brexit has shown that it’s not fit for purpose. It’s a relic of the horse and carriage age and it wasn’t fit for purpose even then.
People are screaming out to participate directly in their democracy. This is shown by the referendum turnout and he millions of posts on internet websites such as this, and in daily newspapers.
Thanks to the internet we now have the technology for a direct democracy where everyone participates, regularly. Putting a cross on a ballot form every five years for a local main-chancer who nobody has ever heard of just won’t wash anymore. This revolution is coming we can be sure of that, as more and more realise how absurd the current system is. The sooner the better.
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Maybe it will take just a crack to brake the log jam and then the water of freedom from economic tyranny will gush through.
The Berlin Wall collapse no doubt started with one brick being removed…
An issue such as the removal of their State Pension from women born in 1950/60s at the relatively last minute and with no debate has led to campaigns. These have been largely ignored but not completely. And is now before judges. If youngsters latch on to the fact that they are being sold down the river called privatisation and will die in poverty having been fleeced all their lives…they will join in the campaigns.
That equals real change. Or going back to what we had before. Not the Poor Laws but the post-war welfare state where the introduction of social policies mitigated income loss as a result of, among other things, unemployment, old age, illness, or family reasons.
PS I looked up what “sociopath” means and for some reason thought of Tony Blair! Must be my age…
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Why drive across France even if meeting your girlfriend in Paris? There are cheap flights from Toulouse. I forget where you live, but it can’t be more than a couple of hours drive away. You’ve missed nothing here, except nearly half the labour party MPs, and the civil service, are trying to nail Jeremy Corbyn to the cross. He needs to get some fire in his balls and shoot back at all the arseholes attacking him. Meanwhile Boris is almost certain to get the job, unless the “civil service” bend the result, after allegedly calling the French “Turds” on the cutting floor of a BBC Documentary at the Foreign Office. It is interesting to find out who all these really evil people don’t like.
Tony
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You can never stop barter. Doctors barter with dentists (I have seen it happen), farmers could barter with each other (farmyard manure in exchange for vegetables), an accountant could barter with an electrician, a butcher could barter with a baker. Etc etc.
Of course some things have to be paid for, but freely consenting adults exchanging services without cash changing hands is historical reality.
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Dear John,
I take your point on the mendacious abusive use of fake data.
Lamentably, our gullible populations of cyborgs, seem to willingly absorb this fake diatribe.
In the race to find a completely irrefutable nirvana of so called “equality”, we are force-fed false representations of commercials, presenters, actors, journalistic and politico commentators, which bear no resemblance to national or international statistics!
White English still make up around 75% – 79% of the UK population, but this is never reflected on our television screens.
We are all enduring the deceit and disinformation, by courtesy of the ministry of EU propaganda.
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If you are not working or in a job with no promotion prospects, renting and your only assets are your household goods – why wouldn’t you vote for policies which might take money from others and give it to you.
On the other side, if you have savings and home equity – why wouldn’t you vote for policies which protect these assets from being taken away.
Your government is dependent on the balance between these two.
PS bringing unskilled, poor migrants into your country will seriously improve the chances of the first group of policies gaining traction!
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John, the level of denial is palpable in the public face of the ego-driven narrative merchants.The Public face of the Esrablishment, The easy way to see who they regard as the Fourth Estate is to look at the risibly absurdist comedy gem that is Credder. https://twitter.com/PMotels/status/1144859456167120896 https://twitter.com/PMotels/status/1143433839966076928 https://wikitacticalvoting.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page Prisons as Frameworks: “The prisons are the frameworks. And those who do not like prisons will be opposed to the myth of the framework. They will welcome a discussion with a partner who comes from another world, from another framework, for it gives them an opportunity to discover their so far unfelt chains, to break these chains, and thus to transcend themselves. But this breaking of one’s prison is clearly not a matter of routine: it can only be the result of a critical effort and of a creative effort.” In some ways, learning a new language is like expanding the horizons of our current prison, not simply because it forces us to experience new ways of seeing the world, but rather because it forces us to reexamine our own. https://web.archive.org/web/20150522065726/http://leakygrammar.net:80/2012/07/15/karl-popper-breaking-out-of-the-prison-of-language/ https://youtu.be/pdZuOfqkuLg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBe8MTcCqKs
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Reblogged this on RogersLongHairBlog and commented:
John, the level of denial is palpable in the public face of the ego-driven narrative merchants.The Public face of the Esrablishment,
The easy way to see who they regard as the Fourth Estate is to look at the risibly absurdist comedy gem that is Credder.
https://wikitacticalvoting.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page
Prisons as Frameworks:
“The prisons are the frameworks. And those who do not like prisons will be opposed to the myth of the framework. They will welcome a discussion with a partner who comes from another world, from another framework, for it gives them an opportunity to discover their so far unfelt chains, to break these chains, and thus to transcend themselves. But this breaking of one’s prison is clearly not a matter of routine: it can only be the result of a critical effort and of a creative effort.”
In some ways, learning a new language is like expanding the horizons of our current prison, not simply because it forces us to experience new ways of seeing the world, but rather because it forces us to reexamine our own.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150522065726/http://leakygrammar.net:80/2012/07/15/karl-popper-breaking-out-of-the-prison-of-language/
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