![[icon]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/15677398/3363913) |
Minimal Harm
|
| There's an old joke in which a wily operator starts every speech he makes with the phrase, "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, ..." in order to win the audience's sympathy. The joke was sort of true in my grandad's case: after he died, my mum and her brothers found drafts of speeches and even recordings of him practising, and they started with lines like, "I didn't expect to have to give a speech today, but I'll make something up as I go..." Canny old thing.
This weekend was a bit of a shock to the system for me: I had to hold conversations, for a couple of days running. I've now been on sick leave or out of work for three and a half months. At first I was doing reasonably well for seeing people, I was having sessions with a counsellor, and I was obsessively playing TES: Oblivion, so was distracted. Since then, this has fallen apart. I finished the game; I left the rotation of the hospital staff and lost my counsellor after being too unwell to attend three consecutive sessions; there was a particularly confusing and upsetting episode with a friend I saw regularly who told me that she "had realised she could never be what I wanted" and cut me off completely; and in general the combination of my withdrawal and my alienatingly unstable behaviour has resulted in several other de facto losses of friends. My direct human contact has now been limited to a few hours of games club on a Wednesday night and a one-hour phone call to my parents every Sunday evening. I'm dangerously unused to having other human beings in my orbit, and this amplifies me being withdrawn and unstable.
There was a bump in the rut when I went to a birthday games weekend (from which I returned this afternoon) with some friends who were some years above me at Oxford but whom I knew through gaming. It was tiring and tough work. From Friday evening to Sunday afternoon I was suddenly surrounded by people, all talking and all interacting. It's like trying to walk when you've been sitting down for a few hours: you seize up, stiff and pained. I felt so aware of how out of my depth I was. I was too out of practice.
In secondary school I spent a lot of time secretly practising conversations and facial expressions with myself - kind of like my grandad - until I could understand others and express what was in my head to the outside world in a sensible and measured way. I have always been fine delivering an impromptu monologue on a "point of interest" - if anything, I become *too* fluent - but I always found things like social rituals and stock recitations difficult. Even at my most recent job, I had to keep a note on Monday to remind me to politely ask my colleagues whether they had had a nice weekend - and to remind me that if they asked me the same question, they were not really asking but merely performing the ritual and did not want to hear if my weekend had been unsatisfactory, but only the phrase "Fine, thank you", with a brief summary of anything nice that had happened. But this kind of practice, preparation and planning is necessary: my default state of sombrely earnest truthfulness is invariably mistaken for rudeness. (I suppose it is rudeness in its way, but an unthinking, unintentional kind.)
Without the regular practice that I need, I slip into my natural behaviours. I am taciturn where normally I simulate extroversion. I speak, not before thinking, but as an expression, display, enactment of thinking, rather than as a summary report of thinking. My manner is brusque and my reasoning unaccommodating of emotional factors. I am unresponsive to facial expressions, body language, vocal inflections, etc, which ought to act as early warning signs of a wrong tack. This combines with the effects of my regular depression - such as pessimism, self-criticism, exhaustion - to make social interaction difficult.
Overall, the weekend went better than it could have gone - but that is because by now I have pitifully low standards for evaluating such things. I had several tone-deaf bickers with people that were unnecessary for me to get involved in. I was exhausted all through my body from the effort of interacting. I had a nice time and I'm glad I went, but it underscored for me how poor is condition at present. I already know that my thought processes are too often drifting to the place they should not be, and that is a process that is nigh-on impossible to arrest internally or indirectly. The struggle continues. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| |
Do they expect a PG-13 answer to that one? Those Writer's Block things are dumb. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I have seemingly been in London for too long. Sleeping and waking intermittently on the meandering coach from London Victoria to Stockport, towns feel as rustic as the middle of nowhere. I was in a cab through south London last week, from Fulham to Brixton, and marvelled at how green everything was every time that we passed a patch of common. I think that my sense of perspective has been lost somewhere.
Posted via LjBeetle | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I read this diatribe just now, which suggests that the US is more "socialist" than Sweden for the following reason:
"The Tax Foundation recently noted that in 2009 the U.S. collected a higher share of income and payroll taxes (45%) from the richest 10% of tax filers than any other nation, including such socialist welfare states as Sweden (27%), France (28%) and Germany (31%)."
Surely in a truly "socialist welfare state", the share of income tax collected from the richest 10% of tax filers would be ... 10%. If there's a very small gap between rich and poor, then the tax share of the top 10% will fall towards 10%, and in any tax regime that is at least as "fair" as a poll tax (i.e., not the theoretical insanity of taxing the richest less per head than the poor), will never fall below it. America's ludicrously high share of tax from the richest 10% is not a sign that America is a "socialist welfare state" (as if that would be a bad thing), but a sign that America has vast inequalities of wealth.
Is it too much to expect basic numeracy from people who write in places like the WSJ? Thought so. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| "By all accounts, Clement Attlee had a brusque manner when he was prime minister. He was never one for beating around the bush and on one occasion called a junior minister and told him he was being sacked. Somewhat stunned, the minister asked, why? Not up to the job, was Attlee's five-word response.
This government has now been in power for almost a year and here's a check list of their achievements so far. Unemployment, going down a year ago, is now going up. Real incomes fell last year for the first time since 1981 and are on course to fall again this year. Consumer confidence has slumped to levels seen in the depths of the recession. High street retailers are sending out profit warnings. And, to cap it all, the government has been forced to revise up its forecasts for the budget deficit.
So here's the question Attlee might have posed. Is this government fit to run the economy or is it simply "Not up to the job"?
Let's be as fair as we can to the coalition, tempting though it is to speculate that if Keynes were alive he would even now be drafting a new work entitled "The Economic Consequences of Mr Osborne". Labour's bequest to the coalition was a terribly sick economy only kept alive by a cocktail of extremely strong drugs. Debt-ridden; unbalanced; far too dependent on public spending in many regions: all these criticisms made by ministers are true. The brutal reality is that there is no painless way out of this mess.
It is, though, reasonable to ask whether the policies of the government are making things even worse than they need to be. Osborne insists that Britain will enjoy what he calls "expansionary austerity", because the knowledge that the government is getting to grips with the public finances will engender confidence and encourage private spending to replace the cuts in public spending.
This theory relies on a tighter fiscal policy (tax increases and spending cuts) allowing monetary policy (interest rates and the exchange rate) to remain loose. Cheap borrowing costs lead to higher investment, while the low pound stimulates exports. This, in turn, leads to a rebalancing of the economy.
There is a theoretical and empirical answer to the idea of expansionary austerity. The theoretical counter is that tighter fiscal policy can only lead to looser monetary policy if monetary policy is tight in the first place.
Struggling
If monetary policy is already ultra loose – as it was when the coalition came to power – there is little scope for it to get any looser, therefore any tightening of fiscal policy leads to a lower level of aggregate demand in the economy.
The empirical case against expansionary austerity is that it doesn't seem to be working in Britain (or in any of the struggling eurozone countries), whereas good old fashioned fiscal expansion does seem to be doing the trick in the US.
Despite two years when bank rate has been pegged at 0.5%, there is a marked reluctance to borrow. Mortgage demand is running at half the levels seen in the 10 years leading up to the financial crisis, and lending to businesses is not picking up.
Monetary policy, in other words, is proving much less effective in turning the economy round, which is perhaps hardly surprising given the enormous shock suffered by the financial sector between 2007 and 2009.
Where is the evidence of expansionary austerity? Not in the balance of payments figures, which are getting worse not better. Not in the high street, where consumers would need to see their incomes rise by 6% to compensate for the price increases and tax rises of the past year. And not in the business community, where investment fell in the final three months of last year.
It has to be acknowledged, of course, that it would be one heck of a gamble for Osborne to do a screeching U-turn. The financial markets would almost certainly take fright, and would demand a higher price for buying UK government bonds. That would mean higher interest rates for long-term borrowers. Sadly, this is what happens when you make a fetish of deficit reduction and exaggerate the risk of a sovereign debt crisis.
As such, we are stuck with what we've got up to the point – as with membership of the exchange rate mechanism – when it becomes clear that the status quo is untenable. Then, and not before, a Plan B will be conjured up.
Here, then, is the current state of play. The government's economic policy isn't working. Even if things do go according to Osborne's blueprint it is still going to be a terribly grim couple of years for households, who will continue to see incomes squeezed, taxes rise, and benefits cut. After rising by a trifling 0.8% last year, household consumption is expected to grow by 0.6% in 2011 and 1.3% in 2012.
By 2015, household consumption growth is expected to increase by 2.3%, but only because it is assumed that the spending will be financed by extra debt. Buried away in the small print of the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecasts for the budget was the projection that household debt will rise from £1,560bn in 2010 (160% of household income) to £2,126bn in 2015 (175% of income).
Malicious
Osborne, quite correctly, has said Britain was over-dependent on private debt during the bubble years. During the recession, the government pumped up its spending and private debt became public debt.
Now the public debt is to become private debt once more. That looks like a pretty suspect cure, even assuming the private sector is willing to load up on more debt. If households save more, because they are worried about their prospects, the economy will hit the wall with an almighty crash.
It has to be hoped this doesn't happen because the human cost of a second downturn will be higher than it was in 2008-09. Then, the government spent a lot of money beefing up Jobcentre Plus so unemployed people were given customised help to get them back into work. It was expensive, but it was a success. Despite a peak to trough fall in output of 6% between early 2008 and late 2009, the rise in joblessness was smaller than in the 1990-92 recession, when the economy shrank by little more than 1%.
A different ethos appears to motivate the current administration. This paper reported on Saturday that vulnerable jobseekers are being tricked into losing their benefits by staff instructed to hit targets for reducing the welfare bill. If true, that suggests the government is not just economically incompetent but malicious to boot. In quite a crowded field, it would stand as the vilest policy introduced by the coalition so far."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/04/coalition-government-osborne-economic-policy-comment | | comments: Leave a comment |
| "It's not Labour profligacy that caused the deficit – if the last government was spending too much why did the Tories promise, until summer 2008, to match its largesse? Labour needs to become as tireless at making this case as the coalition is at repeating, ad nauseam, that it "inherited this mess".
The only way to galvanise opposition to the government is to expose the fiction that the UK’s current economic problems are the result of high taxes and overspending and thus undermine the Tories’ only justification for austerity measures. These are the 15 facts which George Osborne doesn’t want us to know because they expose the Great Tory Debt Lie:
Fact 1: Average annual taxation as a % of GDP was lower in the years 1997- 2010 (35.4%) than in the years 1980-1997 (35.5%) as was average annual public spending (40% and 38%).
Fact 2: The national debt was higher in 57 years of the 20th century than in 2010, when it was 52% of GDP. In 1945 it was 237% of GDP and yet Attlee's post-war Labour government was able to bear the costs of introducing the welfare state and nationalising the railways, the public utilities and the coal and steel industries. Maybe that was because in 1945 we really were "all in it together".
Fact 3: As Osborne admitted to the Treasury Select Committee, in 2010 the UK's national debt was the second lowest of the G7 countries and, at less than 60% of GDP net of bank assets, is within Maastricht Treaty limits. It is expected to peak at around 73%. Germany is already above that level and is expected to exceed 80% in 2013. The debt levels of Japan and Italy exceed 100% of GDP.
Fact 4: In June 2010, the budget deficit was under £155 billion, well below the Treasury's £178 billion estimate made six months earlier. In other words, the deficit was narrowing after Labour increased spending in 2009.
Fact 5: The budget deficit is no more “structural” than an overdraft in your bank account when you spend more than you earn. There is either a real deficit or not, and if there is, then it is due to either excessive spending or an inadequate tax take. Since it can easily be demonstrated that the problem is not the former, then it must be the latter – which is around 36% compared to an EU average of 40%, has been adversely affected by the financial crisis and consequent recession, and is likely to be further aggravated when taxes are cut later during this parliament to the benefit of high earners, corporations and banks.
Fact 6: Even if you accept the idea of a “structural” deficit, this was only 3.5% of GDP in 2007, compared with the last Conservative government’s structural deficits of 5.2% in 1992, 6.6% in 1993, 6.2% in 1994, 5.6% in 1995 and 4% in 1996. Similarly, the last 3 Labour governments managed to earn enough to cover their spending for 3 of their 13 years in office, whereas Thatcher and Major only managed to balance the books for 2 out of 17 years.
Fact 7: Osborne's claim that the UK is in danger of having its Triple AAA credit rating downgraded ignores the fact that the UK government is a reliable borrower with zero chance of defaulting, since most of its debt is held by financial institutions in the UK over a very long period of time and at very low interest rates. In fact, according to economist Ray Barrell (National Institute Economic Review, January 2010), government interest payments as a % of annual GDP are around 3.5%, the same as in the last year of Major's government.
Fact 8: Basing an economic policy on the predictions of the credit ratings agencies is absurd. As happened in the 1930s, when they failed to foresee the Great Depression, these agencies have behaved pro-cyclically – encouraging reckless borrowing when the economy seems to be strong and threatening to slash their ratings when a crisis develops.
Fact 9: Despite Osborne's fatuous comparison of Britain's problems with those of Greece, a 2010 IMF study suggested that "the USA and UK could probably increase their debt burden by another 50% of GDP beyond projected 2015 levels without triggering a crisis."
Fact 10: Osborne has ignored a core principle of Keynesian economics - that government spending should be counter-cyclical. In other words, when growth is slow, you increase public spending and when it is strong you reduce government debt by cutting spending. Governments that reduce spending during a recession, or before full economic recovery, invariably make things worse: Economic growth slows, tax revenues fall, and welfare spending increases as unemployment rises.
Fact 11: The US, which has made no serious attempts at deficit reduction, has suffered almost the smallest recession of any major economy, whereas Ireland and Greece have suffered the most because of drastic spending cuts.
Fact 12: The worst recessions of the 20th century have been caused by harsh spending cuts. For example, in 1937, FDR's premature attempt to balance the US budget helped to plunge the US economy back into recession and Neville Chamberlain's disastrous deflationary budget of 1932 had a similar effect in Britain.
Fact 13: Even if Osborne's policies are successful in reducing debt, their only effect will be to transfer it from the government's books to private households. Although household debt has drastically increased since Cecil Parkinson's "Big Bang" financial deregulation of the 1980s, and is the highest in Europe, the household debt-to-income ratio fell between 2007 and 2010. But according to the OBR, household debt will rise again (by £245 billion from 2011 to 2015) whilst public debt will fall by only £43 billion – the former the result of rising unemployment, falling wages, cuts in benefits and inflation and the latter the effect of a slump in demand and falling tax revenues.
Fact 14: Three Nobel prize-winning economists (Stiglitz, Krugman and Pissaredes) condemn Osborne’s austerity measures as seriously misguided, as does Martin Wolf of the Financial Times.
Fact 15: In 2007, Cameron promised to stick to Labour’s spending plans. Then came the financial crisis, the damaging effects of which he chooses to ignore. Not surprising, since before the financial crisis he had criticised Gordon Brown for regulating the banks too tightly.
So Osborne's “Big Lie” is the product of what Karl Rove called “creating your own reality”. As the cuts begin to bite, it will be peddled ad infinitum until the Tories have turned their small-state, low-tax dreams into reality and achieved a further transfer of wealth from rich to poor."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/12/conservative-labour-pendulum-coalition?commentpage=1#comment-10345084 | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Knife like ice
Caressing,
The fat flat of the blade rubbing greedily on its page:
Waiting,
Wondering
What secrets to impart.
Secrets don’t come cheap: there is always a price to be paid,
And sometimes,
The price is the process of learning them.
What secrets to unlock.
The runes are there already, their
Jagged slashes streaking
Through the rock,
Waiting for the knife
To unlock them
And set them free.
The knife waits. It has time. It slides up and it slides down, teasing.
Maybe the spreading roots,
Covered by soil.
Maybe the spreading branches,
Covered by leaves.
The secrets have to remain secret;
The knowledge must be unknown.
A scratch here;
A scratch there;
The message takes shape.
The canvas transforms, its creamy surface
Covered in crimson pencil lines,
Screaming their message as if everyone around were deaf to them.
The deafness is intentional. It’s upsetting to hear a scream. But still
The teller tells the tale.
It reads:
All we have
Is a crown
Of thorns. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| They were sat in the corner, nattering,
Two women, forty-mutter-mutter.
"How's your daughter?"
"Oh, she's fine.
And yours?"
"Fine too."
"And what about Libya?"
"Incredible."
"Amazing."
"Maybe - there IS power in the people?"
And there it was,
The giant stirring,
A hot blast of destiny,
Right there,
In an office in London.
Posted via LjBeetle | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | For as long as I can remember, I have disliked Coca-Cola. It's not specifically that I dislike the taste - I love those chewy "cola bottle" sweets - but something about the real thing, even the smell of it, always makes me nauseous. Having seen the exposé of the original "secret recipe", which is still fairly faithfully adhered to, I have finally realised why. I worked out about a year ago that my main problem with Indian cuisine, the factor that, even the smell of it, makes me nauseous, was coriander. Even minuscule quantities of it in the air are horrible to me. And, ho and be lol'd, Coca-Cola contains coriander oil as part of that secret recipe. All these years, wondering why others could guzzle the stuff, and at last I know. I feel strangely liberated. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| It's a sort of cross between Halloween (as was) and Armistice Day in the feelings it stirs. On the one hand, terror and loathing; on the other, regret and sorrow. Terror of the darkness, alone and ever-so vulnerable; loathing of the monstrous grinning pairs, partying and happy. Regret for lost life, wasted and tragic; sorrow that the wastage goes on without sign of ceasing.
There are many good things in life. Kind friends and loving family. Interesting work and enjoyable play. Good food. Comfortable living space. Throughout the year, the thing that is missing can be ignored, for the most part. It's easy to not notice something that isn't there, if you don't look at it, that thing that isn't there. But today's different.
A day is just a day. It's a period of local time measured by the speed our planet turns, a changeable quantity (when seen over the right distance). There's no innate reason for when it starts and when it ends, at midnight, that bewitching hour. This day is just one of countless many that has been before, and in time it will not even be remembered, just another box on a yellowed calendar. There's nothing forcing us to use the rotation around the sun to tie this day to previous days. Looked at dispassionately, it's supremely unimportant.
But importance is a status that adheres precisely in things that we think are important. Importance is always /for/ someone: look at anything dispassionately and it's unimportant - that way lies nihilism. And today is a day that society - we - decided long ago was important. It means something because we know it means something, because we feel it, the ecstasy and the excitement, the anxiety and the anguish. Ironically, we cannot escape our passions.
Posted via LjBeetle | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
|
Minimal Harm
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
coldjwplay's journal
anxious
irritated
chipper