Several things have been happening in Britain this week:
1) The recession may well have ended (see here also). This is a good thing.
2) The housing market looks like it’s recovering. This might be a good thing. (ht: Julian)
3) Interest rates on guilts have stayed low in the UK, strongly suggesting continued confidence in the UK economy in the long term. This is a good thing.
4) The Conservatives have been announcing massive cuts in spending if they were to get into government. This is an entirely expected thing.
5) Labour got battered in the election because news items1-4 were not clear at the time (apart from 2-4), and some fascists thugs got elected. Very bad thing.
6) Loads of bank staff got told they’re losing their jobs four days after exactly the same the bank they are now flush enough to pay back £2.3bn of the cash the government gave them a while back when they said they were skint, so that they can now go on making loads more money for their shareholder, having conveniently got rid of some unwanted labour costs (i.e. people), thus proving Graham Turner right about how capitalism is happy to lurch from crisis to crisis as a deliberate way of screwing the working class even more.
7) As a result of the news, Bickerstaffe councillor Paul Cotterill announced he had become very slightly more leftwing than he had been the week before, what with the way the working classes all over the world are treated like crap.
8) Cotterill also announced that, in the face of attempts by the neo-conservative types to pervert the language of the right-left political spectrum, he still holds that ’being leftwing’ is a useful shorthand to reflect a position in favour of equality for people, whatever their gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or any other feature generally used by the Right as a reason for discriminatory attititude and/or policy.
Next, we go over to Paul for the weather:
It’s pissing down.
Glad you’re here to talk about these things. Being as I work in the job I work in, I’m not allowed to comment. So anyhow. No comment. But I may lurch towards the left-wing with you, if that helps to clarify things at all.
I was nosing around and happened upon your blog (ok I looked what Miljenko was talking about.)
)
Stop calling me a stalker.
I liked the sentence that included “attempts by the neo-conservative types to pervert the language of the right-left political spectrum”.
I’ll blog about similar very soon, and quote that, referencing you naturally.
(seen your blog a few times now, you do good stuff
Thanks Brian – look forward to reading your post.
Mil – you’re not allowed to comment on what’s going on in your own industry? How does that work then?
Well, it doesn’t really. But the truth of the matter is that those who are best placed to comment can’t for contractual reasons. Work/life balance? The problem is the goalposts are shifting. Facebook and blogging now allow us to communicate instantly with our furthest and dearest – but whilst the register is throwaway English, the language itself is as set in stone as Moses. Large organisations don’t know how to deal with these changes in the way we communicate, so they simply say: “Don’t talk about work outside work!”
What do you suggest I do?
It is, in fact, part of the reason why I’m finding it difficult to have useful things to say about the current economic situation.
Weird how the digital world gives us only Hobson’s choices.
Mil
I have been giving this matter some thought, and will post on it.
Though that won’t do you much good.