Upper-Class Tory twits & mindless idiots‏

I told you long ago not to talk or listen to politicians, bankers, economists or policy wonks. Instead, you should have been donating, very generously, directly to the money-men of the Conservative Party. It might have been an expensive "kitchen supper' as snacks go but by now you might have zero corporation tax, zero capital gains tax and a top personal income-tax bracket of 15p. All for a backhander of around 750k to the Tory Party. They might even privatise the police forces and toss in a knighthood for the round million. Follow the example of property developers that have bunged enough money at the Tory Party to get the whole of Britain turned into a free-for-all building site. Expect to see several property developers in the next Queen's Birthday Honours List.

To those of us with exposure to the American way of doing politics this comes as no great surprise - nor should it come as much of a shock to the citizens of the UK. Politics is about vested interests and the most vested of these is money and it's derivatives - wealth and power.  The man seen on hidden-camera offering to subvert democracy for large quantities of wedge got there because he threw enough folding money - (in his vernacular; a 'bar" and a couple of "plums")  - at the Tory Party to get the job as it's Treasurer. He made his money in Thatcher's Big-Bang City and he brought it's morality with him. That the Labour party did something very similar is no defence. Selling peerages and getting a "Bernie" from Bernie Ecclestone for political favours is part and parcel of what now passes for democratic politics in the age of unregulated capitalism. Didn't Marx and Engels say something about this? Instead of concentrating all power in the State all power is concentrated in private corporations. Either way democracy isn't involved.

The Irish have just added more proof, if any were needed, to the assertion that all power, in some manner or other, corrupts. Especially in an environment where the Treasurer of the Tory party refers to a billion quid as a "yard". Former Irish Prime-minister Ahern, where he to dwell in London instead of Dublin, could well have added the "Bertie" to the lexicon of money slang.

The recent litany of embarrassment for the UK government might be described as the Conservative Party Conundrum. The "New Labour" emulating "New Tory" modernisers of the Conservative Party are actually the former 19th century model (previously declared extinct) of wealth, class and privilege (requires a minimum of 300 years of inbreeding) now occupying the Parliamentary front benches while the Conservative Party and it's HQ remain firmly in the grip of the (mongrel) Thatcherites. Ne'er the twain shall meet. Cameron rose to power only because the Thatcherites went into hiding after egregious sleaze gave Thatcherism and it's adherents a bad name and made the Tories unelectable - New Labour then stole most of Thatcher's policies anyway. Cameron went out of his way not to speak to Thatcherites, to avoid contagion, in the hope of getting himself elected and he half succeeded. Thatcherites wouldn't have given him any good advice even if he asked for it. Now they're all regretting it.

This has resulted in a face-off between the resurgant Old Tory Entitlement and the Thatcher Meritocracy and they are both losing. The reappearance of Tory Class-Politics is exactly what Thatcherism was meant to prevent - unfortunately it was also meant to prevent exactly the present economic disaster from ever happening. So Thatcherites don't really have much of a clue as to how to solve it without admitting that it was their supporters that brought this disaster about or looking, god forbid, like the Labour party. The Tory Entitlement, represented by Cameron, Osborne and Maude, is doing what comes naturally to them -  concluding that what's good for them is, by definition, good for the country. By extension this means, in their minds at least, that the working classes are undeserving of the privileges dispensed by Public School and Oxbridge upbringings - and need to be treated as mindless idiots. The Lower Orders don't know what's good for them and, in any event, they don't matter. Meanwhile the system is tuned to provide the already privaleged with yet more privileges.

Unfortunately for the chinless upper-class Tory twits this sense of entitlement overlooks how they got put in power in the first place - by mindless idiots. No wonder they fought for so long to prevent universal suffrage. Not only has their socially-elevated personal view of what's right and proper upset the Sun newspaper reading Conservative working-class faithful but the Daily Telegraph, Times and Sunday Times reading middle-class Tory faithful to boot. They've managed to do this by surrounding themselves with doppelgangers - those whose senses of entitlement and self-worth greatly outweigh their abilities - but fit nicely into the Realm of Privilege they foolishly believe the country should revert to. They are so convicted of this notion that nothing - nothing other than electoral annihilation - will convince them that the return to a pre first world war Establishment isn't a good thing. This is benignly described as "being out of touch".

If they were simply "out of touch" it would be a good thing. They are also vastly and unknowingly incompetent. So that makes them oblivious to how vastly incompetently out of touch they actually are - as demonstrated by David Cameron showing his common-man, Cornish Pasty-munching, fuel-hoarding, pay-to-meet, credentials with a photo-op playing BADMINTON in the back garden of No.10! He probably did this on the advice of George Osborne - a man who probably thinks that Badminton is more popular than Soccer and is certainly more popular than Cornish Pasties - at least among the people he knows.

All of this brings us to the disconnect between Entitlement Politicians and the realities of power, money and the electorate. To the Entitlement money is vulgar and it is best to leave such unsavoury things to unsavoury people. By already having all the things others covet they believe they're much better than the people that elected them and so should, naturally, be looked-up to for leadership and guidance. We're better than you and have the plummy accent to prove it. Which begs the question - who are the real mindless idiots?

An Irish Tweet and Fat Americans

Few will be all atwitter if RTE in Ireland is found to have the same political survival culture as News International, if not quite on a par with the Murdoch brand of such an activity. Those that might help with your cash flow would come top of the list for a free lunch, weekend in the Sauna, spot of shooting, to be followed by a positive or contrived story. The BBC are masters at this but then, given the nature of the business, so is everyone in it.

Irish politicians will need to be very careful about throwing feigned acrimony or denial around or they could find themselves on the wrong borrowed horse. God forbid that someone asks for a Judicial Inquiry or the plods get involved. Even worse RTE could start actually investigating the politicians' relationships with bankers, developers and, drum roll here, journalists! While the British have remained stalwartly wooden in the face of systemic corruption and illegality the Irish love a fight. Given the amount of money that went missing there is no doubt the place, along with many others, is rotten to the core.

The future of that island, both north and south, is in the hands of a political cadre that didn't evolve from socio-economic or democratic principles but from a populist nationalism that has permeated and substituted for what passes as governments' policy since the nation's inception. The Irish have done a remarkably good job in hiding the fact that they had their own Civil War by blaming everyone but themselves. The simplicity of getting elected on this basis hasn't filled the halls of democracy with capable, never mind great, thinkers. This doesn't bode well in the search for a political solution to their present economic problems. But at least they can follow ingrained tradition and blame the rest of Europe. Or, if they take my advice, bury fat Americans.

Fat Americans are an integral part of the global economic recovery. What would happen if they all stopped over-eating or paying more for their XXXXL clothes? Processed and fast food companies would go broke. Thousands in China would starve. Internationally when you get a large fizzy drink at a burger joint it is less than a pint - in the USA it is around a gallon. The same phenomena applies to coffins. So many Americans won't fit into a standard size coffin that super-sized ones are available, on display at funeral homes, which necessitate the purchase of a, likewise, super-sized plot in the cemetery - making the funeral industry very profitable and an ideal candidate for outsourcing.

The same Americans are too big to be cremated and, if you can get them in, burn so hot they can damage the incinerators. We're talking people that can weigh a quarter of a ton here. 6 of them weigh as much as a small truck, so ambulances can't carry them.  The cure for rampant obesity - smoking. It has come to my attention that this explosion in girth has coincided with an equal and opposite implosion of cigarette smoking. Encourage, if not mandate, all fat people to smoke. Give anyone over 400 pounds free cigarettes and they'll die thinner and can be buried cheaper. Health care costs might rise a bit but think of the tax revenue. As 75% of Americans will be overweight by 2020 the US debt and budget deficit should be long gone.

Corruption

You appear to be floating around on the top of this ocean of corruption holding the conviction that if your head is above it then you're not a part of the problem - a sort of reverse Ostrich. We all play a part either by accepting that's the way it is or ignoring it and thereby participating in and endorsing it. Pragmatism is no excuse for moral turpitude here.

Corruption and Trust are inextricable from one another so the belief that trust can be re-established without first removing systemic corruption is fallacious - although, rather than this being the corruption of a system it may well be a system of corruption - and when the whole system is corrupt then the the whole system has to go.

Your observation that "honesty in its undiluted form is not necessarily a characteristic which is good for business" would lead one to conclude that under the present "House Rules" honesty is of limited importance so long as an awareness of these "rules" works "perfectly adequately" in your favour. Here we have a conundrum - you can trust corruption. These self-serving "rules" have been the Modi Operandi of Corporations, Financiers and Politicians, abetted by the Media, until it all started to unravel at the onset of it's greatest achievement; the Global Financial Crisis. There have been a few years of "hide the pea" games by the primary beneficiary "elites" - those that see themselves as somehow above the common human rut - but the problem is too big for sleight of hand. This has led to the undignified spectacle of the former participating rats leaving the sinking ship in feigned surprise and indignation to join a recently established Glee Club of the Innocent. Leaving behind those carrying too much baggage to drown.

Given that the whole system appears endemically corrupt it isn't Equitable (I realise this is not one of the "House Rules") to apportion different levels of corruption among participating countries - such as Germany is more corrupt than the UK and both are less corrupt than Italy - once established as corrupt to any degree this is simple hypocrisy (which is one of the "House Rules"). Although what appears to be happening now is that an expensive prostitute has turned on her cheaper colleagues. Understandably there is some resistance to transfer her "top-end" money to one that has caught the Clap and is in danger going out of business. It is not that they want to get out of the game but that they want those that spoil it for them out. Unfortunately this can not be achieved in comfort while in the same profession.

So we're left with the question of whether to weed or plough. Given the damage done to the instruments of democratic government by the present systemic corruption, and the resulting broad loss of public trust this has engendered, that the existing system should remain mostly intact doesn't look like a very positive outcome. While we're focused on the corruption within the media, police and politics we are ignoring - as best we can given the approaching Global Debt Crisis - that other fundamental causative agent that constitutes this corrupt system - Finance. It can be deduced from our present predicament that this agency, having blackmailed sovereign nations into near bankruptcy to provide for their survival, are deserving of the same opprobrium, legal investigation, oversight, regulation and penalties.

If we continue to labour under the conviction that the system is fine, because those that work it to their advantage are able to thrive, and it is only those that are caught with overtly dirty-hands that need punished then we are destined to repeat history. The problems are structural not operational. Honesty, transparency, accountability and responsibility within a system based upon an acceptable level of corruption will not make an iota of difference to the underlying absence of trust.

What will have been resolved if all we do, as a result of systemic scandal, is put Humpty Dumpty back together again?