Extreme Anger.

Recent documentaries on the Russian Tzars told a powerful tale of disconnect. They combined well with the BBC’s War and Peace. But here it’s the disconnect I’m interested in. Recently I’ve watched a video of George Osborne on the Conservative front bench ‘in parliament’ reeling under the influence of a class A drug. I couldn’t do a drug test but I’d put money on it. Then Jeremy Hunt denying the reality of what he’s doing to the NHS. Also the egregious TTIP secret treaty making it legal for corporations to hold democratic governments to ransom. There’s also the supposed sex scandals involving members of Parliament. And lastly, though I’m sure there are others, an ITV documentary exposing the Conservative Party’s blatant flouting of the law over expenditure on by-elections. The program showed three by-elections where expenses over the legal limit were assigned to an individual and did not appear in the accounts even though they clearly should have been. These are all examples of a governing elite that appears to not be accountable to the law of the land or common decency. Of course there are convenient explanations. George had a tummy upset, a simple oversight, inconclusive proof etc but there’s one underlying truth, they have become disconnected. We have spent centuries evolving a moral, law abiding hard working society that I and the many people I know take pride in. Like a marriage undermined by duplicity our incredulity has turned to anger at being betrayed. I don’t know what’s going to happen but it’s reminding me of the downfall of the Tzars. 

The Coke Snorting Chancellor.

Normally if you lend me money I pay you interest, right? Anything other would be insanity. Currently interest rates are less than 1% and the usual recourse of lowering them to bolster the economy has nowhere to go. I mean how can it go negative and you pay me for using your cash? It seems strange for a commodity to so change its dynamics as it passes through zero. I’m finding it hard to imagine what might provoke breaking this economic taboo or its consequences, but as I’m not coke-snorting Osborne I’ll give it a go. So you have loads of money and I have less fortunate circumstances. But you have had a right kicking from falling markets, (as we currently have) and even government bonds etc are giving negative returns. World growth is flat, (as we currently have) and there’s no home for your cash that won’t decrease its value. What to do? Pundits tell you 95% of the population simply can’t afford to fund (by buying products and services) future growth because the top 5% have amassed so much wealth they can’t/won’t spend it because they have all the toilet rolls they need and definitely not going to give it away. As the situation worsens you realise you’re losing say 3% and there seems no future in just keeping it in the bank. (which is close to collapse anyway) What to do? Something must be done to re-capitalise the world economy. You hit on an amazing idea. If enough people lend money at –1% all the hard-up people will go on a spending spree and cause a great surge in demand. Your guaranteed loss of 1% will quite quickly increase economic activity which will swing your invested residue into a positive return. Invest say 20% of your wealth in this loss making scheme will lose you £0.2 whereas 5% on the remaining 80% will net you £4. Even 2% would give you £1.6, a net gain of £1.40. Maybe a proviso that the recipient must repay the loan in five years, so ending the -1% interest payable. Essentially this is an investment in people’s purchasing power whereas coke-snorting Osborne’s austerity would have us all believe impoverishing the already poor makes economic sense. It just goes to show that following ridiculous ideas is worth considering, and why Chancellors shouldn’t use Class A drugs.

118 Initiatives.

Question Time debated Cameron’s connect between 20% of English/Muslim women speaking English and terrorism. Argh the usual tennis. I hate it when people only think as far as how best to justify their own position. I begin to wonder how many of the English Raj learnt Punjabi or lost one iota of their own English culture. Not many. The elephant in the studio was the depth of our cultural roots; how we will, even after several generations, justify our position in those terms. There remains a deep cultural fault line that if stressed will fracture. The error is to deny it. There is an English culture and there is Muslim culture, we cannot pretend otherwise, each with its own way of being. Cameron’s connect both expresses an English fear but also exacerbated tensions by laying the blame elsewhere. Neither side finds itself capable of saying, ‘we’re human and these are our fears’, so the rally continued. On this mornings news Muslim Councillors were being criticised for bringing their Islamic culture into our English system by, of all people, Muslim women not wanting to be treated as second-class citizens. From there I happened on a Danish psychotherapist’s comparison between his Muslim and European clients. Muslims ‘Inshallah’, if God decrees it to happen, puts the locus of control externally where our Christian roots place it internally in self-responsibility. In essence Islam leans towards a co-dependent relationship with God. It fosters victim-hood as in easily offended, persecutor as in aggression, and rescuer as in ‘holder of the faith.’ He finds that integration in the minds of Muslim immigrants is the initiative of the host community where as the host community sees integration, because of our internal locus of control, as to also be our initiative. Hence in Denmark’s  "Diversity, and Safety in the City" conference in 2008 out of 118 initiatives hardly any were about what immigrants could do for themselves, and probably why only 20% of Muslim women have learnt to speak English, and why when asked they point to lack of Government funding for language tuition. By contrast if I moved to Greece I would consider it totally my own responsibility to learn Greek and see it as a necessity in order to partake in the Greek way of life. The external locus of control is completely alien to me but somehow in that blind spot there is vulnerability. Maybe as the host community we need to make it clear that we expect an internal locus of control where ‘Inshallah’ just isn’t good enough.