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What an unbelieveable pile of crap. How has this story dominated the news for so long? It’s so insignificant as to be a total non-event in my opinion. They had an expense allowance. They had rules. They had an overseight body. They claimed and were told they were within the rules and given the money. Now they’ve got to pay it back because … well, I can only come back to jealousy and envy. They followed the rules, they shouldn’t have to pay it back. If you disagree with the rules, then they should be changed, but people who complied with them should not be forced to pay back what they claimed. It’s a fundamental fule of justice, that changes to the rules should not be retroactive! Not breaking the rules is not grounds for punishment.
Take the case of the guy who’s having to repay £41,000. Now, even if every MP had to repay a similar sum that’s only about £2.7 million. Yes, I say only. The budget of the NHS alone was £90 billion in 2007 and was set to reach £110 billion in two years time. That’s one service the government provides which is over 33 thousand times higher than what would take to give every MP £41,000. And, of course, the £41,000 repay was accumulated over 4 years. So it’s even less siginificant. It would work out to £675,000 a year, or 133 thousand times smaller than the budget of the NHS. It wouldn’t even make a dent in the NHSs £900 million deficit last year.
Lets say the figure for MPs over claiming is actually massive and averages to £15,000 per MP, per year (not the case considering the largest ‘over claim’ is £41,000 over four years, or £10,250 per year). Lets also say we can get every penny of that back at zero cost (impossible) and lets round it up to a nice even £4 million reclaimed. Lets say we then give all of the money reclaimed from the past four years to the education department. The education department gets around £80 billion a year. If we translate that to numbers which can be more easily comprehended, it’s like giving a minimum income worker, pulling in £12,000 a year an extra 60 pence. It’s not going to change anything for that person. They can now afford an extra bar of chocolate. They’ll be thrilled.
Okay, lets say we were even more specific and gave that £4 million to primary schools, which have a budget of £700 million. Now we’re talking! That’s the equivalent to giving our £12,000 a year worker an injection of almost £70! Not life changing, sure, but they’ll be able to buy… well, maybe they’ll be able to replace a broken part on their car which didn’t seem worth it before. Or they might be able to take a loved one out for a nice meal.
Of course, the assumptions made are crazy. There’s no way that reclaiming the money would come without cost. There’s no way that the over claim by MPs is that high. The whole thing is a total non-event. Complete storm in a tea-cup.
Interestingly (or actually not if you’re even slightly clued up on how the media operates) it was actually quite hard to find a web news page that said the £41,000 repay figure even in the same paragraph as the fact it’s spread over four years.
I think the story should have been told as: “Look how many MPs don’t claim nearly any of their allowed expenses! What a bunch of freaks/saints!” (depends on how you want to spin it) Seriously, how many people can honestly say that, if their company was to offer to pay for something that they would say no? How many people, when offered either money for, or money towards their work-related costs say no to that money? I would venture to say very few, and further to venture that the ones who do say no say that because of the difficulty of claiming, not because it’s morally wrong to claim. These MPs claimed when everyone of us would have claimed and we hang them out to dry for it!
Of course, there are those who are arguing that it’s not the money, it’s the principle. These people followed the rules and got money. They were open about what it was being spent on. It’s a fucking disgrace! They should all be strung up and shot! No, wait. Hang on. That actually sounds like reasonable behaviour to me. There’s the guy who had his daughter stay with him. He’s a total fiend of course. We want our MPs to be good family people, but not in a house part paid for by us, goddamnit! We want our MPs to represent us and be normal people and we want them present at Parliament and able to vote on the issues of the day, yet we want to make it so that only the disgustingly wealthy can actually hope to be an MP because we want them to finance their own central London houses!
I’ve heard it suggested that MPs should share bed sits… which is a really wonderful idea. Yes, lets have the leaders of the country hunkering down like crack addicts, four to a room!
I hate the coverage of this story because it is so petty. The premises at work are envy and jealousy. The ones demanding these MPs act like super humans are themselves acting like brats who’ve just been told the kid next door has got a new bike.
It strikes me that this story is being used to try and distract us from the worsening economic situation. For fear that we might notice that the system is seriously broken and we might get it into our precious little heads that maybe it needs changing. Maybe it’s not a good idea to have a system built on growth! Maybe it’s not a good idea to have power and wealth pooled in a very small number of hands. Maybe we should think about doing things differently… no, wait! That guy there claimed expenses he was entitled to, in a way he was supposed to, for things he was allowed! Burn him! Get the mob together and tell them to put down the “We demand change” banners and grab up the pitch forks and flaming torches! It’s witch hunt time!
I would like to take a moment to point everyone to a fantastic blog, called Hobo Stripper. One of my favourite posts is For the Love of Salmon, an excellent story about Hobo Stripper’s day with Rich Dicks who only like a little bit of the fish, and throw the rest away. Very thought-provoking and wonderful, highlighting the way the police and other authorities are just there to normalise and support the violence which goes down the hierarchy and supress and destroy any question that this is the way things should be. In accordance with Premise Four:
Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. — Derrick Jensen, Endgame.
I love reading the stories by Hobo Stripper. She has a refreshing view of the world, especially her job. She writes facinating, detailed and useful things, as well as things which are just wonderful, like the salmon story[1].
The way Hobo Stripper lives is an amazing example of how to live as a non-civilised person while using the master’s tools against him. She keeps herself safe while doing one of the most fundamental of all capitalist endeavours – selling a service, which costs her very little, to people who are willing to pay a premium for it. Best of all? She calls a spade a spade. She doesn’t mince around the edges, if there is a person being violent, stupid, whatever, she tells it as it is.
All in all, I would advise people to go over to her blog and take a look around. Her posts are clearly marked so it’s not hard to see when a post has content you might not appreciate, such as her vibrator posts. However, I like reading all of the posts she makes since each one has in it the core of her personality, and that is the thing I like most of all.
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[1] I am not using the word story to belittle or diminish her writing. Stories are the most important part of life. Our entire society, civilisation as we know it, is built on stories which are told and re-told, enacted and re-enacted, all the time and in many different ways. Stories have power and we need different stories, such as those by Hobo Stripper, if we are to break the hold of civilisation’s stories.
As previously mentioned in this blog, Derrick Jensen starts his book, Endgame, with twenty premises. Most activists can get on board with most of them. The problem many of them have is with premise one. The first and most important one.
Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization. — Derrick Jensen, Endgame Vol. 1 + 2
Most of the arguments against this premise center on things like “how can you know?” “how can you predict the future?” etc.
The crux of the problem is in the definition of civilisation that Jensen uses. Jensen defines civilisation thus:
“A way of life characterised by the growth of cities” — Derrick Jensen
As Jensen points out in this short clip, this definition is perfectly reasonable and can be easily defended.
Because it’s begging to be asked from that definition, how does he define cities? Well, like this:
“A collection of people living in numbers large enough to require the import of resources.” — Derrick Jensen
So, if one accepts the definitions as laid out by Jensen, one must logically accept premise one. If civilisations and cities are linked and if cities are characterised by population densities in areas unsuitable for that density of population then civilisation can never be sustainable and therefore premise one holds.
If, as I have read and heard suggested over and over, you change the population density of cities so that they can be supported locally and not require the import of resources, you are not left with cities. You are left with camps or villages. Therefore you no longer have a civilisation, you have a tribe or a community.
If you question the definition then you can have grounds to question the premise, but the problem then becomes: Since the word civilisation is so closely linked with cities, how can you define it in such a way as to not link it to the existence cities?
I personally like Jensen’s definition of civilisation and city. However, I do recognise that his definition of civilisation and city necessarily lead to premise one, but I can’t think of a better, clearer, more accurate definition for either.
The secret to good informative writing, whether it is in the field of journalism or in the field of academia, is to slip your premises by people. If you can get them to ignore the premises on which you build your argument then you can get them to agree with you without knowing why. Eventually they will hold your point of view without any reason other than that you have told them to. It is endemic within the news reporting mass media to do this. We are so often told that “the bad news is that the economy isn’t growing and we need to take action”. We listen, we accept. We don’t ask the obvious questions about the underlying premises. Such as:
- Why is it bad that the economy is chewing up less stuff?
- Do we want an economy which is, year on year, growing and chewing up more stuff? Can that really be considered a good thing?
- Who is ‘we’?
- Why should ‘we’ take any action at all? Since this action is invariably giving large sums of money to people who earnt large sums of money while they exploited and destroyed, can’t we just let the situation sort itself out? Don’t we hold to the delusion that this is a free market?
The reason I like Derrick Jensen’s book, Endgame, so much is because he places the premises he is working from, the things he is taking for granted, right at the start of the book. The rest of the book goes on to explain, expand and highlight what he means, but the premises which need arguing are right at the start. They’re not hidden. You don’t need to read between the lines to find the assumptions on which the writing is based, the writer has given you his assumptions up front. It’s an honest form of writing which I can fully appreciate.
As such, as I have pointed out in a previous post, I subscribe to the Jensen premises. All 20 of them. I can’t actually find anything I could argue against. They are all very sound. I know they’re not very optimistic. Guess what? Our position is not an optimistic position. Peak oil is coming soon, if it’s not already past. Global catastrophic climate change is coming soon. Our government is hell-bent on building nuclear reactors so we can continue business as normal. Population overshoot is continuing and there are no signs that anyone is actually going to do anything to prevent it from continuing. Religious dogma is once again gaining in prominence.
As such, I would like to lay out some personal assumptions alongside Derrick’s 20:
- There needs to be a commitment, by all developed nations, to reduce their populations dramatically. The developing nations probably should too, but since one person in the US uses more stuff than 70 people in most developing nations, we can start on the easy ones.
- Developing nations need to be discouraged from developing, while developed nations need to make it their goal to become less developed. The Earth hasn’t the resources for us all to live like Americans do. It doesn’t have enough resources for Americans to live like Americans do.
- We are screwed because of Premis Six, the system will not change itself. This is a fact. Those in power enjoy the fruits of the system. Those without power have been brainwashed into believing that hard work will enable them to enjoy the fruits of the system. No one within the system has any impetus to change it before the cracks break it for them. Once the system is broken we will not have the collective ability we currently have and the crash will be handled in local areas as best as those local areas can handle them.
These are probably not up to the standard of analytical observation which Jensen is able to do, but they are a start.
Broadly speaking I subscribe to Derrick Jensen’s 20 premises as laid out in his two volume book, Endgame.
The premises in order can be found here.
A somewhat naieve, and perfectly ‘normal’, commentary can be found here.
Why is this a normal and naieve commentary? Basically it does what so many people do when confronted by the fact that a system which is designed to grow (cultures based on agriculture, or ‘civilisation’) isn’t sustainable. It says “you can’t prove that” and “we could transform this system into a sustainable one”.
Economic models such as we use need growth. Without growth our version of economics, the civilised person’s economics, fails. This has been true ever since we developed the concept to describe what was happening within our agricultural societies. A system that needs growth isn’t sustainable.
If you read Endgame, which I highly recommend you do, he lays out a very workable definition of civilisation. Jensen defines civilisation as “a way of life characterised by the growth of cities.”[1] As he points out, civilisation is often directly linked to the appearence of cities. With this definition and with the subsequent definition of cities, it is impossible to argue that civilisation is redeemable. If you change the fundamental nature of either cities (impossible realistically at current densities, thus impossible without making them not be cities as we would have any chance of recognising) then civilisation might be redeemable, but by changing the nature of what a city is you stop it being a city and thus you’re no longer in a civilisation. You might be in a tribe or a small community, but you aren’t in a civilisation.
The end may not come in my life time. I think it will. However, this is an area I would love to be wrong about. I think what Ran Prieur says in this short clip is actually spot on. As a blob of people, we like disaster movies because they give us the escapism that we would do something if there was a massive disaster and our way of life were threatened. The truth is that we will sit in our air-conditioned, centrally-heated houses complaining about the cost of petrol[2] or gas[3] and demanding that the very ‘free market’ system we were lauding just a mere month or so ago should not charge us what it can for goods we have to buy[4]. If we wanted to control the cost of petrol, gas, whatever, we should have kept nationalised industries in those areas. We didn’t. We invited the devil of free market economics to supper and got pissed that he actually burnt us. I’m not suggesting that we re-nationalise those industries (well, I wouldn’t ‘nationalise’ them so much as ‘localise’ them), but I am questioning the sense of giving those areas to private, profit seeking companies and then being shocked and dismayed when those same companies turn out to be seeking profit for private individuals rather than the good of the community.
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[1] http://www.kewego.co.uk/video/iLyROoafYKjY.html
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7527679.stm
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7533389.stm
[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7534421.stm
