Thursday, 10 November 2016

I Confess

It turns out it's all my fault. I mean, this sudden swerve to the right the world has taken. The rise of fascism too. I'm to blame. Well, me and a some other folk. According to some commentators (journalists), my insistence on political correctness, doing away with capital punishment, demanding the legalisation of drugs, allowing free access to contraception and abortion and immigration. All down to liberals (small l) like me.

I'll admit I agree with the first one. Having been called specky, fatty and swotty at various times in my life, I quite like the idea of people not putting other people down by calling them names. I like it when people hold back insults against black people, Jews, Moslems, foreigners of all kinds, women, disabled folk, etc. And when people tell us we're invading their freedom of speech, it's good to remind them that their freedom ends when it infringes the rights of someone else. I don't subscribe to the 'it's political correctness gone mad' approach to life: it's politeness and decent behaviour that keep life ticking over. A friend of mine says she most dislikes the people who blurt out an insult, racist, sexist or otherwise, followed by a defensive: 'Well, it has to be said.' No. It doesn't. Just button it.

As for the rest of the list, I doubt if these things are responsible for the people of southern Europe putting up fences to keep out refugees and immigrants, the UK turning its back on children in a camp that the media called 'the Jungle' (tell me who lives in a jungle - animals mostly, right?), Trump threatening to put up a wall between the US and Mexico and wanting to ban Moslems, Dutch politicians cheerily calling for immigrants from the Middle East to be kicked out of the Netherlands, attacks on Polish people in the streets of the UK, and all the other nasty things that are happening.

Maybe we need to look elsewhere.

Let's start with why we have so many refugees. That would have to do with war. Also to do with poverty caused by the lack of jobs almost everywhere in Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East. Whatever we're doing to support those communities, we're not lifting them out of need.

Added to these people, there's the insecurity felt by large numbers of people all over the developed world.

In the UK, jobs are scarce, so you can find access to work available only through an unpaid internship. You'll be offered short-term contracts or zero hours contracts. You can be invited to be self-employed, in which case you have no employment rights at all. And all the time, there's the spectre of unemployment and a less than generous Social Security system to help you up.

In the US, they have these and other problems. I heard it said on the radio last week that the country is changing from a white, English- speaking community to a Hispanic, Spanish-speaking one. And that leaves millions of white people, not just African-Americans who have traditionally been left behind, looking at at least a lower standard of living and at worst unemployment. I believe the Canadian immigration website collapsed this week under the weight of enquiries from US citizens. That should be interesting.

In France, Spain and Greece, it's young people who are suffering the most, so they too are on the move to other parts of the world.

In the last 20 years, capitalism has been triumphant. So how have we used it? To spread the wealth, create jobs, build houses and decent towns to live in? Of course not. We've allowed capitalism to make small groups of people very, very rich. They went on getting rich during the capitalist recession of 2008. They're still getting rich, even the shareholders of companies that have plundered their employees' pensions.

Is there a cure for the world's ills? I've no idea, but I know from what I hear and read, there's another problem coming our way: last week, I saw a headline in a local newspaper announcing that 'automation' will do away with up to 20% of jobs in the public sector. I'm just guessing but I suppose that will apply to the private sector too.

What then? Is there a plan for dealing with that?




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