TFTD: Childhood in Turbo-Capitalist Britain

"Consumerism is a monster that invades the psyches of very young children to become a permanent occupier. Three year-olds could say 'McDonalds' before their own surname and six year-olds could name over 200 brand names yet name only one or two species of bird. Young adolescents cited lack of designer gear as one of the main causes of humiliation, bullying and depression."

from commenter 'questionnaire' on the Guardian's Comment is Free website.
How far have we got to go before we kick turbo-capitalism into touch- forever?
If you're reading this in a country which still operates a different economic model, the above is what you're in for if your governments are foolish/corrupt enough to privatise all your publicly owned enterprises and let "market forces" decide everything.

Some travel suggestions.....

Well, if you haven't booked your summer holiday up yet, here's a few suggestions.
I can heartily recommend Malta as an ideal seaside destination with plenty of history and culture thrown in too. If you fancy travelling round a fascinating European country that won't cost a fortune, why not try Bulgaria? Brussels is always a great place for a short-city break, especially if you don't fancy queueing up at the shopping malls which in Britain go under the name of 'airports'. If you prefer not to leave Britain at all, why not a coach holiday to the beautiful Scottish Highlands? If you do feel like travelling a little further afield and trying something really adventurous, how about checking out Mexico City? The brilliant anti-war blogger, The Exile can point you in the right direction!

The Shape of Things To Come

This article of mine appears on the Guardian's Comment is Free website today.

I'm really pleased I've already visited Prague. I wouldn't advise any sane person to go now. To savour its "atmosphere", you can save money on your flight ticket and just wander down any British high street on a Friday or Saturday night. But one good thing may come of the influx of British lager louts to the Czech capital: at least the Czechs will know what sort of charming, intelligent and well-mannered people dumbed-down turbo-capitalism produces, and, hopefully, change their present economic course.

As the social pyschologist Erich Fromm observed, every society produces the social character it needs.
Early, Calvinistic capitalism produced the "hoarding character", who hoards possessions and feelings - the classic Victorian man of property.
The priority of the eastern European countries, under socialism, was different. "There can be no socialism without culture - without the culture of the masses," proclaimed the Hungarian Communist party's chief intellectual and ideologist, Gyorgy Aczel, in 1973. It was a philosophy that underpinned the policies of the other countries in the eastern bloc, too.

The higher general level of education and the consequential higher standards of behaviour in public places in Hungary became immediately apparent to me when I went to live there in the mid-1990s. I regularly travelled home on the late-night buses in Budapest, which operated after the tram system shut down at around midnight. The buses were packed full of young people going home after a night out, yet in five years I never once witnessed any rowdiness or aggression. Instead, some people slept, but many also read.
Hungary was a nation of voracious readers. Every flat or house I was ever invited to had an extensive library. It wasn't hard to be a bibliophile as, under communism, book publishing was heavily subsidised. I forget the number of times I was asked my opinion on the works of Huxley, Maugham or Graham Greene during my time in Hungary. It was often the very first question people asked me after hearing I was British.
Yet, while education was communism's greatest achievement, it was also, as Mikhail Gorbachev conceded, its achilles heel. The high general level of education throughout the socialist bloc meant people were able to develop a critical faculty, which was then used to question the system. It is a great irony that intellectuals led the challenge to communism: the very fact that there were so many intellectuals, and such an air of intellectualism in society at large, was a direct consequence of the fact that the society set such a high store on education.

There's little chance of today's turbo-capitalism making the same "mistake".

What turbo-capitalism wants is not a cultured, well-educated working class whose members read Huxley, play chess and debate political issues, but materialistic, under-educated consumers: people who will unleash their frustrations at living such unfulfilled, alienated lives not through anti-capitalist agitation and questioning the structure of society but by getting "smashed" each and every weekend.
As long as the new working class can adequately carry out their jobs, and buy the consumer goods that Nazi-style marketing techniques brainwash them into believing they must possess, turbo-capitalism is content. Concepts such as culture, education, and behaving well in public places do not come into it.

The generation of eastern Europeans now in their late 20s and early 30s will be the last to ask, when visiting a new city for the first time, for directions to the museum or art gallery. The next generation, brought up under turbo-capitalism, will simply ask: "Where's the shopping mall?"

The Czechs - and, indeed, all the countries of eastern Europe that play host to British stag - and hen parties - are having a glimpse into the future, seeing what sort of people their societies will be mass producing in a few years' time, if they follow the same economic path. It's not an edifying sight.

One-way ticket to chaos

This article of mine appears in today's Morning Star.

The highest ticket prices in Europe. The most complicated fare structure. Overcrowded carriages where commuters who have paid a fortune for a season ticket often have to stand in toilets. You wouldn't think any one in their right minds would want to follow the British example and sell-off their state-owned railways would you?

Yet incredibly, that's exactly what's happening.

Although the notorious "Third Railway Package" which proposed the "liberalisation" of rail passenger transport was defeated in the European Parliament in January, other countries in Europe are already embarking along the same disastrous route towards privatisation that Britain followed in the 1990s.

The German government is preparing plans to sell up to 50% of the country's state- owned railway Deutsche Bahn. "From the company's viewpoint, private investors will be able to buy shares in DB in 2008," predicted DB's Chairman and CEO Hartmut Mehdorn in a press conference. How sad.

Any one who spends time travelling on Germany's state-run railway will know that it's a different class to Britain's privatised, fragmented network. Trains run to the second, the fare structure is simple and easy to understand, and you always get a seat. The way Deutsche Bahn responded to the extra challenge of last year's World Cup was exemplary: extra trains and carriages were laid on and supporters all praised the way that public transport was organised. So why on earth are the German government jeopardising a system that works so well? It's all part of an obsession with neo-liberal economics held by some members of the ruling CDU Party, and a dogmatic belief that 'private ownership' is always more efficient than 'public ownership' And of course pressing for the sell-off are the banks and finance houses, for whom privatisation is a gold mine.

Further east, the story is even worse. Last week, the Hungarian government announced that it had received 12 bids for the cargo division of MAV, the Hungarian State railway. The Hungarian government claims the move is about reducing government debt in order to qualify for Euro membership. Yet, if that's the case, why sell off a company which made a profit of 2.8 billion forints (about £7.5m) last year? The sell-off of MAV Cargo is only the latest in a series of steps prior to privatisation of the whole network.

To make the railway more attractive to foreign predators, the Hungarian network has been savaged. Last November, a new Railway Code came into force under which the whole railway infrastructure will be separated from MÁV. In March service was suspended on 14 lines; in April a leaked report revealed that the government intends to close all small regional lines after 2008, leaving just a minimal inter-city network. Prices have risen sharply, in January fares rose by 16%, on 1st May by a further 17%. And thousands of railway workers have lost their jobs.

The destruction of one of the most comprehensive railway networks in the continent means that the many villages which inaccessible by road, will effectively be cut off from the rest of the country. Not that this seems to concern the pro-big business government in Budapest too unduly.

It's not hard to see the connection between global finance capital and the process of rail privatisation. Among the bidders for MAV Cargo are the Lehman Brothers, the US 'global financial services' firm and the UK-listed, Channel Islands-based venture capitalist group Ashmore Group. A merchant bank and venture capitalists running the cargo division of a railway? The very idea would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. But in the age of turbo capitalism, where politicians represent the interests of global capital and not their people, and every publicly owned asset has to be put up for sale, it is regarded as perfectly normal.

Make no mistake - the beneficiaries of railway privatisation are big business and certainly not passengers. Eleven years after privatisation, rail travel in the country which invented the railways is effectively a luxury, priced out of the reach of people on average or below average incomes. Ripping-off passengers is integral part of the privatisation model. South West Trains, Britain's biggest rail company, has told its guards they will be disciplined and possibly dismissed if they show discretion to passengers who are unable to buy tickets before boarding because of long queues at stations. The same company has been accused of secretly programming its ticket machines not to sell cheaper GroupSave fares: the scandal coming to light when a group of Falklands war veterans on their way to London were charged more than double the cheapest fare available.

The government's new rail strategy, announced recently, offers yet more misery for passengers, with ticket prices set to rise by as much as 30% above inflation in the seven years. The logical solution- bringing the railways back into public ownership -a move supported by the vast majority of the public, was not even considered.
British taxpayers pay an incredible four-times more in subsidy to the private rail profiteers than they did under British Rail, yet we hear nothing about this waste of public money from 'free market' pressure groups who normally recoil in horror when the words 'state subsidy' are mentioned.

For other countries to follow such a flawed model is lunacy. Instead of copying Britain, it's Britain who should be copying those countries who have kept their railways in public ownership- like Belgium, whose comprehensive, efficient, publicly owned network has the lowest fares, in real terms, in western Europe.
In Britain a next day peak-time 200 mile return journey ticket costs £202. In Belgium it costs just £23.83. The choice is clear, do we want a railway that puts the interests of passengers first, or one that puts the profits of global capitalists first?

Let's hope sanity rules before it's too late.

Fur

Saki (left) has always been one of my favourite writers (my Daily Telegraph appreciation piece to mark the 90th anniversary of the great man's death can be read here).

In 'Fur', Saki tells a wonderful story about false friends- and how to exact revenge on those 'friends' for whom the sacrifices of friendship are beautiful - so long as they are not the ones asked to make them. I was reminded of 'Fur' when browsing a certain pro-war website earlier this week. Would you ever write of a journalist 'friend' that he/she should suffer "career death"? No, me neither. Yet, incredibly the author of those remarks then claimed to be shocked that his 'friend' should want to initiate legal proceedings against him! I strongly advise that the 'friend' in question (let's call him 'Mr H') should follow the example of Eleanor in 'Fur'. All he has to do to repay his false 'friend's treachery (let's call the false friend 'Mr David T' ) is to reveal to the entire world, via his website, the true identity of 'Mr David T'. You see for a long time 'Mr David T' has hid behind the cloak of anonymity to attack all sorts of people,(myself included) in an extremely obnoxious, deceitful and cowardly manner. 'Mr David T''s targets all write under their own names, yet 'Mr David T' insists on preserving his anonymity because he does not want to " aggravate" his employer.
Diddums.
If 'Mr H' really wants to repay 'Mr David's T's act of 'friendship', he knows exactly what he should do next.

Letter of the Week (2)

Apologies for being a little bit late with this week's Letter of the Week.
This week I've chosen a letter from Ray Davies, published in Saturday's Morning Star.

"In 1947 when floods ravaged the country who was in the front line, sand-bagging homes, premises, industrial premises, schools, assisting the elderly? It was the British armed forces. Where, during our flood emergency in 2007, has the bulk of help come from? From our police, diverted from their work fighting crime, and a mass of public spirited voluntees. Yet with thousands temporarily homeless, without water or electricity, when we could see the damage caused, we asked ourselves: "Could more have been done?". Yes, of course- had our Labour government not committed 98% of our armed forces to the unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The British armed forces in Iraq live under the most atrocious conditions. The death rate of our soldiers in Iraq has now passed that of British soldiers killed in the second world war. Billions of pounds are being wasted on these unpopular wars which should have been available for the environmental crises that, with global warming, will inevitably become more frequent. A prominent Iraqi who supported the invasion of Iraq recently said: "I hated Saddam Hussein, but if he was to walk down the streets of Baghdad today, I would kiss his feet". If Gordon Brown could summon the courage to change course on these wars and confront global warming I would do the same to him".

Somehow, I don't think there's much chance that Mr Davies will ever be kissing the feet of Gordon Brown. But doesn't the comment from the prominent Iraq speak volumes about the horror of everyday life in "liberated" Iraq?

Together For Each Other

Today is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Boy Scouts movement.
The Scouts provide a wonderful example of what happens when young people are encouraged to work together in a spirit of camaraderie, a spirit all too lacking in society at large. There's been lots of talk about the need to introduce new, government sponsored youth movements in Britain but if we're looking for an example, we could do a lot worse than consider the Pioneer movement, which operated in eastern europe until comparatively recently. Here's a piece my wife Zsuzsanna wrote for The Guardian on her experiences of being a Pioneer in Hungary in the 1970s and 80s.

Twenty million Scouts around the world last week marked Founder's Day, and with it the 100th anniversary of the Scout movement. Their celebrations offer a powerful reminder of the ability of youth movements to bring young people together in a spirit of friendship and solidarity - qualities that have become all too rare in modern Britain. "Isn't there more we can do to enable young people to come together and give service to their country?" asks David Cameron. Well yes, David, there is, and we did it in "backward" socialist Hungary more than 30 years ago.
Unlike those brought up in Margaret Thatcher's devil-take-the-hindmost Britain, I was fortunate to be raised in a society where solidarity and togetherness were officially encouraged from an early age. The Pioneer movement, of which I was a member, was not about indoctrinating young people with the tenets of Marxist-Leninism, as many believe, but engendering a sense of community among the nation's youth.

Many of the Pioneers' activities were similar to the Scouts', but the values were more collective and they involved all children and teenagers in the country, not just a minority. Pioneer membership was an integral part of school life, not just in Hungary, but throughout the socialist bloc.

Our motto as Pioneers was Together for Each Other. It was not an empty slogan: it was how we were encouraged to think. Being a Pioneer meant taking special care of the weak and vulnerable. We helped the elderly with their shopping and cleaning; we chopped up firewood for them and carried their coal in and out from the cellar. There were competitions, too: for collecting waste paper and waste metal, for sports activities and for other acts of good citizenship. But, reflecting the collective ethos of the movement, the prizes were nearly always for groups, not for individuals.

Each class had different duties which were rotated week by week. When we were on cleaning duty we had to go to school half an hour earlier and sweep the pavement outside the school. But no one ever seemed to mind: we carried out our tasks willingly.

The highlight of our year as Pioneers was our annual excursion. Every class went to the country for two or three days. When I was 13 I spent two weeks at Csilleberc, a camp near Budapest, with other Pioneers from all over Hungary. We travelled there on the famous Pioneer railway in Budapest. Opened in 1948, the railway was, with the exception of the drivers, staffed entirely by children and connected the previously inaccessible Buda Hills. The children worked the signals, changed the points and sold tickets. At Pioneer camp, we shared both tents and duties - just as it was at home, except we didn't know each other as well. But by working and socialising together we soon made friends. Rabid anti-communists and adherents of the view that "there is no such thing as society" will no doubt sneer at what I have just described, but the Pioneer movement did create a real feeling of togetherness. Hungarians of my generation almost all look back at their Pioneer days with great affection, regardless of their views on other aspects of the socialist system.

"If we are unable to ensure young people the opportunities for positive, creative deeds, then in some cases a gang will serve this purpose instead." So warned Gyorgy Aczel, Hungary's minister of culture in the 1970s. When I compare my childhood to the atomised lives of so many young people in Britain today, one in which violent and antisocial gang culture seems ever more to predominate, I believe Aczel's words to be as relevant as ever.