Tuesday 24 March 2009
hmmm
They are showing me how to make FAKE POO on blue peter. It really has gone downhill if all they can teach kids to make now is a brown blob. lol!
Monday 9 March 2009
Pssh Capitalists
It may be an obvious point but I find it very irritating how much time and suggested compassion the news gives to failing corporations. These corporations do not provide a public service, they do not survive on welfare funding out of taxes. They are companies designed to offer something in exchange for profit. Now, they either were overly greedy and gambled all their money away or people just don't want to buy their product anymore.
Recently, the US government bailed out the car manufacturer GM. This is an example of a capitalist organisation working under the principles of the 'free market' floundering. Again, they do not offer a service to anyone, they sell cars. People don't want their cars right now so they aren't making profit. They wanted to work under a free market because it means unregulated free-for-all i.e. 'We'll try to make money however we can, independently, we don't need to help anyone and in exchange we don't need any help from anyone'. They have failed at this and that means putting lots of jobs at risk, suddenly someone has to be accountable, so here comes the government bail-out.
In this country, the news reports lament the gradual death of the Pub. A British institution? Not so much. The NHS is a British institution. The Pub is just a shop, like any other, designed to sell you over-priced and ineffective drugs along with the general 'traditional' pub experience. So pubs aren't making profit, how can they survive? They live mostly on nostalgia and social pressure without offering many other services. The ones that will survive will be the ones that offer alternative services, the ones that act as gig venues, or the ones that are aimed at students who like to drink publicly. In a recession people become pragmatic, so the myths of 'going down the pub' or wearing 'high-status' clothing go out the window (the fashion industry is also suffering).
Make the connection between intangible 'myth' and intangible 'brand' and you'll see why the UK is going to suffer in this downturn. In the Thatcher years, many of our manufacturing and exporting companies were shut down or moved overseas. Capitalist organisations put more emphasis on 'branding', 'brand identity', 'brand image' etc. rather than the product which was secondary. Many of the products we now consume were made in sweatshops and factories overseas, this method of production is down-played as poverty and worker-abuse do not do much for one's 'brand image'.
So, with very few exports and few jobs in manufacturing or skilled trades beyond the service industry, the UK has a lot of money in intangible fields, think of the stock market bubble.
There are those who believed that capitalism was the epitome of equal opportunity. That the free market gave everyone a fair shot if you were willing to work hard (conveniently forgetting the underpaid third world workers who made the clothes on their back, also forgetting that currency is finite and to make money is to take it from someone else) but to see the flaw in any system we have to imagine its ultimate manifestation or its extreme incarnation. People existing purely for profit, organisations fuelled by growth eventually leaves no room for human compassion, no room for failure, no room for sick days, no room for anything unless it is profitable.
So where do we draw the line or, more importantly, who draws the line? In the free market there is, in theory, no one to draw the line, the government does not regulate a corporation's activity so it can technically do anything it deems to be profitable. The other force here is the consumer. A believer in the free market may have previously said that the organisations are regulated by consumer interest, they offer products and they rely on the consumers to buy them. There is truth in this, so if we follow this logic, if consumers are not interested in keeping a corporation afloat by buying its products, why should the consumer still have to bail the company out through taxes when they fail?
We can only conclude that the free market doesn't work unless its ideals are followed through. Meaning: no government regulation and no government handouts, if you fail then you fail if that's how you want to play it. But we know that wouldn't work, and we can see that it isn't working, things like pubs will suffer and no amount of mourning will ever be as important as profit. When profit is put before people, you have to expect that Sipson Village will be tarmacked over to make way for a profitable third runway you also have to expect that corporations will continue to pollute the planet undeterred while it is profitable to do so.
Recently, the US government bailed out the car manufacturer GM. This is an example of a capitalist organisation working under the principles of the 'free market' floundering. Again, they do not offer a service to anyone, they sell cars. People don't want their cars right now so they aren't making profit. They wanted to work under a free market because it means unregulated free-for-all i.e. 'We'll try to make money however we can, independently, we don't need to help anyone and in exchange we don't need any help from anyone'. They have failed at this and that means putting lots of jobs at risk, suddenly someone has to be accountable, so here comes the government bail-out.
In this country, the news reports lament the gradual death of the Pub. A British institution? Not so much. The NHS is a British institution. The Pub is just a shop, like any other, designed to sell you over-priced and ineffective drugs along with the general 'traditional' pub experience. So pubs aren't making profit, how can they survive? They live mostly on nostalgia and social pressure without offering many other services. The ones that will survive will be the ones that offer alternative services, the ones that act as gig venues, or the ones that are aimed at students who like to drink publicly. In a recession people become pragmatic, so the myths of 'going down the pub' or wearing 'high-status' clothing go out the window (the fashion industry is also suffering).
Make the connection between intangible 'myth' and intangible 'brand' and you'll see why the UK is going to suffer in this downturn. In the Thatcher years, many of our manufacturing and exporting companies were shut down or moved overseas. Capitalist organisations put more emphasis on 'branding', 'brand identity', 'brand image' etc. rather than the product which was secondary. Many of the products we now consume were made in sweatshops and factories overseas, this method of production is down-played as poverty and worker-abuse do not do much for one's 'brand image'.
So, with very few exports and few jobs in manufacturing or skilled trades beyond the service industry, the UK has a lot of money in intangible fields, think of the stock market bubble.
There are those who believed that capitalism was the epitome of equal opportunity. That the free market gave everyone a fair shot if you were willing to work hard (conveniently forgetting the underpaid third world workers who made the clothes on their back, also forgetting that currency is finite and to make money is to take it from someone else) but to see the flaw in any system we have to imagine its ultimate manifestation or its extreme incarnation. People existing purely for profit, organisations fuelled by growth eventually leaves no room for human compassion, no room for failure, no room for sick days, no room for anything unless it is profitable.
So where do we draw the line or, more importantly, who draws the line? In the free market there is, in theory, no one to draw the line, the government does not regulate a corporation's activity so it can technically do anything it deems to be profitable. The other force here is the consumer. A believer in the free market may have previously said that the organisations are regulated by consumer interest, they offer products and they rely on the consumers to buy them. There is truth in this, so if we follow this logic, if consumers are not interested in keeping a corporation afloat by buying its products, why should the consumer still have to bail the company out through taxes when they fail?
We can only conclude that the free market doesn't work unless its ideals are followed through. Meaning: no government regulation and no government handouts, if you fail then you fail if that's how you want to play it. But we know that wouldn't work, and we can see that it isn't working, things like pubs will suffer and no amount of mourning will ever be as important as profit. When profit is put before people, you have to expect that Sipson Village will be tarmacked over to make way for a profitable third runway you also have to expect that corporations will continue to pollute the planet undeterred while it is profitable to do so.
Thursday 5 March 2009
I get the appeal
I totally get the appeal now... (of twitter)... at least I think I do. In the case of celebrities, such as Slavoj Zizek, or Russell Brand, who I am following, they are saying such trivial things, it feels really personal, and they said it so RECENTLY you have instant access to talk to them. This blog nearly turned out as brief as a Tweet. I will elaborate... at the moment I feel a bit blinkered by it, I can see what people have written, sometimes in response to someone else's tweet but it doesn't immediately show you the other half of the conversation, I also have no one following me, so it really does feel like eavesdropping... to half of a conversation. In conclusion, appealing but limited. esp. without a blackberry.
EDIT: (Zizek and Brand are terrible examples of triviality as Zizek actually sparks intellectual debate and Brand is always trivial :P )
EDIT: (Zizek and Brand are terrible examples of triviality as Zizek actually sparks intellectual debate and Brand is always trivial :P )
I joined twitter
mainly because I want to follow Charlie Brooker. Tho I don't see the point (other than to stalk CB), it's just like facebook statuses isnt it?
It's in the media a lot for some reason...? Just because it's new? That gives plenty people an arbitrary reason to hate it... I'm not into that.
There's a lot of that around, hating things cos they are new, I guess people can't be bothered to actually choose what they like and hate based on any kind of real analysis so they just go with the impulse to hate/fear the different/new. You gotta hate something right? I think I wrote a blog similar to this on LiveJournal, about how people distribute their 'liking of things' as if it was a finite thing, actually ((I think I called it 'limiting sympathy' back then when I used big words cos it was before the long long uni holidays melted my brain.)) An example (I always talk about Helen lol) is Helen Meragi, who got myspace, and then a couple of years later myspace introduced photoalbums but Helen didn't want to get photo-albums because she Quote: 'felt like [she] would be betraying [her] old self'. Eventually she got them tho, after Hat convinced her! :P
Anyway, this is a small group of young people... most people that will hate Twitter are OLDDD and they just don't really know what it is and they think as people who are younger than them use it it must be shallow and immature, but also a threat because they are OLD so won't have the power to supress new media forever.
I think young people need a revolution, I personally have had enough of, every time I turn on the TV, hearing a middle-aged, middle-class person calling me stupid because I use a computer, because I write to my friends in e-mails instead of telegrams or face-to-face on a pic-nic blanket eating scones with lashings of strawberry jam and hand-whipped cream or whatever.
This rant is mainly brought on by Baroness Greenfield, a 'professor of neuroscience' who is given regular slots on TV shows, quoted in Newspapers and featured in radio programs with her ridiculous claims that Q: 'these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights'. She also believes that in a few years children won't recognise blood, yes, blood, because they've been desensitised by Youtube... I am not joking she said children will go: 'what's that red stuff pouring out of him?'. She believes that in the old days kids read books which taught them to empathise whereas facebook turns kids into unfeeling robots...yeah... doesn't make much sense to me either!
If the mainstream media only allows these conservative "scientists" in these kinds of forums then they are shooting themselves in the foot because anyone with a different opinion (such as any young person) will air their views on... the internet and this will reduce the relevence of these old media such as TV, Radio and Newspapers. It also perpetuates class divides, typical of the BBC to respect such hierarchies, and continues this attack on the working classes which has been prevalent in the media recently (see: Benefit Fraud adverts starring chavvy looking people.) ITV, of course is supposedly less uptight and middle-class but still perpetuates this hierarchy as its 'factual' programs stir up tabloid-like fear and hatred of young people and working class people and its fiction does nothing to question the status-quo , Coronation Street, for example, has very unambitious working-class characters with low self-esteem who marry the people who live nearest to them (before changing their mind and sleeping with someone 2 doors down), the young people are all scheming or stupid or lazy or shallow, its characters rarely read books or use computers, just sit in the pub all day (though its creators are very aware of this format). ITV's american imports are all aspirational, let's-admire-rich-people programs.
You'd think Channel 4 would be better but (like the BBC) that's full of cooking shows which encourage people to cook expensively, eat fatteningly, all in the name of high-brow dining which is supposedly the antithesis to fast-food and other things favoured by the working-classes. Or there's 'grand designs' where rich people get to build their ugly barbie dream houses because they deserve it cos they are so rich. Channel five is just a magazine channel with very cheap TV shows often about other TV shows on other channels but at least it has Neighbours. And don't get me started on the Digital Channels.
Anyway, anyone want to join my revolution?
Number One, I live in my momma house
I pulled a dead flattened mouse out of the bottom of my trainer the other day.
I thought maybe it was a sock or something I'd left in the end of the shoe but I when I pulled it out it was all stiff and spikey then I saw it was a flattened curled up mouse in my hand I screamed and ran to the bathroom to wash my hands a few hundred times. I can only blog about it now cos the memory of the HORROR has faded.
Anyway, lots of gigs coming up, I wish I had more charisma...
Yesterday me and Sam and a girl called Markella gave away cakes for art... students at uni could have free cakes if they did a piece of art on a postcard. It's for Sam's exhibition People Planet
Where anyone can submit artwork or perform, it opens on the 19th March.
Apparently... Harriet wants to move away to go to uni (cos she's a traitor and she hates me) and my mum wants to turn her room into a kitchen and wants me and Sam to live in the cabin instead of moving out and pay her rent n stuff... Sam wants to paint the living room off-white. I prefer pure white tho. and we'll need a wardrobe.
I thought maybe it was a sock or something I'd left in the end of the shoe but I when I pulled it out it was all stiff and spikey then I saw it was a flattened curled up mouse in my hand I screamed and ran to the bathroom to wash my hands a few hundred times. I can only blog about it now cos the memory of the HORROR has faded.
Anyway, lots of gigs coming up, I wish I had more charisma...
Yesterday me and Sam and a girl called Markella gave away cakes for art... students at uni could have free cakes if they did a piece of art on a postcard. It's for Sam's exhibition People Planet
Where anyone can submit artwork or perform, it opens on the 19th March.
Apparently... Harriet wants to move away to go to uni (cos she's a traitor and she hates me) and my mum wants to turn her room into a kitchen and wants me and Sam to live in the cabin instead of moving out and pay her rent n stuff... Sam wants to paint the living room off-white. I prefer pure white tho. and we'll need a wardrobe.
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