The Herd Instinct
Suddenly for no apparent reason, the herd was off in a panic-stricken stampede. Possibly it had heard something but nobody really knows.
A scene from a Hollywood cowboy movie? No, only the London stock market last month when “panic buying" by investors sent share values soaring by over £11 billion in one day.
And the cause? Various pundits thought that the equally mysterious rise in share values on Wall Street was responsible; others put it down to the “feel good" factor following victory in the Gulf war, while some suggested that falling interest rates had fuelled hopes that the recession was ending — the Director General of the CBI had “anecdotal evidence" of an upturn, and so on.
The fact is that big investors, especially the Institutions, all have vast amounts of cash seeking ways of earning rent, interest and profit The cash HAS to go somewhere so any hopeful sign, real or imagined, was enough to send those investors stampeding to buy, buy, buy, because, as one report put it, "they were afraid of being left behind".
£11 billion on nothing more substantial than rumour, hope and follow-my-leader. Who says capitalism isn’t a crazy old system?
A Happy Thought
Back in the 1960s and 1970s Labour leaders like Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, etc., were forever being attacked by the grossly misnamed "Young Socialists" for being "right wing".
Top Tories used to laugh at this and give thanks that the Young Conservatives were more interested in ping-pong than politics. This situation changed in the last decade when the YCs became "radical" and their actions and utterances more and more embarrassing to the party leadership.
Now Murdo Fraser, National Chairman of the YCs, has denounced none other than John Major for scrapping the poll tax, being indecisive and having no sense of direction (ITV's Oracle 6 April).
Tory leaders were outraged at this attack but they're not the only ones feeling angry, for Major was the very one the "radicals" happily claimed was the man to "carry through the Thatcher revolution" when he became PM!
The fact is that it doesn't matter that Major is a dithering wimp, even if he was Rambo he wouldn't be able to make capitalism work except as a system that puts profits before needs.
Marx's Raw Deal
The Guardian has really got it in for Karl Marx. An article on 10 April outlining Albania's new draft-constitution appears below the headline "Tirana abandons Marxism". The article then reveals that what has been abandoned is "Marxism-Leninism" which is the Leninist distortion of Marxism.
This is typical of the Guardian. No opportunity to misrepresent Marx and his ideas is missed with every Eastern European or banana-republic dictatorship dubbed "Marxist" and without even a shred of evidence to support this.
Hard Times
Many workers are experiencing the full blast of the recession. Some are having to settle for less than the inflation rate in their annual wage negotiations. Some are even being told they will get NO increase at all this year.
Pickford's Travel have gone one worse by proposing that their employees take a 7.5% wage cut. This is bad enough but spare a thought for Gene Lockhart, the highest-paid director of Midland Bank. He has suffered a 41% reduction in his salary. Mind you that still leaves him £429,216 per annum to keep the wolf from the door.
Lockhart's salary is performance-related and the Midland Bank has experienced a particularly bad year only making £11 million profit in 1990. All is not gloom In banking circles however, because Sir John Quinton, chairman of Barclays bank managed to get a rise of 21% to £404,000.
This must be a great consolation to the bank clerks at Barclays who are being asked to accept a 6% increase. Hard times indeed — but only for some it seems.
The Military Mind
The splendid insanities of the military mind are a constant source of astonishment to socialists, but we have recently been sent a newspaper clipping that had even your old battle-scarred Scorpion gasping.
It seems at least one facet of capitalism's inglorious military paraphernalia may be due for the dustbin of history — The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
On future battlefields unknown soldiers may well be identified by the genetic structure of cells found in the blood which vary with each Individual. The technology is so precise that the Pentagon plans to develop a kind of "DNA Dog Tag" for all military personnel. Major V. Weedn, Chief of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab. says, "In the future there should not be any more unknown soldiers.”We suggest that the best way to ensure that we have no more Tombs to the Unknown Soldier is to get rid of the cause of war — world capitalism!(Herald Tribune 11 March)
A Familiar Tale
"Fame is the Spur", shown on Channel 4 on 5 April, is the film based on Howard Spring's novel about Hamer Radshaw, a product of the Manchester slums in late Victorian England.
Radshaw used his talent as a spell-binding orator first for the rising Labour movement and then to become a cabinet minister in both Labour and National governments.
The story charts his unprincipled progress from street-corner agitator to "statesman" and finally to the House of Lords. Who was he based on? There's a bit of Victor Grayson there and Ramsay MacDonald too, but the Labour Party has spawned dozens of Radshaws, men and women who used the working class in their single-minded climb to power and privilege.
Eventually, workers will discard the naive notion that their fate can be left to labour politicians, but in the meantime there are many more Hamer Radshaws patiently awaiting their opportunity.
Prize Specimen
After the Oscars and the Tonys comes the Maggies. This is a prize that the Thatcher Foundation will award annually to the person whose work has best "identified free enterprise with freedom".
The first recipient is Professor David Marsland and he is a worthy winner of this Creep of the Year award. He recently declared "We must get rid of the social worker". He also wants to abolish unemployment benefit and he has great plans for our kids:
He has also called for lessons in patriotism and civil defence to be put on Britain's academic timetables, with encouragement for children from the age of 11 to join "voluntary defence training corps in schools"Give him the Maggie — give us a bucket to be sick in!(The Observer 21 April)
1 comment:
That's May 1991 booted into touch.
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