With most people working in commerce this number-crunching mentality is unintentional; they are

just doing a job, following orders, maintaining company policy, or trying to stay ahead of the next
person who wants their job. This is the generic administrative model. If that means using cattle-
prods instead of dogs to herd the sheep into the pen, then so be it. Just as Nazi soldiers and Zonder
Commanders were manipulated. Function and result is the primary objective, not how we treat each
other as human beings. Less is more – less functionality, more results. We are not merely a number
to them but the business and political strategists force them to treat us as such. Most people don’t
want to be that way and it’s not popular to treat workers that way either. When that’s the case we
buy from companies in places where they couldn’t give less of a shit about people, so it’s not us
doing it. The government will deny to the hilt the sending of prisoners accused of endangering the
public to Abu Grave or Guantanamo Bay for torture. But it is good business to buy all our goods
from companies that beat workers, rob them of their wages, feed their newborns melamine, cause
millions of premature deaths, as well as contaminate the atmosphere and water sources and strip the
forests. I personally want to hug every rural Chinese parent who has lost their son or daughter on the
altar of the Chinese capitalist machine. But someone will say “yes, but they have a better life than
they would stuck in the country growing rice” as if there is no other comparison to make. Would
they? The Chinese populace are far more sophisticated than we give them credit for. In 1999 I met a
twenty-three year-old Chinese student from Manchester University. Her day job was designing
aircraft wings for British Aerospace. She was on release being sponsored to do that for the company,
but also sponsored by her country, so she could take her experience back there and teach them how
to do it. Crafty these Chinese. The only reason the Chinese have not taken over the world already is
that they don’t need to. They have everything right there in China. Let the world come to them. And
it has. The sad thing is that if they aspire only to assimilate life as we know it in the west they’re in
for as rude an awakening.
OK, why shouldn’t they have all the conveniences western societies have and be able to
support their families? But that isn’t what I take issue with. It’s easy to seize on that as a principle
and totally ignore the injustices and poor practices that are being employed by those with financial
clout. Then you have the same determination towards greed and the same delusion of superiority.
This is the extent to which current capitalistic practice impacts on human endeavour and
imagination. Everything is far too big to deal with, when all we have to do is be human. Be humane.
Those who are seem to be in the minority and it begs the question, how many are actually I positions
of authority and power? I wonder what is the actual human toll in acquiring so many rich
benefactors? The Chinese publicly espouse the words of Confucius, Lao Tsi and Siddhartha
Gautama, for the moral ideologies backing their exploitation, without a single reflection or concern
about whether or not it washes. That is not the important thing. The commercial outcome is the be-
all and end-all.
In the UK, they will now be extolling the success we had at the China Olympics, rather than
what a hypocritical colossal failure and compromise it entailed to compete in those games. I
wouldn’t deny the athletes their medals or achievements but if they really wanted to have an impact
on what the Olympics is supposed to represent, they’d have pulled out en masse. But it’s now
success at almost any cost (as much as if the athletes were all on drugs). In fact they calculated the
amount of investment made into sports support and facilities related to the Olympic effort and how
many medals were achieved. I don’t recall the exact figure but each medal ran at over one million
pounds sterling. Those athletes became millionaires in minutes! Taking that standard and projecting
the potential for more medals and increased success, year on year, gold medals will actually de-
value. That calculation, of course, does not include the value of the houses, the livelihoods and the
lives that the beaten, ransacked and uncompensated Chinese neighbours lost in the building of the
‘Bird’s Nest’ car parks. Of course, that’s not the athletes’ fault. No, they didn’t have a choice. I
wonder if any did decline; presumably they’re traitors, not heroes. Integrity – is the cost of looking
good in a sham. But no… blame the Chinese for suppression of protests for human liberty and
cheating us out of a real fireworks display. And keep flashing the brass. If our Olympic committee
had known about this credit crunch, they’d not have gone for 2012, they say. Since the initial bid,
their administrative budget of over five-mill only increased by 1000%, so what are they worrying
about? It isn’t the criticism that the facilities they’re building will not meet the original stipulation,
that they should be suitable for reuse by the community and be able to pay for themselves in the
long-term. So, the primary consideration for continuing with this new outcrop of Millennium Domes
is the temporary employment; the feel-good factor we so need during this recession. And saving
face. Who else will want it, now? At least we can minimise the financial burden employing students
and illegal immigrants, eh? How cosmopolitan and inclusive.
The role of the Trade Unions, occupational therapy and employment-based social initiatives
used to give employees confidence that their employer was interested in the welfare of the people
who made them rich. Loyalty towards firms like that was fiercely defended by those workers. Their
quality of family life was directly related to the success of their firm or industry. Now, that’s not
good for the budgets, for business, for healthy bank balances, for the investors and shareholders who
sit on their cosy arses watching the exploitation and colossal injustices their company executives
connive to inflict. They are not a sponging underclass. Fear is the prime employment motivator,
now. But don’t blame them whatever you do. They’ll fuck off elsewhere with their investments. We
are being done the greatest favour to slave for them, since without them we’d all be poor and
unproductive. We can’t all grow our own tomatoes can we? For a start, they’ll be the wrong shape
and colour. The idea is as preposterous as a Prince growing GM crops. Without them we wouldn’t
be able to keep the underclass in the life to which they’ve become accustomed. Two-Jags thinks
they shouldn’t live. Yes, you can do something with a bad back, but how about making the working
environment and the incentives conducive to it first? Don’t feed us that hog-wash about the new
deal and working tax credits and helping working mothers because you know all the failures of that
system. You just refuse to publish them. Woe-betide if you make share-holders, investors and multi-
national executives in charge of making the money for them and ‘The Company,’ whatever that
actually is, responsible for the knock on effect to consumers. It would just put prices and costs up
further wouldn’t it? They can ALWAYS do that. There is no such thing as over-trading. So, we all
end up minced into this conforming mass. But that is good for powerful people who run the world. It
is subjugation by the pen instead of the sword. And they are nothing short of psychopathic about it.
Funnel funnel funnel.
We alienated the terrorists when we watched people throwing themselves out of the World
Trade Centre hundreds of feet up. They left them no choice. But some people felt the same way
during the 1930s Wall Street Crash. Why is it we do not hold to account the type of people who
have caused this recent global devastation? Where the defrauder, where the embezzler? We have yet
to see people pushed to those lengths here, but current mentality towards sustaining capitalist fat-
cats is far more predatory and widespread than suicide bombs and terrorists crashing aeroplanes.
The lack of transparency and lack of consultation with the tax-payer says, ‘we can take any amount
of your money off you at any time without asking or explaining. What are you going to do about it?’
And the question they will ask across the Cabinet table is not, ‘how can we best represent the
interests of the electorate?’ but ‘how can we make the most out of this and make it sound like it’s in
the interests of the electorate?’ A cunning capitalist never offers, or asks, a fair price. The world’s
big-wigs will be drooling over the potential spoils. Bin-Laden can retire.
This is one reason why I hate money; can’t stand the stuff and all those electronic numbers,
as gratifying as they look on a balance sheet. But for an entire planet to be run by bits of paper and
electronic numbers and those papers and electronic figures to preclude someone from the right to
food, clothing and shelter is such an indictment of our humanity. It is so much worse an indictment
in countries that effectively have everything. That’s what makes it sicker. It is nothing short of
delusional mental illness.
Because, no matter what regime we are in, or situation we’re forced into, we have choice.
We fight for that freedom of choice whenever it comes under attack. We uphold it. So, an American
President can choose if he wants to do something (that countless married American men are doing
week-in, week-out) to risk impeachment. An African dictator can choose to relinquish control later,
rather than sooner, just to take a few hundred thousand lives with him before he goes. Then change
his mind so he can oppress for a bit longer. A person undergoing torture can choose whether or not
to divulge information or be killed or commit suicide or to endure fifteen years solitary confinement
until hope comes out of the blue. You can’t always be moral about the decisions that are made when
people are pushed to extremes. But we run our governments that way. It may not feel that way in the
UK when our economy is on the brink of the biggest recession since the eighties and the governor of
the Bank of England only has to announce his detailed crisis analysis to the television-watching
public as – “It’s going to get a bit grim.” And we settle for that and the news reporters repeat it in
triplicate, very very very slowly – “according the Governor of the Bank of England, today; it’s
going to get a bit grim; our financial correspondent is here with us now.” “Yes Sophie, in the words
… of … the … GOVERNOR … of the Bank of England; ‘It’s … going … to get … a … bit …
grim.” – in case we missed it the first and second time; or to drive the nail home – ‘you’re ignorant
and stupid, here’s your next feed, now remember to chew thirty times before you swallow.’ The
cows will keep chewing the cud, as one fine friend put it to me. And Tracy, who doesn’t want to
look like shit when she goes out, daily injects herself with an untested drug she doesn’t know the
constituents of, because it turns her whole body brown. “Oh, I can’t go out without my tan!” Even if
her kisses taste like a mixture of nicotine and carotene. Nicarotine, on the label. She confirms, for
the tabloid media-news, our funnel-fed prejudice about bottle-blondes. Cows don’t eat their own
shit.
But what is actually happening is an abuse. It is an abuse of some really good qualities that
should be respected, supported and rewarded instead of exploited. The almost indefatigable
patience, long-suffering trust and restraint of people in the UK, who want the best for their families
and the wider world in general, is often seen as passivity. Because the exploitation of this has been
legitimised, guns are no longer needed for us; we’ve evolved beyond that stage. As stated at the
outset, when people are pushed beyond reason, eventually a snap is in the offing, so… to subdue any
potential for rebellion, the best tactic is to bulldoze every bastion of justice, sap them of any hope,
fight and money and drive everyone into depression. Then change your mental health act (that most
of them campaigned against) to marginalise them further so you can strip them of their remaining
rights and legally drug them.
I’m going to be accused of naivety here but sod it. Does the monetary system work? I
suspect by the end we’ll all end up blockbuster caricatures and even Will Smith will be bellowing
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! That’s the reality. We’re forced to believe it does, like there’s
no alternative; but most have debts, even the privileged few who probably don’t need to earn money
any more. Third world countries, who have nothing, owe us more than they can ever earn to pay us
back, so we have no alternative than to wipe the slate clean to help them. The First World has
mountainous debts even though we have every advantage and we are regarded as the richest nations.
Money doesn’t make the world go round, debt does. So, who are the creditors? And why should we
allow them to hold our humanity to ransom with electronic numbers and paper. How sick is that?
And what will you expect the government to do for you, when it doesn’t want to invest in treating
your resulting depression? Mince mince mince.
The most despicable thing is; the richer countries led by people voted in by us to use public
money to care for our interests have “bought into” (sold out to) and exported this mentality. The
developed western countries plug democracy and capitalism as the panacea for global and economic
cohesion and hold up Europe, the division of the USSR, post-war Germany and Japan and
developing China, as prime evidence. But is it really curing the ills of the populace, making for
better lives? Did it stop war and imbedded bigotry?
Of course, the democratic countries are paragons of virtue aren’t they? Leading the way in
peace and prosperity for all; they’re the humblest, eh? They’d never have anything to do with divide
and conquer policy. They’d never support the likes of Mugabe, surely? It’s just not Cricket!
Unthinkable, but some political capitalist based decisions have the same effect of starving the most
vulnerable, robbing people of their homes and relationships, literally making them susceptible to
depression and siege mentality, isolation and self-preservation. In a crisis, don’t expect those who
have the most to budge on one penny, let those worst off pay for them to keep their wealth. ‘Yeah,
here’s my shirt… what? How much to shag my wife and daughter without a condom? And would
you like an award with that? And let us pay for it? No, you’d rather have my newborn twins as
gloves? – “What was that Sooty? I’m better looking than Gordon Brown and you’d like to vote for
me? Well, I think that’s a very good idea, don’t you boys and girls?” Fiddling while Rome burns?
They’re having the fist-fuck orgy of their lives. Whose arse are they actually up, though?
I have tried to ignore the positives, in writing this, but I can’t. Money seems to be the key
gelling factor in people’s interactions; it is a leveller to some artificial degree. But is that the only
basis on which we can interact? When you think of its influence in getting people who hate each
other to think seriously about cooperating for gain, it’s powerful. But fercryinoutloud is there not
enough evidence that people are happier when they interact without financial constraints and
incentives, simply because they care about each other? We still applaud that don’t we? So why do
politicians deny it?

“You can’t always be moral about the decisions that are made when
people are pushed to extremes. But we run our governments that way.”