Trickle down punishment

Over the last couple of decades, lots of people in the UK chose to live beyond their means.  They borrowed money that didn't really exist from banks on the promise that the boom times would roll and they would find enough money to pay for it all in due course.

They borrowed oodles of cash on credit, as loans mortgages and card debt, and used it to buy houses and cars and electric guitars and designer clothes and holidays in ghastly places and so on and so forth.

And on most of those transactions, the government took a little slice of the pie in tax.

And while this led to a huge explosion in the sale of crap people didn't especially need at markups they couldn't really justify, it was accompanied by a diligent refusal to build enough homes for the people to live in.  So the laws of supply and demand kicked in, and the price of a place to live went up, and up, and up.  Even though they were the same crappy houses they had always been, only a bit older and more tumbledown than when you bought them, so should surely be decaying in value.

And each time one of those homes swapped hands for a pretend amount of money the government took a slice of the pie in tax.  And they did the same with the booming sales of fancy tat.  And the tax revenue blossomed and kept going up, so the government went to the money markets which act like its own equivalent of the nice man at the bank who will fix you a mortgage for 125% of what your house is worth, and the government said: the money's bound to come in, lend us another fiver til payday.

And then one day - about the same time as the iPad made a lot of the consumer tat history by replacing plastic tat with virtual tat - someone in a queue at Northern Rock cried out loud enough: this is bollocks this. Where is all the money you're pretending exists?

And the banks admitted: we don't have it. We were hoping it would come in from these amazing houses that just get better and better the more old and decrepit they get.

And the government admitted: we don't have it. We were relying on the money coming in from all the houses and other crap that the people pretending to have money were pretending was worth a lot.  Because a nice slice of a lot of money is a nice bit of cash, and so long as no-one asked any questions we reckoned we'd probably be OK, or the other lot would be in office by then which is even better as no-one ever asks who was in power when the whole thing began.

And the people said: we don't have it. We were relying on the house prices going up and that the bills would come down over time, even though the bills are all kind of tied to the price of oil which is in general just going to go up and up as it runs out.


The banks said: it wasn't our fault, we had to compete with each other, and no-one was made to take out a loan, they just all chose to because they wanted shiny things.

The government said: it wasn't our fault, we only did what the voters all wanted in their own short-term selfish interest, because getting elected and hang the consequences was in our own short-term selfish interest.

So everyone was humungously fucked.

And as the imaginary money dried up, the government found it had been spending money in advance that it hoped to get in one day, which it would now definitely not get, and had been spending imaginary money that it was getting in that now dried up as the whole emperor's new clothes saga came unstuck.  The money that it needed for all the nice things it wanted to give its voters tomorrow had already been spent yesterday.

And the people divided into three camps.  The first camp said: "we never joined in this whole pretend money stuff, though we did kind of benefit from how the cheap money helped keep down the price of taxis and food and subsidised the council tax".  The second camp said: "we joined in this whole pretend money stuff, and it all seems a bit silly now, but we all got ourselves into this mess so we are all going to have to try and get out of it". And the third camp said: "why should we have to stop having nice things, just because there was never any money to pay for the nice things and the money that ought to be paying for the basics today is money we already spent years ago on having nice things? It's so unfair! We blame the banks and we blame the government and we blame anyone who isn't us because nice things are nice and someone else should have to pay for us having them."

And so we get to where we are now, with a tanked economy that isn't the fault of the bankers or the people or the government or business or the unions, but is the fault of almost everyone collectively as just about all of you joined in the pretence that got us here, and even the few who didn't benefited from some of the upsides.

Yet just as it's always popular to blame bad times on immigrants or The Gays or colour television, there's a massive denial movement going on.

Right at the moment it's manifesting itself in amazing playground bully tactics as people who can't get their heads around fairly simple maths, linear time or cause-and-effect gang up to blockade high street banks.  Not the big investy institutions which every bit as responsible for the mess as the protestors are themselves: no, the high street banks, the ones where you pop in to deposit your wages or ask for a cheque book so you can send your nephew a tenner for Christmas and have less chance of a shifty postie swiping it for themselves.  Where there's a loans clerk who helped the farrago errupt, but also four tellers who help you change your holiday pounds into euros and transfer your savings into your current account when your washing machine blows up.


What's frustrating is the thought that "UK Uncut" - alas a political front for preserving the power base of those who have hogged the money, power and influence for decades - could develop its limited analysis of what's gone wrong. Instead it has either been highjacked by playground bullies, or else that is all it ever contained. 

Stopping people going into their local bank will not change the past.  It won't change much about what happens now.  It can't raise the profile of the whole issue any higher than is already the case - we all know the economy has tanked and that it's particularly broken here where the state is about a trillion in debt and the people are another three trillion in debt and turning it around is going to be hideously painful whoever is given the role.

Stopping people going into their local bank will, however, mean people's wages dont go in, bills don't get paid, and overdrafts run up higher charges.  The government won't get hurt. The banks won't get hurt. Individual people on low pay or no pay will get fucked over.

That's who UK Uncut has decided needs to hurt. The poor, the workers on long hours, the unemployed trying to juggle things to keep their heads above water.

If there was ever any doubt, let's be clear. They are acting solely in the interests of the established order, neutralising our frustrations with fake targets.  Compared to the 1930s they've learned to not blame it on The Jewish Bankers but to blame it on The Bankers. The scapegoating bollocks is exactly the same otherwise in its scapegoatyness and its bollocksmithery.

UKuncut. BNP, UKIP, call it what you will. It's a neofascist ruse and it's sucked in some well-meaning people along with a bunch of spoiled playground bullies who only ever wanted to cause pain for those around them.

We agreed, no leaders!

When I first got talking to people about the bi scene beyond my home city, I kept coming up against a quote from the film Time Bandits:

We agreed: No leader!

For a long time I didn't realise this was a quote and - as you do when you find yourself around people who've been doing something longer than you have - assumed it was the distilled wisdom of bisexual activists who had gone before.  We shall have no leaders, no-one shall be a spokesperson or able to claim to be giving a bisexual voice.

Well, it turned out the full quote is

Randall: do you want to be leader of this gang?
Strutter: No, we agreed: No leader!
Randall: Right. So shut up and do as I say.

Which is more of an amusing analysis of how formal and informal power structures work.

Til I found that out, the turn of phrase troubled me as I thought it was a recipe for floundering and getting nowhere fast.  Leaders of any social strata community are by definition a bit mis-representatitive, but when one compares how far gay and lesbian liberation / equality / visibility / callitwhatyouwant has gone in the last twenty years with the leaders they've had, and compare it to bi progress in our ostentatiously leaderless (un)structures... well, leadership sometimes looks like it might have been a clever plan. There's lots we might find ourselves at odds with in how LG things have shaped up, and lots of things that I might argue the bi movement has done better thanks to the way our projects and groups have worked, but on balance, and at the risk of deviating from the party line our non-existent leaders don't issue: we had better parties but the other lot got further along toward an arbitrary set of goals.

Leaders are divisive, sure. Anyone having an opinion and holding it up in public is divisive, mind. So long as you have several voices, there's room for additional or replacement voices, and the people involved disagree reasonably on a reasonable amount of turf, leaders are probably a good tactic. Since Bisexual Index formed, for instance, you'll find Bisexual Index voices get quoted in bits of the press and even invited on TV and radio to put a bi viewpoint.  To a lesser degree, the same thing has happened with BiPhoria (the longest-running bi group we have now) and Bi Community News.

Having high profile figures connected to the community gives people outside the bisexual community whirl someone to connect to, a way "in" or a voice to draw into their own conversations.  A person to invite as a speaker.  A person to call for a quote.  A person to ask when you need signposting.

I think that's a good thing.  Not that I'll always agree with whoever that person is on whatever they're talking about - damn boring life would be if I did, even if I am mellowing into pragmatism in my middle age - but then one hell of a lot of gay people have disagreen with Angela Mason, Ben Summerskill and Peter Tatchell down the years.  The fact that a Ben or an Angela or a Peter was there was still mostly a good thing, even if I might have liked to swap someone else into that role.

Which takes me back to the original point of this posting this blog post, which has been a little bit meandery.  You know I was talking about this Health Summit the other day?  On the same weekend, also in Cardiff as part of an entwined conference series, there is one on LGBT Leadership.  A networkingy trainingy event to skill up, empower, develop and all those kind of shiny words, lesbian, gay, bi and trans leaders in activist circles, business circles, political circles, etc.

And on the weekend when the UK's most committed bi political and community activists - bi being probably in this country the least vocally represented of the four strands - are all tied up elsewhere.

Grrrr!

Sigh.  Maybe it'll happen again next year.

Let's not be healthy then

As BiMedia reports, this year's LGBT Health Summit has been announced for the first two days in September. It'll be in Cardiff, having previously gone to places like Newcastle, Manchester and Bristol: I think this is the first time it's been in Wales.

Chances are, dear reader, that you've never been to these conferences, so I shall observe that these are quite useful events with a lot of interesting research shared and best practice (and bad practice) highlighted.  From an individual queer activist perspective it's a brilliant opportunity to meet people doing all kinds of work and to learn about what's going on out there, bringing so many strands together in one place.  I've gone to quite a lot of LGBT 'sector' things and the Health Summit is toward the top of the usefulness puddle.


However, the first two days in September are also when BiCon falls this year. For the small strand of the LGBT communities who are engaged in bi activism or want to connect to bi issues and community, that's a damn hard clash. For a lot of us, it's a decision that will naturally fall down on the side of being in a properly bi-welcoming space for the few days of the year when that's an option.

It's not the first time these two have been up against each other: when the summit came to Manchester in 2007, it overlapped with BiCon that year too. That conference was one of my Activist Regrets: at the very end of the conference, I was scheduled to talk.  I went with the speech I'd prepared rather than do what my instincts told me which was to do one more off-the-cuff about what I had seen in the part of the Health Summit I had been able to attend. I really should have gone with the impromptu one about the things that weren't being talked about, primarily bisexuality but also genderqueer matters. That year at least - I've not been able to go since - it was remarkably centred on lesbian and gay experience and the small-c conservative end of transgender. By the time I and the keynote speaker on trans matters were lined up to talk, most attendees had already left. 

There are many many queer events every summer and a lot of them have to overlap. It's blooming frustrating though, especially when from what I can make out the Health Summit has been inching toward being more bi positive / inclusive.  If you're just not cut out for BiCon and make it along to the Summit, I'd love to know how it goes.

Preferably not

This icon hits the buffers then, and needs to drop off the set of images in my blog's right hand column, since it's all over now and in the referendum on changing the voting system last week the Yes campaign died on its arse.

I think the voters went the wrong way on it, and that it was lost for a number of reasons most of which I'll not rehearse here. But the public have spoken, or at least that slice of the public that cared to express an opinion, and fear has triumphed over hope again.  At a guess it'll be thirty years before we get another chance at reform of the Lower House.

So: maybe next time :o)



(Such politicking is why I've been quiet here for the last two months. Normal service shall soon be resumed)