Slash Dot, Dash Dot, Slash Dot…Calm?
This is not Fat Boy Slim. This is British politics BABY!
Now, before you get your heckles up, I’m not really saying that George and David planned the cuts on the walls of a metalized public loo with a phat permanent marker. Nor am I saying that one of them is a punky girl. There are lots of things that I’m not saying.
What I am saying is that if – for some reason – George Osbourne’s Comprehensive Spending Review had to be sent to parliament using Morse code, the lyrics of that well known Fat Boy Slim ballad would have got the message across (I know FBS is saying “dot com”, but pretend he’s saying “dot calm”, for full effect).
A wave of acerbic proclamations gushed into my living room yesterday – and into rooms all over Britain. No specific programs were mentioned for jettison, but grave and stoic numbers were certainly read out (don’t forget gravely), with upbeat assurances that this was for the best (that’s the calm/com bit in the song).
The response has been a rash of analyses as opinionated persons such as myself rush to their keyboards to chuck their bale of hay on the bonfire of public opinion. Think of the children we cry, or the poor, the disabled or the sick. Think of everyone who’s going to be effected by this. People’s lives will change – and it seems unlikely that they’ll change for the better.
I want to step away from the bonfire a little. I am not enough of an economics expert to fully examine the ramifications of “swingeing cuts”. I’m eyeing up a slightly more ponderous hay-bale.
For all the comfort it has marshaled under humanity in the past 100 years or so, Capitalism does have some flaws. This is nothing to be ashamed of as everything has flaws, and nothing is perfect.
Its main one, as far as I can see, is that the system is based on ascribing value to everything in our world. The markets can’t deal with valueless things. They are fickle too, with products sliding from golden to nothing as a blistering pace. It is inevitable that in such a system, some components will fall through the cracks – worthless. In my mind, this is where government comes in – to pick up the pieces buffeted in the jet stream of the flying Capitalist carpet.
This is exactly what Osbourne’s Spending review is not doing. It is cutting state support to the most vulnerable people in our society. Old people are pewter in our modern maelstrom of value – although I suppose they always were. Often they have worked their entire lives in Britain, paying their taxes and pulling their weight. However, in a big society such as ours, it seems this isn’t enough to guarantee them a comfortable end of days.
In some ways, I feel we shouldn’t have to count on the state to look after us when we’re old. What is family for if not take care each other – old, young or sick (still though, just a system with cracks)? I think we lose sight of that in our wild pursuit of worth. If we are all going to become little value machines, we may as well just take Uncle Milton’s advice:
“Central banks could profitably be replaced by computers geared to provide a steady rate of growth in the quantity of money”
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So maybe the Fat Boy Slim video is oddly prescient. Our politicians have charged, armed with the sword inexperience and the shield of ideology. Like a computer, they only know their own way.
This evening, beneath Whitehall, a massive, warm computer bank may well be smugly humming, “Slash dot, dash dot, slash dot calm”.
