28 Oct 2006

Blair = greed = ecocide


The greatest crime of the Blatcherites has been the spreading of the affluenza virus among the rest of us. They seem to despise mothers who care for their small children - or anyone else whose work is not paid. They use education to create good little consumer-producers, not to set minds free. They lock students into debts, then impose an insecure, workaholic working environment and a bloated property market that keeps the young on a hedonistic, consumerist treadmill. Above all their talk of "opportunity", "choice" and "freedom" is just Americanised material aspirationalism.


Blair, well I am being shallow but he is not nice man at all...here is a letter to the Guardian, they didn't print it, have had 4 in the G or the O in about two months so fair enough...


Dear Editor,
Oliver James critique of 'Nouveau Riche Labour' (Guardian, 23rd October) is instructive. In 1997 would those who voted 'New Labour' with the jingle 'things can only get better' ringing in their heads have believed that Tony Blair's enduring monument who be the Dome, a giant Texas owned cash till on the banks of the Thames? Who would have predict the war in Iraq driven by oil barons and Haliburton contracts? Who would have imagined Blair on holiday in the villa of Berlusconi, a quasi-fascist billionnaire media moghul?

Money, it is said, makes the world go round but the kind of addictive Dallas style consumerist capitalism, promoted by Blairites, if it doesn't drive us to despair will kill us with ecological catastrophe. It is insanity to believe that the economy can grow for ever on a finite planet.

Gambling, mushrooming mortgage debt, student loans, post office 'deregulation', the truth is that less is more. Bob Dylan in one of his more lucid moments noted that 'money doesn't, talk it swears', depressingly all of our parliamentary parties put happinesses and environmental sustainability, well below, the task of making and circulating more of the stuff. Even the Olympics is an opportunity to sell McDonalds and Coca Cola as well as appropriately competitive sport.

Gordon Brown I think we can safely predict, as the architect of New Labour's economic policies will be giving us more of the same. Love of those with obsence amounts of cash is the passion behind New Labour and while Blair is on his way out, this affair is far from over.


Yours

Dr Derek Wall,

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