Hi All,
If this is going to be weekly, then fair warning - it’s going to vary a lot, between campaigning updates, politics wonkery, TV shows, and other blather and drivel.
First off, baby pictures!
Mary Anne and James brought along the newest Greens campaigner, Ailie, who is five months old and not sold on the climbing close stairs thing just yet. One of the good things about the current plan, which is to put all the effort into where we know people vote for us, so that they actually do go out on the day and vote, is that it is initially a lot less soul-destroying. This is the grinding part of the game, where you have to put the effort in to knock doors and deliver leaflets, and it is a lot easier to do when people are actually pleased to see you.
Also it would be easier to do if I hadn’t tripped while running for the bus, and fallen flat on my face. Seven days since, my ribs are still creaky and my knee and elbow still sore. But no bones broken.
In politics
I need to watch a whole lot more of Kevin Bridges. So much of this clip just cuts home, the feeling of being unemployed as fuck, and the question about what actually is the deficit? Who is the money owed to? Why is it the poorest people who are having to pay it? Because here’s what he points out - the deficit is not poor people spending, it’s rich people saving.
Let’s say that again - the deficit is not poor people spending, it’s rich people saving.
Because what is the “deficit” that they all talk about on the news and politics shows and in the papers? More properly the Budget Deficit, it’s the difference between the money issued by the Treasury to fund government spending, and the money recovered by the Treasury in taxation. It keeps being spoken of as a debt of some kind, but it isn’t - it’s the amount of cash in circulation. If the deficit were zero, the country would collapse because there would be no money to spend. This happened in the US. On the other hand, just printing too much money becomes its own problem, as they found in Weimar Germany with hyperinflation, and Douglas Adams pointed out with his marooned space people on Earth, who declared their unit of currency to be the leaf and ended up having to pay three deciduous forests for one packet of ship’s peanuts.
The UK budget deficit is £1.5tn. One and a half trillion pounds. That’s a lot of money just sloshing around. Where is it? Why aren’t people diving into pools of fivers like Scrooge McDuck?
Because Amazon don’t pay taxes. Nor do Apple or Starbucks or any of the big corporations that politicians are terrified of. Nor do the donors who keep the Tory party in power and get peerages for their efforts - apparently the going rate is £3m - nor do the hedge funds and the City and the oligarchs and other gangsters that the City launders money for. Nor do they pay salaries or wages when they can help it so that the money remains in the economy to be spent. All of the money that the Treasury issues gets socked away in tax haven bank accounts and removed from circulation.
This is why we have austerity - because the Treasury have issued so much money that they can’t recover from their crooked clients, and there isn’t any left. And, let’s be real, because it suits the Bullingdon Boys to have an underclass to sneer at. But to just print more would give the game away and devalue the stashes that the crooks are sleeping on. Don’t let anyone kid you about there not being a Magic Money Tree - it’s planted in the Cayman Islands.
For further reading, look at Debt by David Graeber and The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. And like last week, answers on a postcard about what to do about it.
In other news
Iiiit’s Chriiistmaaas! And I’m spending the holiday season … not spending money. For the reasons above.
Usually I call it Church Mouse Rules, but this month I’m reminded of a picture book that I loved when I was wee, the story of Silent Night. The story went that in the middle of winter, the church mice were starving; so starving that they ate holes in the leather of the church organ bellows. But then the organ couldn’t play and it was coming up to time for the Christmas night service. So the minister asked his friend, one Hans Gruber, to write a carol that the congregation could sing without the need for the organ, maybe to play on a guitar. And the mice listened as the people sang Silent Night.
So I’m on Silent Night rules. I’ll get some holly from the park to put around the fireplace and I’ll light candles and keep the house warm and I’ll play my holidays playlist. But I’ll not be partying or spending money on stuff, rather I’ll meet friends for walks and cups of tea and hot chocolate. And because it costs me so much money I stopped drinking last week - I’ll keep that up for six months through the holidays and up to the election. Which I’ll hopefully celebrate winning with a bottle of bubbly on my birthday.
And that’ll do me. In all honesty I have enough Stuff, and certainly enough models to paint and books to read to keep me through this winter and the next couple. And while it used to be fun to get plastered, it breaks the seals off too much any more that I’m keeping the lids on, for the sake of not being an unsocial rage monster. So I’ll hibernate and meditate and in the new year we’ll go out again climbing stairs and knocking doors.
Hope you have a good December and run up to the festivities, whatever your plans are.