A Short Review of 2014

For those with a progressive political leaning, the themes of 2014 have been pretty dark. Austerity, cuts, and reactionary opportunism from the mainstream parties to try and respond to the rise of the Far-Right. The main hope for The Left has been in ideas like the Citizen's Income entering into serious political discussion, widespread vocal championing of feminism, and some fresh young left-wing parties beginning to gather support.

The early part of 2014 was dominated by the return of Far-Right politics, with right-wing nationalist parties polling in increasing numbers across Europe on the back of immigration scaremongering. While the Far-Right managed to make some breakthroughs, for the most part it simply served to make it easier for those pushing austerity to make scapegoats of the poorest and most vulnerable to draw attention away from the real powerbrokers.

In an intensely pragmatic response to the small victories won by the Far-Right, parts of the Labour Party believed in making opportunistic appeals to those persuaded by anti-immigration propaganda. It gave the impression only of an effort to stave off the threat posed by right-wing parties to the party's supporter base, under threat already in Scotland by the continued rise in popularity of the SNP and its campaign for Scottish Independence.

The summer saw the Scottish Independence Referendum campaign draw unusual lines of division through Britain, with splits between Unionists and Separatists pulling up issues of nationality and nationalism. Yet the campaign was plagued by negative campaigning, particularly from the No group, which rejected Scottish nationalism with its own rather hypocritical British nationalism and played heavily on economic fears by calling on voters to stick with the Westminster status quo in the name of economic security.

Despite the negativity, the world was watching. Separatist voters in Catalonia waited to see if it was possible to construct a democratic path out of the nation-state settlement. In the end independence was rejected - though by much less of a margin than most were willing to admit. That left the matter, at least partially, unresolved. In particular the general discontent with central government, echoed across Europe, was not truly addressed.

Those feelings probably helped to fuel the newly fire lit that saw, in autumn, a rising popular response to conservative driven austerity. In response to the far right and to Conservative cuts, the UK has seen the Green Party finally making a breakthrough, by polling at the same kind of levels as the other mainstream parties. In Spain, the brand new Podemos party has caused a major shock by polling ahead of all of the established parties.

In many ways, conference season and the Autumn Statement in the UK have only stoked that fire further. Both high coverage events where used by the Conservatives to lay out their plans for further austerity measures and cuts. As autumn turned to winter, those moves have led to the Liberal Democrats, junior coalition partners, to distance themselves from the plans for further cuts - something that reopens the possibility of a positive dialogue amongst leftist groups.

Despite some dark moments, particularly in the Far-Right rearing its head, there are reasons to be hopeful. There are pieces moving into position for a progressive alliance in the UK following the election next spring, with the various groups on The Left opening up to working together in common cause.

We will be back in January with more subjective observation and analysis of politics, ideology and public life.

What are the liberal alternatives to the austerity cuts?

Vince Cable and Nick Clegg, two of the most senior Liberal Democrats, were quick to make their voices heard in response to the Autumn Statement and to the Conservative push for more cuts during the next parliament. The essence of their narrative was simple: the Lib Dems believe that austerity has been pushed as far as it can or should go.

Cable was quick off the mark with a letter to the Office of Budget Responsibility, which called for the OBR to make a clear a distinction between the future policies of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats  (Wintour, 2014). Clegg followed in his wake by stressing that the Tory determination to cut tax was not matched by available funds (Marr, 2014) - meaning more public services would have to go.

The economic analysts seem to agree with them. The analysis released in response to the Autumn Statement stressed that public spending would have to be reduced drastically if the Conservative path was to be followed (Johnson, 2014). And this week the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) announced that its research had shown that inequality is bad for economic growth, and that a redistributive economy is far more conducive to economic success - not to mention beneficial to social welfare (Elliott, 2014).

So what would the Lib Dems do differently?

Well, Clegg says that they are not ashamed of the role they have played in arresting public spending (Mason, 2014), but the party has expressed disagreements over the way forward. While the Conservatives want more and deeper cuts, the Lib Dems think that the realistic plateau has been reached. Instead of more cuts, they want a rise in tax that is controlled to protect the poorest (Lansdale, 2014).

While serving as a practical challenge to the Conservative narrative pushed by the Tories and UKIP, people are unlikely to be inspired by ideas aimed at just keeping a sinking ship afloat. People want an opportunity to make things better - and there are liberal ideas, more radically progressive, that the Lib Dems could push.

Though the modern Lib Dems have been focussed on the idea of reducing the state - with a Gladstonian commitment to capitalism, in opposition to the state - when the old Liberal Party began to modernise in the early twentieth century, the new social liberalism it had embraced opened the party up to the idea that there was a role for the public sector to play, though still with the proviso that it should be reduced wherever possible.

Those deep rooted liberal tendencies have produced ideas, beyond simply reducing state influence, that are more conducive to creating a new era of reform. In the 1920s, Liberals under the guiding hand of John Maynard Keynes produced an in depth report of the British economy that included in its recommendations co-operatives, and democracy in the workplace (Yellow Book, 1928).

'The worker's grievance arises from a sense of the inadequacy of their reward, of their insecurity of livelihood and tenure, and of their lack of information as to the financial results of their work... The present ownership of industry is unduly concentrated and should be diffused as widely as possible among industrial wage-earners. Such diffusion, tending towards the popular ownership of industry, may be effected partly by progressive taxation and restrictions upon the inheritance of large fortunes, but more directly by the stimulation of employee-ownership under schemes of profit-sharing and investment by employees, by the encouragement of popular banking and investment, and by the creation and development of investment trusts. All these processes should be encouraged and, where necessary, regulated by the state.'

These ideas are still woven into Lib Dem policy proposals. Nick Clegg has previously called for a move towards a 'John Lewis Economy' (Clegg, 2012), with companies embracing workers holding shares, and party members have argued that co-operatives should be at the forefront of the Lib Dem economic policy (Donaldson, 2013) - as they are in the preamble to the party constitution.

Now could be the time to start bringing those ideas to the forefront. Co-ops represent a huge step forward, giving people more autonomy in their working lives and spreading the profits of their labour more equitably. If the Lib Dems are to see the aims of the authors of the 1928 Yellow Book report fulfilled, to ensure that individuals may enjoy life more abundantly, co-operation is going to play a key role in achieving them.

The Autumn Statement shows us the flaws in the Tory cuts agenda

The UK government's Autumn Statement, released last week, is a mid-year review of its economic policy (Treanor, 2014), and an opportunity to stop and assess the general health of the national economy.

On this occasion, that assessment has stirred up controversy. The main story behind the review was that the Conservatives have not reached their target reductions to the country's budget deficit, and will likely seek further and deeper cuts to public spending in the next parliament (Allen, 2014).

While senior Conservatives have criticised coverage of future spending cuts as hyperbole predicting that the world would fall in (BBC, 2014), they did not deny that further cuts would be coming. In fact, further cuts to welfare certainly appear to be planned.

The most baffling thing is that, despite the Autumn Statement having laid bare that the Conservative approach has failed to deliver the promised results, the government seems intent upon pushing on, further and deeper, with their strategy of cuts, and of placing trust in markets. They seem to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the economy is still weak, the recovery remains slow, and the public deficit has not been eliminated.

The possibility of more cuts is sure to inflame more than a few hearts that are already set against the Conservative austerity agenda. That will not be helped by independent assessments that say future cuts could take the UK's public spending down to an 80 year low, the lowest since the inter-war era (Reuben, 2014; Johnson, 2014).

It has been suggested that one key reason for the failure of the Conservative approach to achieve its goals, was hinged upon a rise in private sector employment. Conservatives thought that a rise in employment - which they believed would follow from economic incentives and encouragements for the private sector, along with cuts to the public sector - would boost the economy to pick up the slack as public sector spending was reduced. Their gamble, however, did not deliver (Arnett & Nardelli, 2014).

The new jobs, that the Conservatives have celebrated, have come with very low pay and short, unstable hours. In conjunction with the general failure of wages to rise, the decrease in unemployment has not led to an increase in the funds available to pay off public debts and deficits. Further, and even more disastrously, austerity and cuts are being directly linked with rising poverty (Wintour & Butler, 2014).

If, as predicted, the next stage of the Conservative approach returns Britain to its pre-war settlement, with a drastic reshaping of the state and its role in society - with further retraction of the state and a return to a market place with fewer safety nets - it is not unreasonable to ask if the continuation of the cuts agenda will drop public spending so low as to threaten even the most basic services like health and welfare that protect people who fall on hard times.

Conservative policy is steering towards an economy built on the backs of workers labouring through unstable and fluctuating hours, for low pay, and with no safety net when something goes wrong in their incredibly temporary situations. That assault upon the security of workers lives, in pursuit of making labour markets more 'dynamic', is undermining the living standards of workers while simultaneously failing to produce a useful growth in the common wealth.

And that is not good enough. It's not enough to just peddle cheap impermanent work, and assume that work itself will be some sort of miracle cure for societies ills. To live the better and fuller lives that they deserve, people need more security and better pay, with real safety nets.

'We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'
(Yellow Book, 1928)

The Autumn Statement is just the latest demonstration that Conservative austerity and cuts are failing, both economically and socially, to address the problems of the day. The question now becomes: what alternatives do we have?

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References:
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+ Jill Treanor's 'Autumn statement 2014 at a glance: eight key points'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Katie Allen's 'George Osborne thrown off course by pay squeeze and falling income tax take'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ BBC's 'Osborne: Autumn Statement cuts warnings 'hyperbolic''; 4 December 2014.

+ Anthony Reuben's 'Headline Numbers: Public spending heads to 80-year low'; on the BBC; 3 December 2014.

+ Paul Johnson's 'Institute for Fiscal Studies: Autumn statement briefing, 2014 - Introductory remarks'; for the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS); 4 December 2014.

+ George Arnett and Alberto Nardelli's 'Why has George Osborne missed the deficit target?'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Patrick Wintour and Patrick Butler's 'Tories seek to avert rift with Church of England over food bank report'; in The Guardian; 8 December 2014.

+ 'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928. [Buy Now]

Constantine's flawed humanity makes for good television

NBC's new TV show Constantine, with a second series yet to be commissioned, has joined a long list of shows that have seen fans start campaigns aimed at keeping them alive (Wickline, 2014). It was always going to be a brave decision to try and translate the character of John Constantine to the small screen. The Hellblazer comics are often dark and intensely grim, and Constantine himself is a hero often shown to be flawed and manipulative, and even prepared to sacrifice his own friends should the need arise.

Yet, so far, NBC's new show has held true to that course. We have seen Constantine smoking, itself a fairly big challenge to modern television standards; he has exploited the abilities of his allies, like Zed and Liv; and he manipulated his friend Gary Lester into sacrificing his life to trap the hunger demon Mnemoth.

But we have also seen him struggle with a troubled and violent childhood. He struggles with his guilt over, in his arrogance, failing to save a little girl named Astra. We have seen him show nobility in trying to save people from many dangers that they might not even believe to actually exist.

These struggles, and the weight of burden that his failures have cast upon him, are what makes him a character that is easy to identify with - and were all key parts of the complicated character that was so beloved on the pages of the Hellblazer comics.

The Constantine of Hellblazer is a punk, a bisexual and a smoker. A working-class mage. He is burdened by enormous guilt over the past, and cares about the people around him, though often reluctantly. He gets by on wit and guile, rather than brute force and physical strength.

Even with the faults in his methods, like the dangerous manipulation of his friends and allies, he is still a charming and likeable anti-establishment figure - and that makes him easy to sympathise with. He is a controversial hero, and a complicated and imperfect person who earns our sympathy through his flawed humanity.

These things, translated to the small screen, make for a fascinating character. His belief in himself is not unshakeable - he has doubts. He has regrets. He is caustic and short-tempered. He is manipulative, using, and exploiting his friends. He is self-righteous when he gets the chance, and angry when he gets called out on his hypocrisy.

These characteristics make him flawed and vulnerable, and so reveal to us his humanity. They are the kind of traits that make for a great television character.

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References:
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+ Dan Wickline's 'There Is Now A Save Constantine Petition'; on bleedingcool.com; 27 November 2014.

+ Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette & John Ridgway's 'Hellblazer'; DC/Vertigo; 1988. [Buy Now]

+ Daniel Cerone & David S. Goyer's 'Constantine'; on NBC; 2014. [Buy Now]

Support for the Greens and the SNP is forcing change on the British Left

If the years since the 2008 economic crisis have shown us anything, it's that people are discontent with the old order. In the UK, as well as elsewhere, governments have struggled to manage sinking economies and it has led to crashing confidence in central national authorities (Nardelli, 2014).

In Britain this has shown itself in the slow but dramatic collapse of the two-party system. Across Britain voters first switched, in modest numbers, to the Liberal Democrats, as the largest left alternative to a Labour Party that had become a towering behemoth of establishment power (The Guardian, 2010).

That switch created the first true multi-party system in Britain since the Second World War. However, when the Lib Dems gathered too little support to achieve much other than mildly shackling the Conservatives in a coalition, their voting support fractured (Kirkup, 2014). Failing to defend certain of their key policies from Conservatives depredations have sent supporters fleeing to find new havens.

In Scotland, the SNP have been the main beneficiaries of the Lib Dems being sucked into the whirlpool of mistrust of establishment political parties, and of voter's loss of trust in Labour  (Carrell, 2014). The SNP have established a reputation as a more than just a single issue separatist party, and have attracted a number of left-wing voters looking for a new left alternative, with policies like nuclear disarmament, free higher education and progressive taxation (Brooks, 2014).

Across the rest of Britain, the Green Party has been slowly building support (Walsh, 2014). The party has persistently set itself apart from the other main parties, supporting policies like the citizen's income. Green parties are organised right across the European continent, and are close to being the first truly federal European party, but have yet to make the big breakthrough in the UK. In 2010 Caroline Lucas became their first MP (BBC, 2010), and since then they have begun to poll at similar levels to both UKIP and the Lib Dems.

The rising support, for both parties, is breaking open the old system. That break could well be a blessing for the British Left. The Greens and the SNP are opening a space to the left of the British mainstream, and it's a space where progressive ideas can make themselves heard. It is also the opportunity to reshape the left in a less centralised way.

Plurality, many voices and many perspectives, is the lifeblood of debate and is at the centre of progress. The Labour Party has tried to force those different groups to unite into a single faction with one voice, but in doing so has only strangled and frustrated the political left - even as they have achieved great steps forward. The emergence of a multi-party system, and the much needed democratic reforms that will allow it to thrive, should be seen then as an opportunity to be embraced.

Britain has seen elements of a multi-party system before, but not since the Second World War. The loss of multiple parties was not really to the benefit of the left, even as Labour managed to gather left-wing voters around itself. It meant an end to co-operation between social democrats and liberals that weakened both movements (Bogdanor, 1983).

The opening up the left by multiple parties could pull Labour back leftwards, and force it to embrace co-operation with other leftist groups. The fear is that a system with many parties will lead to division and therefore weakness - but it doesn't have to. If you can find common ground and find a way to present an allied front, you will be able to work together.

There is room on the left for the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Green Party, the Co-operative Party and more, so long as they, and especially Labour, can learn to co-operate.

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References:
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+ Alberto Nardelli's 'A crisis of trust - and the rise of new political parties'; in The Guardian; 6 November 2014.

+ The Guardian's 'General election 2010: The liberal moment has come'; 30 April 2010.

+ James Kirkup's 'Only third of 2010 Lib Dem voters will back party again, poll suggests'; in The Telegraph; 7 March 2013.

+ Severin Carrell's 'Labour faces massive losses to SNP at UK general election, poll shows'; in The Guardian; 30 October 2014.

+ Libby Brooks' 'Who are the new members of the Scottish National Party?'; in The Guardian;13 November 2014.

+ James Walsh's '7 reasons why people are turning to the Green party'; in The Guardian; 14 November 2014.

+ BBC's 'Election: Green Party gain first MP with Brighton win'; 7 May 2010.

+ Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press; 1983 [Buy Now].

Spain's Podemos party signals the rise of a new political left

Since the financial crisis erupted in 2008, Europe has seen a rise in co-ordinated leftist movements, such as Occupy, getting people out onto the streets to protest against the conservative economic orthodoxy.

Despite being highly visible, those campaigns, for welfare before wealth and people before profits, have found little traction inside the political mainstream. The failure of mainstream political parties to reflect public priorities in policy has led to collapsing support for those parties, and a corresponding collapse in trust in the political institutions (Nardelli, 2014).

However, that has began to change. In time for the European elections, while the world was justifiably worried about the rise of the far right, a new party emerged in Spain. Born out of the Indignados movement, which saw as many as 8 million people take to the streets across Spain in 2011 and 2012, a new party was formed, called Podemos (Jones, 2014).

Podemos, meaning "We can", marks an important transition. The leftist activists and protesters are shifting from campaigning to political democracy, from protesting to developing policy - trying to turn ideas into action (Pope, 2014). It is a beginning of a fulfilment of the promise shown by leftist campaigns across Europe.

People have shown they are active and engaged. But they're unhappy, and are now they're taking to proposing the solutions themselves, because the establishment hasn't listened, and hasn't reformed to suit the needs of the people.

That disaffection has elsewhere only fed the parties of the far right, who only offer narrow and restrictive responses to poverty and suffering. Those groups, like UKIP, do not break from political orthodoxies and fail to offer positive alternatives. Only the anti-establishment libertarian democratic group Movimento 5 Stelle, of Italy, has succeeded in taking popular support away from those far right groups... so far.

The rising polling strength of Podemos is a positive answer to that right-wing populism, and ought to be a huge boost to those on the left, from progressives to socialists to liberals. They are championing the causes of the left: poverty reduction, the basic income, reducing dependence upon fossil fuels, promoting small, medium and local producers and enterprises along with some sensible public control.

They represent the ideals of the left, backed by a popular movement, bringing activism and political policy together to challenge mainstream methods and orthodox ideas. That is a cause for hope for anyone who is looking for a better future, one oriented more towards people and their needs, than to endless, monotonous, accumulation and consumption.

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Reference:
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+ Alberto Nardelli's 'A crisis of trust - and the rise of new political parties'; in The Guardian; 6 November 2014.

+ Owen Jones' 'Viva Podemos: the left shows it can adapt and thrive in a crisis'; in The Guardian; 16 November 2014.

+ Mike Pope's 'The rise of Podemos and its People's Assembly'; on OpenDemocracy.net; 17 November 2014.

Tories are finding new ways to demonise welfare

To prepare the ground for the next phase in their ongoing obsession with cutting back the public sector, the Conservatives announced last week that they were spending £5m of public funds to send all taxpayers a leaflet breaking down how the tax they pay is spent (Mason, 2014).

This Tory presentation on government spending has been criticised, in particular, for presenting welfare spending in an incredibly simplistic, and so misleading, way (Moore, 2014). It has been suggested that the primary aim of doing so is to justify future cuts in welfare spending, by comparing its cost versus other popular priorities like healthcare and education (Ball, 2014).

These leaflets, with their presentation of the cost of welfare are just the latest assault. Yet, a more detailed look at government spending reveals much different picture. Of spending on welfare, 46% of it goes on pensions, with only 3% spent on jobseekers allowance. A further 8% goes to the disability living allowance, and 14% is spent on housing benefits (Moore, 2014). Furthermore, the 3% spent on support for the unemployed, while they look for work, is less than 0.6% of tax revenues (Ball, 2014).

Those figures make the Conservative government's pursuit of cutting back welfare, in order to reduce overall public spending, seem absurd. It also puts into context how heavily the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been criticised for its zealous pursuit of this Tory ideological aggression towards welfare (Toynbee, 2014).

The DWP has even faced legal challenges over its 'workfare' policy, on the grounds that it constitutes forced labour - and has even refused to release information of where it is forcing people to work on the astonishing grounds that it would provoke protests (Chakelian, 2014). It's attitude has, however, provoked protests regardless, unsurprisingly, with people are being forced into work without pay in ridiculous situations (Malik, 2014).

These moves tie in perfectly with the Tory obsession with demonising welfare and demolishing public welfare safety nets. Their illiberal approach is undermining the wellbeing of the poorest, leaving them at the mercy of the market, mostly in the name of supporting capitalist free enterprise by saving the wealthiest the trouble of contributing to the common fund.

That approach, in pursuit of statistical success to justify the very unequal distribution of wealth that their economic approach requires (Watt, 2013), is crushing the real people behind the percentages and the entries in spreadsheets, and dividing the communities that bind them.

Welfare is all about a community coming together to ensure that, should any one of them stumble, everyone else will rally to help them back to their feet - and yet it is being replaced with a modern day workhouse for the poor, forcing the unemployed to labour unpaid in increasingly temporary jobs, in a job market that is being propped up on temporary workers. Throwing more obstacles in the path of those who find themselves at the bottom, or leaving behind those that falter, is an inadequate and unfair response to hard times.

Instead, we should be looking forward with ideas like a Citizen's Income, to engage with new ways to liberate people from poverty and provide opportunities. We need to provide better prospects, created by better investments in people, and the provision of better access to better opportunities - an unlocking of the doors barring the least well off from access to the connections and resources they need for a better life.

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References:
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+ Rowena Mason's 'Tax statements from George Osborne to show government spend'; in The Guardian; 2 November 2014.

+ Susan Moore's 'What the Tories won’t tell you in their ‘transparent’ tax statement'; in The Guardian; 3 November 2014.

+ James Ball's 'Osborne’s tax summary shows benefits bill is biggest drain. Is this fair?'; in The Guardian; 3 November 2014.

+ Polly Toynbee's 'Help to Work is a costly way of punishing the jobless'; in The Guardian; 15 April 2014.

+ Anoosh Chakelian's 'The DWP won't tell us exactly where it sends people on placements for fear of protests' in New Statesman; 4 November 2014.

+ Shiv Malik's 'DWP orders man to work without pay for company that let him go'; in The Guardian; 3 November 2014.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Boris Johnson invokes Thatcher spirit with greed is good speech'; in The Guardian; 27 November 2013.

Marvel finally includes a much needed female lead in their cinematic universe

The announcement of the upcoming movies planned for phase three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) contained a pleasant surprise (Brew, 2014). On the list was, at last, a female-led movie. The introduction of Captain Marvel to the MCU looks set to address the worrying lack of a female lead in Marvel's very successful movie-series (Kastrenakes, 2014).

Until now, rumours of a movie for Black Widow, portrayed in the MCU by Scarlett Johansson, had been little more than a demonstration of the extent of Marvel's dependence upon white male characters. That dependence is, however, hardly unique to Marvel. It has been shared by many a movie franchise, so much so that the success of female led films, such as Scarlett Johansson's Lucy, have resulted in expressions of wonder (Cunningham, 2014).

The Captain Marvel announcement comes then as a positive step, and follows moves made in the TV branch of Marvel's cinematic universe. On TV, with Agents of SHIELD, Marvel has at least featured a number of strong female characters very prominently. The cast has grown to become, gradually, more diverse across its first series, and now into the opening episodes of the second.

That direction is kept up by their upcoming series Agent Carter, starring the eponymous Agent Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell. Carter had a significant role in Captain America: The First Avenger, and Atwell is resuming the role to head-up the MCU's second TV series.

Together, the two Marvel shows have done a good job of giving a good share of screen time, and a good share of character roles to female characters - putting women very prominently and visibly at the forefront. However, despite the critical praise for television in general that has brought increased exposure, TV still lacks quite the same high profile that movies enjoy - and the major money-making entertainment industry that it supports - and that supports it in turn.

In the entertainment industry, that seems very much to be the key. By proving that a major film production with a female lead can bring in big box office numbers, and therefore make large amounts of money, an important ceiling can be broken. That's what makes this announcement so important.

Captain Marvel, set for screens in 2018, will bring much needed exposure and visibility for lead female characters in a critically and popularly acclaimed movie universe. It is a chance to break through the myth that the only safe option for big budget films is a white male lead.

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References:
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+Simon Brew's 'Marvel unveils Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe'; on DenofGeek.com; 28 October 2014.

+ Jason Kastrenakes' '"Captain Marvel" will be Marvel Studios' first female superhero movie'; on The Verge; 28 October 2014.

+ Todd Cunningham's 'Why Scarlett Johansson's ‘Lucy’ Strikes Blow for Women With Kick-Butt Box Office'; for Yahoo Celebrity!/The Wrap; 28 July 2014.

+ Josh Dickey's 'Carol Danvers, Marvel's first female superhero, is also the most powerful'; on Mashable.com; 28 October 2014.

+ Dave Haglund's 'Stop Saying That TV Is Better Than Movies These Days'; on Slate.com; 18 July 2013.

+ David Cox's '10 reasons today's movies trump TV'; in The Guardian; 21 October 2013.

+ Stuart Heritage's '10 reasons why today's TV is better than movies'; in The Guardian; 23 October 2014.

+ Joss Whedon's 'Marvel's Agents of SHIELD'; on ABC; 2013. [Buy Now]

+ Joe Johnston's 'Captain America: The First Avenger'; from Marvel; 2011. [Buy Now]

Fear poisons the democratic well and leaves us ripe for exploitation

Over the past few weeks and months there have been attempted armed assaults on elected officials in two Western countries (The Guardian, 2014; Roberts, 2014); there has been war, kidnap and murder in the Middle East (Swinford, 2014); a deadly disease has posed a threat to three continents (BBC, 2014); and crude and aggressive attempts are being made to stop women from speaking up for their rights (Hern, 2014). All of these events have one thing in common: Fear.

In the UK, from welfare to migration (Wintour, 2014; The Guardian, 2013), fear has started to play too large a part in the political arena, much too often. A rash of issues have been blown up into alarmist struggles, with the disproportionate and scary language used feeding the negative emotions that complicate and confuse matters (Jenkins, 2014).

The US has faired little better. The arrival of the Ebola virus has sparked all sorts of animated and colourful reactions from conservative commentators (Younge, 2014). The fear these events spark upset the order of people's lives, destabilise the things that they depend upon, and that makes them feel vulnerable and afraid, and that fear can lead to escalation (The Guardian, 2013).

Fear, either as a result of fear-mongering or ignorance, is potentially extremely powerful. It can be a potent mover of public opinion, but it does so only by poisoning the popular democratic environment. It poisons debate, it drowns out reason in a howl of noise, and it corrupts our ideals. When that happens, our liberty is at stake. It is a dark road down which we travel when we let fear, and our frightened reactions, override our reason.

Niccolo Machiavelli, the much maligned Florentine political philosopher, gave us an insight into the power that fear, when we let it control us, gives to those who might exploit it:

'And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are thankless, fickle, false studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to you while you are able to confer benefits upon them, and ready, as I said before, while danger is distant... For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes its grasp.'

That cynical view on how the fears of the people may be exploited serve us now as a warning. During the good times, when people have freedom, and their lives have some measure of stability and security, it is easier for them to think clearly and make good decisions. But when their world is upset, they feel vulnerable and so close ranks.

Fear, whether it is of change, violence, chaos or punishment, can be used to control us, or to steer us towards extreme solutions. As we retreat to familiar ground, shut out others and become less tolerant, we give life to extreme solutions. Our fears present a potentially profitable exploit to others willing to react to the situation and give us a sense of security.

However, as reactionaries offer us the extreme solutions that we, in our fear, desire, they only affirm those fears and exacerbate them (The Guardian, 2013). Fear and reaction can this way become a vicious cycle, each causing the other in turn to escalate.

We need to find a way to be calm, to be considered and thoughtful, as we take important decisions. When the world is at its worst is the time when cherished values like kindness, hope and generosity are needed the most. The answer to violence and danger, to exploitation and fear, is not to retreat into narrow tribal groups. Instead we need to find more friendship, and more support for our most cherished values, amongst more people and across many and more diverse cultures.

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References:
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+ The Guardian's 'The Guardian view on the terror attacks in Ottawa: hold fast to tolerance and diversity'; 23 October 2014.

+ Dan Roberts' 'Armed intruder had penetrated farther into White House than admitted'; in The Guardian; 29 September 2014.

+ Steven Swinford's 'David Cameron breaks off holiday after 'British' jihadist beheads kidnapped journalist'; in The Telegraph; 20 August 2014.

+ BBC's 'Ebola: Mapping the outbreak'; 22 October 2014.

+ Alex Hern's 'Felicia Day's public details put online after she described Gamergate fears'; in The Guardian; 23 October 2014.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Welfare state presides over 'culture of fear', charities say'; in The Guardian; 18 February 2014.

+ The Guardian's 'Migration: politics of fear'; 30 December 2013.

+ Simon Jenkins' 'Downing Street’s Ebola panic is a classic case of the politics of fear'; in The Guardian; 17 October 2014.

+ Gary Younge's 'Ebola has exposed America's fear, and Barack Obama's vulnerability'; in The Guardian; 19 October 2014.

+ Niccolo Machiavelli's 'The Prince'; from Chapter XVII; 1513. [Buy Now]

Strikers and protesters are demanding a better future - how long will it take Westminster to catch up with reality?

In the last week, thousands of people have taken to the streets in protest. From strike action taken by NHS staff on Monday, protesting the refusal of a 1% pay rise (The Guardian, 2014), to the Trade Union Congress (TUC) 'Britain Needs a Pay Rise' protest on Saturday (Johnston, 2014), people are taking to the streets in opposition to public sector cuts and austerity - with more strikes planned for the coming weeks.

The NHS strike received wide support, being particularly broad on twitter, that once more demonstrated strong positive public feeling towards public services, and in particular the UK's health service. The TUC protest for better pay only confirmed the increase in opposition to the public sector cuts.

At the coalition's inception a narrative was laid out that stressed the apparent necessity of cuts to public spending. That narrative came with a promise: 'We're all in this together'.

That idea was challenged from the beginning (Butler & Malik, 2010), and the statistics gathered by the government's social mobility commission, chaired by former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn (Boffey, 2014) confirm that young people are being disproportionally burdened with falling pay, fewer opportunities, and in many cases left without either the ability to find work or to find homes.

This crisis extends beyond young people, however. Prices are rising as wages and social security continue to fall across the board (Roberts, 2014). That situation is deeply affecting people's confidence, and leaving them with little hope of a better future (Mason, 2014).

Combined with incongruous contradictions like refusing a 1% pay rise for all NHS staff but approving an 11% rise for MPs (Campbell & Johnson, 2014), or the super rich getting richer as the rest of us are getting poorer (Dorling, 2014), it seems that the cuts, if the necessity of them was ever conceded, have now been pushed far enough to become a bitter pill people are no longer willing to swallow.

There is a growing feeling that the cuts are an ideological project, rather than a commitment to a pragmatic public policy. Part of an ideology opposed to the government collecting and spending money on the behalf of the people. An ideology opposed to the wealthiest contributing a proportional share to the commons. 'We're all in this together' is looking like a hastily slipping façade.

Society is becoming absurdly unbalanced, and the economic crisis continues. At a time when conditions are getting more and more difficult for those hit hardest by the continuing economic crisis, taking away public services, reducing public sector employment and drastically cutting back public welfare & support is making that situation desperate.

As Thomas Paine reminds us (1795), there has to be something in it for the worst off within civilisation.

'In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period. But the fact is that the condition of millions, in every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before civilization began.'

Otherwise, why should they care or participate? Today, Paine's words remind us of society's duty to ensure continued hope and enfranchisement of each new generation. But those obligations are being shattered by attacks on social security.

In response people are out in increasing numbers to strike, and to protest. They are resisting. Yet they are also finding it hard to make themselves heard where it matters. It is not a coincidence that these difficult conditions have been accompanied by the rise of far-right populism across Europe. As Charles Kennedy (2006) warned us:

'The danger in all of this is that if sufficient people conclude that there is nothing in the conventional political process for them then they may opt for more simplistic and extreme options on offer. I remain an optimist. But across the mainstream political spectrum there is a candid recognition of the danger.'

It was in these kinds of conditions that movements like the protests of May '68 in France emerged, when an entire fifth of the country's population went on strike. From Occupy, to the student protests in Chile, to the democratic movement across the Middle East and North Africa, and protests against austerity across Europe, people are taking to the streets to demand a better future.

In the UK, these strikes and protests are becoming a common sight. Public sector workers, trade unions and government commissioners are warning that society is slipping into dangerous levels of inequality and unfairness. How long will it take Westminster to catch up with reality?

==========
References:
==========
+ The Guardian's 'Unite workers vote to strike in NHS staff pay dispute'; 26 September 2014.

+ Chris Johnston's 'Tens of thousands take to UK streets in pay protest'; in The Guardian; 18 October 2014.

+ Patrick Butler's & Shiv Malik's 'All in it together? Young people and the cuts'; in The Guardian; 8 December 2010.

+ Daniel Boffey's 'Alan Milburn says Britain is on verge of being permanently divided between haves and have-nots as young miss out on recovery'; in The Guardian; 19 October 2014.

+ Yvonne Robert's 'Low-paid Britain: 'People have had enough. It's soul destroying''; in The Guardian; 30 August 2014.

+ Paul Mason's 'The unending economic crisis makes us feel powerless – and paranoid'; in The Guardian; 19 October 2014.

+ Denis Campbell & Sarah Johnson's 'NHS strike: clinics close and operations cancelled in dispute over pay'; in The Guardian; 13 October 2014.

+ Danny Dorling's 'How the super rich got richer: 10 shocking facts about inequality'; in The Guardian; 15 September 2014.

+ Thomas Paine's 'Agrarian Justice'; 1795. [Buy Now]

+ Charles Kennedy's 'How we lost people's trust'; in The Guardian; 4 August 2006.

The party conferences reveal different visions for our economic future

With the next UK general election now only months away, this round of political party conferences is all about building towards polling day. That means each party is beginning to mark out its territory, and to lay out the policies that voters will be asked to choose between.

With the economic crisis refusing to abate, and a series of deep cuts to public sector funding likely to be followed by more in the next parliament - certainly if the current government survives the election - the economy is going to be a major factor for consideration.

On the matter of economics, political parties seem to adhere to a set of rules that ensure that things don't change too much. But the main parties all have their own visions, even if there are some common themes. Each of those visions reveals to us a little bit about the differences between the parties.

Amongst the most telling are the policies of the right-wing conservatives, who will have the novelty of being represented by two parties at the next general election. The Conservative Party and UKIP represent the same fundamental political positions, though in UKIP's case it has been taken to some extremes.

Savage cuts to public services appear to be on the Conservative Party agenda for the next parliament, with the wealthiest looking likely to be the main benefactors (Ball, 2014). UKIP's offer looks astoundingly similar, if anything even more weighted towards the upper middle class and upwards - to be paid for, they say, by leaving Europe, and so ending Britain's contributions to things like the Regional Development Fund and support for Agriculture and Fisheries, and by cutting foreign aid (BBC, 26/9/2014).

Both conservative parties are also offering to copy the Liberal Democrats and their stated commitment to take the poorest out of income tax. Along with that, go commitments to give tax cuts to those earning up to £50-£55,000 a year, along with making fairly tenuous promises to 'protect the NHS' (Wright, 2014).

The question is, with all of the tax cuts, how exactly is the NHS going to be protected? Unless by more cuts to other public services or more privatisation? It has been suggested that the cuts will only really benefit the wealthier. Those concerns will become a reality if keeping public healthcare afloat means even more cuts to basic services that the poorest depend on.

With those kinds of attitudes towards the role of government, and to the running of public services, along with the belief of both conservative groups in dismantling Europe's Human Rights framework, the way ahead does not look rosy for the poorest should one of the conservative parties get their way.

Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has focussed his economic pitch on standing out from the other main parties. Rather than raising many of the lowest paid out of tax, Labour want to increase the minimum wage. They want to combine that with a freeze on energy prices (BBC, 22/9/2014).

The issue comes with Labour's unwillingness to commit to whether or not they will continue with the Conservative Party's cuts to public spending (Peston, 2014). This has happened before. Throughout the last four years Labour haven't ruled out continuing the cuts, and Ed Balls' conference speech has done nothing to offer reassurance on the matter.

The Labour Party's determination to set itself apart from the opposition is so far obvious only in words. On the surface, the difference between conservative and Labour positions appears as if it will be a contest over who can better administer the status quo, and subtle shifts in tax taken either from the wealthy, or from the poor.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have also set their stall out in an effort to distance themselves from the others. They want to give a tax cut to 29 million, increasing the pre-tax allowance to £11,000, a policy that has been copied across the board. However the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has stressed that this will be paid for by focussing tax increases on the richest, as part of an effort to 'rebalance' tax increases and cuts (Lansdale, 2014) - highlighting the need to find new ways to rebalance state finances without more cuts.

Their pitch is that the Lib Dems would borrow less than Labour and cut less than the right-wing parties. They are trying to set out their own position, and get back to the basics of liberal policy. But that comes with an attachment to the free market that ultimately chains them, and has led them to sacrifice other policies, like the abolition of tuition fees, that were more important to voters (Wheeler, 2014). It also prevents them from being a complete alternative to the Conservatives, UKIP and Labour.

A group that has not been afraid to criticise the market orthodoxies are the Green Party. The Greens present voters with a progressive alternative that sets them very much apart from the other parties.

They want levies on wealth and large rises in the minimum wage, along with the introduction of a basic income - also known as a citizen's income - and to renationalise the railways (Mason, 2014). Further, they aim to do this within a new framework, a new political settlement, to be drawn up with the participation of the whole country.

The Greens represent a quietly growing progressive movement, with organised political parties across Europe, who are beginning to find support for a renewal of trust and engagement in politics, one coupled to a new approach to economics.

Yet that quiet movement is struggling to make the catchy headlines needed to get public attention away from stunts and controversy, like the Conservative Party tearing itself in two over the European Union, and splitting apart into new factions like UKIP.

Those controversies will ultimately prove the making or breaking of this next UK general election. With so much populist and hyped-up focus on extreme factions, and the main parties squabbling over who to trust on certain issues, it will be hard to see the real information through the cloud of noise.

And that is a problem, because to make the right decisions, when election time comes around, all of the best information is needed. The noise and popularity contests will mean people having to remain vigilant to find it, and see through the propaganda to what each party is really trying to achieve.

==========
References:
==========
+ James Ball's 'Cameron’s tax cuts benefit middle and higher earners, not the poorest'; in The Guardian; 2 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'UKIP conference: Income tax cuts plan unveiled'; 26 September 2014.

+ Ben Wright's 'Cameron frames election choice with tax cuts pledge'; on the BBC; 1 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'David Cameron pledges tax cuts 'for 30m people''; 1 October 2014.

+ Nick Robinson's 'Cameron: Talk of 'better times' rather than austerity'; on the BBC; 1 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'Ed Balls sets out priorities for 'first Labour Budget''; 22 September 2014.

+ Robert Peston's 'Can Balls be just austere enough?'; on the BBC; 22 September 2014.

+ James Lansdale's 'Lib Dems seek centre 'gap' as Tories and Labour shift'; on the BBC; 5 October 2014.

+ Brian Wheeler's 'Lib Dems should have died in a ditch over tuition fees - Farron'; on the BBC; 6 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'Nick Clegg pledges 'tax cut for 29 million people' in 2016'; 7 October 2014.

+ Chris Mason's 'Can the Greens' economic ideas grab the attention of voters?'; on the BBC; 5 September 2014.

+ BBC's 'Green Party calls for £10 hourly minimum wage by 2020'; 5 September 2014.

+ BBC's 'Green Party says membership up to 26,000 across Britain'; 6 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'Green Party seeks 'radical' new political settlement'; 19 September 2014.

Doctor Who and the patronising, paternalistic, patriarchy

The past two episodes of Doctor Who, The Caretaker and Kill the Moon, have seen the dynamic between the Doctor and his companion Clara shift towards something a lot more paternal, and uncomfortably more patronising.

Clara began the season as the responsible adult and carer to the Doctor's increasingly alien psychopathic detachment. But the most recent episodes have seen her caught between two very paternalistic, patriarchal male figures, against whom it felt like Clara deserved to put up a greater resistance. She was, after all, once the commander of some Space Romans and said no to their Emperor, and even resisted conversion into a Dalek.

From being a strong counterpoint to the Doctor, she was flipped into uncertainty, and was somewhat patronised, as she found herself caught between the Doctor and her new boyfriend, former soldier now maths teacher, Danny Pink.

It would not be the first time that the show has been paternal and patriarchal towards female characters. That has, historically, been the result of women being written by men for men, in a less culturally aware past. There have been amongst those many strong female characters, even though they usually existed within a (very) male framework (and gaze).

But right now there is a need for more strong female characters, written for women, as visible role models. Women who can show the full and complex range of human emotions, and be strong for it, while being resolute and kind, heroic and compassionate in the face of danger.

In this latest episode, Clara's angry response to the Doctor's patronising attitude was a positive move - even if it was not necessarily helpful to follow that with this strong female character being encouraged, rather patronisingly, to calm down and act when less emotional, by her former soldier boyfriend. It did take a little of the sting out of the moment.

These latest changes in the character dynamic could all, of course, easily be part of an arc - either for Clara, or for the Doctor, particularly regarding his manipulative, sometimes quite patronising, heroism. It is too early in the series to draw any conclusions.

It would be great to think that we are in the middle of a really meaningful arc for the show, in which a lot of the old sexisms can be drawn out, critiqued and then hopefully discarded. We will have to wait and see.

==========
References:
==========
+ Stephen Moffatt's Doctor Who: 'The Caretaker'; Series 8; on the BBC; 27 September 2014.

+ Stephen Moffatt's Doctor Who: 'Kill the Moon'; Series 8; on the BBC; 4 October 2014.

+ Stephen Moffat's Doctor Who: 'Asylum of the Daleks'; Series 7 Part 1; on the BBC; 1 September 2012.
[Buy Now]

+ Stephen Moffat's Doctor Who: 'Nightmare in Silver'; Series 7 Part 2; on the BBC; 11 May 2013. [Buy Now]

History has shown us that the working class have little to gain from far right groups like UKIP

The unfortunate electoral success of the far right over the past year ought to be a wake up call. It should alert anyone who has yet to notice that the world is not content.

One of the beneficiaries of this discontent are UKIP. They have found fertile ground for their anti-immigrant, anti-government, right-wing populism in the South East of England and now look to test the soil in the North.

Those to whom they will look for new support are the working class who make up the traditional base of the Labour Party's support. They will look to these people in hope that their disillusionment with the Labour movement, and its many deals done with and within a distant Westminster establishment, not always in the worker's best interest, will be enough for them to supplant the Labour Party in working class affections (The Guardian, 2014).

Their play seems simple enough. Lower taxes, protection of the NHS, curbs on immigration and a restoration of national pride - out from under the European Union (Mason, 2014).

The trouble is that these are vague, and often bad, promises. The interests of the working class are not served by a society restructured for the benefit of only a capitalistic few, no matter how the policies leading to it are dressed up in a simplistic and emotional pitch. Cutting taxes is being pitched to the working class, but benefits only the wealthy. The poorest are most likely to be deeply disadvantaged by resultant public service cuts, and to find the least recompense from the market.

The comedy in the promise is that it's not as if this is the first time these kinds of promises have been made, to the working class by the far right, and its not as if they haven't failed before. Spectacularly.

Fascism

The fascist parties that emerged following the Great War made many of the same promises that the far right still turns to today. The main difference is that these parties believed in a state dictatorship that would oversee a populist nationalist movement - one that would restore national pride and advance the national interest, which usually led down violent and racist paths.

Fascism, on top of its fundamentally conservative aims - preservation of tradition, moralism and social status-quo from any sort of change - carried corporatist ideology. They sought to manage society, in a fundamentally totalitarian fashion, through state affiliated trade unions, or entire sectors of the economy through massive private corporations.

The policies of Mussolini's Partito Nazionale Fascista in Italy saw the most ready applications of those beliefs, though other countries, such as Spain where Franco's regime and the Falange party ruled, saw fascism flourish as well.

Mussolini tried to achieve full employments through state guilds, or national syndicates, that enlisted all men, and even banned women from the workplace - confining them to a 'traditional place' in the home as wives and mothers. His efforts however produced few results.

More prominent were the social attitudes of fascists, that drove militaristic language and attitudes into civil society. Mussolini in particular, in his The Doctrine of Fascism, said that:

"Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers."

Fascism in Spain was also heavily infused with militaristic nationalism from the beginning. Franco's Regime began as a military coup against Spain's Republican government, its Republic constitution and the political left that supported it. It sought to regiment society in an authoritarian order, along the lines of conservative values - tradition, hierarchical order and morality.

Though Franco's system of fascism was altered in subtle ways from the Italian model, with a greater emphasis on national moralism - Spanish Catholicism - it retained most of the common elements. A patriarchal society, deeply controlling, with dictatorships that protected the landed classes and the wealthy, and their institutions, by holding the population in an iron-handed grip.

The people were controlled by the state, in favour of those with vested interests and good connections, with the benefits to the people being peripheral or dependent upon a complete denigration of individual choice and an acceptance of, and compliance with, authoritarian rule.

Neoliberalism

The new era of far right movements, represented by political parties such as UKIP, have learned the lessons of fascism's failure. But, they have also learned the lessons of English classical liberalism and neoliberalism, and of American libertarianism and objectivism.

It is no longer necessary to control the state, and thence society, to protect the interests of the upper classes. The language of militarism has been replaced by the language of the boardroom and the stock market floor. The powerful corporations no longer find themselves beneath the authority of states (Orr, 2013).

Protection of the interests of the upper classes today takes place in a world run by money and financial investments, where most of the vested interests find any kind of government at all to be an inconvenience. So begins the era of small government and minimal taxes.

Talk of freedoms is twisted to fit the narratives of the privileged elite, who became so thanks to the protections of 'English liberty' - the protection of private property and the freedom of business and financial transactions. The state, home to the public institutions that restrict and regulate the interests of the elite, becomes a hindrance.

But even a minimal state still requires democracy, with voters on your side, and the trouble for the 1% is that there are just so few of them. In their search for populist narratives to supported a conservative political establishment that is favourable to the interests of elites, the old far right overtones seem to have been revived.

Historically, the far right of old either made an autocratic appeal to the army and suspended democracy; or it made a popular appeal to the people - the poorer, more numerous, and more ignorant, the better - on simple emotive terms. It appealed to religion, to nation, to duty.

The new front of the far right seem to have found for themselves a new role within that neoliberal, economic conservative, pro-business, anti-state era. They are wedding the neoliberal economics of globalised corporate capitalism, with the politics of nationalism, traditionalism and moralism that underwrote the old far right - in a way that has been so effective in the United States.

Controlling the state has become bypassing and minimalising it - even maiming it along the way to keep it quiet and ineffective as a token veil of democracy that is being otherwise shredded in favour of elitism.

Promises

UKIP, as the newest voice of the far right in the Britain, makes all the same appeals as the far right groups of the past. It appeals to popular sentiments, promising national revivals and returns to traditional values, while wielding a language of divisive nationalism - combined now with profitable capitalism.

But those promises, when made by the far right before, have not been kept, and have often been sought along those paths at a great price. The lie of nationalism has divided workers into nations, and then divided them again, against themselves, into cynical ideologically named groups like 'strivers and skivers', of hardworking citizens and welfare cheats.

It is to be hoped that UKIP's brand of far right populism finds itself far removed from the dark days of fascism. But their own brand of anti-Europe, anti-government, anti-immigrant, low tax, pro-business and National revivalist politics, bearing all the hallmarks of the far right of old, deeply conservative and deeply reactionary, carries plenty of causes for concern.

The far right of today may not want to control society by controlling the state any longer, but their attempts to popularly undermine the state does no favours to the working classes. The state is not necessarily in itself a good thing, but its replacement as an establishment force by a capitalist market dominated and controlled by the interests of massive corporations and a 1% of wealthy elites is hardly an improvement.

More privatisation, with corporations given even more of a free hand, together with being bound within a narrow society shaped by narrow perceptions of otherness, does not give the impression of either freedom or prosperity. Neither laissez-faire capitalism, nor far right nationalism, have ever offered the working class something without taking more for a powerful elite. There seems to be no reason to believe that has changed.

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References:
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+ The Guardian's 'The Guardian view on Ukip conference: Nigel Farage’s phoney flutter'; 26 September 2014.

+ Rowena Mason's 'Ukip vows to slash immigration and cut taxes in pitch for blue-collar vote'; in The Guardian; 29 September 2014.

+ Deborah Orr's 'Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom'; in The Guardian; 8 June 2013.

For more information about Fascism and the historical far right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism#Fascist_corporatism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falangism

Four years, two hundred articles, and there are still reasons for hope

This is the two hundredth weekly post on this blog. Over the last four years we have covered everything from the Scottish independence referendum, to the Hacking Scandal, to the Chilean Winter student protests and the first free elections in Tunisia since 1956.

The purpose of this blog, from the beginning, has been to observe politics, society and authority; to scrutinise them and attempt to find moderate solutions to our contemporary anxieties. This has meant searching out the motivations behind political and social movements, identifying ideological themes, exposing them and analysing them.

At times that has been a gruesome task. The past year, in particular, has seen the world take a significant turn for the darker. War has broken out once more in some parts of the world, like Iraq, where the West had believed that peace had been achieved.

In other places, war has broken a long peace. Ukraine has been pulled apart by war after protests against the government led to a severe split in the country, between the pro-European and the pro-Russian elements.

Furthermore, the world has yet to break out of the economic crisis that began in 2008, and continues to be affected by how governments have responded - especially the, Conservative ideology influenced, economic orthodoxy of public sector cuts.

The cutbacks and the hard times associated with them are not unconnected to the rise of far right populism in Europe, having often being the breeding ground for it in the past. Right wing groups have made a significant impact, gaining political representation in a number of countries, including the UK and France, and it has caused concern to many.

But in amongst these depressing events, over the past four years there have been reasons for hope.

Even while voting turnouts have dropped, public engagement with politics has been high. Progressive protesters of all kinds have taken to the streets to campaign for everything from the right to education, to the protection of vital public services like healthcare, pensions and welfare from ideologically driven public sector cuts, to the occupy protests that demanded a more equal society, free from exploitation.

The long struggle for equality of civil rights also continues. Awareness of feminism is at a new high. Rape culture and everyday sexism are all now well known issues, and people are standing up against them. The rights of gay people to civil equality is being taken seriously around the world, and beginning to bear fruit - the first steps of which has been gay marriage.

Rising awareness and greater possibilities of being better informed and better connected than ever before promise us that a new era of radical reformism is only just around the corner. Hypocrisies, contradictions and corruption are being exposed. People are speaking out, openly, about the need to pursue civil liberties, social justice and a sustainable society, and they are getting together to go out and campaign for them.

After four years, and two hundred weekly articles - posted every Monday - of sifting through corruption, hidden agendas and political double-speak, I can still see hope. There are lights sparking everywhere that, just maybe, can illumine the way forward. Thank you for your support, and we hope to see you back here again next Monday.

What now for Scotland, and for Britain?

The votes are counted and Scotland will not be independent. That result will not, however, change much about the situation that the UK finds itself in.

There are 45% of the people of Scotland who wish for the country to break away. Nowhere did less than a third of voters choose independence. Those are not insignificant numbers. Furthermore, even a no vote comes with the promise of some additional autonomy.

For the Unionists, all they have won is a delay until the question is asked again. But, for supporters of the Union, there was really no way, as it presently stands, they were ever going to able to revel in a victory - shy of achieving a comprehensive 90% or more rejection of independence.

Even with a no vote, the autonomy of the provinces will increase, and continue to do so in a lopsided fashion - something bound to agitate those who see the situation to be unfair upon English voters. Westminster will, likely as not, continue to be despised as a distant and out of touch central government.

Scotland is still divided, still drifting away, still retaining its autonomy and independence remains popular. If it comes to vote again, and economic conditions are not so dire as to give Unionists such ammunition for a negative campaign, it is possible that independence could just scrape through.

The rest of Britain could also likely follow the Scottish path to greater regional autonomy and more federalisation, rather than centralisation. The close no vote could well act as a positive spur for Britain to finally claw its way towards modern institutions; towards decentralised, federal government with more power sent to the provinces and local government.

Or, the public will lose interest now that change has been prevented, and Westminster, responding with victorious flag-waving patriotism, will take the no vote to be an opportunity to change nothing at all. It is to be hoped, however, that this referendum will prove a turning point.

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References:
==========
+ BBC's 'Scotland Decides: Results'.

+ James Landale's 'Scottish Independence: What happens after the decision?'; on the BBC; 18 September 2014.

+ Nick Robinson's 'The people have spoken. But it's not over'; on the BBC; 19 September 2014.

+ Andrew Black's 'Scotland votes 'No': What happens now?'; on the BBC; 19 September 2014.

+ BBC's 'David Cameron sets out UK-wide changes 'to build better future''; 19 September 2014.

+ Rafael Behr's 'Nine things the indyref campaign has taught us'; in The Guardian; 18 September 2014.

+ Martin Kettle's 'Scotland votes no: the union has survived, but the questions for the left are profound'; in The Guardian; 19 September 2014.