Michael Gove Wanted Me To Powder Him Down

Here's a little something about Michael Gove I posted last year describing an actual event that took place a few years back in Grays Inn Road. BTW, it's true — teachers do need love, not Gove.

Sad-sack Education Minister Michael Gove helped himself to make-up belonging to an exotic lovely and made strange demands minutes before appearing before blonde Kirsty Young, 27, at ITN's studios in posh intellectuals' haunt, Grays Inn Road.

"It was when I was publicising The Best Democracy Money Can Buy", said buxom press-officer Anna Chen, 22, flicking her long tresses out of her almond eyes. Sultry beauty Chen said, "There I was in the Green Room, helping my mate Greg Palast not reflect the light from his very high forehead when Michael Gove, who was there for an 'interview' with our Kirsty, suddenly reached in and grabbed. He'd been coveting the contents of my little make-up bag with his pre-lasered eyeballs for ages. This was back in the day before he got his new hairdo and makeover."

Sinister Gove then asked her to "powder me down".

"Powder me down" is a well-known perverts' term for unspeakable televisual and filmic practices.

"So there I was, trying to beautify the most evil Education Minister this country would ever see like some champion fluffer. All my skills and photoshopping couldn't prettify this ugly little monster."

Ms Chen is deeply regretful. "It's like when they ask you, if you could go back in time and top Hitler before he came to power, what would you do? I wish I'd tattooed the pursed-lipped creep with 'I am a threat to your children' across his fugly mug. To have missed a chance like that is enough to turn you to drink," said the busty Ms Chen, pouring herself another quart of Absinthe with a trembling hand.

Ms Chen is 19.

Ferdinand Mount's 'Orwell on the Oligarchs' lecture: how George would have loved the Tory cuts

Well, I saw this coming a mile off. I knew that Ferdinand Mount was a novelist, Sunday Times columnist, Thatcher-era Tory grandee and former TLS editor when I heard him deliver his talk on 'Orwell and the Oligarchs' last night at the annual George Orwell Memorial Lecture hosted by Birkbeck. However, I had no idea he was also a cousin of David Cameron's Mum and a former baronet, yet I still managed to guess, about ten minutes in, on which side his fois gras was buttered.

More sophisticated than John Lloyd, whose carefully selected quotes at last week's talk on Orwell and Russia skewed Orwell into a hater of all things socialist rather than someone opposed to the Stalinist betrayal of the revolution, Ferdy knew how to get his audience on board.

He began well enough with the bleedin' obvious crowd-pleasing observation that the new oligarchs of business are having a larf with their pay. Directors are trousering hundreds of times the average pay of their own workers and Ferdy laid out how it's done with satirical aplomb.

Remuneration for boards of directors is out of control and has little to do with worth, stitched up by "mutual admiration societies" of executives and non-executives, leading to widescale looting and pillaging.

He highlighted the case of US company Household, bought by HSBC for £9 billion and which turned out to be an aggressive lender in the sub-prime market. Its inevitable fall was one of the first examples of collapse leading to the recession.

And yet ...

Building up to a full head of steam, he pleaded for self-examination, pointing out that while Marx and others in the leftist pantheon were willing to tear the mask off others, they failed to fully introspect themselves. And so Ferdy showed us how to do it, generously allowing himself the assumption that his way was the straight and narrow, pursued with enviable crystal clarity.

Thus Ferdy took us from George Orwell's critique of James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution and through to his own conclusion. Burnham, according to my Lovely Companion, made the rightward trek from Trotskyist to "ferocious right-wing-conservative". But he didn't travel far enough to the right for Ferdy, who detected a residual Trotskyism in Burnham's analysis that "capitalism was doomed". The state would take over, he warned, and rentier private capital would be smashed rather than retain any place in business. Orwell disagreed, foreseeing a trajectory towards an oligarchy where bankers and managers displaced scientists and productive talent, snatching a disproportionate share of the rewards. Power would be concentrated in fewer hands at the top and, indeed, Britain now has one of the most concentrated power elites in Europe.

And how does this destructive state of affairs manifest?

Not in the rich and powerful who make up the oligarchy: the upper classes salting away their cash in tax havens, dominating the media, and sucking out all the wealth with devil-take-the-hindmost gusto, apparently. Not in the smashing up our arts, culture and education and returning us to Victorian levels of poverty.

According to Ferdy, it is centralised government that is the Big Bad. After all that preamble, with one bound banking and business were suddenly off the hook and out of the equation, while the "thickening networks of controls" and "gigantism" were doing the damage. The Department of Education, f'rinstance, imposed its power on all aspects of education. What's more, municipal housing equates not with putting a roof over the heads of our citizens but with the loss of freedom for the tenants.

He harked back wistfully to a time of individual freedom before financial controls and regulations became oppressive. We all like to relive our glory days, and Ferdy's would have been around 1982-3 when he was a member of Margaret Thatcher's inner sanctum and heartthrob Ronald Reagan was dismantling US financial controls with the results we are still feeling today.

Ferdy wittered on about the virtues of the coalition government. Theirs is true liberalism, don'tcha know, an "apprehension of oligarchy concentrated in too few hands" aiming at a "devolved, plural, liberal" system without central government telling the little people what to do. The policy of Tory cuts, backed by the LibDems, is "the result of genuine dialogue designed to put right what's gone wrong." A "refreshing" "surfacing impulse to examine and put right the oligarchy".

Thus a banking crisis is turned into a crisis of public services. See what he did there?

It was fitting that this lecture should have been held in Senate House, the architectural inspiration for Orwell's Ministry of Truth.

Such was the tortured logic of the argument that the purpose of the lecture appeared to be to give succour to the Bullingdon bullies and legitimise the coalition government's savage policies. Do these guys sit down over dinner and work out a strategy for deceiving the public via the various media organs and propaganda outlets? Or does this stuff spring fully-formed like Minerva from heads hard-wired to work in self-serving concert? As Orwell wrote, you don't need a beaten dog when well-trained ones will do just as well.

The surreal lurch from a deserved castigation of the greed and corruption of the elite — Ferdy's peers — into an attack on our public services, and everything that made this country a pleasure, was bizarre to behold. If this is the best the right-wing intelligentsia can offer, pack them off to the dreaded Media Studies they loathe so much where perhaps they will learn to make their propagandising a teensy tad less transparent.

Birkbeck's invitation was a truly generous and charitable act, providing Mount's threadbare intellectual cast-off with home and shelter. Ferdinand Mount should be grateful that the great man himself was not in the house to offer the drily stinging rebuttal which some of us were aching to hear.

At close of play, Orwell may have been Mounted, but he certainly wasn't stuffed.

Gauche asks what sort of state is it that Labour wants?

Video: Ferdinand Mount's George Orwell Memorial Lecture, "Orwell and the Oligarchs".

Richest 1,000 could clear the deficit here

Student protests mark revival of spirit and challenge to ConDem cuts

A brilliant piece by John Harris here, exposes the right-wing lies pushed by the ConDem media wing about the cuts.

The students who stormed Millbank Tory headquarters on Wednesday are the canaries down the mine. They indicate the level of protest to come when the cuts bite. Greedy bastards such as the tax-avoiding billionaire Philip Green and dodgy former BP head Lord Browne who are helming the attack on the poor, leading to workhouse-style free labour, homelessness and exodus of the poorest from the cities, may think they have a free run, but Harris finds evidence in the polls — largely ignored by the press — that people aren't as stupid as the government hopes.

As Harris writes:

More generally, presumably to the delight of the government, a cliche has long since oozed into the reporting of what they are up to: that people accept the need for drastic austerity, and are meekly preparing for the necessary dose of fiscal medicine. ... the share of people who think the government has made either the right or wrong calls on public spending is evenly split: 41% and 38% respectively, while one in five simply don't know; 40% of people disagree with the idea that the coalition's approach will improve the state of the economy; while 49% reject the idea that, as the coalition insists, public services will somehow improve in the long run; 47% oppose cutting back the number of people who work in the public sector. Public opinion, it seems, is as contorted and contradictory as ever – and for the government, there is much less comfort than you might imagine.

Unlike the mainstream media, we can see that the real vandalism and violence being done to our society is by an unelected government with no mandate to carry out their attacks while preserving their own wealth and privilege.

If we are all in this together, welfare state vandals like Osborne should get their millions out of offshore havens and start paying proper tax. A steep rise in tax for those earning over £100 K, a Robin Hood Tobin tax on city deals, swingeing levels of tax on bankers' bonuses at least until our £1.3 trillion bailout is repaid, and the closure of tax loopholes are all needed if we are to start repairing the damage done by the bankers to the world economy.

Wednesday's student protest at Millbank was a heartening reminder that the spirit of resistance is alive. In the absence of any leadership from a supine Labour party, this looks like the only way forward.

Laurie Penny on the front line.

How the richest 1,000 could clear the deficit here

Student protests mark revival of spirit and challenge to ConDem cuts

A brilliant piece by John Harris here, exposes the right-wing lies pushed by the ConDem media wing about the cuts.

The students who stormed Millbank Tory headquarters on Wednesday are the canaries down the mine. They indicate the level of protest to come when the cuts bite. Greedy bastards such as the tax-avoiding billionaire Philip Green and dodgy former BP head Lord Browne who are helming the attack on the poor, leading to workhouse-style free labour, homelessness and exodus of the poorest from the cities, may think they have a free run, but Harris finds evidence in the polls — largely ignored by the press — that people aren't as stupid as the government hopes.

As Harris writes:

More generally, presumably to the delight of the government, a cliche has long since oozed into the reporting of what they are up to: that people accept the need for drastic austerity, and are meekly preparing for the necessary dose of fiscal medicine. ... the share of people who think the government has made either the right or wrong calls on public spending is evenly split: 41% and 38% respectively, while one in five simply don't know; 40% of people disagree with the idea that the coalition's approach will improve the state of the economy; while 49% reject the idea that, as the coalition insists, public services will somehow improve in the long run; 47% oppose cutting back the number of people who work in the public sector. Public opinion, it seems, is as contorted and contradictory as ever – and for the government, there is much less comfort than you might imagine.

Unlike the mainstream media, we can see that the real vandalism and violence being done to our society is by an unelected government with no mandate to carry out their attacks while preserving their own wealth and privilege.

If we are all in this together, welfare state vandals like Osborne should get their millions out of offshore havens and start paying proper tax. A steep rise in tax for those earning over £100 K, a Robin Hood Tobin tax on city deals, swingeing levels of tax on bankers' bonuses at least until our £1.3 trillion bailout is repaid, and the closure of tax loopholes are all needed if we are to start repairing the damage done by the bankers to the world economy.

Wednesday's student protest at Millbank was a heartening reminder that the spirit of resistance is alive. In the absence of any leadership from a supine Labour party, this looks like the only way forward.

Laurie Penny on the front line.

How the richest 1,000 could clear the deficit here

Vodafone tax protests put Left and TUC to shame

Look. This is what can be achieved with imagination and a bit of media savvy. The sneaky Vodafone deal whereby the ConDem coalition government (that did NOT win the election) let them off £6 billion in taxes owed to the British public while smashing up our society with draconian cuts has been thrust into the media spotlight by independent activists.

So where is the leadership from the Left, whether it be Labour, the TUC or the far left? The sad old dinosaurs and sectarians have had MONTHS to get their act together. Yet all they could do was hold a couple of demos in the week of the actual cuts with another planned manyana.

Meanwhile, the right have been given a free run in the media with the BBC especially shameful in their reinforcing of the cutters' narrative. I'm sure I wasn't the only one to listen to the BBC R4 Today programme coverage on the morning of the Bullingdon Budget (thanks Armando Iannucci) on October 20th, spitting blood over the presentation of the right agenda with no balance except for a meek and mild Mark Steel at the very end.

Did they have a team harrying the BBC editors to present the economically literate side, as articulated by Robert Skidlelsky, and as demanded by their public remit? Aside from the odd token appearance allowed of commentators such as Skidelsky and Ken Loach (who put up a damn good fight versus Michael Heseltine on Newsnight), we were left almost entirely without spokespersons. Selective vox pop meant that the Tory cutting lie was halfway around the world before the truth had got its pants on.

There is a groundswell of disgust with the left's inaction over the assault on our services with the suspicion that Labour is keeping quiet because it, too, would have pushed through similarly swingeing cuts. Johnson instead of Balls in the Treasury? Wrong bit of anatomy, mate. See, I told you "Red" Ed Miliband was all pantomime (here and here), confirmed when he didn't even turn up for the first of the demos as he'd promised.

I look forward to more Vodafone-style action from the public while the Left and the TUC find their balls, now officially MIA.

False Economy
False Economy on Facebook
Paul Anderson in Tribune
Johann Hari in The Independent

Tory cuts: How to solve the crisis in one easy move

Here's a wise and wonderful post from someone's Facebook I noted last month.

HOW TO SOLVE THE CRISIS IN ONE EASY MOVE

A report in the Independent shows that the richest 1,000 people in the UK could pay off the whole of the £159 billion public deficit tomorrow, just from the profits they have made last year out of the economic crisis.
The collective wealth of the country's 1,000 richest people rose 30% last year in the wake of the economic crisis.
Their combined wealth rose by more than £77bn to £333.5bn, the biggest annual increase in the 22-year history of the Sunday Times rich list.

Sadly, I can't find the report but if anyone can shed further light, it would be most appreciated.

Sunday Times rich list here.

George Monbiot on the Tories seeing this as a long-awaited opportunity.

UPDATE: I'd also like to point out that the left has been worse than fucking useless. Where is the debate? It's been business as usual for these phonies. One demo on the day of the cuts and one at the weekend? A bit late, don't you think? The "leaders" of the left want all the glory and will do none of the slog to ensure there's been a challenge in the media, so the government and the right-wing argument has set like concrete in the minds of the public. YOU DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO SET THE AGENDA!

Thanks to Bilus for the link to this report on taxing the rich to settle the deficit.

How the richest 1,000 could clear the deficit here

Tory cuts: How to solve the crisis in one easy move

Here's a wise and wonderful post from someone's Facebook I noted last month.

HOW TO SOLVE THE CRISIS IN ONE EASY MOVE

A report in the Independent shows that the richest 1,000 people in the UK could pay off the whole of the £159 billion public deficit tomorrow, just from the profits they have made last year out of the economic crisis.
The collective wealth of the country's 1,000 richest people rose 30% last year in the wake of the economic crisis.
Their combined wealth rose by more than £77bn to £333.5bn, the biggest annual increase in the 22-year history of the Sunday Times rich list.

Sadly, I can't find the report but if anyone can shed further light, it would be most appreciated.

Sunday Times rich list here.

George Monbiot on the Tories seeing this as a long-awaited opportunity.

UPDATE: I'd also like to point out that the left has been worse than fucking useless. Where is the debate? It's been business as usual for these phonies. One demo on the day of the cuts and one at the weekend? A bit late, don't you think? The "leaders" of the left want all the glory and will do none of the slog to ensure there's been a challenge in the media, so the government and the right-wing argument has set like concrete in the minds of the public. YOU DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO SET THE AGENDA!

Thanks to Bilus for the link to this report on taxing the rich to settle the deficit.

How the richest 1,000 could clear the deficit here

VAT rise as LibDems aid Tory attack on the poorest

It's official. The poorest ten per cent in Britain will see their shopping bills rise and lose the most as ConDem make up the deficit their banker friends caused by raising VAT to 20 percent and cutting our public services. Nick "Ramsay McClegg" Clegg just helped push through the most draconian budget in decades despite all their promises in the run-up to the election, and gave his party their Clause Four moment.

I listened to Vince Cable squirming last night on C4 News as he was quizzed over the LibDem election pledge not to hike VAT as it is a regressive tax that hits the poorest hardest. We were treated to the usual politicians' weasel words, "I may have said that but that's not what I meant". Humpty Dumpty can make words mean whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

I wonder how the LibDem party faithful feel now when you can search on the internet for "libdem vat election ad" and find the unequivocal image above plastered all over their websites. I wonder if there'll be a swift spate of deletions as this part of their bid for political power gets airbrushed out of history. Will it be like Chinese art during the Cultural Revolution, when a person's party loyalty could be measured by the size of the red tractor in their landscapes? In this case, the rebels feature it prominently, while the greasy-pole ascenders minimise or delete it altogether.

More weasel words as David Cameron learns from 1984 and mangles the English language, calling this budget "progressive" when all the evidence shows that it is no such thing.

How progressive is it to raise a tax where the richest ten percent pay one pound in every £25, while the poorest ten percent pay one in every £7? Not just VAT: by a ratio of four to one, the deficit is being paid for by those who did nothing to cause the recession. Why not raise top rates of tax? Even under Thatcher the top rate was 60%. The only crumb of comfort is the rise in the threshold where you start paying tax, but this still means that the poorest end up paying the most when all the changes are taken into account.

Child benefits have been frozen for three years and public departments cut by 25% , while Morgan Stanley joyfully declares the "Austerity Budget" a big win for business. The corporate tax rate falls 1% per year from 28% to 24% by 2013/2014 but a levy on the banks balance sheets rises to only 0.07% by 2012.

Despite a rise in Capital Gains tax by 10% to 28%, Morgan Stanley says:

In general, we thought this was a sensible, balanced and business-friendly budget, which is actually likely to result in an effective tax cut for UK PLC of c. £2.3bn by 2012/13.

And The Daily Telegraph reports the Planet Business rubbing its hands with glee:

Dismissing fears that increasing taxes and cutting public spending could send the country back into recession, the Institute of Directors (IoD) said the Chancellor had "faced up to the challenge", while the British Chambers of Commerce hailed the strategy as "courageous".

Moustache-twirling, bean-counting, avaricious creeps, the lot of them. But this is to be expected of the Conservatives because this is what they do and that is why more than two thirds of the electorate voted left of centre. In empowering them, Clegg has just crapped over everything the LibDems are supposed to stand for.

We all know by now that 23 out of 29 members of the cabinet are millionaires, including Clegg. One of them is George Gideon Oliver Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer who gave us yesterday's budget, and heir to the wallpaper brand of Osborne and Little. One of the blizzard of tweets yesterday wished for 100% tax on inherited wallpaper fortunes. I've always disliked the company's bland tasteless metallic nouveau-riche designs (explains a lot) and I'd be happy just to see him take a pasting and then get hung.

And a moment of silence for poor old Billy Bragg, a decent man criminally misled by his own wishful thinking.

VAT rise as LibDems aid Tory attack on the poorest

It's official. The poorest ten per cent in Britain will see their shopping bills rise and lose the most as ConDem make up the deficit their banker friends caused by raising VAT to 20 percent and cutting our public services. Nick "Ramsay McClegg" Clegg just helped push through the most draconian budget in decades despite all their promises in the run-up to the election, and gave his party their Clause Four moment.

I listened to Vince Cable squirming last night on C4 News as he was quizzed over the LibDem election pledge not to hike VAT as it is a regressive tax that hits the poorest hardest. We were treated to the usual politicians' weasel words, "I may have said that but that's not what I meant". Humpty Dumpty can make words mean whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

I wonder how the LibDem party faithful feel now when you can search on the internet for "libdem vat election ad" and find the unequivocal image above plastered all over their websites. I wonder if there'll be a swift spate of deletions as this part of their bid for political power gets airbrushed out of history. Will it be like Chinese art during the Cultural Revolution, when a person's party loyalty could be measured by the size of the red tractor in their landscapes? In this case, the rebels feature it prominently, while the greasy-pole ascenders minimise or delete it altogether.

More weasel words as David Cameron learns from 1984 and mangles the English language, calling this budget "progressive" when all the evidence shows that it is no such thing.

How progressive is it to raise a tax where the richest ten percent pay one pound in every £25, while the poorest ten percent pay one in every £7? Not just VAT: by a ratio of four to one, the deficit is being paid for by those who did nothing to cause the recession. Why not raise top rates of tax? Even under Thatcher the top rate was 60%. The only crumb of comfort is the rise in the threshold where you start paying tax, but this still means that the poorest end up paying the most when all the changes are taken into account.

Child benefits have been frozen for three years and public departments cut by 25% , while Morgan Stanley joyfully declares the "Austerity Budget" a big win for business. The corporate tax rate falls 1% per year from 28% to 24% by 2013/2014 but a levy on the banks balance sheets rises to only 0.07% by 2012.

Despite a rise in Capital Gains tax by 10% to 28%, Morgan Stanley says:

In general, we thought this was a sensible, balanced and business-friendly budget, which is actually likely to result in an effective tax cut for UK PLC of c. £2.3bn by 2012/13.

And The Daily Telegraph reports the Planet Business rubbing its hands with glee:

Dismissing fears that increasing taxes and cutting public spending could send the country back into recession, the Institute of Directors (IoD) said the Chancellor had "faced up to the challenge", while the British Chambers of Commerce hailed the strategy as "courageous".

Moustache-twirling, bean-counting, avaricious creeps, the lot of them. But this is to be expected of the Conservatives because this is what they do and that is why more than two thirds of the electorate voted left of centre. In empowering them, Clegg has just crapped over everything the LibDems are supposed to stand for.

We all know by now that 23 out of 29 members of the cabinet are millionaires, including Clegg. One of them is George Gideon Oliver Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer who gave us yesterday's budget, and heir to the wallpaper brand of Osborne and Little. One of the blizzard of tweets yesterday wished for 100% tax on inherited wallpaper fortunes. I've always disliked the company's bland tasteless metallic nouveau-riche designs (explains a lot) and I'd be happy just to see him take a pasting and then get hung.

And a moment of silence for poor old Billy Bragg, a decent man criminally misled by his own wishful thinking.