Heard on BBC radio news this morning:

Social breakdown in Manchester is significantly worse than in any other big English city, a survey by ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith suggests.

Talk about chutzpah–my tea nearly shot out the same way it had just gone in.

Despite the bleating of those political illiterates who believe, as a matter of faith, that it does not matter whether you live on an estate in Moss Side or a maisonette in Belgravia, the starting line is the same; research indicates otherwise. It is ironic that Duncan Smith should complain of social breakdown. Notwithstanding the shrinking of the public sector and the privatisation of industry and services under the neo-liberal agenda, wealth is not ‘trickling down’–bones are not being thrown down from the table above. On the contrary, the gap between rich and poor is greater than at any time in the past 40 years–and it is increasing–and due to structural factors in modern developed capitalism, there is less social mobility (social mobility being the redistribution of inequality) today than there was in the 19th Century. We are only now beginning to experience the full social effects of neo-liberalism, a warped ideology which Duncan Smith served, when mass unemployment was used as a weapon to destroy the power of the working class–the people who actually produce wealth–which has left bosses free to gouge ever higher profits, while driving down real wages and employment conditions (eg out-sourcing to agency provided workers on the minimum wage, temporary contracts, etc). The Labour Party has been tinkering around the edges of the midden, attempting to ameliorate the worst stench excesses of the cult of Thatcherism, while evidently reluctant to challenge the status-quo–there are too many careers at stake–but make no mistake, the whole shitheap is Maggie’s work.

Remember, don’t challenge the prevailing ideology. Who knows, one day if you’re really lucky–and you wish hard enough–you might win the lottery.

We are all bourgeois now
Once there was class war
But not any longer
Because baby we are all bourgeois now
So go out and make your way in the world
We’re free to choose
We’re all free to choose
We’re all free to choose
We’re free to choose

Paulie’s post on bloggertarians is well worth a read. The focus of the piece is on a particularly obnoxious sub-species of homo blogiens thoroughly deserving of a textual kicking. Critics might object that Paulie has chosen easy targets. Maybe so, but it must be fun, and I certainly don’t begrudge him that.

Paulie should, however, be careful when describing people as misanthropes. Some of his targets may well be genuine sociopaths and misanthropes, but the term is levelled also at grumpy old men such as myself who like for nothing better than to ridicule all politicians. That doesn’t mean we hate people, or believe there is no distinction between social democrats, Stalinists and Nazis. We look beyond professed political philosophies to the behaviour of the individuals concerned, and wonder how we’ve allowed such people to get into positions of power and influence.

That said, I do largely agree with Paulie. For a start there is the political and economic naiveté of right libertarians, and their simplistic distinction between the public and private spheres. Private corporations routinely collate databases containing the personal details of citizens. Often, but not always, in the guise of market research. Also, much of private industry is parasitic on the public purse. In the aerospace sector, for example, private industrialists are totally reliant on public money, and private industry has in general shown itself incapable of innovating on a large scale.

One of the biggest failings of right libertarianism is its uncritical acceptance of the notion of corporations as persons. This is nonsense, as corporate entities are invariably greater than the sum of their parts. That applies at all levels, and there is in reality no rigid distinction between public and private, just as there is no sharp boundary between individual and community.

There is also a lack of perspective on the part of bloggertarians when it comes to the surveillance society. After reading a large number of articles on the National DNA Database, CCTV cameras, ID cards and like, I had published in Comment is Free a piece highlighting some of the contradictions in the debate. Comparing and contrasting the UK with other western European countries with which I’m familiar, I discussed the benefits of living in an “e-society”, and the need for a certain amount of regulated information sharing. These are complex issues, and seemingly beyond the ken of many bloggertarians.

But what strikes me most about bloggertarianism is its stifling uniformity. Libertarianism is supposedly about the primacy of the individual and the creative self, but I fail to detect this in bloggertarian writing. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places.

The second installment of The Dude getting his self-improvement treatment/torture is now available - unfortunately you only get a little bit of text accompanying some pictures online. The greedy profiteering bastards at VF have deemed it so.

A refurbished but unreformed Hitchens at the Plaza Athénée. “As I look back on my long and arduous struggle to make myself over, I am more than ever sure that it’s enough to be born once, and to take one’s chances, and to grow old disgracefully.”