Ouroboros and the Left

"Ryan" makes reference in a comment on my previous post, to the "Gramscian left". I was too busy in the 70s, trying to get a degree, to look at yawn-inducing Marxist theory, but perhaps I was wrong. For following up this reference I find Wikipedia explaining Gramsci's notion of "cultural hegemony" and how to subvert it:

Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a "war of position" and a "war of manoeuvre". The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of manoeuvre, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support.

Is it too much to say that in British schools at least, there has been a "war of position"? Hymns in assembly, RE, British history, the cane, the authority of the teacher - all in the bin. And all since, oh, I would say the mid-80s*. Now, the teacher is a kind of Lyons nippy, swiftly and attentively addressing every need of every child, and with no expectation of a tip.

And as the revolution approaches its moment of crisis, the Government (members of which have assisted with the first phase) has sealed itself into its Downing Street compound, like the East German rulers before their fall. Gordon Brown, formerly the student Rector of Edinburgh University, learned early how the power system had loopholes and having exploited them, is closing them. So the surrounding area is legally a protest-free zone and our new Stasi is set on harmless teenage student demonstrators.

Despite these efforts, and like Kronos, the Revolution may eat its children. Yet Zeus survived because Kronos was given a Rock to eat instead...

* after first flutterings with the William Tyndale affair (1974), Chris Searle's "Classrooms of Resistance"(1975) and other inputs.

Chicks up front!

In the 60s/70s, a fellow trainee teacher told me, the tactic at demos when the police arrived was to call "Chicks up front!"* and have the girls form a protective cordon for the male hairies. The assumption was that the police wouldn't beat up girls (not a safe bet in France, I think).

Now, in London, near the Mother of Parliaments, a 17-year-old girl can be arrested, charged, taken to a police station and regularly woken up at the low point of her circadian rhythm in order to tempt her to make a statement without the benefit of legal representation. All this, simply for carrying a placard. My country shames me.

Anybody reading, who has any influence with the powers that be, please communicate our shame, chagrin and anger.

*corroborated here - and either inspired by, or inspiring, the Viet Cong according to "DreadPirateRoberts" (see his April 30, 2008 5:04 pm comment here)

MSM: news suppression service

... But the draft documents reveal how close the [Northern] Rock was to a virtual wipe-out.
The Daily Mail first learned of the bank's secret plans in January but, after a late night call from Mr Darling, was begged not to publish.

(From this morning's Grumbler.)

Has the Press become an arm of Government?

Off licence alcohol purchases - minimum age 21

At last, some small attempt to rein-in the alcoholisation of the young, even if only in Scotland.

Michael White confuses matters by yoking this good horse to a bad one (morning-after pills for the underaged). Nevertheless, I wonder if we might make progress in this direction, as with smoking, but perhaps in a different way. as it's not just the young who have drink problems.

I think availability is a key factor. Imagine having a beer (or other tipple of your choice) tap next to each cold-water tap in the home - who could resist? Yet alcohol is nearly as accessible these days - supermarkets, post offices, even petrol stations. Rather than try to enforce an age limit (another pile of arrest records to write), let's try to remove some of the temptation: let's reduce the number of off-licences.

My preferred solution would be not to renew the liquor licence for a supermarket if there is an alternative outlet within a certain distance. Supermarket shelving has a narrative all its own - and booze is near the end so we can say to ourselves or our partners, "Shall we?" "Go on, then." It's a cunningly-positioned add-on to household shopping, encouraging the potentially dangerous habit of steady home drinking.

No stagnation, but a house price crash

A carefully-reasoned post by "Alice Cook" on UK Housing Bubble concludes that house prices will drop 25% quickly (by the end of next year).

The alternative (house prices stagnate, allowing inflation to achieve the same result more slowly) has become unsustainable because of fears respecting the stability of the banks.

Drink is the curse of the post-working classes

The main change in the structure of capital during this century has been the relative stagnation of industrial capital and the growth of the service sector of the economy. This trend, which has been most marked in the south of England, has had consequences for inner city working class areas: de-industrialisation, mobility of labour, and post-war rehousing policies have combined to dislocate the pattern of community based upon local work and extended families and associated cultural traditions (Cohen, 1972). Population has been decanted to the New Towns, and more generally, to the suburbs, where social life has focussed upon the nuclear family, and the home is increasingly regarded as a place of leisure, recreation and consumption. It is in this context that off-licence sales have become more important. The 1961 Licensing Act relaxed restrictions on the opening of off-licences, and the 1964 Licensing Act facilitated supermarket sales. By the late 1970s, most beer was still sold in public houses, but one third of all wine and half of spirits were consumed at home (Thurman, 1981; 4).

... from Alcohol, Youth, and the State by Nicholas Dorn (RKP, 1983)

Taking on the supermarkets now would be like eradicating the Taliban. Remember how they took on the government and won easily, e.g. in 1991? So much for the rule of law.

Licensing Act 1964 - legal summary
2003 Licensing Act - summary

On the coarsening of British culture

"On what little things does happiness depend!" wrote Oscar Wilde in the Nightingale and the Rose. He was referring to the heartbreak endured by a student who needed to get a red rose to impress a professor's daughter. Actually it turned out that the professor's daughter was a bloody idiot and didn't deserve the red rose that was only secured through the agonising death of a lovely nightingale; he should've just written a request for fellatio on the back of a bus ticket and stuck it to her forehead - and insisted on the return of the ticket.

Thus Russell Brand, in the Guardian newspaper. His louche autobiography is entitled "My Booky Wook", though for some reason he doesn't apply the same baby-linguistic titling approach to his blog or website ("My Blogy... no! No! Career death!"). For there are things these jokers take very, very seriously: banknotes.

The Teflon coating on his deadly bullets of vulgarity is a trifling pretension to verbal and literary sophistication. And it's happening all around, and so very well rewarded.

Of course, the next generation is past TV. So what are your children playing on the Internet? Here's some of the games I've seen ten-year-olds chuckling at in the last fortnight:

Stair Fall
The Torture Game
The Last Stand 2

And as fast as you block these entertainments, new routes to them appear via new game compendium sites. And more and more new games, most of them free of charge.

But the work of psychic corruption must proceed, so we must be inoculated against notions of censorship by tendentious TV biopics of well-meaning moral campaigners like Mary Whitehouse, who was of course not nearly so posh, sophisticated, well-breeched and well-connected as the moguls she took on. So smart are we that she is to be condemned as much for her eyewear as for her lower-middle-class status and dowdy profession (schoolteaching - art and sex education).

I think we must wait for the University rebels of the late Sixties to retire or die before we can start the salvage operation.