A restraint of liberty

"It is not just that we are free to kill other people; market freedom constrains us to do so. The economy is so organised as to make it impossible to do the right thing. If your village isn't served by public transport and there is nowhere safe to cycle, you have, for all the talk of freedom to drive, no choice. If the superstores have shut down all the small shops, you must give your money to a company whose purchasing and distribution networks look like a plan for maximum enviromental impact.

So we are encouraged by the market and left free by the law to inflict the most grievous harm that any group of people has ever inflicted on any other. There are several good reasons for supposing that climate change, within the course of this century, will throw the world into food deficit...

...Already, with a food surplus, some 800 million people on earth are permanently malnourished. With a net food deficit, this figure could rise into the billions. We will be responsible for this. By the time we reach the end of our lives, every one of us, however kind and mild and well-meaning we might be, will have been responsible for the equivalent, in terms of human suffering, of a medium-sized act of terrorism."

George Monbiot

Sweet Illusions

Sending in an application can be quite satisfying; you feel like a productive citizen.

The other day I was looking for a quote in Milan Kundera's 'The Joke'. I read it when I was about 20 and I used to put loads of quotes from it on my wall. I was trying to remember this one quote and where it was in the book and I flicked to the right page pretty much straight away. Anyway, the quote - "Submitting to a generation mentality (to this pride of the herd) has always repelled me" - struck with me at the time and I had it pinned to my bedroom door (at 8 Pickmere Road). I remember my housemate noticing it, and with disgust directed towards the statement, stated that the Bible was based on such an ideal. I swelled with pride; not only for my ability to offend a fellow Christian (even I had a strong sense of reverence towards the Church and God back then), but the idea that I contradicted the Bible so unthinkingly. I hadn't done it on purpose, the statement just echoed with me, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of relief that I would always be on the outside of the world my housemate inhabited. The Bible, the text of our faith, which I read with a hollowness in my heart: I contradicted it. What an achievement! I hadn't done much to offend anyone (on the contrary, I desperately wanted to be liked), and by this sweet accusation (to clarify, there was no malice intended by the accusor, more a point of debate), I felt validated as an individual.

The Idle Life

"Mortgate, literally translated, means 'death grip' - such is the patronising and bloated nature of the lender/borrower relationship."

Dan Kieran, The Idler.

A Happy Devil

For all those with a leaning towards the Democratic Left side of political thinking, can I recommend a great think tank website, that of Compass. They've been in existence for less than a year and their statement is well worth a read - inspiring stuff. Their founder Neal Lawson writes Comment pieces in the Guardian often. It has a progressive radical heart; a socialist instict for justice and equality. Excellent.

Link on the right.

The successful applicant

I started this week at the Home Office, and it appears the entire week will be taken up by our training (myself and two other chaps who are starting in the same office), which is a stark contrast to AON (the insurance company I left last week), where training involved a hurried few hours on my first morning. Although I prefer the former method (being talked at for a week), it is quite boring, and what is obvious to anyone is that most people learn by doing. However, we seem to be finishing early every day and still getting paid a full day, so I aint complaining.

Does anyone have a copy of the Orange Book, which the Liberal Democrats produced last year? It's a series of articles (one written by Nick Clegg, my MP), debating various liberal political ideas, and would very much like to read it without paying £8.99. If anyone has any other interesting politics books (historical, theoretical, contemporary) they would like to recommend (and loan) to me, I would be most grateful.

I'm currently reading a book called 'The Age Of Revolution' by Eric Hobsbawm, a very influential Marxist historian (I'm told); it's about the Dual Revolution (French & British Industrial) and how industrial capitalism had its wicked way with Western Europe. Very engaging so far.