Jock's Place - 3rd April, Nineteen-Eighty-Four - Comments

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Jock Coats — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 10:13:49 +0000

Read, read! I think it is truly scary personally.

Don't forget they are also trying to get rid of that pesky parliament thing too."

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Neohippy'84 — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 01:09:51 +0000

I was born in 1984, and I swear as I turned 22 last week, I heard the clocks striking 13. Corruption and sleaze have reached an amazing high, but the more occurrences there are, the less focus is given to each one, resulting in executive acountability going straight down the drain. Yet this is the government which feels it's on constitutionally strong enough ground to bring in ID cards, try to give police 90 day holding powers, basically set the ball rolling for state police control and start doing away with jury trials? Well, i'm reassured.

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Jock Coats — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:09:23 +0000

I'm not saying that capital flows cause poverty, no. I'm sorry if it came across that way. I'm saying we let corporations cross borders willy nilly in pursuit of the free trade mantra but not people.

And I'm saying that as a result of that international business people get a flavour of what's going on elsewhere and it seems so much better, perhaps, than home and so they desire to go there.

And I think that just enforcing against people who want to travel here is kind of like sticking our fingers in our ears and singing to drown out the noise of the clamouring m/billions who for some reason think life here must be so great they just have to try it by whatever means necessary.

I don't have a prescription for it. But I do think that it's encouraging one part of globalization - of business, trade and capital - but trying to shut out and ignore the other parts of globalisation.

And setting up our own little FBI affair is even worse - we need to work as a global village not as individual fortresses.

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Joe Otten — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 21:54:20 +0000

So you're saying that people trafficking is a result of poverty, which I agree with.

And that poverty is a result of a) capital flows - I disagree with that, for the usual reasons; and b) because international development spending is derisory.

I think development spending is important, but it is a small part of the puzzle. Brown had that plan recently to borrow against future development spending in order to be able to spend a great deal now. I'm not convinced that we know well enough how to spend it effectively for that to be a very good idea.

We could probably triple development spending, and it would do some good, but would still have a negligible impact on people trafficking.

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Jock Coats — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 17:45:59 +0000

What are we doing to address peoples' desire to move to north-world countries, especially Britain, that makes them throw in their lot with organised crime like people trafficking and prostitution?

The flow of international organised crime is there because we are desirable argets" either for people or for drugs and such like. The drugs one is a no-brainer of course for me, the way to disarm the organised crime involved, inside and outside the country, is to legalise and legitemise.

But attacking the people traffickers alone is not going to prevent people wanting to come here because their lives are so shit where they are coming from. And we still put less than half a per cent of GDP in international development.

So, we're happy to help TNCs make a fortune out of people in those poorer countries, and give them a glimpse of the sort of "luxury" enjoyed by the developed world, but not to address their wants as individuals.

Simply throwing up the walls of the fortress is not going to help. It might make people feel better than something is being done to protect them, but at what cost?"

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Joe Otten — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 15:53:15 +0000

A little hyperbole, perhaps, Jock?

There is some futher limitation of the right to silence. There is (reasonably IMHO) the right to ask: where did you get all this money? But largely this seems to be organised policing appropriate for organised crime. Just what it should be.

Of course most crime is local, so should most policing be. But measures against organised crime that are largely organisational rather than extra power, should surely be supported.

And what this has to do with capital flows is anybody's guess.

3rd April, Nineteen-Eighty-Four

Jock — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 06:47:00 +0000

The creation of the Serious Organised Crime Squad. Orwell's vision comes true. New Labour give up hope for positive change and resort only to throwing up the fortress walls. Whilst they gad about giving privilege to business and capital flows to operate in a globalized world, when it comes down to real people, enforce, enforce, enforce is the message.

What a bleak authoritarian future.