UKHamlet's Blog

I wrote this article a few years ago when Microsoft  started imposing DRM on everyone. It was meant to be a rant against digital rights, but ended up as a critique of the direction of modern capitalism. At the time, I thought: “This is all going to end in tears….” I’m pretty sure it now has.

Digital Rights Management is more than just a software device to maintain the copyright of published material. It is a reflection of a new philosophy that will ultimately lead to a society in which consumers own nothing, where the nightmare of the dispossessed comes true and corporate bodies own everything. The logical extension of this is: you lose your home, car, all your possessions and everything you own to some vision cooked up in the boardrooms of America. Their vision of the model citizen is someone who is heavily in debt, but owns nothing, who consumes without assuming ownership, and who is powerless to influence the tide of events because the democratic process is meaningless.

The most fundamental premise of capitalism is the concept of ownership. It is the guiding principle that allows everything else in the market economy to work. Ownership is the idea that an individual is able to possess something exclusively, sell it and use the tokens of exchange to buy other things. It is the primary motivational force of incentive. Take away ownership and you take away capitalism. Continue reading

Ian Kerr, private investigator, could be named more appropriately, but only just. He is to be prosecuted by the Information Commissioner for allegedly selling private information to companies in the construction industry who wanted to vet potential employees.

Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner says he seized documents on individuals that had comments appended such as: “communist”, “definite problems, no go”, “lazy and a trouble maker”, “do not touch”, “orchestrated a strike” and so on.

Kerr kept an illegal intelligence database on over three thousand individuals, of which the commission said: “This is a serious breach of the Data Protection Act. Not only was personal information held on individuals without their knowledge or consent, but the very existence of the database was repeatedly denied.”

So, here we have a man trading illegal information to companies on individuals who were participating in perfectly legal activities such as trade union membership being brought to book. It’s probably the tip of the iceberg though. An employer I know has been approached on a number of occasions by investigators who have offered services of this kind. How serious they were, I have no idea, but their existence and this case leads me to believe this is the norm rather than the exception.

The construction industry is particularly hairy arsed and most of the people at the top of the ladder are incredibly thick: classic examples of the buoyant characteristics of faecal matter. So getting caught with their dicks in their hands is par for the course and not particularly surprising. The Tarquin and Rodney set that run the City, the banks and the blue chips are not so stupid. They have the common sense to cover their tracks and not employ dumb-arses like Kerr.

The truth of the matter is the board rooms of Britain are populated by men (and a few women) who are of a similar political mind. Their social standing is an irrelevance, but a disproportionate number of them are from similar social backgrounds, mostly what used to be described as the old ruling classes. The latter is increasingly becoming less the case, but the former is entrenched. You simply do not see anyone with a left leaning outlook in positions of responsibility in these companies. There are virtually no exceptions to this rule.

Now, there may be many reasons for this, not least the simple fact that if you are of the left you probably do not attempt to climb the corporate ladder, but surely there might have been a few exceptions to that rule. Or even one.

When was the last time a leading banker, industrialist or anyone at the top of British business was criticised or complemented for being too socially responsible? How many companies have policies that make Trade Unions irrelevant? Because that’s the crux of this matter: if Trade Unions didn’t need to exist, they wouldn’t. Continue reading

Ronny cries all the way to Nat West

The press has been in a lather about Fred’s pension recently - and to be fair, the revelations that his pension isn’t just £600k, £650k, or even the figure I’ve given of £693k, but actually tips the scales at a humongous £703,000 – which is sufficient to make even the most steadfast of editors to self-righteously foam at the mouth. I’ll admit I did a bit of foaming too, but it’s all just jealousy really. I’d have a bit of that if I could.

Anyway, to put it into perspective – the oily footballer Ronaldo has been offered £200k a week salary – so Fred’s annual pension is roughly three and half weeks pay for the Portuguese international. The difference, as my mate Kev says, is Ronaldo hasn’t lost anyone twenty-four billion pounds. Still, £200k a week for falling over is good money by anyone’s standards.

Postscript. It appears Sir Fred is getting ten grand for doing eff-all for about about a month. This has got Wapping beating their collective bishops again, barking out headlines of outrage and contempt like he’s done something wrong. So what guys? It’s the system you wanted. Just saying, like.

Yes you will.

10 REM Democratic subroutine
20 You vote 
30 They get in 
40 They do exactly what the last government did 
50 You vote 
60 They get kicked out 
70 The next government does exactly what the last government did
80 Goto 10

Fred Hoodwink

Sir Fred Goodwin has been demonstrating massive arrogance and is entirely unrepentant about his £693,000 per annum pension from RBS – a company who he led to the biggest single loss in corporate history – an amazing £24 billion. Part of his pension was “optional” – it was also optionally approved by Lord Myers, a minister in HM Guv. Myers is having a wriggle by saying he was told it was contractual, but I think we know the truth, don’t we?

The thing is, this government is characterised by arrogance: something it gets from the bulky, brooding presence of its leader, Gordon Brown. I used to feel sorry for Gordon and though he’d gotten a bad press for being boring. No longer though. For sure, not everyone can have a vibrant, light up the room personality and Gordon certainly doesn’t. He makes you feel uneasy and he’s certainly not the guy you’re going to vote for. Sorry Gordon, you’re dead meat and frankly, you deserve it, because, really Sir Fred is just another reflection of the government of the day. Your Government, Gordon. You made the bastard, so clean up your mess.

Anyway, back to the arrogance. As I said, this government is arrogant, and so is Fred. He is one of the single most destructive forces to have hit British capitalism and he believes he has earned his pension. The problem is: HE IS CORRECT. Let’s wind it back a bit…

Fred got his nickname “The Shred” because he was very good at getting rid of jobs. His entire management system was to merge companies and shred jobs. In the halls of mammon he was almost universally admired for this. Make no mistake; they loved him as the go-to guy when it came to making money, never mind the cost. I love the irony of this: capitalism’s one redeeming feature is that it is supposed to create jobs, but its arch prince was solely adept at destroying them.

So, I owe this bloke an apology. Not because he wasn’t personally responsible for the destruction of thousands of jobs, burying the nation in debt for centuries to come, and presiding over the biggest corporate disaster in British history, because he was – but that doesn’t matter, because in free market capitalist terms, Sir Fred Hoodwink is an enormous success. Massive.

The nay-sayers will deny this and claim that capitalism needs to be remodelled because the link between success and reward has been broken, but they would be wrong. Fred is ace. He has captured the very essence of free market capitalist success. By this I mean he has made a huge amount of money. For himself. And this, after all, is what unfettered market capitalism is all about: get your nose in the trough boys, it stinks, but there’s lots of it. Fred has loads of money; ergo he is a massive success. He has looked after number one.

In so doing he has shattered the myth that capitalism is all about creating jobs for everyone, spreading wealth down to the lowest levels of society and building wealth. It isn’t – it’s about looking after the most important person in the world: you. If you do that well, then you’re a success, just like Sir Fred.

If I were in charge of a bank and I offered to give you £650,000 you would, no doubt, be very happy. If I then said to that you could have this amount of money every year for the rest of your life, I could see delirium coming on. Then imagine that you’re only forty years old and potentially have another forty or fifty years of this generosity coming your way.

Then, if I can be so bold as to stretch your credulity still further, imagine that to qualify for this you presided over the biggest banking disaster in the history of this country. A disaster you engineered by a casual disregard for the norms of good business practice and almost single handedly brought the Royal Bank of Scotland to its knees. The to top it off you went cap in hand to the government and borrowed billions of pounds from the taxpayer to cover your arse.

Welcome to the world of Sir Fred Goodwin.

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I don’t really subscribe to conspiracy theories. I’m much more a proof of the pudding type of guy. Although, in my darkest moments, paranoia has been known to rear its ugly head. This usually happens when I find micro-transmitters hidden in the light sockets. My neighbour tells me it’s pretty normal stuff for our area and it is only the District Council looking for evidence of non-compliance with the green bag scheme. He’s a good guy my neighbour, although I’m not sure about his name. I thought Frank Zappa had cornered the whacko kid’s name market, but what kind of a handle is “M”?

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