Our bullying corporations are the new enemy within

The demands of business dominate our politicians and embed inequality. It’s a full-blown assault on democracy

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 7 October 2014 20.13 BST

The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The more power you possess, the more insecure you feel. The paranoia of power drives people towards absolutism. But it doesn’t work. Far from curing them of the conviction that they are threatened and beleaguered, greater control breeds greater paranoia.

On Friday, the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, claimed that business is under political attack on a scale it has not faced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was speaking at the Institute of Directors, where he was introduced with the claim that “we are in a generational struggle to defend the principles of the free market against people who want to undermine it or strip it away”. A few days before, while introducing Osborne at the Conservative party conference, Digby Jones, former head of the Confederation of British Industry, warned that companies are at risk of being killed by “regulation from ‘big government’” and of drowning “in the mire of anti-business mood music encouraged by vote-seekers”. Where is that government and who are these vote-seekers? They are a figment of his imagination.

Where, with the exception of the Greens and Plaid Cymru – who have four MPs between them – are the political parties calling for greater restraints on corporate power? When David Cameron boasts that he is “rolling out the red carpet” for multinational corporations, “cutting their red tape, cutting their taxes”, promising always to set “the most competitive corporate taxes in the G20: lower than Germany, lower than Japan, lower than the United States”, all Labour can say is “us too”.

Its shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, once a fierce campaigner against tax avoidance, accepted a donation by a company which delivers “tailored tax solutions to individuals and organisations internationally”. The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, cannot open his lips without clamping them around the big business boot. There’s no better illustration of the cross-party corporate consensus than the platform the Tories gave to Jones to voice his paranoia. Jones was ennobled by Tony Blair and appointed as a minister in the Labour government. Now he rolls up at the Conservative conference to applaud Osborne as the man who “did what was right for our country. A personal pat on the back for that.” A pat on the head would have been more appropriate – you can see which way power flows.

The corporate consensus is enforced not only by the lack of political choice, but by an assault on democracy itself. Steered by business lobbyists, the EU and the US are negotiating a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. This would suppress the ability of governments to put public interest ahead of profit. It could expose Britain to cases like El Salvador’s, where an Australian company is suing the government before a closed tribunal of corporate lawyers for $300m (nearly half the country’s annual budget) in potential profits foregone. Why? Because El Salvador refused permission for a gold mine that would poison people’s drinking water.

Last month the Commons public accounts committee found that the British government has inserted a remarkable clause into contracts with the companies to whom it is handing the probation service (one of the maddest privatisations of all). If a future government seeks to cancel these contracts (Labour has said it will) it would have to pay the companies the money they would otherwise have made over the next 10 years. Yes, 10 years. The penalty would amount to between £300m and £400m.

Windfalls like this are everywhere: think of the billion pounds the government threw into the air when it sold Royal Mail, or the massive state subsidies quietly being channelled to the private train companies. When Cameron told the Conservative party conference “there’s no reward without effort; no wealth without work; no success without sacrifice”, he was talking cobblers. Thanks to his policies, shareholders and corporate executives become stupendously rich by sitting in the current with their mouths open.

Ours is a toll-booth economy, unchallenged by any major party, in which companies which have captured essential public services – water, energy, trains – charge extraordinary fees we have no choice but to pay. If there is a “generational struggle to defend the principles of the free market”, it’s a struggle against the corporations, which have replaced the market with a state-endorsed oligarchy.

It’s because of the power of corporations that the minimum wage remains so low, while executives cream off millions. It’s because of this power that most people in poverty are in work, and the state must pay billions to supplement their appalling wages. It’s because of this power that, in the midst of a crisis so severe that the world has lost over 50% of its vertebrate wildlife in just 40 years, the government is organising a bonfire of environmental protection. It’s because of this power that instead of innovative taxation (such as a financial transactions tax and land value taxation) we have permanent austerity for the poor. It’s because of this power that billions are still pumped into tax havens. It’s because of this power that Britain is becoming a tax haven in its own right.

And still they want more. Through a lobbying industry and a political funding system, successive governments have failed to reform, corporations select and buy and bully the political class to prevent effective challenge to their hegemony. Any politician brave enough to stand up to them is relentlessly hounded by the corporate media. Corporations are the enemy within.

So it’s depressing to see charities falling over themselves to assure Osborne that they are not, as he alleged last week, putting the counter view to the “business argument”.“We don’t recognise the divide he draws between the concerns of businesses and charities,” says Oxfam. People “should be celebrating not denigrating the relationship between business and charities”, says the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. These are good groups, doing good work. But if, in the face of a full-spectrum assault by corporate power on everything they exist to defend, they cannot stand up and name the problem, you have to wonder what they are for.

There’s a generational struggle taking place all right: a struggle over what remains of our democracy. It’s time we joined it.

Never mind eternal youth - adulthood is a subversive ideal

Empirical evidence confirms what honest introspection suggests: most people are happier after reaching middle age

• 
• • Susan Neiman
  • The Guardian, Sunday 5 October 2014 16.45 BST

‘There is reason to suspect those who tell the young to savour the best years of their lives.’ Photograph: Liv Friis-Larsen /Alamy

Where did we get the idea that youth is the best time of your life? Having failed to create societies that our young want to grow into, we idealise the stages of youth. Growing up has come to be viewed as a matter of renouncing your hopes and dreams, accepting the limits of the reality you’ve been given, and resigning yourself to a life that will be more boring and less significant than you supposed when you began it. Increasingly, grownups appear not merely sad but pathetic.

Consider the difference between JM Barrie’s Peter Pan and Steven Spielberg’s reworking for the movie Hook. Barrie’s grownups are dull but menacing, occasionally wistful; Spielberg’s grownups are ridiculous, not only ill-equipped for the adventures of Neverland but barely fit to live at all. Given the lack of compelling role models of adults in western media, it’s no wonder that Peter Pan is seen as a figure of rebellion, or that a great writer’s fondest wish for his newborn is that the child may stay for ever young.

Outside of fairy tales, no one remains a child for ever. For this reason the time of life most often idealised is the decade between 18 and 28, when young men’s muscles and young women’s skin are at their most blooming. Yet few people who are in or past that decade would choose to repeat it. For most of us, it’s a time of doubt and fear – that every decision is irrevocably fateful, that everyone else is more confident and capable, and above all that we aren’t sufficiently enjoying what we’re told is the best time of our lives.

Empirical evidence confirms what honest introspection knows: most people are happier after reaching middle age. Though there are variations in the global low point – the Swiss reach it at 35, while Ukrainians don’t hit rock bottom until 62 – all report becoming steadily happier after that. Researchers controlled all of the obvious factors, such as income, employment and family status, and found they didn’t matter: from the US to Zimbabwe, the evidence that life is not a downhill path is constant.

What explains the consensus on something so clearly false? An answer can be found where we might least expect it, in the work of Immanuel Kant. His famous essay What is Enlightenment? describes humankind’s exit from its self-imposed immaturity. Growing up isn’t bad, but isn’t easy. Laziness and fear lead us to acquiesce: it’s much easier to let others think for us.

Growing up, like enlightenment, is as much a matter of courage as of knowledge. Kant’s call to have the courage to use your own reason is well known, but few have heeded the warning that comes after it: no government has an interest in cultivating adults. It is far simpler to care for distracted consumers than to satisfy the demands of self-confident citizens.

So most of us spend our working lives making or marketing products developed to divert us. The things that capture our attention are never depicted as toys but as tools that are crucial for being adult. Bewildered by the choice when purchasing a smartphone, we easily forget how many decisions are out of our hands. Or did you choose to live in a world where oil companies can wreck the planet, governments spend more on weapons than on education, and children starve every minute for want of food others throw away?

Grownups take on questions that determine real lives, knowing they will never succeed entirely but refusing to succumb to dogma or despair. Both are surely tempting, and successfully resisting them is key to growing up. Not permanent youth but genuine adulthood is a subversive ideal.

There is reason to suspect those who tell the young to savour the best years of their lives. The tone is cheery, but the message is ominous: everything else will get worse. Thus young people are prepared to expect – and to demand – very little.

No conspiracy theories are necessary: we often collude in our own infantilisation, as we often join in with the curious derision that greets the news that an ageing rock star has reached a round-numbered birthday or opened a concert or gone on tour. Isn’t it time these people accepted their obsolescence and left the stage to others?

This sort of disdain and mockery is all the more puzzling since the recent concerts of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen were anything but laughable. Among others, these artists have shown how far and for how long human and creative development can continue, surviving flops and falls and excess and error – thus providing some models of growing up for which we can be grateful.

Cricket - Playing spin well is a state of mind

A batsman should look to dominate, and importantly, not fear the turning delivery

Ian Chappell

October 5, 2014

VVS Laxman was an artist at hitting the legspinner wide of mid-on, against the spin © AFP

I was bemused by Justin Langer's mystifying recent explanation of how Australian batsmen struggle with spin bowling on the subcontinent. "It's almost like Indians have chillies from a very early age, therefore if you eat chilli it doesn't really bother you," Langer said. "But if we eat chilli, it burns our mouth, which is the same while playing spin."

I acquired a taste for spicy food at 19 but learned to play spin bowling from about eight. I retain my enjoyment of spicy food to this day and those lessons I was taught as a youngster stood me in good stead as my career progressed, culminating in a few months at finishing school - a tour of India.

To me, it is at a young age that the real problem lies with modern Australian batsmen, and it is here that the roots of their disconnect with playing good spin bowling lie: the coaches overlook the correct footwork fundamentals.

The first things I was told about playing spin bowling were among the most important:

1) Don't worry about the wicketkeeper when you leave your crease, because if you do it means you are thinking about missing the ball.

2) You might as well be stumped by three yards rather than three inches.

To make a real difference to a spin bowler's length you have to advance a decent distance, whilst coming out of your crease only a little generally improves the delivery.

I remember asking Shane Warne after Australia's 2001 tour of India, where VVS Laxman tamed the legspinner: "How do you think you bowled?"

"I don't think I bowled that badly," was his response.

"You didn't," I assured him, "it's just that when Laxman advances three metres and hits you through mid-on and then the next delivery is a little higher and shorter and he's quickly on the back foot and pulls the ball, it's excellent footwork, not bad bowling."

	If you can walk and chew gum at the same time, then you can eat spicy food and also play spin bowling. The trick is to acquire a taste for the former and be taught the latter correctly at a young age

During that series, Laxman used his feet better than anyone I have seen to hit the ball against the spin through wide mid-on; it was exhilarating stuff.

However, you don't have to leave the crease to be successful at playing good spin bowling. Two of the best batsmen I've seen, Garfield Sobers and Graeme Pollock, both played mostly from the crease, but importantly their footwork was decisive and they weren't fooled in judging length.

Australian batsmen haven't always struggled against good spin bowling. Neil Harvey was acknowledged as a twinkle-toed batsman who was never out stumped in his Test career, and the dashing Doug Walters is the best player of offspin bowling I have seen. There were many others in that period who were extremely efficient when it came to playing good spin.

Playing spin bowling well is a state of mind. To succeed, a batsman has to be decisive, look to dominate, have a plan and not fear the turning delivery. Once I learned on the 1969 tour of India that because of the slower nature of the pitches you had a fraction more time than you first thought, and that when the ball turned a long way it provided opportunities for the batsman as well as the bowler, I never again worried about prodigious spin. I was often dismissed but I never again feared the turning ball; I looked upon it as a challenge to be enjoyed.

If you can walk and chew gum at the same time, then you can eat spicy food and also play spin bowling. The trick is to acquire a taste for the former and be taught the latter correctly at a young age.

What the British Raj can't be blamed for

Written by Khaled Ahmed in The Indian Express| Posted: October 4, 2014 12:00 am

On September 18, the Indo-British Heritage Trust held a discussion in London about “whether the Indian subcontinent benefited more than it lost from the experience of British colonisation”. Speakers who said the subcontinent lost were heavyweights like William Dalrymple and Shashi Tharoor, both of whom I have enjoyed listening to and whose books have given me great pleasure. From Pakistan, the speaker chosen on the other side was my colleague at Newsweek Pakistan, Nilofar Bakhtiar who, before leaving for London, agreed with me that we were better off under the British.

Is that surprising, after half a century of failing to fulfil the promises made twice to the people of India? Once when Muslims and Hindus were united in their struggle for freedom; and second when they fell apart, and Muslims promised to set up a utopian state where they would be “free to practise their religion”.

Under British Raj, we were not free, but we were also not slaves. The British were less brutal than the Belgians to their colonies in Africa. We claimed rightly that we had the right to be free, to decide our own destiny, to have the law we wanted and a government we were able to choose. Morally, we had the right to tell the Raj to go, to resist it and struggle against it. We’d had enough of serving the gora sahib and fighting his imperial wars.

We had a different vision of what kind of state we wanted. We wanted equality instead of inequality practised by exploiters, peace instead of the conflict of a developing bipolar world. After fighting the wars of the Raj, we thought of becoming neutral and nonaligned. We could achieve our visions only after becoming independent.

We have inequality today and we have fought many “just” wars to perpetuate it. And the index of unhappiness keeps on climbing.

By ousting the British we also wanted to purge ourselves of what we diagnosed as a “slave mentality”. We had had enough of local brown sahibs who spoke English and perpetuated the Raj of the mind. After Independence, we would revive our languages and learn to think “free” in them. But today, we are slaves to our narratives of exclusion.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much to fall back on. The British had wrested India

from a dying ruling elite that didn’t even control it territorially. We had no political system we could emulate, except tyranny of one sort or another. Jawaharlal Nehru honestly thought the past was all rotten.

Keen to be born as a nation-state, we disagreed we were one nation. Under the British, India was united as one state. We should have become a nation, but we didn’t. One side suspected the Raj was dividing what was one nation; the other side thought we were not one nation in the first place.

Democracy, introduced by the British through limited franchise and devolved elections, was new to us and felt good. They forced us to respect democratic principles. We had a struggle ahead with the kind of society we were. To be truly democratic we had to remove the caste system, which the Raj couldn’t extirpate. We agreed to disapprove of it. But in 2014, certain communities in our region still feel left out.

The British enabled us to put the past behind us. But after 1947, becoming free, we revived the past we should have buried and got nothing out of it. Muslims thought faith had made them a nation but soon discovered that language divided more than religion united. Muslims rejected the biggest gift of the Raj: secular governance. The British taught us modern commerce, growing out of stock exchanges we had known nothing about. Bombay converted the mostly Gujarati merchant community into India’s wisest class — Hindu, Parsi, Ismaili, etc — who deserved to rule India and thought, rightly, that it was not yet time for independence. Nobody listened.

The Muslims of India got a raw deal. Religion didn’t bind in 1947; and Bangladesh was created in 1971. Further, rejecting the lessons of the Raj, they set up an Islamic state in Pakistan that immediately led to the reduction of the non-Muslims to second-class citizens. Pakistan as a revisionist state fought wars with India. The Muslims of India too became discriminated against. Today, India is ashamed of its Muslim-killing communal riots. South Asia has suffered ethnic cleansing to shame the Balkans.

If we are bad today, it doesn’t mean the British Raj was bad. The bad in us is a kind of return to being us. If India has communal riots, Pakistan is brutal to Hindus in Sindh, joined with Muslim Sindhis through language. Their daughters are kidnapped and forcibly married to Muslim boys after forced conversion, driving Hindu families into exile in India. In “secular” Bangladesh, Hindus should have fared better, but there too, their “bleeding” back into India is unending.

Under the British Raj, Muslims’ sectarianism was effectively suppressed. The Shia and the Sunni began to feel like one community under secular administration and it was no surprise that Pakistan was created by a Shia leader. Today, he would have been bumped off by a “target-killer” of Karachi. The late Papiya Ghosh — yes, there are such great “colonised” people in the subcontinent — in her classic Partition and the South Asian Diaspora: Extending the Subcontinent (2007) tells us how self-determination went wrong in India.

Biharis were the first workers in a peasant India, after iron ore was discovered in Bihar and the steel industry came up there together with the railways. After 1947, Bihari Muslims were most unfairly driven out of India into East Pakistan, but there the self-determining principle was language, not religion. So they were killed and pushed out again. We are still “self-determining” after 67 years, and most of it is just killing. Did the British teach us to kill to achieve self-determination? What Dalrymple does to the Brits through his books is tonic for them.

There were things done in India that should make them squeal with guilt. But “freedom” shouldn’t make us forget how we have fallen short after 1947. What happened to the good things we learned from the European Enlightenment the British carried with them?

I unabashedly admire Raja Rammohan Roy and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan because they borrowed from the Enlightenment and tried to pull us out of the abyss that still attracts us. In Pakistan, “Khan” is not the password to acceptance you thought he would be. Borrowing values made them “unoriginal” for us.

Tagore actually told the Brits what was really wrong with them. He didn’t want the disease of nationalism creeping into “free” India. But we had strong “single” identity ingredients that “excluded” the manifold “other”. Toxic textbooks distort history today to make us feel proud of unworthy things that would’ve made Tagore wince.

I don’t know about India but in Pakistan, all the infrastructure that serves us today is a Raj bequest — the roads, bridges, railroad and the world’s largest canal system — without which the state of Pakistan couldn’t have survived. After 67 years, all that is now quite rundown. Unkindly, the world calls us a “failing” state. Did the Raj cause us to fail?