On Social Democracy

Society was never all that collective after the war while people are never all that individualistic given the chance of social interaction.

What did make "social democracy" a sweary word in  America was the punitive taxation of the rich and business. Also it is blamed for woes like ISO and HSE: systems which are now wholly embraced by all major corporates in the west at least.

The balance returned in many countries to a employees, ie tax payer pays for what they get set up. This lead then to socialist democracy becoming very unpopular amongst enough of the high skill, high pay workers and the other end, the white trash subsistance workers that the New Right could win in the UK and USA , while social democracy moved stage right from the earlier more socialistic visions which actually rebuilt europe and made the German and Swedish economies so strong for so long.

This is the real chasm: getting a house from the state was not a nanny state attitude- the market before the war did not create enough affordable housing. Sound familiar in your country or state ? Yes property is the big corner stone of capitalism for everyone: like OPEC and other gents clubs it is not a free market and capitalists do all in their power in some areas to stop it becoming a free market.

The other aspect is privatisation. Socialist democracy delivered public service which was always restrained by internal inflation and new expectations laid upon it. People complained about little choice and mediocre service and a high price to pay. Public workers and managers were seen as distant, unresponsive and over paid.  Eventually footing the bill became unpopular by taxes so utilities, railways, postal services and health services were privatised. To be subject to high inflation and people complain about the lack of choice, mediocre service and high price they have to pay. Skilled workers and managers were seen as distant, unresponsive and over paid.  The only difference I can summise is in tele-sales, fat cat salaries and even more over paid and expansionist public watch dogs who are largely unaccountable.

We pay a premium on top of the cost of delivery  for a fragmented market with less collective buying power and a sales and marketing operation largely absent or centralised on the former public utility, while on the other side, we also pay a quango beaurocracy who justifies the over inflation changes by stipulating development targets. On the continent they pin energy utilities to inflation limited price rises while in the UK and USA they can charge what they can cream off without people actually disconnecting and making their own power for example.

Why save mother earth , she won't save us ?

I sit and wonder how hypocritical it is for a Norwegian to drive an eco friendly Electric car to work at an oil exploration or drilling equipment company.

It is actually pure economics: Golf sized el'cars will start to become the ordinaire second family car or budget car if the tax break on purchase and road toll stations continues. Oil is not going to get any cheaper.

We are thankfully past peak oil: this means several things, firstly the issue above, it is likely not to get any cheaper particularily with the situation in Iran and the continuing OPEC dominance outside that for some time to come. This means that the market drives alternatives.

So over time a combination of market mechanism and emission total CO2 legislation makes the precious material more a supply for plastics and bitumen rather than fuel.

 Reduction, recycling, replacement .

If global warming continues to be driven by India and China with the power resting in USA and Russia against the rest of the western world, then it won't be before the economic consequences of climate change hit home to the national budget and infrastructure of the national economies that these powers come to legislate much more than now.

So not until wall street is on a canal, the Shanghai docks are submerged and India starves half its population will the stream of greenhouse gases be tackled.

At the end of the day even after a nuclear war, mother nature will survive and recover by evolution. So we only try to protect the planet from a fate less serious than when photosynthetic plants spewed the then highly toxic oxygen by product out into the mostly CO2 atmosphere.  It is human kind who will not survive their own folly.

The generation above me seem to have rolled in on the wave of the 70s freedoms and high employment, few people at university into jobs and management. They inherited the businesses their parents formed post WWII. They got into the oil industry when it was turning up and taking a number. They got training on the job.

My generation hit the wall of unemployment and the middle classes waterloo caused by the upper working class when took bachelors and later masters degrees into commodity land.

The generation before me got apprenticeships and quick HND's and then became technically endowed enough to be my managers today.

But the generation after me, they learned a bit from our mistakes and got better, faster, harder educations with MBx and came up our lazy clever asses. We were the last lazy clevers.

After us everyone believed work came first in life.

This false modesty stuff here is really boring and is one reason Norwegians like to escape to their luxury cabins, ski appartments and 40 foot cruisers so they can actually gloat about how clever they are to earn heaps of money without working too hard.

They have to put up with all this understatement posturing at work so they let out steam in being asshole materialist show offs in their many holiday opportunities.

Religously Real

It seems like we are regressing back into the power of religiion over the rationalism of science.

Creationism, intelligent design. You can't disprove it. . . Well you can't disprove that jesus married mary magdelain and had a family either. What you can argue, study, trace, describe and challenge by experiment is the theory of evolution and the mechanism of natural selection.

However religions and nationalism has never been more in the news.

Religion and nationalism tend not to cure diseases, to make planes fly around the globe or to invent the iPad.

Nrg.

What a pratical, emotionally intelligent and winning way we can be so easily. We decide on other people's magnetism and solarity.

Take an average fro a longditudinal mesure.

Do they recharge us? Do they attract us? Or do they suck us of energy?

Everybody's Dave

I wonder if we all, men that is actuall come to
think of it, have a dave in life?  Or have had a dave?

My dave was the perfect example. He promised very much by way of his way of appearing. A wild hippy type, wannabe surfer like me, a better sailor than me and into mountainn biking and the odd hill top bebooted tour.

Unlike me he had been running away from commitment and economic reality for a few years.

So i fell into the tar pit because when you are the edge you run the wrong way because the wide world for a 22 year old ouit of uni suddenly becomes a scary, square, dreary place compared to the delights of the ivory tower. It is like you step backwards, and in had put myself on the edge anyway by moving home.

I dug myself out while he seemed to drive onwards with a never ending quest for the rad from a musty bedroom above his grannys end of the house.

I think i got labelled as Dave part Ii, minidave, the disciple, neigh,  the klingon. Seeking rad. Wasting money. Most of all wasting time.

I let my chin go under and breathed in the bitumen of wishing and only half doing. Aspiring more and more in the asphixia of the middle class home boy wombs. Acheiving less of my aspiritation in a self imposed mind glue I only now know was chronic understimulation.

Suddenly s if on a huge gas bubble i arose out into a suit and tie and flashy car in the brisk air and startling daylight of Aberdeenshire of all places. My dads own feitherlant. In a job completely innapprporiate for my as yet protopersonality and ersatz ego.

So i was born again of my autofatherhood as a misfoster and really i lived the life for many years unril it wore me out.

But back to dave.

Dave also evolved in an economic way after a while. But in that time he got worse and onto prozac and went a bit mad. He once threatend to kill me, but by then i had realised he was a stone around my neck and proabbly he felt that two.

The positive energy i believed he gave me was actually a merry-go-round lsd trip of illusion and mistake.

Eventually i grew out of dave and felt myself as a proper grown up to his own view of actually very conformist to a supposedly alternative lifestyle.

One day i realised i had grown out of all my best friends or they had to my chagrin, grown out of me.

There are daves in all our lives, and a dave in us all.