It`s raining stones again…

Nora Connolly

Image © Tmaurizia

When will UK interest rates rise?  Pundits recently suggesting an increase likely prior to the next general election, a scenario which would allow the Coalition to spin the policy as a by-product of economic recovery. Given that any decision made in this regard by the Bank of England must be linked to an economic upturn. This introduces a potentially nasty paradox, as economic recovery, either real or illusory (the latter more likely) could have dire implications for many UK households currently struggling to make ends meet at this time. All things considered, it might be prudent to avoid household debt at the moment, a view which is shared by those now running the British economy, not the Treasury but the Bank of England, after yesterday’s very British coup.  The recent announcement by the Bank of England to withdraw the funding for lending scheme had an immediate impact as “shares in construction companies plunged”.  But more significantly the financial stability report leaves Treasury policy undermined, while at the same time cleverly placing future responsibility for any UK housing bubble at the door of number 11 Downing Street.

How many neo-liberals does it take to change a light bulb?

Nora Connolly 

Image © CharlesJshapr

We are all neo-liberals now. You might not like it but an insidious political metamorphosis has taken place, those in denial akin to the misfortunate frog unaware that it’s getting boiled out of existence. We are shedding our social democrat identity for an ugly neo-liberal form and the political implications for this are profound. Recently, I wondered why the economic meltdown of 2008 hadn’t undermined the neo-liberal project, a prescient query. Answers now provided by Professor Philip Mirowski in his recently published `Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown (Verso 2013)`. His thesis a pessimistic one, although it provides the Left with a much needed counter narrative to reconceptualise their collective notion of markets.  

The Intellectual Life Of The British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose, Book Review

Left Central Book Review

Jonathan Rose has provided a service to the working class, an increasingly ignored and demonised section of UK society; clearly there is more to this maligned group than the sobriquet, Chav. Although such hostility is not new; as the working class portrayal by EM Foster in Howard`s End indicates, the caricature of Leonard Bast, soundly critiqued in this text. Rose compares Leonard Bast with Manchester clerk Neville Cardus, he and a companion we are informed, “talked and talked…not to air our economic grievances, not to spout politics and discontent, but to relieve the ferment of our minds, our emotions after the impact of Man and Superman, Elektra, Riders to the Sea, Pelleas and Melisande, Scheherazade, Prince Igor”. Cardus a brilliant autodidactic represents a highly prevalent though largely forgotten feature of our industrial past. Today readers assimilate classical literature by first buying a`Beginners Guide`, it can only be imagined what the Scottish weavers of the Industrial Revolution would have thought of this. Mill workers carrying out intricate and tough manual labour, while next to them perched on a reading stand was a copy of the Iliad or the Odyssey. They read an entire canon of classical literature this way, an army of working class autodidacts, learning at their work station. Jonathan Rose like the Scottish weavers he so eloquently describes has seamlessly woven a vast collection of working class memoirs into a compelling piece of prose with an essence of John Clare.

Homer, A Beginner’s Guide by Elton Barker and Joel Christensen – Book Review

Lincoln Green 

Image © User Bibi Saint – Pol

The first page of Barker and Christensen’s book leaves no doubt as to its relevance to readers of Left Central.  They dedicate their work to those “everywhere suffering many pains because of the incompetency and greed of their leaders and the capriciousness of the ‘gods’ who rule our world.”  At another level the book confirms the importance of reading widely, deeply and with attention.

Homer’s stories, “The Iliad” which recounts events in the Trojan War caused by the elopement of Helen with Paris, and “The Odyssey” which describes the return of Odysseus home from that war, are over 29 centuries old and were captured in text shortly after the development of writing at the point when oral story-telling began to decline.  Despite their age the stories are rich in associations and fulfil Italo Calvino’s characteristics of the classic book:  “which comes to us trailing behind the traces it has left in the cultures through which it has passed” and “with each rereading offers as much a sense of discovery as the first reading”.   Barker and Christensen’s guide is singularly well placed to confirm such characteristics.