What would you do for £100?

In these economically pressed times, what would you do for $202? 

Wal-Mart seems to be the epicentre of this herd mentality, that left one employee trampled to death. At another Wal-mart in Columbus, Ohio, Ms Nikki Nicely -- aged 19 -- was prepared to give and receive physical violence.

According to the The New York Times, Ms Nicely: "...jumped onto a man’s back and pounded his shoulders when he tried to take a 40-inch Samsung flat-screen television to which she had laid claim. “That’s my TV!” Ms. Nicely shouted. “That’s my TV!” A police officer and security guard intervened, but not before Ms. Nicely took an elbow in the face. In the end, she was the one with the $798 television, marked down from $1,000. “That’s right,” she cried as her adversary walked away. “This here is my TV!”"

What is our life for? What is it worth? 

About £100, it seems. 

Denying Reality: Financial Markets on the edge

It's not healthy to deny what is happening around you. Reality is more than just perception, it is what happens while you ignore it until some event forces you to reconsider that perception.

However, the financial markets are built on perception and that has given us the boom in property prices here in the UK and in the US, plus the dramatic "credit crunch" we are now experiencing. Northern Rock was the prelude, a little taster of what was to come. The real performance started this year on Wall Street: the collapse of Bear Sterns with its rescue with public money, the nationalisation ("Conservatorship") of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and now the imminent collapse of Lehman Brothers bank and perhaps the buyout of Merril Lynch.

All these institutions got in to their current predicaments by short term thinking, using massive bonus to reward investments with no long term viability. This was fuelled by irrational group psychology of the trading floors, which in turn is fuelled by testosterone. This clouds the perceptions of not only the dealers but the executives who control the organisations. As one investor has commented "Lehman tried to deny reality until the bitter end."

"Competition and growth" are the bywords of free market capitalism, not "co-operation and sustainability." Competition is a masculine mindset, the same testosterone fuelled psychology that bought us the zero-sum game.

Will it change? That depends on how cynical you are. Hope is normally lumped together with Idealism by those who prefer the status quo. But if the credit crunch tells us one thing, it is that if you live by the market; you die by the market.

When all we had was our labour-power to sell, we banded together to form labour unions. They worked so well that by the 1970s they were too powerful for the ruling elites. The pendulum has now swung back towards the property owners. Capital, the financial markets are all powerful and it seems there is no way we can change things. But we can: We own the means of consumption.

We can choose to borrow. We can choose what to spend our money on. We can even save it. If this financial crisis proves anything, it proves we can take control of the financial markets by withholding our participation within them. By choosing how and where we spend our money, we can starve the markets of what they need: financially ignorant players from whom they can fuel their cancer-like growth.

Change is in our hands. What will we do with it?

Youth crime: Greedy, rude adults 'fuelling teen violence'

"Sometimes as adults we don't model the behaviour we would want youngsters to follow. We live in a greedy culture, we are rude to each other in the street. Children follow that."

As we become more separated from others, as we become more dependent of material things to bring short-term gratification, we grow ever-more angry when we do not get the things we think we deserve.

Marketing sells us the idea that we deserve things, creating need from want. When that is not satisfied we become angry. Is it any wonder our children, who can only learn from example, begin to exhibit behaviour that we already possess.

The no's have it

Today's Britain is angry. We know that everyting is wrong. We
participate in the democratic process in negative: we vote against
everyting the government stands for, but what are we for? We don't
know, because to work that out requires original thought on our part.

We look to others to tell us what to think, under the guise of seeking
consensus with our point of view. Anything that challenges our
comfortable assumptions and received prejudices is other; alien and
threatening.

While in America, a movement grows around an idea of positive change,
something people with open minds can vote for, we have - what?

When there is a real chance of an African American becoming president,
it makes me wonder when we will have our first non-white prime
minister? 5 years? 10 years? 20?

Until Britain becomes comfortable with its own self-identity we will
not see a visible minority leader. This is the truth that remains
unspoken, tacit in every Daily Mail headline.

Until then we will remain against everything and for nothing except
personal gain.

A scientific scale of depravity

More than a touch of evil - World - www.smh.com.au

I have lived here

Enjoyment: "This paradox of living in excrement and dirt while suffering from a germ phobia is well known to psychiatrists; it is even referred to in some research papers as the 'Howard Hughes dilemma'. It is explained by the irrational fear of dirt becoming so intense that no amount of cleaning is seen to be good enough, and therefore cleaning is eventually abandoned altogether."

Louise.
Rest in the peace you could not know in this world.
Paul xx