It's not my failure to complete any of my planned tasks that has sparked depression. Like many people, I seem to be suffering mild depression because of the ... er ... depression.
I don't know if this is officially an economic depression or recession or downturn. I note that shares have dropped dramatically in value over the past fortnight and that prices have risen.
Shareholding is an odd system by which people gamble on the profits of companies in which they need have no interest as either worker or consumer. A company may pay its workers well and gain their enthusiastic loyalty while pleasing all its customers with well-made, cherished goods. It may even produce a small, steady return for investors. But once it's launched on the stock exchange, it's not valued by these simple standards. It has to keep increasing profits and put on a good show for shareholders. Its so-called value will depend on rumours and the way in which shares are sold among people who have no interest in the company's employees or the people who buy its products. The rules of the stock exchange seem much the same as the rules of the bookmaker - but there's a big difference. The stock exchange is less honest about the gamble involved. It has the facade of respectability but is more dangerous than the bookie. Its effects can be felt by people who never gamble but simply do their job the best of their ability. At its best, the stock market allows people with no direct interest in the business of a company to determine its direction. Usually their decisions are based solely on the company's ability to produce dividends and the value of the shares, which isn't necessarily related to the company's dividends.
When I think of it like this, it's hard to care much when the value of shares falls. But indirectly we are all share owners. Companies on which we depend - banks, insurance firms, business, pension funds - own shares and the crazy gamble in the stock market affects us all.
We're being affected by many economic factors. Producers and manufacturers are putting up their prices. The west is used to controlling prices. The big supermarkets are used to paying low for goods and competing with one another - although some have admitted occasionally getting together to fix some higher prices, which is illegal. At the same time, supermarkets pose as the friends of the poor, which usually means ignoring the welfare of overseas workers or animals in order to sell cheap food, clothes, etc. When they strike this pose, it's work taking a look at their profits. In 2006-7, Tesco's pre-tax profits were more than £2.5 billion. (I can't find more recent figures.) Supermarkets do rather better for directors and shareholders than for the poor.
Meanwhile, like most people, I have to decide how to live through this depression. Luckily I don't like shopping (except for stationery and in good bookshops) and have never believed in retail therapy. I'm lucky that my nearest shop is a small Co-op - when I have to shop, I like small shops, market stalls and co-operatively owned stores. The Co-op is a consumer co-op while Waitrose - part of the John Lewis partnership - is owned by its workers. I'll continue to shop through the organic box scheme I use, which delivers weekly and saves me the trouble of thinking much about shopping. The prices look high, but the quality if good and I'm saved the temptation of impulse buys in supermarkets. To my surprise, I find I'm saving money by using the box scheme as I'm managing purchases more sensibly and wasting far less.
I've the advantage of having been poor in the past. I've shopped at jumble sales - perhaps they'll make a come-back now - and devised cheap, nutritious recipes. I can mend and darn clothes if I must, though I don't like doing it. I know it's possible to have a good day out in free museums and galleries with a pack of sandwiches for lunch. And for the moment I have a good income, even if it feels over-stretched and repairs to the house are beyond me.
I haven't enjoyed watching the extravagance of the past few years. I understand and share people's love of travel and their enjoyment of eating out - but for many people these have become an expected part of life rather than a delightful luxury or special treat. Cheap flights are damaging the planet. Perhaps I'm a puritan - it worries me that people shop for things they neither need nor want, that they go to films and shows they don't expect to enjoy, that they have grown used to the deference of waiters. I grew up thinking that luxury meant ice cream or cake for tea or a seat or standing place in the theatre gallery.
The recent rush to luxury was fuelled by Britain's dangerous shift from a manufacturing and agricultural economy to a service economy in which workers sell luxury goods and services to one another. This makes Britain particularly vulnerable to economic depression. Expensive luxuries are the first things people will give up. Nail bars, restaurants and coffee shops are vulnerable. The situation is made worse by the way debt has been marketed as a solution to all ills. Our luxury economy has been funded by people living way beyond their means.
I recently answered a question on the best advice my mother gave me. She told me it was worth missing a meal to buy a theatre ticket because I'd forget the missed meal and live for ages off the pleasure of the show. She was right. I'll be finding real pleasures to see me through this depression - if it ever ends. I'll be up in the gods when I can afford it, seeing concerts and plays. I'll be visiting free galleries and museums and really looking - taking all the pleasure I can from a visit. I'll try to find time to cycle and walk in parks and by the river and look at the scenes. And I'll probably continue fencing once a week. It's cheaper than most people think. So long as my kit holds out, it works out at less than £2.50 per session. I reckon I can afford that.
Friends know better but even they assume that this is a quiet time of year for me. I wish it were. The "to do" list lengthens every day and any spare time must be spent on the house, if I can summon the energy.
Just getting on with jobs on the "to do" list would be good. Many of them would be enjoyable if I weren't so tired, and even housework might make enough of a difference for me to feel I'd achieved something after a few hours. But I'm continually held up by computer problems. I've been suffering from advice that doesn't always make sense. For instance, explaining problems with the screen of my borrowed laptop, I'm faced with the response that it must in some way be my fault.
"It's because you've dropped it," I'm told. I didn't drop it. Then, "You've downloaded Firefox. Why did you do that? Who said you could? You shouldn't download strange programmes. They always affect the computer. That's why the screen has gone black. Why didn't you stick with Explorer?"
I try to explain and, after a while, give up. Mostly the borrowed laptop works - every so often it stalls and takes yet more of my time. I begin to wonder if life was easier before computers.
Still, I know what I have to do this weekend. I have to spring-clean the house. Yes, I know it's past midsummer but spring was busy - and winter and autumn and all last year. And I'm giving a short talk at work which requires research - rather more than I anticipated. So I should reread the Bacchae of Euripides and, for the first time, the whole of Cervantes' Don Quixote. I've only read bits before. If I can do all that this weekend I'll be more or less on schedule.
I started Don Quixote on the train home - page 47 already. 800 or so pages to go. It's a lovely old Penguin edition with the price on the cover: 8/6.
I think I need a Sancho Panza to do the housework. I think I need more than a weekend.
In Marlowe's play of Doctor Faustus, Faustus quotes Ovid's Amores, begging that his last night will last longer: "O lente lente currite noctis equi!" (Run slowly, slowly, horses of the night). Time moves at its usual speed and the night comes to an end.
I expect the weekend will end before I've finished half the tasks I've intended.
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
When I was much younger, I occasionally took part in Reclaim the Night marches. One of the favourite chants was "However we dress, wherever we go,/ Yes means yes and no means no." It was a simple message but objectors frequently assured me that life wasn't as simple as that because women didn't actually say what they meant. Some added that women didn't know what they wanted anyway. At the extreme end of the anti-feminist brigade were the men who would declare that women liked being raped and that Reclaim the Night marchers were angry and soured because they hadn't been.
I've been reminded of those attitudes by some of the responses to the result of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty. As the politicans campaigned and debates took place, almost everyone assumed the Irish would vote Yes to the new Treaty. It was only on the eve of poll that I noted a little doubt in the commentators' voices. Then the Irish voted No. The majority was between 7 and 8 %. so there wasn't any room for doubt. Or so I thought.
Suddenly there was a string of European spokesmen (and all but one I heard were men) talking on TV and radio and to any journalists who would listen, explaining that no didn't really mean no but something else entirely. "It's not about Europe or the Lisbon treaty," one French speaker explained. "It's about the voters' attitude to the Irish government." He went on to explain that the result could therefore be disregarded or, if necessary, the Irish people could be asked to vote again and again - until they got it "right."
I don't know why the Irish people voted as they did, although they seem to have had access to a great range of relevant information, including the text of the Treaty. But their reasons for voting No don't matter. If, in an election, I chose to vote for a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party because he used my favourite brand of toothpaste, my motivation might be regarded as strange. But no-one would have the right to take my vote and re-assign it to the Green Party candidate on the grounds that the Green Party had more sensible policies. As long as I am eligible to vote, my vote should be counted. And it's not for anyone else to re-assign my vote on the grounds that I should have voted in a different way.
The Irish referendum can have only one result. The Lisbon Treaty cannot be adopted. The current rules of the European Community require all member states to endorse major changes. The Irish constitution as interpreted by the highest courts in Ireland declares that such major changes to national sovereignty can be decided only in a referendum. Spokesmen can condemn the Irish people as stupid and ungrateful (I have heard such epithets) but the pro-Europeans who use such terms betray the best ideals of the European Union. If it is to succeed, the European Union must respect the views of all nations involved. It mustn't become a community of bullies and it certainly mustn't ignore legal and democratic requirements.
Pro-Europeans should be encouraging a proper debate on what Europe is for and how it is run. A British referendum would have provided a good opportunity to explore all manner of anxieties, from the question of sovereignty to anxieties about fraudulent use of expenses. But although Britain was promised a referendum on the constitution, we were assured none was necessary for the Lisbon Treaty. Sometimes being a British voter feels like being a woman in Britain before women got the vote. I could almost hear government spokesmen saying, "Don't bother your pretty little head about that, my dear."
There are big issues to discuss about Europe and everyone should be encouraged to think them through. When the constitution was debated - and rejected in France and the Netherlands - I learnt about issues that weren't discussed in the British press, so far as I could see. There were debates on the possible effects of a free market in Labour - would it kill off the minimum wage? And questions were raised about the role of the European Central Bank, which was to have the status of a nation and a right of veto over legislation.
Being pro-European isn't a coherent political position on its own. Pro-Europeans have to say what kind of Europe they support, how it will be achieved and how the dangers of a united Europe can be avoided. A united Europe may be dangerous. While it could have the strength to stand up to other super-powers, world super-powers have often been a force for bad.
For a few days it seemed as though the Irish vote might be disregarded or that Ireland would be sidelined by other countries. Then the Czech president said that the Irish vote must be respected and the Treaty could not be ratified.
I don't know what happens next. But a sensible, thoughtful and well-informed debate on Europe is overdue. If we need a new Treaty or Constitution, we'd better all think and vote on it - and accept what the voters in each nation say, even if we don't agree.
No, I'm not having a beer but a double espresso - I ran out of coffee at home yesterday and was gasping for strong, delicious caffeine. But the real lure of the pub was the promise of free wi-fi.
My broadband internet connection is down at home. After several lengthy and irritable (on both sides) conversations with the Virgin Media call centre, they agreed to send out a technician without, as they threatened, charging me £75. I think the problem is with broadband because the "ready" light frequently flickers and goes out. This will be the second technician in a week despatched to help us.
Sometimes the call centre admits there is a signal problem. sometimes not. They suggest the problem is with the router but, even when I take the router out, the best connection I can get is a home page that takes five minutes to load. And then the connection dies.
At work, my computer decided to freeze half-way through the opening procedure. After a morning of anxiety, a technician tried a new cable, and it worked again. But I don't know if it will continue to work and nor does he. Meanwhile my trusty laptop (also the property of work) is waiting for someone to authorise repairs. I'm not allowed to do so. The technicians claim the problem could have been caused by dropping the laptop. I didn't drop it. It's suffering from overwork, perhaps. Some of the letters on the keyboard have worn away.
I don't know how many hours I've spent on internet and computer problems. They have stopped me blogging. I hope I'll be back soon.
Just at the moment, I'm unable to post as frequently as I would wish. But I ask anyone visiting my blog to read Mark Haddon's article in today's Observer in full. He's writing about the treatment of refugees in Britain. I thought I knew enough about this subject, but his account of human beings denied life-saving medical treatment, parents and children forbidden from meeting, and brutal deportation procedures makes me feel sick and angry. And that's before I think of human beings who have been raped and tortured condemned to destitution in Britain. They are punished because they believed Britain's favourite myth of itself - that Britain cares about freedom and democracy, and defends the oppressed and persecuted.
Refugee Week starts tomorrow. There are events all over the United Kingdom. It's a good opportunity to find out the truth behind the headlines. You can find local events on-line - and there may be programmes in public libraries.
The picture shows Yarl's Wood Detention centre. In the last year for which figures are available, 1,160 children were imprisoned there. They had not committed any crime. 116 were imprisoned for more than 28 days. Because they are asylum seekers, they aren't protected by the same laws as the rest of us.
The video below illustrates one contribution made by asylum seekers to this country: the Amadeus Quartet plays Beethoven (part of the 16th string quartet).
Freedom has had a bad press lately. There was Operation Enduring Freedom, which turned out to be nothing of the kind. And there have been numerous statements from politicians throughout the west, declaring that the bedrock of freedom is free market economics. These are often made by the same politicians who proclaim that physical safety is the most important civil liberty.
But when I heard David Davis's speech resigning from the House of Commons to prompt a by-election, I was moved. He spoke about questions of freedom that have worried me for some time. He spoke of last night's vote to extend detention without trial to 42 days. He spoke of the growth of the surveillance society: the extension of CCTV cameras and the effect of ID cards, the threat to trial by jury and the prevention of peaceful protest.
Nu-Labour supporters hurried to attack David Davis, condemning his decisions as "expensive" and describing him as "unhinged." He sounded pretty sane to me. Of course, he may seem unhinged by Nu-Labour standards - ideas about democracy and civil liberties may seem pretty strange in an organisation that's apparently obsessed by micro-management and control.
I couldn't help noticing that David Davis undermines one of the arguments often advanced by Nu-Labour MPs: that the defence of freedom is a cause only supported by a comfortable, middle-class minority who don't know what poverty or "real life" is. David Davis and I have one thing in common: we both spent much of our childhood on Wandsworth council estates. He probably had a harder time than I did. On many other questions I disagree strongly with David Davis. I have never voted Conservative. I strongly oppose some of the positions he has taken on law and order. In particular, I'm against capital punishment, which he supports. But I think the question of freedom that David Davis has raised is so very important that, if I were one of his constituents in Haltemprice and Howden, I'd vote for him. I might even campaign for him - on this issue alone.
As prices rocket and companies start laying people off, there's one good news story - allegedly. I heard it on the news and read it on the BBC website. British companies are the best at creating wealth.
To me, that raises two questions: where does the wealth come from and where does it go? I assume the companies aren't simply printing banknotes and handing them out in the street.
Looking more closely at the story, it turns out that 23% of British or part-British companies have been placed in the top 750 for a league table I've never heard of. It's the 2007 Value Added Scoreboard from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform - a government department which has the job of boosting British business. I suppose the story would have had less impact if it had been billed as "British government says British companies are the best."
So what precisely is being measured? According to the BBC, the scoreboard measures wealth-generation - which it also terms "productivity" by deducting "bought-in" goods and services from profits made by sales. I'm not quite sure where the value is added in all this. But I find it curious that "buying-in" goods and services is seen as such a bad thing in the private sector. In the public sector we're always being told that buying-in from outside, private industries boosts efficiency.
The top five British companies in terms of wealth generation are a surprising group. They're not exactly known for innovation. Some of them aren't even known for being British. They are: Royal Dutch Shell, BP, HSBC, Vodafone, Royal Bank of Scotland.
Royal Dutch Shell may be registered in Britain but its headquarters are in the Hague. Its subsidiary, Shell, has caused debate, especially for its operations in Nigeria, denounced by Ken Saro-Wiwa and others, and for alleged damage to the environment.
BP, initially the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, is a huge multi-national which has come in for criticism and lawsuits alleging environmental damage and human rights abuses. Most of its activities are far from Britain.
HSBC operates under four initials in Britain. They stand for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. While its HQ is in Britain it operates in 83 countries. It may be the world's largest company. It certainly knows how to make money. In the past two years it has made £100 million from running NHS hospitals. The bank's routine charge for fitting an electric socket is £200 - far above the usual rate.
Vodafone is a global mobile phone company. Two years ago it posted a loss before tax of £14.9 billion (for 2005) - the biggest loss ever posted in British corporate history. For all this, it seems to be profitable at the level of current operations. I'm not sure what - if any - the effect of the loss is.
I'm sure all five companies will be celebrating their position in this new league table. But I'm still not sure why it's a good news story or what, if anything, it means to British people today.
Writer, former Creative Writing tutor who quit in order to write and escape stress. Quaker, concerned with equality and truth. Currently socially distant, usually more approachable.
