From Malthus to Trump, via Darwin, Galton, Fascism and Neoliberalsim

In 1798 Thomas Malthus published his ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’. Originally developed as an argument in response to thinkers such as William Godwin, the aspect of the overall argument that has since become synonymous with the name Malthus is that uncontrolled populations will eventually overwhelm the resources that sustain them, and therefore will inevitably lead to mass-poverty and mass-starvation. In order to understand exactly how this idea came about it is worth…

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Is COVID-19 being used as a smokescreen for embezzling public funds?

Time and time again this government has siphoned money out of the exchequer to redistribute it to their chums. Albeit, chums that were promising to deliver a product or service to alleviate the pandemic, but which almost always turned out to be entirely unfit for purpose. By October, this policy of “pandemic profiteering”, or to put it a little more plainly, embezzling public funds during a public health disaster was being estimated to have reached…

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COVID-19 as a warning sign in an abusive relationship

The American establishment have begun congratulating themselves for the checks and balances built into the constitution which are apparently now heading off an attempted coup by a far-right group within the Republican party. The anchors, editorialists and even late night hosts are applauding one another on how a handful of Judges have seemingly stopped a cult of personality from taking advantage of loopholes in the political system. What is less likely to be mentioned is…

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We are hanging on, but only just

We are coming to the end of July, and it has been 6 months since the world, billionaires and their neo-liberal apparatchiks excluded, first properly acknowledged that we are all facing an imminent and potentially catastrophic global health disaster. At that time certain governments around the world had the basic human compassion and emotional maturity to put the well-being of their respective populations ahead of the wealth and status of their peers. Others did not.…

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While class deference is most apparent at times of crisis, it is also at its most vulnerable to public opinion

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic the cultural mechanisms for maintaining class deference have been at their most apparent in years. While we are told that we are all in this together, time and again the behaviour and the subtle subtexts of the pronouncements of the 1% demonstrate that their true world view is not as egalitarian as they like to pretend. Not only do the rules for the 99% not apply to the…

Continue ReadingWhile class deference is most apparent at times of crisis, it is also at its most vulnerable to public opinion

The question isn’t whether the government should lift the lock-down, it is how many of us have to die before we say enough?

On the 4th May it was reported that an internal UK government document covering their proposed plan for lifting the lock-down had been leaked. How senior members of government, and their civil service advisers had reached the conclusion that their time would be best placed on planning to lift the lock-down is very confusing for most emotionally mature people that have a basic grasp of maths for one key reason. As of the 3rd May,…

Continue ReadingThe question isn’t whether the government should lift the lock-down, it is how many of us have to die before we say enough?

The COVID-19 mortality rate is an interesting measure of government policy

In just over four months between the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in January and the 3rd May, 28,205 people have died in the UK. In that same time in South Korea, a country with a population roughly 4/5ths the size of the UK, only 250 people have died. Trying to understand just how that has come to pass is very difficult because of the lack of consistency in how governments are measuring the impact…

Continue ReadingThe COVID-19 mortality rate is an interesting measure of government policy

Government policies as the variable in the worldwide COVID-19 experiment

While nearly every country on the planet is now fighting the same virus from largely similar starting points, there will over time, be very different outcomes. For instance, less than 3 months into this worldwide disaster, we could already see that the COVID-19 per capita death rate was running at 22 for every 100,000 people in the UK, while in South Korea it was 0.45 per 100,000. Or to put that more simply, for every…

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