Double barrel Swinery this week from one Sir Digby Jones, Director-General of the CBI(1). First off there was his rabid flag waving at Blair's disrupted CBI appearance. Both Jones and Blair tried to spin the whole debacle to portray Greenpeace as the aggressive censor and Blair as the oppressed victim, struggling for freedom of speech.

Just think about that for a moment, two guys armed with nothing but confetti and a banner, probably underfed vegans the pair, ‘oppressing’ the leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world. Isn’t that just a little bit of bullshit?

Somehow people bought this however, even when Jones apparently used the biggest hole in their story as an asset. he basically suggested that Blair had a right to speak because he was the ‘democratically elected leader’ of the nation while the protestors spoke only for themselves. I was half expecting him to break out into ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’.

Of course the fact is that if our political system were truly representative and responsive such protests would become unnecessary. As it is we find ourselves in the frustrating position of living under a system of government which enables those in power to outright ignore vast swathes of opinion.

Our leaders, so highly revered for their democratically elected status, are not, and show no signs of, addressing many of the most significant problems we face today. As demonstrated by yesterday’s post, the issue of future energy sources has unimaginably wide ranging implications. No government has ever taken this issue seriously enough or had the balls to move towards any real solutions.

Jones insisted that an open debate concerning alternative energy sources was necessary, which is fair enough, but that those involved should, ‘check their ideologies at the door’, ie. no principles please, we’re British. As a business man Jones clearly sees principles and beliefs as irrational obstacles on the logical path toward profit.

Unfortunately for Jones, the economic systems to which he subscribes are one of the most pervasive ideologies mankind has ever discovered. Hiding behind maths, these economic theories masquerade as hard science when in fact they are just another belief system. A system, it’s worth noting from Jones’ apparently hypocritical comment, that its followers don’t even realise they are committed to.

The second dose of Swinery came amid possibly one of my least favourite headline stories of the year: ‘the pensions crisis’. I accepted along time ago that, short of some major windfall, like a big publishing deal, I’m always going to be skint, and that’s ok by me. Material luxuries just distract from more important matters.

Anyway, Jones popped up to comment on the argument over public sector workers being able to retire earlier than their private sector peers. Let’s ignore for now the fact that current public sector workers have legal contracts ensuring them this privilege and that if the government didn’t want them to retire earlier they shouldn’t have put in those contracts in the first place.

Instead let’s focus on Jones’s words of wisdom. Basically, he claims, the situation is entirely unfair and is the result of the greedy and evil trade unions strong arming the government. What is obvious to me here is that Jones is providing us with a perfect metaphor for the system he unknowingly worships.

The flaw with most economic theories is that they assume their own completeness, ie. that all influences are not only considered but quantified. Of course this can never be the case for two reasons: firstly it can never be guaranteed that every single possibly relevant factor has been included and secondly there are some things that simply cannot be quantified.

This is flaw can be seen in the form of a gaping hole straight through Jones’ analysis of the situation. He clearly compares public and private sector jobs in purely financial terms: How much do you have to pay a nurse compared to an ad exec? How much does it cost to train them respectively? What do they produce in return for such rewards and investment? What’s the bottom line?

The problem with this is that what these figures will not show is that a nurse is simply more important to society than an ad exec. The difference between public and private sector workers, it seems to me, is the way in which they contribute to society.

The private sector worker contributes through tax, both individually and from the profits they earn for their company. Similarly, the public sector worker contributes through tax but these guys also contribute to society just by doing their jobs at all.

It is tempting, perhaps, to attempt to quantify this contribution in terms of man hours saved by NHS treatment or highway maintenance for example, but the impact of our public services runs so wide and deep as to make this a nonsense task.

It would be lovely to suggest that everyone who works in the public sector does so purely for these reasons but this seems unlikely. In fact many of the public servants who keep this country ticking over probably chose their jobs because of the attractive pay and pensions package on offer.

The point is that these people deserve something back from society and that that very gift helps us continue to recruit people into these vital systems. So for two examples of inflicting his own capitalist blinkers on an unsuspecting public, Digby is this week’s Swine Of The Week. Just because you can’t see past the wad in your pocket mate, doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to listen to your shit.

footnote

(1) Never heard of him? Check out this link: http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/content.nsf/0/cae356201e62c6118025682b004a4e1c?opendocument