February 18, 2009 archive

Not only are there no jobs there is also nobody home.

This diary will encapsulate our current dilemma with political economy in terms of Sigmund Freud’s concepts of the “pleasure principle” and of the “reality principle” in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.  This will encompass a general exploration, helped along by Marcuse’s use of Freud in Eros and Civilization, of how the Pleasure Principle and the Reality Principle are concepts that can be used to “read” society and history.  I will conclude with a reading of our own society at this historical juncture, which will criticize how the present and future are being approached.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

This Pony Party is an open thread!  Please do not rec.

Compare the treatment of a disgraced banker like Andy Hornby with BMW workers like Roger Freitis, sacked at an hour’s notice

Disgraced bank boss Andy Hornby

Wrecked the HBOS banking group but pocketed

£1.3 million in bonuses

Left the bank with a £2.4 million pension pot

Now a ‘consultant’ with Lloyds TSB and scraping by on £66,000 a

month

Former BMW worker Roger Freitis

Worked for BMW on a temporary

contract for two years but sacked with an hour’s notice

Helped to make his

firm £3.4 billion in profits in 2007

Now on the dole with a child and

mortgage

The following should be read alongside this article:

» Bankers’ ‘sorry’ just isn’t good enough

»Fury as Cowley workers sacked with hour’s notice

» Derek Simpson and the ‘British Jobs’ slogan danger

» Union fight derailed by reliance on Gordon Brown

» Agency staff: Labour blocked workers’ rights

© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

This started out as just a ‘to be comment’, with the NPR report just below, updating the reports surfacing about the revisit of the policy on our returning soldiers killed in action in the two combat theaters. I kept finding abit more so included, along with an upcoming HBO presentation, this coming weekend, of a documentary on the journal written by an officer as he accompanied a soldier back to his family and community.

Rethinking Media Coverage Of Fallen Troops