Ralph Windle RW

Unilever’s recent escape from Kraft-Heinz’ (£115 bn) predatory bid inaugurates the Takeover – Leviathan’s latest asset – steeple-chasing season. Unilever’s salivating shareholders are already up-in-arms about a killing missed, and demanding bigger and better others.

Paul Myners, ex City Minister and M&S Chairman at the time it fought off the bid of the egregious Sir Philip Green (of BHS notoriety) has sensed the threat and urged the prime minister to wake up and protect UK prime assets from the depredations of a potential ‘garage sale’. Continue Reading »

The poet sang he’d never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Whereat, some less poetic japer
Hacked it down to craft the paper
On which to read – but thus destroy-
This unique fountain of his joy.

From “All Shades of Green”
Bertie Ramsbottom 2014

Juliet’s ill-fated admonition to Romeo – (“what’s in a name? that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”) has long set the criterion for the intimate language of true love. Continue Reading »

The more the media expand
The less we seem to understand;
The more the information flow
The less we somehow seem to know;
The more the messages we send,
The less we seem to comprehend.
Communication rules, OK ?
Although there’s nothing much to say.

From ‘The Medium is the Message’
Bertie Ramsbottom, 1985

This far into the Brexit imbroglio, which has put most other issues in our lives into uneasy suspension, we have achieved the deplorable score of multiple questions and zero answers. Continue Reading »

“The Business true-believer’s shrine
Is something called The Bottom Line;
All great religions need their Sign,
Some symbol of the Most Divine…”

Bertie Ramsbottom
“The Bottom Line” 1985 *

In the recent momentous weeks, over-shadowed by the Trump inauguration and our more local bumblings-towards-‘Brexit’, we could well ask again the eternal question – when will we ever learn? Since, for better or for worse, each of such happenings entails yet another inescapable period of delusionary self-harm; and – in the long run more important – further diversion from the known priorities of saner, happier societies. Continue Reading »

Last time, in “Whatever Happened to the Good Society?” we warned against the commentators who were already, post the EC Referendum, rushing to write the obituary of neoliberalism – in apparent ignorance of the formidable political and other defences it had built around itself over its many socially divisive years. In Jackson Lear’s chilling words (London Review of Books, July 2015)…

“Neoliberalism is everywhere and nowhere; its custodians are largely Invisible.”

There’s much remaining to be done to fully locate and finally eradicate its deeply destructive social consequences; but in the recent, post-brexit, cacophony of comment, there seems little beyond the political posturing to suggest, even now, any deeper penetration of how this system works, has for so long maintained and propagated itself, usurps both the language and institutions of our democracy, and inflates our soul-less inequalities. Continue Reading »

In a slightly overblown, technicolour, double-page-spread in the Observer (Comment 21.08.16) Martin Jacques confidently proclaimed “The Death of Neoliberalism”.

I wondered how I could possibly have missed the so-much-wished-for demise of the direst of our social and economic scourges since the unholy alliance of Reagan and Thatcher conceived it during their 1980s Chicago-School fling?

Yet sadly, as with so many of the multitudinous commentaries on the 2008 melt-down, Jacques’ presumption of its ‘Death’ seemed not to survive the very first paragraph of his own account…

“The crisis challenged the foundation stones of the long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed.

The Achilles’ heel of the neo-liberal project, and a prime prop in our now crumbling capitalist system, is a naïve faith in the infallibility of money and markets as key motivators of economic and social action.

Despite the benefits of a grammar school education, our new prime minister clearly remains a devotee of this money/market faith, and is losing no time in extending its seductive influence to the reluctant luddites still blind to the benefits of ‘fracking’ around their homes and gardens. Continue Reading »

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics – Mark Twain

Twain, like most of us, was no stranger to the ‘porkie’; and a modern-day George Washington’s “I cannot tell a lie” would not quite seem the unequivocal assurance of integrity of other times. Taking liberties with the truth, in this more sophisticated age, has come to seem a marginal blemish in the savvy politician, given some suitably contrite shrug of the shoulders. It’s tough out there and fuddy-duddism gets you nowhere. Continue Reading »

The Referendum jury – the British public – has given its split verdict and cancelled its membership of the European Union.

Found guilty-as-charged by Mr Farage and other staunch defenders of our freedoms and sovereignties, the accused has been banished to Brussels, Berlin and other distant-sounding, foreign places.

But was it a case of mistaken identity, with the wrong accused in the dock?

For the early evidence of the vote’s geographic split suggests that the ‘leavers’ were predominantly those citizens who have arguably suffered the greatest pains of austerity, inequality, job insecurity, health, housing, educational and other deprivations which have been their lot since the 2008 financial melt-down and beyond. Continue Reading »

The aura of unquestionable truths with which the arch-priests of neo-liberalism and their corporate retainers have cocooned their dismal verities over the four decades of their control of our societies surely deserves its latin tag… and none better than Homo Economicus, with its discreet distancing of women (other than the hallowed matriarch, Margaret Thatcher).

Like me, you may be helped by Pankaj Mishra’s useful definition:

“Homo economicus: who seeks to replace all other human values and interests with cost-benefit calculations, rampages across the globe in personal relations as well as the workplace, higher education and political institutions.