who pays when capitalism takes the tumble?

2008 and the global financial crash leading to the great recession... 

(no not the great depression) 

since then horsemouth has paid considerably more attention to the business pages of newspapers 

(as if what he thought made any difference, as if most business news wasn't an entertainment product and financial boosterism, as if there were some hidden knowledge there). 

in addition to the podcasts the FT is hosting more videos that can be watched for free.

the way horsemouth looks at it we are being geared up for the next great collapse in value (aka. the bursting of the AI bubble) - what was sold to us as worth x amount of trillions turns out to be worth a lot less. the value of the stocks collapse and the value lost is recovered from workers and savers everywhere.

faced by this financial crisis the various governments of the world have nothing to offer but (discredited) neo-liberalism so once again they will offer us austerity (discredited) and deregulation (discredited). 

horsemouth was thinking about this recently. the issue of who pays when capitalism takes a tumble? 

with economic systems it is not simply the people holding the stock at the time because by means of limited companies, shareholder haircuts, reductions in dividends, increases in interest rates, reductions in profits, reductions in wages, reductions in tax take, increases in prices, the harm is spread out over the whole of society - or it would be if the system were fair, in fact the harms are socialized down onto the poor (and any profits, or later gains from the purchase of undervalued assets, are socialized up to the rich).  

of course this is not a definite pre-determined outcome, it is the product of a social struggle, it is just that the working class have been on the back foot for a very long time now. 

the lost decades in the fight against the climate crisis mount up. 

yesterday

another walk into the village. what another one? yes another one.

plus a walk up the hill to deliver the eggs. 

this is probably a decent amount of daily walking. something like 7-8 miles. it is difficult to say how much he saves by walking over the common or cutting through to the river by the abbey. 

last night on the tv an eminently reasonable documentary on the climate crisis but strangely not one featuring the doomster position that are attempted adaptations to climate change are not going to work and that global capitalism as we know it is going to collapse into something much worse. 

the morning 

cold out there. coming up thursday. friday. saturday actual frosts. this should kill off the last of the years crops (including the tomatoes in the greenhouse).  when this happens horsemouth can clear them out and be free of the guilt of them (the guilt of being crap at growing food). 

of course growing food is one of the main skills you are going to need after and during the collapse. 

found balthazar

latest youtube discovery don cherry soundtracks an avant-garde french SF film

 

don cherry, trumpet

flute karl berger 

poem read by anthony braxton.

horsemouth has found balthazar which was hiding in the stacks (or rather as penultimate book in a stack it was not hiding very hard - horsemouth just needed the necessary soft eyes to see it, not to be looking for it, but to just wait for it to appear). 

he therefore has the complete quartet loaded and ready to go. (though he is still unsure of the order). 

justine is a novel of the type found book (horsemouth had forgotten this). our un-named hero is given a book by a previous lover of justine (she is named claudia in the book but it is the same woman). 

'... for love we were forced to substitute a wiser but crueller mental tenderness which emphasised loneliness rather than expurgated it.' 

the city is the star (as it is in the north africa set novels of albert camus). 

there's a new new left review (nlr) out. horsemouth will read the free articles 

yesterday 

a wander into the village across the misty common (and back again). 

the mission? 

kindling (as expected) and a list of foods that horsemouth thinks would be better and more cheaply  ordered from tescos etc. he laid the fire but they did not light it. (he could certainly have gotten away with getting the kindling the next day). 

last night horsemouth clicked like in support of someone he knows with an opinion he likes. the person he was disagreeing with produced a reply linking to all the people who had liked horsemouth's friend's post. this (as far as horsemouth can see) is just classic online trolling. it disturbed horsemouth for a little bit and then he thought no why bother.

today

probably up the hill to deliver the eggs. the morning is rainy and grey and cold. coming up a brace of nights below freezing and then it warms up again into a week of rainy day, rain all day. 

possible sunny spells

so he has riddled out the fireplace of its ashes and built it up again. his mum is probably right, they probably do need more kindling to get the fire going. horsemouth will probably wander out sunday morning or monday morning to get it. 

horsemouth is keen on heating the house more with a wood fire than with the central heating. later on the fire is burning. horsemouth is trying to add just enough to keep it going until 8pm when his mum will settle down to watch tv. 

horsemouth has brought in another basket of logs from the woodshed. his mum always complains the logs are too big - maybe horsemouth needs to get into splitting them down further. 

he could probably wander the eggs up the hill also (maybe he could do that also).  

the weather

hmmn. possible sunny spells. 

from tuesday it all goes relentlessly crap (the weather). but then it cheers up again on the weekend. 

he talked to his uncle terry on the phone. and later on he talked to howard on a zoom call. there are things horsemouth should be getting on with (of course) but he isn't. 

the morning

mist, fog, diffuse light. (how to read that sentence). 

'unimportant celebrations of life that has gone'

'the film consists of 124 brief sketches, each half-a-minute to about two minutes long. portraits of people I have spent time with, places, seasons of the year, weather (storms, snow, blizzards etc...) many of my film-maker friends- streets and parks of new-york- brief escape in nature, out of town- nothing spectacular, unimportant celebrations of life that has gone, by now, and remains only as a record in these personal, brief sketches.'

- jonas mekas, he stands in a desert counting the seconds of his life.

yesterday

a wander into the village (he saw gina from the bell-ringers and julie from next door). he bought bread and picked up medicine. (and then he wandered back). 

when he wrote this it was dark outside his window and it reminds him of the urgent need to make use of such daylight as still exists. 45 days until the winter solstice - so a truer samhain or quarter day. half way down the long dark tunnel (and then there's the long haul back up). 

now it is the morning.

and a misty morning it is. horsemouth will try his usual importuning for zoom calls (and then get on with the day). 

last night the fall of monty don - he departs for pastures green. after the show a somewhat unsatisfactory who do you think you are show about him - he is related to the keiller dundee marmalade fortune but it didn't pass down to his family - instead the family emphasised the architects the wyatts. 

that ship has sailed

a morning, an afternoon, and an evening 

the pharmacy didn't have the drugs available until after 3pm (allegedly) so horsemouth phoned then but the phone line only connects 11 to 1.

horsemouth went in anyway to pick up the hereford times so that his mum has a tv guide.

he picked up the pills no problem. (or so he thought).

sunset was 4.37pm so he was back before it got dark. 

his mum made the discovery that no these were not the right pills (they were some other pills). 

horsemouth is hacked off (can you tell). his patience has been used up once again (all gone).  fairplay he'd reached the end of his patience earlier on in the day and it was only his 'success' with the medicine that cheered him up. fucking fuckries (fucking cunts). 

today the bollocks will begin again. 11 til 1. 

contrary to horsemouth's earlier expectations the weather will be solidly shit and rainy all the way out til the 18th (and probably beyond). 

------------------------------------------

meanwhile

ffvb iv is on its way!

but unfortunately it's not here yet so horsemouth can't recommend you buy it for this bandcamp friday.

horsemouth was just listening through to the track order again (rob seems to have run with the one horsemouth proposed). there are some excellent tunes on it (and all well played by rob lawson). 

horsemouth hopes he's found the correct order to show them off to their best advantage. 

well that's the best horsemouth can do towards pointing to something good. the CD will come with a booklet containing some of horsemouth's fictions from the world of the far future village band. 

horsemouth will do you a review as soon as it seems right to do so.

pray that the road is long (on relaxing the affordability criteria)

'when you start on your journey to ithaka

then pray that the road is long,

full of adventure, full of knowledge...' 

- c.p. cavafy. ithaka.

here we have donovan doing a greek isles/ lawrence durrell sort of thing, reciting a truncated cavafy poem. 

horsemouth saw a newspaper article where the current definition of affordability (that no more than 40% of income should be spent upon housing) as in  part rent part buy housing was providing a barrier to sales.

the current price list published by the owners of these properties (legal & general affordable homes) shows that a 25 per cent share in the smallest one-bedroom flat costs £96,875. buyers must also pay £667 a month in rent on the remaining share, plus a monthly service charge of £319.70. that's a grand a month (roughly) - your quarter share at £97k for cash would cost you £538 a month on a 25 year repayment mortgage (at 4.5%). so you would be paying £1523/ month all in.

(smallprint. assuming interest rates didn't rise. assuming the rent rises are fairly capped (RPI say). assuming the monthly service charge increases are fairly capped (RPI say). or assuming if there were such rises your wages would rise in line with them (unlikely)). 

thus you would need to be earning £3800/ month or nearly £46k a year to meet the affordability criteria (that no more than 40% of income should be spent upon housing).

many of the prospective buyers cannot meet this so the decision has been made to relax the affordability criteria - so that tenant/ owners can now pay more than 40% of their income and still be considered eligible for the scheme. 

such are the victories for the lowly waged (on £46k/ year or thereabouts). 

the median average salary in london is about £53k (so half the london population earn less than this) and there (faced by some AI slop that claimed 16.1% of londoners earned below the various figures horsemouth put in) horsemouth ended his researches. 

still. this is more money than horsemouth has ever seen. other than teachers horsemouth can't think that any of his friends are earning this sort of money. (but they are worked half to death for it). 

there were very few years of horsemouth's time in london when the rent only amounted to 40% of his income. by the end it was more like 80 or 90%. horsemouth was in fact dipping his savings to the tune of the money they were paying into the works pension (on the basis that he was diversifying his savings). 

anyway goodbye to all that.  

'only the city is real'

'what is to become of us without barbarians? those people were a solution of a sort...' 

- c.p. cavafy, waiting for the barbarians.

horsemouth has started on reading lawrence durrell's the alexandria quartet.

however he currently lacks balthazar which is probably hiding in the stacks somewhere. (in theory it shouldn't matter if he finds it or not). this follows on from his reading of the dark labyrinth (which ends with a rediscovery of a paradise of sorts). 

the poet c.p.cavafy makes an appearance (hidden behind an asterisk). two appearances so far. apparently donovan quotes cavafy in his film there is an ocean. (this seems to be lost in the stacks of wikipedia itself. youtube is yet to provide an answer.)

horsemouth was looking for the a french version of electric moon by a 'marie'. he thought it might be marie laforêt but it turns out to be marie-france dufour's 'il faut toujours croire à la chance' (but there's also claudine longet's english language version).

apparently the donovan version only existed on the soundtrack of the film which was unreleased for many years. 

horsemouth had written his usual wittering about retirement but instead decided to go with an entirely written in the morning blogpost. 

the book storage question continues to be answered unsatisfactorily. really horsemouth should have recreated the vast amount of shelving down the walls that he had in his old room and relocated more (if not all) of his books into the house. (he has not done so).