now would probably be a good time to be reading the cobbett (a nation hamstrung by debt, pensions, and tithes (ecclesiastical taxes)) forcing the poor farm labourer down into debt and local poor law welfare provision and make-work schemes but horsemouth has put it to one side to concentrate on poe's gordon arthur pym - essentially a treasure island knock-off. horsemouth has survived his first week back at work - there should be celebrations.
yesterday he was out at the v&a (surely one of the most beautiful museums) in the indian summer having wandered there through a misty hyde park - he hung around little france for a while pretending to read but in fact doing a lot of people watching/ letching the young. horsemouth is never out west. neither of the exhibitions he saw particularly did it for him but sitting by the central pond in the sun was definitely fun. there was an old copy of class war in the disobedient objects exhibition on protest and art, and the wapping news from about the same time, video footage of greenham women rocking the fence.
today it is rainy and grey - horsemouth hopes there's still some more sun to come from the year.
horsemouth is still thinking about the outcome of the scottish indepedence vote - he is still astonished that the ruling class allowed something so potentially destabilising (it kind of snuck up on him before he realised the full horror of it).
it is as if they have believed their own democratic and managerialist propoganda and think empire and union can be restructured as if it were some management buy-out, as if the only political strata of the state were the modern democratic/ administrative one, as if international finance markets didn't have something to say about the kind of stability they expect the 'democratic' regimes where value is warehoused and operations conducted. of course even devo-max is now well and truly kicked into touch, the only chance of keeping it alive lying with idiot backbench tories (jumped up pack of rural solicitors that they are) demanding a proper settlement of the issue when cameron would prefer a quick pacifying bodge. salmond retires from the field of combat - it will be intersting to see if he writes anything (but it will also be utterly irrelevant).
in marx's parable of non-reproduction 'The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery' the scottish lairds (integrated into the economy) go from larids to landowners and turf their subjects off the land to make way for sheep (in the medieval fashion - ' 'sheep devour men' later still the sheep are replaced by trees 'and trees devour sheep' ) - the whole region is depopulated (as remains so as john hillaby notes in his walking diary journey through britain) and is returned to an anomalous state of 'nature'. instread of being developed it is literally devolved and that this 'looting' continues to lie at the heart of development is rosa luxemburgh's line (horsemouth gathers) . it may be that the existing set up with economic conditions set in the interest of london rather than scotland provides optimum stable long-term looting of value, or it may be that a democratically run scotland could develop and produce more value (to be looted locally or to permit a marginally more equitable setup). but the motor for scottish independence was a political one, economic only at second remove, it is the irrelevance of how scottish people vote to how their economic future is decided in westminster. here we see the true 'triumph' of democracy and its continuation - we see the spread of the powerless local assemblies with tax raising powers that dare not raise taxes - a return of hollowed out historical forms and costumes or their invention.
yet had salmond succeeded he would have royally fucked the westminster political elite - that they let it get even this close is tribute to their political ineptitude - that they have survived is largely down to luck.
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