The Prophets of Profit

[Serial_Apologist]

A important series on how capitalism is conducted in this time and has now been for the last fifty years, but one in which main underlying issues in the end are frittered away, rather like wealth:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0027bnp

This series ends where the most important solutions seeking discussion urgently needs to begin.
Sometimes one wonders what the purpose of "balance" and "impartiality" is when questions are posed in the first instance with the aim of not being answered, leaving frustration all around.

[Serial_Apologist]

This programme, also from last Wednesday, turned out to be an insightful adjunct to the one above:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0026nbl

[smittims]

It seems to me that both those ideas are tempting because they seem to promise a good deal ,but have hidden consequences which may be harmful in the long term. Marx, of course, long ago in Capital, showed how the creation of capital has damaging side effects. It appears to create a better world in that more money means more investment, more facilities and spending power for the many, but it never works out that way eventually. .

In the same way, computerisation can dull the mind instead of enlivening it. We appear to have the word at our fingertips but the value of life slips through them. It appears to release many people from menial tasks, but the majority never benefit from more rewarding activity.

I expect many will disagree , but I feel the setting up of fututre unforeseen consequences is a weakness of parliamentary democracy. One government puts into place a shiny attractive new world which gets the votes. Bythe time the disadvantages appear they have moved on,having pocketed the wealth they created for themselves,leaving the rest of us to clear up the mess. .

[Serial_Apologist]

Yet another example of "false political memory syndrome" is being represented by David Dimbleby's hosting of a new series on free market economics, in which - he admitted this morning on Toady - he now finds his petard thoroughly hoisted in helplessness by admitting that he himself now has no answers on behalf of the system he has always been an apologist for, which now finds itself beached with all the future dangers some of us have been warning of for more years than we wish to count.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00298t1

Much of the subliminal bias in what you will have heard, which is easily picked up from the unctuous tone and weighting of Dimbletoes' commentary, will not be heard unnoticed by those of us who remember his dismissive belittlement of sustainable economics in his interview of Jean Lambert, then leader of the Green Party, on a BBC TV documentary back in 1989.

Tomorrow's In Our Time has Melvyn Bragg usefully, in a change from his usual privileged hour, conversing with academics about Maurice Merleau-Ponty, founder (some will disagree) of Phenomenology, the algebra of being at cross purposes .

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002974s

[Serial_Apologist]

I just wanted to add my strong recommendation for yesterday's In Our Time, though with the proviso that it may well need a re-take or two to absorb, as it will in my case. Tonight: an Adorno perspective on radio listening, it says! Make the most of these rare pearls of opportunity while they last!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00291kg

[vinteuil]

Make the most of these rare pearls of opportunity while they last!

... or you could always dust down those Fontana Modern Masters which I know you still have somewhere in the attic...