The Equality and Human Rights Commission has been stripped of its duty to promote a society with equal opportunity for all and had its budget and workforce halved, the government has announced.

The move comes days after the watchdog chided ministers for failing to consider how crucial policies would affect women, disabled people and ethnic minorities.

In part the changes aim to dismantle a legacy left by the previous government. Featherstone said the government would repeal the obligation to assess whether policies affect the poor, which when introduced by Labour was characterised as “socialism in one clause”. The minister said instead the “socio-economic duty” would be repealed.

Gaspar Tamas noted the advent of similar shock doctrine in his native Hungary

Well the whole Hungarian political development over the last-year-and-a-half has been very much worrying. The new government has installed a new regime. This is not just a change of government; it’s a very deep transformation of the whole country with hundreds of new laws changing the whole legal makeup of the country – changing back from a very flawed but still existent liberal democratic order into a very modern, very contemporary authoritarianism, which is very carefully thought out and very coherent. It consists of a number of measures that I can’t list in a short interview, which is curtailing people’s freedoms from press, freedom of assembly, right to strike and all that stuff, while slashing most institutions that enjoyed some kind of autonomy, from media outlets, to universities, to schools, to art institutions, to unions, to whatever.

But all this is based on a very intellectually interesting development in constitutional law that also has some symbolic changes – for example, Hungary is no longer designated a republic as of the January 1. It’s just Hungary. And where there are articles from the old constitution disappearing, such as equal pay for equal work – that’s not any longer in the constitution. Old welfare statist prescriptions are not there any longer. But what is most important is that rights are not defined as they are normally – like in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the beginning of your Constitution – but they are made dependent on the satisfactory delivery of duties – delivery of public functions and observance of duties. And there are other articles of the Constitution wherein its partially hidden, partially declared openly, that only citizens with a community spirit, and honest work, and appropriate makeup of a citizen can really count on the plenitude of all rights. The state is not obliging itself any longer to the performance of obligations on the side of the state toward citizens. So, for example, whenever the old constitution said that the government must guarantee housing or health or whatever, it said now that the government must do its best to insure fairness, health, housing, welfare, et cetera. So both the welfare state remnants in the old constitution are wiped out completely, and also the absoluteness of rights on which liberal democracies are based in most places have disappeared, which of course enables the authorities to deny various things to citizens in need.

That would also apply to the NHS and Legal Aid changes whereby the state has removed itself from a role in enabling access to health and justice while protecting finance capital & govt higher management personnel from its own tax office. This post at My Crippled Eagle is excellent on Tamas and how this also relates to what could be termed the triage of society now being undertaken, where the sick, disabled & unemployed are suffering under eliminationist abandonment.

And Labour’s response? To engage in a polite social democratic policy review (though at least the conservative pro-war Blairites are in retreat) while leaving in place Liam Byrne which sends a big signal that yes, all 3 parties have identified the sacrificial sectors of society to be the scapegoat and target of elimination- the sick, disabled and unemployed. That’s called a political consensus, and woe betide us who fall into the target range. Meanwhile the wealthiest saw their fortunes increase, austerity clearly doing the job it was designed to do. Now then let’s just check to see what the markets think, because duh, who do you think runs this Democracy Zero brand? And Greece, whose corrupt establishment nurtured by military dictatorship then ensured it ruined the country in such a way that the flaws of the EU’s structure could be hidden with the help of ingenious bankers until it was way too late. Is there hope? Background on SYRIZA by Paul Mason here, who are a lot more programmatic than panicked corporate media will have you believe. The EU should save itself, but that depends on some politicians and bankers seeing the inside of jail cells and major reform of the banking and corporate structure. So good luck with that, I’m sure they won’t just go the easy route of vilifying nations and pouring public capital into private banks. Again. Again.

This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. “Oh, it’s just a couple little innocent bad days.” Well, we had a big rain. I don’t know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days. Choke ‘em down to nothin’. They’re your days. Choke ‘em!

PS and ‘Johnsburg, Illinois’ too!

sold over 25 million records and earned over 80 gold and platinum awards. Scooter are considered the most successful single-record German act with 23 top ten hits

Or there is the snark version of Uncyclopedia. Now, imagine, if you will, that you wanted to make a Spinal Tap movie based in the commercial techno genre, you would have no need to invent the band or music or entire career as Scooter have helpfully created it all already (and ps. take that sentence as copyright on that idea, hey Scooter guys, let’s talk, does it matter if we’re laughing at/with?). You see I’m not recommending you listen to this music straight (and let’s face it, it is pretty well much designed for an ear already affected by various intoxicants). But armed with the idea they are a Chris Morris-esque side project they are hilarious… in small doses. It may well be that soon it will be admitted they are all played by comedians and they had no idea it would all get so out of hand. But until then, um make up your own amusement.

And if you want more, 15 tracks free at Soundcloud 

Stay with it, atmosphere, cinematics, ROCK, it’s a flipping’ corker.

However in a synchronous bit of animosity my 81 year old mum was attempting to park in a disabled space (she is a badge holder) when a white middle aged, middle class woman with a ‘big saloon car’ decided to go up to her car and shout expletive filled abuse at her. My mother was shook up, upset, she went on to the library where the staff were enormously nice to her, talked to her and sat her down while they went about the library getting the books she had set out to borrow.

It would seem to me something is rising here, something ugly, something that directs hate at any aspect of society deemed unfit or unprofitable (the library is probably not facing closure unlike others on the island) in order to facilitate policies that attack people and institutions that are of social benefit but do not fill the Cayman accounts of CEO’s. My mum was too unnerved to note down the registration of the woman’s car and does not want me to pursue it (cctv, talk to library staff etc) so I won’t. But I wonder if somewhere this woman understands she was abusive and intimidating to a stranger and feels any regret? I mean sure, my mum like any person can attempt to be annoying but I suspect an 81 year old parking in a disabled space to go and borrow some books from the library is probably not considered terrorism, yet. So call me rash, but I think this woman was in the wrong. So what makes her feel it is ok to verbally assault an older woman with some disabilities? Hmm, maybe Professor Nick Watson of Strathclyde Centre for Disability at the University of Glasgow & the University’s Glasgow Media Group can answer that: Increase in negative coverage of disability issues in print media- Oh look they can.

None of the Big 3 parties diverge from the anti-disability and anti-welfare rhetoric so there is no use looking to established Westminster politics to defend against the rising level of bigotry. We’re in for the long haul, a dark, long, haul. And ain’t that great for one’s depression (or the country’s for that matter)?

Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret

Simply a brilliant dancey pop song by an underrated genius that is a pleasure to have going round your head. Below is an also superb acoustic version. If forced (at gunpoint as it seems to often happen) to describe Róisín Murphy in that -well she’s like X & X & X- way I would probably say- she’s like Grace Jones, Bjork, Kylie mixed with the less annoying bits of Gaga topped with a fabulous voice & style- but the whole point of such descriptions is it takes away the essential individuality of the person, while using existing notions to try to communicate a undiscovered taste (or misunderstood as the odd Moloko hit does not do justice). So instead, just groove the fuck out to this belting choon!

State media has reported that Dimitris Christoulas, the man who took his own life using a pistol on Syntagma Square, in central Athens, on Wednesday morning, left a suicide note.

“The Tsolakoglou government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state. And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting (although if a fellow Greek were to grab a Kalashnikov, I would be right behind him), I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don’t find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance. I believe that young people with no future, will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945″ the note said.

RIP

Update: In the UK current estimate of deaths caused wholly or partly by ‘Welfare reform’ is 90

The deal ended the men’s damages claim for which they were demanding to see secret documents detailing their detention and ill-treatment by US forces in the wake of 9/11.

Yep ‘ill-treatment’ is what our polite establishment-soothing fearless hacks now call torture, kidnap, rape, genital mutilation, water boarding, sensory deprivation, inducement of psychosis, mental illness and mock execution. Now, dearest reader I ask you, with all due humility, if none of that qualifies as torture, JUST WHAT THE CUNTING FUCK DOES?

Oh dear. You see I’ve been offensive there, I used rude words. I’m just not fit to be in polite company, company that gets a neat salary, does what their editor and mortgage demands and calls torture ‘ill-treatment’. I know, I know. I can’t be proud of myself for I am a foul mouthed degenerate with no respect for vast secret global torture programs and the need to abdicate journalistic standards in order to support them. But, please, dear hack, if for some reason a razor blade is applied to your genitals, do remember this is not torture and on no account should the people doing this to you face any manner of criminal sanction. Enjoy the world you are helping build, it is Brave and New and we are all oh so proud of you.

Update: Please read Andy Worthington’s EXCLUSIVE: “They Want Me to be Harmed”: Shaker Aamer, the Last British Resident in Guantánamo, Describes His Isolation