Well, just when we Guyanese are able to travel up to Old Blighty without a visa – first time since we cut that umbilical cord in 1966, before when Government department heads used to actually get an allowance to return “home”!! – comes another sign that the old “mother country” ain’t doin’ so good. Liz Truss has made history for a rather dubious reason – she’s now the shortest serving Prime Minister since the office was created in 1721!! And it’s not like she was overthrown, like the PPP back in 1953 after 133 days; she resigned on her own, 45 days after Queen Elizabeth appointed her in her last official act!!
So, what’s going on?? A letter writer from Linden – now based in Britain – described the hellhole that “life in London” is becoming again. Like in the 1970s, when it was like any Third World sh*thole! Margaret Thatcher then jumped in with her neo-liberal “austerity for the poor and cake for the rich” policies to pull it from the abyss – and then into prosperity based on making money on money. As the British real economy – producing real goods – shrunk, the City of London conjured up money through the legerdemain of derivatives and such like!! The bottom of that barrel had to fall off eventually, and Liz Truss is simply the victim of a vain flailing to fix what’s broken beyond repair!!
She’d taken over from Boris Johnson, who’d resigned after less than three years! Meaning, with Truss’s successor, Britain’s gonna have four PMs in 4 years!! The question right now is: “Who’ll succeed Truss?” but really it should be: “What policies will succeed Truss’s?”!! She’d just cogged from Thatcher’s neo-liberal playbook to offer all sorts of tax breaks to “encourage” investments – without showing how the Treasury would cover the funds from those taxes. Meaning, the UK was going the way of the US in generating a black hole of debts! The market in which all faith lies in this dispensation hit the roof as the pound plunged and bonds’ interests skyrocketed. Looks like she didn’t realise that circumstances had inevitably changed from Thatcher’s time!!
Truss summarily fired her Chancellor of the Exchequer (and close friend) Kwasi Kwarteng – as if she hadn’t boasted about the policies Kwarteng had implemented!! – and reversed gears. But it was too late, and it looks like Britain has entered the realm of Italy and the Balkans as far as governmental stability’s concerned. Whoever succeeds Truss will be facing a winter of discontent not seen since Charles I was beheaded in 1649. The inflationary ripples from the Ukraine War have already kicked in, and ain’t going nowhere but up!
Nowadays, the resignations of PMs are the new beheadings!!
…and gang-raped
Poor Haiti. At long last, Caricom’s making some noises about the latest disaster that’s been unfolding for the umpteenth time in that unfortunate country!! Ironically (or cynically), those same Caricom countries never fail to hail the seminal role Haiti played in fighting against our common Caribbean history of slavery and its never-ending structural effects. Haiti was the first and only slave society that fought the European colonial power on the battlefield and freed itself.
Only to see that freedom turn to a bitter poison through the interventions of the US and the old power France. Haiti suffered from “neo-colonialism” even when the old colonialism was still going strong!! Anyhow, beleaguered by gangs with greater control of the country than the Government, the US and Canada have finally sent some equipment to bolster the official forces’ response. Nothing like the US$1trillion worth of arms to Ukraine!!
Meanwhile, Caricom has dithered, rather than commit troops. We just can’t cry for Haiti!! We must stand shoulder-to-shoulder right now!!
…top 10%?
Xi Jinping seems to be taking aim at the top 10%, who own 70% of China’s wealth and earn 14 times what the bottom 50% does!! Doesn’t look good for a “communist” country pushing egalitarianism, does it??
