The rise and possible fall of the wicker man
Far away from the encampments in London and Wall Street, where very peaceful protesters sit patiently for social justice to appear from some celestial plain, Oxford erected its Wicker Man. Designed by children to support a cancer charity, it makes me think of a more terrible cancer at the heart of our body politic. It has been touring the towns all round the county. I saw it at the Wychwood Fair in Cameron's own back yard, near Witney.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.143560239070619.32029.103566629736647&type=1
It seems that we have forgotten poor old Guy Fawkes and his barrels of gun powder under the houses of parliament. We are not bothered about the bickering Christians and their luke-warm support for poor people sleeping at the feet of the bankers’ gleaming spires. We have even changed our minds about King's marrying catholics.
We might just be returning to Paganism. I heard no screams from any bankers, buried in the fiery heart of the vast wicker sculpture that was set aflame in South Park on November the fifth. But I can record that there was a particularly demonic figure revealed, when the wood had all burned away. It seems that there is something hideous at the heart of our business world that cannot be destroyed by the fire of our every day anger.
It also seems that the purgatory fires of the financial melt down in 2008 left the ugly inner realities, almost the same as their outer forms, still standing.
The Prime Minister of Greece now falls at the feet of the money brokers who do not care for a democratic response to their country’s and Europe’s financial crisis. How infuriating of him to seek some kind of popular endorsement for the austerity foisted on ordinary people, while the power elites continue with no adjustments to their own wealth and status.
When London burned, back in the summer, there were few voices raised to stand up against the torrent of invective which was turned on the under class by the men in power. There were no bankers strung up on the capitals splendid riverside lamp posts. People who felt they had too little of the wealth of the bankers merely wanted to steal some for themselves.
Jesus Christ threw the money me out of the temple. They run his show today.
After the politicians’ expenses scandal and the more extreme scandals of corruption of Government by Murdoch media, and the elite’s massive payouts to each other for the failure and duplicity of their executives, the poor might have expected to be forgiven for dipping their own hands in the till of Mammon.
No chance. It was exemplary prison sentences for this rabble. On the other hand, just four members of parliament went to prison, when even the home secretary was cheating on the nation. The worst bankers slipped away with their pension pots intact, under legal agreements that could not be questioned by courts or politicians.
Bonuses are as high today as they were before. RBS declares another bean-feast today on the back of falling profits.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2058354/RBS--500m-bonuses-casino-bankers-despite-collapse-profits.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
In spite of the fact that we all now know that phone hacking was endemic in the Murdoch press for years, no one new has yet been sent to prison, or even sent to trial.
Since the prince of darkness, Peter Mandelson, declared his state of extreme relaxation around increasing wealth for the wealthy, it appears the whole country has begun to worship Money. Everything today is given a cash value. There is very little chance of a Big Society emerging that can live by any other value. Cameron is Thatcher's heir. He cannot escape her legacy of, "There is no such thing as society."
I don’t suppose many people think mythologically today. The Gods are supposed to be dead. A mere three million ever visit a Christian church. But the Old Gods are returning. Pluto was the Roman God of the underworld. He was the God of wealth. The Greeks called him Hades. Once you cross into his territory there is very little hope of return. Hades is the Lord of Death. He is the Lord of all today.
It is not Jesus Christ who has conquered death in this brave new world, however. The bankers’ towers dwarf the little edifice of St Paul's. These are the cathedrals to Pluto.
As floods swept into the Thai capital last week only the big banks had vast sand bag walls to keep the wet away.
There needs to be no death and/or resurrection for our moneyed men. They do not throw themselves from penthouse windows as the stock brokers did, when the slump was as bad back in the thirties. No-one drags their bodies out into the streets. They just sit tight and carry on as if nothing had changed. It is all a matter of confidence. Magicians are also sons of Pluto and his minister, Mercury.
A little juggling of perceptions, a little spinning, a little sitting tight, and then everything is fine again, at least for them.
The news papers and TV media have been incredibly slow to acknowledge the message of the “Occupy” protesters. They have all preferred to constrain the issue within parochial church affairs.
Not till the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed sympathy did they start to write about there being a case to answer by the plutocrats. That is why they are called plutocrats, by the way. They come from the underworld.
Peter McKay picks up the problem today in the Daily Mail. “Why terrorise inept clerics when they could camp on the doorsteps of Bob Diamond and his pals?” he says. But they aren’t terrorising anyone. My question is, can anything but terrorist tactics, fire and brimstone, do anything to dent the firewall of the arrogant rich.
Bob Diamond, and every other top banker who comes on air, seems to speak about appropriate remuneration for the scale of responsibility of these top people. But they did not take responsibility for the crash. Many did not even comprehend how it had happened. On this line of argument the dictators that are falling about us in the middle east should have been allowed to keep their vast fortunes, since they took responsibility for everything in their countries. In the past, Idi Amin and other tyrants slipped quietly into exile with their ill gotten gains. Gadaffi was not so lucky.
Cameron and Clegg mouth protests about income inequalities and unfairness. But they will never do anything serious to change things. Nor will Milliband, whatever he says now. He was part of the Blair project, which only made Thatcher’s changes worse for poor people.
The Christians made a fundamental change to western culture. They made one person a sacrifice for the failures of all time. Maybe it is time to revert to older ways. The pagans knew it was important to sacrifice the King in a ritual process that would ensure prosperity. This often meant ritual murder.
Leaders were heroes who suffered and died for us. Now only the poor squaddies die in Afghanistan for us.
If we are to start rebuilding the wicker man for a ritual regeneration of our Kingdoms, then our plutocrats may have something real to fear, when they steal from us, aggrandize themselves at our expense, and expect the rest of us to pay the price for their failures.
We await the fate of the new Greek Government and the old lecher, Berlusconi, with interest.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15617132
