Pink Floyd: Dogs

Well, what else, after that ?

That Tax-Haven Trolling in the Telegraph

Far be it from me to suggest the central paradox of leftism, but the recent election campaign seemed to highlight it better than ever. If you believe so passionately in the redistribution of wealth, shouldn’t you also believe in the creation of some wealth to redistribute? But Labour knows that would defeat its fundamental object of building a client state that would obediently vote for it. If you have policies that encourage wealth creation, you encourage job creation, and a rise in real earnings. Then you don’t need a massive welfare state, and you end up with a clientele too small to be politically effective. Simples, as the meerkat says.

...

Even the Tory party believes in redistribution of wealth – if it didn’t it would be unable to fund the NHS, state schools, care services and welfare provision that a civilised society requires....

Erm, there's honest ideological purity, and then there's just blatant lying.

...And you only raise the money to fund those services by having successful businesses that pay taxes and put millions of people in work.

It is time to become aggressive about this point, even though the election is won, because it is fundamental to the difference between conservatism and socialism; and it is not appreciated enough by a public for whom the narcotic spell of the welfare state has yet to be thoroughly broken. Again, it is simple. You don’t tax a loss. You only tax a profit. If you want to raise revenue, business has to be profitable. If you want to cut public spending, business has to be profitable too, because when it is making money it adds people to its payroll.

...

Mr Osborne should raise the 40 per cent tax threshold considerably this year, and every year of this parliament. Currently 4.6m people pay 40p in the pound, and the present threshold is £41,900. HM Revenue and Customs forecast that even if the threshold reached £50,000 by 2020 an additional 900,000 people would be paying it. This is a brake on aspiration and enterprise. It is also a brake on incentive and therefore on productivity, and low productivity is the most poisonous problem in our economy today. He should also abolish the 45p rate, which raises hardly any extra revenue but gives enormous amounts of work to accountants, and take as many low-paid people out of taxation as possible, to encourage their aspiration.

Some public spending is always necessary. But it is not a good in itself. The state has fundamental responsibilities, but providing employment for the masses is not one of them.

...

Indeed, I can’t see what is wrong with making the whole country a tax haven: for I have yet to visit a tax haven where the people are mired in poverty. If Mr Osborne makes that his aim for July 8, he won’t go far wrong.

This piece by Simon Heffer in The Telegraph is fairly blatant Tory Trolling, complete with all the expected requisite buzzwords.  But it does rather beg the question: What if the City, the part of the economy with which Heffer is presumably most enamoured, were itself, alone to become a separate country ?  It already acts virtually as a haven from tax, law, and decency, with the inconvenience of having to drag the long tails of regular England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland behind it.

The new tax-haven city-state would lose guaranteed access to the outside workforce, infrastructure, and so on, but might soon be attracting ever more criminal plutocratic elements away from places such as Switzerland and the far-east.  And the remaining UK, (with or without Scotland, and minus the all-destroying black-hole that is central London, why not, with ?) would have to get over the short-term tax-losses from the City, in so far as such taxes were being paid in the first place, but might learn again what it is to build a real economy -- One based upon the creation & sale of actual physical goods and real (legal) services, rather than the manipulation by corrupt bankers & traders of mere digits in a database.  And one dedicated to the employment, the welfare, and betterment of all its citizens, and not just the get-ahead-at-any-costs City-strivers with the club tie, the firm handshake, and the knife always at the ready.*

It might be a better future for everyone in question.


* Pink Floyd, obvs.  http://www.metrolyrics.com/dogs-lyrics-pink-floyd.html  Although not also finding a way to mention the 'Pigs' in the same sentence rather spoils the metaphor perhaps.

Pink Floyd: Sheep

Featured the lyrics of this here before, but not the actual song, how can that be ?

Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream (Animals, 1977)

If I had to pick one album by Pink Floyd as my favourite, Animals would probably be it. It's certainly in the top three with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall.  This is Pink Floyd ten years

on from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a Pink Floyd that had stumbled a little with uneven albums such as Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, only to find themselves ever more popular and famous with the release of The Dark Side of the Moon, and having subsequently to live in its shadow.  This is also Floyd in the age of Punk, a band probably eager to prove their relevance with a new more electronic sound and lyrics that reflected the political and social realities of the time.  This is the Pink Floyd that would crash out two years later with The Wall, a double disc epic that ended the Roger Waters era of Pink Floyd on a high much as The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway did for the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis.

Whilst much of Floyd's more ah-hippieish work hasn't dated all that well, the darker, more reflective, and the more politically incisive songs have stood the test of time quite well.  Thinking Welcome to the Machine here, Time, Money, and the like.  And this album has those same sort of attributes condensed into a perfect whole, one that really should be listened to in a single hearing.  It slows and builds up again with the (most played by radio) track Pigs (Three Different Ones), only to reach a crescendo in the manic and lyrically cutting Sheep:

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air

You better watch out

There may be dogs about

I've looked over Jordan, and I have seen

Things are not what they seem

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real ?

Meek and obedient you follow the leader

Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel

What a surprise !

A look of terminal shock in your eyes

Now things are really what they seem

No, this is no bad dream

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want

He makes me down to lie

Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by

With bright knives He releaseth my soul

He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places

He converteth me to lamb cutlets

For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger

When cometh the day we lowly ones

Through quiet reflection, and great dedication

Master the art of karate

Lo, we shall rise up

And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water

Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream

Wave upon wave of demented avengers

March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream

Have you heard the news ?

The dogs are dead !

You better stay home and do as you're told

Get out of the road if you want to grow old

-- Roger Waters

The metaphor in the album of people as Pigs, Dogs, or Sheep, loosely inspired by Animal Farm is a simple one, but one that resonates to this day, as a minority of us amass ever more obscene levels of wealth and power, the Dogs of the world fight viciously for what wealth and privilege they can, and the majorities live meekly in denial and willful ignorance of their increasingly vulnerable serf-like place in society.  What do you get for pretending the danger's not real indeed ?