Just to notify everyone that we have sent the last Christmas orders off, and any orders received from now will be posted in the New Year.
As for the Idler itself, you may have noticed that there has been no October issue. This is because we are “between” publishers. Ebury, after seven issues, have called it a day. We are talking to new potential publishers, and in the meantime we are working on Issue 42: Smash The System. This will be a 350 page hardback retailing for twenty pounds. We are publishing it independently and it will be released on May 1.
Have a very merry Christmastide.
TH
We’re thinking of bucking the trend this year and getting luxurious gifts for loved ones. Books and food should never be “economised” on, and it’s better to get small amounts of very good stuff than large amounts of rubbish. Feed the body and mind with quality ingredients. My friend Alan is selling the most fantastic artisan-made sugars, salts and teas on his new Speciality Farm Foods website. A little of the sugar on porridge or oats in the morning is something else.
Merriment is also important, and to that end may I suggest ukuleles as presents? There is only one place to go, and that is the wonderful new site from The Duke of Uke, London’s ukulele emporium.
Finally, we have just produced a nice downloadable Idler Price List, listing all the books we sell, plus t-shirts and other stuff. The Idler’s Diary 2009 is a particularly cheering gift, and we have a few comforting hoodies left, too. A new release is John Mitchinson’s essay on William Morris, first published in the QI Idler, which Christian Brett of Bracketpress has produced in a fine limited letterpress hardback edition.
TH
Charles Hazlewood is coming to our local village hall in North Devon to host a Christmas Wassail party. Wassailing is an English custom involving the singing of old songs and the drinking of large quantities of spiced cider.
The date for this evening of merry-making is SATURDAY DECEMBER 13TH (*NOT* FRIDAY 12TH as previously advertised), the time is 6pm, and the place is Hannington Hall, Martinhoe, EX31 4QT. Martinhoe is off the A39, next to Woody Bay.
£5 on the door; kids free.
TH
The Guardian today reports that the government is going to crack down on that terrifying and dangerous group of wasters and scroungers, single mothers.
The proposals say that every mother of a child over one year old should be forced to get a job:
“… James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, will defy critics when he publishes a review prepared by the academic Paul Gregg that will propose all lone parents with children as young as one should be required to make themselves ready for work.
“The government proposed in a green paper in July to make it a requirement for lone parents with children aged seven or more to seek work, proposals that had already led to a backlash. It is estimated there are 600,000 lone parents with children aged under seven.”
Get those lazy feckless Mothers into jobs! The Guardian continues:
“Gregg is to propose a new category of benefit claimants—the progression to work group—who he says should face clearer state requirements to make themselves ready for work.
“The Department for Work and Pensions said this group would include lone parents with children as young as one, partners of people on benefits with children under seven and incapacity benefit claimants deemed to be capable of work.”
It’s another piece of legislation which seeks to enforce the government’s fiercely pro-work ideology, and their conviction that women should dump their toddlers in childcare facilities while they go and slave in Tesco’s. In the 19th century, such indigents were sent to the workhouse. Their kids were sent to the workhouse as well. The report continues:
“This group, before they are actually ready to actively seek work, would be expected to address debt, confidence or health problems, as well as taking on work and skills training. Young mothers might also be required to make inquiries about access to childcare in their locality.”
It’s a chillingly brutal and authoritarian move:
“‘Sanctions would only apply to those who refuse to take steps to be job-ready that have been jointly agreed with their personal advisers in Job Centres’, said a DWP official.”
This sort of language reminds me of another government attempt to get people into full-time jobs. I ‘ll quote it here:
“Work-shy elements within the meaning of this order are men who are old enough to work and who have recently been certified fit and who can be proved to have rejected offers of work on two occasions without just cause or have accepted work only to abandon it again shortly afterwards without adequate reason.”
The date of this announcement? 1938. The author? Heinrich Himmler. The solution?
“All protective custody prisoners will be sent to concentration camp Buchenwald near Weimar.”
Watch out, people. It’s during times of economic collapse that bits of authoritarian legislation tend to get sneaked through.
The Financial Times today publishes a few figures on deaths in the oil industry. Thirty Shell workers were killed in 2007, they say, and that figure was eight for Exxonmobil and seven for BP. Click here for the full story. It’s a well known fact that work is very dangerous, and often fatal. Each year, according to the UN, over two million people around the world die from work-related causes, that’s over three times the number who are killed in wars. Needless to say, the deaths tend to be among the low grade workers rather than the port-swilling board directors. Another reason, then, to quit your job.
Shell blamed some of the deaths on unruly Nigerians. But “dangerous conditions”, ie resistance to foreign exploitation by locals, has not stopped the general move of Western money into Africa and other so-called “emerging markets”, as this story about private equity firm Actis, also from today’s FT, shows. When there is nothing left to commodify in the First World, the system aggressively seeks out new markets elsewhere around the world.
"The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live."