A whole new meaning to the term 'hedge fund'

CAPITALISM IS CRAZY

‘Ruh oh, here we go’, you’re thinking. ‘She’s had a couple of beers and got political again. She’s ranting and raving and won’t listen to sense. Quick, let me navigate away from this page before the barrage of slurred conspiracy theories starts dissolving my hard-earned brain cells.

Ah ha! Well, think again my friend, for I can (reasonably) confidently confirm that I have only had ONE beer today, and this blog post is totally sane. Capitalism, on the other hand, is absolutely CRAZY. And I don’t mean this in an affectionate, ‘wouldn’t have you any other way’ kind of tone. Please don’t read this the way JD and Turk cheerily say ‘Hooch is crazy’ in Scrubs. I mean it. Forget about inhumane, this concept we’ve built our democracy around has become SUPER RIDICULOUS.

Let me explain what led me to this conclusion, and to add my two cents to a conversation which a lot of people would consider closed by David Hassellhoff on top of a wall in 1989.

I’m not an economist, but based on my limited understanding, I get the point of capitalism. I get that it’s important to affix value to products and services, to allow us to trade effectively in them. That’s a sound idea, really it is. But as society evolves and changes, so necessarily will its foundations, and capitalism has evolved into a CRAZY BITCH.

Any western export delivered by the Hoff is always 100% welcome, right?

Allow me to demonstrate with a very tangential story. I came across a report recently about the myriad benefits public parks provide to society. Great, right? It included a section about a government committee designed to make it much easier to convey the value of public parks, and drive more councils and businesses to invest their time and money in them. This committee was called the Natural Capital Committee, and I still can't understand how anyone writing about this committee manages to do so with a straight face, so ridiculous and comical is the purpose of this ACTUAL GOVERNMENT FUNDED INITIATIVE.

Since 2012, the Natural Capital Committee has been dedicated to showing the ‘true economic value of habitats and species by placing financial metrics on the 'free' goods and services provided by nature.’ This means there are people who are paid by government to translate things like the beauty of trees, the exhilaration of a good morning run, the pleasant chirping of birds and the rush of jumping off a swing into hard cash value. I mean, really. Apart from being far from a science, it’s also JUST SUPER DUMB. The report states, with the unbridled positivity of the guy who voices the JML infomercials, that metrics now exist “that allow the accurate calculation of the economic value of … storing carbon, [and] providing food and clean water”.

That’s a scary sentence, and not just because it uses the hellish mathematical buzzwords of ‘calculation’ and ‘economic’ in the same breath. That sentence tells me that I live in a world where it’s seen as necessary to affix monetary value to that nifty thing trees do where they create oxygen for life. A handful of intelligent individuals are required - sorry, PAID - to demonstrate the financial value of THE ABILITY TO FREAKING BREATHE. As if the value of LITERALLY STAYING ALIVE wasn’t self evident. It’s hysterical, ridiculous, and also more than mildly dystopian. The most dystopian thing about it is that the many many people whose hands this report has gone through, and who established this committee, can’t have seen it this way. This madness was to them, logical and sensible, and a good use of time and money.

Did they factor in the cost to the NHS when she breaks her ankle joyously jumping off that swing to their calculations? Is the creative thought and confidence she builds from playing outdoors worth more or less than the cost of a 6 week cast? Most importantly, WHO THE HELL SERIOUSLY WORKS THIS SHIT OUT?

The version of capitalism we have found ourselves in has morphed so much that the language of money is the only language governments, companies and the other bodies that run our society trade in. In order to persuade those in power of the value of anything, we have to do so in terms of hard cash. Whole government discourses run on this premise, without anyone questioning the super-flawed fundamentals on which the debate is set. It’s pre-agreed that the way to win a policy argument is through finance. ‘How much money can be saved by increasing access to mental health?’, politicians ask. Not ‘How many people will be healthier and safer?’, which is surely the primary aim of any mental health policy. The freedom and safety of financial markets has become, weirdly, far more sacrosanct than the freedom and safety of human beings.

Nothing, including the very air we breathe, it seems, is good or valuable unless it can be monetized. This principle, shown in this report at its most ridiculous of logical extensions, is the same principle that sees the disabled, the unemployed, refugees, low-earners and students so badly treated by western democracies. Our current version of capitalism isn't an all-access market, promoting healthy competition. It's an absolutely ludicrous joke.

Money and capitalism were meant to aid the smooth running of society, but now society seems to be increasingly arranged to aid the smooth flow of money. I’m not crazy - THAT IS.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby ... And Seventeenth Century Theatre

Yes! My totally grabby scandalous title brought you in! Read on, friends as I share my tipsily written, soberly edited thoughts on a seventeenth century spy, tinder and feminism. 

I recently watched the dress run of The Rover, probably the sexiest show currently on at the RSC. (If you don’t think that’s much of a statement, go check out Lucifer in a white catsuit, red lipstick and stilettos in Doctor Faustus at the Barbican, then come back to me. Elizabethan theatre is RAUNCHY.) 

It was very enjoyable. Aphra Behn, who wrote it, was one of the UK’s first professional female playwrights, when she wasn’t being a spy. She’s kind of like a seventeenth century John le Carre, except she wrote about far more universal and exciting things than international espionage: sex and travel, mostly. The play’s about three wealthy sisters who escape their brother’s restrictive watch to experience some fun and romance before facing the highly unromantic futures that have been laid out for them, which involve being shipped off to convents or into unwanted marriages. They disguise themselves as gypsies and join carnival season for one night of freedom, where they become entangled with three English travellers, who find the carnival equally new, exciting and foreign. 

The Rover © RSC

The whole play stinks of patriarchy, like most things from 1677 do. Amid the party atmosphere of the carnival, there are seriously solemn moments: one of the sisters has to not just forgive but pretty much laugh off two men who attempted to rape her (on separate occasions! in one day! And one of them goes on to marry her sister!), and the sisters all have to do exactly what their brother and father tell them. 

While that’s all important though, what I really want to convey here is how SEXY the show is. There’s sexy men, and sexy women, and sexy men having sex with sexy women, and sexy women having sex with sexy men, and sexy women having sex with unsexy men and skirts fly off and hands wander and everyone is just so excited to SEE EACHOTHER. It’s lovely! 

The Rover © RSC

As I sat and watched the scandal unfold, it felt terribly unfair to me that nearly 350 years later, such electric, excitable sexual adventure still feels like such a distant and fantastical notion. There’s something desperately numbing about watching people dance and kiss and argue and get so intensely entangled in each other, in a story that only takes place over 24 hours or so, and then go home and turn to the 21st century’s equivalent matchmaking tool - not carnival, but tinder. Masks and music and dance have given way to swiping through photos and forcing conversation with boring strangers on an app. 

HOW CAN THIS HAVE HAPPENED? We’ve had lots of progress since 1677. Microwaves and shorts for women, to name but two examples. It is very much a good thing that I am not forced to marry anyone I don’t want to. This play makes it abundantly obvious that women in the seventeenth century found it just as unsavoury a prospect as we do today. It is good that women can now report rape as a crime, and men are punished - occasionally. AREN’T WE LUCKY. But all these marks of progress come with serious caveats. I may not have to marry anyone I don’t want to, but that’s not the case for many women and girls in the world. We might be able to report rape as a crime, but women still have to laugh off rape ‘jokes’ in many situations.  

Rather than joining a carnival and dancing round in masks, meeting people, taking in smells and sights and sounds and feeling physical attraction, we join Tinder or Grindr or Happn, and virtually bat off weirdos and consign ourselves to random onslaughts of dickpics. Technology has somehow allowed us to do away with physical connection, but keep the abuse and objectification. How can we have let this happen as a society? We’ve kept the sexual oppression, and LOST THE ACTUAL SEX?!?! 

© Vice

I don’t think I’m being over dramatic here. A study released last month showed that millenials (specifically young people aged 20-24), have less actual, in person, kissy touchy sex than previous generations. And I can believe it. I mean, how do you even connect with people these days? We don’t go outside! Even if we did, what would we do? Technology has splintered the media so much that there’s very little that EVERYONE connects over any more.There’s nowhere that EVERYONE IS. They’re not at carnivals, or speakeasies, or punk gigs or raves. They’re on the internet. (And while you CAN have sex over the internet, I’m going to stick my neck out here and say it’s not as fun.) And yet these extra miles and messages and apps between us all haven’t kept us any safer. Young women have a 30% chance of being sexually assaulted on university campuses. We’ve kept the dark, oppressive demons of centuries past and cast off the fun side. 

Watching this 1677 play in 2016, the poignant, relatable aspects are the violence, sinister control and revenge many of the men seek to affect on the women, while the lively sexual banter feels ludicrous and dated. IT SHOULD BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND. The crazily overt sexism should feel distant and antiquated, and the SEX, the CONNECTION and the CARNIVAL, should feel universal.

The Rover © RSC

Flashback

Money, Hypocrisy, Williamsburg and Wall St: They're not as bad as eachother

In the last couple of weeks I’ve somehow found myself in 3 separate jobs, working almost 7 days a week and simultaneously moving house. Phhew! My feelings of guilt towards this blog hold what I imagine to resemble the awkward feelings of a busy, neglectful mother towards her child. All I want to do is look after it and write for it and plan more things to do with it, but unfortunately, earning money has to take precedence.

In about a month I’m going travelling, and come September I’m going to have bills and expenses flying out of my bank account left right and centre. You know, like other functioning members of society do all the time? My break from the world of careers and study will soon be over, so I’m going out with a bang. The day before my 21st birthday, my friends and I are flying out to Amsterdam! We’re going to spend 3 weeks interrailing round Europe, and fly back to the UK from Venice in September. If all goes well, I won’t even notice myself morphing into a responsible adult. That’s what happens when you turn 21, right? I’ll return to the country an of-age young lady, and with all these exciting experiences under my belt, will settle immediately back into Birmingham life. I shall get a job and pay my rent on time and never drink too much and shall consider hand sanitiser, plasters and tissues as handbag essentials …


I’m going to have to get myself a handbag…

So unfortunately my writings have suffered in this new onslaught of life-stuff. It’s a bit of a sad situation. But while I have a spare couple of hours, rather than leave this space blank, I thought I would make like a dodgy sit-com episode, and go over content I’d made before. I curled up with my notebook, and had a read through the old scribbley pages from New York that hadn’t made it into digital form yet. So, again in afternoon television fashion,

HERE'S ONE I MADE EARLIER

:

I’m sitting in a café on Bedford Avenue (aka Hipster High St, Brooklyn). I’m in the corner on a rickety chair; the walls are stained with chipped yellow paint, which strange stained glass lamps on the wall dye orangey red in places. An exceptionally raucous Buzzcocks number is playing, much louder than a coffee shop should. A large black woman is taking orders behind the bar, belting out every instruction and customer request in bold soul-singer style. ‘Plain bagel and cream cheeeheeese, yeah!’ ‘thankyouuu, coohoome again!’ She doesn’t worry about making her tuneage meld with the angry guitars also blasting through the small shop.


I’m watching the queue for the bathroom begin to snake out of a dark, red-painted tunnel, at the end of which I can only assume is a tiny door shielding a toilet lodged in a cupboard. I really need a wee. I bet there isn’t any loo roll.


On using the toilet, I found band stickers plastered from ceiling to floor, across the cracked mirror, and even on the toilet seat. The one right above the sink said ‘fuck your job, write your screenplay’. The soap was kept in one of those plastic ketchup bottles you get in diners. There was loo roll.


I like Williamsburg. I like the cracked paint, the rickety chairs and the loud music. It tickles me, rather than repels me, that it is has been necessary to put up a sign saying ‘no spitting’. I like that I am asked whether I want ‘big or small’ as opposed to ‘grande or tall’. I like it, but I’m also faintly amused by the whole atmosphere I now find myself in.


Looking through the bookstalls stationed up and down the bustling street – every one of which has at least two Camus books, a copy of Aristotle’s Ethics and a minimum of one novel by either Virginia Woolf or Doris Lessing – I can’t help but crack a bemused smile. There’s something undeniably hypocritical about an area where people sell their art on the street every weekend for $10 or $15, and give their books away for any donation, but where the shops sell ‘vintage’ clothing for upwards of $150 and bespoke indie jewellery for as much as you would find in Manhattan. You can’t help but wonder whether the sellers are just setting up bookstalls in order to show the world that they have read Camus, and philosophised over the Greeks. The majority of people here are not short of cash. The local houses are beautiful family homes, or river view penthouses. With this in mind, the rickety chairs and chipped paint of this café become highly intentional design features, rather than odd quirks. People seem to be paying a lot of money to appear poor, anti-establishment, and grassroots-y. And frankly, thanks to their ripped levis and genuine ray-bans (even though it’s October), it’s a slightly half-arsed effort. Haight-Ashbury this is not.

All this amuses me, but doesn’t anger me at all. I have no judgement to pass on Williamsburg, as I did on the BusinessAwards Dinner. I don't have the same vom-ball forming in the back of my throat when I overhear conversations here, about tattoos of cats and bikram yoga. People here have just as many image hang-ups and hypocrisies as their Wall St counterparts, but at least the image they are conveying is one of sharing, and a lack of emphasis on money and value. Their hypocrisies don’t effect global finances, or lead to tax evasion, or deny school places to children in Africa. Hell, I’m sitting here too. Writing in my hardback notebook, wearing Calvin Klein jeans. And I have a copy of Ariel in my bag. I’m right at home. I don’t really see a problem with maintaining an atmosphere of dilapidation and retaliation despite the wealth of the area. 

Isn’t it actually nice to think that some of the people giving away books on the street must be highly paid city-workers…?

At work on Friday, I thought about boardrooms, warzones and language

At work this week (this strange one-day week created by hurricane Sandy, throwing me all off kilter), I was logging the book reviews published in our latest magazine into the database. Our magazine is about corporate and international affairs, and is only circulated round our membership. All articles written in it therefore, are essentially for the purpose of networking. The book reviews section features publications (mostly non-fiction) written by our members: generally CEOs of large multi-nationals who somehow still manage to write books about their profession. It makes me suspicious. Either being a CEO is easier than it looks or the quality of the books is fairly bad. If you are able run a company and publish masterful business commentary on the side, you must be cutting some serious corners somewhere. (I’m sure Barack Obama shouldn’t have had the time to write that picture book.)

Having neither read any of the books featured, or planning to, I can’t give any further insight into this particular problem. In this instance, the thing that struck me most about these highly specific corporate business publications was their titles: they were all overtly war related. (The only exception to this was ‘How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things’ which, judging by title only, I feel might lend some weight to my previous point about something having to give in the CEO/Author life balance to create such works. In the case of this author, time spent on creating an intelligent and poignant title clearly suffered. The one he landed on gives the impression that instead of writing a book, he just went through ‘Market Capitalism for Dummies’ and deleted out the cartoons of confused looking stick women). Some of these eponymous battleground associations included ‘The Commando Way’, ‘Courageous Counsel’ and ‘Army of Entrepreneurs’. I think this reflects a general attitude surrounding the world of business. Whether it’s in the boardroom or ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, the corporate world is constantly presented to us in combative terms: it’s a harsh, unforgiving, aggressive environment. And seeing all these titles listed on the same page in front of me really made me think about how deep the comparison goes. From every angle, business is seen like a warzone; especially at the highest international level, where extreme free-market economics is generally the ideal. Survival of the fittest. The words ‘cutthroat’ and ‘dog-eat-dog’ are savoured in the mouths of both high up executives and beginning entrepreneurs. For some reason, this language is not considered to be reflective of a dangerous or unhealthy environment, but one to be survived and therefore one reserved for the best. I don’t for a second claim to be a business expert (if you’ve read much else on this blog you will know that I profess quite the opposite), but I think this image of business is probably both unhealthy and unnecessary for modern corporations. Or for the people that have to live in the same world as them at least. 

We know that the highest corporate boardrooms are a boys club, and always hear complaints about women not being able to break the glass ceiling into the offices surrounding Wall St and St Pauls. The constant presentation of business in such an aggressive and warlike way probably has no small part in that. The high up executive positions, like in the army, are advertised to appeal to men. Combat has been presented in this way since the dawn of time. I mean we all know war is justsophallic. Impaling spears gave way to stabbing swords which were replaced with ejaculating missiles. Even the term CEO, Chief Executive Officer, evokes battle-zone vocabulary. I know ‘Officer’ has the word ‘office’ in it, but I’m sure it was an army term before it was a business term. And I’m also sure that it wasn’t lifted from combative ranks unintentionally. Even if it wasn’t a conscious decision, the connotations of the title of ‘officer’ are significant at least on a subconscious level, in conveying what the expectations of the role are, and who is going to desire it. Much like in the army, the title of Chief Executive Officer is just another way for the less physical but equally competitive men in our world to metaphorically display the size of the gun they are carrying. The only thing missing is the pervasion of an offensive, ironic, sexy-CEO Ladies’ costume, mirroring that of ‘army girl’, to make the same gender bias official.

I don’t think business needs this reputation of violence and aggression being the way to succeed. It seeps through every section of corporation until it becomes normalcy. And you only need to watch one episode of ‘The Apprentice’ to see that those aggressive qualities in isolation do not make for a good business environment. They don’t even make good T.V.

It’s a sickening culture, and language is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve all been agreed for a while that real international war-zones are bad, and should generally be avoided where possible. Even the Prince of warmongering, George W. Bush, conceded that he thinks ‘war is a dangerous place’ (well done G). So it can’t be a positive thing for the same imagery used to make war seem appealing to filter into business vocabulary. It makes (and has made) business exclusively for ball breakers and cutthroats, it perpetuates gender-bias, and excludes potentially successful and intelligent people who don’t fancy constantly being on the attack. People who perhaps could use international commerce as a force for good. It makes the highly questionable moral decisions of the Union Carbides and the BPs of the world that much more common and acceptable. Just as morality is suspended in a battleground, so does it seem to be suspended when corporate greed is at play.

International business should not be a war-zone. And if all war could stop too that would be great. Thanks, world

Yours Sincerely,

Siobhan Palmer.

Challenge

So this week I’ve been asking for feedback on my blog posts, and in response, I was issued a CHALLENGE. This post is to only be about positive things.  Before my friend issued me with this task, he warned me not to ‘get mad, okay?’ I suppose because requesting a more positive outlook implies that my posts up until now have been negative and bad. I didn’t get mad. I readily accepted this momentous challenge, because, in all truthfulness, I know that’s exactly what it will be. And I’m interested to see if I can do it. Literally. My mum gave me a similar mission 5 or 6 years ago, when she said that if I (then her sullen teenage daughter, complete in purple lipstick, netted sleeves and chains clinking as I walked, like an eerie gothic morris dancer) gave up insulting her for lent, she would reward me in cash. I think I responded with some derisive comment about how having to buy politeness and respect must be quite a low point for her, thus forfeiting almost immediately (Sorry Mum). So never before have I actually tested whether my brain is capable of just, like, giving the verbal thumbs up to stuff that is good. No sarcasm or abuse included. I’m genuinely intrigued to find out.

I also think this will be a healthy exercise for me while I’m over here, as I’m conscious of becoming one of those horrible expats that just sing the praises of their homeland, and never shut up about where they’re from to the point where you just want to tell them to go home. And I DEFINITELY don’t want to come back one of them nationalists, ew. So here goes. These are some things I have noticed in New York, which are just good in and of themselves, and deserve no scorn on my part. Things that have brought me nothing but enjoyment and happiness, and deserve some recognition:

Good Things About New York

1.   The number of people begging on the subways: I know a lot of them are trying to fund drug habits etc etc., and regardless of whether they are or not, it’s depressing to see these real life reminders of the level of poverty and homelessness in the city, all met with silence and disdain. But as I watch them all go by, I get some twisted satisfaction to know that before the Wall St bankers can return to their uptown apartments, they have to come face to face with their antithesis. For half and hour every morning and evening, they can't stay in their wealth-bubble. Plus, having the subways as such a free space means you get treated to some pretty cool shows there too. Travelling underground on the weekends you can buy sweets, listen to mariachi bands, watch break dancing, and much more without even going out of your way. It’s like a lovely, creative pic’n’mix. You can make eye contact with people on the New York subway, too. Sometimes people say words to eachother. OMFG. 
2.  The pervasion of left-wing propaganda: It’s shielding me from the tide of fearsome Republican announcements probably coming straight from the Deep South to the U.K., striking fear into the hearts of informed British citizens. Living here makes it hard to believe the polls are near tied. I forget the size of America and the insignificance of the Williamsburg electorate, most of whom are probably too hipster to vote anyway. I’m potentially in for a shock on election day
3.  The soldiers in Grand Central Station: They always wear camouflage even though it doesn’t help them fit their surroundings. I never stop finding that amusing. 
4.  The surprising lack of pigeons for such a dense and crowded city
5.  The abundance of public water fountains

That list awkwardly fizzled pretty quickly. I don’t think the tourist board are going to be hiring me any time soon. And despite the scant nature of my ‘good-things count’, I still find it hard not to end my positive post with some kind of final cutting remark; an injection of balance is needed in this overly optimistic and celebratory piece, this unapologetic, unrelenting cringe-fest of HAPPY.  Perhaps I see the bad in everything. Or perhaps I am unfair to America. On reflection, I think it’s the latter. I have a feeling that what made me study the States, and what made me come here, wasn’t deep interest and passion, but a wild obsession which has transfixed me from afar for years. I didn’t come here with the intent of immersing myself in the culture, but rather as a curious observer; someone with a morbid fascination with spray on cheese and the electric chair. Rather than dismissing them as marginal and not worth my attention, as I might do with the EDL for example, I lap up American right-wing vitriol about ‘slut-pills’ and ‘legitimate rape’, and spew out my resulting outrage in big Daily Mail headline font. With the concentration of a child sitting over an ant with a magnifying glass, I sat on twitter late into the night, awaiting the judge’s verdict on Troy Davis. Fox News is my equivalent to voyeuristic 80p gossip magazines. In my first year of uni, I remember being ever so slightly disappointed, after being told that a new girl had moved into our halls from Georgia, to discover that she didn’t have a southern-drawl, red-neck politics or bible-belt religion, but was actually the friendliest, nicest new flat-mate any of us could have hoped for.  So I suppose I am incapable of observing with balance and sincerity. I seek out the strange, maddening aspects of things, and am constantly in the mode of sarcasm, looking to be provoked. And that has made me represent you unfairly, America. I am very sorry. I know you have moderate politicians and unbiased media outlets, and normal, agreeable people. But they’re like the quiet child in the class that does all their work without a fuss and so gets no attention. The naughty ones like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin with their hands in the air throwing their books on the floor, telling on the immigrants and blaming the ‘abortionists’ for 9/11 are unfortunately impossible for me to ignore.

So how did I do, Mark? I feel like I might have failed. I hope you will believe me when I assure you that despite what my writing might suggest, I am not spending my whole time in New York City holed up in a dark room, writing snide hate-mail to the outside. If you were looking for some reassurance that I’m not depressed or sad, but am really getting an exciting and new experience, please set your mind at ease. Angry and ranty happens to be my modus operandi, but please don’t take me too seriously. 

(If you were just trying to make me a bet, then I owe you a beer.)

This is a picture taken from East-River State Park in Brooklyn. If you jump the fence, there’s a wall by an old warehouse that you can climb to and sit right on the East River, and see the New York Skyline. The Empire State Building was just yellow that night, but it shines a different colour for special occasions. Sitting there, it’s hard to forget where you are. 

See that massive glow in the sky? Like a dangerous chemical attack, or space-time cracking? That’s the light from Times Square. That’s the effect on the sky every night; that’s the amount of energy being consumed and spat out by that small section of land 24/7 365. I mean fuck. Just Fuck.