'US AND THEM'
Liverpool's Static art project launches an investigation of 'Us and Them', with its web-published pamphlet http://www.static-ops.org/pamphlet.htm The first issue kicked off with author and lecturer Andrew Calcutt's 'Six Characters in Search of a Role' (subtitled: 'The war on Iraq was a Western identity crisis continued by other means'). The current edition features James Heartfield's 'Hegel Dispirited' a genealogy of the concept of 'the Other' in western philosophy.
TOO FEW ROADS
The British government was accused of betraying its moratorium on road building, after agreeing to widen the M25.
But what were Labour's manifesto promises?
1959: 'With half a million new cars coming on the roads each year, the Government's road programme is entirely inadequate. But, to solve the problem, road-building must be related to a national plan which covers all the transport needs of an expanding economy.'
1970: 'The road programme will be further extended as we embark upon the recently announced inter-urban road programme which will double the capacity of the trunk road system by the end of the 1980s.'
1983: 'Give a high priority to building by-passes.'
Even in 1997 the government's decision to continue the Tory government's moratorium on new motorways was not included in the manifesto, except obliquely as a 'review'. Since then, of course, the policy was handed over to a small clique of anti-car activists ensconced in local authorities - who were given the power to impose misnamed 'road-calming' measures.
The government has woken from this environmentalists dream to discover that they have sabotaged the British economy with traffic jams. The road-building programme is too little, too late.
CORPORATE MANSLAUGHTER
After the loss of life at Hatfield railway crash Railtrack and Balfour Beatty face charges for the new crime of 'corporate manslaughter'. After years of corporate bosses getting away with murder it seems like justice that the firms and some of their bosses are to be charged. But the 'corporate manslaughter' charge is a bastard concept, halfway between personal responsibility and political resolution.
Not surprisingly, it is full of paradoxes. What does it mean to hold a corporation responsible? Fines for killing people seems like a trivialisation. But what else could be done? Should investors spend an hour in prison for each share held? Pinning down the bosses sounds right, but is it a question of personal mismanagement, or a system that puts the onus on cutting costs?
The problem of deaths at work is being resolved in the courts, because workers organisations lack the muscle to really punish companies, as once they would have: through collective action. Punishing the crime of corporate manslaughter lets the capitalists wallow in guilt, but leaves their system intact.
-- James Heartfield