Look at that, gentlemen. Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavour shrink to insignificance.
So speaks Patton, the US general, in the film of the same name. As to Patton, the one hundred year old family construction company from the town of Ballymena (54 degrees North, 6 degrees West), news of moves into receivership, with over 200 persons being made redundant, confirms the truth of the belligerent general's remark.
War is everywhere. In the week the construction company collapses, the British Prime Minister is in The Gulf selling weapons of mass destruction to despotic regimes.
The UK and the world economy are on a permanent war footing.
We do believe countries have a right to defend themselves. And we do believe Britain has important defence industries that employ over 300,000 people and so that sort of business is completely legitimate and right.
The Patton family business survived the Troubles (military war) but now collapses in the recession (economic war.) Such are the perils of globalisation. Would Patton the company be thriving if, instead of building hospitals, schools and houses, it built war jets?
Or speculated with hedge funds and currencies, as banks do? Banks are globalised, so anything banks do anywhere, impacts everywhere, including in the north-east of Ireland.
This is the home region for Ulster-Scots people, many of who's ancestors became US soldiers and presidents. Seventeen of the 44 presidents of the USA can be traced back to sources in the north-east of Ireland, from among 18th and 19th century emigrants.
Will new emigrants leave the region now, perhaps to America, more likely to Australia, and forge new political dynasties there?
Meanwhile, global companies generate wealth using an enslaved class of persons in China. These 21st century slaves experience Modernity as success measured by the possession of an iPad and a car.
There is a war under-way. A relentless war.
The Northern Ireland Executive announces a new economic initiative to respond to this war. It includes relief on parking charges; schemes for public work by young and long-term unemployed. Small arms? Big guns boom elsewhere.
All parties in The Northern Ireland Executive are in favour of a preferential rate of corporation tax, to lure global companies to the region as Foreign Direct Investment.
Sub-contractors to Patton lose jobs/money/work and face closure, including suppliers of sand and gravel. In no time at all.
..... in the time it took a dolly to travel
along its little track
to the point where two movie stars' heads
had come together smackety-smack
and their kiss filled the whole screen,
those two great towers directly across the road
at Moy Sand and Gravel
had already washed, at least once, what had flowed
or been dredged from Blackwater's bed
Following on the recent disembowelling of the FG Wilson engineering plants in the north-east region of Ireland (see Breathingwithalimp: THE WRATH OF CATS; 5/10/2012), the impact of globalisation on regional family firms is evidently tumultuous.
Are efforts under-way to dismantle regional, productive, economic activity, involving a nexus of indigenous political and economic forces and external economic predators?
There are casualties. Hypocrisy. Blood. Gore. Slaves. Victims.
The Prime Minister today embarked on a three day visit to the Middle East, as fears grow in the region about Iran's nuclear programme. During the short trip, he hopes to help sell as many as 100 Typhoon jets to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman. It is highly unusual for a Prime Minister to be so open about the need to win defence contracts.
What further grimness may yet be dredged from the black waters of economic war?
Patton: film; Franklin J. Shaffner; Twentieth Century Fox; Los Angeles; 1970
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9655254/David-Cameron-defends-legitimate-arms-deals-during-Gulf-states-tour.html
Moy Sand and Gravel: book; Paul Muldoon; Faber and Faber; London 2002
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