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Why Dave and I now agree on one thing – it’s horrible to be ignored

a con, Andy Coulson, Britain, David Cameron, digital economy, Digital Economy Bill, DLA, European Union, free schools, human rights, jobs, Legal Aid, News International, NHS, welfare, workfare No Responses »

Mar 022012

Dave complains he’s being ignored in the European Union’s summit on jobs. Dave clearly didn’t know what it was like to be ignored. We do.

I’m glad Dave feels he’s not being taken into account. Perhaps a taste of the medicine he so loves to dish out will finally do him some good.

Meanwhile, ignoring me is what he’s done on the NHS, on DLA, on free schools, on Legal Aid, on welfare reform, on digital rights, on News International, on Andy Coulson, on workfare and forests (for a while), on human rights legislation (surely pretty soon) – and on more or less everything that currently preoccupies me about this unfair and unpleasant land.

Which, I suppose, in a perverse kind of way, brings me closer to Dave than ever before.

The worst of it being, of course, than I’m really not sure if this ignorance of Dave’s is unintentional or fashioned. Politicos these days are so clever – in full marketing mode – at selling their weaknesses as virtues that any virtues you perceive out there must automatically be discounted as weaknesses hidden by the cloak of clever obfuscation.

In short, Dave’s a passive-aggressive bully – and there’s nothing a passive-aggressive hates more than to be simply ignored.

Well done, European Union. My faith in your judgement is beginning, very slowly, to be renewed!

That long proud history of British coalition governments

Blairites, body politic, Britain, coalition governments, coalition parties, LibDems, LibDemVoice.org, on a high No Responses »

Feb 092012

If truth be told, we do know how to do coalition governments in the British body politic. We have done since time immemorial. It’s just that they’re called political parties – and the shoehorning generally takes place before an election; a process which usually allows most of us to understand what we’re getting.

At least while the new PM is still finding his or her feet.

All three major British parties play the same game. Like teaching of old, a leader gets elected to the post and then looks for some lowly common denominator – some common theme – which might attract both activists and voters without tying his or her hands too greatly. Unless, of course, the leader is as politically adept as someone like Margaret Thatcher. In which case the hands that are tied belong to the activists and voters.

We then find the successful leaders getting their parties elected and proceeding to uncover and reveal all their true colours. Disenchantment eventually sets in, as it must, and, after a period of rehabilitation, most leaders will become some kind of national monument, safely tucked away on boards of directors of large- and medium-sized companies – or, perhaps more controversially, at least these days – in the House of Lords.

In the latter place, of course, they may choose to wreak the kind of political vengeance on the current occupants of Number 10 Downing Street which they would never have cared to put up with whilst still in power.

As a by-the-by, isn’t it interesting how an ancient democracy such as ours requires so many unelected members to defend it from the tyranny of Coalition politics? The strangest thing, indeed. The strangest thing. It does make me wonder what is happening to our politics.

So it is that I come to the event which provokes me to write today’s post. Recently, the Lib Dems – one of the political parties most adept at forging both internal and external coalitions – have been tussling with the idea that Labour’s Blairites should find their natural home in the party of the junior partner of our current Coalition government:

There have been some high profile (if not high level) Blairite defections to the Tories. While there are some similarities between the Blair legacy and our coalition partners, the defectees seem to have overlooked or discarded one idea – joining the Liberal Democrats.

And in conclusion:

The party has people on the left, people on the right and people who subscribe to the third way anyway. The difference is that all of those people have a voice and it is of equal weight. Yes, David Cameron is the most centrist Tory leader there has been for a while. But what about after he goes? What if the party – dissatisfied with his abandonment of the right – go for a right winger? Would Blairites be joining the Tories if Liam Fox or David Davis had won the leadership contest? I doubt it.

Powell in his book, when offering advice in a Discourses style, would often begin the sentence with the phrase ‘A prudent prime minister would…’

A prudent Blairite would join the Liberal Democrats.

It is therefore doubly appropriate that just as this appeal is made to Labour Blairites to join the Lib Dems, members of the latter should be creating a Lib Dem space – perhaps, even, one day a party within a party on the lines of Labour’s Progress – with the avowed aim of building bridges with those of us who consider ourselves to be on the left and centre-left of British politics. This nascent website provides us with these interesting paragraphs:

[...] Liberals have long argued against concentrations of power and resources, whether in the hands of the state or of private institutions. Social Democrats have long argued that inequality in wealth, income and esteem undermine social cohesion. The financial crisis is the result of decades of neo-liberal ideology and politics which has ignored these lessons. Instead public policy has allowed financial markets to consolidate power in the hands of unaccountable institutions, has disempowered communities, undermined local economies and has redistributed income and wealth from the bottom to the top. The crisis has also allowed a rebirth of social conservatism as those on the right try to blame the nation’s ills on the poor, the public sector, and a decline of family values.

People understand this. The popularity of progressive single issue campaigns shows a genuine appetite for progressive politics. We believe that Liberal Democrats should be part of this politics, not its target. This is a time for Liberals and Social Democrats to work together for a fairer and more democratic Britain in which people and communities are empowered to build a sustainable future and in which disparities of income, wealth and power are reduced. We must also work together to promote our shared approach to public services and attitudes towards social justice. We believe the state has a clear responsibility to enable people to make the most of their own lives, in contrast to the coalition’s mission to slash the role of the both local and national government dramatically.

To conclude, most usefully in my opinion, thus:

If there is to be any future for the liberal left in British politics, we believe that there must be overt and public dialogue between Liberal Democrats, Labour, Greens and others on the democratic left. There is a centre-left majority in the UK but it all too often fails to be expressed because of parties not being clear in advance of an election about who their preferred coalition partners would be. Many of the political problems faced by the current coalition flow from it being a government which most Liberal Democrat voters did not want. It is ideologically unsustainable and without a mandate.

A future coalition with Labour and others on the liberal left is more likely to secure Liberal Democrat goals than a further coalition with the Conservatives and we should actively work to make that possible. If that is ever to happen, future centre-left co-operation must not founder on personal hostilities, and policy differences/similarities must be fully understood. If coalitions are to become more common, then voters cannot be left in the dark over what parties are likely to do (or not do) from their manifestos if they co-operate. The public deserves to be given a clear idea of what co-operation between Liberal Democrats, Labour the Greens and others would mean in terms of public policy if they are to be expected to trust such a government.

So let us not damn the right of the British body politic to continue making coalitions in much the same way as the entire proud history of its national parties has indicated is perfectly possible – for we have far more experience in the matter than some of our leaders ever care to admit to.

Whether we continue to do so within our parties, amongst our parties or both is, of course, a question of political expediency – and knowing when that moment needs to be chosen. But the arguments given above deserve, at the very least, to be taken into consideration – if nothing more than because the socioeconomic interests of the nation states which currently make up the United Kingdom are at stake.

Something which only hubris would lead us to ignore.

Backing finance or backing monopolistic waste?

bad business, banking, big business, Britain, consumer banking, financial crisis, investment banking, Labour Uncut, small business, unclassifiable No Responses »

Feb 082012

Labour Uncut has a sad piece today on the subject of why Labour needs to back the financial services sector. Sad because it’s clearly an example of a wasted opportunity.

The author of the article, a successful entrepreneur, argues a number of things which – as a very humble ex-worker in a bank at the eye of the 2008 storm – I really must take serious issue with. He does fairly say, for example, that:

[...] it’s not just British bankers who are busy corrupting their national standards of decency and fairness either. The Spanish bankers are also at it, with Santander and BBVA dishing out eye-watering bonuses that will have many City types wondering what exactly their overseas brethren did to end up with both the weather and the cash.

Without mentioning that the new right-wing Spanish government has placed a €600,000 cap on the executive salaries – never mind bonuses – of those who work at Spanish banks which have received public funds over the past few years.

He then goes on to point out that (the bold is mine):

It’s hard not to recoil when looking at the sheer magnitude of some bonuses and then the gap between top and bottom.

But here’s the problem. Words are powerful, especially on a subject as emotive as this. Attacking injustice is fine, but “bankers” has become a term of abuse that is applied without distinction and as a result ends up tarring everyone working in financial services.

And here I agree unreservedly. I remember what it was like when a staid, boring and underpaid profession as my own – my remuneration was always less than the average national wage, even when for example I had responsibilities as complex as checking documentation for signs of potential money-laundering – became the kind of profession one simply didn’t admit to in polite company. From being the glue which kept society together to a pariah on the face of the planet is not an easy series of steps to take.

However, it is when the author of the article under discussion goes on to say the following that I really take issue (again the bold is mine):

The UK is an acknowledged world leader in financial services. Just as in the past the UK was a leader in making cars, ships and textiles. Hundreds of banks and financial institutions from all over the world flock to Britain because it was and currently remains the best place to do business.

But there’s nothing that pre-ordains this will always be so.

If a future Labour government goes to war with finance in pursuit of a mythical rebalancing of the economy, the cost will be felt in the dole queues and in Britain’s international competitiveness.

As if these costs weren’t already being felt precisely because of the recent products, processes and behaviours of a financial services sector which – even now – tends to believe self-regulation would be the answer?

I have, in my job at the bank, witnessed the kind of waste that goes on in all large corporations. From unhappy experiences in IT-system commissioning to dreadfully overpriced display units designed to improve internal communication; from a specialised computer mouse costing an arm and a leg, with the aim of protecting an arm and a wrist from the pain of repetitive-strain injury, to a plush hotel room in a city far away from home for a perfectly honest charity event everyone was too embarrassed at the time to properly publicise; from 50 percent bonuses for middle managers, whose job it was to implement opaque salary policies and end-of-year distribution curves designed to make objectives impossible to achieve, to unnecessary overtime payments for projects poorly managed and husbanded … these are surely not the signs of an industry which currently deserves our support.

Neither fair in remuneration nor measured in its ability to manage change constructively, the real customers of the banking industry happen not to be the personal ones like you and me … nor the sole traders … nor the small- and medium-sized businesses … but, rather, far more importantly, the managers at the top of the tree.

All the admirably good and hard work of the call-centre staff, the branch personnel and the sales people who suffer every day of the week means nothing in the face of the fact that these behemoths are evermore structured to make money for their leaders.

I agree with the initial thesis that we shouldn’t be bashing an entire industry simply because the people at the top are behaving without a single fibre of moral propriety. And the solution to the problem can, perhaps, quite unconsciously, be found in this final quote (once again, the bold is mine):

Actions have consequences and the Labour leadership would do well to pause before endorsing policies that will scythe into one of this country’s truly world class industries. As with Britain’s past industries, it doesn’t take long to lose the edge and fall back.

The Labour party needs to take a deep breath and consider the hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs are at stake in finance. We need to remember that financial services have a key role to play in the future growth of all our industries. And most of all, we need to develop balanced and strategic policies for the financial sector, not simply hop onto the banker-bashing bandwagon.

“As with Britain’s past industries, it doesn’t take long to lose the edge and fall back.” That’s a quote and a half – and should make us think far more profoundly. What is it about British industry and its hierarchical structures which makes it so prone to the vagaries of elements beyond businesspeople’s direct control?

Cogitate on the answer to that one – and you may discover the way forward for our wider society.

A blame culture, ours? It starts from the top. Leadership is, after all, as I saw commented the other day, much more a question of providing the right kind of facilitating work environment than micromanaging people’s creativity out of existence.

Sustainable 21st century business surely requires people at the top to centralise far less their responsibilities on themselves. This does mean, of course, that they will become less indispensable – and, therefore, cheaper to employ. But until this is done, British business will continue to be at the mercy far more of government legislation and external factors than its own long-term and internal securities and structures. Only when both power and earnings are transferred to the people who actually add daily value to a company will company culture and differentiation from the rest of the marketplace become more positively entrenched – and the impact politicians can have on the future health of a sector become, equally, far less significant.

Labour’s attitude to British finance shouldn’t be the key to improving the ability of the sector to perform, whatever the framework. That key, instead, lies within the sector itself. And if the market were truly free – as, indeed, I believe it should be – the sector itself would already realise this.

Whilst a monopoly of top executives continues to run the financial services sector in the UK, we will get a stream of complaints from these top-heavy and highly uncompetitive companies unhappy with the legislative and regulatory constraints of the British economy.

It’s high time they realised they need to sort out their problems by sorting out the way they manage their businesses.

You don’t need to pay someone million-pound bonuses to know how to cut the livelihoods of tens of thousands of workers. For that kind of money we need far more imagination.

So up your game lads and lasses. And transfer that power!
____________________

Update to this post: some background reading from the Guardian newspaper has just come my way – an interview with Stephen Hester from the Royal Bank of Scotland on the subject of the furore surrounding his recent bonus award. It also provides an alternative viewpoint to some of the issues I raise above. Well worth your time.

How the Coalition is deliberately engineering a competitive deficit in British business

a con, bad business, big business, Britain, Coalition capitalism, competition, competitive deficit, small business No Responses »

Jan 272012

Prologue

I will try and limit myself to simply quoting two contrasting situations tonight, though this may prove rather difficult – if not entirely impossible. [Editor's observation: in hindsight it was!]

Act I – Banking on it!

The first involves the Royal Bank of Scotland. Quote number one here from our dearly beloved Guardian:

Royal Bank of Scotland stoked a political row on Thursday night after it announced it had awarded its chief executive, Stephen Hester, a bonus worth almost £1m.

The payment was derided as “utterly unacceptable” by one Liberal Democrat peer, while a Foreign Office minister calculated that Hester’s package meant he was paid in three days what a soldier in Afghanistan, “risking his life”, earned in a whole year.

What’s more:

The bailed-out bank attempted to justify the bonus – which is being paid in shares that Hester will be able to gain access to in 2014 – by saying it needed to reward the chief executive for the progress he had made in reducing the size of RBS.

Since he joined in November 2008, the bank has cut 33,000 jobs.

So Hester needs to have his already lavish salary almost doubled – in this case it is the state, as 80 percent shareholder, which has voluntarily chosen to act thus (for no prior contractual agreement imposed by a previous regime was operating in this particular instance) – in order to reward him for the magnificent skills and prescience required which allowed him to discover how to save pots of shareholder money by prejudicing the lives and times of what we must conclude are 33,000 unskilled and short-sighted workers.

So let’s just weigh that one up as we move onto quote number two, from the same newspaper:

The Royal Bank of Scotland has spent more than $4m (£2.5m) of British taxpayers’ money on lobbyists in Washington since it was bailed out by the government, documents disclose.

Both in-house and commercial lobbyists have been paid to influence American senators and congressmen reforming US finance law since the bank’s collapse and government bail-out in October 2008.

The money has been handed over despite calls from ministers for RBS and other banks that have received taxpayers’ handouts to refrain from hiring public affairs firms.

So is there anything I can add to this which you are not already thinking?

One rule for the rich – and quite another for the poor?

Act II – In the black!

It looks like the government might be trying to work out a way to limit the black economy in the UK to a maximum of £1000 in cash payments. I’m not sure how many cash payments this might eliminate in reality – but let’s put that thought to one side for the moment. Anyhow, today I read from tris over at Munguin’s Republic the following pair of golfing metaphors (ie par for the whole damn bloody dispiriting public-private sector course):

HMCR chief Dave Hartnett (you remember him, don’t you?), says that it is the public’s duty not to pay tradesmen cash in hand, otherwise said tradesmen may be tempted (look away if you are of a sensitive disposition) to ‘evade paying their fair share of tax.’ (Shock, horror.)

And, if you do not act as tax collectors (unpaid), and they do “forget” to declare all their earnings, this might result in even deeper government cuts to public services. (More shock and horror!!)

However, according to tris the very same Mr Hartnett has also been responsible for a number of other matters over the past couple of years about which the Telegraph actually had this to say way back in December; matters which, in reality, cast a teensy bit of doubt on his intellectual cogency. These matters are somewhat distanced from the alleged behaviours of your neighbourhood builder (who, incidentally, though probably irrelevantly to civil servants like the aforementioned individual, may as a result of government economic policy be currently struggling to make ends meet). To continue in tris’s own words:

Now, would this be the same Dave Hartnett who, having allowed himself to be bought, on over 100 occasions, incredibly expensive meals, arranged multi-billion pound tax avoidance schemes with the Goldman Sachs and Vodafone…who, by strange co-incidence, had picked up the tabs for these “fine dining experiences”?

And did this multi-billion pound drop in tax revenue not in some way result in the government having less money to spend?

Meanwhile, we have a story from False Economy from September 2011 which clearly indicates that the government is actually being extremely coherent indeed (table here):

Disturbingly our research shows that some of the companies lining up to take a slice of the mushrooming multi-billion pound public service sector are among the most unethical in the UK and many remain largely unknown to the public

We’ve found that the biggest companies that are playing an increasingly important role in running our public services have the bottom rating for many of our ethical and environmental criteria, including environmental reporting, supply chain management, human and workers’ rights and political activity.

The government is now selling our public services to companies seemingly without any scrutiny of a company’s ethical or environmental policies. This apparent policy vacuum challenges the coalition’s stated claim that ‘this will be the greenest government that the UK has seen’. This is significant as it threatens to undermine the progress that the previous government had made in terms of its ethical and environmental purchasing policies.

And what’s more:

Another area that gives great cause for concern is the evidence we have uncovered that shows that 13 of the companies we surveyed have subsidiaries in countries that are widely considered to be tax havens, something that is included in our Anti-Social Finance category.

This implies that the companies concerned, including some of biggest names in the outsourcing industry such as BUPA, Capita and Sodexo, are managing their finances in such a way that they may be actively avoiding paying tax here in the UK.

Coherent government, that is, in the sense we have already observed: one set of permissible behaviours for the poorer end of society – and clearly quite another set for the wealthier ones amongst us.

Epilogue

I’m beginning to get the feeling that this government and its civil servants are not only being actively encouraged through close and carefully weaved private connections to set up a two-tier Britain as far as public services are concerned, they’re also being actively encouraged to create a Britain whereby:

everything which private companies need in order to function in the public space is externalised onto a rapidly shrinking state evermore at the exclusive service of private sector interests – that is to say, we as a voting public lose out twice: a) fewer public resources will remain as a whole and b) of the fewer resources that remain, more of them will end up in the pockets of private sector advocates
large industry interests will be massively prioritised at the expense of the small – that is to say, whilst only big companies will be able to afford the technical advice to avoid paying tax, small companies will inevitably end up paying proportionately far more than their big cousins ever will

This is in no way a free-market level playing-field of any kind whatsoever. Traditional economies of scale mean those with a monopolistic stranglehold over whole sectors and industries already have a substantial advantage over their small- and medium-sized competitors. But factor into the mix the reality that most large companies will now interpret the government’s recent agreements on tax liability as providing a green light for such behaviours … well, we can only then conclude that a competitive deficit is being deliberately engineered into the British business environment – a deficit intentionally designed to prejudice the smaller companies on that spectrum of economic activity and favour the much larger.

There must, of course, be a better way. The question, of course, is who may provide the leadership we need on the matter.

I would like it to be someone from the party I belong to.

And I do wonder if, one day, it could ever be the case.

Is London fast becoming the UK’s very own Vatican City?

Britain, Great Wall of Westminster, in a hole, London, londonisation, professional politicos, United Kingdom, Vatican City, Westminster No Responses »

Nov 192011

The Lord Mayor as Pope perhaps? Well. My thesis is a little more profound than that.

I’ve touched on this issue at least twice in the past three months or so. First, here:

[...] When London becomes the breakaway Vatican State of the the southern tip of the UK, and Boris becomes Cameron’s highest representative on the face of Planet Tory, only then will we be able to all breathe a sigh of relief – as we then also begin to embrace our hard-won freedoms.

And then more roundly here:

If truth be told, we need to turn London into a UK equivalent of Vatican City – an impervious state-within-a-state, which to all intents and purposes it already is – and recover for the rest of England its right to a homegrown politics; unaffected, that is, by Tea Party-style movements and their hangers-on from across the Pond that now divides us. If London does indeed want the kind of monopolistic capitalist control of public services which Cameron & Co do so love to promise … well, let them have it. But let the rest of us out here, who may have far more in common with the Scots than Left Foot Forward might care to let on, be allowed to properly choose the bed we wish to lie in.

Today’s post, however, is provoked by the short afternoon and evening which I spent in London last Thursday. Although this was a brief experience of the hustle and bustle which is our capital city, I definitely got the feeling that I could understand better where our politicians are coming from when they talk about the deregulation of business and the opportunities which might thus derive. The problem we really have is that London is clearly a great place to work – but less so, perhaps, in matters of accommodation and wider costs of living.

Our leading politicos truly find themselves in a bubble. They see only economic endeavour; business in the sense of busyness; astounding movements; opportunities galore; and grand sociocultural influences. But this is what you get when you concentrate in such a relatively small area so many people and institutional headquarters. In London, more than anywhere else in the UK, monopolistic capitalism and the trickle-down benefits it can – under very special circumstances – apport are clear to see; even it alternatives which could work just as well are not allowed to flower.

But try and translate brutally this religious and unquestioning fervour for that “impervious state-within-a-state” to other parts of the country … well, you’re on a hiding to nothing. There is no way we can reproduce the massive nexuses of opportunities to work and engage with others which such a concentration of humanity has enabled.

And yet, in the name of such a particular reality, we are destroying the very essence of other communities across the length and breadth of the UK. Out of an impossible prejudice, we are looking to “londonise” more than fifty million people.

Yes. A Vatican City for the 21st century. That is what we are really dealing with when we analyse the Tory-led Coalition project. Top-down and fundamentalist; blind to uncomfortable realities which do not fit the datasets; fast and easy with smooth and convenient rhetoric. This is the reality of modern Britain.

We’re wrong about one thing, though. The problem isn’t that our politicos don’t live in the real world: London is as real as any other.

No. The problem is that they don’t live in our real world.

And neither we nor they care to appreciate the implications.

Why they despise Alex Salmond so

Alex Salmond, Britain, civic nationalism, London, nationalism, on a high, SNP, triangulation, United Kingdom 7 Responses »

Oct 222011

We have the Bermuda Triangle. We have the Eye of Providence. And now we have Alex Salmond.

The connection?

Well. Precisely this: Mr Salmond doesn’t have to triangulate himself. And that’s really why they all despise him so. He now has the freedom they never have had to say what he bloody well likes.

The last decade and a half has seen the British body politic jointly responsible for tolerating the kind of dictatorial behaviours a media genius like Mr Rupert Murdoch has managed to sustain: an all-seeing and all-encompassing process whereby he purchased an entire stratum of society. This dominance clearly prepared the ground for and led to the hacking scandal at the News of the World – without such traction on those who should have provided the oversight of observant government, things would never have gone as far as they did.

What has been the most unseemly part of the whole damnable process though – at least from an intellectual point of view – is the ever-present and effervescent instinct to triangulate which dominated the thinking of New Labour’s elite. This led the country not only to its media takeover by the Murdochs and their own particular brand of cavalier freedoms, but also to the absolute control of Middle England by the Daily Mails of this world. And whilst I’m sure Blair & Co must have become soundly fed up of jumping through the hoops that all this entailed, this doesn’t excuse them from contributing to the unhappy consequences which are only now becoming apparent.

The most unhappy one being, for our wider body politic, that no one seems to escape the burden of triangulation.

Except, of course, and as I pointed out at the top of this post, Mr Salmond himself.

The great thing about being a civic nationalist of the kind I believe Mr Salmond likes to define himself as is that the overarching themes of independence can be used to tie together a wonderful rainbow coalition of voters. In this case, however, it’s being achieved through an identification with singularly coherent themes that bind openly and straightforwardly – instead of via that cleverly shabby “searching for the lowest common denominator” approach that has characterised politics in England and Wales for far too long.

If those outside Scottish politics – and even some within it – still find Mr Salmond so very resistible, I suggest they ask themselves how the rest of the UK might respond if a mother lode of such rich political clarity were discovered and equally applied. Something which might tie the English together with such overwhelming insistence that almost anything constructive could be achieved.

Apart from the external threat of a war imposed from without which would serve to engender its own Dunkirk Spirit all over again, I’m not sure, really, that such a force will ever exist again.

Unless, of course, we decide to go for independence ourselves.

In the meantime, the Bermuda Triangle that was the United Kingdom for so long – a place where so many bright initiatives vanished into the political ether – is surely beginning to lose its shape. And in the absence of the all-seeing eye that was Murdoch and his absolutist control over political discourse, it looks like Alex Salmond and the SNP will have a clear run towards the kind of independence Catalonia has achieved within the confines of the Spanish state. A permanent tension with central government – and a consistent and continuous improvement of its competencies in matters of health, security and education.

That is to say, keep them guessing as much as you might – and all the time, all the time, get whatever you can.

We, in the rest of the UK, could do worse than to follow their example.

In relation to Westminster, Cameron & Co – and the other navel-gazers down in London.
____________________

Further reading: Éoin has just published this relevant post on Labour’s current polling preoccupations. Graphs and stats lay it out for all to see. Localism, nationalism and independence are all issues the Labour leadership is currently refusing to face – to the wider movement’s detriment, both intellectual as well as purely electoral.

Birth in a foreign country

birth, Britain, Burgos, friends, Spain, Spanish, stolen babies, unclassifiable No Responses »

Oct 202011

Our children are all Spanish. They were born in Spain – and profess an undying love for it. They are Spanish in a way that I can never be – even as I have Mediterranean blood and spent sixteen years of my life living and working there.

For the first twelve years we lived in the northern city of Burgos. Burgos has a beautiful river running down its centre. The green banks are mechanically sprinkled. Wild grasses are kept at bay through municipal care. The burgaleses were always proud of how much money they spent on picking up rubbish in the streets. You can’t change the Spanish you see – and, at least then, they didn’t try.

I had many good friends in that part of the world for many years. One was a man called Emilio – he was both an English student of mine as well as our paediatrician. He oversaw easy times and he oversaw difficult times. He was a wise man – realistic, thoughtful, intelligent and analytical. The kind of steady hand all new parents need.

I remember the battle we had to go through to name our firstborn. We wanted to give him a Spanish first name and a Croatian second name. The authorities at the Registry Office in Burgos – then still pretty starchy and conservative (Burgos has only – in the last decade – removed the names of Franco’s generals from their streets and squares) – tried to insist it would only make life more confusing for our son to have two forenames. This, despite the Spanish tradition of often having three forenames.

Anyhow, we did as instructed: we obtained written confirmation from the then Yugoslav embassy that the name we had chosen existed; lied that there was no translation of the name into Spanish; and with great persistence managed to give our child the names we wished for.

I forget now, as time has gone by, the absurdity of all this to-ing and fro-ing – the bureaucratic insistence on telling us what he should be called; the foolish and small-minded attitudes it all inscribed. But one thing I have never quite forgotten – and which my previous post today has savagely brought back to mind – is the unnatural fear I had at the time that our babies would be taken away from us.

Or if not taken away from us – then swapped.

We did have the comfort that having a good friend like Emilio provides. And we really had no evidence to presuppose that anything of the sort might happen. You do have to remember that only three years prior to the birth of our eldest, I came across – for the first time – those military-looking civil guards who would be stationed outside the main post office, machine-guns clutched in clearly bored hands.

It all seemed a little over the top for a young man recently escaped from what I might at the time have described as “Dixon of Dock Green”-land. Even where this land had spent a decade under the rule of someone like Margaret Thatcher.

In most things, therefore, Spain was a release from a previous existence. But in terms of security; having to be fingerprinted for the first time in my life; carrying an ID card; having a police officer tell me he had means of finding out how much money I had in my account … all these things, you can understand, as a foreigner abroad, kind of spooked me just a little.

So there were enough culture shocks to knock oneself a little off beam – to make oneself a little sensitive to different ways of doing.

Enough curious matters which – in essence – surely were not curiosities at all.

What really spooked me, though, was the Spanish health service. Mixed up in amongst the state hospitals, and working alongside proper nurses, there were these silent and untrained nuns – a generally unpaid workforce (or so I believe – though correct me if I am wrong) who would pad around the establishments, often supplanting the work of the overworked staff. Often working entirely alone and unsupervised too. It somehow seemed (though at the time unreasonably, because without them nothing would have worked) a very very strange set of dynamics.

Strange no longer. Not in the light of Spain’s stolen babies.

And I am just glad we escaped unscathed.

For the current Spanish government is investigating cases of stolen babies as recent as 1990.

And our firstborn was born in 1991.

So how close to treason are these politicians really getting?

a con, Atlantic Bridge, Britain, Koch brothers, Observer, Tea Party, treason, unclassifiable, USA No Responses »

Oct 152011

I kind of asked myself this question already today in my previous post.

Some further reading on the background to Liam Fox’s curious friends, which makes me want to revisit the original question, has, however, come my way this evening – and can be found here tonight at the Observer. As one politician is quoted as remarking in relation to the issue under examination:

Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshot said: “Dr Fox is a spider at the centre of a tangled neocon web. A dubious pattern is emerging of donations through front companies. We need to establish whether the British taxpayer was subsidising Fox and his frontbench colleagues. What steps did they take to ensure Atlantic Bridge didn’t abuse its charitable status?”

And as Jim Murphy, the Labour Shadow Defence Secretary is quoted as pointing out:

“With each passing day there have been fresh allegations of money and influence and it appears that much of the source was the Atlantic Bridge network and its US rightwing connections. We need to know just how far and how deep the links into US politics go. This crisis has discovered traces of a stealth neocon agenda. For many on the right, Atlanticism has become synonymous with a self-defeating, virulent Euroscepticism that is bad for Britain.”

Let us say, then, and I’d like to underline that I’m simply engaging in a thought experiment here, that those prominent Tories involved in the Atlantic Bridge – Fox himself, William Hague, George Osborne, Chris Grayling and Michael Gove – were actively pursuing, from within a UK governing party, the interests of another nation.

Even where this nation was our close friend, the USA.

Wouldn’t this be something skating so very close to treason too?

British politicians acting in the strategic interests of certain political lobbies with established political movements located on the soil of a foreign power? Think I’m exaggerating? Try reading this from the Observer piece:

Fox’s organisation, which was wound up last year following a critical Charity Commission report into its activities, formed a partnership with an organisation called the American Legislative Exchange Council. The powerful lobbying organisation, which receives funding from pharmaceutical, weapons and oil interests among others, is heavily funded by the Koch Charitable Foundation whose founder, Charles G Koch, is one of the most generous donors to the Tea Party movement in the US. In recent years, the Tea Party has become a potent populist force in American politics, associated with controversial stances on global warming.

Doesn’t this sound just a little like early 20th century spy novels of a most disagreeable and unhappy sort? You know the sort of stories I mean: where clever and moneyed gentlemen make themselves rich on the backs of the poor who are sent to war. Or where ingenious and megalomaniac individuals drive the world to the edge of destruction.

Anyhow.

Enough of my literary digressions.

In the light of all the above which the Observer regales us with tonight, here is my very simple question – a question I reiterate just in case you still ain’t asking it yourself: just how far can influential and serving British politicians get involved with the politics of another country without their integrity and loyalty to their mother country being called seriously into question?

And aren’t such behaviours, where the political interests of another country are being plainly prioritised before the interests of homegrown politics in Britain, the kind of activities which could legitimately require us to require them to prove their loyalty – not only to the Crown but also to the wider British voting public?

As I say.

Maybe not treason.

But so pretty damn close it should really make them feel ashamed.

It does me.
____________________

Footnote: all this also makes me wonder how we haven’t till today had to reconcile the blessed virtues of globalised politics on the one hand – where nation reaches out unto nation – with the legal requirement to fight one’s own corner and protect the interests of one’s own country and state.

Perhaps we never noticed before.

Or perhaps that is what’s really at the heart of the long-standing kerfuffle over Europe.

Or maybe what’s different in this particular case is that it isn’t a matter of nation reaching out unto nation any more – but, rather, the wealthy and already powerful working out ways of carving up planetary real estate. A much less seemly activity than striving to prevent war and conflict on a continent with a long history of the same … don’t you think?
____________________

Update to this post, Sunday 16th October: New Statesman does an apposite round-up of what the newspapers are saying this morning. And what the newspapers are saying is not pretty.

"Fulfilling the Promise of Britain" (II) (or taking on those vested interests)

Britain, Ed Miliband, Europe, Labour, on a high, United Kingdom, vested interests No Responses »

Sep 212011

Yesterday, I posted a short video from Ed Miliband. In it were some pleasant words about how valuable the grafters of the world are. I think he means it too. But I wonder, as in all top-down reorganisations, whether the people lower down the hierarchy – in the battle to maintain their fiefdoms – will actually put into practice what Miliband believes; even, that is to say, within his own party structure.

Never mind the vested interests out there and beyond.

Take on all those vested interests? Banks, energy companies, supermarkets, insurers, private health suppliers and all? I’m all for it. If you’re really aiming to do that, Ed, you’ve got my vote where you never had it before.

An article which puts a bit of flesh on the soundbites can be found in the Guardian today. I do suggest you read it in its entirety; below, I’ll just quote from its dying words:

In Labour’s years in office we should have done more to protect the “squeezed middle”. Our neighbourhoods, too, need protection from powerful interests: the local pub, the green where children play, the shops threatened by a new Tesco superstore. Labour needs to be on the side of the community. New Labour sought a dynamic economy. We refinanced public services. But we should have done more to build a country on our values of responsibility, fairness and social cohesion.

Now Labour’s task is to take on the big battalions, wherever they operate against the interests of the majority. Ed Miliband led the way in confronting inappropriate journalistic practices at News International while the Tories showed timidity.

Equally, there is a Labour way out of the crisis, which is fairer and will chime with the instincts of the British people. The country must turn its back on rightwing solutions which entrench inequality, and whose values are purely market-based. Labour needs to show humility and dedication to service. We need to reconnect with the mainstream, hard-pressed millions who had come to doubt us. And we need to be fearless against the big battalions, however powerful they may be, to rebuild a society based on the British values of fairness and community.

And meanwhile, as a reminder of how powerful and ever-present these battalions are, a tweet from this morning on the subject of battling with the supermarkets – as it refers to what I believe is a David Miliband-promoted organisation:

@eiohel @Paul0Evans1 @sunnyhundal Hope the Sainsbury-funded Movement for Change will be supporting that campaign ;)

Want us to sign up to this almighty conflagration? Convince us, first, that by burning bridges there’ll be a way out – and back – for those of us who choose to ride alongside you. Do that – and the whole of British politics will be at your feet.

Which reminds me. One final – though not insignificant – thought for Ed and his advisers. And what about the Union – European and homegrown both perhaps? Isn’t it time to contemplate different structures which release and liberate the way we are? When you talk about “fulfilling the promise of Britain”, do you mean “keeping it together” or “giving each region its head of rightful steam”? There’s a difference – and we do need to address it.

And sharpish methinks.

"Fulfilling the Promise of Britain"

Britain, Ed Miliband, Labour No Responses »

Sep 202011

A video to consider, along with everything else that’ll be thrown at us over the next few weeks – from all sides, it has to be admitted.

Taking on the vested interests, I like very much. As an idea, I wholeheartedly support it. I wonder if Miliband has the guts to see it through. Or, indeed, the power base.

Let’s see if anything real will come of it during the next six months or so. That’s about as long as I’m prepared to give.

http://youtu.be/CesG0LkeUuM

How the super-rich game the system and rot it from within

a con, Britain, democracy, Democratic Audit, England, riots, super-rich, unclassifiable No Responses »

Aug 152011

This short .pdf file should be required reading across the nation (background here). It’s called “Unelected Oligarchy: Corporate and Financial Dominance in Britain’s Democracy”. And it has something to do with what’s happened here in England recently.

Here’s a Wikipedia definition of “oligarchy”:

Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία, oligarkhía[1]) is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, corporate, or military control. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words “ὀλίγος” (olígos), “a few”[2] and the verb “ἄρχω” (archo), “to rule, to govern, to command”.[3] Such states are often controlled by a few prominent families who pass their influence from one generation to the next.

Throughout history, most oligarchies have been tyrannical, relying on public servitude to exist, although others have been relatively benign. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy, but oligarchy is not always a rule by wealth, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group, and do not have to be connected by bloodlines as in a monarchy. Some city-states from ancient Greece were oligarchies.

And here we have a definition of “corporate oligarchy”:

Corporate oligarchy is a form of power, governmental or operational, where such power effectively rests with a small, elite group of inside individuals, sometimes from a small group of educational institutions, or influential economic entities or devices, such as banks, commercial entities that act in complicity with, or at the whim of the oligarchy, often with little or no regard for constitutionally protected prerogative. Monopolies are sometimes granted to state-controlled entities, such as the Royal Charter granted to the East India Company, or privileged bargaining rights to unions (labor monopolies) with very partisan political interests.

Now whilst the right is blaming a generalised moral decline for the recent disturbances in England and the left attaches the responsibility for such a decline at the feet of the rich, in general (at least according to this tweet tonight) no one really knows exactly what’s going on – nor really why it’s all happened.

I suppose I also have felt something similar these days – as I guess most people who consider themselves thoughtful will have had no alternative but to conclude.

And yet, after reading the .pdf I link to above, a short document of little more than twenty-four pages, I feel that a whole host of realities have slotted into place. I cannot emphasise enough its synthetic importance in summarising and pulling together awful threads of reality which our business leaders and government servants have striven to hide from our sight.

Or, perhaps, not even that: they are so certain of their ability to game the system in their favour that they really don’t care who finds out or when.

Here are some choice phrases from its stream of unhappy truths:

“In the case of the UK, where the ratio of FTSE company directors’ pay to their average employee in 1989 was 19:1, by 2006 it had risen to 75:1, and by 2010 it was 145 times the median national full-time wage.”

“The increasing ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid taxation, and the enormous effort expended on devising ingenious schemes for doing so, is damaging to democracy at each of these levels. It means that those doing so are able to take advantage of the infrastructure necessary to their wealth and profits while escaping the responsibility to pay for it. [...]“

“[...] An investigation by the National Audit Office in 2007 discovered that a third of the country’s largest 700 businesses had paid no corporation tax in the previous year. The UK tax liability of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is minimal, while in 2009 Barclay’s Bank only paid £113m in UK corporation tax on profits of £11.6bn, a rate of around one percent. [...]“

“[...] An investigation in 2006 by The Sunday Times found that the 54 billionaires living in Britain paid income tax between them of a mere £14.7m on their estimated total wealth of £126bn.”

“[...] As a study by Democratic Audit has shown, ‘just 224 donations, originating from fewer than 60 separate sources, accounted for nearly 40% of the three major parties’ declared donation income between 2001 and mid 2010′.”

“The number of former ministers ‘revolving out’ raised particular concern in Parliament and the press in 2008, when the list for the previous two years revealed that no fewer than 28 former ministers had taken jobs in the private sector. Of these, thirteen were still MPs. Paul Flynn, a member of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee (PASC), commented that ‘he could not remember ministers hopping into the private sector like this……It is a way of buying access.’ This number of 28 compares with a total of 31 in the list published in March 2011, which covered the previous twelve months. A smooth transition to the private sector could now be said to be the normal expectation for a government minister.”

Even as the circle of corrupting behaviours is now complete, there’s plenty more I could quote from – but, to be honest, I really think you should go back to the original document and read it in full for yourselves.

There are no easy connections to be made between the street violence in England over the past week or so and the realities the document under discussion in this post contains. But I do honestly feel, and even more so in the light of the above data, that even where the violence has been entirely apolitical, the causes lie most firmly in the field of our system of government – especially where this system justifies the inequalities that this paper makes patent for all who choose to read it.

Where democracy becomes a mere façade which allows those in charge to game the system and rot it from within, we are surely on a long-term journey to nowhere particularly productive for anyone.

Except, that is, for the short-term interests of the super-rich who can hide behind their security measures – and look down on the rest of as simple pawns in their games of stratospheric chess.

Starkey and putsch (or that PhD in Contemporary Looting)

Britain, David Lammy, David Starkey, gloating, Greater Manchester Police, in a hole, riots, Tottenham, Twitter No Responses »

Aug 132011

I’ve been worried about the Greater Manchester Police’s official tweeter for a couple of days now. I mentioned the other day that I didn’t like his or her overbearing tone – but, on the other hand, recognised that most other people, especially those who live in the area in question, seemed perfectly happy with the result.

Today, however, it all seemed to get out of hand. Again, I felt mildly sick, out of sorts, not at all comfortable with what was going on. But, at the same time, seeing no one apparently reacted, I thought little more – or, at least, did little more – as (perhaps I should now ashamedly admit) I passed liverishly by on the other side that is discretion.

In the meantime, Political Scrapbook has been telling the full story here - without, as the Spanish would say, pelos en la lengua …

Then there’s the “Shop A Looter” campaign, from the same part of the world as that gloating tweet – and more information about which the BBC provides here. And I’m really amazed and pleased the police are suddenly so able to catch, charge and put behind bars antisocial miscreants such as these – through the ennobling strategy of energising the democratic collaboration of the sentient English majority: by working alongside, that is, the voting public at large.

I am minded to wonder though whether this is consensual policing or populist policing – as well as if anyone cares to appreciate the difference.

I also do wonder why we can’t operate with the same admirable haste in other notable cases of corrupting societal influences: with financial services sector executives who cocked up big-time with money, jobs, pension schemes and futures that really weren’t theirs to cock up; with MPs who were given the opportunity to pay back their looted expenses instead of serve the time the looters quite rightly are now undergoing; and with journalists and editors who’ve spent the last decade operating illegally with the connivance and virtual authority of a whole political and legal establishment.

I mean I’d love to see a double-decker bus driving through the centre of the City with the bowler-hatted exponents of financial fraud pasted up on either side. Or, alternatively, where appropriate, a bendy-bus in the centre of Marbella, alongside the golfing greens where so many ex-CEOs of banking disasters are now almost certainly to be found.

If only …

But it actually now gets worse. A certain David Starkey, an apparently respected and popularising historian, was reported to have said on British television the other night:

In an appearance on BBC2′s Newsnight, Starkey spoke of “a profound cultural change” and said he had been re-reading Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood speech.

“His prophesy was absolutely right in one sense. The Tiber did not foam with blood but flames lambent, they wrapped around Tottenham and wrapped around Clapham,” he said.

“But it wasn’t inter-community violence. This is where he was absolutely wrong.” Gesturing towards one of the other guests, Owen Jones, who wrote Chavs: the Demonisation of the Working Classes, Starkey said: “What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black.”

Tottenham’s Labour MP, David Lammy, was then referenced by Starkey in the following way:

[...] “Listen to David Lammy, an archetypal successful black man. If you turn the screen off so that you are listening to him on radio you would think he was white.”

So whilst for the Greater Manchester Police tweeters, populist policing would now appear to have replaced consensual policing – at least for rioters and looters, if not bankers, MPs and newspaper people – for individuals like Mr Starkey, the revolution underway is a direct result of people not appreciating the importance of sticking with their assigned stereotypes.

Hardly surprising he should think this, given the attitudes – expressed through the very social media Mr Cameron is looking to censor – of some members of our rather more significantly outspoken establishment.

David Lammy’s response, by the way, whilst understandable in the circumstances, hardly infuses me with any greater degree of hope in what’s beginning to look like a very dodgy future. This, his tweet in question:

Yes, I have now seen what he said. His views are irrelevant – he’s a tudor historian talking about contemporary urban unrest.

So is this the mark of the civilisation we’re looking to build? A democracy which only allows you a certain radius of action? A society where you are only relevant in terms of the silo of specialism in which you are deposited?

Are we really saying you can only talk about riots if you’ve got that PhD in Contemporary Looting?

Mr Lammy, that’s not civilisation either. No, sir.

Or, at the very least, not my idea of what it could – and should – mean.

Silos of specialism lead to walls of misunderstanding – and walls of misunderstanding, in part, in the aftermath of the riots, will only serve to exacerbate an already extremely delicate situation.

Don’t you think?

On not herding readers back into the "creed"

Britain, burning bridges, Fraser Nelson, on a high, Peter Oborne, riots, Spectator, sword and shield, swords into ploughshares, Telegraph No Responses »

Aug 132011

mulberrybush makes an excellent couple of points in an exchange of tweets we had yesterday evening. The first as follows:

@politicsworld @eiohel with the riots, papers are back to trying to herd readers into the “creed”. Need to get beyond this.

Whilst the second continued the theme:

@eiohel @politicsworld I am certain it is important to build bridges. Have spoken to a number of Teleg readers who think so too

Meanwhile, also yesterday evening, and in response to comments from tris on my post on this awful story from Wandsworth (more here from Munguin and Co, and further background here), I couldn’t help myself bleating just a little woefully this sadness on our current state of affairs:

The quality of our political class, and the ability of our institutions to engage with ordinary people, is definitely wanting though.

This clearly has a history behind it, and it truly makes you want to get your own back on the political miscreants involved.

But there’s something else: I didn’t start writing about life and politics to turn into some vengeance-seeking male harpy. I’d far rather we were able to create a society which supported its members, was intelligent in its actions and institutions – and relatively free of corrupt and ingrowing practices. Unfortunately, we simply don’t seem to be any closer to such a society at all – if anything we are moving away from it.

With my Croatian background, I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually I turned into a nationalist of some kind myself. No small can ever be as ugly as big and lumbering London-centric style.

And I suppose I resist the impulse because I’ve seen the damage it’s done in my mother’s homeland.

Even so, it’s a temptation when you see all this disconnected mediocrity.

I’ve already mentioned Peter Oborne’s courageous writing from the heart of Tory thinking over at the Telegraph. I first noticed this “getting it” during the Cameron-Coulson-Murdoch matrix of half-truths at the centre of the News of the World phone-hacking scandals. It was almost as if a certain threshold of evidence – a watershed of truths – had been uncovered. This allowed certain honourable souls to accept that the legacy of spin – which has led us all to doubt any theses about public behaviours, as well as acquire a corrosive cynicism which concludes every accusation has an angle – did not necessarily mean that everything said about top-level governance was inevitably going to be the spoutings of the envious mob.

That people like Oborne are able to tell us home truths the political class feel unable to is both worrying and heartening. Worrying, because our politicians ought to be braver and more principled; more convinced of their own ability to persuade a frightened populace that societal cohesion is still worth pursuing. Heartening, because at least there are some prepared to put their reputations on the line.

Even if, objectively speaking, they speak what we can only describe as blindingly obvious and self-evident truths.

In the modern world of spin, 24-hour rolling news and social media, however, such truths are often the first casualties of this killing-field where reality is edited.

And so I come to another heartening piece – again, from the heart of Tory thinking; again, from a writer of note. This time we find Fraser Nelson concluding in the Spectator with the following even- and open-handed appeal to cross-party cooperation:

The LA report was called “To Rebuild Is Not Enough” – a very good title, which applies to Britain. The report led to the unlikely Clinton/Gingrich welfare reforms. An inquiry is a Labour idea, but if there is to be consensus on any issue in British politics, it should be over tackling poverty, joblessness and lawlessness.

As with the Oborne article, this is well worth a read and careful consideration in full.

Enough has been burnt in the past few days. This is not a time to also burn bridges with aimless self-justifying rhetoric.

Swords into ploughshares? How about enemies into friends? And if friends is not possible, then at least functional colleagues …

A two-tier concept of society indeed

a con, Britain, eviction, riots, two-tier society, unclassifiable, Wandsworth 6 Responses »

Aug 122011

Wandsworth decides to begin proceedings to evict a household from council housing, because one of its members (not the parent or parents it would seem) has been accused of having participated in one of the recent outbreaks of rioting and looting.

It’s self-evident what most of the commenters to this story, at least currently, think of this measure. They’re not happy. And I do wonder if we aren’t in the process of creating a savagely two-tier society, where misdemeanours committed by those who live in social housing (ie at the poorer end of British society), even where they are not actually the tenants, will be punished twice: on the one hand, jail for the person responsible for the crime and, on the other, homelessness for the wider family who, in any case, may have had to suffer in silence other sibling or offspring foolishnesses prior to the case in question.

Meanwhile, the richer amongst us, whose live-in siblings or offspring also commit such unfortunate acts, whilst suffering the shame of a family member’s name being dragged through the media stocks, will not be thrown out onto the streets.

I’m not even clear if in Wandsworth’s case it’s council housing or actually social housing of a different mix – and it’s important to know which it is, because one of the accusations outsiders looking in regularly make at occupants of such housing is that they are a burden on the taxpayer. Myself, I live in housing which belongs to a local housing trust, so our ties with the council are now tenuous to say the least. Except, I suppose, for the £100 a month we pay in council tax.

We also pay almost £400 a month to the above-mentioned housing trust for a first-floor property with three small bedrooms, which, sadly (and we have notified those responsible of this matter several times already) is plagued by mould on the ceilings in all bedrooms – mould which has now even spread to the sitting-room. Private housing with (one would hope) far more pleasant surroundings and internal conditions could probably be obtained for around £650 a month. So we do save somewhat on what a far better standard of private housing would cost us in the area we live – even as we really can’t afford to get out of where we find ourselves.

More so since having lost my poorly-paid job at a bank, I’m now set up in self-employment.

The future may bring better days, of course. That is my prime aim and objective.

What I’m really trying to point out here is that life isn’t easy for anyone. It’s better for me than many people. Many other people, on the other hand, living almost cheek by jowl with myself, are much more materially secure than I am.

I don’t begrudge them their standard of living, mind.

I just don’t want the state to start sanctioning the throwing of parents and children out onto the streets because one member of the family has done something they shouldn’t have.

Or, alternatively, if we do decide this is the kind of vengeful society we need, let us throw private householders out of their nice homes as well.

After all, by this rule of thumb, the millionaire’s daughter who is accused of looting thousands of pounds of electrical goods is clearly the responsibility of her parents too.

And is just as clearly a blight on her entire neighbourhood as anyone who might live in a £400-a-month maisonette.

We want a properly policed state Dave, not a shabby police state …

a con, Blackberry Messenger, Britain, David Cameron, police state, policed state, repression, riots, unclassifiable No Responses »

Aug 122011

With all this talk of interrupting communication networks when riots and serious acts of public order are “planned”, I couldn’t help tweeting the following a moment ago. First, this:

People are going to be thinking twice about going on even peaceful demonstrations in the future. #saddaysfordemocracy

And then this:

Makes me wonder if the gun lobby doesn’t have a point: social media doesn’t cause riots; people cause riots. #saddaysfordemocracy

And a consequence of all this which I’ve seen no one pick up on yet, and which I should have included in yesterday’s post, is that you can’t intervene in and interrupt a communication network such as Blackberry’s Messenger service, when, that is, you need to, if you don’t intend to monitor it on a fairly continuous basis. That monitoring of such networks is therefore on the table is a true sign of the authoritarian instincts displayed by this government of the weak. For, if truth be told, such reactions do demonstrate weakness; and there is no political truth more self-evident than this: the weaker a government shows itself to be, the more authoritarian will be its instincts and behaviours.

Another tweet, in this case from James Doran, reminds us – if reminder were needed – of the confusions we are currently living:

You can’t compare rioters with bankers. Come on, be fair. Not a single banker has been arrested for trashing the economy.

Whilst Peter Oborne’s powerful piece in the Telegraph today deserves to be read by all and sundry. One choice paragraph – even if clearly partisan – runs thus:

Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be “reclaimed” by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.

(Even as I was tempted, ever so naughtily I suppose, to link the words “Bang & Olufsen television” to this site.)

As a commenter to Oborne’s article acerbically underlines:

“The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom “

This comes as a surprise? You can be more easily ripped off by an MP grabbing expenses than by a rioter rifling Currys. The moral justification they both have is basically the same. “It was there. It wasn’t nailed down……so it’s MINE”. Innit!

So what our political class really must get its head round, if, as a nation we are to progress and learn from these riots, is that being responsible for something is a reality all leaders have to face up to – whether they are prepared to admit it, take it or deny it. As the Spaniard Ramon y Cajal argued famously:

“Lo peor no es cometer un error, sino tratar de justificarlo …”

Which, loosely translated, means: “The worst you can do is not to make a mistake but, rather, try and defend it …”

The mettle of a leader lies in his or her willingness to learn, not in his or her ability to confound most of the people most of the time. If David Cameron really wants to turn these circumstances to his advantage, he needs to do a lot more than push resonant phrases of condemnation out onto the airwaves. He needs to learn from the disaster, take responsibility – as the highest authority in the land – and admit he has to rethink.

What he most certainly doesn’t want to do is to lead a political class recently accused of pecuniary sins into the hypocritical self-justifications of those who should not be the first to cast stones.

And above all, don’t shoot the Messenger, Dave!

Communication, not repression, is the key to getting Britain onside, onboard – and on its way again. If you begin to stop us feeling free to communicate, it’s not only the rioters you’ll stop in their tracks. It’s entrepreneurs, makers and shakers, ordinary law-abiding people – and those who would otherwise support you.

The implications of the kind of state you propose, with the intermittent powers to interrupt all communication, and the permanent powers to duly monitor, will drive us all away from consensual policing into the hands of something quite different to everything we’ve cherished to date – something we’ve always harshly criticised other countries for.

If that’s what you want, then all well and good. At least, from now on, we will know where you really stand.

Just be absolutely clear, before you engineer it, that it’s really what you and yours are going to want.

Because if you’re not clear about your intellectual baselines, and are more worried about your soundbites, you might find that instead of a properly and correctly policed state, what we end up with is actually an awfully shabby police state.

Of the kind which the Communists could only have dreamed of.

The kind which – if you’re not very careful – political history might end up concluding only you Mr Cameron could have jolly well dreamed up.

On ignoring "phoney concerns about human rights" [sic]

a con, Blackberry Messenger, Britain, David Cameron, Madrid libraries, Norway, phoney, phony, Spain No Responses »

Aug 102011

Awfully embarrassed update to this post: before you continue reading, apologies to those editors amongst you – and anyone else who might feel similarly aggrieved. Whilst the first entry on Google has the word “phoney” spelt “phony”, my Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, which I consulted too late to avoid my shame, has “phoney” spelt quite rightly “phoney”. Serve me right for being too clever by half and attempting to base an entire post on the worst kind of pedantry – that is to say, the mistaken kind.

Hope you can all forgive me.

Here’s the original post, nevertheless, untouched.
____________________

They do things differently on the Continent. How about this for starters? Almost a hundred young people murdered in cold blood by a rampant manifesto-writer and this is what we get:

I wish I could attribute the original tweeter, but what amazing words:

“Norway loses 92 children and suggests more democracy; [...]

Meanwhile, here in England:

[...] we lose 12 JD sports and some Nandos and demand the army and rubber bullets”.

Then we have richardblogger tweeting the following:

Is it acceptable for a Prime Minister to use the term “ignore phoney concerns about human rights”? Makes me very uneasy.

Now I don’t want to get all pedantic here, but the fact that the word “phony” (not genuine; fraudulent) is being widely spelt as “phoney” (of phone usage, perhaps?) is probably hardly surprising - under the technological circumstances and background to all that is currently happening, that is - even if editorially and technically lamentable.

Anyhow, and whatever the reason for the error, the reality it inscribes indicates once more how differently some parts of the Continent manage to do these things. Though not, it would seem, all parts of the Continent. In a story in today’s Spanish El Pais newspaper (in Spanish), it would appear that the Madrid library service has begun to block all access to web pages relating to or mentioning the “indignados” movement 15-M. From what I can gather, this has been an entirely peaceful movement to date – which almost certainly explains why the politicians it peacefully opposes might find it necessary to reduce public access to the messages thus broadcast.

So from mindless massacres and reaffirmations of humanity to mindless rioting and reaffirmations of autocracy, not even the dignified protests of the polite, guarded and focussed escape the petty oppressions of a bankrupt ruling-class.