Chris Dillow » 21stCenturyFix.org.uk

Why we need more penny-whistle guys in politics

Chris Dillow, music industry, music video, penny-whistle guys, politics, unclassifiable No Responses »

May 192013

So the Danes won the Eurovision song contest. And their doing so made me realise the following: we need more musicians in politics. Watch the video first – in particular the penny-whistle guy – and then I’ll explain.

http://youtu.be/k59E7T0H-Us

See what I mean? No? The penny-whistle guy provides a haunting theme – a haunting motif – that punctuates the song wonderfully. He plays it to the maximum of his abilities – and yet, even as he does so, he must spend most of the time counting bars. I remember this lesson very well from when I used to sing in a choir. We once did “Carmina Burana” – the gong section is, of course, going to be the most impressive and memorable for any young lad participating in any kind of music.

http://youtu.be/AdIpoE2LEps

Counting the bars to shine when you are needed; subsuming your ego to the roundness of a beautiful whole; creating life out of love for your art … yes, the penny-whistle and gong guys of music’s greatest moments certainly have something to teach the rest of us.

I mentioned yesterday how music was being used by the Labour Party to enable, engender and develop a sense of community. As I said in that piece:

Live encounters; real events; natural extensions of hopes, fears, ambitions and futures. All of this and more can be found in a Labour Live performance.

Meanwhile, today Chris posts on a broader perception of what political activism does (or more importantly doesn’t do) for its participants (the bold is mine):

Now, I don’t say all this to claim that all party activists are loons. That phrase “from an economists’ perspective” is doing some work; I’m speaking here of cost-benefit considerations and abstracting from the crooked timber of humanity which causes some sane people to become activists.However, these thoughts are consistent with a recent empirical finding - that political activism, unusually amongst voluntary activities, does not make people happier.

And as I point out at the bottom of Chris’s post:

I did go to a Labour Live event this weekend though, and, in relation to the “being happy or not” theme of your conclusion, wonder if Labour isn’t onto something far more important here. The evening involved excellent live music, young and old people, people from Chester and people from further out. This was about as close to happy as political parties might get. The reward before the pain of envelope-stuffing, even.

And it does make me think that if political parties start to give before they ask something of one, the conditions for party-political volunteering might reach a tipping point in favour of happy collaboration over manic belief.

What I see in music – the selfless nature of good music-makers whilst they are making their good music – is what I think we need to promote in civil society. The best kind of music-making is, after all, like the best kind of socialism: creative; adding to the world; supporting people in their aspirations to do better; working together to common goals; each person finding a niche which allows them to participate to the best of their abilities.

If only we could sell socialism as Labour Live sold music this weekend in Chester.

If only there were more penny-whistle guys in politics.

An example here. Listen to this interview first.

Now watch this.

http://youtu.be/xf6d0Ko-tW0

Now buy it.

The white-rabbity nature of liberal values – a bankruptcy of belief?

Chris Dillow, moral crisis, moral deficit, moral democracy, moral industry, moral relativism, normblog, Paul Cotterill, unclassifiable 1 Response »

Mar 162013

Chris attempts to mediate between Paul and Norman on the subject of the relative primacy of the individual.

I’m a lover of liberal values myself. But when you get examples such as the one I’m going to quote from, you really do begin to wonder if the problem ain’t values at all but – rather – their relative white-rabbity impermanence. This is a story on the behaviours of one of the biggest corporations in the world – a product of liberal values if there ever was one. The original in Spanish can be found here; the robot English translation here (from which I will proceed to quote from and amend where appropriate). In essence, this report describes how Facebook has just withdrawn from its pages a manual on stoning people to death, not because it contravened its rules on representing or fomenting violence but, rather, because it infringed copyright legislation:

A Facebook spokesman told El País that, although the content might be offensive, it did not violate its policies, which seek “a balance between freedom of expression and the maintenance of a safe environment [in the network].”

What did provoke it to finally act was the following assertion of intellectual property:

Finally, on March 14 the pictures were removed but for a very different reason: they infringed the rules on intellectual property rights, as they came from a report on executions in Iran published in 2010 by the Canadian newspaper The National Post.

Now I do understand that one swallow (or is that a gulp?) does not make a summer. But even so, in the light of so many other copyright-associated cases where corporate dosh weighs far more heavily than flesh-and-blood people, I do get the definite impression that liberal values are creeping towards crisis. If Paul, whose humanity, global vision and ability to keep a multitude of ideas moving at the same time I respect immensely, finds it necessary to say, as Chris does quote him saying, that:

There are other worldviews, which do not depend on the primacy of the individual, which are potentially as valid.

then I am inclined not to verbally stone him for his crimes (Norman seems to a little; Chris doesn’t at all) but, at least in a tentative first place, ask exactly why he should be tempted to say such stuff.

Liberal values are fine as they might stand in theory, but not everything they are currently leading to in practice leads us to a happy place. The right of the individual to speak out freely must always be balanced by the damage it does to others by so doing. And if one of the world’s prime technology companies now finds it possible – and what’s more, in the name of liberal free speech – to permit instructions on how to stone people to death to remain on its pages, and only think twice about the matter when the hoary old capitalist construct of copyright rears its ugly head, then we really, surely, are living some kind of bankruptcy of belief.

Money, once again, in a liberal context, weighs far more heavily in the event, and in that practice I allude to, than those theoretical rights not to be abused.

Perhaps that’s what makes Paul’s humanity think the unthinkable.

Precisely because the white-rabbity nature of liberal values is fast coinciding with a parallel bankruptcy of its economic model. For which it can hardly disavow its primary responsibility.

It’s not that we object so much to liberal values but, instead, much more importantly, to what is being done in their name.

Which is to say, in the name of that justly prized individualist prism of valuing equally every single life on the planet.

The problem being that liberal values are beginning to mean far more often “every man for himself” instead of “every man of himself”.

With the emphasis, I guess, at least in the light of today’s Facebook story, on the word “man”.

On being utterly torn between logic and love? There’s no bloody difference any more

a con, Chris Dillow, civilisation, class war, class warfare, latterday capitalism, latterday socialism, left, mother of invention, mother tongue, Mother's Day 2 Responses »

Jan 212013

Chris makes me feel utterly inadequate today. As a member of the soft left, I am fairly in his sights:

[...] it’s the centre-left who are the utopian dreamers, and we Marxists who are the realists.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Political activists, and especially career politicians, are selected for the optimism bias; you don’t go to all those dull meetings unless you think (conventional) politics can achieve a lot.

Of course, it’s not just the soft left who suffer from the condition. As he goes on to point out (and closer to my heart and own personal experience):

And it’s not just mainstream politicians who are the dreamers whilst I’m the sceptic. Stock-pickers who think they can beat the market and CEOs who think they can successfully control ther fate of huge organizations are just like centre-left politicians, exaggerating what they can achieve in the face of powerful and complex market forces.

But it’s his conclusion that really knocks me sideways – and makes me wonder if there is any point in (figuratively) continuing (the bold is, wearily, mine):

As it is, the question “what can politics achieve in a capitalist economy?” is rarely posed, let alone answered, by the centre-left. And until it is, they are likely to remain Isobel Crawley-type figures – perhaps doing a little good, but not challenging basic socio-economic inequalities, and leaving poverty and their own privilege largely unchanged.

(I had to look up the reference to Isobel Crawley, by the way. You might guess which popular upper-class soap I haven’t found myself entangled by.)

So Chris argues we do a little good – but fail, at the same time, to “challenge” the basic socio-economic inequalities. And yet what does this word “challenge” imply? Verbal and/or physical violence of some sort? Or a “democratic” “battle” within the confines of a capitalist discourse he so rightly condemns? What, indeed, can politics achieve in a capitalist economy? Especially the kind of capitalist economy which most of us now labour under, where politicians and business leaders interchangeably operate to the benefit of their own pockets, interest groups and mercenary aims?

What, then, is the alternative to violence of some sort or another? Is there, indeed, anything not countenancing bloodshed which could do more than does the soft left already? My mother has a solution, of course – consistently held: if only we loved each other more, we might achieve the change we are looking for:

It is so distressing to read about the injustices so blatant that the only understanding I can glean from this ‘world’ is that when the money – mammon – is the only goal to achieve in the world, there is no room for love and compassion towards people! The Judeo-Christian ethic has been eroded and something else has to be put in its place and we have got ‘it’ now: greed, avarice, selfishness – it has many facets but it is the one and same thing! Let us return to the God that we have abandoned for false gods! [...]

So on the one hand we have my mother – half of my upbringing, in fact. On the other, we have people like Chris – the other, far more logical, side of my character. Yet, whether we reach our conclusions through faith or whether we reach them through science, it seems – right now – that the conclusions are becoming pretty much the same.

That awful situation where one is torn between logic and love? There’s no bloody difference any more. Society and politics are as shitty as they have become not because society and politics are shitty.

No. That, my friend, is not the explanation.

My mother calls it “mammon”. Chris calls it “capitalism”. Either way, and whatever label you use, it’s hurting us more than it ever did in the past.

In fact it’s not our institutions which are failing us so much as our underlying, and practically unperceived, system of capitalist behaviours.

And so I ask for a solution – a way forward for my own small world. I’m ready, as per my cowardly character, to be patient, meek and mild: to await the beneficence of the powerful even.

At least to a degree. At least for a while.

Yet the examples continue to hurtle past our eyes. This awful story from yesterday, for example:

The world’s 100 richest people earned enough money last year to end world extreme poverty four times over, according to a new report released by international rights group and charity Oxfam.

The $240 billion net income of the world’s 100 richest billionaires would have ended poverty four times over, according to the London-based group’s report released on Saturday.

As the charity goes on to say:

“We sometimes talk about the ‘have-nots’ and the ‘haves’ – well, we’re talking about the ‘have-lots’. [...] We’re anti-poverty agency. We focus on poverty, we work with the poorest people around the world. You don’t normally hear us talking about wealth. But it’s gotten so out of control between rich and poor that one of the obstacles to solving extreme poverty is now extreme wealth,” Ben Phillips, a campaign director at Oxfam, told Al Jazeera.

This is the shit that is going down these days.

This is what creates the real pain and manifest anger.

So one final question to be going away with this evening: is there any kind of lesson to be learned when my mother’s love and faith reach the same conclusion as Chris Dillow’s perspicacious and rational mind?

And is there anything apart from violent civil conflict which will succeed in changing anything soon enough for the majority?

Why is Cameron’s government so evil? #Think #Tremble

a con, Chris Dillow, Coalition, Coalition capitalism, Coalition cuts, Coalition economics, David Cameron, hierarchy of power, Stumbling and Mumbling No Responses »

Dec 302012

Steve continues to pursue, with admirable doggedness, the #plebgate affair – situating it thus. He argues that public confidence in the police may be shaken for many historical reasons – but that the Andrew Mitchell case should not, at least as yet, be one of them.

Myself, I’m beginning to wonder if there aren’t other issues we should factor into our current body politic and society – and which might help explain how dreadful things are getting. For instance, everyone who has ever been a half-decent teacher or parent knows that the confidence and trust you exhibit in someone is often a self-fulfilling tool to sustain that person’s own confidence and trust in themselves. What’s more, the job of good government – where it chooses intelligently not to micro-manage society – should surely be to engender such environments of wider confidence and trust at a societal level.

Not to do so is to endanger the ability of these societies to create the relationships which lead to better, more efficient and less corrupt economies and communities.

Yet this Coalition government of ours appears to care not one jot about the evermore scarce resources that are confidence and trust. In fact, it seems to be quite happy to express the most savage absence of belief in its people – allowing and even encouraging the broader perception that the blame for all our ills lies with the most helpless in society. “If only the sick, poor, disabled, elderly and jobless would fuck off,” so the mantra seems to go, “we could get on with our hierarchical-capitalist ways till the [cash] cows came home.”

For hierarchical capitalism, as described by Chris today, and as employed, encouraged and sanctioned by British governments since time immemorial (but, in particular, by Cameron and Blair), is not only unfair – it’s also bloody inefficiently unfair. As per Chris’s post:

[...] Fehr and colleagues say:

We find a strong behavioral bias among principals to retain authority against their pecuniary interests and often to the disadvantage of both the principal and the agent.

Some two-fifths of principals did not delegate even when income-maximization required it. This suggests that people get a non-pecuniary buzz from being in control, and seek this benefit at the cost of economic payoffs to themselves and others. This is consistent with the findings of other experiments by Fehr and colleagues, which suggests that hierarchy facilitates exploitation rather than pure economic efficiency.

My conclusion? People at the top are not only working in an unjust way but also in a wasteful way. If injustice were the only problem, we might still escape the implications of such a system. But it’s manifestly not. And it’s getting far worse. If you think Cameron is evil, you really ain’t seen nothing yet.

Let’s take the case of workfare. As the Department of Work and Pensions, in what would appear to be one of its more rational moments, has been reported to have concluded:

Academic analysis by the Department of Work and Pensions has cast doubt on the effectiveness of workfare policies. After surveying the international evidence the from America, Canada and Australia the report states:

“There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers. Subsidised (‘transitional’) job schemes that pay a wage can be more effective in raising employment levels than ‘work for benefit’ programmes. Workfare is least effective in getting people into jobs in weak labour markets where unemployment is high.”^[10]

Not that government pronouncements or practice on the ground would care to give any credence to the above. You only have to take a quick look around the worldwide web to realise this.

But if you thought Cameron was evil, how about this for a taster of what such untrusting and confidence-lacking hierarchies are capable of?

Imagine going to work every day and not getting paid. Then, one day, you’re told there’s no work to do — so you must pay the company for the privilege of not working.

This is the daily reality facing Mrs. Kim, a petite 52-year-old North Korean. Her husband’s job in a state-run steel factory requires him to build roads. She can’t remember the last time he received a monthly salary. When there are no roads to build, he has to pay his company around 20 times his paltry monthly salary, she says.

The truth of the matter is that economies the world over – whatever the ideological colours that run their governments, states and politics – can only ever flourish in environments where minimum levels of the trust and confidence I’ve already mentioned above exist in sufficient and realistic amounts. Whether such economies be located in the extremes of North Korean or, indeed, British injustice, people will simply not be willing to take the (additional) risks that imaginative capitalism demands of its participants – especially if the (unavoidable) risks of simply bringing bread and butter home to the kitchen table are as rankly unjust as both North Korea, and now in its own tepid way the UK, appear to display more and more.

Hierarchy as thus exhibited and taken advantage of by those at the top will never function effectively; will never make people work as well as they could.

In order to take the kinds of risks proponents of imaginative capitalism argue must be taken, we need to ensure that life is supportive of those risks. Because any society which makes the reward for sticking your neck out the guillotine is not a society with too much of a future. And men and women as intelligent as those who lead our Western governments today should really have sussed out this truth by now.

A final string of thoughts.

How can any government possibly believe it can engineer changes in a society without getting people onside first?

How can any government possibly believe it can modify behaviours without achieving a certain degree of collaboration and consensus first?

How can any government possibly believe it can implement a series of difficult and challenging policies without managing people as people first?

Unless, of course, like the North Koreans, it believes that hierarchy is all you need to make stuff work.

As I pointed out in a tweet yesterday:

Q: What would these Tories do if they realised they’d lose the next election? A: Exactly what they’re doing right now. #Think #Tremble

Well quite.

Once you realise you don’t need democracy to action the levers of power, everything else just runs as smooth as silk.

Only you do know that silk is made by worms.

The Tories’ post-Orwellian Blitzkrieg against the British people

a con, Blighty, Chris Dillow, Conservative Party Conference 2011, Conservative Party Conference 2012, End of History, Orwell, Tories No Responses »

Oct 082012

If anything has seemed – for an outsider like myself looking in – to have characterised this Coalition’s behaviour almost from the very first day, it’s a firmly casual instinct to break the sacred bond between all those rights and responsibilities we might consider to inhabit a moral sphere.

The latest example is well described in Chris Dillow’s piece today, as George Osborne’s strategy to emasculate working-people’s rights proceeds apace. As I suggested a couple of posts ago, this process may be more out of a desire to give us an example than give us a kicking – but, even so, the results are clear to see. (And in truth, this Tory-led Coalition may be rightly perceived as wanting to give us an example and a kicking. But that, I guess, would lead us onto a completely different debate.)

Anyhow, Chris describes the Coalition’s latest wizard wheeze – to force workers to give up their rights in exchange for shares – as having the following implications:

Herein, however, lies a curious omission in Osborne’s speech.Although he talked of “new rights of ownership” he did not mention that ownership should entail control. As bank shareholders will tell you, ownership without control is just a way of ensuring you’ll be ripped off. Anyone would think Osborne wants workers to suffer a similar fate.

The mindset operating here seems bloody damn clear to me. The fear from without that bound us together during World War II, and drove us on to extraordinary socialising changes in our civilisation, did indeed make our country run more efficiently. The problem this government has, looking as it is to emulate Thatcher not Heath (or, indeed, Churchill not Chamberlain), is that there doesn’t seem to be a sufficiently cogent and convincing external threat to ready hand for the citizens of this country to line up in an orderly queue and follow Cameron & Co down the route they are (in a sense, literally) carving out.

No bloodless revolution here, after all.

So seeing the example of Thatcher – demon witch of left-wing mythology – and the fear she induced in those who opposed her, and remembering the effect that the fear of an invasion of our British Isles had on us, and what it did to an often historically disparate set of nation states and peoples, who wouldn’t think the solution to a time of very 21st-century crisis such as this – an “End of History” crisis without clear enmities to define our latterday direction – is to progressively remove all state-organised support networks in order to force people to act as if in wartime?

In fact, this is perhaps the first post-Orwellian state we’re experiencing here. With terrorism generally beaten, with the Russians and their hold on Western civilisation’s energy supplies on the potential back-foot as fracking spreads across the globe, with the Arab states cowed and struggling with their own flowerings of democracy and even the Chinese involved in their own tentative stirrings … who the hell can we now blame for our ills?

Except, I suppose, our own body politic.

And what political leadership is ever going to admit to that?

Much easier to break that sacred bond between rights and responsibilities – and blame the workers for bringing this all upon ourselves.

Which, in a sense, perhaps, is what has really happened. We have got soft; have believed that rights don’t need to be fought for; have allowed ourselves to trust a referred and professionalised parliamentary democracy as the solution to all our ills.

Time for us to correct our path? Time to realise how post-Orwellian this has become? Time to act as if in wartime back?

I wonder.

For that – don’t you see? – is exactly how the Tories themselves are acting. Quite despite themselves … quite because of themselves … whatever the reason, they’re at war with the British people.

And there seems little, for the moment, we can do to remedy the situation.

But then that’s Blitzkrieg all round, isn’t it? Shock and awe squared.

Party time?

Chris Dillow, on a high, political parties 3 Responses »

Sep 162012

Chris has just posted a fascinating thesis. Whilst it’s long been held that Labour is in the vicious grip of voter-base fragmentation – a grip that New Labour may eventually be seen to have simply ameliorated – there may also exist the possibility that the Tory voter-base is disintegrating just as dramatically:

What I am doing, though, is raising a question. It’s long been a cliche that Labour’s class base – industrial workers – is shrinking and fragmenting. But might the same be also true for the Tories?

The idea is definitely attractive, in the sense that it suggests a convincing symmetry. Surely, after all, those who grow up and benefit in opposition to another are just as likely to decline when that other begins its own decline.

Which leads me to wonder if this isn’t clear evidence of the opportunities that might exist for totally new kinds of political parties. Three examples. Here, from the United States and a website called abetterpeople.com (just so you’re aware, posts of mine are currently syndicated to this website):

The Party

America, the entire World for that matter, is in need of a political force, a political party, focused on the needs of the citizens of the World, not just those with the financial means to influence the outcome of policy.

Our Goal.

In early 2013 to register a new political party in the United States. This party will focus on the needs of all citizens, both the needs of the 99% and the needs of the 1%. However, all needs will be treated equally.

The Charter, The Platform.

A Better People, and our Founder John F Moore, have a few core values that we want to see incorporated into this new party:

All people have an equal voice.

All people are entitled to the same basic human rights.

Through transparency in government and politics we can create a positive transformation.

There is no room for hatred of any people.

Democracy is not perfect. It is, however, better than other forms of government in existence today. We wish to see democracy, by the people, flourish.

Okay, what else?

This is a political party of the people, for the people, by the people.

We want to partner with all citizens of the world and create an initial charter of what matters to this new party. All of you, in equal part, can weigh in by commenting on this initial article.

We will use A Better People to crowdsource many of the initial steps, many of the next steps. We hope you will join us as we seek to create a Party for the People.

Here, from the UK and a website called www.2020uk.org (again, a post of mine from 21CF is due to go up there next week):

WELCOME TO 2020UK
2020UK is a group seeking a new form of governance where cooperation replaces conflict. Party politics have served this nation for many years but the world has become more complex and large international companies have as much if not more power than many governments including our own. Is it possible that a new grouping which takes the best from all political persuasions working together is the way forward for the UK? That is just one of the questions we are asking. As far as we know we are the only group that concerns itself with governance (as opposed to governing) and has no associations at all with any political party. Further details of this concept behind the ABOUT US tab.

Meanwhile, here I described on Facebook the other day the Pirate Party movement – probably out of more than a little ignorance on my part, but certainly with an attempt at good faith:

I’m inclined to think the Pirate Party is the triumph of alternative worldviews over traditional politics. Like a religion, in the sense that its beliefs are separately formed – and also serve to explain and understand many incoherences in traditional politics. You may not agree with the explanations and conclusions – but logic and cogency do play a part; especially as they are looking for a much deeper understanding of the whys and wherefores of modern life. Use technology to explain away our inappropriate dependence on it? In a way, yes. If Google didn’t do evil, the Pirate Party doesn’t do dependence. [...]

I then go on to talk of elites, a subject which does worry me – and probably should worry you too:

[...] Yet neither Google nor the Pirate Party have seen themselves able to avoid creating new elites. In that way, the 21st century isn’t defined so much by right or left but more by the elites continued ability to reinvent their power over everyone else. Perhaps despite their better instincts, perhaps because of their worse. But “right” and “left” and “non-aligned” all seem to wish to recreate self-serving hierarchies.

Which is sad, but possibly inevitable too …

Now, whilst I don’t necessarily adhere to all the objectives of the above-mentioned movements and their predictable attachment to organisational structures I would probably find resistible, I would be happy for my thoughts and ideas to be shared on their platforms – and for one simple reason: the fragmentation of voter bases on both left and right of the political spectrum which Chris describes so perspicaciously in his piece seems to me a clear given – that is to say, an unassailable reality any 21st century politician must really begin to take onboard. And even though all the above – in their different ways – are struggling with this weary reinvention of the wheel of organisation, they are at the same time also addressing with intelligence and good faith the need to create a different approach to bringing people together in constructive consonance. Something I find truly laudable.

My question, I suppose, in the end, is whether the Tories or Labour are even aware of the issue. In the US, it seems clear to me that both the Democrats and the Republicans are so awash with money as not to need to even consider any alternative to the brute force of traditional politics.

Pigeon-holing and square pegs in round holes are the clichés which come lazily to mind as a result.

It may then be that it will be those who inhabit less wealthy societies who will come up with alternative solutions like some of the ones I draw your attention to above – and way before the existing political parties even begin to creep in such a direction. The main challenge we have, of course, is whether we can resist the juggernaut of ever-increasing concentrations of self-interested wealth in modern politicking – before we have a chance to re-engineer how we organise our civilisation.

____________________

Update to this post: another post which references Chris’s original can be found here, making absolutely patent the quandary a complex population of thinking voters now finds itself in when asked to choose between limited and never entirely representative alternatives.

Who’ll be best placed to learn from the 20th century – capitalism or its victims?

capitalism, Chris Dillow, class war, class warfare, Dave Semple, socialism, socialism for the rich, Soviet Russia, unclassifiable 4 Responses »

Aug 242012

Rick describes thus the attitudes of the supposed New Tory Right:

Last week, a group of Tory MPs abandoned all that stuff about ‘hardworking families’ and branded this country Lazy Britain:

Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor.

It’s rubbish, of course. Fact Check pointed out that our full-timers work some of the longest hours in Europe and, even when you add in our relatively high number of part-time workers, we still work longer hours than the Germans. As for the productivity argument, Chris Dillow dealt with that, noting that there is a strong negative correlation between hours worked and productivity. Just working harder, then, won’t improve our economy and, in any case, shouldn’t we aspire to be more like the richer countries that work smarter, rather than the poorer ones that work longer?

Chris had already concluded that (the bold is mine):

I’m pretty sure, then, that Raab is talking rot. What I’m not so sure about is why. One possibility is that he’s so blinded by free market ideology and by romantic ideas about entrepreneurs and managers that he just cannot see that some free market reforms are of negligible benefit and that some bosses are less than heroic.

But you’d have thought that the experience of the crisis – which has seen bankers get multi-million bonuses whilst good workers lose their jobs – would have disabused anyone of the just world theory that capitalism rewards talent and effort. There’s comes a point when a cognitive bias shades into a psychiatric disorder.

This leaves another possibility. It’s that Raab is simply taking sides in a class war. He wants to further empower bosses to bully workers, even if this has no macroeconomic benefit.

Meanwhile Dave, in a comment to my own post, argues the following:

I think your middle paragraph nails it. Do you remember Gordon Brown declaring that boom and bust economics was dead? The truth is that this was pure hokum, in the best traditions of Francis Fukuyama and the end-of-history-death-of-ideology brigade.

Life is a battlefield, but we’ve forgotten it. We’ve had it easy.

Eric Hobsbawm wrote a book about the short twentieth century, from 1914-1991. This is probably mistaken. The twentieth century as an idea lasted until 2008. The fall of the Soviet Union and the fall of the veil behind which capitalism hid, with the crisis and the cuts, are two sides of the same coin. It just took a while for both to be revealed.

Now, I think, we have returned to political struggle almost as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, with no socialist bogeyman to scare people away and no entrenched Stalinist politicians to betray the movement with their bad tactics. We have a clean sheet, for the first time in a century. As prior to WWI, capitalism has geared up for an assault.

If we resist hard, we risk running the same gauntlet as before – war, depression, devastation, even perhaps genocide. But this time we will not make the same mistakes.

And so my question is this: who’ll be best placed to learn from the 20th century – capitalism or its victims?

I wonder.

Victims, throughout recent media history anyhow, have occupied the condition of the passive put-upon righteous. The noble black man in Hollywood cinema you simply know will die the first in the convoluted plot-line so constructed; the screaming woman who can only be saved by a (generally) white knight in shining armour … how the good must die – or at the very least suffer – on the altars of pathos and tragedy our societies so love to casually devise.

Yet the worldly experience of the US Civil Rights Movement, of feminist struggles everywhere, of men, women and children who have striven to create their own worlds quite at the margin of the consumerist freedoms our century wants to limit us to … surely all of the above shows us that victims do not have to be passive, do not have to lie down and suffer – can, after all, action and lever and inspire positive change.

Yes. I think Dave is right. We are right back at the beginning of the 20th century. And so it is that politicians like the New Tory Right which Rick describes so accurately are simply incapable of appreciating exactly what this means. They are so wrapped up in capitalism’s tendency to substitute true renewal with simple dog-eat-dog tail-chasing that they are unable to see beyond their short-term hubris. Their version of capitalism has become so technically and intellectually corrupted – so damnably inefficient on its own terms, for God’s sake – that the seeds of its own destruction have been sprouting for a very long time now.

Will the 21st century, then, be the century that the victims of capitalism learn properly from a previous century’s history – learn properly that being a victim doesn’t have to mean resigning oneself to becoming a downtrodden subject?

Again, I wonder.

And ask you to wonder too.

If you’re powerful, interests never conflict (or brazen, shameless, wicked and evil)

a con, abortion, anti-poor, Catholic Church, Chris Dillow, class war, class warfare, hubris, Opus Dei, Partido Popular, Shuggy, Spain No Responses »

Aug 142012

Wherever I’ve worked, at generally the most humble of levels, I’ve been trained to watch out for conflicts of interest. But there’s a clear pattern emerging of late, of which this story (in Spanish) (robot English here) is but one example: if you’re powerful, interests never conflict.

In this case, an anti-abortion and anti-gay-marriage judge who’s a member of the Opus Dei organisation sees no reason why he cannot pronounce on an appeal by the Partido Popular (the rancid right-wing party currently running Spanish politics) against the legal periods set out by previous regimes in relation to when and why one can abort.

Abortion is a difficult issue, of course. But after our own experience of having to weigh up its appropriateness, I would never dare suggest that I should have a right to decide – a priori - on behalf of another.

It was on the occasion of my wife’s second pregnancy. The local hospital did some tests – and for some reason, asked us to come back the following week to repeat them.

They refused to allege any reason and seemed to be hiding something. When the results of both sets of tests came through, the conclusion was pretty frightening. There was, it would appear, a pretty decent chance that our second child would be born spina bifida. If I remember rightly, and as far as we understood, the consequences ranged from death at birth to a very unhappy childhood and/or limited opportunities to enjoy a fulsome life.

Hurriedly, they organised a distressing test in a Madrid hospital, which involved extracting blood from the umbilical cord – and which, in itself, at least at the time, involved considerable risk to the foetus. All this time, my wife and I were talking over the potential decision of going ahead with an abortion. It was not a happy time.

The results of the Madrid test were, thankfully, positive and constructive. The magnetic resonance they carried out showed a fully formed foetus with everything as it should’ve been. We later discovered – the local hospital had no alternative but to come clean – that an error of calibration of the results had produced the initial scare.

A bad sad time for us both which, in the end, turned out happily.

With that child there was still an almost horrifying birth, as the very same umbilical cord got wrapped around his neck just as he emerged – a blue grey colour; a child of grand fortune indeed.

So all the above is why I would never presume to decide on behalf of a mother whether she should have an abortion or not.

That there are plenty of happy families with spina bifida children is I am sure a truth we should never fail to take on board. That parents who face such a prospect in varying degrees of difficulty – or, indeed, for any other reasons which may encourage them to think twice – may soon, perhaps, in Spain not be allowed to decide for themselves, and all because a self-confessed anti-abortion and anti-gay-marriage member of Opus Dei has decided he has every right to decide on legal matters relating to abortion, is – however – probably par for the course these days.

These days, powerful people don’t seem to care to keep up appearances. Their hubris overwhelms any shame they used to feel. Conspicuous consumption becomes a right – even a twisted duty.

No interests conflict so much as the poor, sick and disabled’s – all the time, as they attempt to survive an evermore Darwinian mindscape.

And meanwhile, the already wealthy see no need to justify their incoherences.

The incoherences of the 21st century.

The new paradigm for being rich.

A century of free education leads to compulsory rugby for the plebs. And as David so rightly points out in yet another sharp piece on the whys and wherefores of latterday politicking (the bold is mine):

Fact is, private schools do indeed produce proportionately more Olympic medal-winners but they aren’t anything like as good at this as they are at making barristers, journalists, doctors, CEOs or members of Her Majesty’s Government. That this state of affairs hasn’t led a host of politicians and pundits to call for a reworking of schools’ timetables prompted an uncharitable thought: could it be because they believe running around a track is a more suitable ambition for the lower orders to harbour, rather than having them entertain ideas about running things?

This is war, ladies and gentlemen. But what’s more, the very worst kind. Undeclared war by the already powerful against the already weak.

Brazen. Shameless. Wicked. Evil. Nothing else comes to mind.

How charlatans became experts

a con, Chris Dillow, democracy, democratic deficit, experts 2 Responses »

May 272012

I watched the film “Moneyball” yesterday. I can’t recommend it too highly. It describes how clever but professionally unwelcomed people were able to show that numbers could understand the dynamics of baseball far better than the experts who made money and a living out of their hapless and hardly evidenced talk.

Myself, I’ve been flailing a little balefully of late on the subject of how other so-called experts have failed us so miserably. Some examples of how I feel can be found here, here and in particular here. I also recently complained that professionals were manifestly in charge of a complete and utter decline of our organisational structures.

I’m clearly being unreasonable in the frustrated thesis I am weaving. Not all experts can be painted in the same colours as such diatribes.

So here’s a fulsome apology: I’m sincerely sorry for weaving it.

But as I see peoples like the Greeks and Spanish – and perhaps soon even ourselves – suffering the ignominy of powerful men and women getting away with the consequences of their crass mistakes, I can’t help but wonder if our problem is the pyramidal systems which set up dividing walls between evermore specialised fields of action.

Specialisms have become a serious issue for modern society’s ability to sustain an even-handed approach to simultaneous citizen and expert engagement. And whilst the specialists in question work and whilst they manage the aforementioned complexities reasonably intelligently, we stumble reasonably satisfactorily from one potential crisis to another – without quite falling. But what if we start to stumble? What if we start to fall? What if what is happening now is a slow-motion disintegration of everything we held dear?

What if when one specialism stumbles, they all must sooner or later turn to rubble?

The questions I have asked in the posts linked to above wander mainly around whether life is simply becoming too complex for heavy-handed democratic economies and institutions to be moderately up to the job in hand. But what if the situation is even worse than I paint it: what if these specialists and experts our societies currently rely so heavily on are actually fraudulent examples of their professions? Or – even worse – if the professions in question are, in their entirety, fraudulent themselves?

Chris would appear to be suggesting such an eventuality here. And it’s quite a terrifying thought.

Which leads me to wonder whether I am not only right about the complexity of life being beyond the reach of latterday democratic discourse but whether – even – the specialisms we still treasure and trust to resolve an encroaching doom are going to be quite the very opposite of what we need.

Not the response to our miseries – but the initiators of.

Not the result of our quest – but the cause of our ills.

And the solution? Maybe we need to create a new school of specialisms designed specifically to save us all from the delirious consequences of depending for so long on erstwhile and so-called experts.

A “Moneyball” to save the earth perhaps?

Creativity, the ant-hill mob and the meaning of life itself

blogging, Chris Dillow, creation, creativity, crowdsourcing, film, individual, industrial poetry, on a high, open source, producer-consumers No Responses »

Apr 202012

Chris rightly asks the question:

The answer is that all pose what might be the most important question in economics – of how to encourage creativity.

I think, however, the question is misplaced – misplaced because economics, as well as observers of the creative industries themselves, still sees human endeavour on a playing-field where individuals are more important than mobs. In fact, some would eagerly blame open source movements and other crowdsourcing efforts for having removed the individual – as well as their due compensation – from modern creation.

But if we’re honest about this, it started at least as early as the nascent 20th century production line that was the Hollywood film industry. (There are, if I remember rightly, historical references to the Flemish geniuses of Renaissance art also running their own industrially produced outputs – though obviously nothing on the scale of Hollywood. On the other hand, what did the printing-press bring to authorship if not the industry of the many cooks who might very well spoil the broth constructively?)

And this selfsame Hollywood, for quite a while, was able to impose a model that other industries such as newspapers readily copied: take advantage of the multifarious skills the properly channelled mob might apport; pay them minimally for their efforts; and cream off the profitable results in terms of massive gains for hierarchies and shareholders decade after decade.

The problem, of course, for all the above now, is that the mob which once scraped a living by working for the corporates – which quite correctly invoked the added value that centralised communications, places of work and managed teams of able staff brought to very many creative people – has “disintegrated” into free-culture producer-consumers on the web. The problem with the web isn’t just that the corporates are getting their content “ripped off”; the problem with the web is, really, that the ant-hill mob of selfless striving has replaced the permanent expectation to be individually famous – and paid for it.

If you stop blogging, another blog will replace you. If you stop posting to Flickr, another photographer will step into your shoes. We have taken on board so completely the fifteen-minutes-of-fame dynamic of Warhol’s that we actually now expect to be eventually trodden on – and our only desire is to carry on scurrying creatively for as long as our own personal resources last.

The problem, then, with creativity in modern economies isn’t finding ways of generating more of it. We only have to read up on YouTube’s download and upload stats, on Wikipedia’s daily pageviews and on Pinterest’s current levels of interest to realise that quantity – and even quality – isn’t an issue. The ant-hill mob is doing its biz – there’s no doubt about that.

No. The real problem with creativity only exists within an individualist – and perhaps libertarian – focus on what human reward should really look like. Even as traditional socialism vanishes from most of modern political practice, the old sharing and community instincts which form a part of being a human being find their expression in modern online creativity.

Essentially, creativity has finally gone all post-modern on us: it no longer needs the traditional economic process of investment, worker oppression and shareholder reward to produce its goods.

The question is whether this is satisfactory for any of us who still believe we human beings should be more than grains of sand on anonymous beaches.

And to that question, I really have no answer.

Maybe because part of its answer, sadly, lies in the meaning of life itself.

On the thorny matter of workfare (or how networks aren’t the solution: they’re the problem)

Chris Dillow, in a hole, long-term unemployed, old boys' networks, social networks, Stumbling and Mumbling, unemployment, workfare No Responses »

Feb 232012

Chris, over at Stumbling and Mumbling, has an interesting post on the case for workfare – or, at least, on the case for something which might aim to do what workfare is alleged, by its proponents, to achieve. He expresses understandable outrage – which I am sure many of us share; though, interestingly, a point made by a commenter does in a way undermine our moral coherence on this matter:

Re the “outrage” at firms getting subsidised or free labour, what’s the reason for the outrage? The Western countries have implemented HUNDREDS of different employment subsidies since WWII that involve supplying subsidised or free labour to firms. If you have some fundamental reason for thinking this sort of measure is immoral, or something like that, let’s have the reasons. (I’m 100% any such reasons can be demolished.)

Reasons for the outrage after such a long time? Maybe we’re all late to the party. This e-petition, and a follow-up comment on Facebook which came my way, does point us in a separate direction:

Petition to Abolish Work for your Benefit/Workfare Schemes in the UK

Responsible department: Department for Work and Pensions

We want to abolish work for your benefit/workfare schemes in the UK.

People selling their labour should be fairly remunerated for their work at the normal level paid for the tasks they perform and treated in the same way as a standard employee with full rights and representation if requested.

These are the basic rights of any worker in a modern democratic society.

Workfare is effectively forced labour and is therefore illegal in the UK.

I’ve signed the petition myself, and would ask you to consider doing the same – although I would like confirmation, if possible, of the final assertion thus contained. As already mentioned, someone on Facebook has argued that if it can be classified as forced labour and is indeed illegal in the UK and elsewhere, doesn’t there exist the opportunity for a class action by all those who’ve been affected over the years?

The very fact that it’s been happening in one way or another for decades doesn’t preclude our right to say “Stop!” at some time. Better late than never, surely.

Chris mentions a number of reasons in favour of a re-engineered workfare. One of the key ones is ensuring that the unemployed don’t become isolated – that those who might become unemployed don’t fear it as much; that anyone who faces the prospect will feel their networks won’t collapse around them:

2. In getting the unemployed out into society, it would increase their circle of friends and acquaintances. This might help them get back into private sector work, not only by encouraging work habits and skills, but also by widening the social networks (pdf) through which people learn of job opportunities. In this regard, workfare might be a better alternative to the numerous courses offered to jobseekers in how to find work.

Surely, however, the problem isn’t exactly as described. The fact of the matter is that, since time immemorial, social networks have been tools for achieving competitive exclusion much more than enveloping environments designed to share out the easy pickings broadly.

Networking – and networks – only carry out the function attributed to them because they create pyramids of hierarchical worth where, in a puzzling flux, the many aggregate around the few in the hope of occasionally getting a few breadcrumbs of recognition – and perhaps even paid work.

Most of the time, however, these highly structured relationships, which people tend to think the unemployed miss out on, generate just as many unpaid opportunities in the hope of something better as workfare of any kind ever did.

Maybe workfare is just the state’s equivalent – its construct if you like – of what private sector and self-employed individuals desperately spend most of their time struggling with: unpaid overtime in the hope of distant promotion; wining and dining in the hope of distant contracts. And the reason we have workfare, even where it may be illegal, is because – in a reasonably illegal (or at least immoral) way too – the private sector has, over time, had to become accustomed to playing the same unremunerated games.

After all, the state and the private sector are often mirrors of each other: closer in what and how they do the stuff they do than detractors of either would care to admit.

Think about it. Tomorrow is “Work Your Proper Hours Day”. Isn’t this pretty similar to what workfare asks us to do?

Work Your Proper Hours Day (24 Feb 2012) is the day when the average person who does unpaid overtime finishes the unpaid days they do every year, and starts earning for themselves. We think that’s a day worth celebrating.

Over five million people at work in the UK regularly do unpaid overtime, giving their employers £29.2 billion of free work last year alone. If you’re one, why not take some time to reflect on how well (or badly) you’re balancing your life? This is one day in the year to make the most of your own time. Take a proper lunchbreak and leave work on time to enjoy your Friday evening – You deserve it!

I think it jolly well is – and should, equally, make us reflect.

Networks aren’t the solution: they’re the problem.

What if an excluding nationalism could be a positive force?

a con, anti-freedom, bad capitalism, Big Capitalism, Chris Dillow, corporations, latterday capitalism, managerialism, Nick Cohen, Stumbling and Mumbling 3 Responses »

Feb 152012

I am minded to ask the question because of this article Brian drew my attention to the other day:

One of our era’s foundational myths is that globalization has condemned the nation-state to irrelevance. [...]

The article – well worth reading in full – goes on to argue that in the absence of a true global consciousness, nation-states are all that we can rely on. Indeed:

The global financial crisis has shattered [the myth that nation-states are irrelevant]. Who bailed out the banks, pumped in the liquidity, engaged in fiscal stimulus, and provided the safety nets for the unemployed to thwart an escalating catastrophe? Who is re-writing the rules on financial-market supervision and regulation to prevent another occurrence? Who gets the lion’s share of the blame for everything that goes wrong? The answer is always the same: national governments. The G-20, the International Monetary Fund, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision have been largely sideshows.

Meanwhile, Chris summarises beautifully how, in the last fifty years, capitalism has become a force for anti-freedom:

During the Cold War, opponents of communism routinely, and not entirely wrongly, claimed to be champions of liberty. Freedom for capitalists and freedom of speech and thought go together, it was claimed. “Freedom is indivisible” wrote Bruce Winton Knight in 1952. “Economic freedom is…an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom“ wrote Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom. And back in 1944 Friedrich Hayek complained that “We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.”

Today, though, this seems wrong. Many threats to freedom come from capitalists. The story is no longer capitalism and freedom, but capitalism against freedom. Two of the world’s largest economies – China and Russia – show that capitalism can exist quite happily without political freedom.

Whilst also quoting Nick Cohen who describes with a chilling precision exactly my perceptions of what working in a massive corporation is like:

The managers of private and public bureaucracies justify their elevated status and salaries not only by attempting to run efficient organisations (a task that is often beyond the poor dears) but by monitoring and intimidating those beneath them.

And so it is that I come back to the question at the top of this post: what if an excluding nationalism could actually become a positive force? Not, however, a traditionally excluding nationalism – but, rather, an economically excluding nationalism.

If, through the channelling forces of a different kind of cultural identity, we could raise barricades against the rapacious actions of a latterday capitalism – a latterday capitalism which prefers to localise to their clear disadvantage the actions of workers even as, to its clear advantage, it globalises the movement of money – perhaps we could create cultures based more on a shared desire to fight the anti-freedom of planetary economics than to battle, maybe a shade dangerously, on behalf of the discrete freedoms of individual ethnicity.

In this sense, then, we could conceptualise our nationalisms around:

how we do business instead of how business does us – which is to say, always attracting business on our own terms;
how we define community instead of how community defines us – which is to say, creating shared spaces which are tolerant to every person but not to every intolerance;
how we see the future instead of how the future sees us – which is to say, empowering the people who live under the umbrella of a nation-state rather than giving in to the inevitable currents of a ruling elite;

That a certain kind of capitalism is now the anti-freedom of us all is no longer in doubt. The question is how we can wield most effectively the little power we have to recreate the conditions that once proudly connected good business with political freedom.

And perhaps we are too late. For if this is no longer possible in the 19th century birthplace of corporate capitalism, and is no longer necessary in its 21st-century powerhouses, how can small people across the globe even contemplate changing anything?

Except, as this post might suggest, little by little – and nation-state by nation-state by nation-state …

On prefixes, uneconomics and an apolitical amorality

apolitical amorality, atheism, Chris Dillow, Christianity, Marxism, non-economics, normblog, prefixes, Stumbling and Mumbling, unclassifiable, uneconomics No Responses »

Feb 092012

You can tell when things are getting tricky to understand. We resort to the undefining prefixes.

Two examples this evening. First, what we might call the paragraph of the day in this lovely article introducing us to the subject of uneconomics:

The bizarre truth, then, is that economics has attained its current pre-eminence in public life through saying as little as possible about the institutions, character and practices of contemporary capitalism. Combining acute humility regarding the realism of its premises, with the appearance of certainty regarding its conclusions, it has created a dangerous form of rationalism that is deeply entangled with economic life, while being entirely unable to reflect on that fact.

And how does that all lead us to uneconomics? In the following way:

These questions are not new. But their urgency is heightened by the present crisis. Of all the social sciences, economics has proven itself to be the most politically useful – some might say politically malleable – but its lack of realism has become a critical issue with serious economic and political consequences. ‘Uneconomics’ is needed to explore alternative forms of expertise and advice, and an alternative basis for public economic debate.

Meanwhile, quite coincidentally (or perhaps I should really say capelloredknappedly), Chris points out how complex it is when in politics you try to be coherently moral – whilst perhaps (I only venture to suggest) he forgets how complex being moral in general can be.

Anyhow, as an alternative to attempting the path of moral rectitude, he suggests that the left should aim to be more efficient:

There is, though, an alternative here. The left should appeal more to efficiency. For example, the problem with bosses’ pay and bonuses is not that they are unfair, but that they are economically inefficient and the product of power, not merit. And, I’d add, the structure of capitalism – at its current juncture – is inefficient, not (just) unfair.

Unfortunately, Chris’s appeal for us to be more efficient doesn’t half sound to me like the atheist’s attempt to believe in not believing. That is to say, it becomes well-nigh impossible to avoid being fashioned in some way by precisely that environment and figure one is trying to escape.

Politics and democracy are only about efficiency when very nearly fascist tendencies to number-crunch our societies try and take over. In that sense, the idea of uneconomics is exactly the right idea for our times. High unemployment, zero growth, governments at a loss as to what they might do next – everything that’s been tried is simply not working and we are, if we ignore the warning signs, laying the foundations for severe societal distress.

For we even manage to forget our love of sustainable economies when our unsustainable economies temporarily stop unsustaining our worlds: what should be an opportunity turns instead into a socioeconomic black hole and – out of rank desperation, crass imagination and a total lack of ambition – we can only hope, pray and demand a return to what caused the boom and bust in the first place.

Norman is perhaps more accurate in this when he points out the following in relation to the Marxism Chris prefers to invoke as a solution:

[...] Marxism embodies a clear ethical standpoint: it holds capitalism to be unjust because it is based on exploitation; and that very notion, Marxian exploitation, cannot be defined and elaborated except by making reference to certain moral expectations about who should get what and who shouldn’t.

Just as, all of a sudden (today in fact), the rest of us seem to have stumbled across this seductive idea of an uneconomics, perhaps, all this time, what Marxists have really been looking for is an apolitical amorality which strives to objectivise our relationships in order to better understand them.

They will continue to do it for very moral reasons then; in this Norman is absolutely right – but the tool itself must be as far away as possible from the inefficient emotivism Chris criticises; perhaps quite rightly.

In this sense, it is also possible to perceive that whilst this apolitical amorality describes the analytical stances of both traditional economics as well as Marxism itself (much in the same way as an atheist’s belief system mirrors in some indissoluble way that of a Christian’s), the desire which appears to be flowering in relatively left-wing political circles to pursue at the very least the idea of a non-economics may have its mirror image and response in rather more right-wing tendencies as the dangers of such an obviation of all that was understood to be right begin to dawn on their leaders.

For if we do eventually proceed with some kind of non-economics, where does that leave all the rhetoric which has pummelled our body politic over the past quarter-century or so?

That is to say, all that stuff about tough love, difficult decisions and necessary medicines?

Can we honestly say without the impenetrable science of traditional economics – coupling that absolute humility of theory with that absolute certainty of practice – that all those jam-yesterday jam-tomorrow politicians would be able to carry on as if nothing had happened?

The ones, I mean, who prefer to strike us down at the slightest opportunity.

For our own good, you understand. For our own benefit.

I think not.

So the question is: will they allow it to happen? Will they allow traditional economics to be relieved of its stranglehold over all that we think and do in political life?

I’m not sure that they will. Not without a fight.

What can we do in the meantime then? Well. First, let us not confuse the goals with the tools. Second, whatever we reinvent (for little more than reinvention will it ever be), let us remember how to maintain that compassionate edge to our objectives.

And third, let us admit that the more apolitically amoral and uneconomic they manage to be, the better and more efficient the tools we discover in the future could become.

On punishing eloquence: is David Cameron just another non-stick politician – or is he occasionally right?

being right, Chris Dillow, David Cameron, David Miliband, eloquence, non-stick politicians, political marketing, unclassifiable No Responses »

Feb 072012

I do wonder. This report today from the Guardian, for example, on the subject of the impact deprived families have on their offsprings’ ability to learn:

More than a quarter of children in the UK are not reaching their potential at school because of poor living conditions and unwell parents, a study has found.

Cameron, meanwhile, frames these families as “troubled” families – a quite supportive, even socialising, way of seeing. He does, then, clearly have the ability to go to the heart of a matter – and, at the very least, describe it constructively.

I assume this is a facet of his previous experience in marketing. After all, defining with clarity and a stylish brevity the essence of an idea is part and parcel of such a role.

In that sense, he’s not a non-stick politician but simply an eloquent professional who often knows how to identify what – today – in society is significant. To paraphrase Chris Dillow on the subject of David Miliband, we may disagree with his analysis and conclusions – but we cannot argue with his ability to identify the key issues of our time.

And I also wonder if it is right to punish such eloquence. Spain’s long-time Prime Minister Felipe González was always getting political kidney blows for being able to say so little so well – but is eloquence necessarily a sign of a man or woman who doesn’t think? Surely the ability to reduce to its minimum expression highly complex ideas is the very indicator of a person who has thought rather more than the rest of us about subjects which affect us all.

We should treasure their eloquence – not criticise it.

So when I suggest that David Cameron may occasionally be right, I don’t mean I agree with him. For one thing, my priorities are quite different. I want to see the grassroots succeed in everything and everywhere. My prime mission in life is clearly not to line the pockets of cash cow-generating corporate sponsors.

But, on the other hand, it may be that I am not in tune with vast numbers of people who occupy this ever less green and pleasant land. Each age may deserve the politicians who rise to its surface.

And our age is the age of superficial authenticity – a social media-driven baring of souls which probably ennobles no one.

Just about sums it up, doesn’t it?

Or does it?

Perhaps we are confusing a weary glibness with eloquence – and a rapacious openness with honesty. In that sense, the politicians we have might be nothing more than a reflection of a wider society. And when we criticise their supposed eloquence, we may really be underlining our own inability to listen actively any more.

Soundbites are to the ear what cheesy bites are to the palate.

Food for a party – but not for life.
____________________

Further reading: a fascinating thesis from the Liberal Democratic Voice website yesterday: essentially, it argues that the natural place for all Blairites from now on in is actually within the confines of the junior partner in the present Coalition.

Curious. But fairly convincingly teased out, all the same.

Why the left needs David Miliband more than ever

Chris Dillow, cool-headed intellectualism, David Miliband, ideas, Intelligence Squared, left, on a high, politics, Stumbling and Mumbling, Tony Blair, triangulation No Responses »

Feb 042012

Chris picks up on David Miliband’s deservedly resonant piece in New Statesman the other day in the following way:

If you ignore the mindless tittle-tattle, David Miliband’s New Statesman article raises a genuine issue: what should be the left’s attitude to the state? He writes:

The weaknesses of the “big society” should not blind us to the policy and political dead end of the “Big State”. The public won’t vote for the prescription that central government is the cure for all ills for the good reason that it isn’t.

As I pointed out in my own post on the subject, David Miliband has done everything since losing the leadership election to deserve our attention – at the very least in articles and interventions such as the one under discussion.

I have to say there are very few things I now miss about Blairism – but one thing I definitely miss at the moment is that feeling that following trains of thought to unpredictable places had a natural place and right to exist in the Labour Party. As an example of this, I saw Miliband (D) at an Intelligence Squared event last year – and I have to say whilst not entirely convinced by what he said, I was entranced by how he moved from one point to another.

And we need more of that eloquent intellectualism – not to use it to triangulate our enemies out of existence as in New Labour times (which is why such approaches have such a very bad name in our body politic at present) but, instead, to search out new ways of understanding our relationship to the universal themes of individual freedom, socialisation, survival and support of the strongest and the weakest – as well as the more traditional aspects of modern life which tend to occupy our leaders: economic and political organisation

In any case, good politics is always more a case of reinterpretation over pure invention. Blair wasn’t really original – he just gave the impression of being authentic. And people value that – at least as a starting point. It helps to build on the past, on previous foundations – something our most recent generations of politicians really haven’t cared to productively contemplate.

So what I do miss Blair for is that sense of authenticity and roundedness. For that, I really do.

I also agree with Chris that Miliband (D) should be allowed to be heard – mainly because if he is permitted his voice, the left will be on the road to a recovery of sorts. Prioritising the bright and breezy generation of ideas over their dusty and technocratic classification is always a good sign. And right now, we on the left need as many good signs as they can throw our way.

As Chris concludes:

Granted, David’s analysis and solutions here would be rather different from mine. But he is posing a good question. The tragedy is that, in our anti-political political culture, this question will be ignored.

It is up to us, then, to ensure that exactly this must not happen.

If we must dumb down our jobs, let’s start with the highest paid

banking, Chris Dillow, dumbing down, in a hole, managerialism, Stumbling and Mumbling No Responses »

Jan 302012

This is part of Chris’s story (well worth a read in full):

[...] Bosses who argue that the complexity of banks means that management talent is scarce and must be highly rewarded are like the boy who murders his parents and asks for leniency on the grounds that he’s an orphan. They are confusing cause and effect.

Bank bosses have played a trick which countless ordinary workers do. The IT support guy who introduces lots of “security features” to his firm’s IT systems, or the secretary who has an incomprehensible filing system, make themselves indispensable by inconveniencing others.

And this is mine:

For my sins, I worked in a bank for seven years in a capacity that become more and more lowly as time went by. After a couple of years, I was paid less than the average national wage to check account opening documentation in order to flag up potential money-laundering issues. If such issues were detected, the job was then handed on to other more specialised staff to further process. My department and its team eventually lost the work to elsewhere in the bank as the processes were chopped up and simplified in order to be able to train new people up faster and more cheaply. For a couple of years we were given a series of evermore routine data entry tasks, before finally being allowed to leave.

Big companies are very good at dumbing down processes – it’s what they specialise in:

1) It protects them against the logistic disruption that is high staff turnover
2) It protects them against staff acting on resentment and contemplating taking business to other employers
3) It makes it easier to train up temps, substitutes and replacement workers of all kinds
4) It also possibly means that those who like to earn what they do can continue to do so *even when they are unable to fully control and understand a company’s complexities*.

And as these organisations so demonstrably make a practice of dumbing down at lower levels in the hierarchies, it does beg Chris’s question why they can’t – or won’t – do the same at the higher levels too. It’s certainly not out of a lack of expertise or experience in the matter.

Or should we be looking to find the explanation to all of this in the plague that is managerialism?

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