We'll get it right next time

Questions to which the answer is quite clearly "No"

2010-06-10T01:50:00.000-07:00

Following in others' footsteps here, but this (from, where else, the Mail) is too good an example of the genre to pass up:

Dear Mrs Clegg, Is your Spanish employer's plan to despoil what is left of our countryside with horrid wind turbines revenge for the defeat of the Armada?

Although before we scoff too hard maybe we should remember that "Revenge is a dish best served cold" is originally a Spanish proverb. Damme those dogs of Spain!

Epimenides the Cretan rides again

2010-05-21T05:44:00.000-07:00

Men lie more than women. We know, because we asked women how often they lie and they said they hardly ever did. By contrast, men admitted fully to all their many lies.

Methodologically speaking, sometimes you just can't win.

Now is not a good time

2010-05-12T06:44:00.000-07:00

I know intellectually that I won't have every election over the course of my lifetime go the way I want it. Frankly, that would be as unhealthy for the country as it would be freakishly unlikely. So I accept that from time to time, party/ies I don't want in power will be in power.

It's just that I very much see this as something that happens at an unspecified point in the future. They can win some other election that hasn't happened yet. I'll settle for winning those that take place in the present. That's only fair, right?

God is on the side of the big battalions

2010-05-11T04:14:00.000-07:00

Hilarious as it's been to watch the Tory and media reaction to the Lib Dem's sudden revelation that they know the value of the cards they're holding - and it really, really has been - the sad truth is that, like its namesake, a rainbow coalition is more illusion than reality.

It's not enough to scrape across the threshold of parliamentary majority - to actually govern in any meaningful sense you need a majority that can withstand the occasional shock. Such as heart attacks, sex scandals, sex scandals involving heart attacks, expenses fiddling or (entirely principled and in no way motivated by bribes of high office) defections. It's also a bonus if every disgruntled MP in your party (not to mention each of your "progressive" partners) doesn't know for a stone cold fact that there's a blank cheque with their name on it to be cashed at their leisure.

Tory + Lib Dem = working majority. Lab + Lib Dem + Green + PC + Uncle Tom Cobbleigh doesn't. Whether Brown's still around or not isn't the big issue. Whether they can actually govern is. The best possible outcome for a rainbow coalition is that they go more than a year before the wheels come off - at which point they'll have achieved a) an austerity budget that gets everybody upset and angry, b) some major compromises on each main party's core issues, c) nothing else.

There are many political and electoral arguments against a rainbow coalition. But the biggest obstacle is basic arithmetic.

Decisions, decisions

2010-05-06T02:01:00.000-07:00

Astonishingly, the campaign seems to be over. As the everyone and his brother have remarked, it's been a lot more interesting than it should have been. When it started, I was faced by two very tempting arguments for doing something other than I've done in the last three elections I've been able to vote in.

The first tempation was not to vote. Not something I ever thought I'd find myself contemplating, but it was strangely beguiling. For one, I live in what is pretty much a safe seat - an initial impression daily strengthened by the complete absence of Tory or Lib Dem activity as the campaign wore on. There's been a lot of talk about how this makes my vote meaningless - the flip side of that is that abstaining comes at a low cost. Essentially, I can duck the whole issue without worrying that I'm failing to influence a crucial election. But this of course is just moral cowardice. Whether or not the future of the UK hinges on my vote, failure to exercise it just makes me a free rider. Someone has to vote, to use the power that ultimately rests with the citizen - letting other people do the hard work of choosing while I hold myself aloof is beyond apathetic. As much as anything else, I want the right to complain about the next government and I don't get to do that if I didn't participate.

The second temptation was not to vote Labour. This, frankly, was much stronger. There's a long list of reasons not to, which have been rehashed to the point of tedium over the past 4 weeks. For a Labour supporter disillusioned with some aspects of the Blair/Brown government, the most dangerous temptation runs something like this: "Labour are a force for good, but they've lost their way. Let them have some time in Opposition to clear out the dead wood, reinvigorate themselves and rediscover their political soul." In that way, you see, a vote against Labour is really truly a vote for Labour, if you think about it. Except of course it's not. There might be times where it seems like it doesn't really matter who's in power over the next five years, so that you can afford to take time to regroup. This is not one of those times. Whatever way you vote, you have to be voting for the party best placed to govern now. Other considerations are just jam tomorrow.

But this raises another much more fundamental question, which is what good government is. For a lot of people, the measure of good government is how much their own lot in life improves. But I find it difficult to use this as a yardstick. I'm a middle-class mortgage payer in a dual-income household with job security. Yes, the effect the next government has on the economy will have a knock-on effect on my finances, but not as much as for other people. And that's not to say that I don't get any value from e.g. childcare vouchers, because I do. But I am not a priority for government action and to vote as if I were would be narcissistic. So my concern for what the next government will or won't do isn't whether it will make my life better, because frankly there are limits under any vaguely centrist government to how bad my life can get.* It's whether it will make life better for people who's lives can go from bad to worse, or bad to good, or tough to impossible. Now, there's quite a large extent to which the general health of the economy will contribute to that, so if the choice were between a party I thought would ruin the economy and one that would save it there would be no choice at all. But not being in that situation, my concern is to vote for the party that will do it's best to a) make sure that the pain of recovery is mitigated for those most vulnerable to it and b) make sure the gains of recovery are shared beyond those best placed to benefit.

I can't make myself believe the Tories fit that bill. And while I agree with the Lib Dems on lesser issues, I don't see that this is their priority. And for all that Labour have got things wrong in their 13 years, their record on fighting poverty and providing services is pretty good. More to the point, I think it'll continue to be better than the alternatives.

Brass trio

2010-04-21T02:33:00.000-07:00

I figure I can get away with this on the grounds that I'm blowing other people's trumpets as well as my own. Anyhow, from Facebook:

Me: I don't know if there's an official term for people stranded by volcanic activity, but if there isn't I would humbly commend the phrase "Ash-strays" to your attention
Jon: For employers who are very relaxed about the impact on their business, and won't dock pay or enforce paid leave of stranded staff, might we call them magmanimous?
Tom: Incidentally, I assume Conservative supporters who are trapped overseas by the ash cloud and concerned they may not get back in time to vote in the election are blocked lavatories.

...I've just thought of one: if you're trapped by volcanic activity, that's a Pompeii circumstance.

If there any more entries in this narrow field of linguistics, please share them...

I met a man the other day who told me...

2010-04-16T03:41:00.000-07:00

...that Nick Clegg won the debate. So I suppose that makes that true.

That's a little unfair - he probably did win it. But now that everybody is telling everybody that he won it, he definitely won it.

In no particular order, here are the things that struck me about/during last night:

1) There are two more of these things to go. What will there possibly be left to say by the third?
2) Given that it was widely acknowledged that Vince Cable won the Chancellors debate because the Red and Blue candidates spent their time beating each other up and thus letting him rise above the fray, why did we get to watch the exact same thing happen this time? What price these debate strategists we hear so much about.
3) When Cameron was going on about "they'll waste your money to put up taxes", wouldn't it have been great for Brown if he had that very day had his position (i.e. thatCameron's plan threatened the recovery) endorsed by 55 leading economists? And had used those big guns to counter Cameron's pet business leaders, thus at least neutralising his opponent's Appeal to Authority? Sadly, he just didn't have that opportunity.
4) Some people can integrate pre-written jokes seamlessly into apparently extempore remarks. Brown can't, and should stop trying. I mean, seriously, read this transcript:

Now, there's been a 75% success in this project, so you can bring the reoffending rate down. But I do come back to this central problem that we face - I'm grateful, by the way, David, for you putting up these posters about me and about crime and about everything else. You know, there's no newspaper editor done as much for me in the last two years, because my face is smiling on these posters, and I'm very grateful to you and Lord Ashcroft for funding that.

What in Christ's name? Was it the word "face" that prompted him to abandon "the central problem" for an ill-constructed jape about Ashcroft and posters and ... stuff? You've only got a minute to answer, so don't waste it on laboured jokes. Play to your goddam strengths.
5) The challenge to provide guarantees on Education, Policing and Health. Apparently, it is Labour investment vs Tory cuts after all. It might work as a way to put Cameron on the spot once, on a question about the economy. Levering the police and schools into a question on health specifically just makes you look like you're not actually discussing the issue you've been asked about. What's really amazing is that it was Clegg, not Cameron, who walked through the open door of "being honest with the public" and promising big cuts and not just flannel. I suppose it's because Cameron is now being positive about the future and "Age of Austerity" stuff doesn't fit in with that - if so, that suggests that Labour are going back to the position that didn't work, while the Tories abandon the position that did.
6) Speaking of health, someone needs to hammer the Tories on the whole "making cancer drugs available" thing. For a man whose current mantra is the need for government spending to be efficient ("I think it's really important that we start focusing on what we get out of the money that we put in, because if we think that the future is just spending more and more money, we're profoundly wrong.") he seems strangely blind to the notion that some very expensive drugs are far from guaranteed to be effective and that there might be better (i.e. more effective i.e. making more people healthier) options to spend that money on. Such as MRI machines to improve screening services. Or a specialist nurse. Or a paediatric intensive care unit. It's almost as if these decisions combine fearfully complex cost-benefit analyses with agonising moral dilemmas. And I would give your eye teeth to see Cameron made to admit that.
7) Cameron's mum was a magistrate. I bet she was. Plenty of spare time and a firm belief that her judgement was what was needed to sort out the local riff-raff. She may even have been right. But this is where Cameron's Big Society leads - power flowing to people who are a) convinced of their own acumen and b) easily able to afford the time to run a school. This is not a random sampling of the population at all.
8) There are two more of these to go.

For reasons that will hopefully never become clear, I should stress that the above are all personal opinions and in no way a reflection of my employer's position.

Like Quasimodo, it's misconceived but it does ring a bell

2010-04-08T05:08:00.000-07:00

So today's big idea is the National Citizens Service for 16 year olds, a radical plan for changing the lives of young people that will offer them the hitherto undreamt of opportunity to spend two whole months of their summer on:

a residential course,
"team building exercises"
local volunteering

Why hasn't anyone else thought about trying this before? Volunteering. For 16 year olds. With residential courses. To pick a name at random, the Duke of Edinburgh must be kicking himself. Or didn't they do that at Eton?

Vote Tory or the cancer patient gets it

2010-04-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

One of the really fun things about having a kid is that you get to see just how hard-wired some of our more irrational behaviours are. Take my first stab at a genetic legacy (please): having learned that he could use his hands to maneouvre slices of banana into his face all by himself, he (as we all did) started trying this trick with everything: breadsticks, bacon, chips (fine), olives (hilarious), pickled beetroot (messy but fun, in a "vampire baby" kind of way), spoons, wooden balls, rabbit poo and assorted choking hazards (panic inducing, primarily for obvious reasons and secondarily in a "can I clean this up before his mother sees him" kind of way). Similarly, he's learnt that crying is a good way to a) alert us to genuine pain or discomfort or b) get attention when he's mildly bored. The point being that once we find a trick that works, we'll keep reusing it until either we run it into the ground or someone's pulling a lego brick out of our throat.

As with my incontinent, wobbly, emotionally manipulative offspring, so with the Tories. This latest wheeze of not raising National Insurance after all seems to have struck a chord (surprisingly for a cynical pre-electoral bribe), and so it's being used to attack Labour not only on the economy, which at least makes a crazy kind of sense, but also on health, which is both bizarre and unseemly. It's bizarre because it seems we're now to rely on efficiency savings paying for both reduced tax reciepts and extra spending on healthcare at the same time.* It's unseemly because it makes a simplistic, populist billboard slogan out of the genuinely complex issue of how we choose to fund treatments on the NHS. To hear the Tories tell it, you'd think that the only reason cancer patients die in this country is that a coterie of evil bureaucrats and soulless beancounters won't let them near the medicine cabinet full of wonder-drugs that will cure their disease, grow their hair back and improve digestive transit to boot. In reality of course, there is no such cabinet - there's a number of drugs which have shown some success in some patients with some specific conditions. Their manufacturers are only too keen to trumpet their efficacy, but more disinterested observers are less convinced that we'd actually see any benefit for our money. In a time when efficiency is all the rage you might think the Tories would want to establish what kind of value for money they were getting, but apparently that's not the point.

Well no. The point is rather distasteful - to use the suffering of cancer patients as just one more improvised weapon in the ongoing bar-brawl that is a general election. It's hefty, it's near at hand, so break that Ming vase over your opponent's head and finer feelings be damned.

*As far as I can work out, the argument goes something like this: We fund the NI non-rise by finding cuts and "efficiency savings", but because NHS-as-employer isn't paying tax to the government, it can now spend that money on cancer drugs in its role as NHS-as-provider-of-state-funded-healthcare. Meanwhile the government has less money because it isn't getting that tax but the overall NHS budget hasn't changed. So effectively the NHS has become more expensive, especially as any savings made within the Department of Health are already ear-marked for funding front-line services, so the savings that are paying for keeping NI static and thus for more cancer drugs are being made by quite different departments. I can see that Paul's come out of the deal quite well, but Peter seems a little out of pocket. Now, if the Tories simply came out and said that they were going to increase spending to fund these drugs, that would be one thing, but given both the current situation and their rhetoric over the past 18 months, they can't. So we get this three-card trick whereby efficiency savings pay for both reduced tax reciepts and extra expenditure at the same time.

What is "fair" anyhow?

2010-03-24T05:32:00.000-07:00

While trying to work up some enthusiasm for the budget, I made the mistake of looking at the Mail. Inevitably, I learned that those most at risk from today's announcements were the middle class. But I learned something else as well:

If we stretched ourselves to buy a house near a good school, we were called pushy. So, to punish us for being caring parents, they introduced a lottery for school places so all would be equal. That's equally stupid.

That's right - I learned that the purpose letting poor children go to good schools is to punish rich parents who love their kids. After all, what other reason could there possibly be?

Complex problems require window-dressing and handwaving

2010-03-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

That's the message from David Cameron's article on black Britain. He lays out the problems impressively enough. (Hey, that's opposition for you.) It's when it comes to solutions that you're left wondering just when this masterly grasp of the issue slackened off. Here's the problem:

Research has shown that almost a third of black people in England want to start their own business, compared with just 9% of the white population. However, only 4% of black people do manage to launch a startup – a level lower than any other ethnic group.
Accessing finance and advice are the key challenges for would-be black entrepreneurs. According to one study, black entrepreneurs are four times more likely to be denied a bank loan outright than white entrepreneurs, while the UK Survey of Small and Medium Enterprises shows that as many as a quarter of black entrepreneurs report problems in accessing finance.

So, we need better access to finance right? Seems pretty clear. Here's the solution:

This will include funding for a national mentoring programme for black people who want to start a business. It will provide would-be black entrepreneurs with the targeted support, advice – and, crucially, role models – they need to access finance and work for themselves. We've selected successful black entrepreneurs – people like Sam Gyimah, Wilfred Emmanuel Jones and Helen Grant – as our candidates: not in Labour-held inner city seats, but in Surrey, Wiltshire and Kent. They'll help inspire a new generation of black people to take on the world.

This is how we solve a big problem? Black entrepreneurs are being denied access to funding on a massive scale, and the answer is to have a black MP in Surrey? That's going to open the floodgates of lending?

If black people are regularly being denied access to business loans then either there is degree of institutional racism in the lending industry or black entrepreneurs are disproportionately likely to be a bad risk. Dave seems to have ruled out the first option, or indeed any suggestion that lenders may want to critically examine their practices. Well and good - let's assume for the moment that he's got a good reason for doing so, even if he hasn't shared it with us.

This leaves us with the maybe slightly uncomfortable notion that black entrepreneurs struggle to borrow money because they're objectively a bad risk, or they at least present themselves as such. Now perhaps, for those entrepreneurs who have basically sound business plans that need a little refinement, some "targeted" advice might help them fix a couple of flaws in the business plan or present it in a more persuasive way. For some proportion of the others, as for all entrepreneurs, the best advice will be, "Stop kidding yourself". But is it really likely that the reason black entrepreneurs struggle to borrow is because they're that much worse than white people at writing business plans?

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the reason black entrepreneurs don't see a lot of bank managers thrusting cheques into their hands is that they lack collateral. And what do you know, someone who actually looked at the issue agrees with me:

Lack of collateral/location in deprived areas - Due to lack of information relating to the borrower’s creditworthiness, lenders may require borrowers to post collateral on loans which can be liquidated in the event of default (see e.g., Bester, 1985). The report highlights collateral shortages (home ownership) amongst Caribbean and Bangladeshi entrepreneurs as a possible explanation for poorer access to finance amongst these ethnic groups. The collateral issue is closely related to the greater tendency of Caribbean and Bangladeshi businesses to be located in deprived inner city areas. Deprivation may create further obstacles for EMBs through skills shortages, higher levels of crime and poorer health/access to health care.

Banks don't lend fledgling businesses money because they think the business will make money - they lend because they think the business will make money, or the bank will get the founder's house. If you don't have a house, or your parents' house, or a few spare acres of land, you're going to struggle to get the bank to trust you. And what do you know - Saying, "but I was inspired by the new MP for Farnborough" won't really cut it.

So if this is a big problem (and it must be, because Dave wouldn't be getting the state involved otherwise) it might be worth a big solution. Maybe the government could set up its own venture capital fund, making unsecured loans to "inner-city" start ups. Maybe it could guarantee the loans under some sort of scheme for guaranteeing finance for enterprise. That would probably go some way to solving our big problem - access to finance. But sadly, it wouldn't address the much more fundamental problem - that when a young, thrusting black entrepreneur looks around for inspiration at a crucial time by flicking to BBC parliament, the member for Chippenham is lily-white. And with that, ambition dies.

As above, so below

2010-02-24T07:12:00.000-08:00

Paul Sagar has an interesting post on the bullying scandal here. He argues that, despite the obvious ulterior motives of various involved parties, it's a good thing that the accusations against Brown have come out, and specifically that it's a good thing they've come out now.

His argument is that whereas pretty much every other boss in every other office in the country can be held to account, either via internal processes or by resort to an industrial tribunal, there is not, and should not be, any similar mechanism to control a prime minister. His office is solely in the gift of the electorate, and for any other body to have the power to sack him for misconduct or harrassment would be a gross violation of democracy.

I don't agree. The reasons I don't agree are largely the same reasons I don't care about this particular "scandal".

1) There is no way the electorate are being given a full, unbiased and accurate picture of the issue. A full independent inquiry presented to the electorate with the minimum of spin, leaks, tendentious reporting and distortion might be one thing; the current rumour-fest turns the idea that I'm in position to sit in judgement on Brown's conduct to colleagues and underlings into a bad joke.
2) I don't need to allegations of bullying to tell me that Brown is a bad leader. The evidence for that is ample, and has been piling up since roughly autumn 2007. I don't mean previous leaks about "tantrums", or anonymous briefings against ministers; I mean the observably poor leadership of the country over the past 2.5 years. As a voter, my concerns about potential PMs should only relate to how they'll run the country. It's bad enough when I'm also asked to form a judgement on their personal morality; now I'm apparently in the position of enforcing HR policy in Number 10 to boot. "He'll treat his special advisers with respect and humanity" is so far down the reasons to vote for any party leader it's jostling for position with "his wife is rather pretty" and "he's a dog person".

The only thing that would make this whole farrago interesting would be if Brown were in fact a competent PM - if he had set out an agenda, pushed it through against opposition with a mixture of diplomacy, consensus-seeking and force, brought the country round to his vision and was now popular and respected. If he'd done that and were still revealed as a horrendous bully who shattered both the morale and the faces of his underlings, there'd be a real moral dilemma for voters to face up to. However, this is fundamentally unlikely. Competence in running the country would be a result of running a well-functioning internal team, not a completely unrelated phenomenon. If the allegations weren't about bullying, then they'd be about some other appalling management failure. If Brown can't run the country, how the hell can we expect him to run an office?

Duking the stats, redux

2010-01-28T04:40:00.001-08:00

A while back I had a bit of a go at Chris Grayling's claim that "under Labour violent crime had risen 70%", on the grounds that it was total nonsense. But I wasn't able to find out what the shaky basis for his claim was.

Happily Mark Easton has rather more clout with Conservative Central Office than I do* and so when he made the same challenge to David Cameron recently, they very kindly provided him with the figures they used.

They're appalling. Transparent horseshit. Do read the full analysis, but the headline version of how you turn a consistent fall in violent crime into a 70% rise is:

Compare figures that you have been explicitly told are not comparable
Cherry-pick your comparison years so that downward trends become upward leaps
Have the unmitigated gall to pretend this is a meaningful contribution to political debate

It's not even sophisticated statistical bullshit. It's out and out manipulation of the figures to argue that fewer stabbings are really more stabbings, fewer shootings are actually more shootings, less crime is more crime.

I'm sure Grayling and Cameron weren't the architects of this. But you have to wonder if, when they were told that the violent crime stats were exactly what they wanted them to be, they even asked themselves whether they ought to check that their researchers hadn't been a little too helpful. Or whether they really cared - it's not very likely they're about to change their policies or rhetoric to match the evidence.

*A low bar there, to be sure.

Lawful Stupid

2010-01-06T03:45:00.000-08:00

This is probably the geekiest analogy I'll ever make; an error compounded by the fact I'm basing it entirely on second hand knowledge. Which is a rather feeble way of saying that even though I'm about to talk about Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games, I've never actually played any.

One of the character types you can choose to play is the paladin: a knight dedicated to the service of a deity, from whom - this being D&D - he derives various mystical powers. It is a necessary characteristic of the paladin that he is both Lawful and Good (as opposed to Chaotic and/or Evil). More than that, while other characters could start off Good but find themselves slipping into Evil (by e.g. stealing useful equipmment, killing defenceless villains, lying to potential allies to get them onside etc.) the paladin is constrained always to be Lawful Good, otherwise they lose their god-granted powers. All clear so far? Awesome.

This constraint has led to the development of the term Lawful Stupid - what you get when paladins are so wrapped up in maintaining their alignment that they actively sabotage their own goals. For example, by waking up sleeping guards because it's evil to murder people in their sleep. Or by insisting on a daylight frontal assualt on the Evil Baron's fortress to recover the MacGuffin rather than just stealing it under cover of darkness. In general, Lawful Stupid means being willing to hand the forces of evil a major tactical advantage rather than sully your purity.

There's a point coming up, and I hope for all our sakes it's worth it.

Anjem Choudary's latest wheeze has stirred up all the predictable reactions, no doubt to his great consternation. Among those is the emergence of the free speech champions, reluctantly defending his right to march. They're not on his side, they know if it ever goes ahead there'll be a major shitstorm, but dammit, principles are principles. This is a position which cuts across the right/left diving lines, although the modes of expression are a little different. Longrider is clearly troubled by the dilemma raised:

So, welcome to Britain, the land of free speech. Free speech means allowing speech that you find offensive – and, let me restate it for those who are a little slow on the uptake; there is no right not to be offended...However, vile, obnoxious cunt though he is, Andrem Choudary must be allowed to voice his opinions. Out in the open, we can see him for the vile, obnoxious cunt that he is – sunshine being the best bleach. Let the world see and revile his views, let him remind us what waits for those who would find themselves living in his desired Caliphate. And, let us remind ourselves that freedom of speech means just that – freedom to speak openly, no matter how vile those opinions, no matter how upsetting, offensive or “inappropriate”.

And David Osler has his robust say-so here:

All of this leaves the principled humanist secular left with a huge headache. After all, if we do not uphold the elementary argument for freedom of speech, who will? So here we are, forced to extend our efforts in support of a manifestation of execrable religious bigotry. It is an obvious sucker punch, and we can even see it coming, but we have no alternative but to walk straight into it.

All of which leaves me asking - what's so great about free speech?

Seriously, what's the point? Why do we rate it so highly? It comes down to one of two reasons - it produces some end that we find desirable, or it's just an end in itself - it's good to have free speech because free speech is good, regardless of whether it actually benefits anybody.

I don't think anyone really believes the latter. Every proponent of free speech will tell you that there are tangible advantages to be gained (e.g. Longrider's "sunshine is the best bleach") from letting everyone have their say. And quite right - if you're going to argue that free speech is valuable, you have to show what that value consists in. Otherwise it all seems very arbitrary.

So fine - we value free speech because it creates the kind of society we want to live in. It's the cornerstone of the kind of society we want, in fact. Until it isn't. If we're supporting free speech because it produces results for us then we're entitled - required, really - to check that it's actually delivering for us. If it's not, insisting on it nevertheless is just a little Lawful Stupid.

Nor is this controversial. The well-worn example is that you don't have the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, because the advantages of sticking with the principle of free speech are outweighed by the disadvantages of panicky mob death. But wait! What have we here? A situation where deliberately inflammatory speech in a particularly volatile arena is rightly banned because it creates avoidable problems. Gosh. I wonder if that has any applicability to a anti-troops march through Wooton Bassett?

Christ you're bored

2009-12-23T08:31:00.001-08:00

If you've come here looking for entertainment over the festive season, you must be having a really shitty Christmas. So you might appreciate this:

and you'll definitely appreciate this:

Class War II: XFactor Boogaloo

2009-12-18T03:45:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, the middle class screwed over the working class with a bit of panache. Corn Laws, child labour in t'mill, trench warfare, "the service economy" - it all had a certain zip and sting. Nowadays, we persecute the lower-orders in ways that make up in lazy contempt what they lack in aggression. Specifically, we're getting in a pissing match over the Christmas No. 1.

In the red corner, people buying music they actually like. In the blue corner, people buying music to piss on the chips of the people in the red corner. And RATM's newfound fans are signing up to the facebook group in droves, let's not forget, as part of a protest about songs being sold on the merits of marketing campaigns rather than musicality. Sweet suffering Christ, have we no decency?

I mean seriously, buying a song whose sole attribute is the refrain "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me" just because you were told to on Facebook? This is the counterculture now?

Class War, Huh, What Is It Good For?

2009-12-07T05:46:00.000-08:00

Good God y'all.

Looks like the battlelines are being drawn. If you're not sure which side of the barricades you belong on, a short fill-in-the-blanks quiz based on the latest Mel Philips piece should help you decide. Simply replace the blank with one of the following: A - Working; B - Upper; C - Middle:

It is the ________ class whose children are discriminated against by the rigging of university admissions against candidates from high-achieving schools.
It is _______-class aspirations for their children which have been attacked by the war of attrition waged against grammar and independent schools.
It is the _______ class whose ethic of professionalism - whether in medicine, education, the law or other disciplines - has been under sustained attack by government interference in order to snuff out the independence of mind and spirit which is one of the principal sources of ________-class robustness.

How you scored:
Mostly As - don't take the piss.

Mostly Bs - well done, comrade. You gut the last banker, I'll hang the last Master of Fox Hounds.

Mostly Cs - Bad luck. If you can't already smoke a cigarette blindfold, I'd start getting some practice in.

That anyone, even Melanie Philips, can suggest with a straight face that doctors and lawyers who can afford either to pay the fees for or live in the cachement area of a high performing school are somehow "middle" class is a joke. Here's the bottom-line: if your personal income is over £50K, you are not only one of the top 10% of earners in the UK, but you are quite comfortably one of the richest tenth of one percent of people who have ever been born.* Anywhere, ever. If your response to being in this situation is to get resentful that people worse off than you are getting government support for e.g. childcare while you miss out on tax-breaks on your second home, then you are whining in a rather unattractive fashion. If you think that you or your financial situation are in any way a priority for government, you're either phenomenally ignorant about your good fortune, or you're pathetic. Good news! You're well-off, and you're going to stay well-off. Even if you have put your child into a state school, or only pay half the deposit on his first home, you're still going to be sitting pretty damn pretty. So don't keep sticking your hand out.

The language of priorities isn't just for politicians. All of us need to start wondering whether "policies that will see me right" are really the same as the policies needed to help the country.

*Probably. Don't be fooled into thinking I'm making that statement on the basis of rigorous economic and demographic analysis.

"I just want to hear the son of a bitch deny it"

2009-12-03T06:05:00.000-08:00

As has been well-publicised just now, the HSE website includes a section on Health and Safety myths, debunking various outrageous anecdotes - including, by happy chance, those used by Cameron in yesterday's speech. A certain juvenile type of mind would find that terribly amusing, but the fact that this site is clearly struggling to make headway is symptomatic of the way we process information. Basically, we can't handle negatives.

A couple of years ago, the US's Center for Disease Control issued a leaflet which listed various "common knowledge" facts about the vaccine and labelled them as "True" or "False". Can't get much clearer than that, right?

When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.
Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.

These findings have been replicated in various other experiments: we just don't seem to attach negative markers to memories. You may have experienced this yourself: telling someone a story about how you e.g. went out and thought you'd left the iron on (but hadn't), and finding out later that they no longer trust you around home appliances because they remember the story but haven't filed it under "fiction". Or, for a more fun version, start introducing your friends to people they fancy with the words, "This is Geoff, who's never had chlamydia."*

The implications for this are fairly massive. For one, it goes some way to explaining why the HSE can't get a break. More seriously, it shows how easy it is to spread falsehoods even when you're trying to fight them. The more you talk about, for example, how MMR doesn't cause autism, and there are no good studies that link MMR to autism, and that studies that do link MMR to autism are flawed then the more you're linking MMR to autism in people's minds. Denying false allegations is such a natural response as to be almost reflex, but if that's all you do then you're just going cement the falsehood in some people's minds.

Instead, if you've got a point to make, make that point. Don't say "MMR doesn't cause autism," say, "MMR is safe". Instead of "Immigrants don't steal your job" try "Immigration makes us better off". As LBJ pointed out, there's no weaker position to be in than denying something that's not true.

*NB, this works better if your friend is actually called Geoff.

Placebo politics

2009-12-01T05:54:00.000-08:00

With the emergency budget safely pencilled in for after the election, there's clearly no need for the Tories to discuss economic policy any more. Moving down the list of key priorities, the next giant to slay is, naturally enough, Health and Safety legislation. Cameron's speech comes as a timely reminder of how tired we all are of a government that's obsessed with cheap, populist initiatives rather than addressing the big issues facing Britain today.

And they don't come much bigger than this: bureaucracy is killing the village fete. I'm going to repeat that so the full horror can sink in: bureaucracy is killing the village fete. Or in other words, the people in charge of organising village fetes are such gullible, lazy, pigshit-thick inbreds that not only do they believe they'll have to fill in reams of forms to get a tombola permit, but they are so scared by the prospect of reading, understanding and completing said mythical forms that, like the selfish bastards they are, they'd rather see the whole village go without the much-anticipated, long-remembered once-a-year thrill of winning a bottle of Tizer at a coconut shy than crease their illiterate brows in thought, or sweat over a row of tick-boxes.

It hasn't occured to them that the popular conception of Health & Safety as bureacracy's war on common sense is outrage porn peddled by right-wing tabloids who are still institutionally aghast at the Factory Act. It might have occured to Cameron, but if it has he's doing his best to hide it. For example, if you're going to kick off your speech with dramatic anecdotes about kids being forced to wear goggles to play conkers, you could have the decency to point out that this nonsense has been debunked by the HSE:

This is one of the oldest chestnuts around, a truly classic myth. A well-meaning head teacher decided children should wear safety goggles to play conkers. Subsequently some schools appear to have banned conkers on ‘health & safety’ grounds or made children wear goggles, or even padded gloves!

Realistically the risk from playing conkers is incredibly low and just not worth bothering about. If kids deliberately hit each other over the head with conkers, that’s a discipline issue, not health and safety.

Cameron does, eventually, admit that the problem lies not with the HSE, but with employers and councils who are a) wilfully ignorant of the regulations and b) terrified of being sued. In fact, he's even prepared to admit that maybe we're all a bit to blame for being so keen to sue over accidents. But that doesn't mean he won't blame the HSE, or commission a report on how quickly workplace safety regulations can be overturned. As Boots recently admitted in a different context, just because what you're selling doesn't work doesn't mean people won't queue up to buy it.

Not as exciting as I first thought

2009-11-23T02:35:00.000-08:00

Probably for the best, but the headline: "Hunt for Scottish sharks officer" refers to a recruitment drive, and not a tragically ironic tale of a man feared to have made the ultimate sacrifice in his quest to protect an endangered but lethal species.

Similarly, "Shuttle astronaut becomes father in space" isn't quite as groundbreaking as you might have expected. It's almost like they're doing it deliberately.

Tom Swifties

2009-11-13T02:42:00.000-08:00

By way of light relief (and because Tom Freeman seems to have the franchise for Uxbridge English Dictionary):

"I'm off angling," said Tom acutely

"I'm going to swim to the Isle of Wight," said Tom insolently

"Sergeant, take the prisoner downstairs", said Tom condescendingly

"I'm determined to air-cool this small biting insect," said Tom fanatically

"Sorry, but I've got to let you go," said Tom discerningly

...and, by way of variation:

"But I don't want to eat whale meat," Tom blubbered.

Winds of change

2009-11-12T03:04:00.000-08:00

As a follow up to the below, I've come across a more directly applicable study on people's susceptibility to be swayed by the "local" majority. This study from the LSE shows what happens if you feed people slanted news on an issue (in this case, the EU). Astonishingly enough, being presented with consistently biased information does change the way you think about an issue. But it does it gradually:

Michael Bruter, a senior lecturer in European politics at the school, fed a steady diet of slanted newsletters about Europe and the European Union — either all good news or all bad — to 1,200 citizens of six countries over two years.

Over time, Bruter found, and without exception, the readers subconsciously adopted the bias to varying degrees and changed their view of the EU and of themselves as Europeans, a few of them in the extreme. Surprisingly, they didn't register any change right after the newsletters stopped — not until full six months later, when they had obviously let down their guard.

This, then, is why it matters that, (e.g.) the Sun is supporting the Tories. Not because it can order its readers to vote accordingly, but because it can decide the story it wants to tell them. Then they'll make up their own minds accordingly. But of course, this has to be a somewhat subtle process. Step over the line between impartial judgement and naked character assassination, and people quickly start to question the quality of the information your feeding them. And in the present case, it seems the Sun has made people think better of Gordon Brown, which is no mean feat nowadays. But only, I suspect, as far as that one story goes. In one month's time, this incident will be firmly in the past but the one-sided narrative, and its effect on voters, will remain. The best way to destroy reputations is erosion, not demolition.

Deeply polarised debates

2009-10-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

Because human beings are basically awesome, we're now able to build models of how political opinions take hold in a society by applying what we know about how ferrous metals become magnetised. How cool is that?

It works like this: you create a virtual society made of agents who have one bipolar attribute: they're either going to vote Blue or Red. Then you give them two means of making a decision: either external (mimicing political campaigning) or internal (driven from each agent's interactions with other agents). Then you use the external influence to set some initial conditions (say, 55/45 in favour of Blue) and then observe how your internal mechanisms affect the final outcome.

In the basic model, each agent is influenced by a local majority, so that they tend to vote for the same party as the agents they interact with. (This, of course, uses the techniques invented to understand magnetisation.) The basic model, however, is banal. As you can imagine, the initial majority usually stays the winner.

What's interesting is when you throw two new types of agents into the mix: "contrarians" (who vote against the local majority) and "inflexibles" (who never change their mind). These agents are hugely and disproportionately influential. For example, if you have more than about 1 in 6 contrarians, you end up with a 50/50 split. Similarly, if your inflexibles only vote Red, you only need that 1 in 6 to gain a Red majority as the vacillating Blues adapt their position by trying to meet them half way.

This is of course only a model. But I think you can see some current debates where a minority's utter unwillingness to compromise has given their position more influence that it might deserve, e.g: teaching creationism in schools; that immigration is basically a problem; that global warning is some kind of elaborate scam; that fruit and nut chocolate is anything other than an abhorrent mockery of all that is good and pure in this world. None of these positions has won influence on its merits: instead they've won favour because a) their proponents refuse to compromise and b) their opponents don't.

So contrary to what JS Mill/your better instincts/your parents might have told you, the way to win an argument is not to reason sweetly with your opponent, take their opinions on board, or otherwise engage with them. That only works if they're playing the same game. If not, you just have to stamp your feet harder, and yell louder, than they do.

Lessons of history

2009-10-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

From yet another article about the BNP:

This has led to concerns that Griffin has become too powerful. Several senior BNP members quit after he overhauled the constitution to make his position as leader practically unassailable.

Clearly, there are times when you can take emulation of Hitler too far.

Why not to bother watching Question Time tomorrow (or any other time, come to that)

2009-10-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

Matthew Taylor shows why having the BNP on Question Time is pointless, when he explains his concept of the "transcendent moment in debate". Essentially, it's the point where all parties (finally) see what the debate is actually about - the fundamental difference between the sides. He quotes this example:

During the proceeding of the US Federal Panel on the use of human tissue in research he [Professor Michael Sandel] had asked an opponent of stem cell research whether he saw any fundamental distinction between using stem cells from a five day old embryo and taking the organs from a five year old child. The opponent had pondered and to his credit had said ‘no’. At this point, many undecided people on the panel had felt they had got to the heart of the difference between the two sides. It didn’t tell them what to believe, but it got them to see the basis for each side’s argument.

This is exactly what won't happen on Thursday night, or in any debate with the BNP. Griffin would rather French-kiss Trevor Phillips than publicly admit that his party's core political aim is a white-only Britain. And, indeed, has said so.

There’s a difference between selling out your ideas and selling your ideas. The British National Party isn’t about selling out its ideas — which are your [the KKK] ideas too — but we are determined now to sell them. That means to use saleable words.'...[selling our ideas] basically means using saleable words… freedom, security, identity, democracy. Nobody can criticise them. Nobody can come at you and attack you on those ideas. They are saleable...If you hold that [fascist policy] out as your sole aim to start with, you’re going to get nowhere. So, instead of talking about racial purity we talk about identity.”

So, whatever happens on Thursday night, we're not going to see the BNP's policies laid bare. Instead, Griffin will mouth off about "our boys", "the working class", "terrorism", "jobs" and "Westminster insiders" in a manner so vague and platitudinous that he'll be more or less indistinguishable from the average Question Time panellist. Which makes the whole event something of a pointless circus.

Moronic Questions To Which The Answer Should Be Bloody Obvious

2009-10-20T04:35:00.000-07:00

From the Mail:

Miracle or hoax? Russians puzzled as phrases from the Koran start appearing 'spontaneously' on baby's skin

You've worked out the answer just by reading the full headline. The Mail bothers to go into detail, but still fails to reach the obvious (or any) conclusion.

The one part of this story I do believe is this quote from the mother:

'Ali always feels bad when it is happening. He cries and his temperature goes up. It's impossible to hold him when it's happening, his body is actively moving, so we put him into his cradle. It's so hard to watch him suffering.'

I'm sure it is harrowing to watch your child writhe in pain. If only - if only! - there were some way she could stop her child being tortured twice a week. Should prayer fail, she might like to at least try not to (let people) rub chilli into her baby's skin. I'm no medic, nor theologian, but I suspect that might help.

This story is not about events beyond our understanding. It is not a challenge to our modern understanding of the world. It's the story of a baby being regularly abused by delusional obsessives and/or manipulative bastards for the sake of attention and status. But the Mail, which is normally so quick to demand that someone think of the children, won't just come out and say so. I can think of a number of possible reasons for this: it might be because unthinking respect for "faith" makes it unpalatable to suggest that the devout may be stupid or criminal; it might be that in the Mail's hierarchy of values "ooh, that's weird" trumps "save the baby!"; it might be because it's happening a long way away to someone very different from the editorial staff or readership and therefore counts as intriguingly exotic rather than meaningful. So, in the spirit of this post's title, let me ask a MQTWTASBBO of my own: The Daily Mail: Pandering, Ignorant or Prejudiced?

Scapegoats

2009-10-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

Tom Freeman has a couple of good posts about the arbitrary and unfounded nature of the retrospective limits being imposed on MPs expense claims. But I think there's an interesting exception to one of his conclusions, specifically that:

If politicians see the public and the media angrily demanding severe punishment for such a group, then they will do whatever it takes to make those people suffer.

As he points out, it's difficult to argue the applicability of this rule to asylum seekers. But there is a group who seem to skate. They've profited at direct cost to the taxpayer for actions that, although legal, were unquestionably ill-judged and arguably immoral. In their defence, they can only say that, "everybody else was doing it" and, "it wasn't against the rules". The public and the media have indeed angrily demanded severe punishment for them. But every time this has been discussed, both parties have reluctantly declined to make the finance industry suffer: we've had promises to "look in to" bonuses which are "unreasonable"; the statesman-like decision not to impose windfall taxes on bonuses has reluctantly been taken; radical reforms such as Tobin taxes have been carefully reviewed, then shelved.

All of these decisions may well have been the right ones - that is to say, proportionate, just, and unswayed by popular sentiment. It's simply curious that the political gravity which now demands that MPs pay back excessive gardening bills doesn't pull so strongly when the potential scapegoats are the high-flyers of the financial industry. There's a certain logic to this from opposition: if he'd spent time calling for penalties on bankers, how could Cameron appear at conference and say that "too much government" is to blame for the financial crisis? But from the government's perspective, there's just as much naked political value to be had from keeping the public's attention focused on the bankers' role in getting us all here. Instead, all discussion of that seems to be off the table. Even as Lloyds is calling for another £5bn from the government as part of a scheme to avoid paying for toxic asset insurance delivered by that same government.

There's obviously some downside to calling for the heads of bankers, in a way that there isn't for venal MPs. But what?

Convicted Criminal To Be Sentenced Shocker

2009-09-29T05:53:00.000-07:00

The world was plunged into shock and confusion yesterday, when a man who had pled guilty to a crime was told he would face sentencing. The move quickly proved controversial:

"He may have committed a crime, but isn't he the real victim here?" asked one total moron. "You have to look at the mitigating circumstances - he's rich, he's famous, his friends are rich and famous, he's an artist, the people arresting him are American... should such a man really be punished?"

Others say he's already suffered enough: "Since fleeing the US after pleading guilty to the assaulting a thirteen year-old, he's been forced to have a successful career, live in the South of France and miss the occasional award ceremony. More than that, some lowbrow oafs still think of him as a rapist, and not a visionary artiste. What more atonement can you ask of a man?" protested some utter clown.

What ever the rights and wrongs of sentencing this particular convicted criminal, there can be no doubt that the whole issue raises some troubling questions about our justice system. Should we sentence convicted rapists? Is it better, after they've done a runner to avoid a hefty jail sentence, to just let them be? What sort of signal does it send to society if we persist in having judges pass sentence on people who merely happen to be convicted criminals? These are complex and difficult moral questions - the one point on which we can be sure is that there are no easy answers.

Don't matter how many times you get burnt, you just keep doin' the same.

2009-08-26T02:23:00.000-07:00

Chris Grayling has taken a certain amount of flack for comparing "broken" Britain to Official Best Ever TV Show "The Wire". This is a mistake. I don't mean that it wasn't a mind-numbingly stupid comparison to make - clearly it was. Whether you focus on the massive disparity between crime rates in Baltimore and Manchester, or the deep unwisdom of using as political ammunition a show which dwells heavily and negatively on opportunistic politicians who'll say anything to get elected, it was a bloody silly thing to say.

But focusing on this superficial stupidity runs the risk of ignoring the much greater, and more dangerous, fundamental stupidity that lurks deep within Grayling's full speech. I say stupidity: I'm tempted to add "and lies". But it's possibly just a cock-up.

Ostensibly, this speech was prompted by an eye-opening evening spent with a special police unit in Manchester. After Grayling's breathless anecdote about what life's really like on the mean streets, he starts tying his own in-depth experience to the grim reality, as revealed by statistics:

Since Labour came to power, the level of violent crime in Britain has risen dramatically, by 70 per cent.

This is, as far I can tell, complete bollocks. Crime figures, happily, are released in July - here is the trend in violent crime:

Those of you not trained in statistics may not see it immediately, but the important point to note is that while Grayling said the figures were going up, they are in fact doing something statisticians refer to as "going down". They have been doing so since just before Labour came into power. They are now at their lowest level since 1981. Grayling could hardly have been more wrong. But hey, "duking the stats" must be one of those trends that comes over the Atlantic too.

In case you're wondering, that's not the really stupid bit. Because, armed with his anecdotes and his tendentious statistics, Grayling goes on to make the following observations:

"We have delved deep into the small print of the official figures on crime and social deprivation - and the picture that emerges is stark...Nationally every single one of the areas that rank at the top of the list for deprivation is in the top ten percent for crime...Because it is the social breakdown in our most deprived communities that creates the environment in which crime can flourish, in which disillusioned young people turn to a gang culture, in which violence just becomes a norm. "

Let the word go forth from this time and place: in August 2009, the Conservatives finally realised there was a link between deprivation and crime. I know, I know. I didn't think it would ever happen either. But surprised as Grayling clearly is by this unprecedented finding, and as tragic as it must seem to him that no-one had ever before thought to "delve into the small print of the official figures" to wrest this nugget of wisdom from the murk, he isn't letting it put him off his game. Here he stands, appalled by the uncanny similarities between modern Britain and a headline-bait TV program, gripped by an insight that revolutionises our understanding of criminology, fired up with the need to change this cycle of neglect - what revolutionary answers does he offer us?

Bribing couples to get married;
Locking up more teenagers and/or teaching them to kayak;
Getting people off benefits into jobs that don't exist, using American policies shown not to work.

Just so we're all clear, this is the actual policy of the people who will be in power this time next year. So while the idiotic comparison to The Wire is worth a little pointing and laughing, the real message of this speech is a lot less amusing. This is the same approach the Tories had last time they were in power - if you're wondering how it worked out, the graph above should offer a hint.

Plus ca change

2009-08-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

Seeing as the world and his wife covered the Stephen Hawking blooper, I'm shooting for something that falls on the other side of the good/original dichotomy. Specifically, contrived historical parallels.

Here we have a modern account of life among the private security contractors of the Green Zone:

Along with having young men armed to the teeth, most of their outfits have bars ... A couple of years ago at one of the compounds inside the British embassy, around 50 young guys got into a fist fight. They were young and obnoxious, many were on steroids and there they were with guns and beer, which should never mix ... Another time, I was in one of the compounds celebrating a birthday for one of the lads and it was obvious all night that something was going to kick off. There were the tight T-shirts, the Americans, the Brits and the attitude. Sure enough, a brawl erupted.

And here we have Dumas' description of the Musketeers and their ethos*:

Loose, half-drunk, imposing, the king’s Musketeers, or rather M. de Tréville’s, spread themselves about in the cabarets, in the public walks, and the public sports, shouting, twisting their mustaches, clanking their swords, and taking great pleasure in annoying the Guards of the cardinal whenever they could fall in with them; then drawing in the open streets, as if it were the best of all possible sports; sometimes killed, but sure in that case to be both wept and avenged; often killing others, but then certain of not rotting in prison...

Assuming for the moment that this parallel has any merit, should we conclude that:

a) we're all a lot more susceptible to the influence of our surrounding than we like to think and that given the right circumstances any of us could degenerate into a hard-drinking street-brawler, or
b) there's always going to be a group of nasty bastards who are attracted to situations that offer them weapons, booze, an arbitrary tribe, regular opportunities for mayhem and a distinct lack of oversight, and that dealing with these apes is just one of those perennial problems any society worth the name has to cope with?

And if it is b) is there some way we can continue the plan of corraling them into a secure compound equipped with numerous and well-stocked bars and arsensals and just letting them have at it - but without involving the locals?

*Ethos was of course the "Fifth Musketeer", but his career never recovered from being cut out of the final draft.

We'd probably have killed Douglas Bader too

2009-08-11T04:04:00.000-07:00

As the US lurches towards some form of national health-care provision, there are many among its more intelligent and perceptive citizens who worry about the possible ramifications of having the government involved in medical decisions. Sarah Palin, for example, has already spoken out against the "death panel" model of universal healthcare, which had hitherto enjoyed widespread support.

But perhaps the clearest argument against government involvement comes from this piece in the Investors Business Daily which looks to some rather worrying implications of the UK model:

The U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the "quality adjusted life year." ...
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Although, to be fair, it's not like his accent gives him away.

People - what use could they possibly be?

2009-08-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

The new proposals on citizenship have kicked off the usual well-informed and dispassionate debate about immigration and integration. Perhaps the bizarrest response was Frank Field's, in which he seemed to assert that the UK has all the people it's going to need for the next 25 years, so we can stop letting any more in now:

It is the growth in population that is the major challenge.
The UK population will, on the government's own estimates, grow to more than 70 million in less than a quarter of a century. Seventy per cent of this growth will be due to migration. This increase of 7 million is equivalent to the building of seven new Birminghams

Now, I admit, at first glance that sounds pretty bad. Seven new Birminghams? Isn't that over-egging the pudding just a little? But consider this - these new Birminghams will be populated by people who are not Brummies. Given our apparent concern over citizens who don't speak English properly, these new-fangled Birminghams already represent clear progress.

Impenetrable accent aside, just what does Frank hold against Birmingham? What's so horrifying about the prospect of more of them? It's a large, thriving city, the third best place in the UK to start a business, the fourth-most visited city by foreign visitors and, apparently, the 55th best city to live in in the world. (He said, carefully maintaining his poker face.)

Throughout his article, Frank proceeds from the assumption that, somehow or other, if we let in too many people, Britain will be imperilled and/or impoverished. Or something. He doesn't present any justification for thinking this, nor does he spell out exactly what these negative consequences are. He just takes it as read that the last thing Britain can afford is any kind of population growth - particularly if it's driven by immigration. Now, for all I know, this may be true. But it may equally be unfounded, knee-jerk parochialism. Without more of an argument, it's difficult to tell.

One of his underlying arguments might be (and I'm guessing here) that too rapid population growth will stretch our resources, and effectively impoverish us all. After all, if population growth outstrips the performance of the economy, we can only end up worse off. Happily, Frank has given us some figures to help us work out how likely this is. The UK population is currently 61 million. In "less than quarter of a century" it will be "over 70 million." Assuming that "less than quarter of a century" means "24 years" and that "over 70 million" means "71 million", this handy Compound Annual Growth Calculator tells us that under this nightmare scenario, the UK population is going to grow by - brace yourselves - 0.63% a year.

I know, I know! An unnerving prospect that ought to strike panic into the heart of every man, woman and child across this fair land. But stiffen that upper-lip for a second like the true-bred Brit you are, or aspire to be, and consider what this implies for Frank Field's argument. He genuinely believes that over the next 25 years, Britain's GDP will be virtually stagnant; that this apparent economic underperformance will in no way affect the number of people who wish to come to live in this country; that GDP will grow faster with a static population than a rising one; that new citizens can only be a net drain on GDP. Either that, or he's not really thought about what he's saying.

Slow going

2009-07-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

It's been pretty slow here, I'm afraid. There are two basic, and possibly related reasons for this. The first is that as a new dad I find spending time with a drooling, incoherent poo-machine is both a higher priority and more fun than blogging*. The second is that there's not much going on in politics that seems worth talking about. Or rather, what people are talking about doesn't seem worth it.

Oh, there are big issues at stake. Huge issues. But (for example) the whole painful issue of the economy, the pace of recovery, bank supervision and the tackling of government debt seems to boil down to the Tories saying "we'll make big cuts, but don't worry, not in anything lovely" and Labour saying "Tory cuts, Tory cuts, fear them, fear them". Whoop-de-do. What am I meant to do with that? What's anyone supposed to do?

Well, the obvious answer is that they're meant to either run fleeing from the Tories crudely-wielded axe or cast a last, scornful glare over their shoulder at Brown as they side with the men on a mission. Stretching my optimism to breaking point, I'm kind of hoping that's not what's happening. Ignoring the many, many confounding factors for a fallacious minute, Labour's vote loss in Norwich North showed that simply shouting about cuts isn't enough to get out their vote. Meanwhile, the Tories limited gain in vote share suggests that they aren't firmly established as the natural party of government just yet.

The big question about the next election isn't "Who?" it's "How much?" Thinking back to the 1997 landslide, we had a nation fed up with a discredited, sleaze-bespattered government. So far, so tediously obvious historic parallel. We also had a reformed opposition led by a charismatic, media-savvy reformer. But I think that parallel is tenuous: New Labour had publicly fought some fairly major internal battles in a way that Cameron has not; more importantly there were some fairly clearly articulated policies as well. The "5 pledges" card may have been a gimmick - but what would today's Tory version look like?

The Conservatives' ability to articulate what they're actually going to do in government is going to make the difference between a victory and landslide. Similarly, Labour's ability to properly criticise the Tories will make the difference between a loss and a pasting. More importantly, either of these approaches will make the prospect of following the news something other than aggravatingly depressing.

*See? There's a perfectly good "drooling, incoherent poo machine"/bloggertarian/the other one's a baby gag there, but I just can't be arsed.

Out of the mouth of babes

2009-07-13T08:08:00.000-07:00

The financial district is (apparently) abuzz over a new report by Morgan Stanley Research into teens' online and media habits. The penetrating insights in this short document have rocked the world of media/business analysis to its very core:

[The] report was “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen — so we published it,” Edward Hill-Wood, executive director of Morgan Stanley’s European media team, was quoted as saying in articles in The Guardian and The Financial Times.
He wasn’t alone in thinking so: Mr. Hill-Wood said the research note generated five to six times the amount of interest of the team’s average note, with dozens of fund managers and a few chief executives requesting a copy.

So who is the genius behind this meisterwerk? Which freethinker shook off the hidebound shackles of recieved wisdom to deliver the definitive guide to teens' media preferences? Step forward Matthew Robson, a summer intern aged 15!, to give us the inside dope. So what were the big insights that had, until now, eluded the finest minds of the City? Brace yourselves:

Most teenagers watch television, but usually there are points in the year where they watch more than average. This is due to programs coming on in seasons, so they will watch a particular show at a certain time for a number of weeks (as long as it lasts) but then they may watch no television for weeks after the program has ended.

Teenagers listen to a lot of music, mostly whilst doing something else (like travelling or using a computer). This makes it hard to get an idea of the proportion of their time that is spent listening to music.

On the other hand, teenagers do not use twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they release that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless.

Many teenagers use YouTube to watch videos...

How teenagers play their music while on the go varies, and usually dependent on wealth –with teenagers from higher income families using iPods and those from lower income families using mobile phones. Some teenagers use both to listen to music, and there are always exceptions to the rule.

I'm prepared to believe that this story is a trifle overhyped, and in particular that the CEOs of major media conglomerates are not, in fact, falling over themselves for a copy. But Morgan Stanley did see fit to publish this, and to publicly state that they've rarely seen clearer or more thought-provoking insight. If this is true - if they were genuinely taken aback to find that teens watch TV when the shows they want to watch are on, but don't when they aren't - then whoever is paying their salaries needs to seriously rethink their value to the company.

What you won't read in the Times

2009-07-10T02:27:00.000-07:00

Once again, the gaping moral void at the heart of Britain's democratic institutions has been laid bare. Our self-appointed moral guardians have, yet again, been caught out breaking the rules for their own profit. Despite all their fine words and lofty claims to serve the public, they have, blinded by greed, forsaken their moral responsibilities in pursuit of naked self-interest.

We all know how this story unfolds: the progressive drip-feeding of relevations, the shift from thin-lipped denial to red-faced excuse, the scapegoats, the forced apologies, the promises to reform and self-regulate. How long before we hear the same sad chorus again: "the problem was the system", "I believed it to be within the rules", "the proper authorities approved it so I felt it must be alright", "it was part of the culture"? How long before we see junior or unpopular figures publicly fired while the charmed inner circle merely apologises?

Now, more than ever, such false contrition will not be nearly good enough. A scandal such as this demands the resignation of senior leadership figures, if only to demonstrate that lessons have been learned. Moreover, the era of self-regulation must surely be over. The time has come for root-and-branch reform of an outdated system; the era of the gentleman's club is over. Our democratic process demands a new, independent and effective watchdog which can exert genuine control over those who would abuse their power.

One of the finest minds of his generation

2009-07-06T05:53:00.000-07:00

It's been quiet here, I'm afraid - partly because I've been on holiday, partly because I don't care about Michael Jackson. By way of dipping my toe back in the water, here is AC Grayling demonstrating the importance of being prepared to admit that your initial assumptions may be faulty:

"I recently retraced on foot a famous journey that William Hazlitt made from Shropshire to Somerset to visit Wordsworth and Coleridge. I spent two weeks slogging through nettle beds before I realised the bastard had taken the coach."

Paramilitary group threatens to blow up exclusive golf resort

2009-06-18T07:11:00.000-07:00

Tom at Freemania can rest easy. We are well on the way to neutralising the threat of rogue planets. Ostensibly, NASA's mission to bomb the fricking moon is merely an experiment to detect the presence of water. But it's fairly evident that it's really the first tentative step in developing our very own Death Star.

And to think there are people who question the wisdom of funding space research. Yes, yes. We could spend the money on curing dread diseases, or feeding the starving. But isn't it better to know that we're bringing shock and awe down on the Eloi?

The secrets of a healthy marriage

2009-06-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

A story that combined cancer with "gender issues" was only ever going to provoke the tabloids to new heights; thus the response to the news that men are 40% more likely to die of cancer. While the Mail went for a fairly straight-forward "NHS panders to women while leaving men to die in a corner" line, the Mirror kicked back, put "Wives And Lovers" on the old iPod and advised it's female readers to Cancer-proof your man.

As in insight into how far marriage has come as institution, it's eye-opening. First, the underlying premise - it's the woman's job to keep her man healthy. Sure, men live less healthy lives and are more reluctant to visit the doctor, but isn't really down to their wives to protect them from their stupid, grunting ways?

Secondly, it's soon clear that women (perhaps not being cut out to win rational arguments) have to resort to more delicate means to influence their husbands:

And if all else fails, refuse to kiss him if his mouth isn't clean and minty fresh…
Make your man feel guilty about the fact passive smoking increases your risk too…
And give him an incentive - stash away the money he's saving by not smoking. If he's a 20-a-day man, that's £170 a month - plenty for a naughty night away in a posh hotel…
Instead of arguing about skimmed milk, just fill the full-fat bottles with the skinny equivalent - he'll never know…

So: emotional blackmail, giving sex as reward, withholding sex as punishment, lying. These are the tools by which the modern women makes her views known to her man. Haven't we come a long, long way indeed?

Mainstream or Extreme?

2009-06-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

Over at Liberal Conspiracy, Unity has a crack at analysing the role of the media in fuelling support for the BNP. It's a typically painstaking attempt at getting to grips with a complex and nebulous problem.

I'm lazier. So here's a quick quiz. Using your skill and judgement, guess the source of the following headlines. The BNP website, or the Daily Mail?

The Curse of Cannabis Reaches Over Britain
Now EU Demands Total Control Over Britain's Immigration and Asylum Policy As Well
Exporting Terrorism: A New Dimension To Islamism In Britain
The Great White Backlash: Working Class Turns On Labour Over Immigration And Housing
Britons 'Lose Out On Jobs And Housing': Race Chief Inquiry Into Claims Of Bias Against Whites
The Great Lie: How Immigration Actually Costs Britain Money And Could Cause Huge Social Problems
Government Renames Islamic Terrorism As "Anti-Islamic Activity" To Woo Muslims
Crying "Racism" - Last Resort Of A Chancer

As a special bonus, can you spot the one Richard Littlejohn headline?

Are we done yet?

2009-06-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

For the past month or so, we've all colluded in making politics about palace intrigue rather than governing. In part, that was necessary - there was no way expenses scandals could simply be ignored - but in part it's been indulgent and narrow-minded. The Telegraph's glee in squeezing every last drop out of their windfall is one thing, but in general government, opposition and media have found it too easy to get caught up in the gossip of resignations and reshuffles rather than, for example, the nitty-gritty of industrial policy.

As a more or less direct result of politicians' and journalists' obsession with palace intrigue, the BNP now represent Britain at the European Parliament.

In some ways, Labour deserve the least blame for this. IF there is one group that has an excuse for devoting time and energy to question of whether Brown should lead the Labour party, it's the Labour party. But they do have to actually make a decision, and then stick by it. Either Brown stays and the rebels get back in line, or he goes and the new leader is given a mandate to change direction. Anything in between would be wallowing in their own effluent.

The media have been only to happy to keep talking about Westminster popularity contests. Partly because that's what their nameless briefers are talking about, and partly because, again, it's a lot easier to understand gossip about who's in and who's out or deconstruct the subtext of clothing accessories than it is to brief your viewers on the implications of economic policy. Besides, we the public lap up gossip while being easily bored by niche, technical issues like whether we'll be able to afford to bathe next year, so what's a poor editor to do?

The people who've suffered most needlessly through their relentless focus on Labour's internal strife are the Tories. Labour were portraying themselves as a shambles just fine on their own. This was the opportunity for the shadow front bench to make themselves look like a Cabinet in waiting. If they could only have wrested themselves from the spectacle of their opponents' slow-motion implosion, this was their chance to look like a serious, organised and prepared party of government. All they had to do was rise above the shoddy internal backbiting and demonstrate that not only did they know there were more serious problems facing the country, but that they had solutions to hand.

But they didn't. They settled for pointing and jeering and making sure everyone knew just how terrible Labour were. Understandable enough. But the end result was that, facing a never more unpopular government, they could barely shift their vote-share up from where it was five years ago. Mainstream voters stayed at home, having been given no alternative worth the name. And the BNP picked up two European seats - with fewer votes than they had last time.

There is, improbably, a glimmer of hope for Labour here. If they can get their act together and start talking about what they actually intend to do in government, they might start to look like people worth voting for. And if they can get people to focus on Tory policy rather than rhetoric, they might find it's a better basis for comparison than who looks good on YouTube.

Using your power for good, not evil

2009-06-02T06:22:00.001-07:00

My colleague Anna is taking part in a sponsored tug-of-war, for MacMillan Cancer Support*. Not something I would ordinarily bother you with, but in this case she's also thrown down a gauntlet to online sponsors :

Give me your best curry-related pop song title. Something like 'Poppadom Preach' by Madonna, or 'Rice Rice Baby' by Vanilla Ice.
The prize for the best entry(as judged by me) is pride and glory. Extra bonus points if I can't already find it online. Minimum £2 per entry, put the song title as your 'comment' when you donate.

Puns are frequently considered anti-social - here's your chance to show how they can help the community. Please share them here as well.

*Not coincidentally, our employer. Consider my interest declared.

Limbo

2009-06-02T05:49:00.000-07:00

What would have happened if we'd reached this institutional political crisis at a time when we weren't due to hold ostensibly unrelated elections? I like to think we'd have seen some definitive action by this point, and that Westminster as a whole would have got itself past the relentless drip-feeding of individual scandals, one way or another. But as it is, everyone's waiting for the other boot to drop.

Which is just silly. There's no possible result for Labour which won't lead Cameron to make a red-faced demand for an immediate general election. That speech is already written. There isn't, in fact, a hard and fast rule about the performance in rural/local elections and the general. There isn't some known vote share at which it makes sense to say, "Above this, Brown should keep his job; below it, he's got to go." In any case, the elections have become as much a referendum on all politicians as a popularity test for the parties - anyone who claims to be able to tease out the distinction between an anti-Labour vote and an general protest vote is deluded or deluding. And yet we're still hanging on, waiting for this supposed moment of clarity.

A big part of the recent scandal has been MPs' apparent inability to exercise their own judgement instead of relying on rules or official guidance. We've got the same problem here. Labour's own problems, and the damage done by expenses revelations, have been clear to everyone for the past two weeks. But nothing's been done about them, as the people involve wait for someone else to tell them how bad things are. If they can't form a judgement on that question for themselves, if they can only respond but not act, then how are they going to govern when there's no conveniently timed election to tell them how good their policies are?

I've got the solution, now show me a problem

2009-05-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

Martin Kettle's piece on political reform starts off sensibly enough, noting that the window for action is really pretty small as, after the election, the new government will find bigger fish to fry. But soon enough, we get on to electoral reform and discover once again that there is no political problem that a new voting system won't solve.

In this case, the "main advantage" of the AV system is that it will ensure MPs have a true majority of votes. Kettle doesn't actually say why this is an advantage; I'm going to guess that the idea is that it would encourage MPs to worry more about keeping all their constituents happy. This is probably true, in that MPs who rely on second or third preferences to get elected will want to maintain a minimum level of acceptability. That's why it's a bad idea.

MPs, frankly, should be prepared to make unpopular decisions. AV puts a campaigning MP in the position of persuading her 1st preference supporters that she's true to the ideals of her party, and her opponents' 1st preference supporters that she's a perfectly acceptable alternative to their party. It's a balancing act, with the concomitant risk of falling between two stools. Proponents will argue that this leads to government by consensus, which I don't doubt. But it's not a consensus based on winning the argument, just on finding an innocuous middle-ground: the consensus of the lowest common denominator.

MeMeMe!

2009-05-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

I've just recieved my first meme, from Tom at Freemania. Seven things I love, eh? Here goes:

1. My wife;
2. My son;
3. My self-preservation instinct;
4. Using bad jokes as a way of avoiding actually thinking;
5. Making a good pie - meat, not fruit, and from scratch;
6. The snowballing/tipping point sensation when the project you're working on starts to go right;
7. Making a good, coherent argument for things I believe in, even if I know it won't actually change anyone else's mind.

The next step is to pass this on, which will be exciting too, so let's try: Hopi, Don P, Shuggy, and Andrew at wongablog, who has also written an excellent rant about the current implosion at the heart of democracy.

New proverb

2009-05-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

The real story here is the totally awesome discovery of a fossilised whale in a kitchen counter-top. Finally, some interior decoration I can get behind. But as a bonus, the slightly breathless National Geographic narration has some hidden gems of its own:

"BEING MASONS WE WERE IGNORANT OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DISCOVERY WE HAD MADE"

"STILL, GINGERICH - THE PREMIER EXPERT IN EGYPTIAN WHALES - WAS INTRIGUED"

"AND FOR THESE PALEONTOLOGISTS, THIS WAS JUST ONE OF THOSE PROVERBIAL DAYS WHEN AN ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY IN A LIMESTONE COUNTER-TOP IN ITALY
LED TO NEW INFORMATION ABOUT THE ANCESTORS OF ICONIC AFRICAN ANIMALS."

I wasn't aware of the proverb, but I'm going to start using it. "I wasn't particularly looking forward to that conference, but actually I learned a lot - it was a real limestone counter-top in Italy for me."

Decisions, decisions

2009-05-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

It's a tricky time to be a Labour supporter. What with one thing and another the fire in the belly has been damped down a little, doubt is creeping in where certainty once held sway and preparatory teeth-gritting is already taking its toll on the nation's dental health. As a public service, therefore, I've prepared this handy guide for anyone (else) wondering what the hell the point of it all is. It'd probably be better done in flow-chart form, but that's the kind of presentational jiggery-pokery for which I have zero aptitude, so you'll have to cope with the Choose Your Own Adventure style instead:

1. In general, do you believe that the ideas represented by Labour are better for the country than the ideas represented by the other parties?

If Yes, go to 2. If No, vote accordingly.

2. Right now, do you believe that Labour ideas are better for the country as things stand than other parties' ideas?

If Yes, go to 3. If No, go to 5.

3. Do you believe that Labour, as currently led, can make these ideas happen?

If Yes, vote accordingly. If No, Go to 4.

4. Is there a plausible Labour leadership that you believe would make these ideas happen?

If Yes, go to 5. If No, go to 6.

5. Do you believe that the changes you want can happen in time to make a difference in the election?

If Yes, remember that it's not personal, just business. If No, go to 6.

6. Do you think parties are better placed to reinvent themselves in power than in opposition?

Vote accordingly.

(I'll admit this is a little crude, and arguably elides a distinction between the party's ideas and the party's leadership. But I think that these are broadly the questions anyone who would describe themselves as a Labour supporter needs to ask.)

The way I see it, Labour needs to choose between two basic strategies. The first says that this is a good election to lose: let the Tories do the heavy lifting for a while, and get tarnished by office; meanwhile, Labour should regroup, rebuild and rethink. Then go into the next election cleaned, polished and fired up. The second says that the job of political parties is to win power; that even if Labour aren't perfect they're better than the alternative*; that the act of winning votes will, at this point, necessarily mean doing a fair chunk of reinvention, one way or the other; thus this election, like all elections, is a good election to win.

Tempting though the first strategy is, hoping for your time in the wilderness is rank defeatism; if you can't handle both being in power and doing serious thinking about your ideals, aims and strategies, you don't belong in politics.

* If you don't believe this then, however temporarily, you have ceased to be a Labour supporter.

Gut vs Head, Round 2

2009-05-11T04:50:00.000-07:00

Gut, Head, Head, Gut. We make almost all our decisions instinctively, or if you prefer, unthinkingly. We're disproportionately influenced by what we can easily remember, or what makes a big impression. Once we start telling ourselves a certain story about something, we only see what fits that story. Things that happen to us, once, matter more than things that happen to thousands of strangers, all the time. We put our faith in authority figures rather than question every single thing we hear*. We evaluate ideas we already agree with using different parts of our brains than we use for ideas we don't like. We flinch from unlikely, dramatic risks and run headlong into more likely, everyday risks. We over-estimate how much we know and how good we are at applying it. We are, collectively, a lot dumber than we like to think.

But hey, it's got us this far. So don't worry about it - you and your rag-tag collection of cognitive biases are going to do just fine. The problem is for people who want to persuade us to do things, and in this specific instance, people who want us to vote Labour at some point in the next year. These are the issues:

We're bored with Labour in any case;
The dominant story we filter politics through now is: Labour are an incompetent bunch of petty swindlers;
The authority figures are against Labour/Labour has lost authority;
The Conservatives look good.

These are basically Gut issues, and any hope Labour have of getting elected rests on tackling them head on. This, frankly, is not going to be easy. Take, to pick an issue at random, the economy. Back in the day this was a strength, and so the fact that people were beginning to wonder if Labour hadn't had long enough in charge wasn't an issue. Now both the poor performance of the economy and the suddenly impoverished government finances are, with less and more justice respectively, laid at Labour's door. Not only newspapers, but also impartial figures such as the Governor of the Bank of England and respected international bodies, have said that Labour got it wrong. The recession has not only caused people to doubt Labour's competence, but that doubt has become a good reason not to vote for them. (I never said Gut was stupid - not trusting the guy who led you into a swamp to lead you out again is a pretty good rule of thumb.) Finally, the Tories have made hay with the economy, particularly in using it to attack Brown's reputation - the source of his authority.

So what to do? Fixing the economy would be a good start; by the time an election comes around, we're predicted to be out of the recession. But hoping for a break won't be enough. If people are bored, give them a reason to be excited. Lay out what Labour will do with the economy. Start by stating the problem clearly. Don't weasel out of responsibility. Take it. But having established where we are, start talking about where we want to go. Talk about priorities. Who is Labour going to be worrying about in government? What's the plan for looking after them? Rather than say, "We're going to have to make tough decisions," why not make them, defend them and stick to them? Coming up with a sound plan for the economy, explaining it to people and demonstrating why it will work and why it needs to be done will go a long way to demonstrating some competence, rebuilding some authority, showing some principles and giving people a reason to support you.

This is the basis for attacking the Tories. Labour actually had one good day last week. PMQs went surprisingly well precisely because Cameron overstepped the mark and went after Brown personally rather than focussing on the issues. If Brown would claim to be a "Head" politician, Cameron is unquestionably a "Gut" one. Which gets him quite a long way. "Didn't fix the roof while the sun was shining", "Labour's Decade of Debt", constant calls for an apology from Brown: it makes an impression on people, and gives them powerful images to recall whenever they think of Labour and the economy. But I would argue that there's still an awareness that the Conservatives haven't actually set their own stall out yet, and that people want a bit more. Head actually has quite a strong appeal to Gut - we might not want to do the heavy thinking, but we're impressed by people who do (or look like they do.) If you've just led your followers into a swamp, pointing out that your rival's cunning plan to cut off everyone's feet won't really help is a perfectly valid argument.

I'm not pretending any of this is easy, or that people don't (rightly) need a lot of convincing. But if Labour want to win an election then that implies a belief that they'd be better at running the country than the Conservatives: they should be able to make a half-way convincing case for that proposition. Doing anything else with the next twelve months would be an unforgiveable waste of time.

*When the tribe's oldest hunter said, "Look out - there's a lion behind you!" the people who became ancestors weren't the ones who replied, "So you claim, but I'm going to need a little more than just your unsubstantiated say so."

Gut vs Head

2009-05-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

Dan Gardner's Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear offers a psychological model for how we, as ex-hunter-gatherers, make decisions about stuff. Apparently we have two separate modes of thought, which psychologists call System One and System Two and Gardner, with rather more of an eye on bestseller status, calls Head and Gut. Instinctively, you can guess what those mean and some careful thought plus a bit of research would tell you you were right.

Gut is where elections are won and lost. Head might sway politicos, journalists, academics and hobbyists/junkies; a full 1% of the population taken care of. Everyone else has better things to do with their time than read economic history or position papers, and so relies on headlines, soundbites and topical comedy shows to tell them what's going on.

Gut is what's killing Labour right now. Take the latest expenses revelations: while there appear* to be some genuine (fairly flagrant) abuses from various Cabinet Ministers, the accusation against Brown himself is pretty flimsy. £6,000 to brother for "cleaning services"! scream the headlines, generously larded with a near-audible,"Oh Yeah?". But Downing St have released what looks a lot like a contract for cleaning services, for the appropriate amounts, over the right time-period. Nor is it an exorbitant some of money for two years worth of cleaning. It probably is, in fact, exactly what it appears to be - an arrangement between two brothers to share a cleaner.

Doesn't matter. Who cares about the contract? That's not the point. We're surrounded by stories where £££ + "Odd Financial Arrangement" = Corruption. This story fits that pattern. And that is more than good enough for Gut. Head might think differently if it ever took a look, but it probably won't. As Gardner says, Head is a bright underacheiver - capable of greatness, sure, but far happier to sit back and let Gut do the driving. Proper thinking is a lot of effort, and who's going to do it on the off-chance that some politician isn't as bad as he's painted?

There's a point to this, but at the risk of creating an artificial sense of suspense, I'm going to leave it to my next post.

Moving on

2009-05-01T04:04:00.000-07:00

A senior Labour "loyalist" today stressed the importance to the Prime Minister of putting recent screw-ups behind him. The ex-Cabinet Minister announced that the best strategy for Labour was to focus on running the country and draw a line under the complete pig's ear they'd made of the past couple of days. "Labour have to stop making godawful errors of political judgement such as losing Opposition Day votes or backing down on expenses reform, and instead focus on governing the country. Not only do appalling cock-ups such as we've witnessed recently generate bad headlines on the day, but they also encourage political non-entities to bang on for days afterwards about what a mess Labour are making. This keeps the nation focused on the government's catastrophic series of mistakes, rather than positive stories."

The self-righteous egotist went on to say, "When you've had a week as bad this one, the last thing you need is some delusional narcissist to start harping on and on about all the mistakes you've made. But trust me, that's what'll happen after a series of screw-ups like this. Just when you think the press might be ready to move on, some pompous blowhard will pop up, flapping his badger-bearded gums and pontificating about just how wrong you're getting it and boom! - another day of bad headlines."

The self-promoting windbag, who apparently could find no other way to communicate with people who actually matter than to leak his every thought to the national press added, "The only thing to is draw a line under your woeful incompetence, start talking about anything other than just how feebly atrophied your political antennae have become, and hope that you can persuade people to forget your clumsy ineptitude. I'm saying this because I want to help Gordon Brown - and let's face it, he needs all the help he can get!"

"...After a disastrous week like that, I mean. Wasn't it awful? If I were him, I'd be praying people would just stop talking about it. He certainly doesn't need people dwelling on all the things he got wrong - that would be a disaster for Labour. So let's all stop banging on about it, and start doing something right. For a change."

Same polls, different opinion

2009-04-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

Hopi's been thinking about opinion polls; what they actually mean and, crucially, what sort of decision you should use them to make. I don't disagree with his conclusions, but I'm not convinced by his initial reading of the trends:

Hopi's take on this is that, "Looking at that graph, there appear to be two periods where an informed observer could see a settled will of the people emerging. In both cases, a disruptive event transformed the political situation. The emerging trends became irrelevant as peoples views of the parties changed." I think he's kidding himself , or at least confusing "settled will of the people" with "support for Labour". There's a pretty clear settled will of the people in that graph, and it's a trend that is going to stay relevant.

Shock political news: people are fundamentally bored with Labour. I don't mean angry, or upset, or disappointed. They're just bored. That's the story of the first half of this graph, up to the Brown bounce. Labour weren't less popular than the Tories because they'd screwed up. The Tories were up because they were fresh - shiny new leader, new team, old guard safely back in the coffin - while Labour were looking increasingly stale. Cash for honours and sordid tales of Prescott's love life added to a view of a party that had nothing more to offer, and was too damn comfortable in office.

As if to prove that people's main problem was boredom rather than fundamental disagreement with Labour, along comes the Brown bounce. This wasn't a time of dramatic policy shifts or repudiations of past ideologies; it was a fresh lick of paint and a chance to start talking about the future, not the past. It didn't hurt that various crises allowed Brown to demonstrate gravitas and statesmanship, but the main point is that people had a fresh look at Labour and realised that actually, yes, they did trust these guys to run the country. Note that Blair announced his resignation almost a year in advance, and that the world and his wife knew Brown would succeed. Why then should there have been any kind of Brown bounce, if people were genuinely, fundamentally unhappy with Labour?

However, the underlying boredom with Labour didn't go away. Changing the leader gave the party a chance to redefine itself for the future, and show the electorate that it knew how to keep delivering what they wanted. But they needed to keep looking very good indeed. The inept handling of the snap election issue, coupled with the Northern Rock crisis, suggested to people that this wasn't a new era of high-minded competence, but more of the same aimless time-serving. (Of course, Brown's close identification with anything to do with the economy didn't help.)

If people were looking for change, innovation or vision from Brown, they weren't finding it. Political novelty was on offer elsewhere; as the failing economy pushed Brown onto the back foot, the Tories took the opportunity to a) shatter the bedrock of his political reputation and b) present themselves as the people with the new and exciting ideas. Various Ministers, MPs, journalists and bloggers took it upon themselves to critique these ideas, point out their inconsistencies or show that the sums didn't add up. However accurate and barbed these criticsims, they were beside the point. On one hand, a government mired in a deteriorating economy; on the other, an energetic opposition with a scheme, initiative or taskforce for every occasion.

At the end of 2008, Labour's fortunes were rising again. People had begun to feel better about the economy, and Brown was positioning himself as the man with the experience to handle a global crisis. But it didn't last. Internal and international disagreements about fiscal stimulus, a sandbagging by Mervyn King, rising unemployment... truth is, it didn't take a huge amount to reverse that trend. Labour no longer have the benefit of the doubt. As a rule of thumb, I'd guess it takes 3 positive news cycles to win a polling point for Labour, and only 1 to lose one.

The boredom factor is Labour's biggest problem now. It means that they to get everything right first time, every time. Even a small slip just encourages people to give up on them. Incumbent parties win elections with three messages:

Look at all the great stuff we've already done;
Here's all the great stuff we're going to do;
Those guys will screw it all up if you let them.

But now no-one's listening to 1), no-one believes 2) and they're willing to take a gamble on 3) just to see what will happen.

Cheap shot

2009-04-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

Derek Draper is not only a gifted political strategist and interblog whizzkid, he's also a psychotherapist. In this guise, he pens a monthly column for Psychologies magazine*, offering wisdom gleaned from sessions with clients. There is much to learn from May's effort, which as his byline notes, is written by a man who "has returned to politics after taking a break":

"In my work with clients, after we have analysed the root causes of their issues and worked on tools to help them change their behaviour, they still seem stuck. At that point, even though it is a cliché, I find myself wanting to point out, "You are your own worst enemy...

There comes a time in everyone's therapeutic journey when...we need to take that vital last step of doing things differently."

But it would be simplistic to think that some people just can't help themselves. Through counselling and self-examination, we find that:

"Whenever we think someone is the wilful architect of their own destruction, the real explanation is that, without knowing it, they are following someone else's rules."

*Would you believe a dentist's waiting room story? Thought not.

Finger on the pulse

2009-04-22T02:18:00.000-07:00

When you wish to convince the British public that your expenses reforms will usher in a new era of probity, austerity and transparency, it is absolutely vital to emphasise that this is the way they do it in Brussells. The British public, and particularly the right-wing media who have been hounding you on this issue, have nothing but respect for European institutions and frequently praise them as evidence of good governance.

It's that deft populist touch we all admire.

The difference between opinion and thought

2009-04-20T04:39:00.000-07:00

This opinion piece by Melanie Reid is staggering in its wilful embrace of ignorance. From start to finish it contains no thought, no facts, no argument, no sense; it does offer denial, knee-jerk prejudice, mindless populism and slavish, empty-headed traditionalism.

In summary: a Dutch study has recently shown that for pregnancies without complications, home births are no riskier than having the baby in hospital. Reid's response, in favour of hospital births, encompasses the following ~~arguments~~ ~~points~~ bald assertions.

Women who choose home births are weird. And principled. But mainly weird;
Home births are currently rare;
Therefore, they are wrong;
Yes, the Dutch study shows that they're just as safe;
The Dutch are in the minority, therefore they too are wrong;
In fact, Holland is not in the real world;
It doesn't matter that home births are safe;
Hospitals are the bestest of all best places, and anyone not using one is delusional and hates women.

Had she merely stuck to writing these assertions out one after another and then pretending she'd formulated an argument, Reid would merely have come across as regrettably stupid. Happily, however, she chose to try and buttress her opinion with some reference to facts; in this case the complications attached to birth. This is where it would have helped enormously to do a minimum of research. Presented as evidence on her side is the history of deaths from puerperal fever. As you can see, even the most cursory research would have given Reid the following information:

The single most important risk factor for puerperal fever nowadays is Caesarean section;
Puerperal fever was, at its lethal peak, spread by doctors working in the new lying-in hospitals of the day;
Conversely, puerperal fever was rarer in home births than it was in hospitals.

It's one thing to write an opinion piece without ever formulating an argument; standard practice, almost. But getting such facts as you present so completely arse about face is just wallowing in ignorance for it's own sake, and reflects the fundamental weakness in paying columnists by the word instead of by the thought.

A rotten bit of luck

2009-04-14T03:41:00.000-07:00

The thing that genuinely depresses me about Smeargate or whatever the hell we're supposed to be calling it is the suspicion that somewhere in McBride's and Draper's minds, and possibly a few other people's, a small voice is saying, "But it was such a clever plan. All this mess is just bad luck."

What's happened inside your head, when you think that is how you get people to vote for you? My guess is a loss of conviction. If Draper and McBride had any genuine belief that Labour should/could win the next election because it has the right policies for the country, they'd have wanted to talk about those policies, and the Labour party. But they didn't - they wanted to attack opposition personalities. Setting aside the moral dimension of destabilising a political opponent by slurring his wife's mental health, the sheer narrowness of the tactic demonstrates the bankruptcy of ideas.

Various bloggers will talk about what Labour really needs to do to get a good showing in 2010. I don't presume to know. But substance, strategy and vision would be a start, and they seem to be sadly lacking.

Help, Police

2009-04-09T04:24:00.001-07:00

The video seems fairly damning. A man, walking away from the police, is struck with a baton and then shoved to the ground, shortly before he dies of a heart attack. It seems massively unlikely that this is a coincidence, although I understand that courts work to a slightly higher standard when they're determining causality.

The policeman in question looks to be facing a criminal trial: possibly for assault, possibly for manslaughter. This is something that will be determined by the courts, one way or another. Meanwhile, the police, as a whole, are facing a crisis of public confidence. This will be determined, in large part, by what the police do next. There are two separate concerns: one is the police response to public order, and the proportionate use of force. The second, more serious issue is the ability of the police to confront their own failings.

Regarding the first, there does seem to be a culture that embraces the use of force to corral and control protesters. The comments on The Policeman's Blog give some insight into the insider's view, although clearly it's hardly a representative sample. Various (presumably) police attitudes include:

Protesters are dirty tax-dodging hippies;
If you go to a demo and get shoved about by the cops, it's no more than you should expect;
"Kettling" works: compare May Day 2001 with 2000 - much less violence, property damage etc. precisely because police did actively and forcefully control the crowd;
Crowd dynamics and control are not precise sciences; treating people as a herd rather than individuals is therefore necessary;
Public order is not community policing: it is all about using force to achieve your ends;
The officer who struck Tomlinson is damned unlucky - this happens all the time and it's only a problem because he had a heart attack;
The officer who struck Tomlinson was acting completely out of order and should be disciplined.

A mixed bag, but coupled with the comments about the police being "up for it" beforehand and you're left with the distinct impression that, to say the least, the police and general public have somewhat differing perspectives on the use of force at protests. (That is, depending on who the force is being used against.) For me, one of the most worrying aspects of the video is that the assaulting policeman has covered his face with a balaclava that (presumably) is part of standard gear. I have no doubt that this helps immensely in a) making riot police look more intimidating and b) giving those police confidence. But the decision to project that image reveals quite a lot about the relationship the police have or want to have with demonstrators.

There is an important question of public policy here: as pointed out by a commentator at the Policeman's Blog, once you've established that attending a demo carries a strong risk of being detained, corraled or even assaulted then you've had a more or less chilling effect on political protest. The overall attitude is not that the protest will happen, and the police need to keep an eye on troublemakers: the protest is trouble, and the police need to control it and minimise it.

Police self-policing has long been acknowledged as a bit of a paradox; it takes a very rigorous adherence to principle for a body devoted to law and order to treat its own members as potential criminals. But it already looks like the various lessons that could have been learned from the Menezes shooting have been given a miss: the police already stand accused of giving out misinformation, attempting to control the media reporting and being very reluctant to consider that they might be at fault. The IPCC also seems to have been slow to decide that this needed independent investigation. Trust in the police is crucial to the whole concept of policing by consent; it's built on knowing that the police can and will self-correct when they get it wrong.

In Labourspace, no one can hear you pontificate

2009-04-07T05:34:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is all shiny just now, and ostensibly dominated by the Conservatives (or at least, the minuscule portion that can claim to be political is.) Therefore, Labour are beefing up their online operations in order to a) engage with the ordinary voter and b) fight for the tactical high ground. At first blush, this seems reasonable enough, but somebody, somewhere, should really have asked a couple of pertinent questions:

a) Is a strong pro-Labour online presence really something we can will into being?
b) Do the Conservatives actually gain any electoral advantage simply because literally dozens of middle-aged males are exchanging Harriet Harperson jokes or hosting the same Dan Hannan video?

Whatever the answers may be, the fact is that Labour are making a concerted effort. Hence LabourList, and now Labourspace. LabourList was a place for discussion, debate and deliberation; Labourspace is the place for action.

The concept is simple: one logs on, sets up a campaign and then, er, campaigns for it. On Labourspace itself, on facebook and twitter, on blogs and in the media. Get the most supporters and you win. Again though, there are a few questions that might have been asked first:

What's a campaign? Currently on the site we have proposals for everything from an international open borders policy to ending NHS parking charges, from re-introducing wolves to Scotland to re-nationalising the railways. Some people have specific goals, others just feel bad about stuff. Some people are trying to re-write national policy, others are looking for a grant. Charities, not surprisingly, are using this to raise awareness. There are differences between campaigning, lobbying the government and drafting policy, but whoever's behind this hasn't actually thought about what they're asking people to do. If they want campaign ideas, it's up to them to provide the policy framework for people to campaign in. If they want to listen to the voice of the people, they should only ask questions if they're prepared to use the answers. If they want a general policy forum, they need to weed out contrarians, spoilers and idiots. This site does none of these things. A more focused approach (say, helping local councillors co-ordinate approaches to, for example, fuel poverty) might have produced some valuable ideas that could actually be used. What we've got is too broad and ill-defined to produce results.

What's this got to do with Labour? Seriously. Any government could run a site like this. In fact, this one already did - the National Petition nonsense. There's no requirement that any of the campaigns have any connection whatsoever with existing Labour policy, or traditional left-wing principles, or New Labour values or anything else with even a vague connection to the Labour party. Ed Milliband makes a point of commenting on as many campaigns as possible; his two longest responses are to clarion calls for a) re-nationalising railways and b) an English parliament. Without looking, see if you can guess whether he's for or against. Which brings us to...

What do you win? This is, at bottom, a popularity contest. Plugged-in social networkers who get the most supporters for their campaign get their "ideas bought to the attention of senior Labour politicians". Really? If you were capable of running a popular nationwide campaign, it would already be bought to their attention. That's what campaigning is. But in any case, let's say you are successful. Either your idea flies in the face of government policy, in which case it gets ignored, or it's more or less acceptable, in which case... what? You get a photo-op with a relevant junior minister? The manifesto gets re-written? A law gets passed? How can this help the Labour party? Support the winning campaign, and they're being craven populists, taking direction from a handful of bloggers. Ignore it, and they're denying the will of the people.

There's no point in asking a question unless you know what you're going to do with the answer. Labourspace, even if successful, won't do anything for Labour but create a new problem.

What do you want, and when do you want it?

2009-04-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

Sam Leith and Don Paskini speak sooth about protest marches.

From Sam:

Face paint and world music and "giving the power back to the people" is not going to have any effect on the world whatsoever. Left to themselves, "the people" will sit in fields practising their polyphonic singing and scratching their furry parts. If they want to get anything done on a scale large enough to be effective, they get together and elect leaders. For want of a better word, I propose calling those leaders "politicians".

Imagine, for a minute, that you are the leader of a G20 country - Canada, say, or South Korea. Imagine further that you have taken a couple of minutes out of your swollen schedule of dialogues, photo-ops and dinners to watch the protest - either on camera or in person. Hordes, or at least myriads, of marchers have taken to the streets, banners high. Clearly, they have something on their mind. Maybe, just maybe, they're saying something you should hear. They are, after all, the people. What is their message? Is it:

a) Hang The Bankers
b) Abolish Money
c) No Third Runway
d) End World Hunger
e) Free Palestine
f) Troops Out of Afghanistan
g) Nationalise The Banks
h) Stop Climate Chaos
i) All of the above
j) All of the above and more

What do you do? What can you do? Shrug your shoulders, turn on your heal and go back into your meeting with the angry Frenchman. He may be a stubborn pain in the arse, but at least you've got a basis for negotiation.

Demagoguery 2.0.

2009-03-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

Charlie Brooker's Newswipe - a Daily Show-esque look at both news and its programming - was predictably good last night. If you missed it, you can catch it here: particularly good is his comparison of the coverage of a) 20 violent Islamist protesters disrupting a soldiers' welcome in Luton and b) 1000s of marchers coming out for peace in N. Ireland.

As always, it's easier to go with the simple and the shocking if you want people's attention. The Northern Ireland march might have got more coverage on a slow news day, but somewhere in Germany an idiot teenager shot up his school, and that obviously demanded hours of coverage. (The clip from Newswipe of a psychologist explaining to an interviewer the media's role in these recurring shootings is pure gold.)

Not every story is violent or catastrophic, but it's better if you can make it so. Hence, we all know now that a government gilt auction FAILED yesterday morning for the first time in SEVEN years. This is a BLOW FOR GORDON BROWN and clear evidence that the MARKETS FEAR GB DEBT. Given that the media's narrative on Brown is now "What a loser", this story fits quite well with a) what they want to tell us and more importantly b) what we want to hear.

Niggling little details about the term of the debt, it's relationship to QE policy, the amount actually sold or the current state of the gilt markets, which by adding context and information detract from the simplicity of the story, are downplayed or ignored entirely. The point, after all, is not to keep the viewer/reader informed about the state of the economy. It's to let us know who's winning.

Mr Eugenides quotes an instructive comment from the blog of Daniel Hannan MEP, regarding a much-viewed clip of him excoriating the PM:

The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day's headlines, are over. Now, a thousand bloggers decide for themselves what is interesting. If enough of them are tickled then, bingo, you're news. Breaking the press monopoly is one thing. But the internet has also broken the political monopoly. Ten or even five years ago, when the Minister for Widgets put out a press release, the mere fact of his position guaranteed a measure of coverage. Nowadays, a politician must compel attention by virtue of what he is saying, not his position.
It's all a bit unsettling for professional journalists and politicians. But it's good news for libertarians of every stripe. Lefties have always relied on control, as much of information as of physical resources. Such control is no longer technically feasible

Yes, yes. No doubt, people who already don't like Brown are tickled to watch someone have a go at him. It's good old-fashioned entertainment. It's not really political news though - Hannan was after all, merely rehashing the Tory line on Brown, somthing that is getting pretty regular coverage as is. A press release from a Minister might well be pointless fluff - or it could detail actual policy. Which might be quite boring and technical, and not use any nautical metaphors at all . But just giving people the fun bits isn't news. People with an interest in politics (by which I mean, voters in a democracy) need to get the boring nitty-gritty as well as the theatricals. The news machine and it's audience are collaborating to avoid that, in much the same way that a stressed-out mother might ask the kids if they want to just get take-away tonight. But pretending that news-as-entertainment is a vital step forward to freedom and prosperity is like claiming KFC is diet food.

Concern

2009-03-17T05:09:00.000-07:00

I've just found the Ambrose Bierce piece I wanted to use two posts below. Which is a little aggravating, but happily there is a new story which marries nicely with a different fable.

The story is here: having failed to follow up on Azhar Khan's complaints of "appalling treatment" in Egypt, the FCO is now withholding full information on how they dealt with his case on the grounds that they wish to safeguard his rights.

A SPORTSMAN who had wounded a Squirrel, which was making desperate efforts to drag itself away, ran after it with a stick, exclaiming: "Poor thing! I will put it out of its misery."
At that moment the Squirrels stopped from exhaustion, and looking up at its enemy, said:"I don't venture to doubt the sincerity of your compassion, though it comes rather late, but you seem to lack the faculty of observation. Do you not perceive by my actions that the dearest wish of my heart is to continue in my misery?"
At this exposure of his hypocrisy, the Sportsman was so overcome with shame and remorse that he would not strike the Squirrel, but pointing it out to his dog, walked thoughtfully away.

Good booze/bad booze

2009-03-16T04:38:00.000-07:00

Andrew Lansley clarifies the Tory position on using price to control alcohol consumption :

He added: "There is clearly a need for action. But it is very important to recognise that to deal with this problem we need to deal with people's attitudes and not just the supply and price of alcohol.

See? Principled. No interference with market pricing from our boys in blue.

"Our proposals, which include measures to tackle loss-leader promotions and higher taxes on high-alcohol drinks aimed at young people, would address this without penalising the majority of moderate drinkers. This would seem to be a much better route to go down than distorting the whole drinks market."

Well, maybe a bit of price interference. But only on the chavvy drinks. We all know you can't be alcoholic if you're drinking Gewurtztramminer.

Forethought

2009-03-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

UPATE: Just found the Ambrose Bierce piece I was thinking of when I wrote this:

THE Warden of a Penitentiary was one day putting locks on the doors of all the cells when a mechanic said to him:
"Those locks can all be opened from the inside - you are very imprudent."
The Warden did not look up from his work, but said:
"If that is called imprudence, I wonder what would be called a thoughtful provision against the vicissitudes of fortune."

The Conservatives (I learn via Mr E) are proposing to make goverment spending more transparent: specifically, voters will be able to access itemised accounts of all government spending over some limit - let's say £50,000. As Steve Richards suggests, and Mr Eugenides proves, Labour are opposed to this, ostensibly on matters of cost, but (no fools us) clearly because it would be a pain in their arse.

So far, so party-political. Demanding greater governmental transparency is an easy Opposition win; heel-dragging is a predictable governmental response. And in some ways, fair enough. No praise will ever come to the government for, say, £51,250 well spent on a worthwhile and vital project; conversely, Ministers will rapidly tire of being forced in "hard-hitting" interviews to justify the latest "outrageous" expenditure on diversity training/health and safety/butterfly migration research or whatever other headline fodder doubtless lurks in the accounts. "Gotcha'd" live, they won't be able to respond on the spot; when they come back a day later to show that understanding the lifespan of lepidoptera actually helps farmers fight pests more cheaply (let's say), no-one will care. So from an already harassed government's point of view, signing up to this proposal is the equivalent of a weedy cowpoke handing the salloon bully two loaded six-shooters and asking for dancing lessons.

But what's weird about this is that no-one seems to be thinking very far ahead. It is common political wisdom that in 15 months time, Labour will be in carefree opposition and the Conservatives will be fitting new carpets in the corridors of power. If they were thinking ahead, Labour would be only too delighted to help the Conservatives fit themselves up. Similarly, the Conservatives presumably don't actually want to spend their time in government answering idiotic accusations of waste, but this is what they're setting themselves up for.

There are various explanations for this:
a) both parties are acting out of pure principle
b) both parties are playing a very long game, and expect Labour to be in government more often than not over, say, the next 30 years.
c) both parties actually expect Labour to win the next election
d) both parties are in full grip of the availability heuristic, and letting themselves be far more influenced by where they are now than by where they expect to be in the future.

A weasel in the rabbit-hutch of thought

2009-03-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

If nothing else, Leila Deen's rationalisation of her ~~consciousness-raising blow against the establishment~~ childish temper tantrum does gift the English language the phrase "cuckoo in the nest of British democracy", albeit in all apparent sincerity. Other than that, there's not a lot to commend it. It's just yet another Plane Stupid acolyte explaining why their attention-seeking muppetry is a) a vital blow for democracy and b) the only option left to them now they're being ignored by the man:

I have done nothing BUT debate for the last three years. In that time everyone who counts came out in condemnation of the runway plans: 86% of people who responded to the Heathrow consultation replied that they did not want it. The London mayoral election was run on who could be most against it. Respected research institutions pointed out that it will make it impossible to meet our national commitments to helping prevent catastrophic climate change. The Labour party rebelled in parliament. Even many in the cabinet were opposed... The debate is over. We won.

"Everyone who counts" in this case not including the people who want the runway built, and "won" being a synonym for "lost". Other debates that have been "won", we learn, include the invasion of Iraq, and ID cards. By this standard ("we marched, we debated") the Countryside Alliance "won" the debate on foxhunting, the miners "won" the debate on closing pits and the BUF "won" the debate on Britain's glorious black-shirted future. If you only deign to consider people who already agree with you, winning debates is trivially easy.

Politics is, at root, the way we make decisions about living together. I am happy to stipulate that it is far from perfect as a process. But even if it were, we would all, from time to time, find ourselves not getting our way. It's a feature, not a bug. Responding by throwing gunk at people, while no doubt giving tremendous expression to one's feelings, does tend to suggest.that you don't understand some very basic ideas such as a) how to make your cause look good and b) democracy.

UPDATE: In other news, she looks good too.

Circular arguments prove their own premises because they're circular

2009-03-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

I meant to comment on some of the substance of Harman's interview below. Specifically, I yelled at the TV when I heard the following, loosely paraphrased, argument:

Q. Why don't you allow fathers to take more time off with a shared parental leave allowance instead of maternity/paternity leave being split.

A. We could do that, but most men would still end up working because they earn more than their partners.

Me: YES, BECAUSE THEY DON'T GO ON LONG PATERNITY LEAVE!*

In other news, the government has announced it won't be repairing the lifts in the Palace of Westminster, saying "the only people we see on the top floors are fit enough to use the stairs."

*I know it's not the only reason men tend to earn more than their partners, but it's a big factor behind a) preferential hiring and b) having more time invested in a career.

If you want something doing, do it yourself

2009-03-09T03:46:00.000-07:00

My allotted two weeks up, I still don't understand how someone that spends 18 hours a day sleeping can so effectively stop you doing anything other than look after him. But he does, so I've not kept quite as ruthlessly up-to-date with the news as I used to like.

It's been great. Major news items break through - terrorists attacks, quantitative easing, Jade Goody's wedding - but I lose the comment, analysis, rebuttal, insight, viewer's comments, punditry and other crud that usually clings to these nuggets. And somehow, I don't feel I'm missing out. Hopi, for example, is left to write not one but two posts bemoaning the vapidity and predictability of the media coverage of the Brown/Obama summit, but remains none the wiser regarding what might actually come out of it. I am equally ignorant, but haven't had to wade through regurgitated dribble either.

But I did, quite by chance, catch a brief segment of the Politics Show yesterday that happened to be both informative, interesting and relevant to my current circumstances. You can see it here, at least for the next 7 days. At 18:32, a panel of three women get to interview Harriet Harman. They grill her on the governments achievements in improving equality on the workplace, bring up specific policy proposals they would like to see enacted and hold her to account on her performance. Clearly, they know the subject matter inside out. In turn, Harman responds substantively, with a minimum of "yeah but the other lot suck".

At times, however, the professional journalist jumps in to perform the vital media role of holding the government to account:. "Shouldn't you be ashamed?", "Isn't this embarrassing?" "Couldn't you have phrased that better?". These are the sort of hard-hitting questions that make journalists look good. They don't, astonishingly enough, elucidate any useful information. . The end of the interviewis a masterclass in turning the viewer off politics and politicians: "We've got very little time and I must ask you about Fred Goodwin." Why, in the name of Christ? Why not shut up and let the interesting conversation continue? "Do you stand by what you said? Will you retract it? Will you admit you were wrong to suggest that? Will you give me a headline? Will you? I don't want your opinion, woman, I want to make you look bad. Give me a retraction, an apology, a regret, anything I can use to spin this non-event out further." (My transcription may not be entirely accurate.)

If you take the ten minutes to watch it, I'm prepared to bet that the bits you find interesting co-incide almost exactly with the periods that the professional interviewer is a mere spectator.

Getting the cliches to work for you

2009-02-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

It's funny how quickly your perspective can change. I used to be firmly convinced that the endlessly repeated phrase "hard working families" was mere politician's cant - a cheap rhetorical device to reassure the tax-resenting voter that his hard won cash wasn't being frittered away on the undeserving (by implication singles, gays, pensioners, the unemployed, DINKYs or maybe the merely lazy).

Following the birth of my son on Friday, I realise that in fact families are the very core of British society and are hugely deserving of all the largesse the government cares to shower on ~~them~~ us. Moreover, it is right and proper that wastrels who lack the capability or commitment to form their own hard working family be prepared to make sacrifices so that right-thinking folks can be given the help they need to forge a stronger, better Britain.

I mean, two middle-class professionals with one child to look after? We need all the help we can get.

Hark to the call of the silent majority

2009-02-17T06:01:00.000-08:00

I always liked Holmes' insight about the silent dog in the nighttime. The idea that you can deduce as much from a negative as a positive is a powerful one, and often consoling when you find all your best efforts falling apart. But you can take it too far. Tread warily around the man who claims that the very absence of evidence for his thesis is proof of its perceptive accuracy:

"But I noticed something else as well: something that wasn't there. Every other issue I mentioned was picked over and debated. One was not. It concerns the most glaring democratic deficit over which this government has presided, yet almost everyone is too polite to mention it."

You and I might think that if nobody wants to talk about an issue, it's because they don't think it's an issue. Not so but otherwise. That polite silence is the sound of furious agreement. Else, we would have some curious situation where right-thinking people did not agree with George Monbiot - theoretically possible, of course, but too outlandish to seriously consider.

The rest of the article is merely yet another rehash of the West Lothian Question ("Where's West Lothian?"), and is interesting only insofar as it throws up a hitherto unsuspected parochialism in Monbiot's understanding of carbon emissions:

"Had Heathrow's third runway been debated only by English MPs, the proposal would have been resoundingly defeated; it was approved by 19 votes, after 67 MPs from the other nations were induced to support the government. They can support such measures without any electoral risk, as their constituents are not directly affected."

I'd understood that emissions and the resulting damage to the climate were a problem for everyone; now it seems that the Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh are immune. Or at least not "directly affected" while (presumably) voters in Cumbria are right at ground zero.

It's in the nature of democracy that people not "directly affected" still get a vote. MPs for land-locked constituencies have a say in fisheries policy; you don't need a car factory in your back yard to vote for a bailout. And you can bet that Monbiot was none too troubled by the idea of urban MPs voting against fox-hunting. And that's fine. It's probably a good thing, in fact, that we strive for some collective say in the sort of nation we want to live in as opposed to leaving decisions to those directly affected, thus reducing our political process to a knife-fight between people whose interests are by definition directly opposed. If the goal is a just and equitable solution, that approach is somewhat lacking.

You can't fight the zeitgeist

2009-02-17T05:35:00.000-08:00

First zombies, now extra-terrestrial ritual hunters. Some people really resented their English lessons, didn't they?

But they've got the mythos wrong. It's been well established (Schwarzenegger vs Man in Rubber Suit) that the Predator will only attack armed opponents (rebel guerrilas, Navy Seals, old black cops just trying to clean up their city etc.). Unarmed humans, particularly women, are permanently out of season. Given that a good 70% of the characters in Pride & Prejudice are a) female and b) not accustomed to packing heat, the most likely outcome is that the Predator will merely rip out Darcy's spinal column and sod off back home. Anything else would turn this proposed entertainment into a cynical and crass corruption of a much-loved classic.

What's in a name?

2009-02-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

Blackwater, the world's best known mercenary group, have finally faced up to the fact that their conduct in Iraq has made them a byword for corporate thuggery and... changed their name.

It's a rare surrender for a company that cherished a brand name inspired by the dark-water swamps of northeastern North Carolina, one that survived another rebranding effort about a year ago, following a deadly shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. The decision to give it up underscores how badly the Moyock-based company's brand was damaged by that incident and other security work in Iraq.

Even before the PR disaster of opening fire on civilians, Blackwater was never the most reassuring name for a global purveyor of violence. The new name, "Xe", by contrast plumps for the definitively meaningless, and as such in no way sounds like a shadowy league of assassins.

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
Took wages: shot civilians dead.

The good news is their contract's ended;
Bad reputations still cost you pay;
But with time some wounds are mended:
Rebranded, they'll be back one day.

----Zombie Update ----

2009-02-10T05:02:00.000-08:00

Two pieces of Zombie news this week:

In the "don't know whether to laugh or cry" category, we have this forthcoming publishing sensation:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.

I admit that there is potential in this:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that an revenant corpse in possession of good mobility must be in want of braaaaiiiiinss."

"Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far from doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other perfections. You would have been less amiable in my eyes had there not been this little unwillingness; but allow me to assure you that I have your respected mother's braaaiiinnnsss. You can hardly doubt the purport of my discourse, however your natural delicacy may lead you to dissemble; my attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as soon as I entered the house I singled you out as braaaiiinss. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it will be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying -- and moreover for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting braaaiiiinnnss, as I certainly did."

However, as the publishers claim that this "insanely" funny novel will introduce Austen's classic work to a new generation of fans, I'm going to come down on the side of weeping.

In other news, Oliver Kamm reveals that, whatever his many other attributes and accomplishment, he will be little more than dead weight when World War Z kicks off

UPDATE: A reader asks reasonably, in the comments below: "Is there any kind of evidence that you would accept as evidence for the supernatural?"
There is. In John's Gospel (11: 43-44) we read: "And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin."
If a man who has been dead for four days, such that "by this time he stinketh", is brought back to life then I will unhesitatingly accept this as evidence of supernatural intervention.

Bad instincts Kamm. When confronted with four-day-old walking corpses, your only unhesitating response should be to destroy the brain or remove the head. What good shall it profit a man if he gaineth his soul, but loseth his brains?

Collective Punishment Works

2009-02-10T03:58:00.000-08:00

That might be the lesson taken from this pair of stories:

UN Halts Gaza Aid Over "Thefts";

UN To Resume Aid Supplies To Gaza.

The timeline seems pretty conclusive: Hamas steals UN food supplies; UN withholds all supplies; Hama returns food. A successful piece of hardball negotiation, you might think. But what were the ethics of withholding the food?

At one level, it seems like an action taken against Hamas. The intention, certainly, was to withhold the food from them. But, given that UNRWA is the only or main supplier of food to Gaza, the effect was to make the entire population of Gaza suffer for Hamas' actions. And, in fact, UNRWA almost certainly did intend to use that suffering, and the (further) unpopularity it would cause Hamas' in Gaza, as the incentive for Hamas to change its ways.

Israel's longer and more comprehensive blockade of Gaza was held, by no means unreasonably, to be collective punishment of civilian's for the actions of their government and as such, arguably a crime against human rights. What of UNRWA? In both cases, we have an entity denying basic and vital supplies to the people of Gaza. In both cases, the purpose is to effect a change in Hamas' policy. What are the differences?

One difference is the scope of the issues. Israel's blockade was aimed at weakening and isolating Hamas generally, as an enemy of Israel, as well as forcing a ceasefire. The UNRWA's withholding of aid was directly related to a specific Hamas action - the theft of that aid. So UNRWA could argue that their actions were not punishing Gazans for the fact that Hamas holds power there. UNRWA could also argue the lack of alternatives: either it sent in aid trucks, or it didn't. Lacking it's own enforcement capability, what choices did it have?

However, just because your only option is an unethical one doesn't mean you have to take it. The key question in fact is what was happening to the food Hamas confiscated. If it was being distributed by Hamas as a "public works" PR offensive - that is, if much the same amount of food were going to much the same people as would have recieved it direct from UNRWA - then withholding the food does punish Gazans for the actions of Hamas. If, on the other hand, Hamas distributed the food mainly or exclusively to its own fighters, or used its control of the food supply to maintain or increase its hold on power, or selectively withheld it to punish its internal enemies, then the situation is different. In that case, continuing with food aid would have put UNRWA in the position of supplying and supporting a terrorist group, and effectively of taking sides in an armed conflict. This is, obviously, both in the short and long term, an exceptionally bad idea.

Now, it's not immediately clear what Hamas planned to do with the food supplies. But, and call me prejudiced if you will, I do incline to think the worst of them. So I'd say UNRWA probably did the right thing (which will come as a relief to them, no doubt). But it's interesting how close even humanitarian goals can take us to unethical behaviour.

Waffle

2009-02-02T04:22:00.000-08:00

Under the Conservatives, the people of Britain will both eat their cake and have it, said David Cameron. Speaking at Davos, he outlined the Conservative vision of baking:

"Yes, we're in favour of cake-eating. I've said many times, cake-eating is what drives our economy. But when cake-eating gets in the way of our society, our environment and our values, then we must not sit there and take it, going along with the old orthodoxy that cake-eating is all that matters. We must speak out. It's time to make sure people have cake - even if that means disrupting the global cake-eating agenda. It's time to decentralise baking, so that people can have cake at a local level. We must look after parents and families, and make sure that they have all the cake they need.

Because let me make this clear. Lots of people today are worried that they won't have cake, and angry with the cake-eaters for eating it all. And my party is basically the party of cake-eating. So I'm in a bit of a bind here. That's why I say to the people of Britain, you can have your cake. And to my party I say, of course we'll eat cake. That's what being leader of the Opposition is all about."

This is why we all need broadband

2009-01-31T06:55:00.000-08:00

Following PooterGeek, I'm happy to let you know that Pythons aren't the only ones embracing YouTube: the entirety of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is now available to watch, in handy 10 minute chunks.

You might have something better to do with your weekend, but I doubt it.

I think we're going to need some more Laws, Dr Asimov

2009-01-31T06:41:00.000-08:00

Another entry for your "Science Too Cool Not To Do" files:

Researchers at the University of the West of England in Bristol have developed a new, carnivorous robot, called Ecobot II, that eats and digests flies for power. The researchers are working on "release and forget" robots that can find their own power sources after being deployed. This is the same team who developed the well-known Ecobot I (aka Slugbot) that ate and digested slugs for power. Expect more carnivorous robots in the future. Ecobot II is an improvment but still takes 12 minutes of digestion to generate enough energy to move forward 2 cm. And Ecobot doesn't smell too nice either, since it's digestion process relies on human sewage for the bacteria needed. For more, see the stories in NewScientist.com, Newsfactor, Scotsman.com, and the discussion on Slashdot.

A senior researcher who wished to remain anonymous admitted that "the descendants of these robots will surely rise and eat us all, but come on! A robot that eats flies - how could we NOT build that?"

Looks good, smells a bit funny

2009-01-27T04:38:00.000-08:00

I was struggling to follow Paulie's position on MPs expenses; like Mr E I didn't see the harm in accounting for money spent, or in scrutinising that expenditure. Nor, to be honest, did I see how this scrutiny was a barrier to MPs doing their jobs.

I begin to see his point, though, with the BBC's decision not to broadcast the DEC appeal. Although most of the scrutiny to which the Beeb is subjected tends to be on somewhat more frivolous grounds, there's no denying it's been picked up before for displaying pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel bias (even in internal reports, apparently). Now it has declined to air the DEC appeal in order to "avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story". There's no question about the merits of the appeal - the Beeb isn't disputing that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, or that the DEC really is trying to alleviate it. The concern that broadcasting the appeal will look partial.

This concern smacks of Mark Twain's cat on the cold stove lid. The BBC's failings of impartiality involved use of language, editorial focus and choice of sources. They didn't involve broadcasting (presumably accurate) charity appeals. But having been criticised in the past, the Beeb is drawing its head in now. The rights and wrongs of the current situation are less important than maintaining (or improving) a reputation. Their solution is to play safe, and avoid more criticism, whether justified or not. And it's a particularly crude solution. If the fear was that devoting however much screen time to images of Palestinian victims would offer a simplistic and biased view of a complex situation, the BBC is uniquely blessed with the opportunity to devote as many minutes of screen time as it needs to presenting a more balanced and nuanced perspective, or to "cancel out" the impression of Palestinian suffering with a documentary on life in an Israeli town under constant rocket attack.

Admittedly that's an approach that involves judgement, and engagement, and runs the risk of further criticism. Whereas not running the appeal is a public show of striving to avoid bias. This I think is what Paulie was aiming at when he talked of "squeaky clean purveyors of public cant". If your principal concern is to look good, rather than do your job, then you're not going to serve the public interest.

Still don't object to seeing MPs expenses though.

We're Doomed

2009-01-21T05:59:00.000-08:00

American Political News: Dynamic, epoch-making, inspirational new President takes office.

British Political News: Ken Clarke rejoins Shadow Cabinet.

Is that really all we've got?

You can't see clean air

2009-01-15T08:58:00.000-08:00

It's no surprise that the govenment went for a third runway. On the one hand, you've got BAA and "business" saying, "Jobs. Money. Investment. Growth." On the other, the green lobby saying, "CO2, average temperature increases over the next century, n% chance of more frequent flooding." On the third, a bunch of attention-whores chaining themselves to railings and organising tea-parties. Skipping over the ineffectual, self-aggrandising, narcissistic, ill-judged, self-satisfied "popular" protests, the green case is somewhat lacking.

I don't mean that it's wrong. Just that to politicians with necessarily short-term horizons and (particularly at the moment) a need to be seen doing something concrete, making the upper atmosphere that bit less rich in carbon-dioxide doesn't really cut it as a visible achievement. Simply saying "Don't do that" leaves you looking hollow. Environmentalists need to offer an alternative by making their own "Jobs. Money. Investment. Growth" arguments. What problem is the third runway solving? What else would solve it? The unsuccessful campaign won a few concessions - one was that the government would maybe think a bit about high-speed rail. What if that had been backed from the begining? What if the offer had been, "We'll free up runway space by cutting down domestic flights."? What if there'd been a costed proposal for high-speed rail from the start. What if it focused on job creation in marginal constituencies?

John Harris is arguing that this decision exposes a new divide in the Labour party - Old Labour vs New Enviro-Labour. I'm not sure about that. I think the divide is what it's always been - what you'd like to do and what can get away with doing.

Education matters

2009-01-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

Here's a cautionary tale from the US:

Parents take away 17-year-old's copy of Halo 3. 17-year-old shoots both parents. 17-year-old tried and convicted.

Judge says: ""I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever."

Parents! Waste no time in explaining the concept of death. Buy short-lived pets. Hang out in graveyards and old-people's homes. The life you save may be your own.

Back to the well

2009-01-08T06:39:00.001-08:00

I'm glad I didn't get around to writing about Cameron's new stab at economic policy, because I'd now be in the embarrassing position of telling you to ignore it and go read Hopi Sen's or John Band's version instead. Luckily, it didn't even cross my mind to start playing Uxbridge English Dictionary, so there's no shame in my sending you to Freemania to do that.

So where does that leave me? Well, if in doubt, sneer at a bloggertarian. It's not big, or clever, but it is so very, very easy. Acting on an anonymous tip-off, I bring you this comment in response to Devil's Kitchen's explanation of why his core moral/political principals have driven him to stop giving to charity. Have you ever felt that their probably is a shadowy cabal ruling the world, but that the usual suspects (masons/Jews/lizard-people) are a just a little too obvious? Good for you - it turns out it's the very last people you'd expect:

They're the Temperance Movement. In fact, most of what we call the "nanny state" in terms of health policy and restrictions is basically the modern manifestation of the Temperance Movement, who from their earliest days were strongly associated with the "Progressive" movement and the "Left" in the Liberal and Labour parties. ...

While normal people were all having a bit of a laugh in the post-war period of social liberalisation, these bastards were worming their way into the international and national bureaucratic cloud that was developing, organisations like the WHO.

Did you know that the Womens Christian Temperance Union were one of the UN's founding NGOs? This war has been running for a very long time. They've cemented their position very well, and we're now in the phase where they're swarming over the city walls.

We're up against a very large, well funded, well organised coalition with a long history of winning.

Yes, my friends, you thought the WCTU was a thing of the past. Fools! They merely retreated to an underground bunker somewhere in darkest Kensington, from which they direct not only government policy but also conference call regularly with Kofi Annan. Soon they will wrest ultimate control over Britain from the grip of their puppet government and we will be forced to march in lockstep to the tune of "Father, Dear Father". I invite anyone who doubts this to consider the state of Britain's city-centres on Saturday night: the chain teashops on every corner, sugared-up pensioners brawling on the pavements; two-for-one deals on digestive biscuits. There can be no doubt that that Temperance movement has been winning its battles for many a long year.

Jesus wept.

Confirming the stereotype

2009-01-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

One prediction I should have made is that newspapers will continue to amaze us all with the complete bollocks they're prepared to print as long as a) it comes wrapped up in a shiny press release and b) it's got "news value" (trans. entertainment value). Consider this story from the Guardian:

US porn barons appeal for $5bn bailout to help prop up limp industry

Even if it weren't completely obvious from the headline it soon becomes apparent that this is exactly the cheap publicity stunt it appears to be, coinciding as it does with this year's AVN Awards - the American porn industry's trade show. Moreover, the Guardian clearly knows this, given its use of the phrase "PR coup" in the first sentence of the article. So why is this news?

The obvious answers are a) laziness and b) sex. But if we instead go along with the fantasy that the Guardian's editors consider this to be genuinely newsworthy, what interest is it they think their readers have in the tribulations of the American porn industry? Are they flagging up a business opportunity? Warning of a forthcoming shortfall in new titles? What, exactly, are they trying to say about me?

In your face, Delphi!

2009-01-02T05:50:00.000-08:00

Hope you all had a good Christmas/New Year, and are starting off January fat, hung-over and happy.

Not much of interest happened in 2008; what will 2009 bring? On the basis of absolutely nothing at all, certainly not expertise or wisdom, here are my predictions for the coming year:

The extent to which the media runs "the economy sucks" stories will only marginally exceed the extent to which the economy really does suck;

The structural integrity of President Obama's coat-tails will begin to fail under the weight of beleagured European leaders who latch on with a drowning grip;

Labour will, however briefly, due to whatever short-lived factor, overtake the Conservatives in the polls. We will then drown in speculation about a) an early election b) internal Labour leadership rivalries c) internal Tory leadership rivalries. This will be so much more interesting than actually discussing the merits and demerits of competing policies;

There won't be an election;

Someone, somewhere, will write "austerity is the new consumerism" and mean it

Despite the oft-voiced hope of middle-class commentators that enhanced poverty will at least drive the poor into eating properly, sales of Bargain KFC family buckets will increase.

Aside from the obvious ones (a celebrity couple will divorce, a reality show will create a gripping scandal, a national sports team will come close to success but not quite make it), that's that. As they're proven hopelessly wrong throughout the year, I'll revisit them and twist them into knots to show how I reallly did mean the opposite of what I said.

At least we know when we're ill

2008-12-21T07:09:00.000-08:00

Posting's been right down here, hasn't it? Sorry about that. There are a variety of reasons: Christmas is about the only time I actually have a social life; this new trend of job interviewers asking you to prepare a "short" presentation is a complete, and unwarranted, time-thief; lastly, I've been ill.

It's worth being clear about the last part. This was no seasonal cold; I was genuinely, sweatingly, shiveringly, ill. That the onset of symptoms started on the way back from my team Christmas party, leading the next morning to the least convincing sickness phonecall in the history of employment is merely emblematic of the wretched, cough-racked misery that I've been dragging my sorry carcass through. Because on day two I had been called back for a second interview half way across town; there can be no better preparation for an hour's Sounding Clever And Being Impressive than hawking up 50cl of coagulated mucus at Vauxhall tube. I staggered back from what was doubtless an inspiring performance just in time to spend the next 36 hours shivering in 4 layers of clothing and drinking my own weight in vitamin-bearing fluid.

In other words, as my female colleagues and pretty much every woman I know took delight in informing me, I had man-flu. It is, apparently, all but impossible for men to actually get sick; anything short of Ebola gets a knowing roll of the eyes, a patient sigh and a healthy dose of patronising skepticism. You can get a signed affidavit from a battery of doctors for all the good it will do you; the first suggestion that, being ill, you've decided not to do some otherwise simple task (go to work, take the recycling to the skip, scale Mt Kilimanjaro) and you become just one more of a long line of whingeing males, eager to give in to their illness where a woman would soldier on, hopped-up on decongestant and coughing up her own spleen.

Well, enough. It may be little enough compared to centuries of social, financial and political dominance, but I'm done with it. Women's position as the arbiters of what is and is not illness, suffering or pain is based (as far as I can tell) on the all but unimaginable rigours of pregnancy and childbirth. (That and leg-waxing.) Not any more. From now on, I'm calling BS on the whole "agony of childbirth" thing. I bet it's really a doddle. Moreover, I'm going to take the wholly unsupported position that men would cope much better. "Tchah," I will say, when next confronted by another claim that men don't know what pain really is, "tchah. Sounds like it was just woman-birth."

I can't see this plan going wrong at all.

Holiday Cheer

2008-12-10T04:38:00.000-08:00

Owing to a MacGuffin in the space-time continuum, I've recently come into possession of some alternative drafts of "A Christmas Carol", as written by a number of different authors. In the interests of literary scholarship, I'm presenting a number here:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Tarantino

SCROOGE: I think you'll find - when all these festivities are over and done - I think you'll find yourself one smiling pauper. You see, right now, Bob, you've got a position. And painful as it may be, positions don't last for ever. Now that's a hard wretched fact of life, but it's a fact of life your posterior is going to have to get realistic about. This business is filled to the brim with unrealistic wretches who thought they'd be home on Christmas Day. If you mean they got fired, they did. If you mean they got time off, they didn't.

On the day itself, you might feel a slight glow. That's Christmas, humbugging you. Humbug Christmas! Much good Christmas ever did to any man. Overcome that nonsense, and a year from now, when your crippled son is dying piteously, you're gonna say, "Ebeneezer Scrooge was right"

MARLEY: I got no problem with that

SCROOGE: On Christmas Day, your posterior is in the office.

MARLEY nods

SCROOGE: Say it!

MARLEY: On Christmas Day, my posterior is in the office
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chuck Palahniuk

Marley becomes my business partner, and after that, Marley's rattling chains in my face and saying, the common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and deliverance, were, all, my business.

His ghostly chains piled on the floor, Marley says, "You will be haunted by three spirits"
I look about me for my own chains. You forge your own chain in life, link by link, yard by yard. You do it every day, the way you treat the people you pass by.

You treat people wrong and the chain will imprison your immortal soul. I know this because Jacob Marley knows this.

"Three spirits will visit you over the next three nights" says Marley. "You can't rebuild yourself until you truly hit bottom."

I am Ebeneezer's frightened anticipation.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a wretched miser in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a haunting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm sure there must be more out there...

Stalinism run riot

2008-12-05T11:19:00.000-08:00

So, if you're keeping score at home, Damian Green's rock solid position on the moral high ground has two foundations:

1) Parliamentary Privilege - to search his office is to tear down the very fabric of democracy, you big bullies.
2) You gotta have a warrant - can't search the sacrosanct Houses of Parliament without a warrant, approved by the DPP and blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Pity about this then:

Parliamentary privilege “does not embrace and protect the activities of individuals, whether members or non-members, simply because they take place within the precincts of Parliament.

and also this:

Section 8 (1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act as amended permits a Justice of the Peace to issue a warrant authorising a constable to enter and search premises where satisfied on application by a constable that there are reasonable grounds for believing:
[snip]
c) That entry to the premises will not be granted unless a warrant is produced.

So if you think you'll get consent, you don't need a warrant. Why did the police think they'd get consent? Because they asked for it the day before:

On Wednesday 26th November 2008 police officer led by the Senior Investigating Officer attended the Palace of Westminster to speak to the Serjeant at Arms...The officers explained the nature of the investigation and the purpose of the search and were satisfied that the Serjeant at Arms understood that police had no power to search in the absence of a warrant and therefore could only do so with her written consent or that of the Speaker. ... The Serjeant at Arms indicated that she would give her consent at the appropriate time...
On the 27th November 2008 officers attended the Palace of Westminster where they again saw the Serjeant at Arms and written consent to search was provided in two forms; namely a signature on a standard police search form 101 and in a letter provided by the Serjeant at Arms. It is understood that the Serjeant at Arms had obtained legal advice in the interim.

It's just like those Stasi pigs to follow the legal requirements. Just thugs in uniform, if you ask me.

(Yes, yes - it's technically possible that the police have published an entirely fictitious account of the crucial events. Wouldn't that be bold.)

Is there an eye-surgeon in the house?

2008-12-04T00:19:00.000-08:00

The Daily Mail reports on the latest pearls of wisdom from the Council of Mortgage Lenders. (The incredulous bolding is mine.)

In an explosive speech, director general Michael Coogan said that the 11.7 million with a mortgage are being forced to cope with a 'dysfunctional' market.
In a reference to the struggle of millions of homeowners to get a loan, he said: 'We have, in effect, returned to mortgage rationing.'
He also said the Government's £37 billion banking bailout was not enough to stop the crisis.
He accused the Government, the Bank of England the Financial Services Authority of making 'piecemeal, self-interested decisions'.

The Mail, somehow, does not go on to report the shout of laughter, followed by shocked silence, followed by murderous howls of frustrated rage with which the audience greeted this masterpiece of two-faced chutzpah, nor on the great fortune with which Mr Coogan escaped from the baying mob with his life.

Fools rush in

2008-12-01T04:52:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of good comment about the whole Green affair, particularly here, but for me the most trenchant was made by Tom Freeman.

I’d like to comment at some length on the propriety of the arrest of Damian Green, based on my detailed knowledge of the information the police acted on, what they found during their searches, the questions they asked him, the answers he gave, and the precise nature of his relationship with the civil servant in question. Alas, I have no such detailed knowledge

Nobody knows enough about this to say anything very sensible. It may be that the police have good evidence that Green was soliciting and rewarding leaks; in which case isn't it good that they were able to investigate a potentially very serious breach of the law? Or it may be that they had no such evidence; in which case this exactly as disgraceful as any other unwarranted* arrest/search. Ignorant of this fairly fundamental point, the media and MPs have settled instead for trivia, to wit:

1) Why hasn't the Home Secretary apologised?
For what? Personally ordering her jackbooted thugs to make Green's daughter cry? I suspect she didn't give that order. There's a difference between "sorry for" and "sorry that"; until we know that Jacqui Smith actually told the police a) to arrest Green or b) to be a bit mean to him when they did, then what need is their for her to apologise. Here's the gold standard of "heavy-handed" arrests - the Forest Gate raid that not only ended with counter-terrorism police questioning two innocent men for well over nine hours, but also involved one them being shot. No Home Secretary apologised for that - the police did. Because, you know, they're the ones who did it.

2) How could this happen to one of us?
The sense of oxen being gored is palpable. Check out Dennis MacShane's temperate use of language:

"MPs, yes they are protected under privilege when they speak in the House of Commons, but there is a broader constitutional privilege that says they can meet anyone, talk about anything, discuss their political passions, they can hold files, and the police, the agents of the state, do not storm in there and start breaking in or going into offices and taking away confidential files that all our constituents think will be treated confidentially."

I'd like to see some evidence of this "broader constitutional privilege". To read MacShane, you'd think MPs could have a stack of dead hookers in their office and remain beyond legal reproach. Here's a crazy notion: if, as an MP, you break the law you don't get to run inside your office and shut the door while the police come to a screeching halt outside the Palace of Westminster. This isn't the Dukes of Hazzard, for Christ's sake.

3) The pigs totally called him a paedo
Oh, sweet Jesus. Yes, the verb "grooming" does have one meaning relating to child abuse. Context, however is all. Despite all my calls to dog-grooming businesses, for example, I am still to find one that will even begin to help me realise my long-standing borzoi/shitsu threesome fantasy. Similarly, while you might be alarmed to hear a policeman ask if you've been involved in grooming, the immediate use of the phrase "26-year-old" should offer a glimmer of insight that you're not in fact being fitted up as politic's answer to Gary Glitter.

There's a point where righteous outrage begins to look a little like desparate shit-flinging; distraction rather than defence. When your position rests on the fundamental principles of democracy, why stoop to this petty, meaningless crap?

*I kill me.

Thanks for nothing

2008-11-27T05:48:00.001-08:00

Because Americans do the whole turkey thing a month early, I get to share this little pre-Christmas appetiser with you.

First the context: in a ceremony the full grotesquerie of which will shortly become apparent, Presidents and, evidently, State Governors "pardon" one lucky fowl in the days before Thanksgiving. You can see Palin twinkle her way through this ritual, and a subsequent interview, here.

But that is just prologue. The real meat to this story lies in this film of the same interview, which follows the bold artistic technique of keeping the real story in the background, allowing the apparent central character to witter on while the unexpurgated reality of the situation is presented in all its unvarnished glory.

Vegetarians*, fervent supporters of animal rights, people with any degree of empathy or anyone whose proximate work colleagues fall into any of the foregoing groups should on no account play this video.

*Darling, this means you.

Cost of everything

2008-11-27T02:35:00.000-08:00

Of all the PR tropes that make "churnalism" such an easy option for hacks, one above all gets my goat. The meaningless survey is almost boilerplate; the "scientific formula" that defines sexy armpits is admittedly ludicrous; nothing could be a greater insult to our collective sense of worth than the dread phrase "X costs British business £N Million every year".

The reduction of every human deed, word or thought to its tendentious and notional effect on some mythical bottom line has become so commonplace that the sheer horror of the notion seems to be overlooked. I still cling, futile and ill-founded though it be, to the notion that I have some innate value to the world above and beyond my ability to maintain an acceptable level of profit for shareholders. It may yet prove that my role on this wretched, ailing planet is neither measured nor defined by the hours I spend at work; that the span of my life has not, in fact, been allotted wholesale to the need for economic growth.

And yet it seems that no issue, from office politics to airport waiting time, can be adequately or sensibly discussed without recourse to some abstruse and flawed calculus, the assumptions of which are offensive (that my time belongs wholly to my employer); simplistic to the extreme (that every minute has equal value); and utterly unrealistic (that ceasing to do X necessarily means I will start doing Y). But even if this arithmetic actually meant anything, there is something borderline sociopathic about arguing, for example, that the reason to not keep workers in "cramped, dismal conditions" is because it costs money. (PDF). How about treating your workers like human beings simply because you're not a complete shit?

This trend has now reached what I can only hope is its nadir. Baroness Scotland has put a cost on domestic violence: £2.7 bn. Well, in that case, we should probably do something about it. Up till now, I was on the fence about domestic abuse. I mean sure, it's "bad" and so forth, but is it really economical to do anything? What exactly is my motivation here? What's the return on my hard-earned tax? I mean, yes, if we could, say, reduce wife-battering by 50% by spending a chunk of cash there'd be fewer bruised, battered women living in a permanent state of fear - but what's that worth?

Well, now we presumably know. We should spend up to £2.7bn fighting domestic abuse. Any women (or men) whom that doesn't help should understand that it's not that we don't care - it's just not economical.

(To be fair to Baroness Scotland - maybe she's right to make her case this way. Maybe the best or only way to persuade government and business that it might be worthwhile to stop domestic violence is to frame it as a profit and loss argument. In which case, it might be time to go a bit Tyler Durden.)

Feynman science

2008-11-21T04:21:00.000-08:00

Unbelievably, there appears to be some debate over the wisdom of cloning mammoths from recovered DNA. Wisdom doesn't come into it. The question to ask is not, "Is that really wise, sir?". The question is, "would this, or would it not, be totally awesome"? Less of the John Le Mesurier, more of the Bill and Ted.

I mean, dammit, the things will pay for themselves. Even assuming that I don't get to use one to commute to work (totally awesome), just imagine the money you can make from thrill-seeking big-game hunters. Never mind the mighty hippo - this is real game. More so if you rock it old school and take it down using only stone axes and spiked pits. I can imagine no finer achievement for 21st century science than to clone an extinct species, and then kill it.

Plus, has anyone run the numbers on the efficiency of farming megafauna? OK, more food and water per head, but if you can kit out a big enough abattoir your processing costs per carcass should plummet, surely. And there's a hell of a lot of meat on those things.

But of course, the practicalities are missing the point. "Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it" We should do this because we can. We should do it to show just how much we can do. Extinct species made to live again. And people say science doesn't have all the answers? If you don't want "let's go mammoth riding" to be the answer, then you are asking the wrong question.

Courage of your convictions

2008-11-18T11:15:00.000-08:00

Apparently, some scofflaw has leaked a full BNP membership list. The Register links to a "patriotic" blog where there is some consternation, running the gamut from panic:

Anonymous said...
I've just had a call, I'm on it to. I want my fucking member money back, like has been mentioned here, I could lose my fucking job. I'm bloody angry.

...to acronym-ridden paranoia:

Anonymous said...
OMG have you seen what has been written by LUAF? What if they give the list to ANTIFA? ANTIFA have just teamed up with BETA TAGAR! The Tagarines would petrol bomb us in our homes.

Anonymous said...
I can't believe you chaps are so surprised or worried! - The BNP "management" is an obvious target for infiltration by: HM Govt, Mossad/CIA French and German intelligence services and "Far left" groups - probably others.

I think this is my personal favourite:

Anonymous said...
Why the fuck are you showing comments that are clearly sent in from the great unwashed,who gives a fuck if they have a list or not. I'm proud to be a member.

But of course there is a real human cost here:

Anonymous said...

People on here who have not seen the list but "don't give a fuck" clearly have not the seen the names of 2 Scottish Premier footballers, half a dozen teachers, close to 100 serving soldiers and Prison officers, people who could be in real fucking trouble.

While some people clearly do not mind who knows about them, I don't fancy being a screw at some prison where some coon or reds can get worked up to have a go at some one.

Remember: Two wrongs don't make a right, even if sometimes it really, really, really feels like they would.

UPDATE: The full list can be found here. Searching for "police" reveals an astonishing number of ex-counter-terrorist officers. Or self-aggrandizing fantasists. It's difficult to say.

Modern studies

2008-11-18T10:35:00.000-08:00

Good news! Or at least, a silver lining. Remember that forthcoming recession? Turns out it's going to offer one bonus - it'll stiffen up the moral fibre of the nation and divert us from the endless, meaningless consumption that rules our wretched, grubby lives. So says the head of Cheltenham Ladies College:

"Sometimes, surrounded by media reports on Botox and bingeing, it's easy to feel we lead in a moral vacuum, garden in a gale. But we must go on gardening!
Am I alone in finding the economic downturn somehow bracing? Perhaps it will spell the end of the conspicuous and ultimately unfulfilling materialism of the me, me, me society. Let's hope so."

Yes, there's nothing like a bracing round of job-loss and home-repossession to make you focus on the important things in life. Just like in the war - sure they were bombing us and we were all half-starving, but it gave us character. Apart from the looters, obviously.

Incidentally, these "media reports on Botox and bingeing" - anyone want to have a guess at which newspaper Miss Tuck reads? Three guesses, first two don't count.

Beating the MSM at their own game

2008-11-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

One of the amusing aftershocks of the US election was the post-mortem twitching of the Republican party - specifically, the immediate scapegoating of Sarah Palin. This culminated in a series of revelations about her supposed ignorance: she didn't know Africa was a continent, not a country; she couldn't name the countries of NAFTA. This was seized upon not only by right-wingers with a grudge but, naturally, by victorious liberals looking for some easy gloating. And boy did they.

Want to guess the problem with this? It didn't actually, you know, happen. As the NY Times tells us, it was all an elaborate hoax. The apparent source, Martin Eisenstadt of the Harding Insitute for Freedom and Democracy doesn't, in the mundane sense of the word, exist. As he hotly denies here.

Following Nick Davies' description of the practice of "churnalism", it should be no surprise that several major news outlets fell for this in the rush to be first with a story. But there was a theory bandied around at one stage that blogs were better than that. Less invested in being first, less tied to the professionals, more intelligent, more sceptical. It's a good theory.

Taking pride in your work

2008-11-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

Paul Dacre has graciously shared some thoughts on modern journalism with the Society of Editors. While there are no surprises, it's a bit of an eye-opener nonetheless. There are edited highlights here, and a full version in PDF here.

There are some gems in the edited highlights, right enough: not only do we learn that adulterers' wives are just as morally culpable as adulterers, and that wearing a military-style uniform is tantamount to being a Nazi, but also that Dacre really does think it's his job to tell us how we can and can't have sex*. But buried in the meandering self-aggrandizing autobiographical notes with which Dacre started the full speech, we find as pithy and honest an account of "respectable" tabloid morality as we could ever hope to:

At university, I edited the student newspaper. I’m afraid I took a product that looked like the then Times on Prozac and turned it into a raucous version of Cudlipp’s Mirror complete, I shudder to admit, with Page 3 girl students whom I dubbed “Leeds Lovelies”.

We mounted an undercover investigation, complete with photographers, into seemingly respectable pubs that were putting on strip shows. Family entertainment it wasn’t. The Yorkshire Post which engraved the blocks for our pictures – remember those Neanderthal days – refused to process the photographs on the grounds they were obscene. With preposterous pomposity, I accused the Post’s Editor of abusing freedom of the press. He wouldn’t budge so we got the blocks made elsewhere and ran a front page story about censorship by the Post and a student paper that couldn’t be gagged.

And, of course, we sold the pictures to the News of the World for a vast sum and dined out on the proceeds for months to come.

Do you think that, on reading that back to himself, he thought, "Good Lord, I've been a tawdry smut-peddling hypocrite for my entire wasted, wretched, miserable life?" I'm betting not. But at least he's come clean. (Yes, yes: probably a first.) Ben Goldacre jokes about the Mail's ongoing project to classify all known objects into causes of, or cures for, cancer. They've got a similar programme with regard to sexuality, only the categories are A: Just a bit of fun and B: Ban this filth. Don't be fooled though: you can still enjoy category B. You just have to maintain that veneer of superior disgust throughout.

*So, the bad news is that military-style orgies are out. The good news, though, is that corsets are AOK. So that's uniforms - no; whalebone - yes. Do bear that in mind, you filthy beasts.

The real Barack Obama

2008-11-05T12:01:00.000-08:00

Newsweek reveals campaign secrets:

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

Now he's President and can say this stuff, can we get John Humphries to interview him? Please?

Politics makes people do crazy things

2008-11-04T09:04:00.001-08:00

Obama was raised by his maternal grandmother. He's often told how she made sacrifices to give him the best chance in life. It's fair to say that particular gamble paid off. And it's heartbreaking, therefore, that she died yesterday. She won't see her grandson become America's first black President.

Most people see that as a human tragedy. There are others who see further, however, to the real truth: Obama killed her. Either for the sympathy vote, or because of some far more elaborate scheme to do with his birth-certificate.

When you find yourself speculating that a Presidential candidate flew thousands of miles in the middle of campaigning - with a Secret Service team - in order to kill his 85 year-old cancer-ridden grandmother,you may begin to wonder whether you are, in fact, the sophisticated poltical thinker you believe yourself to be.

Crystal Balls

2008-11-03T09:08:00.000-08:00

I might otherwise have felt some small urge to lay down a prescient Presidential prediction, but that need has been more or less obviated by Nate Silver at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/. Given that he's run every single poll ever through a massive simulator to create 10,000 different electoral-vote scenarios, suggesting that I could make a better guess would be almost as ignorant as it would be egotistical. Plus, of course, the Hamilton factor.

So here's my prediction: a lot of people are going to be disappointed when Obama starts enacting the policies he has, not the policies they wish he had.

But we shouldn't underestimate the unprecedented nature of this campaign: the rich white war hero is the underdog and the born-in-poverty, mixed-race, community-organiser is the clear favourite. So much so, that he got the Nazis on his side:

Rocky Suhayda
Who: Chairman, American Nazi Party
Likes: Hitler, white people
Dislikes: Jews, immigrants, multinational corporations
Career highlights: Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: "If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere."
"White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. ... we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women--when usually negroes who have 'made it' immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize--that’s the kind of negro that I can respect.

Obama-Biden 08 - reaching all the way across the aisle.

True understanding is given only to the few

2008-10-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

Marcel Berlins thinks that 16-year-olds shouldn't get the vote because they are too ignorant of the world.

Ignorance is a terrible thing, of course. An ignorant man cannot be trusted to exercise good judgement on political issues. Not through any great personal flaw, but simply because, being unfamiliar with the true facts of the matter, he may misapprehend the issues involved and base his judgement on false premises. For example, such a man might fall into the error of thinking that we give the people power because they've got a track record of making good decisions. Complete nonsense. We give the people power because that that is where power belongs - in the hands of the governed. No-one ever fought for the vote because they thought they and their ilk were uniquely gifted to lead the country. They fought for representation. They fought to have a say in the political process that ruled their lives. We don't believe in democracy because it gives good results: we believe in it because it's right.

Only connect

2008-10-29T08:03:00.000-07:00

Band, John Band. By a bizarre coincidence, it's a name shared by a London based market analyst I used to work with, and a London based market analyst who blogs at Banditry. What are the odds of that?

It has genuinely taken me a few months to work that one out. On the other hand, I've never met this man before in my life.

We are the change we've been waiting for

2008-10-28T07:08:00.000-07:00

Changing my blog template is just my way of supporting Obama.

The lessons of history

2008-10-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

Remember the creationist who nearly discovered the sun? Here we have a libertarian stumbling upon tyranny.

Via the Devil's Kitchen, this short piece by the Nameless Libertarian* on the difference between fictional dystopias and the creeping, insidisous reality offers a number of keen insights. But skip over the paragraph explaining that Pol Pot was really a victim of society and treasure instead this explanation of where Orwell, Bradbury et al. go too far:

As I’ve already mentioned, the reality of the slide towards totalitarianism is far less exciting, or obvious as it is presented in fiction. Don’t imagine that there will be terrible war before the state takes complete control; they won’t need to do that. And they are not going to utter clear statements of intent, like burning books.

I for one can't think of a single real world example of a nascent totalitarian regime using the spectacle of book-burning to advertise its intent. Nor indeed, of one which seized power in the middle of some kind of world war. Honestly, where do these hacks get their ideas?

*well, would you want your friends to know?

You can't knock a good mark

2008-10-28T00:55:00.000-07:00

Shocking news from across the pond: US banks in receipt of their portion of the $700, 000, 000, 000 bailout may not put it to the good uses intended:

First, the $700 billion rescue for the economy was about buying devalued mortgage-backed securities from tottering banks to unclog frozen credit markets. Then it was about using $250 billion of it to buy stakes in banks. The idea was that banks would use the money to start making loans again.But reports surfaced that bankers might instead use the money to buy other banks, pay dividends, give employees a raise and executives a bonus, or just sit on it.

Those crazy bankers! Who could have predicted that they'd act irresponsibly with someone else's money? Among other people, David W Maurer, Professer Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Lousiville and author of "The Big Con". From his chapter on "The Mark", here's what he has to say about bankers:

Bankers, executors in charge of estates, trustees and guardians of trust funds sometimes succumb with surprising alacrity...Bankers, if they can be played at all, can be counted on to plunge heavily, for they can dip into bank funds with a view to reimbursing the bank once they have taken their profit.

Several instances of that ironical spectacle, one mark roping another, are reported by a mob operating in Florida. When a mark who is brought in expresses a desire to talk the matter over with his banker, he is (under certain circumstances) encouraged to do so. Sometimes the banker comes back with him, both of them well heeled for the play.

If you read Chris at Stumbling and Mumbling (and if you don't, you should) you might recognise some support for his low regard for the boss class here:

"Most marks come from the upper strata of society, which in America means they have made, married or inherited money. Because of this, they acquire status which in time they come to attribute to some inherent superiority, especially as regards matters of sound judgement in finance and investment. Friends and associates, themselves social climbers and sycophants, help to maintain this illusion of superiority. Eventually, the mark comes to regard himself as a person of vision and even genius...[he] easily forgets the part which luck and chicanery have played in his financial rise; he accepts his mantle of respectability without question; he naively attributes his success to sound business judgement."

Maurer's interest was the language of con-men*, but in the course of his studies he became so fascinated by the grift, and the insights it offered into human nature, that he wrote the definitive book. (Some scenes in The Sting, for example, are lifted pretty much intact.) The book was, of course, published in 1940 and is based on the golden age of the big con - c.1914-29. But we've all come a long way since then.

*"The best way to cool a heavy baby off is the cackle-bladder. Just plug the roper and watch the mark light a rag."