Saturday 31 January 2015

Red Gold and the curse of EU conformity


In a telling article about Greece, Nick Cohen say this about the European 'project':

The EU cannot take responsibility for what it has done and be magnanimous for reasons British readers may not grasp. Raised in a Eurosceptic country, we do not understand how an absolute commitment to the European project was a mark of respectability on the continent. Like going to church and saying your prayers for previous generations, a public demonstration of commitment to the EU ensured that the world saw you as a worthy citizen. If you wanted to advance in Europe's governing parties, judiciaries, bureaucracies and culture industries, you had to subscribe to the belief that ever-greater union was self-evidently worthwhile.

And this is true. But Nick Cohen needs to look closely into the UK's public sector and corporatist business sector where being anti-EU is the badge of the sinner. I recall my election campaign of 2001 in Keighley where we were handing out those much sneered at 'Save the Pound' leaflet. A senior local Labour politician was aghast that I - what he patronisingly called 'the decent sort of Tory' - could possibly oppose the single currency.

In my perambulations around public funding both as a councillor and also as someone working in the voluntary sector, I have encountered the unquestioning commitment to the EU project, to the funding it provides and to the opportunities for pleasant junkets to nice European cities that come with the EU game. To conform to the mindset of the public sector - especially in my field of regeneration - you have to do just what Cohen describes, to have that "absolute commitment to the European project".

To borrow from David Eddings, the EU has spread its red gold across the continent - funding this project and that scheme, supporting international exchanges and generally making people feel that the project is a great big cuddly Father Christmas sort spreading joy and happiness. Very different from the stern and questioning national and local governments.

Greece - and soon Spain, Italy and France - are reaping the full cost of this red gold. Suckered into its spell they hooked their fortune to the fortune of Germany believing that this magical union of currencies would lead them to that better, richer, more Germanic world. As Nick Cohen concludes:

Europe does not seem pleasant, prosperous or peaceful today. When historians write about the end of its postmodern utopia, they will note that it was not destroyed by invading armies anxious to plunder Europe's wealth or totalitarian ideologues determined to install a dictatorship, but by politicians and bureaucrats, who appeared to be pillars of respectability, but turned out to be fanatics after all.

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Rags, swag and pet food - Gentrification, markets and the grocery store...




Scott Beyer writes about gentrification:

If you’re an urban pioneer who settled in downtown Cleveland sometime in the past decade, you’re probably happy with the neighborhood’s progress. Even as the city as a whole has continued to lose population, the central area has revived thanks to an influx of young and educated newcomers. Downtown Cleveland right now has its highest-ever population, with more than 13,000 residents and lots of new housing developments on the way. There are more than 4,000 hotel rooms, with another thousand expected by 2016. And residents today enjoy a more walkable neighborhood, as new restaurants and bars open around old cultural institutions like the theater district. If you are looking for a large grocery store, however, you’re still out of luck.

Partly this reflects the high income of those gentrifying folk plus their preference for eating out - not so much at fancy sit down restaurants but at those street food places, coffee shops and bars that sell slices of cured pig. But it also raises a question about the economics of food retailing and the truth that retailers (especially convenience retailers) are entirely driven by 'counting chimneys' - or whatever the urban high rise equivalent of 'counting chimneys' might be. If there aren't enough people living in the area, there won't be a grocery store.

The response has been subsidy or financial incentive (or even worse - and UK planners are very guilty here - use class constraint). The problem with this approach is that it doesn't change the economic reality - if there aren't enough customers spending enough money then the store will close once the incentive dries up.

The answer - rather than chasing national retail chains or hoping for some hipsterish spin on the corner shop - may lie with something that can be great but is too often neglected by local authorities: the market. The problem is how to strike the balance between the municipal market's traditional customer base and the wealthier, trendier folk following in the wake of gentrification.

The commodification of the shopping experience, with its attendant fetishization of taste and provenance, is still in its early phase in Kirkgate Market, as indeed it is in other British markets. In this sense, Kirkgate and other similar markets are on the gentrification frontier.

Part of the irony here is that the 'hipster' is searching for authenticity, for the sense of discovery and difference, yet doesn't realise what is the authentic and genuine in an English municipal market (swag, rag and pet food as one trader described it to me a few years ago).  I have criticised Leeds Council's approach to Kirkgate - preferring long leases and high rents in the Grade I listed part of the market buildings thereby creating something of a false environment. This is not because I'm against long leases or higher rents per se but because it is very clear that this strategy doesn't work.

Given that markets are in publicly-owned spaces (whether open air or covered) and not operated for profit, there is the opportunity to both support the traditional low income customer base (who want swag, rag and pet food) and also to encourage new customers - whether from new immigrant groups or from those trendy gentrifying sorts. In and around Bradford's Oastler Centre (I still think I was wrong to agree to changing its name from John Street Market) we can see this mix in play as the old mix of stalls (meat, fish, greengrocery, clothing and cafes) is supplemented by stalls serving the new immigrant communities - the spice stall, the stalls catering for African, Philipino and middle-eastern communities. What has yet to happen is for new places to open that complement the customers served by the bars and cafes opening in adjacent streets.

But I'm not here to talk about Bradford's regeneration but to look more generally at how gentrification delivers both benefits and problems. The benefits come from the investment and from the spending power of a wealthier customer base -- no-one can deny that this can, and does, transform places. But the downside is that the improvements are all kecky-pooky. We get nice bars, cafes and specialist food or clothing retailers but the everyday stuff of the high street - grocery, hardware and so forth - doesn't arrive or at least doesn't arrive so quickly.

As Scott Beyer concludes (after two decades of gentrification) in Cleveland where the first general grocery, Heinen's, has opened:

Retail options are now focused around a few scattered nodes, namely the East Fourth Street pedestrian mall, the 5th Street Arcades and the Warehouse District. For the neighborhood to be truly livable, say Starinsky and others, the city will need to fill in the gaps with additional retail options. Attracting the right mix of stores will require continued focus by public officials and private groups alike. But downtown residents will no doubt look at the opening of Heinen’s as a crucial step in the right direction.

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Friday 30 January 2015

Friday Fungus: It had to happen! Welcome to mushroom chocolate!



I am grateful to Julia for bringing this to my attention:

Our aim has always been to develop high quality medicinal mushroom products that improve your health and wellbeing. Not only that, but we want to make it a tasty experience too. That's why our chocolates are the perfect excuse to enjoy raw chocolate whilst getting all the healing benefits of mushrooms. 
The full chocolate range - seven flavours is available at Harrods. Where else!

The firm in question is Hifas da Terra who are a splendidly batty (but super-scientific) Spanish company:

The Hifas da Terra project comes from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC ) where Catalina Fernández de Ana Portela, biologist and founder of the company, began to develop an initiative to grow saprophytic fungi on wood logs. After several years of business coaching and scientific studies at the forestry reasearch center ”Lourizán”, Hifas da Terra was created in 1999. A biotechnology company focused on mycology, trying to bring the knowledge of the beneficial properties of mushrooms to the people.

The firm retails mushroom kits, creams, soaps and health spa treatments, assorted gourmet products (including mushrooms in honey - not to be confused with honey mushrooms), food supplements and gifts, including a range of stylish clutch bags:

Brilliant!

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Thursday 29 January 2015

In which our friend Leg Iron explains stuff to the Daily Mail's health experts...


As it’s payday on Friday and I have a little to spare, what took my fancy tonight was a lump of rump steak with a bottle of cut-price Aberlour for dessert.

And so on - quite wonderful. Do read and act on the advice therein.

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Why the world isn't going to run out of food.



Various publications have leapt on some research looking at 'peak-rate years of global resource use' to scare us with a new thing called 'peak food':

Researchers from Yale University, Michigan State University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany claim what makes their study alarming is how many staple foods have peaked in a short space of time, and as global population levels are expected to reach nine billion by 2050.

So reports the Independent - indeed they have a suitably alarmist quotation from one of the researchers. The problem is that what the researchers are measuring for renewable resources like food isn't total resource use but the rate of increase. So the rate in the expansion of agricultural land started to decline around 1950 ('peak land' if you want to use alarmist speak) and, the authors point out, "recently stabilized at the highest recorded levels, about 1.8 x 106 ha (Ramankutty and Foley 1999)."

The result of this is:

Since the Green Revolution in the early 1960s, the world's cereal (grain) production has increased by 136 percent - from 877 million metric tons per year to 2068 million in 20031 (Figure 1). Grain yields increased by 129 percent over the same period, from 1.4 to 3.1 metric tons per hectare. Total grain production in the United States (U.S.) also doubled - from 164 million metric tons in 1961 up to 349 million in 2003, accounting for 17 percent of the total global grain production. At the same time, overall U.S. grain crop yields doubled from 2.5 to 5.9 metric tons per hectare, an increase of 136 percent and almost double the global average. Europe experienced similar gains.

So the calories available per capita for the world's population now stand at around 2800 calories per day (and yes, I know that this is pretty unevenly distributed). Given that the NHS recommends an intake of 2500 per day for men and 2000 per day for women all this suggests that there is plenty of scope for us to feed a larger population (about 300 million or so larger).

There's no doubt that we face a challenge to meet the calorie requirements for a growing world population. But this rather questions the typical green left response to this problem (their preference for eugenics aside) - talking about local sustainability, resiliance and self-sufficiency. The authors of this study also report on 'peak energy':

The available data suggest that peak-rate years for several nonrenewable resources, i.e., coal, gas, oil, and phosphorus, have not yet occurred.

This suggests that there is plenty of scope to meet energy needs without taking up valuable agricultural land to do so. About 10% of agricultural land is given over to 'biofuels' and other forms of non-food crop - that land would provide enough food (depending on whose calculation you use) for around 250 million people.

The other consideration is crop yields. The 2013 yield per acre for the USA is 7340 kg/ha which compares to a world average of around 3500 kg/ha (it was 3563.54 kg/ha in 2010). If all yields rose to the level in the USA world food production would more than double. If yields reached the levels of Belgium (9213 kg/ha) then world production would be 2.6 times higher - enough to feed a world population of 23 billion much more than even the most dire predictions of the population doomsters.

Finally there are prices. If we were seeing real pressure on supply we would expect to see food prices rising. Here's the FAO Food Price Index since 1960 - it doesn't suggest that there's much of a problem:



This 'peak food' thing makes for a nice story (and I guess we need to be challenged) but the data really doesn't suggest that the world is running out of food or indeed anywhere close to running out of food. And I know one thing for sure - autarky, self-sufficiency, community resilience, agricultural protectionism and anthropomorphic attitudes to animal welfare will make things worse. The very greeny-greeny left that gets all agitated by things like 'peak food' are the very people who always propose solutions that would merely make matters worse.

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Wednesday 28 January 2015

No book programmes on TV? Rather than moan about it, Mr Harris, go and make one

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I make no secret of my dislike for the manner in which books (and arts in general) are discussed by the folk in the media. So I was struck by the report that Robert Harris, who I gather is a successful author, had a go at the BBC - and broadcasting in general - for its coverage of 'books':

‘Today we have 300 television channels and no dedicated book programme and it does seem to me that that is an absolute disgrace,’ he told the audience, who cheered in response. ‘The BBC, a monetary funded organisation, should do a bit more to help business. Whether we write fiction or non fiction, we provide the basis for movies, for documentaries and I do think Tony Hall if you’re watching this on the BBC news do a little bit more for the book trade please."

OK, let's take Mr Harris at his word and agree that (as he told the reporter) there is a demand for a TV programme about books. If this is the case then there is a market opportunity and Mr Harris, rather than expecting the BBC to spend taxpayers money on making such a programme, should invest his own cash - or cash from other investors - in what is clearly a great business idea.

Unless, of course, the demand is only from the tiny audience of self-important glitterati in which case, Mr Harris, this is just special pleading.

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Quote of the day - Nick Cohen on the politically correct

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Pursed lipped prudes, who damn others for their sexist, racist, homophobic and transphobic language, while doing nothing to confront real injustice, are characteristic figures of our time.

That's about the sum of it. The rest of the article is pretty good too - go read it.

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Tuesday 27 January 2015

In which a former Bradford Lord Mayor Mohammed Ajeeb fails to understand free speech.

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I like Mohammed Ajeeb, he's like the progenitor of Bradford's Pakistani Labour politics and most of the time speaks with wisdom. I did once point out that he knew absolutely nothing about marketing (which was true) and now I will point out that we don't, as he suggests, need a new definition for free speech:

At a human level priding ourselves with ignominy is a camouflage for moral sanctimony. In these extraordinary times when different definitions of freedom of speech are banded about, there is pressing need for a more agreeable new definition. Perhaps this difficult task could best be undertaken by the world organisation like United Nations.

All this is suggested because Ajeeb wants people to stop being rude about the founder of Islam, Mohammed. Now, leaving aside the self-evident fact that Mohammed is pretty dead and clearly not upset by cartoons, there isn't any way in which you can 'redefine' free speech without making it 'not free speech'. This is because the definition is really straightforward - you're allowed to say stuff. The 1st Amendment to the US Constitution is a good guide:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There you have it, Ajeeb - you can gather, worship, speak and go about your life freely. That is called civilisation and should be our aim - that we place restrictions on speech is because some choose to kick out at peace and freedom, to cry out the you shouldn't be allowed to say that. If we must change it is to banish such people so we can live in a world where speech, worship, assembly and trade are free.

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Sacked for thought crime...

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The public sector is using its broadly written contracts of employment to sack people who say things that are deemed unacceptable.

NHS administrator Abdurrahman Siddique said HIV is a form of divine punishment for adultery and suggested British aid worker Alan Henning deserved to die at the hands of Isis terrorists because he was a “kafir” or non-believer.

In one post he is said to have claimed Isis were doing a “fine job” as the full extent of the Islamists’ brutality was emerging in July last year.

He was sacked from Hammersmith Hospital last week after his extremist rants were brought to the attention of NHS bosses.

Now Abdurrahman seems to hold some quite disturbing views. But they are just that - views. No suggestion is being made that these statements or opinions affected his work or the reputation of the hospital.

And this case isn't a one-off either:

A town hall worker has been suspended after posting an Islamophobic comment on Facebook.

Dave Balderstone, 46, replied to a British National Party post with the message: ‘Kick Islam out of Britain - we need our country back.’

Manchester council bosses took action last week after a member of the public contacted the M.E.N. in disgust.

Mr Balderstone, of Manley Road, Chorlton, has now been suspended from his position as an IT support technician while the post is investigated.

Different set of unsavoury views, same response from the public agency. Same approach - complaint from a 'member of the public' or because is was 'brought to the attention of' bosses. What we're seeing here (apart from a glimpse of the wide range of opinions out there) is that complaints about material posted outside work in a non-work related environment are used to conduct vendetta. Maybe it was a random member of the public who happened to see Dave Balderstone's Facebook page and happened to know he worked for the Council - I suspect not. And - however barking Abdurrahman Siddique's opinions might be - I'm pretty sure he's spot on when he says:

“It's very clear to me that this was a personal vendetta against me by someone who knew me and was determined to get me the sack.”

We really need to stop sacking people for saying stuff when it really has no impact on the business - the hospital admin worker can go on moving paper across his desk and the IT technician can carry on trying to fix Manchester City Council's rickety computers regardless of their dubious opinions.

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Monday 26 January 2015

“A book is a loaded gun.” So ban them or burn them.

 

One of the first targets of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi organization were books. This began in 1933, shortly after Hitler seized power in Germany. He ordered leaders of the regime to confiscate and destroy any literature deemed subversive to the National Socialist agenda. The elimination of these documents was carried out in a ceremonial fashion. Public book burnings were held for all the citizens to view. These demonstrations were held in both Germany and Austria. All works authored by Jewish, communist, pacifist, socialist, anarchist and classic liberals were fair game.

It does seem that we have learnt nothing. Here - in the latest example of Labour's selective memory about free speech - is a proposal to ban Hitler's turgid racist tome, Mein Kampf:

“Of course Amazon – and indeed any other bookseller – is doing nothing wrong in selling the book. However, I think that there is a compelling case for a national debate on whether there should be limits on the freedom of expression,” writes Docherty to Javid.

Of course Docherty is very careful to tiptoe around making a specific proposal to ban Mein Kampf but the very fact that he can countenance such a ban (or a limited ban where only a few specially licensed academics can view Adolf's incoherent racist ramblings) reveals just how much of a problem the left has with the idea of free speech.

The question for Docherty is where the line is drawn. Do we draw it, as he suggests around the idea of 'hatred' and if so what do we mean by hatred? Do we consider the consequences of a given writing - in which case Das Kapital is just as much a candidate for Docherty's Ban with its fomenting hatred of enterprise, initiative and free choice. And what are we do do about religious books like the Koran or Bible with their incitement to kill infidels, execute gays, stone adulterers and slice chunks off burglars? Do we ban them too?

What should worry us most isn't merely the fact of a Labour MP calling for books to be banned but the concluding rational that Docherty puts up:

Docherty said that the reality today is that if “someone puts the contents of Mein Kampf on to a blog, the police would knock on their door …

This is maybe true. And if it is, it is a damning observation of our supposedly free society. It scares me just how close we are to banning books simply because they promote ideas we find discomforting, disturbing or contrary to the current 'truth' and 'wisdom'. We need books - all of them, good and bad:

“There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves” 

So wrote Ray Bradbury in his passionate defence of the book, Fahrenheit 451. Docherty and the other banners or burners are scared, fearful the good men will be corrupted by words on the page. That we won't see through to the evil or some ideas - whether from Trotsky or Hitler, Guevara or Goebbels. Docherty and all the anti-free speech left are wrong. We are stronger, better and more decent than that - and we deserve the right to know evil for what it is.

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Sunday 25 January 2015

It's poverty that matters not the choices that poor people make...

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In recent days both of our leading political parties have, to one degree or another, embraced the idea that the government has some role in regulating people's lifestyles. And especially the lives of poor people. Indeed, we are expected to carry on with the Fabian judgementalism which made Alfred Doolittle and his friends such a problem - their poverty was, it is implied, the consequence of their poor lifestyle choices rather than a response to poverty.

It seems to me, and has done for a very long while, that we don't solve the problem of poor lifestyle choices by authorising the wrenching of those choices from the hands and lips of the people making them. Not just because such a judgement is immoral but because it doesn't work - we know and have seen thousands of times - that bans, price hikes, regulations and controls merely drive the people who choices you want to influence into the welcoming hands of criminals - smugglers, dealers, moneylenders and all the other occupations of organised gangs.

So it was pleasing to read someone writing in the Guardian who points out the central truth about poor people and poor lifestyle choices - these are responses to their circumstance not the cause of that circumstance:

The underclass eats fast food, drinks and smokes, and some of its more unruly members even take drugs. Why? Why?

Listen, I always want to say, if you’re genuinely mystified, answer me this: have you never had a really bad day and really wanted – nay, needed – an extra glass of Montrachet on the roof terrace in the evening? Or such a chaotic, miserable week that you’ve ended up with a takeaway five nights out of seven instead of delving into Nigella’s latest?

You have? Why, splendid. Now imagine if your whole life were not just like that one bad day, but even worse. All the time. No let-up. No end in sight. No, you can’t go on holiday. No, you can’t cash anything in and retire. No. How would you react? No, you’ve not got a marketable skills set. You don’t know anyone who can give you a job. No. No.

Great stuff (even if I don't think people who don't get this are sociopathic - it's an overused and abused term) that sums up the truth. The single mum in a damp council flat - she has a crap life and the Lambrini, the packet of cheap cakes and the fags help make that crap life just a little bit tolerable And the bloke just made redundant for the tenth time in six years, back on the dole and facing the slightly sneering insistence of the DWP - three cans of premium lager, some roll-ups and a £5 flutter at the betting shop help get him through the depressing prospect of trying to find another crap job to replace the crap job he's just lost.

Yet we want to make out that that single mum's problem is that she's three stone overweight not that she lives a crap life in a crap flat. And that the unemployed bloke would be better off if he didn't drink or smoke - as if that would help find him a stable job paying a decent wage. Everywhere I look, I see people wanting to lecture these people - plus the lads on the park bench, the girl's with a bottle of cheap vodka loading up before heading out to places where they can't afford to drink and the old bloke sat outside Wetherspoons on a chilly morning nursing a pint of the cheapest ale that establishment sells.

We need to stop the judgement. Put away the puritan lectures. And focus ourselves on the real problem - that, even in our rich land, there are too many people who have pretty crap lives. Not just because of misfortune but because of poverty. Not inequality but poverty plain and simple. Not having enough of the means for life not to be crap. And the discussion we should have here isn't about how we can take money off one set of folk to give to poor people - as if there is no prospect of them standing on their own feet and only the forced charity of the wealthy can put things right.

Instead let's talk about the barriers to turning folk around - to finding ways for their lives to be a little less crap. Some of this is about money but a great deal is about the way in which we've allowed the mission creep of political priority to make people's lives worse - whacking great big 'green' imposts on fuel prices, ramping up 'sin' taxes making one of the most regressive tax systems known to man, and creating a housing system where without subsidy only the rich can live in the places where there are jobs and where people want to live.

So let's stop treating the less well off as another species - a world filled with indigent drunks and feckless mums - and ask instead how the well-meant decisions of government have made it harder for them to have a life that isn't completely crap. Above all let's stop taxing, banning, regulating and judging the things that take the edge off poverty, that help people deal with the bad stuff and which give folk a small bit of pleasure in an otherwise depressing world.

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Friday 23 January 2015

A question...

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What if the projections are wrong? What if, rather than the city growing younger and larger it grows older and smaller? What if the economy becomes dominated by the business of looking after that older population? And what if the older people who remain are the poorest and least healthy?

Residents of seaside towns, large and small, will be familiar with this picture. From being wealthy places of leisure and pleasure they have - from Blackpool to Bridlington, from Southend to Littlehampton - become just these kind of places.

The question for people in marginal northern towns - whether in East Lancashire or Yorkshire of the North East - is whether this picture is a real possibility for our future?

I ask because the happy thriving future we're being sold be politicians and planners might not be real.

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Thursday 22 January 2015

A dangling conversation about Mrs Roosevelt and parking outside Cullingworth Primary School

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For many years I subscribed to that famous Eleanor Roosevelt dictum - you know the one:

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Now leaving aside just what an unpleasant gossipy bitch Mrs Roosevelt was, I've now come to the conclusion that this dictum is a monumental load of tommyrot. And this realisation came from listening to a song I really don't like all that much - Paul Simon's 'The Dangling Conversation'. In the third verse Simon tells us:

Yes we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in The Dangling Conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives.
The couple in the song lived absolutely according to Mrs Roosevelt's dictum yet Paul Simon suggests that the result of this is that what they considered to be grand thoughts about important matters were, in truth, utterly superficial. What matters is more personal, more direct and much much more difficult to discuss - how we feel about others, how people relate and how this affects our lives.

This morning I turned down the opportunity to go on the radio for a discussion about 'Charlie Hebdo', free speech and all that stuff. I did so because some neighbours of the primary school in Cullingworth have complained about parking by parents delivering their children to the school. An utterly mundane matter of no strategic significance but, I decided, far more important than pontificating about grand things on the radio.

At the primary school I've got a fighting chance of doing something to make the situation a little better, to allow my neighbours (and the school's neighbours) to rub along together a little better. And this matters far more to people than whether or not I think it's OK to publish cartoons that might upset someone. Those people are the small minded folk that Mrs Roosevelt viewed with such snooty disdain - they want to tell me about the man who parks his 4x4 on the pavement or the taxi driver who always ignores the double yellow lines. This is because these things matter.

When the grand people on the radio or television - or those apeing them like the couple with the dangling conversation in Paul Simon's song - talk about grand ideas they forget that those grand ideas, when acted on, result in real effects on real people. Indeed that, were the ideas presented to those mums at the school gate or the couple in the council house round the corner, they'd get short shrift - out-of-touch would perhaps be the most polite response.

Because us grand folk have Mrs Roosevelt's disdain for such small-mindedness (too often thinking that those people simply won't understand so why bother), we resort to conducting political debate through dumbed down slogan and pithy soundbites. This is the world of 'not right or left but right or wrong', 'long term economic plans' and 'for the many, not the few' - endlessly repeated advertising mantras that mean little but make a pleasing sound.
We pretend that people like what we're saying by the liberal use of opinion polling as post hoc justification of the slogan or soundbite. Yet this brand marketing is weak, inconsistent and ineffective compared to that from big brand owners - put simply Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Persil are more trusted than any political brand anywhere in the world. And this is because, unlike those brands, political parties treat their customers - the voters - with Mrs Roosevelt's disdain.

None of this is to suggest that we shouldn't discuss grand ideas but we need to try to include more people in those discussions rather than, as is typical, using words and concepts seemingly designed to close the debate off to any but the cognoscenti. Whether it's a debate about 'culture' or a discussion of macroeconomics, we should try at least to use words people understand rather than pretending that language is somehow a barrier to the analysis of the subject in question. In the end - as so often with these things - someone has made the point much better - here's George Orwell:

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
Above all, it seems to me, we need to spend more time talking about (and to, and with) people and their daily lives and not pretending that somehow this is a lower form of talk reserved for people who aren't nearly as clever as we are. For, by the use of that grand language, we fall into Orwell's trap and become fools. Fools no-one else much can understand but fools - snobbish fools - nonetheless.

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Wednesday 21 January 2015

Quote of the day - summing up the Green Party:

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Ed West gets it about right:

It wants pre-industrial economic policies mixed with 21st century radical sexual politics mixed with a strong hostility to pleasure, especially if someone’s making money out of it; it supports hard secularism and population control policies combined with open borders and pacifism (let’s see how that works out!); immense levels of state control over our private lives alongside moral relativism towards things like terrorism and crime. Its support base is mostly the educated, squeezed middle yet its economic policies would certainly ruin them.

As Ed points out this won't make a jot of difference to the Party's appeal - trendy hipsters in Saltaire will carry on voting for them - but it is a reminder that the Greens are utterly bonkers.

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It's really time our debate about health grew up.

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Our national debate about health is a shambles. Indeed, 'disgrace' is probably the best way to describe how politics debates the issue that remains with economic well-being the single most important issue for most people. I am grateful to Jackart for 'Bracken's Law of NHS Debate':

"The longer any discussion about the NHS goes on, the closer the probability a spurious invocation of the US system of healthcare gets to one, and whoever does so has lost the argument"

The minute anyone uses the word 'competition', 'market' or 'reform' those with a vested interest respond with reference to the US system (which somehow manages to be both very expensive and wholly captured by producer interests).

The other, and closely related, aspect of the debate is to invoke the caring nature of nurses, doctors and others who work in the NHS. And to imply that, without the NHS, none of this would be there. You'll have heard people exclaim: "my mother (or child or spouse or sibling) is alive today because of the NHS".

To which my response is to ask whether that person would be dead had they lived in France, Holland or Sweden - none of which have a centralised, bureaucratic, national health system. But you can't win with this argument because the shameless and disgraceful debate kicks in with shouty stuff about "selling off the NHS" or even "you don't care about Our NHS".

We have a huge challenge in our health service that isn't being discussed. Or rather it's not being discussed by the national political leaderships, by the representatives of health care producers or by the media. At the very local level people are prepared to discuss how we deal with an ageing population, how we strike the balance between social and health care, and whether our spending priorities are entirely geared to meeting the real health challenges we face.

Yesterday - as the motion's proposer made very clear - Bradford Council didn't debate a motion about public health. We went straight to the vote. Now, to be honest, the motion was a good example of us not facing up to the truth about health spending - instead of asking what Bradford Council was doing with the £30m or so it gets in public health funding, all the motion's proposers wanted was a line in every report asking "what are the implications for public health". This would join similar lines on "sustainability" and "trade unions".

The thing we should have asked was whether the way we're spending that money right now is the best way to help get better health for Bradford's population. And maybe suggesting to the government that they trust local councils and lift the ringfence on public health money would be a start. However valuable smoking cessation clinics might be (and the answer is actually 'not very effective') would the money - three-quarters of a million - we spend there not be better directed to helping keep the wheels from falling off our social care system and keeping old people out of hospital?

If we want a better health service (and right now ours really isn't good enough) then we need to discuss how to get such a service. Instead we refuse to discuss the choices facing us because we fear 'Bracken's Law' and the shouty ignorance of those most interested in keeping the status quo. It really is time our health debate grew up.

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Tuesday 20 January 2015

All-population approaches don't work - even for national security

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We are familiar with the use of all-population strategies to respond to public health challenges - smoking, drinking, eating too much and so forth. The argument is essentially that, if sufficient people are engaged in a negative activity, then it is worthwhile targeting the whole population - thus we impose high duty rates on alcohol, people call for sugar or soda taxes and we impose constraints on the supply of the product (up to and including a total ban).

The problem is illustrated by the success of such a strategy in the UK's consumption of alcohol - this has fallen by around a fifth over the past decade as a result of much higher duty rates, extensive education measures and high profile campaigns from all public agencies targeting binge drinking. So the strategy is a success? Seems not to be so because, assuming that the main gain is a health gain, then the strategy has failed:

The number of hospital admissions for alcohol related harm increased by 47%—representing an increase of more than 800 each day—over the five years between 2004 and 2009, show latest figures for England.

Put simply we saw a continuing rise in ill-health related to alcohol during a period when overall alcohol consumption was falling. The all-population approach had failed (at least in terms of health outcomes - it seems to have been effective in terms of crime). This same problem is repeated when we look at other issues - overall calorie consumption and broad measures of obesity are static or falling but we are seeing rises in chronic conditions related to obesity.

So it should come as no surprise to discover people questioning all-population strategies in other areas of policy:

Surveillance of the entire population, the vast majority of whom are innocent, leads to the diversion of limited intelligence resources in pursuit of huge numbers of false leads. Terrorists are comparatively rare, so finding one is a needle in a haystack problem. You don't make it easier by throwing more needleless hay on the stack.

We cannot us lots of computer power to scan and analyse billions of data rather to replace the dull job of gathering intelligence, targeting known or likely suspects and then conducting specific surveillance. Just as with health - where we should target resources towards those who actually have a problem - the growing security infrastructure really has little impact in the prevention of terrorism or crime.

The problem is that, just as blanket restrictions of booze or boozing appeals to a certain sort, the introduction of all-population surveillance provides a comfort blanket for a nervous population. Confiscating nail clippers and half empty water bottles from tourists boarding a flight to Malaga at a regional airport contributes nothing to the fight against terrorism or organised crime but does give the impression that the authorities are deeply concern (and doing something) about these problems.

It cheers me (although does not explain why government persists with all-population measures) that there's a mathematical explanation as to why mass surveillance is a lousy way to fight terrorism.

No matter how sophisticated and super-duper are NSA’s methods for identifying terrorists, no matter how big and fast are NSA’s computers, NSA’s accuracy rate will never be 100% and their misidentification rate will never be 0%. That fact, plus the extremely low base-rate for terrorists, means it is logically impossible for mass surveillance to be an effective way to find terrorists.

And if it is true for terrorists then it is true for anything where the proportion of the population we need to target is small. Or so it seems, at least to someone who has only a basic understanding of Bayes' Theorem. So answer should be to deal with the actual problem rather than bother at the whole population in the vain hope that this will work. It seems it won't.

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Monday 19 January 2015

Capitalism will eliminate poverty if we let it (and ignore Oxfam)

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The world's plutocrats are gathering in Davos. And, in its annual tradition Oxfam has issued an update of its report on how us evil capitalist bastards are responsible for all that death and starvation in Africa. If only we would tax ourselves more and give the good folk at Oxfam more aid money then things would be fine. The problem is that Oxfam is utterly committed to promoting policies that sustain poverty - its stated aim is to make subsistence farming "sustainable" thereby keeping those peasant farmers just above the point of starvation through the use of aid money.

This article argues that policies used by middle and high-income countries are unsuitable for poorer, agricultural countries; it recommends instead that these nations promote broader access to land and raise land productivity. The authors explain why instruments used by richer countries, such as those that control prices and cheapen food, fail in poorer countries. They describe the features of smallholder farmers in poorer countries, drawing upon evidence from India, Peru, and Guatemala to demonstrate how subsistence farming can be part of policy responses to the distress of a food crisis in both the short and medium term. They call upon donors to improve their understanding of and support for small-scale, subsistence-oriented farming.

What Oxfam are saying here is that it's different in these poor countries and that the thing that made us western folk rich - capitalism - isn't going to work. Indeed, it is utterly shocking that Oxfam support policies that lead to more expensive food, less efficient agriculture and the maintaining of abject poverty in poor countries. So when you reach into your pocket for some change to put in that Oxfam tin or sponsor some well-meaning niece in her swimming or running, think for a second where that money is going. I'm not talking about administration costs here or even the buying of top end 4x4s for aid workers but the policies - policies that sustain poverty in Africa - that Oxfam supports.

The truth is that, not only is Oxfam wrong, but their support for protectionist policies at Davos actively advances the very agenda of those plutocrats and prevents Africa from challenging the dominance of the west. Instead of wibble about taxation or the liberal use of the word 'neoliberalism' what Oxfam needs to demand is an end to agricultural protection in the developed world, a more open banking system and the wider promotion of property rights, free markets and free trade.

Over the past three decades that neoliberalism - the thing Oxfam wants to blame for the ills of the world - has resulted in a billion people escaping abject poverty. Better still, for many of that billion the escape from poverty has been an escape from the tyranny of dirt-scrabble farming. They've moved to the city from where they can play a small part in creating exciting, free and innovative societies - just as happened in the west. Oxfam and its fellow travellers stand - using our cash - between people and the realisation of this dream.

I wrote this a while back - it is still true:

Sit back, put a smile on you face - punch the air with joy. You and me - capitalists both - have sat getting a little richer for thirteen years while a billion folk have escaped absolute poverty. All the international trade, all those businesses and those business folk filling the posh seats in aeroplanes flitting across the world - they've done that, they've lifted those people out of poverty.


Tell Oxfam to either get out of the way or get with the neoliberalism that is ending poverty more quickly that at any time in human history.


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Sunday 18 January 2015

Bradford Labour deputy leader backs Galloway's rally against free speech

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I asked on Friday who would join George Galloway in attacking the idea of free speech (I know George dubbed it a 'free speech rally' in the same way that communist dictatorships call themselves 'democratic').

And we now have our answer - 'hundreds' turned out in last night's cold and snow for what is now being called a 'multi-faith' rally (I wonder how many non-muslims - Galloway excepted, of course - actually attended) and they heard George say:


"I am here to defend the honour of Muslims, Islams and Muhammad.

"These are not cartoons, these are obscene insults to the prophet Muhammad.

"The backlash against Muslims is under way in France and the UK.

"It seems there are limits to freedom of speech in France. That's hypocrisy, not democracy.

"For the sake of unity in our society, we have to demand from our Government the protection of our prophets."

So pretty clear from George there - he wants blasphemy laws that extend the (already excessive) privileges granted to religion and to Islam in particular.

And he was joined in this call by Imran Hussein, deputy leader of Bradford Council and parliamentary candidate for Bradford East:

"There is a big debate around freedom of speech. It is a fundamental right.

"Let's have freedom of speech, not freedom to openly insult.

"I was deeply insulted, deeply offended by the publication of Charlie Hebdo, in particular its depiction of the Holy Prophet Muhammad.

"There has been double standards and hypocrisy here."

So Cllr Hussein thinks that somehow he has the right not to be offended and that special protections - essentially a blasphemy law - should be granted to the faith he professes because him or others might be upset by that blasphemy. This is not free speech.

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Saturday 17 January 2015

The sleepers awake. How the left controls NHS leadership.

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Back in the 1980s the Conservative government did that very conservative thing - it decided that the way to improve the operational effectiveness of public services like the NHS was to get better leadership and management. It's very hard to argue with this principle, indeed it seems like common sense. So the government replaced local councillor led area authorities with a mish-mash of boards and panels each with people recruited to bring 'business' experience of one sort or another.

Spin forward a few years and we arrive at 1997 and the election of a Labour government. Now some on the left wanted to return to the old, pre-reform NHS where the organisation was centrally directed with no pseudo-market and no boards of 'business' people. But Blair and Brown decided otherwise - they realised that the boards in the NHS presented the opportunity to fill the organisation with people sympathetic to New Labour's aims (I'm talking about the NHS here but the same applied right across the public sector).

Once the key appointments - chairs, chief executives and so forth - were in place, Labour could rely on those people to fill the boards with like-minded folk. And, by introducing (in typical New Labour style) a control mechanism - the Nolan Principles - this could be portrayed as removing political interference from the appointment process. The board may be filled with apologists for Labour (and indeed, as we find in Bradford, with actual Labour politicians) but these supposed 'principles' allow that party to claim it has nothing to do with the appointment - the best person got the job.

When Labour left government some assumed (and to see the spat over just one appointment, Labour absolutely believed) that the Conservatives would apply exactly the same approach - chairs and directors would be chosen for their Conservative sympathies. But this simply hasn't happened because of that view, a deeply conservative view, that it's effective administration that matters - as I wrote a while back:

...Cameron’s “conservatism as effective administration” requires attachment to and confidence in institutions – the National Health Service, the Civil Service, Royal Colleges, Universities. Government should concern itself with ensuring these institutions are well administered rather than with the outcomes of the institutions work. Put the right leaderships in place and trust in their judgement is what government must do – and then act to implement and enforce the plans those leaders create.

So the urbane, professorial sorts who lead publiuc institutions remained in place despite their preference - even support - for the Labour Party. The result of this is that - especially in the NHS - the administration actively seeks to undermine the priorities and direction of government policy. And with the 'privatisation' debate the Labour-supporting men and women filling NHS boards have been activated in the manner of sleepers:

Party activists sat on board that slashed funds, doctor who is would-be Labour MP helped shape critical report and lead inspector was opponent of privatisation 

We are reminded again how the Labour Party and its supporters in trade unions like the BMA will always put the interests of power and self-interest ahead of the interests or the public and the patient. And this revelation reminds us that the biggest failure in the current government's administration of the NHS hasn't been the reforms or funding issues but has been keeping a huge fifth column of Labour supporters in place right across the system. Indeed, to allow those supporters to continue appointing their own to positions of power and influence in the NHS.

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Friday 16 January 2015

So who will join in George Galloway's anti-free speech protest?

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It really doesn't come as a surprise that George Galloway has come down on the side of being offended and opposing free speech. He will (quite rarely) grace Bradford with his presence tomorrow evening to join a protest rally under the banner of 'Our Prophet Our Honour'. This event - organised by David Humphreys, George's vicar on Earth - is explicitly against free speech and George is right there:

“While he totally condemns the killings, there is a feeling in the community that there are problems facing Muslims about the issues of free speech. These cartoons have provoked a great anger.”

I'm sure some people are angry about 'these cartoons'. After all, you've every right to be offended and upset by things that are written. But what George and his friends want is a privileged protection for one particular religion - they want the right not to be offended. And in doing this they want to remove the right to free expression from other people.

On Tuesday next week, Bradford Council will debate a motion that says:

This Council notes the deplorable recent terror attacks in and around Paris.

The Council reaffirms its commitment to the freedom of self expression, as contained within  Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

The Council requests that the Interim Chief Executive write to Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, expressing Bradford District Citizens’ condolences for and esprit de corps with, the people of Paris and wider France. 

It will be interesting to see what is said - and whether other councillors try to water down the commitment to support free speech. I am reminded that, on a previous occasion, Bradford's Labour Group voted down a similar motion (proposed in less shocking circumstances).

Update: In a slightly delicious reaction, Jason Smith - Bradford UKIP head honcho - has called for the event to be banned. Seems UKIP don't think much of free speech either!  It also resulted in Galloway - having organised an anti-free speech rally - to make out he's defending free speech. Proof yet again how monumentally stupid UKIP folk too often are!

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The Labour Party really has it in for poor people.

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The other day, to more or less blanket media coverage, Andy Burnham (Britain's most shameless MP) launched Labour's public health strategy - "Protecting Children, Empowering All" is its title:

Changes to diet and lifestyle mean it is all too easy to lead a less healthy life than in times gone by, and we all risk taking on more sugar, fat and salt than is good for us and failing to move about enough to burn it off. Our complex and fast-moving modern world is exposing children to ever-more sophisticated commercial pressures. We are all absorbing higher levels of stress and insecurity which can erode mental health and well-being and lead to poor diet and addiction. For too many people this is the new reality of modern living in the 21st century. Helping people deal with it will require a new approach to public health.

The authors of this 'new approach' go to great lengths to tell us that this isn't the 'nanny state' - mostly because those authors have chosen to redefine what we mean by that term. But what is most shocking - from the political party that claims to champion the interests of the working class and the poorest in society - is that the proposals are for a series of highly-regressive interventions based on a combination of poor science and a snobbish attitude to the personal choices of those people. As Dick Puddlecote puts it:

It reads like it was written in Islington by a bien pensant yogic chakra-chasing millionaire surveying life outside their window with disdain and revulsion at how the unwashed choose to enjoy themselves. This, apparently, is what the modern Labour party thinks will chime with working class people...

The core of the policy is a renewed legislative attack on booze, fags, burgers and fizzy drinks. Or, as Labour describes it - alcohol, tobacco and sugar.  The proposals are founded - as ever - on poor science and an almost complete absence of evidence. On alcohol the proposals are for a series of specific actions targeted at the lowest cost alcohol - bans and taxes that hit the poor not wealthy folk like Andy Burnham. We will see bans or a new higher duty on cider, giving public health directors the power to oppose licensing decisions and, I would expect, a renewed effort to introduce a blanket, regressive attack on the poorest in the form of minimum unit pricing.

On tobacco, we'll see the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes - a policy that will destroy good manufacturing jobs in Bradford without making (as we now know from the policy's effect in Australia) the slightest difference to rates of smoking. And - as befits a bunch of fussbuckets - Labour leaves the door open to bans and restrictions on vaping. Yet again, this is pointless posturing that does more harm than good for the working classes Labour claims to represent.

But it's the attack on sugar that reveals Labour at its worst. Chris Snowdon reminds us that the source of Burnham's anti-sugar position (a position almost entirely without evidential support) is pretty dodgy:

Time and time again Action on Sugar make hyperbolic and downright false claims that cannot be supported by their own citations, let alone by the wider scientific literature. It is scary to think that there are people in power who take them seriously.

The sad truth is that Labour has accepted these false arguments almost entirely, telling us that we're eating more sugar, fat and salt than we used to and that this is why we are fatter. This is quite simply untrue but it doesn't stop Labour launching into yet another attack on advertising and further judgement of the pleasing and personal choices that millions of Britons make, choices to smoke, to drink and to eat salty or sugary food.

These proposals are not only ill-founded but represent a direct, regressive attack on the poorest - things like a soda tax (which Burnham is very keen on) falls heaviest and hardest on the poor and a sugar tax would be even worse. New powers on licensing mean that pubs and clubs in poorer areas will be targeted for closure - on the grounds of combating 'health inequalities' and the entirely false belief that concentrations of licensed premises lead to higher alcohol consumption.

Hardly a day passes without some posh left-winger sniffily and disdainfully dissmissing the choices and preferences of ordinary people. For all the protests of Burnham, these labour proposals represent an extension of the nannying, controlling and dictating state. What Labour's policies tell us - yet again - is that the party doesn't believe that people, especially poorer people, are capable of making their own decisions and choices. Egged on by the health fascists in the growing public health industry, what Labour is doing is planning to ban, control or limit the pleasures of ordinary folk. The pleasures that make like just a little bit more tolerable for the poorest in society.

Labour, it seems, really has it in for poor people.

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Friday Fungus - why fungi are so important

Stinkhorn
It's probably true that we wouldn't be here were in not for fungi - it was the mushroom brotherhood that first colonised the land helping to pave the way for plants, insects and eventually us higher order animals. OK it was a long time ago but fungi remain central to our life on the planet. And death:

“For most people, fungal disease means a bit of athlete’s foot or a manky-looking toe nail. These maybe irritating and unsightly but fungi can do far worse. Fungi kill more people than malaria and tuberculosis worldwide.  They destroy about a third of all arable food crops. Some species have led to the extinction of many animal and plant species – sometimes even before the species has even been discovered. Fungi were on the earth long before plants and other life forms. They readily adapt to increasing globalization and climate change and we need to rise to the challenge to deal with the threats posed by these versatile and intriguing organisms.”

That's Professor Rosemary Barnes from Cardiff University's Institute of Infection and Immunity and is a specialist in fungal infections. She also points out that the bad fungi are a very small part of the total fungal world - just 600 out of two million known species are disease-causing with just 30 causing 99% of these diseases. Plus, of course, fungi are saving lives as well:

Antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacteria pose a very real threat to the world, one that a highly concerned World Health Organization (WHO) has kept in its radar for years. Now a team of researchers has identified a new natural antibiotic in horse dung-dwelling fungus, offering up secrets that might help us avoid or at least understand an encroaching AMR world crisis.

Those clever fungi have worked out how to adapt rapidly as the bacteria adapt and change. And this flexibility can be synthesised in the laboratory - taking us a step towards having adaptive, responsive antibiotics rather than the dead end (and also fungal in origin) drugs we know are such a problem.

Maybe we need more mycologists?

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Thursday 15 January 2015

Thank God for neoliberalism!






Capitalism is wonderful - all that enterprise, that self-interest, that freedom to trade makes us all richer. We need more of it everywhere if we want to eliminate poverty.

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Wednesday 14 January 2015

We're healthier, wealthier, safer and happier because of liberty. Let's not spoil it.

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Baron Evans of Weardale used to be the head of MI5 which means that, when he expresses a view on security matters, journalists and broadcasters go into sombre, stern nodding-dog mode. So Evans gets away with saying this stuff unchallenged:

“Inadequate security will breed vulnerability and fear and that in turn will tend to limit people’s ability to contribute to civil society, will tend to provoke vigilantism and will tend to diminish people’s ability to exercise the very civil liberties and human rights that we wish to sustain.” 

My problem with this is that there is precisely zero evidence of 'vigilantism' in the UK. Nor is there any indication that - other than oddly in a little Pennine village - people are organising themselves in gangs to provide security or exact vengance.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not suggesting that we don't need the security services or security for that matter. Merely that the sort of language used by Evans is designed merely to frighten, to operationalise the H L Mencken definition of politics:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

I will however give Evans the benefit of some doubt - having spent a lifetime looking almost exclusively at the relatively small number of bad guys in the world, it's understandable that his mind is set to see those bad guys as the central problem facing democratic societies. Thus we get this observation from our retired spook:

...the world faced a build-up of trained terrorists not seen since al-Qaeda ran training camps in Afghanistan before 9/11. 
 
We are, of course, expected to take this at face value. But it really is rather meaningless. So al-Qaeda ran training camps in Afghanistan but Evans gives no indication of numbers or the operational capability of those terrorists being trained. The reality is, I suspect, that we're talking about at most a few thousand (most of whom are safely losing a war in Syria against other Muslims) and Evans' former colleagues know who nearly all of them are. But by referring to 9/11, Evans takes us to a dark moment in our history - the worst terrorist atrocity in recent times.

The events in Paris remind us that there are people who would tear down our freedom and destroy the peace in which we (most of the time) live our lives. But we should not allow such doomsayers as Evans with their jaundiced view of humanity to set the security agenda. The truth is that, if we get vigilantism, it will be because people like Evans scared the pants off us not because of anything al-Qaeda, ISIS or Anjem Choudhary do or say.

What Evans should be doing is trumpeting the success of peace and freedom - that the world is now a safer place than it has ever been:

...while there's still plenty of war, hunger, sickness, and poverty in the world, things are much better than what they were only a few decades ago—not to talk about centuries ago. We are still far from utopia, but the data is stubborn: We are getting there. Fast.
 
However you assess the evidence and wherever you look people are safer, healthier, wealthier and happier (at least on average). The cynic would suggest that the likes of Lord Evans are conjuring up those hobgoblins so as to keep the security business going whereas others point to more powers for such folk as part of the reason. They are wrong, the main reason for the world being better is that more people have more freedom. It shouldn't be a surprise that the least safe, healthy, wealthy and happy places are places where security is absolute and government dominates everything.

And when we look at the Muslim world, we need to stop looking at it merely as the breeding ground for murderers like those in Paris but as a place where millions of people discovered they have a voice and are beginning to demand it's heard - by the military and traditionalist leaders as well as by the upholders of religious orthodoxy. The Arab spring may have turned into a pretty lousy summer but the new leaders of these places (as well as those in other places not touched by that spring) cannot put the voices back into a box.

Indeed that hope is there still. Here's Abdelbaseer A. Mohamed talking about his home city of Cairo:

So what to do? Integrate different kinds of people with each other by removing barriers and improving connectivity. By reintegrating street networks we can create valuable urban space. Arguably, allowing people to meet and interact in public urban spaces won’t threaten the security of the country and won’t corrupt morals as old players may fear it will. Rather, it might bring tolerance and promote reconciliation and reduce crime rates. Additionally, it will help in building trust between the regime and people.

My article is a call for a new strategy in which ‘anti-territorial’ programmes that are designed to break down boundaries between communities by encouraging social mix through increasing people’s freedom to construct bridges to other communities and overcome their isolation. In this respect, a new borderless Cairo might foster economic integration and urban competitiveness. I think that is the first step in security sector reform, otherwise this open plan jail will collapse and the prisoners of Cairo will be released.

The last open question that I will leave for the future to answer is: how long will the division between rulers and ruled remain?

This is the antithesis of the position that Evans and the security experts adopt. They want to manage - limit even - interaction, to ban certain activities, to control speech and to determine the sorts of fun that are permissable. Such people are brothers to both the fussbuckets and to the religious absolutists, to people who believe absolutely how people should behave in public and who use arguments about health, wealth, safety and happiness to promote their authoritarian agenda.

Forgetting of course that the thing making us healthier, wealthier, happier and safer isn't government but liberty. It's free trade, free enterprise, free assembly and above all free speech not armed policemen and snooping spies that makes for a healthier, wealthier, happier and, yes Lord Evans, safer world.

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Tuesday 13 January 2015

Don't go to dinner with a critical urbanist...

So there you are at a dinner party, glass of wine in hand, canape poised at your lips, smile on your face as you anticipate some witty chat with intelligent fellow guests. And someone says this:

‘all science would be superfluous if the manifest form of things and their essence coincided’

Then follows it up with this:

‘commonsense is a political relation, as are the categories of perception that sustain it’

Apparently you've met the critical urbanist. I would advise flight. For the conversation will make the poetry of Grunthos the Flatulent seem like Keats. It will be filled with grand phrases and words you barely recognise all mixed in with a slightly sneering attitude to real issues in the real world. You will be regaled with vague unreferenced allusions to something called 'neoliberalism' and comments like:

...when it comes to the production of these categories of perception, these epistemological couples (individual/collective, profit/loss, rights/responsibilities, etc....

Your eyes will glaze over at this point as your attention wanders to whether you let the cat out or how the speaker's trendy goatee isn't quite even. Your will to live will slowly fade as a whole evening of meaningless gobble-de-gook presented as intelligent comment looms before you. If flight isn't an option the only approach is to get drunk. Drunk and rude.

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Trolls. Proper trolls.

None of this Internet troll stuff. We're talking the real thing - a whole essay on the real thing courtesy of Medievalist.net:

“Mucus was hanging down in front of her mouth. She had a beard but her head was bald. Her hands were like the claws of an eagle, but both arms were singed, and the baggy shirt she was wearing reached no lower than her loins in back but all the way to her toes in front. Her eyes were green and her forehead broad; her ears fell widely. no one would call her pretty”

This is what we want - fewer spotty oiks or self-indulgent masked Internet warriors - although this might put ideas in one or two folks' minds:

...calling someone a troll carried also a stiff penalty. Knutson and Riley remark, “Personal honour was taken very seriously, and to slander someone or spread false rumours could be expensive or even deadly”. In his book, Trolls: An Unnatural History, John Lindow recounts that calling someone a troll was considered vicious slander akin to accusing a man of bearing children, anally penetrating another man, or insinuating he was a mare, bitch, witch or whore. In The Saga of Finnbogi, Finnbogi’s young sons tease an old neighbour and call him a troll. The neighbour promptly kills them even though they are only aged five and three. This causes Finnbogi to take vengeance on the man and slay him. So remember, next time at the bar…thinking of calling that annoying drunk a troll? Just don’t.

Do go and read the article -more fun than the latest moan from some social justice warrior or headline-seeking politicians about trolls on Twitter!

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Sunday 11 January 2015

Taking schools policy out of political control means bureaucracy not better education

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We hear it all the time.

A former permanent secretary at the Department for Education, Sir David says there should be no more major changes to the curriculum, qualifications or structural changes to schools during the course of the next Parliament.

He wants an independent body to set long-term policy, separated from the shifting demands of party politics.

This could create a qualifications system that would support a changing economy, he says, arguing that this would include replacing A-levels with a broader, baccalaureate-style exam system.

OK it's schools on this occasion but it could be health, policing, criminal justice or even the economy. In every case the argument for removing politics from the management or administration of a given public service is made by someone who will gain from such a decision. It is the former bureaucrat running a teacher training operation, the former police inspector, a body made up of health professionals and experts, and the assorted grandees of the City along with their house magazine, the Financial Times.

And because we hate politicians (with some justification on occasion) it's easy to nod and agree with the sages, with the experts who tell us that taking the politics out will remove all the bad stuff and will mean that they can create a wonderful system that will do the job just fine.

Except they won't. Trust me on this folks, they won't. It is disingenuous for Sir David Bell, who used to run the Department for Education, to suggest that bureaucrats like him have a fantastic, ready-to-roll system of education just waiting for the politicians to get out of the way. What Sir David wants - and I understand that Labour's excuse for an education spokesman likes this idea - is for an independent body run by him and his mates to replace the current system where we the public have a tiny bit of a say in how the system is run.

Indeed the independent schools body - doubtless called something like Education England - will have a board crammed with Sir David's pals (all pulling down a handy little stipend to top up their pensions) and a Chief Executive on £250,000 a year who will set policy for the long-term. There will be expensive offices in London, a lobbying team and a pleasing round of international trips, conferences and dinners for all those involved. Unfortunately it won't make the slightest iota of difference to schools and, worse, will mean that any semblance of democratic accountability for one of our critical public services is lost. Replaced by know-all folk most of whom are, as is Sir David Bell, responsible for the current mess in the first place.

So long as education is funded through direct taxation we have no real option but for the direction of policy to be in the hands of those people we choose to set policy. We call these people politicians. And politicians sound off about education, about bad schools, lousy teachers and bad management because the people who elect us care quite alot about what happens in schools. So when a school in our patch does well we shout about it and when a school does badly we worry.

If you remove politics from education policy (except do note that you don't actually do this), the result isn't a dramatic change or improvement but stasis.  In reality the moans from Sir David are more about a personal (self-interested) dislike for policy rather than any real conviction that a mystical, politics-free independent body would be any better. Believe me, we in Bradford know about taking politics out of education - it doesn't work.

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Saturday 10 January 2015

The Spectator. A great magazine that's cannibalising it's income for the sake of online hits.

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For a good number of years I've subscribed to The Spectator. It was and still is the best by far of the UK's political and cultural magazines - even though it's arts coverage does has a tendency to disappear up its own London-centric arse.

This evening, after dinner, my wife was reading this weeks issue and exclaimed:

"Why do we pay for a subscription when I've seen most of the articles already online? And not just the main headline articles but little ones."

It has struck me for some while that the search for currency is getting ahead of the desire for subscriptions. What The Spectator is doing by focusing its attention online is treating paying customers like my wife and I with a degree of contempt. We pay what John Major would call 'a not inconsiderable amount of money' to receive the magazine on our doormat every week. But now I can see most of what I want to see without the need to spend that money.

In times past the arrival of The Spectator was an event - not a huge event but still something anticipated and enjoyed. It would prompt a break from whatever I was doing to open the magazine and see what interesting stuff had be gathered together for my pleasure by the editor and his staff. I might brew up a pot of tea or even have a bath so as to create a space and some time to savour the magazine's insights.

Now I open the magazine and look at the articles and, like the frog with the library books, exclaim 'reddit, reddit, reddit'. The reasons for subscription gradually diminish to the point whereas they're merely a combination of inertia and misplaced loyalty (the magazine barely knows where Bradford is, let alone Cullingworth).

So, unless I get a privileged access to content I pay for, I'm very unlikely to renew my subscription.

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Not sure whether Age UK is actively ageist or just profoundly patronising to older people

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I'm sure that the young people who designed the campaign mean well. After all the brief tells you that most of the 'digitally excluded' are elderly so surely anything that celebrates and champions old folk becoming 'digitally included' is brilliant. Isn't it?

So let's have an award - Age UK Digital Champion of the Year:

We want to hear from you if:
  • your newfound digital skills have taken you on an unexpected adventure
  • the internet has helped you re-connect with a long-lost family member or make new friends
  • the internet has allowed you to stay active and improved your quality of life.
  • you know someone that this applies to.
Finalists will be chosen based on their digital experiences and how their stories can inspire and encourage other older people to make the digital leap.

And Age UK have an age range:

Age UK is conducting a UK-wide search to find an inspiring person (age 55+) to champion the benefits of all things digital to others in later life.

Now I've not (quite) reached the venerable age of 55 yet but I know a lot of people who have reached this milestone. And quite a lot of them - nearly all of them, in fact - are in some sort of work or are active in some way or other. Those over 55s who need encouraging to take the 'digital leap' own laptops, tablets, smartphones and smart TVs. They make use of the bewildering array of gizmos, gadgets and apps that these technologies allow - from using Skype to talk to people through to playing Carcassone on their iPhone.

In my social media (and virtual) travels I meet older people using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, What's App, LinkedIn - every tool you can think of has older people out there using it. The Internet - were it not for kittens - would soon fill up with carefully edited photo albums featuring the travel experiences of retired folk. And I'm pretty sure if I look a little closer there are people over 55 creating new stuff - you know, Age UK folk, older people actually writing software and building new apps for us to play with.

So why is it that Age UK - and for that matter most charities and public agencies - treat anyone over the age of 55 as if they're as utterly daffy as Wolfie Smith's mum? That somehow, when the great age is reached we need to have stuff explained to us very....slowly....in short words...because we've lost the intelligence and faculty we had just a few hours earlier.

Age UK, for all its good work (or rather the good work of its local groups that don't, you'll be interested to learn, get any of that cash you donate to the national body) is trapped in a view of the elderly that was pretty patronising back in the 1970s but today is more anachronistic than Nigel Farage's style of dress. It really is time such organisations recognised that the over 55s represent approaching a third of the population and that most of these people continue to contribute a great deal. Not by shakily serving a cup of tea to some other old folk at a lunch club but by running things, organising things and generally being in charge quite a lot.

Age UK. Most people over 55 are not drooling idiots in need of some champion to encourage them to get online but are already there - in their millions. Maybe you need to think harder about how to portray old people?

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