Drunks on a Plane

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Sometimes I wonder about the sanity of some broadsheet journalists. I guess it's probably because they're instructed to churn out a load of clickbait intended to get folk like me going. But this one is utterly ridiculous. The background is that a bunch of drunk idiots caused a plane - presumably filled with a load of other travellers - to land so they could be dumped off and the aircraft continue its journey in peace. Apparently we should be sympathetic:

In these scenarios it’s all too easy for us to blame these men (because that’s what they are) for being ill-disciplined, inconsiderate oiks. “Fine them!” we all cry, obstinately demanding that they are the lowest of the low and should be banned from flying for life.

Instead of that, let’s track their journey through the airport.

They arrive, let’s say at 7am ahead of their 9am flight. Having passed through customs they’re met with wall-to-wall booze, cigarettes and aftershave – all the hallmarks of a true lad.

In the duty-free hall is a bar, offering free samples of rums, vodka, whisky… the list goes on. They could have headed towards the lounge having already had a fair few shots. But oh, look! The airport bar is open. No other bar in the land is allowed to open at this time, but at the airport for some reason that’s OK.

You see these men are so infantilised by modern society that it's impossible for them to pass an open bar without having a drink. This is despite the ample evidence to the contrary - millions of people flying all over the world without getting drunk and causing trouble on planes.

Now it's true that bars at airports are open more-or-less all the time but most of us manage to make it to the plane without getting lashed. And quite a few people - for reasons I am unable to fathom - seem to have an "I'm going on holiday" switch in their heads that makes them quite happy to drink pints of lager or a large glass of wine at 7am. But these people mostly manage not to get drunk, loud or violent as a result. Let's say that there were 150 or so passengers on that disrupted flight - people who didn't pay good money to experience drunk, naked idiots running about the plane. Those people were inconvenienced - they'd people waiting for them on arrival, connections to resorts perhaps even trains to catch. If there's some sympathy it should be directed to those people not the prats who spoiled their journey.

All but a few passengers behave properly - they might drink but they don't get so drunk they think stripping off on a scheduled flight a good idea. What this Chris Hemmings chap (in between reliving his frankly pathetic undergraduate drinking escapades) misses is that these idiots had a choice - they could have chosen to have a drink in the airport, get on the plane, fly to Bratislava and then go party. To suggest that the fault lies with airport bars, cheap flights and duty free is quite wrong. It's the Heinz Kiosk approach - "we are all guilty" - rather than the truth, which is that nobody else at all is responsible for the behaviour of these drunks.

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Too old to rock and roll? Forget it! Welcome to 21st century ageing.

The so-called WASPI campaign for women affected by the change in their retirement age from 60 to 66 has been a feature of news and comment for a while now. It is one of those odd quirks - not always a good one - of policy changes that some people are caught in the change meaning that, while nearly everyone accepts that the new policy is a good one, they also want it not to affect those caught in the change. In a society where women are not excluded from the workforce and where efforts are made to treat those women equally, there is no justification for having a different retirement age for men and women. Nor, given average life expectance pushing 80 years, is there much sense in younger people being taxed to provide twenty years or more of living for those older people.

But I don't want to discuss this issue but rather for it to provide a little context for a look at age discrimination in the UK. This has interested me for a while but was prompted by someone tweeting a rather unfunny quip about all of UKIP members being old dodderers. It wasn't that UKIP's members aren't disproportionately older but that it was fine to criticise - with references to Stannah and Saga - a group of people purely on the basis of their age. My concern though isn't that some people are unpleasant but whether this disparaging of older people is reflected in a wider set of prejudices that result, not in rude words on Twitter, but in significantly different treatment.

One of the WASPI arguments (albeit not their strongest) is about work. Or rather that women in their 50s and 60s find it difficult to find work:

Living longer inevitably means working longer too. But that’s no help to older women who can’t just grit their teeth and work longer as a result of Osborne’s measure, because they’re not even working now: women made redundant late in their fifties, who can’t persuade employers that they’re not past it;

Now I'm happy to believe Gabby Hinsliff here. I want to believe her. But I find it difficult to find much real evidence that older people can't find work. The number of people over 65 working in the UK has nearly doubled since 2008 hardly an indication that the people made redundant in their 50s will fail to get a job. What I do suspect is that men and women who leave management or professional positions in their 50s find it hard to get a similar job on a similar wage - I've known people who had very senior jobs really struggle to get new employment. For a few there's also the issue of declining health. But there remains something of a cult of youth reflected in the attitudes of the, mostly younger, recruiters.

In short, faced with two equally qualified candidates the recruiter will pick the younger one - "they'll fit in better", "more scope for development", "planning for the future". All quite understandable until you think about the actual facts. The average time people stay in a given job has been falling for years - Forbes reported that 'millennials' (can I say how much I hate that unhelpful term) are switching jobs every 4.4 years. So if you've a well-qualified 59 year old woman in front of you, don't think 'she'll be retiring soon', think 'up to eight years contribution from a really experienced person - more if she wants to stay longer'.

Another, more subtle piece of ageism, is a political act - typified by former MP, David Willetts in his book 'The Pinch':

David Willetts shows how the baby boomer generation has attained this position at the expense of their children.Social, cultural and economic provision has been made for the reigning section of society, whilst the needs of the next generation have taken a back seat. Willetts argues that if our political, economic and cultural leaders do not begin to discharge their obligations to the future, the young people of today will be taxed more, work longer hours for less money, have lower social mobility and live in a degraded environment in order to pay for their parents' quality of life.

It's hard to see how we reconcile this polemical view of my generation - selfish, greedy and so forth - with the WASPI victimhood or the anecdotes of declining income as older people take the only jobs they can get, well below their skills and experience. Yet that is what's happening - we're told (with good reason) that more and more of the government's spending is directed towards the old and we're supposed to get agitated because some how this is an imposition on the young while at the same time the established image of the poor old folk struggling away on a pittance sticks in the public's mind.

And yes it's true that we should stop with this emotive nonsense about 'the family home' or 'life savings' and expect older people to use that money to look after themselves. It really is an imposition on younger people to expect them to provide for older people just so they can pass on loads of expensive assets to their children and grandchildren. Indeed this is the only proper response to the issue starkly described by James Delingpole writing about the NHS:

That’s the good side. Now the bad — and it’s so bad I’m surprised it isn’t more of a national scandal. We read a lot about a service stretched to breaking point but what few of us grasp — I didn’t until I saw it myself — is perhaps the main contributory factor to this: bed after bed occupied by elderly, often Alzheimer’s-afflicted patients who simply don’t belong in wards designed to treat acute, short-term conditions.

Round about 75% of all the money spent by the NHS is spent in one way or another on the elderly. It's not just the 'bed-blocking' Delingpole describes but the industrial quantities of medication that the average pensioner chuffs down everyday, the repeated visits to the GP and the collection of special tests, injections and clinics directed to pensioners. All of this - except the de facto role of hospitals as old folks' homes - is entirely justified since it means more and more people living happy, healthy and active lives into their dotage.

Not only are those old people expensive but there are also more and more of them selfishly and greedily staying alive longer and longer. And this will carry on (perhaps with the exception of rock stars whose lifestyles perhaps preclude longevity) as our contemporaries - I speak as one of those 'boomers' - dash about filling up theatre seats, cruise ships and tea shops while driving carefully within the speed limit in front of the next generation of future selfish old folk.

Now I know a lot of young people will go 'ewww' at this but they've to get used a world quite unlike the one I was brought up in - a world where fashion, music, food and drink, art and travel markets are dominated by the middle aged and upwards and where 'youth culture' is a minority sport in every sense of the word. And this isn't because we've sucked up all the cash but because there are loads of us, we've earned a load of money during our lives and the bit of that cash we've got left we're planning on spending living well.

The ageism that Gaby Hinsliff alluded to in her article about the WASPIs may indeed be the case (although it's hard to find solid evidence for it) but it's a fact that's days are numbered. Not because of some sort of national campaign or shouty MPs but because the market tells us you'd better start respecting older people if you want to stay in business.

There's a bar in Harrogate called (creatively) The Blues Bar and it does more or less what it says on the tin. We're there listening to some good blues rock and, looking around, the whole audience is our age or older - no plaid, no slippers and no comfortable stretch slacks but rather jeans, casual shirts and even the occasional band t-shirt. This is the reality of 21st century ageing.

So however po-faced David Willetts gets, I'm convinced that he's wrong. Us 'boomers' do have a duty - it's not to subsidise the next generation or to get trapped in an inter-generational version of the lump of labour fallacy but rather to have as good a time as possible in the two or three decades left to us on this earth. To travel, to party, to eat, drink and enjoy the bounty of the great world we've helped create - we are the richest generation there has ever been and we should enjoy that wealth rather than find reasons to say 'it's not fair'. The next generation, without a shadow of doubt will be even richer than us, will live even longer and - I hope - will have an even better time with their last couple of decades.

We've a long way to go yet. Organisations like Age UK (and the WASPIs for that matter) are still stuck playing the 'poor old folk' card when in large measure that simply isn't the case at all. For sure, there's age discrimination - from nasty little quips on Twitter through to the difficulties redundant managers have in getting jobs - but in the place that really matters, in the consumer markets, older people are the kings and queens. Let's enjoy it!

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Much public health campaigning is about snobbery not concern for people's wellbeing

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Whenever you read a piece - most typically in The Guardian or Independent although sometimes these days in any media going - that talks about some or other 'public health crisis', the focus is always on things that people other than the writer is consuming. The problem with lager, fags and junk food isn't merely their supposed unhealthiness but that the sort of person who reads a broadsheet newspaper and goes to dinner parties with doctors doesn't consume these things. Indeed many of these writers only see these bad and unhealthy things being used - I'm guessing 'used' is the right word here since the stigma is akin to the taking of drugs - in the parts of society they only frequent vicariously via TV and magazines.

I'm reminded that this casual distaste for other people's choices makes little sense with food - there's no real calorific difference between a Big Mac and the sort of hand-formed, artisan burgers our Guardian reader enjoys on his night out. And let's not poke too closely into the sugar question - suffice it to note that uber-hypocrite Jamie Oliver peddles sugar-laden cakes and puddings in his books, newspaper columns and TV shows while ranting and raving about how much sugar there is in a can of coke.

All of which brings me to the matter of vaping, a practice that is, compared to the other snobbishly rejected bad habits, pretty benign and harmless - at least if we are to take the advice of Public Health England and the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT):

We begin by acknowledging that e-cigarettes are considerably safer than smoking cigarettes, are popular with smokers and that they have a role to play in reducing smoking rates

By considerably safer we mean at least 95% less harmful than smoking cigarettes - at least according to PHE. So what's the problem with vaping? Why are those public health officials in every town not rushing to support people switching from fags to vaping? And why aren't places becoming vape friendly, welcoming former smokers back into the warmth of indoors?

Partly the answer lies in a long puritanical campaign conducted - without any evidence - by a handful of well-connected academics and lobbyists. Partly, it's a classic case of 'not invented here syndrome' as public health campaigners and their friends in the pharmaceuticals business fail in believing that a consumer market can resolve the smoking'problem' that they've tried and failed to deal with over decades. But mostly it's just rank snobbery - vaping is something that fat, ugly working class people do. Even when the user is anything but:

It jarred against his crisp tux and stylish stubble, but there was no mistaking the object in Leonardo DiCaprio’s hand at the SAG Awards in January. That was a vape pen, which turns liquid nicotine into vapour.

When photos of the incongruous image began to emerge, the mockery was swift and slightly delirious. “That photo of Leonardo DiCaprio vaping at the awards dinner makes it easier to watch him die at the end of Titanic. #DoucheFlute,” one Twitter user wrote.

The scorn seemed baffling. Why would something designed to help smokers quit incur the snarky wrath of the Internet hordes? But while public-health experts continue to debate the risks and benefits of such smoking-cessation aids – e-cigarettes, as most people know them – cultural critics have reached a decisive verdict: Vaping is incredibly uncool.

The article in question goes on to describe the vaping community as "united in its tackiness" throwing out negative descriptions like this:

It is “vaped” with a gesture that looks disarmingly like a baby drinking its bottle: clutched with the full hand and suckled with pursed lips from a kind of nib.

The journalist in question then runs a quick canter round the usual lies and misinformation about vaping - noting the PHE research but then gleefully celebrating the fact that politicians are ignoring all this, buying the myth of a gateway effect and banning vaping indoors. What's driving this isn't that any of these politicians know whether vaping is dangerous but rather that it's simpler to whack on a ban knowing that those vaping - Leonardo Di Caprio aside - are a bunch of low life losers who are better kept outside.

Vaping is lumped in the same box as cheap kebabs, cans of premium strength lager, fizzy pop and salty corn snacks plus the evilest of evils itself, smoking. Instead of celebrating that Di Caprio has joined millions of others in taking up vaping to reduce harm and quit smoking our health reporters, so-called public health experts put on their finest sneer, peer down their upturned noses and wave away the vape as another distasteful lower class habit to be despised.

Public health campaigns remain unrelentingly snobbish - from forcing children to eat undernourishing salads rather than pies and puddings to clipboard wielding officials lecturing fried chicken shops on reducing salt and sugar, the whole sorry mess is about promoting an approved set of behaviours onto everybody. With the result being a passionless diet of tasteless low salt and sugar free food, an almost total abstinence from booze, the complete rejection of smoking and a preference for giving people dangerous mood altering drugs rather than supporting vaping.

If public health campaigners really cared about people's wellbeing they'd ask why it is that poor people die younger. They'd wonder why the single mum overeats, the unemployed twenty-something smokes and the old soldier drinks rather than simply trying to nudge them out of these habits with the policy equivalent of a baseball bat. But these public health fanatics don't ask these questions, they just ban stuff, control stuff, lecture, nanny and fuss. Public health campaigning isn't about health, it's about the snobbish promotion of a lifestyle set by passionless middle-class puritans.

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Some stuff to read....on peer review, marketing, witches, school dinners, parks, Africa and Uber

My choice for World Book Day

Worth it just for the title alone - an interesting and depressing read about peer review and the fixing of academe:

In the case of Lord Voldemort, the trick is to unleash so many fallacies, misrepresentations of evidence, and other misleading or erroneous statements — at such a pace, and with such little regard for the norms of careful scholarship and/or charitable academic discourse — that your opponents, who do, perhaps, feel bound by such norms, and who have better things to do with their time than to write rebuttals to each of your papers, face a dilemma. Either they can ignore you, or they can put their own research priorities on hold to try to combat the worst of your offenses.

Marketing as engineering - pretty interesting even though I don't really get the argument. Certainly makes you think (apologies for the presentation behind that link - ad agencies, pah!)

So how do we re-engineer corporations so they are able to thrive? I think we need engineering thinking. Engineering is defined as ‘the creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes’. It has been applied in many different areas leading to different types of engineering - civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical... I think we have a new one to add to the list and that’s digital engineering.

Do you believe in witches - how it has to be someone's fault...

Meanwhile, the sciences of human behavior have not been so successful. True, many scholars now understand that social phenomena such as prices are, in Adam Ferguson’s words, “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.” But many ordinary humans still think that prices (and immigration, and drug use, and practically all other social phenomena) arise directly from the actions of capitalists or legislators, and thus that the ill will or goodwill of such people shapes the world directly.

How Jamie Oliver made school dinners worse:

Today, I watch my students play with tiny bowls of sugar-free jelly and fruit salad. I’m all in favour of five a day but those who deem banana and pear to be an enjoyable dessert for a 10-year-old need their head examined.

A traveller's case for Uber:

These scams all have to do with one of three things: the choice of the route, the setting of the fare, and the exchange of money. When I use Uber, all three of these issues are solved, utterly. Firstly, Uber’s satnav/GPS system tells the driver what route to take, and I as a passenger am shown the route on a map. If the driver diverts too far from that route without a good reason, I make a simple complaint, my money is refunded to me, the driver suffers reputational damage, and he does not get paid. The fare is decided by a third party (whose terms and conditions the driver has agreed to) and quoted to me in advance, either as a flat amount or a fare per mile. The “meter” is controlled by that third party, and cannot be rigged. And I pay the money to a third party, and the money is essentially held in escrow until I have completed my journey and have said I am happy with it. The driver knows he gets paid if he does his job properly, and I know that there will be no attempt to scam me over money. Because I know he is not going to scam me and he knows I am not going to scam him (and anyway, because there is recourse if one of us does) there is no reason for us to not trust one another, and we are therefore invariably polite and friendly to each other. Which makes my day nicer, and very likely his also.

All a bit boilerplate and local government speak but still any creative thinking about parks is welcome:

Accurate financial data and park user insights, working with partners who bring new skills, resources and ideas, and providing space to quickly test ideas are all necessary to find out what mix of management practices and revenue opportunities are best able to sustain their park.

There's much that's not right about Singapore but no-one can deny its success.

The year of independence was 1965. It was the ninth day of August. In a national broadcast, a tearful Lee announced the separation between Malaysia and Singapore: “The whole of my adult life… I have believed in Malaysia, in merger and the unity of these two characters, you know, it’s a people connected by geography, economics and ties of kinship.”

Want a reason to leave the EU? Forget migration - focus on the damage it does to Africa:

There are at least three ways in which EU policies affect Africa’s ability to address its agricultural and food challenges: tariff escalation; technological innovation and food export preferences.

African leaders would like to escape the colonial trap of being viewed simply as raw material exporters. But their efforts to add value to the materials continue to be frustrated by existing EU policies.

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In which I feel like Peppone's wife...

It goes like this:

"So it isn't true that the Russians want peace, the way they say they do, is that it?"

"Of course it's true! They want peace but as long as there are warmongers, peace is impossible...Don't listen to gossip, I tell you. The Garibaldi ticket has been replaced by one that bears our own symbol, but the situation is just what it was before. You can go right ahead, without any misgivings, and vote as you did in 1948."

"All right chief," she said, not mentioning the fact that in 1948 she voted for the Christian Democrats.

"Oh, I'm not changing my mind," she protested. "I chose, once and for all, last time."

"Good," said Peppone, starting toward the door. "And would you get my gun out of the drawer this evening so I can clean it when I come home? If we win, then we're to start shooting. That's orders."

After Peppone had gone, his wife stared for a long time at the door. Then she raised her eyes to heaven and prayed:

"Lord, make them lose!"

So often, in understanding the stupidity, futility and meaning of politics, Giovanni Guareschi hits the nail on the head. This is once such occasion. And if you're a politicians - especially a local one - and haven't read Don Camillo, you should start putting this right immediately.




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Tim Worstall (and nearly everyone else) is wrong about open access publishing

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I get it that Tim Worstall as an independent researcher is on the sore end of the historically dominant publishing business model. To remind you, this model is where the authors of research get published for nothing, get paid nothing and the publisher flogs the journals back to academic libraries for expensive subscriptions. Hence this what Tim is celebrating:

Knowledge is a public good, such research papers are meant to be read to spread it and almost all of the research was tax funded to boot. It does seem odd there’s a there’s a few gatekeepers waxing fat off the journals.

Now I'm not going to get into the economics of all this so won't be asking whether or not knowledge is a public good. However, it is moot whether what we buy from academic publishers is knowledge per se or whether what we're buying is the publishing process. After all there's absolutely nothing to stop researchers doing what Tim does and just plonk their work on a free to air blog. There won't be any peer review, it'll be hard to find and it is tricky to protect against copying or plagiarism but authors can do this right now without restriction.

Unless they choose to submit is to a recognised journal so as to secure the peer review, the editing, the abstracting, the writing of key words, the indexing, the dissemination and the guarantee that the work will be seen alongside other similar work with the assurance of quality. Plus - since the copyright has transferred to the publisher - the assurance that copying and plagiarism will meet with a robust response. Under the terms (they vary from publisher to publisher, these are Elsevier's) the author will be able to:

Share their article for Personal Use, Internal Institutional Use and Scholarly Sharing purposes, with a DOI link to the version of record on ScienceDirect (and with the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC- ND license for author manuscript versions)

This means the author can but a copy onto a personal site, can use the article in teaching, can share the work with other researchers and can put the article into an institutional repository. All of which uses are open and sit outside the article cost or journal subscription. Nearly everyone who wants or needs to view the research can do so. Indeed, for credentialed science journalists the big publishers mostly give free access to published research and nearly all research is free to air within six months to a year following initial publication (in Elsevier's case this extends to post-docs not in academia).

So wholesale theft aside, what's the alternative to this model? This is what's called open access and, far from being free, it replaces subscriber pays with author pays. And, because the authors of articles in academic journals are academics, they aren't about to start paying personally for something they've had for free up till now. So the 'author pays' is, in reality, 'author's institution pays' or 'author's funder pays'. All we have done is to shift the cost from the library budget to the faculty budget and research budget. And the cost is anything up to £3,000 per article (depending on the particular journal) so it's not really accessible to the independent researcher in the way the old system was accessible.

The bigger problems with open access publishing, however, relate to who gets published and the quality of the published work. Firstly, the control of publishing shifts from the editorial boards and academic peers to either the institution or the funder (most typically a government body or a private corporation). An academic can only get published what his institution is prepared to pay for since they have to stump up the three grand to pay the publisher for the privilege. We move from the system where the gatekeeper is the publisher to one where, overwhelmingly, it is the government or an institution dependent on the government for its funding, authority and existence.

The second issue is one of quality - here's Beale's List:

This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards.

The worst of these publishers are indistinguishable from a vanity publisher - except that they're exploiting institutional budgets rather than a personal, individual wish to be published. Other simply play fast and loose with the peer review process, with systems for citation and loopholes within the infrastructure around open access publishing. Also, given the way in which people (and especially non-academic people) search, there is a big risk that poor quality, under-reviewed research is given the same credence as high quality, fully reviewed research.

Here from one publisher is an example:

You may suggest information of some particularly qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but who are not affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor.

And

You may also submit a list of reviewers to be excluded.

There's nothing wrong with open access systems but we need to understand that this isn't about whether knowledge is a public good but rather about whether the value added by the publishing process - however it's paid for - is worth the price. The simple 'research should be free to everyone' argument is essentially identical to the 'free access to medicine' argument - it may be right, even a good idea but it certainly isn't free. Which is why Tim Worstall - and many others banging on about open access and 'free knowledge' - are wrong.

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Why you can't buy French cheese in Norway (a case study in pro-EU ignorance)

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Some readers will recall the Great Norwegian Butter Crisis:

With the sense of national crisis deepening, the national daily Aftenposten ran a two-page spread with instructions on how to make your own butter. It's all a big disappointment for the domestic goddesses of the north for whom butter is a standard Christmas staple.

"I need butter today to make my lussekatt buns and my Christmas biscuits," grumbled one elderly Norwegian. "I brought up my four children under German occupation but this is nothing like that."

And the readers who got beyond having a great old laugh at the Norwegians will have learned that the reason for the butter crisis is Norway's deranged (this is genuinely the only way to describe them) agricultural protection policies:

"The problem is more to do with a lack of competition in the market," he said. "Tine is a monopolist in the market as a result of outdated postwar regulatory regimes in a concentrated market with high entry barriers."

Put simply Norway requires its milk producers to sell to one producer of dairy products and then slaps a complicated bunch of quotas, limited, controls and regulations of the industry. All this before lumping on a huge tariff on imports.

Hence the abject ignorance and stupidity of this remark (from the Director of Britain Stronger In Europe):




For, had Will Straw known about the Great Norwegian Butter Crisis, he would have been a little slower in suggesting that the lack of Camembert in Oslo was down to the French not wanting to sell the stuff to Norwegians:

Cheese imports from the EU that were hit by the tariff, including Gouda and cheddar, became almost three times more expensive when the tariffs took effect January 1, driving many brands out of the Norwegian market. EU politicians claim the punitive tariffs have damaged trade and not least Norwegian consumers, and kept European cheeses out of the Norwegian market at a time when Europe needs all the trade it can get because of its economic crisis.

So there you have it - the problem was caused by the decisions of idiot politicians in Norway rather than idiot politicians in Brussels. And, if Will Straw wants to make the case for staying in the EU, then he really ought to get his facts straight.

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Don't laugh, really...don't laugh

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The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) thinks planning is needed for technology development:

‘City planners are uniquely placed to mediate and bring together the conditions that are attractive to technology and AM firms, such as highly skilled employees who prefer a more social lifestyle and proximity to workplace, broadband connectivity, good transport, physical compactness.’

Given the planners' record on housing might I suggest we keep them as far away from all this economic development stuff as we possibly can.

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No, I'm not a special kind of lovely Tory - just the regular kind

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The attitude of some of my left-wing friends to Conservatives is best compared to the old racist who when challenged about his racism - "but what about Dave, you're OK with Dave?" - replies with something like, "ah, Dave's OK but the rest of those blacks....". Here's an example:

It constantly amazes me that you'd rather wallow in Tory rapacious greed. Cos I don't think you belong there.

You see the problem with all this is that I really am a Conservative. Not a special kind of lovely Tory but the regular sort. I know hundreds of Tories and overwhelmingly they're ordinary, decent, kind, caring, helpful folk. There's no sign of any 'rapacious greed' and I've yet to be served baby at a dinner party. Now I'm prepared to speculate that it may just be that I'm not invited to the sort of dinner parties where rapacious greed is celebrated but somehow I doubt it.

So when I'm with Tories, what do we 'wallow in' if it's not 'rapacious greed'? Well from my experience, what we talk about ranges from the mundane ('lovely weather', 'did you get away for a holiday this Summer', and 'how are the children doing') to matters such as schools, crime, clean streets and green fields. If we get a little more philosophical (although being conservatives we don't like to do this too often - gets in the way of our cherished 'stupid party' positioning), we might discuss the limits of free markets, the decline of religion or the balance between a liberal arts and vocational curriculum in schools.

When we're pushed, we'll give you an answer about what conservatism means and words like independence, choice and heritage might crop up. The discussion might mention the importance of institutions and the idea of 'putting something back'. Plus of course the principle that its right that value added to society is rewarded and that we've a duty to do right by ourselves, our family and our neighbours. On the harder crunchier economics the response will be a visceral support for 'business', the centrality of property rights and a slightly equivocal relationship with the idea of markets. And we're not the biggest fans of taxes.

Now it's true that I tend towards the liberal wing of the party but that doesn't mean I don't accept the idea of personal responsibility, don't think that institutions should be changed gently (if at all) rather than torn down in a fit of nihilistic creative destruction. In the end, I've come to recognise that there's a limit to idealism and that most people I represent want practical, pragmatic things from their elected representatives - a sort of 'soft loo paper conservatism'.

So yes, I care - but then so do most conservatives, the very conservatives you'll find on the 'fair trade' stall at church or working in the local charity shop. The same conservatives who help set up car clubs to run people without transport from their village to the doctors or the hospital, who organise a lunch club for elderly neighbours, who help run the village hall, who rattle tins for a bewildering range of good causes, who cherish local history societies and get their hands dirty with the gardening club or their faces daubed for the am-dram panto.

So my left-wing friends, I'm glad you've noticed that I'm neither rapacious or greed-filled. What you need to learn now is that I'm pretty typical of conservatives in England, of the people who for the last 20 years have trusted me as one of their Conservative councillors in Bingley Rural. These people aren't rapcious or greedy either, they're just decent, honest folk who want to get on with their lives, who want to live in a safe, happy and strong community and who know that the best way to do that is to elect Conservatives.

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Quote of the day - the new clerisy

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From Joel Kotkin in New Geography:

These middle income workers increasingly do not work for the private economy; they occupy quasi-public jobs dependent on public dollars than private markets. Universities, a core Democratic constituency have been hiring like mad: between 1987 and 2011, they added 517,636 administrators and professional employees, or an average of 87 every working day.

This educated and often well credentialed middle class tends towards progressive politics; in fact, university professors have become ever more leftist, outnumbering conservatives six to one. Indeed, those voters with advanced degrees were the only group of whites by education to support Obama in 2012.

In modern America, these people serve largely as a clerisy, hectoring the public and instructing them how to live. A bigger state is not a threat to them, but a boon. No surprise that public unions and academics have emerged as among the largest and most loyal donors to Democrats.

Yes, and we've the very same - call it 'common purpose', call it the 'new establishment' - in the UK. They have The Guardian on the kitchen table and a carefully crafted set of progressive opinions that somehow combine extreme snobbery with a pretence of caring. And boy do these folk hector us about how to live our lives!

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Banning political campaigns with public funds - it's because it's not your money

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The government has told public bodies that they can't use procurement as a tool of political campaigning. There has been the predictable outcry from those who want to use public money to promote a geopolitical agenda, usually wrapped up in the now almost meaningless word "ethical":

“The Government’s decision to ban councils and other public bodies from divesting from trade or investments they regard as unethical is an attack on local democracy.

“People have the right to elect local representatives able to make decisions free of central government political control. That includes withdrawal of investments or procurement on ethical and human rights grounds."

I'm afraid not. For the very simple reason that it's not your money, it's not there for you to conduct political campaigns. In the case of the budgets for local government, NHS Trusts and other public bodies the money is there to deliver the services for which those organisations exist none of which is remotely connected to foreign policy. To use that money - at a cost to local people - to seek to change the policies of a government far, far away is truly unethical unlike the make-believe 'unethical' of the political campaigners.

And for those pension funds that these supposedly 'ethical' campaigners want to use for political purposes - that's completely unethical if not downright immoral. It really, really isn't your money - it's the pensions of millions of public servants and you've no right at all to compromise those people's future wellbeing for the sake of your political campaigns.

So the government is absolutely right to take it very seriously when local councils or other public bodies seek to prosecute their foreign policy using public money - especially when it runs counter to that government's foreign policy and to treaty obligations in respect of international trade.

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Why Will Self is wrong about public open space

The writer, Will Self has decided that it is a terrible thing that open space in cities is not in public ownership. Using his familiar flowery language he bemoans this as some sort of loss:

“What people don’t understand is that it does affect you psychically. It constrains you in how you think about what you can do in a space, and it constrains your imagination. It’s like a condensing of time and money and space – it needs to be resisted.”

Self added: “The kind of ludic, playful potential of living in a city is being significantly impoverished by this kind of stuff.”

What I don't get here is why, when publicly-owned space has been the subject of interminable (and often seemingly arbitrary) rules, the campaigners have suddenly latched onto the problem with these rules only when they are set and policed by private organisations. Bradford Council, to take one example, has a 16 page booklet explaining the rules governing its parks and covering such things as the flying of kites and model aeroplanes, bathing and ball games. You'll be delighted to know that cricket balls are banned, for example, as is climbing trees and archery.

We're also familiar with 'no ball games' signs on corner patches of grass and a host of other limitations, restrictions and bans used by public authorities to control the activities of the public using that public open space. So Will Self, in saying that the rules imposed by private organisations on land they own with public access rights constrain 'what you can do in a space', is completely missing the point that public authorities have done exactly the same on land that they control. As the public we have, in effect, no more control over the rules governing a public park than we have over the rules in a private park.

The difficulty comes when the rules imposed clash with what somebody wants to do - most shopping malls, for example, ban leafleting and especially political campaign literature. And I suspect most of the mall users - the public - would probably support that, just as they would support controls on chuggers, pedlars and signature collectors (it's worth noting that, while these activities can't be banned on the public highway they are banned in Bradford Council's parks).

Self, by trying to make out that the problem he sees is a problem of the privatisation of open space, completely misses the point - especially when he rails against Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs). These orders aren't available to private organisations they have to be imposed by a public authority, most usually a local council. Now I've some sympathy with the criticism levelled at these orders as they are a lazy approach to policing space since they, in effect, give the police power to criminalise things that aren't criminal - drinking in the street, smoking, singing, shouting and selling. But these powers are not a consequence of space being private but a consequence of the popular desire for what we might call 'order' being more valued than the unpopular desire of people like Self to act freely in public spaces.

It is a huge mistake to make the debate into a private versus public contest for it is nothing of the sort. Everywhere we go, we see the conflict between different uses of public space. We see this with cyclists, dog walkers and horse riders sharing the same green lane in a country park through to the clash between the right to protest and people's right to go about their business without interference. And in between these contestants we see authorities setting rules so as to allow (at least in their eyes) the moderation of a contested open space.

All of this reflects the persistent desire of public authorities to see private activity in public spaces curtailed and controlled (if not outright banned). As Barbara Ehrenberg observed in her book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, authorities, public and private, dislike gatherings of people (regardless of the reason for gathering):

Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a "danced religion." Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites.

So what Self is protesting isn't a new phenomenon, just a new set of tools and excuses prepared by government to justify the controlling of open space. And what those lovers of order - trust me when I tell you that those dreadful PSPOs are popular with the wider public - fail to appreciate, which I guess is part of Self's point even though he makes it clumsily, is that 'main street' needs those gatherings.

Other consumers and retailers describe social activities on Main Street, which they associate with a variety of experiences, including dining; window shopping; strolling for relaxation; jogging for health reasons; pub crawls; wine tastings; book clubs; language clubs; craft guilds; charity events; art events; parades; demonstrations; mass celebrations following major sports victories; and meeting friends.

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In which The Guardian reminds us why we like Top Gear

Cars - what's not to like?

It was good of The Guardian to remind us why we like Top Gear:

Top Gear fetishises the totally unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels in the name of sport, entertainment and feeling better about your premature ejaculation disorder; it normalises dangerously fast driving; it contributes to the hunger for more and more cars that we neither need nor can sustain; it treats the sheer act of moving a machine as if it’s a display of heroic bravery and skill; and it paid Jeremy Clarkson’s salary for over 25 years.

I don't know where to start with all the goodness in this quotation for it gets right to the heart of Top Gear's appeal which is to wave those two fingers made famous by English archers at Agincourt in the direction of all the spiritless, pinched, judgemental, snobbish bores like Nell Frizzell, its writer. What Top Gear provides is a brief escape from the endless dribble about climate change, from the institutionalised attack on the motor car, and from the dreary moral high ground inhabited by people who write for The Guardian and appear on Channel 4 News.

Cars are great. They sit at the heart of our civilization. Nearly 90% of journeys made are made in cars. The manufacture, sale, maintenance and support of cars is a massive slug of our economy. The modern car is a remarkable feat of engineering, filled with innovation in engine management, fuel efficiency, communications and comfort. And millions - I really mean millions, far more than ever even glance at The Guardian - enjoy the stuff that goes with cars and motor sport.

So Nell Frizzell doesn't like cars (I probably don't believe her on this one but we'll take her at her word). That is, without question, her loss. For the rest of us, we'll carry on enjoying programmes that celebrate cars and car culture, that do so with wit and charm, and that provide the tiniest piece of opposition to the endless boilerplate of green nonsense that infects our media.

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Threats of violence and death are serious even if they're from a vegan

My meatloaf. Not a vegan dish.

Let's be clear. I think veganism is stupid. I've no problem with people who want to adopt the habit, I can put up with them going on about it all the time but I do not consider that vegans have any moral superiority and take the view that their diet is very likely to be unhealthy.

But if you want to be a vegan that's fine. Or rather it's fine until to decide to use violence to try and force your moral prejudices onto others:

The takeaway and couple have received considerable numbers of negative comments on social media – including its Facebook page ‒ such as being called “psychopaths” by user Robert Smith, and Denise Bottall, who said Sam Deeson was “evil”, and that she should “let me at him with a pair of scissors.” Facebook user Janet Tomsen called the practice “disgusting and murder”.

Again, I guess it's just about OK to use this sort of language - the 'let me at them with scissors' comment is getting pretty close to the line though. And that was just one example of organised mobs of vegans trying to destroy a business because they've decided that their supposed (and false) moral superiority justifies that action.

Sadly this isn't a one-off and, because the targeting of restaurants by vegans is not dealt with by the police, the problem is escalating:

"As soon as the activists got hold of it we got around 200 death threats in hours. We have had between 4-5,000 messages, calls, texts and emails.

"It got to the point where staff were in tears and were scared to answer the phone when I thought, 'enough is enough' and pulled the Foie Gras from the menu.

"People coming to eat with us over the weekend are disappointed and I suppose in a way we've let the trolls win but I can't risk the safety of the staff."

You need to understand that there's a distinction between free speech - those vegan activists are entitled to criticise the pub's decision to serve foie gras - and actual harm. And a death threat that results in staff crying and undermines a business that employs people and contributes to the economy is demonstrably harm.

It is time that these mobs of vegan activists were dealt with in the same way we'd deal with a mob trying to prevent a mosque opening or a rampage of activists using threats of violence or rape to close down a feminist blog. Sadly, Norfolk police don't seem to share this view:

A spokesman for Norfolk Police said they were aware but would not investigate further as no direct threats had been made.

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Some interesting stuff to read including snowflake bullies, non-racist football, child mental health and why public health lie all the time

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Bullies with a cause - exploring the 'snowflake fascists':

To make matters worse, among “the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity,” according to psychologists Erik L. Westby and V.L. Dawson, is that “teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity.” Although teachers report they value creativity, these nonconformist children who act and think differently and don’t quite fit in—the children most in need of teachers’ support and protection—are, research reveals, teachers’ least favorite students.

Rod Liddle on form as he discusses why football isn't racist whereas middle-class professions are (and has a go at Beyonce):

It’s not just Millwall, mind — football has done extraordinarily well in accustoming the white folks to divest themselves of racial prejudice. It is still the focus of anti-racist odium from the middle-class liberal left, of course, which despises what it sees as a lowbrow white working-class leisure pursuit. And yet there were more black players on Millwall’s books in 1975 than there were black journalists on the Guardian’s staff. A greater proportion of black footballers then and now than black academics, black lawyers, black MPs, black educationalists, black social workers — name your middle-class profession and the answer will be the same. And black Britons thrived in the same trades as those working-class supporters on the terraces — as electricians, plumbers, labourers.

Frank Furedi in challenging mode as he discusses mental health and children:

Confused and insecure children are likely to be diagnosed as depressed or traumatised. Virtually any energetic or disruptive youngster can acquire the label of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Youngsters who give their teachers a hard time or argue with adults are likely to get stuck with the label of oppositional defiant disorder.

The proliferation of new medicalised categories with which to label school pupils says far more about the inventive powers of the therapeutic imagination than the conditions of childhood. Pupils who suffer from shyness are offered the diagnosis of social phobia. The diagnosis of school phobia can now be applied to label those children who really dislike going to school.

And Chris Snowden explaining slowly and carefully why public health lies all the time about drinking:

The graph represents the relationship between alcohol consumption and mortality. It is, I think, well known that the relationship is J-shaped. This particular J-curve is based on 34 prospective epidemiological studies which collect data on how much people drink and then follow them over a period of years with a view to seeing if they die and what they die of. As this graph shows, the risk of death declines substantially at low levels of alcohol consumption and then rises, but it does not reach the level of a teetotaller until the person is consuming somewhere between 40 and 60 grams of alcohol a day, which is to say between 35 and 50 units a week.

Here's a canter through the weird and wonderful world of consumer apps (this Uber for everything!):

Valet Anywhere will find you and park your car for you. Dufl will pack and ship your bags for you. Zingy, Barkpost, Wag! and FetchPetCare all offer on-demand dog-walking. Over the holidays, I received a breathless pitch for Thirstie, an app billed as a “discovery-to-delivery platform that allows you to stock up on last-minute wine, beer and spirits under an hour.” (Lest you think Thirstie has cornered its market, it’s locked in a Coke-Pepsi-style battle with its arch rival, Saucey.)

Meanwhile the Adam Smith Institute are running against the tide on migration - a welcome challenge to the media-led shouting:

The best international development policy would be to let in more workers from the third world in to work in Britain, according to a new paper from the Adam Smith Institute. Politicians should stop trying to save entire countries with foreign aid programmes and instead help their inhabitants by letting them move to developed countries, it says.

Finally, this is a really great idea:

Using this LoT (Locator of Things) technology, Pixie has basically created a network of items that can correspond and even talk which each other. This does not only create a ‘smart household’, but it also adds potential smart technology to the city. Add a pixie to your bicycle and find it back easily. Let your car give you a sign when you forgot to bring your driver license. Or add a Pixie to your shopping cart and let it find a your pre-set shopping list.

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Quote of the day - on the consequence of political decisions

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From the incomparable Dick Puddlecote:

My personal favourite was a story of a politician who was offered a drink late at night and chose a single malt. His companion went to the bar but was told he couldn't be served that particular drink because it counted as a shot and the law said they were illegal after midnight in order to tackle binge-drinking. "What a stupid law that is!", raged the politician, to which his friend replied, "yes, but you voted for it".

Thus we are reminded that firstly many politicians are stupid and, secondly, that Australia has some of the most controlling, nannying and downright offensive government in what we still call the free world.

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In which we are reminded that the NHS management don't understand economics

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It starts with this:

‘Collectively and cumulatively [these actions] and others like them will help shift power to patients and citizens, strengthen communities, improve health and wellbeing, and – as a by-product – help moderate rising demands on the NHS’

This is the rather ghastly sounding 'Health as a Social Movement' line in the NHS's vain attempts to pretend that preventative medicine will 'moderate rising demands'. What is most striking here is that, yet again, the basic economics of all this are overlooked (although given they've appointed the risible joke of a think tank, New Economics Foundation, it's pretty clear they're not remotely interested in actual real economics).

Unless the project is about improving productivity through these community-focused actions then the only impact - assuming they do improve health and wellbeing - will be to increase the long-term demands (and hence costs) on the NHS.

The report ...projected that people with Type 2 diabetes who participated in a disease management program to prevent serious complications would cost the federal government slightly more money over 25 years than they would have without any intervention.

If you stop and think about this for a second, the reason for a healthy community being more expensive is pretty obvious - most of the costs in the health system (and the care system too) are directed towards older people so if more people live to a ripe old age there are more of those 'end of life' costs.

To use a big example, we've seen a massive decline in the numbers of and in survival rates from heart attacks - since 2002 the mortality rate has more than halved. In simple terms this means there are double the number of long-term heart 'patients' compared to the old days when they all died of a heart attack. This absolutely brilliant and a credit to doctors, pharmacists and the health benefits of a bigger, richer economy. But it's costing the NHS a fortune.

And it's not just heart attacks but every sort of disease, from childhood infectious diseases through to cancers, that has seen declining mortality rates. And this means it's pretty normal to live into your 80s, not unusual to make it to 90 and increasingly common for folk to make it to 100. So when we act - quite rightly - to prevent disease and reduce mortality rates the result is more and more old people and more and more demand for the NHS services that are under so much strain.

The challenge for healthcare is to improve productivity - to reduce unit costs for operations, for providing care, for dispensing medicines, for all the vast array of stuff health care does. And spending money on "health as a social movement" only does this if it means that the allocation of NHS resources to these communities is thereby reduced. So long as we focus on simple prevention as a demand management tool, we will find no benefit in higher productivity and a pile more demand-led costs for the system.

This is, of course, what you get if you believe that NESTA, the RSA and New Economics Foundation are the sorts of organisations that are able to guide the NHS towards greater efficiency and higher productivity. A load of left-wing cant and absolutely no moderation of rising demand.

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Quote of the day: Why doctors shouldn't strike

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Nothing to add to this:

When a country operates under a healthcare monopoly, its citizens are fundamentally at the mercy of the provider. That provider has an ethical responsibility to show up to work every day and look after its patients; if they don’t, no one else will.

Absolutely spot on. It's unethical for doctors to strike.

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Quote of the day - how the NFL is a corrupting enterprise that exploits its players and its fans

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It happened. We all got terribly excited about the Superbowl. Even in England where we have rugby league which is the same game but without armour, forward passes or endless delays to fit in advertising.

Anyway here's Matthew Stevenson on the NFL:

The National Football League runs on backhand payments to athletic organizations, sweetheart contracts, and monopoly pricing, in addition to screwing over its fan base by moving teams around. Its reward for urban price fixing isn’t prosecution for collusion under antitrust laws (it is exempt). Instead, it is awarded a national day of reverence, Super Sunday, during which 30 seconds of ad time costs $5 million, and the strategic national stockpile of guacamole is severely threatened.

The owners don’t actually own teams, but are general partners in a football trust, which allows them to share equally in all television revenues and collectively 'bargain' with concussed players, who are only free agents after five years of indentured service. By then, most are broken men. The league's attitude toward the declining mental of health of its retired players could be summarized as “So sue me”.

Yes, a few stars make big money, for a while, but teams are rarely on the hook for long-term guaranteed contracts and salaries are “capped,” they say, “in the interest of competition.”

No words being minced there and a stark reminder to those fans of proper football who call for salary caps, pooled income and other madatory controls on the operation of the game. Be careful what you wish for.  And read the whole article in New Geography - it's worth it.

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Looks like it's only the mad dogs left...

At least if we follow the latest guidance from the Church of Public Health:

There is no safe or healthy way to get a tan from sunlight, new guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has warned.

The health watchdog's latest guidance also says an existing tan provides little protection against sun exposure.

It recommends using at least factor 15 sun cream, with adults urged to use 6-8 teaspoons (35ml) per application.

Benefits from building up vitamin D from the sun have to be balanced with the risks of skin cancer, it adds.

You remember all those years ago when the merest glimpse of watery sunshine resulted in us stripping layers of clothing off to bask in its glory? When your mum, spotting the opportunity to get some peace and quiet threw you out into the garden with as few clothes on as possible (and sun cream - what is sun cream)? Those days are gone, the midday sun is left solely to the mad dogs.

What absolute frothing lunacy is this - rickets is on the increase and over 90% people with skin cancers survive but the Chief Medical Officer, NICE and the assorted fussbuckets prefer to scare us about cancer while not giving a damn about kids getting deformities from being kept in a dark room in case a ray of sunshine should accidentally splash onto an unprotected portion of skin.

The guidance goes into contortions that are more reminiscent of the hokey-cokey to describe how we can expose skin to build up Vitamin D with first one arm, then another exposed for a 'short period' to the evil rays or the dreaded sun.

It does seem that it's not the dogs that are mad but the entirety of the public health profession.

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Migrants on benefits, mosquitoes, arts funding and other links you'll like

Spooky Bradford

"I didn't even know I could get benefits" - a reality check on migrants and the benefits system

“And actually it doesn’t bother me, all this immigration debate. I’m too busy. I work full time; I have three kids. But nobody I know came here for benefits and I don’t think not getting them will stop anyone coming. Maybe one or two. There’s always someone. But I know many, many more British people who live on benefits than east Europeans.”

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Kill all the mosquitoes

"Mosquitoes spread Malaria, Chikungunya, Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, a variety of forms of encephalitis (Eastern Equine Encephalitis, St. Louis Encephalitis, LaCrosse Encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, Western Equine Encephalitis, and others), West Nile virus, Rift Valley Fever, Elephantiasis, Epidemic Polyarthritis, Ross River Fever, Bwamba fever, and dozens more."

So exterminate them - all of them

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So you don't do politics? Think again.

"Politics is omnipresent wherever humans negotiate over power and governance. We speak of “office politics” or “university politics,” and those phrases are not mere metaphors. Our negotiations with friends are a form of politics as well, as we figure out where to go out to eat or what show to see. Our romantic and familial relationships are full of similar negotiations about language, persuasion, power, and mutual consent. To say we “don’t do politics” is to have a narrow notion, in Ostrom’s view, of what constitutes being a citizen in a society where democracy is a feature of so many institutions."

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Virtue signalling as conspicuous consumption.

"Rather than trying to one-up one another by buying Bentleys, Rolexes and fur coats, the modern social climber is more likely to try and show their ‘authenticity’ with virtue signalling by having the correct opinions on music and politics and making sure their coffee is sourced ethically, the research says."

...interesting and challenging

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Nothing new about retailing as performance (ask any market trader) - and it's back...

One of the key themes emerging from the presentations was that creating face-to-face customer experiences is vital to retailers not only because of the value to audiences in-store but also because of the huge value of customers sharing their experience across social media platforms. Sophie Turton from eConsultancy, who spoke at one of the learning talks, noted that:

“Instead of creating content, retailers should be creating opportunities for content creation – instagrammable moments, inspiring experiences.”

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The Urbanophile on Charles Taylor's 'A Secular Age'

"The creation of the buffered self had consequences, however. By disconnecting us from the world, and draining the world of meanings, the buffered self creates a sense of improverished existence. That is to say, it produces the pervasive modern sense of malaise long commented on by Freud and others. But whereas Freud saw malaise as the inevitable byproduct of the sense of guilt necessary to make civilization possible, for Taylor it is rooted specifically in Western modernity’s sense of the buffered self."

Fabulous stuff.

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And how all the arts funding still goes to London:

The report also highlights that Arts Council England’s decision to move an extra 5% of Lottery funds outside London amounts only to an “improvement outside London of 25p per head”.

Its Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital report in 2013 also claimed that ACE was allocating more than five times as much spending per resident to London organisations as those outside the capital in 2012/13.

Enjoy!!

Quote of the day - on virtue-signalling as conspicuous consumption

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Excellent from the Adam Smith Institute:

Virtue signalling has made widely-held ideas like ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ and conspicuous consumption completely outdated, according to a new paper from the Adam Smith Institute. Rather than trying to one-up one another by buying Bentleys, Rolexes and fur coats, the modern social climber is more likely to try and show their ‘authenticity’ with virtue signalling by having the correct opinions on music and politics and making sure their coffee is sourced ethically, the research says.

A good read too.


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A bad week for culture in Bradford (and The North)

It has been a lousy week for culture in Bradford. First we had the announcement that the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection of art in photography would be transplanted from Bradford to a new 'centre' somewhere in London. And then today we got a second bombshell as the National Media Museum pulled out of the Bradford International Film Festival.

My view of all this is that it underlines the utter and complete domination of arts and culture by a narrow, London-focused elite. The Trustees of the V&A are all based in London and it wouldn't surprise me to discover that many of them, while they've visited Paris, Venice and New York haven't visited Bradford, Gateshead or Wolverhampton. For this elite such places are for talking about - you know 'deprivation', 'poverty', 'the underclass', gritty Northern films on a left-wing theme - rather than visiting. For the London elite the best that can be said is that some of them consider the North somewhere to be patronised - not in a physical way but by appearing on late night arts shows and saying how important it for the North to be recognised culturally (just so long as we don't have to go there).

There's nothing new with this problem - it remains perhaps the biggest challenge facing England. We talk a lot about the imbalance between London and 'The North' - indeed the Arts Council spends most of it's briefing pages on funding trying to demonstrate that it really does care about 'The North' and that most of the money doesn't go to London. It remains the case that roughly twice as much money goes to London that to the whole of the North. And let's remember that The North's population is around double that of London. meaning that per capita Londoners get four times as much arts funding as Bradfordians.

More to the point, London is also much richer with more access to the private sector funding that being one of the world's great cities brings. And this means that the wider infrastructure of arts and culture - commercial theatre, art markets, music and so forth - is much stronger (or at least appears that way). So while the efforts of the Arts Council, Heritage Lottery Fund and others to redress the imbalance is welcome it doesn't get close to the heart of the problem.

This heart - the central challenge - is the assumption that major national institutions have to be based in London. This was the essential problem with the decision by the Science Museum to hand over the RPS collection to the V&A. Not that a new 'centre' for art in photography isn't a great idea but rather that the centre could only be created in London. It seems that the Trustees of the Science Museum Group, at their meetings in London, didn't even consider suggesting to their new partners at the V&A that locating the new centre in the North might be the right idea (we can't be sure because the minutes of this almost entirely publicly funded organisation are not public).

So the RPS collection goes to London, which is sad. But worse than this, there's nothing but a gap left behind. Bradford no longer has that inspiring collection and nothing will replace it (a new 'interactive gallery' at the National Media Museum doesn't work since it's not really new and isn't really culture). The decision is a narrow one driven by a combination of cost pressures on the Science Museum Group (mostly being resolved by cutting the budgets of its three Northern museums) and the in-built bias towards London.

The actual decision was taken - without engaging with stakeholders in Bradford so far as I can tell - back in July 2015 with the time since then presumably spent thrashing out the details with the V&A. I don't know when the second decision, sacking the Bradford International Film Festival, was taken but it's announcement in the same week at the RPS collection decision suggests either a similar timetable or else a desire to get all the bad news out in one week. And now the museum, from being to go-to place for the culture of photography, film and TV, has become a mere adjunct of the science museum proper, a place of buttons and levers dedicated solely to showing off science stuff rather than curating the artifacts and the content of these classic media.

What's missing - from the V&A as well as the Science Museum - is any sense of the damage these decisions are doing to Bradford as a city. London is awash with film festivals whereas Bradford had just three - all now gone or under threat. All killed off by the narrowing of the National Media Museum's focus and by the blind ignorance of that London elite running the museums. The closure of a gallery or reconfiguration of a museum in London may be agitating but it does little real damage to that city's arts and culture infrastructure. Here in Bradford - just as almost everywhere in the North - the decisions made by the Science Museum to withdraw from involvement in culture has left a raw, bloody gash in the UK's only UNESCO City of Film.

It's true that Bradford people will pick themselves up, will gather together and put what pressure they can on government, on the Arts Council on the museums. And maybe a few conciliatory crumbs will come our way as a result, doubtless loudly trumpeted by those London institutions as great news for poor old Bradford. Of a considered approach to that bloody gash in Bradford's cultural life there will be none. The big arts and culture institutions won't set up a group to work on mending the wound their decisions have made, instead they'll spin what little (and it is vanishingly tiny) they've done until such a time as the national media stop taking any notice.

Even more, without some sort of big stick from government there's no way for us 'stakeholders' in Bradford's culture to influence the decisions made by that rich London-based elite that makes the decisions about how England's arts and culture infrastructure should be developed. I'd like them to visit Bradford - let us ask some questions of them. Not just about why everything has to be in London but about how they can support those of us who want to create a cultural heart for the North of England, who want to see the arts infrastructure developed and who are fed up with being supplicants to grand men and women in London who have - as we've seen in Bradford - the power to thoughtlessly tear great chunks from the cultural life of Northern cities.

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Those aren't giants, they're windmills - how the EU deal makes the case for leaving

As a Conservative it's always right to exercise doubt. Which is what most of us have been doing over the progress and direction of the European Union for some time. It's also important to understand that the true believers - in the EU's mission or in the need to escape from its clutches - do not understand the nature of doubt or, as we more regularly call it, scepticism. So when, faced with the need to decide, a sceptic lands on the "wrong" side of the fence it is always a traitorous denial of principle according to those true believers.

I've no doubt that many sceptics will decide to, as a Polish politician suggested on the radio this morning, 'take a rain check'. This is on the basis that, if you leave the EU that's it, there really isn't any going back. If you don't leave then there's always the opportunity to leave at some later time. Now this isn't a view point I share - seems a bit of a cop out - but its appeal is considerable as it conforms to the advice given by Jim's Father after the lad's fatal encounter with a lion.

His Mother, as She dried her eyes,
Said, ``Well--it gives me no surprise,
He would not do as he was told!''
His Father, who was self-controlled,
Bade all the children round attend
To James's miserable end,
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.

Yesterday we saw the next iteration of the 'reform' that will somehow justify us staying in the EU. And it's fair to say that the package announced by Donald Tusk and presented to a panting press pack by the Prime Minister was somewhat underwhelming. As one wag (@taxbod as it happens) described it:

Dave's EU deal. The terms, in full:

1) Raindrops on roses;
2) Whiskers on kittens;
3) Bright copper kettles;
and 4) Warm woollen mittens.

I disagree with those who tell me that the process was all smoke and mirrors, an act of political legerdemain designed to hoodwink up into voting to remain a EU member. Rather, the exercise was similar to the brave actions of Don Quixote when faced with giants:

And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."

"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.

"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length."

"Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone."

And the result - bits and pieces of what we wanted but no treaty change - represents absolutely the best that could have been obtained under the circumstances. We have galloped out, charged the enemy and returned with our heads high having failed because without a threat to its existence the EU cannot change any more than Don Quixote's giants could stop being windmills. Part of the thinking - and it was sound - is that the very fact of a referendum on the UK leaving represented a significant enough threat to the EU's sustainability. It turns out that - especially given the UK's negotiators reassurances of their intent, come what may, to continue supporting membership - this threat was not a threat at all.

I am a genuine sceptic in all this. I don't really believe in ever more draconian immigration controls, I don't want a sort of pseudo-fascist isolationist approach to the economy for that is lunacy. And I absolutely believe that the EU has played a role (albeit a smaller one than its vanity permits) in securing peace and harmony on what was a divided continent. So I ought to be a supporter of the EU except for a couple of real problems.

The first is that the EU's economic and social policies act to make Europeans poorer - this is true of the Common Agricultural Policy, it's true of its policies on the environment, and its true of its restrictive approach to rules on labour, health and welfare. Above all the EU is inward-looking and concerned with protecting what is here now rather than looking forward to what might be there tomorrow. The result is corruption, sclerotic economic growth, misplaced intervention and a preference for managed trade (like the TTIP) rather than free trade.

Worse than all this is that there is no way in which the EU can change this approach, it has ossified into a rigid protectionist mindset and a defensiveness about external criticism that merely shows how weak the 'union' is in reality. The sorry tale of Greece and the Euro should remind us that the EU will watch citizens starve rather than give one inch of ground on its programme - even when that programme is demonstrably failing.

The EU has all the trappings of democracy - a parliament, elections, grand debates and a constant babble about 'citizens'. But it is not a democracy because none of the actions available to the demos are able to change the policies of the union - these policies are set in stone, immutable and unchanging. Vast libraries of impenetrable prose are churned out giving the impression of change but which, on close inspection, change little of any significance or substance.

So no, I don't give a fig about when or whether migrants from Poland can claim benefits - it's a pretty marginal issue to the challenge of reforming the benefits we give to our own citizens. Nor do I care much about net migration or about the essentially meaningless wibble that is national sovereignty. But I do care about my ability, along with my neighbours, to have a real say in the decisions made by governments that affect my life. And - as is shown by the conclusion of David Cameron's negotiations - there is no prospect of the EU permitting this to happen or for us to move towards a polity genuinely founded on the principles of free speech, free enterprise and free trade.

So I shall - and you should - vote to leave.

....