Meme: What were you doing when ...? - 4 comments

I noticed this at Sadie's Tavern and thought I'd have a go (having not been invited to) while I had a spare moment. So what was I doing at the key moments in human history? Or indeed the following ones?:

Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997
I spent that summer working at a certain "one stop" convenience store in lovely Warsash, Hants., and this being a Sunday, I was sleeping in - prior to the early afternoon shift - when I was informed. As I was already known for producing scurrilous poetry about the Royal Family, I confess to not being able to summon up too many of the finer feelings over this particular tragedy, and as I unloaded the black-bannered newspapers early the next morning, I could feel the moralistic bandwagon gathering pace...

Margaret Thatcher's resignation - 22 November 1990
Though an avowed atheist, I wasn't an especially politically-advanced 13-year-old. I vaguely remember asking my Dad earlier on that year how it came to be that the Thatcher administration wasn't getting credit for the seemingly remorseless decline in the (headline) unemployment figures. Labour I might have been within 12 months (anyone remember those brightly-coloured Labour newspapers??), but liberal I certainly wasn't. Anyway, from my diary entry:

"[...] Had lunch - went to the shop with N- L- and bought a Count Suckula (!?). Got back. [...] Had Double Chemistry - that methodist S- has not thanked or congratulated me about the Chemistry Quiz. Got back in a mood [...]
Main news story: Mrs. Thatcher stands down as Prime Minister today.
Football: Chelsea beat Manchester Utd. 3-2"

Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001
I was working in a little software company in the West End and, shocked, we watched the events unfold on the BBC News website, and the rec-room TV.

I vaguely remember a feeling of: "Everything's going to change. Where do we go from here?" Amid the horror, being an idealist, a radical, and generally pro-USA, I hoped that some good must come of this.

England's World Cup Semi Final v Germany in - 4 July 1990
The 1990 diary reminds me that I was supposed to be watching Hampshire v. India at the old County Ground, but that it was cancelled due to rain, forcing us to remain in school, playing Top Trumps, Battleships, Subbuteo, and other worthwhile pursuits.

I did watch the football later, describing it thus:

England should have won, but lost on penalties.

Which, I think you'll agree, captures all the atmosphere of the evening. I also remember watching an episode of Sorry!, the classic Ronnie Corbett "vehicle", as well as continuing my love-affair with this song.

President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963
Not even the CIA could place me there.

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Feel free to join in, if you feel like it.

"A moral crusade, or it is nothing" - 8 comments

There's been a lot of talk about Ivan Lewis MP's call to (sort of) "tax the rich, not the middle class", almost all of it favourable, at least from within the Labour Party.

I'm not going to talk here about economic efficiency, which would warrant a completely different post, nor about Labour's prospects, for reasons which will become clear. I'm going to talk about what motivates me, politically, and step back from that to interpret the moral mission of the Labour Party/movement (I use the two terms interchangeably).

I care about the poor and powerless because they inhabit a country whose economy and political system was built on theft and injustice (for which mainstream politicians offer only the mildest of ameliorative redistribution), just as the rest of us do, but without the cushion of individual wealth and power that the majority enjoy. That's the moral basis for "caring" - Labour's moral mission, as I interpret it: it combines a modest effort to bring them closer to the national average in all good things, with a kind of guilt that comes from knowing that for the most part their lowly status is undeserved, and that their ability to advance has been hitherto thwarted.

[That's redistribution on the basis of need and desert, and as a gesture against past injustice. The redistribution that Lewis talks about doesn't seem to have a moral basis: some have, some have not, so providing the have-nots are more populous than the haves, let one group take from the other - whether the haves are the super-rich, or a well-known utility company with a poor public profile. Tax-grab is a harsh term to use, but the approach is incompatible with a free society. Once it's established, groups advance on the basis of their popularity, not their need or desert.]

So, no, I don't care about the middle classes (as generally defined), and - not being a politician - I don't have to pretend to care either, certainly not for the lot of those who live comfortable lives, and whose fortunes merely ebb and flow with the global and national economy. Political parties in Britain cling to the idea that being elected is the only way to change society, and the lure of the prize - however distant - is too tempting for either party to decentralise and risk the other party enjoying a sniff of power and influence within the polity. Hence the unprincipled appeals of parties to political loyalty, and the mockery directed at those who shun "electability", even as the process of election strips the moral purpose from their own campaign.

If the moral purpose of Labour really can be put aside, what is the point of the party at all? Macroeconomic management? I'm not convinced that's not worth installing any political party for, so what purpose does one more party serve? Correlating public popularity and correct/appropriate macroeconomic strategy is surely bizarre: what does listening to public opinion (through the ballot box) contribute to running an effective economy? Answers on a postcard.

Perhaps the solution therefore, is for progressive movements to abandon both the fantasy of economic management and - for this would follow - elected Government altogether. They would allow the economy to manage itself, concentrating their efforts on redistributing the wealth and power they are entitled to redistribute, in a decentralised way, roughly in accordance with society's chosen model of equality and fairness.

Woolly that might sound - socialist even - but how many within Labour would seriously entertain abandoning the hunt for the prize of an unchallenged five-year shot in Government, a poisoned chalice that brings a future socialist society and economy not a millimetre closer? I doubt you could get a Rizla between the New Labour and "left" factions on this front.

* Quote courtesy of Harold Wilson.

Update (27/08): finally got around to replying to the most recent comments - sorry about that.

Iain Dale's Top 100 UK Political Blogs - 12 comments

Iain Dale is compiling his annual list of the top UK political bloggers, and he wants you to submit your 'top blogs'.

You know what I'm going to say here, right? As Bob rightly says, quality counts, not popularity; and, as ever, I'd like to see the most thoughtful and challenging blogs given a boost, and the six-post-a-day rehashing-of-other-people's-posts-will-get-me-links-type blogs, the 'all my enemies are idiots'-type blogs, and anything produced by obvious egomaniacs, get a thumbs-down.

But, hey, I'm bored of saying it, and you're bored of hearing it. Plus it's my birthday in two days, and I'm a human being, not a machine, so: vote for Bloggers4Labour, your Bloggers4Labour, the People's friend, the Thin Red Line. Vote early, and vote often, and if I get in the 2008/9 book (and receive a complimentary hardback copy) I promise to publish a photo of myself with a ridiculous grin, pointing at the write-up.

Death to 'sovereignty' - 3 comments

Arab nations 'agree Sudan action', is BBC's upbeat message.

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has asked the court for a warrant for [Sudan President] Mr Bashir on suspicion of masterminding crimes against humanity in the troubled Darfur region.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo accused Mr Bashir of running a campaign of genocide that killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through a "slow death" and forced 2.5 million to flee their homes in Darfur.

But here's the Arab League's response:

In a joint resolution issued at the end of the meeting, foreign ministers of the 22-nation Arab League said the ICC move was not acceptable and undermined Sudan's sovereignty.

"The council decides solidarity with the Republic of Sudan in confronting schemes that undermine its sovereignty, unity and stability and their non-acceptance of the unbalanced, not objective position of the prosecutor general of the Internal Criminal Court," the resolution said.

Screw solidarity, and screw sovereignty. What I look forward to is a world where the level of power one exerts over a population is proportionate to the level of punishment due to that person when the population suffers at their hand, or due to their neglect. A world where politicians (almost literally) live in fear of their people, not vice versa; and where sovereignty is invested in populations, not in greedy, corrupt, murderous, propaganda-wielding regimes.

I'm not condemning patriotism, or suggesting that 'national identity' is on the wane, just that the price people pay for their state operating a distinct set of political values, for politicians who look and sound like them, and for restrictions on their moving from one state to another, varies from the merely expensive at one end to impoverishing and brutalising at the other. State sovereignty is simply too high a price for people to pay, even if they did have a choice.

So I propose powerful international institutions that have precedence and authority over all national governments, that adhere to universal values, offer universal human rights, and which are prepared to use all means at their disposal - those of their member (ex-?) states, and the international corporations present within them - to overwhelm and subsume those states that defend their own rights over their people (a bit 'Things to Come', I know).

Far-fetched, perhaps, but is it any less plausible than the establishment of the alternative economic system that socialists look forward to?

So who's with me? Clearly not the Eurosceptics - that is to say, the bulk of the Conservative Party; not the kind of people who think democratising, say, Cuba is dangerous lest it become 'westernised' / a friend of the USA; and we can probably also exclude those who cite the 'homogeneity' of global capitalism. What would that leave: perhaps a couple of people out of a hundred?

Libel law: protecting bloggers - no comments

Ministry of Truth describes the sorry state of British libel law, and ends with this:

In short, Britain's political bloggers have decided that, whenever free speech is threatened, it is better to hang together than hang separately and, as the libel 'specialists', Schillings, found to their embarrassment when trying to shut down Craig Murray's blog, last year, if you're trying to kill a story then the very last thing you should do is start threatening bloggers with litigation. Few things, if any, offer more of a guarantee that bloggers will close ranks and spread a story as widely as possible, to the extent that it is now considered a matter of simple good manners that whenever a blogger is threatened in such a manner, others should do everything possible to spread the 'offending' statement to which the threat relates as widely as possible.

That's a good way of defending targeted bloggers - well, it's as much as most of us can do - but while I'm sure the help of all those bloggers who assist is greatly appreciated, perhaps there's a case for creating some kind of Union, or Committee, to which bloggers can sign up to as a sign of their commitment to the cause. As these situations are rarely party-political, the extent of the result blogging media-saturation the group could achieve could be very great.

The Union would presumably require a central blog/site to maintain it, plus a handful of plugged-in bloggers from across the political spectrum to watch out for attacks against others, to produce boilerplate posts for all member blogs, site badges, and so on. Going further, there could be a pool of legal resources, a centralised "defence fund", and so on.

I'm not sure if anything like this already exists, but it feels like a good idea.

Nudges: encouraging civic behaviour - 5 comments

I started Nudge, the 'latest' behavioural economics book, yesterday. It's full of examples of experiments where subtle changes in the choices that people are offered can greatly influence the decisions they make - potentially, decisions that will benefit them, or society, much more than others. This should interest all politicians. Here's an interesting example from p. 66 (my bold):

In the context of tax-compliance, a real-world experiment conducted by officials in Minnesota produced big changes in behaviour. Groups of taxpayers were given four kinds of information. Some were told that their taxes went to various good works, including education, police protection, and fire protection. Others were threatened with information about the risks of punishment for non-compliance. Others were given information [...] how to fill out their tax forms. Still others were just told that more than 90 per cent of Minnesotans already complied, in full, with their obligations under tax law.

Only one of these interventions had a significant effect on tax compliance, and it was the last. Apparently some taxpayers are more likely to violate the law because of a misperception [...] that the level of compliance was pretty low. When informed that the actual compliance level is high, they become less likely to cheat.

So, no carrot, no stick, just a gentle nudge - rely on peer-pressure and conformity to do the rest. I'm not particularly suggesting it as an alternative to closing tax 'loopholes', the general principle is much more interesting, and just imagine how similar techniques could solve other long-standing problems.

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Following directly on from that:

Note to political parties: If you would like to increase turnout, please do not lament the large numbers of people who fail to vote.

The argument here is that if the electorate believe that others are not bothering - for any of the myriad of good/explicable/plausible-sounding reasons that politicians have proposed - it's easier to justify not voting either; voting seems less and less like part of one's responsibility to society, and more like something exceptional - the action of a political activist, for example.

So if you believe that society is healthier if turnouts are very high (I'm sure I'd agree) then don't:

• Bleat about the electoral system or the nature of the political parties (which are not uniquely bad in the UK).
• Simply appeal to civic virtue, expecting people to look at their consciences.
  
• Punish non-voting.
• Devise strategies to make it 'cheaper and easier' to vote.

A better strategy would be for the Government and media to promote elections much better, and for the media to report on those who vote. Allow people to explain why they're voting, why the various issues, parties, or policies appeal to them, how things changed in their area from having voted in great numbers, etc:

• "So, people like me are voting."
• "Idiots like that are voting."
• "Explained like that, I'm definitely voting for/against X."
• "We organised a group and made the Council listen..."
  

Political haiku group - no comments

I've set up a Facebook group set up for serious, satirical, and humorous haiku (a Japanese poetic form) on political themes.

It's open to all, regardless of political persuasion, so join here and add your contributions. There are quite a few already, but the more the merrier.

Suppressing the BNP - 5 comments

This is almost too ridiculous for words: six companies will withdraw advertisements from Facebook on the off-chance that a non-BNP supporter will visit a BNP (Wikipedia) group page and decide that the same advertisements they see randomly appearing on every other page on the site imply, in this case, some kind of corporate endorsement, or acceptance, of BNP policies. If anyone owns shares in First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, the AA, Halifax, or the Prudential, now might be the right time to sell, if those companies are so quick to make fruitless political gestures that allow additional exposure to their competitors, while doing nothing to thwart the BNP except offer them additional publicity and swelling their victim-complex. If the named companies decided they didn't want BNP supporters as customers, or were prepared to campaign against the party, that would be different altogether, but their corporate image is hardly worth us bothering about. More here, and here.

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The BNP might almost have been invented to distract good, principled, intelligent people from the international fight against bigotry, intolerance, and religious/ethnic/racial victimisation, towards a single struggle against a tiny party that can hardly be separated from the murky world of thugs and madmen (remember Derek Beackon?) that makes up the extremities of the political world. The tragedy is that, by ducking the substantive moral and policy issues, opponents' emphasis on (say) racism appears to shift from to being a moral abuse to, as this new Facebook group argues, a 'terms of service' violation. Forcing the hand of advertisers and open social networking sites, so that poor ignorant members of the public can be insulated from the BNP's extreme views, can't help opponents to mobilise the population against them.

I can't think of any cause that is so critical, or infectious, as to justify the population being kept in ignorance. An account of the atrocious record and (occasionally criminal) behaviour of BNP councillors in office would surely carry more weight. Furthermore, a grown-up analysis of their policies - a plausible-looking summary of which appear here - would allow us to go beyond the word 'fascist' to say that they are morally wrong, inegalitarian, and opportunistic; that they breach universal human rights; and that their mishmash of authoritarian economic policies - culled from both traditional left and traditional right - would make people poorer both here and abroad, just as they have failed under every other government that has ever tried them. Are we unsure that we can win these arguments among the electorate? Ministry of Truth takes some of them on here, but this is rarely done.

So, while I'm sympathetic to the old adage that the only good BNP activist is one holding a steak over his eye, we should allow parties we despise to organise on Facebook within its rules, just as Facebook allows us to organise within its rules, and concentrate on promoting our own, positive message, and criticising stupid and damaging views - with our sights on the electorate, not on ourselves.

Hard-working families - 4 comments

The Times brings us the news that "Thousands of buy-to-let families face tax shock".

The article's feeble and shamelessly partisan rhetoric has already been cut to pieces, but what is tragic is to see the same "boo" and "warm" words traded by all mainstream political parties. How demeaning it is to contemporary politics that people out for themselves can still be held up for pity in front of a less well-off electorate, and the stupid and greedy protected on the grounds that they have a home, a spouse, and perhaps dependants.

It continues to stink.

Back? - 1 comment

Well my 6 weeks of work training is over, so I'll be returning to more normal hours. Unfortunately you should be suspicious whenever you read statements like "I might make a full return to blogging this week...", recognising a symptom of blog-tiredness when you see one.

Not tiredness with Bloggers4Labour itself, or necessarily with what the most interesting bloggers are writing about politics, it's just that I can't bring myself to blog about it at the moment. Not national politics anyway, and certainly not via the regular route of pouncing on something stupid (and quite possibly misrepresented, misinterpreted, or only 'floated' in the first place for the benefit of the Sunday papers) at the BBC or Comment Is Free.

Perhaps I need a holiday - I can't remember the last time I had one. Alternatively, I could look for the practical benefits of political policies rather than fall into the trap of becoming the kind of hack content to write solely off the top of their head, or on the basis of what someone told them over dinner.

Update: Sorry, I will be trying to answer emails, but I still have 22 drafts to work through. The general rule is that I'm not ignoring you, and not trying to snub you, I just can't think what to say/what the answer is, at present.

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I wonder if a lot of time and intellectual effort wouldn't be saved by devising a kind of "automatic Fisking device" that could be deployed by bloggers against potentially offending articles, emitting a factual/logical demolition of the article within seconds. Perhaps the device/program could also be trained by experts with a dictionary of offending terms and phrases that mark the author and article as a potential offender (e.g. "Turbo-consumerism", "... the language of the BNP", "political legacy", "a time of change" - I'm sure you can improve on this list). Perhaps this way the "village idiots" (the Lawsons, Buntings, Clarks, Murrays, and Galloways of this world) can be dealt with swiftly, but not gratuitously, so we can be the more confident that serial critics really do have positive points of their own to make.