Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts

Tuesday 2 February 2016

The Jeremy Corbyn story nobody wanted to publish - because it's boring and irrelevant

because it's staggeringly boring and irrelevant.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-jeremy-corbyn-story-that-nobody-wanted-to-publish-a6848651.html 

This is probably the most pompous article I have ever read.

It is really quite hard to express just how confused and detached from reality it is. I would almost swear it is a satire. You really have to read it for yourself. Just some highlights are below.

"Yesterday, I wrote a blog about the Jeremy Corbyn tour – known as #JC4PM – which the media had failed to cover." The title is a hashtag, but then this is charity aid tour by liberal left, media, cool people. Of course the title is a fucking hashtag

 "Journalist after journalist told me that the story was ‘not newsworthy’." An entertainment tour about Jeremy Corbyn. What could be more important? In the last few days there's only been the Iowa Caucus, the EU renegotiation, the death of Terry Wogan, various wars and the global economy to write about. Who the hell didn't prioritise #JC4PM?

 "'Not newsworthy' is obviously not a scientific term. It's purely subjective. And it's also plain wrong" Checking for irony, checking for irony, not finding any irony, losing the will to live.

 "The #JC4PM tour was drawn up in the same spirit as the rallies that were organised by local activists during Jeremy Corbyn's leadership campaign. It was spontaneous." You mean the rallies that were nationally organised and co-ordinated as part of his Labour Leadership campaign

" There is a fantastic range of talented people who will perform or speak for Jeremy, including Charlotte Church, Michael Rosen, Brian Eno, Ken Loach, Billy Bragg, Mark Steel, Jeremy Hardy, Francesca Martinez, Mark Serwotka, Shappi Khorsandi, Arthur Smith, Patrick Monahan, Janey Godley" Charlotte Church (only in the news this decade for being gobby about austerity), Michael Rosen (who), Brian Eno (Ono and Bono's brother possibly), Ken Loach (who founded his own hard-left political party for goodness sake), Billy Bragg (left-wing campaigner for longer than I've been alive), Mark Steel (last seen being banned from voting for Labour leader for supporting the Greens), I'm seeing a pattern, Jeremy Hardy, Francesca . . . . . . Godley (No I don't know who these people are either.)

 "I can tell you that many of these names would do nothing for Labour before Jeremy Corbyn was leader." Oh, no. "However, now more celebrities are backing Jeremy Corbyn because he represents hope." Nobody cares, and yet you so obviously think they do or will or should.

"Why aren't we being told that Jeremy Corbyn has support from across entertainment and culture and that these talented people are prepared to put their reputation on the line for the Labour leader?" Hmmm, yes, I wonder why?
"The answer to these questions seems to be that many in the media don't want to report a story about how leading musicians, poets, film-makers and comedians support Jeremy Corbyn."
Genius. The media isn't reporting that Corbyn has support from third rate left-wing entertainers because they don't want to report that Corbyn has support from third rate left-wing entertainers. Unbelievably insightful, powerful analysis. Just to repeat from earlier.
"'Not newsworthy' is obviously not a scientific term. It's purely subjective. And it's also plain wrong" Razor-sharp analysis, absolutely razor-sharp.

 "They want Jeremy Corbyn to look like a loner who has little support, or only the support of people that the media have already demonized – those mysterious “loony lefties” who aren’t talented and successful celebrities." You're right, as long as I thought Corbyn was only supported by "loony lefties" I didn't agree with him. But now he's supported by "talented and successful celebrities" I'll abandon my long-held convictions about politics, national security and the economy. After all, I always vote for whoever Arthur Smith tells me to because I have no mind of my own.

"The response has taken me by surprise. I have had 7,000 hits " Cool story bro! And I've had 40,000 hits on this very blog for an article about how many Elves there are in Lord of the Rings. Maybe the Independent will give me a regular column.

 Instead of writing all that I could really have just looked at the sub-title "the dominant media narrative says that affluent, successful celebrities wouldn't support Corbyn". The patronising, pompous, delusion just seeps from every word. No, the media narrative has never mentioned what C list celebs think about Corbyn because nobody gives a toss what they think about politics and they never, ever, ever will.

You'd hope Labour would learn after losing the election was followed by the first disastrous four months of Corbyn's 'leadership'. If they have any sense at all they will run a mile from this man. Here we have the same delusion that said people voted Tory and UKIP because Labour wasn't left-wing enough, concentrated into weapons-grade stupid and converted into prose. I haven't seen this much political delusion in one place since Ed Miliband thought gaining Russel Brand's support was crucial to winning the Election. It really is mind boggling.

Friday 25 September 2015

The Refugee Crisis and the Holocaust - How not to learn the lessons of History.


I am a big fan of learning the lessons of History. Without understanding the past our understanding of the present will always risk being superficial. 

However, amid the chaos and confusion that has been exploding across Europe due to the refugee crisis some people have not got the idea quite right.  The problem comes when people pick out entirely superficial resemblances to historic tragedies when much larger problems are raging around. 

Hundreds of thousands of migrants are struggling across the continent, and there is massive confusion among official bodies in about what they were meant to do with the tide of people.



The BBC reports in one Czech town migrants "had numbers written on their skin with felt-tip pen". The police thought the "priority in dealing with the 200 migrants at Breclav railway station [...] was identifying them and trying to keep family members together. This was a difficult task when many had no documents and did not speak English; hence the numbers in felt-tip pen on their arms."

But many news outlets were outraged because somebody felt this vaguely visually resembled something that was done during the Holocaust: the tattooing of prisoners at Auschwitz, the largest Concentration/Death camp. This is one of the most trivial historical comparisons I've ever seen. The Czech authorities were faced with a situation that was crowded, noisy, confused, dealing with large numbers of people with no ID papers and with whom they probably didn't share a language: whether Czech, English or Syrian Arabic, and so they resorted to felt tip pen. And no, they didn't "stamp" it, they wrote it. The difference is quite clear.

Of all the things that are a problem with the refugee crisis, the EU response (and even the Czech response) this is really not one of them. Even on a surface level the resemblance is not that close. Auschwitz prisoners were tattooed on the arm or chest and some of these tattoos are still visible on survivors 70 years later. The refugees had a number written on their hand in felt tip, which they could rub or wash off in a few minutes. It's hard to know where to start with the other important differences between the planned mass murder of millions of people and a temporary measure to organise a small group of migrants in a Czech train station. It feels like no-one should need to say that but apparently we do. Seemingly news outlets would rather officials cared less about what they were doing to help people, and care more about whether their actions bore a totally superficial resemblance to tiny parts of a vast historic crime.

This summer was very hot in Poland, reaching 100F (or 38C) and so the Auschwitz memorial museum set up mist sprays to cool visitors cueing for long periods in direct sunshine. Apparently though, this caused complaints that they resembled the gas chambers used to kill hundreds of thousands of people there. Actually, I say complaints, but every article I've seen on this repeats exactly the same complaint from one tourist. Again, though, that same article has then been copied and pasted into many online news outlets until it popped up on my computer.

It's hard to know where to even start. Firstly, the museum had an entirely legitimate health and safety reason for putting the mist showers up. Secondly, again, the resemblance is entirely superficial and frankly vague. I can do no better than quote the Auschwitz museum trust's own words from their Facebook page, in which they sound frankly bemused by the whole thing.

"And one more thing. It is really hard for us to comment on some suggested historical references since the mist sprinkles do not look like showers and the fake showers installed by Germans inside some of the gas chambers were not used to deliver gas into them."

That means that some of the gas chambers were disguised as shower blocks to avoid panic and resistance among the victims and to encourage them to strip before being murdered. The shower-heads in the blocks were never used though. Anyway, how anyone could confuse an old fashioned concrete building with fake shower-heads inside with an outdoor mist sprinkler is beyond me. Also, I can't help but feel the complaint is bizarre because surely you're meant to feel uncomfortable when visiting Auschwitz? You're meant to be reminded of the gas chambers? It is unclear whether the person thought the idea of people not being too hot was insulting to victims, or was too light-hearted or what.


"Officials in the German town of Schwerte have made plans to place some 20 refugees in barracks which were once part of the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp. The 'pragmatic solution' to provide shelter has sparked criticism, German media reported."

The wave of refugees entering Germany this summer has strained local resources and available accommodation. So one town has decided to use vacant buildings that were once barracks for guards of a sub-camp of Buchenwald, one of the Nazi concentration camps. This genuine attempt to help in a time of major demand and limited resources is apparently not good enough for some people.

"the decision has sparked criticism among the country's activist groups, with many calling the plan "questionable" and "insensitive."

It's not clear who it is insensitive to: not the migrants who will have somewhere decent to stay, not the victims of the camp who almost certainly couldn't care less even if they knew. And as for 'questionable', that has to be the weakest criticism known to man, to be reached for by politicians and activists when they have nothing to actually say. I would hope that almost everything is 'questionable', except perhaps the fact the sky is  blue (and even then one may ask, why).

The activists do not seem to be making any alternative suggestion of where the refugees should be housed.  And I shudder to think what they would have said when for years after 1945 many of the camps were used to house the millions of refugees and displaced persons who flooded Europe at that time, in some places for years afterwards. In times of great need you do what you can with limited resources to help people.

And finally my last Holocaust related example of people missing a major issue and clinging on to the completely superficial and irrelevant. Migrants and asylum seekers are commonly kept in camps for periods of time while they are being processed, especially when large numbers appear at once. And particularly in this current crisis large numbers have been travelling by train across Europe.




Which will be sad news for anyone who has ever taken the train to Butlins, or Centre Parcs, or a festival of any kind.

Now, it shouldn't need to be said, but to avoid confusion, I'm not saying that the European response to the refugee crisis has been perfect. But I am saying of all the things wrong with it this isn't one.  It's like people's minds are just trying to cling onto something, anything, so they latch onto the surface level visual resemblance to something terrible that once happened.

Maybe I'm over-reacting to a few daft news articles and twitter comments. But I saw all these examples within literally a couple of days, and I wasn't going looking for them. For a brief period it seemed like we were entirely losing our critical faculties. Hopefully it was just a one-off fluke of social media. But most people spend understandably little time in their day thinking about complex global problems. This kind of total trivia just chews up that valuable time and distracts people from actually considering what is really important about these crises, and makes them think these are the kind of issues that they should be concentrating on.

The whole model of 24 hour online news media is partly to blame. We have actually reached a point where there is too much 'commentary' . There are so many news sites that have to be constantly filled with a stream of 'articles' that it just encourages sites to put up any old rubbish with a title that might get a few clicks. It's staggeringly lazy. Each of these 'stories' could be found pretty much word for word identical on many, dozens, scores, perhaps hundreds even of different online news 'platforms', presumably just copied and pasted from Reuters or Associated Press or whoever actually originally wrote the piece. There's no creativity or intelligence or effort involved whatsoever, and once you become aware it's incredible how much of even respectable newspapers and media channel's content is just lazily copied and pasted in this way without any thought of the quality of the 'story'. Even when it's not just copied and pasted from somewhere else the need to constantly update with new content leads to attempts to generate stories left, right and centre where frankly none exist.

More generally, some in our society seem to think you show what a good person you are by finding things that nobody else has thought to be outraged by and getting really angry and pissed off about them.  And the more obscure the thing is you've found to get outraged about the better. That just shows you care more than the other people who haven't noticed that offence or 'insensitivity' enough to be screaming into their computer screens. Any idea that taking a pompous position of personal moral superiority is itself bad, or that people might make innocent mistakes that deserve some benefit of the doubt, or might just be doing the best they can in difficult circumstances, seems to be get lost. 

I imagine the format of many online media, whether short blogs, twitter, facebook, tumblr or whatever, adds to this: difficult to present a nuanced view that understands both sides, easy to scream outrage and bile. Neither do I think this helps get more good done. Often it just makes the world an angrier, shoutier place and distracts people from doing any good, rather than attempting to appear good. As well as quite possibly making us all more miserable and stressed, apart from that small number who seem to actively enjoy having someone to yell at.

I understand the irony of criticising people for criticising people over trivial issues instead of focussing on what's important when this itself is not exactly vastly important. And I am sorry for that, we are all trapped in the same hell. In fact, I don't want to criticise any individuals in particular because there's no point. I just want to encourage greater consideration about what really are the serious issues, common sense, and the occasional benefit of the doubt. That would make the world a less angry place while actually seeing more genuine understanding of complicated historical issues, and more good done in the long-term. 

When there is genuine, serious injustice and suffering, people need to raise a voice, even an angry voice. But we would be better able to hear that voice if it wasn't drowned out by a constant, screeching tidal wave of trivialities.

Update

There appears to have been another outbreak of this nonsense in Britain itself. This time linked to help for asylum seekers. While, as always, there are genuine questions to be asked to improve our treatment of those in need, people squawking about Nazis are not helping. This article covers my point admirably:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/12120009/Red-doors-and-wristbands-Another-day-another-comparison-to-Nazi-Germany.html

Saturday 8 October 2011

The Giant Blind Spot of Human Rights NGOs - By Ziya Meral

The Persecution of people on the basis of their religion is one of the largest, most serious and most widespread forms of Human Rights Abuse in the World.  But it receives far too little attention from Human Rights campaigners because these campaigners and organisations are overwhelmingly European or North American and hence are overwhelmingly secular. They are either ignorant of religion or just don't particularly care, compared to almost any other cause. This blinds them to the suffering faced by hundreds of millions of people.

Ziya Meral says it much better than I could . . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ziya-meral/the-giant-blind-spot-of-h_b_991304.html

The one thing that he doesn't say explicitly (though he does hint at it through his examples)  is that it is overwhelmingly Christians being persecuted, hundreds of millions of them. This is something we should all be aware of, and something that gets even less exposure than religious persecution generally.  This is because most Christian or Christian-heritage countries have strong religious freedom, while most Non-Christian countries, whether Atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or other, don't.  And even in the 'Christian' countries where persecution does occur, it is generally authoritarian governments persecuting Christians and churches who they view as a threat to their control.

(By saying this I don't mean to detract from his main point that we ALL are biased towards carrying more about human rights violations against people like us, and ignoring ones against people unlike us, rather than on the objective basis of how bad things are. And this is something we should all be consciously aware of.  Christians are just as bad at this as anyone else.  But it is right to note the largest actual real-world example, the collective blindness among almost organised human rights advocates towards persecution on basis of religion, and the fact that by far the largest real-world example of this is the frequently horrifyingly violent persecution of Christians around the world. )


Wednesday 31 August 2011

God Bless you, George Monbiot. You've never been so right!

 .
George Monbiot does speaks a lot of total rubbish.  But, My God, when he's right, he's right.

On the Guardian website he's making a point I've thought true for years.

That academic knowledge and research is painfully restricted from the wider public by a high wall of ridiculous prices for books and journals.  
 
That academic discussion and research, much of it funded by every single taxpayer, is kept hidden and restricted for the benefit of journal publishers and academic institutions, locking that information within small and incestuous 'professional' academic circles, much to the detriment of our entire wider society.
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Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist
Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research paid for by us. Down with the knowledge monopoly racketeers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist
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Only he says it far more eloquently (and well informed) than I ever could!

It's good to see a mainstream journalist giving both barrels on such a nerdy and niche,  but I really think quite important, issue.  So Good on you George Monbiot, Guardian hack that you may be.  Keep fighting the good fight.


And if you're interested in the spread of knowledge and discussion in our society do give his article a read.

Sunday 14 August 2011

We have Nothing to Learn from these Riots!

And there is a very simple reason for that.  Because all the pious, boring observations trotted out by commentators and politicians are all things that we damn well should have known already!

Of course mindless, idiotic, destructive, unbelievably selfish and heartless destruction , theft and violence is totally unjustifiable or excusable regardless of other factors.  But then we should already know that!

Of course there exists an underclass in our society, dangerously detached from the respectable mainstream of our society, ghettoised geographically, educationally under-qualified to compete in a globalised world, and utterly let down by a society that has simultaneously preached mindless consumerism and an open contempt for the traditional moral and spiritual values that kept communities together despite poverty and social neglect. But then we should already know that!

The gross failure of the education system when for poorer communities, the lack of stable families and male role models, the sneering contempt at every single common social institution from the liberal 'elite'; the inter-generational worklessness reinforced by pockets of bad education, low skills, crap environments, widespread reliance on welfare, and geographical isolation from jobs and investment.  The collapse of an actual sense of community among 'communities' caused by the decline of the social institutions that have traditionally bonded together; the 'progressive' doctrines that tell people that any possible reason excuses them from their own actions and out-and-out expects them to fail; the empty consumerism and nomadic nature of modern economic life, crude multiculturalism & constant immigration, damaging economic disruption and a political culture that just does not listen, does not pay attention and would rather mouth the same platitudes over and over again than face up to the reality that stares them in the face.

None of this should come as a surprise to anybody.  All of these factors have existed for years and have been clear and obvious for as long for anyone who actually bothers to see. None of them have suddenly become true over the last few weeks. In fact they are largely unrelated.

Despite the blase generalisations that have come from so many people, the rioters and looters were not all particularly poor, unemployed, cut off from society, or from broken homes.  They were not all 16-19 year olds with good prospects cruelly cut short, rioting as a response to the ending of EMA or the increase in tuition fees; nor were not all Black people rioting as a response to police oppression and racism.  Many of them had jobs, qualifications, prospects, money, and already owned much of the stuff they then went on to steal.  Plenty of people poorer than them didn't steal and riot, plenty of people unemployed didn't murder and rob, plenty of people with fewer qualifications or prospects, or from worse home, kept their dignity and honour and didn't go on a violent rampage.

I would like to learn a lesson from a friend of mine and avoid falling into hyperbole.  So I'll say that, for me, the 2nd worst thing about these Riots is that for a few days, or weeks if we're lucky, these issues will be aired.  Various commentators and politicians will pull them out and dust them off and trumpet them in connection with the disturbances we've suffered, regardless of whether there's any actual real or direct connection involved.  Everyone will have an opinion about their favourite left wing or right wing explanation, almost all based on nothing more than personal hunches and a complete absence of actual data.

But then after a few weeks the media focus will move on.    The politicians and commentators will pontificate about some other subject that has been pushed into the news and this will all once again sink back below the surface of our national conversation, to fester and spoil, invisible in plain view, while our leaders and commentators mouth the ideological platitudes that are so much easier and more satisfying than facing up to the difficult reality of issues that no one on the political divide has any easy solution to.

Hopefully this time will be different.  Hopefully the politicians and media will not just move on but will take a concerted and realistic look at the problems that dog many of our communities.  Maybe they'll actually be motivated to try something different rather than mouth the same irrelevant platitudes that press the right ideological buttons but have so little do with what is actually going on in people's lives.  To be honest I'm not that hopeful, but it would be wrong to be entirely cynical and despondent.  It is precisely that gnawing cynicism that gets us into this situation and then leaves us stuck there.

Because the truth is we can change even these seemingly intractable problems for the better.  It all comes down to the choices people make, both in the short term and the long term. Whether they take the hard choices and face up to the uncomfortable reality we have to deal with as individuals and a society, or the easy choices, either for themselves or us all, and try to sweep it all under the carpet once again and hope it will magically just go away.

Only time will tell.  But we can all do our part, if we just have the will and determination to take some responsibility for the world we live in, both individually and socially.

Friday 29 July 2011

How to Fight for Electoral Reform.

In my previous articles I looked at the main reasons for the dramatic failure of the 'Yes' campaign for reform to the Alternative Vote in 2011 and then I suggested a better replacement for pure FPTP now AV has been so thoroughly electorally discredited.  That covers want went wrong before, and what we should try to achieve in the future.

So what's left?

Well, how we actually achieve that goal in the future, and make sure we don't just repeat the absolute thrashing of 2011.  What tactics and strategy should be used to finally achieve the dream of electoral reform?

I have become more and more convinced due to the election results in 2005 and 2010 that our electoral system is inefficient, unresponsive and broken, concentrates power in an arbitrary manner, and fails to respond to the plural reality of the modern world.  I also think that there is a relatively simple adjustment that can be made to it to bring it up to date, while still maintaining the vast majority of the tried and tested principles and structure that are such an ingrained part of our national and political culture, and have helped make Britain the longest lasting and most stable democracy in the world.

I am a conservative and a Conservative.  But a conservative is not opposed to all change, rather he supports measured change, considered change, evolutionary change, change that goes with the grain of human nature and most of all change that is necessary and possible without just making things worse.  I have come to believe that electoral reform, done properly is both necessary to make our democracy suitable for the 21st Century, and possible without losing what is best about our long-standing system. A conservative also knows the importance of practicality. Good intentions alone don't do anything unless you have the practical means of making them happen.  No-one can fault the devotion and patience of Electoral Reformers, but their tactics have been awful.  The 'Yes' campaign "was an epic clusterfuck of a campaign which will go down in the annals of political incompetence" in the words of one of its senior activists.  In fact a future campaign for reform couldn't go far wrong if it just did the exact opposite of everything done by the AV Yes campaign.

The 1st thing is to realise that a fundamental change of strategy and tactics are needed.  The cause of electoral reform has to be one of the most longstanding and least successful causes in UK political history.  The Electoral Reform Society, the UK's largest and oldest supporter of reform was founded in 1884.  It has been fighting the same battle totally unsuccessfully for 130 years.  Along with the Joseph Rowntree Trust it had a major role in the Yes campaign in 2010-11. These groups provided much needed money for the campaign. But beyond that though they imported a downright damaging mindset that profoundly handicapped the Yes campaign.

The skills needed to run a pressure group are very different to the skills needed to run a political campaign.  And the ERS is not even a particularly successful pressure group.  Pressure groups need to inspire a particular group of supporters and keep them involved.  National election campaigns need to rapidly build as a broad a coalition as possible and provide a clear and compelling narrative about why they are the choice that will most benefit people.  A pressure group must grab as much attention as possible in an public arena crowded with many other calls on people's attention, as well as simple apathy.  A referendum campaign has to win a binary choice.  It is Yes vs No.  Any future campaign for reform must move away from the ERS, pressure group model that has failed so comprehensively over many decades.

Electoral reformers shouldn't be thinking like an unsuccessful pressure group, they need to think like a political party. And also they need to appreciate the importance of political parties, and how they can be used to effect change.  The Yes to AV campaign had some idea about building an anti-politics campaign that would set itself against political parties and politics as usual.  This approach was rubbish. It straight and away alienated the very people most experienced and professional in political campaigning. and with power and influence in British political life. Like a political party they need to be able to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible from different ideological and political backgrounds and tie them together temporarily around a belief that electoral reform is a cause for them. It also needs to be ruthlessly practical in reaching out to people.

It must think about political parties in another sense as well. The facts are that our political life is overwhelmingly conducted through political parties, as much as they are also generally somewhat distrusted.  When people want cues about political decisions they don't look to celebrities or entertainers, they look to political figures, media commentators, etc, they trust.  These people set the tone of debate and commentary.  Politics in Britain is conducted on a shoe-string, but what resources there are, are overwhelmingly held by political parties as well, both in terms of money and also connections to the media, experience of campaigning, and standing nationwide networks for disseminating ideas and encouraging volunteers.

Political unbalance crippled the Yes2AV campaign. It deliberately sold itself as a left-wing, progressive cause and made deliberate attempts to even portray AV as an anti-Conservative measure.  At a stroke they successfully managed to alienate 43% of the electorate.  They also managed to alienate many more people who didn't want to support a political stitch-up designed to permanently exclude a particular party from government. It also allowed its media presence to be dominated by Liberal Democrats far too much.

This allowed the No campaign a completely clear run of right of centre voters and even motivated many to get out and vote against. This was absolutely fatal when the left-wing vote was also thoroughly split.  Any future campaign for electoral reform should put deliberate effort into pumping up a Conservative Yes campaign and UKIP Yes Campaign as much as possible, as well as among Lib Dem and Labour voters. The clear truth is that electoral reform will never happen without the support of many right-wing voters. (For a first hand account of how the Yes campaign deliberately ignored even the Conservative Yes organisation.  See here)

This is also important because any future chance for reform is most likely to come about due to action by a political party.  The 2011 referendum occurred because Gordon Brown opened a window in the Labour party, and the Lib Dems got themselves in a position to exploit it when a hung parliament occurred.  This means that a future opportunity for reform may occur as soon as 2015, and reformers should be working towards that eventuality.  The other thing is that an opportunity for reform will only most likely present itself if one of the two main parties opens itself up to reform.  As long as both parties are opposed to a referendum, then they can maintain a solid front against any attempt to negotiate for one. The best chance then is to persuade either Labour or the Conservatives to at least support a further referendum on electoral reform, though this may be too much of a long shot.  At best, it will require another hung parliament, with the Lib Dems in the driving seat.

This work should also be done starting years in advance, building a constant presence, however large or small, and seeking to influence the terms of debate through these crucial drivers of the political weather and discussion. Efforts should go into both lobbying and building support among the MP's, MEP's, Lords, Councillors who hold a vast amounts of power and influence among these parties and also persuading ordinary activists and members, as well as figures in the media and think tanks.  These are the politically active people in our country, and the best hope for reform success must involve getting as many of them as possible onside, regardless of their particular party affiliation. Also because they are among the few people interested in politics enough to listen to arguments about reform outside the context of an imminent referendum.

This is the uphill struggle the Yes campaign faces.  The Lib Dems and Minor Parties are already solidly behind reform, for obvious reasons.  Labour and Conservatives do very well out of the current system though.  This means roughly 65% of the electorate have very little incentive to support change.  One way that this can be countered is by stressing the dangers of FPTP to both sides as well as the way specific reforms such as AMS cohere with the principles they consider themselves to be proud of, such as fairness, while being aware how members of these parties conceive these values differently. Elements of these parties may support change to a more stable proportional system as an insurance rather than the more dramatic shifts of FPTP.   For the Conservatives the ghosts of 1997 and 2005 should raise a powerful argument against FPTP, as does the way FPTP continues to totally disenfranchise large right-wing minorities like UKIP  For Labour, the ease with which the Conservatives have dominated UK government over the last 130 years despite being a minority compared to the broad agreement along the left for much of that time, can only raise question marks against FPTP. Reformers can also appeal to Labour 'progressive' principles.  This attempt was one of the few successful parts of the AV yes campaign, that managed to build an, initially, impressive Labour Yes campaign out of almost no traditional Labour support for reform, although it was later lost in the general chaos and incompetence of the Yes campaign.

But support among political leaders and activists alone will not a referendum victory make.  It is obviously also extremely important to lodge the ideas of reform in the minds of the wider public.  The general public is even less interested in electoral reform that political activists though.  Because of this it may be wise, outside a referendum campaign, to concentrate on discrediting FPTP in the eyes of the wider public rather than actively promoting an alternate system. Support for an actual separate voting system is worth building among a wide range of poltical activists and parties as far in advance as possible, but among the general public this is almost certainly impossible, requiring too much detail.  However, even if reformers could just manage to lodge in the public consciousness a couple of ideas about how FPTP is an unfair, broken system it would build a much stronger platform to persuade them of an alternative in any future referendum campaign, which would hopefully have some support from activists and political groups across the political spectrum ready to go for any campaign.    

The crucial feature is to make electoral reform relevant to people.  In the jargon of campaigning it needs to be 'Retailed'.  That means instead of presenting people with an abstract argument and cause break it down into simple examples of issues people actually care about, both of how the old system is broken and of how the alternative (which for me would preferably be AMS) would be better.  This is what the No campaign successfully managed to do with its arguments about the cost and complexity of AV, and what the Yes campaign singly failed to do.  And again it is something that should be done years in advance.  FPTP has the massive advantage of incumbency.  A Yes campaign for reform needs to take a clear two part message.  Firstly, demonstrating why FPTP is broken, and then explaining how AMS will solve this problem. It is not just enough though to take reform, and take something people like, and tell them the two are connected.  There has to be a plausible and simple logical connection between the two such that their mind's will naturally slide between the two, even for someone not paying that much attention.

Again this was one of Yes' main failure in 2011.  Messages about the expenses scandals and ending seats for life look superficially clear and resonant with a cynical electorate but they failed the connection test.  The Yes campaign never explained (because there was no obvious link) how AV was meant to achieve these miracles and so they made little progress with the electorate.  On the other hand the No campaign's arguments plausibly, clearly and simply connected to AV and so were more successful at sticking in the electorate's minds.

The third crucial feature is to work with the general conservative bent of the public.  If it was not obvious before the massive AV No vote, the public is reflexively conservative about constitutional change, especially any one they don't easily understand the rationale and argument for.  A Yes campaign for Reform should seek to work with this rather than against it.  Stress should be put on how reform actually strengthens the familiar principles and arguments used in favour of our electoral system.  Obviously this won't be possible with all such traditional 'principles' but where possible it should be tried, to counter the unfamiliarity proposed in any change. An example would be that AMS would actually increase representation by electing Labour MP's where enough people vote Labour or Conservative MP's where there are Conservatives or etc.  Rather than giving large numbers of voters no representation on arbitrary geographical grounds.

The next point is not to do your opponents work for them.  This is largely a tactical point to consider during the election campaign.  The side that wins will be the side that more clearly gets their message to the electorate.  Relentlessly push the clear positive advantages of change, relentlessly slag off FPTP.  Every single message should follow a clear formula, FPTP bad because X, PR better because Y. Do not spend valuable time arguing about the minutia of your opponents claims. Don't waste time discussing their arguments to the point where it crowds out the points you are trying to make, especially when media coverage is scarce and the public's attention distracted.  All a No campaign has to do is generate enough reasonable doubt in the public's mind. A Yes campaign has to not do what their opponents would want them to do, which is to get bogged down in precisely the manner the Yes campaign for AV did. I can only repeat the ridiculousness of the latter stages of the AV campaign.  The NO campaign wanted to portray AV as an expensive Lib Dem fix, so the Yes campaign treated them to the ridiculous spectacle of a chorus of leading Lib Dems talking about nothing apart from how much AV would cost. A text-book example of what not to do.    

Be aware of what your opponents will do.  Any future Yes campaign has the advantage of the experience of the AV campaign, and especially the reaction of the No campaign.  Under any future referendum, for AMS for example, it is likely that very similar No arguments will be used.  Other obvious arguments against a semi-PR system can be anticipated. The argument about Cost, possibly about complexity, about there being more hung parliaments, etc.  A Yes campaign should already have pre-prepared and tested plans and responses to the main likely arguments, ways of countering them and re-directing the debate back to the areas a Yes arguments want to hold it on.  They know what didn't work for the Yes campaign in 2011, and hence what to do differently, both in terms of debate and in terms of messages in the future. Generally speaking a No campaign will try to make the argument about anything rather than the issue of the actual features of FPTP vs AMS (or another alternative) because they know that FPTP just doesn't stand up under scrutiny. Yes campaigners must do whatever they can to shut down other issues and direct any debate back to the failures of FPTP and the advantages of AMS (or another alternative).  That is their winning ground.

The final point is a positive one.  The circumstances will be better.  The circumstances in 2011 were almost uniquely bad for Reformers.  It is highly likely that a future referendum will take place in more favourable political weather.  This is certainly not a reason for complacency, but it is a reason for hope.  This is doubly true if Reformers do learn the lessons of 2010-11 and make sure they are better prepared and better planned for any future referendum.  With a combination of a broad political coalition and a clear set of anti-FPTP, pro-AMS reform lines to take there is every reason to hope that we will see Electoral Reform in this country within the next decade.

Wednesday 4 May 2011

It doesn't matter if you're YES or NO! Remember to VOTE Today!

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The Campaigns may have been Crap!
The Claims may have been Outrageous!
The Politicians may have been as Annoying as ever!


You may be YES!  You may be NO!


But none of that matters. . . .


Just make sure you get out Today and VOTE!


Because it's extremely important!
Because it's you only get so few chances!


And because you just know someone stupider Will!


Polls open 7am-10pm.

Friday 29 April 2011

The Royal Wedding: Verger Cartwheels with Joy down Westminster Abbey! Literally!!

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Yes!  This is awesome!




And Congratulations to Prince William and Kate Middleton, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge!

God Bless you both!  And give you a long life of Love and Happiness Together!



It was a beautiful day and a beautiful ceremony.  The best of British pomp, ceremony, Christian and Royal Tradition.  It was great to see so many people coming together for an event.  Kate looked absolutely beautiful.  And both Kate and Prince William looked very happy.  Amen to that.


And in the some of the most beautiful words ever written in any language.  The words of St Paul.

1 Corinthians 13.
The Way Of Love.

 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have total faith, enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I have to the poor, and even if I sacrifice my life, but have not love, I gain nothing.


 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will fade. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when everything is made complete, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I gave up childish things. For now we see as through a glass, darkly but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So for now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Saturday 16 April 2011

I don't care whether you're for YES or NO. For God's sake please actually go out and vote in the AV referendum on May 5th!


We are now rapidly approaching the 5th May and the long awaited referendum on whether for elections to parliament we should switch from First-past-the-post (FPTP) to the Alternative Vote (AV).  I would like to say that national conversation has been buzzing with the excitement of quite possibly our biggest constitutional change for a century.  I would like to say that campaign has been dominated by thoughtful and accurate but accessible explanations of the different mechanics and likely effects of switching to AV or not. But, that would be an utter lie!


Sadly, the truth is that the AV campaign has so far almost entirely passed the public by. Without the scale and widespread organisation of the main political parties the campaign has just not had the bulk necessary to seriously enter the national consciousness or disturb the thoughts of most of the population.  The Yes2AV and No2AV campaigns have been chipper and enthusiastic but thus far largely ineffective.  With disaster in Japan, War in Libya, Politics at Home, Local and sub-national elections their message has been largely crowded out.

On the other hand this is quite possibly a good thing as the AV campaign has been almost certainly the worst political campaign I have ever seen.  Both sides have barely even tried to wade into the complexity of explaining the somewhat technical differences between FPTP and the proposed AV system. Instead preferring to throw a vast wave of heavily emotive sheer rubbish at the electorate in the hope some of its sticks.  It has been truly awful, with a particular low point from the No side with their Vote No or the Baby gets it line of argument only just beating the Yes campaign's repeated massive non-sequiturs that AV will make politics fairer, MP's work harder, expenses lower and is apparently a more 'modern' system, all without explaining precisely how or why these miracles will occur; not to mention end safe seats (no it won't), make every MP have the support of 50% of his constituents (no it won't), end tactical voting (no it won't) and make election results more proportional (actually in direct contradiction to ending safe seats).  Not to mention simultaneously claiming that it will harm the BNP and also help smaller parties (connect the dots between those two if you can). Both sides have also managed to scrape the barrel when it comes to chasing celebrity endorsement rather than discussing to issues and more widely planning the man rather than the ball.

The campaign over AV has been even worse in quality than our last general election, which was itself a new low. In case you have forgotten that campaign was largely occupied by an argument over making £6 billion of cuts between two parties who were planning to cut £80 billion and £50 billion respectively, shortly followed by an unbelievably silly and impressively short lived personality cult based on one semi-decent TV performance that then fizzled out even before election day two weeks later.  It was pretty grim, but it has been surpassed in sheer balloon-faced stupidity by this AV campaign (from both sides).

It gets worse though.  Largely due to the bizarrely low profile of the AV campaign itself, and also, I think, due to the crass, irrelevant negativity of the two campaigns, there is a record low engagement with this important constitutional change.  At this stage in the campaign Yes and No are roughly equal in the polls, leading to the possibility we could see major constitutional change with the support of perhaps 12% of the electorate.  I call that pretty grim.  Lest you think I am exaggerating let me explain myself.

Turnout in general elections is about 2/3.  Turn-out in devolved, local and European elections is commonly about 35%.  I have seen nothing to convince me this referendum has a higher profile than the concurrent local and devolved elections. And see every reason to believe it will be lower.  People are used to local elections, they are somewhat aware of them as they come along with reasonable regularity.  They are also spurred by the high-profile of party politics.  The AV, as a non-party political one-off, has none of these benefits.  I was recently shocked to discover the people in my office between them knew almost nothing about AV and cared almost less.  These are highly educated people working in one of the UK's top universities.  I would put them in easily the top 20% of the country for expected general political awareness and engagement, and they were barely aware a referendum was even happening.  In places where there are local/devolved elections I expect turnout to be slightly lower than for those, where there are no local elections I expect turnout to be even worse.  All in all this means we can expect a turnout somewhere between 20-30%. On the higher end of that if we're lucky, the lower if we're not.  Combine that with an expectation that the result will be close, and we have AV defeated or accepted with roughly 11-16% of the electorate.

This is dire, you have to go back to the mid-19th Century to find a time when such a small percent of the population got to decide the direction of our constitution. Though, embarrassingly, this time the problem is due to apathy rather than legal restriction. It will be a terrible shame if such serious an issue that so affects us all were decided by a thin majority on a tiny turnout. Something that would quite possibly lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the new or retained system, stuck without any real democratic mandate.  It will certainly leave a legacy of bad feeling and mistrust about such change.   It is in all our best interest, whether win or lose, for as many people to be involved in this crucial democratic decision as possible.  

This is the reason for the headline of this article.  It doesn't matter whether you are for AV or against it.  Please, please go out and vote on May 5th!  If you don't have an opinion then get one. If you know nothing about the issue then please take a small amount of time to get yourself at least reasonably informed.  Whatever the case MAKE SURE YOU GET OUT AND VOTE!!!

Saturday 26 March 2011

The Phrase 'Feminist Hero' is used too often these days. . . But not for Veena Malik!!!

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And can I get an AMEN!!


In fact, not just that.  Can we get Veena Malik a Bafta, an Oscar or  

just jump straight to Sainthood.





I just hope it doesn't cost her. . . .   

It is incredibly sad that I have to say that and it be a genuine fear.  But with recent events in Pakistan it is all too possible.

A fantastically brave and courageous woman.   
 
Her utter refusal to be cowed by open bullying (and implicit violent threats) is an inspiration for human decency and tolerance.  
 
God Bless and protect her.  It gives me hope for Pakistan and humanity generally.


Sunday 20 March 2011

I'm a Tory and proud of it. But still, these Sickness and Disability Cuts are Wrong!

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The news for the last year has been dominated by the argument about public spending cuts: how soon, how deep, and what to cut? Between the recession and the previous Labour government, Britain has been left with a £155 billion public annual deficit: 11% of GDP, 22% of government spending, £425 million a day, £5,000 a second. Whatever way you phrase it that is a butt-load of money. The arguments about cuts dominated the general election last year and continues to motivate newspapers, press releases, broadcasts, rallies and riots. There is a general consensus that some cuts are necessary but no agreement about how much or what should be cut. The Labour party were planning £50 billion of cuts pre-election and the Coalition have promised £81 billion. Either way this is also a lot of money and won't happen without valuable services being unfortunately restricted or cancelled entirely.

I'm a conservative: by choice, by temperament, by experience, and by Party. When it comes to debt and the deficit I am a hard-liner. I think we should get our debt and deficit down as fast as possible given the health of the economy and the limits of practicality and morality. I believe this is the most sure and responsible way to ensure our future economic prosperity, by taking the hard decisions now. One of the core reasons I voted Conservative was because they promised to bring the deficit down faster and harder than Labour did, and were the first party to have the courage to stand up and say that serious spending cuts would be needed. Not the easiest message to take to the people in any climate. I'm also proud the Conservative Party took the lead in the election in promising to increase our spending on International Aid to the UN target of 0.7% of GDP, despite the immensely challenging economic climate, something Labour never managed in a decade, as well as ring fencing the NHS, protecting the schools budget and reconnecting the state pension to earnings. All while facing up to the fact that these choices mean harder choices must be made elsewhere. Generally I entirely agree with these priorities and the choices the government has made.

There is one glaring exception to this though. One area where support for some of the most vulnerable people in our society is being severely slashed, contrary to these principles I've mentioned, and that is the support available to long-term sick and disabled people. Starting with the previous Labour government and now the Coalition services and welfare that provide essential support for the long-term sick and disabled are being cut by a total of £5 billion a year. Just for some comparison that is equivalent to the money raised by the government's Banking levy and the removal of child benefit from higher rate tax payers combined. These are extensive cuts across the range of support given to sick and disabled people including Employment Support Allowance, Disability Living Allowance, the Independent Living Fund, Access to Work, as well as Housing, Council Tax and Health and Social Care  (Don't worry if you don't know what those are, I'm going to explain).  And their stupidity is being compounded by a choice of language and lack of communication that is just scaring people for no good reason. People are getting the impression that the government is not listening and does not care. Now, I'm an optimist, I genuinely think that politicians, even most of the ones I strongly disagree with, are really trying to do the best for the country. I think they do care, but they are currently not giving that impression to too many of the more vulnerable people in our society.

There has been opposition to all sorts of cuts.  We've had outraged campaigns against selling forests, increasing tuition fees, removing child benefit from the rich, cutting housing benefit, public sector pensions, closing libraries, raising VAT, cutting EMA, Higher Education, the British Film Council, the Future Jobs Fund, defence, the police, councils, and almost everything else. I pretty much support all of these policies (give or take a few details). I even support some cuts the government have given up on including ending free milk for under 5's, something called Bookstart and re-designing NHS Direct to save money.

This does not mean that it is acceptable to just hack away at random though.  Cuts must be restrained by two minimum principles. Firstly, and obviously, what is good for the economy; and secondly a basic level of service and support for those most vulnerable in our society. This is a matter of sheer morality, but also a matter of political honesty. Before the election British politicians, almost as one, united to try to partially conceal the scale of the challenge of cuts and tax rises that would be necessary to bring the deficit under control, whether using the Coalition's plan or Labour's weaker one. Implicit and explicit promises were made that basic standards of welfare and support wouldn't need to be compromised. Nor is there any need for them to be. Even under the Coalition's program the cuts amount to reducing total public spending by 2% a year. It is rather a matter of choosing, admittedly difficult, priorities.

It is very easy to be NIMBY about cuts. To claim to support cuts in theory but oppose cuts in practice whenever they are to a service or money that I benefit from or care about. There has been a huge amount of this since the election, an orgy of special pleading from those representing almost every imaginable group affected by public spending, on occasions brilliantly coupled with complete loss of perspective. The Labour party is currently making an art-form out of combining these features: Supporting some cuts and tax rises in theory while opposing all specific examples in practice, with occasional, uncontrollable outbursts of total, balls to the wall hyperbole.

This is categorically not one of those issues though. Out of all the cuts and policies I mentioned above this massive, badly planned assault on support for disabled and long-term sick people is by far the most serious. Far more than any of those things these are cuts to essential services, supporting basic financial security and opportunities in our society for some of its most vulnerable and disadvantaged members. These are essential, basic elements for a civilised society more so than any of those other things. I think if you oppose cuts to any of those things, if you consider them a bridge too far, then you must oppose cuts to disability and long-term sickness provision even more, as a priority above them.

Suffering a severe, long-term illness or disability is one of the most difficult things to live with of any of the disadvantages in people can face. Almost by definition it robs people of so many advantages the rest of us take for granted including too much of the ability to take part in society. It is often painful, almost always fundamentally exhausting and draining and always stressful for the rest of a sick or disabled person's family.  It makes life constantly more of a struggle than for well people. It also leaves a person open to a constant flow of minor indignities and general ignorance from a society where many people are still totally clueless about how to relate to disabled and extremely sick people in a human manner. Not to mention more objective stats like the fact that disabled people are the most likely of any group in society to be living in poverty (twice as likely) and to be unemployed (50% are).  I could, of course, go on; the difficulties faced by disabled and long-term sick people are as various as the possible mental and physical conditions people can suffer with, but I'm sure you understand the general idea.But that is enough vagueness.  What is it that I am actually talking about?

Thursday 14 October 2010

Dealing with the Deficit! (3) - Cutting Defence.

Of Military spending, Trident, Cuts, Cabbages and Kings (And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings - well, not really.)

This article follows on from previous articles outlining the economic arguments around the Coalition's budget plans and introducing the structure of the public finances and the plans for reducing the deficit.  It's followed by looking at popularly proposed schemes for cutting the deficit more efficiently/morally by raising taxes and cutting ring-fenced spending and a final article on fairness and (my) opinion of the government's plans.   I've separated them out to try to keep them shorter.  

The current government's approach to cutting the deficit is to take a broad based attack on the problem, raising some money in taxes, and also taking money from across government departments (apart from ID and Health) as well as capital spending and welfare, at varying rates decided on due to various other considerations. All these choices can and have been questioned, most completely by the Labour party's plans, but also by a range of commentators and public bodies. As Polly Toynbee notes, 'What's your cut?' has become a popular game in the media, with various people suggesting their own swinging cuts of things they just don't care about, or they claim are unimportant, or of raising taxes they claim are painless or intrinsically 'fair' compared to the government's plans. These suggestions can be divided into two classes, those such as the Labour party's, which take a similarly broad approach to the coalition, though differing in detail, and those that take a narrow approach and suggest massively attacking a few narrow areas of policy, believed to be particularly unworthy by the suggester, with the belief that this could mean saving most of the pain elsewhere. (Though of course there's also a range in the middle.) These narrow suggestions seem to be uniformly based on the principle that their proposers believe there to be vast pots of money somewhere either just waiting to be painlessly taken in taxation, or being totally wastefully spent that can just be excised without much harm to our general body politic.

These suggestions seem to be largely motivated by the belief that our financial problems are not complicated, deeply based and systematic issues with our economic and political structure but rather a simple problem with an obvious and largely cosmetic solution. The problem with this idea is that it is total bunk, and with most of these ideas underwritten by faulty logic or data. A common thread with these ideas is that either the tax rises proposed could not easily raise nearly as much money as suggested, or the simple spending cuts would not save nearly as much money as their starry eyed proponents would hope, at least not without causing serious damage. These suggestions can be roughly divided into right-wing ideas and left-wing ideas, though both share similar characteristics, as they do with other similar examples of simplistic, near conspiratorial thinking.


The first category for bizarre left-wing approaches to solving the budget deficit is the stop-spending-money-on-defence school. The most bizarre and radical form of this idea comes from Simon Jenkins who proposes saving £44 billion a year by entirely eliminating the armed forces, and thus saving the entire defence budget. Yes, you heard that correctly.  But sentiments along the same lines, if a lot less precise, are expressed widely as a throwaway line by left-wing commentators.  A lot of the desire to be rid of defence spending seems to be based on an emotional dislike of funding things whose sole purpose is to wage war. This is an understandable concern. Ask any person whether they'd rather spend money on healing the sick, educating the ignorant, or purchasing new and better ways to kill people, it is pretty clear, which anyone would chose. There is also the fair criticism that post-Cold war the level of traditional military threat to the UK is unsure.

However, sadly the world is not so simple. In defence of the armed forces there are a number of serious points. Despite the progress mankind has made, we still live in a dangerous world where violence rages all around us. Although Britain itself is relatively unlikely to be invaded anytime soon there are many calls on our armed forces, whether defending British territory abroad, such as the Falklands, or in fighting threats against other peoples and innocent countries. Nor can we be sure that this state of affairs will continue. Europe enjoys unparalleled peace and prosperity, but around exists a deeply unstable world. Whether Russia, the Middle east, China, Africa or other areas the danger of violence increasing in an increasingly populated world struggling over natural resources, changes in climate and political and economic problems. And the terrifying truth is that it only requires a brief period of military unpreparedness to have terrible consequences. We maintain armed forces all the years we don't need them because the possible risk of a situation when we do need them is just so great. Also, an inability to defend ourselves is itself a temptation to less morally scrupulous groups to attack us, knowing we are not strong enough to resist. Even if one does not go as far as Simon Jenkins tentatively suggests there is a temptation to say, well, why don't we hold minimal armed forces then. But this is not a real option, there is no point having a military that cannot quite win in a conflict, considering the damage that can ensure that is hardly better than having no military at all.

Even ignoring this though,although the moral argument that we should not be spending such vast sums on what are in effect weapons of death is a powerful one, but I would say there is an equally powerful opposite argument. As far as the world is a dangerous place, and it is, and this is something we must be aware of then we have an active duty to both provide for our own defence ourselves and also to maintain capability to help others. Europe today has a habit of spending relatively little on defence and criticising the USA for spending relatively more. But this is disingenuous in as far as Europe still benefits from he implicit or explicit protection of American forces and strength, as it did to a huge extent in the Cold War and also the 2nd World War before that. More generally, even if we ourselves are not threatened we have a moral duty to help others who are. And others are most definitely threatened. Neutrality and isolation, a la, Switzerland or Ireland or Sweden, is nice for us, but it sucks for everyone else, and in the larger analysis is really an abdication in the face of evil. We no more really have a moral option of walking by on the other side of violence and military oppression than we do of poverty or sickness or ignorance, and this fact carries the corollary of we, who can afford it, maintaining the military forces to help others who cannot afford it. Whether the first world war, the 2nd world war, the Korean war, the gulf war, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Falklands, fighting pirates off Somalia or peace keeping engagements around the world our military forces are primarily engaged in defending others, often for our own benefit as well, but significantly in defence of those who cannot defend themselves. Indeed, except for the example of Iraq, that particularly divisive conflict, then the main examples of the failure of peacekeeping efforts are examples of the western world not acting decisively enough to stop great evil, whether in Rwanda or in Srebrenica or elsewhere. Elsewhere in a more continuous example, today the security of Taiwan is probably only guaranteed by the promise of military support from the United States in the event of any conflict. Otherwise it is highly likely Communist China would have destroyed this small country. The sad truth is that in a dangerous world we must be able to defend both ourselves and all other peoples of the world, even as we work for a reduction in arms and the threat of force in international and intranational politics. And this is not to mention the central role our military has in relieving disaster zones around the world. Along with our international aid spending, our defence forces are our main ability to actively project our power around the world for the better.

That would be the moral case for military spending (as odd as that may sound), but assuming one does not go quite as far as the complete abolition idea for our armed forces there are practical issues as well. Unlike some departments, such as Health, Education, Welfare, spending on Defence held pretty much flat in real terms throughout Labour's 13 years, while public spending in total increased by around 60%. Our armed forces are already stretched thinly after years of running the forces on an effectively frozen budget. We are also still engaged in a war in Afghanistan, putting additional pressure on the military budget. On top of this defence effectively already has its own internal deficit. Military procurement is legendarily bad value for money. We sink huge sums into purchasing equipment over several years, and by the time it comes it is largely out of date for the threats we face. We are, in procurement terms, always fighting the last war. Also due to the financial pressures of War in Iraq and Afghanistan eating into the military budget the government attempted to save money by stretching out the contracts for major purchases for the armed forces. Like other instances of, effectively, borrowing money over the long term this just means that we end up paying more money in the end, than we would have originally. Talk of inefficient procurement may make it sound as though there is plenty of room for efficiency savings in the armed forces, and hence strengthening the argument for cuts, but what it does mean is that although there is considerable scope for doing things more efficiently in the future, in the present we face looming bills from prior mistakes that we cannot get out of. We would have trouble maintaining our armed forces at their present standard even were funding to remain the same due to this looming internal deficit. In the face of even relatively modest cuts (compared to other budgets, as is planned now) we are going to lose a significant part of our military capability.

That is the broad argument surrounding the inability to solve the deficit through attacking military spending. One important sub-set of this argument is the widespread argument that scrapping the Trident nuclear deterrent should be the first call in cutting the deficit, advocated in a limited sense by the Lib Dems and more strongly by the Greens, SNP, Plaid, as well as a host of organisations and commentators. This bears even greater immediate appeal than the standard cut-the-military argument. Nuclear weapons, by definition, can never be actually used except to deliberately cause massive civilian casualties. Their only legitimate purpose is deterrence. Especially in a post-Cold War world there seems relatively little purpose holding expensive nuclear weapons. There is a problem with this, though, similar to the argument above. The number of unstable countries either with nuclear weapons or seeking to gain them continues to increase: China, Russia-ish, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and possibly others. As more countries gain nuclear weapons the possibility of an unstable future situation involving nuclear blackmail at the hands of one of these non-democratic countries increases and this is something that is deeply to be avoided as once we get in that situation there is no way we can respond. There is also a feasible argument that nuclear weapons actually reduce conventional conflict, by making it not worth people's time. Between their founding in the late 1940's and their acquiring nuclear weapons in the 1970's Israel and its Arab neighbours and India/Pakistan engaged in three wars each, but since these states acquired nuclear weapons there have been no major wars. On a grander scale the threat of Nuclear war may have contributed to the peaceful (at least in Europe) conduct of the Cold War, that could so easily have turned into a 3rd World War of immense proportions.

If we accept the importance of some respectable nation having nuclear weapons to counter the possible threat from less stable nations, soon or even in the relatively more distant future, then there comes the criticism that it is unnecessary for us to maintain nuclear weapons, as some people correctly suggest there is no conceivable situation where we would use nuclear weapons independently of America. So why not just let them pay for them and scrap our own capability? The argument is, again, moral. To push the responsibility of maintaining a nuclear capability for the "good guys" onto the USA is to abdicate a responsibility to others. It is to say that it is acceptable for American taxpayers, soldiers, politicians etc to bear the essential responsibility of defending the enlightened world in this most extreme manner, with the danger of retaliation that entails, but it is not a danger and cost that it is worth us bearing. This is an abdication of moral responsibility, and a remarkable one at that, seeing as how it explicitly places us as a strategic dependent of the United States. What is particularly odd about this is that it is generally the same people who claim to be most worried about the UK being subservient to America, or following too closely America's foreign policy, who advocate most strongly that we abandon this major independent capability for independent action and policy and effectively cede this entire area of independent strategic policy to the US in its entirety.

That is, again, the theoretical case for maintaining our nuclear deterrent. The practical issue in terms of deficit reduction is that even entirely scrapping Trident and our whole Nuclear deterrent would not save that much money. And this itself it not something that any major political party supports. Pre-election the Lib Dems went the furthest in supporting an alternative cheaper system than Trident, though they never actually said what system. This is one of those topics for which reliable statistics seem most in need. Numbers given for the actual cost of the Trident system and its renewal vary dramatically depending on the person giving them, as well as contextual factors such as whether figures given involve just the cost of purchasing the system, the cost of running it over the next parliament, over the entire lifetime of the system or something else. And of course those who give the statistics do not make this clear when they give them. Possibly depending on which of these features one takes into account or just what your ideological bias is, it is possible to read statements running from £20 billion to as high as £100 billion I read in one commentary piece, for the cost of replacing the Trident system.

 Actual official estimates for replacing the system, as opposed to whatever numbers column writers come up with, tend to be at the lower end of this continuum, with estimates in the range of around £20 billion for replacing the system and around £1.5 billion annual running costs. It is only possible to get the higher range estimates for costs should we take the possible costs over the entire life-time of the system, some 20-30 or more years. Looking at the total cost of a nuclear deterrent is a reasonable thing to do in general but in a conversation about a budget deficit it is not, since that is mainly concerned with annual cost. One could take a similar approach and produce monstrous figures that the cost of housing benefit is £400 billion, but neglect to mention that is over the next 20 years. On an annual basis, assuming the cost of purchase is spread over a 20 year period, Trident makes around a £3 billion a year contribution to the deficit. Getting rid of it is evidently not going to solve our budgetary problems or really even make more than a small dent in the hole. And these savings are for the outright scrapping of the nuclear deterrent. Trident is already assessed as one of the cheapest long term option for an independent nuclear deterrent. Any other system, even if was cheaper, would still have significant costs running in the billions of pounds and so relative savings would be even smaller.

This is not to say that some savings cannot be made in planning for the nuclear deterrent. It is possible to lengthen the lifetime of the Trident system by refitting submarines and missiles, rather than replacing the system now, as well as reducing from the current level of Continuous At Sea Deterrent (CASD). Full replacement could be put off until we don't have a desperate budget crisis and there is more money to go around. It is estimated that postponing Trident's replacement could save some £11 billion over the next 5-10 years. This is definitely worth doing in a time when money is tight, and the nuclear threat over the next few years is tight. But neither cuts to defence nor the nuclear deterrent particularly are either a wise nor useful solution to cutting the budget deficit, except as small part of a much wider program of savings and tax rises.

Sunday 19 September 2010

An Open Letter to the Guardian Letter Writers of 15th September and other anti-Pope visiting schmucks.

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Dear Guardian-letter-signing, so-called, 'public intellectuals'
(and other pain-in-the-ass commentatorswho have expressed or agree with the same arguments),

The Pope's visit has brought out some of the dumbest public and political commentary I have heard for a while. Particularly from yourselves. I'd hoped with the election gone we'd be spared this level of stupid for a while, but no. Though, to be honest, the debate on public spending was already keeping the choo-choo train of opinionated ignorance firmly on the tracks.

You would actually have managed to be more coherent if you just stated you don't approve of the Pope coming to Britain, and simply do not want him to come and process through the streets to cheering crowds. That would at least have been consistent. Of course the response would have been that it was ridiculously arrogant of you to assume anyone cares whether a handful of self-appointed busybodies want him to come, and he wasn't coming to see you anyway.

You could even have said you disagreed with some official positions of the Catholic Church but saw this as a chance to open a rational dialogue and have greater public discussion of issues that are of central importance to mankind. But that would have required an adult disposition and a genuine desire for discussion and understanding, rather than childish name-calling, and that sounds like hard work, doesn't it.

However, sadly, thanks to your faux-liberal commitment you felt unable to state what is pretty obviously actually your wish, and instead claimed you were happy for him to come but merely had a few procedural problems with the form of his visit. Unfortunately these problems are total nonsense, and so you just made yourselves look dumber than otherwise, in an attempt to appear like you were expressing something more generally relevant than your own personal dislike of Catholicism.

Arguing that a generally recognised political state is not a state, just because it is momentarily politically inconvenient for you, is pretty moronic. I personally don't like the fact that Communist China is considered a state, and I wouldn't like the fact that the Soviet Union was considered a state, if it was not that collapsed when I was three years old. Before the Iraq War I was deeply irritated by people arguing that Saddam Hussein's government's held any legitimacy at all, since it was a genocidal, undemocratic, neo-Nazi tyranny. I consider all these regimes to be violent, murderous and entirely lacking in any democratic and popular legitimacy.

However, in none of these cases do my personal preferences affect, one jot, the plain facts of the world. One can only be astonished at the arrogance of a few figures (I'm looking at you Stephen Fry) who have apparently suddenly become experts in International law and early 20th Century Italian History. It is incredible you seem to think the global weight of governments, civil servants, legal scholars and peoples should bow  before your inane and often inaccurate trivia and re-assemble Inter-nationally recognised political facts and realities for your convenience.

The next most ridiculous thing has been the suddenly discovered outrage about waste in public spending, namely the £10 million cost for the Pope's visit. We spend 2/3 of that policing the Notting Hill carnival for God's sake, let alone football matches up and down the country. Not to mention the billions we waste each year on public bureaucracy, spin, pet projects, subsidies for opera and goodness knows what else. Indeed, a whole list of things of considerably less use and public interest than a chance to engage with the spiritual leader of 1/6th of the world's population, the largest popular organisation in the world, and around 2 million people in the UK at the moment. Living in a democracy means that your money gets spent on things you don't agree with, or wouldn't bother spending it on yourselves: Tough. If people don't like it they are free to leave the country, or perhaps blame Gordon Brown since he invited the Pope on a State Visit in the first place.

And let us not forget the sheer hypocrisy of making such a fuss about the Pope coming but not batting an eyelid about, say, the President of China, the King of Saudi Arabia, the President of Ghana, the President of Russia, the King of Jordan, the former President of South Africa, the President of China again a couple of times, the President of Israel. All of whom head regimes that actually officially engage in violent, human rights abuses. One can only get the impression this is more to do with the Pope's religion, and some persons' bigotry towards it (or that he represents one at all) rather than the moral record of the state he leads.

Because God forbid you actually try to open up a dialogue or engage in some adult and rational debate and discussion, instead of just ranting and raving and name-calling like children throwing a temper tantrum. But that wouldn't allow you to feel so self-righteous. Referring to him as "Pope Ratzinger" in your letter is particularly weak. I'd have thought that deliberately getting someone's name wrong to show disrespect was a childish affectation that would have been abandoned in secondary school. If you are actually that ignorant then it's 'Pope Benedict' or even 'Joseph Ratzinger', something that 30 seconds (its called Google) would have sufficed to discover, even if you'd never heard of the Pope before.

Which brings me to my last point. Even if you can not respect the Pope's positions on many of these issues, then you should be able to respect the importance he has, in part, in carrying the hopes and representing the beliefs of millions of good, honest, kind, thoughtful and decent people in this country and a billion more around the globe. But in too many of you this criticism is a poorly disguised front for sheer anti-Catholic bigotry, that comes out into the open in the de-humanising and hate-filled language employed on too many other occasions. Sometimes reaching the insane culmination of blaming Joseph Ratzinger personally for Aids, every individual act of child abuse and the devastation of the planet through over-population, among other paranoid ravings.

In summary, you're all idiots. Rarely has a part of my own country's 'cultural elite' made me want to reach so thoroughly and quickly for the sick bucket. You provide yet further proof of the wisdom of democracy: that no matter how well qualified, publicly acclaimed, or usually charming (looking at you again Mr Fry) a person may be, they are still prone to bouts of being an utter moron. How very egalitarian of you. Please stop embarrassing yourselves and your country. It's tiring.

Yours Sincerely,
Stephen Wigmore