Oh God. Oh, God, Oh God, Oh God. When will this living nightmare of a government end?
I sometimes pinch myself, just to check that I am in fact experiencing this for real, and the last two years since the last election haven't been some awful day-dream.
But no: this is really happening.
I had the pleasure of seeing Jeremy Hunt (once mis-spoken as a vulgar term for the female organ) at the Leveson inquiry today. The general gist of the story is that he had been in regular touch with NewsCorp officials, and was personally supportive of a corporate bid by NewsCorp. This was before he was given the role to adjudicate on the bid as a minister, as well as during the process. But he hadn't shown any bias during the process. So he says. And he seems a nice chap, so I'm sure he's telling the truth.
So that's sorted, then. Nothing wrong there.
Except that Hunt was given the adjudicating role because Vince Cable had shown clear bias during his tenure of looking at the bid. David Cameron appointed Jeremy Hunt, knowing that he was in favour of the bid, but because he showed no clear bias during the process, then that was OK. Hunt's advisor (who was a thoroughly upright and good guy, according to Hunt) had to be forced out, but not Hunt himself. Hunt did nothing wrong The minister who is also famous for hiding behind trees (to avoid journalists) has nothing to fear. Obviously.
What about those confusing (misleading) statements given to Parliament? Ah, that was for Cameron to decide on if a separate inquiry should be set up; once Hunt had given his evidence at the Leveson inquiry, Cameron assured us that an inquiry would be set up. Now that Hunt has completed his evidence at the Leveson inquiry, Cameron assures us that a separate inquiry does not need to be set up. It's quite obvious, really!
You see, when Cameron realised that Cable had made those biased statements, it was clear that they made his judgement biased. When Hunt made those biased statements, it was clear that they would not make his judgement biased. It's quite obvious, really!
When the government declares a new policy, like those in the Budget, they're not really "policies"; they're more like "ideas". If enough people don't like them, the government changes its mind. To those critics who talk about "U-turns", and not thinking things through enough, well this is just silly: there are plenty of other policies which are clearly in the public interest that the government has no intention of listening to the public's view about. For example, tuition fees; cutting the deficit; heath and education reform: these are the things that the government really cares about, and no amount of whining or facts from people who think they know better will make the government change its mind.
People say that the Conservative ministers don't take their jobs seriously. They take strikes very seriously: so seriously that they take particular pleasure in talking up a strike, and doing what they can to aggravate public sector staff into calling one. This is the best way to defeat the power of the unions; by creating as many strikes as possible!
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Thursday, May 24, 2012
China's domination is inevitable, but no reason to worry.
When pundits predicted China's rise to dominance twenty or thirty years ago, many were dismissive. No longer. But many of those recent converts to the new orthodoxy have gone to the other extreme; from once dismissing China, they've gone into hysterical paranoia about China putting the rest of the world in a virtual stranglehold.
This is misplaced, and ignorant. Certainly China is the pre-eminent economic and trading power in the world, but its military power still lags far behind that of the USA. The real question is to understand what the Chinese themselves want out of the world.
Western thinkers who spread threats of World War Three between China and the USA base this thinking on their own logic: Western powers spread their might over the the rest of the globe through war, colonisation and settling to other parts of the world over several centuries. They assume that China wants the same thing: dominance through control of territory. But China's methods and aims are more subtle. You only have to compare European and Chinese history to get an understanding of that.
A overview of how the West and China came to evolve over two thousand years to their current state of human evolution (eg. through advances in science and technology) is informative.
For a period of more than one thousand years (roughly between 300BC to 1300AD) China was consistently ahead of Europe in most areas of technology and scientific research.
Europeans think that logic and philosophy are Greek inventions, but the Chinese had similar philosophical schools around the same time period, possibly even slightly earlier, known as the "School of Names". Inventions such as the abacus, the recording of comets, the first building of the Great Wall of China, and the crossbow, were all invented long before the birth of Christ. The ancient Greeks had also invented the crossbow, but this weapon quickly went out of use, and was not widely used again for more than one thousand years in Europe. The Chinese, however, continued to improve upon it. Also in the area of weaponry, the ancient Chinese invented a sort of early halberd (a spear that combines an axe with a dagger-head), that was not widely used in Europe till the Middle Ages.
These are just a few examples. There are then the so-called "Four Great Inventions" in early China, while Europe was experiencing the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome. These were the compass, paper, printing, and gunpowder. Although some of these inventions still needed time to improve, these were things completely unknown to Europe at the time. Gunpowder was used in China nearly a thousand years before Europe; the same for printing. From that, China built there own early version of the musket, centuries before Europeans, as well as cannons. The Chinese also created other military innovations such as Chinese lanterns for signalling and spying. There are then quasi-industrial inventions such as pistons, cast iron, propeller, sluice gates for canals, all a thousand years before their common use in Europe.
I could go on, but I don't want to labour the point, which is that by the time Europe had its Renaissance, China had had at least a five-hundred-year head start on technological innovation, and even China contemporaneous with the Roman Empire was probably still comfortably ahead technologically. The fall of Rome and the Dark Ages put Europe in a funk, and it was only by the Renaissance that they had somewhat caught up with the Chinese, though still a bit behind.
There is a phrase in Capitalism called "Creative Destruction" that goes some way to explaining why the Renaissance happened in Europe at all. The idea is that you have to cause a little anarchy, shaking up the system, in order to promote new ideas. By the time that the Renaissance started in Europe (in the 13th century), China had had more than a thousand years of "creative destruction": China had been at various times over the previous thousand years divided into competing states, or gone from one dynasty quickly being uprooted by the next. There is some credence in the thinking that, like with Europe's creative mess that provoked the Renaissance, this all kept the creative juices flowing in China, as competing powers were always trying to out-do the other in technological pursuits in order to gain an upper hand.
The other thing that was in Europe's favour in causing the Renaissance, was its geography. With the irregular landscape, mountain ranges and so on, it was nigh impossible for "stability" to be created in Europe. There would always be small states, like in Italy, where this continual to-and-fro would provoke ideas to gain the upper hand on political rivals.
China's geography was different, being essentially a large, relatively uniform landscape (about the same size of Europe, with a similar-sized population), dissected by two large rivers. This meant it was in theory easier for one dynasty to control for a longer period of time, given the right circumstances. I'll return to this point shortly.
The coming of the Renaissance in Europe in the 13th century coincided with the arrival of the Mongols onto the world scene. This would prove pivotal for world and Chinese history. The Mongols overran China, ruling from 1271 till 1368, and at the same time, over-running much of the rest of Asia and the Middle East, as far as Eastern Europe.
This would be pivotal for two reasons. First, the sheer scale of the Mongol Empire meant that, for the first time, Chinese trade and ideas could be much more easily transported to the West. The second reason relates to what happened when the Mongol rule of China was defeated in 1368, and a misconception that the West holds about the Mongols.
Mongol rule in China did not bring about a collapse of Chinese innovation; by contrast, it flourished, with further technological and scientific discoveries being made and put into good use. But when the new Chinese Emperor saw the array of technological contraptions in the former Mongol Emperor's palace, he dismissed it all as indicative of the indulgence of their foreign masters, and decreed them all destroyed, discouraging further research into such unnecessary pursuits. Although extensive trade with the Middle East and Africa continued unabated for a while, Chinese research and development never really held its previous high value, and in a matter of a few hundred years, the Chinese were relying on Western explorers' expertise for improving on their now-anachronistic technology.
And yet, paradoxically, the decline in Chinese innovation, happening at around the same time that Europeans' innovations were proliferating, did not adversely affect the lot of the average Chinese peasant compared to his European contemporary. In the four centuries after the restoration of Chinese sovereignty from the Mongols, the average life expectancy in China was roughly between five to ten years high than the Europeans'. The reason was this: China was never, except during occasional periods of political instability, poor in a real sense. The Chinese court was rich from European trade; China's previous extensive exploration and trade links as far as East Africa declined as the Chinese Empire's priorities changed. China, in other words, became complacent and generally content with its lot. It was rich; the West indulged it for China's richness of resources; it was not in imminent danger of invasion. The conditions suitable for "Creative Destruction" that had spurred its previous thousand years of innovation had dried up. As a result, during the 16th century it suffered from a weak, corrupt and long-lived rulers. The dynasty was eventually overthrown in the middle of the 17th century, but the same state of complacency was difficult to get rid of.
By the time of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, China, while economically stable and self-sufficient, its technology was centuries out-of-date compared to Europe due to lack of innovative curiosity. With the onset of Imperialism, the 19th century brought Europeans to China's territorial doorstep. From that point onwards, the decline and political collapse was just a matter of time. The first half of 20th century was arguably the most chaotic period in Chinese history for a thousand years, with civil war overlapping with Japanese invasion. Communism brought stability in 1949, but it was another thirty years before its leader, Deng Xiaoping, had the courage to make the reforms necessary to activate China's long-dormant, massive potential.
So that brings us up-to-date, and provides the necessary context to better understand China's position and where she sees herself in the world. In a nutshell, China seems to see herself primarily as a nation of producers and merchants. It is well-known that China is making significant inroads into Africa and South America, but mainly Africa; particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. Looking at the historical context, this seems to be simply putting its global reach of a thousand years ago into reset mode. It plans to create a so-called "String Of Pearls": a number of naval and commercial outposts that dot the Indian Ocean, from Burma and Bangladesh, west to Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and down the East African coast.
What will a world with a pre-eminent China look like? From what I can tell, China priorities are, in the following order, about: ensuring a stable supply of resources (from Africa etc.) to maintain the continued improvements in its population's quality of life; ensuring a stable trade with the West for the same purpose; and to maintain a suitably-sized military to protect those interests. Those priorities are nothing controversial or outlandish.
To be sure, there are other factors that the West has to pencil in: China is sensitive about having its values misunderstood and has no moral objections to using clandestine methods to make its points. Issues like human rights can provoke responses like the disabling of communications systems through hacking and sophisticated viruses. But this is no more than to expect from any wily merchant-civilisation carefully protecting its position. China does not want war: it is bad for business.
As we have seen from Chinese history, as a people and civilisation they are nothing if not endlessly-inventive and resourceful. The description I used as a "nation of merchants" puts me in mind of the Venetian Republic: a commercial power, industrious and innovative, that grew to be a world leader for a time.
The USA shares a similar outlook and mentality, albeit with a more assertive military and an over-confidence in its philosophical superiority over its rivals. These are long-term disadvantages to the American position in the world. China has a few important advantages over the USA in the long-term: China has a huge population; it has better productivity; its military budget is modest compared to its size; it is diplomatically-astute; in the West, it has a stable and reliable demand base, and its native population is expanding its purchasing power.
The future is China's, but don't panic; they've got everything under control.
This is misplaced, and ignorant. Certainly China is the pre-eminent economic and trading power in the world, but its military power still lags far behind that of the USA. The real question is to understand what the Chinese themselves want out of the world.
Western thinkers who spread threats of World War Three between China and the USA base this thinking on their own logic: Western powers spread their might over the the rest of the globe through war, colonisation and settling to other parts of the world over several centuries. They assume that China wants the same thing: dominance through control of territory. But China's methods and aims are more subtle. You only have to compare European and Chinese history to get an understanding of that.
A overview of how the West and China came to evolve over two thousand years to their current state of human evolution (eg. through advances in science and technology) is informative.
For a period of more than one thousand years (roughly between 300BC to 1300AD) China was consistently ahead of Europe in most areas of technology and scientific research.
Europeans think that logic and philosophy are Greek inventions, but the Chinese had similar philosophical schools around the same time period, possibly even slightly earlier, known as the "School of Names". Inventions such as the abacus, the recording of comets, the first building of the Great Wall of China, and the crossbow, were all invented long before the birth of Christ. The ancient Greeks had also invented the crossbow, but this weapon quickly went out of use, and was not widely used again for more than one thousand years in Europe. The Chinese, however, continued to improve upon it. Also in the area of weaponry, the ancient Chinese invented a sort of early halberd (a spear that combines an axe with a dagger-head), that was not widely used in Europe till the Middle Ages.
These are just a few examples. There are then the so-called "Four Great Inventions" in early China, while Europe was experiencing the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome. These were the compass, paper, printing, and gunpowder. Although some of these inventions still needed time to improve, these were things completely unknown to Europe at the time. Gunpowder was used in China nearly a thousand years before Europe; the same for printing. From that, China built there own early version of the musket, centuries before Europeans, as well as cannons. The Chinese also created other military innovations such as Chinese lanterns for signalling and spying. There are then quasi-industrial inventions such as pistons, cast iron, propeller, sluice gates for canals, all a thousand years before their common use in Europe.
I could go on, but I don't want to labour the point, which is that by the time Europe had its Renaissance, China had had at least a five-hundred-year head start on technological innovation, and even China contemporaneous with the Roman Empire was probably still comfortably ahead technologically. The fall of Rome and the Dark Ages put Europe in a funk, and it was only by the Renaissance that they had somewhat caught up with the Chinese, though still a bit behind.
There is a phrase in Capitalism called "Creative Destruction" that goes some way to explaining why the Renaissance happened in Europe at all. The idea is that you have to cause a little anarchy, shaking up the system, in order to promote new ideas. By the time that the Renaissance started in Europe (in the 13th century), China had had more than a thousand years of "creative destruction": China had been at various times over the previous thousand years divided into competing states, or gone from one dynasty quickly being uprooted by the next. There is some credence in the thinking that, like with Europe's creative mess that provoked the Renaissance, this all kept the creative juices flowing in China, as competing powers were always trying to out-do the other in technological pursuits in order to gain an upper hand.
The other thing that was in Europe's favour in causing the Renaissance, was its geography. With the irregular landscape, mountain ranges and so on, it was nigh impossible for "stability" to be created in Europe. There would always be small states, like in Italy, where this continual to-and-fro would provoke ideas to gain the upper hand on political rivals.
China's geography was different, being essentially a large, relatively uniform landscape (about the same size of Europe, with a similar-sized population), dissected by two large rivers. This meant it was in theory easier for one dynasty to control for a longer period of time, given the right circumstances. I'll return to this point shortly.
The coming of the Renaissance in Europe in the 13th century coincided with the arrival of the Mongols onto the world scene. This would prove pivotal for world and Chinese history. The Mongols overran China, ruling from 1271 till 1368, and at the same time, over-running much of the rest of Asia and the Middle East, as far as Eastern Europe.
This would be pivotal for two reasons. First, the sheer scale of the Mongol Empire meant that, for the first time, Chinese trade and ideas could be much more easily transported to the West. The second reason relates to what happened when the Mongol rule of China was defeated in 1368, and a misconception that the West holds about the Mongols.
Mongol rule in China did not bring about a collapse of Chinese innovation; by contrast, it flourished, with further technological and scientific discoveries being made and put into good use. But when the new Chinese Emperor saw the array of technological contraptions in the former Mongol Emperor's palace, he dismissed it all as indicative of the indulgence of their foreign masters, and decreed them all destroyed, discouraging further research into such unnecessary pursuits. Although extensive trade with the Middle East and Africa continued unabated for a while, Chinese research and development never really held its previous high value, and in a matter of a few hundred years, the Chinese were relying on Western explorers' expertise for improving on their now-anachronistic technology.
And yet, paradoxically, the decline in Chinese innovation, happening at around the same time that Europeans' innovations were proliferating, did not adversely affect the lot of the average Chinese peasant compared to his European contemporary. In the four centuries after the restoration of Chinese sovereignty from the Mongols, the average life expectancy in China was roughly between five to ten years high than the Europeans'. The reason was this: China was never, except during occasional periods of political instability, poor in a real sense. The Chinese court was rich from European trade; China's previous extensive exploration and trade links as far as East Africa declined as the Chinese Empire's priorities changed. China, in other words, became complacent and generally content with its lot. It was rich; the West indulged it for China's richness of resources; it was not in imminent danger of invasion. The conditions suitable for "Creative Destruction" that had spurred its previous thousand years of innovation had dried up. As a result, during the 16th century it suffered from a weak, corrupt and long-lived rulers. The dynasty was eventually overthrown in the middle of the 17th century, but the same state of complacency was difficult to get rid of.
By the time of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, China, while economically stable and self-sufficient, its technology was centuries out-of-date compared to Europe due to lack of innovative curiosity. With the onset of Imperialism, the 19th century brought Europeans to China's territorial doorstep. From that point onwards, the decline and political collapse was just a matter of time. The first half of 20th century was arguably the most chaotic period in Chinese history for a thousand years, with civil war overlapping with Japanese invasion. Communism brought stability in 1949, but it was another thirty years before its leader, Deng Xiaoping, had the courage to make the reforms necessary to activate China's long-dormant, massive potential.
So that brings us up-to-date, and provides the necessary context to better understand China's position and where she sees herself in the world. In a nutshell, China seems to see herself primarily as a nation of producers and merchants. It is well-known that China is making significant inroads into Africa and South America, but mainly Africa; particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. Looking at the historical context, this seems to be simply putting its global reach of a thousand years ago into reset mode. It plans to create a so-called "String Of Pearls": a number of naval and commercial outposts that dot the Indian Ocean, from Burma and Bangladesh, west to Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and down the East African coast.
What will a world with a pre-eminent China look like? From what I can tell, China priorities are, in the following order, about: ensuring a stable supply of resources (from Africa etc.) to maintain the continued improvements in its population's quality of life; ensuring a stable trade with the West for the same purpose; and to maintain a suitably-sized military to protect those interests. Those priorities are nothing controversial or outlandish.
To be sure, there are other factors that the West has to pencil in: China is sensitive about having its values misunderstood and has no moral objections to using clandestine methods to make its points. Issues like human rights can provoke responses like the disabling of communications systems through hacking and sophisticated viruses. But this is no more than to expect from any wily merchant-civilisation carefully protecting its position. China does not want war: it is bad for business.
As we have seen from Chinese history, as a people and civilisation they are nothing if not endlessly-inventive and resourceful. The description I used as a "nation of merchants" puts me in mind of the Venetian Republic: a commercial power, industrious and innovative, that grew to be a world leader for a time.
The USA shares a similar outlook and mentality, albeit with a more assertive military and an over-confidence in its philosophical superiority over its rivals. These are long-term disadvantages to the American position in the world. China has a few important advantages over the USA in the long-term: China has a huge population; it has better productivity; its military budget is modest compared to its size; it is diplomatically-astute; in the West, it has a stable and reliable demand base, and its native population is expanding its purchasing power.
The future is China's, but don't panic; they've got everything under control.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Unemployment is no longer a lifestyle choice: it is economic necessity
Inflation can be a misleading thing. Officially, inflation in the UK is fairly low compared to other nations, at 2.5%. But that tells barely half the story.
Real wages have barely increased over the last few years. Meanwhile, food prices and fuel prices have increased sharply, to the extent that some are having to seriously ration their car use; those that, due to their word commitments, do not have the luxury of that choice, are squeezed even further. Haulage companies, for example, have seen their costs increase by double digits year on year, with those increased costs passed onto the retailers, and then onto us, the customers. That is just one example; a microcosm of the overall hidden inflation that is squeezing the average family to the bone. Then there are the increased costs of utilities, creating massive rises in monthly bills for the average family.
Many young families cannot get mortgages from risk-paralysed banks unwilling to lend; the result of that has been a surge in demand for rental accommodation in recent years, resulting in significant rises to rents around the country, and a further eating away of the hard-earned wages of everyday families.
Apart from the miserly wage increases, there are then government policy changes, such as the changes to working family tax credits, that make thousands of families worse off. These things all add up to a situation where some families are literally better-off week-on-week by being on benefits.
The overall rate of unemployment is apparently coming down; but there are two significant caveats to that point, it be true or not.
It may well be that the overall rate is coming down. But much of that decrease is taken up by a significant increase in people accepting part-time employment. The East of England, where I live at the moment, it the centre of this story. In other words, an increasing section of working people cannot find real jobs; only part-time jobs. In the mid-1970s there was the three-day-week for a while; for many people now, a three-day-a-week career has become the new reality. How these people make ends meet on a part-time salary, I don't know. Many, for obvious reasons, would rather stay on benefits than accept a part-time job that cannot economically support them.
Which leads me to the second point: that while overall unemployment may be coming down, long-term unemployment keeps on going up. For these people, the longer they stay unemployed, the less employable they can become. In other words, even when the economy does eventually improve for real, there is still likely to remain a significantly higher rate of long-term unemployment than we have experienced before. It seems the "good old days" of high employment may well be a thing of the past.
And if costs keep on increasing (and there is no reason to expect that they wouldn't), and if the government remains determined to cut the size of the state (and, consequently, the economy) for the foreseeable future, then the government will continue to have a massive welfare bill on its hands, undoing all the efforts that they have made to reduce the government's deficit.
The situation has come to this: the government's obsession with cost-cutting has eroded the economy so much that economic logic has been turned on its head. Conservatives wanting to reduce the size of the state will be responsible for the largest increase in state welfare benefits for their unemployed population ever seen in British history. The UK, with its millions of part-time "three-day-a-week", may reduce a significant portion of the population to virtual financial slavery. Meanwhile those of the population unemployed and unemployable will make the UK a permanent "welfare state" not seen since the days of the Soviet Union.
Quite an achievement for a Conservative government...
Real wages have barely increased over the last few years. Meanwhile, food prices and fuel prices have increased sharply, to the extent that some are having to seriously ration their car use; those that, due to their word commitments, do not have the luxury of that choice, are squeezed even further. Haulage companies, for example, have seen their costs increase by double digits year on year, with those increased costs passed onto the retailers, and then onto us, the customers. That is just one example; a microcosm of the overall hidden inflation that is squeezing the average family to the bone. Then there are the increased costs of utilities, creating massive rises in monthly bills for the average family.
Many young families cannot get mortgages from risk-paralysed banks unwilling to lend; the result of that has been a surge in demand for rental accommodation in recent years, resulting in significant rises to rents around the country, and a further eating away of the hard-earned wages of everyday families.
Apart from the miserly wage increases, there are then government policy changes, such as the changes to working family tax credits, that make thousands of families worse off. These things all add up to a situation where some families are literally better-off week-on-week by being on benefits.
The overall rate of unemployment is apparently coming down; but there are two significant caveats to that point, it be true or not.
It may well be that the overall rate is coming down. But much of that decrease is taken up by a significant increase in people accepting part-time employment. The East of England, where I live at the moment, it the centre of this story. In other words, an increasing section of working people cannot find real jobs; only part-time jobs. In the mid-1970s there was the three-day-week for a while; for many people now, a three-day-a-week career has become the new reality. How these people make ends meet on a part-time salary, I don't know. Many, for obvious reasons, would rather stay on benefits than accept a part-time job that cannot economically support them.
Which leads me to the second point: that while overall unemployment may be coming down, long-term unemployment keeps on going up. For these people, the longer they stay unemployed, the less employable they can become. In other words, even when the economy does eventually improve for real, there is still likely to remain a significantly higher rate of long-term unemployment than we have experienced before. It seems the "good old days" of high employment may well be a thing of the past.
And if costs keep on increasing (and there is no reason to expect that they wouldn't), and if the government remains determined to cut the size of the state (and, consequently, the economy) for the foreseeable future, then the government will continue to have a massive welfare bill on its hands, undoing all the efforts that they have made to reduce the government's deficit.
The situation has come to this: the government's obsession with cost-cutting has eroded the economy so much that economic logic has been turned on its head. Conservatives wanting to reduce the size of the state will be responsible for the largest increase in state welfare benefits for their unemployed population ever seen in British history. The UK, with its millions of part-time "three-day-a-week", may reduce a significant portion of the population to virtual financial slavery. Meanwhile those of the population unemployed and unemployable will make the UK a permanent "welfare state" not seen since the days of the Soviet Union.
Quite an achievement for a Conservative government...
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The smallest state(s) in the world
The smallest officially-recognised state is the Vatican City; the city-state of the pope, and comprises of little more than St Peter's, the Papal Palace and the surrounding out-buildings and gardens; the pope also has a pastoral residence somewhere in the country outside of Rome.
But the smallest de facto recognised state (meaning its territorial rights are recognised by its neighbours and it possesses observer status in the UN), is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Their independent "territory" comprises of two small palaces in Rome, and a castle (in need of restoration) in Valletta harbour, Malta. The citizens of this "state" are modern-day knights; the descendants of Crusaders - all three of them. These three people have their own "SMOM" passports recognised by a number of states in the world (including Italy and Malta), although the UK isn't one of them. The unofficial population of SMOM is in the tens of thousands, though these "unofficial" citizens cannot use SMOM passports, and use those of their country of origin.
The story of these contemporary knights begin back in the Crusades. Their ancestors were the Knights Hospitaller, who ran a hospital in Jerusalem prior to the First Crusade in 1089. After that, their fortunes prospered in the Holy Land. When the Saracens overran Jerusalem a hundred years later, they fled north to the port of Tripoli (in modern-day Lebanon), and when that was overrun in in 1291, they were offered sanctuary in Cyprus. The knights (now called the Knights of St John) then decided to conquer a territory of their own, and settled on the island of Rhodes and its nearby territories.
The knights made Rhodes their own territory, holding it from 1309 until they were finally forced to flee after a six-month siege by Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1522. After hanging out in Sicily for a while, the Holy Roman Emperor gifted the knights the territory of Malta, as well as the North African port of Tripoli (Libya's capital city today) in 1530. The knights made this their own independent state, like Rhodes before it, building a castle in the harbour in Valletta to use as their stronghold. And they held on to Malta until Napoleon decided Malta was of too much strategic importance, and that a late-18th-century Crusading state was an anachronism, and successfully invaded it in 1798.
Kicked out of their home of nearly three hundred years, the British Empire then forced the French from Malta only two years later, in 1800, and held on to it until Malta's independence after the Second World War. But the Knights of St John were again effectively homeless, some of them finding favour with the then Russian Tsar Paul I, others finding residence in the ports of southern Italy. Eventually, they found a permanent base in Rome in 1834 (at the time ruled by the Papacy, until its dissolution in the 1860s), where the knights was given two palaces for their own personal use, outside of foreign jurisdiction. These two palaces, the Magistral Palace and the Magistral Villa, are still the sovereign territory of the knights today, as well as the Fort of St Angelo in Malta.
Apart from this legal oddity that has allowed a modern-day Crusader-state to exist in the middle of Rome, there is another, even smaller "state" that exists as a de facto independent entity. It is called the Principality Of Sealand.
During the Second World War, the British military built a number of military platforms in the Thames estuary and a short distance off the coast of South-east England. One of them, called HM Fort Roughs, lies six miles off the coast, roughly east of Harwich. As with all the military installations, it was abandoned after the war, and in 1967 an enterprising couple, Major Paddy Roy Bates and his wife, decided to live there. The following year, when workmen were close to the occupied platform, Bates fired shots to ward them away. The issue went to court, and the judge ruled that as, at the time, the platform was beyond the UK's three-mile territorial waters, no charge could be sustained. So from a legal point of view, the self-styled "Principality of Sealand" was de jure a legally-separate entity.
The platform which Bates and his family live on comprises of two concrete hollow "supports" (which each have seven floors of living space, each floor consisting of one or two small rooms), and a platform above with a residential structure, a heli-pad, and a winch for supplies. It is, in effect, a large house at sea with office space.
Since the onset of the internet, the "government" of Sealand (the Bates family) has done what it can to make money out of their unique territorial status. It has tried to be an internet haven; that project fell through. It tried to sell the territory to Spain; that was not legally possible. Now the plan this year is to set up an Internet Casino.
There are many people involved in different ways with the "Principality"; check out their website if you want to find out the latest madcap adventures of Sealand.
But the smallest de facto recognised state (meaning its territorial rights are recognised by its neighbours and it possesses observer status in the UN), is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Their independent "territory" comprises of two small palaces in Rome, and a castle (in need of restoration) in Valletta harbour, Malta. The citizens of this "state" are modern-day knights; the descendants of Crusaders - all three of them. These three people have their own "SMOM" passports recognised by a number of states in the world (including Italy and Malta), although the UK isn't one of them. The unofficial population of SMOM is in the tens of thousands, though these "unofficial" citizens cannot use SMOM passports, and use those of their country of origin.
The story of these contemporary knights begin back in the Crusades. Their ancestors were the Knights Hospitaller, who ran a hospital in Jerusalem prior to the First Crusade in 1089. After that, their fortunes prospered in the Holy Land. When the Saracens overran Jerusalem a hundred years later, they fled north to the port of Tripoli (in modern-day Lebanon), and when that was overrun in in 1291, they were offered sanctuary in Cyprus. The knights (now called the Knights of St John) then decided to conquer a territory of their own, and settled on the island of Rhodes and its nearby territories.
The knights made Rhodes their own territory, holding it from 1309 until they were finally forced to flee after a six-month siege by Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1522. After hanging out in Sicily for a while, the Holy Roman Emperor gifted the knights the territory of Malta, as well as the North African port of Tripoli (Libya's capital city today) in 1530. The knights made this their own independent state, like Rhodes before it, building a castle in the harbour in Valletta to use as their stronghold. And they held on to Malta until Napoleon decided Malta was of too much strategic importance, and that a late-18th-century Crusading state was an anachronism, and successfully invaded it in 1798.
Kicked out of their home of nearly three hundred years, the British Empire then forced the French from Malta only two years later, in 1800, and held on to it until Malta's independence after the Second World War. But the Knights of St John were again effectively homeless, some of them finding favour with the then Russian Tsar Paul I, others finding residence in the ports of southern Italy. Eventually, they found a permanent base in Rome in 1834 (at the time ruled by the Papacy, until its dissolution in the 1860s), where the knights was given two palaces for their own personal use, outside of foreign jurisdiction. These two palaces, the Magistral Palace and the Magistral Villa, are still the sovereign territory of the knights today, as well as the Fort of St Angelo in Malta.
Apart from this legal oddity that has allowed a modern-day Crusader-state to exist in the middle of Rome, there is another, even smaller "state" that exists as a de facto independent entity. It is called the Principality Of Sealand.
During the Second World War, the British military built a number of military platforms in the Thames estuary and a short distance off the coast of South-east England. One of them, called HM Fort Roughs, lies six miles off the coast, roughly east of Harwich. As with all the military installations, it was abandoned after the war, and in 1967 an enterprising couple, Major Paddy Roy Bates and his wife, decided to live there. The following year, when workmen were close to the occupied platform, Bates fired shots to ward them away. The issue went to court, and the judge ruled that as, at the time, the platform was beyond the UK's three-mile territorial waters, no charge could be sustained. So from a legal point of view, the self-styled "Principality of Sealand" was de jure a legally-separate entity.
The platform which Bates and his family live on comprises of two concrete hollow "supports" (which each have seven floors of living space, each floor consisting of one or two small rooms), and a platform above with a residential structure, a heli-pad, and a winch for supplies. It is, in effect, a large house at sea with office space.
Since the onset of the internet, the "government" of Sealand (the Bates family) has done what it can to make money out of their unique territorial status. It has tried to be an internet haven; that project fell through. It tried to sell the territory to Spain; that was not legally possible. Now the plan this year is to set up an Internet Casino.
There are many people involved in different ways with the "Principality"; check out their website if you want to find out the latest madcap adventures of Sealand.
Monday, May 7, 2012
The personal failings of David Cameron: less "the heir to Blair"; more like David Brent
David Cameron has been Prime Minister of the UK for two years. As a Prime Minister and as a human being, it's worth taking a closer look at how we can measure him as a man and a man-manager.
When he became the Conservative leader in 2005, he declared himself as the "heir to Blair", and the man to take the Tories by the scruff of the neck, modernise them, and put them back into government.
At a superficial level, it is clear that he has learned and imitated Blair's "style": self-confident, charming, communicative and pragmatic on ideology. When the financial crisis struck, and in the following years of the Brown premiership, all these qualities marked him in stark contrast to Brown, who appeared dour, charmless and unable to properly communicate his ideas to the public.
When it came to the 2010 election, Cameron felt confident enough that his character and abilities had been enough to convince the public to vote the Tories back into government. It was a profound shock the day after the election to discover that Cameron had failed to get an outright majority, especially considering the massive unpopularity of the Labour government of the time, and the personal unpopularity of PM Gordon Brown.
As an aside, it is telling enough of Cameron's personality that he didn't take time to consider why he had personally failed to convince the electorate - the first indication that Cameron as a person (as well as many of his future ministers) doesn't take much time to fully consider issues before pressing on regardless. We'll return to this point later.
Since successfully concluding the Coalition Agreement with the LibDems, Cameron has been keen to delegate responsibility to the respective ministers. His later support for elective mayors is another indication of this belief. This is in some ways a positive attribute; except when the ministers in question wish to impose government policy on a nation that didn't vote for it, or a policy that goes directly against assurances made before the election. Then it just looks like Cameron is avoiding responsibility.
This is another example of one of Cameron's major personality flaws: a frequent lack of intellectual curiosity, or to take matters based simply on trust. Another recent head of state had this unfortunate habit: George W. Bush. Cameron seems to often not ask questions that a more rounded (or less naive) person would naturally want to ask: such as finding out the proper background of advisers before hiring them (Andy Coulson); such as checking if a minister's policy idea would in fact be practical, politically expedient or worthwhile (such as health and educational reforms); such as checking a ministers links to private companies before giving the minister his full support. I could go on.
This "flaw" seems to come from his background. Although he seems a thoroughly honest and straightforward person (as Tony Blair also liked to think of himself), the fact that he comes from such a narrow, comfortable background embarrasses him when confronted with real-life situations. He gives the impression of not being used to dealing with a cynical political reality, or even a desire to get a fully-rounded perspective on issues. This is all the more bizarre considering he's been involved in politics for almost all of his adult life. When scandals come out, as they have over the last two years, it makes Cameron look as though he doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing - it makes him look amateur. And this may well be closer to the reality than he would like to admit.
Being self-confident is usually a good attribute to have in a politician and a leader. All great statesmen are. When things are going your way, this self-confidence gives the impression you know what you are doing. For the first eighteen months or so, Cameron's self-confidence was an impressive confidence trick. But then the government's economic policy of public service cuts was shown to damaging the economy rather than improving it, and that coincided with "omnishambles": a series of collective governmental and ministerial foul-ups, scandals and presentational errors that made the government look misguided, devious, heartless and incompetent all at the same time. And that was when Cameron's "self-confidence" morphed into something darker: arrogance and stubbornness.
In these events of Spring 2012, those that have done the most damage to Cameron's reputation are his reaction to the double-dip recession, and his reaction to the scandal surrounding Jeremy Hunt and his alleged corrupt and dishonest dealings.
With the government's economic policy apparently discredited, Cameron is still unwilling to change policy. Again seemingly (but erroneously) inspired by Blair's determination over the unpopular war in Iraq, he is determined to continue on the same economic policy, even though it is damaging rather than helping the economy. This shows that Cameron is either someone too stubborn to admit defeat (and would rather see his country suffer than his own self-esteem), or is in a state of denial, and no longer rationally dealing with the facts. Both may be true to an extent, but my feeling is it is more of the latter. Neither of these bodes well for the country in the years of Cameron's premiership till the next election.
Regarding the Jeremy Hunt affair, Cameron has even shown signs of petulance and anger, something that Blair almost never did, and certainly not with such little provocation. This shows that beneath Cameron's charming, self-confident exterior, lies a thin-skinned and quite insecure person, eager to defend his actions and decisions beyond feasibility. This instinctive defensiveness also seems to come from a sincere belief that he is incapable of doing something for nefarious reasons (either through omission or otherwise), and similarly feels offended when those he has personally supported are shown to have been either incompetent or devious. This then leads him to be seen as defending his colleagues' incompetent or devious behaviour beyond what would be considered a rational limit, and therefore makes himself look foolish.
What this last point demonstrates is either embarrassment at his naive trust of others being caught out, or has a sore point about being seen as being less than honest. In general, it seems fair to say that David Cameron has an over-inflated view of his own capabilities, considering that he has a habit of not thinking strategically, and of failing to fully consider the political consequences of his actions, and the actions of others as their senior in government.
David Cameron once called himself the "heir to Blair"; but the way he behaves is more like another David: David Brent.
When he became the Conservative leader in 2005, he declared himself as the "heir to Blair", and the man to take the Tories by the scruff of the neck, modernise them, and put them back into government.
At a superficial level, it is clear that he has learned and imitated Blair's "style": self-confident, charming, communicative and pragmatic on ideology. When the financial crisis struck, and in the following years of the Brown premiership, all these qualities marked him in stark contrast to Brown, who appeared dour, charmless and unable to properly communicate his ideas to the public.
When it came to the 2010 election, Cameron felt confident enough that his character and abilities had been enough to convince the public to vote the Tories back into government. It was a profound shock the day after the election to discover that Cameron had failed to get an outright majority, especially considering the massive unpopularity of the Labour government of the time, and the personal unpopularity of PM Gordon Brown.
As an aside, it is telling enough of Cameron's personality that he didn't take time to consider why he had personally failed to convince the electorate - the first indication that Cameron as a person (as well as many of his future ministers) doesn't take much time to fully consider issues before pressing on regardless. We'll return to this point later.
Since successfully concluding the Coalition Agreement with the LibDems, Cameron has been keen to delegate responsibility to the respective ministers. His later support for elective mayors is another indication of this belief. This is in some ways a positive attribute; except when the ministers in question wish to impose government policy on a nation that didn't vote for it, or a policy that goes directly against assurances made before the election. Then it just looks like Cameron is avoiding responsibility.
This is another example of one of Cameron's major personality flaws: a frequent lack of intellectual curiosity, or to take matters based simply on trust. Another recent head of state had this unfortunate habit: George W. Bush. Cameron seems to often not ask questions that a more rounded (or less naive) person would naturally want to ask: such as finding out the proper background of advisers before hiring them (Andy Coulson); such as checking if a minister's policy idea would in fact be practical, politically expedient or worthwhile (such as health and educational reforms); such as checking a ministers links to private companies before giving the minister his full support. I could go on.
This "flaw" seems to come from his background. Although he seems a thoroughly honest and straightforward person (as Tony Blair also liked to think of himself), the fact that he comes from such a narrow, comfortable background embarrasses him when confronted with real-life situations. He gives the impression of not being used to dealing with a cynical political reality, or even a desire to get a fully-rounded perspective on issues. This is all the more bizarre considering he's been involved in politics for almost all of his adult life. When scandals come out, as they have over the last two years, it makes Cameron look as though he doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing - it makes him look amateur. And this may well be closer to the reality than he would like to admit.
Being self-confident is usually a good attribute to have in a politician and a leader. All great statesmen are. When things are going your way, this self-confidence gives the impression you know what you are doing. For the first eighteen months or so, Cameron's self-confidence was an impressive confidence trick. But then the government's economic policy of public service cuts was shown to damaging the economy rather than improving it, and that coincided with "omnishambles": a series of collective governmental and ministerial foul-ups, scandals and presentational errors that made the government look misguided, devious, heartless and incompetent all at the same time. And that was when Cameron's "self-confidence" morphed into something darker: arrogance and stubbornness.
In these events of Spring 2012, those that have done the most damage to Cameron's reputation are his reaction to the double-dip recession, and his reaction to the scandal surrounding Jeremy Hunt and his alleged corrupt and dishonest dealings.
With the government's economic policy apparently discredited, Cameron is still unwilling to change policy. Again seemingly (but erroneously) inspired by Blair's determination over the unpopular war in Iraq, he is determined to continue on the same economic policy, even though it is damaging rather than helping the economy. This shows that Cameron is either someone too stubborn to admit defeat (and would rather see his country suffer than his own self-esteem), or is in a state of denial, and no longer rationally dealing with the facts. Both may be true to an extent, but my feeling is it is more of the latter. Neither of these bodes well for the country in the years of Cameron's premiership till the next election.
Regarding the Jeremy Hunt affair, Cameron has even shown signs of petulance and anger, something that Blair almost never did, and certainly not with such little provocation. This shows that beneath Cameron's charming, self-confident exterior, lies a thin-skinned and quite insecure person, eager to defend his actions and decisions beyond feasibility. This instinctive defensiveness also seems to come from a sincere belief that he is incapable of doing something for nefarious reasons (either through omission or otherwise), and similarly feels offended when those he has personally supported are shown to have been either incompetent or devious. This then leads him to be seen as defending his colleagues' incompetent or devious behaviour beyond what would be considered a rational limit, and therefore makes himself look foolish.
What this last point demonstrates is either embarrassment at his naive trust of others being caught out, or has a sore point about being seen as being less than honest. In general, it seems fair to say that David Cameron has an over-inflated view of his own capabilities, considering that he has a habit of not thinking strategically, and of failing to fully consider the political consequences of his actions, and the actions of others as their senior in government.
David Cameron once called himself the "heir to Blair"; but the way he behaves is more like another David: David Brent.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
The politicians' fear of "the markets": the real tail wagging the dog
We all know that finance and the stock markets guide so much of what governments, especially in The West, do. But it's worth reminding ourselves what the purpose of the stock market is.
Companies float create shares (float on the stock exchange) in order to increase the revenues of the share-holders, and therefore the company. But what causes the price of shares to go up or down is "events", and confidence in the future. Buying and selling shares is, as is well-known, a glorified form of gambling. If you've ever looked the frenetic behaviour of stock-brokers in the FTSE or anywhere else, and their knee-jerk reaction to bad news, you'll quickly get the (correct) assumption that stock markets are the arenas of capitalism. And it is far from pretty. To be a successful stock-broker takes nerves of steel and complete ruthlessness: in other words, to throw your humanity out the window.
Stock markets operate as reactive rather than pro-active entities. By definition, stock markets themselves are not supposed to "make news" but instead, are designed to react to it. Stock markets operate mainly on confidence. If they hear news of a war in an oil-producing country, they react with human nature: fear, and the values of stocks and shares suffer. If they receive news of positive jobs figures, they react with confidence, and so rise.
The growth of the financial sector in the last thirty years has seen the financial sector have more and more influence on politics, with governments breaking down decades of regulation on the power of the stock market. Ronald Reagan's chief of staff was a former financial chief. Even Obama's government has been called "the government of Goldman Sachs"; George W Bush and Bill Clinton were similarly in awe of the financial sector. The same can be said of Thatcher's government, and every UK government since. But Why?
For the past thirty years there has been a conventional wisdom that "the markets know best", therefore it is best to do whatever you can to indulge them. By indulging the wishes of the financial sector, governments sold into the argument that this would feed an endless cycle of economic growth.
We now know that this is a simplistic fallacy. The "growth" that was created by deregulating the financial sector, instinctively feeding the growth in the stock market, was simply a credit phantom. The stock markets are fiendishly complicated to understand, but the stock brokers that work in them are just human beings, working to human nature. That aspect of human psychology is not complicated at all. Eventually, when that confidence trick was shown to be the illusion that it had been all along, the markets panicked. And so we had a financial crisis.
But the politicians' treatment of the stock markets in countries like the UK since that crisis has been difficult to explain rationally. The Conservative-led government seems to have a quasi-reverence for "the markets"; the government's policy has been to have an economic policy that should not upset "the markets". But the price of stocks and shares should not dictate government policy; that is to completely misunderstand the cause and effect relationship between the stock market and reality. Stock markets do not create the reality, they react to it. The dog is supposed to wag the tail, not the other way around. But the Conservative government do not intellectually understand this fundamental truth.
Gordon Brown's government were also guilty of this fatal error at times, but the Conservatives under chancellor George Osborne make it almost official government policy. In Greece and Italy, their technocratic governments have also held themselves hostage to "the markets". This is intellectual madness, where the financial tail wags the government dog. What is more extraordinary is that this takes place after an almost apocalyptic financial crisis. The whole financial sector was seen to be utterly incompetent; yet governments across The West have decided to effectively hand over national economic strategy to financially discredited banks, and their financial growth strategy to a stock market that has the collective psychological mentality of a five-year-old.
Now that Greece is effectively a commercial colony to the ECB (itself effectively ran by Germany), the fate of a country of more than ten million people (and the "cradle of democracy") is in the hands of the stock market.
These days, "conventional wisdom" has logic turned on its head: when governments are subservient to markets, it is the same as doctors asking patients what they think their diagnosis should be, and asking patients what they think their remedy should be. Yet this is the counter-intuitive world that we are living in: where lowering taxes on the rich is supposed to help the poor; where cutting government investment and jobs is supposed to encourage a more positive economy.
It seems that there must be a government department where an advisor comes up with an idea and the minister asks: "Does is make any sense? No? Then it's probably the correct thing to do!"
Companies float create shares (float on the stock exchange) in order to increase the revenues of the share-holders, and therefore the company. But what causes the price of shares to go up or down is "events", and confidence in the future. Buying and selling shares is, as is well-known, a glorified form of gambling. If you've ever looked the frenetic behaviour of stock-brokers in the FTSE or anywhere else, and their knee-jerk reaction to bad news, you'll quickly get the (correct) assumption that stock markets are the arenas of capitalism. And it is far from pretty. To be a successful stock-broker takes nerves of steel and complete ruthlessness: in other words, to throw your humanity out the window.
Stock markets operate as reactive rather than pro-active entities. By definition, stock markets themselves are not supposed to "make news" but instead, are designed to react to it. Stock markets operate mainly on confidence. If they hear news of a war in an oil-producing country, they react with human nature: fear, and the values of stocks and shares suffer. If they receive news of positive jobs figures, they react with confidence, and so rise.
The growth of the financial sector in the last thirty years has seen the financial sector have more and more influence on politics, with governments breaking down decades of regulation on the power of the stock market. Ronald Reagan's chief of staff was a former financial chief. Even Obama's government has been called "the government of Goldman Sachs"; George W Bush and Bill Clinton were similarly in awe of the financial sector. The same can be said of Thatcher's government, and every UK government since. But Why?
For the past thirty years there has been a conventional wisdom that "the markets know best", therefore it is best to do whatever you can to indulge them. By indulging the wishes of the financial sector, governments sold into the argument that this would feed an endless cycle of economic growth.
We now know that this is a simplistic fallacy. The "growth" that was created by deregulating the financial sector, instinctively feeding the growth in the stock market, was simply a credit phantom. The stock markets are fiendishly complicated to understand, but the stock brokers that work in them are just human beings, working to human nature. That aspect of human psychology is not complicated at all. Eventually, when that confidence trick was shown to be the illusion that it had been all along, the markets panicked. And so we had a financial crisis.
But the politicians' treatment of the stock markets in countries like the UK since that crisis has been difficult to explain rationally. The Conservative-led government seems to have a quasi-reverence for "the markets"; the government's policy has been to have an economic policy that should not upset "the markets". But the price of stocks and shares should not dictate government policy; that is to completely misunderstand the cause and effect relationship between the stock market and reality. Stock markets do not create the reality, they react to it. The dog is supposed to wag the tail, not the other way around. But the Conservative government do not intellectually understand this fundamental truth.
Gordon Brown's government were also guilty of this fatal error at times, but the Conservatives under chancellor George Osborne make it almost official government policy. In Greece and Italy, their technocratic governments have also held themselves hostage to "the markets". This is intellectual madness, where the financial tail wags the government dog. What is more extraordinary is that this takes place after an almost apocalyptic financial crisis. The whole financial sector was seen to be utterly incompetent; yet governments across The West have decided to effectively hand over national economic strategy to financially discredited banks, and their financial growth strategy to a stock market that has the collective psychological mentality of a five-year-old.
Now that Greece is effectively a commercial colony to the ECB (itself effectively ran by Germany), the fate of a country of more than ten million people (and the "cradle of democracy") is in the hands of the stock market.
These days, "conventional wisdom" has logic turned on its head: when governments are subservient to markets, it is the same as doctors asking patients what they think their diagnosis should be, and asking patients what they think their remedy should be. Yet this is the counter-intuitive world that we are living in: where lowering taxes on the rich is supposed to help the poor; where cutting government investment and jobs is supposed to encourage a more positive economy.
It seems that there must be a government department where an advisor comes up with an idea and the minister asks: "Does is make any sense? No? Then it's probably the correct thing to do!"
Friday, May 4, 2012
Mid-term Blues or Long-term Denial?
It's the night after the day of the morning after the night before.
The 2012 local elections are done and dusted, and it's time to take stock. The basic story is this: Labour have regained pretty much all of the ground lost in the disastrous local elections during Gordon Brown's premiership, and are now back where they were during Tony Blair's tenure. The Conservatives have had their artificially-high water-mark of Brown's time brought back down to earth with a thump. And the LibDems just keep on reaching new lows of despair.
That's the broader picture, but there are many sub-plots. The turnout was low (as is often the case), but the local elections are a barometer of where Cameron's government, his party and his personality stand with the public after two years.
Baroness Warsi, the Tory chairperson, said (rashly, as it turned out) that Labour would be doing well if they won more than 700 council seats. In fact, they gained more than 800. It's true that Labour were starting from a low base, but what's also noticeable and significant is the breadth of their success: stealing councils from the LibDems in the north and midlands, and the same from the Tories in the midlands and south. These are exactly the places they need win councillors in to be in a good position for a national election.
In terms of the popular vote, Labour scored about seven percent higher than the Tories, 38% to the Conservatives 31%. Political experts point out that this not a significant advantage for an opposition be in mid-term: during Blair's tenure as PM, the Tories were often as far ahead, but failed to win the national election later, and the same was said of Kinnock against Thatcher in the eighties. That may be true, but they're also forgetting something important: the Conservatives are not in a majority government. Also, Blair and Thatcher presided over a boom; the Coalition is in a sustained period of economic stagnation.
In other words, this local election is taking place in a situation that hasn't existed in living memory. If the Conservatives are in government now, and their high watermark is as sharing government as a minority party, then Conservatism as a political force in the UK is effectively moribund.
This is not just "mid-term blues" for the Conservatives; it would be a long-term denial to think of themselves any more as the "natural party of government".
No-one in the UK seriously expects the economy to fully recover by 2015, except those fantasising in George Osborne's Treasury. As the vast majority of the cuts have yet to take place, the only way that the economy could possibly have a chance to recover in time for the next national election would be if the Coalition made a complete about-turn on its policy of cuts and adopted Labour's own economic strategy - investing in jobs and growth and having a more long-term deficit reduction plan. But that would be a political humiliation for the Cameron, and give even more ammunition to Labour, to add the the growing amount of political open goals from the government already.
So the local election results effectively give Labour a large advantage over the government for the future national election.
The Conservatives' position in government is complicated, first of all, because the local elections saw a rise in the vote of UKIP. In some cases, Labour gained councils from the Conservatives because disaffected Tory voters chose UKIP instead, therefore reducing the Conservative vote by a margin high enough to swing council seats the other way to Labour. This is a small-scale version of what is likely to happen in the French elections this weekend - far-right supporters abstaining instead of supporting Sarkozy in the run-off, giving the Socialist, Hollande, the presidency. In the aftermath of the local elections, Tory politicians are arguing that Cameron must be more supportive of traditional Conservative values and causes in order to re-capture the trust of those migrating ultra-Conservative voters.
But then there is a second problem: the personality of Boris Johnson, who narrowly retained the Conservative hold on the London mayoralty, while Conservatives around the country were being punished hard by Labour. Some Tories are saying that Cameron has to be more like Boris in style and thinking in order to win over the affections of the people. With Boris being effectively the second most powerful Tory in the country, and certainly with more popular support with his eligible voters than Cameron, it puts the Prime Minister in a further fix. Because Boris is something of a maverick (whose ideology seems as incoherent as some of his sentences), "learning lessons" from Boris is something Cameron would likely be reluctant to do. Nevertheless, some Tories would be calling more something to change from Cameron's way of doing business. But what?
Cameron's last (and potentially biggest) headache is his Coalition partners, the LibDems. Having lost, in two years of successive local elections, a vast number of council seats, the LibDem leadership in government would be pressed to make significant changes in their approach to Coalition - more independent of the Conservatives, and more obviously left-wing and progressive. This means that, like after last year's local elections, Cameron may feel obliged to cut the LibDems some slack over policy. But when looking at the two points already mentioned, we see the obvious problem.
With both the Conservatives and LibDems under pressure from their party base and MPs for respective "red meat" policies, there is now the serious danger of the Coalition being put under intense pressure in the coming weeks, months and years till the next election.
Nick Clegg seems the most likely of the two Coalition's party leaders to compromise, and support the government come what may. Clegg has now trapped himself in what looks like a self-defeating vicious circle: in spite of whatever damage is done to his party at the grass-roots, he feels obliged to see the Coalition through to the end, in the belief that voters will eventually give them the benefit of the doubt once the economy improves. But for the last eighteen months, that belief has looked more and more like a daydream. So he manages to stay as leader till 2015, his party will be hammered. If he pulls out of the Coalition early and forces an early election, his party is still likely to be hammered. If his party de-select him as their leader and their new leader pulls out of the Coalition early, the party may still be hammered. The LibDems are trapped in a burning building with no safe exits: they know it, and Cameron knows it.
If, however, Cameron repeats his compromises of last year for the benefit of the LibDems (though it seems politically more difficult now he's been punished at the polls), the murmurings within the Tories will increase. Already with a question over Cameron's judgement, more appeasement to the LibDems may well lead to a rebellion and a leadership challenge from a more right-wing candidate. The consequences of that on the Coalition are obvious.
So from now on, things are going to get even stickier within the Coalition, while Labour look on and reap the rewards. Politics is a funny old game. Two years ago, the Two Eds, Milliband and Balls were tarred with the brush of Brown, and were all punished at the polls. Their message on growth versus cuts was seen as discredited.
But now, with the experience of the Eurozone in the news every week, the arguments that the Conservatives made for cuts in 2010 look old hat. Brown and his disciples are vindicated. Their message hasn't changed; they are largely repeating Brown's response to the financial crisis - an Obama-style stimulus, inspired by FDR's strategy to tackle the Depression. In 2012, the man who "saved the world" in 2008 isn't looking quite so out-of-touch. Not compared to "arrogant posh boy" Dave Cameron.
Come back Gordon - all is forgiven!
The 2012 local elections are done and dusted, and it's time to take stock. The basic story is this: Labour have regained pretty much all of the ground lost in the disastrous local elections during Gordon Brown's premiership, and are now back where they were during Tony Blair's tenure. The Conservatives have had their artificially-high water-mark of Brown's time brought back down to earth with a thump. And the LibDems just keep on reaching new lows of despair.
That's the broader picture, but there are many sub-plots. The turnout was low (as is often the case), but the local elections are a barometer of where Cameron's government, his party and his personality stand with the public after two years.
Baroness Warsi, the Tory chairperson, said (rashly, as it turned out) that Labour would be doing well if they won more than 700 council seats. In fact, they gained more than 800. It's true that Labour were starting from a low base, but what's also noticeable and significant is the breadth of their success: stealing councils from the LibDems in the north and midlands, and the same from the Tories in the midlands and south. These are exactly the places they need win councillors in to be in a good position for a national election.
In terms of the popular vote, Labour scored about seven percent higher than the Tories, 38% to the Conservatives 31%. Political experts point out that this not a significant advantage for an opposition be in mid-term: during Blair's tenure as PM, the Tories were often as far ahead, but failed to win the national election later, and the same was said of Kinnock against Thatcher in the eighties. That may be true, but they're also forgetting something important: the Conservatives are not in a majority government. Also, Blair and Thatcher presided over a boom; the Coalition is in a sustained period of economic stagnation.
In other words, this local election is taking place in a situation that hasn't existed in living memory. If the Conservatives are in government now, and their high watermark is as sharing government as a minority party, then Conservatism as a political force in the UK is effectively moribund.
This is not just "mid-term blues" for the Conservatives; it would be a long-term denial to think of themselves any more as the "natural party of government".
No-one in the UK seriously expects the economy to fully recover by 2015, except those fantasising in George Osborne's Treasury. As the vast majority of the cuts have yet to take place, the only way that the economy could possibly have a chance to recover in time for the next national election would be if the Coalition made a complete about-turn on its policy of cuts and adopted Labour's own economic strategy - investing in jobs and growth and having a more long-term deficit reduction plan. But that would be a political humiliation for the Cameron, and give even more ammunition to Labour, to add the the growing amount of political open goals from the government already.
So the local election results effectively give Labour a large advantage over the government for the future national election.
The Conservatives' position in government is complicated, first of all, because the local elections saw a rise in the vote of UKIP. In some cases, Labour gained councils from the Conservatives because disaffected Tory voters chose UKIP instead, therefore reducing the Conservative vote by a margin high enough to swing council seats the other way to Labour. This is a small-scale version of what is likely to happen in the French elections this weekend - far-right supporters abstaining instead of supporting Sarkozy in the run-off, giving the Socialist, Hollande, the presidency. In the aftermath of the local elections, Tory politicians are arguing that Cameron must be more supportive of traditional Conservative values and causes in order to re-capture the trust of those migrating ultra-Conservative voters.
But then there is a second problem: the personality of Boris Johnson, who narrowly retained the Conservative hold on the London mayoralty, while Conservatives around the country were being punished hard by Labour. Some Tories are saying that Cameron has to be more like Boris in style and thinking in order to win over the affections of the people. With Boris being effectively the second most powerful Tory in the country, and certainly with more popular support with his eligible voters than Cameron, it puts the Prime Minister in a further fix. Because Boris is something of a maverick (whose ideology seems as incoherent as some of his sentences), "learning lessons" from Boris is something Cameron would likely be reluctant to do. Nevertheless, some Tories would be calling more something to change from Cameron's way of doing business. But what?
Cameron's last (and potentially biggest) headache is his Coalition partners, the LibDems. Having lost, in two years of successive local elections, a vast number of council seats, the LibDem leadership in government would be pressed to make significant changes in their approach to Coalition - more independent of the Conservatives, and more obviously left-wing and progressive. This means that, like after last year's local elections, Cameron may feel obliged to cut the LibDems some slack over policy. But when looking at the two points already mentioned, we see the obvious problem.
With both the Conservatives and LibDems under pressure from their party base and MPs for respective "red meat" policies, there is now the serious danger of the Coalition being put under intense pressure in the coming weeks, months and years till the next election.
Nick Clegg seems the most likely of the two Coalition's party leaders to compromise, and support the government come what may. Clegg has now trapped himself in what looks like a self-defeating vicious circle: in spite of whatever damage is done to his party at the grass-roots, he feels obliged to see the Coalition through to the end, in the belief that voters will eventually give them the benefit of the doubt once the economy improves. But for the last eighteen months, that belief has looked more and more like a daydream. So he manages to stay as leader till 2015, his party will be hammered. If he pulls out of the Coalition early and forces an early election, his party is still likely to be hammered. If his party de-select him as their leader and their new leader pulls out of the Coalition early, the party may still be hammered. The LibDems are trapped in a burning building with no safe exits: they know it, and Cameron knows it.
If, however, Cameron repeats his compromises of last year for the benefit of the LibDems (though it seems politically more difficult now he's been punished at the polls), the murmurings within the Tories will increase. Already with a question over Cameron's judgement, more appeasement to the LibDems may well lead to a rebellion and a leadership challenge from a more right-wing candidate. The consequences of that on the Coalition are obvious.
So from now on, things are going to get even stickier within the Coalition, while Labour look on and reap the rewards. Politics is a funny old game. Two years ago, the Two Eds, Milliband and Balls were tarred with the brush of Brown, and were all punished at the polls. Their message on growth versus cuts was seen as discredited.
But now, with the experience of the Eurozone in the news every week, the arguments that the Conservatives made for cuts in 2010 look old hat. Brown and his disciples are vindicated. Their message hasn't changed; they are largely repeating Brown's response to the financial crisis - an Obama-style stimulus, inspired by FDR's strategy to tackle the Depression. In 2012, the man who "saved the world" in 2008 isn't looking quite so out-of-touch. Not compared to "arrogant posh boy" Dave Cameron.
Come back Gordon - all is forgiven!
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
"Just A Bit Of Fun...": The Rise and Rise of "Laddish" culture
I recently heard about "The Sun" headline poking fun at new England manager Roy Hodgson's slight speech impediment (he can't pronounce Rs properly, like TV celebrity Johnathon Ross), and it really demonstrates a deep ugly under-current to English culture - an under-current of careless prejudice prevalent in our society.
I'll come back to this specific example later. I want to look at other examples of the same ugly prejudices. Staying on football, it's interesting that racial comments allegedly made by footballer John Terry to Anton Ferdinand received such strong condemnation from the media; yet a man convicted of assault and with a vicious reputation, footballer Joey Barton (Anton Ferdinand's club captain at QPR) still has no problems getting employment despite his criminal past, in fact having over a million followers on Twitter.
This is another example of lazy prejudice: the casual glamorisation of violence. I can go on. There's also the case of the Sheffield United player convicted of rape, receiving many supportive/misogynistic comments as a result. Not only that, but the victim's name was casually passed around (which is a criminal offence - rape victims are guaranteed anonymity), so this demonstrates another prejudice that exists in the dark corners of English psyche - not only glorifying violence, but also misogyny.
Moving on to the police, and the Met in particular, this is an institution still rife with casual prejudice. After all the years of reforms, racism still exists lurking under the surface. I've read of a number of anecdotes of black people receiving casual racial abuse, with police officers ignorant of how insulting these words really are.
There is this "laddish" culture that runs through much of contemporary life, and making fun, throwing casual insults, making light of appalling behaviour is all part of the same issue.
So "The Sun", making a cheap insult at the England manager the day after he's appointed is just another example, but it demonstrates a lot. Roy Hodgson is not an ordinary Englishman. As a football coach, the large majority of his plus-thirty years of experience has been abroad, often at the highest club and national levels. He is cultured, modest, well-spoken and multi-lingual - in other words, everything that the average contemporary Englishman is not. In character, he seems similar to Sven-Goran Eriksson. But also, he is like a welcome throw-back to the days when English managers were "gentlemen"; the likes of Sir Alf Ramsey, for example (and the only one to win anything with the national team).
I'm not going to wax lyrical about the values lost in recent decades, don't worry. I'm making a wider point. The rise of fashionable "laddish" culture in the '90s happened after a clamp-down on the prejudices and behaviour like rampant racism and hooliganism that existed in previous decades. So "laddish" culture became a sort of glamorisation of the back-lash against "political correctness" - magazines like "Loaded" and "Nuts" are the archetype, but tabloids like "The Sun" more or less continued as normal, just minus the obvious racism.
"Laddish" culture is about being "part of the gang". "The Sun" knows this well, because many of its male staff have the exact same mentality, and assume (often correctly) that many of their male readers share it.
So the hype about Harry Redknapp being the "obvious" choice for England football manager shows us another side to the same coin - the face of reverse snobbishness. Redknapp is a hero to "laddish" culture because he openly admits to being barely literate and practically innumerate, while talking in the same way that many "Sun" readers do. Furthermore, he has an easy charm and comes across as being "one of the lads". He also had a recent run-in with the law, which would add further to his "laddish" social standing. This added to the "laddish" culture's fascination with Harry Redknapp as a "lovable rogue".
That also reminds me of the incident some time ago on "Sky Sports": when Andy Gray and his colleague were caught on camera making misogynist remarks and behaviour. They were quickly fired, but the fact is that this type of "laddish" behaviour in engrained into the English male psyche.
Phrases like "just a bit of fun" are still being used to condone behaviour that some thought had been kicked out of contemporary Britain with the coming of the 21st century. I'm no Feminist (being a man, that's hard to pull off...), or moralistic kill-joy - I just find the casual attitude of "laddish" culture to prejudice and the glamorisation of violence and drunken excess sad, embarrassing to behold, and collectively pathetic.
Grow up, guys!
I'll come back to this specific example later. I want to look at other examples of the same ugly prejudices. Staying on football, it's interesting that racial comments allegedly made by footballer John Terry to Anton Ferdinand received such strong condemnation from the media; yet a man convicted of assault and with a vicious reputation, footballer Joey Barton (Anton Ferdinand's club captain at QPR) still has no problems getting employment despite his criminal past, in fact having over a million followers on Twitter.
This is another example of lazy prejudice: the casual glamorisation of violence. I can go on. There's also the case of the Sheffield United player convicted of rape, receiving many supportive/misogynistic comments as a result. Not only that, but the victim's name was casually passed around (which is a criminal offence - rape victims are guaranteed anonymity), so this demonstrates another prejudice that exists in the dark corners of English psyche - not only glorifying violence, but also misogyny.
Moving on to the police, and the Met in particular, this is an institution still rife with casual prejudice. After all the years of reforms, racism still exists lurking under the surface. I've read of a number of anecdotes of black people receiving casual racial abuse, with police officers ignorant of how insulting these words really are.
There is this "laddish" culture that runs through much of contemporary life, and making fun, throwing casual insults, making light of appalling behaviour is all part of the same issue.
So "The Sun", making a cheap insult at the England manager the day after he's appointed is just another example, but it demonstrates a lot. Roy Hodgson is not an ordinary Englishman. As a football coach, the large majority of his plus-thirty years of experience has been abroad, often at the highest club and national levels. He is cultured, modest, well-spoken and multi-lingual - in other words, everything that the average contemporary Englishman is not. In character, he seems similar to Sven-Goran Eriksson. But also, he is like a welcome throw-back to the days when English managers were "gentlemen"; the likes of Sir Alf Ramsey, for example (and the only one to win anything with the national team).
I'm not going to wax lyrical about the values lost in recent decades, don't worry. I'm making a wider point. The rise of fashionable "laddish" culture in the '90s happened after a clamp-down on the prejudices and behaviour like rampant racism and hooliganism that existed in previous decades. So "laddish" culture became a sort of glamorisation of the back-lash against "political correctness" - magazines like "Loaded" and "Nuts" are the archetype, but tabloids like "The Sun" more or less continued as normal, just minus the obvious racism.
"Laddish" culture is about being "part of the gang". "The Sun" knows this well, because many of its male staff have the exact same mentality, and assume (often correctly) that many of their male readers share it.
So the hype about Harry Redknapp being the "obvious" choice for England football manager shows us another side to the same coin - the face of reverse snobbishness. Redknapp is a hero to "laddish" culture because he openly admits to being barely literate and practically innumerate, while talking in the same way that many "Sun" readers do. Furthermore, he has an easy charm and comes across as being "one of the lads". He also had a recent run-in with the law, which would add further to his "laddish" social standing. This added to the "laddish" culture's fascination with Harry Redknapp as a "lovable rogue".
That also reminds me of the incident some time ago on "Sky Sports": when Andy Gray and his colleague were caught on camera making misogynist remarks and behaviour. They were quickly fired, but the fact is that this type of "laddish" behaviour in engrained into the English male psyche.
Phrases like "just a bit of fun" are still being used to condone behaviour that some thought had been kicked out of contemporary Britain with the coming of the 21st century. I'm no Feminist (being a man, that's hard to pull off...), or moralistic kill-joy - I just find the casual attitude of "laddish" culture to prejudice and the glamorisation of violence and drunken excess sad, embarrassing to behold, and collectively pathetic.
Grow up, guys!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)