Layer 303 . . . Whitehall Revisited, and Still Deadlocked

.
This should have been posted this morning. Arrived home this evening to find Brown's announced he intends to resign, the Lib Dems say they now want formal talks with Labour, and the Tories have belatedly said they'll offer a referendum on PR if the Lib Dems stick with them. So it's all still going to plan. Excellent.

.......................................................

First item on Start the Week on Radio 4 . . .  Whitehall, and its geography and history. It's been there as a thoroughfare for 1,000 years.

Whitehall has become a byword for government bureaucracy, but beyond the facade of civil service offices are the rooms that shaped our nation’s history. In Whitehall, a “biography of the most important street in Britain”, Colin Brown explores the hidden gems behind closed doors. From Henry VIII’s tennis courts, to Cardinal Wolsey’s wine cellar and the secret passage still in use today, Colin Brown reveals the long history of political drama and despair, spin and scandal in the street of Whitehall.

Whitehall: The Street that Shaped a Nation is published by Simon & Schuster.

..........................................

Still no conclusion to the talks that have been going on all weekend about the right to govern Britain. This is a good thing. Serious thinking is taking place up and down the country as well as up and down Whitehall and Westminster about the meaning of mandates, political allegiances and the future of politics in this country.

Polly Toynbee wrote a good column yesterday, again insisting that The Lib Dems must not make common cause with the Tories, and will only destroy themselves as a party if they refuse to be part of a grand alliance with the other left of centre parties.

A done deal? No, Tory-Lib is a marriage made in hell

Brown's letter captures a despondent mood. But Labour must not give up on a progressive alliance

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/09/election-clegg-cameron-brown-alliance?

Clegg is right to try all he can to get a deal from Cameron, on the economy as on PR. He can only legitimately turn towards Labour if it is self-evident that no way can this radical and progressive party fold in with a sub-Thatcherite programme. Clegg and Cable are against the £6bn cuts this year, and cautious about removing the stimulus too fast. This marriage made in hell is unlikely. And Labour panickers should take a deep breath (get some sleep) and trust in the great bulk of Lib Dem members who are progressives, not Orange Bookers, decent people. There are more thoroughly conservative types in Labour than among the Lib Dem clan. It would be good for both to bring the two together as repairing the rift in the left is the goal. The likes of Shirley Williams, Tom McNally (their leader in the Lords), Matthew Oakeshott, Charles Kennedy and as many other grandees as you care to mention are not about to end their long and honourable careers tricked into a coalition in which all pledges would be jettisoned within weeks. The southwest Lib Dem MPs who fear alliance with Labour are plain wrong: a large chunk of their vote is Labour people lending their votes, voting tactically, who would not support them again if they turned to the Tories.

The prize of an alliance government, far better than Labour on its own, is still there to be seized. But how depressing to hear old tribalists like David Blunkett today rejecting PR. Labour has its own internal fights to resolve, too.

Oxzen commented:

    "But how depressing to hear old tribalists like David Blunkett today rejecting PR."

Depressing, Polly? Why are you even surprised? Right from '97 the man was an appalling education secretary, one that made common cause with the likes of Woodhead, and took his reactionary and ignorant agenda ever further to the right. What on earth has Blunkett ever said or done that would cause anyone to think he's anything but the most right wing politician within the New Labour camp? He may talk the anti-Tory talk but his politics are well to the right of the Lib Dem progressive wing. Sadly he's by no means the only top-down authoritarian bully within New Labour's ranks.

Why would anyone give a damn any more about what David Blunkett thinks or says? Cheer up Polly - whatever happens next the Labour party finally has an opportunity to clear out both the Blairites and the Brownites and begin to rehabilitate itself as a proper social democratic party. Whether or not it takes it is another matter, however.
.

Layer 298 . . . Monbiot, Parasites, Paralysing Fear, Mass Democracy, Brown, and Momentous Times Ahead

.
I was looking for some images of parasites to use here, but on Google they're too disgusting to even consider. So let's settle for these instead:
parasite

 Mandelson

George Monbiot's column this week was enjoyably hard-hitting:

New Labour is a parasite. A vote for them is born of fear, not hope

Voting with fear has let this movement for social justice abandon everything it stood for. On Thursday we must heed our hopes

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/03/parasite-new-labour-fear-hope

Cling on to nurse for fear of something worse. Though she has become crabbed and vicious, though she has usurped our parents, swiped our inheritance, binned our toys and sold the nursery, we must cower behind her skirts for fear of the beasts that prowl beyond. This, in essence, is what Polly Toynbee, Jonathan Freedland, Seumas Milne and Nick Cohen  are now telling us to do.

By instructing us, over the years, to heed fears, not hopes, such voices have allowed Labour to abandon everything it once stood for, and hand us, trussed and oven-ready, to big business and the Daily Mail. We'll be trapped like this for ever, in New Labour's Bermuda triangulation, unless we vote for what we believe in rather than just against what we don't.

This paralysing fear has licensed four tragic developments. It has allowed a parliamentary consensus to form that is well to the right of public feeling, alienating voters. It has created space for ideas – such as the creeping privatisation of almost everything – which were unacceptable to previous generations. It has allowed the Conservatives to appeal to moderate swing voters: if there is so little that divides the two parties, such voters figure, can the Tories really be so bad? And it has permitted a once progressive party to form the most rightwing government this country has suffered since 1945.

Let us begin where my colleagues claim the party's record is strongest: poverty and inequality. During the first seven years of the Labour government there was real progress on poverty. But from 2004 onwards the trend went into reverse. In the three years to 2007-08 the number of people in households living on less than 60% of median income rose by 1.3 million – producing a total better than in 1997, but worse than in 1989. This was before the recession hit, so God knows what the next set of figures will show.

The number of people in extreme poverty (living on less than 40% of median income) never substantially fell: it held steady through the first eight years of Labour government, then rose. There are now 700,000 more people in this condition than when Labour took office, and more than at any point since records began. The average real incomes of the poorest tenth declined by 2% in the 10 years to 2007-08. These figures, again, predate the recession.

The rich, on the other hand, have seldom done better. Of the extra income enjoyed by British households over the Labour years, 40% has accrued to the richest 10% (all references are on my website). The richest 1%, according to Injustice, Danny Dorling's new book, have captured a higher share of national income than at any time since the early 1930s. Inequality in the United Kingdom is now higher than at any point since consistent records began, in 1979. I feel that needs repeating. After 13 years of Labour government, the UK has higher levels of inequality than after 18 years of Tory government.

The old workers' party has switched allegiance to the bosses, handing key positions to corporate executives and private equity tycoons, even appointing Digby Jones, the neanderthal former head of the CBI, a minister of the crown.

Having promised to scrap it when in opposition, it has extended the private finance initiative into sectors the Tories didn't dare to touch. Labour left sweeteners in PFI contracts for corporations to find, rigged the figures to make it look as if the scheme delivered value for money, then had to bail out the private operators when it began to collapse.

While Labour has liberated billionaires, it has trussed up the rest of us with 3,500 new criminal offences, including provisions that allow the police to declare any demonstration illegal . . . It has colluded in kidnapping and torture. Britain now has more CCTV cameras than any other nation, and a DNA database that is five times the size of its nearest competitor. The number of prisoners in the UK has risen by 41% since Labour took office.

This government blocked a ceasefire in the Lebanon; sacked Britain's ambassador to Uzbekistan after he complained that the regime was boiling its prisoners to death; gave aid to a Colombian military that collaborates with fascist death squads; announced a policy of pre-emptive nuclear war; and decided to waste our money on replacing Trident. But worse, far worse than any of this, it launched an illegal war in which hundreds of thousands have died. This is the government that colleagues of mine on the Guardian want to save.

This is New Labour. It has colonised a movement that fought for social justice, distribution and decency, rewired its brain and delivered it to the fat cats who were once its enemies.

I understand the hazards of voting for the smaller parties and allowing the right-hand glove puppet to replace the left-hand glove puppet. I know that the Tories are even worse than this government. But by voting for the candidates on the list compiled by the democracy campaign Hang 'em – not all of whom are Liberal Democrats, but all of whom are reformers with a good chance of taking or keeping seats – we can break this rotten system while remaining true to our beliefs.

Whatever the outcome of the election, the real fight begins after 6 May, as we build a mass democracy movement that ensures that we can never be colonised by a parasitic political class – of any colour – again. It starts with a rally in Parliament Square at 2pm on Saturday. During and after this election, we must demand something better, rather than fleeing from something worse.

..............................................

Nice to see you!

Ever since the 'just a bigoted woman' incident took place Gordon Brown seems to have given up on chatting with 'the people' (quelle surprise) and has reverted to the traditional big speeches to mobs of people in town centres kind of approach. Surprisingly, he suddenly seems animated and passionate about some genuine beliefs, and he's managing to attack his opponents to some good effect. But is it too late? The latest poll puts Labour up to 30%, and the Lib Dems down to 26% - a reversal of the position a week ago. Possibly a good thing for a hung parliament since it would give Labour the biggest number of seats of the three main parties, and thus make it more difficult for Clegg to go with Cameron & co in any circumstance, even if the Tories were to offer a referendum on PR, which they won't, and which Brown has already pledged to do.

Yesterday Brown had a column in the Guardian, saying some sensible things, to which one can only say - yes, but why the fuck didn't you do this stuff 13 wasted years ago?

Don't kid yourself, Nick. No Lib Dem I know sees any Tory progressive bond

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/03/in-tory-labour-marginals-vote-labour

Doh!

I passionately believe that in the momentous times that lie ahead, Britain needs a new model for running our economy and a new way of doing politics.

True. Why haven't you done it already?

A progressive agenda for economic and political reform under Labour.

Good. Why haven't you done it already?

The economic crisis has taught us that we need a global constitution for our financial system, with a global system of financial sector taxation to underpin it.

I think we knew this a long time ago. But why didn't you even show any interest in starting this off in Britain when many of us were demanding it? You haven't even been making the argument in favour of it till now.

These reforms will help bring about a new era of social mobility which will strengthen and extend Britain's middle class.

Bastard. What about strengthening and improving the lot of the working classes? This is pathetic language, coming from a self-proclaimed middle class man who's presided over 13 years of declining 'social mobility' and increasing inequality.

I want to seize this moment to place progressive ideals at the heart of a new constitutional and political settlement.

Bastard. The right moment to seize it was when you came to power with a landslide, not when you're about to be booted out. Three wasted landslides, and only now he talks about a new constitutional and political settlement.

I know in my bones that Labour is the only party with a passion to eradicate poverty.

And I know in my bones, and in my grey matter, that not only has New Labour not diminished poverty significantly, or increased the real incomes of the majority of our people, or reduced inequality, it's never even shown the slightest 'passion' in any of its actions to actually do something truly significant.

We will stand by our obligations to the elderly by delivering a national care service, allowing more people to live in dignity in their homes.

Why haven't you done it already?

A vote for Labour is a vote for electoral reform, an elected House of Lords, fixed term parliaments and a right to recall your local MP.

Why hasn't New Labour done these things already!!!!!!!!

 Sorry!

.

Layer 154 Dartmoor and New Directions in Westminster.

.
Rumbling over the cattle grid and out on to the moor I never fail to get a thrill from entering into a different world where there are no trees, no hedgerows, no fences, no fields and no houses. The very few people who are up on the moor are either driving along the ribbon of road or hiking. There’s an immediate feeling of freedom and limitless horizons up on Dartmoor, on top of what is essentially a mountain covering a very large area on which stand a series of rocky peaks known tors.

The more I go there the more I love what the moor has to offer. The essential thing is the feeling of timeless space and freedom from all the clutter and nonsense down below. The road up from the rolling hills of South Hams is steep and narrow, and runs through a dense canopy of trees that shuts out the light. Tall banks beside the road and tall hedges make the narrow track of the road feel even more restricted. And then there’s that glorious moment of bursting into the clear and into the wide open spaces.

Down in Ashburton the owner of the bar had suggested going to a part of the moor where very few people ever get to. Not that it’s particularly remote. Heading towards Widecombe you veer off towards Hound Tor and then almost immediately go left down an unmarked road which eventually makes its way to the village, way down in the sheltered valley.

Having parked the car in a spot high above Widecombe I hiked up through a scattering of wild ponies that were calmly feeding, a number of young foals among them, and made my way up to Bell Tor, Chinkwell Tor and Honeybag Tor, from where the views all around were fantastic.

It’s just under 1500 feet, and you can see clear across to the west where the TV mast stands on its peak above the prison and Princeton. You can see beyond the moor to the north, south and east. I can’t think of anywhere else in Britain I’d rather go to walk and to enjoy landscapes and huge vistas of hills and skies.

-------------------------------------------------------

“Ordinary party members, you valiant few, get up and tell your MPs that Gordon Brown must go.”

So concludes Polly Toynbee in her Guardian column yesterday. Coming from someone who’s opinion is so respected in centre-left circles, and someone who supported Brown’s ascendancy to the party leadership, that’s really telling it like it is. Doomsday for our Prime Minister.

“It’s all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. As long as he remains leader, there is nothing that wretched Labour candidates can plausibly say on the doorstep at next month's European elections. They are struck dumb. Why should people vote for them? The horse manure bought on expenses is garnish for a decomposing government. The heart of the matter is the economy, and Brown's responsibility for the bubble years. He personally is to blame for Labour's failure to ensure that ordinary people on median incomes and poor people at the bottom received a bigger share in national growth: it turns out that they fell back and only the wealthy prospered. Labour made the rich richer and the poor poorer: growth for the few, not the many.

That is a failure so fundamental to Labour's purpose that the party can't go into the next election led by the man responsible. His other failings as leader pale beside this one monumental fact. While he is there, Labour cannot claim "fairness" or "social justice", so what is left to say? What is Labour's offer?

Gordon Brown has been tested and found in want of almost every attribute a leader needs . . . That he was no great public orator or warm telegenic talker would never have mattered had he gained a reputation as a gruff, unspun man of honour, vision and purpose. I thought it an asset after Blair's glibness and Cameron's suavity. It wasn't the medium that did for him, but the message. There wasn't one. What was Labour for?

“An essentially neo-liberal ideology coupled with timidity prevents him taking this once-only chance to reform the City, demand more of bankers and separate high street from casino banking. Despite the crash, he harbours the same old reverence for, or fear of, the money-men who wrought this global mayhem.

The morning after the 4 June ­election a majority deputation from the ­cabinet, bearing a long list of MPs' names, should knock on the door of No 10 to tell him his number's up. Plot it now, do it fast. The Tories are lethal with their failed leaders: Labour MPs facing annihilation must find the bottle. There is nothing to lose.”

--------------------------------------------------------

The great pity is that there is currently no-one available with the profile and the stature that Labour needs in order to put in place a proper programme for progressive government. I agree that Brown has to go, but so do all his cronies and the whole damn right wing of the party leadership that hijacked the party and turned it into a neo-conservative machine that was programmed to follow the nostrums and ideologies of the money men, the markets, and the majority of the media.

Polly Toynbee favours Alan Johnson to take over, but he’s never impressed me as a thinker or as a potential leader. If it has to be someone from the current cabinet then I’d probably pick Harriet Harman, who at least made some left of centre noises in the Deputy leadership contest, and who spoke to the hustings with far more conviction than Johnson and the others. In the same way that Thatch was underestimated prior to her leadership bid, Harman could turn out to be unexpectedly radical should she ever get the top job.

Logically she should be supported in the Cabinet by the Compass group, which also happens to have some very thoughtful left of centre thinkers as members. These people must now seize the time, and lay out a bold programme for progressive reform of the entire system of governance, including constitutional changes, proportional representation and much tighter regulation of finance and the economy.

They have to make it clear that excessive profit-taking by the banks will not be tolerated, and that sectors of the economy that properly belong in the public realm, like the railways, will be returned there. Hospitals and schools, and in fact the entire health and education sectors, will be put back into the hands of the professionals, who will be told to make both those services work effectively for the benefit of their users. No more political interference from half-baked politicians and their ‘advisers’ and think-tankers.

Furthermore, the Alexander review must be used as the basis for a complete revamp of the Primary sector, and a new review put in place to research what’s needed to create a Secondary sector that’s fit for the 21st Century.

There’s no point in fiddling about now with the current system. Labour simply has to admit where it went wrong under Blair and Brown, make its apologies, and say very clearly what now needs to be done to create a society that most people in Britain actually want to see. It’s what we wanted in 1997, and it’s what we want now.

It’s a sane vision for a society where poverty has been eradicated, where there’s greater equality and social justice, where quality of life matters and not just size of income, where crime and drugs are minimised, where there are excellent public services, where there’s a thriving mixed economy with strict regulation of finance and the banks, and where children can go to school to have their developmental needs properly met and learn how to become creative, imaginative citizens who feel proud to belong to a society in which liberty, equality, justice and fraternity are the key words of active citizens.

There now. That’s not too difficult.
.

Layer 137 The Theory of Everything and the Source of All Our Ills.

.
Oh well, back to the politics, the financial meltdown, the appalling lack of spiritual intelligence in our public life.

There was a fascinating programme on BBC4 last night (twice - I caught the late show) about Zen and wabi sabi, but I’ll come to that in a moment.

The front page headline on the Guardian this morning is “Brown: I should have done more to prevent crisis.” And “PM says he accepts ‘full responsibility’ and declares laissez-faire era over.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/17/gordon-brown-recession-banking-regulation

"Gordon Brown attempts to launch a political fightback today by declaring that he takes "full responsibility" for his role in the banking failures that led to the global recession, and claims that the downturn marks the end of the era of laissez-faire government.

In an interview with the Guardian, the prime minister concedes that in retrospect he wishes he had mounted a popular campaign 10 years ago to demand more responsible regulation of the world's financial markets. He attempts to draw a line under calls for him to make an apology by admitting that the national system of regulation he helped establish in 1997 could not keep pace with the massive global financial flows.

In some of his most extensive comments on his role in the recession, Brown said: "I take full responsibility for all my actions, but I think we're dealing with a bigger problem that is global in nature, as well as national. Perhaps 10 years ago after the Asian crisis when other countries thought these problems would go away, we should have been tougher ... keeping and forcing these issues on to the agenda like we did on debt relief and other issues of international policy."

So what Brown actually said to the man from the Guardian was, “I take full responsibility for all my actions”. Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he? What he deliberately fails to say is that he takes full responsibility for all of his INactions which allowed and encouraged the bankers and the fat cats to ruthlessly exploit the gullibility and naivety of millions of ‘ordinary’ people - i.e. non-insiders (even people like Max Hastings, more of whom later) - and effectively rob them and steal from them their life savings in the capitalist casino, which, like every casino, operates for the benefit of those that run it.

He argues that "only progressive, centre-left governments can address the problems of the global change".

Brown also claims that "the 40-year-old prevalent orthodoxy known as the Washington consensus in favour of free markets has come to an end", but signals a refusal to return to Labour's comfort zone by saying there will be no return to "big government", or any let up in public service reform.

What a fucking nerve - suggesting that New Labour has been a progressive, left of centre government when we know damn well that it’s gone even further than Thatch and Major in its privatisations, deregulations, giving independence to the UK’s central bank, appointing useless bankers to key advisory and regulatory roles, etc. Bastard.

What a fucking nerve - telling us that the 40-year old ‘Washington consensus’ has (thankfully) come to an end when he and Blair did fuck all to try to end it when they came to power in ’97, as they should have done. As if he’s played any part in ending the era of voodoo economics and the reign of the Chicago School! He fucking supported it!

And now he’s opportunistically trying to follow Obama’s lead on everything - from suddenly adopting Keynesianism and ditching the Friedmanite Chicago School theorists, to advocating the end of the bonus culture, raising taxes on the rich and putting ceilings on executive pay. Bastard.

Jon Stewart on the Daily Show neatly skewered Brown last week by running clips of several of the bits of his speech to Congress that milked standing ovations, and then showed the much older clips of the bits of Obama’s speeches that Brown had copied word for word or plagiarised.

As Jon S put it, “What is this guy? A Barack Obama cover band?”

He said nothing original in that speech, and only stated the bleeding obvious when he called for concerted international action to deal with the world economic crisis. Big deal. We could all do that.

"Laissez-faire has had its day. People on the centre-left and the progressive agenda should be confident enough to say that the old idea that the markets were efficient and could work things out by themselves are gone", he says.

What’s this? You don’t say! Laissez-faire capitalism should have had its fucking day way back in the 1930’s - since it took a world war to kick-start economies out of the great depression that L-FC had caused, and post-war it took Keynesian enlightenment, the Marshall Plan and the creation of the United Nations and the IMF (before the Chicago Boys took up residence there) to pilot the world into a new era of peace and prosperity. These were institutions and international agreements that came into being because it was clearly understood back then that unbridled, unregulated capitalism could only bring misery, recession and ruin to entire populations.

And as for Brown saying that “people of the centre-left and the ‘progressive agenda’ should be confident enough blah blah” - WE fucking WERE confident enough to say that markets needed regulation and public accountability! Only Brown and Blair and their crew weren’t fucking listening!!

“The prime minister also argued that the world recession was changing the public's expectations of business values, and they no longer believe a successful economy has to be based on high levels of risk.

"Most people want business to have the same values as they practise in their everyday life. People would rather reward hard work rather than risk-taking.”

This is bollocks too. Maybe the world ‘recession’ (economic implosion) has changed Mr Brown’s ‘expectations of business values’, but WE, the ‘public’, i.e. the real people, have always espoused the values that he’s now, belatedly, proclaiming. It’s not the bloody public’s values that are now changing..

Brown also says, in the interview spread across pages 14 and 15, that “both government and markets have got to be underpinned by values”. That’s right, Gordo. Socialist values. Belief in fairness, social justice, the elimination of poverty, much greater inequality, the elimination of tax havens, tax avoidance and fat-cat bolt-holes, caps on executive pay, the elimination of the bonus culture, higher rates of tax for the rich, a much higher minimum wage, and so on. All the things that NuLabour has patently failed to even campaign about and argue for, let alone act on.

How this guy has the nerve to paint himself as a progressive and left of centre is beyond belief.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/17/labour-gordon-brown-interview

---------------------------------------------------

A couple of days ago I was reading the chapters in Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock doctrine” that deal with what happened to the so-called Asian Tiger Economies, which Brown refers to, during the late 1990’s. Read them and weep. Big business and big finance in the USA and elsewhere decided it wanted part of the action in places like Malaysia, Indonesia, the Phillipines and South Korea - places that had built thriving industries and public utilities that were at least part-owned by the state - and so set out to destabilise their currencies in order to force them to apply to the IMF for support. The IMF, of course, which by this time was firmly under the control of the Chicago Boys, told them that loans would only be available to them AFTER they’d agreed to sell off, to privatise, at knock-down prices, their state assets and their major industries. And guess who stepped in, bought them up, and asset-stripped them, as they had already done in Russia, Eastern Europe, South Africa, South America, and elsewhere? That’s right - fat cats, financial predators and oligarchs.

-------------------------------------------------

Two more recent columns in the quality press about the harmful effects of inequality, as researched and reported by Wilkinson & Pickett in ‘The Spirit Level’.

Will Hutton in The Observer:

‘Look no further than inequality for the source of all our ills.’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/15/equality-economy-will-hutton


John Crace in G2:

‘The Theory of Everything’.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/12/equality-british-society

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/11/mental-health-inequality

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2009/mar/05/the-spirit-level

----------------------------------------------

Simon Jenkins had another excellent column in The Guardian on Friday 13th, on the deeds and legacy of Thatch and her ilk.

“Where Thatcher - or rather her chancellor, Nigel Lawson - went wrong was in the reformed structure of City finance brought on by the Big Bang of 1986.”

No one was more traumatised by the miners' strike than two young Labour politicians, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. A year earlier, Blair had been elected for Sedgefield on a leftwing, anti-Europe, pro-union, pro-CND platform, to begin one of the most spectacular U-turns in political history.

By 1989 Blair was shadow employment secretary, and was demanding that his party quietly accept Thatcher's labour and privatisation laws. He and Brown visited Australia to study Labour leader Bob Hawke's ideal of Thatcherism with a human face. He declared, "We play the Tory game when we speak up for the underclass rather than for the broad majority." Meanwhile Brown demanded that the party "make an almost religious atonement for the sins of Labour's past", in the words of his biographer, Robert Peston.

Brown was so frantic to mimic Thatcherism as shadow chancellor that Peter Hain wrote in 1993: "There is little to distinguish Labour's macroeconomic policy from that of the Tories." John Prescott, Jack Straw and David Blunkett dismissed Brown in Tribune as a crypto-monetarist. He was against tax rises, for privatisation and an ardent defender of Kenneth Clarke's Treasury policies.

This is only relevant since whatever blame attaches to Thatcher for the financial chaos of the last six months attaches even more to Blair and Brown. In truth, Thatcherism was a consensus, built on the experience of the 1970s as the consensus of 1940s welfarism was built on that of war.

The difference is that Brown, in his semi-independence for the Bank of England, was super-Thatcherite. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 established the tripartite regulation that has so conspicuously failed. It went far beyond what Thatcher would have tolerated.

Meanwhile history is silent on the downside of the Thatcher era. The command structure she created to crush her foes became unrestrained, over-centralised and inefficient. Her evisceration of local democracy bred a cynicism among Britons towards political participation that remains unique in Europe. It also led to her downfall through the poll tax.

Thatcher was one of the great "nationalisers" of all time, taking control of the public housing stock, the rating system, a previously devolved hospital service, the universities, the courts, crown prosecution and, during the miners' strike, the police. It was Thatcher who turned Whitehall from an elite administrative corps into a demoralised, politicised officialdom which, under Blair and Brown, became besotted with targets, initiatives and useless IT systems.

Thatcher removed former nationalised industries from the state. But ask any doctor, farmer, lecturer, engineer or victim of the health and safety executive if, as a result of Thatcher, they feel less or more liberated from state interference. You will get a sick laugh.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/13/margaret-thatcher-recession-mythology
------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, back at Max Hastings, “Winning the next election should be the least of Cameron’s worries.”

In his previous Guardian column Max, a life-long Tory, had described how he’s lost a shitload of his own money through trusting financial advisers and others who told him to invest in stocks and shares that are now worthless. He’s belatedly woken up to the evils of capitalism. He’s extremely fearful that as a result of the collapse of economies around the world we’re now on the eve of social, political and financial catastrophe.

Well, Max, I hate to say this, but I, for one, could have told you so. Many people in fact wrote books about it. Am I the only one who read “The State We’re In” - Will Hutton’s best-selling 1996 classic? Surely not.

Anyone who had eyes to see could have told Max that American and European economic imperialism and exploitation would one day come to a very bad end. And now it has. People like Max may have lost the most money, but they’ll still be better insulated from the effects than those who lost nothing because they had fuck-all to lose in the first place. Nothing except their jobs, their homes, their self-respect, their life chances and indeed their lives, in lots of cases. The rates of suicide during and after the Asian downturn and buy-out were phenomenal. Millions are still unemployed and impoverished all over the world, and it’s going to get a lot worse.

“We are in a phoney war period, comparable with the winter of 1939. Everyone recognises the gravity of events, but no bombs are falling. Although markets have crashed and unemployment is rising steeply, most people are still going about their affairs more or less as they did a year ago. Few national leaderships are yet thinking or acting with a conviction commensurate with the scale of the crisis.

It is hard to suppose this comparative normality will persist. Hundreds of millions of lives are going to be brutally changed. It is unlikely that any decisions taken at next month's London G20 summit will avert acute social pain. It is implausible that populations will respond stoically. This will be especially so if they see those who created the disaster, notably the banking community, still enjoying absolute or even relative opulence secured by false pretences.

A few years ago, many of us were naive enough to suppose that the global struggle between left and right was effectively over; that capitalism and social democracy were irrevocably triumphant. Peter Flannery's 1996 TV classic, Our Friends in the North, seemed to represent an archaeological dig through old British miseries. The rage of the left that it portrayed, the corruption of capitalism and of the police as its enforcement arm, the violence of the 1984 miners' strike, the class war cliches, were light years removed from the prosperous Britain of the Blair years.

As a Tory, I watched Flannery's series with some complacency. I was confident - and still am - that our side was mostly right in the struggles of the 1980s.

The left's view of capitalism as a conspiracy against working people looked ridiculous. Tony Benn was wrong about almost everything. After Thatcher's fall, for almost a generation, capitalism delivered on an extraordinary scale, conferring prosperity on all but the poorest members of society.

Today, however, few people even in Wall Street or the City of London dispute that we are suffering a historic failure. It cannot be blamed on political troublemakers, workers, asylum-seekers, terrorists or climate change. It is explicitly the responsibility of those who have conducted the world's financial machinery, indulged and abetted by governments. Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, speaks frankly of "a systemic failure of regulation".

In the face of this, the innocents who will suffer seem entitled to vent their feelings, armed with a moral authority a hundred times greater than that which provoked the turbulence of the miners' strike or, for that matter, the poll tax riots. To say this is not to countenance violence, but merely to acknowledge the justice of public anger.

It will be strange if, in a new and poorer world, voices of the left do not find audiences such as they have not known for 30 years. As public spending is cut, the jobless find it impossible to regain work, businesses of all kinds struggle for survival, the political map of many nations, notably including Britain, could be redrawn. In the decade ahead, no one will speak without irony of "the enterprise society".

The war had forced upon Churchill's government socialistic domestic policies. These will be equally inescapable amid the 2010 economic crisis.

Privately at least, most politicians acknowledge the probability of civil unrest.

Thus far, what seems most remarkable about the cataclysm is that few prophets have acknowledged how radically it could change the political landscape.

Right on, Max, my man. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/16/david-cameron-conservatives-election

---------------------------------------------

Damn - I’ve run out of time and space to say anything about wabi sabi. Manyana.
.

Layer 127 David Cameron, Progressive Conservatism and Progressive Education.

.
A Man of the People?

It’s an extraordinary coincidence that both David Cameron and Gordon Brown have fathered severely disabled children, and both have experienced the death of their first-born. These are the things that every parent fears most - abnormalities, extreme illness and death.

According to Michael Gove, living with their son Ivan has changed the way that the Camerons see the world, and life. Obviously for the better. Various people have said that Cameron used to be an arrogant toff.

Presumably bringing up a severely disabled child forces a parent to understand more than most of us that all children are different, all children have specific needs, all children have a right to love and care and also appropriate provision for their differing abilities, disabilities and special needs.

Expectations cannot be the same for all children, and more than anything else children have a right to enjoy life and to live without undue pressure, coercion and unrealistic expectations. All children progress at different rates, and their wellbeing must not be compromised by forcing them into inappropriate moulds.

It would be immoral to run a health service or an education service in the interests of the staff - their managers or their policy-makers. It is immoral to run a public service on the basis of performance data and statistics, driving practice according to the need to prioritise government targets.

Unfortunately there’s no evidence that Brown has views on education that differ in any respect to Blair, Blunkett or any of the other fools that have set the policies and targets for schools.

Cameron, on the other hand, has already made it clear that he’ll sweep away the targets culture and free schools from the oppressive yoke that’s been placed on our schools these many years. We shall see. If he does that and restores education to the profession it should be, then he’ll certainly win over that section of the population.

In the meantime we should allow him the benefit of the doubt, assume that he’s a man of his word, and offer him and his wife condolences on the loss of their son, and warm wishes for their future happiness.

-----------------------------------

By an incredible coincidence David Cameron was the main story in G2 yesterday, with a photograph of him in white shirt and tie on the front cover. Andy Beckett’s article sprawls across six pages, with large photos of DC playing with a Frisbee on a beach, reading a speech, in his toff gear at an Oxford ball, surrounded by his shadow cabinet, and of course the famous one on the sofa at home with his family, looking down at Ivan, who’s lying across his lap.

He says the four aims of progressive conservatism are “a society that’s fair, where opportunities are equal, that’s greener, and safer - with people protected from threat and fear”. If that means he plans to abolish privilege, inequality, poverty, homelessness and unemployment, then what’s not to vote for?

The main cloud on his horizon appears to be that neither he nor his shadow chancellor, George Osborne, understand Keynesian economics. There’s also the little matter of his “progressiveness” being completely against the traditions and instincts of the Conservative party.

The ideal scenario would be for him to split the Tories and force the remaining toffs, the reactionaries and the backwoodsmen to go off and start their own party, or join UKIP. If he promised to do that then he’d definitely be worth voting for. That and promising to bring in proportional representation and an elected second chamber.

I’ve been saying for a couple of years that the best outcome of the next election would be a hung parliament and a government of all the talents. New Labour doesn’t deserve another term, unless of course they get rid of Mandy and Blears and their ilk, and suddenly become a proper socialist party, which seems unlikely to the point of pure fantasy.

Vince Cable clearly is best qualified to be the next Chancellor. Clegg and Hughes have a basic decency and intelligence. Willetts and Hague and aren’t idiots either, and are probably entitled to call themselves progressive conservatives if they subscribe to DC’s ‘four aims’.

Harriet Harman, currently parked in the Prescott slot, deserves better. The fact is she’s the most intelligent, decent and progressive of the current cabinet. And she’s intelligent in the sense of socially, emotionally and spiritually intelligent, being empathetic and intuitive as well as knowledgeable and genuinely ‘progressive’ in her beliefs and values.

Others will, of course, favour David Miliband for future stardom, but he’s done himself no favours in his current post over the torture cover-up, which is stupid and unforgivable. He’s also tainted by being a Blair advisor and collaborator for so many years, as he climbed the greasy NuLabour pole within the Downing Street clique. He was also useless as an Education Secretary.

-------------------------------------------------

“Soft Skills and Starters for 10”

The Guardian published an interesting column yesterday by Yvonne Roberts, a senior associate of the Young Foundation.

In it she refers to both Jade Goody, whose affliction with terminal cancer and recent marriage have been big news in the tabloids, and in fact in all the papers, and Gail Trimble, who’s become a national superstar as a result of her excellence in captaining the winning team to the final of University Challenge.

To her great credit, Gail Trimble has said that her performance on television is no demonstration of real intelligence or understanding - it’s just quick recall of facts.

Unfortunately Yvonne Roberts refers to the development of social, emotional and spiritual intelligence as ‘soft skills’, which I think is pretty unhelpful, even if it is the current jargon at the Young Foundation and elsewhere. These intelligences are neither hard nor soft, so what’s the point? It only antagonises the kind of people who equate ‘soft’ with female and touchy-feely and of lesser importance.

Interestingly in the Cameron piece in G2, there’s a quote from Chris Patten: “We know he is clever in an orthodox sense. But the tests he will face as prime minister are tests of temperament, and he has a good temperament.”

So there we have it - ‘orthodox cleverness’ can only get you so far. What really matter in life, and in one’s career, are the things that make up ‘character’ - the things that Obama clearly has in abundance - judgement, tenacity, self-confidence, self-discipline, vision, compassion, determination, empathy, integrity, emotional intelligence and balance. It’s a blessing that we now have a leader of the Tory party who may indeed have some or all of these qualities, especially when you think about those who have gone before.

I need to quote extensively from Ms Roberts’ piece, as it hangs together so well:

The British education system is based on a form of apartheid. Those with a reasonable IQ are deemed "bright", and therefore they matter; the remainder are labelled failures, and know they are from infancy.

For decades, education has been artificially divided between the academic and those deemed inferior, who are possibly "good with their hands". Cognitive skills (academic knowledge, long-term memory, the ability to think abstractly) are still considered all that really matter. As the interim report of the primary review, published last week, points out, the result of this focus plus a distorted emphasis on numeracy, literacy, tests and targets, leaves teachers little freedom to bring out the best in each child.

As a result, we have illiteracy and alienation at one end of the spectrum and academic inflation at the other - producing young adults unsuited for work. Some schools and universities are exceptional in their determination to make education work for individuals, but most are pushed to produce young people who are anything but rounded, resilient, confident - or employable.
Much of the debate around the primary review missed the most important point: no matter what parts of the national curriculum are overhauled, expanded or removed, our system in the 21st century is not fit for purpose. It needs transformation, not reform.

The government is aware of the challenge. Verbally, at least, it endorses creativity and innovation and the importance of the soft skills - non-cognitive attributes such as attitudes, values and beliefs, self-confidence, enterprise, creativity, determination and persistence. These skills are much loved by the right as the ingredients of "character". It is these soft skills that the allegedly dumb Jade Goody has developed in public over the past several years.

In its actions, however, Labour still sticks to the past: IQ, exams and rigidly unimaginative didactic teaching rules.

US research by Martin Seligman, among others, has shown some people of superior intelligence who lack sufficient soft skills never make their mark. Conversely, others who produce low results on IQ tests, but who score highly in soft skills, can shine.

Yet with the absence of those skills and poor teacher expectations, hundreds of thousands of children are outstripped by their more affluent (and sometimes dimmer) peers who have their non-cognitive abilities developed to the hilt by middle-class parents able to invest hugely in project junior.

Flexibility, teamwork, problem-solving and determination are what's required - and while Trimble might have almost singlehandedly won it for Corpus Christi, as a society we can no longer afford to leave the thinking to an academic elite. Or endorse an education system that does not sufficiently invest in developing the non-cognitive skills and character that allow a child to achieve his or her full potential.

-------------------------------------------

Further to my comments in the last blog, the Guardian published a survey yesterday which confirmed that most voters (two thirds) think that Labour would fare better with a new leader.

-----------------------------------------

Alistaire Darling on Radio 4 this morning was continuing to witter on about the need to return the banks to the private sector - to “fully commercial operation”, “run on a private basis”, as soon as possible. He was also at pains to emphasise that RBS is one of the biggest banks in the world.

So bloody what? Since the banks imploded aren’t we, the public, entitled to aquire them at little or no cost, then hire capable managers to run them properly, and in doing so make fat profits that benefit us - the people? Or am I missing something?

----------------------------------

Also in the news today the fat cat bastard who dumped RBS (and almost the whole of the financial system) in the shit, and on his ‘retirement’ became ‘entitled’ to a pension of £600,000 per year for the rest of his life. He’s only just turned 50 now. Mr Darling is going to ask him politely if he’d care to give some of the money back, since he was evidently so useless at his job, and ought to have been sacked anyway. Mr Darling said it seemed only right to give the money back since these are hard, indeed dire, times for RBS. Like - that amount of pension would be OK if RBS was making ‘normal’ profits? Fuck off!

Speechless. Just speechless.

-----------------------------------------------

As indeed I am at Mandy’s determination to part-privatise The Post Office. The man is a complete maniac. Brown was an idiot to bring him back into government, and can do nothing about him now. He’s no idea of the scale of revulsion for this unswerving determination to privatise public assets.

Any fool can make profits from a public monopoly - you just put up prices. The point is - it’s a matter of public policy that postal rates are kept low. Another problem lies with NuLabour’s willingness to let private sector companies cherry pick the bits of the former postal service they can make profits on.

You want the post office to be more efficient? Hire better managers, and let them work with the unions on ways to improve efficiency.

There’s a problem with the pension fund? So what? It’s a pittance compared with the banks’ bail out. And do NOT let that be an excuse - that’s we’ve given so much money to bail out the banks that we can no longer afford to bail out the Post Office. Bullshit.

---------------------------------------------------

Springwatch 4.

The very first tiny yellow blossom on the forsythia outside my kitchen window.
.

Layer 126 Gaza, Vegas, Pollock, Brown and the Bankers.

.
Human rights researchers were featured on Radio 4 yesterday, since they’ve issued a report on the Gaza slaughter of hundreds of civilians. Their central concern was the use of weapons that were guaranteed to kill innocent women and children, and men. White phosphorous that causes flesh and guts to burn unstoppably, tank shells fired through the windows of houses, bombs that release ‘flechettes’ or barbed arrow-heads by the thousand, high explosive bombs and shells fired into streets, markets and public buildings, all caused carnage. Israel more or less shrugs its shoulders, says the Hamas fighters shouldn’t have hidden themselves in urban areas, and says the use of phosphorous was unauthorised by their government. No apology though.

Could it be that the Israeli state sees God as its role model, I wonder, since the Bible tells us that God was very much given to smiting bad guys? He apparently smote places like Egypt with plagues of locusts, unhealable boils and the death of first-born children. When He got really pissed off with the human race He apparently just drowned the lot of them, with the exception of good old Noah and his missus.

Maybe the Israeli government sees itself as enacting God’s will in smiting the people of Gaza? They’ve certainly gone further than extracting an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They presumably see themselves as the Chosen Ones, carrying out the will of God.

So did God tell the Nazis to murder 6 million innocents? Was that God’s will? Or the Devil’s? And if the Devil can be responsible for the killing of innocents, could he then be responsible for the killing of more than a thousand innocents in Gaza? In which case, was the Israeli state acting on behalf of the Devil?

And in any case, how does all this square with God’s commandment that thou shalt not kill? It’s all too much for my poor little Zen brain.

------------------------------------------

On a much lighter note, the BBC are re-running the Johnny Vegas comedy vehicle - Ideal. Last night they showed the episode where the Vegas character and his girlfriend are discussing their simultaneous affairs, which are supposedly at an end.

The girlfriend berates him for the way he carried on his affair so indiscreetly, so blatantly, whereas as she blah, blah . . . To which Johnny replies, “What’s this? An infidelity masterclass?”

Their relationship, however, is messed up by Johnny’s acquisition of a massive television set. She makes it clear that the TV has to go, and that he has to choose - her or the TV. The TV stays.

She later returns to the flat to try a reconciliation, and the new girlfriend has to quickly hide - behind the TV. From her hiding place she overhears a conversation about how Vegas had talked about the new girlfriend as a complete idiot. She bursts out of her hiding place and wails, “I know I’m stupid! I’ve tried learning, but it just doesn’t happen for me!”

Finally they’re happily curled up on the sofa, with the TV towering over them, and Vegas murmurs contentedly, “You and me and the big telly were just meant to be.”

And what are they watching? “Clangers - as relevant today as it was then.”

Well, he is a dope dealer, after all.

---------------------------------------

This bit’s going to be boring, but it has to be said. Gordon Brown is an idiot. He tried learning, but it just didn’t happen for him.

He clearly thinks we’re idiots. The article he wrote, or was written in his name, for the Observer on Sunday was headed “We will put people first, not bankers.” Future tense, we notice.

And this is the crux of the matter, and why people now despise him and want to punish him, to smite him, as well as the bankers - precisely because we’re not idiots.

[Guardian front-page story yesterday - Britain Faces Summer of Rage - Police. ‘Middle-class anger at economic crisis could erupt into violence on streets.’]

For 10 years and more Brown presided over unregulated casino capitalism and ignored the calls from a multitude of critics, notably Will Hutton as far back as 1995, who were demanding that he do the things that he’s now saying he’s going to do.

In the article he blathers on about our values as a nation and the need to protect people from the ‘downturn’ and prepare ourselves for ‘every future challenge’. Quite right, Gord, but we wouldn’t now have a ruinous banking crisis and a recession if you’d taken action back in ’97 to re-regulate the bankers, prevented a property bubble developing, insisted on due caution when handing out mortgages, put limits on people and companies building up ‘portfolios’ of residential houses and flats for private renting, etc. “No more boom and bust”, indeed.

Gord goes on about “a reformed and more responsible banking system”, which is exactly what Will Hutton wrote about in “The State We’re In” before NuLabour came to power - so why didn’t our great leader do something about it before the shit hit the fan, before the horse bolted? Only now he wants to shut the stable door and clean out 10 years’ worth of droppings.

Gord says he “understands and shares people’s anger towards the behaviour of some of the banks”, but he doesn’t see the anger that’s towards HIM? I’m sure he does, but a complete lack of integrity and honesty prevent him from acknowledging it.

If he had any integrity he’d resign and allow someone who’s consistently advocated proper banking regulation to become the party leader and PM - if such a person could be found within the Labour party. (It’s surely axiomatic that there’s no such person within NuLabour.)

But lo! There’s more. “We must make changes both in the banks themselves and their regulation.” (Why didn’t he do it 10 years ago?)

“Banks must act in the long-term interests of their shareholders and therefore of the economy as a whole.” (Why didn’t he do something 10 years ago?)

“This starts with a rejection of the old short-term bonus culture.” (Why didn’t he do it 10 years ago?)

We must have “long-term incentives and claw-backs if future performance is poor”. (Why didn’t he do something 10 years ago?)

We must have “better governance of banks. Their boards must have the expertise and power to challenge management and they must be able to understand the risks the company is taking.” (Why didn’t he do something 10 years ago?)

Board members must have “the necessary expertise and the right incentives to monitor executives.” (Why didn’t he do something 10 years ago?)

“We need both better national and global regulation.” (Why didn’t he do something 10 years ago?)

“Institutions with global reach should be regulated in a global way, not by a patchwork of national regulators.” (Why didn’t he do something 10 years ago?)

“We have to be clear as a nation about what we expect from our banks, and clear too about how people . . . expect these vital institutions to be run.” Fuck off, Gord! You weren’t clear about that, 10 years ago? 20 years? I certainly was. A great many of us were clear about it. Socialists certainly were. It was just NuLabour that wasn’t. Even the Tories and the neo-cons were clear about what they wanted, which is exactly what you gave them.

“Britain needs to lead the world in reforming and restructuring our banking system.” Too late, you arrogant twat. Leaving aside your crappy syntax - since the world can’t restructure OUR banking system - many other countries never had governments that made their central banks independent of their government, never deregulated to the ridiculous extent that we did, and never had so-called watchdogs that were as useless and pathetic as ours was.

What’s happened is thanks to YOUR laissez-faire lack of attention. Thanks to YOU appointing the actual mad bankers to run the so-called watchdogs.

AND it was YOU who appointed mad bankers to be your top economic and financial advisers. Instead of competent professional economists with an independent and disinterested, non-partisan, non-neo-con viewpoint. People like Will Hutton, for instance.

New Labour did none of the above, did none of the things Gord now says he intends to do, in spite of a crying need to do so, because it was bent on slavishly following the neo-cons and the Chicago Boys, not leading us towards a more enlightened system that was “the servant of our economy, and society, never its master”, which is now what Gord says he wants.

Fair enough - he’s now (finally, belatedly) seen the light. But where’s the credibility? It’s not like he can say he was busy doing something else with fisheries or the health service or education whilst the economic time-bomb was being constructed. He was right there, in the Treasury, surrounded by advisers (the wrong ones - Ed Balls!) and able to take decisive action any time he chose. Except that he wasn’t able.

Oh dear! Tony wouldn’t let him! George wouldn’t let Tony! No doubt these will be the excuses he’ll trot out in his memoires. Better to be in there, tinkering around as best he could within the neo-con straitjacket, than not there at all. No doubt.

Except that he could have resigned. He could have made a stand. He could have drawn our attention to what needed to be done. The reason he didn’t do that either was simply because he was an idiot and he believed people like the ex-head of RBS when they told him that all was for the best in the best of all possible capitalist worlds. Wasn’t London now the epicentre and the hub of the world’s financial markets? How great was that? Brilliant!

Gord has now learnt from hard experience that this wasn’t the case. That’s ‘hard’, by the way, in the sense that other people’s lives are now being devastated. Gord himself continues to occupy Number 10 and still spends his weekends in the splendour and comfort of Chequers. Why?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/22/gordon-brown-comment-banks

--------------------------------------------------------

Polly Toynbee wrote an interesting article last week about the Labour leadership. She makes the point that a change in the leadership won’t necessarily improve NuLabour’s electoral chances. What’s needed now, she points out, whoever leads the party, are the right policies that will lead to economic stabilisation and recovery, with the least amount of pain and misery for the innocents who will take the brunt of the implosion of the current free-market, globalised system.

It's life and death for Labour in the here and now, never mind who leads the battered remnants if Labour loses as badly as looks likely.

Fiscal rectitude can wait: for now, 100,000 more unemployed every month matter most. Promise a job or apprenticeship for every school-leaver, create green jobs, build homes and railways. Make mortgage rescue work. Talk openly about the divide between the majority in work, doing rather well with low mortgages and falling prices: they will need to share more with jobless families and pensioners in real hardship. Explain the need to spread pain and gain more fairly. Describe what's happening honestly and why there must be no cuts in public services. Make bold savings on Trident, aircraft carriers and ID cards among other things and, for the sake of foreign investor confidence, admit that later taxes will need to rise for those who came through this well.

Clarity and honesty are the only hope: April's budget is Labour's last chance. It's an all or nothing gamble. But since the Tories will go for the jugular on debt anyway, Labour needs to take a bolder Keynesian line that really will save millions from suffering. Brown's talk of the "spirit of the Blitz" might start to resonate if he makes a braver fight against this ever darkening depression.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/21/labour-leadership-budget-toynbee

------------------------------------------------------

Last night I watched a superb film about the life and times of Jackson Pollock, the notorious Jack the Dripper, and his ever darkening depression. It was fascinating to see such a good drama depicting his development as an artist, his poverty, his rise to fame, his madness and his alcoholism - the affliction that eventually ruined his work and ended his life through a car crash whilst out driving when he was completely pissed. Tragically he also killed the young woman who had taken the place in his life of his long-term partner and wife, Lee Krasner.

I can still remember the first time I saw paintings by Pollock in an exhibition. What was stunning, apart from their size and apparent simplicity, was the fact that they clearly weren’t painted, in the accepted use of that word. There were no brush strokes - just incredible surfaces looking as though they were actually moving, swirling, shifting. They had this sort of rhythm and sway, and were truly mesmerising, which I hadn’t been expecting. Completely abstract, with no figurative elements, they spoke directly to the soul and the senses.

A body of work like Pollock’s reminds me that it’s not the length of our lives that matters - it’s what we do with them. He died at 44. Van Gogh at 37. Hendrix died in his twenties. All of them ruined by drugs and/or personal demons. All of them produced bodies of work that were stunningly original, incredibly vibrant and uplifting, and will never be successfully copied or replicated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock
http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/pollock/

---------------------------------------------

A Final Word on Gaza and Iraq

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/11/pankaj-mishra-democracy

I’ve been meaning to blog about this article for a couple of weeks. It’s by Pankaj Mishra, author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tibet.

When last week in Ha'aretz the Israeli historian Tom Segev judged Israeli "apathy" towards the massacre in Gaza as "chilling and shameful", he brought on deja vu among Indians. In 2002 the Hindu nationalist government of Gujarat supervised the killing of more than two thousand Muslims.

As the Israeli right looks likely to be the latest electoral beneficiary of state terror, it is time to ask: can the institutions of electoral democracy, liberal capitalism and the nation-state be relied upon to do our moral thinking for us? "Trust in the majority," they seem to say, but more often than not the majority proves itself incapable of even common sense.

Hannah Arendt's phrase "banality of evil" refers precisely to how a generalised moral numbness among educated, even cultured, people makes them commit or passively condone acts of extreme violence.

Shallowness and ignorance have been our lot in the mass consumer societies we inhabit, where we were too distracted to act politically, apart from periodically deputing political elites to take life-and-death decisions on our behalf. We were shielded from many of the deleterious consequences, which worked themselves out on obscure people in remote lands. The free world's economic implosion is bringing home the intolerable cost of this collective deference to apparently efficient elites and anonymous, overcomplex institutions.

It is too easy to blame Bush, who told Americans to go spend and consume while he ratcheted up pain levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the grotesquely overrated technocrats running banks and businesses. As the New York Times columnist Frank Rich reminded Americans last week: "We spent a decade feasting on easy money, don't-pay-as-you-go consumerism and a metastasizing celebrity culture. We did so while a supposedly cost-free, off-the-books war, usually out of sight and out of mind, helped break the bank along with our nation's spirit and reputation."

The prosperity many democracies enjoyed lulled citizens into political torpor. The prospect of economic collapse has persuaded a majority of Americans to exercise more individual judgment than they showed while re-electing Bush in 2004. But collective failures of the kind Barack Obama spoke of in his stern inaugural speech will continue to occur among citizens of other democracies - and they will have no Obama to exhort them to personal responsibility.

In any case, economic disasters or foolish wars are hardly guaranteed to bring about large-scale individual self-examination or renew the appeal of truly participatory democracy. They are more likely to make authoritarianism attractive, as European democracies in the 1930s and Russia in recent times demonstrated. Many Indians and Israelis seem set to elect, with untroubled consciences, those who speak the language of torturers and terrorists. More disturbingly, these corrupted democracies may increasingly prove the norm rather than the exception.
.