Layer 288 . . . Bravo Cleggo, Leadership Debates, Mos Eisley Spaceport, Spin Alley, Satire, Universities, Geriatric Judo and Aerial

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Nick Clegg was on Andrew Marr's programme this morning, and was very good indeed. He was confident, convincing and didn't stumble in any way. He's making the case extremely well for a sizeable vote for his party as an instant demonstration that Britain is sick of the old two-party monopoly and needs a proper proportional voting system in order to have a more mature and credible democracy. As it happens his party's priorities are right in line with what Britain also needs. He's managed, with the help of his colleagues, to position the Lib Dems perfectly as the more radical and progressive party. If there's any justice in the world the electorate will do the right thing and ensure that neither the Tories nor New Labour get anything like an outright majority. S'exciting!

It's true that prior to the financial crisis Clegg was on the right wing (the 'Orange Book') side of his party, and supported the Chicago School / Friedmanite vision of neo-liberal economics, but that was then and this is now. It's reasonable to suppose he's learnt lessons, as have millions of others during the financial catastrophe that's gripped the world.

http://www.liberator.org.uk/media/lib-0904.pdf

And in any case, as has been said elsewhere, this is now, chiefly, a one-issue election - proportional representation.

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The Leadership Debates - Part Two

Last week's debate (on Sky News!) threw up no surprises, and most reactions suggested there's a pretty even split in public perception over who was the 'winner'. Oxzen, however, took issue with the Guardian editorial about the event -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/22/leaders-debates-nickclegg?

"all three leaders agreed on the fundamentals of every question. If voters want to see real difference between the three main parties they will have to look elsewhere."

Really? The one thing that stood out in this debate was Clegg's brave and principled insistence that it's foolish to renew or replace Trident with a similar weapons system, that fresh thinking is needed about the place of nuclear weapons, and that we should take a significant step towards ridding the world of nuclear weapons by not rushing into the purchase of a new generation of such weapons when there's no actual need to.

Brown certainly seized on this difference during the debate. How come the author of this piece didn't even notice it? Whether or not you agree with Clegg you must give him credit for remaining consistent on this fundamental difference, which Brown and Cameron are too afraid or too lacking in vision to grapple with themselves.

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Marina Hyde wrote a brilliant piece about the insane happenings in the interview area - 'Spin Alley' - immediately after the debate:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/22/sky-leaders-debate-spin-room-abortion-democracy

Sky leaders' debate spin room: the live abortion of democracy

"Mos Eisley spaceport," sighs Ben Kenobi in Star Wars. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy ... " Evidently Obi Wan never visited Sky's post-debate spin room, which – pound-of-flesh for pound-of-flesh – must have been one of the most distasteful places to be in this galaxy or any other tonight.

The venue was an interactive science museum in Bristol, magically transformed by Rupert Murdoch's news network into a fully operational 10th circle of hell. Behold, the cream of Britain's arseoisie, as journalists, spin doctors and politicians interact in scenes that just scream "Come, friendly bombs …"

It was like watching the live abortion of democracy. Had the network decided the evening should have been immortalised in oil paint (surely only a matter of time), Hieronymus Bosch would have declined the commission on the basis that it was a hellscape too far even for him.

Still, the premise is simple. Even before the party leaders have finished debating, legions of spinners and spinners' lackeys materialise to explain exactly why everything you thought you saw and heard was wrong.

Having vapourised seconds before the debate, the spindroids were suddenly all back in the room, presumably having just slid through a haunted TV screen to begin immediately the task of dispensing weapons grade wisdom.

In America, they call these media pens Spin Alley, so those searching for a suitably small-time UK equivalent should alight on something like Fibbers' Close, or Bollocks Avenue.

To isolate the biggest whopper told in the room in the wake of the debate would be a task for a more sophisticated listening system than the human ear, but an audit even of those overheard in a mere six foot radius would have to include Douglas Alexander's "Gordon dominated the debate tonight. He left Nick and David Cameron trailing in his wake." In fairness, everyone was giving their best Iraqi information minister. "The infidels are nowhere near the airport! No one could ever want to slap David Cameron round the face with a wet fish!"

The entire affair is, quite simply, a two bath event, which is to say that when one finally escapes it, a single immersion in scalding water doesn't begin to get the psychological dirt off.

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Satire

Last week's 'In Our Time', as it happens, had satire as its subject.

In ancient times satirical attacks were known as satori!

Mocking the so-called elite in order to correct folly was seen as a noble calling.

Democracies need those who are prepared to attack the pomposity and snobbery of political elites, and need those satirists to be aggressively outspoken and even rude in order to drive home their points. The hypocrisy, pretense, falsehoods, self-indulgence, love of luxury and depravity of the ruling classes ought to be targeted.

The father of the genre, Lucilius, is the writer credited with taking satire decisively towards what we now understand by the word: incisive invective aimed at particular personalities and their wrongs.

All this happened under the Roman Republic, in which there was a large measure of free speech. But then the Republic was overthrown and Augustus established the Empire.

The great satirist Horace had fought to save the Republic, but now reinvented himself as a loyal citizen of the Imperium.

His satirical work explores the strains and hypocrisies of trying to maintain an independent sense of self at the heart of an autocracy.

This struggle was deepened in the work of Persius, whose Stoicism-inflected writing was a quietist attempt to endure under the regime without challenging it.

The work of the last great Roman satirist, Juvenal, was famously savage - yet his targets were either generic or long dead.

So was satire a conservative or a radical genre? Was it cynical or did it aim to 'improve' people? Did it have any real impact? And was it actually funny?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s0gwd#supporting-content

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Polly Toynbee's column yesterday was very good, and so far has attracted well over 1,000 comments on CiF:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/24/clegg-electoral-reform-tactics-romance?

Your heart might say Clegg. But vote with your head

Until the electoral system is reformed, progressives are stuck. If you do not want a Tory government, it's tactics, not romance

Get real. Keep your head screwed on. What result do you want? I will assume, dear Guardian reader, that like me you have two prime purposes. One is to prevent Cameron walking into Downing Street on 7 May. Equal first is to secure electoral reform so that we are never again presented with such a disgraceful voting choice. If that's not your view, you can save time, stop reading here and push off to some Murdoch organ that will amply satisfy your needs.

Hundreds of posters on Guardian threads yesterday wanted a Liberal Democrat win. No surprise, since there is no doubt that Clegg was the best in both debates. He talks human not slogans, he is sincere, and he stands by unpopular positions without trimming. Those who squirmed at Gordon Brown asserting that Trident will protect us against Iran and North Korea – or his failure to answer on what to do about long-term illegal migrants, their children and, soon, grandchildren: stateless, exploited and paying no taxes – will think Clegg a brave and decent man. So he is on human rights, and how to "punch above our weight" in Europe. He might make a good prime minister. But it won't happen this election because the abominable voting system makes it impossible. Win electoral reform and he might win next time, if there is a rerun after we have got voting reform.

But until that day, never take your eye off the ball, whatever it takes. If many go with heart not head against such ferocious odds, and Cameron gets the crown, electoral reform will be a dead duck, and it's back to square one.

I have never much minded what the best anti-Tory party is called, I just want the left of centre to win. I will always back whichever group combines being furthest left with winnability: that's always a trade-off.

It's not a game. The people who always, without fail, get hit hardest by Conservative governments are the powerless, the weakest, the voiceless – and they may not even vote. It is an absolute certainty that inequality will always worsen under the Tories, always did, always will.

This time it will happen faster . . .

It's low tactics, not high romance. Vote what best keeps the Tory out where you are. Buck that arithmetic at your peril.

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Cif comments included:

rednorth

These damn Tories take people for simpletons.

If you are reasonably well off, there are good reasons to vote Tory, so why not just be honest and admit you vote Tory out of self interest, instead of persisting with this ludicrous conscience-salving charade that the Tories have social mobility and the poor's best interests at heart?

It always amazes me that Tories dislike Modern 'broken' Britain so much. It was, after all, built in their image by Thatcher, and sustained by Blair.

What do you people think this is? a fucking game?

We're heading for a Libcon pact. Ideas of a Libdem clean sweep are fanciful rubbish. The task of the clued-in social democrat is to frustrate Toryism when and wherever you encounter it. The Tories are not a political party in the same sense as Labour and the Libdems. They are a Conspiracy, funded by business and corporations, and kept in power by the power elites and media barons, class interests and landowners.

They, in Bevan's words, are lower than vermin, and our job, as left of centre voters, is to don any kind of nose peg, plastic bag or gas mask and put down the seeds of democracy everywhere they feed.

Democracy to Tories is poison.


TiggerNoFan

YouGov 22 Apr - Con 33 Lib Dem 31 Lab 27
Seats: Con 253, Lab 256, Lib Dem 112

OnePoll 24 Apr - Con 32 Lib 32 Lab 23.
Seats: Cons 262, Lab 213, LD 146

Now then Polly, remind us which one of these massive Tory overall majorities it is that you're so worried about?

That's right - there isn't one.

One poll I spotted an hour or two ago gave me pause for thought:

Mums Net voting intentions following 2nd debate - LD - 50.3% Lab 20% Con 18%

Seats: Lib Dem 598, Lab 23, Con 3, others 26

Funny how close the MumsNet 50.3% is to the 49% who would allegedly vote Lib Dem if they thought the Lib Dems had any chance of winning...

Maybe that's what both the Guardian and the Murdoch empires are so worried about that they want to frighten you into not voting Lib Dem.


Natacha

A very good article, one of the few truly intelligent pieces of journalism produced in this election.

For all the excitement Clegg has generated a couple of facts remain;

If we have a Tory government after May 6th Clegg might as well never have existed.

If we have a Tory government after May 6th there will be no electoral reform.

If we have a Tory government after May 6th the LibDems will find it much harder to achieve a breakthrough next time.

If we have a Tory government after May 6th Cameron has said he will actually make the current electoral system worse and even more skewed against the LibDems.

If we have a Tory government after May 6th Clegg will go back to being a nobody.

I am now a member of Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Party and I am risking being thrown out by saying this but everyone, Labour as well as LibDem voters, should vote tactically against the Tories.

In doing so you are voting positively for PR, social justice, a sensible economy and better public services. Cameron and Osborne's malicious, mendacious incompetence is the last thing the UK needs.

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Graduates: a problem in four parts

Only when students, academics, employers and politicians can agree what university is for will answers emerge

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/students-universityteaching?

Oxzen's comment:

How would it be if universities were places where people of all ages could go in order to pursue their own educational agendas, with a right to be as narrow or as broad in their learning pathways as they see fit? Maybe we could have universities that set out to meet the needs of learners, whatever they might be, with a view to creating a nation of well-balanced, highly intelligent, creative, enlightened and productive individuals who could make creative, enlightened and useful contributions to society? This might even make a refreshing change from generations of narrow, over-specialised and uncreative individuals pursuing self-interest and greed to the exclusion of any other goal in life.

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The end of the affair?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/23/sharon-shoesmith-crisis-child-protection

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Elderly 'should learn martial arts'

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100422/thl-elderly-should-learn-martial-arts-d831572.html


Fighting disciplines such as kung fu, karate and judo involve techniques that can help brittle-boned patients fall more safely, research suggests.

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Album of the Week - Aerial, by Kate Bush

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_%28album%29

http://www.katebush.co.uk/katebush_html/lyrics.html
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Layer 282 . . . Witch Hunts, Balls, Ofsted, The Big Debate and The Big Society

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Another excellent column by Jenni Russell this week -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/13/baby-p-case-good-witch-hunt?

The Baby P inquiry shows witch-hunts still thrive

The pressure was on Ed Balls to serve up a head to the howling crowd – and the public checks to ensure calm utterly failed

The version of events we'd been fed – that the chief responsibility for the tragedy could fairly be laid at the door of one highly incompetent and publicly vilified executive, Sharon Shoesmith – turned out to be frighteningly unreliable.

Instead, we read about pressure on Ofsted to produce the results the secretary of state required, endless rewritings of a supposedly independent report until it did exactly that, and the stunning failure of Ofsted to produce any of the evidence of this happening until the court hearings dealing with it had ended. We can't afford to ignore a sequence of events that suggests how easily the government can manipulate information to suit its purposes, and how responsive public servants can be to political and media demands. They can't be relied upon, on this evidence, to be disinterested searchers after truth and solutions when things go wrong. Some simply want to protect themselves from criticism and find someone to blame.

In response to this, and a comment I posted, 1nn1t posted this excellent piece -

   @Oxzen

We can only remain hopeful that one day people who were involved in or are aware of school inspections where there was collusion between Ofsted and local authority officers to condemn and get rid of particular headteachers will have the courage to come forward with the evidence.

Ofsted has from from the beginning. Remember Islington Green:

    Chris Woodhead, a now-discredited former chief inspector of schools for Ofsted, condemned Islington Green as a "failing school" after ignoring the judgement of senior inspectors.

The leader of Ofsted, now and at the time of the Haringey case, is Christine Gilbert

    Divorced from her first husband, she met then councillor and later government minister Tony McNulty when she was Director of Education for the London Borough of Harrow. The couple married in September 2002 in Hammersmith and Fulham.

In Yorkshire Ofsted is used by LEAs as an attack dog to drive out heads. The story goes like this:

LEA and Head don't get on.

Ofsted starts programme of snap inspections.

LEA institutes agressive discussions of Osted reports.

More snap inspections - easily failed because, eg "the school Safeguarding Policy Document wasn't provided to the Inspectors within x minutes of their requesting it" or "The school has carried out all necessary CRB checks but the information has been stored separately rather than on "a single central record"." or more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7530212/Top-public-schools-fail-new-inspections.html

More agressive discussions. Heads by now suffering from stress.

Head called to meeting with big cheeses in Town Hall. Cheeses propose to Head that he take early retirement on grounds of sickness with pension enhancement.

Conditions of offer by cheeses:

1 Impending retirement not to be mentioned to staff/pupils/parents.

2 Retirement will take effect from this next mid-term Friday afternoon.

3 The 'retiring' head will sign a gagging contract preventing him disclosing anything of the events, circumstances and terms of his sudden departure.

Some heads have refused such offers. They then receive a series of off-the-record chats and phone calls from senior LEA staff pointing out to them the advantages of accepting the 'retirement offer'.

Why, do you imagine, so few teachers any longer wish to become Head Teachers?

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Back to the Election - and the Big Debate

Tonight's the night - the moment political anoraks have been waiting for - the first of the 'debates' between between Brown, Cameron and Clegg, live on ITV.

The Tories are in big trouble, and I think they know it. What's more there's nothing they can do about it. Their brand is what it is.

The further this election goes on, and the more that voters come to realise that Clegg, Cable, Hughes, Ashdown and co are a decent bunch of people with genuine social democratic and liberal instincts, the more that many of these voters will make up their minds to switch their votes from the despised New Labour to the Lib Dems instead of to the other "major" party, with huge consequences for Tory hopes in the marginal and "winnable" seats.

What's more, as the campaign rolls forward, the Green Party and its very able leadership will attract not only protest voters but also those who like what they see in terms of policies that the Labour party should have but forward but in fact haven't.

Voters are not as stupid and as fickle as politicians often think, and the memory of Thatcher will last for more than a generation or two. During the years of the Thatcher ascendency the Tory party congratulated itself on having such a political colossus as their leader - right up to the point when they and everyone else suddenly realised that she was a true nutter who had exposed Toryism in all its true character by smashing the lingering post-war social-democratic consensus, with terrible consequences for British industry and the majority of the working class electorate. John Major, by winning an election, made matters worse for the long-term good of the Tory party and not better, since it was on his watch that the 'bastards' and the sleazeballs of Torydom were thoroughly exposed.

So mark my words - by the time this election takes place the Lib Dem share of the vote will have gone up by around 5% and the Greens by 3%, with the Tories down by 8% on current projections. What's more, the Lib Dems started the last campaign at around 18% and put on 6 percentage points, whereas this time they're starting from 24%. And this time they have the benefit of being the party of Vince Cable, who was virtually the only politician who foresaw the financial crash, and has become the man most voters would like to have as chancellor.

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On the Today programme one of the presenters reminded us of one of the dictums of Groucho Marx - "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them - I have others."

A Hazel Bloody Blears interview was broadcast in which she was asked whether or not it's surprising that people are turned off politics thanks to the expenses scandals, Iraq, etc, - to which she replied, unsurprisingly, in her usual pathetic and useless way, by saying that people feel "excluded" because politicians too often speak in jargon.

So here's someone who's clearly learned a lesson. Her answer to all of this nation's ills is that politicians just have to stop speaking in jargon - and then all will be well again with our political culture.

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Meanwhile, in the Guardian, Marina Hyde's campaign trail has taken her to the launch of the UKIP manifesto:

Kicking off the launch proper, the deputy-leader, David Campbell-Bannerman, promised policies "from animal welfare to pubs" – truly, the full gamut of thinking from Y to Z.

When Farage announced he would be devoting his energies to standing against the speaker, John Bercow, in Buckingham, the party's top job was taken over by former Tory peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the sort of patrician dullard you pray not to be seated next to at dinner.

Before long, it was on to Ukip's proposed ban of the burqa and niqab in public "and some private" buildings. How were they going to enforce that?

"We haven't said private buildings," countered Pearson.

Well you have. It's in your manifesto. "Have we?" his lordship wondered of his more junior colleagues. Doubtless he'll get round to reading the 15-page document in good time.

Tag-teaming Pearson was the more seasoned media hand Nigel Farage, who has an enduring line in misplaced confidence. "I don't want to be rude about the other parties – that's not my style," he smiled knowingly, in the manner of a man who fondly imagines he has a style other than "affable berk".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/general-election-ukip-manifesto-launch

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Simon Hoggart, meanwhile, was at the launch of the Tory manifesto:

DIY government? It's scary

The Tories launched their manifesto in Battersea power station, site of the Pink Floyd album cover with the flying pig.

Finally David Cameron introduced the Conservative manifesto, which is a dark blue hardback and looks like a tombstone. The theme is that the next government can save money by getting people to do the work themselves, whether taking planning decisions, holding elected representatives to account, saving local pubs and post offices, appointing the chief constable, checking wasteful public expenditure online or founding new schools.

"It's about we, the people!" said Mr Cameron, with great conviction and terrible grammar. "We're all in this together. Join us, in forming the next government of Britain."

Gosh, life is going to be busy under the Tories. It's lucky their campaign against waste means there will be mass sackings. Otherwise nobody would have the time to do everything the "Big Society" demands of us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/conservative-manifesto-simon-hoggarts-sketch

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Labour, Tories and Lib Dems clash ahead of key TV debate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/14/general-election-tv-debates-row

Gordon Brown has received a boost on the eve of today's televised leaders' debate after more than 50 economists from around the world signed a letter backing his handling of the economy. The letter, from 58 academics, was organised by Labour, and comes as a response to a letter from business leaders criticising Labour's planned increase in national insurance.

The British signatories include the Labour peers Lords Layard and Peston; the crossbench peer Lord Skidelsky, who is the biographer of John Maynard Keynes; and Sir David Hendry, a fellow of Nuffield College Oxford. They are supporters of a Keynesian stimulus for the economy.

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Gordon Brown admits banks needed more regulation

PM says the government should have been tougher on the banks

Gordon Brown has admitted mistakes in regulating the banks, accusing the City of lobbying against greater scrutiny before the financial crisis plunged Britain into recession.

Brown had previously blamed the scale of the recession mainly on the international financial crisis and the refusal of other countries to agree to tighter international surveillance of the banks.

In an ITV interview due to be broadcast tonight, Brown admits he had been influenced by bankers' lobbying.

"In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation.' ... And all the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much.'

"The truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/gordon-brown-banking-sector-regulation

WFTYS. We fucking told you so!

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Deborah Orr

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/government-govern-affairs-powerful

[Here's] the part missing from David Cameron's vision of a grassroots-up, sober, self-help society. It was not ordinary people who needed the state to keep them in line – fearful authoritarian religious leaders did that. It was the ruling elite, who abused their power without restraint, that made "big government" necessary.

All Britain wants or needs really, is a government that will persuade the powerful that it is right to behave in a manner that is responsible, humane and generous, and help the people who can't help themselves.

We have had 13 years of a government that thought it could do the latter, without doing the former. Come 6 May, we might just end up with a government that is eager to do neither.

'stonepark' commented with this quotation:

"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents.Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.
We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves.When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket,he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property.We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society."

John (Fire) Lame Deer
Sioux Lakota - 1903-1976

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Drunkeness, Violence and Spiritual Intelligence

Also on the Today programme this week was a piece about our culture of drunkeness and violence - and STILL nobody has any answers, other than more crackdowns and "toughness".

How long will it take before people in general and politicians in particular begin to admit that we have to begin at the beginning - with young children in school - helping them to develop emotional intelligence, social intelligence and spiritual intelligence, together with a capacity for lovingkindness, a belief in the value of meditation, and a determination to be non-violent?

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Pope in the Poop

The pope should stand trial

Why is anyone surprised when Christopher Hitchens and I call for the prosecution of the pope? There is a clear case to answer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/13/pope-prosecution-dawkins?

Sexual abuse of children is not unique to the Roman Catholic church, and Joseph Ratzinger is not one of those priests who raped altar boys while in a position of dominance and trust. But as so often it is the subsequent cover-ups, even more than the original crimes, that do most to discredit an institution, and here the pope is in real trouble.

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Layer 217 Chomsky, Hutton, Hyde, Toynbee and One To Avoid.

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A couple of friends have recently said they often read the magazine The Week as a good way to keep up with what's happening in the world. I agree - it's well edited and it gives a clear digest of current events, interesting topics and the best media reports.

In the spirit of The Week here's a mention of some recent pieces in the papers, beginning at the genius end of what's being said:

'US foreign policy is straight out of the mafia'

Noam Chomsky is the west's most prominent critic of US imperialism, yet he is rarely interviewed in the mainstream media. Seumas Milne meets him

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/07/noam-chomsky-us-foreign-policy

Noam Chomsky is the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar. A philosopher of language and political campaigner of towering academic reputation, who as good as invented modern linguistics, he is entertained by presidents, addresses the UN general assembly and commands a mass international audience. When he spoke in London last week, thousands of young people battled for tickets to attend his lectures, followed live on the internet across the globe . . .

Chomsky is America's most prominent critic of the US imperial role in the world, which he has used his erudition and standing to expose and excoriate since Vietnam.

Like the English philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke out against western-backed wars until his death at the age of 97, Chomsky has lent his academic prestige to a relentless campaign against his own country's barbarities abroad – though in contrast to the aristocratic Russell, Chomsky is the child of working class Jewish refugees from Tsarist pogroms. Not surprisingly, he has been repaid with either denunciation or, far more typically, silence.

Chomsky supported Obama's election campaign in swing states, but regards his presidency as representing little more than a "shift back towards the centre" and a striking foreign policy continuity with George Bush's second administration. "The first Bush administration was way off the spectrum, America's prestige sank to a historic low and the people who run the country didn't like that." But he is surprised so many people abroad, especially in the third world, are disappointed at how little Obama has changed. "His campaign rhetoric, hope and change, was entirely vacuous. There was no principled criticism of the Iraq war: he called it a strategic blunder.

The veteran activist has described the US invasion of Afghanistan as "one of the most immoral acts in modern history", which united the jihadist movement around al-Qaida, sharply increased the level of terrorism and was "perfectly irrational – unless the security of the population is not the main priority". Which, of course, Chomsky believes, it is not.

He argues that since government officials first formulated plans for a "grand area" strategy for US global domination in the early 1940s, successive administrations have been guided by a "godfather principle, straight out of the mafia: that defiance cannot be tolerated. It's a major feature of state policy." "Successful defiance" has to be punished, even where it damages business interests, as in the economic blockade of Cuba – in case "the contagion spreads".

He describes himself as an anarchist or libertarian socialist, but often sounds more like a radical liberal – which is perhaps why he enrages more middle-of-the-road American liberals who don't appreciate their views being taken to the logical conclusion.

But for an octogenarian who has been active on the left since the 1930s, Chomsky sounds strikingly upbeat. He's a keen supporter of the wave of progressive change that has swept South America in the past decade ("one of the liberal criticisms of Bush is that he didn't pay enough attention to Latin America – it was the best thing that ever happened to Latin America"). He also believes there are now constraints on imperial power which didn't exist in the past: "They couldn't get away with the kind of chemical warfare and blanket B52 bombing that Kennedy did," in the 1960s. He even has some qualified hopes for the internet as a way around the monopoly of the corporate-dominated media.

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Will Hutton

Discarded mobiles, wire-taps and Mr Bigs. Welcome to Wall Street

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/will-hutton-wall-street-corruption

Imagine The Sopranos, The Wire and Gordon Gekko's Wall Street all rolled into one. You don't have to: the FBI has just broken one of the largest-ever insider dealing rings in Wall Street. It wire-tapped its way into a seedy world of secret tips, kickbacks and disposable, pre-paid mobile phones. A network including staff of New York law firms, hedge funds and share-trading companies, with links extending to top Plcs, investment banks and consultancies has been revealed. Five people have pleaded guilty, while others maintain their innocence.

The reputation of the financial markets is already at rock bottom. The crash, the bailouts and the extravagant bonuses have convinced ordinary Americans as much as us ordinary Brits that morality and fair play are not values much  found in the financial markets. And now there is this.

In 1720, the London stock exchange was a minor casino that represented a fraction of Britain's GDP.  Now, the value of the assets traded outstrips world GDP many, many times. The financial markets and their values have become the most dominant economic force on the planet. They give capitalism its culture. If London and New York financiers are part of a casino that is crooked, only fools and the naive continue to play by the rules.

Financial services now constitute a kind of tax on the real economy as well as distorting its priorities; short-termism and the search for impossibly high returns are rife. The culture, of which systematic insider trading is part, is having a growing impact on business ethics.

Most people in the financial markets start with a working moral compass, but retaining it becomes ever harder. Capitalism had its origins in a Protestant commitment to saving and investment, along with the Enlightenment commitment to truth. Great companies still have a strain of moral purpose; they seek to do something great from which they make profits. Today's financial markets mock such sentiments. Their destructiveness and awesome power goes well beyond the credit crunch. This culture of amorality reaches everywhere . . .

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Marina Hyde

Sit back and await the joy of Simon the singing canary

With its top-class cast and horribly fascinating location there could scarcely be any more to love about the Mann saga

In the supermarket yesterday, I wondered how many enforced bathroom visits Mark Thatcher had rushed to make since hearing the news that the organiser of the failed Equatorial Guinea coup in 2004 had been pardoned – he's out, and he's still singing like an amphetamine-charged canary! – and I almost had to sit down in the canned goods aisle at the gorgeousness of it all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/06/await-joy-simon-singing-canary

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Polly Toynbee

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/10/brown-tax-convert-hard-believe

Brown, a tax convert? Hard to believe, but let's hope so

A Tobin transaction tax would be a bold, sensible, social democratic move – so it's a shock to hear the prime minister backing it

After the crash Brown needed a public reckoning, a time to say: "The world has changed and so have I. Like other leaders and most economists in the boom years I got things wrong. I should have regulated more, not less. Our new industrial policy acknowledges that I relied too much on the financial sector. When the facts change, I change my mind. As everyone should, I learn from experience, and now I see what must be done. Not only was the whole economy unbalanced by the dominance of finance, but the rewards were too unfairly shared in the boom years; we must ensure the pain of these hard times is born by the broadest shoulders."

Without some explanation of his intellectual journey, any change of direction will be seen as the frantic opportunism of a drowning man. Proposing a Tobin tax just doesn't fit the Gordon Brown story. As chancellor he did not conduct a progressive tax policy. He eased tax for the richest, while taxing the middle more.

Brown thought it enough to use the proceeds of tax for progressive purposes, without redistributing tax itself. As a result Britain became less equal, and income and wealth were shared less fairly. Instead of shifting attitudes to appreciate the social value of tax, he colluded with an anti-tax ideology that calls all tax a burden.

That is why his sudden espousal of the Tobin tax looks unconvincing. It doesn't belong in his back story – unless he redefines that story as a journey of rediscovery of lost social democratic tax ideas. Then he might take people with him: because his Tobin tax should be a roof-raising, banker-bashing, debt-defying, public-service-saving, rabble-rouser of a political winner.

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And here's One To Avoid . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/football-education-childhood-school

The touchline timeline

Just as in my childhood, winning or losing together remains a basic lesson on the great field of life

It's Peter Preston, of course, who writes in a lazy little column this week about watching his grandson play football, and has some useless thoughts on . . . nothing really. It's writing for writing's sake. It's what he does. The only explanation for the continuation of his regular column in the Guardian must be that it was part of his retirement package from his editorship of the paper, and essential to maintaining his self-esteem and ego – that his thoughts are still read and appreciated. Well they're not. At least not by anyone with half a brain.

“Here I am, back on the touchline again.

That's one of my grandsons in the centre of the defence . . .

The world of the touchline is frozen in time – and your heart bleeds a little as you sample it again.

Ahhhh . . .Still the bleeding heart liberal, then?

The real fields of dreams have no stands, no roaring crowds – just a few dozen kids, with dads and mums doing their stuff . . . somehow showing they care.

And Peter really cares! So Pete – What is point? (I really miss the Paul Whitehouse character in Down The Line.) We're back on one of Pete's old favourites, of course - smack the teacher. All teachers. Cos they're all the same really, are they not? The regular common or garden State school variety of teacher, that is.

Earnest teachers – invoking the policies of two decades ago that saw school playing fields sold off to supermarkets and competitive games shunned because they involved losing as well as winning – will wince over even a trickle of testosterone. Some 72% of kids on the latest government research don't get a regular chance at teamwork, 81% will never play anything against another school. Yoga and juggling are much in individual vogue.

Well we all know how useless yoga is! Never catch Pete and his pals doing any bloody yoga. Or their grandchildren, if he's got any say in it.

But the central pitch of existence still teaches many useful things. It shows you in a trice who's good and who never can be better than mediocre.

Does it? Once a crap footballer, always a crap footballer? Here's a man who always thinks in absolutes – you're either 'good' or 'bad', or 'never better than mediocre'. At anything, presumably.

Does it hurt, though, to know early on that you're an also-ran, that you'll never have the X factor that brings riches and renown in train?

No, not really, because that isn't the true point whenever little lads trot out to show what they can do; because being part of something is a quite different feeling; because winning or losing together, whatever teacher says, is one of the basic lessons for those on the great field of life – and for those strung out, shouting, clapping, cheering, above all involved, along its eternal touchlines.

Where to start with this bullshit? They're not 'trotting out' to 'show what they can do'. They're on the pitch to enjoy a game of football. Ideally they don't need to show anyone anything. Not even their grumpy old grandparents, or their over-ambitious parents.

Here's a man who perhaps wasn't able to amass what most people in his circle would call riches, but who was always chasing 'renown'. So clearly he had to have some kind of X factor to become a successful journalist and an editor of a newspaper, and so clearly Pete can't be considered an 'also-ran'. Whereas in reality he's just a pathetic has-been, except maybe in the kind of social circles where grumpy old men are the norm, and flailing around with reactionary and badly-informed opinions gets you some sort of status and 'renown'.

As a young teacher I used to spend at least one weekday after-school session per week and every Saturday morning coaching the school football team and taking them to matches. Brother J and I did it together, and he was always hugely enthusiastic, come rain or shine. In the summer we did cricket.

Preston doesn't realise – why would he? - that all over the country there are still lots of teachers who do these things, in spite of the fact that the demands on teachers are now massive in terms of preparation, marking, assessment,  record keeping, staff meetings, on the job training, curriculum leadership, professional reading & correspondence, and assorted meetings with colleagues, parents, etc. And how could anyone even suggest that teachers should feel obliged to involve themselves in sports (or any other extra-curricular activity such as drama, music and singing) when they're already working in the evenings and weekends at keeping up with their regular workloads? Work-life balance is a joke when you're just doing your regular job as a teacher.

What a lot of schools do nowadays, and what my old school still does, is employ specialist coaches to work with children on various sports – football, basketball, netball, tennis, cricket, volleyball, etc. Of course Preston knows nothing about any of this. “Wince over even a trickle of testosterone” indeed.

The man's a total ignoramus. Testosterone Pete. Not least because he's still stuck with the myth that because a few misguided teachers in a few places did make some waves about not liking competitive games, and argued the case for involving more children in collaborative rather than competitive games, that this somehow represented all teachers.

And it certainly wasn't the teachers that sold off school sports grounds. Of course you can't expect Fleet Street Pete to know any of this. He's the original Private Eye Lunchtime O'Booze, or one of them. At least that's what he shounds like these days. He's shurely got to go. Bleating into his cups about his childhood polio and his land of lost content.

In a way I feel bad about being so critical of someone who's so pitiful, but what the hell – he started it! He shouldn't talk such shit about subjects he knows nothing about. He should show some more respect  to teachers and to people who do more for kids than he's ever done. And it's not like he's going to read this blog anyway.

The truth is that if  “72% of kids on the latest government research don't get a regular chance at teamwork” then it's because of people like P Preston esq, who have beaten on about “the standards agenda” and raising test scores to the exclusion of practically all else. These days there are probably more kids in after-school “booster classes” learning how to perform tricks for academic tests than kids doing after-school sports, thanks to the fear of ruthless reactionaries like Preston and his gang who see life only in terms of successes, failures and also-rans; who think that getting to Oxbridge etc is the be-all and end-all, who think there's “no excuse for failure”.

And then they bleat on about the benefits of learning about collaboration and not getting “regular chances at teamwork”. That's right Mr Preston – make education and the learning process as individualistic and competitive as you possibly can and then rue the fact that kids don't develop social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, which is precisely what this “teamwork” amounts to.

Thank goodness there are some good teachers who see the benefits of allowing their pupils to actually learn collaboratively and don't rely on competitive team sports to develop these other vital intelligences. Roll on the day when we all realise that the gaining and expanding of human knowledge is best done as a collaborative effort, and one in which everyone can and should participate, whether or not we are intellectually gifted and academically  talented.
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Layer 175 Return to Base, Nihilistic Despair, The Alpajarras, Jeem, Jamming, and Healthy Living.

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Trying to get your head around what's happening in the world when you've just spent two weeks off the planet is a bit like trying to open a memory-intensive word processor on your computer when you only have 5 megabytes of RAM available. There's just too much information needing to be uploaded, assimilated and processed, with far too little processing power on tap.

It's very tempting to just switch off, close the curtains and stay ignorant.

What's happening in politics on these sad little islands was pretty well summed up by Marina Hyde in her usual excellent column in the Guardian on Saturday:

A new politics? Let's revert to a state of nihilistic despair

Do you remember "A new politics"? It was that turn-of-last-month movement for restoring faith in the way in which we are governed. It sort of coincided with the vague tetchiness that capitalists had just blown up capitalism and the plebs were expected to foot the bill.

Once upon a time – June, basically – a series of scandals made it voguish to go around saying that not only ought the public to be exempted from funding lavish accommodation for MPs' ducks, but that the whole rotten system needed reform. Even some members of parliament themselves were saying it. Honestly, they really were.

She goes on to describe a typical debate in parliament:

You need hardly be told that the debate played out to a typically underpopulated chamber, or that government engagement tended toward the half-hearted. Indeed, one had the overwhelming sense that the home secretary really just couldn't be done with the hassle, and anyway the argument was way over his head. "I accept that I am not a lawyer," Alan Johnson declared blithely. "I am a hack politician. I go by the advice I get."

This man is home secretary. It's all very well for call-centre operatives and Little Britain characters to drone "Computer says no" at the public, but when you hold one of the great offices of state, and are in charge of an annual budget of £10bn, it does make you look a bit of a spanner. Can you imagine Roy Jenkins addressing the house during the debate on capital punishment with the words: "Don't look at me, luv, I just work here"?

Wednesday's "debate" . . . seemed to crystallise so much of what repulses the electorate about their representatives. The secretary of state . . . seemed to wear staggering incompetence as a badge of honour.

This pretty much sums up what I've come to understand about how our governance works – politicians (i.e. 'our' representatives) at both local authority level and nationally have no wit, no imagination, no wisdom, no experience of real life, no guiding philosophy or ideology, no level of enlightenment whatsoever. All they do is put their signatures on documents drafted by bureaucrats who have no wit, no imagination, no wisdom, etc, etc.

Marina then quotes from a letter written by the appalling Denis MacShane MP (nee Denis Matyjaszek):

“The Commons will survive this scandal as it survived earlier scandals ... The great historian Macaulay wrote that there was nothing 'so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality'. The British public is in one of its fits of morality right now but this will pass."
Do excuse our ridiculousness, Denis. We are now back in our state of nihilistic despair, and you will find that rather less of a caprice.

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I suppose we have to give honest broker Alan Johnson at least a little credit for his admission that he's just a hack politician who has no particular expertise or even any critical faculties - who just does what he's told by his 'experts'.

Read here what Wikipedia has to say about 'MacShane', his record as a parliamentarian, and his expenses claims:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_MacShane

This ridiculous shithead wrote a column in the Guardian last Thursday in which he actually advocated Tony Blair as the first 'president' of the European Union. It's like he's living in a parallel universe, let alone on another planet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/16/tony-blair-eu-president

A realistic assessment of Blair's suitability for the post is given in a column by John Palmer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/15/tony-blair-european-president-labour

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Since returning to base I've been catching up with some spiritually refreshing music, and thanks to Spotify have been listening to the entire output of the divine Webb Sisters. Out of curiosity I also tried “Webb Sisters Radio”on last.fm, which is a curious Internet vehicle for listening to music. This is an outfit that started life in Shoreditch, whose aim seems to be to feed you music that's supposedly similar to the artists you actually enjoy. All I can say is that the solo female singers they send to your computer – supposedly lyrical, melodic, original, etc; supposedly similar to the Webb Sisters – just highlight the sheer brilliance of the Webb Sisters themselves, whose work is outstanding in every way: vocally, lyrically and musically.

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Last week I met a guy called Jeem who plays the piano accordion. He's tall and thin, has long hair and a crazy kind of Dali moustache.

He was playing in a little square outside a cafe called El Tilo, in a village called Capileira, up in the Alpujarra mountains, which lie next to the Sierra Nevadas.

He was playing some Spanish tunes, and I sat down and started to video him. He then switched to playing a great arrangement of “Season of the Witch”, which he also sang. Sitting on the terrace of Bar El Tilo (the lime tree) we were treated to a range of different styles and tunes, including some 12 bar blues.

At the end of his ‘set’ the people in the cafe gave Jeem a good round of applause. He then came round with a hat and collected cash from the customers.

It turned out he’s from Arizona, having been brought up initially in Chicago. He decided to leave the US 17 years ago, feeling disgusted at the turn to the Right the country had made under Reagan and Bush The First.

He now spends his time travelling by bus between places in the mountains and places on the coast, playing in squares and markets and streets, spreading the happiness.

He said he’d loved Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’ from the first time he’d heard it, way back in the sixties. I said his version sounded a lot like the one recorded by Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll, which he’d apparently never heard.

(Type “Season of the Witch” into the search box on Spotify and you can hear about 10 different versions. I still love Brian Auger's Hammond instrumental.)

He said he’d started playing the accordion when he was 6 years old, though it seems unlikely he could even have picked up a full-sized piano accordion at that age.

Jeem’s the kind of guy who really appeals to me – laid back, laconic, talented, humorous, thoughtful and idealistic. It feels good to be around people like that, as they go around raising spirits.

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We bumped into him again later that day, sitting on a bench, his accordion in its case beside him, plus his folded stool. He chatted some more about his musical influences, and how he intends to learn to play in the classical French accordion style of Bal Musette. I’d have liked to have chatted more, and listened some more, but the hour was getting late.

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The Alpajarras are definitely my kind of mountains – high, but not too high; lush and warm and accessible. The kind of mountains with well-established paths that enable you to walk up to the tops and the ridges, and not have to scramble or rock-climb.

It would be good to go back there next year, rent a room somewhere, and spend several days, maybe even a month, exploring the region on foot. I'd also like to get back to Granada and the Alhambra, and get to know those places better. Learning some Spanish would be a good idea as well.

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Jeem talked about hanging out with other musicians and having jams that go on late into the night. The ability to play an instrument and jam with others is an absolute gift. It's too late now for my kids, but I'll try to make sure my grandchildren get hold of instruments at an early age and learn to play them.

Imagine a world in which every home, and every market and square in every village, town and city was enlivened by live music. How great would that be? Instead we buy our kids TVs, DVDs, Playstations and Wiis. These things have their place, but their very ease of use takes up time and opportunity that could be put to much better use.

The only public singing that takes place spontaneously in Britain is when drunk people and/or sports spectators lose their inhibitions and let rip with cacophonies worse than frustrated cats and dogs.

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This was the first time in ages I've been in Spain during the summer months, and the first time I've paid some attention to the way the Spanish people use the beaches as places to gather at weekends and after work.

I guess it's similar to the other places around the world that enjoy 'Mediterranean' types of climate – places like Australia, California and Brazil, where descendants of the original colonists get together by the sea and hang out in the same fashion as their European forebears have done for centuries – informally and joyfully soaking up the power of the sun in beautiful places where whole communities can meet and mingle.

Last week, down at the little bay, there were still more than 30 cars parked each evening till just before sundown, with at least 60 – 80 people scattered along the shoreline enjoying the sun, the sea and one another. Some had barbeques and little fires, with fish and meat grilling on little sticks pushed in the ground. Others would head off to eat in bars, cafes and homes. There's a deep simplicity, enjoyment and relaxation in such a social lifestyle. Being able to sit on beaches and terraces in the open air and to eat and drink every day al fresco has such huge benefits.

Back in London, these days, smokers in particular like to sit at tables in the streets. But let's be honest – what is point? In coats. Near traffic. Polluted. Noisy. Sucking poison into lungs.
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Layer 121 A Series of Gaffes; Bankers and MPs in the Dock.

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This should have been posted yesterday.

Being a full-time carer (for son and dog) and keeping up with reading and TV viewing about the appalling things happening currently leaves precious little time for journal writing. Makes me feel nostalgic for quieter and less momentous times when it seemed easier to focus on pleasanter and more enjoyable events.

Nevertheless there are lighter moments in the day, like this morning listening to veteran star of radio comedy Clement Freud on the Today programme, discussing ‘old age’ - “At 84 your memory begins to go . . . a bit . . . and also . . . at 84 . . . your memory . . . begins to go . . . a bit.”

Other good chuckles include hearing that Prince Harry is being sent on an ‘Equalities Course’ “after a series of gaffes”. Also hearing that (following the rows about the bankers’ greed and incompetence completely collapsing the economy and ruining our financial system) “there’s now concern that ‘quality bankers’ won’t now come forward to sit on supervisory boards.” God help us.

And why indeed should they want to do us any favours (leaving aside the fact that the bastards get paid shedloads for doing it) when the rest of us want to see them hanging from lampposts? I’m right in saying that, aren’t I? Is there anyone who doesn’t want to see bankers hanging from lampposts?

And can you even imagine Harry sitting there studiously on his equalities course, taking in the idea that all people are created equal and deserve equal opportunities, respect, blah, blah . . . ?

HEL-LO? This is a fucking PRINCE we’re talking about! Who voted for him? The very epitome of elitism, inequality and privilege!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/13/prince-harry-racist-comments

So what else is worth recording and celebrating? Marina Hyde wrote a very witty piece in the sports section this week, remarking on the fact that this year the football transfer window deadline was on Groundhog Day.

She focused on Sky Sports News’ “clone army of deadline-day reporters . . . getting snowed on outside Andrei Arshavin’s burrow . . . informing viewers whether or not Punxsutawney Phil Scolari had seen his shadow and thought there might be another six weeks in this for him”. (There wasn’t)

Remember the moment where Bill Murray narrows his eyes at the camera and drawls: "This is one time when television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather"? That's the kind of sarcasm-dripping bitterness I'd have liked to see from Sky's David Craig, stationed outside St James' Park. "This is the one time when television really fails to capture the true excitement of a possible Ryan Taylor move to Newcastle."

A personal favourite moment was their parading of a kid who obligingly told the cameras something along the lines of "it's brilliant – you just watch Sky Sports News all day and you never miss a single thing". It's a living, my son. But it's not a life. Still, I hope he got his tenner and went out and enjoyed the snow.

As the day wore on, though, I couldn't help feeling that the joke might be on us, we cynics who decline to celebrate the transfer window deadline day for the charming spectacle that it really is – the moment we mark the end of a month originally designed to get people to behave decently, but which swiftly became a licence for them to behave like absolute shysters from around mid-November.

Perhaps it is we who deserve to be woken by the alarm each morning, only to switch on Sky Sports News and discover that it is still deadline day, and will always be, until we somehow manage to transcend the experience. Because the lesson of Groundhog Day – and the reason it has been praised by Buddhist teachers, among others – is that a wretched experience will repeat itself until you stop trying to take petty advantage of it. Only when you resolve to be better will you transcend it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/feb/05/groundhog-day-offers-solution-to-transfer-window

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But there’s no getting away from the main issues of the week, which are still the bankers, the bonuses, the corruption, the City, Wall Street and the financial crisis (credit crunch!!!) in general.

The pithiest and funniest comment on it was on today’s Daily Show, from the brilliant Jon Stewart, naturally:

“Wall Street didn’t like the particulars of the latest trillion dollar bailout? Wall Street doesn’t seem to understand the particulars of the rescuer/rescuee relationship! They’re like someone complaining about not getting a window seat on the rescue boat! What the fuck were you doing in the water in the first place!?”

Trudging through the rain in town yesterday I was handed copies of thelondonpaper and London Lite, groovy free sheets full of first class journalism and fascinating facts and opinions.

Thelondonpaper headline - Revenge of the Whistleblower: Brown Adviser Quits Over Sacking of HBOS Banker (i.e. sacking of the bank’s ‘head of risk’, who’d pointed out that HBOS was making far too many dangerous investments)

London Lite headline - PM’s Aide Quits Over Bank Row: Regulator Goes After Whistleblower Speaks Out. “Gordon Brown’s favourite City regulator was forced to quit today amid claims that he sacked a whistleblower. Sir James Crosby was handpicked by Mr Brown to become the deputy head of the FSA, the City watchdog.”

Clearly Mr Brown is in deep shit.

The Guardian’s editorial yesterday focused on the appearance of the bankers, the former head honchos, in front of the Treasury select committee.

“They dutifully mouthed their apologies, just as the PR men had said they must. On cross-examination, the admission of culpability turned out to be less than it had appeared. The former HBOS chair, Dennis Stevenson, clarified that they were sorry "for what happened to their businesses", namely the drying up of global money markets. He might as well have expressed remorse for the foul February weather.

The committee heard allegations that an employee who had blown the whistle over risk had been fired for his pains by one-time HBOS chief and Gordon Brown associate Sir James Crosby. This reinforced the sense that hubris had sown the seeds of nemesis. That hubris should have been the focus of remorse yesterday.

Sorry may be the hardest word, but it was not the only thing the guilty men found it tough to say. They agreed there was an "interesting debate" around remuneration, but none accepted that their own outsize pay packets were connected to the poor decisions they had made.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/11/bankers-sorry-leader

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It’s worth reading the whole of that editorial, but everyone MUST read Simon Jenkins’ brilliant opinion piece - “The banker show trail is in vain. Put MPs in the dock.”

Yesterday's show trial of bankers in the House of Commons was a waste of urgent time. It was an exercise in apologetic hindsight conducted, so it seemed, almost entirely in Scottish.

Extracting parliament's favourite word, sorry, was predictably easy, and meaningless. Anyone can say sorry.

What we await is the remotest idea as to why bankers, or the institutions they represent, should still be trusted with rescuing the British economy from recession.

At this point a banker has no profession, let alone a role as a national hero.

The money has gone into relieving balance sheets coated in red. It is throwing good money after bad, otherwise known as madness.

Giving it to already failed institutions in such a way that they were sure to cause it to vanish was plain stupid.

The banks should have been taken into temporary public ownership, their deposits protected by the state and their commercial lending ring-fenced with public money. It happens in war. It is not that difficult.

Just as Labour opposed privatisation when it was needed, so now it opposes nationalisation when it is needed. Its ideological knickers are in a total twist. Some ministers were allegedly persuaded by officials (and journalists) that they should not "play banker". It is hard to see what else they were playing when they were devoting such huge sums of public money to bank subsidies. Why give the money if not for some public purpose?

Unless banks are nationalised and directed, and financial institutions can channel public money into credit, these sums will just vanish into balance sheets.

The show trial that should be staged is not of bankers or journalists but of ministers, who have now blown £200bn of public money on a massively failed strategy for staving off recession – indeed on making it worse. Because ministers are from the same club as MPs, they are let off lightly. There will be no show trial of the chancellor.

The truth is that if anyone has slept through this sorry affair, it has been parliament. If I were the second team of bankers appearing before the Commons today, I would take a large mirror into the room and hold it up in the face of the committee. Let them see themselves in the dock for once.

What were they doing as the economy lurched to war? Perhaps they might say sorry too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/recession-bankofenglandgovernor
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Layer 89 “Excellence is a useful reference point.”

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Watching Obama’s first press conference since the election, live on CNN yesterday, was an experience. Instead of just walking on like the big cheese and standing alone at the lectern, he first of all sent out his new team, who arranged themselves across the back of the stage like some dark-suited choir. How clever is that? Firstly - here’s the whole group of people who are going to be running this country quite soon, and secondly, here am I, their spokesperson and leader, certainly, but also a team player.

He invited questions from the gathering by calling out the names of the journalists, first names only. (I KNOW who these people are. I’m on first-name terms with them.)

He was low key, serious, kept to the point, didn’t over-elaborate, didn’t waffle, didn’t sloganise or patronise. He kept it short, and he left swiftly and without ceremony, pausing only to say, “Bonjour” to a French journo who threw a parting question at him. Or was that a French/Canadian pranker?

Was he looking tired, finally, or was he feeling unwell? Both, maybe.

There’s some excellent writing in the Guardian today:

By Marina Hyde (A bad week for the cause of banality and witless snidery -
Obama's extraordinary oratory made us feel less jaded, and less willing to humour those who made us jaded in the first place
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/08/barack-obama-usa)

By Jonathan Raban ( 'He tried his best to veil it, but Obama is an intellectual'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/08/obama-race-democrats-us-elections?commentpage=2)

And by Polly Toynbee ( ‘Barack could teach Brown to say boo to the goose -
Obama has broken the spell that says centre-left parties threatening to tax the rich are inevitably dead in the water http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/08/obama-brown-glenrothes-labour )

Each of these articles also generated a huge amount of responses in Comment Is Free, which are worth taking the time to read, even when they’re written by saddos, cynics and frustrated rightists. What it is to have this huge, virtual meeting going on with the possibility of re-reading what each individual is trying to get across.

Marina Hyde said,

As they watched Barack Obama's inspiring acceptance speech this week, one wonders how many politicians, and even ex-politicians, experienced a . . . sobering, gut-sinking sense if not of their own inadequacy in the face of the gold standard, then at least of the manner in which the public discourse has been allowed to bump along at the level of the banal and unedifying for what suddenly seems so long.

Obama's extraordinary oratory this week made people feel less jaded, but simultaneously less willing to humour those who had made them feel so jaded in the first place. Many will have smarted anew at the terrible squandering of New Labour's mandate in 1997, sensing that the president-elect realises there are rather more pressing things to do than organise cocktail parties for pop stars; or, to use a more up to date example, that there are nobler ways to spend one's time than messing about on oligarchs' boats.

This week people were reminded of what an inspiring politician sounds like, and how he carries himself. Excellence is a useful reference point. While that memory remains fresh in the public mind, people will be measuring their own leaders against it - the very leaders now seeking to be Obama's best friend.

Jonathan Raban said,

Inevitably, Wednesday's headlines were all about Obama's skin colour and the historic milestone of the first black presidency. For the United States and the rest of the world, that is a fact of huge symbolic importance, but it is the least of Obama's true credentials. What America has succeeded in doing, against all the odds, and why we cried when it happened, is to elect the most intelligent, canny and imaginative candidate to the presidential office in modern times - someone who'll bring to the White House an extraordinary clarity of thought and temperate judgment.

Much of the nightmare of the last eight years has arisen from the fact that one of the least intellectually curious or gifted presidents in history was in thrall to a group of passionate, but second-rate, neoconservative intellectuals, all associated with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose imperial agenda for the US was lost on the man they guided and advised.

The 43rd president . . . prided himself in reading no newspapers and being in bed by nine. While Bush was bicycling and cutting brush at his Crawford ranch in Texas, the intellectuals in his administration were staying up late in DC, busy about the task of reshaping the United States into the Roman Empire of the 21st century.

Heaven knows, (Obama) will need all the intelligence and range of viewpoints he can muster to cope with the toxic legacy he inherits from the 43rd president: the mounting turmoil in Afghanistan, the dangerous, simmering cauldron in Iraq; an America cordially loathed by at least half the world; an impending global economic catastrophe, triggered by the lunatic improvidence of deregulated Wall Street. Not since Lincoln and Roosevelt has an incoming president been landed with an America in such desperate need of rehabilitation and repair, and it was no surprise that, in his Chicago victory speech on Tuesday, Obama conjured the ghosts of those two presidents.

On Tuesday, there was a strong echo of Roosevelt's first inaugural speech when Obama said, "I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree."

After eight years of an administration whose hallmarks have been secrecy, dishonesty, and a refusal to listen to any voice outside its own inner circle, this promise of candour and conversation was probably the most important policy statement that he could make as president-elect.

The best thing about living in the United States since Tuesday has been the gilt-edged assurance that, somewhere out there, very smart people are thinking and talking in a serious conversation from which narrow ideologues have been rigorously excluded.

Polly Toynbee said,

To the centre-left Obama sets a remarkable challenge, especially to the Labour government. He has changed everything: triangulation is dead; saying what you mean and meaning what you say has won the day for progressive values, with no feinting to the right. Can Gordon Brown grasp how many of the old rules Obama has broken?

Here is an American president - repeat, an American president - elected on a platform well to the left of Labour's. Obama is pledged to take 10 million of the lowest paid out of taxation, paid for by higher taxes on earners of above $250,000. Brown has never permitted even the whisper of a suggestion of taxing the rich more fairly. He never castigated the greedy in the years of plenty when they needed to hear it

Obama won the day when he said: "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." However often John McCain and Sarah Palin replayed the phrase, calling it socialism, the spirit of fairness resonated with voters.

Obama talked openly about obscene pay at the top: "You can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street." He said: "The last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else." Can you imagine Brown ever saying this? "Our free market was never meant to be a free licence to take whatever you can get, however you can get it." Obama promises a windfall on energy companies too.

Beyond that, he lays into tax avoiders. "There's a building in the Cayman Islands that houses supposedly 12,000 US-based corporations. That's either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax scam in the world." He promises to close the loopholes and "restore fairness to our tax code". So who rules the Caymans? We do. Who controls more tax havens than any other nation in the world? We do. Let's hope Obama now forces us to shut them all down. Much of the £28bn missing in uncollected UK taxes leaks out here - and 11 years into a Labour government, our tax havens remain untouched.

So will Gordon Brown get the deep message of the Obama win? Stop being afraid of your own shadow. Say what you think. On gross greed and excess, the people are far ahead of the politicians, as they are on the behaviour of banks. Yesterday, prodded by the public outrage (or maybe by the Mail's "Shame of the banks" front page), Alistair Darling summoned the bankers in and made each of them round the table say, one by one, what they would do to cut their lending rates - and they did. Labour is learning to say boo to the goose.

Now it's time to abolish bonuses, ending the phoney "performance related" culture that brought the world economy to its knees. There is no research evidence for its effectiveness: it simply inflates excess. Clean up corporate culture; stop fleecing shareholders with outrageous pay and executive expense account extravagance with money stolen from our pension funds. A time of austerity, where millions suffer greatly and permanently in lost jobs, homes and businesses, demands political leadership that echoes the indignation on the streets. Obama did just that.

America always amazes, and we usually follow on - sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Blair made the terrible mistake of following the lead of the very worst of all US presidents. The question now is whether Brown can breathe in the message from one who may prove to be among the very best.
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