.
"Good evening! We're expecting disturbances in many parts of the UK this week."
So said Richard the Met Office weatherman, at 1.00am this morning. Tongue in cheek? Surely not.
Thank you Richard. You're not wrong either.
But as Bob Dylan said, back in the Sixties - you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
All evening and all night long there's been chaos and violence on the streets of London. Yesterday it was Enfield. The night before Tottenham. Last night there was anarchy in Hackney, Camden, Southwark, Lewisham, Clapham, Brixton, Woolwich, Ealing . . . and Croydon. Yes, Croydon. Several shops and other premises ablaze.
Buildings set alight, barricades erected, mobs roaming the streets - looting shops and attacking inadequate deployments of riot police.
Many of us expected this to happen last summer, and when it didn't we began to wonder just what it would take to provoke public anger and riots in this country. MPs stealing public money? Bankers' salaries and bonuses? Unemployment? Falling incomes? Rising prices? Student fees? Deep cuts to public services? Hacking scandals? Police corruption?
Well now we know. A squad of armed police surrounded a suspect and blew his brains out with handguns. The police claimed the guy had shot at them. A police officer apparently claimed that the radio clipped to his chest had saved his life by deflecting a bullet. A day later it turned out that the bullet in question was of a type that's used by the police . . .
On Saturday the family and friends of the dead man organised a peaceful protest and a demonstration outside Tottenham police station. It took four hours for the police to see them. (Were they invisible?) Somehow the demo turned into a riot . . .
On Sunday morning Nick Cohen's column in the Observer had this headline -
No Riots in Britian. Just quiet, ever-deeper anxiety.
Hmmmmmmm
What we are witnessing in this recession is not abrupt catastrophe but the slow erosion of the hopes and aspirations of so many
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/07/nick-cohen-recession-misery
'When will there be riots?" eager journalists ask thinktanks, sociologists and anyone else who monitors Britain's unravelling social fabric. "When are the British going to imitate the Greeks and the Spanish and snap?"
On the face of it, their questions are reasonable. Contrary to the predictions of nearly every expert, inflation roared ahead of wage increases after the crash of 2008, squeezing the living standards of all but the most fortunate harder than at any time since the 1920s. The asinine George Osborne tightened the vice further by raising VAT in the middle of an outbreak of stagflation. Meanwhile his coalition's austerity programme is ensuring that public services will begin a long slow decline into shabby inefficiency, as public-sector workers start to lose their jobs en masse. Working- and middle-class families have already lost tax credits. The poor have already lost benefits.
To cap it all, the distribution of the pain is so monumentally unjust it cries to high heaven for a reaction. The banking crisis and the flooding of the market with easy credit were the City's follies.
But it is not London and the south-east which are suffering but the Britain north and west of the line from Severn to the Wash. [????] While the state bailed out the City so the bars could carry on heaving and the banks could carry on delivering fantastic rewards to their "stars", it has allowed the provinces to sink.
So complete has been the capture of the coalition by the moneyed interest that Osborne says in all seriousness that the one fiscal measure he simply must have at any price is not the relief of poverty or an easing of the burden on middle England, but a tax cut for the wealthiest 1% of earners.
These arrant insults ought to push the most mild-mannered people into revolt. Yet in Britain they provoke only students to riot. The wider public remains resigned rather than enraged; indifferent rather than incandescent.
[Not any more. Oh no, not any more.]
If insecurity continues to grow, our old assumptions will have to change. Imagine that Margaret Thatcher had died before the crash. Even her toughest critics would have had to accept that many of her reforms had succeeded and she had allowed the private sector to flourish. Now the world she left us has fallen apart, and her deregulation of finance in particular seems like a ruinous blunder. . . Now that the financial system Labour relied on to provide the tax revenues for social reform has crashed, the centre-left's old maps are useless as well.
Thatcher's Enterprise Society and Blair's Cool Britannia are lost worlds The promises both parties offered to those who "worked hard and played by the rules" of rising living standards, a secure retirement and a better life for their children sound empty. Millions are living thwarted lives of quiet desperation, and cannot see a way to escape them.
..................................................
This morning John McDonnell MP said this -
Reaping what has been sown over 3 decades of creating grotesquely unequal society,with alienated young copying ethos of looting bankers.
Many people will question his rhetoric - since it was all quite legal for the bankers to do what they did. But the point is that morally and ethically the bankers behaved, and are still being allowed to behave, like fucking gangsters. Their so-called financial 'products' were always designed to be toxic - to the poor sods who became victims of mis-selling, and the rest of us who still suffer from the consequences of the derivatives, the mis-selling, the sub-prime mortgages, etc.
Imagine if the law was changed to make it legal to go out and carry out smash and grab raids, loot shops, break into homes and torch businesses. Well that's what happened when banking and finance was "deregulated" by Thatcher. We used to have laws that prevented banks and financiers from doing what they've done to individuals, communities and the economy in general. Those laws were abolished. We live with the consequences - and what's happening on the streets is one of the consequences. Either you believe that or you don't. Make up your minds time. There's no grey area in this argument. No walls to sit on. Not any more.
We await Cameron's next statement, now that he's back from his holiday, now that he's back in charge, with great interest.
It was interesting to see Clegg on TV yesterday - our Acting Prime Minister! Now there's a young man who had completely lost his bottle, as well as the plot. Not that he ever had a plot, or any bottle.
It's worth having a look at John McConnell's Twitter this morning: http://twitter.com/#!/johnmcdonnellMP . He's a proper politician who's been consistent in his approach to political and financial issues. Compare him with the publicity-crazed Dianne Abbot, whose wisdom extends to popping up on Sky and BBC 24 to demand curfews. What next Dianne - call in the army?
What we actually need is people on the streets showing the way with peaceful protests - following the example of people in Cairo - reclaiming their city from the political thugs and their followers, reclaiming it from the rioters, determined to have non-violent change and a better, fairer, more democratic society.
...............................................
What's intriguing me is what will happen next - since I'm old enough to remember the Watts riots in Los Angeles, and the fact that everything just went back to 'normal' after the fires had burned out and the politicians simply condemned the whole thing as mere criminality.
The difference this time around is the Internet - citizen journalism, chat rooms, blogging, twittering, discussion forums and so on - none of them under the direct control of the mainstream media, business, politicians, etc. This time there's the opportunity to take things a step further and higher - to reflect online, to analyse, to reason, to exchange opinions with non-establshment thinkers and reporters. This is not a time for bullshit, complacency, or going backwards.
And it's not a time for simply increasing the power of the police state. This is what was established in Cairo. There ARE limits to state power. There ARE limits to people's tolerance, inertia, fear, indifference and unwillingness to protest and demand justice.
.
Showing posts with label Nick Cohen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick Cohen. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Layer 450 . . . Class War, Economic Fundamentalists, The City's Mafiosi, Pambazuka, Changing the World and Blessed Unrest
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It seemed strange to be blogging about the competing economic theories of Keynes and Friedman recently (Layer 447) - as if anyone's really interested? However, Michael Tomasky wrote this piece for the Guardian last week -
...............................
......................................
Pambazuka News
http://pambazuka.org/en/
Egypt and the revolution in our minds
by Nigel C. Gibson - activist and scholar
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/70972
Egypt: How to overthrow a dictator
by Samir Amin
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/71173
.............................................
How to Change the World: Marx and Marxism 1840-2011 by Eric Hobsbawm
[Review in the LRB by Terry Eagleton]
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/terry-eagleton/indomitable
How to Change the World is the work of a man who has reached an age at which most of us would be happy to be able to raise ourselves from our armchairs without the aid of three nurses and a hoist, let alone carry out historical research. It will surely not be the last volume we shall be granted by this indomitable spirit.
Eric Hobsbawm, who was born in the year of the Bolshevik revolution, remains broadly committed to the Marxist camp – a fact worth mentioning as it would be easy to read this book without realising it. This is because of its judiciousness, not its shiftiness. Its author has lived through so much of the political turbulence he portrays that it is easy to fantasise that History itself is speaking here, in its wry, all-seeing, dispassionate wisdom. It is hard to think of a critic of Marxism who can address his or her own beliefs with such honesty and equipoise.
You cannot speak of what free men and women are bound to do in certain circumstances, since if they are bound to do it they are not free. Capitalism may be teetering on the verge of ruin, but it may not be socialism that replaces it. It may be fascism, or barbarism. Hobsbawm reminds us of a small but significant phrase in The Communist Manifesto which has been well-nigh universally overlooked: capitalism, Marx writes ominously, might end ‘in the common ruin of the contending classes’. It is not out of the question that the only socialism we shall witness is one that we shall be forced into by material circumstance after a nuclear or ecological catastrophe. Like other 19th-century believers in progress, Marx did not foresee the possibility of the human race growing so technologically ingenious that it ends up wiping itself out. This is one of several ways in which socialism is not historically inevitable, and neither is anything else. Nor did Marx live to see how social democracy might buy off revolutionary passion.
Marx was an artist of sorts. It is often forgotten how staggeringly well read he was, and what painstaking labour he invested in the literary style of his works. He was eager, he remarked, to get shot of the ‘economic crap’ of Capital and get down to his big book on Balzac. Marxism is about leisure, not labour. It is a project that should be eagerly supported by all those who dislike having to work. It holds that the most precious activities are those done simply for the hell of it, and that art is in this sense the paradigm of authentic human activity. It also holds that the material resources that would make such a society possible already exist in principle, but are generated in a way that compels the great majority to work as hard as our Neolithic ancestors did. We have thus made astounding progress, and no progress at all.
.........................................................
Blessed Unrest
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
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It seemed strange to be blogging about the competing economic theories of Keynes and Friedman recently (Layer 447) - as if anyone's really interested? However, Michael Tomasky wrote this piece for the Guardian last week -
So this is the Tea Party's endgame. No government
In 1995 Clinton and Gingrich were always going to deal. But these economic fundamentalists don't want compromise
As the liberal commentator Jonathan Chait observed last year, America is in a new culture war, but "this culture war is not over social issues – it is over economic ones".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/23/tea-party-endgame-no-government
Over the last 30 years – during which time overall union membership has gone from about 25% of the workforce to barely 11% - the richest 1% have seen their pre-tax incomes nearly quadruple while median earners have stayed flat.
Were the Democrats cleverer and braver, citizens would broadly know these facts. But most Americans have no idea of the massive class war – stealing from the bottom and the middle and giving to the very top – that has been waged over the last three decades. Instead, they appear to know, or "know", that Barack Obama has governed from the hard left, that unions are piggy, and that an uprising of Tea Party patriots has been all that stands between the good old US of A and a kind of Muslim-Marxism state.
In such an atmosphere, the right can move with impunity.
...............................
Why omerta still suits the City's mafiosi
Banks will begin the process of reform when their employees aren't penalised for speaking out
by Nick Cohen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/20/nick-cohen-banks-reform-whistleblowers
'Why are we so hated?" the City asks with increasing nervousness as it begins to realise that its gaudy allure is fading. "Because you wrecked our prosperity and then stole our taxes," is the short answer it will hear during the coming weeks as bankers pick up £6bn in bonuses.
The national consensus holds that the City is being "rewarded for failure" and, for once, the national consensus is right. Most understand, too, that in the cases of RBS, Halifax and the other bailed-out banks, the financiers are engaged in a theft of public money beyond the dreams of a mafia crime family. What we must grasp if there is to be serious reform is that the bonuses are rewards for cowards as well as for failures.
Inside Job opens this week and the title of Charles Ferguson's intelligent and quietly angry documentary on the causes of the crash hints at the destructive effects of fear and secrecy. The world does not experience a financial meltdown without insiders realising that the system is going haywire.
We need to break up a system that rewards those who bite their tongues because it suits their private interests and punishes those who speak their minds in the public interest. We need to recognise that we live in a half-free country, where we have freedom of speech at home but not at work; where people pride themselves on their freedom to criticise politicians, but dare not criticise their employers.
A minimum programme would include the outlawing of gagging clauses in redundancy settlements, the lifting of the limits on the compensation whistleblowers can receive from employment tribunals, a ban on financial institutions using the libel law, the appointment of compulsory worker-directors to corporate boards and the establishment of a statutory regulatory body that can punish bankers who fail to protest against misconduct.
The banks are as great a threat to our national security as a foreign enemy. We collect intelligence on hostile powers. Why should we not collect it on the hostile City?
......................................
Pambazuka News
http://pambazuka.org/en/
Egypt and the revolution in our minds
by Nigel C. Gibson - activist and scholar
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/70972
Egypt: How to overthrow a dictator
by Samir Amin
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/71173
.............................................
How to Change the World: Marx and Marxism 1840-2011 by Eric Hobsbawm
[Review in the LRB by Terry Eagleton]
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/terry-eagleton/indomitable
How to Change the World is the work of a man who has reached an age at which most of us would be happy to be able to raise ourselves from our armchairs without the aid of three nurses and a hoist, let alone carry out historical research. It will surely not be the last volume we shall be granted by this indomitable spirit.
Eric Hobsbawm, who was born in the year of the Bolshevik revolution, remains broadly committed to the Marxist camp – a fact worth mentioning as it would be easy to read this book without realising it. This is because of its judiciousness, not its shiftiness. Its author has lived through so much of the political turbulence he portrays that it is easy to fantasise that History itself is speaking here, in its wry, all-seeing, dispassionate wisdom. It is hard to think of a critic of Marxism who can address his or her own beliefs with such honesty and equipoise.
You cannot speak of what free men and women are bound to do in certain circumstances, since if they are bound to do it they are not free. Capitalism may be teetering on the verge of ruin, but it may not be socialism that replaces it. It may be fascism, or barbarism. Hobsbawm reminds us of a small but significant phrase in The Communist Manifesto which has been well-nigh universally overlooked: capitalism, Marx writes ominously, might end ‘in the common ruin of the contending classes’. It is not out of the question that the only socialism we shall witness is one that we shall be forced into by material circumstance after a nuclear or ecological catastrophe. Like other 19th-century believers in progress, Marx did not foresee the possibility of the human race growing so technologically ingenious that it ends up wiping itself out. This is one of several ways in which socialism is not historically inevitable, and neither is anything else. Nor did Marx live to see how social democracy might buy off revolutionary passion.
Marx was an artist of sorts. It is often forgotten how staggeringly well read he was, and what painstaking labour he invested in the literary style of his works. He was eager, he remarked, to get shot of the ‘economic crap’ of Capital and get down to his big book on Balzac. Marxism is about leisure, not labour. It is a project that should be eagerly supported by all those who dislike having to work. It holds that the most precious activities are those done simply for the hell of it, and that art is in this sense the paradigm of authentic human activity. It also holds that the material resources that would make such a society possible already exist in principle, but are generated in a way that compels the great majority to work as hard as our Neolithic ancestors did. We have thus made astounding progress, and no progress at all.
.........................................................
Blessed Unrest
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
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Sunday, October 24, 2010
Layer 367 . . . Nick Clegg, Music, Character, and Desert Island Discs
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Oh yes. Nick Clegg. Desert Island Discs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vhdmb#synopsis
What a treat. His first track was some sort of bog standard Chopin piano waltz. Please! Dullness in the extreme.
Next up - Johnny Cash . . . chugga chugga chugga Well I woke up Sunday morning drone drone drone. Country crap he remembered listening to in the family car on their outings. Aaaah! Pure nostalgia.
Nick's dad was a banker. Quelle surprise. Nick had "an extraordinarily happy childhood". He's from a long line of itinerant European bourgeoisie. Which is nice.
Nick's first day in London was his start day at Westminster School. Lucky lad.
Next record. Prince - "The Cross". Christian nonsense, and pure gobbledegook. Pretty weird stuff for an atheist like Nick. And about as musically interesting as plain boiled rice. But it's Prince himself that Nick really goes for - "I think Prince is fantastic". Chaque'un a son gout.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-cross-lyrics-prince.html
Personally I think Prince is, at best, a cute little guy who appeals to people who like cute little guys. According to Wiki, "Prince pioneered the "Minneapolis sound", a hybrid mixture of funk, rock, pop, R&B and New Wave that has influenced many other musicians." In other words, a load of derivative dross. As soon as you start talking about funk, pop and New Wave - whatever that is - you've lost me.
Nick evidently likes his (non-classical) music to be like his politics - funky, new wave, derivative, middle of the road and poptastic.
Next we have Petit Pays by Cesária Évora. I think we can safely say his wife's influence is showing here. Fair enough. Very pleasant. Not great.
Followed by Radiohead. "A great, great band." No they're fucking not. Music for angsty, earnest, vaguely alternative and so-called arty, public schoolboys and girls. The kind of kids who pronounce themselves Liberals in order to shock the more boring of their Conservative friends and family.
Wiki: "The musicians who form Radiohead met while attending Abingdon School, a boys-only public school in Abingdon, Oxfordshire." This is essentially dreary, dull, dross. The top rated Radiohead track on Spotify is "Creep" - and you can't get any creepier and duller than that. Appalling crap, though probably quite relevant for Nick -
But I'm a creep,
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here
I don't care if it hurts,
I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
when I'm not around
You're so fuckin' special
I wish I was special
The Radiohead track Nick chose for DID was Street Spirit, whose dopey lyrics you can check out yourself, as if anyone really cares. Let's just say "Cracked eggs, dead birds, Scream as they fight for life, I can feel death, can see its beady eyes" does not a great lyric make. As for any musical merit the thing might have - you must be joking. This is the kind of stuff that public schoolboys who've smoked a few too many spliffs might write and record, and end up wishing they hadn't. As for Nick - he probably went to a gig, bought the CD, smoked a few too many spliffs and thought it was like really, really great. And he still does.
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Street-Spirit-fade-out-lyrics-Radiohead/839FE0EBB8B9339148256866000F5706
Next! What to say about Life On Mars by David Bowie? - another cute guy who's vaguely "alternative", arty and "interesting"? The song only makes any sense within the context of the Ziggy Stardust album, which was at least some good frivolous fun, and musically original and interesting.
And now - Waka Waka, by Shakira. Perfect lyrics for a politician in Nick's current position. Pretty wacky.
http://www.directlyrics.com/shakira-waka-waka-lyrics.html
Nick's final choice is wasted on . . . Franz Schubert - Impromptu No.3 in G Flat Major. Completely and utterly banal. Bore-RING! Available on Spotify if you fancy some music to slit your wrists to. A nice, safe choice for a working politician. Schubert sucks. But Nick used to listen to many Schubert piano things that his father used to listen to regularly, so . . .
On that basis I'd be a big fan of The Laughing Policeman, Vera Lynn, Alma Cogan, Russ Conway, Val Doonican, Matt Munro and Andy Stewart.
.......................................................................
At this point I was going to go off on a rap about people who don't rate Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and all the true greats of music - people who seem to think that third rate but cute little creeps are more worthwhile than Bob and Jimi, and more worth taking to a desert island, but then I thought - wait! I've been missing something.
Here's the thing. Had the first gigs I went to as a teenager been some great stage shows by the likes of Cliff Richard, Adam Faith, Billy Fury and Helen Shapiro - maybe I'd have remained to this very day convinced that these people were great artists and brilliant music makers. Whatever grabs you as a teenager - in a live show or even on the radio or TV - tends to stay with you. There's a time in our adolescence when we're wide open to whatever's currently out there and happening, as you might say.
Or then again, is there really? I'd like to think I'd have run screaming from a Cliff gig no matter what age I was. As I would a Radiohead gig. I might have hung around for a while at a Prince gig when I was a teenager, but only out of curiosity.
On the other hand, it seemed pretty damn obvious to me when I was a sixteen year old that Bob Dylan, whom I never saw playing live till years later, was an absolute genius. So what's stopping the likes of Nick Clegg from also seeing that?
Also - I didn't need to see them play a live gig in order to know that there was greatness in the likes of John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Janis Joplin, alongside all the greats that I have indeed seen playing live. So what's stopping Nick?
Here's another thing. Nick admitted to Kirsty that he'd done a 2.00am shift of actually listening to some music in order to compile his list. How desperate is that? This is clearly a guy - yet another on DID - who never really listens to music, and probably never has. Music has never been seen as important or a priority for Nick, let alone as essential stuff for the soul and spirit. Nick's spent his whole life chasing after achievement and success in one way or another - for example, gaining TWO masters degrees - so he's never had the time, let alone the inclination, to discover and to savour what actually exists in the world of music.
It's either that, or he's indeed listened to the good stuff - Dylan, Cohen, Hendrix, etc - and rated it below Radiohead and Prince. Which really would mean he's a total fuckwit.
So what did Kirsty Young make of young Nick? Not a lot, by my reckoning. It's pretty obvious when Kirsty's enjoying a guest, and their music. She clearly felt very little rapport or empathy with Nick, which is because Kirsty herself has such a lot of soul, spirit . . . . and a sense of humour. Nick has none.
Nick seems to be a decent and intelligent guy, in the sense of intellectually able and astute. Like bank managers used to be decent and intelligent. Unfortunately that's not enough to make him enlightened, original, radical, creative, amusing, and so on.
Interestingly, though, in the following programme on R4 - The Unbelievable Truth - the brilliant David Mitchell admitted that he's a total ignoramus when it comes to music. David Mitchell is one of our most gifted, original and hilarious artist/performers. A real national treasure. Far too good to be in politics. The quickness of his wit is phenominal. How the hell to explain his lack of interest in music?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007mf4f
..........................................................
Joined Up Thinking
Interesting talk today on The Politics Show. It seems Ken Livingstone has advocated that London should have no more than 5 local authorities. And now 3 of the existing (Tory) LAs - Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, and Hammersmith & Fulham - have decided to join together in running services, and indeed in decimating them. Is this a Good Thing?
Way back in 1990, when the Inner London Education Authority was abolished by Thatch, Oxzen was loudly advocating that the inner London boroughs should voluntarily join together on a north/south basis to run education and schools. It made no sense at all for a major city like London to have a fragmented education system. There should at least be a West London collaboration, an East London collaboration, a North London collaboration and a South London collaboration.
20 years on, and it seems that there may soon be a joint approach to managing education services by Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham. Finally . . .
Similarly it makes no sense at all for Hackney, Islington, Camden and Tower Hamlets to remain separate.
Other couplings could be an Outer Southeast group, an Outer Southwest group, an Outer Northwest group. an Outer Northeast group, and an Outer North group.
Since Thatch hated ILEA it goes without saying that ILEA was a brilliant education authority. Its very size attracted hundreds of very talented and visionary people to its education services. In arguing against the break-up of ILEA some of us used to emphasise the sheer impossibility of attracting the best talent and the most visionary leaders to the likes of miniscule Southwark, Lewisham and Lambeth. And so it has proved. Merge them together, however, and you'd be in with a chance. Well . . . we shall see.
What a pity New Labour never, ever, had the vision to promote effective collaborations between the pathetically tiny London banana boroughs. That's politicians for you.
....................................................
David Attenborough on TV today was shown ripping off a Moroccan fossil collector by paying only 850 dosheroons for an amazing piece of rock containing several perfect trilobites. Whatever is the world coming to?
.............................................................
Essential reading in the Observer today:
Chris Riddell:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/cartoon/2010/oct/24/david-cameron-spending-cuts-demons
Will Hutton:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/24/will-hutton-spending-review-economy
Nick Cohen:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/24/rooney-manchester-united-city-bonuses
Oh yes. Nick Clegg. Desert Island Discs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vhdmb#synopsis
What a treat. His first track was some sort of bog standard Chopin piano waltz. Please! Dullness in the extreme.
Next up - Johnny Cash . . . chugga chugga chugga Well I woke up Sunday morning drone drone drone. Country crap he remembered listening to in the family car on their outings. Aaaah! Pure nostalgia.
Nick's dad was a banker. Quelle surprise. Nick had "an extraordinarily happy childhood". He's from a long line of itinerant European bourgeoisie. Which is nice.
Nick's first day in London was his start day at Westminster School. Lucky lad.
Next record. Prince - "The Cross". Christian nonsense, and pure gobbledegook. Pretty weird stuff for an atheist like Nick. And about as musically interesting as plain boiled rice. But it's Prince himself that Nick really goes for - "I think Prince is fantastic". Chaque'un a son gout.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-cross-lyrics-prince.html
Personally I think Prince is, at best, a cute little guy who appeals to people who like cute little guys. According to Wiki, "Prince pioneered the "Minneapolis sound", a hybrid mixture of funk, rock, pop, R&B and New Wave that has influenced many other musicians." In other words, a load of derivative dross. As soon as you start talking about funk, pop and New Wave - whatever that is - you've lost me.
Nick evidently likes his (non-classical) music to be like his politics - funky, new wave, derivative, middle of the road and poptastic.
Next we have Petit Pays by Cesária Évora. I think we can safely say his wife's influence is showing here. Fair enough. Very pleasant. Not great.
Followed by Radiohead. "A great, great band." No they're fucking not. Music for angsty, earnest, vaguely alternative and so-called arty, public schoolboys and girls. The kind of kids who pronounce themselves Liberals in order to shock the more boring of their Conservative friends and family.
Wiki: "The musicians who form Radiohead met while attending Abingdon School, a boys-only public school in Abingdon, Oxfordshire." This is essentially dreary, dull, dross. The top rated Radiohead track on Spotify is "Creep" - and you can't get any creepier and duller than that. Appalling crap, though probably quite relevant for Nick -
But I'm a creep,
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here
I don't care if it hurts,
I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
when I'm not around
You're so fuckin' special
I wish I was special
The Radiohead track Nick chose for DID was Street Spirit, whose dopey lyrics you can check out yourself, as if anyone really cares. Let's just say "Cracked eggs, dead birds, Scream as they fight for life, I can feel death, can see its beady eyes" does not a great lyric make. As for any musical merit the thing might have - you must be joking. This is the kind of stuff that public schoolboys who've smoked a few too many spliffs might write and record, and end up wishing they hadn't. As for Nick - he probably went to a gig, bought the CD, smoked a few too many spliffs and thought it was like really, really great. And he still does.
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Street-Spirit-fade-out-lyrics-Radiohead/839FE0EBB8B9339148256866000F5706
Next! What to say about Life On Mars by David Bowie? - another cute guy who's vaguely "alternative", arty and "interesting"? The song only makes any sense within the context of the Ziggy Stardust album, which was at least some good frivolous fun, and musically original and interesting.
And now - Waka Waka, by Shakira. Perfect lyrics for a politician in Nick's current position. Pretty wacky.
http://www.directlyrics.com/shakira-waka-waka-lyrics.html
Nick's final choice is wasted on . . . Franz Schubert - Impromptu No.3 in G Flat Major. Completely and utterly banal. Bore-RING! Available on Spotify if you fancy some music to slit your wrists to. A nice, safe choice for a working politician. Schubert sucks. But Nick used to listen to many Schubert piano things that his father used to listen to regularly, so . . .
On that basis I'd be a big fan of The Laughing Policeman, Vera Lynn, Alma Cogan, Russ Conway, Val Doonican, Matt Munro and Andy Stewart.
.......................................................................
At this point I was going to go off on a rap about people who don't rate Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and all the true greats of music - people who seem to think that third rate but cute little creeps are more worthwhile than Bob and Jimi, and more worth taking to a desert island, but then I thought - wait! I've been missing something.
Here's the thing. Had the first gigs I went to as a teenager been some great stage shows by the likes of Cliff Richard, Adam Faith, Billy Fury and Helen Shapiro - maybe I'd have remained to this very day convinced that these people were great artists and brilliant music makers. Whatever grabs you as a teenager - in a live show or even on the radio or TV - tends to stay with you. There's a time in our adolescence when we're wide open to whatever's currently out there and happening, as you might say.
Or then again, is there really? I'd like to think I'd have run screaming from a Cliff gig no matter what age I was. As I would a Radiohead gig. I might have hung around for a while at a Prince gig when I was a teenager, but only out of curiosity.
On the other hand, it seemed pretty damn obvious to me when I was a sixteen year old that Bob Dylan, whom I never saw playing live till years later, was an absolute genius. So what's stopping the likes of Nick Clegg from also seeing that?
Also - I didn't need to see them play a live gig in order to know that there was greatness in the likes of John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Janis Joplin, alongside all the greats that I have indeed seen playing live. So what's stopping Nick?
Here's another thing. Nick admitted to Kirsty that he'd done a 2.00am shift of actually listening to some music in order to compile his list. How desperate is that? This is clearly a guy - yet another on DID - who never really listens to music, and probably never has. Music has never been seen as important or a priority for Nick, let alone as essential stuff for the soul and spirit. Nick's spent his whole life chasing after achievement and success in one way or another - for example, gaining TWO masters degrees - so he's never had the time, let alone the inclination, to discover and to savour what actually exists in the world of music.
It's either that, or he's indeed listened to the good stuff - Dylan, Cohen, Hendrix, etc - and rated it below Radiohead and Prince. Which really would mean he's a total fuckwit.
So what did Kirsty Young make of young Nick? Not a lot, by my reckoning. It's pretty obvious when Kirsty's enjoying a guest, and their music. She clearly felt very little rapport or empathy with Nick, which is because Kirsty herself has such a lot of soul, spirit . . . . and a sense of humour. Nick has none.
Nick seems to be a decent and intelligent guy, in the sense of intellectually able and astute. Like bank managers used to be decent and intelligent. Unfortunately that's not enough to make him enlightened, original, radical, creative, amusing, and so on.
Interestingly, though, in the following programme on R4 - The Unbelievable Truth - the brilliant David Mitchell admitted that he's a total ignoramus when it comes to music. David Mitchell is one of our most gifted, original and hilarious artist/performers. A real national treasure. Far too good to be in politics. The quickness of his wit is phenominal. How the hell to explain his lack of interest in music?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007mf4f
..........................................................
Joined Up Thinking
Interesting talk today on The Politics Show. It seems Ken Livingstone has advocated that London should have no more than 5 local authorities. And now 3 of the existing (Tory) LAs - Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, and Hammersmith & Fulham - have decided to join together in running services, and indeed in decimating them. Is this a Good Thing?
Way back in 1990, when the Inner London Education Authority was abolished by Thatch, Oxzen was loudly advocating that the inner London boroughs should voluntarily join together on a north/south basis to run education and schools. It made no sense at all for a major city like London to have a fragmented education system. There should at least be a West London collaboration, an East London collaboration, a North London collaboration and a South London collaboration.
20 years on, and it seems that there may soon be a joint approach to managing education services by Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham. Finally . . .
Similarly it makes no sense at all for Hackney, Islington, Camden and Tower Hamlets to remain separate.
Other couplings could be an Outer Southeast group, an Outer Southwest group, an Outer Northwest group. an Outer Northeast group, and an Outer North group.
Since Thatch hated ILEA it goes without saying that ILEA was a brilliant education authority. Its very size attracted hundreds of very talented and visionary people to its education services. In arguing against the break-up of ILEA some of us used to emphasise the sheer impossibility of attracting the best talent and the most visionary leaders to the likes of miniscule Southwark, Lewisham and Lambeth. And so it has proved. Merge them together, however, and you'd be in with a chance. Well . . . we shall see.
What a pity New Labour never, ever, had the vision to promote effective collaborations between the pathetically tiny London banana boroughs. That's politicians for you.
....................................................
David Attenborough on TV today was shown ripping off a Moroccan fossil collector by paying only 850 dosheroons for an amazing piece of rock containing several perfect trilobites. Whatever is the world coming to?
.............................................................
Essential reading in the Observer today:
Chris Riddell:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/cartoon/2010/oct/24/david-cameron-spending-cuts-demons
Will Hutton:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/24/will-hutton-spending-review-economy
The coalition is taking a huge gamble with the economy
Unemployment and miserable poverty are about to hit Britain hard. Unstable times lie ahead.
Nick Cohen:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/24/rooney-manchester-united-city-bonuses
Wayne Rooney symbolises the greed that laid us low.
The Manchester United striker has negotiated a deal for £10.4m a year. That's small beer to our avaricious financiers
No such critical self-awareness troubles the City. Its managers were worse than irrelevancies, they were calamities. They did not understand the risks their banks were running. Now that we are all suffering the consequences, they continue to throw money away on bonuses, despite the evidence that lavish rewards provide traders with an incentive to maximise risk in the search for short-term profits.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Layer 120 I Wanna Live With The Common People
.
This should have been posted two days ago.
-------------------------------------------
Jarvis Cocker was featured on a Sky Arts programme last night, about songwriters and their techniques. A whole hour of the wonderful Jarvis explaining how to compose, even if you only have a rudimentary ability to strum chords on the guitar. At one point he used the very same ancient model of Casio keyboard my children played with two decades ago, complete with little orange percussion pads. He was having a laugh, to be sure, but also demonstrating that he's no snob about having the coolest instruments, and showing that you don’t need expensive equipment in order to write and be creative.
There are three excellent and very different versions of Pulp performing ‘Common People’ on Utube. As Jarvis says, it’s only three chords: C, G and F.
Coincidentally I was thinking just last week how imperceptibly we make progress with playing an instrument. What sparked that thought was memorising and playing the chords for Lennon & McC’s ‘In My Life’ on the guitar.
Eight years ago I had to abandon the attempt to play the song, but suddenly, now, it seems quite doable - to move easily from A to F#m to D, then Dm and back to A, and so on. Whereas getting three fingers squashed into an A chord used to be an almost impossible task, it’s now even become possible to nail that B7 that sneaks into the final sequence.
We really need a campaign in this country to implement the Venezuelan scheme that enables all children to learn to play an instrument. I believe it ought to be a basic right of every child in this country, and if it can be done in Venezuela then it can surely be done here.
---------------------------------------------
Saturday’s Guardian Review carried a curious two-page spread giving massive publicity to a new book by Iain Sinclair, “A bittersweet love letter to the London borough of Hackney”. Eh?
So what’s he have to say? He came to live among the common people some 40 years ago. He doesn’t like the new flats next to the new Dalston station. He can’t bear to leave “the repository of memory” (i.e. Hackney) where the children of this Welshman were born. He can see the end of Hackney as he knows it, and he feels like he’s ‘crumbling in synch with the old Hackney’. He’s “deeply disturbed and angry” at the Olympics site that’s taking shape just across the River Lea, calling it “a folly”, “apocalyptically catastrophic”, and “brutalising”. And . . . Er . . . That’s about it, according to the author of the piece, Rachel Cooke.
For a mere £20 you can buy the book, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, out now in all good booksellers. Don’t all rush at once.
Apparently NuLabour’s tosspot of a Mayor, Jules Pipe, has banned Sinclair from doing readings in Hackney libraries, since Sinclair’s so anti-Olympics, and they can’t allow “controversial topics” to be discussed in libraries. No, that would never do, Jules - clearly he's the mayor that likes to say No.
-----------------------------------
Technically, and statistically, Hackney is a dump. However, it has huge pockets of poverty, but it also has more parks and open spaces than anywhere else in London; parts of it have more artists per square mile than anywhere on earth, and it also has some nasty and vicious gangs who fight one another for territory and control of the drugs trade.
Property prices are high, rents are high, many of the common people are extremely poor. It’s incredible that there isn’t far more crime and danger on the streets.
This morning my local cornershop owner was livid about the bonuses that the bankers are still determined to pay themselves, in spite of their spectacular greed and incompetence having totally fucked up the economy. He was absolutely fuming. He’s been a pillar of my local community for two decades, and operates an informal community centre, with a loyal customer base that values both the shop and the family that runs it.
And now he’s struggling with pressure from the bank, and lack of credit facilities. Plus customers whose spending power is seriously depressed. To know that the bankers are still stuffing their own pockets with cash when all else are suffering is just too much. The bastards wouldn’t even have a job if we, the people, hadn’t bailed them out, and they still expect to keep their snouts in the trough. Unbelievable.
Martin Rowson’s cartoon in the Guardian sums it up superbly:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/cartoon/2009/feb/08/banking-crisis-executive-pay-cartoon
As Johnny Prescott said on Newsnight last night, “They’ve bust our economy and they’ve a lot to answer for”. Yes Johnny, and whose government allowed them to get away with it, and who was Deputy Prime Minister for ten years and said not a word about the need to re-regulate casino capitalism and put and end to the bonus culture and the obscene salaries the fat cats awarded one another?
Today in Parliament four of the former top guys in the bust British banks faced questions from a committee of MPs. They appeared to apologise, but as someone said, since they didn’t own up to any personal incompetence and liability for fucking up our financial and economic system then their apology’s worth nothing. Off with their heads!
------------------------------------
Nick Cohen, in his Observer column, makes the point that the government’s greatest desire is to restore the status quo ante to the wonderful capitalist system we still have - just.
They still hope that the model of free trade and globalisation can be put together again. Property prices will shoot upwards. The tax receipts from financial services will flow. The City will resume its primacy and all will be right with the world.
In this intellectual climate, reforms that appear obvious to social democrats remain unthinkable to insiders. Closing tax havens, regulating hedge funds and stopping high street banks behaving like investment banks so that never again do we have the obscenity of taxpayers bailing out speculators are items the agenda-setters have no wish to put on the table.
Much to their discomfort, however, our leaders are realising that although the Washington consensus lives on in London, it is dying in Obama's Washington. Now when they talk about Paulson there is a faint whiff of nostalgia. Say what you like about old Hank, but at least he wanted to consult us. We wish we could say the same about his successors.
Every day brings news from Washington our rulers find profoundly unsettling. Conceivably, Labour may have to imitate Obama's pay cap on executives of firms that have taken public money. The power of the American example, combined with the public's disgust at the remarkably dumb yet brazenly rapacious executives of Lloyds, Barclays and RBS, could be too much for any government to resist.
But, trust me, they will hate intervening if they forced into it. They still yearn for the roaring days when the moneymen were getting richer and Labour was winning elections. Salary caps and bonus bans are alien inventions from a strange, new world they neither like nor understand.
[Alistair Darling] argues for international co-operation to stop the banks bringing the roof down again, but there is no echo of the talk in Washington about closing tax havens or regulating hedge funds.
In my view, tax havens are centres of organised crime and, like everyone else, I find the sight of bankers enriching themselves at public expense revolting.
I also know, however, that Whitehall regards such social democratic views as naive and extremist.
But I sense as I watch startled ministers react to the changing line from Washington that they are beginning to suspect that perhaps normal is dead and gone; that maybe, just maybe, there is no normal to get back to.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/08/barack-obama-protectionism
---------------------------------------------------
The Observer’s editorial, meanwhile, says,
The bonus culture encouraged short-term risk and irresponsible behaviour, leading eventually to the banking sector's near collapse and rescue by the state. With the taxpayer now in charge, the bonuses must stop.
What is baffling, then, is why the government has seemed unable to exert any power on this matter despite having majority opinion and moral authority on its side. Authorities in France, Germany and the US have all used the leverage of state bail-out to demand pay restraint in the financial sector. The British government, by contrast, has appeared impotent, relying on vague exhortation and thinly veiled pleading. Now at last it seems a government review is to be launched.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/08/banking-salaries-bonuses-government
--------------------------------------------------------
The Torture Papers
Andrew Rawnsley’s column focuses on the complicity of the Blair government in torture and kidnapping in the ‘war on terror’.
Torture was sanctioned by George W Bush early in 2002 when he signed the now notorious memorandum declaring that the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to members of al-Qaida and the Taliban.
From those strokes of the presidential pen flowed the outrages in the cells of Abu Ghraib and the cages of Guantánamo, at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and CIA "black sites" in Europe and around the world. From that sprang "extraordinary rendition", the Orwellian euphemism for state-licensed kidnap, and "enhanced interrogation", the spin-torturer's way of describing his trade in pain.
Charles Guthrie is no one's idea of a bleeding heart liberal. He served with the SAS and was commandant of the intelligence corps before he became chief of the defence staff. As he puts it, torture is not only illegal, unethical, ineffective, cruel and counter-productive, it is also plain dumb. "Western use of torture to counter terror has been a propaganda coup for al-Qaida and a recruiting sergeant for its global jihad. Our hypocrisy has radicalised our enemies and corroded the power we base on our proclaimed values."
David Miliband has just suppressed the publication of grave allegations about the activities of US and British officials in the case of Binyam Mohamed. In the view of two high court judges, what happened to him "gives rise to an arguable case of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment". There was a "very considerable public interest" in publication, they argued, "particularly given the constitutional importance of the prohibition against torture".
The David Miliband that I know is a humane and liberal man who utterly abhors torture. Yet he finds himself suppressing a dossier about the crime, doing so in the name of national security, the very invocation used to justify torture in the first place.
On the same day that the foreign secretary was facing accusations of a cover-up, Tony Blair was in Washington wearing his faith on his sleeve. At a "prayer breakfast" with Barack Obama, the former prime minister made more than 30 mentions of God and declared: "We pray that in acting we do God's work and follow God's will."
Only God knows how Tony Blair reconciles his conscience with his role in this disgraceful period. It was not as if the Bush administration made much pretence about it. "Bad things happen to bad people," baldly declared Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Did Tony Blair never ask what was going on? If he did not ask, was it because he knew he would not like the answer? His own law officers were highly uncomfortable with the legal black hole created at Guantánamo. Charlie Falconer, not only his lord chancellor but also one of his closest allies, tried to persuade his friend to raise his voice in opposition. He failed. "An anomaly" was all Mr Blair would ever say about Camp Delta when he was prime minister.
The true extent to which British officials colluded in torture is yet to be established. In terms of ethical complicity, I think we can already begin to return a verdict. As the God-fearing Tony Blair knows, there are sins of commission and there are sins of omission. "We have condoned with our silence torture committed by others," says Charles Guthrie, his favourite general.
That was arguably the biggest moral failure of Tony Blair's premiership.
The biggest? Hmmm - maybe. We might give equal status to his failure to regulate the fat cats; his failure to prevent the gap between the poor and the rich increasing; his failure to prevent the rich becoming obscenely rich; and . . . oh yes - the little bit of a failure to keep this country out of Iraq and thereby have no part in the unlawful and unnecessary killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children, the common people indeed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/08/tony-blair-human-rights-torture
.
This should have been posted two days ago.
-------------------------------------------
Jarvis Cocker was featured on a Sky Arts programme last night, about songwriters and their techniques. A whole hour of the wonderful Jarvis explaining how to compose, even if you only have a rudimentary ability to strum chords on the guitar. At one point he used the very same ancient model of Casio keyboard my children played with two decades ago, complete with little orange percussion pads. He was having a laugh, to be sure, but also demonstrating that he's no snob about having the coolest instruments, and showing that you don’t need expensive equipment in order to write and be creative.
There are three excellent and very different versions of Pulp performing ‘Common People’ on Utube. As Jarvis says, it’s only three chords: C, G and F.
Coincidentally I was thinking just last week how imperceptibly we make progress with playing an instrument. What sparked that thought was memorising and playing the chords for Lennon & McC’s ‘In My Life’ on the guitar.
Eight years ago I had to abandon the attempt to play the song, but suddenly, now, it seems quite doable - to move easily from A to F#m to D, then Dm and back to A, and so on. Whereas getting three fingers squashed into an A chord used to be an almost impossible task, it’s now even become possible to nail that B7 that sneaks into the final sequence.
We really need a campaign in this country to implement the Venezuelan scheme that enables all children to learn to play an instrument. I believe it ought to be a basic right of every child in this country, and if it can be done in Venezuela then it can surely be done here.
---------------------------------------------
Saturday’s Guardian Review carried a curious two-page spread giving massive publicity to a new book by Iain Sinclair, “A bittersweet love letter to the London borough of Hackney”. Eh?
So what’s he have to say? He came to live among the common people some 40 years ago. He doesn’t like the new flats next to the new Dalston station. He can’t bear to leave “the repository of memory” (i.e. Hackney) where the children of this Welshman were born. He can see the end of Hackney as he knows it, and he feels like he’s ‘crumbling in synch with the old Hackney’. He’s “deeply disturbed and angry” at the Olympics site that’s taking shape just across the River Lea, calling it “a folly”, “apocalyptically catastrophic”, and “brutalising”. And . . . Er . . . That’s about it, according to the author of the piece, Rachel Cooke.
For a mere £20 you can buy the book, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, out now in all good booksellers. Don’t all rush at once.
Apparently NuLabour’s tosspot of a Mayor, Jules Pipe, has banned Sinclair from doing readings in Hackney libraries, since Sinclair’s so anti-Olympics, and they can’t allow “controversial topics” to be discussed in libraries. No, that would never do, Jules - clearly he's the mayor that likes to say No.
-----------------------------------
Technically, and statistically, Hackney is a dump. However, it has huge pockets of poverty, but it also has more parks and open spaces than anywhere else in London; parts of it have more artists per square mile than anywhere on earth, and it also has some nasty and vicious gangs who fight one another for territory and control of the drugs trade.
Property prices are high, rents are high, many of the common people are extremely poor. It’s incredible that there isn’t far more crime and danger on the streets.
This morning my local cornershop owner was livid about the bonuses that the bankers are still determined to pay themselves, in spite of their spectacular greed and incompetence having totally fucked up the economy. He was absolutely fuming. He’s been a pillar of my local community for two decades, and operates an informal community centre, with a loyal customer base that values both the shop and the family that runs it.
And now he’s struggling with pressure from the bank, and lack of credit facilities. Plus customers whose spending power is seriously depressed. To know that the bankers are still stuffing their own pockets with cash when all else are suffering is just too much. The bastards wouldn’t even have a job if we, the people, hadn’t bailed them out, and they still expect to keep their snouts in the trough. Unbelievable.
Martin Rowson’s cartoon in the Guardian sums it up superbly:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/cartoon/2009/feb/08/banking-crisis-executive-pay-cartoon
As Johnny Prescott said on Newsnight last night, “They’ve bust our economy and they’ve a lot to answer for”. Yes Johnny, and whose government allowed them to get away with it, and who was Deputy Prime Minister for ten years and said not a word about the need to re-regulate casino capitalism and put and end to the bonus culture and the obscene salaries the fat cats awarded one another?
Today in Parliament four of the former top guys in the bust British banks faced questions from a committee of MPs. They appeared to apologise, but as someone said, since they didn’t own up to any personal incompetence and liability for fucking up our financial and economic system then their apology’s worth nothing. Off with their heads!
------------------------------------
Nick Cohen, in his Observer column, makes the point that the government’s greatest desire is to restore the status quo ante to the wonderful capitalist system we still have - just.
They still hope that the model of free trade and globalisation can be put together again. Property prices will shoot upwards. The tax receipts from financial services will flow. The City will resume its primacy and all will be right with the world.
In this intellectual climate, reforms that appear obvious to social democrats remain unthinkable to insiders. Closing tax havens, regulating hedge funds and stopping high street banks behaving like investment banks so that never again do we have the obscenity of taxpayers bailing out speculators are items the agenda-setters have no wish to put on the table.
Much to their discomfort, however, our leaders are realising that although the Washington consensus lives on in London, it is dying in Obama's Washington. Now when they talk about Paulson there is a faint whiff of nostalgia. Say what you like about old Hank, but at least he wanted to consult us. We wish we could say the same about his successors.
Every day brings news from Washington our rulers find profoundly unsettling. Conceivably, Labour may have to imitate Obama's pay cap on executives of firms that have taken public money. The power of the American example, combined with the public's disgust at the remarkably dumb yet brazenly rapacious executives of Lloyds, Barclays and RBS, could be too much for any government to resist.
But, trust me, they will hate intervening if they forced into it. They still yearn for the roaring days when the moneymen were getting richer and Labour was winning elections. Salary caps and bonus bans are alien inventions from a strange, new world they neither like nor understand.
[Alistair Darling] argues for international co-operation to stop the banks bringing the roof down again, but there is no echo of the talk in Washington about closing tax havens or regulating hedge funds.
In my view, tax havens are centres of organised crime and, like everyone else, I find the sight of bankers enriching themselves at public expense revolting.
I also know, however, that Whitehall regards such social democratic views as naive and extremist.
But I sense as I watch startled ministers react to the changing line from Washington that they are beginning to suspect that perhaps normal is dead and gone; that maybe, just maybe, there is no normal to get back to.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/08/barack-obama-protectionism
---------------------------------------------------
The Observer’s editorial, meanwhile, says,
The bonus culture encouraged short-term risk and irresponsible behaviour, leading eventually to the banking sector's near collapse and rescue by the state. With the taxpayer now in charge, the bonuses must stop.
What is baffling, then, is why the government has seemed unable to exert any power on this matter despite having majority opinion and moral authority on its side. Authorities in France, Germany and the US have all used the leverage of state bail-out to demand pay restraint in the financial sector. The British government, by contrast, has appeared impotent, relying on vague exhortation and thinly veiled pleading. Now at last it seems a government review is to be launched.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/08/banking-salaries-bonuses-government
--------------------------------------------------------
The Torture Papers
Andrew Rawnsley’s column focuses on the complicity of the Blair government in torture and kidnapping in the ‘war on terror’.
Torture was sanctioned by George W Bush early in 2002 when he signed the now notorious memorandum declaring that the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to members of al-Qaida and the Taliban.
From those strokes of the presidential pen flowed the outrages in the cells of Abu Ghraib and the cages of Guantánamo, at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and CIA "black sites" in Europe and around the world. From that sprang "extraordinary rendition", the Orwellian euphemism for state-licensed kidnap, and "enhanced interrogation", the spin-torturer's way of describing his trade in pain.
Charles Guthrie is no one's idea of a bleeding heart liberal. He served with the SAS and was commandant of the intelligence corps before he became chief of the defence staff. As he puts it, torture is not only illegal, unethical, ineffective, cruel and counter-productive, it is also plain dumb. "Western use of torture to counter terror has been a propaganda coup for al-Qaida and a recruiting sergeant for its global jihad. Our hypocrisy has radicalised our enemies and corroded the power we base on our proclaimed values."
David Miliband has just suppressed the publication of grave allegations about the activities of US and British officials in the case of Binyam Mohamed. In the view of two high court judges, what happened to him "gives rise to an arguable case of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment". There was a "very considerable public interest" in publication, they argued, "particularly given the constitutional importance of the prohibition against torture".
The David Miliband that I know is a humane and liberal man who utterly abhors torture. Yet he finds himself suppressing a dossier about the crime, doing so in the name of national security, the very invocation used to justify torture in the first place.
On the same day that the foreign secretary was facing accusations of a cover-up, Tony Blair was in Washington wearing his faith on his sleeve. At a "prayer breakfast" with Barack Obama, the former prime minister made more than 30 mentions of God and declared: "We pray that in acting we do God's work and follow God's will."
Only God knows how Tony Blair reconciles his conscience with his role in this disgraceful period. It was not as if the Bush administration made much pretence about it. "Bad things happen to bad people," baldly declared Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Did Tony Blair never ask what was going on? If he did not ask, was it because he knew he would not like the answer? His own law officers were highly uncomfortable with the legal black hole created at Guantánamo. Charlie Falconer, not only his lord chancellor but also one of his closest allies, tried to persuade his friend to raise his voice in opposition. He failed. "An anomaly" was all Mr Blair would ever say about Camp Delta when he was prime minister.
The true extent to which British officials colluded in torture is yet to be established. In terms of ethical complicity, I think we can already begin to return a verdict. As the God-fearing Tony Blair knows, there are sins of commission and there are sins of omission. "We have condoned with our silence torture committed by others," says Charles Guthrie, his favourite general.
That was arguably the biggest moral failure of Tony Blair's premiership.
The biggest? Hmmm - maybe. We might give equal status to his failure to regulate the fat cats; his failure to prevent the gap between the poor and the rich increasing; his failure to prevent the rich becoming obscenely rich; and . . . oh yes - the little bit of a failure to keep this country out of Iraq and thereby have no part in the unlawful and unnecessary killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children, the common people indeed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/08/tony-blair-human-rights-torture
.
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