Layer 333 . . . Radio 4, Reasons to be Cheerful, and a Big Lunch

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I heard on the radio recently someone saying, with absolute authority, "We can never get rid of aggression and jealousy in human beings . . . "

Really? The good news is that we have techniques for controlling these destructive emotions - techniques which centre on learning to be emotionally, socially and spiritually intelligent. We're just waiting, some of us, for our school system to enable our children to develop these intelligences in any thorough and significant way - and to do it day after day, throughout each day. Thank goodness it's already happening in more enlightened countries.

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Possibly the best antidotes to destructive emotions are laughter and music. People like the Dalai Lama and the Zen masters laugh a lot.

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is back to its very best - Mondays at 6.30 on R4. Jack Dee is turning out to be a very good choice for the successor to Humph. Maybe the humour in this programme isn't for everyone, but if you think it might be hilarious to hear two people playing "Sisters" as a duet for swanee whistle and kazoo - tune in now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnwb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_I_Haven%27t_a_Clue

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Desert Island Discs was superb this week - Tim Robbins is a very interesting guy, and has brilliant taste in music. Springsteen, Joni, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye and more.

During the programme he recalled his dad's band, The Highwaymen, and their version of Donovan's 'Universal Soldier':

http://www.lyricsdomain.com/4/donovan/universal_soldier.html

Repeated on Friday, but also on the website.

The BBC website for DID gets better and better:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t0ztc#synopsis

Unfortunately Tim's track of Ry Cooder with V.M. Bhatt isn't available on Spotify, but I noticed other Ry Cooder classics are there - especially Theme from Southern Comfort, Get Rhythm and The Very Thing That Makes You Rich. So are The Bourgeois Blues, Across The Borderline, and The Way We Make A Broken Heart.

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Big Society, Big Lunch

This year's Big Lunch Day was Sunday 18th July. This is only its second year, but it could grow into a national phenomenon. So what is it? I hear you ask.

http://www.thebiglunch.com/index.php

The Big what?

It’s a one-day get together with your neighbours on Sunday 18th July 2010. It can be anything from a simple lunch to a full-blown street party with DJs and a home cooked feast.

Why be involved?

You’ll enjoy it. Food, music and laughter tastes, sounds and feels better with others.

The Big Lunch began life as a wild seed at The Eden Project. We believe the world can get better by working together, with nature, optimism and common sense.

We know that when people get together, we become more positive and start to sort out some serious stuff. By simply having some fun on one day in July, we can build new friendships that we can enjoy for the rest of the year.

The Big Lunch is a chance for different generations and backgrounds to hear each other out and share stories, skills and interests. It's the start of a journey into rebuilding our communities. We call this phenomenon ‘human warming’.

Make isolation history

For most of us, doing The Big Lunch is simply about having fun and sending a message to the establishment that we're not all going to hell in a handcart. But there are many of us who lead lonely lives or at least more isolated or anonymous lives than we’d like. The stats don’t make easy reading but if we want to turn them around, we need to hear them:

    * Two million more single person households by 2019.
    * More rich, poor and ethnic ghettos than ever before.
    * 7% annual drop in trust between neighbours from 2003-05.
    * Social trust in the UK halved and now among the lowest in Europe.

So, you might think a street party is the last thing you’d do to tackle crime, domestic violence, homelessness or children in poverty. But as a catalyst facing up to tough issues, it works, as anyone who took part last year knows. When doors open up, people open up and neighbourhoods open up, from sleepy hamlets to hyper estates.

Why the Eden Project kick-started The Big Lunch

We believe the world can get better by working together, with nature, optimism and common sense. We took a former china clay pit and turned it into a landscape capable of sustaining plants from all over the world to prove the point.

Ten years on, we’re developing more wild ideas to help us face up to the challenges of the toughest century on record. Global warming needs human warming. The odd light bulb here and there won’t work. Ideas like The Big Lunch just might if we join up our efforts. Change the way we live, do the things we know we should, and we’ll leave the planet in a ripe state for our children, their children, and so on.

Eden is all about projects, we believe in experiments that live, eat, breathe and with luck, thrive. Eden is a celebration of life. People say it puts champagne in your veins, which sounds a lot more fun than chlorophyll. Although Eden kick-started The Big Lunch (and are working hard to help it grow year on year), we’re resisting the temptation to own or control the day. We want to keep it organic, create a mood, a rumour.

As we said, it’s your party.

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As far as I can see, pretty much anything that Tim Smit gets involved in turns out to be pretty special - The Lost Gardens of Heligan, The Eden Project, and now The Big Lunch.

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


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/06/food-big-lunch-production

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tim-smit-breaking-bread-together-will-break-down-community-barriers-1658946.html

http://howtomakeadifference.net/2010/06/tim-smit/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6719642.ece

So does the event live up to its billing? The 'lunch' I was invited to certainly did.

Seeing a typical London street completely empty of vehicles is an experience in itself. As someone said - they're surprisingly W I D E.

In the centre of the street, within a simple frame of wooden planks, a ton of sand created a brilliant beach for the kids to play on, right next to two large blow-up paddling pools. They had even covered them with a huge colourful sunshade, strung between four houses. What could be more brilliant for kids than to come out of their houses in bare feet and swimming cossies, carrying buckets and spades, and get busy on their very own beach?

Someone had set up a DJ station in front of his house, using the street's own community wi-fi to play a Spotify feed through laptops and big speakers - an amazing variety of brilliant music - all day long, and into the evening, at which point there was literally dancing in the street - some of it very tipsy.

Everyone contributed food - either in dishes and casseroles, or to be cooked on the barbeques. Feed the world!

Someone had organised a bunch of people - adults and children - to play a variety of instruments and lead everyone in singing some favourite songs. Who knew so many neighbours had such musical talent? There were guitars, cellos, recorders, drums and various percussion.

The sun shone, and people actually mingled and talked to one another. All the generations together, from four months to well over eighty. I met a young guy who has a recording studio set up at home, and an older guy who's really into the local live music scene, who readily offered to pick out some places to introduce me to. Someone else reminded me that it's really worth keeping in touch with the Vortex.

As darkness descended, sitting on the front steps of the houses, even my cynical son agreed that it was a brilliant day, and people ought to live like this every week - not just on a single day of the year. By then his own son was soundly asleep upstairs, having spent the whole day toddling from beach to pool and from person to person. His dog was also sleeping contentedly, having had endless fussing and food from practically everyone there. A very happy Staffie.

People got to know one another, and got to know one another's children, and dogs. It was a day full of sunshine, music, laughter, amusement, entertainment, conversation, good food, good beer and good wine.

Exactly as it says on the Big Lunch label.

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Big Society

David Cameron reveals 'big society' vision – and denies it is just cost cutting


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/19/david-cameron-big-society-launch

Cameron also outlined three strands of the big society agenda. These included social action for which the government had to foster a culture of voluntarism and philanthropy. There was also public service reform – getting rid of centralised bureaucracy "that wastes money and undermines morale" – and community empowerment, "creating communities with oomph", the neighbourhoods being "in charge of their own destiny".

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Layer 223 . . . World Philosophy Day, Greeks, Stranglers, Floyd and Spiritual Intelligence

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 Today is World Philosophy Day, and it's synchronicity time again. Last night – had discussions with friends about the film 300 - tales of ancient Sparta. This morning, 9.00am, Radio 4, In Our Time: Melvyn Bragg and various pals were talking about . . . Sparta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta

Also on the radio (R4) this morning – a news item about introducing 'philosophy' into the school curriculum.

How can schoolchildren be introduced to thinking in a philosophical way, rather than just learning by wrote? Peter Worley, founder of the Philosophy Shop which introduces young children to philosophy, and Anthony Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College London, discuss how philosophy can be made to appeal to children.

“wrote?” - whooooops!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm

Reasoning

Grayling and co discussed the way in which 'philosophy' lessons develop thinking, speaking, listening, communication and concentration. These are even more fundamental skills than literacy and numeracy.
Deepening understanding, learning how to ask important questions, considering the wisdom of the ages. Learning that it takes effort to answer difficult questions, like 'How can I be happy?' 'Is there a God?' 'What is beauty?' Learning that some questions don't have easy answers.

Grayling reminded listeners that Jim Rose's curriculum review has said that it's vital to promote the capacity to carry out research, to make connections between things, to evaluate information, and to think creatively. To generate ideas, and to critically evaluate them.

Philosophy is essentially thinking about thinking, about why we think what we think, and about whether our thinking is valid.

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More synchronicity.

Last week, down in Devon, I chatted to friends about the pub/restaurant in Tuckenhay that used to be owned by Keith Floyd – The Maltsters. All this week on Radio 4 – the serialisation of Keith Floyd's autobiography as the Book of the Week. What a bizarre guy. I always wondered how he appeared from nowhere to become a huge TV star. He's an amazing character, but a rubbish writer. He writes exactly the same way as he talks. The talk is great. The writing isn't.  “Just being Floydie.” He did 23 TV series.

He was very keen on Vietnamese food, and described filming in Vietnam, including a visit he made to the 'food store' at the back of a restaurant, where there were many cages containing bats, cats and rats. Also frogs and cobras. Now there's food for thought. We now have a very large Vietnamese community in London, and lots of Vietnamese restaurants in places like Hackney. Ratney. Makes you think.

Incidentally, one of the best and funkiest things about Floyd was the choice of music for his programmes, examples of which are on the Book of the Week 'listen again' iPlayer – different tracks at start and end, Waltzinblack and Peaches..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00nsp2k
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qftk

Floyd was a big fan of rock group The Stranglers: the tracks "Waltzinblack", an edited version of "Peaches", and an instrumental version of "Viva Vlad" were used as theme music for most of his TV programmes.[3] Former Stranglers guitarist and vocalist Hugh Cornwell used to play guitar at Floyd's restaurant during his student days in Bristol and the two remained friends. In his book Floyd's Cockney Cuisine, Floyd also claimed to be a huge fan of 1980's punk/indie act Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. - Wikipedia

The Stranglers were a great band, and produced several classic tracks, like Peaches, No More Heroes, Golden Brown, Hanging Around, Waltzinblack, Nice n Sleazy, and The European Female (Celebration Of), which has a great melody and fabulous guitar and keyboard licks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bn8se4LXhY  - The European Female
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2iWGRgIz_g
http://www.lyricsbox.com/stranglers-lyrics-european-female-z6rnllj.html

The band also recorded a great version of the Kinks' “All Day and All of the Night” - an all-time rock classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akysLe8vi4c&feature=related
On this video there's a funky horn section . . . .  but does that make them a jazz-punk rock band? Answers on a postcard to Anthony Julius. And it's a MUCH better track than 25 or 6 to 4.

Walk On By  -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXHToM3qt6w&feature=fvw
    a superb performance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFPEbeMdTng&feature=related
    great shots of JJ Burnel and Hugh on guitars, but keyboards solo missing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1363thA73Q&feature=related
    crap video quality but great keyboard solo

The Walk On By(Edit) on Spotify has fantastic sound quality.

The Stranglers also recorded 96 Tears - a great cover of the original by Question Mark and the Mysterians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_Mark_&_the_Mysterians

The group is best known for its song "96 Tears," a garage rock classic recorded in 1966 that reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and would go on to sell over one million copies and receive a BMI award for over three million airplays. ? and the Mysterians was perhaps the first band to be described as punk rock[1], and also may be the first Latino rock group to have a general audience hit record in the United States. The group named itself after the 1957 Japanese science fiction film The Mysterians, in which aliens from the destroyed planet Mysteroid arrive to conquer Earth.

(Aretha Franklin has a superb cover of 96 Tears on Spotify!)

The Stranglers' great keyboards sound was down to Dave Greenfield:

“In July 1975, an advertisement in ‘Melody Maker’, produced one Dave Greenfield, keyboard player. Dave had already played in a large number of bands and it was immediately obvious to the others that he was a natural addition to the line-up. The unusual inclusion of swirling keyboards at the time was to give the band a very distinctive sound, setting them apart from their contemporaries.”

http://www.stranglers.net/b_ground.html

The original Stranglers’ line up began to coalesce during 1975 and brought together four individuals with very different backgrounds and interests. This diversity was probably a factor in keeping them together during the band's first phase (up until 1990).

Jet Black was a terrific drummer, and the twanging bass was so distinctive because the bassist, Jean Jaques Burnel, was originally a classical guitarist:

Jean Jacques (JJ) Burnel, was introduced to Jet & Hugh through a chance hitch hiking incident. Although an accomplished young classical guitarist, he had never seriously considered a music career -- his main passion being Karate. His ambition at the time had been to travel to Japan, in order to further his development in this martial art. JJ has since fulfilled this ambition and currently teaches at his own Dojo in the UK. His other passion, maintained throughout his career, was, and is, for motorcycles.

Hugh Cornwell was a Biochemistry graduate from Bristol University who had gone to Lund University in Sweden to pursue research. Here, he formed a band called ‘Johnny Sox’ with two American draft dodgers and a Swede. Disillusioned with the politics of research (and with a desire to make the band succeed) he persuaded the other members that London was the place to be; they arrived in London - minus the drummer - in early 1974.

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

“A documentary Keith Meets Keith[8], featuring actor and comedian Keith Allen interviewing Floyd, was broadcast on Channel 4 on 14 September 2009 and watched by nearly one million people. In the programme, Floyd admitted that away from the cameras, he often drank too much out of loneliness. It later emerged that Floyd had collapsed and died shortly before the broadcast.”

Incidentally, Rattus Norvegicus is a classic Strangler's album, and the Stranglers' website is called The Rat Lair. So there.

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Anyway, as I was saying, it's World Philosophy Day, and as my contribution I'm going to post some more extracts from the Dalai Lama's 'How To Practice' – 'The Way To A Meaningful Life'.
http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12341&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12911&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://www.temoignages.re/world-philosophy-day-2009-devoted,40108.html

First, though, readers might like to visit (or revisit) what I've already posted from this book in previous Layers:
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/08/layer-181-meaningful-life-how-to.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/08/layer-182-responsibility-humanity.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/08/layer-183-grace-character-basics-all.html

The last paragraphs I posted on Oxzen say,

Since it is through sustaining mindfulness that you achieve a calm abiding of the mind, the practice of morality must precede the practice of concentrated meditation.

Looking at the three practices – morality, concentrated meditation, and wisdom, - we see that each serves as the basis for the next. Therefore all spiritual progress depends on a foundation of proper morality.

Part 2 of the book is simply called Practising Morality:

Identifying the Scope of Suffering

Overview of the Types of Morality

The main principle of Buddhist morality is to help others and, if that is not possible, at least to do no harm. This fundamental commitment to non-violence, motivated by concern for others, is central to the three types of morality in Buddhism.

1. The morality of individual liberation (the subject of this chapter) is mainly practiced by refraining from physical and verbal actions that cause harm.    
2. The morality of concern for others – called the morality of Bodhisattvas – is mainly practiced by restraining the mind from falling into selfishness. The essential point is to refrain from self-cherishing, but also to refrain from ill deeds of body and speech.
3. The morality of Tantra centres around special techniques for imagining a fully developed state of body and mind effectively helping others. It provides a way to transcend our limited perception of our bodies and minds so that we may perceive ourselves as shining with wisdom and compassion.

Tell that lot to the Spartans.
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And as a final contribution to World Philosophy Day, something that appeared first appeared in Oxzen in Layer 181:
http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/

About Buddhism

The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the world's ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Atisha (11th century Tibetan Buddhist master)

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Layer 222 . . . Parting Shots, Bullshit Bingo and Brainwashed Parrots.

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British diplomats leaving their posts used to be allowed to fire off Parting Shots, which is the title of an interesting series on Radio 4 -

Matthew Parris marks the passing of the valedictory despatch, the traditional final telegram home in which British ambassadors could let their hair down and settle a few scores. The series features newly declassified Foreign Office files alongside interviews with the diplomats who wrote them.
Valedictories which embarrassed ministers. Featuring interviews with Sir Ivor Roberts, whose 2006 valedictory led to the Foreign Office banning their circulation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n85t5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00nvdv5
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/former-envoy-makes-devastating-attack-on-blairs-bullshit-bingo-management-culture-of-diplomacy-446358.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Roberts_%28diplomat%29
http://www.trinity.ox.ac.uk/college/staff/iroberts/

"Sir Ivor tells of a Foreign Office under siege by management consultants, efficiency drives and Wall Street business-speak mumbo-jumbo:
“The culture of change has reached Cultural Revolution proportions, with no opportunity for new working methods to put down roots. Can it be, that in wading through the plethora of business plans, capability reviews, skills audits, zero-based reviews and other excrescences of the Management Age, we have indeed forgotten what diplomacy is all about?” - Sir Ivor Roberts, Rome, 2006

He went on to say,

“Priorities and objectives have their place, clearly, but an excess of them smacks of a command economy, with its long and inglorious pedigree. Ordered to come up with a business plan by Stalin in 1929, Commissar Maxine Litvinov refused. “The Commissariat for Foreign Affairs cannot, unfortunately”, he said, “Put forward a 5 year plan of work. International affairs are composed of a large number of countries pursuing other aims than ours, and using other means to achieve those aims than we allow.” I suggest a variant of this be used on the Treasury.”

“Too much of the 'Change-Management Agenda' is written in Wall Street management-speak, which is  already tired and discredited by the time it is introduced. Synergies, value for money, best practice, benchmarking, silo-working, roll out, stakeholder, empower, push-back, deliver the agenda, fit for purpose - are all prime candidates for a game of bullshit bingo, a substitute for clarity and succinctness."

He adds: "Can it be that... we have indeed forgotten what diplomacy is all about?" The dispatch says there has been an "explosion" of reports commissioned by management consultants, "many of whose recommendations do little more than reverse the previous recommendations of the consultants 15 years ago".

It says there is a "perverse comfort" in knowing that the costs alone of consultants engaged by Dfid are "said to match the whole of the FCO's budget".

The dispatch also complains of a "malaise" because of funding cuts and says that diplomats risk "being demoralised".

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http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-life-features/liverpool-special-features/2007/07/17/a-master-of-diplomacy-64375-19465133/

Relieved of ambassadorial restrictions, he’s even more outspoken. His hackles rise describing what he claims is the “dismantling from within” of the British Diplomatic Service, “once enviously regarded as the finest in the world”.

He can barely contain his contempt for the “politicisation” of the Foreign Office under Tony Blair’s Labour government, with highly experienced and skilled senior diplomats being bossed around and over-ruled by ignorant and arrogant young party officials and consultants.

“You have ambassadors and senior diplomats filling in multiple Foreign Office forms about achieving management performance targets.

“Or they’re having to waste time assuring Whitehall their embassies are cutting carbon emissions by 7% over last year.

“Meantime, where are the memos from the Foreign Office about foreign policy? Or debating how we intend to get out of the mess we’re in with Iraq?

“High quality diplomatic negotiations can stop wars and are infinitely cheaper than going to war and later clearing up the resulting physical, social and political wreckage.”

So, beneath all the international glamour and diplomatic corps savoir faire, he’s really just another subversive Scouser?

“Absolutely,” he chuckles, embracing the soubriquet without hesitation.

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http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/collections/BDOHP/Roberts_Ivor.pdf

 Ivor Anthony ROBERTS (born 24 September 1946)

“When I left the Foreign Office last September, I think there were thirty-four separate management reviews going on into various aspects of the organisation, and that cannot be right. It distorts the whole balance of the organisation if you are endlessly pulling the plant up by the roots. You have to say ‘this is as far as we are going for the moment. We’ll allow things to bed down. We won’t look at anything in this area for five years, and see how it’s gone.’ That is the normal way of conducting business.

But when you are buried under an avalanche of management reviews by less than impressive management consultants who are charging huge fees for their services, and then have to undergo follow-up Treasury-led reviews and things called ‘skills audits’ or ‘capability reviews’, ‘zero-based reviews’, ‘comprehensive spending reviews,’ exhaustion sets in, together with a sense of demoralisation that you don’t actually know where you are going to be, or if you are going to have a job, or what direction the Foreign Office is taking, I think it has been very negative.

I think the other failure has been to impress on people like the Treasury and the Cabinet Office that diplomacy isn’t something measurable, like hospital waiting lists, but you have to expect that diplomacy is largely a matter of failure, in the sense that it really is the ultimate Sisyphean task of pushing your boulder up hill while lots of other boulders are going down hill as fast as possible. I remember my earliest days when I was in Arabian Department, my Head of Department saying, “Dear boy, you mustn’t think there is an answer to the Middle East question.” Forty years on, there isn’t one yet. In many ways, the answer seems to be further away. So it is a difficult task; very often we’re not capable of finding solutions.

How do you find solutions to the war on terror anyway? When do you declare the war on terror won? I don’t know. Democracy in the Middle East? There are plenty of other areas where we can’t expect to see concrete outcomes, and I think we fool ourselves and delude the Treasury if we think that we can always reduce things to neat objectives which can be met.

I remember the first time this objectives exercise began I set myself a goal to bring the Bosnian War to an end, and of course at the end of the year I hadn’t, so that was a total failure. These things are absurd and we really must put these things in proportion. I think we spend so much time trying to measure the unmeasurable that we don’t allow enough time for those people who have good long-range diplomatic grasp to address questions such as Iraq, how we got into this mess and how we extricate ourselves. Those are the longer-term questions we ought to try to address.”
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I believe Sir Ivor could have highlighted this MBA management-speak bullshit bingo as a phenomenon that's afflicted the whole of our public services these past 20 years or more, not just the diplomatic service. Anyone who's worked as a public servant knows this is the case. Many of us have cringed for years every time we hear people talking about “business plans” and “value for money” in the context of health, education, social services, etc.

To the New Labour mob and their smart-arse advisors and consultants, and their civil-service wide boys, 'value for money' has meaning, and all it means is achieving numerical targets at the top end of the continuum of what schools and hospitals, for example, achieve, and what all of them should apparently achieve if they're to be deemed to be offering 'value for money'. Exams and tests scores, waiting list reductions, operations carried out, and so on - this sort of raw data determines whether something or somebody is offering 'value for money'. Regardless of any qualitative assessments, such as pupils' attitude to school and learning, and patients' attitude to their treatment and care. Regardless of the social context and the stage of development of the individual school or surgery or hospital.

Which, incidentally, as a matter of fact, are not fucking businesses. So why use the expression 'business plan'? Simply because the graduates of the business schools, the Masters of Business Administration, have become accustomed to it, if not brainwashed by it - by the constant repetition of the expression “business plan” as they go through their indoctrination? So that means the rest of us have to use it as well?

As for bilge like benchmarking, silo-working, rolling out, empowering and delivering the agenda – the next time I hear someone using those words I'm going to have to tell the user to please stop speaking in pathetic cliches and to try to grow up and start thinking for themselves if they want to sound like a human being and not like a business school brainwashed parrot, or somebody who's allowed themselves to be brainwashed, bullied or browbeaten by one.

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http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/people/profile-article/newsarticle/struggling-to-speak/?no_cache=1

http://newafricaanalysis.co.uk/index.php/2009/10/undiplomatic-diplomacy/
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Layer 215 Exploitation, Banking, Whistleblowing, Bombing, Intelligence, Snobbery, Stupidity, Greed and Jealousy

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Minimum Wages

Listening to some early Bob Dylan songs recently I came across this humorous verse from his early 60's song “Talkin' New York” -

Well, I got a harmonica job begun to play
Blowing my lungs out for a dollar a day
I blowed inside out and upside down
The man there said he loved my sound
He was raving about it, he loved my sound -
Dollar a day's worth.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/talkinnewyork.html

I've been thinking about exploitation, especially of younger people, and how the minimum wage has also become the maximum wage as far as a lot of employers are concerned. The people who used to employ my daughter said they loved her approach to the work and to customers, her trustworthiness, her commitment and her reliability, and they still paid her the minimum wage. When they asked her to look after the business whilst they went away on an expensive holiday they had still intended to pay her the minimum wage, and only begrudgingly paid her slightly more when she suggested they should.

Makes me wonder whether Dylan ever got a pay rise.

Of course these people are idiots, with no business sense whatsoever. These sorts of idiots can't see how a ruthless focus on short term profitability is detrimental to long-term business development. They certainly can't see that it's exploitative to expect someone to handle money competently and honestly  and deal in an intelligent way with customers or clients and yet pay them the same as someone who sweeps streets or stacks supermarket shelves. They just do it because they can.

As I write I'm listening to a Radio 4 programme (“The Choice”) on which I can hear someone saying that a senior banking manager admitted that they couldn't possibly have hit their sales targets by selling 'ethically'. In other words, business ethics these days don't exist. As if they ever did, that is, in most places.

More about banking later.

Incidentally, there's some interesting thoughts here about Dylan's influences and inspirations -
http://www.bobdylanroots.com/greenway.html

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According to a report out yesterday there's an 18 year gap in life expectancy between people living in the poorest and the richest parts of Sheffield. That's a bloody big gap.

http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news2/Sheffield-A-city-split-for.5785752.jp
And we should never forget that our economies as well as our banking system are based on selling “financial products” to people who have no way of knowing that the “deals” on offer are for the most part nothing more than swindles based on deception, exploitation, lies and half truths. How else do those bankers get those profits and those 'bonuses'?
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Coventry

At the other end of the spectrum of how human beings behave towards one another there was a documentary on the BBC recently, about the destruction of Coventry in WW2, which gave a very real sense of the extraordinary comradeship that was responsible for the phoenix-like revival of the city and also its community after the devastation that occurred. It was also interesting how that spirit of comradeship caused the majority of people in Coventry not to take up the offer of evacuation to a safer place – they became even more determined  to stay, in spite of the hardships, and to keep the factories working to provide the war equipment that was essential to the effort to defeat fascism.

Interviews with elderly people who lived through the air raid and its aftermath also gave a very real sense of what I know to be the truth about the majority of Midlands people of my parents' generation – their humility and groundedness, their stoicism, their decency, their modesty, their spirit of community – their spiritual intelligence.

“We were all the same. There was real camaraderie.”

568 people were killed in the bombing of Coventry. 50,000 civilians were killed in the subsequent RAF bombing of Hamburg. Almost as many died in the destruction of Dresden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/15/newsid_3522000/3522785.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n7xky/Blitz_The_Bombing_of_Coventry/
http://www.cwn.org.uk/heritage/blitz
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The Choice

Michael Buerk interviews people who have made life-altering decisions and talks them through the whole process, from the original dilemma to living with the consequences.
Michael talks to former banking executive Paul Moore about his choice to blow the whistle on HBOS.

This was another brilliant little programme that went to the heart of the kind of society we've become in this country. Paul Moore talked about his decision to become a whistle-blower - his concern for truth and justice versus his concern for his own wellbeing, his family, his career, and his future.

Mr Moore spoke very eloquently about having a  strong ethical sense of fairness that was in conflict with the taking of severance money on condition of a gagging order. £700,000 is what was offered.

He also spoke about his feelings of devastation at being fired for doing something that was clearly right and proper – simply speaking up about things the bank was doing that were clearly unethical. He spoke about turning to the bottle in the aftermath of his sacking.

Sir James Crosby – the head of Moore's employer HBOS who insisted Moore had to be fired after he'd written a devastating report about what the bank was up to – subsequently went on to be head of the Financial Services Authority.

Moore spoke very well about the importance of the truth coming out so that we could reconstruct the banking industry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nk2c2

see also
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/4629670/Gordon-Brown-must-go-says-HBOS-whistleblower-Paul-Moore.html
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Banking

All over the media this morning – how our Chancellor Darling has determined to keep our capitalist system pretty much as it is by creating some new banks. Ha!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/03/banking-bailouts-lloyds-rbs
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Finance and Banking

Please read this excellent piece in the Guardian yesterday by its economics editor, Larry Elliott -

Painful death of the American economic dream

This crisis has been a long time in coming, and history suggests that the period of upheaval will be long and painful, just as it was between 1914 and 1945

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/02/globalisation-financial-markets-reforms

This is precisely the sort of clear-eyed overview that everyone should read if they care to understand the really big picture, the global picture.

Have a look at this on today's website as well, including Oxzen's comment - 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/banking-rbs-lloyds-darling?

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More on Drugs and Government

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/drugs-science-evidence

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/02/cannabis-row-drugs-david-nutt

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Spiritual, Social and Emotional Intelligence

I know I bang on about this, but what's the alternative? Keeping quiet?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1224565/Random-attack-thugs-30-seconds-stranger-assaults-soar-binge-Britain.html

Someone is attacked by a complete stranger every 30 seconds in Britain, figures revealed last night.

There were 1,057,000 violent attacks by strangers last year - the equivalent of 2,895 a day or 120 every hour.

When Labour came to power, only a third of violent crimes were carried out by an attacker the victim did not know.

That has now jumped . . . as random violence . . . has become commonplace.

Of course the Daily Mail's focus is on the symptom rather than the causes, and this report is part of a campaign to reduce pub opening hours. These sick people couldn't possibly admit that our society is sick, and it's the mental and spiritual health of the nation we ought to be concerned about, not simply how to clamp down on the behavior of sick and/or stupid people. Of course it's a lot simpler, and cheaper, to force pubs to go back to closing at 11.00pm, rather than having to invest more in developing proper spiritual, emotional and social intelligence in our young people and thereby educate them away from lives of violence, binge drinking and drunkenness. Of course these young (and not so young) people for the most part KNOW that what they do is harmful to themselves and others – but do they give a shit? What we must do, and fail to do, is to educate their souls and spirits away from the ignorance and stupidity that infects them. It can be done. It's done elsewhere. It's not even rocket science.

Talking about infections, Brother B reminded me that he still wants to read “Affluenza” by Oliver James, and I'm reminding all of Oxzen's readers that they ought to read it.

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More Sickness

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/cage-fighting-the-ultimate-challenge-447449.html

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

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In Praise of the BBC

The reason conservatives and reactionaries hate the BBC is because it insists on making quite a lot of programmes that appear “liberal” or “progressive” or “left wing” - simply because they're intelligent and they deal in revelation and truth-telling. Intelligent discourse that deals in reality is abhorrent to the idiots on the Right simply because they either can't get a stupid word in edgeways in the discussions or because when they do it's promptly exposed as misguided ludicrous reactionary rubbish based on ignorance and fear.

The best of the BBC is our only hope for an intelligent national discourse that's available to all and also very wide-ranging. “To inform, educate and entertain”. Contrast that with what's on view on Fox TV, for example, as seen on the clips on Jon Stewart's 'Daily Show' on More Four.

Items heard on Radio Four yesterday -

• The government's PREVENT programme that sets out to show young Asians etc how the police monitor and deal with “extremists threats” is no more than an exercise to convince the young that our approach to surveillance and “intelligence gathering” is right and proper. Whereas what we should be doing is teaching the young people that have the biggest sense of grievance to engage constructively in a dialogue with those who oppose and dismiss their radical views. We should also be helping them to learn whilst still at school that non-violence is the best and only proper philosophy, no matter how great your sense of frustration and injustice might be.

• Quentin Letts has a new book out called Bog Standard Britain. This appalling man, who might actually be quite an intelligent individual given some extensive de-toxification and some further learning opportunities, actually thinks that the TV character Hyacinth Bucket (Keeping Up Appearances) is a fine example, in spite of her extreme snobbery, of enlightened self-interest and drive to “better oneself”.  http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0030918/quotes    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyacinth_Bucket

• The Radio 4 Book of the Week this week is a biography of Somerset Maughan, who apparently qualified as a surgeon before opting to live his  life as a writer, in spite of the huge drop in income that it initially involved.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nj9jc   "In 1892, at the age of 18, Somerset Maugham enrolled at St Thomas' medical school, but his heart wasn't in it. What he really wanted to do was write."
  

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

Galactica

I've finally got round to watching Battlestar Galactica – the mini-series. The first 90 minute episode was on the Sci-Fi Channel last night.

“Greed, spite and jealousy. We still commit murder and other sorts of violence because of these things.”
Destructive emotions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_%282004_TV_series%29
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Layer 133 The Little Things, the Bigger Picture and the Desert Island.

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Having perfect eyesight, children scrutinise everything. They see the minute detail in everyday things, and are mesmerised, fascinated and incredulous in the face of the awesomeness and wonderment of it all. How could they not be?

Pre-verbal children see colour, form, shape, proportion and texture and go “Wow!” A baby will stare at a colourful object time and again for minutes on end. We can surmise that the colour and shape alone are worthy of their unblinking attention.

A re-birth in the art of seeing takes place when children, usually at school, have access to a 3-D microscope and can see things like the hairs on the legs of insects and spiders, the texture of their eyes, and the incredible surfaces of human skin, and the leaves of plants, when highly magnified.

Many adults who went through school prior to the availability of affordable powerful 3-D microscopes have missed out on something truly awesome.

One of the downsides of growing older is that eyesight becomes less acute and we literally stop seeing the little things in their glorious fine detail. We put on glasses to read, but can’t normally be bothered to take them out of their case to look closely at the everyday things which we take for granted.

A cup has some artwork on it. A postage stamp has some kind of design. An insect has an unusual colour and shape. They remain a blur. In any case, there’s no time to look properly, and it’s not as though they’re important. We have more pressing things to attend to. So much passes us by.

Having perfect long sight I take it for granted that I can see the world in general in all its glory. I never stop to think about the children or adults for whom it’s a blur if they don’t have corrective lens or can’t be bothered to wear them. I have a complete lack of empathy with such people, because I’ve never asked myself what it must be like NOT to be able to see the wonders of the world all around - trees, clouds, hillsides, buildings - all of the time, in proper focus.

There’s a new optical telescope orbiting the earth that will enable the human race to observe the universe in unbelievable detail. I can still remember the pictures that were taken with the Hubble telescope when they first became available, after much corrective surgery. The universe is un-be-bloody-lievable!

Radio is a kind of telescope for the ears. Through it we can hear things happening far away, and can be incredulous and amazed by what comes into our lives. The BBC is a kind of hearing aid and telescope combined, feeding the brain with incredible and sometimes awesome, sometimes appalling, information.

Thanks to television and channel FX it’s recently been possible to see, through the combined efforts of some very technically and artistically gifted people, an approximation of what life is like in far-away places like America’s drug-infested ghettos (The Wire) and Iraqi towns and cities (Generation Kill), and the sheer horrific and brutal nature of what went on and still goes on there.

It’s hard to give a damn about something if we don’t really know about it. That’s the reason journalists were ‘embedded’ with troops in Iraq - so that we never got to see or hear what it was really like.

The final episode of Generation Kill showed young troops confronted with the non-attached or detached viewpoint of a journalist through the lens of a collage of images he took on his personal digital camcorder and left with them before he flew home - showing close-ups of the carnage caused by the war. They sat around and cheered at the opening shots of buildings being blasted apart by bombs and rockets. They quietly drifted away when confronted with lingering shots of dead and maimed bodies of civilian adults, and children.

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The other day I persuaded my 94-year old aunt to put new batteries in her hearing aids and to insert them in her ears. The sheer joy of having one’s quietly-spoken non-shouted words heard at first utterance! And as for her - “What’s that noise?” The upstairs cistern re-filling. “What’s that ticking?” The kitchen clock.

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Desensitised, we cope with the world, but we don’t really see it or hear it. It doesn’t impact on us the way it could, or should.

I read the other day that Gordon Brown tends to watch only sport on television when he wants to relax. That’s relax, as in, switch off from reality. Not for Gordo, then, gritty dramas portraying the reality of other people’s lives. The writer was pointing out that Gordo is unlikely to ever watch any of the collection of films on DVD given to him last week by Barack Obama. I wonder if we can find out which ones he was given . . .

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I’m going to make a pitch to the BBC for a programme and a series called Desert Island DVDs. Celebrities and interesting nonentities will be filmed talking about the eight films they would take with them to a desert island.

Which films could we bear to watch more than a couple of times? Surely most films only hold our attention because of our innate desire to find out ‘the ending’? Which films are worth watching when we already know what the ending will be?

That was the amazing thing about the Frost/Nixon film - we already knew how it would end - so how did it manage to be both interesting and exciting? The fact is, we remember roughly how the Frost/Nixon interviews ended, and approximately what happened. We have a hazy and fuzzy recollection. Or some of us do.

The film focuses tightly on the characters and their relationships, and by three quarters of the way through the film it’s still almost impossible to see how on earth Frost can get from a position of absolute defeat and humiliation by Tricky Dicky - a formidable opponent - to a position where Nixon admits to his culpability for the Watergate fiasco and its attempted cover-up. I’ve written elsewhere about what happened to make Frost wake up to the reality of what was going on, and start to focus and work hard at defeating his opponent.

A proper work of art gets beneath the surface of things and lets us see glimpses of the human condition in all its tragedy and majesty. A true artwork is our instrument for looking at things we otherwise overlook and fail to perceive, even when it’s just showing us what true beauty looks like and feels like. Even that perception of beauty or simple truth gives us some insight into the awesome nature of reality, and connects us to metaphysical truths.

If we ever take the time to look closely at the credits for films we notice what an incredible piece of coordinated teamwork a feature film can be. The best films require a lot of genius to make the end product watchable, arresting, entertaining, comprehensible, enlightening and enthralling. Brilliant directors, editors, producers, camera operators, scriptwriters, lighting specialists, scenery makers, actors, location scouts, special effects people, composers and costume makers work together and sometimes produce something magical. The annual film awards pay homage to these people.

But it’s one thing to produce something profound and wonderful - it’s another to want to view it repeatedly on a desert island. Presumably the cast-away would want a mixed diet. Something to provide escapism, something to remind them of home, something to nurture the soul and spirit, something to provide spectacle for the eyes and ears.

I wonder which ones Gordo would choose. He’d maybe just dimly remember a couple he saw back in his youth, before he became a full-time politico. The presenter would have to put a ban on him taking DVDs of great sporting events, repeats of Scotland’s occasional victories at football and rugby. I wonder what Sarah watches while she’s waiting for him to roll home of an evening, or at Chequers at the weekend.

There will no doubt be some wonderful films of the Great Financial Crash of 2008, in years to come. There are probably scripts being written already, with directors already considering who they want to play Gordon Brown and Alistair - Dahling! Who will be Bush and Greenspan and the bank chairmen?

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Business ethics, unscrupulousness and under-regulation was big in the Observer yesterday. The paper seemed to major on lap dancing, and its increasing prevalence, even in places like Bournemouth and Newquay, both of which are said to have 4 of these ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. It seems they’re very popular with wealthy young high-spirited bankers, as well as other varieties of saddos and desperate fools who are easily parted with their money, to the tune of around £200 per visit, and £1,000 for a bottle of posh champagne.

Oxzen holds no brief(s) either for or against such ‘businesses’, but he’s very interested in their treatment of their workers, whom the bosses claim are not operating in the sex industry. They also claim they enjoy good protection, good working conditions and high rewards, all of which appears to be less than the truth.

An ex-lap dancer, Nadine Stavonina de Montagnac, (crazy name, crazy gal), wrote a half-page article for the Observer, saying the business was ‘not what it was portrayed to be’. Shock horror. Gosh - really? Who knew?

She has a strange way of expressing herself, as a self-confessed exhibitionist, looking for ‘an exciting life’ and wanting to ‘feel like a superstar’. She says she ‘conditioned herself to think that removing my clothes was a sacrifice worth making to feel special’. Sacrifice? Sacre bleu!

Call me old-fashioned, but I can see how women make sacrifices by working two or three jobs a day and studying for better qualifications in order to better support their families, and I can see how very able and intelligent women make the sacrifice of doing cleaning and shelf-stacking in order not to go on state benefits. But taking your clothes off for the benefit of men who want to ogle women’s bodies, and by doing so ‘feeling like a superstar’ - that’s not a sacrifice!

The serious point here is that these women, like most workers, are exploited, and whilst they make serious money for the bosses and owners, they make little if anything for themselves, unless they’re prepared to make ‘private’ arrangements with the ‘clients’.

What happens is that the ‘dancers’ are ‘self-employed’, and have to pay the clubs for the privilege of plying their trade on the club’s premises. You therefore find situations where there are too many dancers for too few customers, all competing with one another to do £20 dances after paying the club’s owners up to £80 a night for just being there. They also have to perform regular pole dances for free, and they say that some nights they might only get to do one or two lap dances, if any.

The club’s owners are trading on the naivety and gullibility of the performers - a bit like financial advisers and bankers trading on the naivety and gullibility of people who need to invest their money, who are led to believe they’re getting a good deal, and that riches await them. The only ones who actually benefit are the insiders who really know that it’s a pack of lies they’re peddling.

But we already knew all this - Channel 4 showed a documentary on lap dancing last year. It was appalling seeing how the young women were deluded and desperate, and had no come-back against the unscrupulousness of the club owners who knew full well that they were ripping off these pathetic individuals, who were just trying to earn some money and stay solvent.

The problem clearly is lack of regulation by ‘our’ government, so that the exploitation can take place. People are protesting about the effect on their neighbourhoods of having the clubs setting up near where they live - but do they even give a damn about the exploitation that goes on within their unregulated walls? Surely that’s the much bigger issue?

Thanks to Channel 4 and others, the government has known full well what’s been happening to these women, but has it done a damn thing to regulate these practices? Er - NO.

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Returning to the subject of radio, and what it can tell us about the wider world to which many of us have no immediate access, Desert Island Discs has been very interesting lately.

The more you listen, the more you realise that most of the third-rate performers and presenters who wash up on the desert island had pretty awful childhoods, suffering from lousy parents and spirit-crushing boarding schools. Of course there are exceptions, like David Walliams recently, who was amusing and chose some excellent music.

More often though, you get people like Brian Rix, who, whilst he’s done wonderful things for Mencap, made his living in the theatre by dropping his trousers. He was sent to a boarding school he hated, and was ‘bullied’ there, and has been dropping his trousers ever since. His choice of music was abysmal. Very troubling.

This week there’s Richard Madeley, a self-madeley man, an extrovert, a show-off, a hyper-competitive self-promoting ‘presenter’ who’s done more or less anything to try to appear talented, interesting and special, short of actually dropping his trousers. Mental and spiritual undressing he’s done plenty of, and his wife’s been known to get at least some of her kit off in public. His choice of music was abysmal.

How could anyone seriously think that something by Sting or The Police is in the top echelons of fabulous music? Some of their songs have been very good pop songs - but would you really want a pop song as one of your choices on the island? Consider the alternatives!

The Police above all bands were about fake blondness and pretty-boy image, not music, as such. Pretty much what Madeley has traded on. Some of his ‘blond’ quotes will haunt him to the end of his days. “So who’s written your autobiography?” Bless.

He did say one thing, though, that’s worthy of note. He’s finally learnt that show business isn’t worth a damn compared with the worth of a good family life, which he’s now focused on having. The boy’s growing up.
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Layer 124 The Working Classes

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It’s obviously a zeitgeisty thing, but Radio 4 started a series on the working class today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00hkl7g

Class consciousness is definitely making a comeback in Britain. It’s surely impossible NOT to think about Us and Them when most people are feeling fucked over by the bankers and the financiers, and have become acutely aware of the fact that there’s a whole group or class of people who manage to avoid paying their fair share of taxes whilst simultaneously paying themselves phenomenal amounts of money in salaries, profits and ‘bonuses’.

No doubt many of those people work hard, but it’s not necessarily ‘work’ as we know it, Jim. And many of them only work because they feel driven to get seriously rich - like, mega rich. Many of them don’t work at all, of course, and this is also becoming clearer to many - that there’s a rentier or property-owning class who have become richer and richer on the basis of their families having bequeathed to them property and share portfolios which they pay other people to manage, whilst they themselves swan around the place and live the life of Reilly.

Not that anyone would seriously want adopt their useless and pathetic lifestyles, their parasitical and trivial existences. As someone said in the programme, even if he won the lottery he’d still want to live near his family and mates, use the same pub, and go to football at weekends.

But this is something the footloose and aspirational middle classes have difficulty understanding - ‘up there’ in the midlands and the north there are people living happy and fulfilled lives who are not driven by a restless quest for life behind suburban walls, behind electric gates, thinking that’s where happiness and contentment lie.

You can’t buy community, you can’t buy lifelong friends and a loyal extended family. Money doesn’t bring happiness, especially if it’s used in ways that cut you off from those who bring joy and friendship into your life.

Of course we’d all like a year’s sabbatical and enough money to go traveling - but ultimately there has to be more to life than being idle. Prince Siddharta found meaning in life, and ultimately enlightenment, by becoming a bodhisatva and striving to serve people in need.

According to the programme:

More people now identify themselves as working class than they did 40 years ago

Engles was shocked by the conditions of the working classes in Manchester.

For many years it’s been ‘unfashionable’ to talk about class

Who now speaks for the working class? (Certainly not NuLabour)

Unfortunately they interviewed Hazel bleeding Blears, “one of the few senior politicians from a working class background”, blathering on about having a string permanently around her neck as a child. It turns out the string held a latch key. There’s quite a few of us who’d like to see the string back round her neck.

So how do people define their class? Is it about attitudes?

“There’s only one way to get money, and that’s to work,” said somebody. But that’s so not true. There are now thousands of people who live off inherited wealth. Trustafarians abound in the wealthier parts of London, for instance.

So is a working class person someone who works for a living, or someone who HAS to work for a living, because they have no choice?

There’s also the issue of identity - identification with a section of society, such as the working class, plus whether you need to work for a living.

The programme made the point that in Australia & the USA it’s different - since people there usually have a sense of being able to (and wanting to) reinvent themselves. Invariably as better off and more aspirational beings. Nobody in those places apparently wants to consider themselves as working class, let alone feels any pride in it.

The programme then focused on how change comes about in society - how working class people can fight back against poverty and exploitation. Pressure from below? Mass movements agitating for social change?

Thomas Paine - England’s greatest radical - was mentioned. "These are the times that try men's souls," declared Thomas, in his pamphlet The Crisis - and indeed they are. Are we also on the brink of a revolution? Not necessarily a revolutionary war, as such, but certainly a revolution in consciousness and political sophistication, leading to the radical economic and social changes the world desperately needs. Perhaps. Who knows where the current turmoil will lead? (see also the bits on Cameron and Chavez below)

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

http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/

Ewan McColl was name-checked by the programme, as was Anthony Burgess - a working class lad who grew up in Manchester and also went to university there.

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

http://www.peggyseeger.com/ewan-maccoll
Interesting that there’s such a good section on Ewan on Peggy Seeger’s website, and a coincidence that Pete Seeger’s reputation has been boosted lately by the man himself performing at Obama’s inauguration concert (see below), and by Springsteen’s brilliant “Seeger Sessions Band”. The Boss, as we know, has always been the champion of blue collar folk, in both senses of the words - champion and folk.

(And to digress even further - there was a superb documentary on Seasick Steve on BBC4, or Sky Arts, last week - his life and times. Plus 30 minutes of him playing the blues at the Reading Festival and the Albert Hall - literally rags to riches. Go out and buy Dog House Music if you don‘t already have it.)


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


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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNoPNC3ebYQ

- great video of Steve performing Dog House Blues on 3-string bottleneck guitar on Jules Holland’s prog. Play loud. (great camera work, by the way. Respect to the ‘Later’ team.)

Another coincidence for me was rooting around on my bookshelves last night and coming across Anthony Burgess’s ‘Earthly Powers’, which I bought second-hand for £1.30 several years ago and never got round to reading. It was written in the year of my son’s birth, and has written inside the front cover: “Dear Daddy, Happy Birthday 19/11/81 lots of love Helen xxxxxxxxxx”.

I wonder what Helen and her dad are doing now, and whether he managed to read the book. (see below)

The programme concluded with some thoughts about working class people getting by in life, helping one another out when times are hard, having a sense of community

Whereas middle class & comfortably off people can afford to let things stay the same, and can seemingly live anti-socially, in isolated nuclear units.

Right at the end there was a reference to John Cooper Clark, the Bard of Salford, whose dad worked in car factory. “Working on the midnight shift”, no doubt. Coincidentally John’s about to go back on the road, and had a gig reviewed in the Guardian this week.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/16/john-cooper-clarke-pop
http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/midnight.html
http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/poemlist.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7DQRWeTWos

Looking ahead to the next programme the presenter asked: Is it just what we earn, who we identify with, whether we feel a part of a community, and which newspaper we read? Is it in fact a question of values and culture?

Stay tuned.

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There’s a brilliant advert on TV at the moment for the Co-operative movement, showing dandelion seeds floating on their parachutes to a soundtrack of Dylan’s ‘Blowing In the Wind’, letting the lyrics speak their message - “How many roads must a walk down? . . . “How many times must a man look up? . . .“

The message of the voice-over right at the end is simply about the Co-ops’ community projects, sharing profits, fair trade, etc. Excellent.

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1) A Cat Among the Pigeons

David Cameron set a cat amongst pigeons with an article in yesterday’s Guardian, “A Radical Power Shift: Our future depends on putting more political responsibility in the hands of local people.”

Tony Benn once spoke about wanting a fundamental shift of power and wealth to working people. I too want that fundamental shift - to local people and local institutions. Over the last century Britain has become one of the most centralised countries in the developed world as power has been sucked to Westminster. Some might wonder why this matters. After all, isn't politics just about what works? But there is a deep connection between where decisions are made and what works.

When one-size-fits-all solutions are dispensed from the centre, it's not surprising they so often fail local communities. When people experience a yawning gap between the changes they want to see and those they can directly affect, it is inevitable that demoralisation and democratic disengagement follow.

225 responses in CIF so far. Worth a read.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/17/cameron-decentralisation-local-government?commentpage=1

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2) A catamite among the pigeons.

So I started reading Earthly Powers, and was immediately grabbed by it. How many books do you come across that have a word in the very first sentence that you need to look up in a dictionary, or Wikipedia?

A catamite is the younger partner in a pederastic relationship between two males, which was a popular arrangement in many areas of the ancient world.

Kings and Emperors in some ancient cultures had not only concubines but also catamites (male concubines), in addition to their many wives.

The word is also used to describe the practice in early Japan, where monks would have sexual relationships with younger monks[citation needed]; samurai with pages; and noblemen with younger members of the aristocracy.

The word catamite is derived from the Latin catamitus, itself borrowed from the Etruscan catmite, a corruption of the Greek Ganymedes, the boy who was seduced by Zeus and became his beloved and cup-bearer in Greek mythology.

So there. And then we discover that Burgess is having a laugh -

“I have lost none of my old cunning in the contrivance of what is known as an arresting opening.”

A novelist is having a siesta on his 81st birthday. An archbishop comes to visit and the novelist asks his manservant to take him into the bar and pour him a drink.

“The bar was across the hall, to the right, between the wreck of an office where Geoffrey neglected his secretarial work and my own fussily neat study. On the wall between the bar and the study was the Georges Rouault - a scrawled ugly ballerina, impatient thick black strokes and bitter washes. In Paris that time Maynard Keynes had hotly recommended that I buy it. He had known all about markets.”

600 pages to go.

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

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/burgess.htm
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Chavez

Hugo Chavez has won his referendum to entitle him to keep on putting himself up for reelection in Venezuela. Say what you like about him, and his methods, but the man’s got a head, a heart and balls. After all that the USA did to the proletariat in South America, after all the killings and torture inspired by the Shock Doctrine, the revenge of the neo-cons and the Chicago Boys against leftists and progressives, it takes guts to stand up to the USA when it’s in the control of Bush and his ilk and is determined to get rid of you, and considers you a threat to its ‘national security’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez

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Obama’s Inauguration

Last night on TV there was a broadcast of the ‘concert’ that preceded Obama’s inauguration. A dog’s breakfast of an event, but very stirring in parts. Some naff speeches, but how fantastic to see so many black people taking leading roles in their country’s affairs. Some truly awful music and songs, but some wonderful stuff from the likes of Springsteen and gospel choirs.

After the truly hideous years of the neo-con ascendancy how incredible it all seems - the possibility that the affairs of a great nation are at last being coordinated and supervised by people with intelligence and credibility.
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Layer 123 Signs of the Times; In Praise of Will Hutton

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Chantelle Loves Alfie

Max Clifford is now handling the publicity for the happy couple, and has said that Alfie will soon take a DNA test to prove he’s the 13 year old father of Chantelle’s baby. Several other diminutive lads have now stepped forward to claim they’re the father of the sprog - i.e. they’re responsible for getting Chantelle up the duff. Which presumably entitles them (or one of them) to a share of the Sun’s payout for photos of the children and their child.

Chantelle swears she’s never had sex with anyone other than Alfie, who she truly loves. And anyway, she only shagged him the once. Vikki Pollard couldn’t have said it any better - yeah, but, no, but . . .

Alfie has said he will do his best to do well at school as well as be a good father to the baby. When asked by a radio reporter how they will manage financially, Alfie said, “What’s financially?”

Circus? What circus?

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090216/tuk-dad-at-13-alfie-will-get-dna-test-on-45dbed5.html

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Radio 4 this morning broadcast a fascinating programme about wives. I hope Chantelle was listening, as she went about her motherly duties.

“Nobody knows what a wife is anymore, and if they do, they certainly don’t want to be one.”

“Although it takes two to make a marriage, it’s on the wife that happiness depends.” (Which might explain why so many marriages are less than happy, I heard a misogynist mutter.)

“The very being or existence of the woman is suspended during marriage. We are willing these days to make sacrifices for our children, but not for our husband.”

“Arguments, resentments and negotiations are endemic when the terms of a relationship are not clearly defined.”

“After children are born the workload quadruples and nobody gets a day off.

“Shopping, washing and ironing are usually seen as the province of the woman.”

“Harmony, equality and sharing are the ideal, but relationships become attritional rather than companionable.”

“If you don’t have clear-cut roles then every day you have to work it out, which is hard work.”

“The important thing is the deal. If a woman specialises in being the homemaker and child carer then the man ought to be the financial provider.” (Alfie was presumably not listening to this, as he’s having to do extra maths classes to learn what financially means.)

“Is it any wonder that working women are scratchy and resentful?”

“Maintaining hygiene and comfort takes over a thousand hours a year.”

“Is marriage on its last legs? Who is now prepared to trade domestic labour for financial security? Most women don’t need marriage any more, and often see it as licensed prostitution.”

“Obligation, being someone else’s property, servicing someone. But to inherit property, women need to change their status from concubine to wife.”

Interesting. Lots there for Chantelle to chew on, after she’s discovered for herself the delights of Radio 4.

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Book of the Week?

Also on Radio 4 this morning - the first part of the new book of the week, by Iain Sinclair. It’s even worse than I’d imagined.

What I really dislike is the fact that his pretentious, prolix, so-called love-letter to Hackney will make people who don’t know the place say to themselves - well damn it . . . if this gimp likes the place then I’m bound to hate it. And I wouldn’t blame them.

Actually it’s not all that clear that he does like the place. He sees himself as some sort of pioneer/discoverer, like a modern day David Livingstone or Walter Raleigh, who loved the ‘virgin’ territory he found many years ago, but hated what it later looked like becoming.

There’s no doubt Hackney, like anywhere else, especially after 30 years of Thatcherite and NuLabour despoilation, has a mass of problems, but so what? Why does this toff think he’s qualified to pontificate about it? What makes him think that anyone actually cares what he thinks? He’s got nothing original to say anyway.

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Signs of the Times

#1 More and more kids are putting on the Internet explicit sexual images of themselves which they’ve taken with their phones and digital cameras. Well they would, wouldn’t they? Does anyone seriously doubt the stupidity and thoughtlessness of teenagers?

#2 More and more of us are, in these hard times, spending our hard-earned funds on buckets of delicious ‘Kentuck’. KFC expect to open many more “restaurants” this year and next.

#3 An eight year old girl became terrified of losing her milk teeth. The doctors tried to help - by removing them. The girl refused to eat or drink, and subsequently died. The ‘authorities’ said that ‘with hindsight’ there was a ‘lack of communication’.

#4 A panel of senior figures in the legal establishment has said it’s time to repeal the abusive laws regarding privacy, detention without charge, civil liberties, etc, that were enacted after the events of 2001. They say they were, and are, illegal and counterproductive.

#5 BMW has dismissed hundreds of workers at its Oxford ‘Mini’ plant, having given them no notice at all. It simply called its ‘agency’ workers together at the end of a shift and told them not to come back. Some of these people are highly skilled and have worked at the plant for some years, but because they’ve remained on the books of agencies they have no protection, no employment rights, and no entitlement to redundancy pay. As a Union official said, if it was in Germany they wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. But that’s the very reason why they’re here, is it not? The unions have been asking NuLabour to do something about the excessive use of agency staff, and their entitlement to employment rights, for several years, but to no avail.

#6 According to makers of a scary documentary about Christianity, “The missionary boot is now on the other foot”. So look out Britain - the Pentecostals from Africa and elsewhere are on the rise and on the march. Millions of them, it seems. Doing their missionary best to evangelise us into shouting hallelujah, happy clapping, speaking in tongues, and carrying out exorcisms. We can only blame ourselves.

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Victorians

Last night was the first part of Paxo’s much-anticipated series on the Victorians, as seen through the eyes of their artists and painters. And it was good stuff - brilliant close-ups of paintings by relatively little-known artists such as Grimshaw, Egley, George Joy and John O’Connor, plus Gustav Dore and Ford Maddox Brown.

It make you think of how much of our infrastructure and our culture is directly attributable to the Victorians, and how little, relatively speaking, was added during the 20th Century. I guess the jury’s still out on how much of a benefit we ultimately get from the digital age.

It’s going to be interesting, for example, to see whether electronic surveillance helps the power elite to keep us all in our little boxes, or whether, on the other hand, the little people can use the technology to by-pass the ‘official’ media and communicate with one another about what’s really happening in our society. The phone video taken inside the mass meeting at the BMW/Mini factory would be an example of this. Will it galvanise and stir up opposition to what’s happening?

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Where would we be without Will Hutton in these insane times? For three decades or more he’s written intelligently about economics and finance, never deviating from his Keynesian understanding and insights, and he’s now the “go to” expert for all those who get even a glimmer of the reality of what’s happening. Anyone who wants to understand the big picture should definitely read his 1995 classic, The State We're In. We're in it now, alright. Big time.

This Sunday he had an entire page in The Observer, which is a must-read for anyone with any intelligence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/15/us-economic-policy

Obama has picked the wrong hero for our times.

In order to save the global economy, the President has to stop trying to satisfy everybody. He should follow the example of Roosevelt and leave Lincoln behind.

The ideological divides that have racked the US remain as entrenched as ever. Obama may be a champion of the importance of government, but he and the Democrats have a long battle to convert a political victory into an intellectual one.

What is beginning to look doubtful is whether he can build around him a buttressing team who share the same passion and capacity as President Roosevelt had in similar economic circumstances. Obama has no equivalent of Roosevelt's two key lieutenants, Harry Hopkins, who led the fight for work, or Jesse Jones, who took on rebuilding the financial system.
Instead he is resolutely following his hero Abraham Lincoln, trying vainly to build a cabinet of all the talents.

It is the incapacity to trump the voodoo belief systems that have laid the US and world so low that is so dismaying and dispiriting. We are living through nothing less than the disintegration of the global financial system, shattering the western banking systems' capacity to lend. The risk is growing of a worldwide debt deflation. The west's governments have no choice but to put their balance sheets behind their broken banks and to make good the consumer demand that is no longer there via fiscal policy. They may even collectively have to print money, much more effectively done together than separately. Yet conservatives deny these truths.

The acute problem is that, although the old order and ideas do not work, there is no consensus on what the new order and ideas will be. The lack of coherence is plaguing these early weeks of Obama's drive for economic recovery. Thus Geithner's disappointing speech last Tuesday setting out the next steps in his financial recovery programme, and then stone-walling the senate budget committee the following day.

The administration wants to act decisively along the same lines as Sweden in the early 1990s in putting its banking system back on its feet. But it hesitates to nationalise banks as Sweden did. And it hesitates to commit what could be 14% of American GDP in creating a "bad bank" to take over crippling toxic debt as the Swedes did. It wants the same ends, but cheaper - an intellectual challenge too far.

Bankers are in no position to complain. Their avarice and the scale of their business misjudgment have vastly complicated the politics of a bank bail-out, which will have to be on a stupefying scale to be effective. The open question is whether the US can afford to create a "bad bank" or equivalent that might cost up to 14% of GDP, on top of a budget deficit already of that same size. The answer is that it cannot afford not to do it. Otherwise it might suffer the same fate as Japan in the 1990s, whose refusal to accept the size of the problem meant that it temporised with half measures - and suffered a decade of economic stagnation.

The G7 is a cacophony of different plans and preoccupations. Everybody, including Gordon Brown, is looking for legitimation for short-term political advantage. It needs the Obama administration to cut through the cackle and impose an agenda equal to the scale of what needs to be done at home and abroad.

That inability is the gravest source of concern. There are signs that the Obama team is getting the message; it backed off the worst protectionist excesses in the Stimulus Bill, and both Obama and Geithner say we need decisive, large-scale action. The worry is that they will make too many concessions to the ideas and people who got us into this mess. Lincoln was a great man. But it is a Roosevelt America that the world needs now.

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In Saturday’s paper the blessed Will had a column in the Guardian on tax avoidance:

Behind tax avoidance lies an ideology that has had its day. We must end it.

Neoconservatism has collapsed. The need for the state should now be evident to all - and that includes big companies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/14/comment-tax-avoidance

Nearly a third of our top 700 companies pay no tax at all. At best, the spirit of the law is being obstructed.

How do they justify to themselves what they do?

The economic wreckage is now all around us.

Tax avoidance was a central part of yesterday's exploded financial structure.

The stench is overpowering. The takeover of Boots by the private equity firm KKR has become exposed as a transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to its astonishingly rich partners, only one of whom is domiciled in the UK, for tax purposes. The headquarters is moved to Zug to avoid tax. Nottingham is stripped of key jobs.

Boots no longer pays UK corporate tax because the interest on the debt overwhelms its profits. And the banks that lent KKR the money, now worth between 60 and 70 pence in every pound because of doubts about whether it can be fully repaid, have to be bailed out by the self-same taxpayer. No wealth is generated. It is transferred. How the libertarians, self-styled wealth generators and fighters against Big Government must mock the little people whom they run rings around.

What is required is the will. Neoconservatism has collapsed. The western financial system is bust. The need for the state, and for international collaboration, is now evident to all. President Obama is keen to act. If we cannot slay tax avoidance now, we never will.
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