Layer 421 . . . People Power, By-Election, Miliband, Obama, America, Wikipedia and Intelligence

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Tunisia

"A lesson in people power - from the Arab world!" said the Channel 4 correspondent. Non-violent demonstrations "led by the secular middle class" have deposed the President, who has now left the country.
The protests were over unemployment, rising prices, lack of proper democracy, and State repression.

Interesting lesson . . .

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By-Election Non Shock
So the Oldham and Saddleworth result turned out pretty much as expected. So what?

I watched the studio discussion after the results came in. The Tory talking head was decent, but witless, and said nothing of interest or impact. The Labour guy was also uninspiring. This was worrying - the fact that Ed Miliband thinks so highly of Sadiq Khan and yet he seems callow, unprepossessing and lacking in style as well as substance. Of course Ed thinks that Khan, being of minority ethnic origins, is a good choice to speak after an election in an area such as O & S. He's not. He's another young politico burning with ambition and guile, and not much else. At least that's what comes across from the TV. Not an attractive personality. Not a good speaker. Not convincing.

The LibDem guy was the most interesting in that he simply twaddled on about the LibDem vote holding up - which was clearly not the case. Why let him get away with it? It's perfectly obvious that it was tactical Tory voting that kept the LibDem vote somewhat respectable. Why bullshit about this? Why not just admit that  thousands of Labour voters who either abstained or voted LibDem in order to get rid of Brown and New Labour are now back in the fold? Why not admit that thousands of people, including lots of first-time voters, who voted LibDem in order to break the Lab-Con monopoly are appalled at what the LibDems have done within the coalition, and will never vote for them again?

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And then there was Ed Miliband giving a few comments this morning. Not good, Ed! Talking about voters being against the coalition on account of the VAT increases and tuition fees. For fuck's sake - these are the minor issues! He should be hammering the coalition at every opportunity about the vicious budget cuts, and their determination to shrink State spending at a moment when it's vital it should be broadly maintained (apart from legitimate cutting of waste and crap projects). He should be hammering them about their failure to do something about the bankers and their bonuses. He should be hitting them hard about their deliberate use of unemployment as a cost-cutting measure, and about the illegitimacy of this - especially as unemployment reduces the national income tax take, and requires more state spending on individual and family support. He ought to be beating on the Tories for their illigitimate radical changes to the NHS and the education systems - their Shock Doctrine do-it-all-in-the-first-six-months-without-any-consultation neo-conservative slash and burn tactics.

Wake up, Ed! You were right to stand for the leadership in order to draw a line under New Labour, and you're a bright and decent guy - but you really have to be better prepared for interviews and say the things that are really important, the things that are most likely to make an impact. Compared with highlighting the really big issues this emphasis on the VAT increase and on the decision to ensure students pay higher fees are just pinpricks in the coalition's thick skin.

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Simon Jenkins on Obama and America

The USA, as we know, is a monster. Who'd be the President of such a huge, violent, unmanageable country? What kind of people even want to be Senators and Congressmen?

Free speech can't exist unchained. US politics needs the tonic of order

If America is to speak in a way that heals, as Obama wishes, it needs the curbs and regulations that make freedom of expression real

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/13/free-speech-us-politics-obama

The ugly American is back. Can the handsome one do anything about it? When Barack Obama addressed a shocked nation in Tuscon, Arizona, yesterday, he deployed the only weapon left to a crippled presidency: the power of rhetorical cliche. He deployed it brilliantly.

The vitriol and inaccuracy of the campaign against Obama's public health reforms last year were like those against abortion and homosexuality. To many Europeans, the echo across the Atlantic came from a people isolated from the outside world and unable to handle today's social and scientific progress. The debate was infused with nastiness and xenophobia, as if the US was a land composed of tribes bred only to hate the outside world, and often themselves.

I was asked some time ago by a university-educated Texan, in the nicest possible way, what it was like to live in a country of "baby-killers" about to be "overrun by Muslim bad guys". I inquired where he had gained this bizarre impression of Europe, which he had never visited. It turned out his sole information about the world beyond America's shore came from Fox News. He was not stupid. But he and millions of people like him considered this source of news a sufficient window on the world. He genuinely thought American troops would soon have to save Europe from "the Arabs".

Fine. But how different is this from all those in Britain who  get their news exclusively or mainly from the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Express, etc? There are lots of people here who apparently believe that BBC news and current affairs are hopelessly biased towards the left wing. And who tells them this? Those newspapers, of course. Turn on any phone-in radio programme and just listen to these morons.

When the art historian and TV presenter Sir Kenneth Clark was asked what quality best defined civilisation, he did not answer with liberty or wealth or equality. He answered with courtesy, the framework of rules governing people's tolerance of each other, so their discourse might be creative. Most of the time, it is best for that courtesy to be informal. The best rebuttal of the politics of hate is a torrent of love – or, if not love, at least of facts.

But sometimes, as Obama said, there is a yearning "to try to impose some order on the chaos". If American politics is now going the way of wounding, not healing, it needs the tonic of order. It is the great paradox of democracy. Free speech cannot exist without chains.

Obama's full speech available here:

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

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Intelligence

I've finally got round to watching the recent BBC4 Horizon programme about 'intelligence'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00x7cb3/What_Makes_Us_Clever_A_Horizon_Guide_to_Intelligence/

On the website the "key talent" for this programme is listed as the presenter, Dallas Campbell. Dear oh dear.

Dallas Campbell delves into the Horizon archive to discover how our understanding of intelligence has transformed over the last century. From early caveman thinkers to computers doing the thinking for us, he discovers the best ways of testing how clever we are - and enhancing it.

How "clever", eh?

No. Throughout this programme there's absolutely no attempt to differentiate 'intellect' from 'intelligence'. The script is so stupid it continuously uses the word intelligence when it actually means intellect.

IQ is of course the starting point - "the benchmark".

IQ testing brands us with "a single mark".
IQ testing was introduced in 1912. Almost a century ago, and we're still doing it.
How has our understanding of intelligence changed?
Sternberg was introduced and talked about "the testing 'industry'". Well we know all about that!
Someone called Gould talked about animal and insect 'instinctual' intelligence as being "automatic responses to cues"
Is this intelligence?
The presenter clearly thought not. He's obviously not even considered instinct as a true intelligence.
He was only interested in 'ability to solve complex problems'.
Chimps and bees were described as 'Intelligent enough to cooperate' - so there's some sort of inkling there about social intelligence, but it was quickly glossed over.
'When did we learn to think?'
"Humans alone plan ahead, dream and think. Other animals live from day to day."
How do we find evidence of the first recorded expressions of intelligence?
'Only humans create and can make sense of art.'
"Paintings and abstract art are expressions of thought."
The ability to store something outside the human brain.
Galton was convinced that intelligence is inherited.
He was a hero for Cyril Burt. Ah, yes. Dear Cyril. The Bogus Man.
He believed in Eugenics and 'good birth'.
Believed the poor should be prevented from having children. Hitler agreed.
Burt was responsible for the development of IQ tests and the introduction of the 11+.
He claimed to have tested separated twins - and claimed that genetics is responsible for 80% of IQ.
Only after his death were his results properly scrutinised.
'Clearly something was drastically wrong.'
Probably he never saw a single separated twin.
Robert Graham believed the gene pool was deteriorating. He hoped to use the 'sperm of clever men' to breed 'intelligent kids' with 'outstanding genes'.
His sperm bank was operational for nearly 20 years.
Three Nobel scientists were persuaded to donate sperm.
So are there inherited components of intelligence? No specific genes have ever been identified.
But a large part of intelligence IS inherited, according to recent research with twins. According to this programme.
Should we be engaging the minds of children in "something useful" ALL of the time?
Can other behaviours predict academic success?
Kids who defer gratification apparently do better at school.
Other variables? Parents? Upbringing? Wider environment?
"IQ tests seem to show we have an all-purpose thinking skill that can be measured."
Memory/intellect seems to be an all-round ability. (?)
What about a broader spectrum of skills, abilties and aptitudes?
Howard Gardner and his Multiple Intelligence Theory were eventually mentioned.
Gardner says we have at least 8 separate intelligences.
But there's NO agreed system for measuring them.
Writer and dramatist Bonnie Greer scored highest of a bright bunch of people when 'a wider range of skills' was considered. Joint top with a quantum physicist. But we never got to find out which skills she did well on.
Is a high IQ a predictor of longevity?
Can we use microwaves to alter the structure of the brain?
Could this be the dawn of a brave new world?


Lawks. Most unenlightening. Such a waste of a programme.

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Wikipedia

We've seen America's vitriol. Now let's salute Wikipedia, a US pioneer of global civility

For all its shortcomings Wikipedia, now aged 10, is the internet's biggest and best example of not-for-profit idealism

by Timothy Garton-Ash

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/12/wikipedia-us-pioneer-global-idealism

If Wikipedia's principal architect, Jimmy Wales, had chosen to commercialise the enterprise, he could now be worth billions – like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Putting it all under the not-for-profit umbrella was, Wales quipped to me, at once the stupidest and the cleverest thing he ever did. More than any other major global site, Wikipedia still breathes the utopian idealism of the internet's heroic early days. Wikipedians, as they style themselves, are men and women with a mission. That mission, upon which they boldly go, is summed up in this almost Lennonist (that's John, not Vladimir) sentence from the man they all refer to as Jimmy: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge."

To suggest that this utopian goal could be achieved by a world wide web of volunteers – working for nothing, editing anything and everything, with the words they type immediately visible for the whole world to see – was of course a totally barmy idea. Yet this barmy army has come a remarkably long way in just 10 years.

We do not yet know if the shooting in Tucson, Arizona, was a direct product of the vitriolic incivility of American political discourse, as heard on talk radio and cable channels such as Fox News. A crazy man may just be crazy. But America's daily political vitriol is an undeniable fact. Against that depressing background, it is good to be able to celebrate an American invention which, for all its faults, tries to spread around the world a combination of unpaid idealism, knowledge and stubborn civility.

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I was intending to finish this blog with a piece on another TV programme about children under pressure, but that'll have to wait till tomorrow. Y'all come back now.

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Layer 318 . . . A Realignment of the Mind and Halting the Capitalist Merry-Go-Round

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There were some good articles (and CiFs) in the paper yesterday which sum up pretty well the current state of play in politics in a way similar to my own recent ramblings, only more articulate and concise. This is going to be a long one, but I think it’s worth trying to summarise where we’re at in politics.

This one's by Peter Kilfoyle:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/24/neil-kinnock-support-for-ed-miliband

Labour leadership trio perpetuate Blair-Brown years

The Milibands and Ed Balls only reinforce the status quo when the Labour party needs a fighter to galvanise members

I am mystified as to the basis upon which Kinnock's enthusiasm for Ed Miliband is built.

I have to assume it is a social experience of Ed Miliband. They had never worked together; and, having spent five years alongside the younger of the two precocious politician brothers, I fail to recognise the panoply of political and personal talents so admired by Kinnock.

Yet perhaps this is one of the difficulties which humble members in the provinces face. We do not have the social interaction so beloved of the London-based chattering classes, and the influence they exert on processes such as the selection of a new Labour party leader.

Left to our social (and, so they would have it, intellectual and political) superiors in the capital, there would probably be a choice of no more than three candidates – Ed and David Miliband, and Ed Balls.

It must be a great disappointment to Lords Mandelson, Falconer and Adonis – among others – to find an ungrateful and impertinent party demurring from their judgements.

Indeed, it is a measure of the decline of the party that we have the three leading contenders we do, and who are being heavily promoted. In background, there is little between them. Each has that narrow set of experiences seemingly mandatory for contemporary party leaders – Oxbridge, research, and political bagcarrying. Life experience outside of that restricted world is nonexistent, and their politics are apparently of the pick-and-mix variety.

What is truly astonishing is that while Miliband major has served all of nine years as a member of parliament, Miliband minor and Ed Balls were both first elected only in 2005. It was widely believed at the time that they were shoehorned into seats to look after the interests of their long-term boss, Gordon Brown. It now seems as if it was for premature promotion.

Indeed, this trio of hopefuls look set to perpetuate the Blair-Brown years; and a London-centric perspective of the Labour party would continue to be the case. Although each has a northern seat, they are not of the north.

Their politics are not even those of London but those of the Westminster and Whitehall villages; theirs are the politics of spin, not of conviction; of advancement, not of service; of an elite, not of a wider political community. Their political apprenticeships were served in the rival courts of Blair and Brown rather than on the mean streets of Britain.

It is, therefore, very depressing for Labour members throughout the country to see the same old charade in the build up to what, for millions of people, will be a vital election.

The country is crying out for a break from what was presented in the past as consensual politics. Our loyal supporters want us to fight for them, recognising that clever talk of triangulation is a betrayal of those most loyal and most dependent on Labour. Away from the spin and the mealy mouthed rhetoric, our intrepid trio offer only more of the same.

That is just not good enough. They have neither the real roots in the wider party, nor the established ideological commitment, to offer either real opposition in the short term or a bankable alternative to the present coalition at a general election.

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This comment from SamJohnson

I heard Balls on the radio at lunchtime.

He was MAGNIFICENT!

A splendid example of the emptiest, stupidest talking points imaginable. He knew perfectly well what he was saying was drivel and insult to the intelligence of listeners. I've never heard such a pathetic going through the motions exercise in my life. This is a man without principle and without passion. A cynical triangulator. Talk about the spawn of Brown!

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stucathome

The questions for Mandelson, Milibands and the NuLab muppets are:

What purpose do you serve except your own interests?

Have ever knowingly told the truth?

Labour is dead, murdered by the NuLab addiction to self-aggrandisement. A curse on all your houses say I to the incompetent lying corrupt tossers who can very rarely be bothered to get their greasy snouts out of the trough long enough to see the damage they have caused and never long enough to care or regret.

exiledlondoner

As one of the London-based chattering classes (when I'm not here in Spain), I do have to ask why you northerners keep electing these poncy southern scumbags?

David Miliband - South Shields.
Ed Miliband - Doncaster.
Ed Balls - Morley.
Tony Blair - Sedgefield.
Peter Mandelson - Hartlepool (that really takes the piss).

If you want to get rid of these entryist spivs, stop electing them.....

RapidEddie

New Labour turned out to be not very good at this capitalism lark that they embraced with such gusto. I fail to see that drawing your next leader from a pool of candidates who were at the very heart of the New Labour project restores confidence or moves you on from the perception that policy wonks and professional politicos make for disastrous real-world decision-makers.

They had a 13-year shot at making their case as competent capitalists. They flunked it. Now they're a party of no fixed beliefs and about to elect a leader with straight down-the-line New Labour credentials. I hope that makes sense to somebody.

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This is by Chuka Umunna and Lisa Nandy  - both newly elected Labour MPs

Labour leadership battle gives time to create future agenda

History cannot be allowed to set the parameters for debate as the Labour party takes the time it needs to select a new leader

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/25/labour-leadership-contest-create-agenda-for-future?

The task ahead: to restore the historic strength of a party formed and led from its grass roots, and in so doing, offer a vision that is in step with the concerns of the electorate.

But first, there is the contest. It is vital we not only involve members but the wider public. Next to the more traditional leadership hustings and inevitable TV debates, why not get candidates out, in every part of the country – not just London – to do high-street walkabouts and town centre soap-box sessions? That way members will see the leaders-to-be in action and judge whether they can connect and talk "human".

Then there is the discussion on where we went wrong and how we must change. This cannot be some arid dialogue between Blairites and Brownites, left and right, modernisers and those who supposedly want to turn the clock back to Militant and the 1980s.

Yes, we can learn from history but it cannot be allowed to set the parameters of debate in this new era.

These are different times requiring a different set of policy responses – people want to hear a response from the candidates. Undoubtedly, the City needs greater regulation so it better serves all of us and not a highly remunerated financial elite who are allowed to play fast and loose with our money. But what does "better regulation" look like?

Several candidates are already talking about immigration. Let's drop the cheap mantras and be honest with people: we allowed this issue to become a smokescreen for some of our biggest failures in government – the failure to get to grips with the housing crisis and the failure to address the race to the bottom in respect of the wages and the terms and conditions of a great bulk of the workforce, particularly temporary and agency workers.

Our belief in markets and globalisation blinded us to the fact that many have been left behind by globalisation. How do we address this? Both of us like the idea of a minimum-income guarantee that makes work pay, but how do we put this in place in the context of public expenditure restraint?

And then there are the quality-of-life issues, which seemed absent from so much of the general election debate. We work longer hours than any other country in western Europe, yet we are neither more productive nor, above all, happy. We have so much more material wealth than many third- and developing-world economies, yet in so many studies British people are less satisfied. How do we tackle this social recession? Professor Richard Wilkinson suggests this might have something to do with the outstanding gap between rich and poor . . .

There is so much to talk about. We found it impossible to properly consider where to go next while in government. We now have the time and space to map out an agenda for the future. It will be a gross dereliction in duty if we fail to do so this summer.

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A suitably angry and impassioned comment from orwellwasright:

Let's face it, party politics as we know it is on its way out - you lot are so discredited not only as effective and fair-minded "leaders" but as basic human beings - lacking in what resembles normal emotions and a sense of compassion - that it's only a matter of time before everyone's so sick and tired of the mealy-mouthed bullshit and servility to bankster fraudsters and warmongering big business that they'll think "fuck it" and storm the halls of Parliament. Which, judging by the continued looting of the global economy and this foolish drive to push austerity on the entire world so Goldman Sachs/JP Morgan thieves can buy another island, is not far off.

So rebuild the Labour party all you like - you'd be better off running for the hills though. I can hear the sound of pitchforks being sharpened.

Oxlan

Tellingly you seem to have completely failed to mention little things like the perception of Labour as the enemy of civil liberties.

That's the one that turned me from a default "vote Labour because they're the Tories' main opponents" (yep, being a student in the Thatcher years left its mark) into a LibDem activist. Moved a good few other people I know firmly out of the Labour camp, too.

And before anyone else brings it up, no, as a LibDem I don't regard the coalition as betrayal, undemocratic, etc . . . : with the things Labour were doing I regard them as worse than the Thatcher crowd and the coalition as the best available option for the country as a whole, given the hand the election dealt.

MartynInEurope

John McDonnell is the best hope for Labour supporters, for a fast return to an honourable, decent, democratic, egalitarian and inclusive Labour Party.

If Labour continues to be managed by New Labour spivs it deserves to become the Liberal Party of the 21st century.

Time for Labour to return to values of social justice and to become the party of real community transformation, by embracing the desire for and the will to enable a constitutional, democratic, egalitarian, decent and civil society.

Labour has the chance to unite the democratic left into a truly transformational force, and these opportunities don't come along every day.

John McDonnell for Labour Party leader!

Fbayes

You say we can't look back to history, how you sound like David Miliband's whipping boy. Guess what? People are still REALLY pissed off with Labour for invading Iraq and thus making Britain complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians - and how much of a financial cost for New Labours (I mean the Neo Conservatives) war - hard to tell them apart sometimes.

I wont even begin about civil liberties. No Chuka, this once great party needs to face up to the awful things that it did.

alisdaircameron

How revealing and damning is this line

    We found it impossible to properly consider where to go next while in government

That'd be because you jettisoned principle and pursued power for power's sake, and this manifested itself in many dismal ways; by both increased authoritarian intervention in the day-to-day lives of citizens and an invocation of positive liberty, in a narrow and twisted fashion that suited New Labour control-freaks and power-hungry cliques at the cost of the citizenry, propagandising and pushing the (unsustainable) consumerism and consumption as freedom shtick: this is the way to a better, shinier, new, improved future, so we'll force you towards it, whether you like it or not, then you will attain some higher, nobler liberty, because hey, we're the smartest guys in the room so obey (or else).

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This excellent piece is by David Marquand:

Green, socialist, republican: the new politics needs a realignment of the mind

Tarted-up neoliberalism won't cut it. The great question of our time isn't the deficit, but halting the capitalist merry-go-round

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/25/caroline-lucas-deficit-neoliberalism

The great French philosopher-statesman Alexis de Tocqueville once called for "a new political science for a new world". It is a good motto for liberal social democrats who hoped for a realignment of the left and centre-left, and now confront a baffling counter-realignment of the centre-right.

Fundamental to any progressive alliance worthy of the name would be a politics of power-sharing, tolerance and republican self-government. Such a politics is light years from Labour's inherited instincts. There are pluralists in Labour's ranks; the pressure group Compass contains many. But most Labour people are power-hoggers by nature, not power-sharers. Labour could not have taken part in a genuine progressive alliance without a cultural revolution. Of that there was (and is) no sign.

For would-be realigners, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are both broken reeds. Compass or no Compass, the Labour party is not going to change in a hurry.

Though realignment as Westminster politicians have understood it is now a dead duck, a richer and deeper realignment is desperately needed. For the last two years we have been living through the third great capitalist crisis of modern times; and it is not over yet. The neoliberal paradigm that has dominated policy-making throughout the developed world, not least in the institutions of global economic governance, has been turned inside out. Markets, we have discovered (or rediscovered), do not always know better than governments. Private greed does not procure public benefits. The lords of creation in the hedge funds and investment banks are not wealth creators. They are wealth destroyers. A rising tide does not invariably float all boats.

The self-regulating market of neoliberal economic theory is a phantom, whose pursuit led to a shameful increase in inequality and eventually to a catastrophic fall in employment and output. The newly untamed capitalism of the last 30 years has not been driven by "rational economic actors": the "rational economic actor" is another phantom. It has been driven by stampeding herds of electronic gamblers. It is not only monstrously unjust, it is also unsustainable – not only economically, but politically, environmentally and, above all, morally.

Yet the implications have not sunk in. In Washington, London and the capitals of the eurozone, the hunt is on for a tarted-up version of business as usual, radical enough to seem new, but conservative enough to keep the essentials of the old show on the road. Hayek and Friedman have been toppled from their perches; Keynes has returned to his. Tougher regulation, banking reforms, quantitative easing and even bank nationalisations have been the order of the day; some still are.

However, this is an elaborate exercise in rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. As Will Hutton once pointed out, the point about the Keynesian revolution is that it wasn't revolutionary. Keynes was a small-c conservative, not a radical. He wanted to save capitalism, not to supersede or even to transcend it. And almost by definition, he couldn't foresee the accelerating environmental crisis of our day. There will be no salvation from his quarter: of the great economists of the past, Marx is a better guide than Keynes to the turbulent, masterless capitalism of today.

But none of the economic gurus of old days is of much help now. The one certainty is that we can't continue indefinitely on our present path – and by "we" I don't just mean British politicians and voters; I mean the human race. Sooner or later the crisis-haunted capitalist merry-go-round will have to stop. The great question for our time is not how and when to cut the fiscal deficit, or calm the markets, or curb the bonus culture, or tax transnational financial transactions – pressing as all these questions are. It is how to halt the merry-go-round before it is too late: how to switch from an unjust and unsustainable economic order to a just and sustainable one. [My emphasis]

No single thinker, party or school of thought offers a complete answer, or anything like it. Answers will have to be hammered out in open-minded dialogue, between all those who accept that tinkering is not enough, across the lines of party and creed. The need, in fact, is for a realignment of the mind, socialist in economics and republican in politics. In such a realignment the Green movement must surely have a central place, along with radicals and dissenters from all parties and none. Caroline Lucas, over to you.

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PeterGuillam said:

Spot on. Neo-liberalism has failed, comprehensively, but politics hasn't caught up. Two years ago the banking system fell apart and with it the basic ideology of neo-liberalism - that markets know best. Apologists for that ideology tried to pretend that the collapse was in fact a failure of 'statism', that it was the state's fault for allowing the banks to act as they did. But of course that was nonsense in terms of neo-liberal ideology, which holds that individuals and corporations are the best judge of their own interests. If that was so, then it would not have mattered what corporations were allowed to do, since they would not have used that licence in contradiction to their own interests. But this they manifestly did, hence the collapse of Lehmanns etc.

The wholesale screw up by the banks required national governments to step in because, whatever the theories of neo-liberalism, allowing them to fail would have wreaked such havoc that no democratic government could entertain it. So the private risk of banks became the public deficit. Now, unbelievably one would have thought, that public deficit incurred to rescue the banks is being used by the banks (or 'markets' - as if these were some kind of force of nature) to penalise the states that rescued the banks from oblivion.

So we have the extraordinary situation where the banks have been rescued by the state, creating huge state indebtedness, but now demand that the state cut every last piece of public welfare because it is now indebted - as a result of the banks! It would be a joke, were it not for the massive human misery it will cause.

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DWearing

Caroline Lucas has been quite clear - repeatedly - that the Green Party is firmly of the left, and the (entirely correct) economic policies in the 2010 Green manifesto bear that out.

I personally find Lucas' refusal to apologise for being of the left - whenever its presented to her as though its an accusation - very refreshing indeed. As Marquand points out here, the economic failures of the present day are right-wing failures (which the Labour Party shamefully bought into). New thinking on economics and social justice is urgently required from people, like Lucas, who care about people more than profits.

There's a large constituency in the country beyond the Green Party's current voter base - including disillusioned Labour and Lib Dem voters - who will welcome a voice like hers in British politics.

rd232

It seems like the entire world is now losing its head and deciding that having bailed out the financial sector, we now need to kowtow to it like never before - even at the cost of another Depression. Keynes would be rolling over in his grave . . .

PS to those who think the Greens' views are fringe: consider that they came out TOP at http://voteforpolicies.org.uk, based on nearly 300,000 surveys. Yeah they got 1% of the vote in a close first-past-the-post election - so what? Just wait for electoral reform (especially if it's ACTUALLY proportional, and not just AV).

englishhermit

The Green Party is a bottom up party. Each local party, sometimes ward by ward, is independent from the others. This is green philosophy as with Greenpeace whose national organisations are independent and Greenpeace International provides co-ordination but cannot dictate what each national organisation does.

The same principle goes for the Greens. We don't really need a national leader except for publicity purposes. There is no central office diktat as with all the other political parties. This the foundation stone of green politics. Localism building upwards.

dierobdie

yoric:

    How many people who voted for the Greens a couple of weeks ago actually really understand how they would have to live and change their lives, IF the Greens were running the Country?

Quite. God forbid that there arent 20 different types of automatic air 'fresheners' on sale at Tescos. That would really reduce my choices and make me less free. The Green also advocate a shorter working week. Utter lunacy! How would people be able to afford ring tones or vote in X factor?

The horror!

Stargrave

So there are only 2 " alternatives"? What an absolute poverty of vision and imagination.

What about (real) Social Democracy, or mutualism, or cooperativism or various combinations of these and direct democracy?

Looked at objectively the policies that the Greens in England and Wales just offered in their election manifesto were basically left wing social democratic policies with a strong Green/Environmentalist theme. As hard leftists never tire of pointing out, this would have been close to mainstream 40 years ago.

The fact that this reformist leftism was seen as the most "left wing" electable programme, and has the "libertarians" and neo cons and wing nut ranters screaming "Commies!" or "Medievalist primitivists who want us to live in caves!" tells us more about the level of political understanding and development of much of the current right (and their excitability or preference for hyperbole and exaggeration and smear) than it does about the Greens.

The Right who rant on in such terms are of a similar mindset to the Tea Party crowd in America who think Obama (for goodness sake) is a "Commie". In short, not to be taken seriously politically, but to be watched in the knowledge that such concotions of conspiracy theory and scapegoating have a nasty history and potential trajectory.

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

Simon Jenkins, meanwhile, writes sensibly about the new government:

Radical? Hardly. But Cameron is so much more than Blair reincarnated

The Queen's speech may cleanse only Labour's most fouled stables. Yet Cameron has proved an original political personality

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/25/david-cameron-radical-original

A four-page coalition agreement, a 36-page manifesto, a £6.2bn cuts programme and now a 22-bill Queen's speech. The post-election fortnight began with a weekend of promiscuity and has abruptly morphed into two weeks of fruitful bliss. The bond formed by David Cameron and Nick Clegg on May 11 produced an almost surreal moment in British politics, not so much a coalition as a fusion. Two lookalikes have become feelalikes, and it is hard to see how they can ever part. A cynic can add: fine so far … wait and see. But something remarkable has happened. It is time to take stock.

The Queen's speech and pre-announced cuts will cleanse only the most fouled of Labour's stables. Illiberal registers, databases, inspectorates and regulatory quangos typified the regimes of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and obsessed such control-freak ministers as David Miliband and Ed Balls. Disbanding these bodies meets the libertarian spirit of Tories and Liberals, saving money and freeing frontline administration. To deplore this as a savage assault on the welfare state is ludicrous.

The same goes for George Osborne's cuts, a mere tenth of those proposed by Labour before the election. After the profligacy of Brown and Alistair Darling, 1% less public spending is hardly crippling. The quango cull is mild and 3% off bureaucracy modest. Most departments and local councils have already allowed for such cuts.

Where the government demands to be judged is elsewhere, in using the financial crisis to steer the public sector towards greater accountability. Cameron has promised less state intervention and a more co-operative society.

Now Cameron and Clegg want to bring power closer to the consumers, "to devolve greater powers to local councils" and "repeal unnecessary laws". Everyone wants that. But unless the two comprehend what balked Thatcher and Blair, they will get no further.

The coalition can't seriously finance selective white schools in black, urban areas – the chief driver of "parental choice" – in defiance of local catchment areas. There is no way the Liberal Democrats will buy it. While much of Gove's programme, in teacher training and curricular freedom, is admirable, the old antagonism to local government jars. As before, the Treasury will stop it.

If this is the coalition's most radical moment, it is not very radical. The withdrawal of ID cards and the children's database is hardly controversial. Both were toys arising from Labour's infatuation with computers. There is no curbing of such regulatory monsters as the Criminal Records Bureau or the Health and Safety Executive. There is no review of farm payments, the NHS computer or the lunatic digital radio edict. As for Osborne's proposal to freeze council tax, it is the purest centralism. Whatever the Queen says, local councils will stay shackled to Whitehall.

The government's ideological ambitions are almost identical to Blair's in 1997, which is why Cameron was so deftly able to fashion a centre-right coalition out of the ruins of New Labour's centre-left one. But he is a cleverer, deeper politician than Blair, with whom he once compared himself. Blair was hobbled by his obsession with headlines and his failure to understand how government worked. He surrounded himself not with doers but cronies.

Cameron suffers some of the same handicaps. But he seems a more original political personality. He is less blinded by the glamour of office. He walks to work and has dictated an ascetic administration. He seems to care about civil freedom, unlike Blair, and to be thinking afresh in areas of foreign policy.

Coming after John Major, Blair and Brown, Cameron faces the prospect of proving merely a better class of disappointment. The British centralist state is a monstrous, unyielding beast. No one knows how soon the coalition will find itself embattled by its backbenchers or its constituent parties in the country. No one can predict the engulfing tide of events. For all that, his ministry has started well and has held, so far. Britain can at least cheer it on its way, so far.

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

Exactly. So far.
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Layer 314 . . . The New Politics and The Future of Labour

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The New Politics?

I've just realised that nominations for the next leader of the Labour Party have to be in within 6 weeks. This might cause me some problems . . .

But seriously - it's ridiculous. This is guaranteed to favour those who have been around in the last government for some time, even if the leadership election itself isn't till the end of the summer.

John Cruddas has already counted himself out and says he won't stand. Can't say I blame him - he didn't make a very good fist of the deputy leader contest, in which Harriet H far outshone him.

Maybe Harriet will now be persuaded to get involved and fight to reshape Labour as a proper principled social democratic party.

There's lots of silly talk around about how the government coalition will be hoping to push the next reincarnation of Labour well over to the left, where they will be unelectable because they'll fail to appeal to the centrist floating voters. This stems from the fallacy that the opposition in Parliament must oppose everything the government proposes, and must stand on political ground that's distinctively and exclusively their own.

It's now time for grown up politics where issues and policies are debated on their merits, and time for Labour to make it clear they support the new government's proposals as and when they make good sense. In this way they don't need to vacate the centre ground - which is where you'd expect to find overlap between the rival camps.

If Clegg and Cameron are offering fairness and social justice, then Labour need to say so and to support their offer. If C & C propose policies that are unfair and unjust then they should be attacked, and better, democratic socialist, policies should be put forward.

And if the new government, following the example of the Macmillan government, manages to increase the real income of the majority of people and families, whilst holding back the salaries and capital gains of the fat cats, then more power to their elbow, since this was patently not the case under New Labour.

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

There's a very silly column on the Guardian website today, by Simon Tisdall, under the heading,

Obama's keenness to congratulate David Cameron suggests Washington feels less secure about British support

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/18/poodle-politics-uk-us-over

Oxzen posted this:

Why wouldn't Obama welcome a Cameron-led government into office? On a personal level Cameron has shown he shares some of Obama's intelligence, pragmatism, wit and unflappability, whilst the broader picture is that a liberal Democratic administration and a liberal Conservative-led administration occupy exactly the same political ground. This is in marked contrast to the Blair/Brown goverment that was over to the right - in Bush territory where Chicago-school (non) trickle-down economics, unregulated banking and growing inequality, together with an erosion of civil liberties, were the dominant schools of thought.

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

I somehow missed this Polly Toynbee column at the weekend. It's worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/15/labour-needs-to-rethink-polly-toynbee

Don't rush for a new leader. Labour has to rethink it all

First, the party needs to shed a whole mindset of tribalism and caution – and take a long, hard look at where it went wrong

First, the autopsy and time for necessary blame and contrition. There can be no moving on until Labour people acknowledge so much that has been badly wrong. No "renewal", "fundamental rethink" or "revitalisation" comes from David Miliband getting in and out of his limo to create the "alternative government". If not sackcloth and ashes, this is a party that should be travelling by tube and not wearing the tie of office.

"We are a loyal party by nature," said one cabinet member. Loyal to what? That is a fundamental question. If political tribe comes first in a country that no longer feels tribal, only 65% voting for either old party, Labour will be lost in a future that is transformed, for much the better, into multi-party pluralism.

Look at the new government with open eyes or risk misjudging the moment. There will be plenty to criticise later, but these Conservatives are leapfrogging over Labour to do radical things that Labour never dared – from docking bank bonuses to raising capital gains tax back to 40%, and better green policies. Know the enemy: this is something new. Jon Cruddas gets it: "It's a good thing that we do not have an extreme right government. That helps the centre-left."

Everything moves on. The argument will be between those who think Labour must reclaim the mythical "centre ground" and those who see how far politics have just jumped in a social democratic direction. Will Labour get it on the new pluralism? Neither old party may be able to govern alone again: better government comes from coalitions. Labour's last 13 years would have been much improved by a Lib Dem alliance.

Here is the authenticated list of what Labour offered the Lib Dems: a new levy on banking, the mansion tax on high-priced property, raising personal allowances to the Lib Dems to £10,000 (at the same pace as the Tories offer), no ID cards, the DNA database cut, fixed-term parliaments, an alternative vote referendum Labour would campaign for (the Tories won't), the Wright plans for Commons reform and fair party funding, no third runway at Heathrow, new freedom of information laws, 13 of the 15 civil liberties reforms in the Lib Dems' freedom bill and the pupil premium for poor children. If all that had been policy long ago, Labour would have kept its good civil liberties reputation as the party that brought in the Human Rights Act. Why cling to the third runway, alienating green voters, if it was so unimportant?

New Labour always muffled its messages and triangulated away its strengths. By 1997, the country was ahead of it and expecting more – but Blair restrained radicalism. Even when the country seethed with fury at the greed of bankers and boardrooms – yes, even the Daily Mail – Labour did not dare to attempt radical redress. Fear born in the 1992 lost election trammelled all that they did and said. "Fairness" was meaningless without bold action against the unfairness of entrenched privilege. Markets had to be praised and public services castigated to prove their mastery of the mythical "centre ground". What if there is no such thing – and the winner is the one who best captures the public imagination? Cowardice costs votes.

Profound rethinking takes time: rushing the leadership election is a grave error. Some imagine Tory cuts and fury with Lib Dems will gift power back to Labour. Hard questions need new answers. What went wrong on inequality? Why did 18% of vital C2s defect, angry over their static incomes, housing and immigration? Face the facts: Labour lost badly and needs a jump start, a blood transfusion and every other metaphor for new life it can summon.

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Layer 310 . . . Bogdanovich, Petty, Dylan, What's Up Doc?, Wake Up Time and Running Down A Dream

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You spend your life dreaming, running 'round in a trance
You hang out forever and still miss the dance
And if you get lucky, you might find someone
To help you get over the pain that will come
Yeah, you were so cool back in high school, what happened?
You were so sure not to have your spirits dampened . . .

- Tom Petty, Wake Up Time

I was talking with my daughter last week about a feature film called "What's Up Doc?", which we used to watch on our video, time after time, howling with laughter. It's one of the best comedies ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_Up,_Doc%3F_%28film%29

The film was directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Last night BBC4 cleared its schedule for a showing of a monster documentary made by Bogdanovich in 2007 - 4 hours of pure engaging magic, with never a dull moment for lovers of great rock music. It's a real tribute to the art of a great documentary maker that the film engages on so many levels, telling a heartwarming story of a great musician, singer and composer - Tom Petty.

Prior to watching this film I hadn't fully realised what a great band the Heartbreakers have been from the very beginning - a group of terrific musicians, and a kind of family and not just a group of performers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runnin%27_Down_A_Dream_%28film%29

I hadn't realised, either, that Tom and the band had hit the really big time in Britain before they were even known in America. Following that first amazing tour here, to promote their first album, they went home and went back to being struggling musos, trying hard to get radio stations to even play their music.

It's a measure of Tom's genius that later in his career he worked regularly with and made records with some of the true greats of rock music - Bob Dylan, George Harrison and Roy Orbison. The Travelling Wilburys seemed to come together almost by magic, and Tom made a major contribution to the band's songwriting and performing.

Tom's interest in music seemed to really take off when, as a kid, he was introduced to Elvis Presley by a relative who was working on one of the King's films. However, it was after seeing The Beatles performing on television - a startling experience according to him - that his world changed forever and he was convinced he would spend his life writing songs and performing in a band.

In the course of the film TP spoke with great clarity and intelligence, and without a shred of ego or pretention, about his life and times, and of course about his passion for music. He was as determined to make great records with a great sound and great songs as he was to put on great live shows.

Another measure of the greatness of Tom and the Heartbreakers is the fact that Dylan chose them to be his "backing" band for a world tour. Dylan's never going to play with musicians who are anything but the best, but it was interesting to listen to the guys in the band being interviewed about the way in which Dylan always stretches his band to the furthest limits by constantly playing in different keys, with different tempos, and improvising with the arrangements within his songs. With the Heartbreakers he knew he could do whatever he wanted and the band would always be paying attention and be able to respond and improvise and go with him.

At the conclusion of the film Tom says, "Everybody used to care. Now they don't care."

Tom still cares.

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

Check out Ballad of a Thin Man - with Dylan hugely enjoying himself, and some great drumming and guitar soloing:

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

Knocking on Heaven's Door - Dylan a master of the harmonica: notice the way he signals to the others he's enjoying the blast and he's going to extend the opening harp solo -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNdeKThOljo&NR=1

An extended live version of Refugee, with great Hammond and guitars -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fxzviZmdSk&feature=related


Well, if he gets lucky, a boy finds a girl
To help him to shoulder the pain in this world
And if you follow your feelings
And you follow your dreams
You might find the forest there in the trees
Yeah, you'll be alright, it's just gonna take time, but now
Who could have seen you'd be so hard to please somehow . . .

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

Dylan
http://www.new-pony.com/timeline.html

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

What's Up Doc?

"Utterly hilarious is the best short description for "What's Up Doc?" This seldom-discussed, nearly forgotten hommage to screwball comedy is one of the most consistently funny, inspired, brilliantly realized ever made. There are no weak spots. Even if you are not a Streisand fan, it must be admitted that she has a gift for comedy (and she only stops the action once, to sing for five minutes). Ryan O'Neil is a perfect foil as an uptight college professor completely bamboozled by Streisand. Smaller roles are humourously portrayed by the likes of Austin Pendelton, Kenneth Mars and Mabel Albertson.

But, for those who love this movie, the real star of the show is MADELINE KAHN, as the all-time great comic character of Eunice Burns. Who can forget Eunice forcing her way into the hotel banquet hall, swinging her purse as a weapon? Or poor Eunice cowering on her hotel room bed, asking "what more can they do to me?"

Director Bogdanovich's version of the car chase which closes the film is so tremendously funny and entertaining that the viewer is sorry to see it end.

A richly comic feast."
- by mackjay
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069495/usercomments

"What's Up Doc is one of six movies I use to offset ANY bad mood. I have seen it countless times and still can't keep the suitcases straight.

This film is full of visual humor and one liners; Madeline Kahn screaming and taking on all comers while dragging the doorkeeper across the ballroom floor; the hotel crook using his "charm" to drop Mrs. Van Hoskins in her tracks; Eunice hiding in the bathroom because snakes "live in deathly fear of tile"; the promise of Howard conducting an avalanche in A Flat.

My only regret about this movie is that it began endless failed efforts by television and movie makers to replicate the chase through San Francisco. No one has. That sequence is the best example of humor, timing, backdrop, and action, of the chase genre. It has never been equalled by either serious or comedic directors.

Little mentioned in these reviews are Kenneth Mars and Austin Pendelton, two fantastic character actors who are the emeralds surrounding the diamonds of Streisand and O'Neal in the glorious setting of this jewel.

Thank goodness no one in What's Up Doc knows the meaning of the word "propriety!".

- by annmason1

"A zany, riotous slapstick comedy that lives up to what it purports to be...a zany, riotous slapstick comedy! Silly, simple and superficial . . . `What's Up, Doc?' is pure, unadulterated fun. Bugs Bunny should be proud.

Saluting its classic screwball predecessors, this innocent send-up has all the joy, style and panache one could ask for . . . Director Peter Bogdanovich, (who also wrote the story and co-produced) was at his zenith when he made this in 1972. Thirty years later, I've yet to see anything comparable to it.

Proving before her she had a nose for comedy (she was a hoot in `The Owl and the Pussycat'), Streisand outdoes herself here. She wisely (and generously) defers to the director and, in return, churns out her most engaging performance yet as a wacky, accident-prone, highly determined gal who creates utter chaos out of confusion while striving to win the guy. She proves once and for all she is a funny, FUNNY girl, her quicksilver timing a joy to behold. And, as a bonus, she sings!

`What's Up, Doc' is a refreshing reminder that laughter is still the best medicine. Th...Th...That's all, folks!"

- by Gary Brumbergh

"Not only in my top three favourites of all time, but most definitely the funniest hour and a half ever registered on celluloid. I first saw it in 1974 - I was nine - and instantly fell under the spell.

Streisand delivers like a sniper and actually looks sexy and desirable, O'Neal does his bespectacled Iowa music professor with all the dizziness of sex on legs that he was, and the cast generally glide through two separate crescendos of stupid situations, fuelled by dialogue in break neck speed, each more hilarious than the previous, all inexorably slipping into general uproar and mayhem at every turn.

This is a true comedy classic that hasn't lost any of it's breeziness, funk, sexiness and freshness with years. Dumb, twisted and invigorating all at once it's a true gem. Watch it and feel your I.Q. drop, and get hooked by all means. Or miss at your own peril."

- by Oggz

"I think this film is the funniest movie I have ever seen. No matter how many times I see it, I always find surprisingly fresh and completely hilarious. Barbra Streisand's performance is the centerpiece of the whole film. She simply glows with warmth, sexiness, and humor. There isn't a moment when we don't find her completely believable. Ryan O'Neal adds a great physical presence and is gloriously restrained. The film also contains some great supporting turns from Ken Mars, Liam Dunn, and especially Madeline Kahn, who nearly steals the movie in her film debut."

- by MAX80

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

Nick Clegg has this piece in today's Guardian:

Don't take offence at our coalition. Its aims are liberal

A Lib-Con deal was the only responsible choice. And our shared aim is to build a fairer society by a radical dispersal of power

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/14/nick-clegg-coalition-aims-are-liberal?

It's helpful that Clegg's bothering to give us an update on his thinking, but Oxzen took issue with his concluding words:

    And from our different traditions we can pursue one simple, shared aim: this will be the government that re-empowers the British people.

Such a shallow and glib slogan - they can empower but they can't re-empower since the powerless have never had any real power. Without PR the concept is meaningless anyway. In Britain it's the major parties and the cliques who control them, and over-mighty governments and prime ministers, that have power. Money = power. I'll believe in decentralisation and power to the people if and when I see it.

There are, however, six good reasons for Clegg to have joined in a coalition with the Tories:

1) Too many Labour MPs made it clear they wanted no part of a coalition.
2) Too many Labour MPs made it clear they will never support PR.
3) New Labour needed to be kicked out - as a punishment for being a lousy government, and also for the party to re-think what it's about, under new leadership.
4) Britain needs a progressive and not a regressive Tory party, and with the help and the constraints of the LibDems Cameron has a chance of bringing this about.
5) Several things done by Labour need to be undone, and several things not done now badly need to be done.
6) There needs to be a demonstration that a coalition government can work effectively in Britain as a whole, just as it has in Scotland and elsewhere. Under a fair voting system coalition governments are both inevitable and desirable. Government by 'big tent' parties using whipping systems in the name of party 'discipline' both stifles debate and fudges issues.

One overwhelmingly bad reason for the LibDems to join with the Tories is to assist them in slashing spending on front-line public services, creating further unnecessary unemployment, and putting us into a deeper and more prolonged recession - all in the name of rapid repayment of debt and appeasing 'the markets'. Nick Clegg says nothing about this in this column. Since the rate of debt repayment was such a major issue in this election Clegg can't stay quiet about it in the name of 'collective responsibility'. We need to know what Clegg and Cable are now advocating, even if, or especially if, they continue to disagree with Osborne and his fellow slashers. I'm sure we're grown up enough to accept that they were simply outvoted in cabinet, if this is the case. It's all very well showing TV pictures of happy smiling faces around the cabinet table - we need to know what they're saying and who's arguing for what. Coalition is all very well - but it has to be done in an open and transparent manner, if it's to have credibility, legitimacy and public support.
.

Layer 307 . . . Meet the New Boss

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Meet the new boss -
Same as the old boss . . .

The Who
Won't Get Fooled Again

So it's 'steady as she goes' Britain - the country's new leaders stand on pretty much the same political ground as the old ones.

Had we not had a hung parliament and a coalition then without a doubt we'd now have a centre-right government. As things stand, however, the new government, thanks to the LibDem presence, has had to commit to the far left of the right-wing spectrum - i.e. somewhat to the left of where the Blair/Brown governments stood. We'll now get banking regulation, abolition of the FSA and return of control over banking to the B of E, greater decentralisation, abolition of the targets culture, fixed term parliaments, a vote on AV/PR, etc. There will also be, potentially, more parliamentary scrutiny and influence over the executive. The executive will have to be more open and transparent about decision-making , thanks to the coalition. There will be much less government by a clique around an over-powerful prime minister.

It's not hard to imagine that Cameron will indeed turn out to be a one-nation Tory, the likes of which we've not seen since the days of MacMillan, or possibly Heath. He'll be helped, not hindered, by the coalition, in his efforts to modernise the Tory party, make it more 'progressive', and minimise the influence of the real 'nasties'. He may even get some of the real dinosaurs and regressives to push off and start their own party. I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he really would like a more equal society, and is less intensely relaxed about the super rich than New Labour was.

Another up-side is not having to listen to the smug and arrogant voices of Balls and Mandelson, Alexander and Cooper, ever again. Thanks to them being thrown down to the same level as the rest of us we can now give them the humbling they so richly deserve.

The Milibands are another matter. It's going to be interesting to observe the political progress of David and Ed. Cruddas and Compass will also be worth watching.
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Layer 305 . . . Rats and Sinking Ships

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More and more of the Labour troops are coming forward to say they think Labour can't or shouldn't do a deal with the LibDems - and so the party should let the Tories and LibDems do whatever they want to do. Fucking amazing.

Charlie Faulkener is one who's saying "I think we're doing ourselves damage now, as a party."

And this seems to be the main concern of many of these bastards - they're more bothered about the wellbeing of their party than the wellbeing of the people they're supposed to represent.

I wouldn't be surprised if they quite fancy a period of time out of the driving seat. In which case they should fuck off and let someone else from within their party take over. They should do that anyway.

Many of them will no doubt be thinking they quite fancy making a pot of money from little sidelines elsewhere if they're not in government.

A great many of them are such careerist and tribalist bastards they're no doubt thinking - and rubbing their hands with glee - about the shit that's going to land on the Tories when they start slashing and burning. Pure political calculation, without giving a toss for the fact that over 50% of us actually voted for a left-leaning government.

The final point is that many of these tribalists and careerists don't want anything to do with proportional representation, or even STV. Kate Hooey's one of these anti-PR people who say Labour should jack it in. Fine for her - this is all she's got to disturb her orderly little life. She doesn't bat an eyelid at the sheer unfairness of FPTP either.

Fuck the lot of them. It's going to be interesting to find out sooner or later who were the ones prepared to fight, and who didn't feel a jot of responsibility for carrying out the wishes of the majority of the electorate.

And there's one more category of Labourite that wants to pack it in. There seem to be a few of them who relish the prospect of having an almighty internal punch-up in the aftermath - many of them because they can't stomach the likes of Balls, Alexander, Milibands, Cooper, etc carrying on with their career trajectory, and want very badly to see them done down and beaten up. In many ways I agree, but this is a luxury that the vulnerable people of this country can't afford.


Large holdalls are currently being loaded into the backs of cars at the rear of No 10 . . .
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Layer 303 . . . Whitehall Revisited, and Still Deadlocked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oxzen commented:

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

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

Why would anyone give a damn any more about what David Blunkett thinks or says? Cheer up Polly - whatever happens next the Labour party finally has an opportunity to clear out both the Blairites and the Brownites and begin to rehabilitate itself as a proper social democratic party. Whether or not it takes it is another matter, however.
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Layer 299 . . . Almost There, Blind Anger, Greek Protests, Shock Doctrine, and Fightbacks.

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It's polling day today, and everyone's on tenterhooks. This is one election whose outcome, everyone seems to agree, cannot be predicted.

The news from Athens may or may not be a foretaste of what could happen here if our next government tries to impose a version of the Shock Doctrine.

Greek protesters storm the Acropolis

World markets plunge over fears that Greece's economic crisis will spread to other countries despite austerity measures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/04/greek-protesters-storm-acropolis

In a dramatic escalation of the anger unleashed by the economic crisis engulfing Greece, communist protesters stormed the Acropolis today as the euro and world markets plunged on concerns about the debt-choked country's huge bailout from the EU and the IMF.

Irate trade unionists took over Athens' ancient landmark as fury over an unprecedented package of austerity measures, agreed in return for a multibillion euro aid package from eurozone nations and the IMF, intensified.

By the break of dawn the citadel's ramparts had been draped with banners proclaiming: "Peoples of Europe rise up."

In Athens, protesting public sector workers said their action had been prompted by "blind anger" over the near-bankrupt government's decision to accept the painful policies.

Under the deal the Greek government must also freeze wages, slash pensions and do away with a plethora of bonuses and allowances – draconian reforms not seen since the second world war.

"We want to send a message to the people of Europe," said Panagiotis Papageorgopoulos, a communist party official marching with the protesters. "We can take control of our fate with organised protests so that our lives are not run by the EU and IMF."

In a prelude to tomorrow's paralysing general strike, schools, hospitals and domestic flights were disrupted as public servants stepped up action against the measures. Private sector workers, including air traffic controllers at Athens airport, will participate in the walk-out piling the pressure on the government.

Passing in front of Athens' imposing Greek parliament, demonstrators shouted: "Let the rich pay for the crisis." At the time MPs were debating a draft bill outlining the unpopular economic reforms that will have to be imposed.

With tensions running high, riot police fired off rounds of tear gas as they scuffled with men, women and students who also joined the protests.

Workers have warned that their campaign against the stringent package of fiscal policies and structural reforms will be ongoing and relentless.

If any of the above sounds like what the Tories are proposing to do in the UK, in order to please their chums in the City - well that's because it is. Cameron fully understands the principles of The Shock Doctrine. The question will be - will he get away with it? Or will British civil servants and other British workers have the guts to organise public protests and an effective resistance?

We can only hope they won't need to, and that a Lab / Lib collaboration will thwart the Tories' ambitions. Even so, we can't trust either the Labour lot or the Lib Dems not to slash and burn following the election, if they're in charge. Whatever happens, I just hope nobody's stupid enough to get involved in physical aggro.

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I had another look at the closing chapter of Naomi Klein's book this week [Shock Wears Off], in which she details the grassroots movements in South America that have assumed power in most of the major countries, and have fought back from the appalling conditions imposed by American-sponsored dictatorships in places like Chile, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina. Klein makes the point that having a number of these states in the control of left-of-centre governments gives the progressive movements much greater collective clout as they rebuild their countries in the interests of the mass of their population.

"The core tenets of Chicago School economics - privatisation, deregulation and cuts to government services - had laid the foundations for the breakdown.

The hording of wealth by a tiny minority of the . . .  population was not a peaceful process . . . nor was it a legal one.

[A] veneer was being very publicly stripped away, to reveal a system of gross wealth inequalities, often opened up with the aid of grotesque criminality.

It was in 2001 . . . that Argentina erupted in protest against IMF-prescribed austerity measures and proceded to force out five presidents in only three weeks.

In the years since, that wide-awake shock resistance has spread to many other former shock labs - Chile, Bolivia, China, Lebanon. And as people shed their collective fear that was first instilled with tanks and cattle prods, with sudden flights of capital and brutal cutbacks, many are demanding more democracy and more control over markets.

The staunchest opponents of neoliberal economics were winning election after election. The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, running on a platform of "21st Century Socialism", was re-elected in 2006 for a third term with 63 percent of the vote.

Latin Americans understand perfectly well that it was authoritarian communism that failed in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. Democratic socialism, meaning not only socialist parties brought to power through elections but also democratically run workplaces and land holdings, has worked in many regions, from Scandinavia to the thriving and historic cooperative economy in Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.

It was a version of this combination of democracy and socialism that Allende was attempting to bring to Chile between 1970 and 1973.

The dirty secret of the neoliberal era is that these ideas were never defeated in a great battle of ideas, nor were they voted down in elections. They were shocked out of the way at key political junctures. When resistance was fierce they were defeated with overt violence . . .

In other words, Allende needed to be taken out before his democratic third way spread . . .

The dream he represented was never defeated. It was . . .temporarily silenced, pushed under the surface by fear.

Ever since the Argentine collapse in 2001, opposition to privatisation has become the defining issue of the continent, able to make governments and break them; by late 2006, it was practically creating a domino effect. Luiz inacio Lula da Silva was reelected as president of Brazil largely because he turned the vote into a referendum on privatisation.

Chile and Argentina are both led by politicians who define themselves against their countries' Chicago School experiments.

The structures built by the continent's developmentalist movements [had been] sacked, stripped and sold off. Today Latin Americans are picking up the project that was so brutally interrupted all those years ago. Many of the policies cropping up are familiar: nationalisation of key sectors of the economy. land reform, major new investments in education, literacy and health care. These are not revolutionary ideas, but . . . [an] unapologetic vision of a government that helps reach for equality.

The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) is the continent's retort to the Free Trade Area of the Americas. ALBA is . . . "a perfect example of genuinely fair trade: each country provides what it is best placed to produce, in return for what it most needs, independent of global market prices." So Bolivia provides gas at stable discounted prices; Venezuela offers heavily subsidisd oil to poorer countries and shares expertise in developing reserves; and Cuba sends thousands of doctors to deliver free health care all over the continent, while training students from other countries at its medical schools.

The major benefit is that ALBA is essentially a barter system, in which countries decide for themselves what any given commodity or service is worth, rather than letting traders in new York, Chicago or London set the prices for them.

When one country does face a financial shortfall, this increased integration means that it does not need to turn to the IMF or the U.S. Treasury for a bailout.

The results have been dramatic. Brazil, so long shackled to Washington by its enormous debt, is refusing to enter into a new agreement with the IMF. Venezuela has withdrawn from both the IMF and the World Bank.

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

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

 Mandelson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Nice to see you!

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

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

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

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

Doh!

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

True. Why haven't you done it already?

A progressive agenda for economic and political reform under Labour.

Good. Why haven't you done it already?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why haven't you done it already?

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

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

 Sorry!

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