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Friday 20 November 2009 In 1963, less than a year into their recording career, the Beatles were asked about their prospects. Paul McCartney suggested that he and John Lennon might become professional songwriters for other acts. George Harrison hoped to have enough money ‘to go into a business of my own by the time we do flop’. And Ringo Starr had already set his sights on a string of hairdressing salons. It was hardly surprising that they were thinking ahead: the group had already exceeded expectations by achieving two chart-topping singles and a number one album, and the experience of previous acts suggested that the ‘flop’ would come sooner rather than later. ‘How long are we going to last?’ pondered Lennon. ‘You can be bigheaded and say, “Yeah, we’re going to last 10 years”, but as soon as you’ve said that you think: “We’re lucky if we last three months”.’ In the end, the Beatles managed another six years, by which time they had conquered the planet and become the biggest popular music act of all time. By then the mythology surrounding them had grown so suffocating that Lennon spent most of 1970 trying to be a normal person again. ‘I don’t believe in Beatles’, he sang on his solo album that year. ‘The dream is over.’ Yet here we are in 2009, living the dream once more – in virtual reality with The Beatles: Rockband game, and in high fidelity with state-of-the-art reissues of the most famous back catalogue in popular music. So let me re-introduce to you the act you’ve known for all these years… RemasterpiecesForty years after the Beatles ceased to be a functioning group, their music remains as popular as ever. Hence the extraordinary level of interest in the Apple/EMI remasters of their core catalogue. These replace the unloved 1987 CDs, produced when digital technology was in its infancy and artwork consisted of a flimsy slip of paper. Together they constitute the most eagerly awaited restoration project in pop history, and it’s worth considering the reissues before looking at the music itself. The stereo remasters include all the original non-compilation British albums, along with the US version of Magical Mystery Tour and the Past Masters compilations of stand-alone singles and other loose ends. This is significant because the Beatles’ relationship with stereophonic recording is complicated and at times confusing. Most Beatles albums were mixed in mono first and foremost, and the stereo mixes were often little more than an afterthought. The two versions were often markedly different – not only in their overall sound, but in the prominence given to individual instruments, the addition of extra segments, and so on. More importantly, they were subjected to a notoriously crude form of separation, whereby the vocals were channelled through one speaker and the backing music through another. As one would expect, the stereo reissues bear no resemblance to their stereo forebears. They have been painstakingly transferred from original analogue master tapes and a great deal of discussion took place about how to utilise the latest digital technology without compromising the integrity of the sound, as well as how much ‘restoration’ should be allowed – for example, correcting clicks, pops, sibilance and bad edits. The results will not be to everyone’s taste, but overall they are a big improvement on previous stereo versions of the earlier albums. Having said that, anyone who loves the Beatles, or simply wants to know what all the fuss is about, is advised to head straight for the mono masterpieces. Mono is the way this music was meant to be heard – on transistors, juke boxes, portable Dansettes and big wooden radiograms that looked like sideboards, and it had to sound great on all of them. (Not for nothing did American producers play their mixes through car radios to make sure they hit the spot.) One has only to compare any artist’s mid-Sixties vinyl 45s and 1970s reissues to understand the difference. The grooves on the originals are so wide you can read them with the naked eye, and take up twice the space of some later pressings. Put them on a record player and the difference is just as striking: the former are loud and cavernous; the latter anaemic at top volume. An original Parlophone pressing of ‘She Loves You’ is a raucous, barrelling force of nature, ‘Day Tripper’ batters you into submission, and ‘Ticket To Ride’s’ sonic boom really does shake the room. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band might have set new standards in sophisticated production, but it packed a powerful punch too, and Lennon himself believed the mono mix was the only way to hear it. These mono remasters are the closest you will get to the original experience without spending a considerable amount of time and money collecting original vinyl. They come in a box set containing all the albums that were mixed in mono – Please Please Me (1963) to The Beatles (1968) – plus a Mono Masters double-disc roughly equivalent to the stereo Past Masters. As a bonus, they sport miniature replicas of the original sleeves with all the trimmings. It’s the Beatles Compleat in packing most neat, and a worthy showcase for the marvellous music within. Beatles For SaleOn 11 February 1963 at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in London, the Beatles recorded 11 songs, 10 of which would appear on their first long-playing disc. In those days ‘the pops’ was very much a singles game, and ‘LPs’ were created by the simple expedient of taking a couple of previous 45s and padding them out with rubbish composed by managers, producers and other leeches in order to earn ‘songwriting’ royalties. (Two hits and 10 pieces of shit, as Keith Richards memorably put it.)  Beatles for sale album cover The Beatles’ first LP promised ‘“Please Please Me”, “Love Me Do” and 12 other songs’, which might suggest a cynical acknowledgement of Richards’ maxim. Nothing could be further from the truth. There were two hits, for sure, and some covers of other people’s; but they were classy, and supplemented by an impressive selection of self-penned originals. It was an integrated piece of work that set new standards: pop would never be the same again. With The Beatles came out just seven months later and contained no singles at all, even though most acts would have killed their grandmothers for a hit as good as ‘All My Loving’. The Beatles didn’t need to release it because that year, in addition to two great albums, they released three chart-topping singles, comprising six exclusive self-compositions. The third album went further still, consisting entirely of Lennon-McCartney compositions. All in all, in the period 1963 to 1965 they released six albums (plus non-album singles), made two feature films and played more than a thousand concerts. In their spare time, they wrote hits for other artists (1). With such a workload, they could have been forgiven for letting standards slip. Yet the overall quality was amazing. Every album has at least one single-that-never-was, and several songs strong enough to become hits for others. Even the ‘filler’ is better than other bands’ best material. Their singles rewrote the rulebook, too – particularly the B-sides, which had traditionally played the ‘piece of shit’ role to lucrative effect. Beatles’ flipsides like ‘Rain’ and ‘I Am The Walrus’ were superior to most ‘greatest hits’, while their stand-alone double-A-sides – ‘Day Tripper’/‘We Can Work It Out’ and ‘Penny Lane’/ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ – were two of the best singles ever made. Had contemporaneous singles been included on LPs at the expense of the odd substandard track, their albums would have been almost flawless. ‘She Loves You’/‘I’ll Get You’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’/‘This Boy’ could have been contenders for With The Beatles. ‘I Feel Fine’ would have boosted Beatles For Sale and ‘Day Tripper’/‘We Can Work It Out’ would have made Rubber Soul pretty much perfect. Other options were ‘Paperback Writer’/‘Rain’ (Revolver) and ‘Hey Jude’/‘Revolution’ (The Beatles). The exception to the rule is ‘Penny Lane’/‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, recorded along with ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ in late 1966, which doesn’t fit Sgt Pepper and rightfully remained in splendid isolation as a singular jewel of British psychedelia. (It eventually found a home on the American Magical Mystery Tour.)  The With the Beatles album sleeve showed off their unique visual style One other element of the catalogue deserves comment: the sleeves. Every picture tells a story, and the 12.5-inch x 12.5-inch images that graced the Beatles’ LPs truly merit the overused word iconic. With The Beatles set the standard with a serious, studenty look – half-lit black-and-white portraits in the style of their German friend Astrid Kircherr (who also bequeathed them their trademark hairstyle). Subsequent sleeves would become as famous as the music within, and are subjected to homage, pastiche and parody to this day. They are a visual testament to a culture clash that could have been a disaster, but turned out to be a marriage made in heaven. The cool, stylish pictures are framed within the conventions of an earlier era, with manufacturers’ logos, corporate typefaces, formal sleeve notes and advertisements for Emitex record cleaner. (Looking at these laminated monuments to British manufacturing, one is reminded that the Beatles were awarded MBEs for services to exports.) They also symbolise the way in which band and record label shaped one another. EMI was a company of the old school – its recording engineers wore collar-and-tie and white lab coats. At the height of ‘Swinging London’, Beatles producer George Martin could have passed for a grammar school master. Studio practices were similarly strict, with manuals setting out rules on how to record. Yet the relationship between these consummate professionals and the enthusiastic youths who landed in their laps shows how the tension between discipline and self-expression can stimulate, rather than stifle, artistic development. Within a few years, these same engineers were enthusiastically creating the increasingly outlandish effects demanded by Lennon and McCartney. Martin, meanwhile, worked tirelessly to broaden the horizons of his protégés and realise their unformed ideas.  McCartney – the 1969 version Beatles sleeves also tell another, very human story. Lay them out and you are struck by how brief the journey was from fresh-faced debutants to world-weary veterans. Although Help! shows young four young men on the cusp of their most creative period, the strain of touring was taking its toll. The accompanying film – a droll celebration of their youthful charms – contains one scene in which the glamorous gear is set aside and the boys disguise themselves as old men with hats, glasses, moustaches and beards. Four years later, incredibly, they really looked like this. Bearded, puffy-faced McCartney resembled a refugee from The Band, while Lennon was in a shocking state, with wide-brimmed hat, granny glasses and a big red beard. Ever the realist, and never completely losing his sense of humour, it was Lennon himself who was responsible for the best illustration of this change. The Beatles’ 1969 album was intended as a ‘back to basics’ exercise, revealing the group warts and all. John suggested that for the cover they replicate the pose used for first LP, on the stairs at EMI head office. In keeping with the ironic tone, the album sleeve would use the same graphics and bear the legend: ‘“Get Back” with “Don’t Let Me Down” and 12 other songs.’ (2) Let It Be (as it was eventually entitled) was exhumed in 1970 and released posthumously after the band split. Phil Spector played the role of undertaker, tarting up the corpse as best he could. Its bloated packaging – a box with a 174-page book – was a world away from the elegance and understatement of their prime, and the NME described it as a ‘cardboard tombstone’. Right to the end, you could always judge a Beatles record by its cover. Beatle PeoplePostwar baby-boomers measured out their lives, not in coffee spoons, but in Beatles records. Each new release was a staging post for ‘Beatle People’ like Carolyn Roberts, who sent poems based on song titles to The Beatles Monthly Book, and Brenda Howard, who made regular trips to Heathrow with her home-made banners (‘IT’S GEAR TO HAVE YOU BACK BEATLES!’). For the real children of the Sixties, born slightly later, the Beatles were part of the scenery from the word go. As infants we strummed plastic Beatles guitars and learnt the songs by heart, like nursery rhymes and hymns. All but the very squarest families had at least one Beatles record, and we pieced together the repertoire house by house.  Rubber Soul album cover The resulting education wasn’t merely musical. The Beatles gave a glimpse of the grown-up world, with rivalries and relationships laid bare in the matter-of-fact lyrics. Flipping the friendly ‘Yellow Submarine’ was a disconcerting enough experience for adults, who understood exactly why the lonely spinster Eleanor Rigby wore a ‘face that she keeps in a jar by the door’ to keep up appearances when she ventured into the outside world. To a six-year-old like myself, it was a real face in a jar, like a melting Dali watch. The subtly distorted cover of Rubber Soul was similarly disturbing, with the Beatles’ discoloured elongated features resembling drowned corpses in a lake. Later records struck a chord in other ways. British psychedelia, with its colourful Edwardiana and Lewis Caroll weirdness, was perfect for kids. ‘I Am The Walrus’ would never become a regular on ‘Junior Choice’ – it was banned by the BBC for using the word ‘knickers’ – but we appreciated its strange logic better than anyone, and experienced a special frisson from its ‘rude’ lyrics and disrespectful demeanour at a time when such things were still taboo. To us, the Beatles were a magical band of older brothers who had nothing to do with the mundane world around us. It wasn’t just kids who loved them, of course. In one broadsheet critic’s opinion they were ‘the best songwriters since Schubert’, and this was no empty hyperbole. The Beatles were all things to almost all people, and for a few glorious years they united toddler, pensioner, teenybopper, egghead, square and mod. Those untouched by the magic were fools, liars or Stones fans. The Fab FactorWhat made the Beatles so fantastically popular? Reading much of today’s coverage, one could be forgiven for thinking that they were just a bunch of wannabe celebrities who struck lucky. Just as historical heroes are now scrutinised for their ‘ordinary’ qualities, so the Beatles are viewed through the prism of X-Factor culture – the return of the vapid ‘light entertainment’ that they swept aside. Routinely cited as the first ‘boy band’, the argument has it that they were manufactured, packaged and marketed to an audience excited as much by the haircuts as by the music.  Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein Even allowing for manager Brian Epstein’s considerable presentational talents, the comparison is wholly misplaced. The Beatles redefined popular music and achieved worldwide stardom on an unprecedented scale, and they did so on their own terms. Epstein sold ‘the boys’, but apart from a wardrobe makeover (sorely resented by Lennon) he never tried to fundamentally change them. Geographically, they were 200-odd miles away from the Denmark Street impresarios with their teen idol fodder. In every other sense, they were from another planet. The likes of Larry Parnes looked for malleable young men to turn into two-dimensional pin-ups. The Beatles, by contrast, were already seasoned veterans of unforgiving northern clubs and the wild bars of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn. They were clever, talented, funny, self-assured and ambitious. Crucially, they were also a tight-knit group whose close relationship had seen them through a hard apprenticeship and given them the resilience to overcome the initial knock-backs. They backed their own talent and did it their way. This ambition was tempered by self-awareness and self-deprecation, which only added to their appeal. Their self-confidence was allied to a down-to-earth, approachable image, symbolising a new era in which being ambitious and working-class was no longer seen as a contradiction in terms. Yet even as they were clasped to the nation’s bosom, they maintained their spikiness, and Lennon was enough of a loose cannon to give every encounter an edge. His most famous quip, when he invited the Queen Mother to ‘rattle your jewellery’ during a live televised Royal Command Performance, is often used as an evidence of the group’s cheeky charm. Less well known is the fact that Epstein was on the verge of a heart attack in the wings because Lennon had threatened to tell the Queen Mum to ‘rattle your fucking jewellery’. In the event Lennon managed to have it both ways, as Beatles usually did. This combination of ambition and character was not just a case of disarming journalists and winning hearts and minds: it was crucial to the music itself. At their early hard-won recording sessions they had the balls to turn down material they were given by George Martin and put their own songs forward instead. Right from the start, their personality shone through: there was never any mistaking the Beatles sound. Like most bands of the time, they were influenced by Fifties stalwarts like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and the Everley Brothers, and their debt to rockabilly and country is obvious on their first six albums. But they were quick to pick up on new developments, too, and covered several Brill Building hits by the early Sixties ‘girl groups’. (As early champions of Tamla pioneers like Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye, they helped to broaden the appeal of many other artists in the process.) Whatever material they chose, though, it always ended up sounding like a Beatles song. This ability to impose their personality was helped considerably by their distinctive vocals. Lennon possessed one of the greatest rock voices of all time, and it was enhanced by the way it melded with McCartney’s and, to a lesser extent, Harrison’s. Individually, too, each Beatle was instantly recognisable. And unlike the Elvis wannabes, they sang in their own accents in a way that was both unusual and completely natural. The overall result was a new and unique sound (3). At their peak, in the years 1963 to 1967, the Beatles’ antennae were finely tuned to scenes around and beyond them. They kept abreast of everything and absorbed anything that took their fancy. McCartney is usually portrayed as more mainstream than Lennon, yet in this respect he was far more inquisitive than his partner, who always professed himself a rocker at heart. Against McCartney’s ‘twee’ side should be balanced his interest in classical music and the avant-garde. (His unreleased sound-collage ‘Carnival of Light’ predated Lennon’s ‘Revolution No 9’ by 18 months.) This eclecticism should not be allowed to overshadow their innovation. They foraged and borrowed because they were open and adventurous, and this impulse ensured that they added, improved and transformed whatever raw materials they were using, as well as introducing new ideas of their own. In turn, they influenced everyone around them – including their own heroes at Motown. The Beatles weren’t technically brilliant musicians, although both Starr and McCartney had highly distinctive styles. Lennon famously described Ringo as ‘not even the best drummer in the Beatles’, but he was imaginative and versatile, and perfectly suited to band’s music. McCartney was a guitarist until Stuart Sutcliffe quit, whereupon he took up (and mastered) bass. He went on to redefine rock bass-playing with the fat, bouncing style that boosted the group’s recordings so dramatically in 1966 and 1967. McCartney, Lennon and Harrison could all pick up instruments and play them, and they approached music-making from a fresh, untutored angle. McCartney was blessed with a supreme sense of melody and an inspired ability to find solutions to musical problems – hence his additional value as a collaborator. Lennon was an inspired and unorthodox composer, although he was amused by, and dismissive of, any attempt to analyse his talent. He utilised an Aeolian cadence on ‘Not A Second Time’, yet was unaware that he had done so until he read a review by the classical music critic of The Times.  The Beatles’ producer George Martin, alongside McCartney and Starr These compositions were enhanced by George Martin, who used the studio as an instrument rather than a passive recording device. Together they grabbed the baton from Fifties visionary Les Paul and ran off into the distance. Their most technically accomplished recordings were made with rudimentary equipment, which only adds to the achievement: the extraordinary soundscape of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, for example, was created with a double-tracked vocal filtered through a Leslie speaker and a cacophony of manually operated tape loops. Martin’s arrangements usually hit the spot, although there were times when less would have been more. (His mock-baroque keyboard solo was shoehorned into ‘In My Life’ at Lennon’s request, and not necessarily for the best.) Win or lose, however, their experiments were more enjoyable than the ‘authentic’ fare served up by purists like Eric Clapton and soulless stylists such as the Rolling Stones. The rate at which the Beatles developed was staggering; only David Bowie has ever achieved anything comparable. Six months after their debut single, Beatlemania began with ‘From Me To You’ (number one for seven weeks and virtually forgotten today). A mere three years and one month later, following the transitional Rubber Soul, they entered the Studio Years with the experiments described above. Even within the different phases, the variety was enormous. The ‘psychedelic’ Sgt Pepper has a full, warm sound and is full of humanity, nostalgia, playfulness and sly humour – a world away from the sensory assault of the previous year’s ‘Rain’, ‘She Said She Said’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Lennon’s ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘I Am The Walrus’, on the other hand, are personal visions of a type that only Bob Dylan would have had the ability or inclination to pursue.  By the end of the decade their artistic powers were on the wane Their most glittering achievements tend to obscure the depth of their talent. The magnificent jewels are paraded endlessly, while numerous other gems are overlooked or even forgotten. The singles-that-never-were, groundbreaking experiments, and landmark tracks are almost as familiar as their famous chart-toppers. Other tracks are unfairly overlooked simply because they don’t happen to have a backward-guitar solo, or a trumpet part inspired by the Brandenburg Concerto. Among their number are classy pop songs like ‘Don’t Bother Me’ from With the Beatles, ‘Every Little Thing’ from Beatles For Sale, ‘You Won’t See Me’ and ‘I’m Looking Through You’ from Rubber Soul and ‘I’ll Be Back’ from A Hard Day’s Night (a pleasingly downbeat conclusion to the album-of-the-film-of-Beatlemania). Last but not least, and one of the most neglected aspects of the Beatles’ appeal, is their sense of humour. Broadcasts and press conferences were lit up by their repartee, to the extent that the media were completely disarmed. This and the best efforts of the emollient Epstein were usually enough to ensure that the press turned a blind eye to Lennon’s acerbic quips, simmering aggression, and uncontrollable urge to do ‘spastic’ impersonations on stage and Nazi salutes from balconies. Their humour won over George Martin, too, and they in turn were impressed that he produced the Goons. His comedy sound effects were used to good effect on the amusing fan club records as well as novelty tracks like ‘Yellow Submarine’. The general atmosphere of the Beatles’ studio sessions owes something to this tradition, with banter conducted in silly voices, and jokes slipped into many ‘serious’ tracks – partly, no doubt, to puncture any suggestion of pretentiousness. Lennon’s self-pitying ‘Girl’ includes a schoolboyish backing vocal by McCartney (‘tit, tit, tit’), while ‘Revolution No 9’ – easily the most controversial and anger-provoking track in the Beatles catalogue – is similarly undercut by the tongue-in-cheek lullaby ‘Goodnight’ which follows (4). Clowning aside, there is an irresistible joie de vivre in much of the music. Look no further than the uncomplicated open-heartedness of ‘All My Loving’, the saucy optimism of ‘Lovely Rita’, and the ecstatic ‘GLA-A-AD!’ that closes ‘She Loves You’ in unforgettable fashion. ‘I’m in love and it’s a sunny day’, sings Paul in the exuberant ‘Good Day Sunshine’. Has anyone ever put it better? And in the end…Conventional wisdom has it that the Beatles quit at the top with their legend intact, while their contemporaries stagnated over the following decades. It’s certainly true that their final years were successful in commercial terms, and they enjoyed three chart-topping albums and seven number one singles in the US and UK between 1968 and 1970. It is also true that their popularity masked a significant artistic decline. The Beatles shaped their times, but they themselves were shaped by their surroundings, and it is no coincidence that their slump coincided with a general decline in music, and the self-conscious separation of pop and rock. The former was now for ‘teenyboppers’; the latter for ‘grown-up’ fans. Before this fateful separation, the music industry didn’t really distinguish between different types of pop. The press treated singles by Cream, Traffic and Jimi Hendrix much the same as those by Herman’s Hermits or the Hollies – they were all just potential ‘hits’ and ‘misses’. In 1967 no one thought it odd that a determinedly arty group like the Doors, who took themselves very seriously indeed, could have a number one single and schoolgirl fans. They were a pop group, and that was what pop groups did. Popular music criticism, inasmuch as it existed at all, consisted of desultory, arbitrary and often misguided track-by-track descriptions. So ‘Drive My Car’, in the single-sentence judgement of the NME’s Allen Evans, ‘Sounds out of tune but isn’t quite, and diction of John and Paul is slurred at times’. And through his eyes, ‘She Said She Said’ (one of Revolver’s more challenging numbers, based on John Lennon’s fraught conversation with Peter Fonda during an acid trip) was ‘about a girl with morbid thoughts being put right by boy’. Value for money was a recurring theme in the reviews of the mid-Sixties, and this was often at the expense of artistic considerations. When Bob Dylan’s double-album Blonde on Blonde was released in 1966 it was judged as food was in those days – by the size of the portions. Unfortunately for Dylan, 72 minutes of music was not regarded as good value for 50 shillings. Sgt Pepper, too, was treated as just another snack platter by the NME, and given the usual bite-sized song-by-song treatment (5). (In 1974, a new generation of NME writers would vote Sgt Pepper and Blonde on Blonde equal first in a poll of the best albums of all time.)  Joe Cocker represented a distinct rock sensibility By 1968 even the music journalists had grasped the fact that things were changing. ‘Serious’ musicians were establishing a new order, and this sea change was symbolised by a single Beatles number: ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ – the ‘Ringo song’ from Sgt Pepper. When Joe Cocker released his cover version, the accompanying ad featured a cartoon Starr with a speech bubble that ran: ‘Hey Joe, don’t make it bad… Take a sad song and make it better.’ The contrast between the dapper drummer, pictured in his Carnaby Street clobber, and the wild-looking Cocker could not have been clearer. It was a graphic illustration of the divergent ‘pop’ and ‘rock’ sensibilities that had now emerged. The Beatles’ version of ‘Friends’ managed to be all things to all people. The underground picked up on the drug references and interpreted the song as a display of countercultural solidarity. The disc jockeys, teenyboppers and mums and dads simply tapped their feet to its catchy tune. It perfectly demonstrates the levity that prevented Sgt Pepper tipping into pomposity, with the jaunty arrangement and sardonic backing vocals nicely complementing Ringo’s deadpan delivery. ‘What do you see when you turn out the light?’ sing John and Paul knowingly. ‘I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine’, comes the poker-faced reply. The effect is nonchalant, witty, and slightly risqué. Like much of the Beatles’ best work, it has a lightness of touch and an irresistible charm. Cocker’s version, by contrast, is heavy with a capital ‘H’. In place of playfulness and understatement he offers nothing but blood, sweat and tears. Stand well back as he pumps this diffident slip of a song full of steroids and turns it into the Incredible Hulk. It’s groundbreaking, certainly – but then so is a sledgehammer. And this was just the single: for a master class in overkill, witness the moaning, groaning, nine-minute version performed at Woodstock. The grotesque mismatch between form and content brings to mind the Nineties TV ads in which a Janis Joplin sound-alike shrieked ‘whoaaaaaah Bodyfoo-oo-oorm!’ in praise of a sanitary towel. This little story sums up what happens when concision, intelligence and fun are replaced by ‘authenticity’, elongation and self-importance. By the time Joe Cocker was sitting atop the charts, the Beatles themselves had succumbed to his hairy, sweaty ways. No longer at the cutting edge, they were now producing poor imitations of dull musical trends that were totally unsuited to their own style. ‘Yer Blues’ (on 1968’s The Beatles, also known as ‘The White Album’) gave dire warning of the decline, and worse was to follow. The year 1969 began with the bad-tempered sessions for the aforementioned ‘back to basics’ project that would show the Beatles ‘naked’ without fancy concepts and studio trickery. By this time, however, the naked truth was distinctly unattractive, as the band churned out their dreary new numbers and endless plodding versions of old chestnuts. The results were so bad that its release was vetoed, and McCartney set about organising a replacement album.  Abbey Road – overrated With smoke and mirrors, he and George Martin managed to turn a hotch-potch of workouts and cobbled-together fragments into the most over-hyped Beatles album of all: the shiny but shallow Abbey Road. Shorn of its ridiculously inflated reputation, it cuts a sorry figure. The first side consists of dross like ‘I Want You’ (horribly but revealingly subtitled ‘She’s So Heavy’ and described by Robbie Robertson as ‘noisy shit’). The second side brings to mind Alan Partridge’s tribute to McCartney’s Wings, ‘the band the Beatles could have been’. It’s easy to see where it all went wrong; the question is, why? The major factor was unquestionably Lennon’s steady withdrawal into his own private world. Once he became totally preoccupied with himself, his natural scepticism and humour no longer acted as a brake on either his own indulgences or McCartney’s. Lennon had always put his trust in the emotional power of music – it was this that attracted him to primitive rock’n’roll in the first place, and he had stayed loyal to it in the face of snobbery from his art-school contemporaries. His favourite self-compositions had always been the most personal and truthful, and this attitude was confirmed and intensified by LSD. The initial effects were there to see in 1966 and 1967 when his unique visions were painstakingly reconstructed in the studio to produce startling aural settings for his intense lyrics. By 1968, though, his individualism had become an intellectual justification for self-indulgence: if art is personal, then anything personal must be art. This was the polar opposite of the Beatles’ previous modus operandi, in which songs were reworked and honed until they were judged to be good enough for release. To make things worse, Lennon’s introspection led to an outpouring of misery, which would culminate in the ‘primal therapy’ album immediately after the Beatles split. Genius is pain, declared Lennon, and for listeners it was the old story: I’ve suffered for my art, now it’s your turn. Lennon’s self-indulgence coincided with the coming of age of the blues-boom generation. With handfuls of downers and trucks full of Marshall stacks they transmogrified into the rock dinosaurs that would roam the stadiums of the world for the next decade. Sharpness and invention were out, and the music became as dull and rancid as the lank hair, greasy denim and stinking tennis shoes of the musicians themselves (6). McCartney became the de facto leader after Lennon’s withdrawal, and he fought to keep the group together in the face of indifference from the others. Unfortunately, while his work ethic remained high, his inspiration declined. Without a partner to spark him and act as a creative foil, even his best songs lacked the crucial ‘Beatle’ factor.  Lennon and McCartney during happier times Lennon had always helped McCartney play to his strengths. He distrusted McCartney’s ‘professional songwriter’ tendencies, which were the opposite of his own philosophy of self-expression. In particular he disliked ‘novelist’ songs that told stories for the sake of it (‘boring people doing boring things’). As a foil he could curb McCartney’s sentimental excesses and add a much-needed twist of Lennon – he claimed, for example, to have written the ‘face in the jar by the door’ line in ‘Eleanor Rigby’. As a friendly competitor, he could spur McCartney on to better things. When he gave up on the partnership it left the way clear for McCartney to foist songs like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ on the group. Having failed to make the cut for ‘The White Album’ – no mean achievement in itself, given some of the material on that album – its appearance on Abbey Road was the last straw. The Liverpool echo‘People keep talking about it as if it’s the end of the Earth’, complained Lennon after the dissolution. ‘It’s just a rock group that split up, it’s nothing important – you can have all the records if you want to reminisce.’ His words fell on deaf ears, and the Beatles legend – and industry – went from strength to strength. In the aftermath of the split there was a tiresome quest to discover ‘the new Beatles’. ‘T.Rextacy’ and ‘Rollermania’ were small-scale re-enactments of Beatlemania, while Pilot, 10cc, ELO and more or less any group with pretty melodies and block harmonies were held up as musical heirs. The quest for a successor was eventually abandoned and the focus switched back to the originals. Capital Radio launched in London and played Beatles songs all day long, and throughout the Seventies there was a series of compilations, a live album, and the reissue en masse of all the singles. Punk temporarily consigned the Beatles to the sidelines (Glenn Matlock was supposedly kicked out of the Sex Pistols for liking them), but it was business as usual again after John Lennon’s death. The Beatles catalogue was released on CD in 1987, and Q magazine was launched the same year, to attract a lost legion of ageing fans. Old became ‘gold’, and Q begat Mojo with its endless Beatles specials. Britpop begat Beatlemania once again in the mid-Nineties as Oasis recycled ‘Rain’, Ian MacDonald published his engrossing Revolution In The Head, and Apple released the best-selling Anthology series. Since then, the bandwagon has kept on rolling, and nobody was surprised when the new reissues sold in massive quantities just as the originals did half a century ago. The passing of time merely confirms the Beatles’ pre-eminence. Motown produced sublime dance music, Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson were touched by genius, and the Who and the MC5 were unmatched in their explosive brilliance. Love and other mid-Sixties mavericks made classic records in brief bursts. The Beatles did so much more, and changed everything in the world of popular music. They played their instruments, wrote their own songs, demanded artistic control and created the modern rock group in the process. They invented the album and then reinvented it four years later. They introduced the idea of progress and then progressed at a rate that left their rivals standing. Above all, they touched the lives of hundreds of millions across the globe. The last word goes to a young fan interviewed before the Shea Stadium concert in August 1966. ‘The Beatles bring joy to the world’, she smiled. ‘We forget our cares when we hear Beatle records.’ Four decades on, we still do. Ed Barrett is features editor at Anorak. Buy The Beatles via Amazon(UK): Box Set: Remastered in Stereo; The Beatles in Mono; The Beatles: Rockband for Nintendo Wii Previously on spiked Neil Davenport criticised a Cambridge don for having an anti-capitalist pop at the Beatles. Jerker Jansson hailed Bruce Springsteen for his ability to preach without religion. Nathalie Rothschild was cheered up by ‘the Godfather of Gloom’, Leonard Cohen. Emily Hill did not see anything countercultural about the Glastonbury festival. Patrick West looked at the Samsonite demise of heavy metal. And Andrew Calcutt explained why Elvis Presley was still Number One. Or read more at spiked issue Music. (1) The habit persisted to the end, with McCartney writing hits for Cilla Black, Badfinger, Mary Hopkin and others. In 1969 the latter’s ‘Goodbye’ was kept at number two only because another McCartney composition was number one (‘Get Back’). What’s more, the year had started with the Marmalade at number one with McCartney’s ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’. When the Beatles split, they had enough leftovers by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison to release an album superior to their recent Abbey Road. Most of these would appear on subsequent solo albums. (2) The point was made even more strikingly when the picture eventually appeared alongside the earlier shot on the 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 compilations. (3) The Beatles had the advantage of being from the north, so the American rock’n’roll vernacular naturally suited their accent. Southern English singers had little choice but to adopt cod-American accents or look ridiculous – viz David Bowie’s humorous rhyming of ‘branch’ with ‘romaaarnce’ on his 1967 gem ‘Love You Till Tuesday’. (4) Fan club Christmas records aside, there are only two out-and-out comedy songs in the Beatles repertoire. ‘You’ll Be Mine’ is an early love song to a girl with a National Health eyeball. ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ is a skit on northern nightclubs recorded with Brian Jones shortly after Sgt Pepper was finished. (Fans of The Fast Show will notice that the incoherent ramblings around the 3.40 mark bear an uncanny resemblance to Rowley ‘I was ve’y ve’y drunk’ Birkin QC.) (5) The professional critics might have been oblivious to the changing times, but the fans certainly weren’t. Rumblings of discontent among ‘Beatle People’ in 1967 prompted The Beatles Monthly Book to pose the question: ‘IS SGT. PEPPER TOO ADVANCED FOR THE AVERAGE POP FAN TO APPRECIATE?’ Readers’ reactions showed that two distinct camps were beginning to emerge. ‘I disagree very strongly with a lot of the Beatles’ personal opinions’, wrote Sylvia Wilton, ‘but I respect their great talent as composers and performers. More than ever before Sgt Pepper demonstrates just how good pop music can be if a group is willing to do a bit more work and not just churn out new records that say the same old things’. Wilton represented the majority, but a significant minority sensed that the boys were getting too big for their Beatle boots. ‘Everything is over our heads’, complained Joanne Tremlett, who pleaded with the boys to ‘stop being so clever and give us songs we can enjoy’. Ann Turnbull was angry after spending ‘£2 including the train fare’ on an album with ‘only three songs worth hearing’, while Jan Williams liked only the title track: ‘It’s the Beatles we used to know before they went stark raving mad and started to write rubbish.’ If that was bad, the following year brought the ‘White Album’ and the notorious ‘Revolution No 9’ – a bridge too far for many. By now even the pop papers realised that things had changed. ‘I am angry about this’, admitted Alan Smith of the NME, who dismissed the eight-minute experiment as a ‘pretentious piece of old codswallop’. (6) Despite his musical decay, Lennon remained a fascinating, funny, and essentially honest character, as demonstrated by his lengthy interviews with Rolling Stone, Playboy and David Wigg. His lacerating tongue was still in working order, and he was scathing about longhaired conservatives – prefiguring the new hippy-conformists who would shape the stultifying landscape of the coming decades.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7733/
Friday 20 November 2009 Scottish fitba: where did it all go wrong? This week, Scotland coach George Burley got the sack after a wretched 3-0 defeat to Wales. If you throw in the financial crisis at Rangers and the growing unrest amongst the Parkhead faithful at the erratic performances of Tony Mowbray’s team, it’s clear that things are in a sorry state north of the border. Whoops, must try not to laugh. How is it that a once-proud footballing nation has been reduced to an international laughing stock? Burley’s record is abject – three wins and eight defeats in 14 games. But the problems run much deeper than a poor World Cup qualifying campaign. The conveyor belt of Scottish talent has ground to a halt. Former Scotland captain Graeme Souness doesn’t think changing the coach will revive the fortunes of the national team. ‘I don’t think if you had Arsene Wenger or Alex Ferguson managing the Scottish team right now the results would be much different’, said Souness. ‘I think the Scottish players right now are a limited bunch.’ If you look at the players at Burley’s disposal you can see that Souness has a point. Darren Fletcher is the only Scot who plays for one of the big four English Premiership teams. Of the rest, most are Championship quality at best. It wasn’t always thus. It used to be the case that the spine of any successful English team was made in Scotland. Look at the great Liverpool teams of the 1970s and 1980s. Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Alan Hansen were integral to their success. The successful Leeds United teams of the 1970s were also built around Scottish players – Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer, Joe Jordan and Gordon McQueen. Most of these players were good enough to get into the England team. Could the same be said now? Darren Fletcher would probably be a strong contender for the holding midfield berth. The rest? Not a chance. Why is Scottish football in such a wretched state? Many point the finger at the Old Firm, Rangers and Celtic. Firstly, it is argued that the Old Firm’s duopoly has made the Scottish Premier League about as competitive as an Afghan election. Secondly, they have given up nurturing homegrown talent and gone for the quick fix of importing foreigners. Okay, admittedly the Scottish league isn’t the most competitive of leagues. The last team outside the Old Firm to win the league was Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen in the 1985-86 season. But Rangers and Celtic’s domination is hardly new. The Scottish league title has been won only seven times in the past 50 years by a team outside the Old Firm. Rangers and Celtic dominated the league when Scottish football was in much ruder health. And they dominate today. There is no causal relationship between the Old Firm stranglehold and parlous state of the national team. Blaming foreign imports for stifling homegrown talent isn’t a persuasive explanation either. It muddles up cause and effect. The foreign imports are brought in because the production line of talent is broken, not the other way round. Most Scottish clubs simply can’t compete with the financial clout of the Old Firm. A perfect incentive you’d have thought to develop homegrown players. So why isn’t it happening? You can’t blame the Old Firm for the failure of all their rivals to develop players. Another common explanation is the lack of facilities. A 2006 audit of sports facilities in Scotland found that 75 per cent of grass pitches and 61 per cent of astroturf pitches needed renovation and that the 400 mineral pitches were unfit for football. There is no doubt that grassroots facilities have suffered from decades of neglect. But you have to ask yourself this: what training facilities are available to poor Brazilian kids? Indeed, what facilities were available to Jimmy Johnstone or Jim Baxter when they were growing up in the tenement blocks of Glasgow? The beauty of football is that you don’t need expensive facilities. You just need a ball, jumpers for goalposts, and you can play anywhere: school playground, street, tenement yard. I’m tempted to say that the Scots have just gone soft – but I’m not sure that explanation really convinces either. Of course kids in Scotland don’t play street football any more. But this is not a uniquely Scottish problem. Where in Western Europe will you find kids playing football on the streets? The Dutch recognised that street football was in decline 30 years ago. To address this problem they developed a loosely supervised small-sided 4v4 format of the game to encourage skill development in youngsters. Have the Scottish football authorities taken any similar action to develop young talent? I think you can work out the answer for yourselves. The most plausible explanation is the failure of the Scottish FA and clubs to find another way of developing young players after the supply of street footballers dried up. It’s not just about facilities, it’s also about the coaching and technical development of young players. Former Scottish international John Collins thinks that the Scots need to take French lessons. ‘We need to get them under the umbrella of the clubs at a younger age and get them training every day’, said Collins. ‘French kids go into academies at 14 and are full-time. In Scotland they can’t become full-time until 16, but those two years of training every day make a big difference’. Forty-one Premiership and Football League clubs have established youth academies. Scotland, by contrast, has been slow to modernise its youth systems. The bigger SPL clubs have now set up academies, but they are a decade behind England. The Scots are playing catch-up. They may be doing so for quite some time to come. Duleep Allirajah is spiked’s sports columnist. Read on: spiked-issue: Sport reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7734/
Friday 20 November 2009 What do you do when a popular television show loses its main attraction, your main man? First of all, you can carry on and pretend nothing’s changed. This has had mixed results. It was the tactic the BBC and ITV employed with This is Your Life, which since 1955 had become synonymous with its presenter, Eamonn Andrews. Upon his death in 1987, Michael Aspel took up the reins, but nothing really seemed the same again, and after struggling along for years, it was axed in 2003, only to be revived again two years ago. But it remains a sorry shadow of its former self, owing mainly to the fact that Andrews was a quietly spoken, unassuming everyman, with whom the audience could empathise and to whom the show’s format was uniquely suited. Monty Python decided to carry on with their final TV series without John Cleese, but it was obvious something was missing, which is partly why it was their last TV series. ITV had better luck with Family Fortunes, which was to most minds inexorably linked with Bob Monkhouse, yet he was successfully replaced by Max Bygraves in 1983, then Les Dennis. All Star Family Fortunes is brought to us today by Vernon Kay. University Challenge has survived the legacy of Bamber Gascoigne and is now Jeremy Paxman’s baby, while with John Humphrys in the chair, Mastermind is no longer ‘that show from the 1970s with Magnus Magnusson’. Channel 4 has attempted to do likewise with Countdown after the death of its anchorman Richard Whiteley in 2005, but his various replacements - Des Lynam, Des O’Connor and Jeff Stelling - have failed to capture the essence of the show, which Whiteley, with his giggling fits and deliberately appalling puns, made his own. Secondly, you can depersonalise a show. John Craven’s Newsround, first broadcast in 1972, became simply Newsround in 1989 upon the eponymous presenter’s retirement from the programme, and has since been fronted by a procession of wide-eyed simpletons. Thirdly, you just cancel a programme altogether. When, like the BBC did, you lose the presenter of a chat-show called Wogan, as the Beeb did in 1992, there’s little point in trying to revive it. Fourthly, there is the sci-fi get-out clause, which has been used by the makers of Dr Who for decades now. Simply get around the problem of actors leaving or dying by inserting a magical clause in the narrative that the Doctor occasionally ‘regenerates’. But when the Doctor regenerated into Sylvester McCoy in 1987, it proved that even this tactic was not fail-safe. This decade has seen a new and rather strange development, demonstrated most often by the BBC’s attitude to quiz shows. This fresh ploy to deal with departed regular, popular presenters associated with a show is simply to carry on without any regular presenter. You could witness the mood of dithering and hesitancy within the Beeb after its celebrated radio presenter Humphrey Lyttleton died in April last year. Much cherished by listeners of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, ‘Humph’ had chaired the programme since its first episode in 1972, and was so beloved by the Radio 4 audience that the BBC, fearful of its radio listeners’ notoriously belligerent and cantankerous reputation, considered scrapping I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue altogether (1). A timid compromise was made in having Stephen Fry, Jack Dee and Rob Brydon as replacement chairmen on a rotational basis, so presumably, X-Factor-style, the BBC could adjudge who would be regarded as the ‘winning’ presenter. The ‘winner’ in this case, so far, seems to be Jack Dee. I suspect BBC radio producers took their lead from their TV colleagues over in West London. From White City, the BBC has produced one of the sharpest and wittiest comedy panel shows of our times, Have I Got News for You, which from its inception in 1990 until 2002 was personified by its regular panellists - the impish Ian Hislop and the languid Paul Merton – and by its droll, sarcastic presenter Angus Deayton. Yet, following stories in the tabloids about Deayton’s drug use and dalliances with prostitutes, he was fired in 2002 – and has never been replaced. Ever since, HIGNFY has featured ‘guest’ presenters, whose incompetence the show’s makers try to make a joke out of by repeating an extended version of the programme each weekend as Have I Got A Bit More News For You, principally to feature the inability of these ‘guest’ presenters to put a sentence together or read an autocue properly. It’s fairly amusing, but betrays a cast-iron truism of the arts: whenever an act becomes self-referential you know its in decline. The Beatles proved as much with their 1968 ‘White Album’, as did The Who in 1973 with Quadrophenia. You could tell Philip K Dick had clearly gone bonkers when he wrote Valis in 1981, a novel in which he is the protagonist, and you knew Viz wasn’t funny any more when it started to advertise the fact. Now, the makers of Never Mind the Buzzcocks have followed suit. Although Buzzcocks in a way blatantly mimicked HIGNFY‘s format – it being a quiz show in which laughs, rather than points, mattered – it has proved deservedly successful since first being aired in 1996. Until 2005, it was chaired by Mark Lamarr, who was just as wonderfully cynical as Deayton (the best comedy demands cynicism, which is why comedians shouldn’t be taken seriously in real life). While he might have lacked Deayton’s talent for understatement and the ability to arch an eye-brow at a well-timed moment, Lamarr made up for it with his abrasiveness and feigned outrage. Lamarr has since disappeared into the world of radio, replaced by Simon Amstell in 2006. Although Amstell, on paper, looked every bit the clichéd comedian, being gay and Jewish, he is not the stereotyped ‘tortured’ homosexual, nor the lurid ‘outrageous’ gay who makes jokes about bums, nor a likewise ‘tortured’ Jewish person who makes references to his overbearing mother and her chicken soup. Rather Amstell is just a very funny person who has a unsettling knack of being incredibly rude to people while looking them straight eye with a beaming smile and cherubic face. Or, he did have that knack. This April, Amstell announced his departure from Buzzcocks, and now it, too, features a parade of guest presenters, also with mixed success. The normally excellent Mark Watson was pretty poor the other week, but I know that he has been feeling unconfident about his comedy career recently (he is a frequent and especially candid user of Twitter), so I suspect this affected his performance. On the other hand, Martin Freeman was composed, quick and commanding this week (2). It did help that guests included the bizarre Dappy from N-Dubz, and Britain’s leading misanthrope Charlie Brooker, whose formulaic left-liberal rantings about politics are very much to be avoided, but whose observations about television are unrivalled. But that’s not really the point. Buzzcocks is a fine show, as is HIGNFY, but being rudderless, it runs the danger of following HIGNFY into a miasma of self-referentiality and in-jokes – funny only to devotees of the show and forbidding towards any outsiders. There is much written these days about television companies and corporations being in ‘crisis’ owing to the recession, but perhaps a better way to avert a crisis would be if the likes of the BBC didn’t advertise so blatantly their own crisis in confidence. Just choose a presenter and let us like it or lump it. Patrick West is spiked’s TV and radio reviewer. Read his blog here. Read on: spiked-issue TV and radio (1) He was the hub of the show, the urbane man surrounded by idiots, Guardian, 27 April 2008 (2) Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Series 23 Episode 8, BBC iPlayer reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7735/
Thursday 19 November 2009 Last week, on 12 November, spiked editor Brendan O’Neill debated Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, at the Wellcome Collection in London. To kick off spiked’s campaign against neo-Malthusianism and all forms of population control, O’Neill’s speech is published below. In the year 200 AD, there were approximately 180million human beings on the planet Earth. And at that time a Christian philosopher called Tertullian argued: ‘We are burdensome to the world, the resources are scarcely adequate for us… already nature does not sustain us.’ In other words, there were too many people for the planet to cope with and we were bleeding Mother Nature dry. Well today, nearly 180million people live in the Eastern Half of the United States alone, in the 26 states that lie to the east of the Mississippi River. And far from facing hunger or destitution, many of these people – especially the 1.7million who live on the tiny island of Manhattan – have quite nice lives. In the early 1800s, there were approximately 980million human beings on the planet Earth. One of them was the population scaremonger Thomas Malthus, who argued that if too many more people were born then ‘premature death would visit mankind’ – there would be food shortages, ‘epidemics, pestilence and plagues’, which would ‘sweep off tens of thousands [of people]’. Well today, more than the entire world population of Malthus’s era now lives in China alone: there are 1.3billion human beings in China. And far from facing pestilence, plagues and starvation, the living standards of many Chinese have improved immensely over the past few decades. In 1949 life expectancy in China was 36.5 years; today it is 73.4 years. In 1978 China had 193 cities; today it has 655 cities. Over the past 30 years, China has raised a further 235million of its citizens out of absolute poverty – a remarkable historic leap forward for humanity. In 1971 there were approximately 3.6billion human beings on the planet Earth. And at that time Paul Ehrlich, a patron of the Optimum Population Trust and author of a book called The Population Bomb, wrote about his ‘shocking’ visit to New Delhi in India. He said: ‘The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved slowly through the mob, [we wondered] would we ever get to our hotel…?’ You’ll be pleased to know that Paul Ehrlich did make it to his hotel, through the mob of strange brown people shitting in the streets, and he later wrote in his book that as a result of overpopulation ‘hundreds of millions of people will starve to death’. He said India couldn’t possibly feed all its people and would experience some kind of collapse around 1980. Well today, the world population is almost double what it was in 1971 – then it was 3.6billion, today it is 6.7billion – and while there are still social problems of poverty and malnutrition, hundreds of millions of people are not starving to death. As for India, she is doing quite well for herself. When Ehrlich was writing in 1971 there were 550million people in India; today there are 1.1billion. Yes there’s still poverty, but Indians are not starving; in fact India has made some important economic and social leaps forward and both life expectancy and living standards have improved in that vast nation. What this potted history of population scaremongering ought to demonstrate is this: Malthusians are always wrong about everything. The extent of their wrongness cannot be overstated. They have continually claimed that too many people will lead to increased hunger and destitution, yet the precise opposite has happened: world population has risen exponentially over the past 40 years and in the same period a great many people’s living standards and life expectancies have improved enormously. Even in the Third World there has been improvement – not nearly enough, of course, but improvement nonetheless. The lesson of history seems to be that more and more people are a good thing; more and more minds to think and hands to create have made new cities, more resources, more things, and seem to have given rise to healthier and wealthier societies. Yet despite this evidence, the population scaremongers always draw exactly the opposite conclusion. Never has there been a political movement that has got things so spectacularly wrong time and time again yet which keeps on rearing its ugly head and saying: ‘This time it’s definitely going to happen! This time overpopulation is definitely going to cause social and political breakdown!’ There is a reason Malthusians are always wrong. It isn’t because they’re stupid… well, it might be a little bit because they’re stupid. But more fundamentally it is because, while they present their views as fact-based and scientific, in reality they are driven by a deeply held misanthropy that continually overlooks mankind’s ability to overcome problems and create new worlds. The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction. The fact that the presentational arguments can change so fundamentally over time, while the core belief in ‘too many people’ remains the same, really shows that this is a prejudicial outlook in search of a social or scientific justification; it is prejudice looking around for the latest trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because behind the new language they adopt every few decades, they are really driven by narrow-mindedness, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its future. The first mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate how society can change to embrace more and more people. They make the schoolboy scientific error of imagining that population is the only variable, the only thing that grows and grows, while everything else – including society, progress and discovery – stays roughly the same. That is why Malthus was wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because he could not foresee how the industrial revolution would massively transform society and have an historic impact on how we produce and transport food and many other things. Population is not the only variable – mankind’s vision, growth, his ability to rethink and tackle problems: they are variables, too. The second mistake Malthusians always make is to imagine that resources are fixed, finite things that will inevitably run out. They don’t recognise that what we consider to be a resource changes over time, depending on how advanced society is. That is why the Christian Tertullian was wrong in 200 AD when he said ‘the resources are scarcely adequate for us’. Because back then pretty much the only resources were animals, plants and various metals. Tertullian could not imagine that, in the future, the oceans, oil and uranium would become resources, too. The nature of resources changes as society changes – what we consider to be a resource today might not be one in the future, because other, better, more easily-exploited resources will hopefully be discovered or created. Today’s cult of the finite, the discussion of the planet as a larder of scarce resources that human beings are using up, really speaks to finite thinking, to a lack of future-oriented imagination. And the third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate the genius of mankind. Population scaremongering springs from a fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, simply the users of resources, simply the destroyers of things, as a kind of ‘plague’ on poor Mother Nature, when in fact human beings are first and foremost producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of things and the makers of history. Malthusians insultingly refer to newborn babies as ‘another mouth to feed’, when in the real world another human being is another mind that can think, another pair of hands that can work, and another person who has needs and desires that ought to be met. We don’t merely use up finite resources; we create infinite ideas and possibilities. The 6.7billion people on Earth have not raped and destroyed this planet, we have humanised it. And given half a chance – given a serious commitment to overcoming poverty and to pursuing progress – we would humanise it even further. Just as you wouldn’t listen to that guy who wears a placard saying ‘The End of the World is Nigh’ if he walked up to you and said ‘this time it really is nigh’, so you shouldn’t listen to the always-wrong Malthusians. Instead, join spiked in opposing the population panickers. Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. His satire on the green movement - Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas - is published by Hodder & Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) The above is an edited extract of a speech given at the Wellcome Collection in London on Thursday 12 November.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7723/
Thursday 19 November 2009 Writing in the Guardian recently, Madeleine Bunting argued that bankers and benefit claimants have one thing in common: ‘their capacity to provoke popular resentment’. Certainly, the welfare state, and the dependent status that comes with it, has long been regarded by its critics as the cause of everything that is going wrong in society. It is blamed for the breakdown of community; it is blamed for the various deprivations and depravities associated with the creation of a dependent underclass, from anti-social behaviour to child abuse. It is even blamed for the failing UK economy, for unsustainable public spending, ‘hidden’ unemployment and negative growth. Yet, for all that the welfare state finds itself falsely accused of a multitude of problems, the charge of welfare dependency is fairly levelled. While there are only 800,000 official job seekers, more than 2.5million are claiming incapacity benefit, and hundreds of thousands more are reliant on housing benefit and income support, amongst other things. In all, there are nearly five million people out of work and claiming benefits at the moment. What is perplexing is that for all the concern about public spending levels – particularly on welfare – critics do not oppose the retention of this ‘safety net’. Instead, the question asked of this safety net is how big it should be and how far it should be cast? It is pretty clear, for instance, that the state should be stepping in right now to address the immediate needs of those most affected by the recession. But in other areas of life, especially people’s interior lives, their emotions and feelings, state intervention is far less helpful. Take, for example, a recent report by the Mental Health Foundation. Here it is argued that the economic downturn is having an ‘adverse effect on the nation’s wellbeing’. This shift, from focusing on people’s welfare to attending to their wellbeing, brings problems of its own. The use of this term today tends to justify a more intrusive and extensive role for the state: through its appointed experts, the state can effectively manage people’s lives for them. And in doing so it assumes that people in general lack the resources to cope with life. On all sides of the debate there is a failure to grasp just how profound this shift has already been, and how ingrained in the wider culture the problem of dependency has become. Beyond the confines of the welfare state, the micro-politics of lifestyle and therapy, ostensibly aimed at promoting our wellbeing, are in fact making us all dependent on the intervention of third parties. ‘People can’t cope’ is the underlying assumption. Hence a ‘surge in children taken into care’ is blamed on the recession, because (we are told) it is ‘inevitable’ that as people get poorer they smack their kids, suffer breakdowns, and turn to drugs and alcohol. It is acknowledged almost as an afterthought that the headline-grabbing child abuse case of Baby P (see Fixing ‘Broken Britain’?, by David Clements) may also have had something to do with this. In a similar vein, the Audit Commission has warned that local authorities need to be prepared for the ‘surge in social problems such as addiction, alcoholism and domestic violence’ that we can expect as a consequence of the ‘second wave’ of the recession. This concern with people’s potentially troubling behaviour, about the risks they face and about their emotional and relationship needs, is unsurprisingly having an impact on welfare policy. All the political parties claim to support ‘radical’ welfare reform and issue statements about imposing tougher conditions on the workless. The Tories, for example, say they want to protect us from ‘stifling’ big government and to end ‘state control over the lives of individuals’. But like New Labour, they still understand the lot of benefit claimants in terms of people’s needs and personal inadequacies; that is, they lack self-esteem or self-confidence. This is rather different to the traditional Tory view that the workless are lazy, bone-idle or work-shy. There is nobody telling the jobless to get on their bikes anymore, as old Tory warhorse Norman – now Lord – Tebbit once did. The new Tories might want to go along with Tebbit, but only so long as the stabilisers are left on. Like New Labour, the Tories will lead benefit claimants down the Pathway to Work, but never quite let go. So even after a job-seeker has succeeded in getting a job, there will be ‘sustained mentoring and development advice’ from the touchy-feely Tories. Today’s official interest in the minutiae of our lives does not look like ending with the demise of New Labour; it is set to continue under David Cameron’s Tories. So, instead of telling people that they should get married because that’s the right thing to do, a Cameron government would offer couples ‘relationship counselling at critical moments in their lives’. As if to demonstrate he has no political convictions one way or the other, self-styled ‘Red Tory’ Phillip Blond says he doesn’t object to lone parents because they are lone parents. Rather he objects to them because their children do badly at school, or get addicted to drugs and alcohol, or go on to commit crimes when they get older. Similarly, right-wing journalist, former banker and critic of the welfare state, James Bartholomew, claims that it is the damage done to children rather than the fact that they’re born out of wedlock, that he finds so objectionable. The belief that the welfare state is to blame for Britain’s problems draws on a profound sense of people’s inability to run their own lives. If anything, the critics of the welfare state underestimate the problem of dependency by failing to recognise just how pervasive is this view of people’s incapacity. Dependency is not about the feckless few, it runs much deeper than that. If we are to defend welfare, we need to work out how it can be a help and not a hindrance, a boost rather than a burden. Whatever the merits of the welfare state, the postwar optimism that inspired it is long gone. It is only when we challenge the pessimism of our own age, and the notion that people are essentially vulnerable, helpless and not to be trusted, rather than robust, resourceful and autonomous, that we will regain our independence. David Clements works in social care, writes on social policy issues, and is co-editor of The Future of Community: Reports of a Death Greatly Exagerrated published by Pluto Press. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) This is an edited version a speech given this year’s Battle of Ideas festival. Previously on spiked David Clements argued that earlier state intervention into family life would not fix ‘Broken Britain’. Ken McLaughlin looked at the legacy of ‘radical social work’. Jennie Bristow said the tragic case of ‘Baby P’ should not be used as a springboard for spreading suspicion. Tim Black did not think the death of Baby P proved the existence of Britain’s underclass. Or read more at spiked issue Baby P.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7724/
Thursday 19 November 2009 An international summit to tackle a problem that already affects one billion people worldwide and may very well affect billions more if we don’t act immediately and decisively. That’s going to be big news, right? Yet just such a summit has passed, almost unnoticed, under the radar of the world’s media. While there is ever more intensive handwringing about the outcome of the UN’s Copenhagen summit on climate change next month, from endless demonstrations to blow-by-blow accounts of tedious negotiations, a similar UN event on the small matter of feeding the world has prompted comparatively little coverage. The World Summit on Food Security, held over the past three days in Rome, produced many of the usual platitudes, but few hard commitments of cash to solve the problem on malnutrition. Food has been, relatively speaking, a success story for humanity in recent decades. UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) figures suggest there were 878million people undernourished in the period from 1969-71, or 24 per cent of the world population. That fell to 825million by 1995-97, but that was just 14 per cent of the population. Since then, the proportion of the population who don’t have enough to eat has started to climb again and now the FAO estimates that ‘the number of people who do not get enough food energy, averaged over one year, to both maintain productive activity and maintain body weight’ is now over one billion. The reasons for this rise are complex. The immediate cause of rising hunger has been rising food prices, caused in the short term by a combination of poor harvests, increasing demand from rapidly growing developing countries like China, and a shift in food production towards biofuels in the USA. But these sit in a wider context where the world market for food is tight and innovation has been held back. Because only a small proportion of the world’s food is traded, even small shortfalls can produce wild swings in prices, while the problem of growing more food has become a low priority both for research and international aid. In her contribution to spiked‘s online debate, What’s the Future of Food?, Caroline Boin, a project director at International Policy Network, puts the blame squarely at the feet of governments. ‘Barriers to trade are four times higher in developing countries than in high-income countries. Farmers are hit especially hard: overall, African farmers pay 60 per cent more in export taxes than other African businesses. More generally, many developing country policies have disadvantaged and exploited their agricultural sectors, in order to subsidise more grandiose urban activities. Food marketing boards and heavy tariffs on the agriculture sector have deterred investments that would have increased agricultural output.’ While developing-world government policies have stifled agricultural development, they are often inspired by Western organisations. ‘Despite the widespread failure of protectionist policies in agriculture, many Western NGOs continue to support the idea of self-sufficiency and protectionism. They argue that developing countries, which are so reliant on agriculture, should be able to protect themselves from the vagaries of the market. But as appealing as these ideas may seem, they are at complete odds with reality.’ Boin points out the irony of self-sufficiency: the countries who are most self-sufficient are often the poorest and the most food insecure: ‘Malnutrition and poverty rates remain high and, despite involving 70-80 per cent of the workforce, agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa only provides 30 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Conversely, food security has increased and food prices have decreased in countries that have opened their agricultural sectors and engaged in trade.’ The theme of free trade is echoed by another debate contributor, Economist business editor Tom Standage. ‘I think that the advantages of free trade and comparative advantage are obvious. It makes sense for people from different countries to grow different things and trade. Yet a lot of people think that agriculture and food are things to which the laws of economics should not be applied.’ Standage also points out that food has been, in a way, a victim of its own success. ‘One of the things that happened after the “green revolution” of the Sixties and Seventies was that lots of people thought that food was a solved problem. As a result, the problem of food production fell off the development agenda. The amount of research and development (R&D) money that was put into agriculture fell as governments thought that agriculture was old-fashioned and they needed to concentrate on building industry. The fact is that a country cannot industrialise, with the associated surge in the urban population, without first undergoing a massive increase in agricultural productivity – that is, producing more food with fewer people.’ What is needed, then, is a new wave of serious work on producing new crops and techniques – or even simply applying existing ideas more widely and effectively – to produce more food. Standage is pretty open-minded on how best to grow food: ‘I think there is a worthwhile analogy with energy here. When it comes to generating electricity, there is no one right answer; we’ll need wind, nuclear and a variety of other sources. And, just as with food, different countries will have different strengths. In Morocco, solar power will be abundant. In the UK, wind and wave power will be the predominant renewable energy sources. With food, too, I think what we need is a portfolio approach where we find the best solution for the local situation, whether it is no-till, GM soya in Argentina or organic methods elsewhere.’ What is distinctly unhelpful is the intervention of Western NGOs, which often impose their own anti-development ideas on the countries that they are supposed to be helping. Standage is critical of the ‘cult of the peasant farmer’ and the ‘fundamentalism’ of the organic movement, which argues that ‘the right amount of chemicals is always zero’. This all suggests that the problem is not too many people, nor is it even a problem of technology. We already have the means to grow enough food to feed the world, with plenty of potential solutions in the pipeline for feeding even more in decades to come. The real problems are political. Firstly, we need to allow people to trade freely to encourage the expansion of production, whether it is export barriers in the developing world, driven by misguided notions of self-sufficiency, or import restrictions in rich markets used to protect local farmers. The free market is flawed in many ways, but compounding those problems with heavy state intervention makes things even worse. Secondly, we need to emphasise the importance of technology and break away from the irrational anti-modern thinking that has dominated food and development policy for so long. African farmers need chemicals, machinery and biotechnology every bit as much as the agro-industrial farmers of the US and Europe. Thirdly, we need to get our priorities right. The real solution to feeding the world is to make people richer – but tackling poverty just isn’t terribly fashionable any more. Instead, we’re simply bombarded with fears about the environment. Yet this obsession is misplaced. Our climate has constantly changed, creating new problems for society to solve. If we need to adapt to warmer temperatures in the future, we should start to think about how we might do that. But to devote so much political energy to the potential problem of climate change while a billion people go hungry right now shows the perverse logic of politics today. What do you think? Let us know what you think by joining in the debate here. Rob Lyons is deputy editor of spiked.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7728/
Wednesday 18 November 2009 In virtually every Western society, education is in trouble. Unfortunately, however, policymakers tend to obsess only about the symptoms of the problem – unsatisfactory standards in core subjects, growth of a cohort of poorly schooled underachievers or erosion of classroom discipline – and not the cause. Yet the main reason education often is not educating is because it finds it difficult to give meaning to human experience. Time and again, curriculum specialists inform us that because we live in a world of rapid change, the conventions and practices of the past have become outmoded, outdated or irrelevant. Present educational fads are based on the premise that because we live in a new, digitally driven society, the intellectual legacy of the past and the experience of grown-ups have little significance for the schooling of children. The implicit assumption that adults have little to teach children is rarely made explicit. But there is a growing tendency to flatter children through suggesting that their values are more enlightened than those of their elders because they are more tuned in to the present. So children are often represented as digital natives who are way ahead of their text-bound and backward-looking parents. Although education is celebrated as one of the most important institutions of society, there is a casual disrespect for the content of what children are taught. Curriculum engineers often display indifference, if not contempt, for abstract thought and the knowledge developed in the past. Both are criticised for being irrelevant or outdated; only new information that can be applied and acted on is seen as suitable for the training – and it is training and not teaching – of digital natives. In policy deliberations about education, the acquisition of subject-based knowledge is often dismissed as old-fashioned. Typically, an emphasis on the intellectual content of classroom subjects is labelled an outdated form of scholasticism that has little significance in our era. Policymakers often represent change as an omnipotent force that renders prevailing forms of knowledge and schooling redundant. In such circumstances, education must transform itself to keep up with the times. From this perspective, educational policies can be justified only if they can adapt to change. Since they are likely to be overtaken by events, classroom innovations by definition have a short-term and provisional status. The instability that afflicts the education system is turned into the normal state of an institution that needs to be responsive to the uncertain flow of events. Although fads come and go, the constant feature of today’s throwaway pedagogy is a deep-seated hostility to teaching academic subjects to young people, especially to those who come from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups. So-called modernisers regard the subject-based curriculum as far too rigid for a school system that must adapt to a constantly changing world. The dramatisation of change in Anglo-American education-speak renders the past irrelevant. If indeed we continually move from one new age to another, then the practices of the past have little relevance for today. Sadly, the ceaseless repetition of the idea that the past is irrelevant desensitises people from understanding the influence of the legacy of human development on their lives. The constant talk of ceaseless change tends to naturalise it and turn it into an omnipotent autonomous force that subjects human beings to its will. This is a force that annihilates the past and demands that people learn to adapt and readapt to new experiences. From this standpoint, humans do not so much determine their future as adapt to forces beyond their control. In the worldview of the educational establishment change has acquired a sacred character that determines what is taught. It creates new requirements and introduces new ideas about learning. And it encourages the mass production of a disposable pedagogy. Educationalists adopt the rhetoric of ‘breaks’ and ‘ruptures’ and maintain that nothing is as it was and that the present has been decoupled from the past. Their outlook is shaped by an imagination that is so overwhelmed by the displacement of the old by the new that it often overlooks historical experience that may continue to be relevant. The discussion of the relationship between education and change is frequently overwhelmed by the fad of the moment and with the relatively superficial symptoms of new developments. It is often distracted from acknowledging the fact the fundamental educational needs of students do not alter every time a new technology influences people’s lives. And certainly the questions raised by Greek philosophy, Renaissance poetry, Enlightenment science or the novels of George Eliot continue to be relevant for students in our time and not just to the period that preceded the digital age. Often change and social transformation are represented as if they are unique to our time. Innovation guru Bill Law makes this pronouncement: ‘We may not know precisely what shape the future will take but we do know that the futures of our current students will not much resemble those of our past ones.’ But when did we last think the future of our children would resemble our own? Not in 1969, or in 1939 or even 1909. The idea that we live in a qualitatively different world serves as a premise for the claim that the knowledge and insights of the past have only minor historical significance. In education it is claimed that old ways of teaching are outdated precisely because they are old. Knowledge itself is called into question because in a world of constant flux it must be continually overtaken by events. Policy has become so focused on keeping up with change that it has become distracted from the task of giving meaning to education. The fetishisation of change is symptomatic of a mood of intellectual malaise, where notions of truth, knowledge and meaning have acquired a provisional character. Perversely, the transformation of change into a metaphysical force haunting humanity actually desensitises society from distinguishing between a passing novelty and qualitative change. That is why lessons learned through the experience of the past are so important for helping society face the future. When change is objectified, it turns into spectacle that distracts society from valuing the truths and insights it has acquired throughout the best moments of human history. Yet these are truths that have emerged through attempts to find answers to the deepest and most durable questions facing us, and the more the world changes the more we need to draw on our cultural and intellectual inheritance. If the legacy of past achievements has ceased to have relevance for the schooling of young people, what can education mean? Thinkers from across the left-right divide have always realised that education represents a transaction between the generations. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist thinker, wrote ‘in reality each generation educates the new generation’. Writing from a conservative perspective, English philosopher Michael Oakeshott concluded ‘education in its most general significance may be recognised as a specific transaction which may go on between the generations of human beings in which newcomers to the scene are initiated into the world they inhabit’. Liberal political philosopher Hannah Arendt said education provided an opportunity for society to preserve and to renew its intellectual inheritance through an intergenerational conversation. One of the key tasks of education is to teach children about the world as it is. Although society is subject to the forces of change, education needs to acquaint young people with the legacy of its past. The term ‘learning from the past’ is often used as a platitude. Yet it is impossible to engage with the future unless people do draw on the centuries of human experience. Individuals gain an understanding of themselves through familiarity with the unfolding of the human world. The transition from one generation to another requires education to transmit an understanding of the lessons learned by humanity through the ages. Consequently, the main mission of education is to preserve the past so young people have the cultural and intellectual resources to deal with the challenges they face. This understanding of education as renewal stands in direct contrast to the present predilection to focus the curriculum on the future. In Anglo-American societies, curriculum-planning is devoted to cultivating an ethos of flexibility towards the future. Of course, the capacity to adapt is a valuable asset. But the exercise of this capacity requires a grounding in an understanding of the world in which we live. The question of the balance that education should strike between orienting towards the past and towards a changing world should be a source of debate. However, today, when policymakers tend to be so fixated on the present that they attempt to distance education from the past, it is essential to reaffirm the importance of a traditional humanist education. The impulse to free education from the past is influenced by a prejudice that regards ideas that are not of the moment as old-fashioned and irrelevant. Yet the project of preserving the past through education does not mean an uncritical acceptance of the world as it; it means the assumption of adult responsibility for the world into which the young are integrated. The aim of this act is to acquaint the young with the world as it is so that they have the intellectual resources necessary for renewing it. Through education, all the important old questions are re-raised with the young, leading to a dialogue that moves humanity’s conversation forward. Education needs to conserve the past. As Arendt argued, conservatism, in the sense of conservation, is of the essence of education. Her objective was not to conserve for the sake of nostalgia, but because she recognised that the conservation of the old provided the foundation for renewal and innovation. The characterisation of conservation as the essence of education can be easily misunderstood as a call inspired by a backward or reactionary political agenda. However, the argument for conservation is based on the understanding that, in a generational transaction, adults must assume responsibility for the world as it is and pass on its cultural and intellectual legacy to young people. An attitude of conservation is called for specifically in the context of intergenerational transmission of this legacy. Until recently, leading thinkers from across the ideological divide understood the significance of transmitting the knowledge of the past to young people. Conservative thinker Matthew Arnold’s formulation of passing on ‘the best that has been thought and said in the world’ is virtually identical to Lenin’s insistence that education needs to transmit the ‘store of human knowledge’. A liberal humanist education is underpinned by the assumption that children are rightful heirs to the legacy of the past. It takes responsibility for ensuring this inheritance is handed over to the young. It is because education gives meaning to human experience that it needs to be valued in its own right. One of the key characteristics of education is its lack of interest in an ulterior purpose. That does not mean it is uninterested in developments affecting children and society; it means that it regards the transmission of cultural and intellectual achievements of humanity to children as its defining mission. Once society is able to affirm an education system that values itself and the acquisition of knowledge, policymakers and the public can begin to envisage the steps required to deal with the practical challenges facing the classroom. Frank Furedi’s latest book, Wasted: Why Education Isn’t Educating, is published by Continuum Press. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Visit Furedi’s website here. This article was first published in the Australian and is an abridged version of his opening lecture at the Battle of Ideas conference, which took place at the Royal College of Art in London on 31 October/1 November. Previously on spiked Frank Furedi argued that education has been hijacked by single-issue campaign groups with little concern for pedagogy. Jennie Bristow interviewed Frank Furedi about this latest book, Wasted. Neil Davenport said education was suffering from a low level of ambition. Elsewhere, he argued that the establishment are making learning uncool. Michele Ledda felt that children ought be challenged by subjects. Or read more at spiked issue Education.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7717/
Wednesday 18 November 2009 A twenty-first century tribute to the Royal Family? A satirical swipe at the Labour government? A mistaken delivery address? At first, it’s difficult to know what to make of the large hunks of dead wood currently cutting a dash in London’s Trafalgar Square. That is, until you read the info-boards positioned around the installation or encounter the press-released promotional material. At which point Ghost Forest’s meaning, or better still, its message, will become all too clear: all this modern stuff, this industrial development, has come at an environmental cost we’ve been able to ignore for too long. Why? Because it’s always been over there, in Africa, in South America. But not any more. In the form of huge tree stumps it’s been brought close, dumped in our figurative backyard. To quote its creator, the journalist-cum-artist Angela Palmer, it is an awareness-raising, visual expression of the ‘connection between deforestation and climate change’.  Featuring nine huge tree trunks (plus one injured one) which have been dragged across, and then ferried over from the Suhuma forest reserve in western Ghana, Ghost Forest is perhaps not the most appropriate name. With each trunk assigned its own slab on which to lie, a more accurate one would’ve been ‘The Tree Mortuary’. Which is certainly how it feels to walk around it. The trunks are arrayed like a body parts, their angry tangle of roots straining out like the veins and capillaries of gigantic limbs at one end, while at the other end there is just a clean, surgical, lumberjack’s cut. It’s as if you’re being encouraged to look at the results of planetary surgery, to survey the casualities of man’s open-heart conquest of nature. Palmer is clearly not insensible to the effect, judging by her anthropomorphic language. The roots are like ‘nerve-endings’, she says, the rainforests themselves, ‘the world’s “lungs”’. This isn’t to say unsuspecting visitors were entirely clear as to what the stumps mean. Speaking on Monday, Palmer seemed unconcerned: ‘Many observers will see the stumps as beautiful sculptural objects; others will perhaps see the installation as a scene of devastation, others may see the tree stumps posited in the no-man’s land between the past and the future. For others the installation may represent an overt piece of political activism – a call to arms. I am equally comfortable with all responses.’ Beautiful sculptural objects? A no-man’s land between the past and the future? The most common response, from what I could see, was to stand next to the planet’s ripped-out lungs, and grin for the camera. After all, it’s not everyday some kindly artist leaves nine three-metre wide trunks around central London. This surely missed Palmer’s point. Because whatever Palmer says, there was a point, a big, blunt change-your-ways point to Ghost Forest. Little wonder those reporting its opening on Monday were in no doubt as to what Ghost Forest was saying. In the words of Art Daily, ‘Ghost Forest’ is ‘a powerful visual statement about climate change’. ‘[A]s a microcosm of planetary overconsumption of expendable resources’, concluded the Londonist, ‘it’s a powerful statement’. Hence this Sunday it will leave London and head to Thorvaldsens Plads in Copenhagen to ‘raise awareness’ before the start of the UN climate change summit in December. The reviewers had clearly read the promotional material. And this was the problem with Ghost Forest as art. In clued-up reports, in interviews on the Ghost Forest website, and on the 300-word-long, on-site info boards, the meaning of Ghost Forest was all too articulated. If the installation itself was ambiguous, a selection of barely worked-up Ghanaian tree stumps, its message was clear and overwrought. In fact the message could have done without its truncated embodiment in the wooden sculptures – the content here had no need of its form.  Overtly didactic art is nothing new, but what marks a project like the Ghost Forest out is the extent to which the hectoring content is liberated from the material in which it was to be represented. Little wonder that the UK foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change, John Ashworth, was able to praise it before it actually existed as an installation – after all it was the message, not its formal realisation, that was valuable. ‘We need to reach people in other ways as well’, he told Palmer. ‘Since the crisis we face is about who we are before it is about what we should do, the role of art will be critical. So I applaud what you are doing, and wish it success. You will in effect be confronting some of those who pass through Trafalgar Square with the consequence of their choices.’ Confront people with the consequence of their choices? This is art as behaviour-changing device. As Palmer explains on her website: ‘Its location in Trafalgar Square is key: it is one of the world’s most visited tourist sites and the epicentre of Western industrialisation over the past 200 years.’ In other words, for didactic purposes, plonking it in the centre of London allows it to tell as many people off as possible, from tourists to Christmas shoppers. It’s tricky to avoid The Message if you have to walk the long way round it. Then there’s the element of juxtaposition, of bringing the distant near, of shoving the natural in the face of the social. In the midst of a developed society, ‘an epicentre of industrialisation’, the mortified tree stumps, symbols of the underside of industrial progress, exist to discomfit, to unsettle. They are signs that something is wrong. This is a gesture premised on the perceived complacency of the public, their selfish behaviour. And as if the distaste for the lives of modern citizens wasn’t writ large enough, Palmer is prepared to take her fetish for the primitive and animistic one step further: tomorrow, an Amazonian chief is going to bless the trees in a special ceremony. Which does make you wonder. Perhaps Palmer is actually being subversive. After all, like Mark McGowan’s attempt to ‘raise awareness’ about water wastage by leaving the tap running in his London gallery, it took Palmer a large ship, and several tonnes of heavy haulage, to drag a symbol of excessive energy consumption to its current resting place. Add to that the power expended by the electricity generators to keep the lights blazing through the night, and Palmer’s carbon footprint must be at least the size of ten large Ghanaian trees. This must surely be one giant environmentalist wheeze, a satire of sanctimony, right? Perhaps not: ‘The artist considered carefully the carbon footprint which would be incurred in the project’, the info-board tells us, ‘but felt its potential message to millions of people on the impacts of deforestation would outweigh the carbon “spend”. The carbon cost of “Ghost Forest” will be calculated and offset on a ClimateCare project which has introduced more energy efficient cooking stoves to Ghana, meaning fewer trees are needed to provide cooking fuel.’ This is straight-faced contemporary art all right. It is art for those who know the carbon price of everything and the value of nothing. And art without value is not really art at all. Ghost Forest is in Trafalgar Square until Sunday 22 November. Tim Black is senior writer at spiked. Previously on spiked Tim Black criticised the impulse behind David Miliband’s climate map. Elsewhere, Munira Mirza asked whether modern art was a left-wing conspiracy. James Heartfield said that while Marc Quinn’s sculpture of Alison Lapper put disability on a pedestal, it was not controversial. Josie Appleton decried the return of ‘statuemania’ and art for inclusion’s sake.Or read more at spiked issue Environment or Arts and entertainment.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7718/
Wednesday 18 November 2009 Last week, what many are describing as ‘the greatest videogame ever made’ was released. It sold five million copies in the US and the UK on the first day of sale, raking in a record £186million in 24 hours. It is an involving, intense and immensely playable game. Yet how have many politicians and pundits responded? By being curmudgeonly; by calling for the game to be banned; by suggesting that it will warp the minds of a generation and create an army of glazy-eyed, thumb-wagging terrorists who will commit violent acts in the real world. Behold the latest violent videogame scare, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 being held up as the destroyer of morality on a par with the kind of stuff produced by Joseph Goebbels. The hysterical attacks on Modern Warfare 2 were led by the New Labour MP and chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Keith Vaz. He says he is ‘absolutely shocked at the level of violence in this game’. He is ‘particularly concerned about how realistic the game looks’. I was amazed by its realism, too - but in a good way. Modern Warfare 2 is a whirlwind of a game, visually stunning and thrilling from beginning to end. You are a counterterrorist soldier and the action takes place five years in the future. The gamer carries out missions everywhere from Afghanistan to Washington DC. It is the most in-depth, absorbing game I have ever played. The map is seemingly infinite, the missions are tense and, yes, frequently scary, and you can even play online, allowing you to pit yourself against friends (and enemies) all over the globe, making Modern Warfare 2, not an isolating, brain-warping experience, but a form of collective play. The bit of the game which has caused most uproar is a mission in which you must pretend to be a terrorist in order to infiltrate a terrorist gang. And in order not to blow your cover with your evil ‘friends’, you have to kill civilians. Perhaps some gamers will find this scene distressing, which is why Infinity Ward - makers of Modern Warfare 2 - have included a ‘skip option’ (though I don’t know anyone who has skipped it). The Daily Telegraph describes the civilian-shooting scene as ‘harrowing, terrifying, despicable’. It can indeed be all of those things, which is what makes it so intense, but at no point does one forget that this is just a game. Just as I don’t play Grand Theft Auto and then go out driving a Ferrari on the pavement in order to knock down pimps and junkies, or play Tekken and then pop out to have a fight with a kangaroo in boxing gloves, so I didn’t play Modern Warfare 2 and think to myself: ‘I must somehow procure these kinds of guns and hand grenades and then use them against the civilian population in an airport.’ Vaz claims that his desire to restrict access to games like Modern Warfare 2 is ‘not about adult censorship, [it is] about protecting our children’. But access to the game is already restricted: it has been given an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification, meaning that you have to be an ID-carrying adult to buy it. No doubt many children are playing the game, and, whether Vaz likes it or not, that means that an adult - a parent, an uncle or an older sibling - will have made the decision to buy the game for an under-18. Big deal. I would far more trust an adult within a family to judge whether a child is capable of playing Modern Warfare 2 than trust Keith Vaz to enforce blanket censorship in the name of ‘protecting children’. Vaz, and others, want to act in loco parentis. Under the cover of ‘concern for children’ they are really spreading suspicion about the decisions and actions of adults, the only people, after all, with the ability to purchase Modern Warfare 2. The hysterical response to Modern Warfare 2 echoes the ‘video nasties’ moral panic of the 1980s, when there was outrage amongst religious groups and right-wing censors over the distribution of horror movies that depicted scenes of violence. Only today, videogames have replaced video nasties, and frequently it is liberal and ostensibly left-wing politicians rather than the religious right who demand censorship. One spokesperson for a Muslim community group even said on TV last week that Modern Warfare 2 was similar to the hateful entertainment promoted by Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany, in that it desensitises young people to hatred and violence. What nonsense. Both the video nasties and videogames panic are based on outdated and discredited ‘media effects’ theories, the idea that media - what we watch, hear and play - has a potentially explosive impact on how we think and act. Effects theory has taken many forms over the decades, changing its focus and arguments every time it has been disproved and discredited. In 1920s America there was the ‘Hypodermic Needle Model’ - the idea that watching media directly injected thoughts into people’s minds. The audience was seen, in the words of one historian, as ‘passive, empty vessels’. By the 1980s, such a crude view was unfashionable… but it had been replaced by the idea that a combination of dangerous media material and the viewers’ background, personality and ‘cultural context’ might generate violence. In other words, things should be banned or restricted in order to keep vulnerable people under control; everyone should be denied access to material in the name of preventing individuals in a certain ‘cultural context’ from going off the rails. Supporters of effects theories now focus on violent videogames, arguing that the fact that young people actually take actions in relation to this violent media increases the chances of a detrimental ‘effect’. They often cite the academic study by the Americans Craig Anderson and Karen Dill, which claimed that ‘graphically violent videogames [increase] aggressive thoughts and behaviour’, because the games ‘reward violent behaviour’ and are ‘highly engaging’. However, some intelligent sceptics have pointed out the labs in which these experiments on young people’s responses to games were carried out ‘are not representative of real-life situations’. They also point out that the ‘exact contribution that videogames play in shaping children’s behaviour is virtually impossible to isolate when considered from broader intra-personal and environmental contexts’, and no study has shown any real, causal link between gameplaying and violence (1). The truth is, rational human beings are not sponges that soak up information: we process stuff, we think about it, we put it into one part of our brain, and we know the difference between killing an avatar and killing a human being. A lab full of academics examining a youth’s every reaction to gameplay is about as far away from real-life gameplaying as you will ever get. Just as rock’n’roll was said to have warped a generation of Teddy boys, and punk was said to have destroyed a layer of British youth, and video nasties were said to have encouraged rape and murder (although there’s no pesky evidence for this), so today we’re told that shoot’em-up games might encourage young people to… well, shoot them up. Like Frankenstein’s monster, with new bits of cultural theory and flimsy evidence attached to its ageing and grotesque body, Effects Theory is stalking young people’s fun once again. I say, let’s turn our (imaginary) guns on these killjoys: Modern Warfare 2 is a masterpiece, and it will not give rise to warfare. Shane O’Neill is a third-year Physics student at Imperial College London. Watch the trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: Previously on spiked Rob Lyons wondered who was afraid of Manhunt 2? Graham Barnfield called for the Video Recordings Act of 1984 to be abolished. He also untangled the supposed links between videogames and violence. Tim Black wondered why the BBFC is so scared of arousal, and reckoned that it is scarier than The Dark Knight. Or read more at spiked issues Liberties and Free speech. (1) Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics, J Springhall, Macmillan, 1998 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7721/
Tuesday 17 November 2009 As the papers announce that ‘Brown signals start of bitter election campaign’, many of the politics watchers of Britain are looking a little confused. For a couple of years they have been living off the lazy assumption that the opinion polls prove the Conservative opposition is heading for an easy victory in next year’s General Election. Then New Labour wins a parliamentary by-election in Glasgow last week, and suddenly it seems all those safe bets are off, with talk of a ‘tremendous’ Labour revival, and of seemingly doomed prime minister Gordon Brown now ‘bouncing back’ with a raft of pre-election policy announcements in this week’s Queen’s Speech to Parliament (when the government lays out its legislative plans for the next parliamentary session). So what’s really going on? It is worth trying to situate the polls, and particularly that by-election result, in some wider political perspective. Behind the bare statistics, these snapshots of political life reveal that there is no party today with any solid support or reliable constituency in British politics. New Labour is widely loathed, but the new Tories are not trusted either. Indeed there are arguably no real political parties in Britain today, in terms of political movements with roots in society that represent clear interests, rather than simply PR operations and election machines. The traditional core votes of both Labour and the Tories have corroded, and the floating voter – or perhaps more likely the floating non-voter – is now king. This makes electoral politics a more arbitrary, unpredictable affair, where sudden swings of fortune are possible for no very good reason. The uncertain underpinnings of the parties’ support means that any combination of results at the next election still seems possible – the one exception being another New Labour majority. This ought to make the election campaign interesting and engaging for the electorate, with everything being up for grabs in terms of the precise make-up of the next parliament. Yet the opposite is the case – the public are less engaged with politics than at any time in living memory. This is because, although all is apparently up for grabs in narrow electoral terms, in political terms there is nothing real to play for, nothing at stake, no battle between competing visions of the future of our society. In the midst of the economic crisis, we are facing a political crisis. That is why this looks like being the worst election on record. Look at the Glasgow North East by-election that caused all the excitement among the small band of Westminster-watchers last week. The election was caused by the resignation of the former Commons speaker and Labour MP Michael Martin, forced out as a consequence of the expenses scandal. Labour won with 12,231 votes (59 per cent), easily beating the Scottish National Party (SNP) on 4,120 (20 per cent). The Conservatives trailed in a very poor third with just 1,075 votes (5.2 per cent), barely beating the British National Party (BNP) (1013 votes, 4.9 per cent). It is a sign of how bad things have become for the government that New Labour should get so excited about managing to hold onto one of its very safest seats in one of Britain’s most deprived constituencies – the sort of seat any previous Labour leader could have afforded to take for granted, but which Brown flooded with party loyalists after losing neighbouring Glasgow East to the SNP last year. Had that humiliation been repeated here, as The Times (London) noted, ‘it would have meant there was hardly a safe Labour seat anywhere’. And we can take out the ‘hardly’ from that statement. However, avoiding humiliation is not normally considered the same thing as a ‘tremendous’ reversal in fortunes. The Glasgow result showed that New Labour is down to its rump of support even in its old heartlands. That does not exactly augur well for its prospects in the marginals. Its national poll rating has scarcely touched 30 per cent in a long time, and it has even been reported that the party’s own private polling suggests it might be left with as few as 120 seats in the new parliament, barely a third of the 356 won at the 2005 general election. It will take a lot more than holding onto the poor end of Glasgow to suggest any sort of national fightback is underway. If Glasgow North East gave Brown & Co a glimmer of hope, it was only because it confirmed that the opposition parties have serious problems of their own. The SNP suffered a terrible result in one of its target seats. The Scottish Nationalists, of course, are now the governing party north of the border, after they won the largest share of the votes in the Scottish Parliament. Having risen to that lofty position as the non-Labour opposition party, the SNP now finds itself suffering its own anti-government backlash in response to the crisis, with nothing distinctive to offer. The Conservatives, meanwhile, made no impression at all in Glasgow despite the intervention of several high-profile party figures. This may not have been natural Tory territory. But the dismal failure of their campaign does point to a wider problem. David Cameron is still coming up against the firm limits of Conservative support, not only in Scotland but in other key places such as north-west England, where the party still does not have any councillors in the cities of Manchester and Liverpool. Even in more traditional Tory heartlands, Cameron’s support is much softer than would once have been the case and remains vulnerable in places to a challenge from the toothless Liberal Democrats. And with fewer than 200 seats at the last election, the Conservatives are starting from an historically low base. A couple of weeks ago, it was estimated that their rating of 39 per cent in a national poll would give Cameron an overall majority of just two seats next year. That may underestimate the scale of bitterness felt towards the New Labour government. But the Conservative leader is not yet on course for any effortless Tony-Blair-in-1997-style landslide. If the Glasgow North East result was not great news for any party, the arguments and attempted explanations that followed it exposed the dire state of political debate. The SNP offered a couple of excuses for its defeat – which, whether they are true or not, revealed quite a lot. First, the Nationalists complained that New Labour had run a wholly negative ‘grudge and grievance’ campaign against the Scottish government, and warned Labour that in a UK General Election, the boot would be on the other foot. In other words, all any opposition party can offer today is an attempt to connect with the bitterness and cynicism people feel towards those in power. Whether in Glasgow or London, elections are likely to be lost by governments, not won by opponents. Then the SNP added a further explanation – that the Labour Party had profited in Glasgow from the ‘Don’t vote for the BNP’ campaign, which had whipped up fears of a far-right breakthrough to get out the traditional left vote for Labour. If that were true, it would not only show the SNP itself up as a fringe party that can be marginalised by an anti-extremism campaign. More importantly, it would confirm, as we have argued on spiked before, that the only thing New Labour and the other mainstream parties have to offer in terms of a positive vision today is that ‘We’re no Nazis’. That is a dismal enough state of affairs to make many people feel like voting BNP. Little wonder after all this that we are left with one other telling fact about the Glasgow North East result: the turn-out, which at only 33 per cent of the electorate, was the lowest ever recorded for a Westminster by-election in Scotland. Conventional wisdom has it that this was a response to the expenses scandal. But public disaffection and alienation from the political class have been growing for years, long before MPs’ duck houses and cleaning bills became an issue. At the 2001 and 2005 general elections, the ‘Apathy Party’ of non-voters was easily the largest group. It is normally assumed that the more unpredictable an election appears, the larger the turnout is likely to be. Hence the grey Tory John Major received more votes than any other British prime minister in history at the closely-fought 1992 election. But it seems hard to imagine anything stirring such public interest this time around. Yes, the exact balance of power in the next parliament may yet be up for grabs. But in a more important sense it is already clear that the election is a no-contest. There is nothing at stake in terms of genuine choices about the future of society. This week we are promised that the Queen’s Speech will mark the start of New Labour’s election campaign, as Brown sets out policies designed to demonstrate the clear differences between him and Cameron. The policies themselves are bad enough, yet more political intervention in the education system, for example – just what schools need. But what lies behind them is worse still. Even leaving aside the spectacle of a government turning an entire legislative programme into an election leaflet, this is a pathetic excuse for democratic choice. These are proposals made-up on the hoof simply in order to look different from the Tories, as an end in itself. They do not represent any genuine clash of principles or interests between the parties. Each side might just as well pledge to wear different coloured party hats so that we can tell them apart. Brown is apparently pinning his hopes for the General Election on an economic recovery, the promise of which he claims has already won Labour that by-election. No doubt things are already booming on the famously run-down housing schemes of north-east Glasgow. In reality, the UK economy remains in the doldrums, with zero-to-low growth set to be the New Normal. Yet even that economy seems pretty vibrant compared to the depressed and bankrupt state of political debate on all sides of parliament. Time to start re-enfranchising the electorate before it’s too late. Join the spiked campaign and Vote for Politics in 2010.
Mick Hume is editor-at-large of spiked. Previously on spiked
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7714/
Tuesday 17 November 2009 Ann Keen, the health minister and a former nurse, wants to raise the status of nursing and the quality of patient care. Others, like the main nursing union, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), and the chief nursing officer, Dame Chris Beasley, want to make nursing more attractive and to get rid of the stigma of nurses being ‘doctors’ handmaidens’. And the proposed solution to this problem that Keen plans to consult on? All newly qualified nurses should be university graduates by 2013, up from the current level of 25 per cent. Admirable sentiments, considering how bad things have become, if a damning report published by the Patients’ Association this year is to be believed (1). The report outlines the dreadful, neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel treatment that patients and their elderly relatives have experienced at the hands of some National Health Service (NHS) nurses. A row of sorts has erupted in response, suggesting that the problems identified will not be addressed by degree-based training. As a nurse of 35 years standing, I wholeheartedly agree. I believe that the most fundamental aspect of nursing – caring – has been degraded and devalued. Bedside care has been devolved to health care assistants with registered nurses undertaking more technical tasks. It’s as if bedside care is no longer the remit of nurses. But I don’t think it’s the role of universities to address this problem. Universities should not be used for instrumental purposes like teaching skills. Their role should be an entirely different one. Nursing has been and remains for many, a poorly paid occupation, although huge variations as well as opportunities exist within it. In the past, we were bought off with platitudes like nursing being a ‘vocation’ and being ‘ministering angels’, as if we were nuns, not health workers. Although we partially colluded with this patronising and demeaning view of ourselves, we at least felt, despite our lowly status, that we were doing the job for altruistic reasons. We felt valued, respected and trusted by patients and the public alike. We felt that we did a good if hard job, and gained a lot of satisfaction from helping people. Our professional organisations and trade unions didn’t ever put up much of a fight to change our pay or conditions, however. Some even actively discouraged us from seeing ourselves as ordinary members of the public-sector workforce. We were supposed to be different. We cared, unlike the porters and domestic staff who took strike action from time to time. All that’s changed, of course, as has the status of nurses – but not necessarily for the better in my estimation. In wanting degree-based education for nurses, Keen and the RCN are presumably acknowledging that current nurse training is inadequate, at least as far as England is concerned. Nurse training in Wales is already degree-based. Prior to 1992, when diploma-level training was introduced, nurses spent only a quarter of their training in the classroom and three quarters on the wards. The supernumerary status that student nurses acquired in 1992 meant they were no longer part of the clinical workforce. They are now expected to learn through supervised participation – observing but not participating enough in the care that health care assistants and registered nurses perform. It’s not surprising, therefore, whether graduating with degrees or not, that many nurses qualify with quite basic and superficial knowledge and with nothing like enough skills, knowledge, clinical and practical experience. Much of this then has to be learnt after qualifying; the time when they should be consolidating what’s been learnt, putting theory into practice and taking on new responsibilities and becoming good practitioners. Some never learn the skills adequately. This invariably has a knock-on effect. Wards become staffed by poorly trained, inexperienced nurses not up to the job, who find basic nursing care challenging. The nurses who stick around and thrive, despite all of this, have to work under enormous pressure, trying to carry the load that their less-experienced colleagues can’t share (or even add to), struggling to keep the show on the road and maintain standards and trying to ensure that patients are cared for competently and compassionately. Patient care is consequently sometimes less than adequate. And the pressure this engenders contributes to many good nurses leaving the NHS. But degree-level education is not the answer to the problem of inadequate training and poor care provision. Indeed, it may exacerbate it. As has been written about at length on spiked, degree-level education in Britain, in general, has long been inadequate and unchallenging for students and does many a disservice. It’s even been suggested that a degree is now the equivalent of the school exam for 16-year-olds, the GCSE, because the standard has dropped so low. But universities should not be teaching skills anyway. Instead, they should be helping students expand their minds, teaching them to think and to acquire knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Leave skills training to the nursing colleges where it belongs. The practical, attitudinal and compassionate skills that nurses need to acquire, so that they become intuitive in the provision of care, have to be learnt on the job. Theory ought to be after, not prior to actual experience. This practical side is the very aspect of training that nurses get an insufficient amount of already. The problem can only get worse if university-based training becomes the norm because the emphasis will shift further to theoretical aspects of caring as opposed to its practical application. That may well compound the existing prejudice about nurses being ‘too posh to wash’, delegating the work to less qualified health care assistants. These fundamental problems need to be acknowledged and discussed before going any further with this consultation. Caring for sick people is a privilege and nurses need to be competent in providing it. When they are, their status will automatically improve. Nurses can and should be able to attend university after qualifying and when they’ve consolidated their knowledge and acquired the necessary nursing skills. Meanwhile Ann Keen and the RCN could review the seriously flawed ‘Agenda for Change’ they so enthusiastically support, to address the pay and conditions of nurses and other NHS staff. Brid Hehir is head of engagement and patient involvement and sessional nurse in the NHS in London. She writes in a personal capacity. Previously on spiked Brid Hehir criticised the covert monitoring of NHS staff. Tim Black noted that the problem with degrees today was a society that has lost faith in learning. Dr Michael Fitzpatrick criticised the squalor of contemporary UK healthcare and argued that Darzi’s interim report on the NHS profoundly misunderstood Britain’s ‘health crisis’. He also criticised the way Tony Blair alienated patients and degraded doctors. Brendan O’Neill declared we don’t need any more patient choice. Or read more at spiked issue NHS. (1) Patients not numbers, people not statistics, Patients Association reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7715/
Tuesday 17 November 2009 Northern Ireland peace process: are these the four most boring words in the English language? If they are it is because, in the name of ‘good governance’, the ‘process’ has usurped politics. The Irish peace process is apparently in trouble again. Rumours are circulating that the Nothern Ireland Assembly is once more in danger of collapsing as the hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) moves further to the right in an attempt to outflank the challenge from the reactionary Traditional Unionist Voice, led by disgruntled ex-DUP Euro MP Jim Allister. Alternatively, some think Sinn Féin will quit government because the DUP is back-pedalling on commitments to bring the police under the control of the Assembly (1). Both rumours miss a very important fact: the Assembly won’t fall because Northern Ireland is a one-party state, ruled by the Peace Process Party. For decades Northern Ireland was derided, correctly, as a joke ‘country’ – a made-up Protestant Bantustan which, while officially democratic, denied civil rights to almost half of its population through gerrymandering, discrimination, the curious practice of allowing limited companies to vote in elections and, if necessary, a good old-fashioned pogrom (2). From its foundation in 1921 to its eventual dissolution in 1972, only one party ever exercised power in Northern Ireland’s parliament: the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). During this period one British prime minister after another lined-up to lambast the absence of democracy in Eastern Europe, seemingly failing to notice their own miniature East Germany by the Irish Sea. The end of the Stormont parliament in 1972 following Bloody Sunday, and the institution of direct rule, fixed this, right? Not exactly. During most of the conflict Northern Ireland was ruled from Westminster. This government, regardless of which minister happened to be running the Northern Ireland Office, was effectively government by the unelected civil service. None of the major British political parties stood in Ireland (though the Tories did eventually start a local branch, not that anyone cared – or voted for them). Despite the occasional outburst of republican rhetoric from the Labour left, this lack of interest in Irish affairs was not driven by the idea that British politicians should stay out of Irish affairs. Instead, it was simply a result of the fact that Britain has never wanted much to do with Northern Ireland other than ensuring it continued to exist. The UK government created Northern Ireland through the Government of Ireland Act in 1920 and, in doing so, ignored the will of the Irish people as expressed in an all-Ireland General Election in 1918 in which Sinn Féin won 73 of the 105 parliamentary seats. After such a birth, the British government could have been expected to take a direct interest in ruling its new statelet. This singularly failed to happen. Instead, it immediately separated Northern Ireland from the rest of the British polity, handed control over to a dodgy Ulster Unionist-dominated parliament and happily ignored the place until war erupted in 1969. Prior to this, both unionists and the British government had been hostile to Irish home rule, let alone independence; now that a sectarian carve-up had guaranteed an artificial majority of subjects loyal to the Crown, home rule was seen as ideal. Even at the height of the conflict while the IRA was trying to bring its war to the streets of Britain, successive British governments pursued a policy of pretending the affair had nothing to do with them. Indeed, three consecutive prime ministers – Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher – pursued a policy of ‘Ulsterisation’ intended to further isolate Northern Ireland from Britain. New Labour’s victory in the general election of 1997 seemed to change things. Within months, Blair was hailed for engaging with Ireland and bringing about a peace process that resulted in local, democratic rule. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, Blair had simply ramped-up the Ulsterisation process – the only difference was that he would involve republicans. Today, it is commonly believed that the British government is acting in good faith in Ireland, as an impartial party keeping apart ‘two tribes’ of crazed bigots who have spent thirty-plus years shooting each other. By writing its involvement out of the history books, the British establishment has succeeded in making Northern Ireland incomprehensible to all but the keenest observers and depoliticised its own role as an occupying power. Blair twice handed power over to a new Stormont Assembly, one that unlike its predecessor does represent republican sentiment. Unfortunately, in order to obfuscate the national question, the assembly has been constructed in the most unpolitical way imaginable. Today, gerrymandering and discrimination are no longer problems. The UUP is a shadow of its former self, having been replaced by the hyper-Protestant DUP, and republicans have fair representation in the Assembly. But Northern Ireland is still a one-party state. The difference is that instead of being ruled by the Unionist Party, it’s ruled by the Peace Process Party, a bizarre coalition of almost everyone who manages to get a foot in the door of the Assembly. The government of Northern Ireland, if we can even call it that, is composed not only of the DUP but also Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionist Party and the Irish nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). The real difference between the one-party state of yesterday and that of today is that republicans now have a hand in governing these hollow and undemocratic institutions. In fact, this government is usually referred to, even by itself, as ‘the Executive’. This is not merely an Americanism; it is a tacit admission that the Assembly is neither a real parliament nor is Northern Ireland actually capable of electing a real government under its sectarian rules, described locally as ‘consociationalism’. In fact it is more like a mutant form of the Pillarisation, the segrational system of both the Netherlands and Belgium that saw Protestants and Catholics attend different schools, join different trade unions and generally have as little do to with one another as possible. For all the waffle about ‘shared futures’, the people of Northern Ireland share less than ever and the more the government expands to take in members of different political stripe the less coherent and cohesive it becomes. With every expansion of the government there is a corresponding contraction of the political space. Further growth is expected with the tiny Alliance Party expected to take a ministerial post in the near future. (For the record, Alliance is a group of supposed liberals who think there is middle position between British and Irish sovereignty, though, inevitably, it always turns out actually to be the continuation of British sovereignty, just with less Union Jackery and Orange Order parades). In fact, the only elected party that hasn’t been yet been invited into the Executive fold is the Progressive Unionist Party, a small labourist group that grew out of the Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitary organisation. Naturally, like the coalition from hell that it is, the Northern Ireland Executive lurches from crisis to crisis. As we have seen in Germany and Italy, a government composed of conflicting views rapidly becomes incapable of functioning. Parties with divergent views on economics can rarely rule together, so how is it possible that a government can exist when two of the four parties in it want to abolish the state they are supposed to be running? The answer has been to depoliticise everything. The Executive gets on with governance while its members, in an attempt to appeal to their supporters, fight noisy sham battles over the latest sectarian issue. There are only two real positions on Northern Ireland: either it is an undemocratic carve-up because it was artificially separated from the rest of Ireland, or it is, as Margaret Thatcher said, ‘as British as Finchley’ – at least politically if not culturally. The pretence that Northern Ireland can be magically transformed into a normal society simply by ignoring the fact that it remains a disputed territory does a disservice not only to committed republicans and unionists, but also to the electorate who are refused the right to express their political will in meaningful elections. All of the parties in the Executive owe their allegiance not to the electorate nor to the sovereign nations of Ireland or Britain, but to the peace process – a process without end whose sole purpose is to enforce a political compromise. But this compromise comes at the very high cost of heightening communal division and sectarian tensions. Northern Ireland is no longer about as legitimate as East Germany – today it more closely resembles Kosovo. Jason Walsh is a journalist based in Dublin. He is the editor of forth, a new online current affairs magazine. Previously on spiked
(1) Anxiety at lack of action on policing and justice, Gerry Moriarty, Irish Times, 6 November 2009. This row has been running for some time – see this report from 2008: SF threatens to collapse assembly, BBC News, 24 August 2008 (2) For a history, see: Northern Ireland: The Orange State, Michael Farrell, Pluto Press, 1980 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7716/
Monday 16 November 2009 A new report by the British think-tank Demos has hit the headlines, with its claim that ‘Parents are the principal architects of a fairer society’. Based on research from the Millennium Cohort Study, the report argues that how children are parented has a more significant impact upon their future life chances than just about anything else, including poverty and the social class into which they are born (1). You might wonder whether the world really needs another report blaming particular parenting styles for every evident problem in late capitalist society. Across the British political spectrum, policy continually seeks to clobber parents over the head with the assertion that the future of Britain rests or falls according to whether they feed their children too many sweets or read to them for the requisite number of minutes at bedtime. So when Jen Lexmond and Richard Reeves, authors of the Demos report, respond to concerns about interference by the ‘nanny state’ by arguing that ‘if there is one area where government intervention is justified, it is in precisely the area of life signalled by the term “nannying” – the development of children’s capabilities’, they are pushing at doors opened by New Labour, and held open by the Tories. Nothing new there. However, Lexmond and Reeves at least try to go beyond the emotional blackmail that informs most parenting policy, which simply asserts that if you don’t adopt the right kind of parenting behaviours with your children they will die of obesity or end up on the social scrapheap, with no qualifications and a million mental disorders. Their report, Building Character, is an attempt to wrestle with the problem of how we bring up children with a sense of self and agency, who can achieve things in life and develop a responsibility to people and projects outside of themselves. This is an important question, and one that preoccupies parents as much as policy-wonks. I have often found myself ploughing through the latest piece of official parenting advice and wondering to what end it all leads. The idea that rearing children is just about maximising their ‘happiness’, or stopping them from becoming fat, or enabling them to take a few calculated risks, might all make some sense on a personal, daily level, but it seems thoroughly inadequate in terms of a generational project. When we say ‘children are the future’, we don’t just mean that they will outlive us, but that they will be the ones running society and making history. To that extent, it really is not enough that they are happy or that they have high self-esteem – they have to be able to cope with adversity and think outside of themselves, in order to shape the world around them. This is where character comes into play, and where adults’ role in helping to ‘build character’ is crucially important. Unfortunately, while Demos’ enthusiasm for addressing this issue is refreshing, its narrow focus on parenting styles and outcomes among young children means that the report ends up peddling the same old mixture of common sense and nonsense. On the common sense front, it finds that more authoritative parents have better-behaved children and that more confident parents are more authoritative. On the nonsense front, it speculates that better-behaved children with more confident parents will get to be middle class when they reach adulthood – which leads to the conclusion that training parents on low incomes to be confident and authoritative will magic some social mobility into their children. Or, as Jen Lexmond told The Sunday Times, ‘when it comes to parenting, it is not what you are, but what you do that’s important’ (2). What is striking about this is not only the blithe assertion that all manner of social inequalities and life problems can be obliterated by parents simply setting a few house rules for their toddlers. It is the reduction of a child’s moral development, the building of character that takes place over the course of childhood within a distinct cultural context, to a particular parenting style that results in clearly observable attributes amongst five-year-olds. Building Character starts with a discussion of Aristotle; eight pages later it presents us with a table showing how three ‘key character capabilities’ are exhibited by the behaviour of five-year-olds studied by the Millennium Cohort Study. So we find that a child who ‘cannot sit still, is constantly fidgeting or squirming’ shows something about ‘application’, a child who is kind to younger children shows something about ‘empathy and attachment’, and a child who ‘often argues with adults’ shows something about ‘self-regulation’. The child who exhibits the good behaviours is presumed to be a product of authoritative parenting, and will go far in life; the restless hypochondriac tantrummer is presumed to be lacking boundaries and will end up socially immobile. An expert in survey methodology could no doubt find several holes in this research. I was struck by the admission, in the appendix, that for all the authors argued that confident parents make better-behaved (or more character-ful) children, ‘It is possible that the association between parental perceived competence and child behaviour outcomes is spurious’ – as the data was based on parents’ reports of their children’s behaviour, and less confident parents tend to report more bad behaviour in their children than do more confident parents. It seems equally possible that the report’s entire evidence base is ‘spurious’. But aside from that, why do we think we can measure something so complex and human as ‘character’ by looking at the behaviour of five-year-olds? Can human agency really be reduced to an ability to concentrate and a willingness to share toys? As a parent, I worry about the development of my children’s characters. I worry about the impact of a purportedly child-centred therapy culture, which encourages children to think that that they should never be criticised and that their feelings are the most important ones. I worry that children who are over-protected, who are not allowed to take risks or work through problems for themselves, are profoundly ill-equipped to become adults capable of running the world. I worry that the educational direction taken by ‘personalised learning’ and methods that make everything fun and relevant to children limits their capacity to apply themselves to things. I worry about the way that anti-bullying initiatives actively discourage children from developing empathy, by presenting bullying as the use of certain bad words or particular actions, rather than encouraging children to think about what it means to be kind or unkind, how to roll with the blows and how to maintain friendships. I worry that precisely the model of ‘good parenting’ that is advocated by policymakers is that of the active consumer – the parent who elbows everybody else out of the way to achieve the best for his or her child, who is obsessively anxious about the individuals within his or her family to the exclusion of thinking about what’s best for the school, the community, even other friends and family members. And I worry about lots of other things as well. But, as the parent of a five-year-old and a three-year-old, I know that their characters are not yet fully formed. There are several years and many experiences left in order to inspire and shape young children into the kind of adults we hope they will become. As children gain the ability to read, reason and expand their world beyond the home, we can engage them in questions of agency and morality, and trust them to work things out for themselves but in relation to other people. The idea that parents alone can – even should – short-circuit these processes by seeking to ‘develop character’ by the end of five, and that we can measure our children’s worth as moral, responsible beings according to whether they sit still at the dinner table, displays a narrow and deterministic view. Character is not an ‘outcome measure’, and obedience is not what makes us human. Jennie Bristow edits the website Parents With Attitude. She is author of Standing Up To Supernanny, and co-author of Licensed to Hug. (Buy these books from Amazon (UK) here and here.) Read on: A guide to subversive parenting (1) Building Character, by Jen Lexmond and Richard Reeves, November 2009. Download it for free here. (2) Bad parents kills prospects of working class, The Sunday Times, 8 November 2009 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7710/
Monday 16 November 2009 ‘It’s official: Britain is on the way back’, declared a frontpage headline in the London Evening Standard last week. Yet behind the headlines, the UK – and the world’s big, developed nations in general – have a long way to go before the economy returns to pre-recession levels. The buoyant headlines were the product of two pieces of news. Firstly, unemployment in the UK isn’t rising as fast as would be expected, given the fact that the most recent official statistics suggest the economy was still very much in recession from June to September. While other developed economies like Germany and France have started to grow again, official figures suggest Britain’s national output (gross domestic product or GDP) fell by 0.4 per cent in the third quarter of the year, despite predictions of growth from many economists. Even if the GDP figures are revised upwards later – as many predict they will be – a return to ‘normality’ is a long way off. Nonetheless, unemployment rose by only 30,000 in the three months to September, the smallest rise for 16 months. The second piece of news was the quarterly inflation briefing from the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King. Actually, King’s briefing was pretty sombre. The UK has ‘only just started along the road to recovery’, he said, although the Bank now predicts growth at a respectable four per cent by the end of 2011. However, King warned that the recovery would be restrained by ‘a prolonged period of balance sheet adjustment’ as banks, businesses and consumers paid down debts while new credit would remain hard to obtain for some time. The ‘good news’ is that King’s new forecasts for the economy are not quite as bad as his slash-your-wrists-now previous estimates. One of the themes of 2009 has been the endless search for the ‘green shoots’ of recovery. They remain hard to find. For example, on Tuesday The Times (London) declared ‘Poll shows Britons see good times around the corner’. What the story actually said was that the number of people who think the economy will do well over the next year has risen from a quarter to a third. Most people still see hard times ahead for the UK. The pessimism seems well-placed. The UK is stuck under a mountain of borrowing, with its economy propped up by an ever-expanding government debt that’s heading towards the equivalent of 100 per cent of GDP by 2014. In fact, given that the government has temporarily reduced value added tax (VAT), maintained public spending despite a sharp fall in tax revenues and the Bank of England has effectively magicked £200billion of new money out of thin air through the process of ‘quantitative easing’, it really is about time the economy started growing. It’s as if the government has turned the economic defibrillator up to maximum voltage. If there isn’t a pulse soon, King will just have to record the time of death and move on. Yet if the country is in dire straits, why has unemployment not galloped towards three million – about 10 per cent of the workforce nationally – as widely expected? The BBC’s economics editor, Stephanie Flanders, notes that the process of making people redundant is a costly and time-consuming one, so it may be that there are more job losses in the pipeline. But it is also the case that people have been far more willing to accept cuts in hours and pay to protect jobs than they might have been in the past. There has also been a sharp rise in part-time employment as people accept any kind of work to stay in the jobs market. Despite all this, Flanders argues that ‘given the long-term cost of being out of work – for individuals and for the economy – the slowing rate at which people are losing their jobs overall has to be cause for good cheer, however cautious’. We should indeed be very cautious about such figures. While the private sector has been hit hard in the past year or so, the public sector has been relatively insulated from job losses. All the major parties agree that deep cuts in public spending will be essential as soon as the economy picks up (see The austerity auction, by Rob Lyons). We can therefore expect a long period of stagnation as a feeble recovery in private-sector activity is offset by a shrinking public sector. And at some point, the Bank of England is going to have to reverse that policy of quantitative easing, too. One BBC reader’s comment on Flanders’ article put it less than delicately: ‘Stephanie, you’re trying to point out the brightly coloured bits in a sea of puke – it’s still puke, no matter how many carrots and peas there are within it.’ Thanks to a considerable degree of employee collaboration with employers, the crushing unemployment levels of the 1980s have so far been avoided. A report in today’s Financial Times suggests such an environment is set to continue in the short term, with half of British companies planning to maintain a pay freeze in 2010. But the long-term economic outlook suggests that the current high levels of joblessness are going to be around for some time. If the unemployment figures are a surprise, the way in which unemployment – and the recession in general – has failed to ignite as a political issue should be deeply worrying. A year or so ago, there was much talk about how capitalism itself was being called into question by the recession. But the reaction so far has been less a defiant fist, and more a resigned shrug. This is partly because there is an element of phoney war about the recession at present. Some areas of the country have taken a beating in terms of job losses. Unemployment in the West Midlands, an area strongly associated in the past with manufacturing, has hit 10 per cent, for example. But those still in work will have experienced low retail-price inflation and falling housing costs as mortgage interest rates have tumbled. Perversely, many people will feel better off now than 18 months ago. Whether that continues remains to be seen. But the overriding factor is the lack of any alternative to what is on offer at present. The defeat of the labour movement in the 1980s was quickly followed by the collapse of the only apparent alternative to capitalism, the Stalinist command economies in Eastern Europe, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. This double whammy has deprived opposition movements of any base to work from. Both the British trade unions and the Soviet-inspired Communist parties were an enormous barrier to meaningful political change, but we live in an era where there is no coherent opposition at all. Unable to find a basis on which to oppose the economic crisis collectively, and with no political alternatives on offer, people are left to cope as best they can as individuals. When Flanders talks about the ‘long-term cost’ of being out of work, it only emphasises how unemployment is seen less and less as an economic problem and more as a psychological one, particularly for young people. If we don’t socialise people into the world of work, so this train of thought goes, we will end up creating a dysfunctional generation, lost to mainstream society (see Why unemployment is no longer a political issue, by Brendan O’Neill). The result of this depoliticisation of unemployment and the economy will be a period of stagnation, when much of the potential of society will be wasted and the majority of people will have little or no say over the way events unfold. There is little prospect of a vibrant political movement emerging any time soon, but we can at least make a start by developing a hard-headed and sober assessment of where we are now. It would make a welcome change from the optimistic/pessimistic bipolar disorder that currently characterises the debate about the future direction of society. Rob Lyons is deputy editor of spiked. Previously on spiked Brendan O’Neill looked at why unemployment is no longer a political issue. Sean Collins countered those who saw the rise of the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a sign of recovery. Patrick Hayes reported on the Visteon factory occupation. Rob Lyons praised the strikers at Gate Gourmet. Neil Davenport wondered why there are so many wannabe workers. Or read more at spiked issues British politics and Economy. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7696/
Monday 16 November 2009 Poker has long since stopped being the clichéd preserve of men in smoke-filled dens. It is now an almost-approved leisure activity, played by celebrities on the telly and millions of punters online. I say ‘almost approved’ because at the same time as it appears ubiquitous, poker, particularly its online version, has its critics, too. Headlines such as this one last month, ‘Online gambling tempts students further into debt’, are never far away. The fear is that the ease with which one can play online poker is just too tempting, and that many people won’t be able to control themselves. However, as former spiked intern Julius Pasteiner, author of an MA thesis on gambling, has argued in the spiked online debate The rise of online poker, this ‘too easy’ criticism of online gambling undermines any liberal idea of rationality and subjective self-control: ‘Internet poker, the biggest pull for online gamers, highlights the problems with a philosophy of self-regulation. Firstly, the player is removed from the social environment and gambles in isolation in any physical or mental state and at any time with a number of anonymous screen names. Secondly, the player occupies an abstract world where money is never handled, chips are never touched and bank accounts are hooked up straight to the table. Thirdly, the skill of observation, so valuable in a real game of poker, is negated as every player comes with a digital poker face.’ Pasteiner concludes that ‘to expect individuals successfully to manage finances under such conditions is asking a lot of their prudence’. Yet one of the curious things about poker is that its defenders are keen to point out the role, not only of skill, but also of what skill presupposes: self-control. So, far from encouraging reckless, irrational behaviour, poker, even its online version, demands precisely the opposite: controlled, rational play. Or at least for those who are good at it, it does. I spoke to Harvard Law School graduate Andrew Woods, executive director of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, which, in the words of its website, ‘views poker as an exceptional game of skill that can be used as a powerful teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education’. The first thing that becomes clear is that for Woods, poker, online or offline, is a game of immense skill. ‘If you look at successful poker play, it is almost always dominated by skill’, he said. ‘A few years ago, research by an economics student at the University of California, Berkley, compared professionals who played poker tournaments with those who played in golf tournaments – they found that poker players are more likely to repeat success than their golf-playing equivalents. Add to that the fact that poker players come from a far wider field than golf, and the role of skill in poker becomes yet more apparent.’ Woods is not convinced that people still think of luck as the predominant factor in being successful at poker. ‘Popular perception of luck’s role has changed, particularly over the last four or five years, because poker has penetrated in a much wider way into the public’s consciousness [due to TV coverage and online poker]. What people are seeing now is that poker, as a game, is much closer to chess than it is to, say, roulette and the casino games it might have once been more commonly associated with.’ Throughout our conversation Woods was keen to highlight the nature of the skill involved. ‘Just like the stock market or real estate, the skill involves assessing the variables in the game’, he said. I asked for an example: ‘Maths and statistics are obviously very important to understand what the probability is of certain outcomes happening given the limited information you have available to you. For instance, if you’re playing Texas Holdem and you get dealt a pair of aces, you have to work out how strong that hand is versus your opponent’s potential starting hand, and be able to modify the probability and your expected value, based on what happens on the poker board. So, at the beginning, with a pair of aces you have a very strong hand, but say a pair of aces comes on the board, then that would obviously modify the expected value of your hand and you’d have to act accordingly to maximise your potential value. The extent to which maths and statistics are built into the game shows the type of knowledge and skill that informs successful poker play.’ Woods makes a stronger case for the skill element in poker. He suggests that the skills involved can be conveyed into other areas of life. ‘Historically, people have always seen chess as the thinking man’s game. If you look at chess, it has complete information. If you look at a chessboard, every possible outcome is there for you to see. It’s just a matter of your ability to process and recognise [those outcomes]. But chess involves a set of parameters you would almost never find in the real world. When you move into any realm in the world – be it a business or a personal relationship, financial markets or real estate – you almost never have complete information. The skill, which allows people to be more or less successful, is the ability to take in the information you have, but also the information you don’t have.’ ‘And what poker trains you in more than anything else is what you don’t know, and how you can modify your risk accordingly. How do you put yourself in the best possible position? You succeed according to what you don’t know. And I think that that parallel holds very strongly in almost every area of life that you can look at.’ And what about online poker? ‘Obviously, it’s a different situation, given the different interactions, but the core components and strategy remain the same. It just produces a slightly different set of skills that allow you to succeed.’ What about the idea of being addicted to poker? ‘Certainly, you could say there’s a danger of being addicted to online poker’, Woods tells me. ‘But then there’s a danger of being addicted to just about everything we deal with in our lives. You can be addicted to online shopping, you can be addicted to alcohol, you can be addicted to any number of things. We do a disservice to citizens by banning things outright. Instead we should simply tackle specific problems head on, as and when they arise – otherwise you ban things because there’s a danger that a very small percentage of the population will become addicted to something.’ Woods goes even further. He argues that the poker format does not lend itself to addiction. If you’re losing in poker you’re going to keep on losing, he says. It’s not bad luck; it’s bad play. This is different to other games, such as craps, where the random element might continue to draw players in despite a losing sequence. In other words, because of the high skill component in poker, there’s no pay-off to be had from continuing to play. There’s no point in thinking: ‘If I hang out just one more time, my luck will change.’ Woods’ portrait of poker playing seems opposed to the image of the feckless, uncontrolled gambler of online nightmares. ‘Poker is all about self-control’, he states. ‘It’s all about bankroll management, chip management. If you’re playing a tournament, you have to think about how can you manage the resources you have in front of you to acquire your opponents’ resources. If you can’t manage very tight self-control, the other players will take your resources. The term for that player is being on tilt, or being a maniac. In the poker world those people will be singled out as an easy mark, the sort of players from whom you can acquire chips very easily. The idea that poker encourages a lack of self-control is just ridiculous. You couldn’t be any sort of poker player over any period of time if you didn’t have self-control.’ As for whether the companies owning casinos or online poker sites are keen to encourage uncontrolled spending, Woods again is sceptical: why would they want players to do that, he asks? ‘Room owners make their money from a small percentage of each pot. So if you lose your money, you can no longer be their customer.’ And besides, ‘when you lose your money you don’t lose it to the casino, but to the other players. In the poker company’s eyes, the ideal situation is that no one loses or wins very much – they just want you to keep playing for as long as possible.’ So what do you think? Is poker, particularly its online version, a threat to punters’ ability to control themselves? Or is it a highly skilled game dependent on self-control? Join our online debate on the rise of online poker here. Tim Black is senior writer at spiked.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7711/
Friday 13 November 2009 This article is republished from the October 2009 issue of the spiked review of books. View the whole issue here. ‘In retrospect, it is striking’, writes epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat in Hyping Health Risks ,‘how disposed the public [in the USA] was to believe that some form of environmental pollution – whether chemicals in the soil and water, radionuclides from nuclear reactors, or magnetic fields from power lines, or something else – must be involved in the development of breast cancer’. However, to the disappointment of environmental activists, intensive local investigations (notably in Long Island, New York) of exposures to organochlorine compounds (including DDT) and combustion products – the major focus of suspicion – showed no evidence of a link with breast cancer. While in relation to breast cancer such negative findings have largely been accepted, in other areas – such as the alleged links between electromagnetic fields and childhood cancer – the strength of popular conviction has led to the distortion and misrepresentation of scientific studies. What Kabat characterises as a ‘deliberate willingness to be careless with data’ is most apparent in the controversy over passive smoking, where he identifies ‘a political strategy of hyping an unrealistic risk in order to gain public support for tobacco control policies’. Kabat was co-author, with James Enstrom, of a paper published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 2003 under the provocative headline ‘Passive Smoking May Not Kill’. This paper reported the results of a large, 40-year-long, rigorously conducted study of the effects of ‘environmental tobacco smoke’. It revealed a marginally increased risk of coronary heart disease (and an even smaller effect on lung cancer). The increase in relative risk was slightly smaller than in numerous similar studies, but within the same range – the sort of increase that, given the margins of error of such studies, would generally be deemed too small to be considered of significance. Yet, as Kabat observes, anti-smoking campaigners and public health authorities have routinely manipulated the results of such studies to justify increasingly coercive policies. He details their methods of selecting positive and neglecting negative studies, overstating the significance of results and ignoring weaknesses and inconsistencies. Their key calculation is based on multiplying marginal increases in relative risk by vast population numbers to construct an estimate of the annual mortality attributable to passive smoking. Headlines proclaiming that ‘passive smoking kills’ thousands every year then provide the banners for the anti-smoking crusade. The Kabat and Enstrom paper, published at a moment when the campaign for bans on smoking in public places had reached a critical stage in the UK, provoked a torrent of condemnation and abuse, with – (unsubstantiated) allegations of corruption and fraud. A subsequent commentary on ‘the BMJ affair’ by two sociologists, entitled ‘Silencing Science’, was based on a study of the 144 ‘rapid responses’ received by the BMJ: ‘Silencing is based on intimidation, as partisans employ a strident tone full of sarcasm and moral indignation. There are elements of an authoritarian cult involved here: uphold the truth that secondhand smoke kills or else!’ Their conclusion was that ‘public consensus about the negative effects of passive smoke is so strong that it has become part of a truth regime that cannot be intelligibly questioned’. The result of what Kabat dubs ‘the new McCarthyism in science’ is that epidemiology is reduced to propaganda. In his fascinating history of anti-smoking, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, Christopher Snowdon (who was previously interviewed for the spiked review of books here) provides the wider context for the witch-hunt against Kabat and Enstrom. He shows how the campaign against passive smoking took off in the 1970s, long before the first studies that claimed to show its ill-effects. An early campaigner’s statement that ‘we were just waiting for science to tell us what we already knew’ accurately reveals the subordinate role of science in the anti-tobacco cause. Snowdon also shows that the campaign against passive smoking has grown more strident and more influential in inverse proportion to the scientific evidence. Though large studies in the 1990s had shown all ‘those who had eyes to see that the passive smoking theory had unravelled’, the anti-smoking bandwagon rolled on regardless. Snowdon provides entertaining examples of the preposterous claims of anti-smoking campaigners – some suggesting that passive smoking causes diseases (such as breast cancer) that have never been linked to active smoking. From Helena, Montana to Glasgow, Scotland, campaigners have claimed dramatic falls in mortality following the introduction of smoking bans – claims that disintegrate under the slightest scrutiny (which they rarely receive from a cravenly ‘on-message’ media). More objective reports suggest increases in levels of smoking, particularly among young people, since the introduction of bans. Snowdon quotes a recent editorial in the New Scientist, which suggests that the anti-smoking campaign may have reached some sort of limit. Commenting on the promotion of the concept of ‘third-hand smoke’ – the notion that toxic residues in the form of particulates can be transmitted from a victim of passive smoking to a third party (and hence justifying bans on smoking in the home as well as in the workplace) – campaigners were accused of ‘distorting the facts to make their case’. The editorial concluded that ‘using bad science can never be justified, even in the pursuit of a noble cause’. Yet, as Snowdon observes, the ‘real message’ that emerges from his study is that ‘government health agencies could no longer be trusted to provide accurate medical advice and were now wilfully misleading the public in an effort to manipulate behaviour’. This is the real damage done to public health by its embrace of the cynical moralism of the anti-smoking crusaders. Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is the author most recently of Defeating Autism: A Damaging Delusion, published by Routledge. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) He is speaking in the debate Is the NHS institutionally ageist? at the Battle of Ideas festival on Sunday 1 November 2009. Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology, by Geoffrey Kabat, is published by Columbia University Press. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking, by Christopher Snowdon, is published by Little Dice. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) This article is republished from the October 2009 issue of the spiked review of books. View the whole issue here. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7704/
Friday 13 November 2009 It’s very fashionable these days to say that the fall of the Berlin Wall was not a good thing. The twentieth anniversary of its demolition has not so much been an occasion for celebration as an opportunity for great swathes of people to point to the chronic failings of capitalism, to note the continued poverty that is endemic in eastern Germany, and to conclude that the Berlin Wall’s fall did not signal ‘the end of history’. Yaa-boo sucks to you, Francis Fukuyama. Big blowing raspberries to all you neo-cons. Bet you didn’t see Islamic fundamentalism coming, eh? Or the financial crisis of 2008, or the oncoming ‘environmental catastrophe’ (which has supplanted communism as the new, re-aligned focus of demonic ‘otherness’). Where’s my Che Guevara t-shirt? Must buy that new Al Gore book… Free-marketeers who celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall as the symbolic terminus of Stalinist-Marxism are regarded today much like Alan Davies on QI. He is the man who forever gives the obvious but incorrect answer, only to be reprimanded in a schoolmasterly way by Stephen Fry, with the aid of a loud alarm horn, that he is ‘wrong, wrong, totally wrong. That’s a complete misconception.’ ‘Actually, Alan’, Fry might say, ‘the Berlin Wall didn’t signify the end of Marxism. It signalled merely a hiatus of its historical inevitability, and was entirely in keeping with the logic of Hegel’s theory that a thesis and an antithesis must engender a synthesis. I think you’ll find… ho! ho! ho!... that the film Good Bye Lenin! proves it so.’ I’m no expert on Cold War politics, but I do remember visiting East Germany as a 12-year-old in 1986. My abiding memory is that it was horrible. I didn’t ponder at the time whether East German Stalinism had corrupted the essentially liberating ethos of Marxism, or whether the man himself would have been shocked at the authoritarian state created ‘in his name’. No, I was shocked that East German cola was so shit. In West Berlin you could drink Coca-Cola, or Dr Pepper, or 7-Up, but once you crossed Checkpoint Charlie, everything was rubbish. Everyone in West Berlin seemed very happy, perhaps owing to the fact that it was a destination for draft-dodgers, and that it did have a beleaguered feeling to it - its burghers having a suspicion it was surrounded by malevolent forces (which it was). Or maybe it was the fact that Burger King served lager, which gave my father a rather good reason to take me and my brother there every day. West Berlin did have a decadent atmosphere, but my childish mind preferred it to East Berlin. Everyone there looked sour and gloomy. The cars looked like they were designed for hobbits; the streets were deserted; there were Russian soldiers doing their silly goose-step march; and most men seemed to have mullets. My most abiding memory from East Berlin, apart from its dreadful cola and the Def Leppard hairstyles, was the fact that, upon heading from west to east through Checkpoint Charlie, we were told to hide our newspapers. Even a 12-year-old can appreciate that a society that hides newspapers is not quite right in the head. This is why the BBC’s The Secret Life of The Berlin Wall (BBC Two, Saturday) seemed so resonant. It reminded you just how oppressive and awful a state East Germany was. It told us how East Germany was the economic power house in the Soviet Bloc in the 1970s (which is not saying much), how Berliners in particular came to terms with the legacy of Nazism, and how it regarded itself as a morally superior antithesis to West Germany, which was presumed to be the puppet of fascist capitalists from America. It also recounted just how appalling the Stasi were, and how good people do bad things for the ostensibly right reasons. But we know all this. We’ve been told it a thousand times before. The Secret Life of The Berlin Wall was often gripping and very unsettling, yet totally formulaic. People digging tunnels. The Stasi. Gorbachev. Reagan. Families separated. Bearded intellectuals disillusioned by the East. Bearded intellectuals disillusioned by the West. Men being shot and dying while strangled by barbed-wire. ‘We weren’t free, but at least we had jobs.’ Troops letting protesters go through the Wall. Cheering crowds. The East German Politburo capitulating. West versus East Berlin being regarded as a generally convenient metaphor for Good against Evil. It was a horrifying programme about a horrifying country, made just a bit more amenable by the fact that we didn’t see the Scorpions performing their Wind of Change. The underlying problem with The Secret Life of The Berlin Wall, and most other documentary series about Germany, is that it mainly interpreted Germany in terms of its relation to other countries. Germany is the eternal Other, forever perceived by the British, the Russians, the Polish, the French and just about every other country in Europe as a recurrent ‘problem’. Germany is always perceived, or perceives itself, as a country in disjuncture, whether it be a bastard creation of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Kaiser or the Fuhrer. We British always think it amusing to point out that Hitler was Austrian, but this just betrays the fact that we subconsciously think Germany is a made-up country. Germany should be interpreted in itself. Certainly when it comes to talking about ‘The War’, or the Cold War. East German communism was not just a Russian imposition. Berlin has traditionally been a socialist city. Nazism had been given impetus by Prussian militarism, but its ideological inspiration had come from Bavarian or Austrian or Rhinelander mystics, with their various pseudo-Catholic illusions. The same country and culture which gave us Hitler, the Stasi, the Schlieffen Plan and 99 Red Balloons also gave us Beethoven, Kant, Nietzsche, Jürgen Klinsmann and Kraftwerk. And not to mention the most wonderfully romantic and silly film about Berlin and the Cold War: Good Bye Lenin! It would be better, still, if someone could explain why the Communists couldn’t make decent cola. Patrick West is spiked’s TV and radio reviewer. Read his blog here. Read on: spiked-issue TV and radio reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7702/
Friday 13 November 2009 So the comedy continues on Tyneside. Messiahs hired and fired, silly money wasted on useless players, the farcical appointment of Joe Kinnear, the panic recruitment of Alan Shearer, relegation from the Premier League, an aborted attempt to flog the club. And now, to cap it all, the stadium renamed against the wishes of almost every sentient creature of Tyneside. It’s enough to make a grown man weep (and God knows, Geordies don’t need much encouragement). Mike Ashley, as we all know, isn’t the most popular man on Tyneside. Watching a recent Newcastle game on TV, all I could hear from the Toon Army was chorus after chorus of ‘You fat cockney bastard, get out of our club’. Suffice to say, Ashley has long since abandoned his populist routine of rubbing shoulders with the fans in a replica shirt. So why, if you are cockney non-grata in the North East, would you add insult to injury by announcing that you’re hawking off the name of the stadium to the highest bidder? And why, when no mug punter has shown any interest in buying the naming rights, would you rebrand the stadium after your own sportswear business? It’s a bloody stupid name, too. Sportsdirect.com@St James Park. Is it a football stadium or an email address? Sports Direct isn’t exactly the Rolls Royce of brands either. It just sounds cheap and nasty (though some might say that’s quite fitting). If a club is trying to attract new investment I can see the logic of selling the naming rights. An American NBA team, the New Jersey Nets, will earn a cool £225million from the sale of the naming rights to their new stadium, the Barclay Centre. Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks aims to raise £250million by selling the naming rights to the club’s new ground. But what does Newcastle United get out of its new stadium? Nothing but ridicule. Maybe it’s Ashley’s idea of a joke. His revenge on the fans for all the vilification. Mind you, if it was intended as a joke, then I can think of one or two more suitable names. The Theatre of Delusions, the Blub-o-drome, the Stadium of Tears – the comic possibilities are endless. Inevitably, Ashley’s latest stunt has backfired badly. The Newcastle supporters trust has launched a drive to raise cash to buy the club. Former chairman Freddie Shepherd has denounced the naming rights sale. ‘I appreciate we are living in a commercial world’, he said. ‘But there are some things money can’t buy.’ Even marketing experts have questioned the wisdom of the decision. ‘The Newcastle stadium renaming is a joke’, said Stephanie Branston of the sponsorship consultancy Synergy. ‘For a club to sell that name is like selling its soul. The deal Newcastle have just done comes across as an act of desperation.’ Selling the naming rights to football stadiums isn’t new. A number of recently built stadiums, notably the Emirates, the Reebok Stadium, the Kingston Communications (KC) Stadium, the JJB Stadium (now the DW stadium), the Ricoh Arena, and the Walkers Stadium have all been named after corporate sponsors. Does a change of name matter? In one sense it doesn’t. Even when a stadium is legally re-christened there is no guarantee that the official name will be used. Many Arsenal fans, for example, refer to the Emirates Stadium as ‘Ashburton Grove’ or simply ‘The Grove’. Leicester fans protested against the original proposal to name their new ground the Walker’s Bowl. In order to placate the fans the name was changed to the Walker’s Stadium but some fans insist on referring to the ground as ‘Filbert Way’. However, while a stadium’s official title might never be used, a change of name has huge symbolic significance. Certain football traditions are considered sacred: the stadium name, the team colours, the club crest. Club owners risk the wrath of supporters if they dare meddle with these hallowed traditions. It’s heresy. A Faustian pact. Well, not necessarily. Traditions aren’t always inviolable. Leeds United played in blue and white stripes until the 1930s and then in various combinations of blue and gold. In 1961, however, manager Don Revie made a radical break with tradition when, inspired by Real Madrid, he introduced the all-white kit. Are any Leeds fans campaigning for a return to the more traditional gold and blue kits? Of course not. Similarly, when Malcolm Allison took charge at Crystal Palace in 1973 he undertook a radical rebranding of the club. He changed the club’s nickname from the Glaziers to the Eagles and replaced the old claret and blue colours with the iconic sash kit - all-white with a red and blue sash. The rebrand was clearly inspired by US sport but, at the time, there wasn’t the same antipathy to Americanisation that we see today. I know one old-skool Palace fan who insists that the club’s rightful colours are claret and blue but he’s pretty much a lone voice. If asked what the definitive Palace kit is, most fans would vote for the sash kit or the Barcelona-style red and blue stripes which Palace adopted in the 1980s. So, traditions can be ditched. Modernisation is possible. The fans won’t always oppose it. The all-white outfit is regarded as the definitive kit by Leeds fans even though it’s a relatively recent innovation. Why? Because Leeds enjoyed their greatest period of success with the modern white kit. The same can’t be said for Newcastle’s new stadium name. It doesn’t evoke a glorious era, nor does it honour a Geordie hero. Quite the opposite. Mike Ashley is a hate figure on Tyneside. Everything he touches turns to shit. A stadium named after his own company simply rubs the fans noses in it. But what if Mike Ashley hadn’t screwed up so spectacularly? What if, under his chairmanship, the club had actually won trophies (bear with me here; you have to use your imagination)? What if Ashley had delivered glory rather than ridicule? He could have called the stadium whatever he wished. Kiss My Fat Cockney Arse Arena. And no one would have objected. Duleep Allirajah is spiked’s sports columnist. Read on: spiked-issue: Sport reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7703/
Friday 13 November 2009 British documentary films linked to political campaigns are everywhere these days. Following films such as Taking Liberties (chronicling the attack on our rights and freedoms by the Blair government), Black Gold (about unfairness in the coffee trade), and The End of the Line (on the depletion of fish stocks), the latest is Erasing David, a film opposing the erosion of privacy rights in Britain. It was shown at last week’s Sheffield Documentary Festival. Director David Bond creates a sense of urgency in the film by attempting to escape for a month from the prying eyes of the state and big business. He goes off grid (‘I’m going to leave my life behind and disappear’), although never completely. He always has his mobile phone to hand, speaking to his heavily pregnant wife at one point, even though he suspects that mobile phone signals will help the two private detectives who are attempting to track him down. Erasing David is part of the new wave of documentaries experimenting with fictional narrative structures. The film is essentially a chase movie. This would be enjoyable to watch in itself, but Erasing David is also conscious of its need to address the politics of some of the campaigns and campaigners in favour of privacy rights, such as the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (which co-funded the film) and Henry Porter, the Observer journalist who is interviewed in the film. Privacy is an excellent angle for a documentary about contemporary Britain. Privacy has become a key talking point in British public life. Bond claims that the British rank third behind the Chinese and the Russians as the most heavily spied upon people in the world. The film’s poster promotes the tag line: ‘He has nothing to hide but does he have nothing to fear?’, a neat retort to the pro-CCTV advocates. Or is it? The main political thrust of the film is to reveal not only how easy it is to get private data on an individual, but also how paranoid an innocent man can become by having his privacy invaded. In one scene Bond loses himself in the middle of nowhere, growling demonically like a madman to the camera. Unfortunately the elevation of paranoia as a theme does a disservice to the political arguments in favour of privacy rights. What happens if you don’t feel paranoid in relation to state surveillance, but are simply opposed to the democratic implications of the state having so much power over the individual? The obsession with the theme of paranoia is a weak point for privacy campaigners, not a strength. Surprisingly, the dramatic thrust of the documentary is also damaged by the obsession with paranoia. In fictional movies such as The Lives of Others (the Oscar-winning tale of a Stasi agent spying on a couple in the old East Germany), the film audience get their emotional fix through the rising paranoia of the characters, each one a victim of state surveillance. So you’d think this emotional device would be useful for Erasing David. It isn’t. The reason is that this is a film arguing for the right to privacy, rather than an unfolding investigation that reveals something new. Bond starts the film incensed at all the privacy-invading going on around him, which means his emotional outbursts throughout the film seem inauthentic. You can’t help thinking he’s performing (or, at least, further dramatising his feelings) for the camera, in order to prove a preconceived view rather than discovering, in a way that surprises himself, that a lack of privacy can make you paranoid. Erasing David simply doesn’t reveal any new information. Admittedly, many documentaries struggle along on meagre budgets. These days it’s hard to get sufficient funding for investigative journalism given the exponential number of documentary-makers chasing smaller pots of cash. Yet the problem is not simply a question of film funding. As a film funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, and partnered by Liberty, Action on Rights for Children, No2ID, Genewatch and the Open Rights Group, the less-than-revelatory feel of Erasing David suggests it is designed to be shown at campaign rallies to confirm opinions rather than being designed to win over those not aware or not convinced about the problem of encroachments on our privacy. I wanted to see more investigation about Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks, a scoop on how the state use new technologies to spy on millions of people, or evidence of the effects of surveillance on children who are being groomed ‘to exist in a database state’, as a contributor observed. Last year, the filmmakers approached me to appear in the film. They decided not to use my contribution. This review may seem like sour grapes, but it’s not. I like David Bond; it’s the politics and artistry of his documentary I am critiquing. The kind of thing I would have focused on – which the movie didn’t – is why so many people accept the argument that the state should invade our privacy to protect us from criminals, terrorists and each other. This didn’t feature in the film. Too tricky an argument to engage with, perhaps? Then I remembered that in the opening scenes of the film, Bond debates the issue with his wife. How could I forget that? The reason that had slipped my mind and wasn’t even in my review notes is that the views of his wife seemed less relevant compared to those outside of Bond’s inner circle. Her opinions were honest and heartfelt and she represented the Everywoman in some ways, someone not initially over-concerned at invasions of privacy. It’s a neat device to introduce a note of disagreement, but not nearly as effective as if the director had put himself in the firing line with critics who had nothing to lose by opposing his argument. In the context of what is seen as a ‘campaign film’, the kitchen sink disagreements were too cosy. Overall the film was not investigative and confrontational enough at a time when we should be demanding more privacy - that is, more freedom from the authorities’ gaze. The focus on paranoia undermined the campaign and the documentary drama. Films raising campaign issues need to be more artful as well as braver. [The original version of this article asserted that a number of NGOs and campaign groups funded the film. See letter here for clarification.] Tessa Mayes is an investigative journalist and documentary film-maker based in London. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Watch the trailer for Erasing David: Read on: spiked-issue: Film reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7705/
Thursday 12 November 2009 On 31 October Wendy Kaminer, spiked columnist and one of America’s leading civil libertarians, spoke at the debate ‘Rethinking Freedom in an Illiberal Age: Securing Rights or Celebrating Liberty?’ at the Battle of Ideas in London. Her opening comments are published below. I have no intention of ‘rethinking freedom’. Rather I persist in maintaining a traditional notion of rights and freedom and a belief in traditionally liberal distinctions between the public and private realms. The title of this debate, ‘Securing rights or celebrating liberty?’ does seem to me to assume a false opposition. Positing a choice between securing rights and celebrating liberty is a bit like positing a choice between love and marriage. They may not always overlap but they‘re not mutually exclusive, or so we hope. In fact, they’re often mutually reinforcing. Our social freedoms are to a great extent contingent upon our formal legal rights. Take a very simple example: going to a cinema or a museum is part of daily, lived experience, but our formal speech rights will determine what we may or may not see there. Personal relationships are certainly part of our daily lived experiences, but the nature of those relationships is partly contingent upon the legal right to engage in them, which is why the gay rights movement is currently focused, at least in the US, on the right to marry. The philosopher Hannah Arendt called the right to marry fundamental and inalienable. It is both a social freedom and a formal political right – marriage is an institution of the state. I’m not denying that there’s tension between rights and freedom, but this tension is overshadowed by confusion about what each entails and the government’s role both in protecting our rights and allowing for our freedoms. Debates about rights and freedom, at least in the US, tend to be framed in terms of an incoherent, result-oriented partisanship. On the right, people celebrate freedom – the right has virtually copyrighted the word freedom – while showing relatively little regard for the concept. Trumpeting freedom hasn’t stopped many right-wingers from supporting the expansive national security state that developed during the Bush years or an ongoing censorious culture war. On the left you rarely hear people utter the word freedom, although they sometimes talk about civil liberties; they tend to focus on equality and not just economic but existential equality, which includes some sort of imagined right to psychological wellbeing. And this, I think, is really quite dangerous. The left undermines freedom the most by trying to restrict intolerance or discrimination in the private sphere. This is particularly pronounced on college and university campuses. The right, at least historically, has undermined fairness by ignoring discrimination in the public sphere. It also tends to undermine freedom by trying to restrict sin in the private sphere. But put right and left together and you’d still lack any coherent analysis of rights and liberties and the public and private realms. Which brings us back to Hannah Arendt. She made her comment about marriage in an essay written about 50 years ago, a very controversial critique of federal efforts to forcibly desegregate the public schools. I don’t share her opposition to forcible school desegregation – it was unavoidable – but the reasons for her opposition are instructive. Aside from her pragmatic concerns, and her very strong distaste for enlisting children in what was often a very heated and violent political battle, Arendt was quite sympathetic to the private associational rights of parents who wanted to control their children’s education. I disagree that, in this case, private associational rights should have prevailed. In my view, your associational rights aren’t dissolved but they are diluted when you engage in a commercial or educational endeavour in the public realm. But I share Arendt’s conviction – and she stated it in her usual clear-headed fashion – that social life entails the right to engage in social discrimination. And that’s a right that many liberals seem bent on eviscerating. Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, during the civil rights era, that law can’t change what’s in people’s hearts; law can only point the way. The problem today is that many liberals seem intent on using the law to do what it should never attempt to do – change what’s in people’s hearts. Going back to Arendt, her analysis of the private, social and political realms, and the government’s role in each, clarifies the dangers of this very intrusive approach to law. At the risk of stating the obvious, the political realm demands government intervention to secure political rights: the right to vote, due process, rights against summary detention, and also rights to public education, employment, and access to public services. The private realm demands laissez faire government. These are pretty obvious principles about which you can find general agreement. Yet in practice they’re really quite controversial, or they’re applied arbitrarily with an eye towards results and no coherent delineation between the public and private spheres. Today, with people being summarily detained and tortured, political rights seem paramount. It’s easy to scoff at people who complain about social restrictions on their daily life, from the right to smoke or overeat to the right to indulge in allegedly abusive speech. And their complaints can seem relatively trivial when viewed individually. But collectively, these restrictions upon people’s daily lives are really quite consequential. Collectively, they erode the basis for a free society, because the more officials exert control over everyday behaviours, the more people develop habits of submission, the more they become tolerant of repression. I do believe that privacy is the foundation of a free society – it’s extraordinarily important. We have lost so much of it, some of it perhaps irrevocably. It’s not just government surveillance or surveillance by large private entities that’s the problem; it’s the enthusiasm, the eagerness with which the public has surrendered privacy for the sake of a department store charge card, notoriety, or easy social networking. I really do worry about a future in which privacy is so greatly diminished. ‘There no longer exists an un-political sphere of life’, a German court declared in 1937. I worry about the future because if you imagine a world with no private, personal realm, you imagine a world with no refuge. Wendy Kaminer is a lawyer, writer and free speech activist. Her latest book is Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) See her spiked column, Letter from America. Previously on spiked Wendy Kaminer defended academic freedom. Norman Lewis called for new ways to defend privacy. Dolan Cummings wondered why we submit to the ‘surveillance society’. Brendan O’Neill saw CCTV cameras as political rather than practical and went to war against London’s illiberal rulers. Tim Black reviewed Dominic Raab’s The Assault on Liberty. Or read more at spiked issue Liberties. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7690/
Thursday 12 November 2009 Twenty years ago, the implosion of Stalinism in Europe and the end of German partition were celebrated as a triumph for democracy and freedom. The Iron Curtain fell, the East German party dictatorship and shortage economy were vanquished and, as in the rest of Eastern Europe, pluralist party democracy and market economies prevailed. In what was the German Democratic Republic, the enthusiasm was especially marked. The spectacular uprising of eastern Germans had dealt the final blow to the Stalinist order across Eastern Europe, seemingly ending the division not just of Germany, but of the continent, too. But this enthusiasm was shortlived. The mood of renewal in 1989/90 soon gave way to disappointment and new insecurities. This applied not only in Germany, but across Eastern Europe, where market and multi-party systems were established at different speeds during the 1990s. Everywhere, a short period of euphoria was followed by long-term disillusionment. And everywhere, the transformation was soon characterised, at least temporarily, by the growth of right-wing and nationalist trends that cast a shadow over the newly won freedoms. In Germany, the turning point came in 1991 with the pogroms in the former East German city of Hoyerswerda that sent disconcerting images of violence against immigrants around the world. Anti-foreigner violence had been an almost daily occurrence in West Germany throughout the 1980s, and the Hoyerswerda pogroms were followed by similar events in the western German cities of Solingen and Mölln. However, it was Hoyerswerda that acquired special importance. For western Germans they became a symbol of a new sense of estrangement from, if not disdain for, their eastern fellow Germans and a reference point for therapeutically oriented discussions about the ‘problems’ of German unification that continue to this day. The big difference between the transformation in eastern Germany and the rest of the former Warsaw Pact countries is that, in Germany, the confrontation between the western market and eastern state socialist life worlds was politicised in a form specific to Germany. Put simply, during the Cold War, Germans were politically divided, but did not feel estranged in human terms. That only happened once the country was reunited, ironically. And this sense of difference was promoted and institutionalised by the way western German politicians and opinion-formers soon began to rationalise the economic and social dislocation brought about by the process of market transformation in the east. The notion that eastern Germans were somehow ‘different’ gained momentum only a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. The western German left played a particularly sorry role in this regard. Otto Schily, later minister of the interior in the Social Democratic (SPD)/Green coalition government under Gerhard Schröder from 1998-2005, quit the Greens to joint the SPD in November 1989. He recommended himself to his new party colleagues by a remarkable television performance. When asked, after the last elections to the GDR parliament in March 1990, why so many people in the east had voted for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he silently held a banana into the camera. And in preparation for the first national elections of the united country in December the same year, Oskar Lafontaine, then SPD candidate for the chancellery, banked on mobilising western fears of the economic consequences of German unity in his fight against the then-incumbent chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU). While Schily expressed unabashed contempt for eastern German desires for a modest share in western prosperity, Lafontaine played the other side of the same card, stoking fears that economic transformation in the east and labour migration from there would put a big dent into accustomed western living standards. This was the welcome given to the people who had just overthrown the Honecker regime by the SPD – along with the groupings on the radical left who more or less unanimously misconstrued the fall of the Berlin Wall as an expansionist capitalist conspiracy to conquer the east and disparaged eastern ‘consumerism’. That Helmut Kohl and the CDU/CSU in turn tried to recharge the stuttering batteries of German conservatism with the images of the popular pro-market uprising in the GDR was a comparatively harmless political manoeuvre. Nonetheless, taken together, the effect from the start was to saddle the process of unification with the degenerate political impulses of the decaying western party system. The Democratic Awakening (Demokratischer Aufbruch) party, east German proponents of unification, quite sensibly wanted to prevent eastern opposition groupings being lost amidst the western political parties. Commenting on the left-right divide in the western German parliamentary system, the DA leadership declared in January 1990: ‘We regard this distinction as a myth, as an ideological illusion.’ (1) But despite such rhetoric, the December 1990 elections saw the different strands of the GDR opposition dissolve themselves virtually without trace into the western German parties. Inevitable as that was, since none of them presented an alternative strategic vision, it nonetheless meant that the experience of 40 years of GDR history and the popular uprising in which it had just culminated found no place in the political universe of the united Germany. Eastern Germans had to make do with the imported western party machines, themselves clearly showing signs of political exhaustion. Given their decrepit state it is perhaps unsurprising that the old GDR state party, renamed first the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), and then, since 2005, Die Linke, soon made a stunning recovery. And it is equally unsurprising that opinion surveys show that eastern Germans doggedly express high regard for democracy in the abstract, but not for its currently practiced form. The political unification of Germany, consummated on 3 October 1990, entailed a certain institutional imbalance from the start. This encouraged eastern Germans, who had just enjoyed the liberating experience of collective political action, to regard themselves as passive objects of economic and social transformation. To make things worse, Chancellor Kohl’s government proved incapable of giving the concept of unification a positive meaning beyond stilted phrases. Eastern Germans joined a tired republic. As a result, the great historical moment that could have sparked a real sense of social renewal remained strangely flat. Without lasting power, this exceptional moment was soon lost to the machinery of administrative restructuring and adjustment processes. This highlights a truth generally ignored in debates about the problems of German unification: the progress of German unity could only be as politically and culturally dynamic as the society – and the political order – in which the eastern Germans found themselves 20 years ago. The trouble was that the intellectual, political exhaustion of western party politics, both left and right, meant that the difference in life experience between eastern and western Germans became politicised. Hostility to materialism among the western left, which had long exchanged its former affinity with working-class politics for ‘post-conventional values’, inevitably struck the eastern ‘workerly society’, as the sociologist Wolfgang Engler described the GDR, as exceedingly odd. In a society that, as Engler wrote, ‘attributed exceptional importance to work, whether loved or unloved, for people’s personal lives’, people had been accustomed to ‘clothe their critique of social conditions in the silent demonstration of workerly virtues’ (2). The productively employed Werktätige were the sole moral authority of GDR society. That some western parties viewed their eastern compatriots’ aspiration for modest prosperity and functioning factories with at best incomprehension, and at worst derision, further undermined understanding between east and west. The same applied to the other side of the political spectrum. For the best part of the past 20 years, the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU made up for their lack of a future-oriented politics by indulging in a more or less incessant rant against the loathsome features of the long defunct GDR. This was partly an ill-conceived attempt to draw dividends from Cold War anti-communism, and partly a reaction to discontent with ‘really existing’ eastern German capitalism, which proved rather less dynamic and prosperous than originally expected once the shortlived unification boom was over. Here, too, a defensive political reflex generated east-west discord. The simplistic formula of anti-socialist rhetoric, according to which life in the GDR had consisted of nothing but the oppression of ‘victims’ by ‘perpetrators’, simply did not square with the real life experience of eastern Germans before 1989. That experience naturally also included other things like a sense of shared destiny, a partly ironical distance from the GDR regime, and certain opportunities for self-assertion that a western-style market economy does not always provide workers with. As the Bulgarian sociologist Ivan Krastev notes in a recent article, even members of the state elite in Eastern European countries had to befriend their greengrocer, because he decided who got what. The greengrocer may have been formally powerless, but still had a certain informal power (3). At exactly the same time as the market destroyed social networks that had once provided people with at least a certain sense of orientation and self-esteem, eastern Germans were being accused of being mentally contaminated by their totalitarian past. That, too, could only promote anger and a sense of estrangement. And it is therefore not surprising to learn that eastern Germans now often say things had not really been ‘quite that bad’. The handwringing with which experts in academia and social research often respond to utterances of this kind betrays a lack of understanding of the forces at play. It was because of the ideological vacuum at the heart of western politics at the turn of the century that simple differences in life experience in east and west acquired the form of politicised misunderstanding. In the process, the debate about German unity has taken the form of a rather degraded obsession with the eastern German ‘mentality’. The focus on eastern ‘difference’ has given rise to an entire research industry that has probed the souls of the new German citizens. It did occasionally bring forth comedic moments of pseudo-Freudian insight such as the famous ‘potty thesis’ of the criminologist Christian Pfeiffer. He argued that anti-foreigner sentiment among eastern German youth was a late consequence of socialist kindergarten education. During the past 15 years, innumerable studies have diagnosed a high level of dissatisfaction with economic and political development as well as an increased tendency among eastern Germans to view certain features of the GDR favourably. Given the situation described, these findings are not at all surprising. But what is notable is that more recent studies have shown that the difference between east and west as regards the level of dissatisfaction with social and political trends has narrowed considerably – without this having so far had any noticeable impact on the firmly established notion that eastern Germans are somehow ‘different’. As the sociologist Claus Leggewie recently noted, survey data presents ‘a rather undramatic picture of the situation between east and west which, in view of current discourse, is the real sensation’ (4). Nonetheless, the media continue propagating the image of the easterner as the ‘other’ with derogatory neologisms like Ostalgie (eastalgia) and Jammerossi (moan-easterner), thereby attributing to the eastern psyche responsibility for all the real and imagined ills in the united Germany. A kind of ethnisation has taken hold of the German political imagination – with the doubly unfortunate effect that reality becomes progressively even less comprehensible than it already appears, and that understanding between eastern and western Germans is undermined. However, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this period of construed difference may hopefully be drawing to a close. The new generation of young Germans now starting out on their training or working lives have no living memory of the divided Germany. The high level of cross-migration between both parts of the country ensures that personal contact mitigates the impact of prejudice and politicised misunderstanding. And, last but not least, the now shared experience of economic crisis and political stagnation might become the source of a new sense of common identity and purpose. Yet this is only likely to happen to the extent that a sense of otherness gives way to a focus on real life experience.  Sabine Reul is society and politics editor of spiked’s German sister magazine, NovoArgumente. The above is an edited version of a Battle in Print published in the run-up to this year’s Battle of Ideas festival. Previously on spiked Mick Hume explained why Thatcher wanted the Wall to stay. Matthias Heitmann looked at the stagnation of German politics. Sabine Reul looked at lack of debate in German politics and the rise of anti-modernism among German conservatives. Emily Hill reviewed The Lives of Others, about the omnipresent surveillance in East Germany. Or read more at spiked issue Europe. (1) Unsere Revolution. Die Geschichte der Jahre 1989/90, Erhart Neubert, Piper München 2009 (2) Die Ostdeutschen als Avantgarde, Wolfgang Engler, Aufbau Verlag Berlin 2002 (3) The Greengrocer’s Revenge, Ivan Krastev, Prospect, Oktober 2009 (4) ‘Veröstlichung oder: Vom Zäsur- zum Differenzbewusstsei’, Claus Leggewie, included in Neues Deutschland. Eine Bilanz der deutschen Wiedervereinigung, Eckart Jesse and Eberhard Sandschneider (eds), Nomos Freiburg 2008
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7694/
Thursday 12 November 2009 It was advertised as an academic get-together with Professor David Nutt, the drug adviser to the Home Office who was sacked for contradicting the government’s line on cannabis, but it felt more like a meeting of the temperance movement. In Lecture Hall B5 of King’s College London, Professor Nutt and an audience of around 400 scientists, journalists, students and dope lobbyists partook in a booze-bashing fest that will have had John Stuart Mill – that great critic of killjoy Prohibitionists – spinning in his grave. The event confirmed that Nutt and his supporters are calling for relaxed laws on (though not decriminalisation of) cannabis, not because they believe in free choice, but because they really, really hate alcohol. Professor Nutt started by criticising the government for twisting science to justify moral positions. Good call. Only he then went on to do so absolutely and exactly the same thing himself that I almost felt embarrassed for him. He cited research that shows alcohol can have a detrimental impact on some people’s health (science) and then argued that there must be a severe hike in alcohol prices and Prohibition for under-21s because ‘alcohol is the drug young people are suffering from most’ (morality). If anything, Nutt’s science-moralising is worse than the government’s. At least the government employs an equal-opportunities ban on drugs, legally denying everybody access to them, whereas Nutt’s scientific/moralistic opposition to alcohol would disproportionately impact on poor people (who would be priced out of booze consumption) and the young (who would be banned from drinking). He wants to use ‘science’ not only to moralise but to discriminate. One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Mill dealt with the poisonous, authoritarian, Prohibition-in-disguise argument for increasing the price of alcohol in order to ‘save the public’. He described price rises on the basis of moralism as a kind of ‘sin tax’, an effort to punish the ‘sin’ of drinking by making it prohibitively expensive. ‘Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those whose means do not come up to the augmented price’, he wrote. ‘To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained is a measure differing only in degree from their entire prohibition; and would be justifiable only if that were justifiable.’ Absolutely. Yet here, in King’s College in 2009, under the cover of ‘science’ and ‘research’, the same tired old price-rising arguments were being trotted out against evil alcohol. The event provided an insight into what is driving the pro-dope movement today, that strange mix of scientists and politicians (who are at least sympathetic to cannabis) and social workers and students (who are champions of it): it is not freedom, or even hedonism, but Booze Prohibitionism. They promote cannabis as a way of denigrating alcohol. Professor Nutt explicitly said that the government’s attacks on cannabis are a ‘distraction from getting alcohol misuse under control’. Alcohol should also be part of the Misuse of Drugs Act, he said, since it is the ‘most damaging drug’ for young people in particular. He even discussed his and other people’s experiments in creating ‘safe alcohol’ and said the government needed to find and legalise a new ‘social intoxicant’ to replace booze. (‘Social intoxicant’? Has he read Brave New World?) No wonder he has attracted temperance groupies. Alcohol Concern was there, one of its representatives standing up to denounce, in a shaky, priest-like voice, the way in which booze ‘kills 10,000 people a year’ (more simplistic ‘science’). A man from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition – a group of police officers that thinks certain drugs should be legalised – also railed against the destructiveness of alcohol in comparison to cannabis. ‘Students for a sensible drugs policy’ talked up the safety of cannabis in comparison to drinking (Yeah baby! Rock and roll!). There was pure conspiracy theorising, too. A social worker asked, to murmurs of agreement from the audience, if perhaps Professor Nutt was silenced by the government because the government is under the thumb of ‘the drinks industry’, which wants to stamp down on any suggestion that smoking weed is a safer alternative to swigging cider. Nutt said that might indeed have been the case, and spoke darkly of ‘the huge influence of the drinks industry’, its ‘overt and covert influences… which permeate society so deeply’. He talked about other scientists and commentators who had been ‘stamped on’ for proposing the ‘appropriate pricing’ of alcohol (the new PC term for Mill’s ‘sin tax’). When I stood up and said I felt like I had wandered into a meeting of the temperance movement, and that Nutt and his supporters were explicitly also bastardising ‘science’ for perniciously moralistic purposes, he didn’t really know what to say… except, after a lot of hot air about ‘evidence’: ‘Well, you have a point.’ The meeting should have confirmed, for those still possessed of the delusion, that Nutt is no ‘pure expert’ dealing merely in ‘scientific truth’. It will hopefully also have confirmed that the pro-cannabis argument today has next to nothing to do with liberation and joy but is deeply authoritarian, killjoy, and even discriminatory. Indeed, the pro-dope lobby, or the sympathetic-to-cannabis lobby, is now well and truly The Man: it argues, more vociferously and consistently than almost any other section of society, that young people’s drinking habits are a disgrace, that booze should be put beyond the reach of certain classes, and even that cannabis should be promoted as a way of dulling the nefarious instincts of the drunken, ruffian, rioting hordes. This is not a Sixties-style call for experimentation but a Soviet-style desire to use drugs to calm rebels and dope the masses. Similar to Nutt’s pro-cannabis/anti-alcohol stance, the edgier wing of the pro-dope movement also demonises booze and the people who consume it. The Legalise Cannabis Alliance says alcohol is the real ‘hard addictive drug’. It talks about ‘drink-frenzied Britain’ where the poor police (!) and NHS have to struggle every Saturday night to cope with the ‘alcoholic aftermath’ (1). The shortlived, semi-legal dope cafés that sprung up in Britain a few years ago had signs on the door saying: ‘No alcohol or drunk and disorderly persons on the premises.’ Well, we don’t want those young drunkards ruining respectable middle-class kids’ adventures in dope-smoking. One dope café posted a sign saying: ‘Will you please bear in mind, alcohol kills 28/33,000 people every year.’ (Dope, on the other hand, won’t kill your body, only your soul.) Some dopeheads believe cannabis should be legalised to relax the rougher sections of society. One pro-cannabis campaign group says it can ‘help with sufferers from aggressive disorders’. The authorities in Europe agree. In 2004, the Portuguese police conducted cannabis-calming experiments on English football fans. Under the ‘Here We Blow’ policy, the English fans visiting Portugal were allowed to smoke dope while the authorities simultaneously clamped down on drunken behaviour, on the basis that dope would ‘reduce chances of punch-ups between rival fans’ (2). Similar experiments have been conducted in Amsterdam. The Legalise Cannabis Alliance celebrated these sinister social experiments, arguing: ‘If people are drinking they lose control; if they smoke cannabis they don’t.’ This is why, in the wake of the Nutt affair, both the temperance movement and the pro-dope lobby have had a new lease of life and have won implicit backing from respectable scientists, politicians and the serious media – because the authoritarian message of both campaign groups, and of the Nutt bandwagon itself, is the same: Booze Is Bad. These people instinctively hate alcohol and love dope because alcohol tends to be consumed in a social group and it makes us cocky, happy, arrogant, sexually charged, up for all sorts of larks, including, it is true, the odd row or punch-up; cannabis, by contrast, tends to be smoked alone (it’s certainly an alienating experience), is generally consumed at home, and leads to little more than the consumption of Wotsits and rubbish films from the 1960s. They hate the way alcohol helps to loosen us up and reveal our inner swagger; they love the way dope makes us fall asleep. They hate the fact that working men and women enjoy booze; they love the fact that cannabis is a largely middle-class pursuit. Anyone interested in real freedom today should stand up to The Man, that joint-smoking, anti-working class, drink-demonising, like, total loser of modern debate. Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. His satire on the green movement - Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas - is published by Hodder & Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Previously on spiked Brendan O’Neill met the curious Cult of Nutt and called the ‘revolt of the experts’ revolting and Tim Black reflected on why New Labour is so dopey on cannabis. Frank Furedi deplored today’s tyranny of expertise, and reviewed a book which showed that governments are bypassing the democratic processby outsourcing their authority. Elsewhere, he explained why politicising science is a bad idea. Or read more at spiked issue Drink and drugs. (1) See the Legalise Cannabis Alliance website. (2) Police to let England fans smoke dope, Sun, 11 June 2004
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7701/
Wednesday 11 November 2009 The controversy over Gordon Brown’s badly written, misspelled letter to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan might just be the perfect metaphor for the dumbed-down nature of contemporary British politics. A prime minister is being judged, not for what he has done and instituted in public, but for something he said in private. He’s being slammed by the tabloid newspaper the Sun, and others, not for his ideas or even for the words he speaks, but for the style in which he writes words down, the way in which he spells them. And on the flipside, he is being defended – by his Labour colleagues and by liberal broadsheet journalists – not on the basis of what he stands for or believes in, but in terms of victim politics (he’s visually impaired so we shouldn’t attack his writing style) or just outright conspiracism (the Sun is sinisterly recruiting bereaved mothers to topple the government on Rupert Murdoch’s behalf). With a PM being either attacked over one hurriedly written letter or defended as a victim of circumstance and conspiracy, we can glimpse the illiteracy of mainstream British politics today. Never mind the content or the wording of the letter Brown wrote, it’s the political scene that is sorely lacking in substance and increasingly lost for words. Brown, like most modern-day PMs before him, sends a handwritten letter to the families of soldiers who die overseas. His letter to Jacqui Janes, whose son Jamie was killed in Helmand in October, contained various spelling mistakes. Mrs Janes sent the letter to the Sun and later recorded a telephone conversation with Brown – in which he ermed and ahhed as she accused him of contributing to her son’s death by failing to provide sufficient equipment in Afghanistan – and she sent that to the Sun, too. The Sun has spearheaded a ‘respect Our Boys’ campaign, while on the BBC’s, the Guardian’s and even the Sun’s own online discussion boards there has been a reaction against what Peter Mandelson this morning described as the Sun’s ‘mixture of bad taste and crude politicking’ (1). It is certainly ridiculous, but indicative of today’s shallow political culture, to take a prime minister to task over a private letter. Instead of holding Brown to account for the illiberal, miserabilist, vision-free things he has done in public over the past 12 years – both as a penny-pinching chancellor of the exchequer and as a boneheaded prime minister – we are expected to judge him on the basis of something that was intended as an entirely private correspondence. In place of a serious and much-needed debate about the war in Afghanistan – its purpose, its direction, its impact on regional and global stability – we are given a shouting match between one grieving mother (backed by the Sun) and one beleaguered prime minister (backed by the more serious media). In this sense, ‘Lettergate’ shines a light on the denigration of public debate and the collapse of the clash of ideas that has taken place over the past 15 years. Ours is an era of the politics of personality rather than the politics of principle, where how a politician behaves or speaks or what he spends his money on is considered more important than what he believes in and what vision (or lack of vision) he has for society – to such an extent that even a key public issue such as the war in Afghanistan can be reduced to an interpersonal spat over a private letter, to the style of words Brown wrote in private rather than the words and ideas he has used in public to justify an increasingly pointless war. ‘Lettergate’ reveals, more than anything, the narrowing of the public, political sphere and its replacement by a myopic obsession with politicians’ appearance, with how they act, speak, express emotions. However, Mrs Janes is not to blame for this state of affairs. Nor is the Sun. Indeed, for all the snide remarks now being made about Mrs Janes – whom, the broadsheets imply, is a rather stupid woman who has been bought and sold by the evil Sun – we should remember that grieving military families have been pushed to the forefront of the debate about Iraq and Afghanistan over the past five years, and frequently by the kind of liberal campaigners who now slate the Sun. In recent years, military families have sued the government for their sons’ and daughters’ deaths overseas, written letters to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown accusing them of ‘ruining people’s lives by the decisions you make’ (2), stood in General Elections, been featured in trendy anti-war documentaries such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and have been interviewed on the front pages of the broadsheets. All of this has given rise to a situation where military families, in the words of one overjoyed liberal commentator in 2004, have become ‘a significant political force on both sides of the Atlantic’ (3). The politicisation of military family grief has been a product of two things: deep divisions within British society over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the cynical promotion of grief as a powerful weapon by anti-war campaigners and commentators. Unable to make sense of their sons’ and daughters’ deaths overseas, denied victory parades or even a clear, convincing justification for the wars and their families’ losses in them, military families have become more likely to ‘break ranks’ and publicly upbraid New Labour leaders. And they have been egged on by liberal campaigners. Indeed, it is striking that, where a Guardian journalist yesterday accused the Sun of ‘pure cynicism’ in its exploitation of military family grief to try to ‘topple Brown’, no one batted an eyelid when, in 2004, Naomi Klein wrote an article in the Guardian titled ‘The grieving parents who might yet bring Bush down’, in which she described a mother’s grief as ‘the mother of all anti-war forces’ which, best of all, was unquestionable and unchallengeable: ‘No one questions the wildness in the eyes of a mother or father who has just lost a son or daughter….’ (4) So it’s okay to exploit grieving parents to topple Bush but not Brown? It’s all right to cheer public grief if it is for anti-war purposes, but not if it is done in the name of securing more equipment for soldiers? In fact, both of these uses of grief look like ‘pure cynicism’ to me, an attempt to get desperately sad parents to do the dirty work of what ought to be upfront, honest and political campaigns. If the Sun really is cynically exploiting a mother’s implacable grief for ‘crude politicking’, it is not the first media outlet to do such a thing, and it is not the only institution elevating politicians’ private behaviour over public argument. The way in which Brown is being defended is telling, too. The forces rallying around him are pointedly not arguing that Brown is doing the right thing on Afghanistan, or that he has any vision for Britain; rather they are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him on the basis that he is, in the words of one commentator, a VIP: a visually impaired person. We shouldn’t criticise his letter-writing because he can’t see very well (5). Or they argue that Brown has been duped by a tabloid newspaper that is promoting ‘unrelenting hostility’ towards the New Labour government and trying to ‘humble a prime minister that is clinging to power’ (6). Some hint that Murdoch himself wants Brown out and so he has let the Sun, his No.1 attack dog, loose on him. This is pure conspiracism. Leaving aside the fact that the Sun and every other major British newspaper was stultifyingly pro-Labour from around 1997 to 2005/2006 – and nobody complained about the denigration of debate which such conformism gave rise to – we should remember that Brown is, firstly, an adult, and secondly the prime minister of the United Kingdom! If such a person, surrounded by advisers, and supposedly leading the country, is duped by a newspaper and a mum, then he has no one to blame but himself. Labour supporters are effectively trying to institute a Victim Protection Programme for Brown, to surround him with a PC forcefield that depicts criticism or media attacks as a slur on his disabilities or as ‘pure cynicism’. Utterly isolated, devoid of vision and heading for defeat, Brown, it seems, can only be defended these days as the poor kid in the playground being bullied by Murdoch and his cronies. ‘Lettergate’ has provided a worrying snapshot of the state of political debate. With a General Election around the corner, it is time to up the stakes. Don’t back the Sun, don’t rally around Brown – Vote for Politics instead.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. His satire on the green movement - Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas - is published by Hodder & Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Previously on spiked Brendan O’Neill described the war in Afghanistan as a war for the soul of New Labour. Mick Hume asked why it took eight years to ask questions of the war in Afghanistan. Tim Black criticised the defeatism of the anti-war movement. Elsewhere, Mick Hume couldn’t believe how low New Labour had sunk during the Megrahi/Libya affair, and, before that, looked at the lingering death of New Labour. And Brendan O’Neill called Gordon Brown the hangdog dictator of Downing Street. Or read more at spiked issues Afghanistan orBritish politics. (1) Mandelson blasts Sun’s bad taste, London Evening Standard, 11 November 2009 (2) Letter to Tony Blair by Maxine Gentle, Military Families Against the War, 18 August 2004 (3) When soldiers die in dubious battle, Scotsman, 21 August 2004 (4) The grieving parents who might yet bring Bush down, Guardian, 10 July 2004 (5) It’s not Gordon Brown’s spelling, it’s his sight, Guardian,9 November 2009 (6) The Sun declares war on the prime minister, Greenslade Blog, 10 November 2009 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7695/
Wednesday 11 November 2009 For many celebrities, public figures and models, the development of airbrushing techniques have been a godsend. Gone are unsightly wrinkles, stray hairs, blemishes and flabby skin. In the world of advertising and publicity shots, a bad hair day can now be transformed into a picture-perfect moment. When, during the US presidential race last year, Newsweek published a close-up front cover picture of then Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, conservatives over at Fox News were outraged. They claimed that while Newsweek’s cover of Barack Obama had been flawless, the magazine had presented Palin in an unflattering light by not airbrushing her photograph. There was a not-so-subliminal message here, said Fox: showing Palin warts’n’all (metaphorically speaking) meant that she was denied the idealised, flattering presentation that the liberal media offered to its political favourites. Airbrushing has become a controversial flashpoint: celebrities crave it, politicians apparently deserve it, and experts claim that it creates unrealistic images of perfection that impact on young people’s self-esteem. And so this week a group of experts has bizarrely called on the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to outlaw the use of airbrushing in ads aimed at teenagers and children. A group of academics, doctors and psychologists has argued that airbrushed images promote unrealistic expectations of perfect body images. In a paper supported by 44 academics, and overseen by the Liberal Democrats as part of their broader campaign against the use of airbrushed or retouched images in advertisements, the group claims that these images encourage eating disorders and self-harm amongst girls in particular, but boys, too. The idea that altered images of fit men will have insecure boys reaching for their steroid shots, or that seeing pictures of impossibly skinny women will have girls sticking two fingers down their throats, displays a rather crude understanding of how advertising affects people, and a complete disregard for the intellect and resilience of young people. Advertisements reflect ideals that are grounded in contemporary social relations, aesthetics and material needs. Such ideals cannot be airbrushed from society or negotiated through quibbling over what sort of pictures are acceptable and which are not. The campaigners are looking for a quick fix to what they see as a damaging influence on young people’s psyches and wellbeing. And what quicker fix is there than asking the ASA to step in and Do Something. The ‘experts’ have asked the ASA to wield its censorious powers in the name of protecting the public from mental and physical breakdown. The ASA – the UK watchdog that spends its time scouring ads and considering complaints from the public – has increasingly become the moral arbiter of public space. The watchdog sees its role as keeping public space ‘safe’ – that is, obliterating from the public sphere any images of sexy young women, violence, guns, nipples etc. Considering its track record, it is not surprising that a small group of signatories to a campaign that has not been tested out or debated amongst the public is hedging its bets on pushing through its censorship-drive via this undemocratic institution. For instance, earlier this year the ASA banned an ad by the clothing firm American Apparel because it featured a 23-year-old female model who looked too young. The watchdog judged that if the ad was seen by people outside the 18-to-34 target age group, it could potentially cause serious offence as it ‘could be seen to sexualise a model who appeared to be a child’. Last year the ASA upheld 23 complaints over an ad for a hairstyler because the ‘eroticised images’ were likely to ‘cause serious offence, particularly to Christians’. Last winter a Ryanair ad, which showed a scantily-clad, Britney Spears-style schoolgirl next to the words ‘HOTTEST Back To School Fares’, was deemed likely to cause ‘serious or widespread offence’ after just 13 people complained. The list goes on. But the red thread that runs through the ASA’s decisions is its justification of censorship in moralistic and prudish terms and in the name of avoiding offence. And so, if a bunch of experts can put their case convincingly to the moral custodians of the ASA, then they have a far greater chance of obliterating altered images from advertising billboards than they would if they tried to win public support for their cause. This bizarre campaign shows up the futility of censorship as a means of fixing social problems (or alleged social problems). The experts believe that ‘media images that depict ultra-thin, digitally altered women models are linked to body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating in girls and women’. Such images can apparently cause ‘unhealthy dieting regimes and problematic eating behaviours (starving, bingeing, and purging), clinical eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia), cosmetic surgery and extreme exercising’. No doubt there are many girls who take drastic measures to alter their looks, but it is ludicrous to suggest that advertising can be held singularly responsible for everything from dietary choices to exercise habits and women’s decisions to undergo cosmetic surgery. Being concerned about your looks is simply part of growing up. Yet the experts both vastly overstate how many young girls and boys are depressed about their physiques, and also vastly overstate the negative influence advertising has on young people. The fact that most – if not all – young people know that advertisers try to sell not just products but lifestyles and ideals means that they are not likely to be as naive about advertising images as these experts suggest. To the extent that some young people do have issues with their body image, then perhaps the experts should peel their eyes away from glossy magazines and billboards for a minute and consider what effects the hectoring ‘War on Fat’ might be having on kids. The UK government campaign against obesity has done more to demonise chubbiness than any advertising drive ever could. These days we have lunchbox inspections and routine weighing of schoolkids. Headmasters are writing letters to parents whose children’s body mass index (BMI) is above the ‘acceptable’ level and councils are closing down fast food shops near schools. Parents have been urged to stop referring to their kids’ chubbiness as ‘puppy fat’ and instead to accept that they are obese and headed for heart failure unless they adopt a healthy diet. Talk about screwing up kids’ minds and encouraging an unhealthy relationship to food and exercise… It is true that, today, chubbiness is demonised and slimness is celebrated. But the misguided Lib Dem-supported campaign against airbrushing does not have a fat chance of changing that, because it is focusing on the wrong thing. Instead, if successful, the anti-airbrushing campaign will severely slim down free expression in the world of advertising and reinforce the idea that – young or old – we are all dupes and suckers who fall for the exaggerated images projected by admen. Nathalie Rothschild is commissioning editor at spiked. Previously on spiked
Nathalie Rothschild attacked the ASA for censoring an ad in which the female model looked too young. She also looked at London Underground’s ban on posters for the play Fat Christ. Brendan O’Neill revealed the prudishness of the Advertising Standards Authority and explained why advertising is a free-speech issue. Alex Hochuli warned of the dangers of the tyranny of the individual. Duleep Allirajah criticised the media reaction to a football celebration that no one complained about. Or read more at spiked issue Free speech. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7691/
Wednesday 11 November 2009 Things now look so gloomy in UK electricity supply that New Labour, in its dying months, appears to have rowed back from 12 years of diffidence about nuclear power. In well over 500 pages of National Policy Statements (NPSs), energy secretary Ed Miliband has spent more than 300 trying to streamline the planning of new nuclear reactors – to be built, in innovatory style, on 10 existing sites (1). His stance, however, shows all the usual ifs and buts. And the Tories’ reaction? Pretty much a deafening silence. In recent years, New Labour has supported nuclear power like a rope supports a hanging man (2). Its priority has not been to build new energy supply in line with new economic growth, but to move people to cut back personal energy use and so engage in what the sinisterly named Behaviours Unit of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs calls ‘pro-environmental behaviours’ (3). New Labour’s idée fixe is not high energy, but low CO2 emissions. That being its main justification for nuclear power, it’s no surprise that other, reputedly safer paths to low CO2 will beat new reactors back into the ground. In keeping with New Labour’s oh-so-democratic tradition of listening to the masses, Miliband’s NPSs were published as drafts for consultation. But just a few days before, the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) gave this game away. Insisting that changes in individual consumption will produce larger cuts in CO2 than cleaning up the UK’s energy supply, WRAP looked forward to you and me ‘avoiding all edible food waste by 2050 (Best Practice)… [or]… fulfilling this intervention 20 years earlier by 2030 (Beyond Best Practice)’ (4). Then, after Miliband published his NPSs, WRAP announced that Britons are guilty of kitchen habits involving food that is ‘cooked, prepared or served too much’, or ‘not used in time’ (5). WRAP also proclaimed that microwaving cold coffee or tea is about five times better for the environment than making a fresh cup – though it added, reassuringly, that this admonition was ‘not about nagging people’ (6). This is the cost-free, zero-engineering, authoritarian culture behind New Labour’s stated commitment to nuclear: not constructing additional electricity capacity, but dictating how you eat and drink. We need to remember that, before this week’s apparent conversion to the nuclear cause, the government did not dissent from the Brussels Commission’s laughable goal of making demand for energy in the EU drop by 13 per cent over the period 2007-2020 (7). Indeed as late as the summer, Miliband vaguely averred that ‘by 2050 we may need to produce more electricity than we do today’ (8). Only now has he reluctantly concluded that, ‘having made good progress in building new [energy] infrastructure’ – that is, having completed no major new power stations since 2000 – Labour’s move to a low-carbon economy ‘could also mean that electricity demand increases in the longer term as we use more electricity for transport and domestic use such as heating buildings’ (9). Well, that’s nice to know. Britain might need a bit more juice. So is that the argument for nuclear? Not at all. Rather, ‘failure to take account of the ability to develop new nuclear power stations significantly earlier than the end of 2025 will increase the risk that the UK is locked into higher CO2 emissions than would otherwise be necessary’. In other words, Miliband’s argument for nuclear power can only begin, and does begin, with the line that ‘Nuclear power is low carbon’. All subsequent arguments for nuclear – that it contributes to energy security, enhances generation diversity, is proven technology, etc – are subordinate to ‘the urgent need to decarbonise the economy’ (10). For some time now, we have heard a lot about UK hedge funds. In keeping with the City hedging its bets, New Labour does the same. The nuclear NPS isn’t just late, and less than forthright: it is timid, pusillanimous, and knock-kneed. The government, it says, believes that ‘in principle’ new nuclear power should be ‘free to contribute as much as possible’ toward meeting the need for 25GW of new non-renewable capacity by 2020 (typically enough, New Labour still hopes to install 35GW of new renewable capacity by the same date – which is not so much a target as a pipedream). However, the nuclear NPS continues that ‘there can be no certainty that development consent on all sites listed in the NPS will be granted as issues may emerge once they are analysed in detail’ by the soon-to-be-established Infrastructure Planning Commission (11). But what are these issues that may emerge? The most prominent – wait for it! – is… climate change. The 10 sites chosen by New Labour are on Britain’s coasts and estuaries. As a result, builders of new reactors must ‘in particular set out’ how they would deal with coastal erosion and increased risk from storm surge and rising sea levels. They must worry about the effects of higher temperatures in the UK, including higher temperatures of cooling water; and despite all the floods to come, they must also fret about an ‘increased risk of drought leading to a lack of available cooling water’ (12). Then what must also be considered is the risk of tsunamis, seismic risks, the proximity to civil aircraft movements, and the negative impact of reactors on biodiversity and on cultural heritage (13). No wonder that the nuclear NPS hopes to have a working site ready for the geological disposal of nuclear waste only ‘by about 2040’. Despite the urgency of decarbonising British electricity supply, there is no urgency felt about dealing with waste, one of environmentalism’s principal arguments against nuclear power. In the summer Miliband proclaimed that part of his job was to persuade British people to ‘take difficult decisions’ – not least, to pay more for their energy by 2020 (14). But any Conservative regime looks set to find nuclear a difficult decision. At the time of writing, no press release, nor shadow minister speech, has made a riposte to the NPS; there have just been one or two statements to the press. The Conservatives’ 53-page consultation paper on energy contains two paragraphs on nuclear, and four on nuclear waste (15). At least the Liberal Democrats don’t mince words. New nuclear, Liberal Democrat energy secretary Simon Hughes burst out, would be ‘reckless’ (16). If the next parliament is a hung one, the Liberal Democrats can be relied upon to see their view carried through. Perhaps, instead of all this torpor, we should look forward to sea-borne Russian nuclear reactors to be hauled up next to Britain’s major ports, so as to keep the lights on (17). Reckless? Perhaps. But not as reckless as Labour’s dithering, or the Tories’ deafening hush. James Woudhuysen is visiting professor of forecasting and innovation at De Montfort university, Leicester. He is author, with Joe Kaplinsky, of Energise! A Future for Energy Innovation, published by Beautiful Books. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Previously on spiked James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky criticised the myth that New Labour is pro-nuclear. In 2007, James Woudhuysen accused the then UK department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform of strangling generation schemes in red tape. Rob Johnston highlighted the lack of a UK windpower industry and exposed 10 myths about nuclear power. Tim Black talked about Ed Miliband’s response to environmentalist skin-flick The Age of Stupid and called Britain a world leader in dithering on the issue of nuclear power. Or read more at spiked issue Energy. (1) Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6), 9 November 2009 (2) Nuke the consultation - let’s have a debate!, by Joe Kaplinsky and James Woudhuysen; The myth that New Labour is pro-nuclear, by James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky (3) A Framework for Pro-Environmental Behaviours, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Behaviours Unit, January 2008 (4) Meeting the UK climate change challenge: The contribution of resource efficiency, WRAP, Final report, 3 November 2009, p3 (5) Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK, WRAP, 9 November 2009, p23 (6) WRAP director of retail Richard Swannell, quoted in Harry Wallop, Reheat cold cups of tea, Government waste watchdog says, Daily Telegraph, 10 November 2009 (7) See The EU’s post-industrial revolution, by James Woudhuysen (9) Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6), 9 November 2009, pp10, 8 (10) Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6), 9 November 2009, pp10-12 (11) Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6), 9 November 2009, p13 (12) Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6), 9 November 2009, p20 (13) Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6), 9 November 2009, pp29-31 (14) Government maps low-carbon road, Today, 15 July 2009 (15) Conservatives.com (16) New nuclear a reckless mistake says Hughes, Liberal Democrats, 9 November 2009 (17) Russians plan floating nuclear plants, New York Times, 9 July 2009. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7692/
Tuesday 10 November 2009 News that the Tory debate over Europe is back on the UK political agenda will have had some of a certain age groaning with pre-emptive boredom. Their endless factional infighting about the EU was for many the dullest issue of the dull years of John Major’s Conservative government (1990-1997). Yet the latest row is different, and reveals how much things have changed over the past decade – for Europe, Britain, the Conservatives, and the political map. Conservative leader David Cameron’s difficulties over the Lisbon Treaty certainly demonstrate that Europe remains a tricky issue. His admission that there was no point holding a referendum on Lisbon once it had passed into law, coupled with a non-specific commitment to resist any further euro-encroachments on UK sovereignty and ‘take back’ powers that have been granted to Brussels, managed to satisfy almost nobody. He was simultaneously attacked by Eurosceptics in Britain for selling out to the EU, and by European government ministers for being an anti-EU extremist. Yet anti-Tory commentators were surely wrong to make the predictable claim that this showed that the European kraken was awaking within the party and that we are in for a re-run of the Euro-rows of yesteryear. Such claims reveal more about the historical and political ignorance of those fighting a fantasy war against the ghosts of Toryism past than they do about the changed situation today. Europe certainly divided the Tories in the Eighties and Nineties and helped bring down first Margaret Thatcher and then Major, who railed against the Eurosceptic ‘bastards’ in his own ranks. But even then the debate was only partly about the EU, and the divide over the pace of European integration (which has also long existed in the Labour Party) was not as wide as many made out. Unlike during the referendum on Britain’s membership in the 1970s, there was no major movement for a British withdrawal from the EU, and even Thatcher, the allegedly arch Eurosceptic, signed the Maastricht Treaty that committed the UK to a more integrated Europe – without holding any referendum. The European debate was really more about Britain – its post-Empire place in the world, and how to manage the UK’s declining international power in relation to the supposed ‘special relationship’ with the US and its growing economic dependence on Europe. It was also about British politics, and what the Tory Party should stand for in an age when the old-fashioned nationalism of Rule Britannia seemed increasingly anachronistic. The debate about the Tories and Europe may have re-emerged, but in a context where everything has changed. For a start the EU is a different institution, now even less democratic and accountable than it was in the past. Fearful of being sidelined internationally by the rise of the new economies in the East, and even more fearful of their own increasingly mistrustful and alienated peoples, the rulers of the EU now huddle together behind the walls of their top security summits. The EU has become the power bastion of an isolated political elite, well symbolised by the Lisbon Treaty that creates a Euro-president ‘elected’ by the leaders of the member states. Within this insecure empire, Euro-conformism is now the order of the day, and any hint of Euroscepticism is shrilly shouted down. The EU elite were outraged by the Irish people daring to vote against Lisbon last year, and made them do it again and get it ‘right’ this year (see A defeat for the democratic instinct, by Brendan O’Neill). And they cannot allow any serious European politician to depart from the one-party line on EU hegemony. Hence Cameron’s mild suggestion that he might oppose further integration led to him being screamed at as ‘autistic’ by one French cabinet minister, and as ‘pathologically Europhobic’ by the leading French newspaper. When the minister later issued an apology of sorts, it was for any offence he might have caused to the autism community, not for equating Euroscepticism with a behavioural disorder. With the EU exposed as more elitist, conformist and contemptuous of its peoples than ever, it might be imagined that there would be greater scope for a Eurosceptic Tory Party to make an impact. Yet under Cameron the Conservatives seem even less inclined to rebel and rock the Euro-boat than they did in the past. This reflects the extent to which things have changed for Britain and the Conservative Party, too. Britain’s position in the world is now more parlous than at any time in the modern age. Far from choosing between the ‘special relationship’ with the US and a place at the centre of Europe, the UK authorities face being left with neither. The recession that has left Britain trailing behind the other major economies has only confirmed its declining international status. US president Barack Obama clearly does not see Britain as ‘special’, and the difficulties Tony Blair has had getting the job as president of paper clips at the new Council of Europe shows how little the German and French authorities think of their British ‘friend’ these days. Britain is at risk of being marginalised in world affairs, which leaves Gordon Brown or a wannabe statesman such as Cameron with little room to manoeuvre and little appetite for upsetting ‘our allies’ as they seek to hold on to the remaining symbols of British power such as the permanent seat at the UN Security Council. The Conservatives have also changed, perhaps more than anything else. As we have argued before on spiked, the old no-surrender Tory Party of the Union Flag and Winston Churchill no longer exists (see David Cameron and the demise of Conservatism, by Mick Hume). The Cameron leadership is just another part of the mainstream Euro-elite, without any outstanding ideology or creed to fight for. Opponents have claimed that the Conservatives’ decision to quit the major centre-right grouping in the European Parliament is proof that they are in bed with East European ‘homophobes and fascists’. In fact this clumsy move simply confirmed that the British Conservatives remain rather less federalist-minded than their major European counterparts – a pragmatic recognition that ‘federalism’ means further Franco-German domination. The heated reactions to it say more about the Euro elite’s contempt for their new members from ‘uncivilised’ Eastern Europe than about any substantial political split with the Conservatives. Euroscepticism remains popular among the rump of the Conservative rank-and-file, of course, for whom Europe has become a symbol of rumbling discontent with the way their old party has been transformed. Yet these people no longer have any real say or influence in British politics. The much-threatened rebellion against Cameron’s abandonment of a referendum on Lisbon last week fizzled out like a damp firework. New Labour’s remaining media supporters now warn hopefully that Cameron is only storing up trouble for the future, and a rebellion will follow the election. No doubt the Conservatives’ veneer of unity would crack quite quickly under the pressures of government, given the absence of any coherent political worldview to hold them together. Yet an Old Tory backlash is just as unlikely as the Old Labour revolt against Blair that we were told would inevitably follow New Labour’s victory in the 1997 General Election. These changes in the political climate have also altered the British public’s attitude to European matters. Once there were passionate camps on both sides of the debate between Europhiles and Eurosceptics. Now, although the UK is socially and culturally more European than ever before, you never hear of Europhiles in politics. Instead public opinion appears to reflect both a bitterness about the EU as a symbol of anti-democratic trends, alongside a shrug of inevitability about our powerlessness to do anything about it. Despite the rhetorical outbursts about the ‘Brussels empire’, there is a mood of passive fatalism about the whole thing. Hence while Eurosceptics invested their hopes in the Irish rejecting Lisbon on our behalf, the pro-EU lobby looked to the Czech courts to win their case for them and ratify the treaty. The ripples that Cameron’s speech made in Europe last week show how widespread is the expectation that the Conservatives will win the next UK election. There was certainly no mileage for New Labour in exploiting his discomfort, not least because we all know that the government reneged on its commitment to hold a referendum when it could have stopped the Lisbon process. Yet at the same time, Cameron’s unwillingness and inability to take a firm stand on an issue such as Europe shows the problems he has in getting any real momentum behind his non-political party. Whatever the precise result in next year’s General Election, it seems clear that there will be no return to Thatcher-style setpiece confrontations with Europe. Instead European politics are likely to continue to drift, with the EU elite – whatever their minor differences – clinging together to deny their peoples any real say in the future. Things have changed – but not for the better. The one change we really need, a new Europe-wide debate about democracy and political power in the twenty-first century, seems further away than ever. Mick Hume is editor-at-large of spiked.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7687/
Tuesday 10 November 2009 For ChildLine, which offers telephone advice to distressed or worried children, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), the case of Plymouth nursery worker Vanessa George, who pleaded guilty to multiple counts of child abuse last month (1), provides the near perfect backdrop to their latest announcement: ‘More children telling ChildLine about female sex abusers.’ (2) It reads like a perverse form of gender equality. It’s not just men who ought to be uniformly suspected of sexually abusing children, goes the campaigners’ demand: women should be too. Since George’s arrest in June this year, articles and interviews have been doing the rounds with titles like ‘Are there women paedophiles?’ or ‘Sexual abuse crosses the gender divide’. Stuffed with professional guesstimation and stat-lite assertions as to the extent of child sex abuse committed by females, all such pieces lacked was actual evidence of a problem. George, and her cohorts Angela Allen and Colin Blanchard, remained stubbornly exceptional, isolated perpetrators of a series of vile acts. With the release of the ChildLine findings, however, the idea that child sex abuse by women is more prevalent than previously thought gains in credence. According to ChildLine, 42 per cent more children called its hotline in 2008-9 than in 2004-5, and the number of children calling to report abuse by women rose by 132 per cent – that is, a rise five times greater than the rise in children phoning to report abuse by men. In total, during 2008-9 the number of children phoning to report female child sex abuse stood at 2,142, of which 1,311 claimed that the mother was the abuser (3). The NSPCC and ChildLine have been predictably bullish. The head of ChildLine, Sue Minto, seemed almost proud to be exploding myths of the good mother: ‘Many would find it shocking that any woman – let alone a mother – can sexually assault a child. But they do.’ NSPCC senior researcher Lisa Bunting saw it as the proof of a problem too long ignored: ‘If you don’t think females are capable of committing sex offences, then you are never going to be looking for that.’ (4) Couple the ChildLine findings with the Vanessa George case and the campaigners seemingly have enough to ramp up their don’t-trust-women-especially-the-mums campaign. No matter that what Vanessa George, and Allen and Blanchard, allegedly did was exceptional, not indicative. No matter that a phone call to ChildLine is not the same as proof of actual abuse. For the NSPCC it is enough. And so the headlines roll, and with it the suspicion grows that cases of child sex abuse by women and mothers are more common than anyone, even in their worst NSPCC-branded nightmares, previously thought. But are they? Is there really a mass of under-reporting when it comes to female-committed child sex abuse? Is it a problem that society has wilfully ignored because of a wishy-washy belief that mothers do not sexually abuse their own children? Firstly, the existing statistics do not suggest there’s a massive problem with child sex abuse carried out by women. Of the 32,000 people on that testament to institutionalised suspicion of adults, the UK Sex Offenders’ Register, two per cent are women (5). That’s about 650 people. Given that you can be put on the register for anything from obscene gestures to inappropriate touching, and that some of the women on the register are schoolteachers who had foolish affairs with teenagers, it is unclear as to how many have been found guilty of child sex abuse. The latest Home Office figures do not help the NSPCC’s cause either: there are 56 female child sex abusers in custody, and 84 under supervision within the community. Whichever way you spin it, the number of women proven to have sexually abused children is thankfully minuscule. Not that actual statistics really matter to the NSPCC. They are far more interested in hinting at a problem whose breadth and depth is unknown. It’s a canny move not untypical in the abuse industry. Usually using the cliché-cum-theory of an iceberg, it can then be argued that what can be seen is not all there is. In fact it’s just a tiny proportion of a far more pervasive problem, ‘the secret crime’ as ChildLine founder Esther Rantzen describes it. And because it is a secret crime, a hidden crime, claims that it exists can never be disproven. The idea that what is unknown is more important than what is known was made clear by Bunting: ‘It is important that regardless of what is currently known about the numbers of female offenders, more is done to understand the nature of sexual offending by women [and to] raise awareness among the public so that they can report it.’ The assumption that a problem exists irrespective of proof doesn’t just give their awareness-raising campaigns an interminable quality. It also touches upon the objective of such campaigns: to change people’s perceptions not just of child sex abuse, but also of each other. This is the tragic effect of the NSPCC and ChildLine’s awareness-raising, perception-changing mission – the conversion of trust into suspicion. Such ‘raising of awareness’ helps to cultivate a socially corrosive fear. None of this is new, of course. The obsession with child abuse has long been a depressing feature of contemporary culture. While the protection of children might at first sight seem a benign policy and campaigning objective, it not only draws upon and entrenches a mutual distrust of adults, but also invites the state to intervene into the most informal and intimate of adult-child relationships. And this is what is most worrying about this latest addition to the child-abuse files. While we’ve long been encouraged to see fathers as potential paedophiles, now mothers, too, are to be routinely viewed in the same degraded light. By encouraging the public, not to mention child protection professionals, to view the bond between mother and child as potentially dodgy, that most intimate of relationships is being rendered up for official scrutiny and state censure. It seems that each horrific case of child molestation and child killing, whether it was Ian Huntley’s murders, the killing of Baby P, and now Vanessa George, is inserted into a larger narrative of social failure, a failure for which all adults are to be held responsible. Behind these campaigns we can glimpse the authorities’ profound distrust of their citizens and the way we live. Tim Black is senior writer at spiked. Previously on spiked Tim Black discussed the return of the paedophile panic and sex offenders’ freedom of movement. Rob Lyons said it’s time to tear up the Sex Offenders Register. Barbara Hewson show how looking at child porn was being equated with rape. Mick Hume railed against the need for a ‘Sarah’s Law’. Or read more at spiked issue Crime and the law. (1) Nursery worker admits sex abuse, BBC News, 1 October 2009 (2) See NSPCC press release, 9 November 2009 (3) See NSPCC press release, 9 November 2009 (4) Claims of sex abuse by women grow, BBC News, 9 November 2009 (5) See Up to 64,000 women in UK ‘are child-sex offenders’, Guardian, 4 October 2009 (6) See Up to 64,000 women in UK ‘are child-sex offenders’, Guardian, 4 October 2009 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7688/
Tuesday 10 November 2009 Youth is wasted on the young, said George Bernard Shaw. These days, so are vampires. In recent years, thanks mostly to Stephenie ‘Twilight’ Meyer and, before her, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampires have become symbols, not of foreignness, alienation, unspeakable lust and all the other things that coursed through the veins of vampire stories from Bram Stoker to Near Dark, but instead of teenage self-pity. Thank God, then, for Thirst, a brilliant new film about Korean Catholic vampires which could easily have come with the strapline: ‘Not Twilight. Not for teenagers. No expressions of angst to a soft-rock soundtrack.’ Directed by Chan-wook Park, who will go down in film history for 2003’s Oldboy, Thirst tells the story of a South Korean Catholic priest, Sang-hyun, who decides to take part in an experiment to find a vaccine for a deadly virus. The experiment goes horribly wrong and a blood transfusion turns Sang-hyun into a freak of the night with an insatiable lust for human blood. If that isn’t enough to draw you in – Catholics? Vampires? Blood? What more do you want? – you might also want to know that Park’s film is loosely based on Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, in that it also features a pretty woman, Tae-ju, who is locked in a loveless marriage with a superbly irritating spoilt mummy’s boy, Kang-woo, and who escapes it by succumbing to the awkward advances of our handsome, blood-quaffing priest. (Zola’s novel does not have vampires in it, I know. Or Koreans. But it does feature just such a love triangle between a lonely woman, her irritating husband, and an alluring outsider.) Sang-hyun turns Tae-ju into a vampire and they go looking for blood. Lots of it. In keeping with virtually every vampire story ever told, Sang-hyun is an emotionally torn character who has profound issues with his post-Catholic priest existence as a super-strong creature who feasts on the red stuff (real blood, that is, rather than the alcoholic ‘blood of Christ’). Molly Williamson, author of The Lure of the Vampire, says the vampire has traditionally been ‘a pathos-filled creature who has been at odds with his ontology and his innate desires’ (1). This is doubly the case for Sang-hyun, who one day was helping the poor and handing out communion wafers and the next is wandering through hospital corridors in the dead of night looking for comatose patients whose blood he might suck without causing them too much internal damage, because he can’t bring himself actually to hunt human beings. Tae-ju suffers no such internal angst at becoming a monster. In response to her previous life as a meek little wife kept virtual prisoner by her sap of a husband and his overbearing mother, she tightly embraces her new human-hunting, buildings-leaping life. She kills unsuspecting motorists and sinks her teeth into their jugulars. She takes great pleasure in her vampiric ability to fly (whereas Sang-hyun is sheepish in his use of this godlike skill). She helps visit vengeance on her sap of a husband. And so the scene is set between the ‘good vampire’ and the ‘bad vampire’, between decent Sang-hyun and indecent Tae-ju, who are bound together by bloodlust but ripped apart by morals and who, if they’re not careful, might just end up destroying each other. Some Twilight fans – and they’re not all teenage girls; I know one who is 34 and male – will think this sounds familiar. The Twilight stories also feature good vampires (the Cullens) who struggle with their moral and bodily constitutions and only drink animal blood, and bad vampires (the Nomads) who have pointy teeth, don’t mind devouring human blood and, worst of all, want to kill Bella, the human chick who is, like, really pretty and stuff. Yet what is striking about the Twilight saga’s projection of vampire lore on to American high-school life, so that 108-year-old, super-pale, emo vampire boys become just another youth tribe alongside jocks, geeks and sluts, is how it removes the traditional struggle of the vampire from any recognisable moral universe and makes it instead all about self-reflection and teenage narcissism. If Thirst, in an updated, Korean version of so many vampire tales before it, is a blood-spattered story about alienation from ‘the human’, and a struggle by one individual to reconnect with human values and by another to let go of them with gleeful abandon, then the Twilight saga is about little more than the whimsical internal life of teens. Unlike Sang-hyun, whose post-Catholic torment at becoming a vampire is a believable moral conundrum, Edward Cullen (famously played by Robert Pattinson) resists his inner vampiric longings in the name of boring risk-aversion and do-gooding. Far from a Dracula-style neck-chomper, he’s the poster boy for the pieties of our age: safe sex and self-denial. His is not a story of beastly excess but of heroic restraint: he’s a ‘vegetarian vampire’ (in that he drinks animal blood rather than human blood), and he suppresses his physical desire for Bella, even initially refusing to kiss her in case he is tempted to bite and suck. In short, he’s a veggie and a celibate, half-Linda McCartney, half-Benedict XVI, a brooding, big-haired advert for restraint, both sexual and gastronomical, in the name of… well, nothing in particular. Where Sang-hyun, like some of the vampires of Romantic literature through to Mae in Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987), fights with his vampire tendencies as part of a profound battle to be human, Edward suppresses his inner vampire because it feels like the ‘right thing’ to do – more the management of a multiple personality disorder than the monster/human moral wrestling match of vampire legend. The Twilight vampires – back in cinemas this month in New Moon – are ideally suited to our super-pious but post-moral age, where it’s not clear why anyone would really want to be human anyway. (Indeed, it’s striking that the Twilight saga completely turns on its head the vampire-human chase, so that it’s the bored human girl who chases after the vampire, longing to be part of his underworld.) Thirst is the anti-Twilight. The human girl is no Avril Lavigne-style sourpuss but an evil bitch destined for hell, and the vampire boy (actually man) does not spend the whole time in forests talking about his feelings but instead visits priests, doctors, friends – the arbiters of morality – to discuss his ‘sickness’ and his longing for a ‘cure’. And there are sex scenes – very long, very noisy sex scenes – that would bring a blush even to Edward Cullen’s pasty face. Leave the kids at home tucked up in bed with their Stephenie Meyer novels and see Thirst while you can. Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. His satire on the green movement - Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas - is published by Hodder & Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Watch the trailer for Thirst here: Read on: spiked-issue: Film (1) Quoted in How vampires got all touchy-feely, Brendan O’Neill, BBC News, 19 December 2008 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7689/
Monday 9 November 2009 Some scientists are bemused that a British judge has decided that a strong belief in alarmist climate-change scenarios ought to be awarded the status of religious faith. Following a judge’s decision at a UK employment tribunal that Tim Nicholson, a sustainability officer who was sacked from a property firm, was entitled to legal protection for his ‘philosophical belief’ in climate change, scientists have been expressing their shock. ‘As a scientist who works on climate change, I find it deeply alarming’, said Myles Allen, who heads the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford (1). Allen’s concerns are entirely understandable. Since the rise of the modern era, science has prided itself on its capacity to explain the world on the basis of experimentation, research and, above all, hard evidence. Science emerged, self-consciously, as an alternative to worldviews based on faith, moral conviction and other forms of a priori thought. So it is natural that a genuine scientist would feel insulted by the judge Sir Michael Burton’s ruling that Nicholson’s concern with climate change qualified as a ‘philosophical belief’ under the Religion and Belief Regulations 2003. One reason why Allen and some of his colleagues are concerned about this decision is that it actually serves to undermine the pre-eminent authority of science today. In the twenty-first century, science has a near monopoly on authorising claims about virtually every aspect of human experience. We are far more interested in what ‘science says’ than in what ‘God says’. Consequently, even those who are sceptical about science and the scientific method will nevertheless mobilise these things to support their arguments. Not long ago, in the 1970s and 80s, leading environmentalists insisted that science was undemocratic, that it was responsible for many of the problems facing the planet. Now, in public at least, their hostility towards science has given way to their embrace and endorsement of science. The global warming lobby depends on the legitimation provided by scientific evidence and expertise. However, if science is recast by a legal ruling as simply a moral or religious worldview, then its pre-eminent authority is likely to be compromised. What is to distinguish science from quacks with strongly held principles? The erosion of the line between science and moralising has not simply been brought about by one eccentric judge. In recent times more than a few scientists have found it difficult to resist the temptation to cross the line into domain of public moralising. Take the case of Professor David Nutt, the expert recently sacked from the Home Office’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. As a scientist, he is entitled to point to evidence which unequivocally calls into question the government’s policy on drugs. But Nutt is not prepared to confine his role to that of a disinterested scientist; he also wants to be a moral crusader fighting against the scourge of alcohol. ‘I want parents to know alcohol will kill your kids, not ecstasy’, said Nutt last week, before insisting that the minimum drinking age should be increased to 21 (2). Nutt obviously has strong views on the subject of the minimum age of drinking, but these views are based on his personal moral attitude, not on science. The way in which Nutt can quite easily make a conceptual leap from scientific evidence to the domain of moral and political decision-making is symptomatic of a powerful trend today: the transformation of science into an ideology, if not a dogma. Indeed, science often has the quality of a quasi-religious dogma these days, especially in the arena of climate-change alarmism. ‘The scientists have spoken’, says one British-based green campaign group, in an updated version of the religious phrase: ‘This is the Word of the Lord.’ ‘This is what the science says we must do’, many greens claim, before adding that the debate about global warming is ‘finished’. As I have argued previously on spiked, campaigners against climate change frequently prefix the term science with the definite article, ‘the’. So Sir David Read, a former vice president of the prestigious scientific institution the Royal Society, stated: ‘The science very clearly points towards the need for us all – nations, businesses and individuals – to do as much as possible, as soon as possible, to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.’ (3) Unlike ‘science’, this new term – ‘The Science’ – is a deeply moralised and politicised category. Today, those who claim to wield the authority of The Science are really demanding unquestioning submission. The legal ruling that someone’s belief in the behaviour modification demanded by climate-change activists should have the status of a religious conviction shows how much The Science now influences Britain’s legal culture. Although some scientists feel insulted that their views on climate change have been equated with a religion, there are many green activists who are more than happy to recruit the support of God to their cause. One blogger says ‘thinking about environmentalism as if it were a religion is an interesting way to go’. Why? Because religion ‘looks a lot more successful at achieving its aim worldwide than the environmental movement’ (4). Tim Nicholson wants to have both God and Science on his team. After the judgement he noted that ‘my moral and ethical values are similar to those promoted by many of the world’s religions’. However, he also added that ‘the difference is mine are not faith-based or spiritual, but grounded in overwhelming scientific evidence’. Whether this ‘philosophy’ presents itself as science with a bit of religion, or as a religion based on science, appears to be a matter of personal opinion amongst campaigners, all of whom seem to believe that their cause is far too important for them to worry about opportunistic inconsistencies in argumentation. Giving philosophy a bad nameWhen the law was changed to protect people from discrimination at work on the basis of their beliefs, many humanist and secular commentators believed this was a positive step forward. And some argued that philosophical beliefs ought to be accorded the same rights as religious beliefs. Unfortunately, what many supporters of the change in the law did not grasp was that if secular views were also transformed into ‘weighty and substantial’ beliefs, they would in effect become a form of pseudo-religion. This development is particularly striking in the way in which philosophy has been recast as religion-lite. From the standpoint of Mr Justice Burton, adherence to climate-change theory is a philosophical belief because it is a view that is genuinely and deeply held. But where is the philosophy in all this? It is possible to argue that climate-change theory is inspired by a distinct epistemology and teleology and influenced by ethical and moral concerns. But in and of itself the belief in recycling and reducing consumption is not a philosophy. Philosophy raises fundamental questions about the meaning of human existence. It engages with fundamental issues that underpin the sciences and public debate. Strictly speaking, the term ‘philosophical belief’ makes little sense, because philosophy is principally devoted to the task of asking questions and speculating about things, rather than providing answers. Philosophy is devoted to the quest for the truth in its quest for wisdom. It is not a secular form of religion. It does not rely on religious revelation for guidance, nor does it thrive when its search for answers is compromised by an adherence to a priori beliefs. Such beliefs may arise out of a philosophical inquiry, but these beliefs do not constitute a philosophy as such. The term that Mr Justice Burton is really looking for to describe the beliefs and behaviour of climate-change crusaders is not philosophy or religion, but lifestyle. The sacralisation of lifestyleThe decision to provide environmentalist arguments with the protection of the law, in a manner akin to that afforded to religion, demonstrates that the legal and political elites have lost their way. But it is important not to take too seriously the arguments used to support this decision. Strongly held moral views about the conduct of life have never been the essence of religions alone. In previous times, such sentiments informed political ideals and cultural movements. Today, the beliefs and practices advocated by Nicholson are part of his lifestyle. Yes, we take our lifestyles very seriously: what we eat, how we look or travel and whom we sleep with define many people’s identities. But in a world where there are a multitude of lifestyles, all of which have assumed great significance, it is not possible to treat them all as quasi-religions. To qualify for protection under the Equality and Employment (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, a philosophical belief must be ‘genuinely held’, be about a ‘weighty and substantial’ aspect of human experience, possess ‘seriousness, cohesion and importance’, and be ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’. This last point is most significant. Who decides which strongly held view is ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’? Certainly our legal and cultural elites have clear assumptions about which views are worthy of respect, and which are not. So last week we discovered that, under new proposals from the New Labour government, parents who are hostile to the provision of sex education in schools are not ‘worthy of respect’ despite the fact that their views are informed by genuine and deeply held convictions – their ability to withdraw their children from sex-education classes will be restricted. Some forms of lifestyles are protected, or at least sacralised, by law, while others are stigmatised. So Christians who, in keeping with their beliefs, refuse to perform same-sex marriages are unlikely to gain legal protection, even though they express traditionally recognised religious convictions. However, those whose conscience does not allow them fly on Ryanair will now enjoy legal privileges and dispensation that are not accorded to their morally inferior colleagues. The sacralisation of elite-approved lifestyles creates a double standard that directly contradicts democratic norms. Those who hold strongly held environmentalist views even have a semi-official mandate to break the law these days. Protesters against genetically modified (GM) food or nuclear power are often represented as idealist young people who are acting on ‘everyone’s behalf’. In truth, being part of the British political oligarchy, they have the kind of freedom to protest that is usually denied to ordinary mortals. That is why such protesters who break the law often face a sympathetic court hearing and win ‘not guilty’ verdicts (see State-sanctioned radicalism, by Brendan O’Neill). So when Lord Melchett, the aristocratic former leader of Greenpeace, was arrested for criminal damage and theft after taking part in a protest against GM crops, he was genuinely shocked by his treatment. As far as he was concerned, his action was a ‘direct expression of “people’s power”’. Greenpeace, the self-appointed voice of the British people, described its action as an exercise in ‘active citizenship’ which ‘keeps democracy healthy and responsive’. Melchett, like many other leading lobbyists, has an elitist notion of democracy, one driven by a conviction that, if they believe that something is wrong, then waiting for an unresponsive political system to do something about it is a luxury that society cannot afford. Professional environmental protesters assume that they have the moral authority to take matters into their own hands, since they are acting on behalf of The People. They believe that their unique philosophical insights entitle them to special dispensation. Now, Mr Justice Burton has effectively agreed with them, elevating environmentalism over other, inferior, less ‘worthy’ beliefs – and democracy is all the more impoverished for it. Frank Furedi’s latest book, Wasted: Why Education Isn’t Educating, is published by Continuum Press. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Visit Furedi’s website here. Previously on spiked Nathalie Rothschild said the idea that green beliefs in the workplace should be legally protected from ridicule is deeply censorious. She thought the response to Lord May’s speech on climate change revealed greens’ authoritarian desire to chastise ungreen heretics. Frank Furedi looked at why religions are in search of eco-salvation, asked whether floods in the UK were punishment for our eco-sins, and called the reaction to the cancellation of Planet Relief a crusade against open debate. Ian Murray wondered if environmentalism is the opiate of the liberals. Or read more at spiked issues Environment and Religion. (1) It isn’t godly being green, Guardian, 6 November 2009 (2) Alcohol gravest threat to society, claims sacked scientist, Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2009 (3) Really Bad Ideas: Politicising science, by Frank Furedi (4) Environmentalism is the new religion? So what if it is?, RSA Arts&Ecology, 10 September 2009 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7684/
Monday 9 November 2009 Yesterday, on Remembrance Sunday, they gathered on Whitehall to honour the dead. The day before, on Saturday, it looked like the dead themselves had assembled on the political street that cuts through the heart of London. Outside Downing Street, wasted-looking young men and women, pierced, dyed and musty, some with gaping holes in their ears, one accompanied by an inevitable dog, shouted for the reinstatement of their hero, a ‘modern-day Galileo’ no less, whom they claimed had been silenced, victimised and oppressed by Gordon Brown’s evil government: that is, Professor David Nutt, the sacked drug adviser to the government. Yes, the Cult of Nutt, that curious combination of pro-dope campaigners and defenders of science, was out in force. I say force. In truth there was nothing very forceful, or even convincing, about the assembly of 50 or 60 people to ‘demand the reinstatement of David Nutt’. It worked better as an advert for why you shouldn’t smoke dope. One quite elderly woman handed out a pamphlet advising ‘Cannabis: Legalise and Utilise’ while chanting ‘Bring back David Nutt’ in a raspy, barely audible voice. A woman from 1983 (pink and purple hair, New Romantic get-up) made a speech that no one could hear but which everyone applauded. A man who I think was the organiser of the demo asked: ‘Does anyone have any ideas for chants?’ Hardly. The vacant, staring couple with dreadlocks and gaping holes in their ears looked like they lacked ideas for how to get home, never mind for toppling a tyrannical government. Since he was ousted by home secretary Alan Johnson from the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs on 30 October, for publicly contradicting the government’s line on cannabis, Nutt has become a cult figure for an eclectic group of people: dopeheads, liberal commentators, the science community. Saturday’s demo was organised by Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (I am in principle opposed to any political movement that has the word ‘sensible’ in its name) and was attended by at least one scientist (the clean-shaven guy in a blazer). More than 4,500 people have signed up to the Facebook group ‘Reinstate Professor David Nutt’ and nearly 6,000 have signed a pro-Nutt petition on the No.10 website. Saturday’s protesters made extraordinary claims about both Nutt’s mistreatment by the government and his apparently implacable scientific standing. ‘Free speech for scientists!’ declared one placard, somewhat overlooking the fact that you could be living under a rock, or even in a bedsit off your nut on dope, and still not be able to avoid Nutt’s pronouncements on everything from the medieval nature of the New Labour government to the evil impact of alcohol on young people’s minds. Far from being silenced, Nutt has enjoyed almost unprecedented levels of media and science-world exposure, his ideas and his campaigning sanctioned by everyone from the broadsheets to opposition politicians and scientific research bodies. Another protester held up a makeshift banner declaring ‘The World Is Round: we didn’t get to where we are today without Galileo…’ And there you have it: Nutt is a modern-day Galileo, a scientific giant broken on the wheel of government authoritarianism and opportunism. Only he isn’t. At all. Galileo was a leading figure in the Scientific Revolution and a daring proponent of the idea that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, while Nutt thinks he is the centre of the universe and has built his reputation on ploughing through published research papers about potential links between cannabis and schizophrenia. Galileo was forced by the Inquisition to recant his views and then spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Nutt is never off the BBC. But even more importantly, where for an individual like Galileo the pursuit of science was an open-ended endeavour, a search for possible new truths, an attempt to rise above worldviews based on rigid faith or prejudice and to discover something new about the world, for Nutt and other contemporary scientists the line between their evidence and their desire to moralise, between their research and their own reactionary views, is becoming ever thinner. Some have responded to the Nutt case by instinctively standing up for ‘the expert’ against philistine New Labour. Others have opted to defend democracy against a scientist whom they claim is wrong about the dangers of cannabis (he says it isn’t dangerous; his opponents say it is). Of course it is right, as spiked has argued, that the formulation of drugs policy should be a democratic process, infused by open, public debate and moral questions about freedom and choice rather than decided by experts who stand above what one newspaper ridiculed as ‘the public mood’ (1). But the Nutt affair is not about ‘good science’ or ‘principled democracy’. In fact it shows how both those things have been denigrated almost beyond recognition by the rise and rise of research-led policy and its ugly twin: policy-led research. For the government, ‘evidence-based policymaking’ – a reliance on the authority of expertise – springs precisely from its lack of real democratic mandate and collapse of moral vision. As spiked argued last week, ‘Lacking the political conviction or moral authority to lay down the line on drugs (and numerous other issues), and fearful of engaging with the public in any meaningful way, the government has surrounded itself with experts, hoping that their evidence-based findings will drive everything from education policy to climate-change strategies’ (2). Yet when the experts’ arguments run counter to the government’s pretty much predetermined policy, the government kicks them out and decides to talk up, opportunistically, its democratic authority. It would be entirely legitimate to reject expert advice, even correct advice, in the name of democracy and elevating the public interest over ‘the facts’, but that is not what the government has done: it has merely used the cover of democracy to deal with one troublesome expert, while continuing to surround itself with an army of debate-replacing, democracy-substituting experts. Yet while many people can spot the opportunism of the government in relation to research-led policy – where it embraces facts it likes and discards facts it doesn’t – they are utterly blind to the detrimental impact that this process is having on research itself, on science, on the pursuit of knowledge and truth. The courting of experts as a stand-in for grown-up debate and decision-making, the use of science as a new form of post-religion, post-moral authority, is changing the nature of scientific research, too. It is giving rise to policy-led research, which frequently, and semi-consciously, moulds itself around the expected outcome, around the desired future policy. This is most clear in relation to the debate about climate change, where there is an increasing seamlessness, an overly cosy relationship, between scientists’ allegedly open-ended investigations into climatic variations and governments’ extreme authoritarian solutions to the climate change problem. As a consequence, scientists can easily flip from being apparently disinterested researchers to being prejudiced moralisers. So over the past week Nutt used his apparently implacable scientific findings on cannabis to demonise alcohol (which he reckons is far more dangerous than dope) and to call for authoritarian measures to restrict access to booze. Alcohol ‘will kill your kids’, he hysterically warned parents, before demanding that we raise the minimum drinking age to 21 and increase alcohol tax (3). The ease with which Nutt can shift from being a Galileo-style defender of the truth to being a Mary Whitehouse-style campaigner for new political measures and clampdowns on morally lax youth demonstrates how blurred the line has become between science and ideology. Those who defend Nutt imagine that they are defending an expert, when in truth they’re defending a new breed of super-politicised, ideologically muddied ‘expert’, who, in playing both scientist and moraliser, has further blurred the lines between research and reaction. Anyone interested in Knowledge with a capital K, in the pursuit of truth whatever uncomfortable facts we might discover, should forget about the self-regarding Nutt. And anyone interested in real democracy, in meaningful debate about the big issues of our day, should challenge the whole fetishised notion of ‘evidence-based policymaking’. Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. His satire on the green movement - Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas - is published by Hodder & Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Previously on spiked After the sacking of David Nutt, Brendan O’Neill called the ‘revolt of the experts’ revolting and Tim Black reflected on why New Labour is so dopey on cannabis. Frank Furedi deplored today’s tyranny of expertise, and reviewed a book which showed that governments are bypassing the democratic processby outsourcing their authority. Elsewhere, he explained why politicising science is a bad idea. Or read more at spiked issue Drink and drugs. (1) Drugs: Prejudice and political weakness have rejected scientific facts, Observer, 1 November 2009 (2) See This ‘revolt of the experts’ is revolting, by Brendan O’Neill (3) Professor David Nutt attacks ministers over ‘failure’ on alcohol, The Times (London), 5 November 2009 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7685/
Monday 9 November 2009 One of the most confusing things about the question of privacy, and what makes it so elusive today, is that it is far from evident how people regard their right to privacy, or how these attitudes translate into day-to-day behaviours. The concept of privacy, once merely thought of as the right to be left alone, has been transformed as we have become more information-oriented and as digital technologies have come to ensure that almost everyone now has a ‘digital fingerprint’. The question is further complicated by the fact that, in recent decades, the boundary between private and public has become blurred. A new age of disclosure has emerged where reality TV and social networking sites now represent the ‘private’ face of public scrutiny. Can one seriously argue that privacy is generally regarded as important today? It is clear that contradictory attitudes and practices co-exist - often in the same individuals. For example, it is common to encounter people who are concerned about data collection and the potential abuse of power by the state, but who are at the same time willing to reveal deeply personal thoughts on social networking sites. Some say they value the right to privacy but then also seem willing to bargain the release of very personal information in exchange for relatively small (often financial) rewards. Others who are keen to protect their sexual or medical histories will still gladly disclose vital details of their financial circumstances on commercial websites (1). It is not uncommon for those who reveal personal information on social networking sites also to be paranoid about online transactions, fraud and identity-theft. When it comes to security, anti-terrorism and anti-crime measures, even those who regard privacy as intrinsic to personal liberty are willing to accept encroachments on their freedoms and rights by the state with little protest or outcry (just consider the deployment of CCTV cameras in the UK). A convenient trade-off?It appears that privacy is increasingly being regarded as an area of trade-offs rather than a political principle to be defended or upheld in all circumstances, particularly against the state. There are several signs that this is happening:
There are numerous studies that show the differential attitude people have towards sharing information in different circumstances. One example is a recent study published by the Economic and Social Research Council, Assessing Privacy Impact, in which Dr Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute explains that his organisation’s latest annual survey of internet users found that while more people are now happy to provide email addresses and names to e-commerce websites, public concern over data collection by state institutions (beyond concerns about competence) remains very high. Brown notes that ‘the public is unhappy about extensive sharing, even for purposes such as counter-terrorism and medical research’ (3). So how does one begin to understand what is really happening here, let alone what this might mean for the future? It appears that people’s willingness to share information about themselves depends to a large degree on who they are sharing that information with. It is precisely because people have different levels of trust (or confidence) towards different institutions that these differentials in attitude and behaviour can coexist. This is what makes anticipating privacy behaviour so elusive; how much information people will disclose or how they will regard a breach of data protection depends not only on their prior attitude towards privacy, but also on how they trust the beneficiary of their self-disclosure or data breaches. Risk trade-off behaviour is mediated through a trust relationship between the discloser and the recipient of information. The distinction between sharing information with people in a social network versus institutions sheds considerable light on the apparently contradictory behaviours noted above. Trust and confidenceIn The Problem of Trust (1997), Adam B Seligman makes the important and helpful distinction between trust and confidence. Seligman argues that there is a fundamental difference between trust in people (interpersonal relationships) and confidence in institutions. (The same would apply to technological systems, though this is not Seligman’s focus.) This goes to the heart of what trust actually is: a relationship that is not based upon reciprocal calculation, but is open-ended. Seligman argues convincingly that if a trusting act was based on calculation of expected outcomes or on the rational expectation of a quantified outcome, this would not be an act of trust at all, but an act based on confidence. It would be based on the idea of confidence in the existence of a system that delivered what it promised. The suspension of reciprocal calculation is precisely what defines trusting relationships. Trust not only entails negotiating risk, it implies risk, as it is about negotiating that which is unknown. But the risk is specific. It is based upon the implicit recognition of others’ capacity to act freely and in unexpected ways. Unconditionality and engagement are at the heart of trust relations. As Seligman notes, if all actions were constrained or regulated there would be no risk, only confidence or a lack thereof. In relations of confidence, roles are prescribed while passivity defines behaviour; we give data to the state, they act upon it - more often than not - outside of our control. Data-protection legislation protects data and prescribes what can or cannot be done with that data. We are merely passive onlookers who give up that data either willingly or inadvertently. So, in our interpersonal relationships – in the realm of trust – we act as free individuals and recognise others’ free agency as well. But when we act in predefined ways (that is, when we are constrained), then trust is not called for nor established. Confidence that everyone will act in accordance with the law or existing moral standards suffice. It is only when aspects of behaviour transcend this that trust emerges systematically as an aspect of social organisation. Thus, the origins of trust are rooted in our recognition of the freedom of others to act freely. Trust is based on the ability to act autonomously and outside of predefined or ascribed roles, and on the recognition that others have this ability, too. Trust is therefore a very rare thing indeed. And because it is based on free will, trust cannot be demanded, only offered and accepted. Trust and mistrust thus develop in relationship to free will and the ability to exercise that will, as different responses to aspects of behaviour that can no longer be adequately contained within existing norms and social roles. High trust, low privacyThis provides some important insights into the complexities surrounding the contradictory privacy behaviours mentioned above. Sharing of personal information on Facebook is thus a fundamentally different act from allowing one’s personal data to be used by the National Health Service or any other government institution. In the first instance, social networking sites are voluntary. Joining and participating is based upon free will and the ability to act autonomously. By adding friends to our network, we implicitly recognise this capacity in our friends and recognise their ability to act outside of predefined roles. Reciprocity is an outcome rather than a condition for participation. Gaining acknowledgement from your peers does not assume what form that should take. Outcomes cannot be predetermined. It is a trust relationship because it is open-ended; individuals are free to control their identities, how they present themselves and share what’s on their minds, and they recognise in their friends the same capacities. For younger people, in particular, this is perhaps their only truly private space. Not even their homes or bedrooms are as private as this. This is thus a high-trust space where privacy has a negligible impact on behaviour. Low trust, high privacyThe opposite pertains to environments where requests for information are made from institutions and organisations that we interact with. From what has been said above it should be clear that our relationships with state institutions are based upon confidence rather than trust: roles are ascribed while outcomes are intended and expected. Transgressions are resolved through the legal system. There is neither unconditionality nor active engagement, but a passive relationship based on prescribed roles that are not subject to change or control. Passivity and/or the expectation of trust being delivered are thus anathema to the establishment of real trust relations. In these circumstances it is clear that privacy concerns will come to the fore and influence behaviour far more than in the case of social networks. The blurring of the boundaries of public and private today, and the general disengagement of atomised citizens with the political process, means that the lack of confidence in the institutional frameworks of society is extremely high. In these circumstances of a lack of confidence, indeed, a lack of trust, privacy concerns come to the fore. The future?Attitudes to privacy, and the behaviours that arise from those attitudes, will change according to the level of trust or mistrust people have with regard to the people or institutions they are interacting with. How much people trust the potential beneficiary of their self-disclosure is now the overriding motivator of behaviour. This has a number of important consequences, which require further research and debate. First, this insight suggests that any discussion that does not take questions of trust as a starting point will inevitably get it wrong. Regulation and legislation (around data protection, for example) or technologically based solutions (like identity management solutions, privacy policies and so on) can exacerbate rather than allay fears because they fail to take into account the trust relations underpinning them. Indeed, even raising the question of safeguards increases rather than allays privacy fears. This is a problem of perception and social attitudes, not something that is susceptible to legal or technical fixes. For regulation or technological solutions to be effective they have to be based upon the prior question of how much trust the given institution or system has with the public. Second, because privacy is increasingly understood as a trade-off, its link to freedom and free will is increasingly brought into question. In these circumstances the right to be left alone is no longer a universal principle. Rather, subjectivity and the randomness of individual choice become the realm within which a degraded notion of privacy is upheld or encroached upon. A universal principle is replaced by the tyranny of subjective judgement, which can only result in the loss of social and political solidarity. Third, the defence of privacy as a political right needs to be re-established on the basis of its centrality to the development of individual identities. Today’s identity formation through social networking represents a degraded sense of identity. ‘Facebook identities’, which are constantly exposed, force social conformity. Individuated conformity is not the basis upon which a robust defence of privacy can be mounted. This represents the loss of privacy and is a regressive force. The rethinking of privacy as a trade-off mediated by trust is thus a critical starting point for mounting a defence of privacy today. The right to be left alone is not something whimsical or self-indulgent, but a crucial personal and social freedom. The loss of privacy represents a real threat to the spirit of human progress through social experimentation. Norman Lewis is the founding partner of Open-Knowledge UK Ltd. Read his blog here. This article is based on a speech at the Battle of Ideas on 31 October 2009. Previously on spiked Norman Lewis and Neil Barrett debated privacy online. Rob Killick looked at the online threats to privacy. Nathalie Rothschild warned about overblown fears about Facebook. Josie Appleton wanted to bring back privacy. Or read more at spiked issue Privacy. (1) See Esther Dyson, ‘How loss of privacy may mean loss of security’, Scientific American, September 2008 (2) See Anderson, et al, Database State, Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, York, 2009 (3) See Assessing Privacy Impact, ESRC, October 2009, p11 (4) Adam B Seligman (1997) The Problem of Trust, Princeton University Press reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7686/
Friday 6 November 2009 This article is republished from the October 2009 issue of the spiked review of books. View the whole issue here. Everyone has a view on the crisis of education. Politicians point the finger at outdated attitudes, mess about with the curriculum, prescribe new teaching methods and seek to involve parents in the project of schooling. Teachers blame interfering politicians alongside parents who don’t discipline their children or help them with their homework; parents blame teachers for being too hard or too soft on children, too modern or too traditional. Classically trained university professors bemoan the annual intake of students who can barely read a book, write a sentence or formulate an equation, while employers castigate schools for turning out young people who lack the basic life skills necessary for the world of work. Even for somebody like me, born into a family of educators and with two young children embarking on their all-important schooldays, all this educational angst can get a bit tedious. Do we really need another book on the subject? What could Frank Furedi say about education that has not already been thought and said? ‘All the big debates about pedagogy – how children learn to read, whether English literature is superior to media studies, whether history teachers should focus on the Napoleonic wars or the Holocaust – all these are really secondary issues’, says Furedi. ‘Yes, these questions are important, but how well any teaching method works depends on the recognition that education is an intergenerational dynamic, which relies on the assumption of adult authority. Today, we have an inability to give meaning to education because we struggle to give meaning to adulthood. My book Wasted is an attempt to understand that fundamental problem.’ The struggle to give meaning to adulthood is expressed in a number of familiar ways. From parents struggling to know how to tell a two-year-old to behave to teachers feeling threatened by ‘violent’ four-year-olds and politicians threatening parents of truanting teenagers with jail, discipline is one area of life that used to be taken for granted but has now become an endless source of conflict and anxiety. The fact that it is now questioned whether adults have the moral right to discipline children in the way they see fit, and that their attempts to do so are met with scrutiny and contestation, is a stark example of the way that the very assumption of adult authority has been thrown into question both at school and at home. A related trend is that which Furedi terms ‘socialisation in reverse’. Socialisation, he notes, ‘is the process through which children are prepared for the world ahead of them’. This is a responsibility that ‘is carried out by adults at home and their communities, and in the formal setting of the school’. Today, however, this intergenerational responsibility is being usurped by a new breed of professionals, so-called experts ‘who transmit values by directly targeting children’. Parents will be only too aware of the way that children now come home armed with advice for their parents about how to eat healthily and recycle their rubbish correctly, while teachers find their own authority on this front trumped by specialist interlopers who parachute into schools to teach pupils about sex, drugs and ‘life skills’. Furedi’s seminal 2001 book Paranoid Parenting highlighted the grave consequences of the devaluation of adult authority for the role played by parents and the extent to which they are accorded autonomy in their private family lives. In Wasted, he explores the meaning of this infantilising trend for teachers, and for the project of education as a whole. Teachers will identify with the everyday frustration and humiliation that arise from such practices as having their discipline techniques closely monitored and questioned, or finding themselves interviewed by pupils on the grounds that the children should be ‘given a voice’ in deciding which staff the school recruits. But such practices are only symptoms of the process by which the core idea of education as a transaction carried out between generations has been called into question. Formal education is the process by which society transmits its values and its intellectual legacy to the younger generation. Drawing on the work of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, Furedi argues that ‘it is through education that society both preserves and renews itself’. It is for this reason that a traditional, liberal education has been an essentially conservative project, designed to teach children what is known, thought and agreed upon, rather than attempting to challenge the received wisdom. ‘The conserving function of education is not an attempt to indoctrinate children into conservatism – it is about giving them the resources to create a new world’, explains Furedi. Only when children are taught about the world as it is, by an authoritative source, can they develop the knowledge and critical faculties necessary to shape their world as adults. In this sense, a conservative education should be understood as the necessary foundation for a generation that is capable both of transforming society and holding it together. One result of the devaluation of adult authority is that ‘the proper relationship between education and society has been turned upside down’, and ‘education is used as the site where the unresolved issues of public life can be pursued’. As adults are infantilised and children are treated as mini-grown-ups whose voice must be expressed and heard on every matter from the content of the curriculum to the attributes of their teachers, education becomes viewed as a place where political debates can and should take place. As Furedi argues: ‘In public life, politicians and policymakers play it safe and tend to avoid substantive issues and serious debate. But often problems that are avoided in the domain of politics appear as a subject for the school curriculum. So the problem of political apathy and disengagement is accepted as a fact of life in public life only to reappear in the form of citizenship education in schools. Solving problems and changing attitudes is assigned to the institutions of education.’ In this respect, the politicisation of education has gathered pace in recent years as politics and public life have become exhausted. Modern society’s retreat from politics, from the notion that we have choices about how to organise our existence, was examined in Furedi’s 2005 book Politics of Fear. One key consequence of the discrediting of political authority is that those who seek to manage society increasingly do so by attempting to manipulate pre-political relations of authority: those that exist within education, and the family. This is a dangerous process, argues Furedi, because all forms of authority in society draw upon the basic relationship between adults and children. The authority of parents has historically been considered paramount, not because politicians of the past had a particularly elevated view of parents or respect for their autonomy, but because childrearing was understood as the one area of life where natural necessity forces adults to protect children. So while established relations of authority have historically been contested in the name of democracy, freedom or science, and these have had largely progressive consequences, pre-political forms of authority were generally perceived as areas in which reformers meddled at their peril. But as Furedi explains, over the past 50 years or so this assumption has come unstuck: what has increasingly been contested is not one or another particular form of authority, but ‘the authority of authority itself’. This is sharply revealed by the extent to which the authority of adults – parents and teachers – over children in everyday life is blithely challenged by parenting experts peddling tips on toddler-taming, or educational consultants training teachers in the use of ‘motivational techniques’ that rely upon flattery rather than authority to encourage the child to pay attention. Today, says Furedi, ‘society has become as uncomfortable with the authority of parents and teachers as it was with the absolute monarch of the eighteenth century’. But unlike rebellion against inherited privilege, there is no positive or democratising outcome to our present-day discomfort with the authority of adults: its consequence will be further confusion, where ‘the lines between generations become very arbitrary, and the process of socialising generations is incomplete’. Furedi is currently focusing his work around the historical evolution of authority relations, as part of an attempt to understand the way that society responds to problems when it lacks clarity and meaning about its own purpose. With Wasted, Furedi considers that he has finished the first phase in this programme of work – and in this respect the book could be read as one that is not really about education at all. But the coherence of the book’s focus on the intergenerational dynamic of education provides the basis for demystifying some of the specific debates and initiatives about education that worry and perplex many parents and teachers. For example, once the importance of society renewing itself through the education of its young is appreciated, some of the problems with the contemporary mantra of ‘lifelong learning’ become easier to understand. While it is true, and right, that people learn things informally in the course of their lives and that intellectual development does not stop at the age of 18, the politicised promotion of ‘lifelong learning’ as an educational endeavour that exists on a par with schooling implicitly devalues both the role of adult teachers and the importance of formal education. If learning is seen to be something that people just do at any point in their lives, what is so special about the job that teachers do – and why should we insist that children leave school with qualifications at all? As with the vogue to redefine headteachers as ‘lead learners’, and to talk about the importance of ‘teaching and learning’ in one breath, the educator is robbed of his or her status and equated with the pupil who has ‘learning skills’. No wonder good, authoritative teachers are finding themselves insulted and turned off by their erstwhile profession. The therapeutic turn that education has taken in recent years, where managing children’s feelings and behaviour has come to be seen as being of paramount importance, has caused some consternation – but little direct objection. Partly, this is because it is difficult to oppose such initiatives as ‘happiness education’ without becoming caricatured in a ridiculous counter-position: that it is fine for children to be unhappy, for example, or that teachers should stick to dry facts about maths and leave the emotional side of life for the home. But as Furedi explains, the distinction is not between taking children’s emotions seriously or not: it is between a proper appreciation of academic education and a de-intellectualised form of therapeutic education. ‘A good school will make every effort to attend to the moral, spiritual and emotional needs of a child, and good teachers recognise that the cultivation of the intellect is linked inextricably to the education of a child’s disposition and behaviour’, he says. The way in which schools have traditionally ‘educated the emotions’ is through the arts, introducing children to a world in which the human condition is explored and certain norms of feelings and behaviour promoted. By contrast, the anti-academic approach taken by therapeutic education takes emotions out of their human, historical context and promotes narrow, dogmatic rules about acceptable and unacceptable feelings and behaviour. When education is understood as a process by which the values and intellectual legacy of society are transmitted to its young, the significance of the subject-based curriculum becomes more profound. If the teaching of literature is superseded by literacy skills, or the teaching of science becomes a vehicle for ethical debates rather than practical experiments or the acquisition of the scientific method, children are not merely being taught the same thing by other means. The fragmentation and politicisation of the curriculum represents a defensiveness about the cultural achievements of the past, and a reluctance to transmit even the awareness of society’s intellectual heritage to its children. Every time politicians fiddle with the school curriculum, or insist on schools following the latest ‘new idea’, they demonstrate their willingness to dump centuries of knowledge, creativity and thought for the sake of political expediency. What is ‘wasted’ as a consequence of the philistine policy churn of educational reform is not just the potential of young children to appreciate the gains of the past in order to transcend them, but human history itself. Jennie Bristow is author of Standing Up To Supernanny, published by Societas in 2009) (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) She edits the website Parents With Attitude and is speaking in the session Standing up to Supernanny: why we need a Parents’ Liberation Movement at the Battle of Ideas festival, 1 November 2009. Wasted: Why Education Isn’t Educating, by Frank Furedi, is published by Continuum on 29 October 2009. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) To see the media discussion provoked by the book, go to Frank Furedi’s website here. This article is republished from the October 2009 issue of the spiked review of books. View the whole issue here. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7675/
Friday 6 November 2009 What do you reckon will be the legacy of the Noughties? This question seems to be exercising the minds of many newspaper features editors. In recent days, for example, the Guardian has asked us ‘Who’s the biggest eco-villain of the Noughties’ (1) and pondered over the ‘Environmental milestones of the Noughties’ (2). The Times (London) has given us a ‘Noughties: year by year’ (3), while the Daily Telegraph has been musing over the ‘Top 100 defining cultural moments of the Noughties’ (4). And then we had ‘the Noughties… was that it?’ on BBC 3 (5). Naughty, naughty, very very naughty, as the Shamen might say (6). Or as Danny Dyer would put it: this is all proper naughty (7). The BBC iPlayer preview to the Noughties… was that it? did not bode well: ‘People became text addicts; metrosexual men donned make-up; smoking behind the bikesheds returned; Twitter arrived; there was a fight with “terror”; WAGS, ASBOs and chavs made an appearance.’ This intro made me fear it was going to be one of those programmes with talking heads who are complete arseholes - with Lauren Lavern or Steve Merchant or whatshisface from Two Pints of Lager regurgitating the same old lame rubbish. Yes, you love Westlife and Katherine Jenkins and Barack Obama and programmes about your adolescence. But so what? However, I thought the Noughties… was that it? was rather good. I’m a sucker for any nostalgic kind of programme that deals with the past, and contextualises modern, cultural history. But I do think it rather missed the point, just like every other retrospective of this decade has. The Noughties have been characterised by a general sense of introspection and nostalgia, which makes reflective articles and programmes about the Noughties somewhat ironic. A true portrait of the Noughties would be about the gloomy mood of the Noughties itself. The Noughties will be mainly remembered as an era in which we all re-remembered, in which we all logged on to Facebook and Twitter and Friends Reunited, to get in touch with long-lost friends or ex-girlfriends. We’re all becoming avatars. I Love 1996 - yes I remember that programme. I’ve watched it again and again throughout the Noughties. ‘I Love Watching I Love 1996 in 2004’ would be a more accurate description. We watched Frasier, Friends, Scrubs, Seinfeld and all the other shows that made us think of the past, and of what was, and what should have been. No wonder Philip K Dick’s stories have become so popularised in cinematic form - in the guise of Minority Report (2002) and A Scanner Darkly (2008), which are both paranoid paeans to the past, and to the future. And no wonder Danny Dyer’s fake cockneyism has become popularised in a time when we all long for the ‘good old days’ when West Ham, Millwall and Chelsea fans could kick the shit out of each other. No wonder the backward-looking Life On Mars was a success. Even Dr Who has a decidedly retro feel about it. Yesterday and Dave and various Discovery and History channels have become successful avenues, and with good reason. The Noughties has been an epoch of endless re-remembering. Perhaps our era of eternally re-remembering reflects a postmodern malaise. Certainly we do live in an age in which reality has become a reflection of itself. Journalists get their information from Twitter; journalists criticise Twitter; Twitter twats criticise journalists. It’s all a simulacrum. I do wish Jean Baudrillard was still around to have seen the Nick Griffin vs Question Time affair, in which the pre-emptive reaction to his appearance became the substance of the programme itself. ‘Did Question Time take place?’ Discuss… The Noughties have been all about introspection. Retrospectives about the Noughties also beg the obvious question: how do we know what’s going to happen in the next two months? Perhaps our neurosis about the past is equally matched by our neurosis about the future? 9/11, 7/7 and all other dates that have a slash in them will probably be assumed as the defining episodes of the Noughties - but worry and a longing for the past will be this decade’s legacy. Nostalgia will be the defining mood of the Noughties. This is why retrospectives on this decade are very fitting. Even ‘ironic’. Perhaps in the Twenty-Tens there will be a retrospective about the Twenty-Noughts. Time will tell. In the meantime, I think the Noughties will be thought of as a bit naughty. Patrick West is spiked’s TV and radio reviewer. Read his blog here. Read on: spiked-issue TV and radio (1) Who’s the biggest eco-villain of the noughties?, Guardian, 29 October 2009 (2) Review of the decade: Environmental milestones of the noughties, Guardian (3) The Noughties: year by year, The Times (London), 20 October 2009 (4) Top 100 defining cultural moments of the noughties, Telegraph, 30 October 2009 (5) Watch episode 1 of the noughties… was that it? on BBC iPlayer here. (6) Watch the music video of The Shamen’s ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ on YouTube here. (7) Watch Danny Dyer’s Deadliest Men 2: Living Dangerously on YouTube here. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7676/
Friday 6 November 2009 In Rafa we trust. That’s what Liverpool fans will tell you. Or at least that’s what they used to say. Until this season that is. Now there are audible voices of dissent. Rafa hasn’t ‘lost the Kop’. Most Liverpool fans still believe in the Rafa-lution. But it’s evident from the message boards, football blogs and phone-ins that the counter-Rafalution is gaining support. I’ll lay my cards on the table here. I don’t think Rafael Benitez is a tactical genius. Never have. He got lucky in the Champions League final in Istanbul in 2005. It wasn’t his rousing half-time pep talk that turned the game – Stevie Gerrard has said he can’t even remember what Benitez said. No, it wasn’t Rafa wot won it; it was AC Milan who threw it away. The Italian club’s extraordinary complacency and carelessness gifted the game to Liverpool. Benitez’s early Liverpool teams rarely played expansive football. They defended well and counter-attacked at pace. It was a simple formula. Not particularly pretty to watch but very effective, particularly in Europe. The acquisition of Fernando Torres in 2007 has given Liverpool an attacking dimension which they didn’t have previously. Torres, for my money, is the best striker in the country, possibly the best in Europe. He conjures goals out of nothing. When Torres and Gerrard are fully fit and firing on all cylinders Liverpool are a match for any team. Liverpool’s problem this season is that their two best players have been injured. Invariably, with Gerrard and Torres struggling for fitness, and their deep-lying playmaker Xabi Alonsi sold to Real Madrid, Liverpool’s form has been erratic. The Premiership title is already looking a lost cause and their Champions League campaign is hanging in the balance. There are calls for the manager’s head. Here’s the rap sheet against Rafa: 1. The Premier League isn’t top priority. The charge that Benitez knows how to navigate the Champions League but doesn’t ‘get’ the Premiership has been a recurring theme during his tenure at Anfield. Former Kop hero Ronnie Whelan was scathing about Benitez’s tactics after the 3-1 defeat at Fulham last Saturday. ‘It’s all gone wrong with the manager. He has shown today exactly where his priorities lie’, said Whelan. ‘He wants to win the European Cup so that he can get a job anywhere in Europe. For me now, his days have got to be numbered.’ 2. He tinkers too much. Squad rotation is one thing, but Benitez’s team selections have had fans and pundits alike scratching their heads. ‘Does he even know what his best team is? I don’t think so’, said Tony Cascarino. ‘And more often than not, his selection is not even near what many would consider to be his best. He makes Claudio Ranieri, the former Chelsea head coach and renowned ‘Tinkerman’, look positively conservative.’ 3. He’s wasted money in the transfer market. Since he became manager in 2004 Rafa has signed 79 players at an estimated cost of £256 million. You can’t argue with signings like Fernando Torres or Javier Mascherano. However too many of Rafa’s signings have failed to shine. ‘Benitez’s record with players signed for around £10m is not good’, said former Liverpool defender Mark Lawrenson. ‘My goodness, Benitez should get a revolving door for all the full backs he’s signed and have flopped. It’s frightening.’ 4. Poor man-management. Benitez isn’t an arm-round-the-shoulder sort of manager. Former Liverpool winger Jermaine Pennant accused Rafa of being too ‘cold’. Andres Palop, the goalkeeper at Valencia during Rafa’s tenure, complained that: ‘Benitez is a great manager but, at a personal level, he leaves you feeling like you don’t even exist.’ Even Steven Gerrard has admitted that it took him some time get used to Benitez’s aloofness. Some have blamed Benitez’s man-management style for Gerrard’s flirtation with Chelsea and the departure of Xabi Alonso. As I said, I’m no Rafa fan. His Liverpool team is occasionally exciting but mostly functional. Torres and Gerrard are fantastic players but you can keep the rest. Most of them wouldn’t even get a place on the Crystal Palace subs bench. OK, only joking, I’d probably have Mascherano. But the point is that I don’t buy into the cult of Rafa. However, I think it’s only fair to present the case for the defence. So, this is how Rafa would account for Liverpool’s current malaise. 1. An injury list as long as the Mersey Tunnel. The first team squad has been decimated by injuries. Any club would suffer in those circumstances. 2. Yanks out. Boardroom strife has undermined the Rafalutionary project. George Gillette and Tom Hicks haven’t stumped up the cash Rafa needs. They should bog off and let some filthy rich Arab bankroll the club. 3. Still playing catch-up. Rafa argues that he needed a lot of money because the quality at all levels – from academy to first team – was so poor. By contrast Manchester United and Arsenal already have an infrastructure in place. 4. Making progress. Rafa argues that Liverpool are making incremental progress in their Premier League campaigns. He’ll reel off all manner of statistics to prove it. 5. ‘When you walk through a storm hold your head up high’. Rafa actually said this at a press conference this week. It’s not really an excuse but, when all else fails, play the populist Scouse card. Convinced? Well, some of his points are valid. Liverpool are still playing catch-up and don’t have the spending power of Chelsea or Manchester City. However, even if you discount the youngsters he has signed who are not yet ready for first team action, there are still some very baffling transfer decisions. Andrea Dossena anyone? The Robbie Keane affair was also head-scratchingly hard to fathom. Why didn’t Keane get a proper run in the first team? And why, having sold him back to Spurs, didn’t Benitez bring in a goal-scorer to deputise for Torres? Rafa can’t be blamed for the injury list, but the lack of cover for his star striker is entirely his fault. But leaving aside his transfer decisions, the biggest problem, as I see it, is that Liverpool too often trip up against weaker Premiership teams. Whether it’s a lack of team spirit, an inability to motivate his players, or his stubborn insistence on using zonal marking to defend set pieces, it’s Benitez who has to take responsibility for this failing. Still think he’s a tactical genius? I’m not saying he should be sacked. But a little less blind faith and a little more healthy Rafa-scpeticism wouldn’t do any harm. Duleep Allirajah is spiked’s sports columnist. Read on: spiked-issue: Sport reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7677/
Thursday 5 November 2009 Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, author most recently of Defeating Autism: A Damaging Delusion, was invited by the Progress Educational Trust to speak at the debate ‘From Autism to Asperger’s: Disentangling the Genetics and Sociology of the Autistic Spectrum’ which took place in the UK Houses of Parliament on the evening of 20 October. His speech, in which he addresses the search for a gene for autism, is published below. Scarcely a week goes by without the announcement of another breakthrough in research into the genetics of autism. Such studies are now commonly reported in the mainstream media as well as in scientific journals and are invariably followed by speculation about the possibilities for screening tests to detect autism in fetal life or for the development of therapeutic interventions in people with autism. The quest to discover the cause of autism through research in genetics and neuroscience – and hopes that this research will lead to a cure – have captured the imaginations of many parents of children with autism. In the US and in the UK, the charity Autism Speaks has brought parents and scientists together with the aim of raising funds and promoting research in these areas. Yet, from the perspective of parents (like me) or jobbing family doctors (also like me), the yield from more than a decade of intensive genetic research into autism has been negligible. Just as autism manifests itself as a complex condition with a wide range of presentations, so it appears to be genetically heterogeneous, with a number of different genes on a number of different chromosomes contributing to the emergence of the disorder. Though there have been impressive discoveries, in genetics and epigenetics, and in neurophysiology, according to one leading authority, ‘in essence, we know very little about the changes in brain development and brain organisation that underlie autistic spectrum disorders’ (1). The direction of scientific research into autism has been challenged from different directions, by groups of parents and by people with autism. Let’s take these in turn before suggesting how we might begin to move beyond the narrow focus on the quest for cause and cure. In the 1970s and 1980s, an earlier generation of parents of children with autism welcomed the rise in genetic theories (emerging from twin and family studies) because they relieved them of the burden of psychogenic ‘parent-blaming’ theories of autism. Yet for some parents, genetic explanations still implied an unwelcome degree of parental responsibility, leading to investigations of the family tree for autistic forebears and disputes about which side of the family may have contributed to the autistic pedigree. Genetic theories also appeared to reinforce fatalistic notions that autism is a constitutional, immutable, condition. By the 1990s parent groups were demanding a greater emphasis on potential environmental factors in the causation of autism – an approach that raised hopes of prevention, treatment, even cure. Over the past decade militant parent groups on both sides of the Atlantic have focused on vaccines (whether MMR or vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thiomersal) and other putative toxins and pollutants as contributory factors to the rising prevalence of autism (which they characterise as an ‘epidemic’). These groups have sought to move away from the mainstream concept of a neurodevelopmental disorder to that of autism as a biomedical disease, identifying biochemical, immunological or toxological pathological processes. So-called ‘unorthodox biomedical’ campaigns, proclaiming the goal of ‘defeating’ autism, have promoted a wide range of treatments, including diets, vitamins, minerals, enzymes (largely derived from the alternative health sector) and more controversial methods such as chelation therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, hormone treatments. Supporters of these campaigns claim that these techniques can result in ‘recovery’ or cure. The pursuit of environmental causes for autism has proved even less fruitful than the search for a ‘gene for autism’. It was recognised in the 1960s that women who took the drug thalidomide during pregnancy had an increased risk of having a child with autism; it was also noted that the congenital rubella syndrome resulting from infection during pregnancy was also associated with autism. But not a single new environmental contributor to autism has been identified since the anti-epileptic drug Sodium Valproate more than 20 years ago. While vaccine theories of autism have collapsed because of the failure of their protagonists to substantiate them, no convincing evidence has emerged in support of any other theory of environmental toxicity. In their attempts to justify their theories and therapies, unorthodox biomedical campaigners have lapsed into pseudoscience and quackery, sustaining a substantial commercial sector devoted to dubious tests and treatments. Another challenge to the mainstream focus on genetic research has emerged from people who identify themselves as having an autistic spectrum disorder, usually ‘higher-functioning’ autism or Asperger’s syndrome. From the perspective of those who align themselves with the ‘neurodiversity’ movement, autism should not be regarded as a disorder, still less as a disease, but as a different way of thinking and behaving, which should be accepted and respected. They object to the depiction of people with autism in pejorative terms in both mainstream and unorthodox biomedical campaigns and to the representation of their existence as an unremitting source of grief and distress to their families. They also object to the subjection of children with autism to dehumanising, degrading and sometimes dangerous treatments. On all these points, I and a growing number of parents and professionals are in full agreement (though I am concerned that the celebration of autistic difference risks trivialising the difficulties facing not only people with more ‘lower-functioning’ autism but also those experienced by many with Asperger’s syndrome). Some neurodiversity activists object to genetic research on the grounds that it may lead to screening tests that may lead to the termination of pregnancies if a high risk of autism is identified. In his contribution to the PET discussion, leading UK autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen endorses concerns that prenatal tests may be used in an attempt to eradicate autism (2). He argues that these worries ‘raise the spectre of eugenics’ and the ‘social policies of the Nazi government in Germany’, observing that ‘such prenatal testing is already possible and being used in this way in relation to other conditions (like Down’s syndrome)’. I believe that this argument is misconceived – firstly on the issue of eugenics. If parents opt for an abortion in the case of a fetus with Down’s syndrome (as more than 90 per cent of parents faced with this decision do) this is not a eugenic policy promoted by the state in the cause of improving the fitness of race and nation, but a decision taken by parents in the light of their judgement of the difficulties they are likely to face in rearing a child with the range of disabilities typical of Down’s syndrome. (Nor does a personal decision for termination imply any inclination to support discrimination against people with Down’s syndrome or any other disability.) It is sometimes argued that the selective abortion of fetuses carrying a genetic marker for autism would risk depriving society of the particular contribution of geniuses who have been (contentiously) identified as autistic, such as Newton, Einstein and Wittgenstein. Apart from implying a fanciful notion of a ‘genius gene’ that should be conserved in the gene pool, this is an argument for ‘positive eugenics’, attempting to improve the collective genetic welfare of society. I believe that Professor Baron-Cohen’s initiative to promote a discussion on the ethics of genetic screening for autism is also misconceived for more pragmatic reasons. As he accepts, there is at present no genetic marker that can be used reliably as a screening test for autism – and no realistic prospect of such a test emerging in the foreseeable future. Why then promote a discussion about an entirely hypothetical possibility? While he believes that it is important to pursue this ethical debate in advance of the science that would make screening possible, I am concerned that it may simply aggravate existing animosities and distract attention from more pressing issues. For example, current initiatives by the National Autistic Society and other agencies seek to identify people with autism who may not have received a diagnosis – but in most areas of the country appropriate services and adequate resources to meet the needs that are identified do not exist. Yet there is little debate of this ethical problem. The defect of genetic research in autism does not lie in the neglect of environmental factors or in its eugenic implications. The problem – at least as far as parents and people with autism are concerned – lies in the mismatch between the time frame within which scientific advance takes place and the relatively short duration of human childhood and even adult life. Given the very low level from which the neurobiological study of autism began scarcely 30 years ago, progress has been spectacular – but it is likely to be another 30 years before substantial therapeutic intervention is feasible. (There was a delay of around 300 years between the discovery of basic human anatomy and physiology and the emergence of effective medical treatments: hopefully it will not take this long.) In the 15 years since my son was diagnosed with autism, genetic and neuroscientific research has produced negligible benefit. Let’s be realistic: any child diagnosed with autism today is also likely to make the transition to adult life without the benefit of medical treatment for the core features of autism. This is not to dismiss the importance of continuing to pursue research in genetics and neuroscience: this is far more likely to yield long-term results than chasing vaccines or any of the other toxic fantasies of the environmentalists. It is simply to recognise that for individuals and families affected by autism today the pursuit of ‘cause and cure’ misses the point: we need interventions that will make life better for people with autism in the here and now. This means that, in addition to basic scientific research, we need research to evaluate behavioural and educational programmes as well as other sorts of psychological therapies and pedagogical techniques, to discover which methods work and for which children. We also need more research into the wide range of problems that commonly coexist with autism, such as epilepsy, learning difficulties, anxiety and depression, obsessions and compulsions, self-injurious and aggressive behaviours, sensory and motor difficulties and gastrointestinal disturbances. As the American author Mark Osteen (also the parent of an autistic child) writes, ‘nobody – autistic or non-autistic – speaks for everybody in the autistic community’ (3). He wisely counsels that, in relation to these controversies, it is ‘essential to attend to a range of voices, not just the loudest ones’. Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is the author of MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know (buy this book from Amazon(UK)) and The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle (buy this book from Amazon(UK)). This is speech was delivered at the House of Commons on 20 October 2009 at an event organised by the Progress Educational Trust. Previously on spiked
(1) Genes and the environment: how may genetics be used to inform research searching for potential environmental triggers?, by P Levitt, ‘Presentation at Autism and the Environment: challenges and opportunities for research, workshop proceedings’, Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine (2) Studying autism genetics responsibly, Simon Baron-Cohen, BioNews 528, 5 October 2009 (3) Autism and representation, by Mark Osteen, Routledge, 2008 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7671/
Thursday 5 November 2009 He’s a staple of office life: the penny-pincher checking that colleagues aren’t using too much paper or drinking more than their fair share of instant coffee. Now, anyone who shows open contempt for a colleague who does these things in the name of upholding ‘sustainable office practices’ or caring for the environment can be deemed prejudicial, and green workers can take their bosses to court if they feel they’ve been discriminated against because of their environmental convictions. A British court ruling this week by Mr Justice Michael Burton stated that ‘a belief in man-made climate change… is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations Act’. This signals that discrimination on the basis of green views is as unacceptable as sexism, racism or religious prejudice. How long before we see the term ‘envirophobia’ to describe people who dislike greens? The ruling was a response to the treatment of Tim Nicholson. A former head of sustainability at Grainger, one of the UK’s largest property companies, Nicholson won his case that he should be able to take his former employer to a tribunal, arguing that his views on climate change were met with contempt and eventually dismissal at work. Nicholson says he was made redundant because of his ‘philosophical belief about climate change and the environment’. This has helped set a worrying precedent on how environmental views are regarded in English law: not as a political outlook which can be held up to scrutiny and debate like any other political outlook, but effectively as faith, as gospel, and anyone who contests it might face retribution. So just as some employers have to cater for staff members’ religious practice needs, by providing prayer rooms or special meals, a company which fails to cater for environmentalist employees’ green lifestyles can be regarded as discriminatory. Recycling facilities, low-energy lightbulbs, bicycle storage facilities, composts in the communal kitchen, solar-powered computers, fair trade coffee for boardroom meetings… to what lengths will employers have to go in order to ease the minds of green employees who believe we are all headed towards apocalypse? Because that is what Nicholson’s ‘philosophical belief’ amounts to. As Dinah Rose, QC for Nicholson, explained, it is a belief ‘that mankind is headed towards catastrophic climate change and that, as a result, we are under a duty to do all that we can to live our lives so as to mitigate or avoid that catastrophe for future generations’. Nicholson is of course entitled to believe that there is a moral imperative to take action on climate change. He has every right to make his house more eco-friendly and to avoid flights, two private choices he has made. But in effectively demanding that opposition to his green antics should be regarded as a form of bigotry, he also believes that his convictions should be beyond reprehension. Apparently Nicholson was affronted by Grainger’s chief executive’s decision to fly a staff member to Ireland to deliver his Blackberry, which he had left behind in London. He was also angry about not being able to set up a company-wide ‘carbon management system’ because colleagues failed to provide the necessary data. Nicholson may have felt all this made his job as a sustainability officer challenging, but why should anyone who chooses to put business interests ahead of environmental interests, or who objects to having their personal habits monitored at work, be regarded as discriminatory? Essentially Nicholson’s case is about seeking state protection for environmentalist views. And because that is all they really are – views – they should be up for contestation and critique. How can you even develop an environmental policy at work if employees are afraid to raise concerns and objections to the exact terms of that policy for fear of being disciplined? After the ruling, Nicholson tried to distance himself from the idea that he was turning environmentalism into a protected religion. He said the difference is that his is ‘a philosophical belief based on my moral and ethical values underpinned by scientific evidence’. Some critics of environmentalism have responded by arguing that this case does show that environmentalism is a religion. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. On the surface, environmentalism does resemble a modern-day religion. It has turned into a moralistic campaign where carbon sinners must be punished through taxes and fines or be rendered social outcasts. Any objection to the ‘absolute truth’ of an impending climate catastrophe is treated as heresy. Greens’ ritualistic behaviour resembles religious rituals, with carbon offsetting as the modern form of penance and the endless rules on what food is ethical and how to separate household waste looking like a secular version of kosher laws. But in truth, the rise of environmentalism has little in common with how old-fashioned religions emerged and how they developed, or with the meaning and sense of community they can provide. And while religion at least offers the hope of redemption or some form of transcendence, and a belief in the power of man to shape his world, environmentalism is an inherently pessimistic worldview which says we should forsake our ambitions in the name of protecting the planet. By first demanding that green views be put on a par with religion in the eyes of the law and by then suggesting that green views should be elevated above religion because they are ‘underpinned by science’, Nicholson not only debased religious belief but also expressed an ignorant attitude towards the scientific process. As Frank Furedi has pointed out on spiked: ‘Science emerged through an intellectual struggle to free humanity from the tyranny of sacred dogma… science depends on an open-minded and open-ended attitude towards experimentation and the testing out of ideas.’ Nicholson’s efforts to stamp out opposition to those who ‘believe in anthropogenic climate change’ is an expression of dogmatic thinking if ever there was one. In his new role as head of the healthcare section of the Guardian-supported 10:10 climate change campaign, he will at last be in a safe haven, free to spread the green gospel without a colleague batting an eyelid. It’s a shame Nicholson is not satisfied with preaching to the converted; the ruling on his case may make it harder for any workplace to conduct a proper discussion around how to deal with environmental issues, or to choose to ignore them altogether. Nathalie Rothschild is commissioning editor of spiked. Previously on spiked Nathalie Rothschild thought the response to Lord May’s speech on climate change revealed greens’ authoritarian desire to chastise ungreen heretics. Stuart Blackman argued that climate change is not beyond questioning. Brendan O’Neill wondered why environmentalists demanded Martin Durkin’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle be censored because it contained scientific errors, but were happy to accept Al Gore’s mistakes as ‘good lies’. Ian Murray wondered if environmentalism is the opiate of the liberals. Or read more at spiked issue Environment. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7672/
Thursday 5 November 2009 As with every bonfire night in recent years, in the run-up to this evening’s festivities there has been the usual torrent of guidance on safety and how to enjoy ourselves in a responsible manner. Some groups have tried to ban fireworks altogether on the grounds that they are unsafe, but a compromise seems to have been reached. Officially licensed pre-designated zones of fun have been marked out, or, if you adhere to a set of rules, you can have a private display with low-noise fireworks. But for some animal-rights activists, this is not good enough. Instead, they have called for even tighter controls on fireworks on the grounds that they distress pets. In 2003, the Fireworks Bill limited the sale and use of fireworks to certain times of the day and introduced a compulsory permit for public displays. Under-18s are not allowed to buy or handle fireworks and fireworks cannot be used between 11pm and 7am, except on four festivals: Diwali, Guy Fawkes night, New Year’s eve and Chinese New Year, when we are allowed an extra couple of hours of fun. The 2003 Act also introduced criminal sanctions for contravention of fireworks regulations – an offence punishable on summary conviction by up to six months’ imprisonment or by a fine of up to £5,000. The 2003 bill was celebrated by the Animal Welfare Fireworks Coalition, led by the RSPCA, who had handed 75,000 signatures to parliament demanding that the noise levels of fireworks be reduced to 95 decibels - about the same as a house door slamming (1). In 2004, an amendment to the bill settled on 120 decibels as the limit for private displays (2). Bill Tynan, the Labour MP who introduced the Act, did so on the grounds of protecting animals from distress, as did his colleague Rob Marris in 2008 when he sought to get the noise level down to the RSPCA-approved 95 decibels (3). In other words, the UK law already seems pretty tight, but for animal welfarists, it does not go far enough. The UK group Ban the Bang! wants to restrict public fireworks displays to Guy Fawkes day, New Year’s eve and Diwali. They think fireworks should only be available for purchase in the two weeks prior to these festivals and they should be bang-free, ground-based and have a dispersal range of no more than two metres. Under Ban the Bang!’s proposals, each British household would also be able to apply for one special party license per year, which would allow them to purchase fireworks from licensed shops. Professionally organised public displays would have to abide by a string of rules, including a max noise threshold and being confined to open, designated areas in order to protect wildlife. Displays should, Ban the Bang! argues, be a minimum distance of around 1.5 km from rural habitat areas such as trees, woodlands and heathlands, and at least 2 km from stables, zoos and farm animal locations (4). Despite all this, Ban the Bang! insists it is not a killjoy organisation because, it says, you can still have visual fireworks on the ground. But there is no doubt that without the loud rockets, big bangs and massive, thrilling, colourful, sky-high explosions something will be lost. And that something is the fun. So what about the animals? Isn’t it worth reining in people’s fun if it means ensuring our pets’ welfare? There are several accounts of animals having suffered or died as a consequence of being distressed by fireworks. For instance, there was the story headlined ‘Family nightmare as dog dies of fear “in war zone”’ (5). It involved a dog on a chain who panicked and asphyxiated herself. It’s a sad story, but in no way does it justify a clampdown on fireworks. Instead, pet owners should be urged to keep their dogs loose during firework displays. My own dog Fern often gets distressed when there are bangs, but she just goes upstairs and hides under the bed until it’s over. There’s no real problem. Another story involved a rare parrot who was spooked by fireworks and thrashed itself to death (6). According to a spokesman, ‘Any excuse for a holiday, and it’s like Baghdad out here’. But again this is not an argument for banning fireworks, it only points to the need for better sound-proofed enclosures for protected species. If pets are kept indoors and if their needs are catered for by their owners, the problem of fireworks causing them distress fades away. They get over it. There are also techniques to train a pet to get used to loud bangs. And if this fails, there’s always the option of getting tranquillisers prescribed by the vet. Essentially, the concern of animal welfare is simply not strong enough to justify further controls of fireworks. As Ban the Bang! itself points out, ‘even the sight of noiseless fireworks can cause pets to run away and get lost’ (7). In other words, pets can freak out at anything and so the obsession with noisy fireworks is totally irrational. The whole idea of animal distress is anthropomorphic – it projects qualities associated with human subjectivity on to the animal realm. Animal rights activists often compare animals’ reactions to fireworks to war trauma. But when people hide and quake from a bombing raid, they are frightened because they might die or lose their family and friends, their home, and their job; an animal can’t worry about such human things. It can’t even think ‘I might die’ since it lacks awareness of what ‘I’, ‘might’ and ‘die’ involve. Humans are distressed by the brute sound of bombs or earthquakes because of their consequences. By contrast, animals are scared of bangs because they do not understand what is going on and cannot be reasoned with. If we go along with the misguided proposals of groups like Ban the Bang!, then we could conceivably soon see fireworks users convicted under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act, which makes it an offence to cause any unnecessary suffering to any domestic or captive animals. The penalty on conviction is either imprisonment for up to 51 weeks or a fine of up to £20,000, or both. A pet’s distress is an issue only for its owner, not society. So let’s send these killjoy attacks on loud, noisy, colourful festivities off with a bang. Barry Curtis blogs for Independent Minds here. Previously on spiked In 2001 Jonathan Calder wondered whether our obsession with health and safety is ruining bonfire night? Brendan O’Neill asked why Britain is scared of Halloween? Munira Mirza looked at the truth behind stories about banning Christmas. Elsewhere, Patrick West criticised the anthropomorphism of nature programmes. And Stuart Derbyhsire pointed out that humans are more important than animals. Or read more at spiked issue Moern life. (1) Ban fireworks say animal groups, CBBC Newsround, 4 November 2003 (2) See Fireworks Legislation - Safety and Anti-social Use (3) See Fireworks Act 2003 (Amendment), House of Commons Hansard Debates, 5 March 2008 (4) See the Ban the Bang! campaign on the Looking-Glass website (5) Family nightmare as dog dies of fear ‘in war zone’, Northern Territory News, 3 july 2009 (6) Rare bird, spooked by fireworks, thrashes itself to death, Palm Beach Post, 1 January 2009
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7673/
Thursday 5 November 2009 Since being established nearly six years ago, the Independent Monitoring Commission has been regularly reporting to the British and Irish governments on republican activity in Northern Ireland. Its latest report struck an ominous tone: ‘The overall level of dissident [republican] activity was markedly higher than we have seen since we first met in late 2003.’ Unsurprisingly, this recent surge in republican activity has led many in Northern Ireland to wonder just who the ‘dissidents’ are, who they represent, and what they want. Irish affairs have dropped off the British press’s radar since the Real IRA’s headline-grabbing killing of two British soldiers and the subsequent assassination of a police officer by the Continuity IRA in March this year. But that doesn’t mean nothing has been happening. So-called ‘dissident’ republicans have planted several bombs, including a number of huge, 600-pound devices, and most recently a car bomb that injured the partner of a police officer. Continuing action by republican dissidents has resulted in widespread criticism from all quarters. Condemnations have been issued by Unionists and the British and Irish governments, of course, but also from within the republican movement. Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, said the various IRAs still intent on fighting the war with Britain were ‘traitors to the island of Ireland’. Yet for all the fearmongering headlines and public condemnations, republican microgroups remain small, ill-supported outfits with little influence. So why do they generate such widespread concern? The representatives of republican microgroups reject the label ‘dissident’. I recently spoke to Republican Sinn Féin representative Geraldine Taylor, who was adamant that it was Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA who were the dissidents (1). ‘We in Republican Sinn Féin are the republican movement’, she told me. Taylor’s claim is not as outlandish as it might sound. True, the vast majority of republicans support the Sinn Féin led by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, but there are other measures by which such matters are judged. Republican Sinn Féin (RSF) was founded in 1986 by a group of republican traditionalists who walked out of the party ard fheis (conference) on a point of principle. Led by former Sinn Féin president and one-time IRA chief-of-staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and IRA army council member Dáithí Ó Conaill, the dissenters’ objection was simple: Sinn Féin had decided to take its seats in the Dáil, Ireland’s parliament, a move they saw as the beginning of a slide into reformism and accommodation with Britain. Traditionally, republicans have rejected as illegitimate not only the Northern Irish state but also the Southern one, which they see as a betrayal of the Irish Republic founded in 1919. According to ‘republican legitimists’, the Second Dáil, the parliament founded in the immediate post-revolutionary period, passed its authority not to what was to become the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland), but to the Army Council of the IRA. It is from this fact that the IRA’s traditional claim to be the legitimate government of Ireland springs. The dissidents in 1986 claimed that Sinn Féin had broken its own rules and that the decision to recognise the current Dáil could only be taken by first amending the party constitution. Having lost the battle, the dissidents founded – or refounded, as they see it – Republican Sinn Féin. Republican legitimism is a pretty geeky issue, only of interest to policy wonks, history nerds and, of course, republicans. Depending on how one looks at things the ‘legitimate’ mantle of republicanism could fall, not to the RSF, but to Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour, the rump of the Workers’ Party or Sinn Féin – in fact, virtually every party in Ireland other than the Unionists and Greens is descended in some way from the IRA. For those who care about such things, RSF’s claim is probably the most convincing. In addition to the Continuity IRA, linked to Republican Sinn Féin, there are two other IRAs intent on reigniting the war with Britain: the Real IRA, infamous for the 1998 Omagh bomb, which was formed by disgruntled members of the Provisional IRA in 1997, and Óglaigh na hÉireann (the Irish name for all putative IRAs and Ireland’s defence forces), founded in 2006 by ex-members of the Continuity IRA. No doubt all these groups share a desire to be seen as the ‘actual’ IRA. What they also share, however, is the romantic delusion that being the ‘real republicans’ is enough to justify a renewed military campaign. Legitimism is not enough to sustain a serious political campaign, let alone the military one that the republican microgroups appear intent on running. The turmoil in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s and 1970s meant that the IRA enjoyed genuine popular support – a fact that tends to be ignored in recent historical discussion of the era. Facing not only discrimination but loyalist pogroms and open assaults from the state in the form of the RUC and the paramilitary police force known as the ‘B Specials’, the Catholic community turned to the IRA for defence. This ‘defenderism’ gradually mutated into open support of revolution, thanks in part to the British state’s heavy-handedness and its unending ability to misjudge Irish affairs. Today, support for revolution, violent or otherwise, has almost entirely dissipated. Sinn Féin overtook the reformist SDLP at the polls not by promising a new Republic, but by better articulating the demands of the republican community within the British polity: equality, representation and a dash of cultural recognition. In essence, it beat the SDLP at its own game. Since then the IRA has been at best irrelevant, at worst a nuisance, to a Sinn Féin leadership that has comfortably settled down into government. The IRA’s ceasefire, which held since 1997, and its decommissioning of arms in 2005 were simply the endpoints of the logical process that began in earnest with recognising the Dáil in 1986. The problem with legitimism is that it is itself, arguably, illegitimate. In a democratic republic, something all Irish parties other than Unionists either claim Ireland already is or aspires to be, popular support is a must. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a hard left republican group which made no claims to the ancient heritage of republicanism despite being founded in a split from the similarly Moscow-oriented Official IRA of the 1970s, recently demonstrated this fact – by giving up. The INLA has been on ceasefire since 1998 when it stated: ‘It is now time to silence the guns and allow the working classes the time and the opportunity to advance their demands and their needs.’ This despite the group viewing the Irish peace process as unworkable and sectarian. Martin McMonagle, a senior member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the INLA’s political allies, told me recently that the group wanted to engage in wider political action: ‘It’s about the primacy of politics, [we want] to challenge the status-quo and [the INLA standing down will] allow us to build alliances.’ What the INLA seems to recognise, which the various mini-IRAs don’t, is that there is no possibility of attracting popular support in Ireland, North or South, to a renewed campaign of violence – and support is essential for any group that styles itself as the representative of the people. Without it they risk ending up as isolated fringe groups who perform unpopular, and often vicious, stunts – like the German hippy terrorists Baader-Meinhof (2). Writing in the aftermath of the Masserene barracks attack earlier this year, spiked editor Brendan O’Neill made just this claim, saying: ‘The Real IRA and the Continuity IRA are zombie movements. Their violence is better seen, not as the latest manifestation of physical-force Irish republicanism, but as an Irish variant of contemporary nihilism, of the rising trend [...] for executing violent acts in order to express anger, alienation, bitterness, frustration.’ (3) Republican commentator Liam Ó Ruaric took issue with O’Neill’s analysis, saying that the traditionalists are simply attempting to remind the British that the settlement is not a done deal. Complaining about O’Neill’s take, he told me: ‘In 2007, Oxford professor Paul Bew noted how, from a military point of view, Robert Emmett’s 1803 insurrection was a small and sordid affair. However its symbolic value was significant, meaning that the “nullity of its short-time effect” was different from its “long-term impact”. The 1803 insurrection was above all a blow against the British government’s policy of “normalisation” and “amnesia” following the Act of Union. ‘Armed actions by traditionalist republicans today follow a similar logic. They do not throw British armed forces into the sea but set limits upon the British government’s ability to “normalise” the Six Counties and constrain the working of an internal settlement. Even if they are a small and sometimes sordid affair, they have a symbolic value of setting limits on current normalisation and amnesia, meaning that, as was noted in the Belfast Telegraph recently, there is “relative” pacification – and thus not absolute.’ But the key question to be asked about the various IRAs is not whether they have a significant capability to inflict damage – clearly they do – but whether or not they have any support. Do they express something, reflect something, win people’s backing, or are they ‘legitimised’ merely by long-gone historic documents and debates? Are they simply ghosts from history correcting the wayward political reality of today? RSF’s Geraldine Taylor claims Sinn Féin is losing support in the republican community: ‘We knew it was going to be a long and slow process to take back control [of the republican movement] from the Provisionals, [but] people are now beginning to question Sinn Féin, support us and lose their fear of the Provisionals’, she told me. But there is little evidence to support such a claim. The situation for Northern Catholics is not remotely like it was in 1969 and while some disgruntled activists are abandoning Sinn Féin, particularly in the Republic, those who leave tend to do so over policy matters and either move into small socialist groups or abandon politics altogether, exhausted and demoralised. If any great numbers have taken up arms and (re)turned to the bosom of (another) IRA they have yet to do anything to show this. Some have speculated that the microgroups’ plan is to drive the British Army back on to the streets of Ireland, thus inflaming republican sentiment and reigniting a full-scale conflict. Anthony McIntyre, a former member of the Provisional IRA who is now very much a republican dissident but does not support a renewed armed campaign, disagrees: ‘I’m not sure their actions are that thought out – I don’t think there is a strategic logic behind them. Bringing the Brits on to the streets wouldn’t phase them but I don’t think it’s what they’re after’, he told me. ‘I think they probably see the pool settling, and every now and then they’ll throw something into it to create a ripple effect – and embarrass Sinn Féin. They get an obvious enjoyment from Martin McGuinness’s discomfort every time he has to stand beside a British politician and call them traitors. McGuinness would probably like nothing better than for the SAS to shoot them all.’ For McIntyre the blame for the dissident actions lies with the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin – but not in the way that hardline Unionists often claim: ‘The Provos need to come out and say their campaign was wrong and that they were the product of British state policy in 1969, not of ideology. Otherwise you get into a situation where these groups can justify continuing by pointing to the campaigns of yesterday’, he said. Perhaps any future there is for republicanism lies with unarmed political groups such as the nascent socialist republican party Éirígí. Yet the Irish public, angry as it is with the economic policy in both jurdisdictions, has shown no more appetite for socialism than it has for a revived republicanism. Jason Walsh is a journalist based in Dublin. He is the editor of forth, a new online current affairs magazine. Previously on spiked
(1) See ‘Rebels without a cause’, by Jason Walsh, Irish Examiner, 17 September 2009 and Could IRA splinter groups bring back Northern Ireland’s Troubles?, by Jason Walsh, Christian Science Monitor, 23 October 2009 (2) The Baader Meinhof Complex: hippy terror, by Rob Killick, 13 November 2008 (3) The Zombie IRA, by Brendan O’Neill, 10 March 2009
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7674/
Wednesday 4 November 2009 Britain’s war in Afghanistan goes from bad to worse, the Lisbon Treaty consolidates the unaccountable power of the Euro-bureaucracy, the UK economy refuses to climb out of recession even on paper, never mind in reality, and the government pours billions more into keeping the banks afloat. So, which big issue is the British political class obsessed with? You guessed it – MPs’ expenses and living arrangements. The report finally published today by Sir Christopher Kelly, the parliamentary standards commissioner, recommends that in the future MPs should be prevented from claiming mortgage interest on second homes, instead made to stay in selected rented flats whilst in London (and prevented from claiming even for that if they live within an hour of Westminster), and barred from claiming expenses for employing members of their own families. To anybody normal outside the Westminster ‘village’, these must seem petty issues of no real interest. Yet the way that the endless wrangling over MPs’ expenseszzz has yet again come to dominate the political agenda does raise some bigger and less boring questions. Such as, who should decide whether an MP is fit to represent the public – the voters or unelected civil servants such as Sir Christopher and Sir Thomas Legg, the official running the probe into past expenses claims? And when it comes to holding MPs to account, should they be judged on whether they employ their wife, or whether they have presided over mass unemployment in the UK? Should their position be questioned because of what they have claimed in expenses – or because they have claimed political leadership in society and made a complete duck-house of it? Parliamentary democracy is supposed to mean the country is run by our elected representatives. It is also meant to entail presenting the electorate – that’s us – with a choice of political programmes for the future. The manner in which the expenses nonsense has taken over political life threatens both those sides of the democratic system. Of course, parliamentary democracy is a very imperfect form and nobody should have any illusions about its ability to control the social power of capitalism and the state machine. But the rule of parliamentary democracy is far better than the undemocratic alternative system now being mooted. In short, it is better for politics to be decided by a bad but democratically elected MP with questionable expenses than a squeaky-clean appointed bureaucrat with impeccable credentials, answerable to nobody. The issue here is not the detail of the proposals for expenses reform. Who really cares whether MPs buy or rent, or pay their wives to answer letters? No, the trouble is the assumptions that lay behind this entire furore and the consequences for democratic politics. Political accountability is in danger of being replaced by accountancy, political debate by book-keeping disputes, the clash of election manifestos by the spectacle of candidates pointing to one another’s claim forms, democracy by quangocracy. It is bad enough that the lifestyles of MPs should take over the agenda, so that politics becomes an incestuous affair of politicians talking about themselves. But now we are informed that this issue is actually so important to our system of government that those untrustworthy MPs and their ill-informed electorate must be excluded from it. So ministers have said there will be no parliamentary vote on the proposed reforms. Instead it is all to be left in the hands of Sir Philip, Sir Thomas and Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, newly appointed chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority that will implement the proposals. Their pursuit of MPs is all of course done in the name of the people, playing to the public gallery as it is imagined in the pages of the Daily Mail. In reality it is more of a punitive exercise by senior officials against uppity MPs, a bout of entirely intra-establishment feuding. Political life in Britain is now such a closed elite affair that even rank-and-file MPs are to be kept out of it, while the public are reduced to booing spectators. It is not that we at spiked want people to have a say in the disputes over mortgage interest and family employees. There are far more important things to talk about. But there will be no prospect of that while politics is increasingly left in the hands of the state elite. The way that the expenses scandal has both come to dominate politics and been removed from political debate is a sign of the times in which the electorate are increasingly excluded from politics and offered no genuine choices. The expenses issue has touched public nerve over recent months as a symbol of the isolation and authority crisis of the political class. But if we want political change we will need to attack more than symbols and start a debate about the big issues facing society. Nobody wants to defend MPs today, and that includes spiked. Not because we think they are all crooked or corrupt, but because they have brought this on themselves through the degradation of political debate over more than a decade. It was the political class – first New Labour and then the new Conservaties – who de-politicised politics by making ‘sleaze’ and scandal and ‘character’ and behaviour the standard by which politicians are judged, rather than by their beliefs and political actions. And when we ask who voted for Sir Christopher Kelly, well, in a way they did, through their spineless capitulation to the march of the bureaucrats. It would be no great loss to get rid of most MPs along with Kelly and his ilk. But that should be a matter for the mass of voters, not the members of an elite committee. There is a pressing need for a General Election in Britain now, to shake up political life. The trouble is that in this climate we face the depressing prospect of an election campaign largely dominated by expenses and all of that, where every sitting MP who dares to stand for re-election is pilloried for his cleaning bills more than his principles, and those bidding to replace them make no political pledges other than a promise to live in piety and poverty like St Francis of Assisi. If all of this is enough to make you feel like sticking your head in a gas oven bought from John Lewis on expenses, support spiked’s Vote for Politics campaign to give us a choice worth making and re-enfranchise the electorate. Mick Hume is editor-at-large of spiked.
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7670/
Wednesday 4 November 2009 The message of The Cove, the highly-praised, award-winning documentary about dolphin slaughter, is spectacularly simple: dolphins are freedom-loving, beautiful and intelligent creatures, while human beings – especially of the Japanese persuasion – are cruel, robotic and murderous. You know this instantly because every time the film shows a dolphin, the scene is wonderfully lit and there is sweeping violin music playing in the background, and every time it shows a Jap the scene tends to be darkly lit and the music is even darker. And as Homer Simpson once said while watching TV: ‘But Marge, that man must be evil. Just listen to the music.’ Not since Mr Osato accidentally killed a beautiful woman with poison that was intended for James Bond in You Only Live Twice have Japanese people been depicted so one-dimensionally on celluloid. Directed by Louie Psihoyos, The Cove tells the story of a bunch of American hippies – adrenalin addicts, scuba divers, dolphin-trainers-turned-dolphin-liberators, various animal-rights types – attempting to expose the slaughter of dolphins that takes place in Taiji, a small town in Wakayama, Japan, every year. There’s a cove in Taiji which each September is turned into a bloody, watery grave for around 2,300 dolphins, slaughtered, usually with hooks, for their meat and blubber. Annually 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed by the Japanese. As with so many documentaries these days (I blame Nick Broomfield), The Cove is actually a film about making a film. It shows the filmmakers having run-ins with stiff, interfering Taiji officials who definitely do not want anyone going near ‘the cove’; it shows them climbing hills in the dead of night to plant video cameras disguised as rocks so that they can film the cove-based slaughter; and of course it shows them looking shocked and shedding tears as they watch their own footage of the killing of the dolphins, because what’s the point of making a film about how much you care about dolphins in contrast to those evil Japanese if you don’t show yourself on camera, actually caring? The Cove is heavily laden with morality. It trowels on the moral superiority of the American outsiders to the cruel Taiji villagers, only this is not the old-fashioned presumed superiority of ‘civilised America’ over ‘uncivilised Japan’ but intriguingly the superiority of free-lovin’, Sixties-influenced, countercultural America over stiff, conformist, animal-hating Japan. The documentary-makers and their assistants are shown as wild and open-minded: their potted life stories are accompanied by footage of them leaping out of aeroplanes or swimming with whales. The Japanese are depicted as suppressed and unquestioning: we’re shown speeded-up footage of hordes of Japanese people walking through garishly-lit, buzzing city centres, their travels to work or home crudely reduced to pointless, super-fast marching through the streets, and we’re told that there’s a saying in Japan that ‘if a nail is sticking up, pound it down’ – in other words, Japanese culture is stultifyingly automaton. Where old racist America depicted the Japanese as rats, contemporary countercultural America depicts them as members of a rat race. The Taiji fishermen – sorry, the hook-wielding crazy killers of beautiful dolphins – come off the worst. The film dehumanises them to an alarming degree. Where the interviews with Japanese officials are subtitled, the shouting of the local fishermen and security guards around the cove as they try to prevent the filmmakers from entering is sometimes left un-subtitled, so that viewers are left with the distinct, and distinctly queasy, impression that these are strange and peculiar men speaking in a strange and peculiar tongue. They bellow brutish-sounding words into the filmmakers’ faces. The deprivation of subtitles, of context and meaning, of the fishermen’s humanity, leaves them looking like mad ‘murderers’ with no words worth hearing. Japanese politics is depicted as a uniquely slippery affair. The film covers the deliberations of the International Whaling Commission, the body set up in 1946 to monitor and control the hunting of whales for food and scientific purposes (the IWC doesn’t cover dolphins). The various small, mostly black nations that support Japan at IWC meetings – for example Antigua, Dominica and St Lucia – are depicted as ‘whoring’ themselves (one interviewee’s actual words) to a silver-haired, smooth-talking Japanese official. Yes, Japan invests in these small countries in return for their pro-whaling support. But there is nothing specifically and suspiciously ‘Japanese’ about such behaviour – global affairs are dominated by deal-making and support-seeking between powerful and less powerful nations. For me the most shocking thing about the IWC footage in The Cove was the sight of various representatives of white Western and white Pacific nations, which have no tradition of, or interest in, hunting whales, lecturing the Japanese for being dishonest and barbaric. Yet this – the increasing use of the whaling issue by Australia and New Zealand in particular as a stick with which to beat Japan – is depicted in the film as something heroic, while the orientation of small, poor nations to Japan’s case is depicted as disgusting, sinister, the work of ‘whores’. The Cove unwittingly shines a light on what lies behind today’s cult of the dolphin: a discomfort with humanity itself and with the gains of modernity. Dolphins are the favoured beast of the animal rights lobby because they are presumed to be as intelligent as human beings, possibly even more intelligent says one contributor to the film. They are more spiritual, at peace and caring than we human beings (well, not hippy human beings, but the other kind, over there). As one of the many, many recent books on the wonders of ‘dolphin culture’ argues: ‘While we humans have devoted our creativity to the technological achievements possible when one has chosen thumb over flipper, they [dolphins] have devoted their vast intelligence to the realms of the heart: community, pleasure, play, touch.’ (1) It is this that motivates the animal-rights people who made The Cove: an estrangement from humanity; a belief that we have corrupted ourselves and our souls and our capacity to deal with the ‘realms of the heart’ through our soulless modernisation of society. Like a crazy updated version of the mermaid myth, they see in dolphins the ‘lost ideals’ of the simple life they would like human beings still to be living. So the contrast in The Cove is not a terribly crude one between civilised white people and uncivilised yellow people, but rather is between feeling, emotionally intelligent dolphins (and their human champions) and overly-modern, too-speedy, light-flickering Japan. Dolphins play the role of the simple life; Japan is set up as the bad guy of modernity. The truth however is that those supposedly weird fishermen in Taiji do not stab and chop up dolphins for fun – they do it to make food, to make things, to make a living, to provide for their families. There is infinitely more humanity in their slaughter of the dolphins than there is in a film which depicts a species of animal as being superior to a nation of human beings. Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. His satire on the green movement – Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas – is published by Hodder & Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Watch the trailer for The Cove here: Read on: spiked-issue: Film (1) Quoted in Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacy, John Knight, Berg Publishers, 2005 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7669/
Wednesday 4 November 2009 Once again, the most privileged care in the community scheme in the entire world was let down by one of its patients being allowed to interact with members of the public. The only surprise was that it wasn’t Prince Philip emptying his brain through his gob, but the ruddy-faced fruit-cake of his loins, Prince Edward. There he was, tanning his pate in Sydney during the course of a trip to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of young persons’ CV booster, the Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) award scheme, when he was asked about the death of 17-year-old Australian David Iredale in 2006. Given that a significant part of the DofE award scheme involves relatively unsupervised trekking across the countryside for several days, the question was relevant. Having got lost and then run out of water, Iredale had died during a similarly unsupervised ramble in the New South Wales Blue Mountain region. Edward responded by drawing an analogy with the death of 16-year-old Ray Guyatt during a DofE training exercise in 1961. Far from putting people off, he said, it improved the scheme’s appeal: ‘Its reputation among young people was, “Wow, this is serious”.’ In other words, the risk attracted young people. ‘The sense of adventure’, he continued, ‘the sense of excitement, that it gave you that sort of risk element, young people are like that still; that sense of adventure, that sense that [death] is possible. Obviously we don’t want that to happen, certainly it’s not our intention… It was just that psychology about what makes young people tick.’ It’s not difficult to see why some might have deemed Edward’s response ‘crass’ or ‘insensitive’. He seemed to be saying that a teenager’s death was good PR. And this is not helped by him being who he is – so not only was it ‘crass’ and ‘insensitive’, it was also a ‘gaffe’, a word rarely used without its ‘royal’ prefix. Hence the Independent was quick to slip it into a right royal list of ‘gaffes’, describing it as a ‘another royal blunder down under’ akin to Philip’s ‘throwing spears’ jibe to Aborigines. And if that wasn’t enough, Edward’s own history rather undermines his hymn to thrill-seeking. This, after all, is a man so resilient and adventurous that he dropped out of the Royal Marines after serving just four months to pursue a career in the theatre. Andy McNab he is not. But if you look beyond the clumsiness of what was said, and the unsuitability of who said it, was it really such a shocking thing to say? In fact, did Edward not actually have a point? Surely an activity does become more interesting, more appealing, if there is some element of risk involved. If you remove that element you divest an activity of consequence, the sense that it matters. And that’s where the true shock value of Edward’s rambling response about rambling lies. In societies in which keeping young people safe – safe from strangers, safe from traffic, safe from failure – is paramount, to state that some things are more important than being safe, such as excitement or adventure, appears well and truly as a bit of a gaffe. The cosseting of children happens from an early age. In 1970, 80 per cent of primary school children walked to school by themselves. Now it’s nine per cent. In 1970, on average children would play up to 840 metres away from their homes. By 1997 few would venture beyond 280 metres (1). Now the doorstep would be the boundary of a child’s existence. Playing outside, walking to school, speaking to adults – all of these everyday activities are now sources of parental anxiety in relation to children. So, while there’s little doubt that children’s lives have never been more safe, or better still, more regulated, they’ve also never been more stultifyingly boring. And if you breed unadventurous kids, you’re going to get unadventurous adults. This isn’t just about thrill-seeking, adrenaline-rushing activities. It’s about giving young people the space to develop, to begin taking responsibility for themselves, to forge their own relationships, to learn how to get on and how not to get on. Or as it used to be known: growing up. And the only way to do that is to let children and teenagers start exploring the world on their own terms, whether that’s playing in a park 900 metres away, or trudging around the Lake District in early February, camping on Farmland and shitting behind dry-stone walls. That there’s risk involved is no bad thing. It means that there’s autonomy involved, too, and that young people are beginning to grasp how they themselves ought to live in the world. There is, of course, more to youthful experimentation than the DofE. Like elocution lessons and membership of Amnesty International, there’s something cloyingly middle-class about a scheme often seen as little more than a way of fleshing out a university application. But the principle matters. Entrusting young people with their own lives is important. That that means they might mess up, that they might get hurt, that they might not get things their own way, is a necessary part of becoming an adult. The alternative is a society of big kids. Tim Black is senior writer at spiked. Previously on spiked Rob Lyons defended spontaneity. Helene Guldberg said we shouldn’t blame parents for ‘cotton-wool kids’. Angus Kennedy wasn’t keen on the UK government’s new risk advisory committee. Stuart Waiton explained how risk aversion is driving children away from swimming pools in Scotland. Or read more at spiked issue Risk. (1) See Rearing children in captivity, BBC News, 4 June 2007 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7668/
Tuesday 3 November 2009 A new survey has revealed that out of 12 countries surveyed for the Climate Confidence monitor, Britain is the ‘least concerned’ about global warming. Only 15 per cent of Britons are worried about the worst crisis mankind has ever faced. If anything shows the dangers of what some people term ‘free debate’, but what is really the spread of cancerous ideas in the British body politic, it is surely these findings. Before the UN Copenhagen conference on climate change in December, we need a focused, concerted effort to remove from public life the language of Denialese.  Imagine waking up to articles like that every morning, without anybody around to put the opposite case. Imagine a world in which there was only a flimsy commitment to free speech. Where misanthropic ideas went unchallenged. Where there was no one who consistently – day in, day out – put the case for freedom, Enlightenment and serious, grown-up debate. In other words, imagine a world without spiked. Well, it’s a very real possibility if we don’t raise £20,000 by the end of the year. And who knows who would take the place of our oasis of sanity on the World Wide Web – more misanthropes, perhaps, or another publication that believes in ‘free speech’ for some people but not for others. If you value spiked, if you value our daily salvo of Enlightened thinking and our ceaseless struggle against fearmongering, priggishness and the politics of low horizons, then please donate to our fund-drive TODAY. spiked has no wealthy benefactor and no sugar daddy. We rely on our readers and our readers alone to keep us afloat. So if you would like to see the normal spiked service resume tomorrow and into the next decade – that is, our service to free-thinking, humanist argument and rigorous debate – then please dig deep and click here now. Because a world without spiked ...well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Brendan O’Neill, Editor reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7665/
Tuesday 3 November 2009 Such are the general levels of ignorance today that the recent news that Britain’s population is expected to rise to 70million by 2029 was shrugged off by most people as an unimportant fact or something we can do nothing about. Yet add into the mix the fact that the world’s population is expected to grow from 6.7 billion to 9 billion in the next 40 years, and it’s pretty clear we are facing a population timebomb that will make the literal bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like sideshows in the circus of human suffering. Tough measures – far tougher than China’s – are required to deal with this spectre of spawning. Imagine waking up to articles like that every morning, without anybody around to put the opposite case. Imagine a world in which there was only a flimsy commitment to free speech. Where misanthropic ideas went unchallenged. Where there was no one who consistently – day in, day out – put the case for freedom, Enlightenment and serious, grown-up debate. In other words, imagine a world without spiked. Well, it’s a very real possibility if we don’t raise £20,000 by the end of the year. And who knows who would take the place of our oasis of sanity on the World Wide Web – more misanthropes, perhaps, or another publication that believes in ‘free speech’ for some people but not for others. If you value spiked, if you value our daily salvo of Enlightened thinking and our ceaseless struggle against fearmongering, priggishness and the politics of low horizons, then please donate to our fund-drive TODAY. spiked has no wealthy benefactor and no sugar daddy. We rely on our readers and our readers alone to keep us afloat. So if you would like to see the normal spiked service resume tomorrow and into the next decade – that is, our service to free-thinking, humanist argument and rigorous debate – then please dig deep and click here now. Because a world without spiked ...well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Brendan O’Neill, Editor reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7666/
Tuesday 3 November 2009 The recent removal of grossly obese children from a family home in Dundee, Scotland, was a great leap forward for the war on obesity. Following in the footsteps of various American examples of fat children rescue operations, the Dundee social services decided that the kids would be safer in the care of the authorities rather than in their burger-strewn home. Yet this doesn’t go nearly far enough. Parents who smoke are also killing their kids. Parents who drink are poisoning their kids with second-hand drunkenness. And parents who swear are turning out the worst kind of children of all: feral f-worders. Imagine waking up to articles like that every morning, without anybody around to put the opposite case. Imagine a world in which there was only a flimsy commitment to free speech. Where misanthropic ideas went unchallenged. Where there was no one who consistently – day in, day out – put the case for freedom, Enlightenment and serious, grown-up debate. In other words, imagine a world without spiked. Well, it’s a very real possibility if we don’t raise £20,000 by the end of the year. And who knows who would take the place of our oasis of sanity on the World Wide Web – more misanthropes, perhaps, or another publication that believes in ‘free speech’ for some people but not for others. If you value spiked, if you value our daily salvo of Enlightened thinking and our ceaseless struggle against fearmongering, priggishness and the politics of low horizons, then please donate to our fund-drive TODAY. spiked has no wealthy benefactor and no sugar daddy. We rely on our readers and our readers alone to keep us afloat. So if you would like to see the normal spiked service resume tomorrow and into the next decade – that is, our service to free-thinking, humanist argument and rigorous debate – then please dig deep and click here now. Because a world without spiked ...well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Brendan O’Neill, Editor
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7667/
Monday 2 November 2009 The ‘mass revolt’ of drug experts following the sacking of Professor David Nutt from the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs shows that scientific experts are becoming a menace to democracy. The presumption made by Nutt and his numerous supporters in the science and media worlds is that his cool-headed, oh-so-wise, fact-based expertise on drugs should take precedence over what one newspaper snootily describes as ‘political weakness’, ‘prejudice’ and ‘the public mood’ (1). No way. Whatever you think of the government’s drug policy (I’m opposed to it), it is essential that these issues are discussed and decided by democratic institutions rather than collections of experts. Professor Nutt was turfed out of the advisory council on Friday, by the New Labour home secretary Alan Johnson, after he criticised the government’s policy on drugs. He argued that cannabis in particular is no more medically harmful than drinking alcohol and therefore it made no sense to label it a Class B drug (that is, a dangerous drug that can earn its dealers tough prison sentences). Two more experts have since resigned from the advisory council, giving rise to what one newspaper describes (rather fancifully) as a ‘mass revolt’ in which experts intend to express their ‘horror and disgust’ with Johnson’s stance on drugs and treatment of Nutt (2). There has also been a very public shouting match between Nutt and Johnson, with the former accusing the latter of unacceptably ‘interfering in the scientific process’ (3). The question that springs to my mind is this: who the hell does Professor Nutt think he is? Of course it is wrong for the government to sack people for speaking their minds (though I have a modicum of sympathy with Johnson’s argument that you ‘cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy’) (4). And I have no doubt that Professor Nutt’s position on drugs – that some, especially cannabis, are not as dangerous as the government has made out – is more correct than the government’s position. But that should not detract from the fact that only the democratic process, and not any tiny revolting clique of scientists, should determine public policy on an issue that pertains to choice, freedom and morality. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, theme of Nutt’s media-supported revolt against the government – in which he presents himself as the principled liberator encouraging other drugs experts to ‘not continue under the current regime’ – is that expertise is superior to old-fashioned ideological debate and politicking. One editorial argues that ‘prejudice and political weakness have rejected scientific facts’ and accuses the government of ‘bowing to the public mood’ – the sin of all sins in the eyes of experts and their supporters who would prefer that policy was ‘evidence-based’ rather than influenced by flimsy and ignorant public opinion (5). Here it is assumed, firstly that the public are instinctively illiberal on issues such as drugs, and secondly that it should therefore be left to experts – intelligent, aloof, not linked to any filthy political interests or ideological movements – to guide policy in the right direction. This springs from the contemporary tyranny of expertise. Increasingly, and the New Labour government has played a key role in encouraging this phenomenon, the political realm is being colonised by experts, the purveyors of wisdom on everything from climate change to education to drugs whose views are considered more reliable and robust than those of an ill-informed public. This is very bad for democracy. It excludes the public from serious decision-making and it reduces debate to a discussion of technical, measurable things rather than more profound questions of morality and freedom. For example, one scientific expert who supports Nutt says: ‘Scientific data and their independent interpretation underpin evidence-based policymaking – and nobody rational could possibly want a government based on any other type of policymaking.’ (6) Really? Well, I consider myself perfectly rational yet I am utterly opposed to the fetishised notion of ‘evidence-based policymaking’. An issue like drugs, for example – an important social and political issue – should not be decided on the basis of laboratory tests or scientific surveys showing that Drug A causes a similar level of bodily harm as alcohol but a lower level of bodily harm than Drug B. This issue is not reducible to expert-driven, scientific, measurable impacts of harm. What about the morality of taking drugs? The importance of people’s freedom to choose? The question of the drugs subculture and where it springs from? All of these political and social arguments – mere ‘prejudice’ and ‘public mood’ – are elbowed aside in favour of the wisdom of our Scientific Elders. But we should hear and have these arguments. Indeed, it is only through the open, frank and completely public exchange of ideas, ideologies and passions on issues such as drugs that we might arrive at a fully formed and rational public policy. I am outraged by the government’s criminalisation of drugs, not because I think drugs are cool or liberating (I think they’re neither), but because I believe strongly that people should have the freedom to choose what they ingest and how they get their rocks off. Yet scientific expertise is just as much a barrier to freedom as is government morality. If, as one revolting expert says, ‘it is crucial that drugs policy is based on evidence’, and that evidence finds that a certain drug poses a measurable and unacceptable risk of medical harm, then that drug will still be banned. Indeed, the experts’ main motivation in questioning the government’s position on cannabis is not a love of liberty but, as Tim Black argues elsewhere on spiked, a loathing of alcohol, which is seen as being far more measurably harmful (see Why New Labour is so dopey on cannabis). On the basis of evidence and in the name of expertise, scientific and health experts such as the British Medical Association have become key, temperance-style campaigners against the evil booze. The end result of both cut-off government moralising and super-aloof expert deliberations is the same – a deeply patronising campaign to protect the public from themselves. But at least the government moralising, unlike the scientific deliberations, is carried out by an institution that the public can – and probably will – eject from office. It is not only nauseating to hear scientific experts contrast themselves to ideologically-compromised politicians, as if ideology were a bad thing – it is also deeply disingenuous. Scientists can be as prejudiced and ideologically motivated as any politician. They might dress their views up as purely evidence-based expertise but it is frequently driven by their own belief systems. For example, Professor Nutt has spoken not only about the potential medical harm of drugs but the ‘social harm’, too, the question of drugs’ alleged impact on social stability and social wellbeing. ‘Social harm’ is an ideological category, underpinned by ignorance about the various complex factors that drive people’s interest in drugs and a fairly wacky belief that society can be pacified or improved by restricting access to certain substances. And to present such ideology as expertise is to deny the public any real right to consider it and debate it – we’re just not qualified, you see. Of course, the government largely has itself to blame for this state of affairs. Lacking the political conviction or moral authority to lay down its line on drugs (and numerous other issues), and fearful of engaging with the public in any meaningful way, the government has surrounded itself with experts, hoping that their scientific, evidence-based findings will drive everything from education policy to climate-change strategies; indeed, as Nutt has self-servingly pointed out, governments have been surrounding themselves with experts and advisers, especially on the drugs issue, for the past 30 to 40 years. And now the experts are revolting, assuming that their views should take precedence over the views of elected ministers who are too swayed by an ignorant ‘public mood’. In Iran they have ‘religious experts’ who are forever interfering in the political process; here we have ‘scientific experts’ with designs on doing the same. Experts should be treated as a discrete source of information as and when it is suitable, but public policy should be decided through mass debate, passionate argument and, yes, even some ideology. Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. His satire on the green movement – Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas – is published by Hodder & Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Previously on spiked Rob Lyons said drugs should be decriminalised, but not celebrated. Rob Johnston criticised Labour’s schizo drug policy. Neil Davenport called cannabis the political class’ drug of choice. He also asked why everyone loves ‘Dopey’ David Cameron. Jamie Douglass looked at Charles Clarke’s bad trip and drug use in schools. Or read more at spiked issue Drink and drugs. (1) Drugs: Prejudice and political weakness have rejected scientific facts, Observer, 1 November 2009 (2) David Nutt’s sacking causes mass revolt against Alan Johnson, Guardian, 2 November 2009 (3) David Nutt’s sacking causes mass revolt against Alan Johnson, Guardian, 2 November 2009 (4) More experts could quit over drugs sacking, Reuters, 2 November (5) Drugs: Prejudice and political weakness have rejected scientific facts, Observer, 1 November 2009 (6) Delicate role of government advisers, BBC News, 30 October 2009 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7661/
Monday 2 November 2009 There are plenty of good reasons to legalise cannabis: prohibition has done nothing to limit its use; there’s little evidence to suggest it’s any more damaging to one’s health than other legal drugs; and it ought to be up to people themselves to decide how best to live their lives, whether that’s sober or with a joint stuck to the lip. But perhaps the most persuasive reason for decriminalising cannabis is the sheer relief that comes from knowing that one will never have to go through the tedious should-it-be-legalised debate ever again. Unfortunately, given the British state’s bewildering approach to drugs, especially cannabis, such respite looks unlikely. Most recently muddying the waters of the government’s already turbid drugs policy has been Professor David Nutt, who, until he was sacked on Friday, was the government’s chief drugs adviser and head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Earlier this year he was downplaying the risks of Class A drug Ecstasy, comparing it favourably to horse riding; then, last week, in a briefing paper titled Estimating Drug Harms: A Risky Business, he argued that last year’s Home Office decision to give cannabis a B classification, rather than the less punitive C classification it then had, was not based on any good scientific or medical reasoning. In fact, Professor Nutt was unequivocal: ‘Overall, cannabis use does not lead to major health problems.’ (1) It’s all very confusing. Given that the ACMD has been downplaying the harmful effects of cannabis for well over a year, why in the summer of 2008 did then home secretary Jacqui Smith make cannabis a class B drug and, in doing so, reverse her predecessor David Blunkett’s 2004 decision to reduce cannabis’s classification to class C? At the time she justified it in terms of the precautionary principle: ‘Where there is a clear and serious problem, but doubt about the potential harm that will be caused, we must err on the side of caution and protect the public.’ (2) New Labour’s line on cannabis, twisting one way in 2004, twisting the other in 2008, and twisting any way in 2009 is nothing if not perplexing. It’s worth bearing in mind that between 1971 and 2004, various governments were unwavering in their anti-drugs, anti-cannabis stance. The state had a firm line on the weed, and that was that. But under New Labour any state-like resolve seems to have withered with confused and confusing results. There just seems to be no consistent rationale for the changeable legal status of drugs. Hence in 2006, the science select committee went in search of one, using the overarching criterion of harm, principally health-related, but incorporating so-called ‘social harms’, too: drug-induced violence for instance. They discovered, unsurprisingly, that the existing classification system didn’t make much sense in those terms. As the chair of the committee pointed out, the only way to get ‘an accurate and up-to-date classification system’ was to ‘remove the link with penalties and just focus on harm’ (3). Which, given that alcohol was just behind heroin, cocaine, street methadone and barbiturates, and five drug placings ahead of cannabis in the harm league tables, it meant their proposal just confused matters further. Make alcohol illegal? Legalise alcohol and everything below including cannabis, LSD and ecstasy? Or just stick with the nonsensical, arbitrary approach? The internal criticisms of government drug policy have just kept coming. In August last year, Julian Critchley, the former director of the Cabinet Office’s anti-drugs unit, called, incredibly, for the legalisation of drugs. ‘I think what was truly depressing about my time in UKADCU’, he leaked, ‘was that the overwhelming majority of professionals I met, including those from the police, the health service, the government and voluntary sectors held the same view: the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves.’ (4) With anti-drugs unit directors like this, who needs scotch-egg-munching Legalise Dope lobbyists? Nutt’s criticism of the policy of those he was meant to advise, and more importantly whose decisions he was meant to provide with ‘evidence-based’ legitimacy, is just the latest in New Labour’s history of vacillating policy and desperate opportunism. But their approach also betrays something deeper: the inability to say why people should not take drugs, that a life lived without haze is a life lived well. Instead of a moral argument, they have recourse only to the lexicon of harm. Which is why it seems so internally problematic. Nutt and others have argued that the only issue in relation to drugs is the ‘scale and degree’ of potential harm. But that isn’t the only issue; in fact the scale and degree of harm is not even the critical question and would not justify prohibiting certain substances. As Nutt observed earlier this year, horse riding often leaves people injured. Even jogging, the paradigmatic example of healthy living, would not fare too well on the harm scale, putting undue strain on the heart, damaging knees, and annoying other pavement users. Both class C activities if ever there were ones. The problem for the bureaucrats of harm is that one person’s harmful activity is another’s meaningful pursuit. Perhaps someone goes jogging because they want to lose weight. Or maybe they simply enjoy the exertion. The same goes for ingesting certain substances. Perhaps someone smokes dope from time to time because it’s relaxing or fun. Perhaps someone else smokes a lot of dope, or indeed drinks a lot of vodka, because reality at that point just doesn’t bear thinking about. But this longing for oblivion, no matter how destructive it might be, will not be solved by prohibition. The only real answer involves making life worth living. And that’s the problem with the continued criminalisation of drugs. Directionless, and bereft of authority, New Labour can no more say why life ought to be worth living than it could say why drug-taking is wrong. It has no moral or political vision. And without this, prohibition stops making sense. It becomes, like everything else in the contemporary state, a technical matter, a case of calculation and management, in this case the calculation and management of harmful outcomes. Historically, prohibition (in the main, of alcohol) was not the product of administrators, advisers or select committees; it was born of puritanical censure. If hard work was considered to be good, to be proof of one’s faith, then to sin, to reveal oneself as a sinner, was to be unproductive, to backslide, to live debauched and wastefully. Inebriation was disapproved on the grounds of health all right, but moral health, not physical health. It is this belief in the virtue of a productive, active, striving life, exemplified by hedonistic puritans like Benjamin Franklin, that is missing today. While the state might have inherited the legal, coercive form of abstention, it has none of the moral content, none of the belief in the value and virtue of social life. Yet this moral vacuum does not just affect the state – it is reflected in the pro-legalisation, dope-is-great lobby, too. When they can tear themselves away from Space Odyssey 2001, campaigners hail cannabis’s sedative effects as if they were positives. ‘Cannabis is well known for its calming effects in healthy people’, proclaims online collective Hempire: ‘It can help with sufferers from aggressive disorders.’ Elsewhere a pro-cannabis petition on the No.10 website points out that cannabis has the effect of ‘pacifying users [in contrast to] the alcohol-fuelled aggression and violence tackled by police in most UK town centres on a weekend’. As Brendan O’Neill has argued elsewhere, the comparison drawn between drinking alcohol and smoking weed is telling (6). Where drink is talked of in terms of disruption, of anger, of physical confrontation, cannabis is praised for its calming, relaxing, reality-obliterating qualities. This is no vision of the good life; it’s a vision of putting up with life, of ersatz escape, and very real acquiescence. Calling for the legalisation of drugs should not be confused with celebrating them. That drugs can seem so appealing, that a whole venerating culture has been built up around cannabis for instance, rests on a profound disappointment with what a real life ought to, and can, offer. Just as continuing to prohibit drugs will not restore to people’s lives the meaning it has lost, neither will continuing to champion them. Tim Black is senior writer at spiked. Previously on spiked Rob Lyons said drugs should be decriminalised, but not celebrated. Rob Johnston criticised Labour’s schizo drug policy. Neil Davenport called cannabis the political class’ drug of choice. He also asked why everyone loves ‘Dopey’ David Cameron. Jamie Douglass looked at Charles Clarke’s bad trip and drug use in schools. Or read more at spiked issue Drink and drugs. (1) Scientists v Politicians: Round 3, BBC News 29 October 2009 (2) Tobacco and alcohol should be classified as more dangerous than LSD, British Medical Journal, 5 August 2009 (3) Julian Critchley: All the experts admit that we should legalise drugs, Independent, 14 August 2008 (4) |
