JARED LOUGHNER is not a well young man.
In 2007, while still a teenager, he was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. When he tried to join the US Army he was turned down because of an admitted cannabis habit.
Last October he was expelled from college after a series of classroom disruptions and increasingly weird behaviour on campus.
Pima Community College in Tucson had called in the police to take Loughner home to his parents. He was told he could return to his studies only after seeking the help of mental health professionals.
Just last month Loughner, now 22, wrote on his MySpace page: “I don’t feel good: I’m ready to kill a police officer!”
Yet none of this prevented him from walking into a shop in Tucson on November 30 and buying a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol. Perfectly legally.
A gun like that is not a toy. Neither is it an appropriate weapon for hunting.
Evidence revealed by FBI investigators appears to show that Loughner bore a grudge against Gabrielle Giffords since 2007.
Giffords, who seems to be a strong, gifted and principled politician, is now in intensive care after being shot in the head at point-blank range.
The attack on her left six people dead and 13 others badly injured.
It has naturally led to fresh calls for stricter gun control across America.
Yet, incredibly, sales of high-capacity assault weapons such as the one used so devastatingly in Tucson at the weekend were banned by law. Until 2004.
Sarah Palin’s “cross-hairs” posters, which included one aimed at Congresswoman Giffords, and her inappropriate talk about “reloading” are a side-issue.
Of course they are offensive. Of course they could seen as incitement. It might even make sense to charge her with that offence.
One can certainly hope her career, and any danger of her one day becoming president, are now effectively over.
But this isn’t really about Palin. Even if Palin herself thinks everything is about her.
It’s about guns. And the way a rampant armaments industry has manipulated America, via a romanticised view of its history and “rights”, into a kind of addiction.
An addiction more pervasive than that to any drugs, bar alcohol and tobacco.
And vastly more dangerous.
There seems little realistic hope, however, that this latest sickening shooting will bring much sense to American gun laws.
The awful truth is that any attempt at prohibition is doomed to failure.
In the words of Bradley A Buckles, former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives: “I don’t know what you could do. People are going to get guns and shoot people.
“There are 300 million guns out there. We are close to the end of where we can regulate guns.”
Close to it – or well beyond it?
It must be obvious to nearly everyone that Jared Loughner was too sick to be allowed to play with guns.
The same could be said of America itself.
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Saturday, 8 January 2011
VAT’s the way to do it for the smirking Tory
AT least he didn’t have the gall this time to say there was no alternative. Maybe even George Osborne knew that wouldn’t wash when he was talking about raising VAT to an all-time high.
Instead the chancellor claimed that putting up VAT from an already swingeing 17½ per cent to a thumping 20pc was the “least damaging” way of reducing Britain’s deficit.
To which the question is: “Least damaging to whom?”
Not to those families who will have to pay around £400 a year more for their basic necessities.
Which might not sound a lot if you’re a multi-millionaire Tory, but hits rather harder on the streets of Chantry.
The Tories and their LibDem co-conspirators have been revelling in the economic crisis as an excuse to do all those things they’ve always wanted to do.
Rolling back government. Putting what should be everyone’s concern – such as street-cleaning and further education – into private hands. Where profit, not service, is the motive.
And the same naturally applies to their tax policies.
Crank it up on the food and clothing everyone needs. While banks remain exempt.
Let the fat cats go on licking up the cream. Let the common people pay through their weekly grocery bill.
A simplification? Of course. Economics is always a lot more complicated than anyone can explain in a newspaper column.
In fact, economics is a lot more complicated than anyone can really explain at all. It’s a conjuring trick. A baffling with pseudo-science.
The complexity of terms and figures bandied about by economists is a cover for the plain fact that nobody truly knows what’s going on. Or what the ultimate effects of any change will be.
It’s pretty obvious that the stock market is a huge gambling business. Less obvious, but equally true, is that the whole of capitalism works that way.
Economists, including chancellors (and bankers), like to talk as if they know what they’re doing. In fact, most of it’s as much a stab in the dark as I’d be making if I bet on Connor Wickham to score the first goal in Sunday’s Cup-tie at Stamford Bridge.
Among the things Osborne said this week to justify the VAT increase was this: “It’s a structural tax change to deal with a structural deficit and a structural increase in expenditure that happened.”
Does that make it clearer to you? No, nor to me.
But that, really, is the point. What he’s really saying there is: “I know what I’m talking about.”
To which he might add, under his breath, as it were: “And if you don’t, so much the better.”
He claims, rather improbably, that putting up VAT will somehow save jobs.
Others, whose crystal balls are surely no cloudier than his, think otherwise.
The British Beer and Pub Association say the increase will cost 8,800 jobs in the pub trade. It seems a curiously precise figure for a guess, but the trend of what they’re saying is clear enough.
The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development puts total job losses at 750,000.
More than two-thirds of small firms expect the rise to damage their businesses.
International finance advisors KPMG say most firms will put up prices “by far more than the VAT jump”.
One retail consultant quoted in the pro-Tory Daily Telegraph said he expected high-street prices to rise by between 5pc and 8pc.
Others warn that falling sales due to rising prices will mean the government will get less in tax revenue than they expect. Maybe a lot less. Maybe less than they’ve been getting at the lower rate.
Truth is, none of the experts really knows any better than George Osborne, or me, what all the effects will be.
But it does sound like a bare-faced bluff when Osborne claims his VAT rise will be “progressive” – in other words that it will actually benefit the poor.
You can almost see the satisfied smirk as he lifts the cane and claims: “This will hurt me more than it hurts you.”
****
NEWS that a US Navy captain has been stripped of his command over a series of smutty and homophobic videos is vaguely dispiriting but no great surprise.
What makes it more fun is the name of the vessel from which Capt Owen Honors has been sacked. The USS Enterprise.
Seems Capt Honors has been boldly going where no man should’ve gone before. A clear case of “Don’t make it so, No.1.”
****
I’M not a difficult customer, but… our New Year meal out was one to remember.
During the hour and a half it took for our food to arrive, the pub ran out of beer.
When at last our meals were presented, one was merely a little over-cooked. Of the rest:
• my partner’s salmon was raw in the middle;
• my mother’s “hot goat’s cheese salad” wasn’t hot and had barely a trace of cheese;
• my stew was severely under-cooked, the accompanying rice dried out into one solid lump.
If more festive feasts were like that we wouldn’t need to go on a January diet.
Instead the chancellor claimed that putting up VAT from an already swingeing 17½ per cent to a thumping 20pc was the “least damaging” way of reducing Britain’s deficit.
To which the question is: “Least damaging to whom?”
Not to those families who will have to pay around £400 a year more for their basic necessities.
Which might not sound a lot if you’re a multi-millionaire Tory, but hits rather harder on the streets of Chantry.
The Tories and their LibDem co-conspirators have been revelling in the economic crisis as an excuse to do all those things they’ve always wanted to do.
Rolling back government. Putting what should be everyone’s concern – such as street-cleaning and further education – into private hands. Where profit, not service, is the motive.
And the same naturally applies to their tax policies.
Crank it up on the food and clothing everyone needs. While banks remain exempt.
Let the fat cats go on licking up the cream. Let the common people pay through their weekly grocery bill.
A simplification? Of course. Economics is always a lot more complicated than anyone can explain in a newspaper column.
In fact, economics is a lot more complicated than anyone can really explain at all. It’s a conjuring trick. A baffling with pseudo-science.
The complexity of terms and figures bandied about by economists is a cover for the plain fact that nobody truly knows what’s going on. Or what the ultimate effects of any change will be.
It’s pretty obvious that the stock market is a huge gambling business. Less obvious, but equally true, is that the whole of capitalism works that way.
Economists, including chancellors (and bankers), like to talk as if they know what they’re doing. In fact, most of it’s as much a stab in the dark as I’d be making if I bet on Connor Wickham to score the first goal in Sunday’s Cup-tie at Stamford Bridge.
Among the things Osborne said this week to justify the VAT increase was this: “It’s a structural tax change to deal with a structural deficit and a structural increase in expenditure that happened.”
Does that make it clearer to you? No, nor to me.
But that, really, is the point. What he’s really saying there is: “I know what I’m talking about.”
To which he might add, under his breath, as it were: “And if you don’t, so much the better.”
He claims, rather improbably, that putting up VAT will somehow save jobs.
Others, whose crystal balls are surely no cloudier than his, think otherwise.
The British Beer and Pub Association say the increase will cost 8,800 jobs in the pub trade. It seems a curiously precise figure for a guess, but the trend of what they’re saying is clear enough.
The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development puts total job losses at 750,000.
More than two-thirds of small firms expect the rise to damage their businesses.
International finance advisors KPMG say most firms will put up prices “by far more than the VAT jump”.
One retail consultant quoted in the pro-Tory Daily Telegraph said he expected high-street prices to rise by between 5pc and 8pc.
Others warn that falling sales due to rising prices will mean the government will get less in tax revenue than they expect. Maybe a lot less. Maybe less than they’ve been getting at the lower rate.
Truth is, none of the experts really knows any better than George Osborne, or me, what all the effects will be.
But it does sound like a bare-faced bluff when Osborne claims his VAT rise will be “progressive” – in other words that it will actually benefit the poor.
You can almost see the satisfied smirk as he lifts the cane and claims: “This will hurt me more than it hurts you.”
****
NEWS that a US Navy captain has been stripped of his command over a series of smutty and homophobic videos is vaguely dispiriting but no great surprise.
What makes it more fun is the name of the vessel from which Capt Owen Honors has been sacked. The USS Enterprise.
Seems Capt Honors has been boldly going where no man should’ve gone before. A clear case of “Don’t make it so, No.1.”
****
I’M not a difficult customer, but… our New Year meal out was one to remember.
During the hour and a half it took for our food to arrive, the pub ran out of beer.
When at last our meals were presented, one was merely a little over-cooked. Of the rest:
• my partner’s salmon was raw in the middle;
• my mother’s “hot goat’s cheese salad” wasn’t hot and had barely a trace of cheese;
• my stew was severely under-cooked, the accompanying rice dried out into one solid lump.
If more festive feasts were like that we wouldn’t need to go on a January diet.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Once the tech's out there, we're all on the Brink
I DON’T watch much telly, so I’m not in the best position to judge what have been the best programmes on in 2010. But I can’t believe there was any more enjoyable or intelligent drama series than Dollhouse.
If you didn’t see it – and the chances are you didn’t, as it never made it onto a mainstream channel – I can highly recommend the DVD sets of both series.
The show’s creator, Joss Whedon, was the man behind Buffy the Vampire-Slayer, which ought to give him some clout in the TV industry. And not just because of the dreary cult of lesser vampire tales Buffy’s success seems to have spawned.
Yet Whedon’s brilliant outer-space Western series Firefly never got beyond 14 episodes in 2002-2003 before it was cancelled by the dimwitted suits of Fox TV.
As with Firefly, the key to the failure of Dollhouse to break into mainstream viewing lies in one word I used above to describe it. Intelligent.
In the world of free-market telly, competition means lots of “choice” between dumb and dumber. Whedon, unusually, doesn’t believe in dumbing down.
Dollhouse is set in the present, or very near future, in a secret and very dodgy establishment.
In it, people are electronically turned into “dolls”, or “actives”, with other people’s personalities, talents and life-histories temporarily implanted in their brains. Their time is then sold to clients, for a variety of purposes.
In lesser hands than Whedon’s, this premise could easily have led to some tedious and predictable story-telling.
But Whedon’s not interested in smut (though Dollhouse is quite sexy at times). And he’s not really very interested in the conventional action-thriller – though he’s expert in its techniques.
He’s a master of twists and turns, not only of storyline but also of character. He can get your sympathy for villains, or your scorn for the good guys – and always keep you guessing which are which.
As in life, almost no one in Dollhouse is simply good or simply bad. It’s more real, more sophisticated than that.
No one in the Dollhouse – not just the actives – is quite what they seem.
Except, perhaps, Topher Brink, the character in whom the key ethical dilemma eventually crystallises.
The brilliant Brink (Fran Kranz) is the scientist whose genius makes the brain-wipes possible. His delight at his own cleverness is somehow both credible and childishly charming.
Ultimately, his dawning awareness of what he has done makes him a true tragic hero.
Rather in the mould of Robert Oppenheimer, the real-life “father of the atomic bomb”.
Like Oppenheimer, Topher learns too late that once the tech is out there, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. And the guy who made it has no control over the uses it’ll be put to.
Another excellent, and largely ignored, programme in 2010 was a short BBC4 series on the National Grid.
The third of these fascinating documentaries made it quietly clear how the nuclear power industry began as a cover for the manufacture of material for atomic weapons.
And how Margaret Thatcher backed its growth – and specifically the development of Sizewell B – as part of a deliberate plan that also included provoking the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
A wrecking plan hatched as revenge for the strike that brought down the previous Tory government in 1974.
The killing of King Coal was ultimately one of the unintended outcomes of the splitting of the atom in Ernest Rutherford’s Cambridge lab in 1932.
Rutherford, Cockcroft, Walton – and Oppenheimer – were good guys. But once the tech is out there…
If you didn’t see it – and the chances are you didn’t, as it never made it onto a mainstream channel – I can highly recommend the DVD sets of both series.
The show’s creator, Joss Whedon, was the man behind Buffy the Vampire-Slayer, which ought to give him some clout in the TV industry. And not just because of the dreary cult of lesser vampire tales Buffy’s success seems to have spawned.
Yet Whedon’s brilliant outer-space Western series Firefly never got beyond 14 episodes in 2002-2003 before it was cancelled by the dimwitted suits of Fox TV.
As with Firefly, the key to the failure of Dollhouse to break into mainstream viewing lies in one word I used above to describe it. Intelligent.
In the world of free-market telly, competition means lots of “choice” between dumb and dumber. Whedon, unusually, doesn’t believe in dumbing down.
Dollhouse is set in the present, or very near future, in a secret and very dodgy establishment.
In it, people are electronically turned into “dolls”, or “actives”, with other people’s personalities, talents and life-histories temporarily implanted in their brains. Their time is then sold to clients, for a variety of purposes.
In lesser hands than Whedon’s, this premise could easily have led to some tedious and predictable story-telling.
But Whedon’s not interested in smut (though Dollhouse is quite sexy at times). And he’s not really very interested in the conventional action-thriller – though he’s expert in its techniques.
He’s a master of twists and turns, not only of storyline but also of character. He can get your sympathy for villains, or your scorn for the good guys – and always keep you guessing which are which.
As in life, almost no one in Dollhouse is simply good or simply bad. It’s more real, more sophisticated than that.
No one in the Dollhouse – not just the actives – is quite what they seem.
Except, perhaps, Topher Brink, the character in whom the key ethical dilemma eventually crystallises.
The brilliant Brink (Fran Kranz) is the scientist whose genius makes the brain-wipes possible. His delight at his own cleverness is somehow both credible and childishly charming.
Ultimately, his dawning awareness of what he has done makes him a true tragic hero.
Rather in the mould of Robert Oppenheimer, the real-life “father of the atomic bomb”.
Like Oppenheimer, Topher learns too late that once the tech is out there, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. And the guy who made it has no control over the uses it’ll be put to.
Another excellent, and largely ignored, programme in 2010 was a short BBC4 series on the National Grid.
The third of these fascinating documentaries made it quietly clear how the nuclear power industry began as a cover for the manufacture of material for atomic weapons.
And how Margaret Thatcher backed its growth – and specifically the development of Sizewell B – as part of a deliberate plan that also included provoking the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
A wrecking plan hatched as revenge for the strike that brought down the previous Tory government in 1974.
The killing of King Coal was ultimately one of the unintended outcomes of the splitting of the atom in Ernest Rutherford’s Cambridge lab in 1932.
Rutherford, Cockcroft, Walton – and Oppenheimer – were good guys. But once the tech is out there…
Friday, 3 December 2010
So who’s for freedom of information technology?
JARED COHEN is an interesting young man.
When Condoleezza Rice, then US secretary of state, appointed him to the state department, he was just 24, the youngest ever member of the policy planning staff.
He was fresh out of Oxford University, where he’d taken a masters degree in international relations. He already had one published book under his belt – on the 1994 Rwandan genocide – and had another well under way.
This second book, Children of Jihad, was subtitled “A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East”. It was those travels and his thoughts about them that made him so important to Rice.
Almost more remarkable, when the presidency changed hands and Hillary Clinton took over Rice’s old office, she chose to keep Cohen on. Not too many people work as senior policy advisers to both Republican and Democrat administrations – let alone while still in their 20s.
It is surely Clinton’s loss, and maybe America’s, that after four and a half years in Washington’s corridors of power Cohen has now chosen to go work for Google instead.
It’s no surprise Google should want him, though. Because his real area of expertise is not just Middle-East relations, but the internet.
In particular its power to reach out to people, to bring them together, to change lives. In that, he has not only knowledge but zeal.
It was he who took a party of Silicon Valley bigwigs, including some Google engineers and the founder of Twitter, to a meeting with the president and vice-president of Iraq in Baghdad.
It was he who called Facebook “one of the most organic tools for democracy promotion”.
He who believed American technology could be a powerful diplomatic tool around the world.
At a video-linked press conference during that Baghdad trip, he told reporters in Washington: “The platforms that all of these guys here are pushing out from the tech industry are riddled with American values of critical thinking, free flow of information, freedom of choice, freedom of assembly.”
No wonder both GW Bush and Barack Obama thought this flag-waving geek was one of the good guys.
When you consider the huge role the internet played in Obama’s election, the close tie-up between the net and democracy looks pretty clear.
But hang on. What was that about “critical thinking” and “free flow of information”?
Obama might have espoused those values when he was in opposition, but now he’s president it’s a different matter.
He’s incensed about the free flow of information from Wikileaks, which this week posted just the first few hundred of a promised 250,000 formerly secret diplomatic messages.
A White House statement described the release as “reckless and dangerous” and added: “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”
Among other things, Wikileaks got up Obama’s nose by revealing that he considers David Cameron “a lightweight”. (You were right about one thing, anyway, Mr President.)
Meanwhile, Clinton described Wikileaks’ latest disclosures as an “attack on the US and the international community”.
So net freedom’s a good thing, then, when it’s spreading “American values” among the youth of Iraq. Or when Twitter is helping dissidents organise protest rallies in Iran.
But when it’s American secrets being revealed, that’s another matter, apparently.
Freedom of information is an essential component of democracy. Until you’re in power.
Jared Cohen’s no fool. Maybe his decision to quit government work is about more than money.
****
SO Prince Andrew is rude, indiscreet, foul-mouthed, jingoistic and not exactly left-of-centre politically. Glad we had Wikileaks to reveal that to us.
In an era that until now has not been a great one for investigative journalism, Wikileaks promises to become a goldmine resource for the world’s press – and a right pain in the posterior for its politicians. Which can only be a good thing.
Trouble is, there’s far too much material coming out for anyone to make sense of it all. Which leaves the traditional media to filter it – not always good news.
What, among this week’s deluge of diplomatic memos, have we heard most about?
Not the Americans’ real opinion of Vladimir Putin’s Russia (“a deeply corrupt state dominated by its security forces”).
Not US diplomats’ description of Afghan president Hamid Karzai as “an extremely weak man who does not listen to facts”.
Not the inside stories about Guantanamo Bay, Al-Qaeda or Pakistani uranium.
Not even the suggestion that Iran has acquired “sophisticated missiles” from North Korea with which it is capable of hitting western Europe.
By common, almost unanimous, consent the news editors of this little island think what will interest us most is the Duke of York’s ability to open his mouth and insert his foot.
The sad thing is, they’re probably right.
Which just shows how pathetically we remain in thrall to the soap opera of the dysfunctional family we call royal.
When Condoleezza Rice, then US secretary of state, appointed him to the state department, he was just 24, the youngest ever member of the policy planning staff.
He was fresh out of Oxford University, where he’d taken a masters degree in international relations. He already had one published book under his belt – on the 1994 Rwandan genocide – and had another well under way.
This second book, Children of Jihad, was subtitled “A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East”. It was those travels and his thoughts about them that made him so important to Rice.
Almost more remarkable, when the presidency changed hands and Hillary Clinton took over Rice’s old office, she chose to keep Cohen on. Not too many people work as senior policy advisers to both Republican and Democrat administrations – let alone while still in their 20s.
It is surely Clinton’s loss, and maybe America’s, that after four and a half years in Washington’s corridors of power Cohen has now chosen to go work for Google instead.
It’s no surprise Google should want him, though. Because his real area of expertise is not just Middle-East relations, but the internet.
In particular its power to reach out to people, to bring them together, to change lives. In that, he has not only knowledge but zeal.
It was he who took a party of Silicon Valley bigwigs, including some Google engineers and the founder of Twitter, to a meeting with the president and vice-president of Iraq in Baghdad.
It was he who called Facebook “one of the most organic tools for democracy promotion”.
He who believed American technology could be a powerful diplomatic tool around the world.
At a video-linked press conference during that Baghdad trip, he told reporters in Washington: “The platforms that all of these guys here are pushing out from the tech industry are riddled with American values of critical thinking, free flow of information, freedom of choice, freedom of assembly.”
No wonder both GW Bush and Barack Obama thought this flag-waving geek was one of the good guys.
When you consider the huge role the internet played in Obama’s election, the close tie-up between the net and democracy looks pretty clear.
But hang on. What was that about “critical thinking” and “free flow of information”?
Obama might have espoused those values when he was in opposition, but now he’s president it’s a different matter.
He’s incensed about the free flow of information from Wikileaks, which this week posted just the first few hundred of a promised 250,000 formerly secret diplomatic messages.
A White House statement described the release as “reckless and dangerous” and added: “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”
Among other things, Wikileaks got up Obama’s nose by revealing that he considers David Cameron “a lightweight”. (You were right about one thing, anyway, Mr President.)
Meanwhile, Clinton described Wikileaks’ latest disclosures as an “attack on the US and the international community”.
So net freedom’s a good thing, then, when it’s spreading “American values” among the youth of Iraq. Or when Twitter is helping dissidents organise protest rallies in Iran.
But when it’s American secrets being revealed, that’s another matter, apparently.
Freedom of information is an essential component of democracy. Until you’re in power.
Jared Cohen’s no fool. Maybe his decision to quit government work is about more than money.
****
SO Prince Andrew is rude, indiscreet, foul-mouthed, jingoistic and not exactly left-of-centre politically. Glad we had Wikileaks to reveal that to us.
In an era that until now has not been a great one for investigative journalism, Wikileaks promises to become a goldmine resource for the world’s press – and a right pain in the posterior for its politicians. Which can only be a good thing.
Trouble is, there’s far too much material coming out for anyone to make sense of it all. Which leaves the traditional media to filter it – not always good news.
What, among this week’s deluge of diplomatic memos, have we heard most about?
Not the Americans’ real opinion of Vladimir Putin’s Russia (“a deeply corrupt state dominated by its security forces”).
Not US diplomats’ description of Afghan president Hamid Karzai as “an extremely weak man who does not listen to facts”.
Not the inside stories about Guantanamo Bay, Al-Qaeda or Pakistani uranium.
Not even the suggestion that Iran has acquired “sophisticated missiles” from North Korea with which it is capable of hitting western Europe.
By common, almost unanimous, consent the news editors of this little island think what will interest us most is the Duke of York’s ability to open his mouth and insert his foot.
The sad thing is, they’re probably right.
Which just shows how pathetically we remain in thrall to the soap opera of the dysfunctional family we call royal.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
The class of 2010 – yours for just £29,310 a year
“COMMONER? I bet she’s not half as common as the bird my son’s marrying.”
That overheard comment is the funniest I’ve met yet on a certain up-coming event. And it could almost go down as the definitive comment on this curious year.
2010, the year of class. The year the toffs took over the country again.
The state-funded grammar school, and more than that the comprehensive school, were supposed to end class in this country.
It doesn’t seem so long since the question, “Is the British class system dead?” seemed one worth considering. Maybe not one to ponder long or hard, but at least a question worth giving a little thought.
Forty years ago, when one grammar-school boy (Ted Heath) displaced another (Harold Wilson) as prime minister, we might have assumed that by 2010 the class system would be history.
Yet here we are, with the poshest (and richest) PM since Alec Douglas-Home in 1963-64 and an only slightly less posh (and possibly richer) deputy.
And about to "celebrate" what has preposterously been dubbed the “people’s wedding”.
Which people are marrying? Not your people or my people, that’s for sure.
This week’s announcement of the date and venue did sadly end the hope that the commoner bride would get a proper commoner’s wedding. A 15-minute ceremony at Slough Register Office followed by a bit of a do at the rugby club.
It would probably have been a good do, too, since the bride’s parents run a party planning business.
More fun, I dare say, than a televised national event squandering millions of the cash “the people” don’t have.
And it would surely have been more within Carole and Michael Middleton’s budget.
Not that they will be expected to foot the bill for the abbey extravaganza. That, indirectly, will be up to you and me.
And not that they are exactly hard up. The national paper that told this week [this column appeared in the Evening Star on Friday, November 26] of their “modest, middle-class background” has a generous definition of “modest”.
I do know some fairly modest families who stretch themselves financially to put their children into private education. I have never understood why they bother, especially as we are lucky enough to have some excellent comprehensives round here.
But I don’t think anyone I know spends £29,310 a year on school fees.
That’s the current base price – before things like uniform, books, music lessons and pocket-money are considered – of sending a child to Marlborough College.
Party Pieces must do a brisk trade.
But if class is your thing, Marlborough is obviously the place to send your daughters (Carole and Michael sent two).
Apart from Kate and Pippa Middleton, other former pupils include:
• Samantha Cameron, prime minister’s wife
• Frances Osborne, chancellor’s wife
• Sally Bercow, wife of the House of Commons speaker
• Antonia Robinson, royal wedding-dress designer
• Emily Sheffield, sister of Samantha Cameron and deputy editor of posh mag Vogue
• oh, and someone called Princess Eugenie.
Not bad for a school that didn’t even let girls in until 1968. It obviously instils a self-confidence in its pupils that can stand up to the attentions of a prince or an ambitious Etonian.
The Middletons may not have old aristocracy in their family tree. But they do have money.
Which may not buy love or happiness – but it can buy you a posh schooling and posh friends.
It can buy power. And that, ultimately, is what “class” is all about.
****
THERE was much to applaud in the White Paper for education unveiled by Michael Gove this week.
Compulsory foreign-language teaching up to age 16. About time. Our inability to speak other languages has always been shameful, and has been getting steadily worse.
Anonymity for teachers being investigated for “inappropriate behaviour” – about time too. One malicious false accusation should not be allowed to wreck a person’s reputation and career.
How good it will be to have “experts” brought in to review the curriculum depends on who the experts are. Teachers, I suppose, don’t count as experts themselves…
School league tables will be “shaken up”. OK, but scrapping them altogether would have been better.
Targets introduced for primary schools. Oh dear. As if the whole of education wasn’t already overrun with tick-boxes.
Former troops offered sponsorship to train as teachers. You what? I’m all in favour of teachers having some experience of life outside the classroom, but why military experience in particular?
The effect on class discipline might, I suppose, be interesting.
Anything good in the coalition’s policy, though, was overshadowed by the revelation, on the same day, of Ofsted’s overall conclusion about our schools.
And that is that the so-called academies – those quasi-independent schools the government is putting all its weight behind – aren’t better on average than other state schools.
They’re worse.
That overheard comment is the funniest I’ve met yet on a certain up-coming event. And it could almost go down as the definitive comment on this curious year.
2010, the year of class. The year the toffs took over the country again.
The state-funded grammar school, and more than that the comprehensive school, were supposed to end class in this country.
It doesn’t seem so long since the question, “Is the British class system dead?” seemed one worth considering. Maybe not one to ponder long or hard, but at least a question worth giving a little thought.
Forty years ago, when one grammar-school boy (Ted Heath) displaced another (Harold Wilson) as prime minister, we might have assumed that by 2010 the class system would be history.
Yet here we are, with the poshest (and richest) PM since Alec Douglas-Home in 1963-64 and an only slightly less posh (and possibly richer) deputy.
And about to "celebrate" what has preposterously been dubbed the “people’s wedding”.
Which people are marrying? Not your people or my people, that’s for sure.
This week’s announcement of the date and venue did sadly end the hope that the commoner bride would get a proper commoner’s wedding. A 15-minute ceremony at Slough Register Office followed by a bit of a do at the rugby club.
It would probably have been a good do, too, since the bride’s parents run a party planning business.
More fun, I dare say, than a televised national event squandering millions of the cash “the people” don’t have.
And it would surely have been more within Carole and Michael Middleton’s budget.
Not that they will be expected to foot the bill for the abbey extravaganza. That, indirectly, will be up to you and me.
And not that they are exactly hard up. The national paper that told this week [this column appeared in the Evening Star on Friday, November 26] of their “modest, middle-class background” has a generous definition of “modest”.
I do know some fairly modest families who stretch themselves financially to put their children into private education. I have never understood why they bother, especially as we are lucky enough to have some excellent comprehensives round here.
But I don’t think anyone I know spends £29,310 a year on school fees.
That’s the current base price – before things like uniform, books, music lessons and pocket-money are considered – of sending a child to Marlborough College.
Party Pieces must do a brisk trade.
But if class is your thing, Marlborough is obviously the place to send your daughters (Carole and Michael sent two).
Apart from Kate and Pippa Middleton, other former pupils include:
• Samantha Cameron, prime minister’s wife
• Frances Osborne, chancellor’s wife
• Sally Bercow, wife of the House of Commons speaker
• Antonia Robinson, royal wedding-dress designer
• Emily Sheffield, sister of Samantha Cameron and deputy editor of posh mag Vogue
• oh, and someone called Princess Eugenie.
Not bad for a school that didn’t even let girls in until 1968. It obviously instils a self-confidence in its pupils that can stand up to the attentions of a prince or an ambitious Etonian.
The Middletons may not have old aristocracy in their family tree. But they do have money.
Which may not buy love or happiness – but it can buy you a posh schooling and posh friends.
It can buy power. And that, ultimately, is what “class” is all about.
****
THERE was much to applaud in the White Paper for education unveiled by Michael Gove this week.
Compulsory foreign-language teaching up to age 16. About time. Our inability to speak other languages has always been shameful, and has been getting steadily worse.
Anonymity for teachers being investigated for “inappropriate behaviour” – about time too. One malicious false accusation should not be allowed to wreck a person’s reputation and career.
How good it will be to have “experts” brought in to review the curriculum depends on who the experts are. Teachers, I suppose, don’t count as experts themselves…
School league tables will be “shaken up”. OK, but scrapping them altogether would have been better.
Targets introduced for primary schools. Oh dear. As if the whole of education wasn’t already overrun with tick-boxes.
Former troops offered sponsorship to train as teachers. You what? I’m all in favour of teachers having some experience of life outside the classroom, but why military experience in particular?
The effect on class discipline might, I suppose, be interesting.
Anything good in the coalition’s policy, though, was overshadowed by the revelation, on the same day, of Ofsted’s overall conclusion about our schools.
And that is that the so-called academies – those quasi-independent schools the government is putting all its weight behind – aren’t better on average than other state schools.
They’re worse.
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Why BT musn't get away with their new town plans
BT wants to build 2,000 homes, a health centre, a hotel, a park, a community centre, shops, a café, a pub and two new schools on their land at Martlesham Heath. In other words, a town.
The campaign group No Adastral New Town has done a good job of raising local awareness. I hope they are equally successful when it comes to persuading Suffolk Coastal planners and councillors, and the inevitable public inquiry, not to let BT’s dream become our nightmare.
BT’s purpose, of course, is simply to make money. NANT’s purpose is to prevent them spoiling a bit of still-rural Suffolk for those of us who already live here.
I certainly don’t want the extra bustle, and the extra traffic, that would be caused by having a new town dumped in my back yard.
But my objection isn’t mere nimbyism. And it’s not just about keeping Suffolk special – though of course that’s part of it.
I object in principle to the whole policy of concreting over the countryside.
Of obliterating fields, woods and farmland with yet more soulless new buildings and pollutant roads.
Under the headline “We are murdering our countryside”, the outstanding journalist Trevor Philpott wrote: “After the war we thought our planners would save our countryside. But the bulldozers move over the farmland as relentlessly as ever. The new ‘estates’ spread, like a rash, over the meadows…”
If that was true in July 1954, when that Picture Post article appeared, how much truer is it now after 56 years more pillage?
In 1954 there was at least an excuse.
There was a need still for new homes to replace old ones flattened by Hitler’s bombs.
There was still a need, too, for people to be moved out of decaying Victorian slums and into better housing. Post-war council housing, on the whole, did a pretty good job of that.
But somewhere along the way politicians (and, of course, builders) got addicted to the idea that it is always necessary to keep building more and more houses.
According to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, about 21 square miles of English countryside is lost every year to concrete and asphalt.
Since 1954 England’s population has risen by 19 per cent. The loss of land to development has been much greater than that.
Those who want to cash in talk, as they always will, about the “need” for new homes. But what need?
A few questions need to be answered urgently while we still have enough farmland to feed ourselves.
Why must be build new homes when in every town and city so many perfectly serviceable older ones stand empty?
Why must we build new towns instead of making the old ones liveable again?
And – most relevant of all to Suffolk – why do we go on letting wealthy folk from other parts buy up our best houses as “second homes” when there are local people needing first homes?
In 1940, the year of the Blitz, architect Ralph Tubbs designed an exhibition, Living In Cities, to consider what post-war Britain should look like.
In a fascinating accompanying brochure, he wrote: “The advocates of garden cities do not face up to the problems of introducing fresh air and sunshine, trees and open space into the decayed towns of today.
“Dissatisfied with the existing chaos of cities, they start new centres, which are neither town nor country, but little patches of suburbia. They leave the existing cities to rot.”
Tubbs wanted cities to live, not rot. He wanted the countryside to live too.
He was a visionary (who incidentally despised the kind of sham architecture that Prince Charles now champions). It’s a tragedy his vision continues to be ignored.
****
GEORGE W BUSH says “waterboarding” wasn’t torture. So it’s OK, then, to keep pushing people to the very edge of drowning.
It was legal, says GW, “because a lawyer said it was legal”.
But then, when you’re president of the United States you can probably find a lawyer to tell you anything you want to hear. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what someone under torture will tell you.
Not the truth. Not anything useful. Just exactly what they think you want to hear.
Which is why torture – legal or not, humane or not – is fundamentally useless.
And that is one reason I disbelieve GW’s claim that waterboarding saved British lives by preventing attacks on London.
The other reason I disbelieve it is GW’s own record with the truth.
As I have pointed out over the years to a variety of small children, if you keep telling lies people eventually stop believing what you say.
There’s a story Bush should read, about a boy and a wolf.
But does it matter now if he’s still telling porkies?
He’s yesterday’s man. Finished. No point in knocking him down again, surely?
The point isn’t about Bush himself. He’s no longer important.
What is important is to nail the lie. To stop him infecting future generations with the pernicious idea that torture can ever be justified.
The campaign group No Adastral New Town has done a good job of raising local awareness. I hope they are equally successful when it comes to persuading Suffolk Coastal planners and councillors, and the inevitable public inquiry, not to let BT’s dream become our nightmare.
BT’s purpose, of course, is simply to make money. NANT’s purpose is to prevent them spoiling a bit of still-rural Suffolk for those of us who already live here.
I certainly don’t want the extra bustle, and the extra traffic, that would be caused by having a new town dumped in my back yard.
But my objection isn’t mere nimbyism. And it’s not just about keeping Suffolk special – though of course that’s part of it.
I object in principle to the whole policy of concreting over the countryside.
Of obliterating fields, woods and farmland with yet more soulless new buildings and pollutant roads.
Under the headline “We are murdering our countryside”, the outstanding journalist Trevor Philpott wrote: “After the war we thought our planners would save our countryside. But the bulldozers move over the farmland as relentlessly as ever. The new ‘estates’ spread, like a rash, over the meadows…”
If that was true in July 1954, when that Picture Post article appeared, how much truer is it now after 56 years more pillage?
In 1954 there was at least an excuse.
There was a need still for new homes to replace old ones flattened by Hitler’s bombs.
There was still a need, too, for people to be moved out of decaying Victorian slums and into better housing. Post-war council housing, on the whole, did a pretty good job of that.
But somewhere along the way politicians (and, of course, builders) got addicted to the idea that it is always necessary to keep building more and more houses.
According to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, about 21 square miles of English countryside is lost every year to concrete and asphalt.
Since 1954 England’s population has risen by 19 per cent. The loss of land to development has been much greater than that.
Those who want to cash in talk, as they always will, about the “need” for new homes. But what need?
A few questions need to be answered urgently while we still have enough farmland to feed ourselves.
Why must be build new homes when in every town and city so many perfectly serviceable older ones stand empty?
Why must we build new towns instead of making the old ones liveable again?
And – most relevant of all to Suffolk – why do we go on letting wealthy folk from other parts buy up our best houses as “second homes” when there are local people needing first homes?
In 1940, the year of the Blitz, architect Ralph Tubbs designed an exhibition, Living In Cities, to consider what post-war Britain should look like.
In a fascinating accompanying brochure, he wrote: “The advocates of garden cities do not face up to the problems of introducing fresh air and sunshine, trees and open space into the decayed towns of today.
“Dissatisfied with the existing chaos of cities, they start new centres, which are neither town nor country, but little patches of suburbia. They leave the existing cities to rot.”
Tubbs wanted cities to live, not rot. He wanted the countryside to live too.
He was a visionary (who incidentally despised the kind of sham architecture that Prince Charles now champions). It’s a tragedy his vision continues to be ignored.
****
GEORGE W BUSH says “waterboarding” wasn’t torture. So it’s OK, then, to keep pushing people to the very edge of drowning.
It was legal, says GW, “because a lawyer said it was legal”.
But then, when you’re president of the United States you can probably find a lawyer to tell you anything you want to hear. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what someone under torture will tell you.
Not the truth. Not anything useful. Just exactly what they think you want to hear.
Which is why torture – legal or not, humane or not – is fundamentally useless.
And that is one reason I disbelieve GW’s claim that waterboarding saved British lives by preventing attacks on London.
The other reason I disbelieve it is GW’s own record with the truth.
As I have pointed out over the years to a variety of small children, if you keep telling lies people eventually stop believing what you say.
There’s a story Bush should read, about a boy and a wolf.
But does it matter now if he’s still telling porkies?
He’s yesterday’s man. Finished. No point in knocking him down again, surely?
The point isn’t about Bush himself. He’s no longer important.
What is important is to nail the lie. To stop him infecting future generations with the pernicious idea that torture can ever be justified.
Monday, 8 November 2010
Day Labour abandoned its aims for the big Tory lie
ONE day someone will get round to writing a history of the modern Labour Party that isn’t just re-hashing the tedious details of Blair-Brown infighting. When they do, the date Tuesday, October 4, 1994 will loom large in it.
That was the day Tony Blair gave his first speech as leader to the party conference.
Most of it, frankly, was waffle, though it received the predictable massive ovation.
He even claimed, incredible though it seems looking back, to be a socialist. Though he did insist that “his” socialism “is not the socialism of Marx or state control”.
(Neither is mine, Tony, but unlike yours it’s distinguishable from messianic Toryism.)
The nugget of meaning – I’m tempted to call it the gobbet of phlegm – came four minutes from the end.
That’s when he said: “It is time we had a clear, up-to-date statement of the objects and objectives of our party.”
Which was the first real inkling he gave that he was set on abandoning the perfectly clear objectives which had defined the party since 1918.
Until Blair ditched it, the party’s aim was laid out in Clause Four of its constitution: “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”
That is socialism. That is what Labour, under Blair, gave up. A coherent ideology. Any ideology.
As it happens, the ideology of those now in power (Clegg as well as Cameron) could be summed up as the opposite of poor abandoned Clause Four:
• To DENY the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry;
• To PREVENT its equitable distribution;
• To ERADICATE any remaining vestiges of common ownership;
• To GIVE UP popular administration and control of anything.
It’s a nightmare. But it does have the virtue of consistent thinking behind it.
At its heart is the idea that private ownership is in every way superior to public ownership. A view quite understandable from those (like Cameron, Clegg and most of their pals) who own quite a lot.
Not so good in practice for all the rest of us. The workers by hand or by brain.
A fortnight ago I reported with incredulity the view of Gordon Brown that “only the private sector is efficient”.
This brought a robust response from one of this column’s more intelligent readers.
For fairly obvious reasons he wishes to remain anonymous. I can tell you only that he is Ipswich-based, works for a prominent local company, and that I agree with every word he says:
“As someone who has worked in the private sector for his entire adult life, I can assure you that the constant assertion of private sector efficiency is a complete myth.
“The idea that people or businesses fail if they are inefficient is complete hogwash. Every single company I have worked for, or contracted into, has been massively inefficient and wasteful.
“Incompetence is routinely rewarded and any suspicion of innovation or creativity stifled at birth.
“Most private companies are extremely risk-averse. Even supposedly high-tech companies (the area in which I earn my bread and butter) tend to be held back by managers who would rather be assured some new technique or technology is ‘proven’ before they consider an investment.
“The difference is that the vast profits to be made from the minority of ideas and products that succeed mask the hideous waste that’s going on behind the gloss and headlines.
“When you consider the level of service that much of the public sector continue to deliver, despite shrinking investment, it baffles me that politicians continue to get away with this lie.”
We’ll end up in the Browne stuff
THE headlines so far have mostly been about the high cost of education hanging over future students. And that is certainly bad enough.
But there are worse things lurking in the detail of Lord Browne’s review of university funding.
I predict trouble ahead if the government tries to implement it – as it surely will, because it fits Tory thinking so well.
At heart, Browne aims to end the notion of higher education as a public service and reduce it to the level of the free market.
Universities will cease to get government support and rely instead purely on fees.
Which courses are available will depend ultimately on “consumer choice”. In other words, on the unrealistic expectations and desires of 18-year-olds.
Not that I have anything against 18-year-olds. But anyone in need of education needs better guidance than comes from a profit-driven market.
And that’s before you even consider society’s need for scientists, engineers, doctors and the rest.
That was the day Tony Blair gave his first speech as leader to the party conference.
Most of it, frankly, was waffle, though it received the predictable massive ovation.
He even claimed, incredible though it seems looking back, to be a socialist. Though he did insist that “his” socialism “is not the socialism of Marx or state control”.
(Neither is mine, Tony, but unlike yours it’s distinguishable from messianic Toryism.)
The nugget of meaning – I’m tempted to call it the gobbet of phlegm – came four minutes from the end.
That’s when he said: “It is time we had a clear, up-to-date statement of the objects and objectives of our party.”
Which was the first real inkling he gave that he was set on abandoning the perfectly clear objectives which had defined the party since 1918.
Until Blair ditched it, the party’s aim was laid out in Clause Four of its constitution: “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”
That is socialism. That is what Labour, under Blair, gave up. A coherent ideology. Any ideology.
As it happens, the ideology of those now in power (Clegg as well as Cameron) could be summed up as the opposite of poor abandoned Clause Four:
• To DENY the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry;
• To PREVENT its equitable distribution;
• To ERADICATE any remaining vestiges of common ownership;
• To GIVE UP popular administration and control of anything.
It’s a nightmare. But it does have the virtue of consistent thinking behind it.
At its heart is the idea that private ownership is in every way superior to public ownership. A view quite understandable from those (like Cameron, Clegg and most of their pals) who own quite a lot.
Not so good in practice for all the rest of us. The workers by hand or by brain.
A fortnight ago I reported with incredulity the view of Gordon Brown that “only the private sector is efficient”.
This brought a robust response from one of this column’s more intelligent readers.
For fairly obvious reasons he wishes to remain anonymous. I can tell you only that he is Ipswich-based, works for a prominent local company, and that I agree with every word he says:
“As someone who has worked in the private sector for his entire adult life, I can assure you that the constant assertion of private sector efficiency is a complete myth.
“The idea that people or businesses fail if they are inefficient is complete hogwash. Every single company I have worked for, or contracted into, has been massively inefficient and wasteful.
“Incompetence is routinely rewarded and any suspicion of innovation or creativity stifled at birth.
“Most private companies are extremely risk-averse. Even supposedly high-tech companies (the area in which I earn my bread and butter) tend to be held back by managers who would rather be assured some new technique or technology is ‘proven’ before they consider an investment.
“The difference is that the vast profits to be made from the minority of ideas and products that succeed mask the hideous waste that’s going on behind the gloss and headlines.
“When you consider the level of service that much of the public sector continue to deliver, despite shrinking investment, it baffles me that politicians continue to get away with this lie.”
We’ll end up in the Browne stuff
THE headlines so far have mostly been about the high cost of education hanging over future students. And that is certainly bad enough.
But there are worse things lurking in the detail of Lord Browne’s review of university funding.
I predict trouble ahead if the government tries to implement it – as it surely will, because it fits Tory thinking so well.
At heart, Browne aims to end the notion of higher education as a public service and reduce it to the level of the free market.
Universities will cease to get government support and rely instead purely on fees.
Which courses are available will depend ultimately on “consumer choice”. In other words, on the unrealistic expectations and desires of 18-year-olds.
Not that I have anything against 18-year-olds. But anyone in need of education needs better guidance than comes from a profit-driven market.
And that’s before you even consider society’s need for scientists, engineers, doctors and the rest.
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