I HAVE always had the highest regard for Mr X as a footballer.
His only serious failing in that regard is his lamentable decision to play all his career for Melchester Rovers instead of for my team. And indeed, similarly, to represent another nation rather than England.
On the rare occasions when he speaks in public at all, he tends to speak reasonably well about football. Not about much else, but then why should he? He is, after all, a footballer.
Frankly, I don’t know much else about him. And indeed, why should we? What business, or interest, is it of ours?
It seems now, however, that as a human being he is… well… human.
He has, unremarkably enough, a sex life. One which now turns out to be a little less than straightforward. Which is also normal enough – and not just for footballers.
Few of us, I suspect, would want the details of our romantic activities to be widely known. I can sympathise with Mr X there.
On the other hand, being rich and famous has brought him huge privileges. The almost inevitable down side of which is a certain loss of privacy.
Had he been prepared to take the rough with the smooth, Mr X would have found his sex life made public months ago.
It would undoubtedly have been embarrassing. For a little while.
By now, his bedroom games would be long-discarded chip-wrapping. While his football game would continue to delight.
Mr X, however, has been badly advised. Perhaps by fellow footballers, perhaps by an agent or other interested party, maybe even by his wronged wife.
Possibly by m’learned friend, who is clearly the chief beneficiary.
Because Mr X was encouraged to use some of his great wealth to prevent disclosure of his private life to the public. And so he took out what has come to be known as a super-injunction.
Also known, more graphically, as a gagging order.
One of the curious effects of which has been that while I have known of the case for weeks, as a journalist I have not been allowed to mention it.
Frankly, if it were only Mr X’s love-life at issue I wouldn’t be interested anyway.
But his recourse to law, his attempt to use money to hush things up, is of much more vital concern.
His love-life is perhaps of passing interest to the public.
His privileged use of a bad piece of legislation should be more so. Indeed, breaking that law – not just transgressing it, but getting rid of it entirely – is most definitely in the public interest.
Which is why Mr X may ultimately, inadvertently, have done us all a favour.
After being exposed by thousands of Twitter users, and then more crucially in the House of Commons by MP John Hemming, Roy Race – yes, I can now name him! – has been the implement by which a coach and horses has been driven through that lousy law.
And why is it a lousy law?
Not because a number of overpaid sporting stars – yes, there are others! – have used it to try to conceal their away games.
Not merely because, like so much of the law, it serves only the interests of the rich.
But because among the 80-odd such injunctions still functioning there could be some that are more serious.
Take Sir Fred Goodwin. From 2001 to 2009 he was chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He presided over the bank’s rapid rise, and then its even more rapid fall.
In 2008 the bank lost a British record £24.1billion. While the British taxpayer picked up the tab – a substantial factor in the nation’s economic woes – Goodwin, then 50, rode off into the sunset with a pension of about £700,000 a year.
Meanwhile, he was allegedly having an affair with another of the bank’s senior staff. Something which may or may not have involved “a serious breach of corporate governance” at the now-nationalised bank.
He didn’t want us to know that. We only do because Lord Stoneham revealed it in the House of Lords, leading to the lifting of an injunction.
A bank source now says it is “slightly ludicrous” to suggest Sir Fred’s decision-making was impaired by any affair. Equally ludicrously, the same source likens the alleged dalliance to “holidays and hobbies”.
Following an investigation, the bank says: “We are satisfied the employee in question did not compromise the bank in any way.”
Maybe. But is the whole matter of interest?
More to the point, is it in the public interest to know about it?
You bet it is.
If not a multi-billion-pound bet, then at least a £700,000 one.
Meanwhile, how come we all now know about Roy Race but still can’t even name the other footballers, the manager, the TV star, the actor, the comedian, the world-famous athlete and the “rich public figure” who still have super-injunctions in force?
Maybe it’s time for Mr Hemmings or Lord Stoneham to get to their feet again. Or for Twitter to get busy once more.
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Saturday, 21 May 2011
Once upon a time there was a famous physicist called Stephen...
SHOCK story of the week: “Stephen Hawking says heaven’s just a fairy story for those who are afraid of the dark.”
Or, to put it another way: “Famous scientist states the bloomin’ obvious.”
Now, if the Pope, say, had made that statement it might have been news. Or if Hawking had claimed his debilitating motor neurone disease was a curse from the Devil.
Hawking has spent most of a brilliant life trying to discover the way things actually are, how we got here, the way things work.
The answers he and his fellow leading physicists have come up with so far may or may not be the right ones. The best anyone can say is that they’re the best answers we’ve got so far.
They have at least been arrived at by intelligent inquiry, scepticism and careful, repeated experiment. Not by either wishful thinking or taking old stories as gospel.
To Hawking, the question of whether there’s really a heaven, in the common religious sense, is surely an old chestnut long ago cracked and discarded.
I’d like to think that if I’d been interviewing him I’d have had more interesting questions to ask. If only I’d have had a chance of understanding – properly understanding – the answers.
And there, of course, lies at least part of the problem.
I know just about enough of both astral and quantum physics – the big picture and the little picture – to find them fascinating, compelling and a bit weird. But nowhere near enough to claim I really understand them.
I know that without some of the weirdness your telly, your computer, your mobile phone wouldn’t work. But if it comes to explaining HOW they work… Well, could you?
So much easier just to listen to the fairy stories. Especially if you’ve got that night-phobia thing.
But hang on. Whoever said it’s going to be dark when you die? You can’t experience darkness if you have no senses to perceive light.
The idea of eternal darkness is just as much a fairytale as winged harpists sitting on clouds, luscious damsels plying martyrs with intoxicating drinks – or evil-smelling demons torturing sinners forever with red-hot tongs.
They all assume, contrary to all verifiable evidence, that consciousness will somehow continue after your body is no more.
If you really want to know about the after-life, the person to ask isn’t Stephen Hawking. Unless by “after-life” you mean the projected future of the planets, stars and galaxies long after our species – all species – have ceased to exist.
If it’s visions of Paradise (or everlasting darkness) you’re after, the chap to consult is John Casey, author of the book After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.
In which you will find, among other delightful titbits, that the ancient Egyptians’ idea of heaven was just like a better Egypt, with plenty of bread, pastry, beer and wine.
Unfortunately, at least in the early days, only the pharaoh and his family had any hope of getting there. The idea of an afterlife for all came later.
As for hell, with fire, brimstone and torments eternal, that came later still.
It was, in fact, essentially a medieval invention, contrived to frighten the populace into obedience.
Like so much of Christian tradition it owed little to Christ, or to the book upon which all was supposed to depend.
The Bible has 622 instances of the word “heaven” but only 13 of “hell” – all from the New Testament, all but two of them from the gospels, and more than half of them from the Book of Matthew.
But if there is a heaven, or a hell, where are they?
Attempting, in 1727, to reconcile old religious notions with new scientific ones, Tobias Swinden published An Enquiry Into the Nature and Place of Hell.
In which he took around 500 pages to conclude that hell must be in the sun – the only place with enough fire to last forever.
It would seem the idea of space travel, which Hawking is broadly in favour of, is not so new. Travelling to the sun, though? That would be hell.
****
NICK CLEGG was momentarily taken aback. The petition he’d just been handed came in a heavy box containing 385,747 names (including mine).
Addressed to the government, it said: “Our NHS is precious. We won’t forgive you if you ruin it.
“Don’t break up our health service and hand it to private healthcare companies.
“Listen to the real experts – doctors, nurses and patients – when they give warnings about these plans.”
Maybe the LibDem leader was in the mood to start distancing himself from the Tories anyway. Maybe he already had it in mind to stand up for the NHS against the grubby hands of free enterprise.
Or just maybe he was swayed by the clarity and strength of feeling shown in the petition and its presenters. In which case, perhaps there is hope for democracy.
And, if Clegg’s party is at last prepared to show some spine, hope for the survival of the NHS.
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Dead reckoning that puts a cash price on your body
THERE are lots of reasons to be queasy about the death of Osama Bin Laden. The no-doubt grisly photos are not, as it happens, among them.
The apparent fact that they were taken is one thing. (I say “apparent”, because what of this whole grimy business can we really take as fact?) That no photos have been released to public view is another.
Not to be used as propaganda? What else was the whole mission if not a gigantic exercise in US propaganda?
Too unpleasant to be seen (even if a child was there to witness the event itself)?
And then there is the haste with which Bin Laden’s body was (apparently) disposed of.
If Muslim sensibilities were really the reason, then why at sea?
Is it entirely irrelevant that that makes any post-mortem impossible – or even an indisputable identification?
If the Americans wanted to provide material for another batch of conspiracy theories to match those spawned by 9/11 they could hardly have gone about it better.
I made it clear last week why I thought the killing was wrong. I don’t want to add now to the welter of theories, or even ethical concerns.
But rather like another historically ambiguous episode, this whole story has put an extraordinary focus on a corpse. More specifically, a missing corpse.
What is it about dead bodies that we find so revolting – and at the same time so fascinating?
In our society there is nothing we like to look at more than human bodies. It’s only when the life goes from them that we whisk them out of sight.
The idea of killing is constantly in the news, constantly part of our entertainment.
Shoot-em-up games have moved on from the cowboys-n-injuns of my primary school playground to the slick graphics of the latest computer simulations.
But real bodies, real human meat, remain as absent from our everyday lives as they were from The Lone Ranger or Space Invaders.
Not just since medieval or Tudor times, when the physicality of death was a known reality to all, but since the Second World War, death has been sanitised. Swept up. Cleaned away.
Like those photos of Bin Laden’s remains, dead flesh has become something we’re not supposed to see.
Which perhaps goes some way to accounting for the inflation of graphic nastiness in horror movies. And the increasing obsession in detective fiction, on the page and on screen, with forensics and pathology.
Maybe it’s time we treated the shivery obsession with a healthy dose of realism.
After all, there’s nothing so certain as death and taxes. And taxes haven’t always been around.
So let’s consider the reality of dead bodies. Not shot-up celebrity corpses like Bin Laden’s, just ordinary everyday cadavers such as yours and mine will be one day.
Reality, in this cash-conscious capitalist world, is most commonly measured in monetary units.
For some reason, we usually make an exception to this when it comes to dying. Unless you’re talking about the will of someone wealthy. And even then the deceased’s physical remains are seldom considered.
Yet looked at as a collection of reusable scrap parts, a human body can be worth a good deal of money. Which almost makes it perverse that most of us pay simply to have the thing disposed of.
A full set of heart valves in good nick is supposed to be worth about £16,000. The corneas in your eyes, undamaged and with proper legal provenance, could fetch £3,600. Your brain only has a market value of about £350 – but a whole head can be worth ten times that to the right buyer and with all the paperwork in order.
Then there’s the skin, the hair, the other organs. All with potentially good trade-in value. Unlike your cremated ashes, which are worth less than the battery from your old mobile phone.
It’s just as well, I suppose, that law and taboo should restrict trade in human parts. And of course there’s always the question of ownership.
But there are plenty of valid reasons – medical, educational and experimental – why those parts might be better used than as food for worms or fishes.
And if you baulk at the idea of someone selling your bits after your demise, bequeathing them to medical science is an excellent option.
This is all assuming, of course – as I do – that once deceased your body stops caring what happens to it. Or, indeed, about anything else.
That should apply even if you ascribe to a belief in an after-life. Which seems to me to be wishful thinking of the oddest kind. Odd and misplaced.
The time before our birth does not scare, or even mystify, us much – so why should the time after our death? In both we are equally non-conscious, non-existent.
I find this not only more plausible, but also a more comforting idea than any imagined afterlife.
As Woody Allen put it: “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
The apparent fact that they were taken is one thing. (I say “apparent”, because what of this whole grimy business can we really take as fact?) That no photos have been released to public view is another.
Not to be used as propaganda? What else was the whole mission if not a gigantic exercise in US propaganda?
Too unpleasant to be seen (even if a child was there to witness the event itself)?
And then there is the haste with which Bin Laden’s body was (apparently) disposed of.
If Muslim sensibilities were really the reason, then why at sea?
Is it entirely irrelevant that that makes any post-mortem impossible – or even an indisputable identification?
If the Americans wanted to provide material for another batch of conspiracy theories to match those spawned by 9/11 they could hardly have gone about it better.
I made it clear last week why I thought the killing was wrong. I don’t want to add now to the welter of theories, or even ethical concerns.
But rather like another historically ambiguous episode, this whole story has put an extraordinary focus on a corpse. More specifically, a missing corpse.
What is it about dead bodies that we find so revolting – and at the same time so fascinating?
In our society there is nothing we like to look at more than human bodies. It’s only when the life goes from them that we whisk them out of sight.
The idea of killing is constantly in the news, constantly part of our entertainment.
Shoot-em-up games have moved on from the cowboys-n-injuns of my primary school playground to the slick graphics of the latest computer simulations.
But real bodies, real human meat, remain as absent from our everyday lives as they were from The Lone Ranger or Space Invaders.
Not just since medieval or Tudor times, when the physicality of death was a known reality to all, but since the Second World War, death has been sanitised. Swept up. Cleaned away.
Like those photos of Bin Laden’s remains, dead flesh has become something we’re not supposed to see.
Which perhaps goes some way to accounting for the inflation of graphic nastiness in horror movies. And the increasing obsession in detective fiction, on the page and on screen, with forensics and pathology.
Maybe it’s time we treated the shivery obsession with a healthy dose of realism.
After all, there’s nothing so certain as death and taxes. And taxes haven’t always been around.
So let’s consider the reality of dead bodies. Not shot-up celebrity corpses like Bin Laden’s, just ordinary everyday cadavers such as yours and mine will be one day.
Reality, in this cash-conscious capitalist world, is most commonly measured in monetary units.
For some reason, we usually make an exception to this when it comes to dying. Unless you’re talking about the will of someone wealthy. And even then the deceased’s physical remains are seldom considered.
Yet looked at as a collection of reusable scrap parts, a human body can be worth a good deal of money. Which almost makes it perverse that most of us pay simply to have the thing disposed of.
A full set of heart valves in good nick is supposed to be worth about £16,000. The corneas in your eyes, undamaged and with proper legal provenance, could fetch £3,600. Your brain only has a market value of about £350 – but a whole head can be worth ten times that to the right buyer and with all the paperwork in order.
Then there’s the skin, the hair, the other organs. All with potentially good trade-in value. Unlike your cremated ashes, which are worth less than the battery from your old mobile phone.
It’s just as well, I suppose, that law and taboo should restrict trade in human parts. And of course there’s always the question of ownership.
But there are plenty of valid reasons – medical, educational and experimental – why those parts might be better used than as food for worms or fishes.
And if you baulk at the idea of someone selling your bits after your demise, bequeathing them to medical science is an excellent option.
This is all assuming, of course – as I do – that once deceased your body stops caring what happens to it. Or, indeed, about anything else.
That should apply even if you ascribe to a belief in an after-life. Which seems to me to be wishful thinking of the oddest kind. Odd and misplaced.
The time before our birth does not scare, or even mystify, us much – so why should the time after our death? In both we are equally non-conscious, non-existent.
I find this not only more plausible, but also a more comforting idea than any imagined afterlife.
As Woody Allen put it: “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Saturday, 7 May 2011
From Hitler to Haydock, it's all a Revelation
DID you know the Bible was written in code?
That all that stuff about the laws, legends and creation myths of a wandering long-ago Middle-Eastern tribe was just a cover for a lot of brilliant predictions about the world to come?
You didn’t? Well, it’s all there.
Hitler, the moon landings, the Kennedy assassination, the Bin Laden killing, the result of tomorrow’s 2.30 at Haydock.
Only trouble is, it only offers wisdom after the event. You have to know what already happened before you can find it.
Which makes it pretty useless as a racing tipster.
Still, find the right algorithm and pretty much everything is spelled out. You just need to know how and where to look.
And the really amazing thing is, it works not only on the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts – the magic survives translation into English. Even the flat, awful English of the New International Version!
If, as Michael Drosnin, author of The Bible Code, suggests, the Bible is literally the word of God, a couple of questions arise.
Such as: Why did He scramble His prophesies so thoroughly that they couldn’t be read until someone had invented a really powerful computer?
Why do His predictions only become clear after the events they describe?
And why on earth should the same power of prophesy apply to War And Peace, the Complete Works of Charles Dickens – or those of Richard Dawkins?
The answer to all these questions is that the magic has nothing to do with God and everything to do with numbers. That, and the amazing human capacity to find patterns in almost anything.
If a book is long enough, and the technique flexible enough, you can find anything encoded in pretty well any text. Anything you’re looking for. Anything you already know.
As scientist and author Simon Singh demonstrated delightfully at Ipswich Regent on Monday night when he revealed a mass of information about the death of Princess Diana “encoded” in Herman Melville’s big fat 19th-century novel Moby Dick.
Singh was one of the stars of the science show Uncaged Monkeys, which kept a near sell-out audience wrapt for almost three hours.
The other headline acts were Ben Goldacre and Brian Cox.
One or two of my friends accuse the cherubic Cox of dumbing down the presentation of science on TV. Which seems to me way off the mark for a man helping to make intelligence popular.
Of course his series The Wonders of the Universe aimed for a wide market. And if his enthusiasm helped spread the idea that scientific inquiry – and, yes, wonder – is fun, then that can only be good.
And it’s hard to imagine that without Cox’s telegenic charisma a large paying audience would have turned out to see what amounted to an evening of back-to-back short science lectures. Even one compered by the comedian Robin Ince, whose splendid idea all this was.
A highlight was Ipswich bor Adam Rutherford, whose whistle-stop presentation of the science of genetics told me nothing new, but did so highly entertainingly. And, incidentally, rubbished the wilful ignorance of the Daily Mail even more effectively than the frenetic Goldacre.
But the real success of the show wasn’t any one particular performer. It wasn’t even any one scientific revelation. And it certainly wasn’t any of Ince’s jokes, funny as many of them were.
It was simply the fact that a science show could fill the theatre.
And spread the word that it’s both fun and important to learn by scientific inquiry. Not just to take the word of “authority”.
Whether that’s the word of a journalist, a crackpot medic, or the cryptically encoded “word of God”.
THE MAKING OF A MARTYR
SO Barack Obama apparently believes America, and the world, are safer for the murder of Osama Bin Laden.
And I used to think Obama was a clever – more than that, sensible – man.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the question of whether it can ever be morally right to set out to kill someone.
Let’s put aside our revulsion at the spectacle of thousands of people celebrating another person’s death. And our disgust at the idea of a national leader watching the slaying by live video link.
Let’s even accept that the intention was to bring Bin Laden to justice alive, to face an international court and the likelihood of a life – not a death – sentence.
Have Obama, David Cameron and all those others cheering the killing never heard of vengeance?
Or do they think Americans are the only people capable of carrying out missions of revenge and calling it justice?
I fear Bin Laden, vile as he undoubtedly was, is more dangerous as a martyr than he was as a man.
And that by killing him America has handed a huge propaganda boost to the Islamists just when the political future of the whole Arab world is up for grabs.
That all that stuff about the laws, legends and creation myths of a wandering long-ago Middle-Eastern tribe was just a cover for a lot of brilliant predictions about the world to come?
You didn’t? Well, it’s all there.
Hitler, the moon landings, the Kennedy assassination, the Bin Laden killing, the result of tomorrow’s 2.30 at Haydock.
Only trouble is, it only offers wisdom after the event. You have to know what already happened before you can find it.
Which makes it pretty useless as a racing tipster.
Still, find the right algorithm and pretty much everything is spelled out. You just need to know how and where to look.
And the really amazing thing is, it works not only on the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts – the magic survives translation into English. Even the flat, awful English of the New International Version!
If, as Michael Drosnin, author of The Bible Code, suggests, the Bible is literally the word of God, a couple of questions arise.
Such as: Why did He scramble His prophesies so thoroughly that they couldn’t be read until someone had invented a really powerful computer?
Why do His predictions only become clear after the events they describe?
And why on earth should the same power of prophesy apply to War And Peace, the Complete Works of Charles Dickens – or those of Richard Dawkins?
The answer to all these questions is that the magic has nothing to do with God and everything to do with numbers. That, and the amazing human capacity to find patterns in almost anything.
If a book is long enough, and the technique flexible enough, you can find anything encoded in pretty well any text. Anything you’re looking for. Anything you already know.
As scientist and author Simon Singh demonstrated delightfully at Ipswich Regent on Monday night when he revealed a mass of information about the death of Princess Diana “encoded” in Herman Melville’s big fat 19th-century novel Moby Dick.
Singh was one of the stars of the science show Uncaged Monkeys, which kept a near sell-out audience wrapt for almost three hours.
The other headline acts were Ben Goldacre and Brian Cox.
One or two of my friends accuse the cherubic Cox of dumbing down the presentation of science on TV. Which seems to me way off the mark for a man helping to make intelligence popular.
Of course his series The Wonders of the Universe aimed for a wide market. And if his enthusiasm helped spread the idea that scientific inquiry – and, yes, wonder – is fun, then that can only be good.
And it’s hard to imagine that without Cox’s telegenic charisma a large paying audience would have turned out to see what amounted to an evening of back-to-back short science lectures. Even one compered by the comedian Robin Ince, whose splendid idea all this was.
A highlight was Ipswich bor Adam Rutherford, whose whistle-stop presentation of the science of genetics told me nothing new, but did so highly entertainingly. And, incidentally, rubbished the wilful ignorance of the Daily Mail even more effectively than the frenetic Goldacre.
But the real success of the show wasn’t any one particular performer. It wasn’t even any one scientific revelation. And it certainly wasn’t any of Ince’s jokes, funny as many of them were.
It was simply the fact that a science show could fill the theatre.
And spread the word that it’s both fun and important to learn by scientific inquiry. Not just to take the word of “authority”.
Whether that’s the word of a journalist, a crackpot medic, or the cryptically encoded “word of God”.
THE MAKING OF A MARTYR
SO Barack Obama apparently believes America, and the world, are safer for the murder of Osama Bin Laden.
And I used to think Obama was a clever – more than that, sensible – man.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the question of whether it can ever be morally right to set out to kill someone.
Let’s put aside our revulsion at the spectacle of thousands of people celebrating another person’s death. And our disgust at the idea of a national leader watching the slaying by live video link.
Let’s even accept that the intention was to bring Bin Laden to justice alive, to face an international court and the likelihood of a life – not a death – sentence.
Have Obama, David Cameron and all those others cheering the killing never heard of vengeance?
Or do they think Americans are the only people capable of carrying out missions of revenge and calling it justice?
I fear Bin Laden, vile as he undoubtedly was, is more dangerous as a martyr than he was as a man.
And that by killing him America has handed a huge propaganda boost to the Islamists just when the political future of the whole Arab world is up for grabs.
Saturday, 30 April 2011
AV or not AV, that is not the right question
UNLIKE some other countries, Britain doesn’t do national referendums very often. In fact, the last one was 36 years ago.
I remember it clearly. Partly because I felt passionately about the issue involved. Partly because it was the cause of one of the few fallings-out I had with my girlfriend of the time.
The question we were asked on June 5, 1975 was: “Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?”
I say “we”, but actually I wasn’t asked. Not officially. My girlfriend was, though.
That was because she turned 18 just in time to vote, while I missed out by a few weeks.
She voted “no”. I would have voted “yes” – as I probably would now, though perhaps with greater reservations, if the same question were to be asked again.
In the event, I needn’t have worried. The Yes campaign triumphed by a whacking two-to-one majority.
It did so largely thanks to the support of the opposition Conservative Party under its new leader Margaret Thatcher. Which seems a tad ironic when you consider how much the Tories have beaten themselves up over Europe almost ever since.
The ruling Labour Party remained officially neutral, with most of its top brass on the Yes side despite a big conference majority the other way.
The most senior politician in the No camp was industry secretary Tony Benn, while the only national newspaper to urge a No vote was the Communist Morning Star.
Nearly 26million people cast a vote – 65 per cent of all those eligible (the same as in last year’s general election). If next Thursday’s referendum gets a turn-out half that size I’ll be surprised.
Yet the result could be just as significant for Britain’s future. In theory, at least.
If a majority votes Yes to a switch to the alternative vote, it will change the system used in all future elections. And could, therefore, change the outcome.
So how come the whole business seems such a turn-off? How come it hasn’t raised temperatures in the street the way the Common Market did in 1975?
Partly, it’s because we’re being asked the wrong question. And partly because the people running both the Yes and No campaigns seem to think we’re all half-witted.
There may be a good argument in favour of voting No. But I haven’t heard it. And it certainly isn’t in the glossy purple-and-sicky-green leaflet that dropped through my door the other day.
Its main argument seems to be that you and I shouldn’t have AV because we’re all far too thick to understand it.
Whereas it seems to me that it’s the campaign leaders themselves who are thick.
They say: “The winner should be the one that comes first.” Yet they don’t seem to have noticed how often that isn’t the case with the present system.
At present, Glenda Jackson’s Labour majority of 42 in Hampstead is worth as much as the 13,050 majority Matthew Hancock gained for the Conservatives in West Suffolk.
While the Tories govern the country after gaining little more than a third of the votes cast at the election – as, indeed, did Labour before them.
Under the present system, the government is effectively chosen by a few thousand floating voters in a handful of marginal consistuencies.
And this is supposed to be fair?
Amusingly enough, David Cameron himself was elected to the Tory leadership under a version of AV similar to the one France uses to choose its president.
If the ballot had been a straightforward first-past-the-post one, David Davis would now be prime minister. Or, perhaps, leader of the opposition.
So it’s a bit rich that Cameron should want to deny the rest of us the benefit of the system that got him where he is today.
The leaflet put out by the Yes campaign is far cheaper and shabbier (guess where the money is – just as the Tories had all the big shiny posters last year). Which may be a point in its favour.
Unfortunately, the arguments in it are if anything even stupider than those for the Noes.
A Yes vote won’t make all MPs work hard. It won’t end MPs’ jobs for life. And it won’t give us all a stronger voice, whatever Ralph in East Sussex may say about all the men in his family fighting in both world wars.
It will make the system fairer. Slightly.
It will give some people a sense that their votes aren’t wasted – as mine is always likely to be in a constituency that would elect a fish if it wore a blue rosette.
But it will also represent a sadly wasted opportunity.
Our allegedly democratic system desperately needs reform. Real reform, not petty tinkering.
Proper proportional representation, not a continuation of the Westminster village of one-constituency, one-MP.
I shall vote “Yes”, on the principle that a little shuffle in vaguely the right direction may be better than no move at all.
But I’ll do it without the passion I’d have voted with – if I’d been a few weeks older – in 1975.
I remember it clearly. Partly because I felt passionately about the issue involved. Partly because it was the cause of one of the few fallings-out I had with my girlfriend of the time.
The question we were asked on June 5, 1975 was: “Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?”
I say “we”, but actually I wasn’t asked. Not officially. My girlfriend was, though.
That was because she turned 18 just in time to vote, while I missed out by a few weeks.
She voted “no”. I would have voted “yes” – as I probably would now, though perhaps with greater reservations, if the same question were to be asked again.
In the event, I needn’t have worried. The Yes campaign triumphed by a whacking two-to-one majority.
It did so largely thanks to the support of the opposition Conservative Party under its new leader Margaret Thatcher. Which seems a tad ironic when you consider how much the Tories have beaten themselves up over Europe almost ever since.
The ruling Labour Party remained officially neutral, with most of its top brass on the Yes side despite a big conference majority the other way.
The most senior politician in the No camp was industry secretary Tony Benn, while the only national newspaper to urge a No vote was the Communist Morning Star.
Nearly 26million people cast a vote – 65 per cent of all those eligible (the same as in last year’s general election). If next Thursday’s referendum gets a turn-out half that size I’ll be surprised.
Yet the result could be just as significant for Britain’s future. In theory, at least.
If a majority votes Yes to a switch to the alternative vote, it will change the system used in all future elections. And could, therefore, change the outcome.
So how come the whole business seems such a turn-off? How come it hasn’t raised temperatures in the street the way the Common Market did in 1975?
Partly, it’s because we’re being asked the wrong question. And partly because the people running both the Yes and No campaigns seem to think we’re all half-witted.
There may be a good argument in favour of voting No. But I haven’t heard it. And it certainly isn’t in the glossy purple-and-sicky-green leaflet that dropped through my door the other day.
Its main argument seems to be that you and I shouldn’t have AV because we’re all far too thick to understand it.
Whereas it seems to me that it’s the campaign leaders themselves who are thick.
They say: “The winner should be the one that comes first.” Yet they don’t seem to have noticed how often that isn’t the case with the present system.
At present, Glenda Jackson’s Labour majority of 42 in Hampstead is worth as much as the 13,050 majority Matthew Hancock gained for the Conservatives in West Suffolk.
While the Tories govern the country after gaining little more than a third of the votes cast at the election – as, indeed, did Labour before them.
Under the present system, the government is effectively chosen by a few thousand floating voters in a handful of marginal consistuencies.
And this is supposed to be fair?
Amusingly enough, David Cameron himself was elected to the Tory leadership under a version of AV similar to the one France uses to choose its president.
If the ballot had been a straightforward first-past-the-post one, David Davis would now be prime minister. Or, perhaps, leader of the opposition.
So it’s a bit rich that Cameron should want to deny the rest of us the benefit of the system that got him where he is today.
The leaflet put out by the Yes campaign is far cheaper and shabbier (guess where the money is – just as the Tories had all the big shiny posters last year). Which may be a point in its favour.
Unfortunately, the arguments in it are if anything even stupider than those for the Noes.
A Yes vote won’t make all MPs work hard. It won’t end MPs’ jobs for life. And it won’t give us all a stronger voice, whatever Ralph in East Sussex may say about all the men in his family fighting in both world wars.
It will make the system fairer. Slightly.
It will give some people a sense that their votes aren’t wasted – as mine is always likely to be in a constituency that would elect a fish if it wore a blue rosette.
But it will also represent a sadly wasted opportunity.
Our allegedly democratic system desperately needs reform. Real reform, not petty tinkering.
Proper proportional representation, not a continuation of the Westminster village of one-constituency, one-MP.
I shall vote “Yes”, on the principle that a little shuffle in vaguely the right direction may be better than no move at all.
But I’ll do it without the passion I’d have voted with – if I’d been a few weeks older – in 1975.
Saturday, 9 April 2011
NHS ‘reform’: An open letter to my MP
DOES democracy work? Here, maybe, is a chance to find out.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg appear to have wobbled a little on the subject of vandalism – sorry, reform – of the NHS.
But does a possible delay and a “listening exercise” actually add up to anything of value? Or is it merely a ruse to deflect protest before pressing ahead anyway?
Remember, the planned changes aren’t cuts. They aren’t about saving money – in fact, they’ll almost certainly cost money.
They are about handing control of the pursestrings to GPs. As if they wanted it, and as if they didn’t have enough to do already.
They are about “fixing” something that ain’t broke. About replacing duty of care with duty to make a profit.
They are about giving away billions of pounds of public money – your money and mine – into private hands.
The LibDems, of course – at least, those in the parliamentary party – could just pull the plug. But then that applies to everything they’re letting the Tories get away with.
The best you or I can do (until the next election) is to see how closely the politicians are really listening. And for that, the time-honoured technique is to write to your MP.
These days, with email, that’s easier than it used to be. Below is the text of the email I sent this week to Suffolk Coastal MP Therese Coffey.
If, like me, you’re deeply concerned about the future well-being of the NHS, I’d urge you to send a similar message to your own MP.
The quickest and easiest way to do that is to visit the website 38degrees.org.uk and click on the green “Email your MP” button near the bottom of the homepage.
The fact that all Suffolk’s MPs are now Tories may make them less open to your fears than others might be. On the other hand, if they do listen, their views may be taken more seriously for being in the party of government.
****
NOT surprisingly for an island nation with a lot of shoreline and a mountainous interior, the Japanese eat a lot of fish. Much of it raw.
Which is why they have good cause to be concerned at reports of radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit being found in seawater off the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.
Authorising the release of 11,500 tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific, the Japanese government said any radiation would quickly be diluted and dispersed.
Well, maybe. But the truth is – as with so much about the whole Fukushima incident – that they don’t really know.
They can’t know how far the contamination will spread, or precisely what effects it will have on sealife large or small, animal, plant or indeterminate.
There is simply no precedent for this kind of release of toxic material into a heavily fished sea.
It’s an experiment no one would willingly contemplate carrying out.
Like it or not, they’re carrying it out now.
****
David Cameron and Nick Clegg appear to have wobbled a little on the subject of vandalism – sorry, reform – of the NHS.
But does a possible delay and a “listening exercise” actually add up to anything of value? Or is it merely a ruse to deflect protest before pressing ahead anyway?
Remember, the planned changes aren’t cuts. They aren’t about saving money – in fact, they’ll almost certainly cost money.
They are about handing control of the pursestrings to GPs. As if they wanted it, and as if they didn’t have enough to do already.
They are about “fixing” something that ain’t broke. About replacing duty of care with duty to make a profit.
They are about giving away billions of pounds of public money – your money and mine – into private hands.
The LibDems, of course – at least, those in the parliamentary party – could just pull the plug. But then that applies to everything they’re letting the Tories get away with.
The best you or I can do (until the next election) is to see how closely the politicians are really listening. And for that, the time-honoured technique is to write to your MP.
These days, with email, that’s easier than it used to be. Below is the text of the email I sent this week to Suffolk Coastal MP Therese Coffey.
If, like me, you’re deeply concerned about the future well-being of the NHS, I’d urge you to send a similar message to your own MP.
The quickest and easiest way to do that is to visit the website 38degrees.org.uk and click on the green “Email your MP” button near the bottom of the homepage.
The fact that all Suffolk’s MPs are now Tories may make them less open to your fears than others might be. On the other hand, if they do listen, their views may be taken more seriously for being in the party of government.
“Dear Therese Coffey
Having studied Andrew Lansley’s proposals for changes to the NHS, I am deeply troubled by the damage his plans would inflict upon a service that is a cornerstone of British life and which we have all learned to rely on over decades.
The introduction of too much competition and privatisation threatens both the caring ethos of the NHS and the currently extremely good provision of care our doctors and hospitals provide.
In our part of Suffolk we have very good GPs whose commitment to the community could only be worsened by having to manage a privatised service. We also enjoy outstanding levels of care at Ipswich Hospital, which it would be unforgivable to jeopardise.
I speak with some knowledge of this as the son of an 89-year-old mother whose life has undoubtedly been extended and certainly hugely improved by this excellent service.
Please urge Andrew Lansley, David Cameron and the Cabinet to listen seriously to the many concerns people have about their plans; and not just to pay lip-service to our genuine worries but actually to abandon a course which would greatly impair both the reputation and performance of Britain’s outstanding health service.
Yours sincerely,
Aidan Semmens”
****
NOT surprisingly for an island nation with a lot of shoreline and a mountainous interior, the Japanese eat a lot of fish. Much of it raw.
Which is why they have good cause to be concerned at reports of radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit being found in seawater off the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.
Authorising the release of 11,500 tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific, the Japanese government said any radiation would quickly be diluted and dispersed.
Well, maybe. But the truth is – as with so much about the whole Fukushima incident – that they don’t really know.
They can’t know how far the contamination will spread, or precisely what effects it will have on sealife large or small, animal, plant or indeterminate.
There is simply no precedent for this kind of release of toxic material into a heavily fished sea.
It’s an experiment no one would willingly contemplate carrying out.
Like it or not, they’re carrying it out now.
****
SHAMELESS self-promotion corner.
My first full-length book of modernist poetry is now available from Shearsman Publishing, a mere 33 years after my first small-press pamphlet appeared.
Titled “A Stone Dog”, it can be found on Amazon, at shearsman.com, or by order from any good bookshop.
My poetry bears no obvious resemblance to this column, but regular readers might (I hope) see something in the description by poet Kelvin Corcoran: “Semmens doesn’t blink in the face of the big scam…”
Friday, 1 April 2011
A pleasant stroll with 250,000 friends
MY cousin Martin is a quiet, reserved sort of chap, as befits the service he worked in for many years.
At 67, he’s retired now but clearly still cares about the library, and indeed other public services.
On Saturday night he reported: “Cathy and I had a pleasant stroll through London in the company of quarter-of-a-million or so friends this afternoon.”
Barring some uncertainty about the total number gathered – a quarter-million was at the lowest extreme of the range of estimates – that gentle image seems to sum up nicely the experience of all those I know who took part in the anti-cuts demo.
Another friend, coincidentally also called Martin, took his seven-year-old daughter, at her request, and didn’t regret it.
At one point in the afternoon, a little after reporting on Ed Miliband’s speech to the throng, he tweeted: “Of course no expression of anti-establishment tendencies is complete without a trip to Claire’s Accessories…”
Which also puts the day’s events into a different perspective from anything you may have seen on the TV news.
Finally he concluded: “It was a great experience. Really lovely atmosphere. Too bad the real story of the day has been lost behind a cake stand at Fortnum & Mason.”
Too bad indeed.
And it’s an interesting question who you should blame for the news crews turning away from hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters to focus on the less peaceful few.
Those inevitable few?
Or the news teams?
After all, isn’t a march by half-a-million disgruntled citizens (to move to the top of the estimates scale) of greater real significance than a sit-in at a posh shop by a few dozen?
In fact, video taken inside Fortnum & Mason shows even that sideshow to the main event was non-violent and non-destructive – as was admitted by police officers present.
Nevertheless, all 145 peaceful demonstrators were rounded up and arrested. That’s quite a high proportion of the day’s total of 201 arrests.
Leaving not many “mindless thugs” for Theresa May to get all unnecessary about.
When the home secretary talks about “thuggish behaviour of the worst kind” she is, frankly, raving. Except if it’s madness, there is surely method in it. A rather cynical and calculating method.
Suffolk teachers’ union leader Graham White was more measured, and more accurate.
He said: “The few who were intent on causing damage to property … targeted banks and big business – those who their research had shown to be substantial tax avoiders.
“It was damage to property and not to peoples’ livelihoods or personal circumstances. It will not cause intense personal suffering, unlike the Con-Dem cuts.”
It’s no surprise that Tories such as Suffolk Coastal MP Therese Coffey should find such straight talk “appalling”.
It’s more disappointing that former county council leader Bryony Rudkin, speaking for the Labour Party, should describe Mr White’s comments as “unhelpful”.
Much as it’s disappointing that Labour should go along with the Tory cuts as far as saying they themselves would merely cut more slowly and more sensitively.
Instead of being bold enough to stand up and tell the truth.
That in percentage terms Britain’s debt is not unusually high – either by comparison with other countries, or with our own history.
Messrs Cameron and Osborne say savage cuts are needed because Britain is bust.
But it’s no more bust than it was at the height of the industrial revolution.
No more bust than when the British Empire coloured a quarter of the world map pink.
Less bust than when we went to war with Hitler’s Germany and won.
Much less bust than when the NHS, social services, the welfare state – all those vital services the Tories are now intent on destroying – were set up in the wake of that victory.
On all those occasions, the nation got itself out of trouble by going to work. Not by throwing people out of work.
The same policy would work now, if only the toffs at the top weren’t intent on out-Thatchering Thatcher.
On taking an axe to the caring state – and, incidentally, to the economy.
That’s why somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 law-abiding people took to the streets of London last weekend.
That’s why their legitimate protest must be heard, not drowned out by the home secretary’s hysterical reaction to the tiny minority of the slightly less law-abiding.
****
POOR Nick Clegg got caught in an old trap this week – the informal, “off-the-record” chat with reporters that goes on the record when he makes the mistake of saying something interesting.
What he said, in a nutshell, was that the Fukushima incident will make the future cost of building nuclear power-stations so great they won’t get built. Essentially, that the nuclear industry is a dead duck.
Terribly bad form, that. Breaking government ranks by telling the truth.
At 67, he’s retired now but clearly still cares about the library, and indeed other public services.
On Saturday night he reported: “Cathy and I had a pleasant stroll through London in the company of quarter-of-a-million or so friends this afternoon.”
Barring some uncertainty about the total number gathered – a quarter-million was at the lowest extreme of the range of estimates – that gentle image seems to sum up nicely the experience of all those I know who took part in the anti-cuts demo.
Another friend, coincidentally also called Martin, took his seven-year-old daughter, at her request, and didn’t regret it.
At one point in the afternoon, a little after reporting on Ed Miliband’s speech to the throng, he tweeted: “Of course no expression of anti-establishment tendencies is complete without a trip to Claire’s Accessories…”
Which also puts the day’s events into a different perspective from anything you may have seen on the TV news.
Finally he concluded: “It was a great experience. Really lovely atmosphere. Too bad the real story of the day has been lost behind a cake stand at Fortnum & Mason.”
Too bad indeed.
And it’s an interesting question who you should blame for the news crews turning away from hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters to focus on the less peaceful few.
Those inevitable few?
Or the news teams?
After all, isn’t a march by half-a-million disgruntled citizens (to move to the top of the estimates scale) of greater real significance than a sit-in at a posh shop by a few dozen?
In fact, video taken inside Fortnum & Mason shows even that sideshow to the main event was non-violent and non-destructive – as was admitted by police officers present.
Nevertheless, all 145 peaceful demonstrators were rounded up and arrested. That’s quite a high proportion of the day’s total of 201 arrests.
Leaving not many “mindless thugs” for Theresa May to get all unnecessary about.
When the home secretary talks about “thuggish behaviour of the worst kind” she is, frankly, raving. Except if it’s madness, there is surely method in it. A rather cynical and calculating method.
Suffolk teachers’ union leader Graham White was more measured, and more accurate.
He said: “The few who were intent on causing damage to property … targeted banks and big business – those who their research had shown to be substantial tax avoiders.
“It was damage to property and not to peoples’ livelihoods or personal circumstances. It will not cause intense personal suffering, unlike the Con-Dem cuts.”
It’s no surprise that Tories such as Suffolk Coastal MP Therese Coffey should find such straight talk “appalling”.
It’s more disappointing that former county council leader Bryony Rudkin, speaking for the Labour Party, should describe Mr White’s comments as “unhelpful”.
Much as it’s disappointing that Labour should go along with the Tory cuts as far as saying they themselves would merely cut more slowly and more sensitively.
Instead of being bold enough to stand up and tell the truth.
That in percentage terms Britain’s debt is not unusually high – either by comparison with other countries, or with our own history.
Messrs Cameron and Osborne say savage cuts are needed because Britain is bust.
But it’s no more bust than it was at the height of the industrial revolution.
No more bust than when the British Empire coloured a quarter of the world map pink.
Less bust than when we went to war with Hitler’s Germany and won.
Much less bust than when the NHS, social services, the welfare state – all those vital services the Tories are now intent on destroying – were set up in the wake of that victory.
On all those occasions, the nation got itself out of trouble by going to work. Not by throwing people out of work.
The same policy would work now, if only the toffs at the top weren’t intent on out-Thatchering Thatcher.
On taking an axe to the caring state – and, incidentally, to the economy.
That’s why somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 law-abiding people took to the streets of London last weekend.
That’s why their legitimate protest must be heard, not drowned out by the home secretary’s hysterical reaction to the tiny minority of the slightly less law-abiding.
****
POOR Nick Clegg got caught in an old trap this week – the informal, “off-the-record” chat with reporters that goes on the record when he makes the mistake of saying something interesting.
What he said, in a nutshell, was that the Fukushima incident will make the future cost of building nuclear power-stations so great they won’t get built. Essentially, that the nuclear industry is a dead duck.
Terribly bad form, that. Breaking government ranks by telling the truth.
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