Getting Shirty

Posted on Wednesday 14th July 2010 | Leave a comment

I read a couple of versions of this story the other weekend and I was going to dash off a quick post in response; but time was tight and I wasn’t sure of my facts, so I decided to wait until both those issues were remedied before commenting. There’s a moral in there, somewhere, for somebody.

West Midlands police “wastes money” on new shirts

ran the BBC headline, but the Telegraph, Mail and Mirror also covered the story. The fury is over the discovery that West Midlands police have spent a whopping £100,000 on changing the shirts of non-station based staff from white to black. “It’s absurd to spend money on cosmetic changes at a time when police forces are feeling the pinch,” suggests the inevitable TaxPayers’ Alliance spokesman, Mark Wallace. But what’s this? Did I use the definite article erroneously? Over at the Telegraph, Matthew Elliot of the TaxPayers’ Alliance chips in “Now is not the time for police to make a cosmetic change, like switching the colour of their shirts”.

Now, you may wonder why the TaxPayers’ Alliance feels the need to employ two people to say essentially the same thing – if they’re looking for efficiency savings, then they can have that one for free – but instead lets look at that £100,000 figure. It is a large sum of money indeed; certainly, were I to spend that much on shirts then I would be unable to dodge the accusation of profligacy. Then again, last time I checked I wasn’t a police force serving “nearly 2.6 million inhabitants” (source: Wikipedia). If I trust my maths (and I don’t, and neither should you; grab a calculator before you take this as fact) then that £100,000 works out at around 4p per resident of the West Midlands area. Of course, not all residents are taxpayers; I reckon some people will be paying upwards of 10p towards those shirts. But all those 10 pences add up; specifically they add up to the suspiciously round figure of £100,000, which is a big number, with lots of noughts. Is it money well spent? Well, we simply don’t know. Because the journalists employed here are useless. Evidently. Allow me to explain.

I read these articles, and a whopping yet oddly unasked question kept occurring to me; namely, is this £100,000 on top of the money the police would have been spending on white shirts anyway, or instead of it? It seems so blindingly obvious a question that I find it amazing that no one saw fit to ask, or to clarify the matter in their article, but apparently no one did. But it’s pretty pertinent; on the assumption that West Midlands police would be buying shirts for their staff anyway, what does this £100,000 actually relate to? And once you’ve asked that question, why stop there? Why not go on and try to find out other relevant information (the technical term for this is “journalism”); we can probably assume that some of that £100,000 is down to having to replace everyone’s white uniform shirts in one fell swoop, but what is the unit cost of each black shirt compared to a white one? Are they more, or less, expensive? Are they more, or less, hard-wearing? Apologies for getting all “1066 and all that” on your ass (as I believe the hepcats say), but depending on the answers to such questions we could range from one extreme, where the police are spending £100,000 over and above what they would have spent on white shirts in order to procure more expensive and flimsier shirts – this is a bad thing – to the other extreme where they would be spending £100,000 minus what they would otherwise have spent on white shirts in order to kit their officers in less expensive yet more rugged, longer-lasting gear; that is potentially a good thing. But rather than ask the questions that need to be asked to prevent their stories from being cobblers, instead the media collectively seem to have just sellotaped together a Press Association story with some added quotes from the TaxPayers’ Alliance and considered it job done. Now, I don’t expect the ideological twits at the TPA to want to go looking for the actual facts of the matter, but how not one journalist seems to have had his or her curiosity slightly prickled and thought to get the answers to the bleeding obvious questions without which their articles are meaningless, I do not know.

Now, journalists do far worse things than this, I know. This seems at face value to be down to laziness, albeit a laziness that allows a story to be put about that fits in with a popular media agenda; and we know that journalists also deliberately lie, twist facts and quote out of context in order to try to mislead their readers into drawing nasty conclusions. That I don’t generally tackle such stories is because people like Anton, 5CC, MacGuffin, uponothing and Jonathan do it so much better than I do; that and, while I often read a tabloid story and think “that’s bollocks”, I don’t usually have the time or inclination to look further into it, especially when I reckon that one of the above named is usually already on the case and doing the leg work. I also rarely have a background knowledge to give me a head start in taking the media to task; but I do know about shirts (I possess several, in varying colours and fabrics), I can follow the logic of what it must be like to have to procure staff shirts, and I can spot a gaping big hole in a newspaper article. This is part of the reason why I have written about such a trifling matter as police shirts, rather than, say, a more important matter such as this repulsive bit of journalisting.

But in fact the main reason I have written this post is not to criticise journalists; they’re just collateral damage. No, I’ve actually mentioned my key point already, and I’m writing this here because a realisation hit me as I was mulling things over. Do you know what it is? Any ideas? No?

It’s my earlier line about the TaxPayers’ Alliance, and my belief that

I don’t expect the ideological twits at the TPA to want to go looking for the facts of the matter

Because we know that the TaxPayers’ Alliance are just a bunch of rentaquote oafs there to pad out stories such as these. We know that they aren’t a serious think tank dedicated to the efficient running of government; but they claim to be, and they damn well should be. When a paper comes calling, asking them for their opinion on wasteful spending, they shouldn’t just dash off a quick spleen vent; they should investigate it, and then come back with a proper analysis. But they don’t appear to have done that, quelle surprise; this waste of server space is all I can find on their website, while both of those underemployed TPA spokesmen’s dismiss West Midlands police’s action as a merely a “cosmetic change” without apparently even being aware of the police’s justification that officers find the new shirts less restrictive and more comfortable. On the assumption that even the TPA believe that the police should both exist and wear a uniform, why didn’t they at least think to ask those obvious questions I raised above, even while deadline-bound journalists couldn’t be bothered? Why did they seemingly just respond “wah!”to that headline £100,000 figure, rather than investigate the long run costs or savings of this decision, as one would expect of an organisation genuinely interested in value for taxpayers’ money? Why do they only ever seem to call for more and more cuts in public spending, when they should be at least as concerned about blind, stupid cuts; for as public borrowing is just taxation deferred, can’t rash cuts just be public spending deferred? And why am I not in the least bit surprised by the way they have acted, and why do I expect so little of them?

Well, we know the answers, don’t we, and with luck I’m signing off here and you can consider this my last post on the TPA. Thing is, a proper taxpayers’ organisation genuinely holding government to account and actually doing what the TPA claims it does would be a good thing indeed. Shame the TaxPayers’ Alliance we have is broken.

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Posted in Media

The First Sign Of Madness

Posted on Thursday 8th July 2010 | Leave a comment

Re-reading the final section of my previous post, I imagine a reasonable person could make an obvious riposte to my comments on public sector pensions. This person would work in the private sector, he doesn’t have an occupational pension scheme, and the personal private pension he is paying into each month is building a pension pot that, at current rates, will pay him an annuity on retirement which will just about cover the daily costs of a cup-a-soup and a small bottle of supermarket own-brand cola. He has little time for my whining, and with fair cause. After all…

“Why should my taxes rise to help pay for your gilt-edged pension, when I can’t afford to pay for a decent pension for myself?”

It’s a good point, I say, and I don’t think your taxes should rise for that reason. If there is a shortfall in public sector pensions then that should be met by the employees, or by employers within existing budgets, but it would certainly be unfair for you or others to pay more to ensure I have a good pension. As it is, whether or not public sector pensions are unaffordable is, I think, more arguable than the media often allows. That is when they aren’t just complaining that public sector pensions should be cut for the sake of it, because they are usually better than most private sector pensions.

“Ah, right,” he says, seeing me on the back foot, “but they are usually better than private sector pensions aren’t they, and that isn’t fair, is it? Why should I pay into your pension at all, when you don’t pay into mine?”

Well, it’s true that my pension may well be better than yours and you may not consider that fair. On the other hand, your pay may well be better than mine; is that also unfair? Perhaps you get a company car; why can’t I have one? We both have our pay and benefits and a good pension is one of my benefits; it doesn’t seem reasonable to me to cherry pick one area where my benefits may be better than yours and decide to reduce it for reasons of fairness, while leaving untouched other areas where your benefits may be superior to mine.

“But I don’t care if your pay or benefits are better than mine. I care that I’m paying for them. And not just me; millions of people in the private sector are paying a premium in taxes so that those in the public sector can have better pensions than we can ourselves afford.”

And millions of public sector workers pay for goods and services in the private sector, and so we pay into your wages and benefits, including into your pensions, or into the wages that you then invest in pension funds. Have a word with your employer if they choose not to provide as good a pension as my employer does. But if you must reduce things to this simplistic public sector versus private sector argument, as if both are just opposing homogeneous blocks, then whilst it’s true that you pay my wages, it’s truer to say that we all pay each other’s wages. And while your taxes do help pay for my pension, your consumption spending is also going to help pay for the occupational pension schemes of private sector workers whose pensions may similarly be better than the one you are able to afford. What’s the difference?

“Oh come on! The difference is that they are private companies and can do what they like with their revenue. That’s completely different to what government agencies do with public money. Our money.”

But it’s your money that private companies receive, just by a different method, through your discretionary spending rather than through taxation; it’s different, yes, but not, I think, completely different. Put it another way; you complain that public sector pensions are better than yours, and you are paying a premium on your taxes in order to pay for them. But many private sector occupational pensions schemes are also better than yours, because the employer pays into the pension scheme. In effect aren’t you therefore paying a premium when you buy their goods, paying a premium for their workers to have a better pension than you can have? And that premium is your money too, your money that you have had to pay on top of the price of the goods to pay for someone else’s pension. Should private sector companies also cut their occupational pension schemes in some great levelling down, simply because the benefits of such schemes are better than your own?

“No. But. That really is different. I can’t choose whether or not to pay taxes; I have to. I don’t just decide to pay my council tax, I am forced to by law, and some of that money gets paid into pensions whether I like it or not. With private sector companies I can choose who I give my money too, and so I’m not forced to pay into someone else’s pension if I don’t want to. I can always take my custom elsewhere.”

But would you?

“Eh?”

Would you?

“Would I what?”

Would you take your custom elsewhere in order to avoid paying into a private company’s staff pension scheme? It seems to me that we have reached a point where your main objection to public sector pensions being more generous than your own is because you have to pay for their services and so pay into their pensions schemes regardless; but you don’t seem to mind some private sector schemes being more generous than your own because you can simply avoid paying into such schemes by avoiding using their goods and services. So the question is, would you? Would you avoid using a private sector company solely because it means paying into a decent pension scheme? Would you ever consider not shopping at Tesco if you were to discover that some of their turnover goes into paying for a staff pension scheme that is better than your own? Would your hunt for an alternative supermarket be in any way influenced by whether or not another supermarket pays into an occupational pension scheme for their staff? Would you really object if they did? If not, and so the provision or otherwise of a staff pension scheme by a private employer plays no part in how you choose to spend your money, then surely the fact that you are able to take your custom elsewhere is not relevant to this discussion, and so should have no bearing on the provision or otherwise of a staff pensions scheme by a public sector employer to whom you have to pay your taxes. And indeed you could extrapolate this concept further; whenever you hear of something that occurs in the public sector that you think is outrageous and yet you have to pay for, consider what you would think if you heard of the same thing happening at a private sector firm you patronise, and whether you would still object to the extent that you would exercise your freedom to choose not to pay for it by taking your custom elsewhere. And if you wouldn’t, and if you would still cheerily pay for a private firm to do the self same thing that you find so objectionable in the public sector, consider that perhaps you’re not really viewing these things equally.

“”

I realise, then, that somewhere during my last paragraph, my conversation partner had disappeared. Perhaps I had flummoxed him with logic and reason? Perhaps he had tired of feeding me prepared lines to which I could deliver my prepared responses. Perhaps my mention of Tesco reminded him that he needs to pop out for some milk. Perhaps he’ll return in a few minutes with a crew to make me shut the fuck up. But perhaps, just perhaps…he didn’t exist at all, and was just a compliant FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION!

That would mean that I’ve been talking to myself, all this time. “What’s new, on this blog,” you may very well think; that is if, indeed, you exist. But this feels different. I’m tired, so very, very tired. Time to splash myself with cold water and go out for some fresh air.

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Posted in Economics

Tribes

Posted on Wednesday 30th June 2010 | Leave a comment

So, a great result for England on Sunday, no? Another fine victory over our greatest historic tribal foe. Makes one proud to be English, doesn’t it.
Sarcasm? Me? Oh no, sorry, you misunderstand. Were you still thinking about the football, and Germany? Oh well, I’ve already moved on; to cricket, and yet another one-day international victory over the hapless Australians*. But I can understand your confusion. An easy mistake to make.

As for the football, what can I add to the obvious, and that England simply aren’t good enough to justify the hopes that some people place in them? On the game itself, I do think it a tragic irony that the one time a Lampard speculative, edge-of-the-area pop actually gets into the goal, the officials manage to miss it. Fortunately, such was the extent of Germany’s victory that any dwelling on that “goal” as an example of us being robbed has been kept to a minimum. On the other hand, it has reignited the old issue of whether technology should be used to prevent such mistakes again. I seem to be in a minority here in harbouring serious doubts over technology’s use. Perhaps, if you could guarantee that such technology was limited only to judging if a ball has crossed the line, then fine; but can you? Later that evening, when Argentina scored a goal that was clearly offside, technology was mentioned again; when Eire failed to qualify for the World Cup finals thanks to an Henry handball, again the benefits of technology were mooted. Where will it end? Before you know it, perhaps every goal will have to be analysed before it is given: to see if there was perhaps an illegal tug on a defender at some time during the long, labourious build up to it being scored; to wait for the committee to decide if, on balance, the award of the free kick that led to the goal was down to the attacker diving; or perhaps we’ll have to scrutinise each free kick, corner and throw in before it is taken just in case it results in a goal, eventually. And so the game as we know it will be buggered, all to prevent the sort of decision on Sunday which is extremely rare, and which was also so blatant that technology itself shouldn’t even be required for it in the first place. No, I’m really not sure it is a road we should be going down.

But a few words on the England team. I usually get pretty hacked off when pundits say stuff like “he would have scored that in the premiership”, or “why do England players look so poor here, when they look so good in the league?” It’s bollocks, mainly. Hansen and his ilk spend each weekend bemoaning terrible misses and poor defending, as players’ form fluctuates during the course of the season; but come the World Cup, all that is strangely forgotten, and they all seem to expect the players to be as good as they appear on the “Best of…” end of season review DVDs. But, as I said, I usually get hacked off by such nonsense…but when was the last time you saw a premiership back four defend as badly as England did against Germany (Burnley excepted)? With the possible exception of Ashley Cole, did they have a clue about their roles or where they were meant to be playing? It is easy to blame the manager – and if he has lost the confidence of the players then that may be fair enough – but what is any manager meant to do when his centre-backs take it upon themselves to wander about the field aimlessly, and with no regard to positioning or formation?

Capello has also got some stick for his attacking options: why didn’t Joe Cole play a bigger part?; everyone know we should play “Gerrard-in-the-hole!” Enough, already. Was playing Heskey really the reason that Rooney had apparently forgotten how to control a football? I doubt it. There is always some simplistic solution to England’s woes; four years ago it was the failure to select Defoe, before that it used to be the manager’s refusal to play a Waddle, or a Le Tissier. I’m sure that if Capello had listened to the media and played Gerrard where they wanted him they would just have found something else to whine about. Because there’s always something, and there always will be. Because, as I said before, we’re just not good enough.

The British media collectively announced another European victory over Blighty and common sense the other day, this time regarding contentious EU labelling legislation. You’ll remember the old Metric Martyrs story, years ago? The injustice that it was made illegal to buy a pound of bananas? I was pretty shocked at the story myself; shocked that the media expected me to buy bananas by the pound anyway. Does anybody? Don’t they buy them by the bunch, or by number? Isn’t the weight irrelevant to most people, be it in pounds or kilograms? Anyway, the whole story was a pile of crap regardless, since it was and is permissible to buy groceries by the pound, as long as the shopkeeper has a metric scale.

But having told us we should be buying items such as bananas by weight, the media has now changed its mind, at least with regards eggs. New EU regulation, apparently, will mean that items will have to be labelled with their weight. By a massive leap of anti-logic, some people have decided that if a box of eggs has to be labelled by weight, it can’t also be labelled to include the number of items in the packet. “It’s an end to buying eggs by the dozen”, apparently, despite the fact that eggs almost universally come in boxes of six. It takes a special kind of stupid to think that packaging will actually be prevented from mentioning the number of contents on the inside, and no mention whatsoever is made of this in the legislation. But we are talking here about our pathetically tribal, anti-EU British press here, so I guess anything goes. And it is my perhaps debatable allegation of tribalism here which means I can just about squeeze this brief observation into my post on the theme of “tribes”.

Tribalism, of course, is a feature of our party politics, so I’m on safer ground in this third part of my post; but elements of that tribalism still surprise me. I’ve felt close to the Liberal Democrats for many a year now, being something of a student activist and a member for a time. I veered away a bit during the useless Menzies Campbell’s era, and then smug Nick Clegg’s. I stopped understanding what they really stood for – I’m not sure they themselves know – but they still got my vote at the election. Following the formation of the coalition government I was surprised by some Labourite sniping at the Lib Dems, accusing them of betrayal and the like. As an outsider who saw the Labour party as my natural allies, such tribal anti-Lib Dem sentiments took me aback somewhat. It was a reminder of one of the things I so dislike about party politics.

And now? Well, while I still wouldn’t call the Lib Dems traitors, I am getting more distressed at the way their leadership seems to have so gleefully signed up to the Conservative’s agenda; for while I may like to think of myself a something of a pluralist politically, I still, pathetically, simply cannot abide the Tories. Now, I am sure that the Lib Dems will have exerted some sort of positive influence on the recent budget, but not enough for me to be happy. On such crucial issues such as how quickly the budget deficit should be reduced, how it should be reduced, and when to start, the Lib Dems were always more-or-less in step with Labour. Now they have performed a volte-face and say they are backing the Tory’s ideas, based on a post-election worsening of the UK economic position that hasn’t actually happened. When Obama wrote a letter to the G20 leaders saying we should be careful not to instigate cuts too soon, the coalition’s reply was that each government should act depending on its individual circumstances, apparently oblivious to the irony that they keep justifying the actions they are taking in Britain by referring us to what is happening in Greece. But at least the Conservatives can state that they went into the election saying they would start the cuts now, although my fear has always been that they haven’t so much dismissed the idea that cuts now can harm the recovery – a reasonable and arguable position – as failed to understand the economics of the theory in the first place. But the Lib Dems cannot claim such ignorance.

Now, I can see why Liberal Democrat MPs may be backing the Tory policies; they are in government, in the cabinet, and governed by collective responsibility. They may be supporting things they personally have misgivings about but feel they have to go along with, to toe the party line, in the same way the Labour leadership candidates are now fighting over each other to disown some of their former policies that they went along with at the time.

More surprising to me is the attitude of so many Lib Dem bloggers and commenters on sites such as Liberal Conspiracy, where they seem to have so seamlessly adopted some typical Tory rhetoric in an effort to defend the Lib Dems and their coalition policies, the sort of rhetoric they would surely have shunned just a few months previously. But I guess the question is did they actually shun such rhetoric previously? That is to say, perhaps I simply haven’t been paying attention, and that many Lib Dem bloggers have been saying these sorts of things for ages. In which case, perhaps I’ve been part of the wrong tribe, and voted for the wrong party, all along.

One of the coalition’s recent acts was to move to speed up a change in the age at which one can draw the state pension, an action that has been openly welcomed by some Lib Dem commentators. Perhaps that shows the gap between myself and some other Lib Dems; demographic changes may mean that a later retirement age could be considered necessary for the public finances, but how it can be actively welcomed is a mystery to me. In a few short years my expected retirement age of 65 has moved to a likely 70, and I doubt that will be the end of the matter. It’s demoralising, to say the least, to see the date at which you could retire move away from you faster than the years themselves are passing by.

Changing the state retirement age has been described by some as a wake up call for people to get their personal pensions in order. Well I thought I’d done that in signing up to my occupational pension scheme, but as public sector pensions are the next item in the firing line, I don’t know how that will fare. I assume that, at the very least, my contributions will have to rise again, just a couple of years after the last review meant an increase in my contributions. But I don’t mind that, as long as such changes are based on the financing and affordability of the pension scheme itself, and not just an attempt to make public sector workers pay more to redress the unfair way many private sector employers have chosen to abandon decent pension schemes for their workers.

(As an aside – and as a final, transparent attempt to crowbar this last section of the post into my tenuous overarching theme of “tribes” – it’s funny that when I left the private sector I assumed I was just changing jobs; I had no idea at the time that, as far as some are concerned, not least many denizens of blogs and newspaper comment sections, I was also changing tribes. Despite doing a very similar job, and working at least as hard and with the same abilities as I had before, little did I realise that to some private sector workers I was now a lazy, inefficient, incompetent and overpaid public sector worker, all pampered and bloated. Now, fortunately I am lazy, inefficient, incompetent and overpaid, slightly pampered and certainly bloated; but my many hard-working colleagues must be furious at such an unjust guilt-by-association, especially since I had never been the target of such daft generalisations when in the private sector because such contempt does not appear to be reciprocal. Nowhere I think seems to show this tribalism better than the matter of pensions, where too often the financial affordability of public sector pensions plays second fiddle to the argument that it’s not fair that some people have better pensions than others. Perhaps I had been naive in my private sector days, but my move to the public sector revealed to me that tribalism can appear in the most unlikely of places, and when you least expect it.)

But how else should I personally react to this supposed financial wake up call? Voluntarily increase my pension contributions still further? For a while I had been considering taking out some AVCs to supplement my pension, and I guess that is what some would still advise, but now I’m beginning to think: for what? To add to a pension that, with each revised retirement age, I am increasingly unlikely to ever see a payout from? I used to see things through the eyes of my parent’s generation, fed on Saga adverts of suntanned old folk enjoying their long, slow, golden retirement. Now it seem far more reasonable to assume that retirement will never happen and we will have to adjust to that reality and live for the day. Rather than work harder to pay more into a pension I will never see, perhaps I should just take it easy and take life as it comes: with an expectation that I will have to work till I drop, I’m not going to slog my guts out now for no reward later.

If the change in the state pension age was intended to make us all plan more for the future, then I think it will have failed to have had the desired effect on me. When combined with the events of last year – my father, after all, passed away aged just 68 – my response is more a “fuck it…this is my life now, and I think I’ll live for the moment, thanks very much.”

*Oops.

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Posted in Economics, Media, Politics, Sport

Swan, With Two Nicks

Posted on Tuesday 11th May 2010 | Leave a comment

One of the criticisms levelled during “bigotgate” was that, in calling Gillian Duffy a “bigoted woman”, Gordon Brown was attacking his core support and displaying an ignorance of the concerns of your ordinary Labour voter. I thought at the time that that was pretty patronising and insulting, based on a tired assumption that the average Labour supporter is inherently opposed to immigration; and now that the election has been run and Labour’s vote failed to collapse any further following the discovery of Brown’s claimed contempt for a supposed Labour voters’ shibboleth, I think I’m justified in my position.

I’ve long been vexed by this strained factoid so beloved of some that most BNP voters are disenchanted former Labour supporters. It may be true, and in part it’s bandied as a way to portray the Labour party as out-of-touch and not listening to the public; but more than that it seems like a lazy smear, an implicit tying of Labour voters to racism while taking a swipe at the Labour party at the same time, because didn’t you know that the Nazis were the “National SOCIALISTS” after all, and that far from being on the far-right surely Nick Griffin and the BNP are a left-wing party, just like Labour?

But what’s in a name? You can argue about whether the BNP are far-right or far-left, but right-wing and left-wing are just simplistic, ill-fitting labels; best avoid using them if at all possible, that’s my opinion. But if you must insist, then to apply them correctly you’ll have to accept that their meanings have already been defined, the far-right label has been assigned to the BNP and their ilk, and that’s that. Meanwhile, by all means claim that, because of their name, the Nazis were “socialists”; just as long as you’re consistent, and similarly insist that North Korea must be democratic, and that a Bombay Duck is an aquatic bird.

But even ignoring all this, from my perspective, just what is this criticism of Labour? That racists feel dissatisfied with their immigration policy and have fled into the arms of Nick Griffin? If true, I’d say that’s a good thing. Put another way; why aren’t racists similarly leaving the Conservative party and supporting the BNP as far as we’re told? Is it because the Tories have an immigration policy that satisfies their bigotry? Well done them! That certainly seems to be the view of The Economist when they stated that the Conservative candidate in Romford had “managed to contain the BNP vote…by occupying much the same ground, with hardline views on immigration”. And in that light, is the failure of the BNP to breakthrough at the general election – and the collapse of their vote in the council elections in Barking – an unqualified good sign? I sincerely hope it is; I hope it is because people have turned their backs on their poison. I hope it isn’t simply because the main parties have just pandered to the prejudices the BNP have stoked, occupied “much of the same ground” that they do, and been rewarded for holding the bigot line. I hope.

This post is looking suspiciously as if it is a sort of re-run of my previous one; a moan about the parties’ immigration policies and a look to what the future holds, my current observations on the political scene splurged out and then reconstituted into some vague sort of order. If that’s what you suspect, then you’d be right. So, a-week-and-a-bit on, how are we fixed? David Cameron’s party won the largest number of votes and seats at the general election, but not an absolute majority. He’s made an offer to the Lib Dems to join in a coalition, and we’re waiting for Nick Clegg’s response. Cameron has, however, staked out a few red lines that cannot be crossed and where change in policy cannot be countenanced. Proportional representation isn’t one of them, but immigration – the subject that no one can talk about, and which the main parties all ignore – is. Go figure.

For a few days it was looking like the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were going to strike some sort of deal; then yesterday Gordon Brown resigned while announcing that Labour and the Lib Dems have entered into formal negotiations, and this has shaken things up a bit. The Tories responded to Brown’s resignation by offering a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system. I stand by my previous post, where I stated that I hoped that a hung parliament could provide us with proportional representation (PR), and that a Liberal / Labour coalition is the most likely way to get it. AV is a step in the right direction but it is not proportional representation, and I would still like to hold out for PR at this time, fearing that a move to the imperfect less-than-half-measure of AV could park PR for an age. My heart, then, goes with Nosemonkey in this post, who broadly agrees with my pre-election hope for a short-term Lib-Lab coalition government that could run a referendum on full proportional representation and then hold a fresh election; by my head looks at the post-election arithmetic and tells me that Donald S is more on the money and that a Lib-Con agreement is the best bet. Last week I thought that the policy gap between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives was too large for them to ever do a deal, but the electoral mathematics does concentrate the mind, and despite complaints from some, that simple maths does mean that even if you assume the Lib Dems have a moral duty to join with Labour – and they most certainly don’t – even rabid anti-Tories like me can’t accuse them of a betrayal if they side with the largest party to form the most stable coalition on offer; instead I’ll keep my powder dry so I can charge them with betrayal based on what they do in government, if required. I’m torn then between common sense and wishful thinking, hoping for a “progressive alliance” (as the the current jargon has it) that would allow the voting reforms I want, would allow Labour to honourably drop ID cards and other albatrosses during the negotiations, and would hold a stable government together for the time being. But I think it likely that something somewhere has got to give.

As things stand there are three potential governments on offer; a Lib-Con coalition, a Lib-Lab coalition, and a minority Conservative government, and which I have placed in descending order of legitimacy and stability. Certainly, the first, Lib-Con option with an absolute majority of seats would be the most stable and would have more legitimacy than a Lib-Lab coalition of 315 out of 650 seats and 51% of the votes; but if the Liberal Democrats simply feel they cannot do a deal with the Conservatives, I’d personally still give a Lib-Lab coalition more legitimacy than a Conservative minority government based on just 306 seats and 36% of the votes, and in resigning Brown’s swansong is merely to make the Lib-Lab option a vague possibility; I don’t see it as a way to unfairly usurp the Tories, who, after all, simply did not win this election. I also don’t feel that the Tories can both defend the current electoral system and complain if Labour do stay in power with a supposedly “unelected prime minister”, since that is a feature of the parliamentary system they support; any new Labour prime minister would, if I’ve counted correctly, be the umpteenth “unelected” PM by such a definition, so unless the Conservatives propose a further change to the electoral system they’ll just have to lump it. It has, though, been argued that the Lib Dems’ support could suffer if they are seen to be propping up a failed Labour government, which may be true; but a slump in their support alongside a new proportional electoral system would probably still reward them with more seats at the next election than if they were to do the alleged noble thing and support the Tories while full PR is kicked into touch.

I do understand that it could seem indulgent to be worrying about proportional representation now, when there is an economic crisis to deal with, but quite apart from the fact that I don’t trust the Tories on the economy anyway I don’t think that organising a referendum on the electoral system need distract anyone from the matter of dealing with the deficit. Has no one heard of multi-tasking? Of course, now is the time for those hoary old criticisms of proportional representation to get wheeled out, such as the way it fails to produce stable governments. Oh, er, kinda like we have now under first-past-the-post. The “smoke-filled rooms” line has been allowed a run out too, and the warning that the current horse-trading could be a permanent fixture under PR; what must the public think of politicians at the moment, worry the politicians? But, as far as I can observe, the public aren’t nearly as interested in politicians as they think we are, and we’re getting on with our lives just fine, happy for those apparently baleful negotiations go on for as long as is necessary, and content for the media to fret and frown on our behalf, and to successfully misread the public mood again. And which is worse; for minority parties to have to trade policies based on a wider support, or for a minority party to have total power to impose its will with no regard to what a majority think? After all, in 2005 Labour was elected with the votes of just 36% of the electorate; they didn’t need to enter into any dreaded deals, but are we honestly suggesting that even those 36% got what they wanted? Since a mere 28% voted Labour this time, that seems unlikely.

Are there many people unconnected to Labour or the Conservative who swallows the guff trotted out in favour of first-past-the-post? The strong, personal constituency link between an MP and their constituents is one argument, but this ignores the fact that under the favoured single transferable vote (STV) system there are multi-member constituencies that not only maintain that link, but to my mind improve on it. One argument is that in first-past-the-post you can “vote the bugger out” if you don’t like your MP, but a Labour voter who hates their sitting Labour MP is on the horns of a dilemma on whether to vote for their party or against the sitting MP; with STV, as each party puts forward more than one candidate, you can do both. Of course, multi-member constituencies are likely to be larger than those single member constituencies we currently have, but I don’t see how the Tories can use that as an argument as they want to reduce the number of MPs as it is, and so, presumably, want to increase the size of each constituency and the number of constituents per MP. At least with STV, while you increase the size of the constituencies you also increase the number of MPs answerable to you, allowing you to shop around for the one more sympathetic to your position if you want them to raise an issue for you.

In all it’s hard not to see that at its heart the reason that most Tories don’t want full PR is because they feel it will mean that they will be shut out of power for generations by centre-left coalition governments. It seems an implicit acceptance that you think that your policies, even with coalition partners, will struggle to ever gain a majority support, and so you prefer to stick with a system that includes distortions that periodically work in your favour. Labour is no better; when I hear the likes of that shitbag John Reid apparently nobly admitting that Labour have lost the election, should listen to the public and allow the Tories to form a government, I hear a tribal Labourite trying to scupper the possibility of proportional representation in the short term so that Labour can benefit in the long term. When Reid says he fears Labour will be damaged by being seen to be clinging to power with the Lib Dems, my immediate response is to say I don’t care about the future of the Labour party; my more considered response is that no one knows how our electoral landscape will look under PR, and I’m perfectly happy with that. Proportional representation may let minority parties like the BNP gain seats, but only if they earn their support; it could also provide room for pro-immigration parties to flourish, and hopefully change the whole nature of that particular debate. I can imagine that the coalitions that are the Labour and Conservative parties have only been held together because of first-past-the-post, and that under proportional representation they could well splinter into more clearly defined groupings that provide the electorate with a far greater choice. It is way too simplistic to say that there is an anti-Conservative majority in Britain, there are many Tory policies that gain widespread, majority support, it’s just that the full package doesn’t; but it appears I have more faith than many in the Conservative party that a centre-right coalition could take power in the UK, just as they do all over the world. The fact is, though, that I don’t know how proportional representation will work out if adopted; I don’t think that it is a panacea and that all in the garden will be rosy, I don’t assume that it will mean I will always get a government that I see eye-to-eye with, and I don’t think that as an electoral system it is perfect (albeit I do think that its imperfections are less egregious than those of other systems). I don’t even know if a referendum on proportional representation would result in a vote for a change to our electoral system; but I think we should try our best to find out.

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Posted in Politics

Say The Right Things

Posted on Friday 30th April 2010 | Leave a comment

I’ve been busy with things and stuff recently, but that isn’t the reason I’ve barely commented on this general election gubbins. Considering this is the first election for ages where the result is up for grabs it’s been a remarkably tedious campaign. It isn’t the only reason, but I think the TV debates have been a large part of the problem. They’ve sucked the life out of the day-to-day campaigning, and from the first debate everything has seemed to hinge on what happens in each of the three weekly televised style trials with all else put on the back burner; and what has happened in the debates themselves amounts to “not a lot”. It could well be that my interest in politics has simply waned; but gone, it seems, are the daily twists and turns in a campaign that in the past would cause me to follow the news with a trainspotterish devotion during election times.

The first debate on ITV began in what was for me an ominous and eye-roll inducing manner, with a question about immigration. After each of the three party leaders had spoken it elicited my first comment on the election, via Twitter.

As an open borders man they’ve all lost my vote. Bunch o’twats. When’s ‘Outnumbered’ on? #leadersdebate

At the time I didn’t really mean that I wouldn’t vote, but as the leaders reprised their roles in the Sky and BBC debates, during which each of them tried to outdo the others and to show how they would be the most effective at tackling immigration – taking it as read that it is a problem, is too high and needs to be reduced, without advancing any reason for why it is a problem and too high – I was taking the “fuck the lot of them” option more seriously. As it is I will probably still vote non-Tory on May the 6th – in my case that’s Liberal Democrat – but that’s nothing to shout about.

The fact that each leaders’ debate – and #bigotgate, the sole example, albeit tedious, of anything outside the TV debates being considered devastatingly newsworthy by our media – was concerned with the matter of immigration gives the lie to the “you can’t say anything about the immigrants” trope. For one thing, the statement that “you can’t say anything about the immigrants” tends to be used when talking about immigration, rendering it as prima facie bollocks; for another, if it is true that you can’t talk about immigration, at the very least our tabloid press never received the memo. The fact is that you can talk about immigration, as much as you like; it’s just that having done so you’re not then protected against being called a bigot in return, if you’re talking to someone who thinks you’re displaying bigotry. And it’s not even “closing down debate” to be called a bigot; it is debate. You’re free to respond to and deny the charge of bigotry if you like. That’s how this free speech thing works. If anyone has genuine cause to feel restricted in saying what they feel then it is apparently those politicians who in private don’t have a problem with immigration and see some anti-immigration rhetoric as bigotry, as it surely is, but who in public have to pander to people’s “legitimate concerns” – which range from the legitimate to the xenophobic – rather than to actually defend immigration and the huge benefits that it brings as evidenced in countless reports, or to even defend immigration on liberal grounds as a right in itself.

The one thing the TV debates have done, however, is to have thrown the election wide open, as Nick Clegg hijacked the “change” vote by virtue of standing next to David Cameron for 90 minutes and robbing the latter of his USP. The Liberal Democrats soared in the polls, but for the most depressing of reasons I fear. I doubt very much that many people saw the first debate and were swayed by the Lib Dems’ rag-bag of policies; they saw a reasonable, normal looking person who was well presented and who exhibited a devastating ability to write down the questioners’ names and to then refer back to them in his closing speech, and who was neither a scary alien robot creature from planet Tory, nor Gordon Brown. It’s a crap reason to decide who you’ll vote for and to alter the course of the election so decisively, and for that reason I’d be happy to see the back of the leaders’ debates from now on, but we’re obviously stuck with them. I hope, though, that they have at least served one purpose. They have made a hung parliament all the more likely, a hung parliament that may well require the ruling party to rely on the Liberal Democrats, and which could in turn ensure we finally abandon the anachronistic First Past The Post electoral system in favour of some form of proportional representation. Nothing illustrates FPTP’s failings more than those projections that show that, based on current polls, the Conservatives could end up winning the most votes with Labour pushed down into third place, and yet the electoral system would award Labour the most number of seats in parliament. If that does happen, I wonder how the Conservatives, with their staunch support for FPTP, could possibly object if Labour, as the largest party in the House of Commons, are then given the first chance to form the new government?

Shh. Come with me on this. After the election Labour are the largest party, and the Lib Dems agree to work with them on the condition that Gordon Brown steps down, and either voluntarily or by palace coup, he does. The new Labour leader becomes prime minister on the understanding that there will be a referendum on proportional representation and a fresh general election held under the new rules immediately following that result. First Past The Post is ditched for the Single Transferable Vote, and following a new election everyone lives happily ever after. Future elections even feature an open and mature debate on immigration.

What do you reckon? I know, I know; you were with me up to and including the “everyone lives happily ever after” bit, but after that I went a bit daft.

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Posted in Politics

On A Plate: Italy

Posted on Friday 26th March 2010 | Leave a comment

Talking of which (not that I was) here is the latest tip from my irregular cookery series. And that tip is…use passata.
Once upon a time I decided to make a pasta Bolognese for tea – I’m a big fan of using cavatappi myself, having bored with spaghetti a while ago – but all of a sudden I realised we were without a ready-made pasta sauce in the cupboard. We’d often rely on a jar of something like Loyd Grossman’s Primavera or a Sacla Cherry Tomato and Basil sauce for ease of thing; many are nice although none are perfect, the main problem being that the kids baulk at the sight of any “lumps”, such as a miniscule sliver of onion or a tiny cube of tomato, and so we’d have to meticulously pick those bits out prior to serving. Such concerns are irrelevant, though, if you don’t have a jar in; so what to do? Fortunately, way at the back of the cupboard, sat a carton of passata that I’ll have bought in with the intention of making something a bit more adventurous sometime (I’ve got a great recipe for puttanesca somewhere). That’ll have to do, I thought, because I’d my heart set on Bolognese and red wine by now and I couldn’t be bothered popping out to the shops.

Passata on it’s own I knew would be pretty dull – it’s just sieved tomatoes at the end of the day – so first I fried a bit of garlic, dried basil and dried oregano in a little bit of olive oil; then I added the passata and stirred well. I warmed it through a bit, then gave it a little taste. It was still a tad bland, so I added a bit of salt. Tasting it again the flavour had certainly pepped up but now I thought it a little bitter, so I chucked is a sprinkling of sugar. That did the trick, and soon I was left with a simple pasta sauce as nice as any I’d tasted before.

The first and most obvious advantage I noticed in making your own sauce is that there are no bits in to annoy the kids – or to annoy me when having to pick them out – so long as you don’t stupidly add them in the first place. But I also realised that this must be pretty much all that pasta sauce manufacturers are doing; taking passata and adding stuff to it. The beauty of adding that stuff yourself, of course, is that now, rather than shopping around and trying to find a pasta sauce that is just to your liking, it is just as easy to buy passata and then customise your sauce however you like depending on your situation or mood; so, just garlic, oregano and basil if we’re eating with the kids, but, say, onions, capers and chillies too if it’s just me and the wife. And it is, of course, far cheaper to do yourself what you’d otherwise be paying Sig. Dolmio to do for you. So, now you know what to do, take this rotten old tree and make it bear fruit.

But a warning; this knowledge is dangerous. There is a lucrative pasta sauce industry out there, charging up to £2 for little more than 35p passata with bits. That’s quite a mark-up, their profit margins must be enormous, but can this last? I doubt it. It can’t be long before word spreads and it becomes common knowledge that what had looked at first glance to be the manufacturers “adding value” now seems to be little more than “adding oregano”. I fear we have an enormous, inflated and overheated “pomodoro bubble” here which is about to pop, splashing tomato sauce all over the tiling and hob. So I’m entrusting you to use this new information wisely and cautiously. Sell your shares in Ragu for sure, but allow this information to simmer out gradually, so there is just a gradual decline in the sales of those inefficient and overpriced pasta sauces rather than a sudden crash, giving the manufacturers enough time to find another way to rip us off. The last thing I want to see is a penniless and dejected Loyd Grossman, his pasta sauce business in tatters, begging to be let back on MasterChef; but as a contestant, imploring one and all that the only thing he’s ever wanted to do is to work in a kitchen.

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Posted in Food

Street Life

Posted on Saturday 13th March 2010 | Leave a comment

It could be said that criticising the media is like shooting fish in a barrel. True, and therefore it is the ideal sport to engage in when you want to dash off a quick blog post. So here it is.

Google Street View is a “service to burglars”

announces the Daily Telegraph. It concerns the fact that 95% of Britain’s roads are now covered by the Google Street View service, knowledge that immediately made me check whether our house is now featured; and I’m delighted to say that it is. But how can Street View be a burglar’s aid, I wondered? Burglary surely is an activity requiring the burglar to be in close proximity to your house at the time, typically after “casing” it from a number of different angles while standing immediately adjacent to your property. How can a 2D picture taken of your house an indeterminate time ago be of any assistance? Time to read further into the report.

Google Street View, which has now been expanded to cover more than 95 per cent of Britain’s roads, is being seen as a “service for burglars”, according to new research.

Hmm. I see what you did there. The words “service to burglars” in the headline were placed between speechmarks, so you think you can get away with it, but I’m not sure you can. I don’t think that the fact that research suggests that Street View “is being seen” as a service to burglars can justify a headline saying the Street View “is a” service to burglars, do you? And what of the evidence gleaned from this “research”?

The report, which was carried out by a discount website, myvouchercodes.co.uk, found that two-thirds of the people polled thought that Google Street View images were ‘intrusive’.

The company interviewed 1,317 people – 57 per cent of which described the street mapping service an ‘intrusion’ while 24 per cent said that they believed it was simply ‘a service for burglars’.

Right. So this isn’t so much “research” as “market research”; or rather, it’s a survey. Now, let’s put aside the fact that unless they asked two separate questions on whether the interviewees found Street View both “intrusive” and an “intrusion” (and I doubt it) then the Telegraph thinks it’s reasonable to equate “57 per cent” with “two-thirds”. Instead let’s focus on the statistic – if that doesn’t debase the term – that informs the headline: the fact that 24% believe Street View is “simply ‘a service for burglars’.” In other words, the only thing that even attempts to justify the statement in the headline is the fact that just under a quarter of the people surveyed agree with a statement as put to them by the survey team. Presumably, then, any question that a researcher deems to ask, and which anyone feels they can agree with, can be portrayed in a Telegraph headline as a fact that researchers have unearthed. Amazing.

But perhaps I’m being unkind? Perhaps there is something, somewhere in this sad article that can support the assertion that Google Street View is a service for burglars? What do the police have to say on the matter?

Thames Valley Police told The Telegraph there was no evidence to suggest that the service caused an increase in burglaries.

Well what would they know? I’d rather go with the opinions of a quarter of the people who were asked to agree or disagree with a statement when they were stopped in a shopping precinct as they were racing to the butty shop in their lunch hour and no they couldn’t really stop but will it be quick oh alright then. Any day.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you our best-selling quality daily.

Update: The Telegraph has now updated its headline to a more anodyne “Google Street View: survey raises privacy concerns”, which is more accurate, especially seeing as the survey literally did raise those concerns by asking the questions in the first place. The rest of the article remains intact, to the best of my knowledge.

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Posted in Media

Woolly Bully

Posted on Tuesday 23rd February 2010 | 2 Comments

A few years ago I read Andrew Rawnsley’s book Servants Of The People, and very fine it was too; it is a well written and entertaining telling of the early New Labour years full of interesting anecdotes and incisive analysis. But, I wondered as I read it; what to make of all those florid descriptions of private conversations between two parties where the author wasn’t present? How reliable a record were they of what had actually occurred? This was easily resolved; they simply weren’t to be relied upon, not at all – how could they be? – and to think otherwise would make me either deluded or a fool.

Seeing as Andrew Rawnsley does apparently believe his words to be utterly reliable, I can only conclude then that he is either deluded, a fool, or a deluded fool. Let’s take the example in the news, Rawnsley’s allegation that Gus O’Donnell verbally warned Gordon Brown about his bullying conduct towards his staff. Rawnsley defends his story as being “100%” accurate, his source “24-carat”. Utter, utter arse. Let’s assume that this conversation did take place; the only way he can credibly insist that the story is 100% accurate is if he was there, and he wasn’t; even if he were, we’ve all been in situations where our account of events and our reading of a situation differs markedly from others who were also there and whose opinions are just as legitimate as our own.

So, in the absence of actually being there, the only other way Andrew Rawnsley can seriously claim that he has covered events with anything like a 100% accuracy is if he has spoken to both parties involved, and I think we can be pretty sure that, in the case of O’Donnell and Brown, he hasn’t. In order to justify his 24-carat claim, then, Rawnsley has all but admitted that he has spoken to Gus O’Donnell and has his first-hand version of events; but if we are to believe that there are two sides to every story – and I think we should – then that must leave us with Rawnsley’s account being 50% accurate at best. Add in all other factors – O’Donnell, being human, will have all manner of reasons for overplaying or underplaying his part, even for outright lying when briefing a journalist – and I’d rate the veracity of Rawnsley’s story at about 27%; the quality of his source may be 24-carat, but the quality of his sources story is more like die-cast metal. Which is not to say that the story isn’t true, mainly or wholly, just as die-cast metal is perfectly good when it comes to the manufacture of Space 1999 Eagle Transporter or Star Trek USS Enterprise toys. But just as you wouldn’t want to be handed a die-cast metal spaceship at the altar on your wedding day, a die-cast metal story hardly seals the deal. Apart from anything else, one day you’ll drop that Eagle Transporter on you aunt’s kitchen floor and snap the engine off in a jagged white break; and the bay doors of the Enterprise will get loose over time and then you’ll lose that orange plastic space shuttle that clips on underneath, and you’ll never find it, no matter how often you check the back of the sofa, and it won’t ever turn up, not even when you move house, although you’re twelve-years-old by then and no longer bothered, because it must have gone up the Hoover, let’s face it.

I digress. The point is that Andrew Rawnsley has been told something, written it in a book and claims it to be true; but he can’t know that, so it’s just a story he has been told and cannot possibly verify. He was on Newsnight yesterday along with Daniel Finkelstein who similarly stated that he knows these claims are true because loads of such stories have been going around Westminster for years. Well that’s a slam-dunk! Received wisdom is now historical record! Frankly it calls to minds the dubious police practice of “trawling” for allegations rather than actual evidence, yet Finkelstein even referred to these allegations – my choice of word, since that is all they possibly can be at this stage – as being examples of the sort of “facts” that journalists should report (although, since he doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word “pedantic” that could merely be down to his poor knowledge of English vocab). Honest to fucking God it makes you want to cry. Whatever happened to a bit of journalistic scepticism? Is it left behind in the cloakroom when they enter the lobby? Are they too dim to countenance that at least some of these stories could be the ulterior imaginings of Brown’s opponents, or is it that they are too busy congratulating themselves on being “in the loop”? Are they naïve or arrogant? Judging by Rawnsley and Finkelstein’s performance on Newsnight I’d say the latter, actually.

Look; I’m not saying that these stories aren’t true, I simply don’t know and yes, I can well believe them. But the likes of Andrew Rawnsley and Danny Finkelstein don’t know either, unless they were actually present at any of these alleged incidents; the difference is that while I entertain doubts and keep an open mind, they seem to have abandoned their critical faculties so as to confidently claim an insider’s total knowledge based on the self-serving rumours that swirls around parliament’s bars and tea rooms. Well they’re welcome to their credulity, but the rest of us should bear in mind that these are stories, authored by politicians and the like, and adapted by journalists with books to sell and column inches to fill. That’s hardly a recipe for accuracy, reliability and truthfulness in my book.

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Posted in Politics

Run Letter

Posted on Monday 15th February 2010 | Leave a comment

By now you’ll know that twenty esteemed economists wrote a letter to the Sunday Times yesterday, calling on the government to start the tricky business of cutting the budget deficit earlier than some have advocated. You may be wondering why they didn’t instead write to the Chancellor-of-the-exchequer, since News International’s power over the government’s budget is minimal? Well, today The Obscurer can exclusively reveal that the eminent score indeed did contact HM Treasury direct, emailing the contents of their letter on Saturday evening. Furthermore, and inexplicably, The Obscurer was copied into the Treasury’s reply! So here, exclusively, is the government’s considered response to that Sunday Times bombshell.

to: #Group:Emminent_Economists
cc: The Obscurer

re: UK economy cries out for credible rescue plan

Dear All,

Thank you for your latest letter concerning how to deal with the UK budget deficit. As many of you will know this is indeed a priority for the Treasury at the moment, and we are taking a large number of soundings and looking at all the options available to us regarding exactly how and when we should deal with the current situation, and we do indeed value your input. Thank you for spending the time on coming up with your own considered solutions.

Sadly, you appear to have omitted the attachment in which you detail how exactly you would go about cutting the structural deficit in the timeline you propose, and all we have received is the covering preamble which, while of interest, merely makes some bland and somewhat meaningless pronouncements. Still, they do whet the appetite for the meaty specifics to follow and we eagerly anticipate seeing your full proposals, so please forward them with some haste.

In particular, we note that you say that

  • “In the absence of a credible plan, there is a risk that a loss of confidence in the UK’s economic policy framework will contribute to higher long-term interest rates and/or currency instability, which could undermine the recovery.” We agree, but admit that we are having some difficulty in drawing together our various strands of thought into one credible plan. As such we are excited to learn that you must have completed your own plan on how to deal with this matter. We look forward to receiving it so we can see how it moves us forward.
  • “The exact timing of measures should be sensitive to developments in the economy … and there is a compelling case, all else being equal, for the first measures beginning to take effect in the 2010-11 fiscal year.” We are, however, (and also ceterus parabus!), struggling to pin down that exact time, as we are uncertain when the economy will have recovered sufficiently. You appear to have less uncertainly than ourselves and so we would welcome you own precise proposals regarding timing (something that, being a small detail, we are surprised you omitted from the email we received, but which we look forward to seeing once we have your complete correspondence in front of us).
  • “The bulk of this fiscal consolidation should be borne by reductions in government spending, but that process should be mindful of its impact on society’s more vulnerable groups.” Aye, there’s the rub. The problem here is that while it is a commonly held view that the public sector is stuffed full of non-workers fulfilling non-jobs, according to a recent report by Reform – a think-tank you would expect to be sympathetic to that view of the public sector – any cuts to the government’s workforce would soon “hit bone” and affect frontline services. Cuts will have to be made and we are working on them right now, but we have found that it is far easier to propose cuts in government spending than it is to define where these cuts will be made; therefore it is gratifying that you have done the heavy lifting here and we look forward to your own specific plans on which departments to close and who should be made redundant.

Everyone here at HM Treasury is tremendously excited that you must have already managed to produce just the credible plan that you require of us, and which is currently eluding us; we are only disappointed by the regrettable delay that has been caused in your oversight in not including this plan in your email. However, we are sure that this can be speedily remedied, and together we can crack on with the vital work of restoring the nation’s finances to balance.

Yours faithfully etc.

That was two days ago, and sadly I have not been copied into the economists’ reply. I can only assume that someone noticed the error, and when forwarding their detailed plan for economic recovery they also ensured that I was removed from the cc. field. Well, I assume that is the case, and I assume that these foremost economists have produced and forwarded on their own detailed plan. Haven’t they? That can’t be it, surely? I can’t imagine that such an illustrious band of experts-in-their-field would make such a wishy-washy list of statements and requests from others without something of their own to back it up, would they? Why, because if they would then that would make their letter to the Sunday Times appear to be just an empty gesture, a substance-free waste of time? It would suggest that writing the letter was a mere vanity-stunt and a exercise in self-importance, with about as much value as some bloke on Grumpy Old Men – Richard Madeley, say – sounding off about something he doesn’t really understand and which he has no solution for?

No. That can’t be it at all.

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Posted in Economics

The Obscurer Awards 2010

Posted on Sunday 31st January 2010 | Leave a comment

Let’s rattle through these shall we?

  • Single – I’m pretty poor at getting into new music, but I like to think that I get there in the end. My occasional listens to either 6Music or Radcliffe and Maconie on Radio 2 tend to do the trick and top me up, and that was the case with Fleet Foxes’ Mykonos which I stumbled upon at the start of Adam & Joe one Saturday, and which was handily the first song they’d played that day and so instantly re-accessible via listen again for a week. Seven days later I was still humming it incessantly and so decided to buy their splendid album. Mykonos is a swooping, swooning piece of timeless folky-beauty that feels like it could have been written in any era but which fortunately for us was written in the current one, and hopefully the Fleet Foxes can build on their impressive start at give us more of the same in future.
  • Album – Doves also got off to an impressive start in their career, but after a bit of a stumble with their patchy second album they returned to top form with 2004’s Some Cities and continued last year with Kingdom Of Rust. The title track was an early single and suggested that the new album would be Doves-by-numbers; certainly the boys aren’t exactly branching off in a different direction here, they’re staying comfortably in their comfort zone, but personally Doves-by-numbers suits me down to the ground. So many good songs that it’s hard to pick out individual highs, although if I had to pick one stand-out track it would be the stunning 10:03, one to turn up loud and which I would love to see them play live.
  • Book – Tim Winton’s Breath, or breathe as I keep pronouncing it, was a book that Simon Mayo’s book panel were so effusive in praise of that I snapped it up the minute I saw the paperback version in the shops. It’s a very easy read, drawing you in from the first page as the narrator recounts a period in his teens when he and his mate, both of whom would spend their days engaged in risky stunts, are befriended by a local surfer, and the book follows the trio as they push their skills to the limit as they compete against the waves, themselves and each other. Friendship is severely tested by events, jealousies and the surfer Sando’s girlfriend, and throughout there is a tone that tells you it isn’t going to end with everyone happily sharing a beer together. While reading this book it owns you completely and the quality of the writing is simply wonderful; surfing, like skiing, is something I think of as being for other people, but Winton’s descriptions make you understand the exhilaration you must feel when catching a big wave. An exquisite work; the only problem is that it’s so good that I’m reluctant to give his other books a go as I fear I’ll be disappointed.
  • Film – Bolt is a sort of animated anthropomorphic Truman Show where the eponymous dog believes he has super powers, when in fact he stars in a television programme about a hero dog. Cocooned in his fantasy world he breaks out when he thinks that his owner – and TV show co-star – is in danger, but once in the real world he gradually realises that things are not what they seem. In many ways it is a retread of some earlier Pixar themes; Bolt, like Buzz Lightyear, has to get accustomed to the fact that he is not what he had assumed he was, the cat Mittens knows what it is like to get left behind as children grow up, like Jesse in Toy Story 2, and so on. There are better animated films about but it’s all mildly diverting, and the only film I saw in the cinema last year. Hold on, though; wasn’t Bolt released in 2008? Oh bugger. But I think I only watched it in 2009. Does that count? I dunno. Oh forget it.
  • Sport – I’ve already mentioned the First Ashes test at Cardiff, and I’ll stick with that for my sporting moment; a perfect example of Test Cricket, as tense a sporting occasion as I can imagine, and the antithesis of the supposedly more exciting Twenty20 as, on the fifth day, England’s last two batsmen, unconcerned with actually scoring runs, were instead hell-bent on just hanging on to their wickets as the final overs ticked away. Unforgettable, yet something that England seemed to be making a habit of in the recent tour of South Africa.
  • TV – The funniest TV moment of the years has to have been on Noel’s HQ, with Noel Edmonds completely losing it on national television (albeit on a Sky 1 programme that no-one watches). It looks like an appalling show, one designed to take each spurious pile of cack from the tabloid agenda to make it appear that Britain is going to the dogs regardless of any real evidence, and to uncritically present such bollocks as fact in front of a baying mob. Specifically, on this clip Noel featured the story of an injured soldier who had been denied planning permission for his family to build a new adapted home for him on their land. There may be something in their complaint, although the local authority did say they were happy to speak with the family to try to resolve the problem; what really seemed to get Edmonds’ goat through was a council spokesman’s refusal to appear on Noel’s HQ because it was what he described as an “entertainment show”, a statement that drove Edmonds into a fit of apoplexy while the audience for this programme dedicated to keen investigative journalism booed and waved those massive foam hands in the air, just like we used to see on World In Action and Weekend World Gladiators and Robot Wars in their pomp. What an oaf. (For genuinely good television, I really enjoyed Red Riding, The Street and the Doctor Who special The Waters Of Mars.)
  • Radio – I’ve never read John Irving’s A Prayer For Owen Meany, although I’ve always fancied it. So when Radio 4 adapted it for The Afternoon Play early in 2009 I decided to save myself the bother and to listen to its five parts. It was a brilliant and moving production; the always excellent Toby Jones was excellent as Owen and the typically dreadful Henry Goodman was excellent as the narrator John, as we entered the world of their peculiar friendship which endures despite an incident in which Owen hits a baseball which strikes and kills John’s mother, and which assists Owen in thinking that his life is part of some divine plan. Owen is also beset by a recurring dream in which he believes he knows the time and some of the circumstances of his own death, but not the where or why other than that it will be part of God’s plan. An ominous inevitability then hovers over the piece until the final act and the full picture is revealed, at which I shed some tears for a few minutes before packing my daughter in her pram and left to collect my son from school, drying my eyes as I did.
  • Blog – Although I had read a few of his posts before, 2009 was the year I really began to read Anton Vowl’s Enemies Of Reason regularly. Anton specialises in taking some old toss from a newspaper and ripping it to shreds, exposing it for the duplicitous, disingenuous or outright deceitful load of nonsense that it is. It would be easy to criticise this as shooting fish in a barrel as we all know how bad the papers are, but Anton is a hugely likeable writer and finds endless variation in describing the papers’ failings, often finding just the right words in doing so. And it is all done with the most honourable of intentions; it doesn’t take much to show the Daily Mail up for the hateful rag it is, but Anton stresses how he doesn’t just hate the Mail, he would like it to thrive and be good, and seems genuinely sad that it isn’t, a magnanimous attitude which has affected my own views on our actually-existing media. He is also something of an evangelist for the idea that, while many journalists may often look down their noses at “mere bloggers”, in fact the best bloggers have nothing to learn from and much to teach their professional counterparts, and Anton himself is a great advert for that line of thought. Recently Anton stated he would be branching out a little more, covering issues other than the media’s decline, and that is certainly a journey I will follow him on.
  • Castle – Although I’ve been to Falmouth a few times – munching on a pasty in The Waterman pub overlooking the harbour, estuary and St Mawes is a regular treat – we’d never been to Pendennis Castle, but we remedied it last summer. Our trip coincided with the August Bank Holiday and it was an exceptional event; just £20 bought our family entry to two jousts, a juggler, a performance of medieval music and the finest falconry display I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few. Oh, and the small matter of having the run of Pendennis Castle itself, of course, with its many rooms and ramparts and staircases, all great fun for an inquisitive six- and two-year old and their aging dad lagging behind. Extraordinary value for money, so much so that we’ve decided to join English Heritage as a result (which, along with our existing membership of the National Trust means that there aren’t many old wrecks left in the country that we haven’t got covered, and I think we more or less own Stonehenge and its immediate vicinity outright).

Right, that’s that. I don’t think I’ll bother with this crap next year. But then I say that every year.

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Posted in Obscurer Awards, Reviews