November 29, 2008
Some Implications of the Arrest of Damian Green
EDIT: As Peter points out in the comments, it was a MISTAKE (shared with several Saturday newspaper commentators) to say Damian Green was arrested under counter-terrorism legislation. He was not, though counter-terrorism officers did assist in his arrest. Make what you will of this post in that light.
Continuing to operate on the assumption that Damian Green was arrested for releasing documents that embarrassed the government – also known as doing his job – and isn’t guilty of doing something like endangering national security by releasing sensitive defence documents, let’s consider some implications.
Lots of attention has been paid to the fact there must almost certainly be resignations. Michael Martin seems most likely to fall: given that he authorised the arrest and searches, combined with the fact he is a particular hate figure for the Opposition, it is widely expected he will have to go. Jacqui Smith is also under threat, as many have commented. Perhaps even Brown will be under pressure – see an excellent article here (yes, even I read Conservative Home occasionally).
Many words have already been given over to the nature of this arrest. Nick Clegg said it was more reminiscent of a “tinpot dictatorship” than a modern democracy. Conservatives have been gleefully chucking around the term “Stalinst”. Although it is unhelpful in the long term to use such extreme language, it has to be said that these commentators still have a very large point.
What I want to focus on here, however, hasn’t received much attention generally: the implications for trusting the word of a government which has proven itself to have more authoritarian designs than any other in history.
When Brown froze the assets of Icesave using counter-terrorism legislation two months ago, most people were happy to turn a blind eye. It was an economic crisis, we were told, something had to be done fast and this was the only way to do it. So when Brown explicitly invoked legislation designed for one thing and used it for something completely different, most people let him off.
We should not turn a second blind eye. That Damian Green was arrested under counter-terrorism legislation is not only scandalous in itself (for, in lieu of further revelations, he was doing nothing like aiding or abetting terrorism), it is a dire warning to us all. This government wants to introduce a raft of authoritarian, liberty-restriction legislation, foremost being 42-day detention for suspected terrorists, and I.D. cards for all. The government has frequently assured us that when such things are introduced they will be carefully regulated. 42-day detention will just be for dangerous terrorist suspects. I.D. card biometric information will be carefully regulated, and passed on only to approved agencies when absolutely necessary.
The use of counter-terrorism legislation to arrest a sitting front-bench MP for embarrassing the government puts the lie to the government’s claims, and should make us all suspicious of their proposed legislation. Whether ministers ordered the police to arrest Green, whether they knew about his imminent arrest in advance, or whether they knew nothing, it doesn’t matter. The fact is legislation passed on the justification of it being necessary for national security has now been hopelessly abused, whether the government authorised the abuse or not. Why should we believe the case will be any different with 42-day detention or I.D. cards?
November 25, 2008
You won’t get this in The Sun
Over at the Guardian’s website there is a simply outstanding series of articles about Nietzsche’s On The Genealogy of Morals. Rarely do you get this sort of care, attention, appreciation of depth, honesty and accuracy in respect to philosophical work outside of academia.
It’s cheered me up no end – though not enough to start creating my own values and throw-off the worm-morality of my Christian heritage. At least not just yet.
Why it is fair for the rich to pay higher taxes
Yesterday Labour announced that those earning over £150,000 per year will be taxed at 45% (rather than 40%) if the government is re-elected for a fourth term. This has sparked the expected response from many quarters: outrage that it is “unfair” to tax hardworking people. I will now quickly lay-out the reasons why, contrary to these claims, higher taxes for the rich are completely justified.
There is no such thing as “pre-societal income”. It is a mistake to think of income in terms of pre-deduction totals, and to see National Insurance and Income Tax as being ‘taken away’ from a total which is – before deductions – wholly yours. This is a very simple point made by the political philosophers Murphy and Nagel in their book The Myth of Ownership, and goes as follows. In order for it to be possible for anybody to earn any income at all, there must be a stable society in place. That is, in order for it to be possible for you or I to go to work and get paid, a whole host of things must exist. There must, for example, a banking system. But a banking system requires enforced property rights. The enforcement of property rights requires an extensive legal system as well as a police force. In order for you to get to your work place, you require roads on which to drive or trains upon which to sit. These things not only require direct government funding, but even when privatised rely upon an underlying structure of stability by which property rights are protected. All these things are expensive. Very expensive. Never mind the bureaucracies that are required to make them all function. Those are even more expensive (perhaps arguably too expensive, but that isn’t the point here).
Without such underlying structures it would not be possible for people to earn any income at all – let alone the great wealth represented by earning over £150,000 a year (remember that average income in the UK is c.£15,000 p.a.). Thus in order for it to be possible that anybody earns any income at all, it is necessary that funds are raised to provide the underlying stability making it possible for people to work and be paid. As all benefit from this underlying stabiltiy, it is fair that all should pay for its upkeep.
So when you look at your pay-slip, it is a mistake to think of the pre-tax income as “yours”, and of the deductions as something taken away by the state. The pre-tax income could not exist without the underlying stability provided by the state - hence deductions represent what makes any income possible at all. (Even National Insurance fits this model: NI contributions ensure that peolpe have a base-line of social security, providing stability for the poorest members of society, who make up a crucial although financially un-rewarded component of a developed economy). It is therefore a mistake to think of pre-deduction income as “yours”; it would not even exist without a general system of deductions.
It is fair that people pay these deductions, as they make it possible for any peolpe to earn anything. It is also fair that those who are richer pay more. This is for two reasons.
First, the richer you are, the easier it is to contribute. As we all benefit from the existence of a state making it possible to earn any regular, secure income at all, it is fair that we all contribute to its upkeep. Yet those who are more wealthy can not only afford to may more in straightforward terms of having more to give, but the incremental cost to them of each contribution is marginally lessened the richer they are. This is quite a simple concept: if two people are asked to give £1 each to a cause, but one possesses £1million and the other only £10, then the contribution of £1 is clearly less of a cost – relative to existing wealth - for the millionaire.
The same princilpe operates with taxation: it costs less to contribute for those who earn more. As we all benefit from living in a stable society, it makes sense that we should pay similar costs relative to our ability to pay, towards the upkeep of that society (and perhaps even disimilar costs: there is a good case for saying that the rich have benefited the more than others from the stability of society, and hence should pay more for its upkeep). It is for this reason that taxation is both set as a percentage of income, and is progressive. Taxation is levelled as a percentage rather than a flat rate to reflect the fact that different sums mean different things to peolpe depending on their wealth. Taxation is progressive because it is recognised that if two people both pay a 30% tax rate, but one earns a 10th as much as the other, she who earns more thus effectively contributes less. It is for this reason that higher rates are applied to higher earners - it reflects their ability to contribute equally (or possibly more) to the maintenance of stable society.
The second reason higher taxes for the rich are justified is because of the importance of equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity – which no politician would dare say they are against, remember - roughly says that all people should have the same chance to do well. If two peolpe work equally hard, they should both be able to achieve the same outcomes. Yet without a progressive system of taxation, this is hard to maintain as even remotely possible. If the rich are allowed to accumulate wealth, they will be able to pass this on to their children, both in terms of hard cash, but also in terms of social privilege (private education, extra tuition, being raised in a nice area, having books etc). This means that the rich and their children will stay rich and, given the way our society operated, in dominance of the key positions in society. This means that the poorer will not be able to compete. This therefore means there is no, or little, equality of opportunity.
To spell it out: a system of progressive taxation is the cornerstone of any society which holds that people should have equal opportunities to succeed, and which believes that people must make contributions to the upkeep of the society (which makes their wealth, however great or small, possible in the first place) which reflect their ability to pay.
It is not ‘unfair’ to ask those who are rich to contribute more to society. No matter how hard they worked for their wealth (leaving aside those cases where hard work is dubious, and avoiding the very real issue of those who work long and hard hours in low-paid drudgery), those who are richer should contribute more. If anything can be considered ‘fair’, it is that we tax the rich, and tax them more.
November 24, 2008
Greer, Cole, Ellen and Feminism
Barbara Ellen’s comment pieces in The Observer seem to be getting worse with every passing week. I used to rather enjoy her articles, but over the past couple of months her column has become increasingly lazy and ill thought out. Her leader piece this week was so objectionable I actually found myself getting out of bed at 10 past midnight to write a letter to The Observer in reply. You can read Ellen’s piece here.
As my letter is a tad long, it probably won’t get printed. So:
When Germain Greer comments that Cheryl Cole is ‘too thin’, it is
surely a mistake to take this – as Barbara Ellen does – as a sign of
‘thin-woman-hating’. Surely Greer is making the reasonable point that
a woman whose physical appearance is vaunted as sexual perfection, but
which is unattainable for 99% of women, can hardly be classed as a
feminist icon? Ellen writes “Modern feminism could do a lot worse than
claim Cole as one of our own”. Really? A woman whose career is based
on singing songs about love, looking attractive and crying on The X
Factor? A woman who embodies a patriarchal attitude towards women
whereby docility, prettiness and virtually unattainable physique are
the ultimate virtues? Ellen claims that she must frequently “explain
what [feminism] is from painful scratch”. Yet a key tenet of modern
feminism is that the struggle for equality is not straightforward
emancipation from the kitchen, unequal pay and domestic violence
(though those issues certainly remain), but a mental emancipation from
the ideals of a society dominated by artificial male stereotypes of
the feminine ideal. Key is for ordinary women to reject the
patriarchal male ideal. Given Ellen’s unflinching praise for Cole, it
is puzzling as to why she considers herself a ‘modern feminist’.
November 18, 2008
Organs, Consent and the State
Until now i’ve held out against writing anything about the ‘opt-in/opt-out’ organ donation debate because, frankly, I had nothing to add. The case for switching to an opt-out system seemed so overwhelmingly strong that – apart from a few thin objections from the usual religious suspects – I hadn’t come across a single argument for not switching to opt-out worth responding to. Then I read this, originally from the Sunday Times of 16th November. Minette Marrin presents what looks like an intellectual case against switching to opt-out. Accordingly, it should be subjected to intellectual scrutiny. Does swithcing to opt-out constitute the state’s owning our bodies and an end to the free society?
We can begin by ignoring Marrin’s thinly veiled references to Stalin and the implication that Brown is putting us on a slippery slope to indiscriminate state massacre. Brown is not about to impose state socialism, nor is he about to start massacring millions of his own people, whether the donnor system switches to opt-out or otherwise. We can dismiss Marrin’s opening remarks as substance-less (not to mention crass and cheap) demagoguery designed to get her predominantly right-wing readership fired up with some easy remarks about the commies and Brown being a socialist dictator.
So let’s examine the parts of the article which might possess intellectual substance. Firstly, Marrin’s principle objection to opt-out systems – and she states this herself – is an idealogical one, not a practical one. Even if opt-out saves lives, she is still against it. Fair enough, we can say, but in that case she’s going to need some pretty good arguments againt making the switch, as they are going to have justify the possibility of allowing people to die.
Her core claim is this: “The idea [opt-out] lets in an evil and dangerous political principle – the assumption that the state owns our bodies”. That our bodies are our own is, she says, “an essential assumption of freedom and personal autonomy”. Now, putting the pieces together, Marrin’s argument basically goes like this:
1. Individual freedom and autonomy are the basic foundations of a free society, which we desire to live in
2. We cannot have freedom and personal autonomy if we do not own our bodies
3. An opt-out system would mean that we do not own our bodies, because the state would own them
4. THEREFORE: An opt-out system is incompatible with a free society
From this, Marrin is in a position to argue (or as she actually does, imply) that a free society is so important, that it should not be sacrificed even if people die as a result. That is, even if switching to opt-out lead to fewer people dying, it would not be justified because we would have lost the foundation of a free society – and that is more important even than saving lives.
It all sounds very grand and noble, doesn’t? Except that, if we look closely, it’s sheer nonsense. There are lots of things wrong with Marrin’s argument, but to keep matters brief I will focus only on the most pertinent.
An opt-out system along the lines being proposed would not amount to the state owning our bodies for the blindingly obvious reason that it is an opt -out system, not a totalitarian snatch-and-grab system. There remains plenty of free choice. If a person feels sufficiently strongly that they do not want their organs to be used after they have died, they can make that clear to the relevant authorities. If they do not, then it is assumed that they had no objection before dying. Now, family and/or friends will still be asked if they had any unofficial record – e.g. conversation – of the deceased saying they did not wish their organs to be donated. If so, the family (or close friends) would still be able to veto the donating of organs. The reason opt-out is deemed to be a desirable default is because under the present system doctors of the deceased must ask friends and/or family very soon after the terrible news that somebody close to them has died, whether they wish to approve the donation of the deceased’s organs. In many cases, when the deceased was not on the organ donor register, friends and family are reluctant to donate in case the deceased had not wished for this to happen. With presumed consent, the picture changes. The doctors can say “we have no record of their objecting to become donors, do you?” The idea is that this takes the pressure off families and friends at a difficult time. Organs could still be refused, even under a presumed consent system. The difference is that with presumed consent, the apathy or indifference of the deceased can now contribute to saving lives, rather than leading to more death.
When laid out honestly, as above, the idea that an opt-out system is tantamount to the state “owning our bodies” and that it would lead to the end of a free society is sheer, unadulterated, cheap, pseudo-intellectual nonsense. However, Marrin appears to believe she has other, supplementary arguments against switching to opt-out. Unfortunately those don’t stand up any better either, and indeed serve largely only to land her in contradiction.
We can quickly dismiss the scare-tactics of the slipper-slope argument, the warning that if we switch to opt-out, the Organ Gestapo will be at the door chopping off people’s arms and pulling out their eyes to facilitate the Brown Socialist Dystopia of Marrin’s nightmares. Slippery slope arguments are invariably poor and sensationalist, and a little calm reflection shows this again to be the case. There is a world of distance between the organs of dead people – who themselves left no objection to their organs being taken and used, combined with agreement from friends and families – being used to save lives, and the state taking the organs of the living. If the state did take – without consent – the organs of the living then we would certainly have ceased to live in a free society. But to get to the stage where the Organ Gestapo is coming to collect your kidneys on behalf of Fuhrer Brown an awful lot more would have to change in our society than simply moving to opt-out. And there’d be plenty of places along the way at which we could stop and reverse the process. Switching to opt-out in view of the dead will not automatically lead to the harvesting of the living.
Marrin is right that the NHS is grossly inefficient in places – but that is a practical constrain against switching to opt-out (remember, those constraints she said at the start she wasn’t interested in?) It could be true that the NHS is too much of a mess for us to switch to opt-out. But that just means we need to sort out the NHS first, not that there is anything wrong with opt-out itself.
Marrin then makes the startling claim that: “The real reason that people keep dying for lack of life-saving transplants, after 11 years of Labour spending on the NHS, is not that there aren’t enough donors. There are plenty of donors – 14m have signed up. Their organs just aren’t used”. This is the first time i have heard anything of the sort. From every other source I have read there is a chronic under-supply of organs. And even if 14m have signed up, most of them are living so that statistic hardly proves anything. When she writes that
As Tim Statham, chief executive of the National Kidney Federation, explained last week, about 1,500 people die in the UK every day and 400 of them, statistically speaking, have signed the organ donor register. That makes about 800 available kidneys a day, not to mention all their other organs. Wasted. Denied to the living and buried or burnt.
I am not sure this proves anything. From my understanding even if 800 kidneys are made available, given the problems of compatibility between donors and receivers, that’s still not enough. I am extremely dubious of Marrin’s claims that there are enough organs being donated currently, and would like to see them substantiated. I assume that they can’t be, and anyway her claims are straightforwardly contradictory with what she says soon after. Marrin goes onto rail further at the NHS and return to her practical objections, quoting lots of statistics – and then drops in the mysterious line that “The problem is that there is no transplant culture here. Transplants don’t happen.” If that is supposed to refer to a lack of a transplant culture amongst donors, it contradicts what she says mere sentences earlier about there being enough organs. Alternatively, if it is meant to be an indictment of the medical profession, it is pretty galling. If Marrin is seriously suggesting that doctors in this country lack a transplant culture, and are letting harvested organs go to waste because they don’t care about saving lives, as she seems to be, it is difficult to know what to say in reply.
But I will, however, say this. Let’s assume that Marrin is right – and there are good reasons to doubt she is – that there are enough organs, and were the medical profession simply to develop a culture of transplanting and the state to make the process more efficient, then we wouldn’t need to switch to opt-out at all because the present opt-in system would be enough. Let’s assume that’s true (which it seems not to be). Even if it is true, it remains that we should still switch to an opt-out system. I showed above that switching to opt-out does not take away our autonomy or remove the foundations of a free society – that was mere blunder and rhetoric on Marrin’s part. Given that opt-out does not have these consequences, why not move to it in spite of Marrin’s practical objections? If Marrin is right that there are enough organs and it’s merely a problem of efficiency, then we have two choices. Either make the system more efficient, or get more organs so that the inefficiency is compensated for. In either case, lives are saved. The first option – improving efficiency – will take years and billions in funding (assuming Marrin is even right that this would solve the organ shortage problem). The second option – moving to opt-out – would take effect almost overnight, and cost nothing in comparison to the alternative.
As moving to opt-out does in no way undermine the possibility of a free society, and instead carries the probability of saving thousands of people’s lives each year, the arguments against making the switch continue to escape me, Marrin’s not withstanding.
November 10, 2008
The Art of Politics
In this Sunday’s Observer (9th November) there is a piece (ostensibly) by Gordon Brown, (ostensibly) commenting upon the election of Barak Obama. In truth – as is always the case whenever Brown (or possibly the Brown ghost writing team) writes in a national publication – the piece ends up being a declaration of all the Great Things he is doing in office plus all the reasons why the Bad Stuff isn’t his fault.
As has been much publicised, Brown, and the Labour Party, have been experiencing an unexpected bounce in the polls. Many have commentated upon how the dire environment created by the economic crisis has put a spring into the step of the gloomy Scotsman. Last week Labour won the Glenrothes by-election against the ‘law’ that mid-term governments loose by-elections. So given that Brown and Labour are experiencing a come-back, it only seems fair to keep a close eye on his antics, just in case he becomes electable. In that spirit, I will now take some of the comments made by Brown – or his writing team (in either case, he’ll have approved what was published) – in this week’s Observer, and simply apply a basic memory test.
“I’m looking forward to co-operating with the President-elect in building a new global society in which the advancement of people – their homes, jobs, savings and pensions – is always put first”.
That sounds OK in itself, but we really ought not to forget that during his 10 years as the most powerful Chancellor in English history, it was Gordon Brown who happily acquiesced to the desires and demands of the City, and who was a fervent advocate of the ‘light-touch regulation’ which ensured that the homes, jobs, savings and pensions of ordinary people were put anywhere but first.
“Today we are seeing not just the collapse of failed institutions but the collapse of a failed laissez-faire dogma”.
Presumably these are the same failed institutions and the same failed dogma which Brown put at the heart of his economic policy for 10 years. Perhaps these failed institutions and the failed dogma are the same that were integral to the widening gap between rich and poor from 2007-2008, and to the creation of grotesque sums of (in many cases) virtually untaxed wealth. The same untaxed wealth which allowed people to get ‘filthy stinking rich’, something about which Peter Mandelson – whom Brown has of course just invited back into his cabinet – proclaimed himself to be ‘intensely relaxed’ about.
“No country can stop the world slow-down, but it’s only progressive governments – in Britain a Labour government – that will take decisive action to safeguard people on middle and modest incomes. While the very privileged can look after themselves in times like these, the rest of us need to know we’re not on our own”.
Perhaps this might ring less hollow if it did not flow from the pen of a man who decided to remove the bottom band of taxation – thus increasing the tax burden for the very poorest members of our society – whilst choosing not to add a percentage increase to the very wealthiest earning above a threshold of income which the vast majority can only ever fantasise about earning. And who – as alluded to above – chose to tax the various foreign oligarchs and billionaires residing in this country less than those earning minimum wage. A minimum wage which, according to a recent UN Food report, is not enough to provide a human being with the minimum level of quality food to needed in order to be in proper health.
“That’s why this government has acted to protect homeowners from repossessions”
After over-seeing a deregulated market where those homeowners were sold unsustainable mortgages at unrealistic rates based on the insane premise that house prices would forever rise and never fall.
“[This Government] has introduces an energy package, including higher winter fuel allowances for the elderly”.
Whilst declining to redistribute (via taxation, say) the enormous profits made by energy companies who declined to pass on this profitability to consumers, and whom remain resistant to down-sizing fuel costs despite the collapse in world oil prices.
Now some things Brown says in his article are not as barefacedly hypocritical nor as opportunistically hopeful of the average reader’s being possessed of a gold fish memory. Brown is right that since the Bank of England cut interest rates, the government must ensure high street banks pass this on to consumers. Brown’s vague rhetoric about climate change is better than nothing. Yet on the whole his article is striking for its audacity. It is like watching a boss set fire to his workplace after having removed the fire extinguishers and then turning around to his singed employees and saying: “it is now clear we should have had fire extinguishers! But never fear – I will bring you fire extinguishers to ensure your workplace never burns down again! Hope you don’t starve whilst we re-build here and stop paying you. By the way, please can you re-instate me as your boss at the next general meeting?”.
The New Statesman recently ran an article about how for the first time in more than a generation, Labour is seeing an increase in membership numbers (New Statesman, November 3rd). I’ve recently been toying with the idea of joining Labour myself. Not because I think the party is particularly noble or its ideals or politicians particularly laudable as things currently are. It’s more because I see no other serious alternative to Cameron’s Bullingdon Reunited, and the old cliché that ‘you can only change the party from the inside’ has something about it. But one thing is for sure: I will never be a member of the Labour Party for as long as Gordon Brown remains in office.
November 8, 2008
Goodbye Sarah?
So Obama won, and the world for the most part breathed a sigh of collective relief. Although many are suspicious of Obama – see for example here – it seems clear that whatever his failings the election of a Democratic administration is infinitely preferable to the McCain-Palin ticket. Given the state of the American and global economies and the general mess inherited from Bush & Co, it is unlikely Obama will be able to actually do very much over the next four years, should it turn out that he truly has the desire to bring about the ‘change’ he has promised. Yet none the less, the election of a black man as president of the USA, a mere 40 years after the civil rights movement established that blacks could sit on the same buses as whites without giving up their seats, could go to college, and – hell – vote in elections, this is a momentous event.
But what will become of McCain and Palin – have we heard the last of them? McCain it seems safe to say will go back to his senate seat, and hopefully will go back to being the genuine maverick he used to be, opposing the worst economic nonesenses of his own party and building meaningful bridges with Democrats on important issues. As for Palin, well that’s another story.
Anybody who has been following the senatorial race will observe that Alaska is still uncalled. The incumbent Republican Ted Stevens and his Democratic challenger Mark Begich are both tied on 48%. For those who may be unaware, Ted Stevens is now a convicted felon, having fallen foul of numerous counts of corruption and abuses of official power. Given his advanced age (he will be 91 by the end of his final senate term) he will die in prison. So given that he’s a corrupt felon, how come he’s managing to tie the vote?
One theory is that as an ultra long-serving senator, many Alaskans simply don’t care that he’s corrupt, believing that he’s done a good enough job for them regardless. Another theory, however, goes like this. If Stevens is elected, due to having been convicted he will not be able to take his seat at the Capitol. This will mean the race will have to be re-run, with a new Republican (and possibly Democratic) candidate. Step forward Sarah. It is conceivable that many Alaskans have voted for Stevens on the assumption that if the McCain-Palin ticket lost the race for the White House, then Palin could be manoeuvred into the senate seat. And given that a 1-term senator from Illinois just became President of the United States, that is food for thought. The Republican primary race in 2012 could be a most interesting affair.
Perhaps by 2012 Sarah Palin’s grasp of geography may have improved somewhat. Palin claims that her comments about Africa being a country rather than a continent were “taken out of context”. It’s rather difficult to imagine what the context could possibly have been sufficient to excuse what she said. It’s also not worth the mental effort, for over at the BBC she is quoted as saying:
I think if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about Nafta or about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context and that is cruel.
Just focus on the line: “the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there”. Perhaps this is just a verbal slip – Palin is hardly the most eloquent of speakers – but I do wonder if this is a revelation that Palin now thinks that there are two Africas – country and continent – possible one within the other. Sort of like the way America (the USA) is inside North America. Except that would involve her being aware of Mexico and Canada, which given her comments about NAFTA she apparently is not.
November 2, 2008
Most Interesting
With two days to go, there are things which give you hope in the face of all pessimism and cynicism:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7704636.stm
November 1, 2008
Boring Boring Boring
Let’s be honest, the Jonathon Ross-Russel Brand phone call debacle is for the most part fantastically boring. But then, such is often the case when mountains are made of molehills.
Yes, the calls were obscene and stupid. Yes, what happened was unacceptable and it was good that there was some public out-cry (though how much is a relevant question, given that nobody seemed to care until the Mail on Sunday got its teeth into the affair). But my god, did we really have to hear so much about it?
Aside from the usual demagoguery from leading politicians about ‘standards’ and ‘decency’, the state pretty much kept out of it, so there aren’t really any interesting John Stuart Mill type arguments to be had about the proper nature and extent of regulation of ‘offensive’ behaviour by the state.
The gutter press went on its usual rants about decency, and ganged up on the BBC. Aside from noting that papers like The Sun will surely have had a vested interest in trying to do-down the BBC, there’s nothing much interesting here. Except perhaps to point out for the billionth time the bare-faced hypocrisy of papers like the Daily Express and The Sun calling for ‘decency’ and ‘standards’, when the former is owned by Richard Desmond (aka ‘Dirty Des’ to Private Eye readers) who also owns The Fantasy Chanel and Red Hot TV, while the latter built its success around printing pictures of topless girls. But as it’s the billionth time such things have been said, this too feels quite boring.
As for the BBC, the affair is a sad indictment of how utterly gutless this otherwise fantastic organisation can be. The resignations of Brand and Lesley Douglas (director of BBC2) are reminiscent of how the BBC sacrificed Andrew Gilligan when he exposed Alistair Campbell back in 2003. Except that Gilligan was doing a fantastic job as an investigative journalist, whereas Brand is a moronic and banal ‘comedian’ bringing little of merit to the broadcasting world. Brand should have left BBC2 a long time ago, not because of obscene phone calls but because he is talentless and has built a career out of little more than being a publicly debauched idiot.
Douglas, on the other hand, was a broadcaster of great dedication, skill and creativity. Her resignation should have been refused on the grounds that everyone makes mistakes, and that whatever the gutter press says this mistake was of only moderate seriousness, and could have been atoned for at far lesser cost. But apart from noting (again) that the BBC is overly pusillanimous and skittish in defending itself, in part because it must forever worry about justifying the license fee in a world where corporately-funded media becomes ever more powerful and ever closer to government string-pullers, we learn nothing new.
Jonathon Ross is suspended on £16,000 a day (more than my parents will earn for a year), and the BBC will continue to pay him more than the yearly funding of the Today programme for the coming year (source: New Statesman 3 November 2008). This would be a cause for great outrage, surely, except that it’s nothing new. And given that it’s nothing new, outrage fades simply into boredom once again.
Which makes me wonder why I am even bothering to write on this matter. Too many words have been wasted on this affair this week. So let’s not waste any more…except to say that it concerns me slightly that so many things that should have me up in arms leave me with little more than a vague sense of apathy.
