December 31, 2009
Whoops
In my haste yesterday, I left off some deserving names from my Top Bloggers 2009 list.
Don Paskini, Laurie Penny (of Penny Red), Cliford Singer (of The Other Taxpayer’s Alliance) and Hopi Sen should all have recieved a mention.
OK,that’s it for 2009.
Happy New Year and all that rot.
December 30, 2009
Top Bloggers 2009
It’s a cheap effort, I know. But my stats are good today so why not bump everyone’s RSS feeds and make it a killer?
Over the last year these are the bloggers that have really stood out for me.
Sunny Hundal deserves a really big mention. Without this guy the quality leftwing blogosphere would be a shadow of what it is, leaving the field to bile-spitting Harry’s Place and the froth of the right. I don’t always agree with Sunny on political specifics, and every time he rejects one of my submissions he’s obviously wrong. But Pickled Politics and (especially) Liberal Conspiracy are continuing proof that grass-roots, voluntary blogging can produce quality superior to any of the established media.
Another big blog whose author deserves a mention is Chris Dillow of Stumbling and Mumbling. I’m kind of in awe at the guy’s like-clockwork output, with so much of it being such high quality. A model of concise, well-argued and entertaining political-economic blogging, S&M should be on everyone’s sidebar.
My vote for best new-entrant of the year goes without question to Giles Wilkes at Freethinking Economist. Although he’s only been blogging independently for a few months, Giles is already getting a readership that puts mine to shame. And rightly so. Sensible, informed economics (with a dash of politics) from a permanently pleasant man. That this blog gets written alongside professional and matrimonial duties is quite a feat. My one to watch for 2010.
Two bloggers that also deserve especial mention are Dave Semple and Paul Cotterill, now united at Though Cowards Flinch. TCF is my compulsory hard-left reading for the day. I vascilate in my levels of agreement, but it’s always an informed, interesting and well-argued read over there.
Similarly, Left Outside should get a mention for sheer diligence and perseverance. I’ll confess I don’t read LO as much as I ought, but I’m always impressed by the tenacity, as well as willingness to engage (politely!) with rightists who I struggle to even be on the same comments thread as.
On the subject of hardworking bloggers, two other names really stand out. Unity at Ministry of Truth (and Liberal Conspiracy) must be permanently sleep-deprived, but his tenacious science blogging with a political angle, and especially his efforts on climate change, deserve applause. Similarly Sunder Katwala at Next Left deserves commendation for his superhuman blogging efforts, ferreting out the hidden facts and lost details (and Sunny H gets another shout-out for chopping it all down and serving it up on LibCon). On the subject of Next Left, Stuart White deserves a mention for consistently super-high standard political theoretic blogging made accessible to the lay-man.
Three more bloggers I owe a personal debt to are the guys at the Tax Justice Network. Firstly, John Christensen and Nick Shaxon who write most of the Tax Justice Blog both put in huge amounts of time and effort to provide a forever-moving resource of the highest standard. Richard Murphy at Tax Reasearch UK needs no introduction, having become something of a celebrity of late. But Tax Research UK continues to be one of my favourite blogs, and as a one-man-watchdog it’s second to none.
Bizarrely, I’m also going to give a shout-out to Richard’s long-time nemesis, the dreaded Tim Worstall. Don’t get me wrong, I think Tim is a protracted pain in the arse. The undisputed King of the deliberately point-avoiding pedants. But having said that, it’s good to debate the enemy. And apart from Dan who comments on this site, I don’t think anybody else forces me to get clear on my positions and consider my grounds as much as Tim does. It would just be nice if he could drop the sarcasm and childish taunting.
Finally – and here’s one you weren’t expecting – I’d like to give an especially big recommendation to Flying Rodent, who writes the severely under-rated Between the Hammer and the Anvil. Flying Rodent is possibly the best blog commentor on the internet. His LibCon put-downs are forever of the highest order, and his incisive intellectual-demolition-cum-hilarious-satirisation are the stuff of which I dream. Take this comment from today as a paradigm classic:
“I’m amazed anyone thought this was worth disputing – Charlotte and DK think that socialism causes racism for the same reasons they think socialism causes every other social ill. They probably think socialism* causes piles and erectile dysfunction as well.
Quite why anyone imagines that this stuff can be reasonably argued against is beyond me. God love ‘em for their commitment, but it’s like watching a bunch of seven year olds thrash out a political system based upon the repeal of baths and bedtime and the institution of free Haribo for all.”
And the blog’s not bad either. Check out this personal favourite of mine.
OK, that’s it for the year in bloggers. Now go out and kill yourself on drugs like it’s 1999.
December 29, 2009
The Daily Mail is really, really horrible
OK, we already knew this.
But as casual misogyny and general nastiness goes, the following headline is something of a paradigm example:
“Stripper jailed for lacing lover’s Angel Delight with poison“
Screams the Mail.
I don’t trawl the Mail website for entertainment. I know about this because the “stripper” in question is (deep breath) my girlfriend’s housemate’s ex-boyfriend’s sister.
A stripper, was she? Well even the Mail’s own article manages to note that:
“The court heard that Mardon carried out the attacks because she was in an abusive relationship and was forced to work as a stripper to bring in extra cash.”
From what I’m told, “abusive relationship” is something of an understatement. But for the Mail, it’s just a woman’s place in the home:
“She had a day job as a clerical assistant and had been pressured by him to work at night as a stripper.
Mardon would then return to the two-bedroom house in Thornbury, Bristol, owned by Martyn’s father. She lived there with Martyn and his brother and their father.
She would then be required to cook for the men and do the housework.”
Delightful.
Some more on class war
A couple more thoughts on class war following on from yesterday’s post.
Sunny Hundal has picked up the tenor of my argument about how 21st century appeals to privilege and minority interests is neither a disastrous retreat to 1970s antagonisms nor the suicidal doom-and-gloom message that New Labour dinosaurs claim. Yet he seems insistent on labelling the overall strategy one of “class war”.
To be fair to Sunny, he does say that this is intended merely as shorthand, holding his nose and agreeing with Ed Ball’s on this matter. But even then, I’m suspicious of using the term even as shorthand in strategy-debate. For terms have a tendency to stick. Especially when a predominantly right-wing media has already shown itself desirous of squawking about the “class war” label.
And there’s (at least) two more reasons why “class war” is an unwise use of language, on top of yesterday’s list.
First-up, I think it’s fair to say that the very notion of “working class” (which is inextricable from “class war” language) can be alienating to at least 50% of the population. For what do we think of when we use the term “working class”? Well, men down the mines, men striking at the docks, men wearing flat-caps and racing whippets. The concept of a “working class” came into usage when women mostly did not work at all, or if they did were employed in spheres of labour not generally covered by the “working class” label (primary school teachers, secretaries, check-out girls). “Working class” still invokes the image of working men united in labour (think: working men’s clubs). It’s surely alienating, therefore, to a vast number of women who not only never knew the world of the traditional “working class” (for it is long-since departed), but may surely perceive it as a thoroughly alien (and perhaps hostile) notion to boot.
Secondly, what on earth does “class” mean in the 21st century? I certainly believe Britain remains a class society. Yet I’m hard-pressed to give you an account of what constitutes the dividing lines of class today. In an era where many of the poor may never have worked at all – poverty-trapped on benefits in cycles of deprivation and under-education – it’s no longer the case that “poor” and “working class” are clearly or usually synonymous.
This is the era of chavs and chav-nots. Clearly, this means Britain is still a class society; there remain big (and growing) divisions of wealth and opportunity. I find my social antennae sufficiently well-attuned that I can spot poorer and richer members of society a mile-off from how they dress or talk.
But whilst Maggie and Tony certainly didn’t make us all middle-class (as the rhetoric had it), the economic changes under their premierships altered and eroded the old, (relatively) clear-cut class distinctions. Again: these are classes, Jim, but not as we knew them.
In an era where “class” no doubt exists, but no longer tracks the divisions and economic stratifications of old, it’s unlikely to prove tactically wise to campaign on the language of “class war”. In 2010 it’s time to talk about the many versus the few; the privileged versus the ordinary; the Etonians versus the people.
December 28, 2009
Class war, Jim, but not as we knew it
Sunny Hundal has been leading the charge at Liberal Conspiracy, calling for Labour to fight the next election on the basis of ‘class war’. I think this strategy could work. But only if it’s done right. And paradoxically, the first thing is to stop calling it ‘class war’.
That term has all the wrong connotations. It brings to mind struggle, strife, conflict and hardship. You know, like in war. It’s also reminiscent of the language of proles vs. capitalists, unions vs. bosses, revolutionaries vs. bourgeoise apologists. And it’s a bad idea to run an election campaign on those lines.
Not because Labour should hide it’s working class socialistic roots, or because of rightist nonsense that such rhetoric punishes aspiration and alienates ordinary people. But because such overtones mean very little to ordinary working people, most of whom have never been down a mine or ballotted in a union, because they work in call centres and Tesco.
Class war overtones may mean more to (some) older generations, who may themselves still be unionised (teachers, public sector workers). But the antagonistic overtones of class war are, in 2010, most likely to inspire ill-defined but powerful fears deriving from our collective political memory’s bette noir: the economic strife of the 1970s.
‘Class war’ is the idiomnof last century’s battles. Those on the hardened left may not like this. But it’s a fact. And if you fight the last battle, you always lose.
Which is not to give carte blanche to rightist in the Labour party like Tessa Jowell and Jack Straw, for they want to fight a 20th Century battle too.
The New Labour old guard (for 16 years on, that’s what they are) still think in the politics of the boom times. That elections must be fought by ‘out-aspiriationalising’ the Tories, presenting Labour as intensley relaxed about people getting filthy rich. The old guard doesn’t seem to have noticed the collapse of Lehman’s, rising unemployment and recession. When the economics change, so must the politics.
In 2010, pointing out the enormous privilege of the individuals composing the Cameron clique and Tory upper echelons, it’s multimillionaire string-pulling main funder, or it’s desire to drastically cut public spending and state support for ordinary families whilst offering tax breaks to millionaires, should all work. Why? Because these things bother people, and bother them so very much more in the bad times than the good.
But let’s not forget what the Fabian Society found in 2009: that most voters like to think of themselves as in the ‘i’m-doing-ok’ middle (wherever they really are in class and income terms). They don’t picture themselves as poor, disadvantaged or hard-up relative to others (even when they are), let alone as underdogs in a class war. We ignore that at our peril.
Navigating the above, it’s clear we must abandon the rhetoric of class war. Instead we should be talking about ‘the unfairly privileged vs the hardworking ordinary’, ‘the many vs the few’. Of course, you and I know it’s still class war, Jim. But not as we knew it.
December 22, 2009
‘I want my cake and I want to eat it’
I notice a lot of people on the news complaining that the council hasn’t gritted the pavement or road of their quiet residential street. In some appalling cases this is despite the person in question having phoned the relevant authorities!
I do wonder how many of these outraged complainers pass the warmer months petitioning for higher council tax and celebrating the rise of The Nanny State.
Vigilante
Why can’t people take the law into their own hands?
When sentencing Munir Hussein – who chased-down a burglar and beat him so hard with a cricket it shattered in three places, leaving Walid Salem brain-damaged for life – the judge said:
“Sadly, I have no doubt that my public duty requires me to impose immediate prison sentences of some length upon you. This is in order to reflect the serious consequences of your violent acts and intent and to make it absolutely clear that, whatever the circumstances, persons cannot take the law into their own hands, or carry out revenge attacks upon a person who has offended them.”
He added:
“It may be that some members of the public, or media commentators, will assert that Salem deserved what happened to him at the hands of you and the two others involved, and that you should not have been prosecuted and need not be punished,” the judge added.”However, if persons were permitted to … inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting justice take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are the hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.”
And indeed there’s been the typical apoplexy on the right about criminals now having more rights than law abiding citizens, Hussein being a hero, and the rest.
My own tribe normally takes the other route, typically assumed to lead to The Moral High Ground. That it would be barbaric if individuals could take the law into their own violent hands, result in an end to the rule of law before which we are all equal, effectively licensing murder, and the rest. Catherine Bennett puts a powerful case forward for the High Grounders.
Now, being of High Ground persuasion I tend to think there’s a lot to these arguments. But it would be naive and dishonest of me not to acknowledge something lurking in the conceptual background: the intimate relationship between violence and the modern state.
Max Weber gave the classic account:
“What is a ‘state’? Sociologically, the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in hand, and there is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar to those associations which are designated as political ones: today the state, or historically, those associations which have been the predecessors of the modern state. Ultimately one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely, the use of physical force
…
Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions – beginning with the slib – have known the use of force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”
And Weber is right. Crucial to the State’s authority and capacity to maintain order, control and power over the disparate actors is the (successful) monopolisation of violence, delegated officially through army, police forces and maybe even Community Support Officers.
Furthermore, the state’s having a monopolisation of violence is something that, in general, we ought to be damn grateful for. I’ve just finished reading Simon Schama’s Citizens, a chronology of the French Revolution. Schama claims that the revolution began when insurrectionary rhetoric about the people’s power was actually put into practice, and the King’s forces lost control over the use of force. But Schama also contends that from 1789-94 the revolutionary government simply could not put the genie of violence back in the bottle, and it was this lack of state monopoly of force that led to The Terror and the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
Dark as Weber’s diagnosis may strike us, there are reasons to be grateful when it obtains.
Which brings us back to the sentencing of Mr Hussein. We on the High Ground may be right in our usual arguments about barbarism, the rule of law, and all the rest. But lurking behind that is a basic truth: we don’t allow vigilantes in this society because violence is the preseve of the state and its specially licensed agents.
And that, ultimately, is about power, control and domination. It just happens to be power, control and domination that we are in favour of.
How to do really, really good philosophy
I promise I’ll write a proper blog at some point this week.
But for now I invite you to observe how really, really good philosophy is done. And to become an atheist at the same time.
It so happens that the question of whether or not we ought to believe in an intelligent (and possibly benevolent) deity was settled in the 18th Century. The two classic statements – which really do sort the issue out rather decisively – come in David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding chapters X and XI, and in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
Those short works would put atheists (or if we’re being technical: properly reflective agnostics) the world-over in better stead than all the fallacy-ridden pages that Richard Dawkins and A.C. Grayling manage to churn out.
If, however, you don’t feel brave enough for Hume himself then Julian Baggini has provided a wonderful service and condensed all Hume’s key arguments into an excellent 8-part miniseries. A great virtue of Baggini’s restatement is that he understands how terms like “atheist” and”agnostic” need to be handled carefully in light of proper understanding.
Then again all that lengthy reading may be superflous. For this outstanding podcast by Stephen Law pretty much settles the issue. Not only is it a model of beautifully elegant reasoning which simultaneously bulldozers its opposition, but in about 10 minutes Law establishes a case for non-belief in a benevolent deity that I simply don’t think can be refuted.
Game over.
December 18, 2009
Those who die, are justified
I’ve stayed out of this so far.
But whatever. It’s time to bring down Simon ‘death of western civilisation’ Cowell.
Saturday is the crucial day. Rage Against the Machine must triumph as Christmas Number 1. Use a legal download site and purchase ‘Killing in the Name Of’. It will cost you a pitance.
Cowell could lose. My youthful rebellions could be vindicated in one last act of insurrection.
Comrades, now is the hour of our discontent.
