November 9, 2011
Why I’m Not At The Protest
Big student protests in London today, against fee rises and the perceived “privatisation” of Britain’s university system.
I’m not going. Two reasons.
1. This afternoon I have a crucial cup fixture to play in. My first loyalty is to King’s Men’s First XI, only secondarily to the future of education and the good society.
2. I often do stupid, impulsive things. I get caught up in the moment. And I’ll be honest, riot and disorder situations are exciting – heightening the chances of my doing something stupid. But I don’t want to be arrested on charges of violent disorder, for something as minor as throwing a smoke bomb, then ending up in prison for 18 months with the rest of my life in tatters.
I also don’t want to be shot at with rubber bullets. Similarly, I was charged by police horses last December, and frankly it wasn’t a very pleasant experience.
So congratulations, government, police force and judiciary (or if you like ‘The Establishment’). With me at least, it worked. Wonder how many others will chicken out?
October 27, 2011
Occupy (my attention)
A friend – who happens to be both left-leaning and employed in City finance – sent me a text:
“Not that I’m against it, but what is the stated reason for the St Paul’s protests? Just awareness or do they want something specific? Normally there’s a reason – Uni fees a very valid one – but this just seems like a bit of a moan. The timing seems odd, even if it is jumping on the Occupy Wall Street bandwagon. It’s been two weeks though, who has that much time?”
I sympathise.
Recently, I’ve become utterly bored by day-to-day politics. Paradoxically, this has afforded me some insights.
I don’t really know what Occupy London Stock Exchange (OLX) is about. I haven’t had the time or inclination to find out. Because I don’t really care. Because I am uninterested in the repetition and tedium of daily political debate and exchange. I’m interested in politics (hence why I’m doing a PhD in it), but then I increasingly think that’s really something else. What I’m certainly not interested in is the daily outrages and accusations; the ranting; the tribalism; the he-said, she-said; the bla bla bla ad nauseam .
Which itself wouldn’t actually be so bad, if people were quietly conscious that they were being hypocrites and opportunists in pointing out the hypocrisies and opportunisms of their enemies. What I have no time for is the pathetic sincerity of the daily outrage. “Oh, my political enemy has done something nasty and underhand! How outrageous! How shocking! I am so appalled! Something Must Be Done!”
Yawn.
I don’t really know what OLX is about. It seems a bit silly. And that’s an interesting perspective coming from me, given that a year ago I was involved in the Cambridge student occupation, attended quite a lot of demos, and was generally Pretty Interested In Daily Politics.
But it may be instructive, for precisely that past, to observe just how off-the-radar OLX is to me. Somebody busy with their research (which is not much like having a real job). With teaching commitments. With Friday nights. With the football season. With time on my hands. With left-wing views. With a tendency to read the news.
If I don’t register OLX, how much do you think it gets through to people working 40+ hour weeks? With kids? With bills and mortgages to pay? Worried about job security and inflation? Who don’t have time to read the paper? Who aren’t particularly left-wing?
Of my friend’s text, however, what really stands out is his closing line: “It’s been two weeks though, who has that much time?”
When I used to box at a gym in Southport, a post-training discussion once turned to the TV series Big Brother. The general conclusion was that not only were all the contestants freaks, but they were Not Like Ordinary People. Why? Precisely because they could swan off for 10 weeks without worrying about work. For most in the discussion, that was enough to discredit each and every contestant. The BB housemates weren’t from the real world. The world where kids and mortgages ruled out such summer sojourns. And that bred both a fairly obvious contempt, but also an underlying if mild resentment.
Leftist activists might endorse OLX with passion. Many of them are out there right now, proudly taking part, braced against the cold by the sincerity of their views. But activists should remember that goldfish bowls create visual distortions, in both directions. And like it or not, dissimilarity quickly breeds contempt.
August 10, 2011
Riot of a Time
Very quick thoughts on the recent riots.
1. Clearly it is true that poverty, alienation, deepdisgruntlement with the police and lack of opportunity are important background facts that any serious attempt at understanding will have to take into account.
2. But these alone cannot explain what was clearly, in many cases, opportunistic theft and glee in destruction.
3. So where do we go from there?
4. I take these to be true and important components of any description of modern British politics and society: that it promotes self-interested greed, materialism, the possession of ostensive goods for status, immediate gratification, and a toleration (even encouragement) of ruthless competitiveness with a deep disregard for the welfare of others. (Call this the “no-such-thing-as-society society”, if you like.)
5. Putting 1 and 2 together with 4, and adding in conditions of spontaneity, anticipated impunity and evident opportunity, a basic yet broadly sufficient explanation appears to emerge.
6. Note that the things described in 4 above constitute the core tenets of the political ideology broadly known as ‘Thatcherism’ (or if you want to bring things up to date post-1997, ‘neo-liberalism’).
7. Also note that the conditions described in 1. have been massively and continuously exacerbated by Thatcherism (or ‘neo-liberalism’), especially if enormous inequality and its debilitating effects on individual well-being and self-respect are included too.
8. So actually this may not be such a mystery after all. If you constantly tell people to be selfish, ruthless, competitive, greedy and disregarding of the welfare of others, then you can’t really be surprised when they behave as they are told they fundamentally are and must be (even if they forget about the bits to do with obeying the law).
9. However, if you happen to be the prime minister just invoke some vacuous covering fluff about ‘moral responsibility’. Continue to condemn loudly, and then get back to promoting the elements in 4. on a daily basis. Without wondering about which ways the knife may cut.
March 27, 2011
On Violence and Recent Protest
As previously noted, I have no problem per se with political violence. Its use and justification must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, with reference to myriad factors such as likelihood to succeed, ability to justify harm to victims, long-term advantages gained, greater evils averted, and so on. Use and justification of violence – like any other tool of politics – depends on firstly the judgement of those who deploy it, and at a later stage the judgement of those (if different) who must assess it (and quite possibly, sentence it). As a general rule, it is wise to hope for better judgement than worse, and from all concerned.
Some situations allow for more judgement, particularly with regards to strategy, than others. The leaders of the ANC, or the ETA, or Hamas, typically control the means of violence in hierarchical command structures. A few men will decide when and where to use violence, and dictate orders to subordinates. In such cases, judgement (including strategic planning) is in the hands of specific individuals with relatively high degrees of control. In turn, moral judgement by other parties as to the justified or unjustified use of that violence will in large measure focus on the decisions of the commanding individuals. The same, incidentally, goes for the aparatus of the modern state – though for complex and important reasons we tend to shy away from recognising the deeply and necessarily coercive natures of the states we find ourselves in and under.
But certainly not all instances of political violence fit this model. When the so-called “Black Bloc” of anarchist militants attacked stores on Oxford Street yesterday they were not part of a (para)military organised hierarchy with a leadership exercising strategic-tactical judgement – still less the militant wing of the 250,000 peaceful marchers congregating in Hyde Park. When UK Uncut protestors launched their non-violent direct action against Fortnum and Mason, they can hardly be held responsible for the spontaneous vandalism that enthusiasts in the assembled crowd promptly launched.
In these latter cases the problem with considering the use of political violence from the perspective of strategic judgement in particular is that it quite simply doesn’t apply. Before Saturday’s outbursts of violent direct action no hierarchy of command could exercise the sort of command and control upon which strategic judgement is predicated. Yet after the violence talk of strategic judgement seems largely besides the point. Insofar as there was any, it was exercised by individuals or small groups in loosely organised ways, in a situation of mass happenings over which nobody had meaningful control.
In turn, this makes the task of passing retrospective moral judgement over the uses of political violence on Saturday a nuanced affair. For a start, we must distinguish between the actions of opportunistic vandals, committed anarchists, young enthusiasts caught up in the moment, and those goaded and provoked by police tactics (if any of the above indeed turn out to apply).
Nonetheless, it remains possible to assume a third-party perspective in order to analyse yesterday’s events. Specifically, we can adopt a position of hypothetical strategic judgement. It is quite sensible to ask: if I had absolute control over what actions people did and did not take yesterday, which would I permit? Personally, I would have preferred an entirely peaceful protest. Not because I’m opposed to all political violence (I’m not), but because yesterday’s outbursts were unambiguously counter-productive, and predictably so.
By contrast, my strong sense is that if the student movement had remained entirely peaceful at the end of last year, it would certainly have achieved absolutely nothing. The broken windows at Millbank and the riots in Westminster attracted levels of attention that peaceful marching never could have. And importantly, I believe that the student violence did not lead to the same outcomes that purely peaceful protest would have (failed to) achieve.
Certainly, the Parliamentary vote was passed and in that sense the student protests failed. Yet the carnage witnessed in Parliament Square – chronciled by myself, Jeremy Gilbert and others in Fight Back! – will have sent a shiver down many Coalition MPs’ spines. Lib Dems in particular must know that the ferocity of student anger means that particular constituency is lost for the very foreseeable future. Tory MPs must know deep down that if things can get that bad that quickly before the cuts have even started to bite, the next 4 years will contain some very difficult fights. Perhaps this will only make the present Government even more determined and bullish – but my sense is that it will quietly make key decision-makers more wary, and Lib Dems more skittish. And even if all of that is wrong, I still think that the student protests stood a better chance the way they actually happened than any peaceful alternative could have offered.
By contrast, Saturday’s march needed something entirely different. It needed the other face of protest: the face of hundreds of thousands of ordinary, reasonable and respectable people calmly registering their disapproval. As Paul Mason has noted, if you can get your entire workforce out to a Saturday demonstration, this means something. The scale of yesterday’s protest, quite obviously not made up of the “usual suspects”, would have been very powerful just because of its sheer size. If only it had been the main news story.
Instead, much coverage was given over to actions initially started by the “Black Bloc” idiots. I call them idiots because that is exactly what they are. Either they like to smash things just for the thrill (in which case they are Basic Idiots), or they are so politically deluded they think throwing paint bombs at TopShop will light the fuse of revolutionary explosion (in which case they are Advanced level Über-Idiots). Whichever camp of idiots yesterday’s Black Bloc thugs fell into, they did the anti-cuts campaign huge damage. By distracting attention to the loudly spectacular and meaningless away from the quietly awesome and meaningful they ruined it for everyone. Except the Tory Party.
Yet, crucially, there is more to say. For although the actions of the Black Bloc started the trouble – as Ryan Gallagher has noted – it is undeniable that many others quickly joined the violence without premeditation. Likewise the kids who stuck it out in Trafalgar Square, or who angrily confronted police outside Fortnum and Mason, cannot be dismissed as merely extended members of the Black Bloc.
Rather, they were the people who don’t any longer see the point of maintaining peaceful protest if the opportunity to descend into confrontation arises. And at a certain level they have my sympathy, for two reasons. Firstly, my generation learned quite spectacularly in 2003 that even enormous peaceful demonstrations of over a million people can make precisely zero difference. Tony Blair invaded Iraq, and didn’t give a flying damn what any of us thought.
Secondly, anybody who has been on even a handful of protests – especially in London – knows full well that the police do not hesitate to use violence, and frequently instigate aggressive confrontational situations amidst previously jovial and peaceful atmospheres. At the G20 protests in 2009, trouble only started when the police moved in – and it is probably significant that following that experience increasing numbers of protestors are drawing the obvious conclusion: if you know the boys in blue will baton you regardless, why wait around passively for them to do it?
It is significant and telling that so many recent protests have seen flare-ups of violence. The Black Bloc has been around a long while now and they cannot alone explain this. A better explanation is that many people – especially the young – are angry, justifiably untrusting of the police, and contemptuous of the old (failed) channels of political expression. As the cuts really start to bite, their numbers must surely increase.
So whilst I regret yesterday’s violence – if I could have had my way, there would have been none at all – I can understand why these outbursts of wider political violence are happening. And they do not make me optimistic about the future.
January 14, 2011
Cold World
18 years old is a strange age. Legally, you’re an adult. But in many ways you’re still a child. Looking back on my own late teenage years, I’m astonished at how immature I really was.
Which brings me to Edward Woolard. There’s no doubt Woolard was an idiot at the precise moment he threw that fire extinguisher off the top of Milbank. Yet whether he is an idiot through-and-through is a different matter. Certainly the national media branded him a thug in its instant witch hunt. But in truth, none of us know whether he was simply seized by a one-off moment of immature madness.
Either way Woolard is paying dearly. 32 months in jail, at the age of 18. His life prospects in tatters, and a family no doubt heartbroken.
You may think he deserves it. And certainly, it seems clear he had to receive some sort of serious sentence. Not simply to act as a deterrent to other acts of idiocy, but also to reflect that he could have killed somebody. The state can’t, after all, have private citizens behaving in ways which recklessly endanger the lives of others.
And the authorities also had to send a clear message for their own purposes. That even though they lost control at numerous points towards the end of 2010, captured perpetrators can expect to pay dearly for their actions.
It is worth remembering, however, that Woolard didn’t actually kill anybody. And surely that matters (even if the reasons why are philosophically complicated). Two and a half years in jail is a long time. Especially for not killing anybody, in an unpremeditated single act of stupidity. I can’t help but find it excessive.
And that’s partly because I keep thinking: “that could have been me”. Not because I’d ever throw a fire extinguisher off a roof (‘tis not my style). But because when I was 18 I did something very, very stupid too.
Angry and frustrated at the world generally – and heartbroken because the girl I was head-over-heels about decided she preferred her boyfriend after all – I got into a drunken fight one Friday night. Except I’d also been doing some amateur Thai boxing. And I hit the guy in the sort of way that you don’t hit people, even in organised amateur fights. Because you can kill them.
Needless to say I didn’t kill anyone. But if the angles had been a little different, the impact a little more, his alcohol-levels a little higher, it’s very possible I might have. A moment of madness, and I could have killed a man. And gone to prison for 20 years.
But I’m lucky. My moment of madness didn’t go that way. I’m free to pursue a successful and comfortable life. As I sincerely hope the guy I struck 6 years ago currently does.
Incidentally, PC Simon Harwood is lucky too. As we all know, when Ian Tomlinson was walking home from work PC Harwood struck him without warning and pushed him to the ground. Not long later, Tomlinson was dead. Yet Harwood never saw the inside of a dock, and the Crown Prosecution Service decided this particular bobby wouldn’t even stand trial for assault.
No such luck for Edward Woolard. I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Of course I’d like to say that the hypocrisy of a judicial apparatus which allows the police to kill whilst giving children lengthy prison terms will lead the The People to rise up for reform. But that’s spectacularly unlikely, I’m afraid.
So all I really have to note today is that it’s a cold world out there. If you’re lucky enough to be sitting by the fire, think on that a little while.
December 13, 2010
Reflections on a Kettle
Much has been written about the police use kettling at last Thursday’s riots. Here’s an attempt to say something different.
The kettling of thousands, by rows of armour-clad and masked riot police (never mind the batoning, punching, kicking and horse charges) demonstrated a fundamental truth of politics:
“That a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory…Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence.”
Standing in the shadow of Parliament, as fires burned and smoke billowed, Max Weber’s words received practical purchase.
The old anarchist saying – that the state creates the violence which it uses to justify its existence – also took on a dimension of vivid reality that night. I watched (and dodged) as fellow citizens were beaten by an organised, armoured and armed militia. A militia which prevented even the peaceful from leaving the fray.
And yet that is only half the tale.
When the kettle had gone into effect my friends and I wandered aimlessly. Suddenly a commotion erupted nearby. Youths wearing ski-masks and raised hoods were attacking a reporting crew. We watched as they threw a cameraman to the floor, where he received kicks and blows.
Believing the attackers simply to be angry protestors, I confronted one youth. He was not wearing a ski mask, but his mouth and nose were covered. He was about 15, and a lot smaller than me. He shot me a look that sent a shiver down by spine. But he weighed his options, and backed off.
I got lucky.
As other protestors confronted the remaining youths, there was a sudden palpable rush of fear. We all saw the hammer come out. Everybody took a step backward. For a few terrible seconds, I thought I was about to witness a murder. Mercifully, the situation defused as quickly as it began. Somebody with a leveller and braver head than mine calmly shouted to “put the hammer away, mate” – and away it went. The gang ran off, to another part of the kettle.*
And that’s when the second wave of fear – the reflective wave – hit me. I couldn’t get out. I was trapped here, with the hammer-wielding gang; one of whom I’d just confronted and had clearly seen my face. The police? It wasn’t their problem anymore: “there’s nothing we can do pal – it’s your fault for being in the kettle”.
It is true that the police enforce the will of the state by monopolising legitimate violence. One of their functions is to impose social control; protecting politicians from the betrayed, the wealthy from the poor, the rulers from the ruled. But that is not all they do. The police also protect ordinary citizens from those who would prey upon us. Protestors who wish to live under the safety of laws must acknowledge the janus-faced relationship we stand in towards the police.
Trapped in the Westminster kettle, it was ultimately the words of Thomas Hobbes I recalled most clearly:
“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
–
*As the night progressed they distracted themselves, attempting to destroy any available windows. Let nobody tell you that the attack on the Treasury had no positive dimensions.
December 11, 2010
Reflections on a Riot
In the press reports and police statements surrounding what happened in Parliament Square on Thursday, we’re often told that “violent extremists” ruined it for “peaceful protestors”.
But is it really that simple?
I was stood in the crowd next to Westminster Abbey on Thursday, where I saw riot police striking people with batons after they had fallen to the floor. When a young man trying to help others get away from danger took a baton to the back of the head, and came out streaming blood and unable to walk. When people around me started panicking, running, crushing and screaming in terror – and I turned around to see 15 police horses charging a packed crowd with nowhere to go.
Was I a peaceful protestor, or a violent extremist?
Certainly, I was not one of the people who brought weapons. I didn’t throw missiles at the police horses, or light flares and fireworks. The people who did that (and despite my earlier scepticism, it was true that prepared troublemakers were there on the day) can accurately be classed as violent extremists. Waving red and black flags, dressed in plain black with faces purposefully covered and snooker balls in hand, these were anarchists in the technical sense. I was not with them, or one of them, and I do not defend their actions. It would have been better for all if they had not been there.
But the prepared troublemakers were a very small minority. And yet the images you have seen of the riot in Parliament Square show police battling with thousands of protestors. So what happened?
Quite simply, ordinary people joined in. As I was not on the front row of the protest – or riot, as it quickly became – I stayed clear of the violence. But I’ll be honest: I was swept up along with the enthusiasm of the situation just like the thousands around me. Very quickly it became us versus them; the ordinary people dressed in plain clothes taking batons to the head and facing horse charges, and the masked riot police trying to get at and hurt people like us.
So how and why did the situation deteriorate so quickly? Because it was exhilarating to be part of it.
Insincere apologies for breaking the taboo, but this is a brute truth the pious po-faced tut-tutters of the media and political power dishonestly deny to be the case. Riots happen because they are exciting, because they are fun, because ordinary people who did not come for any violence or trouble suddenly find themselves in the fray and simply do not want to leave. The shackles of society are off, and the animal thrill of conflict is pumping through everybody’s system. And whilst fear and the instinct to run can get the upper hand – like when the horses charge you – adrenaline for the most part takes over. And hence people stand, and they fight.
Those who would now dismiss me as a mindless thug should be aware that this equally applies to the police on the other side. It is simply obvious to anybody who’s seen riot police in action that they enjoy the ruck every bit as much as those they are fighting. And why should that be a surprise? They are only human too; ruled by the same passions and suddenly unleashed animal instincts as the rest of us.
It is true that at 2pm on Thursday 9th November, the anti-cuts demonstration could be accurately divided into violent extremists waiting to strike, and peaceful protestors only there to march and sing. But by 3.30pm, after the batons and the horse charges, the flares and the missiles, such a distinction was spurious. The riot had started, there was violence on both sides, and we were suddenly all in it together.
We can have a simplistic discourse about “violent extremists” and “peaceful protestors”, if we want; an easy narrative in which the Bad Guys ruined it for the Good. But if we stay at that level we’ll never get beyond inaccurate platitudes, and never understand the dynamics of riots as they actually happen in practice. If the police are serious about stopping this sort of thing in future they’ll take this brute truth on board. But that is to assume that they really are interested in stopping this sort of thing in future – and there’s all sorts of reasons to doubt that.
September 30, 2010
Changing the Law…but Changing Nothing
There is no requirement for letting and estate agents in Britain to be part of a regulatory body. This means any cowboy who chooses can set up shop. And many do.
Since 2007, however, tenants have in theory gained peace of mind. It is now illegal for letting agents not to register tenancy deposits in a licensed Deposit Protection Scheme (DPS). Failure to do this entitles tenants to a compensatory sum of three times the original deposit, should this a) not be returned at the end of a tenancy and b) not have been placed in a DPS.
Has this prevented dodgy letting agents from continuing that age-old practice of stealing tenant’s original deposits?
Not exactly.
Imagine you leave a property – without causing any damage – and apply to your letting agent for a return of your original deposit. Imagine they refuse. Imagine you then ask for proof that they registered your deposit in a DPS. Imagine they can’t do this, because they didn’t. Imagine they persistently refuse to return your money nonetheless.
What happens next? Do you assume you’ll be able to straightforwardly take the agent to County Court, getting both your money and legally-entitled compensation in due course?
Think again.
To try and get your money back you must start by sending a claim form to county court, explaining that your agent has breached both your original contract and also the obligations of the Housing Act (2004). The Court then writes to the agent.
But imagine the agent opens the court’s letters, re-seals the envelopes, writes “gone away” on the front, and returns the documentation pretending the business has folded. When you go to the agent and try and serve them a claim form in person, they refuse to accept it from you.
What next?
Sensibly, you press for a county court hearing to rule on your dispute with the agent, which is granted. But the agent doesn’t turn up to the hearing. So you win the judgement by default. The agent now owes you three times your original deposit value – a sum likely to be in the thousands. Will you get your money now?
Not likely.
The Court sends the agent an order demanding that they pay you the money that is now legally yours. But imagine the agent sends this order back, again writing “gone away” on the envelope (which is a lie, because they are still trading). At this point you might expect the court to take matters into its own hands so as to extract the money owed.
You’d be wrong.
There are now three options. 1) You can send in bailiffs to take the agent’s property up to the value you are owed. However bailiffs cannot take property essential to the business’ operations, so if you’re dealing with a shoe-string agency (as is likely) the bailiffs will be able to take very little and almost certainly nowhere near the sum you are owed.
2) You can file to have the business declared bankrupt. The problem with this is that it is likely to be expensive, and if anybody else is owed more money by the agent than you are, they will get paid first (and as you’re dealing with a dodgy letting agent this is quite likely).
3) You can attempt a third party debt order, whereby an income stream intended for the business is diverted into your bank account instead of theirs.
Let’s say you (sensibly) try to pursue option 3). However you can only do this if you secure key information, such as the businesses’ bank account details. The only way you can get this is by having the business attend court for questioning. To make that happen, you need to serve a notice-to-attend-court to the manager of the business personally, and then swear an affidavit to the court that you did so.
Now imagine that the manager avoids you for several weeks. Imagine that bailiffs are no use because they cannot track down the manager personally, and the papers have to be served that way. But imagine you eventually pin-down the manager at work one day, give him the papers, then swear an affidavit accordingly. Are you any closer to getting your money?
No.
Because now imagine the agent writes to the court and lies, saying that the manager has left forever. The court (somewhat reassuringly) says this is not acceptable, and the court date for questioning goes ahead regardless. But the manager (unsurprisingly) doesn’t turn up. A judge then issues a Suspended Committal Order. This means that if the manager does not turn up to a second hearing, a warrant will be issued for his arrest.
Is the process over? Is your money on the way?
No, because you have to serve the Suspended Committal Order to the manger, personally. The Court won’t help you do this. But the manager knows who you are, and isn’t going to let you do that. So are you going to get your money back? It really doesn’t look like it.
Imagine over a year has now passed. Imagine you are an Oxbridge educated British citizens whose first language is English and whose current flat mate just qualified as a solicitor. Would you conclude that the much-touted Deposit Protection Scheme has done anything whatsoever to rebalance power between tenants and dodgy letting agents? Do you think that vulnerable people with limited resources, who may struggle with reading English and legal documents – i.e. the worse-off, who are most likely to be at the mercy of dodgy letting agents – are better protected than before, let-alone the highly educated and better-resourced?
I think the evidence speaks for itself.
But there’s a wider lesson here, too: for those (like me) with faith in the power of the state to improve society, we must nonetheless remember that simply changing laws does not necessarily guarantee the good consequences we desire.
September 6, 2010
Reflections on a City
For the past 18 months I’ve been living in a city I was neither born nor raised in. Today I am moving away, heading for pastures new.
The city I am leaving behind hosts a huge global financial centre, which generates some of the most enormous sums of corporate and personal wealth in the world. And although that financial sector currently remains dependent on vast sums provided by taxpayer revenues, profits are booming and the good times roll – for the rich. Yet 20 minutes walk from the main hub of this financial hive lie some of the poorest and most deprived housing estates in Europe, generating staggering levels of inequality within a few square miles.
The mayor of this city operates on a part-time only basis, systematically avoiding scrutiny and public accountability. Despite running on a platform against cronyism, he has since promoted exactly this. He stalwartly defends his friends in the financial sector, assuring taxpayers that multi-million pound bonuses are the necessary price for the conspicuous successes of complete systemic collapse. Yet by cultivating the image of a loveable buffoon, as well as riding a bicycle, this mayor is rewarded and loved by a people apparently stuck in a time-warp of deference to class superiors.
It is a city in which foreign billionaires are invited to live with the inducement of extensive tax exemptions if they possess sufficiently grotesque levels of personal wealth. As well as buying up prime real estate, marketed at sums beyond most people’s wildest dreams, these foreign plutocrats may consider joining the ever more exclusive club of moguls who own the domestic media.
Based in this city are “news” organisations that divide their time between providing a deluge of meaningless celebrity gossip and lies, fuelling intrusive and salacious rumours about public figures, and ferociously pushing a right-wing business agenda demanded by their tycoon owners.
Many of these news organisations engage in systematic criminal activity to acquire stories. When this activity is discovered, newsrooms blame a “few bad apples” and assert with a straight face that senior editors did not know what was happening. Even though this is obviously impossible. Senior editors go on to glittering careers advising the supreme leader of the country of which the city is capital.
When members of the news oligarchy push matters too far and become impossible to tolerate, a show-investigation is provided by the city police force. The “few bad apples” are arrested and publicly decried with well-publicised show trials, and everyone else is left alone. Thanks to a symbiotic relationship whereby the police are flattered by the media organisations who themselves provide the foundations for investigations the police pursue, no important feathers are ruffled.
This police force has the gall to say it will pursue cases if more evidence comes to light. Despite accusations centering precisely on the claim that the police already have the necessary evidence, but won’t act on it or release it to interested parties affected by criminal activity.
The same police force murders innocent civilians on public transport, or when they are walking home from work with their hands in their pockets. Lies and disinformation are relayed to a supplicant media which faithfully peddles them outwards. In the event of any subsequent public pressure because of leaked evidence, internal police cover-ups are conducted, tame pathologists hired to provide favourable autopsy findings, and delays ensured so even the most basic charges are avoided. Murderers walk free, so long as they wear the badge of the force supposed to protect the citizenry.
As most of my readers know, I have not been living in the capital of some Caribbean tax haven. Not some African “banana republic”. Not Moscow, not Bucharest, not Beijing.
London.
And you know what? I really won’t be missing it.
August 17, 2010
How Not to Run a Campaign Event
Update: in the interests of accuracy I should say that Martin of MayorWatch blog attended the event as well (see comments). But still, two people – not exactly a barn-stormer is it? I will try to reply to people later, but just finished a 90mile bike ride and feel like death, on the 2-hr train home, with no food. I have replied to Sarah Hayward of Oona’s campaign in the comments below.
I was recently invited to attend a “bloggers meeting” with Oona King, scheduled for last night. Having nothing better to do I decided to go along.
For anybody living under a rock, King wants to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor. That means overturning Ken Livingstone’s claim to the throne – not an easy task given his deeply-entrenched support. But personally I’m no fan of Livingstone, and think Labour needs to move on. So despite Oona’s deep unpopularity amongst much of the Labour Party, I went hoping to be impressed.
Arriving promptly at 7pm I went direct to the meeting room. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anybody there. A couple of waiters wandered by, and I asked if this was the right place. They consulted a clipboard: “Er, yes, but we haven’t seen anyone yet. However help yourself to drinks and snacks”.
Never one to decline free things, I indulged. But after 10 minutes I was feeling lonely. Where was Oona – or for that matter anybody else?
Suddenly, feet and voices on the stairs. Who could this be – fellow bloggers surely? Alas, no: enter King’s campaign team. The head of the group quizzed me as to whether I was a journalist. I replied that I’m just a blogger. “Which blog?” Er, Liberal Conspiracy. “Oh yeah? What’s that about then?”- asked with suspicion at the possibility of LibDem infiltration.
Now forgive me for being precious, but at a supposed bloggers meeting it might be worth knowing what the biggest left-wing blog in the country is. And the sort of content it runs. And that yes, it has covered the Ken-Oona race so far.
Anyway, small talk was made. Or rather, I was told that Oona needed to be Labour’s candidate because Ken is “old Labour, from the 1980s” and represents only inner London. After 5 subsequent minutes of being told I was wrong to suggest nonetheless that Labour’s Blairite past ought to be broken with, I made some excuse and disappeared to the toilet for 10 minutes.
When I returned there were in fact new people in the room. Bloggers, perhaps? Er, no. Some interns and staff from the New Labour “Progress” group, presumably there to represent the right of the party. And still no Oona.
For 20 minutes a guy from King’s campaign team did try to engage me in conversation. He was nice enough to ask about my background, though in future he should drop the Soviet-interrogation-voice when prying for information, such as how many readers LibCon gets, and what weight it gives to London issues. Also, whilst I know it’s hard for politicos to remember this, we ordinaries really appreciate it if you don’t constantly look over our shoulders to check nobody more interesting is around.
With still no sight of Oona, I tried to join a conversation amongst her campaign team and the Progress types. But when I questioned the view that it was “ridiculous” to attack Alan Milburn’s decision to help the Tories, a portly man apparently in charge of the conversation responded by addressing the group instead of me, and dismissing what I’d said as though it were a bad smell. As the group then physically closed around the circular table, I found myself pushed out and resorting to a discarded copy of the Evening Standard. And still no Oona.
I looked at my phone. 53 minutes had elapsed. Frankly, it was time to leave. But just as I started up the stairs – there was Oona, coming out of the lift! Except by that point I was queasy from my fourth glass of orange juice, and frankly things were beyond a joke.
Oona King’s campaign team can’t run a meet and greet where more than one person turns up.* And that one person sods off in boredom. Mayor of London? Pull the other one.
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*I mean, I could be wrong and perhaps some other bloggers were lurking incognito. But I genuinely believe I was the only person there not already affiliated with her campaign.
