September 5, 2010
From Machiavelli to Dale
Iain Dale is currently illustrating a fundamental dynamic of politics, and helpfully demonstrating a valuable Machiavellian insight.
Dale has written what can only be described, at least from an anti-Tory perspective, as a desperate blog attempting to defend Andy Coulson. The argument (such as there is one) runs: Coulson is good at his job now; allegations against him relate to his former job which he has already resigned from; accessing people’s voicemail without their knowledge is not hacking; John Prescott and Alistair Campbell were terrible media manipulators and are thus hypocrites to attack Coulson.
There’s several dozen things wrong with this, and I don’t need to spell them out. So just the most obvious will do: if Coulson is implicated to the extent the New York Times alleges, then he oversaw systematic criminal activity. If so, Coulson is not suitable for a role coordinating the Conservative Party’s relations with the media, and with access to the Prime Minister’s ear.
But I reckon Iain Dale knows all this, because he isn’t stupid. I’ve seen him debate and he is sharp. So what’s going on?
Quite simply, Dale is doing what is required of the high-placed party animal: fighting for his pack.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation, Dale is prepared to ignore the truth and go so far as to apologies for what may be criminal, and is certainly immoral. Twitter and the blogosphere are predictably becoming aflame, with Tim Ireland leading the charge.
But at a reflective level, I just won’t get worked up about this.
For Dale is being manifestly Machiavellian. And I use that term technically, in line with the great Florentine himself. Namely, that Dale is prepared to defend immorality and the possibly criminal in the service of his primary political aim: promoting and defending the Tory party, insofar as he sees this as necessary for achieving his fundamental political goal of a strong Conservative government
To those outside of Dale’s party this appears abhorrent. Non-Conservatives hold the relevant standards of morality and non-criminality above the career of Andy Coulson or the reputation of the Tory Party. But to Tory loyalists, what matters most right now is the perceived higher political value of defending the party. Hence obfuscation and defence of the indefensible are not only permitted – they are required.
And within the realm of politics, in a certain sense there’s simply nothing wrong with this. Because it’s just what politics is about: the visceral defence and promotion of your tribe, sometimes by accepting dubious means, to promote what you believe is a higher good.
Of course the best and most desirable political agents will also possess the capacity to step-back and judge when their political ends are trumped by other more important values. This balance between being a fierce political loyalist, and not a blinkered apologist for even the worst evils, is one of the most important to get right – and one that relatively few manage. It’s where John Rentoul continues to fail, but why Robin Cook will be remembered with reverence . Iain Dale, however, is nowhere near such a tipping point.
The job of political opponents is to clamour and howl; to do everything possible to tear down the enemy. Hence the merry dance of counter-blogs, outrage and faux-surprise against Dale will – and indeed must – continue. That’s how politics works. Indeed, I myself will condemn him: not only is Dale defending the indefensible, he’s doing it in the name of an end (strong Tory government) that I ferociously oppose. Hence for me, he is doubly damned.
But what I have no intellectual time for is yelling “hypocrite” or other assorted indignations in Iain’s direction. Although Dale has apparently abandoned dreams of becoming an MP, he still gives his life to politics and his party. Sometimes that demands of him that he be a hypocrite, and other nasty things. But that is just what politics does to its serious participants, and does to them by necessity. And whilst the rules of the ballroom demand that we on the other side hurl our accusations and rebuttals, we shouldn’t forget that we, too, are dancing the merry dance.
September 2, 2010
The Woodlice of British Democracy
One of the great benefits of living in western democratic society is the presence of the rule of law. Rather than being governed unaccountably by powerful figures able to arbitrarily ruin lives, the rule of law guarantees that even those who enforce the will of the state are subject to binding regulations. As a result, the scope for abuse, corruption, domination and injustice are massively reduced.
At least, that’s how it works in theory – but not always in practice.
What’s striking about the New York Times revelations that Andy Coulson knew of extensive illegal phone hacking at the News of the World is just how deep the rot goes. It’s as though somebody has lifted up the big stone of British democracy, and all the woodlice and earwigs are now scuttling about in the daylight.
Most amazing is that Andy Coulson himself remains perhaps the most high-placed adviser to David Cameron, and by extension the British government. If the media strategist is implicated to the extent the NYT alleges, he is responsible for overseeing wide-spread and systematic illegality. That Coulson should now be in such a position of influence – without having been elected, nor being accountable to the British public – throws a stain on the British government. That he is apparently above the law – insofar as Scotland Yard are manifestly set against investigating him – indicates that there is a serious sickness in of our society, because the rule of law has ceased to apply to the powerful.
Which brings us to the case of Scotland Yard itself. For if the police cannot – or will not – enforce the rule of law, this is cause for grave concern indeed. Assuming the NYT allegations are true, Scotland Yard deliberately curtailed its investigations out of deference to The News of the World:
“Scotland Yard…had a symbiotic relationship with News of the World. The police sometimes built high-profile cases out of the paper’s exclusives, and News of the World reciprocated with fawning stories of arrests.”
Despite dozens of journalists – and hundreds of hacked celebrities – apparently being implicated, Scotland Yard has declined to investigate further than two implicated reporters, or to notify those who have been the victim of hacking “effectively shielding News of the World from a barrage of civil lawsuits.”
And although it is perhaps not surprising, it is nonetheless deeply troubling to see the sheer dearth of attention the NYT allegations have received in the British media. Of all the major media outlets, only The Guardian and the Financial Times appear to be covering the story. It’s no surprise that outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch are ignoring the scandal. And perhaps the BBC is too scared of retaliation to antagonise a Conservative Party already eager to placate a BBC-hating Murdoch – itself a damning indictment of media-government relations. But what of Britain’s other news organisations, whose job is supposedly to hold the government to account?
It is worth spelling this one out: what we have on our hands is a major scandal implicating people in the highest echelons of government as well as the police force itself. And yet the story risks passing as nothing into yesterday’s news, with no consequences or ramifications for those implicated.
Perhaps people will think I’m being naive kicking up such a fuss. Marxists and elite theorists, for example, have long argued that the rules of liberal democracy apply in theory to everyone but in practice never to the powerful. The case of Coulson appears to confirm this basic diagnosis.
But the point, surely, is to take steps and measures to curtail and moderate that reality. To clamour and protest that when the rule of law is not applied to those who hold power over us, it must be made to do so. It may be a hard, realist fact of life that our lords and masters do not live by the rules they impose on us. But equally, it is incumbent on us to whine, kick and scream to try and reverse that truth as far as possible and drag reality somewhere closer to the ideals we’re told we live under.
And it will have to be us that does the whining, kicking and screaming, because our glorious media has quite conspicuosly abandoned its post.
July 15, 2010
Why not camping?
When I’ve got my philosophy hat on I tend to side with thinkers like Aristotle, David Hume and Adam Smith, who all urge that instead of sitting in our armchairs thinking about what good boys and girls ought to do if they’re being nice and rational, it’s more fruitful to check our hypotheses and reasonings against the real world to see what people actually do, and take actual human practice as our litmus test and conceptual baseline.
Plato, Locke, Kant and arguably John Rawls disagreed (though of course they wouldn’t have described situation as I do). Such disagreement will likely go on for as long as there are philosophers.
But here’s some support for my tribe. I recently discussed the work of Gerry Cohen regarding an ethos of justice. This week one of Cohen’s other (but connected) ideas has come under the public gaze: the question of camping and communism.
To summarise: Cohen thought that on camping trips everybody automatically and spontaneously fell into communistic social ordering and production, living out the dictum of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. The puzzle for Cohen was why modern mass democratised society did not exhibit the ethos and organisation of the camping trip.
What’s been really rather good, however, is the treatment this idea has been getting over at The Guardian. Personally, I had too-quickly taken for granted Cohen’s premise that collective camping is more or less like communistic society. But Aditya Chakrabortty, in a rather funny little piece, has noted that “A more outdoorsy philosopher might have acknowledged that someone will always turn up on a camping trip without all the kit, while someone else will always skive off.”
Following-up, Mark Wallace is also even more critical of the camping-as-communist thesis:
“We weren’t rich, but that didn’t make us experimental communists. Nor does camping induce a magical, selfless comradeship among those who pitch their tents in the same field. As we swiftly discovered, nothing is quite as funny as picking up someone’s tent while they’re asleep and moving it somewhere inconvenient, or hearing someone woken up by a burly archaeologist falling on to their rickety tent in the middle of the night.
Sure, if someone’s guy ropes break or their tent pegs get stolen, their fellow campers will probably dig out some spare ones to lend to them. There is community on a campsite – but it has far more in common with the old-fashioned workings of a small village. You’re either friends with your neighbours or you’re stuck with them, so you help out when it’s needed.
Communism has always been a daydream rather than a reality, and the same goes for the concept of camping as communism. From a distance, it’s easy to get misty-eyed about shared ownership flourishing under canvas, but in practice it’s still a load of drunk people living in a field.”
You might reply – and you’d be right – that Wallace doesn’t really engage with the core point of Cohen’s argument: that withholding essential goods, monopolising the means of production, and attempting to extract the surplus labour value of one’s fellow campers would all be automatically unacceptable on the camping trip, and thus not done.
But he’s probably still right about the nitty-gritty of camping, and the fact that some of the communistic-tendencies Cohen claims to identify may well be born of necessity rather than anything else. That is, you help out your neighbour because you have to – even when they are letting everyone else down and being a lay-about free rider, but only because you have to. From which an important question follows: what, exactly, is wrong with choosing to abandon the spirit of help-thy-neighbour-even-when-he’s-a-scrounger when it ceases to be a forced necessity – as it is with advanced capitalist society?
It seems to me quite a deep-cutting question. In fact it’s probably essentially the same one that the never-ending “luck egalitarian” debate diligently chips away at. But it’s also one we all have to confront in a country whose politics is apparently dictated by the Daily Mail and Sun’s benefit witch hunts.
June 17, 2010
Win! A free subscription to the London Review of Books
An offer you can’t afford to miss!
As I have just renewed my LRB subscription, I can nominate ONE lucky person to get 1-year’s free subscription worth however much that costs (I have forgotten).
Rather than show partisan personal preference, I thought it would be better to have people compete for my patronage. Thus, an open essay competition, conducted via comments below, with the winner decided by the supreme judge, who is me.
Suggested topics:
Why Bad Conscience is so Clever
Why Bad Conscience is so Wise
Why Bad Conscience Philosophises with a Hammer
But really, I’m open minded. Let’s see what you’ve all got.
May 10, 2010
Stop it
You know the worst thing about this hung Parliament limbo? The idiotic tribalism on all sides is only getting worse.
No doubt the Tories have been at it, though I’ve no particular desire to go looking. Lots of Lib Dems on this thread are crowing and pontificating. And indeed I and others have been wearing the war paint over here at the weekend.
But it’s just getting boring now. And I’m the sort of restless hyperactive temper-control-issues person that really hates boring. Who wants to throttle it, then throw it out of the window onto spikey railings. So the potty, deluded nonsense that has been pouring out of Labour camps about Sky News’ Adam Boulton is almost too much to handle. Not least because it seems to be symptomatic of a growing leftist trend, as evinced on Saturday by this loop-the-loop article at Liberal Conspiracy, my thoughts on which are here (and here).
If you only read blogs and tweets, you’d think Boulton had broken some major regulatory codes over an encounter with New Labour’s former unelected minister for propaganda, Mr Alistair Campbell. (Whom you may remember from his appearances at the Hutton Inquiry, relating to the death of a certain Dr David Kelly).
However if you watch the following video without Rose-tinted Party Spectcles, you may see something different:
From where I’m standing that looks simply like Boulton and Campbell having a rather acrimonious exchange. Neither of them really responds to what the other says, and all that ultimately happens is they talk or shout past each other. As things go on Campbell repeatedly pokes Boulton, who eventually snaps like an angry dog. Except that instead of having a proper fight like dogs would, they just go for handbags at dawn. More than anything, it’s pathetic.
But if you pay attention to many Labour supporters tonight, you’d be fooled into thinking that some sort of major scandal has occurred, specifically about Boulton breaking regulatory codes regarding expressing political views. Except, that’s just not what happened. Campbell (twice) accused Boulton of expressing political views, and Boulton took exception at having words put in his mouth. To be honest, I’d react like that if Campbell was shoving things in my mouth. Furthermore, pointing out that Campbell is unelected – and yet gets to pull the leavers of power – seems like a perfectly legitimate response. Not least because he probably has been stithcing things up because that is exactly what politicians do.
However I apparently live in a parallel world to many other Labour supporters. The normally sensible Dave Semple declares “Adam Boulton really giving Fox News a run for their money with his constant pushing of the Conservatives, regardless of the fact that Labour and the Libs together tot up to about four million votes higher than the Conservatives.”
At The Staggers blog, angry Labour supporters pronounce “Time for Boulton to resign- his bias is no longer tenable for a journalist”, or opine that “This is not journalism. Adam must be sacked! for God sake hes not an MP. This is very personal unprofessional behaviour” – forgetting that Mr Campbell is not elected either, and never has been.
On Twitter, Labour party-drone churn-machine BevaniteEllie intones “Sorry but Boulton should be sacked, this is horrendous”, whilst John Prescott calls for people to write to Ofcom.
I mean seriously. This is absurd. If we must all Twatter away can we at least all gain some perspective and #getagrip?
April 28, 2010
Political Nasties
The Daily Mail has taken a brief break from smearing Nick Clegg, and reverted to type to attack Labour and Gordon Brown. The story in question is particularly distressing. It concerns the awful treatment of Mrs Clara Stokes, who after suffering a stroke was admitted to Luton and Dunstable Hospital. Whilst there she was left unattended and lying in filth, for hours at a time. Understandably, Mrs Stokes’ family are outraged and justifiably they are calling for heads to roll. If I was in their position, I would be overwhelmingly angry too.
But what’s the Mail up to? Unsurprisingly, it’s happily putting the outrage and grief of a bereaved and justifiably emotionally distressed family to politically partisan ends. Yet there’s something odd in the report:
“Outraged at her treatment, Mrs Stokes’s family removed her from the hospital in Luton. She died in a nursing home just days later on February 28.”
Now that’s interesting, isn’t it? Because it’s now the 28th of April. Of course, maybe the Daily Mail only just heard about this story. It’s also possible that they’ve been keeping it on the back-burner, craftly deciding to deploy it the week before an election.
In fact it makes little difference either way. I want to stress again that I entirely understand that Mrs Stoke’s family are outraged, and with complete justification. I can also understand that because they are angry, they want to go all the way to the top and put pressure on the Prime Minister himself:
“Mrs Chambers said: ‘Gordon Brown said the country depended on her for survival but when she depended on her country for her survival where was it? I cannot stand to see Gordon Brown spouting off about the good he has done for the health service. It sickens me. He would never say the same if it were his own mother being treated in such an inhumane way’.”
But the fact is, this is not Gordon Brown’s fault. As Prime Minister he is not in charge of the day-to-day running of any hospitals. He is not even in direct control of the Department for Health. Of course, the PM he bears ultimate responsibility for making Britain a better place – and that’s ultimately what we judge him and his party on at election. But that does not mean that individual responsibility for each individual failings rests at the door of Number 10.
An important reason why this is so is that a Prime Minister can only be judged responsible for the overall achievements of his government; what his party manages to do on average, the “big picture”. And when it comes to the NHS it is simply undeniable that Labour has made big improvements since 1997:
“A review by the King’s Fund shows there have been significant reductions in waiting times and improvements in access to primary care since 1997. Access to drugs and treatments has become more consistent and rates of ‘superbug’ infections have fallen. There have also been sustained reductions in deaths from cancer and cardiovascular disease, and the number of smokers has fallen.”
Of course, there have been failings too. Health inequalities between socio-economic classes are apparently up. And tragedies still happen, as the case of Mrs Stokes so painfully attests. Yet it is simply wrong to blame individual failings on Brown personally, or to simply generalise from one individual case to conclude that Labour as failed. And trumpeting the grief of a distressed family does not change this. Mrs Stokes’ family are rightfully distressed, and they are justified in expressing their anger – but that doesn’t make their testimony the final word. It is cynical politicking for the Mail to exploit a grieving family for their partisan ends.
Which of course is absolutely nothing new. This is the Daily Mail we’re talking about. So why raise it at all? Well, after the election we mere bloggers will reappear from behind the tribal barricades and stop hurling party rocks with such ferocity (some of which will, I suspect, look rather embarrassing post-May 7th). The Mail won’t. It will continue as the mouthpiece of vicious right-wing nastiness.
As I’ve previously remarked, the presence of a viciously right-wing media prepared to distort or condition the truth for political ends is problematic for the workings of democratic societies. Yet the age of declining newspapers poses new problems. The great 19th Century democratic theorist Alexis de Tocqueville was himself no great fan of the free press – he thought it mostly led to libel and inaccurate partisan propaganda. But he believed that it had to be tolerated, as otherwise one would have to embrace outright despotism. And ultimately, Tocqueville was sanguine: the sheer number of newspapers produced in 19th Century America led to all the libel and disinformation cancelling itself out, as each side shouted at the other.
But that correction mechanism is absent from modern Britain. We retain a handful of national newspapers as locals go into apparently terminal decline. Newspapers are now increasingly owned by foreign billionaires, holding expressly political agendas. There are big question-marks over the futures of papers like the Guardian, the Independent and even the FT. The Telegraph is not entirely healthy, and we’re yet to see how Murdoch’s experiment of charging for the Times works out. There is a very real possibility that in five years all we’ll have left are tabloid nasties like the Mail. Blogging will be too disparate to rival the readership of these national organs – and those that cling-on will lack the competition required to drown out their drivel.
The future: looking decidedly bleak on rather a lot of fronts.
April 19, 2010
Je Ne Suis Pas Anglais
The Conservative’s pet press continues to go attack-dog on the Lib Dems, and more specifically Nick Clegg. Today the Daily Mail is drawing attention to the fact Clegg is – scandal! – not properly British.
“Indeed, Mr Clegg’s exotic lineage and cosmopolitan lifestyle is a world away from his gritty Yorkshire constituency.
The multilingual Lib Dem leader was born to a Dutch mother and a half-Russian father, and employs a German spin doctor.”
Reading the Fail’s article has caused me to have something of an identity crisis.
I was born in a town called Southport, near Liverpool. That’s where I lived until I was 18. Since then I’ve resided in other parts of the British Isles, but have never been out of the country for more than two months. I’ve had British citizenship since I was born, and a British passport for almost as long. My favourite food has been fish and chips (preferably from the Busy Bee on Station Road) for as long as I can remember. I’ve supported England at every World Cup and European Championship that our pathetic squad manages to qualify for. Even in 1998, when David Beckham gently and innocently tapped a horrible diving Argentine and we promptly crashed out, only to watch one of the best French teams ever fielded cruise to victory.
I grew up watching English Premiership football, discussing it with English friends (in English), and going to English schools – and then English university. I read English books – and then when I got older, newspapers too. However I’ve also visited Scotland and Wales, and found them very pleasant – and because I’m not a Little Englander, I tend to think of myself as British. If I bother to think of myself “as” anything at all.
But I am saddened – and somewhat surprised – to learn today that I am not British after all. You see my mother was born in France. Not my Dad, mind – he was born and bred in Lancashire (or “gritty” Lancashire if you’re a Fail journalist). And yes, my mum does now have full British Citizenship (having sworn allegiance to the Crown, don’t y’know). But – curses! – her blood is French, and therefore so is mine! I have French first cousins! And a French grandmother! Even worse, I can actually speak Froggish!
So it’s with a heavy heart that I must inform you that I am a mongrel. I do not belong anywhere. With a French mother I am not British – but with a British father, I am not French either. Where shall I go? What shall I do? If I develop ambitions in politics, is there a transcendental mongrel community floating above La Manche that I can apply to govern?
Presuming not, I’ll have to resign myself to being identitylessness, not belonging anywhere. Then again, I suppose there’s comfort in the fact I am in good company. For many others fail the Daily Heil’s Britishness test. Wisnton Churchill, Isambard Brunel and Princess Diana (aka the People’s Princess), to name but three.
And I suppose there’s another ray of light. Even if I am a mongrel – an imposter in this green and pleasant land – at least I’m not working for a newspaper that once supported (with vigour) Oswald Mosley and Adolf Hitler. And which even today peddles notions of race and identity that are in line with the worst creeds of blood and soil nationalism propogated by last century’s far right, and also by their pathetic contemporary admirers.
April 15, 2010
Been writing nasty things? Don’t go into politics then.
In the past I have said dumb things and people have called me out on them. I’ve written daft things on various websites, and been promptly ridiculed in comments threads and blogs. It hurts at the time, but I usually deserved it at some level. However, I try to learn from such experiences and to improve myself and my writing.
One thing I’ve learned is that if you go around simply saying what you think and not about how you say it, then very often people will quote that back in your face at awkward moments – when simply saying what you thought seemed like a very bad idea indeed. As a private citizen, in my case this leads to nothing more than personal embarrassment. If I were the leader of a political party with aspirations and pretensions to power, things would be different.
Step forward, Chris Mounsey aka Devil’s Kitchen, leader of the UK Libertarian Party. Mounsey yesterday appeared on Andrew Neil’s The Daily Politics - and was promptly eviscerated. Some bloggers have claimed that Neil was unfair in focusing initially on the smallness of LPUK. Maybe. But then again, a membership of 450 and fielding one candidate does mean a party has tadpole-stature, and viewers ought to know that. More commentators have focused upon Neil quizzing Mounsey over his – let’s not mince words here – highly offensive and frequently deliberately outrageous blog posts.
Chris Dillow – I must say, surprisingly – thinks that this is indicative of the media shutting down debate and allowing only the big 3 to get a look in. But that’s ridiculous, at least as far as this example goes. The views expressed at Devil’s Kitchen are heinously offensive, and wilfully so. But it’s a brute fact of politics that personalities matter. If Mounsey wants people to vote for him and his party, people will have an interest in knowing what kind of people form LPUK. A natural place to look is the party leader’s blog. And if journalists go there and find lengthy rants of personalised, pornographic, narcissistic, grievously offensive invective and vitriol – well they are going to report on that. And rightly so, because before people vote for LPUK, they should know what sorts of people they’re dealing with. And one of the media’s jobs is to convey information to the electorate.
So I’m afraid Dillow gets it wrong. His first commenter is rather more on the mark:
“Oh come on, your general point – the oppressiveness of the media – is surely utterly undercut by the ridiculousness of your central example: Chris Mounsey just got an old fashioned and very well deserved kebabing. The Devil’s Kitchen has always been full of vile invective that has continually ratcheted up the level of demonisation of any half way civilised discussion of public life.
He hasn’t been taken out behind the bike sheds and beaten up or sent to a Gulag, he’s just been called to task for suggesting he’d like to see someone die slowly and painfully. If you give it out you have to take it.”
If you want to be a politician, then you have to accept the rules of politics as they are. And those rules clearly state that if you write heinously offensive – and sometimes disturbing – things about everyone and anyone who comes into your eyeline, that will quickly be used against you. And rightly so.
I’ve no sympathy for Mounsey. He gives it out, and so he must accept that he has to take it. And I suppose his half-recognition of this fact is to his credit. (And I appreciate that a man has his pride and can only back down so far). But please, Devil’s Kitchen persecuted by the nasty media? Pull the other one. Mounsey dropped himself in it by writing a lot of nasty vitriolic crap. That’s all there is to see here.
–
UPDATE: The blog post referred to by Andrew Neil – of which he could repeat only a couple of words – has been found! It is here. And I quote:
“Go fuck yourself, Chris Keates: I hope that the massive black dildo — with which you while away the hours between raping babies and destroying the dreams of the young — ruptures you and you bleed to death out of your disgusting, filthy, piebald cunt.”
Delightful. Why is it that so many Libertarians are nasty? Perhaps it’s that nasty views attract nasty people, and vice versa.
April 13, 2010
Rant about Twatter
Right, as I’ve nothing nice to say I’ll follow my usual rule and say something anyway. At least this distracts from the fact I’ve got nothing politically or intellectually substantive to write about at the moment, what with the election ruining politics.
So I’ll just get this out there: I hate Twitter. Or more precisely, I hate the Myth of Twitter.
You might think that makes me a hypocrite. After all I use Twitter, occasionally, to plug this blog. But then it’s not really Twitter per se that I have an objection to, it’s the way that the conventional wisdom now has it that Twitter is somehow really important. That it’s a central feature of the modern political landscape, a vast resource of essential information, the new frontier in communication and 21st Century social networking.
I mean, frankly, give me a break.
Twitter is little more than a bunch of idiots expressing half-baked thoughts, joining herds of other stampeding #idiots, and at very best linking their “followers” to other place that aren’t Twitter, where things of substance are actually going on.
Partly this is an inevitable product of the Twitter format. You can’t say anything of substance in 140 characters. The very best you can do is say “read this” and provide a link. Alternatively, you can just spew forth some inanity attached to a hashtag so that it can fester in a long list of fellow irrelevant inaneties expressed mostly by morons.
This in itself wouldn’t be so bad. But what I find deeply irritating is people squawking-on about the “importance” of Twitter in the so-called new age of digital media. Yes, I know that Twitter gets some websites a lot of traffic. The excellent MyDavicCameron.com is a good example. Liberal Conspiracy benefits from the Twitter hordes too. Great. But that makes Twitter nothing more than a conduit for readership. You might as well celebrate Google Reader.
Every twit tweets these days – often with disastrous results. Take Andrew Rawnsley’s “tweet” prominently displayed on The Guardian’s website last night:
“Oh dear, @BevaniteEllie revealed, that was why The End of the Party upset you so much. It reminded you of why you called for GB to go.”
I have a vague sense that this relates to the Daily Mail’s hatchet job of Ellie Gellard. But I still don’t understand what the hell Rawnsley means. Such are the pitfalls of the public 140 character pronouncement.
Though Rawnsley himself is not a twit, his “tweeting” is symptomatic of the trend: anyone who is anyone now has to be on Twitter, pouring reems of inane irrelevance out into the internet regardless of whether they’ve actually got anything to say. But the truth is that the vast majority of “tweets” have the intellectual content and social usefulness of an extended discussion about the inside of a hermit’s handkerchief.
Twitter is a time-wasting device for a complacent generation with a great deal of time on its hands – and indeed there’s nothing wrong with knowing or admitting that in and of itself. Yes, Twitter has the upshot of increasing some traffic to some websites, and sometimes that’s A Good Thing because we like the websites that get the traffic. But Twitter is not changing the face of politics – it’s not even applying a touch of eyeliner.
Twitter is simply a bunch of people prattling at each other. 4 years ago they did it via email, mercifully in private. Nowadays they hang their unwashed thoughts in public, whilst many others have the audacity to pretend that this collective babble is of any political or social relevance whatsoever.
In sum: I hope Twitter it goes the way of Bebo. Now back to my book, which is fittingly entitled Political Hypocrisy. It’s by the excellent David Runciman, you should all read it. That would be a better use of your time than spewing forth inane drivel into the internet. I should know, I’m a blogger.
April 1, 2010
On Revenge and Punishment
When I was in my mid-to-late teens I got to know a guy named Haro. That wasn’t his “real” name; he was one of the prolific Merseyside graffiti writers, and that’s what he wrote. But I only ever knew him as Haro, and I don’t see why that should change. We weren’t strictly “friends”, more friends-of-friends. But around 2002-3 we hung out a fair amount, watched bands, got drunk and were generally a bit delinquent. We largely lost touch when I went to university.
A few years ago, as he was riding his bike home from work, three youths waited for Haro on a street corner. As he rode by they hit him across the head with a plank of wood. Having planned to steal his bike, when they found it damaged from his fall they abandoned it beneath his crumpled body.
Haro sustained terrible brain damage and died several days later in hospital.
The three boys were arrested and eventually brought to trial. Because they were young, and it couldn’t be proved they premeditated the crime or brought the plank of wood to perpetrate the assault, and because they left the bike instead of stealing it, the sentences they received were – it still seems to me – shockingly lenient. The youngest boy received no prison term, whilst the other two were expected to serve one to two years.
When I first heard this, it made me livid. Outraged. Overwhelmed with anger. They had murdered Haro, taken away his future and inflicted terrible pain on all who knew him. I believed they were effectively getting away with it. I still feel incredibly angry about this. Indeed, I can’t bring myself to Google the details as I don’t want to think about it much more.
But amidst my rage I realised – and have continued to realise – that there was nothing wrong with my feeling that way. Anger and hatred at those youths was entirely normal. That’s how well-functioning human beings should feel about those who kill, especially when the victims are people we know and like. But I also realised that for precisely those reasons decisions about law-making, criminal sentencing and (eventually) rehabilitation should not be made by me, or by anyone enmeshed in the kinds of powerful emotional tangles I felt and continue to feel.
For if we are to avoid living in a barbaric world of incessant retribution, violence and suffering, we have to put laws and punishment in the hands of those not directly affected by instances of crime and suffering. The price of that may indeed be – as in the case of Haro’s murderers – that we feel the punishments delivered by the authorities are inadequate. And that hurts. It hurts and it makes us feel angry as hell – as indeed it should. Yet that’s the tough price of avoiding barbarism, of rule by the antimorality of the angry mob.
Sadly this cold detachment is far from encouraged in Britain’s tabloid press. The obvious example is the case of Jon Venables. It’s normal and right to feel disgust – even anger – at what he did. But it’s precisely such emotions that we must shun and restrain when dealing with Venables’ case. That’s what’s required if we are to create and inhabit a society which is not an institutionalised cousin of what those two 10-year olds from Liverpool did on that fateful day.
In particular, as raw as her pain no doubt remains, Denise Fergus – the mother of Jamie Bulger – is probably the last person who we should turn to as a guiding voice in this case. Writing in the London Review of Books, Andrew O’Hagan puts the point well:
“Denise Fergus…is being paraded as the proper arbiter of justice: as if the mother of a murdered child should call the shots, should be the one to decide what ought to be done with the killers. She is not to be challenged: who in their right mind would seek to challenge a grieving parent?
[...]
This case has, from the beginning, involved the need to say that grief is not an achievement, doesn’t confer power, and Denise Fergus should have no say at all in the fate of the boys who killed her son. She speaks contemptuously of the justice system, feels she should be consulted on every aspect of the case, and the media egg her on because her words claim attention and sell papers…We want to listen to her, but to act on what we hear would be criminal. She says she won’t rest until those boys are truly punished for what they did: she wants them incarcerated under their original names – a death sentence.”
We must control our passions for revenge. If we don’t then Steve Bell’s depiction of the last few weeks will become a haunting reality. It sounds a strange thing to say, but cold anti-emotional detachment can sometimes make the world a much better place.
This case has, from the beginning, involved the need to say that grief is not an achievement, doesn’t confer power, and Denise Fergus should have no say at all in the fate of the boys who killed her son. She speaks contemptuously of the justice system, feels she should be consulted on every aspect of the case, and the media egg her on because her words claim attention and sell papers. She, too, is one of the shades haunting the Strand Shopping Centre. We want to listen to her, but to act on what we hear would be criminal. She says she won’t rest until those boys are truly punished for what they did: she wants them incarcerated under their original names – a death sentence
