tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68565472024-03-07T07:56:16.223+00:00Dead Men LeftAn occasional flicker of life.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comBlogger894125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1159626956017013742006-09-30T14:50:00.000+01:002006-09-30T15:35:56.973+01:00The horror, the horrorDon't say I didn't <a href="http://deadmenleft.blogspot.com/2006/08/coming-over-here.html">warn you</a>. The awesome prospect of John Reid actually becoming Prime Minister remains distant - though not quite distant enough, but the major effect of his likely candidature will be to pull Brown and thus the whole contest even further to the Right. That, it strikes me, is one reason amongst many why the Left - inside or outside of Labour - needs to <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9724">back John McDonnell's</a> <a href="http://www.john4leader.org.uk/">campaign</a>. British politics is debased enough without a thuggish neoconservative[*] in <a href="http://chickyog.blogspot.com/2006/02/case-for-defence-secretary_11.html">Communist</a> <a href="http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2006/04/peculiarities-of-pro-war-left.html">drag</a> marching us smartly towards a police state. I don't agree with McDonnell's perspective - I think the Labour Party as a vehicle for progressive change is all but dead - but it would be criminally foolish not to support him as best as possible.<br /><br />Reid's <em>current</em> prospects of victory are, of course, not great. The electoral college system the Labour Party now has ensures that each MP's vote is weighted nearly a thousand times more heavily than each ordinary members' - to say nothing of the trade unionists' votes. And with Reid, I'm told, unable at present to get close to enough signatures to even stand, we might gain some idea of his present popularity amongst MPs. That's a significant hurdle.<br /><br />What bothers me is that the media will do a Cameron for him: take the outsider, and plug him so heavily that he acquires an unstoppable momentum amongst ordinary members, often isolated from political structures and generally completely passive, who vote for him by the bucketload. We had a taster over the summer, with the absurd spectacle of John Reid defending the Britsh Way of Life from the awesome dangers of <A href="http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/09/british_army_ex.html#more">shampoo and Lucozade</a> being talked to the heavens by the press - aided and abetted, of course, by Reid himself, who is both obsessive and canny in such matters. (Incidentally, such is Reid's eye for a media prize, and evident lack of scruple, that it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the disruption of the Home Secretary's meet-the-natives speech by a bona fide loud-mouth fundamentalist nutter was not simply a result of typically incompetent police "intelligence". <a href="http://www.respectcoalition.org/?ite=1171">George hints as much here</a>.) It's certainly a risk, and one of the few means to break up such a media push would be a concerted, grass-roots campaign amongst Labour Party members and union affiliates over the key issues the Labour Party has always claimed to stand for - not (at best) warmed-over communitarian shite. Brown can't deliver that, but perhaps McDonnell and the Left can.<br /><br />[*] Not a curse-word; I can't think what else Reid's politics can be best summed up as. I suspect he'll harp on the theme of "security" actually being about helping the weakest some more, and perhaps adopt "social entreprenurship" as a theme over coming weeks.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1159349296618508862006-09-27T10:22:00.000+01:002006-09-27T11:13:25.766+01:00Hubris<blockquote>From now until I leave office I will dedicate myself, with the same commitment I have given to Northern Ireland, to advancing peace between Israel and Palestine. I may not succeed. But I will try because peace in the Middle East is a defeat for terrorism.</blockquote><br /><br /><a href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourconference2006/story/0,,1881510,00.html">GrrrrrrRRRRRRRRR.</a>Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1158768959013873632006-09-20T16:57:00.000+01:002006-09-20T17:15:59.536+01:00Popery IIBang on cue (and neatly proving my earlier point), via <A href="http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2006/9/20/defend-pope-against-muslim-intimidation-sean-matgamna.html">Islamophobia Watch</a>, we find the secular cavalry, in the person of Sean Matgamna, <a href="http://www.workersliberty.org/node/6954">rallying to the Gates of Vienna</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The difference between modern Islam and modern Christianity is that Christianity, more under the pressure of the modern world for longer, is more schizoid, paying nonsensical, oxymoronic, lip service to both faith and reason. The Catholic Church is what it always was. The difference between that church now and in its quite recent past is not that it has, at root, changed, but that it is weaker.</blockquote><br /><br />Absent a few rhetorical flourishes, this is in its essentials <em>identical</em> to the claims Benedict XVI made in his speech: "lip service" the Pope may be paying, but at least the Catholic Church recognises reason - unlike the irrational hordes on our borders. Both claim Islam is uniquely irrational. But both the AWL's guru and the Holy Father have an astonishing lack of awareness if they think the history of rationalism can be written without reference to Islamic scholars. Matgamna continues:<br /><br /><blockquote>The right to secular free speech, and the right to write and publish freely (under the laws against incitement to violence, and the laws of libel) is taken for granted in the western bourgeois countries. It is written into the constitution of the USA. It had to be won in centuries of struggle.... Today, militant, and even, comparatively speaking, some varieties of 'moderate' Islam, oppose all of that.... Now, we have reached the stage where the revelation, which should surprise nobody, that the Catholic Pope doesn't like Muhammad, or Islam, that he thinks his own religion better, the true religion, and says so, more or less, unleashes organised, obstreperous outrage across large parts of the globe! He is forced to deny that he said what he said, and what he clearly intended to say!<br /><br />"... I repeat: if political Islam can do that to the Bishop of Rome, what can it not do to secularists, male and female sexual rebels, infidels, apostates from Islam, and socialists in the countries where it is dominant, and in the communities in Western Europe where it is immensely powerful? What does it do? Everywhere it is repressive, often murderously.</blockquote><br /><br />A truly unholy alliance.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1158744728107234222006-09-20T09:52:00.000+01:002006-09-20T14:11:03.500+01:00PoperyFunny thing with this Pope business: those usually keenest to prove their secular credentials by poring over the alleged utterances of Muslim clerics for the slightest whiff of Indecency and Badness, irrespective of context and the inadequacies of translation, suddenly become keen to defend that notorious secularist, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, and desperate to exonerate the Holy Father: his remarks were out of context, they were only illustrative, it's an obscure theological point anyway.<br /><br /><A href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1875589,00.html">Madeleine Bunting</a> is spot on here:<br /><br /><blockquote>Some say this was a case of naivety, of a scholarly theologian stumbling into the glare of a global media storm, blinking with surprise at the outrage he had inadvertently triggered. The learned man's thoughtful reasoning, say some, has been misconstrued and distorted by troublemakers, and the context ignored.<br /><br />But such explanations are unconvincing. This is a man who has been at the heart of one of the world's multinational institutions for a very long time. He has been privy to how pontifical messages get distorted and magnified by a global media. Shy he may be, but no one has ever before accused this pope of being a remote theologian sitting in an ivory tower. On the contrary, he is a determined, shrewd operator whose track record indicates a man who is not remotely afraid of controversy. He has long been famous for his bruising, ruthless condemnation of those he disagrees with.</blockquote><br /><br />And, if you do get round to <a href="http://zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=94748">reading the Vatican's translation of the Pope's remarks</a>, it is clear that the musings of an ill-remembered Byzantine emperor were chosen precisely because they fitted Papa Rat's argument so well:<br /><br /><blockquote>[Regensburg University] was also very proud of its two theological faculties... That even in the face of... radical skepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: This, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.<br /><br />I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by professor Theodore Khoury (Muenster) of part of the dialogue carried on -- perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara -- by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.<br /><br />It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Koran, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the "three Laws": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran...<br /><br />In the seventh conversation ("diálesis" -- controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.<br /><br />Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."</blockquote><br /><br />The debate is established as concerning the necessary harmony of reason and faith; into which, after the vaguest of nods towards more liberal - indeed, mainstream - interpretations of Islam, the Pope immediately throws in a quotation describing Islam as "evil and inhuman" from an long-dead emperor perhaps best known for his battles against the Muslims. It's hardly a Jesuitical argument - subtle, it ain't.<br /><br />But the key points are in later paragraphs:<br /><br /><blockquote>The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry...</blockquote><br /><br />So: Islam is not bound by any rationality, claims the Pope; whereas, in the arguments following, the Pope attempts to establish - on the basis of the dual meaning of the Greek word, "logos", "word" and "reason" - that Christianity is inherently tied to reason, and a Greek view of reason at that: "In the beginning was the <em>logos</em>", as John's Gospel has it. Arguments attempting to deny the unity of word and reason, therefore, aim to break this divine link:<br /><br /><blockquote>In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately led to the claim that we can only know God's "voluntas ordinata." Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done.<br /><br />This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.<br /><br /><em>As opposed to this</em>, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language... [emphasis added]</blockquote><br /><br />Let's be clear about this: the Pope begins his argument by citing an obscure Byzantine Emperor, given to warring with Muslims, on the "evil" of Islam; he then claims that Islam is not bound to rationality; he then further claims, arguing against other Christian theologians, that Christianity is tied to a specifically <em>Greek</em> rationality.<br /><br />He is, in other words, repeating the crudest Orientalist stereotypes about the irrational, sensuous East, and <em>deliberately</em> counterposing it to the rational (and therefore more god-like) West. One of his concluding paragraphs is absolutely clear on this:<br /><br /><blockquote>The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur -- this is the program with which a theology grounded in biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. </blockquote><br /><br />It is, in other words, necessary for "the West" to defend its rationalist heritage through "biblical faith". This is the argument alleged secular liberals use when lining up with Bible-bashing US Presidents; it is the logic of the Clash of Civilisations with a Catholic twist. Is it any wonder it has caused such alarm?Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1158412523502523902006-09-16T14:14:00.000+01:002006-09-16T14:15:23.603+01:00"Crude populism"...post at the Sharpener, on <a href="http://www.thesharpener.net/2006/09/15/crude-populism/">Livingstone and Chavez</a>.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1157020877719402812006-08-31T11:24:00.000+01:002006-08-31T11:41:17.933+01:00Burn the witch<a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/index.html">Comment is Free</a> rank their articles by "activity": the more people posting replies to the original, the higher the ranking. I was vaguely surprised to see that <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/soumaya_ghannoushi_/2006/08/blair_has_been_a_disaster_for_1.html">this - fairly nondescript - article</a> was currently top the of the vox pops, until I remembered its authour was a WOMAN with a HEADSCARF and therefore a MUSLIM. It certainly gets the <A href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/soumaya_ghannoushi_/2006/08/blair_has_been_a_disaster_for_1.html#comment-193296">crazies good and excited</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Now, once again, we are subjected to Soumaya Ghannoushi ? what is this, the softly softly steel fist in velvet glove approach?<br /><br />Are these people so up themselves and their oh so right approach to life that they cannot see the obvious: WE ARE ON TO THEM ALL!!!!...</blockquote><br /><br />Yeah, that told her, with her uppity literacy and shit. (Oh, and those "anarchist SWP supporters", a beautiful phrase that offers a tantalising glimpse of the ocean of ignorance behind it.) Depressing stuff; the slack-jawed howlers have more confidence of late. Can't imagine <A href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9603">why</a>.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1156877438223845552006-08-29T19:40:00.000+01:002006-08-29T19:50:38.350+01:00"Wicker Tam"Bit slow off the mark, but news from distant parts takes its time. Front page of the Scottish Mirror, Friday 25 August:<br /><br /><blockquote>Tommy Sheridan's SSP rivals burned an effigy of their former leader in a scene straight out of The Wicker Man.<br /><br />Activists on a woodland retreat cheered as the life-sized model went up in flames, echoing the climax of the 1973 cult movie. <br /><br />A witness said: "The event was supposed to be about learning more about socialism. But it soon became clear that most people there only wanted to bitch about Tommy Sheridan.<br /><br />"There was a bonfire made up and then this effigy of Tommy was brought out and thrown on. It was bizarre." The training weekend, called Camp Secret Squirrel, was organised by the Scottish Socialist Youth (SSY) wing of the SSP...<br /><br />Mr Sheridan yesterday dismissed the incident as an "embarrassment". He added: "I really don't want to comment any further."<br /><br />But a source close to the Glasgow MSP said it shows why he feels he must leave the SSP and set up a new socialist party.<br /><br />The source said: "This is not something he'll be losing any sleep over. But it does show the kind of people we're up against in what remains of the Scottish Socialist Party.<br /><br />"These people would rather burn effigies of Tommy Sheridan than get out there fighting New Labour and the Tories. It's about time that some of them got a life.<br /><br />"They really have to ask why they got into politics if all they want to do is burn effigies of fellow socialists. This shows why the time has come to seriously consider the creation of a new, inclusive left-wing party in Scotland that people can feel comfortable with."</blockquote><br /><br />More interesting than this sectarian lunacy is the Mirror's editorial comment on Sheridan:<br /><br /><blockquote>No wonder Tommy Sheridan wants to leave the crisis-hit SSP.<br /><br />His fellow Socialist MSPs have already tried to bring him down by giving evidence against him in court. <br /><br />Now some of his so-called comrades have burnt his effigy at a secret camp in the wilds of Lanarkshire.<br /><br />The crazy stunt is just another example of a nasty streak that seems to run through some in the far-left party.<br /><br />They seem more concerned with attacking Tommy Sheridan - who helped found the party - than getting on with the job they were elected to do.<br /><br />At the last election thousands voted for the Socialists hoping they would fight for a fairer Scotland.<br /><br />And the party's six MSPs made a good start - putting forward popular proposals such as free school meals for all and scrapping prescription charges.<br /><br />But the party has now become a laughing stock.<br /><br />The task of rebuilding a credible left-wing party in Scotland will no doubt rest on Tommy Sheridan's shoulders.<br /><br />But he will only succeed if he ditches the losers and loonies who seem bent on taking over the SSP.</blockquote><br /><br />Now, bearing in mind the Mirror's slant - vaguely left-of-Labour - and readership - working class - this is a telling line for them to be taking. It will no doubt be an interesting ride over the few months to Holyrood elections next May, and not just for the SSP: the Scottish Tories, it seems, are <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1266142006">at each others' throats</a>.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1156799723259079652006-08-28T21:55:00.000+01:002006-08-28T22:39:27.423+01:00Revisionist defeatism: the worse, the betterPresumably <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1859710,00.html">deliberately provocative</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>If it did lose the next election, Labour could return in 2013-15 with a ministerial team that boasted a rare combination of youth, talent, maturity and experience. Barring a revival of Trotskyist entryism in the Labour party or a cleverly engineered Conservative economic boom, I cannot see the Tories being an appealing alternative in the longer term. There is little sign of a new intellectual ferment of the sort that carried Margaret Thatcher to power.<br /><br />A period in opposition, far from being a disaster, will be the final test of the durability of Blair's historic transformation. In the past, Labour, turfed out of office, would normally lose several consecutive elections; if it won, it was by the slenderest of margins, as in the 1970s. To fulfil Blair's ambition that it should become the natural governing party of this century, it needs to show that it can bounce back quickly from defeat, as the Tories always did in the 20th century, and as Sweden's social democrats still do.</blockquote><br /><br />Given that New Labour's justification for itself is that it won elections, I cannot see how - once it loses an election - it can survive. Surveying Blair's likely legacy - the sad demise of the NHS, the resurgent racism, the disappearance of critical civil liberties, a new generation of nuclear power stations, economic injustice on a grand scale, and Iraq - finding the few voters impressed by the wreckage will be a hard task.<br /><br />More to the point - and I say this having earlier indicated the <A href="http://deadmenleft.blogspot.com/2005/10/white-lines.html">Tories' decreptitude</a> - it may yet be wide of the mark to claim the Tories lack "intellectual ferment". Whilst David Cameron is little more than a TV gimmick, and whilst the Tories' current, apparent lead seems more driven by Labour defections to the Lib Dems than their own popularity, there is a certain buzz developing around, for example, the happy-face Thatcherites at the Policy Exchange, and the <a href="http://deadmenleft.blogspot.com/2005/12/very-british-neoconservatism.html">sour, sinister neoconservative claque Cameron surrounds himself with</a>. <br /><br />It's nothing like on the scale of the intellectual assualt that preceded Thatcher, and nor is it quite so obviously tied to the Conservative Party. It <em>accepts</em> latter-day Blairite positions (boo to terrorists, yay for cappuccino) in a way Thatcher never tolerated any form of Old Labourism. But the flickerings of a revival are there nontheless. Whether it can produce a popular Conservatism beyond the party's declining and elderly base is a moot point. When national party politics has become, under New Labour, little more than the orderly management of decline, <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1190882006">strange things start to happen</a>.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1156722735593336902006-08-28T00:16:00.000+01:002006-08-28T00:52:21.706+01:00Coming over hereBack, after a considerble delay, partially extended by <a href="http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/about_john_reid.html">John Reid</a>, who from reading your funny English press I now see is going to be the next <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5264334.stm">Prime Minister</a>.<br /><br />Aside from all that, am mildly puzzled by sudden <a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nL25577411&imageid=top-news-view-2006-08-25-162949-RTR7WI5_Comp%5B1%5D.jpg&cap=File%20photo%20of%20a%20man%20carrying%20away%20his%20shopping%20in%20Tesco%20branded%20carrier%20bags%20in%20central%20London.%20%20April%2012,%202005.%20CPROD%20REUTERS/Toby%20Melville&from=business">accelaration in UK economic growth</a> coupled with sudden desire to <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,31-2006380578,00.html">deport Poles</a>. There are few compelling reasons to think British capitalism's sudden up-turn in growth is anything other than the product of the EU's immense <a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=703606<br />">free gift of 600,000 trained workers</a>. Leave aside the alleged effects of World Cup euphoria, strip out North Sea oil, and it is clear the boost has been provided by <a href="http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=192">service sector output</a>: precisely the sector where the physical location of labour matters the most. Sustained by historically cheap short-term borrowing, demand for services has propelled the UK economy forward once more.<br /><br />But no matter. I see forthcoming <A href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2281618,00.html">Romanians and Bulgarians</a> are evidently <a href="http://www.romani.co.uk/Sunday_Times_Misinformation.htm">Bad People</a>, and doubtless unable to integrate properly. Apparently rather like <a href="http://www.ippr.org/articles/?id=2258">this</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Our borders are being overwhelmed by migration on an unprecedented scale. Many of these migrants are failing to integrate with their host communities. Some do not even bother learning the local language. Local services are struggling to cope with the influx. Worse still, the UK government seems to know little about the scale or impact of this migration.</blockquote><br /><br />(...incidentally, I think the neoliberal response to migration - a good example <a href="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,16849-2331607,00.html">here</a> - is also inadequate to the task. Not <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5007148.stm">fit for purpose</a>, even. That is for another post, however.)Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1154510076895540922006-08-02T10:08:00.000+01:002006-08-02T10:14:36.980+01:00SummertimeAnother enormous delay, and then I'm away for another week. Posting resumes after that. The indefatigable <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com">Lenin</a> continues to blog on Lebanon and the Middle East: if, for some reason, you're not reading the Tomb already, I recommend you vist it forthwith. Attendance on the <A href="http://www.stopwar.org.uk/">demonstration this Saturday</a>, meanwhile, is all but mandatory.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1152733422024766552006-07-12T20:10:00.000+01:002006-07-12T20:43:42.426+01:00Fish and barrels<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5173860.stm">Levy arrested</a>! Quick - <a href="http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2006/07/levy-etc.html">send for the cavalry</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>I'm not convinced that the police really needed to arrest Lord Levy to question him about his role in getting loans for the Labour Party.<br /><br />What I am convinced about is that to restore public faith in the party funding system we need:<br /><br />a) at least some element of state funding or match funding to create a more level playing field between the parties and reduce the need for donations and loans and thereby insinuations of "buying influence"...</blockquote><br /><br />Fair play to Luke Akehurst, my very favourite Hackney councillor, for trying: but just look at the response: a Labour councillor - a <em>Labour</em> councillor, to paraphrase an Akehurst lookalike - advocating not independent working class representation, but grabbing government largesse.<br /><br />The only solution these people can offer to venality is <em>institutionalised</em> venality. Anyone promoting state funding of political parties has not the faintest understanding of what democracy means and why people have fought for it.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1151356860807744862006-06-26T22:02:00.000+01:002006-06-26T22:21:54.796+01:00The Forward March of Liberalism Halted<A href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1806148,00.html">Touching honesty</a>, really:<br /><br /><blockquote>It is quite certain that most of the young men and women who have come forward as Liberal candidates know little (and care little) about the tangled history of the Liberal party in the two decades between 1918 and 1939. They have become Liberal because Liberalism stands for something different from Labour or from Toryism (even Toryism of the reform variety).<br /><br />It offers something which, better than other parties, satisfies the desire for bold reform combined with freedom and personal initiative. The Labour party can reflect that this revival of Liberalism is a sign of Labour's failure to broaden from a sectional into a national party.</blockquote><br /><br />...followed by a small footnote on Labour's 1945 landslide. Another glorious defeat, Guardian comrades! Onwards! I don't think the paper's had a decent sense of history since c. <A href="http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=307151009469437">Richard Cobden negotiated the Treaty of Paris</a>, but no matter. Buy it for the Steve Bell cartoon in G2.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1151355655089324632006-06-26T21:28:00.000+01:002006-06-26T22:00:55.270+01:00Hackney-Nike logo (pt. 37)This one could run and run. Our friends in the north - way, way up north, along the bloodspattered Cambridge Heath Road - have an uncanny ability to prolong <A href="http://lukeakehurstsblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/logo-pogo.html">political grudges</a> (with approximate footnotes):<br /><br /><blockquote>I told Pipey[1] to keep schtum about this one, but he would have to open his gaper and make a fuss. Poor old Mikey[2] is in for a shock when he gets the reports back from his legal team. It seems that Nike is likely to argue that appropriate use of the logo was included in the deal for the Zoneparcs project to support playground sports activities targeted at the most deprived and socially excluded kids in London boroughs. Apparently they offered a sack of wonga to Mad Max[3] back in 2002 but he was scared of getting his fingers burnt so he refused to touch it and insisted it went to Nicky [4] over at Tender Loving Care[5]. I must ask Pipey to get together with Nicky to sort out where the cash went to and try to dig up the contracts (if there ever were any).<br /><br />[1] Jules Pipe, Mayor of Hackney and lord of all he surveys;<br />[2] Gawd knows - some councillor?<br />[3] The unlamented "Mad Max" Caller, former Chief Exec at Hackney Council;<br />[4] Possibly Nicky Gavron, New Labour GLA stooge-creature. Could be wrong, though;<br />[5] The GLA?<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Local politics, innit. Also spoofing a (it has to be said) rather easy target who - joy of joys - describes Brown's stance on thermonuclear destruction as <a href="http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2006/06/lets-see-how-much-support-left-has.html">"commonsense" </a> and, again without the merest whiff of irony, calls the Chancellor's happy-clappy regime-changey chums <A href="http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2006/06/people-liberation-front-of-judea-etc.html">"traditional Labour rightwing Atlanticists"</a> - presumably packing their cloth-caps and whippets for trips to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1343578,00.html">British-American Project</a> meetings in Washington after a hard day hewing coal.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1151251598153304682006-06-25T16:46:00.000+01:002006-06-25T17:06:38.270+01:00Flimsy<a href="http://councillorbobpiper.blogspot.com/2006/06/johnathan-ross-for-a-list.html">Bob Piper</a> on Jonanthan Ross on David Cameron:<br /><br /><blockquote>He squirmed in his boxers when Ross pinned him down to say <A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5108584.stm">he still thought the Iraq invasion was right</a>, he looked distinctly uncomfortable when he said the old witch of Finchley was right to throw people out of work in Scotland, Wales and the North of England, and he squirmed again when Ross pressed him on the failure of privatised water companies. The highlight, though, was still to come. Ross raised the issue of decriminalising drugs (no, the conversation didn't touch on Dave's flirtation with the nose candy, although the guffaws from the audience indicated that was where they thought it was heading) and Cameron sort of giggled and said he didn't think that was right, and the proper thing to do was to care for the addicts - his touchy feely side showing, he hoped). Ross then said that drugs were actually available now, to anyone who actually wanted them, and that virtually any kid in the street could tell you where to get drugs (and, although he didn't say it, it was hanging in the air... even David Cameron knew where to score). It wasn't a question of caring for addicts, it was about driving the criminals out of the drug scene, said Ross. Dave said ....errrm, he didn't think that was right and the real issue was about caring for the addicts. Obviously not briefed beyond that, Cameron looked immensley relieved when Ross asked him if he could do a 'high five'. That was more like it for the lad... get me off the bloody policy stuff and play at being Ali G.</blockquote><br /><br />What's interesting about the Cameron thing is that this entirely superficial rebranding exercise, centred on one rather dull toff, has managed to cripple (if not break) New Labour. It speaks volumes for New Labour's underlying flimsiness that it has done so: we are, after all, talking about a government that slightly over 20% of the electorate actually voted for, and a government whose biggest single policy initiative - invading Iraq - is its biggest single weakness.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1150653097289789022006-06-18T18:33:00.000+01:002006-06-18T18:51:37.423+01:00"Cargo Cult Keynesianism"Really good post over at <a href="http://aaronovitch.blogspot.com/2006/06/aaronomics.html">Aaronovitch Watch</a> on Aaro's bubble-headed attempts to whip up enthusiasm about neoliberalism in India. I'm not too sure about "Cargo Cult Keynesianism", though: partly it's a slight twitchiness about taking Keynes' name in vain (reinforced by the bloody awful posthumous treatment dished out to J.K.Galbraith), partly it's the strong suspicion that Keynes is better read (as Galbraith, arguably, read him) as an economist of institutions, rather than of behaviour - if that distinction makes sense (Toni Negri wrote a brilliant earlyish essay on just this, turning Keynes into a theoretician of "supply side" production relations, rather than effective demand - doesn't seem to be online, but these notes <a href="http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpkeynes.htm">give a flavour</a>). <br /><br />It's difficult to square, for example, the neoliberal enthusiasm for privatisation and mobile finance capital with Keynes' explicit calls for the "socialisation of investment" and the "euthanasia of rentier": "Keynesianism", in the sense Aaronovitch Watch intend, seems to refer to what <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Robinson">Joan Robinson</a> called "bastard Keynesianism": the postwar blending of some of Keynes' less radical insights with existing neoclassical theory. What we have now is still more watery substance, the so-called <A href="http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2005/12/is_there_a_new_.html">"new consensus"</a>: the reduction of Keynes to little more than a vague idea that interest rates matter, washed up with a framework that looks remarkably like the bankrupt free-market nonsense he spent the latter half of his life attacking.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1150650441549958522006-06-18T17:56:00.000+01:002006-06-18T18:07:21.726+01:00'Ackney 'ypocrisyYou might remember <A href="http://deadmenleft.blogspot.com/2006/05/hackneyed.html">Nike nicking Hackney Council's logo</a> a few weeks back. Squeaky clean, painfully New Labour Hackney <A href="http://www.hackney.gov.uk/index.htm/w-information-centre/xc-press-office/w-press-releases-current.htm">Mayor Jules Pipe</a> was heard to fulminate about how terribly unfair all this was, Hackney Council poor innocent victims of copyright theft, boo hiss to nasty corporations, etc etc. <br /><br />Well... I recevied this email:<br /><br /><blockquote>Just days after making threats to sue Nike for stealing its logo, Hackney Council has launched its London 2012 Olympic Games logo to cries of hypocrisy and theft.<br /> <br />Hackney Council, which has done nothing to help Hackney's arthritis sufferers, has angered them further by stealing their representative body's logo to promote the Olympics, disability activists claim.<br /> <br />Hackney Council has angered many of Hackney’s arthritis sufferers by “stealing a logo well-known and respected by them, to use as its Olympic logo”. Ironically, Hackney Council recently complained that Nike stole their logo to use on their 'Hackney Marshes' brand of sports clothing and equipment.<br /> <br />Hackney Council’s London 2012 Olympic Games design appears to be identical to the NRAS Support Network logo and remarkably close to the main NRAS logo.<br /> <br />“How can Jules Pipe, Mayor of Hackney, denounce Nike for nicking a logo while he carries out the same action himself?” said John Thornton, chair of Disability Sport Hackney and himself an arthritis sufferer. “In my book, that’s outright hypocrisy.”<br /> <br />“Mayor Jules Pipe has rightly come under criticism for doing less than nothing to help people with arthritis in the London Borough of Hackney. He has allowed the swimming pools here to fall into rack and ruin, and even when they do reopen, they will largely be inaccessible to disabled people and it will cost us more to use than to travel to surrounding boroughs, he said.<br /> <br />“He's done nothing for grass-roots sport, he’s working with Olympic planners to turn over the Hackney Marshes football pitches to tarmac crews. Hackney Council Cabinet members have given them to the Olympic crew to be turned into a massive car park. Re-opening London Fields open air lido won’t make up for all the facilities we’ve lost.”<br /> <br /> Due to years of under-investment and maladministration it is now not possible to swim in a Hackney Council 25 metre pool and completely impossible to swim in a public pool. Instead the only pools available are the two or three small pools in private gyms. No hydrotherapy facilities exist in Hackney and the closed Clissold Leisure Centre, built at a cost estimated at £45,000,000, was not constructed to be accessible. The works to complete it, which have now been abandoned, have not been specified to improve access beyond what was absolutely necessary in law at the time of its original construction.<br /> <br />“To add insult to injury, the Council have purloined a well-known and well-respected national symbol – the logo for the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society - and used it for their own self-aggrandisement. It wouldn't be so bad if he cared a jot about enabling disabled people to use sports facilities. Instead, we have no accessible pools in Hackney and, if we are on benefits, we couldn’t afford the exorbitant entry fees.”</blockquote><br /><br />Have a look for <a href="http://www.clissoldleisure.com/2006/06/12#a3064">yourself</a>.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1150641149734416422006-06-18T13:54:00.000+01:002006-06-18T15:32:32.296+01:00Anyone but...Sorry about the absence of posts lately. Been watching the football.<br /><br />All right, I haven't. I did, however, catch England vs. Paraguay last weekend. The Whitechapel Respect celebratory meal coincided with the game, so a TV and projecter were rounded up and put into service.<br /><br />I don't see anything unreasonable in doing this; if we hadn't provided the TV, fewer would have turned up. I find the argument that socialists should actively oppose England slightly tiresome: there seems to be no quicker way to have a futile and bitter argument with precisely the people we should be trying to win over. It would have been particularly absurd, in a room full largely of Bengalis, some in England tops, almost all watching the match, to have raised an objection. <br /><br />I can't think of a single instance - indeed, I'm fairly certain there <em>isn't</em> a single instance - where anybody-but-England has advanced the cause of socialism. It is more absurd, naturally, to pretend that supporting England is a singularly progressive cause, dragooning poor old Orwell into service for the ocassion. But disentangling the threads of identity, culture, and recognition that lead people to support England is not going to be done through bloody-minded opposition.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1149007195613223942006-05-30T17:28:00.000+01:002006-05-30T17:39:55.776+01:00On finding the real scroungers<A href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=OU5VK4NFYDAIRQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2006/05/30/ufraud.xml">Outrage</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Fraud and overpayment in public sector bodies including primary care trusts, hospital trusts and local authorities hit £111 million in the last two years, it has been revealed.<br /><br />The Audit Commission's National Fraud Initiative showed a 33 per cent increase in 2004/05 compared with 2002/03 in nearly 1,300 public bodies...<br /><br />"The message to those tempted to steal from public service bodies is that there is now more chance than ever of being caught," Steve Bundred, the Audit Commission chief executive, said.<br /><br />The report revealed a number of cases in which failed asylum-seekers were employed by local authorities or NHS organisations, received housing benefit or other state benefits, or had local authority accommodation.</blockquote><br /><br />£111m! Asylum seekers! It's <a href="http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/tax-advice/income-tax/article.html?in_article_id=407357&in_page_id=77">daylight robbery</a>!<br /><br /><blockquote>Tax avoidance by the super-rich is costing the country £10bn per year...<br /><br />Wealthy individuals - earning millions per year - use loopholes to beat the system, including avoiding National Insurance through bonuses paid in gold and having salaries delivered through offshore trusts and loans which are later written off.</blockquote><br /><br />"...more chance than ever of being caught": if only.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1148510102662049082006-05-24T23:23:00.000+01:002006-05-24T23:35:02.820+01:00Hackneyed<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3852619.stm">Hackney</a>. Funny old place. It's council is <A href="http://www.hackney.gov.uk/index.htm/w-information-centre/xc-press-office/xc-news-may2006-election-results/xc-news-may06-nike.htm">overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with something nicer</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Hackney Council is calling on Nike to compensate the young people of Hackney for their misappropriation of the Council's logo for use on a World Cup range of sportswear. The Council has threatened Nike with legal action, after the global sportswear giant produced a range of kit and equipment bearing an exact replica of the Council's logo, without seeking permission. The Council is demanding financial compensation to spend on sports development in the borough.</blockquote><br /><br />No Logo innit. The council website has pictures. Why anyone in their right mind would want to wear the beastly garments I do not know, though they're (perhaps) preferable to godawful Oxford hoodies. Also naughtily abusing the Hackney Council logo, <a href="http://hackneylookout.blogspot.com/">this</a>.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1148331413578098652006-05-22T21:34:00.000+01:002006-05-22T21:56:54.640+01:00The North, being grimFascinating creature, John Reid. Been keeping an eye on him and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,659705,00.html">stumbled over this</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Instead, Reid sees the rise of New Labour as the regional Labour heartlands reclaiming a lost extremist metropolitan citadel. But despite the brogue and the working-class roots, Reid is the ultimate Labour iconoclast; there are no sacred cows in his personal political manifesto apart from a determined will to gain power. His policy aims are avowedly market capitalist. "The only thing that is constant is change. We should be permanent revisionists. We should never believe that what we are doing is essentially right because it pleases the party faithful. We must look and apply our analysis of the way society is working and prepare to update and change."</blockquote><br /><br />The first sentence is the most important - I just didn't want you to miss out on Reid's nudge-nudge, wink-wink with the "permanent revisionist". That line about Northern hordes descending upon the metropolis, <a href="http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html">out for loot</a> perhaps, reminded me of <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-2188620,00.html">this Times article</a> on Cameron's difficulties:<br /><br /><blockquote>In 1979 the Tories held many constituencies across the North, as well as a dozen in Scotland. Today they have only one in Scotland. Despite being accused of turning its back on the northern cities in the 1980s, the party held on to local government and Westminster seats under Margaret Thatcher and it was not until the 1990s that first Tory councillors, then MPs, were voted out.</blockquote><br /><br />There's a whole history to be written of the British Left's relationship to the North-South divide. (Actually, for all I know, it may already have been written. Anyone got any ideas?) It's something that stretches right the way back to <A href="http://throughthescarydoor.blogspot.com/2006/05/just-for-craic-britains-first.html">Will Cuffay</a> attempting to lead the metropolitan masses against the cowardly, Northern leadership of the Chartists in 1848; or Jarrow marchers refusing to join the London-centred NUWM. The triumphant march of Blairism into Downing Street would probably belong with those two, should we believe Reid's version of events.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1148143117753880722006-05-20T17:07:00.000+01:002006-05-20T17:39:06.970+01:00Embarrassing memoriesMartin Kettle - he's a very quick way to <a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1779342,00.html">annoy yourself</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>One of the ways New Labour deliberately signalled its break from the past was to burn its bridges with what it saw as luvviedom. Where Neil Kinnock had embraced the arts with exuberance, Blair icily kept his distance.</blockquote><br /><br />...what the hell is he on about? This is raging nonsense, it's rolling around on the floor and giggling hysterically, it's banging your fists against either side of your head and howling - "<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/72375.stm">icily</a> <A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/452331.stm">keeping</a> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/04/98/powerhouse/72853.stm">his</a> <a href="http://www.locum-destination.com/pdf/LDR12BeyondCoolBrit.pdf">distance</a>"?<br /><br />And then:<br /><br /><blockquote>Perhaps politics and the arts don't, can't and maybe even shouldn't mix. That was certainly what Lenin thought; which seems a good enough reason to assert that they can.</blockquote><br /><br />Blairites for <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletkult">Proletkult</a>? It figures.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1147968419012331992006-05-18T17:00:00.000+01:002006-05-18T17:06:59.190+01:00Boo<a href="http://throughthescarydoor.blogspot.com/2006/05/politicians-who-are-actually-evil.html">Actually properly scary</a>, for once. <br /><br />This is also <a href="http://www.recessmonkey.com/2006/05/18/pulling-power/">frightening</a>, though in different way. They might start breeding.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1147962201570836812006-05-18T15:02:00.000+01:002006-05-18T15:23:21.666+01:00Vauxhall (briefly)That <A href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/18/nvaux18.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/05/18/ixuknews.html">dynamic UK economy</a>, again:<br /><br /><blockquote>Union leaders claimed last night that manufacturing was being "massacred" after Vauxhall announced plans to axe 900 jobs and the rate of unemployment rose to its highest level for four years.</blockquote><br /><br />Unlike the fools on the continet, you see, we've got a <a href="http://www.jobbankusa.com/News/Employment/employ101603b.html">wonderful flexible labour market that creates jobs</a>. <A href="http://www.econ.ox.ac.uk/Members/andrew.glyn/LabourDeregEurope.pdf">Andrew Glyn </a> offers a good, short assessment (PDF):<br /><br /><blockquote>The case for labour market deregulation in Europe is that it would have a major effect on European joblessness... the cross country evidence does not bear this out. Moreover the benefits of labour market regulation and welfare state measures in terms of a wage floor , income security, job security and conditions at work are frequently ignored... The call for comprehensive labour market deregulation in Europe lacks empirical justification in terms of large and predictable effects on employment and thus a more egalitarian distribution of welfare.</blockquote><br /><br />(Interesting to note, by-the-by, that New Labour is becoming <A href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1777369,00.html">increasingly open about offering state aid</a>.)Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1147806346278057222006-05-16T20:05:00.000+01:002006-05-16T20:05:46.353+01:00Post on nuclear power over at the <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/05/shiny-new-chernobyls.html">Tomb</a>.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6856547.post-1147802120560006662006-05-16T18:37:00.000+01:002006-05-16T19:06:46.713+01:00Vaguely worth notingIn passing, <A href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/05/16/cnus16.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/05/16/ixcity.html">this one</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>US investors are rushing for exits in risky markets across the world, accelerating an ugly sell-off in Turkey, Indonesia, India, Russia, and Brazil...<br /><br />Mr Bloom [HSBC "currency expert"] said fears of a dollar collapse had been the chief source of contagion spreading worldwide...<br /><br />"I expect the dollar to fall fast and furious against everything because the point of inflexion has been reached in US interest rates," he said. "If the Fed is not going to keep rewarding me with higher rates for the risk of holding dollar assets, why should I hold them?<br /><br />"The US is importing $750bn more than it is exporting every year and now has $2,500bn in external liabilities. This is a big call on world savings and it can't go on forever," he added.</blockquote><br /><br />This overweening desire for security hardly betokens a system <A href="http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/us/index.asp">enjoying a glorious renaissance</a>, but you may have guessed that already.Meadershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13370018173589886201noreply@blogger.com