The Future Now

A first step to understanding

A final post on the Baby P affair.  This excellent article by Anne Karpf should be required reading for everyone who thinks more could be done to prevent child abuse and filicide.

The Crooked timber of mankind

Further to yesterday's post about the tragic death of Baby P, Simon Jenkins has a very good summary of the case in today's Guardian.  As he says:

The implication must be that Baby P died for the same reason that street crime rises, educational performance stagnates, and mortgage debts go haywire. When the human element in any frontline service gives way to quantifiable process, something crucial is lost. The belief has long been bred in the bone of the children's minister, Ed Balls, that any computer can solve the world's ills at the click of a mouse. It is a dangerous lie.

Not shocked

There is much one could say about the horrific neglect and murder of Baby P in Haringey, North London last year; a case that has only now come under the media spotlight because of the legal requirement to await the outcome of the trial for murder of the child's mother and two other men.

What irritates me most, however, is the way politicians and pundits alike talk about how shocking it all is.   When I hear those words I know immediately that nothing will be done to address the underlying causes of the happily very rare instances of extreme child neglect and abuse.

Then there's the blame game.  Someone must always be responsible and held to account.  For David Cameron, it is the government.  For the lamentable Jeremy Paxman (whom Minister for Children, Beverley Hughes, dealt with admirably on Newsnight, I thought) it is politicians in general.  No one, of course, lays any part of the blame at the state of a society in which people like the parents who murdered this child can aspire to parenthood without having first learned the fundamentals of humanity.

The reason, I suspect, that people are so shocked by these dreadful events, is that they have a the false impression that the world is, bye and large, a good, safe, warm and  comfortable place.  For the majority of citizens globally, and for sizeable minorities even in the rich countries, this is palpably not the case.  If 30,000 children under five die each day from preventable causes, then we've got some considerable way to go before we can be proud of the world we have created.

It is probably impossible, ever, under any conditions, to keep all infants safe from the actions of psychopathic parents.   It is however possible to create social and economic conditions in which more young people grow into adults and undertake parenthood with the a level of emotional and psychological maturity that would minimise the possibility of abuse or neglect.

It would also be possible, if we chose not to fix society, to properly fund, invest in and motivate social services departments and people who work in them, to sort out the mess that inevitable follows without on occasion, failing to act in time.

If we really want to protect every single child from parental abuse we have either to change society beyond all recognition, or massively increase social services funding.

We could settle, on the other hand, for being thankful that such events are so rare, and remind ourselves, as Professor Colin Pritchard noted yesterday,

that children in England and Wales are less at risk than in most developed countries. The baby murder rate is highest in the US and only Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden have lower rates than England and Wales.

But please, let's be a bit more grown up about the warts-and-all reality of human existence.  Dreadful thinks happen, thankfully not that often; and unless we are really prepared to address the underlying causes, at huge cost, we really should stop pretending to be shocked.

What is the economy for?

With UK unemployment nudging 2 million once again (and that's the official count - if we apply the measurement criteria used back in the 1970s, it's now well over three million) it's time to ask again a simple question: just what, and more to the point, who, is the economy for, and what ends it is supposed to serve?

It's not - or should not be - rocket science:  the economy consists of those mechanisms and institutions in society through which its members secure for themselves the means to survival and satisfaction in life in exchange for their labour.

For the last thirty years, however, the objective of full employment has fallen off the radar of economic policy because the neo-classical school of economics that has come to dominate the political and academic establishments has persuade people in large numbers that economic policies focussing on continuous growth and low inflation offer the best hope for economic advance. 

This argument is now revealed as a gigantic con-trick, pulled off by economists and politicians, ably aided by much of the mainstream media, in the service of the interests of elite wealth and privilege.  Democracy, meanwhile, appears quite unable to defend majority interests.

I'm not arguing that the state should take responsibility for directly creating jobs for those whom the market doesn't provide.  But there needs to be a moral basis for economic policy, and key among the values referenced should be a commitment to an economy in which everyone has access to the resources and opportunities necessary to make a reasonable living for themselves. 

By starting from that belief, and ensuring it remains the over-riding goal in policy formulation, it should be possible to restructure the economy along more just and inclusive lines.  Presently however, there seems little chance of such progress.

Please get lost in the jungle

The only good thing about Brian Paddick signing up to appear in the upcoming series of I'm a celebrity get me out of here is that it should put a permanent end to his political career.

His candidacy for Mayor of London under the Lib-Dem banner did untold damage to that party's future electoral prospects at a time when Britain desperately needs a strong third party to counter the conservatism of Labour and the Tories.

The new series will likely have two things in common with the mayoral election campaign:  Paddick will lose badly and in the process will piss everybody off, including most of his putative supporters.

Apart from having to endure the slimy Ant and Dec, the new series should make entertaining viewing though, peppered as it is with the usual mix of ego-driven attention seekers, and ex-soap and pop stars trying to revive their flagging careers.

Ester Rantzen really should have been put out to grass long ago.  And quite what Martina Navratilova is doing there I don't know - surely she doesn't need the money.

Mandelson to the rescue?

Whatever one may think of Peter Mandelson, he still show signs of being a top-rate political operator.  He has today called on the Prime Minister to save the threatened UK post office network arguing that in the current financial crisis, the Post Office's trusted brand could become the focal point for renewed confidence among savers and borrowers.

If the post office were to be decimated, as has been the likely upshot of current government policy, it would represent a hammer blow for hundreds of rural communities.  In suggesting, not only that they should be saved, but by coming up with a commercial rationale for saving them, Lord Mandelson might be doing both the government and the country a massive favour.

Pope Clitoris the Umpteenth

If you want to discover the provenance of this unusual headline, you will have to go and see Terence Davies' Of Time and the City, a wonderful combination of film, music and poetry now on general release. 

As Peter Bradshaw, who gave it five stars, says in his review:

What a lovely film this is, and what a welcome comeback for one of Britain's greatest film-makers.

Here's the trailer:

Don't cheer too loudly

I have a new piece over at Comment is Free this evening urging caution in the wake of Barack Obama's victory.  I certainly believe his success makes the world a better place, but the kind of progress which would make a real difference to the lives of millions of excluded and disposessed people worldwide, will take more than the election of one man, however remarkable.

Simon Schama, Magnus Pike and the typical blowhard

Alongside the obvious pleasure at Barack Obama's victory in this week's presidential election, there was much to smile at in the election coverage.  The sight of Jeremy Vine on the BBC struggling to get his touch screen controlled map of the United States to work properly will have brought pleasure to many people who, like me, spend hours cursing such devices for their inability to deliver a simple train ticket.

But the highlight of the last week has to be Simon Schama's pre-election rebuttal of a rather unpleasant American gentleman on Question Time from New York.  Against my better judgement I really rather like Schama, although as you can see from the clip, without his own production team to restrain his bizzare limb, and indeed whole body, movements, he is rapidly turning himself into a new Magnus Pike for the noughties.

The Possibility of Progress

The chances of creating a more just, inclusive, sustainable and human world are a little better after the victory of Barack Obama.  America is a country full of contradictions, but as Mike Tomasky - who now deserves a vacation as much as the cadidate himself - observes here, it could not have happened anywhere else.

When America has a good day, the rest of us can afford to celebrate the fact that the United States remains the world's only superpower.  I have my doubts about Obama: anyone who achieves his stunning level of success must necessarily have kept very quiet about any plans to change the world. But, for those of us who know how urgent the need for substantial, structural change is, an Obama White House provides a much better context in which to make our case.  As Tomasky concludes, it's been a good night.

Let's not get too excited

If, as now seems very likely, Barack Obama is elected to the Presidency today, it will be an historic moment.  But what it will mean for United States policy - both domestic and foreign - remains unclear.  The world moves very slowly, especially in respect of building a more inclusive and sustainable global society.

There's been little in his rhetoric to suggest Obama is a radical, and in any case, as veteran US commentator James Ridgeway points out, the realities of congressional inertia and the country's continuing dependence on foreign oil suggest that while the place might look very different to outsiders, it will take some considerable time before any real progressive gains are made.

Small is beautiful

I have a new piece over at Comment is Free this afternoon looking at the social and economic impacts of the contrasting histories of the UK and Italy.

Something for nothing

I have another piece at Comment is Free this morning.  This one looks at the financial crisis in terms of the huge discrepancy between consumption and production that has become the norm over the last decade of so.

Economic justice by the book

I have a new piece over at Comment is Free this afternoon, this one inspired by John Stewart's excellent political novel, The President.

What is wrong with these people?

Until the Labour Party expels people like the barbarian Andy Burnham, it will not have my vote.

Getting away from it all

Although Sir Simon Jenkins can be bloody irritating at times, he can claim to one of the few polymaths of our time; remarkable given that his principal trade as been that of a newspaperman.

Despite our having obvious and deep political differences, I am happy to admit that he is probably the finest columnist at work in the English language today, and I offer this sublime piece of writing from today's Guardian as evidence.

This film is so good

A good time to take our minds off the turmoil outside, I think. Happy to be able to report a wonderful cinema going experience this week.  I've loved you so long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime) has to be one of the finest films in a very long time.

Kristin Scott Thomas is unbelievably good in the lead role.  Even if the part was written for her, as Peter Bradshaw suggest in his excellent review, her performance was still breathtaking.  I have always thought her to be a very fine actress, but this is the first role to make the most of her unparalleled abilities.

Having awarded last year's best actress Oscar to Marion Cotillard for her portrayal of Edith Piaf, it seems unlikely that Scott Thomas will be in the frame this year; not only is the film French, it will doubtless be considered too art-house, and its subject matter too uncomfortable.  But if there were any justice in Hollywood, she would walk it.

Special mention also must go to her co-star, Elsa Zylberstein, who was almost as good.  Go see the film at least twice.  In the meantime, here's the trailer:

Taking housing seriously?

Only hours after I concluded here that Labour's plans to address the housing crisis are dead in the water, Margaret Beckett, one of the party's most experienced former ministers has been handed the housing portfolio. Well, it has been a day of surprises. 

Beckett's predecessor, Caroline Flint, never quite recovered after suggesting that access to social housing should be conditional on tenants actively seeking work.  Her plans were derided by the Child Action Poverty Group as "insulting and stigmatising to people facing major barriers to employment".  Shelter said the proposals would only "add to the thousands already homeless."   After that her eight month tenure coincided with one of Gordon Brown's flagship policies falling off the political radar.

The new minister continues a now established tradition women being appointed to the housing portfolio. But compared with her recent predecessors, Hilary Armstrong, Yvette Cooper and Flint, she is by far the biggest political hitter to be handed the brief.  If this is a sign that a rapidly regenerating prime minister has remembered what his priorities are, then all well and good.

Beckett has proved herself an adept politician, performing rather better in a series of challenging roles rather than many of her colleagues.  She is certainly a survivor, and on the basis of today's news must still have an appetite for politics despite 34 years as an MP.

But will she be able to succeed where so many have failed, and make a difference to a housing crisis that has proved quite immune to a period of sustained economic growth, and which now seems bound to worsen under the toughest economic conditions in decades?

That depends on how much power she is given and how much influence she can exert.  I have never understood, given the fundamental importance of housing to people's well-being and to the wider economy, why it has been passed, repeatedly, from one department to another.  It's time the housing minister was given full cabinet rank.  That would be a sign that the government really is serious about tackling homelessness.

Yesterday the prime minister was rumoured to be putting together a standing committee of close advisers to tackle the financial crisis.  Equally necessary is a cobra-style committee to tackle social injustice.  If, as head as of a beefed-up Department of Housing and Homelessness Beckett were to chair such a committee, and it drew in education, employment, drug abuse, pensions, care of the elderly and parenting as well as having input into economic policy, then not only would Labour demonstrate to the electorate that it was returning to its principled roots in a meaningful way, it would also put pay to Tory efforts to paint themselves as the party of social justice.

Society's shame

I have a new piece at Comment is Free this morning.  This one looks at the ongoing housing crisis.  Once again the Guardian's standfirst sums it up very neatly:

Millions live in sub-standard housing. Labour hasn't delivered, the Tories are bereft of ideas and even the voters don't care.

Stop selling you idiots

Having opened about 50 minutes ago, the FTSE is going through the floor right now following the failure of Congress to approve the US Governments bail out plan last night.

Talk about burning down your own house.  If only people would stop selling shares, especially bank shares.  Most bank shareholders have already lost money; the best way of recovering at least some of those losses is to sit tight, and prevent the crisis deepening any further.

Plummeting share prices no longer remotely reflect the value of companies; there's now a very good case for suspending trading - especially in HBOS shares which are continuing to fall despite a rescue plan having been agreed.

What we are seeing is the gross irrationality of the market at work, and that reflects the gross irrationality and amorality of most of those who play the markets.  The people who run the markets effectively run the real economy upon which most of us depend for our livelihoods.  Psychologically, they are precisely the wrong people to be in charge.

It looks like things will get worse before they get better.  And improvement will be a long time coming.

11am update:  Well, either this post had a rapid (and unexpected) impact, or we are now seeing the flip side of the erratic behaviour described above.  In London shares have rallied, apparently on rumours that the US bail out plan can be saved.  Interestingly though, as Joseph Stiglitz points out this morning, growing numbers of economists believe the Paulson plan won't work.

A nuclear damascene conversion

This is a very interesting piece from Mark Lynas in yesterday's Sunday Times.  Mark is a leading environmental campaigner and long-standing opponent of nuclear energy as a solution to the environmental crisis.

Recently however, having studied evidence about the new breed of nuclear reactors currently being developed, he has changed his mind.  And, predictably, he has been ostracised by much of the green community.

Like Mark, I have long opposed nuclear energy on grounds of safety and cost.  But I have have always hoped that the time might come when science would succeed in addressing those concerns, and there would no longer be any moral or financial objection to nuclear.

I haven't yet studied the evidence Mark cites, but he knows his stuff; there must be something in it.  The fight against climate change needs all the help in can get, so we should at least give him a hearing.  It's too easy to cling onto comfortable, long-held convictions, but they won't necessarily help save the planet.

Mark's website is here.

Solving the banking crisis

I have a new piece on Comment is Free this morning looking at the banking crisis and its connection with the crazy way private banks are allowed to create money as debt simply to turn a profit.

Cityphilia

With impeccable timing, The London Review of Books has put John Lanchester's superb essay Cityphilia (originally published in January) back on its home page.  If you haven't read it, you should.  You're unlikley to find a better analysis of the origins of the current financial crisis, and its implications for wider society.

Broken Society

Playwright David Edgar has an excellent piece in today's Guardian in which he reminds us it is the Tory policies of the 1980s that are responsible for the current crisis and for many of today's social problems.  He argues that Cameron's new Tories should not be allowed to escape responsibility, even if new Labour could have done much more to repair the damage.

Good riddance

This piece by the always excellent Chris McGreal in today's Guardian explains why the resignation of Thabo Mbeki is long overdue.  Like many though, I fear it will take more than a change of leader for South Africa to escape its current predicament.  The country is a perfect example of how economic growth can do absolutely nothing for society, if its fruits are not widely distributed.

The few who knew

Former Labour leadership contender Bryan Gould - one of the few successful politicians of recent times whom, having experienced the sham of national politics first hand, threw it in and returned to his original career - has this very good piece on the inevitability of the current crisis and the naivety/stupidity of those, like Alan Greenspan, who apparently never saw it coming.

As Gould says,

This is a crisis that has been thirty years in the making. Its approaching outline has been visible for a very long time. Only those who did not want to see (and that includes almost all the so-called expert commentators and actors in the drama) could have failed to register the warning signs.

It really is as much a question of psychology as economics.

A new model of the economy

I have a new piece up at Comment is Free this afternoon.  It takes a look at possible long term solutions to the financial crisis through the ideas outlined in an excellent new book by Brian Hodgkinson.  As the Guardian summarises in its standfirst:

Left and right, economists have been suffering from a shortage of new ideas. But that may be about to change.

I think this book could make a major contribution to building a more just and equitable society.  I recommend it wholeheartedly, and am pleased to report that the publishers, Shepheard-Walwyn are making it available to readers of this blog at a considerable discount.

Click here to take advantage of this offer.

Financial meltdown

As someone who has been predicting the economic and financial chaos that we are now witnessing for a number of years, it's rather difficult to know what to say now it's finally upon us.

To be honest, I didn't think it would quite as catastrophic as it has turned out, although my gut feeling was always that as the financial markets became ever more complex and globally interdependent, then the inevitable crash could only get bigger.

It's fascinating to read a million and one commentators give their opinion.  Suddenly we are all experts on short-selling.  But all this attention to the detail and intricacies of the markets and the various instruments that have been devised solely to allow traders and fund managers to make more money for themselves and their wealthy clients should not distract us from the real problem: that a financial system that makes its central focus the generation of unearned wealth from speculative trading of shares and securities that has nothing to do with the real economy needs replacing with a system which supports the economy in a way that promotes the interests of all citizens and of wider society. 

Reform is not enough; we need to replace the system with one that works, and to do that we need a thorough reassessment of the underlying economic theory on which the whole fragile edifice is built.

A fair deal on land reform?

I have a new piece over at Comment is Free, looking at the situation with land reform in South Africa.

The nice people at the Guardian cut the original version (it was a bit long).  For anyone interested, here it is.

The longer version makes mention of the fact that, unlike most countries, South Africa has been levying a partial tax on land values for many years; a practice that has now been outlawed.

Cake and eat it capitalism

This piece by Larry Elliott in yesterday's Guardian on the nationalisation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae perfectly describes the hypocrisy of the current economic system, and those who support it.

As Elliot says,

If ever there was a time to bring in controls on the ability of banks to create unlimited amounts of credit, to restrict the more toxic forms of derivatives, to rein in the activities of hedge funds, to insist that remuneration structures are not biased in favour of reckless speculation, and to use anti-trust law to break up the power of the big institutions then this, surely, is it.

But as he correctly points out, no one, from Gordon Brown to Barack Obama is making the right noises.  Surely we can't let the interests of elite wealth and privilege off the hook again, while taxpayers pick up the tab?

ps: for anyone who, like me, intensely dislikes the use of ghastly American nicknames to describe some of the largest financial institutions in the world, their real names are: the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie) and Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie).

On holiday

Just in case you're trying to contact me, I'm on holiday, in Italy; and yes, it's great, thanks.

Back 1st September.

Clare Short tells it like it is

Clare Short, whom I had the pleasure of meeting when she attended my book launch a couple of years ago, sums up perfectly the woes of the Labour Government in this piece in today's Independent.  She's absolutely right about what needs to happen, but, of course, it won't.

Sack David Miliband

Gordon Brown has, of course, made a complete fist of things since he became Prime Minister.  On almost every count he has proved a massive disappointment to anyone who believes in the possibility of progressive social change and a more just world.  But that's not why he's struggling so badly in the polls.

Brown's problem is his inability and/or unwillingness to communicate with the electorate and the media in the way politicians need to if they are to be successful; and his failure to recognise the power of the bold gesture in politics.

But he now has an opportunity to start the process of saving his Prime Ministership: he should sack David Miliband.  In terms of the qualities required to be elected Prime Minister, the only thing Miliband has in common with David Cameron in relative youth.  He has yet to say anything meaningful about his principles or beliefs, or about how he would tackle the many and serious problems facing British and global society.

Not only is he Cameron-lite, he is also Brown-lite; the difference is, we know Brown does have principles, and does have a vision for society; he just lacks the capacity to make these qualities work for him in the New Labour/New Tory world of politics bequeathed us by Tony Blair.

Before he became PM, people were looking forward to Brown finding a way to cut through the crap, and reinvent politics as a reality-connected activity in which what politicians think and say means something to ordinary people.  There is still time.  Come on Gordon, assert yourself.  You must have been as sickened as I was, yesterday, to see Miliband swaggering down the street, jacket over his shoulder, lapping up the media attention having declared himself PM in waiting.  Sack him today!

The benefits of class

There's an excellent piece by Andrew Martin in today's Guardian on the consequences of the assault on our previously class-based society; many of which are negative.  As Andrew points out, when the only measure of success in life is wealth, many of the more noble values held by the privileged classes of earlier generations are lost.  Without class, it seems, we are all less classy; and that is not a good thing.

Oy Oy Oyster

It seems that London's automated travel payment system, Oyster, has today suffered another severe technical break down, resulting in thousands of commuters having to be waved through open barriers and thus gaining free travel.

Good for them, but this is the second time in a month that this has happened, although last time it was worse, with thousands of Londoners suffering data corruption on their oyster cards.

Now I might be wrong about this, but I don't remember this happening before.  The system was introduced by former mayor Ken Livingstone, who, untypically for a politician, clearly knew what it takes to get complex technology-driven systems up and running without too much fuss.

Is it a coincidence that the Oyster system has crashed only since Boris Johnson took over as mayor?  I'm not suggesting a Phd in systems engineering is a prerequisite to running London, but you do, at the very least, have to understand that you need the right people in the right jobs if a large and complex city like London is to run smoothly.

Ken this week announced his intention to run again in 2012.  Many more screw ups like this, and the people of London might just be happy to have him back.

Obama plays hardball

On his tour of Europe and the Middle East Barack Obama has been making all the right noises as far as getting elected in November is concerned.  On Tuesday he went out of his way to make clear that "the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon".

Although he said he wished to see "a viable and peaceful Palestinian state",  he was at his most forthright when he said "I will take no options off the table in dealing with this potential Iranian threat", thus aligning himself with a policy that even senior figures in the Bush administration now appear to be having second thoughts about.

Now, I didn't assume for one minute that Obama was a fundamentally different kind of politician; although in many ways he is a breath of fresh air.  You don't get almost to the top of the greasy pole of American politics without being hard as nails, and without being willing to sacrifice whatever principles you started out with in pursuit of electoral success.

But it would be good to know what Obama really thinks and feels about issues like the Middle East; and, assuming he is inclined towards a more balanced view on the Israel/Palestine question than is usual for senior (ie successful)  American politicians, whether he has a plan, post-election, to rekindle a peace process that is effectively dead in the water.

My bet is that, although a man of substance and intellect, like nearly all politicians today, Obama has no principled position on this issue (or indeed any other).  What he may have is a general sense that the long term interests of the United States are best served by a more collaborative and inclusive foreign policy than that practiced by the current administration, but you can be sure that the degree of inclusiveness will be determined by electoral realities. 

Obama will do and say whatever it takes to get elected, and in the process will commit himself to policies, and to relationships with vested interests, in the United States and elsewhere, that have little to do with genuine democracy.   That process has already begun.  Hawks in the Israeli administration will be breathing a sigh of relief.  Decent Israelis, who long for a just peace with the Palestinians, and, of course, the Palestinians themselves, would appear to have little to get excited about at the prospect of an Obama White House.

Behaviour as old as the hills

The always sound Martin Jacques has a very good piece at comment is free on power, the hypocrisy of the Western nations' stance on Iran's potential nuclear capability, and the bias of the International Criminal Court when it comes to policing war crimes.

A civilised society?

Last night's Channel 4 documentary on adult illiteracy was shaming.  More than 5 million adults in the UK cannot neither read or write, victims of an education system which has clearly been filing a sizeable minority of those who pass through it for decades.

While it was exceptionally moving to see remarkable teacher Phil Beadle make real progress with the adult students who enrolled on his course, the damning discovery that the materials on offer from the government  to help with adult literacy were woefully inadequate, gave even greater cause for despair.

An educated population is the cornerstone of a civilised society, and literacy is the foundation of education.  On the basis of last night's first episode of Can't Read, Can't Write, we have no right to call our society civilised.

Consistently inconsistent

Two indications that summer has finally arrived in the UK:  It's warm and sunny - no doubt by the end of the week we'll be in the midst of heatwave of which we ungrateful Brits will complain as vociferously as we do about the more typical lack of warmth - and the England cricket teams is once again performing like a bunch of one-legged budgerigars.

After an early season series win over a poor New Zealand side, word was that England would come unstuck against the recently much improved proteas.  And so it has come to pass.  For the first two days of the Lord's test, England batted well, albeit on a (very) flat pitch.  But they then failed to bowl out South Africa taking just three wickets in the last two days. For those of you not well-versed in test match cricket, that's twelve hours of play.

As I write, England are one wicket away from an innings defeat in the second test at Headingly, having been comprehensively outplayed in every department.

So why are England so consistently inconsistent.  It's not just at cricket that we fail to live up to expectations and to deliver the kind of team performance of which such a good (on paper) collection of individuals should be capable; the same happens routinely on the soccer and rugby fields.

We Brits seem to have lost the ability to excel at team sports.  Our football teams may do well in Europe, but then they field very few home grown players.

The two sports at which we are currently able to punch above our weight are golf - look how many Brits (including the amateur, Chris Wood) did well in the Open at Royal Birkdale which concluded yesterday, and cycling, in which we are phenomenal.  And these are both individual rather than team events.  On the other hand, we perform very badly at tennis, compared, for example, with the French.

I don't have an explanation for these continuing failures - especially those on the cricket field - but it is getting a little tedious.  The Australians are back next year, and a home whitewash is surely on the cards.

ps: thanks to Stuart Broad, at least South Africa are having to bat again, but with just nine runs required, it hardly seems worth the bother.

Film of the week: Savage Grace

I didn't really enjoy this film, indeed if it hadn't been based on a true story, I would have thought it rather a poor effort despite good performances from Julianne Moore and, particularly, Stephen Dillane, as well as some excellent period design.

If it is a true account - and there is some cause for doubt as one of the surviving characters has gone on record as saying several of the more extreme events depicted have no basis in reality - then it's a shocking portrait of the one of the most dysfunctional society families I have come across.

I think the film probably tells us more about the corrupting influence of wealth and privilege than the causes and consequences of family dysfunction.  Frustratingly, it says nothing at all about the links between privilege and social pathology.

Phillip French though it good, while Peter Bradshaw called it "gripping, coldly brilliant and tremendously acted movie".  For me, it's just about worth seeing.  Unusually, for a film depicting dreadful trauma and psychological anguish, it left me feeling weirdly unemotional.

Until we are adult enough ...

These words from the concluding paragraph of Rachel North's excellent piece on knife crime in today's Independent could, of course, apply to all manner of social problems. 

We need, collectively, to outgrow the assumption that life and society is necessarily competitive and, therefore, inevitably sometimes violent, before we can successfully address the pointless waste of young people's lives on the streets of London and elsewhere.

None of them get it

Works and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, today attacks the Tories for misunderstanding the causes of poverty, and therefore having no chance of tackling it, if and when they form the next government.

I think he's right about the Tories, but his claims for his own party ring a little hollow after ten years in which the Labour government has set out to reinforce precisely those aspects of the economy which are guaranteed to encourage a growing gap between the haves and have-nots, and leave those at the very bottom with no hope of improvement.

I’m not sure politicians from any the main parties are genuinely interested in creating an economic context conducive to poverty reduction; if they were, they would surely take notice of the evidence that  putting all your economic policy eggs in the basket of economic growth doesn't lead to any reduction in poverty given the way the economy is currently configured.

Redistributing money from rich to poor was only ever a sticking-plaster on the open sore of endemic poverty. Only a redistribution of access to economic opportunities and the assets (land and capital) that make them viable, will bring an end to poverty. No politician, anywhere, is prepared to accept this simple truth.

Leonard Cohen: Genius

As you may have noticed, this blog has been rather quiet of late.  I blame a combination of blogger apathy and a careless loss of control over my work/life balance.  In this equation, I count writing as life, and the day job which pays the mortgage, as work.  So, I've been waiting for something special to get me writing again, and last night, at the O2, that something special happened.

The last time I saw Leonard Cohen on stage was when he took a hysterically applauded bow at the end of Philip Glass’s musical rendering of his collection of poems, The Book of Longing, at the Barbican last year.  On that occasion, many Cohen fans, apparently misled by the publicity, left early, once they realised the great man’s contribution on the night was limited to his recorded voice. 

Last night at the O2, 18,000 fans finally got the chance, after a 16 year absence, to see the great man ply his trade on a London stage.  And what a performance it was.

Having wowed a new generation of fans at Glastonbury a couple of weeks ago, and with every performance on his current world tour garnering five star reviews, expectations couldn’t have been higher.  Not that Cohen showed any signs of pressure as he jogged onto stage and, once prolonged applause subsided, went straight into Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Cohen’s remarkable voice was as beautiful as ever.  Once reviewer dared suggest that his live performances were sometimes too close to the studio recordings.  But this is to miss his subtleties of interpretation and timing.  He is the perfect live performer.  And over four decades he has built up an unmatched repertoire.  By the time he began Sisters of Mercy (third or fourth encore?) I couldn’t believe, after so many great songs, he still had such a classic left to play.

But last night was not just about Cohen.  His collaborator, Sharon Robinson, has one of the finest female voices I’ve ever heard.  With Robinson and the Webb Sisters, Charley and Hattie, Cohen has assembled the best backing vocal line-up imaginable.  Indeed, he seems to have persuaded some of the finest musicians in the world to join his band.  All were superb: Javier Mas on 12-string guitar and Dino Soldo on sax, harmonica and the weird synth-type wind instrument which Cohen appropriately calls ‘The Instrument of Wind’ were especially good, but for me Neil Larsen on the Hammond B3 stood out.  It’s my favourite instrument and Larsen plays it superbly.

Much has been written about the reasons for Cohen embarking on a world tour well into his seventies, a decade and a half after retiring.  While one can only have sympathy for the way he was ripped off by his former lover/manager; had he not so suffered, thousands of people would have been denied the opportunity to see a true master of his craft, at the peak of his powers.   I try to avoid hyperbole wherever possible, but I don’t remember ever enjoying a concert quite as much as I did last night.

The full set list, courtesy of Gerry Smith, is available here. And the London Evening Standard review is here.

And here he is singing Closing Time on the current tour:

After Henley

It was fascinating, after such a long break, to hear Tony Blair on the Today Programme this morning.  AS you will know I'm no great fan of his, but this morning he reminded us of the qualities a politician needs to survive. Qualities he was able to acquire in spade loads, while his successor, presumably, had his head buried in books.

Blair was typically diplomatic when pressed on what Gordon Brown should be doing to turn his fortunes around. He wasn’t going to be bounced into giving advice over the airwaves; though it's difficult to imagine quite what advice he could give, even in private.

He was at pains to point out that Brown is to some extent the victim of circumstance. If Blair had had to deal with Northern Rock, the credit crunch, record oil prices and the prospect of stagflation in his first year in charge, he too would have found his honeymoon rapidly curtailed. But he would also have made a better fist of persuading the electorate to trust him, and that things would turn out alright in the end. And, however unrealistic those assurances might have been, they would have satisfied enough people to stave off the kind of unprecedented electoral meltdown that Labour suffered at Henley last night.

And, of course, Blair could have sacked his chancellor. One of his cleverest tactics as PM was to spread the idea that he had little understanding of economics; and that it was therefore sensible to leave responsibility for the economy entirely in the hands of the man next door.

Blair’s grasp of economics may have been patchy, but I suspect he was at least aware of one enduring truth: that in economics, what goes around comes around. While Brown was boasting that he had achieved what none of his predecessors had managed, and cracked the secret of the boom-bust economic cycle – an idiotic claim that sections of the media and academia were grossly negligent in their failure to question – Blair kept his counsel.

As I wrote here just before Brown became prime minister, with his rather unbelievable apparent naivety of  economic realities, he spent most of his time at the Treasury setting himself up for a massive fall. Nonetheless, Blair is correct to suggest that his successor is to some extent a victim of circumstance. That circumstance is globalisation, or rather the way in which the process of economic globalisation has removed from politicians most of the traditional tools of economic policy. Their hands are now tied in ways that those of earlier generations of policy makers never were.

According to Blair, therefore, we should cut Brown some slack. But whenever politicians talk of the new global economic context it's as if that context has mysteriously emerged from undetectable cosmic dust particles, and been foisted upon governments while their backs were turned. Nothing could be further from the truth. This new and troublesome context is the direct result of a purposeful project that began with Reagan and Thatcher, and has been consolidated, largely by governments of the so-called centre-left, in the years since.

That process of consolidation continues each time a senior minister makes a speech calling on us to celebrate the growth in the number of millionaires. And it continues each time the former prime minister ask us to look kindly upon his struggling successor, while conveniently ignoring the fact that neither of them have ever seen fit to question any aspect of the economic revolution of the last three decades.

Brown is a poor politician; and while the electorate is unlikely to forgive him that, I can. What lost him my support was his failure to understand that a just society can never emerge until governments recognise the social consequences of the economic changes of the last three decades, and have the courage to strike out in a quite different direction.

Who really governs?

The consistently excellent Prem Sikka has this piece over at Comment is Free this afternoon, in which laments the current state of democracy and the rising power of corporations:

As he concludes,

The taxation debate is indicative of a deepening crisis of democracy. Public confidence in parliamentary democracy will continue to be eroded until the power of corporations is checked. Normal people pay a large share of their income in taxes, but the political structures are unduly influenced by corporations and their controllers. They seem to enjoy representation with little or no taxation. The choice is clear: we can have either democracy and public accountability or rampant corporate power with enormous private wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few business executives, but not both.

Never a truer word ....

Alien justice

I have a piece over at Comment is Free.  This one is a review of John Stewart's new novel, Visitors.

Radical solutions

I have a new piece over at Comment is Free now, which you can read here.

It's a response to Aditya Chakrobortty's challenge to progressives to do better in their response to the current economics crisis.

Blogging fatigue?

I was reading something yesterday about the number of US bloggers dropping dead on the job.  Nothing so serious here, I'm happy to report, but I am struggling to find the time to blog regularly at present. Normally service should be resumed in the not to distant future.

Arthur C. Clarke - visionary and storyteller

 Arthur C. Clarke died today.  One of my favourite writers, his books were an important part of my literary and political formation.   In marrying the possibilities of science with ideas around the possibility of a world in which human beings might one day live in harmony, Clarke was a great visionary.  He blurred the lines between fiction and reality with great success, despite setting most of his stories in a future which most people find fantastic.

Whenever I have that (all too familiar) conversation with people who just don't get science fiction I try to persuade them to read Clarke's Childhood's End; a book I would recommend to anyone not familiar with his work.

A keynesian Cure?

As you will know if you've read any of the articles listed in the left hand column of this page, I am not a Keynesian.  That is to say I don't believe a return to the Keynes-inspired fiscal polices that served western society so well in the decades after 1945, could deliver social justice today.

Keynesianism is a pretty good method for dealing with the failure of an unregulated market economy - one which inherently favours the already wealthy  - to provide an equitable distribution of economic opportunities and resources.  But it is a sticking plaster; and for anyone committed to the principle of social justice, an admission of failure.  Advocating a Keynesian approach is to say, 'well we can't do anything about root causes or the structural failings that promote injustice, so let's just try to alleviate the worst symptoms without screwing up the economy too much'.

The question remains, however, that if no progress is being made in respect of root causes, is there a short-term, stop-gap role for Keynes-based policies?  Having read this piece by Austin Mitchell MP (old Labour) in Monday's Independent, I'm beginning to think there is.

As Mitchell says, the problem with private investment is that its biggest impact is asset inflation: making the things owned by people who hold assets (like land) worth more, while doing nothing to produce more of the goods, or create more of the economic opportunities, which are needed by people at the poorer end of society.

As Polly Toynbee reminds us in today's Guardian, for all the faults (and they are many and considerable) the Labour government does still seem keen to do something about child poverty.  And it can only get anywhere near its vaunted targets by following a more Keynesian agenda.

Of course it's no long-term substitute for tackling the crazy foundations of the current (un)free market economy: the private appropriation of economic rent, allowing privately owned banks to create money at will, and allowing surplus cash that should be used for much needed investment in trade and manufacturing to be used as casino chips on global financial markets.  But it's worth a second look.  Especially with the global economy poised on the brink of recession.  The usual argument against a return to Keynesianism is that it would spark massive and damaging capital flight.  But with economic conditions as they currently are, that capital would not find many welcoming destinations at present.