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Poverty and simplicity
'I don’t accept their claim that “the Conservative Party is developing a
deeper understanding of the subject than New Labour has ever
manifested”. They argue that “Government policy revolves around a
simplistically defined poverty line”, but “measures of relative income
are… not sufficient” because there are “other important indicators of
deprivation” that the Government ignores.'
Posted by Tom Freeman on Freemania, December 20 at 10:20am
Attack of the clones
'I am already having trouble telling the difference ... '
Posted by Luke Akehurst, December 19 at 10:29am
The difference between halving child poverty and doing nice things
'In 1999, a prime minister not noted for bold visionary statements made
a visionary statement. In the Beveridge Lecture, delivered on 18 March
1999, Tony Blair committed his government to abolishing child poverty
within 20 years.'
Posted by Antonia Bance, December 17 at 11:00pm
Social mobility is not what Labour should be about
'There has been a lot of comment in the last year on the “failure” of
Labour to increase social mobility. Except I don’t think it is a
failure at all.'
Posted on Could have been a contender, December 15
The topsy -turvy world of politics continues, with week-end headlines about Cameron making a "progressive alliance" offer to the Lib Dems and the publication on Wednesday of a new Tory pamphlet by Greg Clark MP and Jeremy Hunt MP entitled Who's Progressive Now, Why the Conservatives Offer the Best Hope for Progressive Politics.
It's easy for our side to ridicule these Tory attempts to steal our clothes but it would be foolish to underestimate the attraction of their latest message for the more decent elements of the population. As Clark and Hunt say in their Observer commentary on their tract (click here) "A progressive society also recognises the value of non-material goals. Cameron has repeatedly spoken of society's sense of general wellbeing and has maintained a sustained focus on social and environmental concerns. Initially this was derided as Tory cynicism eating itself...but as the progressive Conservative vision has taken shape, such criticism has become difficult to sustain." In the leafy marginals lofty appeals of this nature could well swing the vote and hence the election.
So how should we react to the new Tory agenda? The knee-jerk response of course is to list Tory transgressions against the progressive principle and make light of what they are saying by denying any talk of a "social recession" and dismissing Cameron's references to wellbeing as some kind of New Age quackery (akin to Cherie's aberrations). However the more astute response is to use The Tories' arguments on this matter against them.
As I pointed out in my previous post current discontents and the intractability of social and environmental ills have more to do with the market culture that pervades our society than government policies. It is advertising and marketing ploys that are encouraging excessive forms of behaviour, whether this be acquiring too much debt, binge-drinking, over-eating or over-consuming generally. It is the car industry that is creating our environmentally harmful obsession with the car and the sex industry that is creating our relationship damaging obsession with sex. It is a market-driven media that is responsible for young girls rating how they look as more important than how intelligent they are. And it is the rat- race for riches that is causing so much stress and mental illness.
The answer is not to give even greater free rein to market forces as the Tories would have us do but to rein these forces back where appropriate as New Labour are trying to do. Countering the seductive and insideous influences of the market cannot just be a matter for "the family" or for "the charities"or of giving "more power to the people" since, where nothing else changes, they will all continue to be overwhelmed by the tidal wave of market pressures. Nor in a secular society can it be done by "the church" as was done (to some extent) in the old days.
No, the only sufficient countervailing force to the enormous strength of today's market culture is the state. Only the state has the power to enable us to resist rampant consumerism. This it can do by building on and extending the interventions that have already been made to address many of our social and environmental ills, supplemented by a redirection of our education system to prioritise social and environmental goals over economic ones.
By emphasising how a progressive society can only be attained through this kind of state intervention we can mark up the essential difference between our and our opponents' approach and turn Tory efforts to claim the moral high ground in this vital area into a massive own goal.
The clash of cultures that exists at the heart of the EU is between the French way of doing things and the British way. One is the culture of Centralisation, the other, the culture of Diversification. It’s not that one way is better than the other, they’re not. They are just different, but it is important to understand how they are different in order to understand how we go forward.
The way to explain the difference between the French and British way of doing things, is to look at a typically mundane piece of public policy and observe the approach of the two countries. The example I will use is Domestic Recycling.
In France, the whole country puts out their recycling using the same system. The recycling bags are a different colour for glass, paper and plastic. This ensures that wherever you are, you know how to do your recycling. Centralisation makes life simple.
The British choose not to impose a central system upon the people, for fear that central planning will quash the inventiveness of policy makers and service providers. This means that each of the 600 Local Authorities across the country have adopted their own system for recycling. If you go to stay in a different part of the country, or even, another London Borough, you will find a different system that you are unfamiliar with and you will become confused. This is bad for recycling, since the ease of recycling is proportionate to the amounts of rubbish that get recycled.
However, because of the lack of central control, the diversity model allows the system to change and adapt. In Britain, a new processing-plant invention came along. All the rubbish is chucked on a conveyorbelt, and lasers identify which item is plastic, glass, and paper. Then jets of air fire the plastic into one hopper, the glass into another and the paper into its own hopper. So councils began to request that households put out just one bag containing all recycling, rather than separating it. This is a better way, since the ease of recycling is proportionate to the amounts of rubbish that get recycled. So the Diversity model adapts.
This is not a devolution argument. I’m not talking about local or national government. It’s simply a question of when it is appropriate for policy makers to micromanage or not. A good example of Centralised and Diversified policy existing side by side is in British Education policy. The National Curriculum is imposed by National government, yet schools are given incentives for their management to opt out of government control through the Grant Maintained policy. So the curriculum policy is Centralised but the management policy is Diversified. So the British recognise when it is useful to Centralise.
The different philosophies affect wider policy. The French wish to centralise makes a smaller Europe more desirable, since centralisation becomes increasingly burdensome the larger the community. The British desire to diversify tends to encourage an expanded community, since diversity, by its nature, has no boundaries.
The current predicament of wavering between the Centralised and Diversified systems does tend to cause confusion and fudge. We end up with a constitution that’s really just a tidying up exercise. A free market, with massive subsidies. A diplomatic unity, that can be divided by the will of a single southern African dictator. We need to decide when it is appropriate for Centralisation and when is it appropriate for Diversification, before we can counter the bigger threats facing the European Union.
Dan McCurry practices as a Solicitor in East London
Welcome to the first edition of a weekly series, a round-up of Progress' favourite blogs from the past week ...
Jeffrey Archer Watch: Theatre
'Jeffrey's been to the theatre this week, and had this to say: "Pantomime villains can often over-play the role, but he
gave a beautifully understated performance of a thoroughly evil and
unpleasant man."'
Posted by Lloyd Shepherd on Westmonster, 13 Dec 2007 at 4:40pm
Gilding the Lilly
'The Tory think tank, The Policy Exchange is under fire from Newsnight.
At stake, specifically, is the credibility of their recent report, the Hijacking of British Islam.'
Posted by david t on Harry's Place, 13 Dec 2007 at 12:15pm
am i a lib dem'r?
'I was never really an Old Labour man. I became politicised during the
age of Blair. Although, more than most, I have always been interested
and aware of politics and current affairs. I remember a Christmas quiz
at school and I was the only one (we were about 14 or 15-years old) who
knew that the leader of the opposition was one Neil Kinnock. I was
astonished, but it does prove that political apathy was around even
when the divisive Maggie was in Number 10.'
Posted on Tygerland, 11 Dec 2007 at 08:03 pm
NotW Gay Horror!
'I had the misfortune to read the News of the World on the train home
yesterday and was quite offended by an article about the Spice Girls.'
Posted on Recess Monkey, 10 Dec 2007 at 1:51pm
The Decade That Taste Forgot
'Liam Byrne says that we are not a nation of Alf Garnetts. All this in a week when Martin Amis and Morrissey have had their own brushes with controversy on related issues ... '
Posted by Rupa Huq, December 6, 2007
In a week when Ed Balls clearly been busy he has hailed the Spice Girls suitable role models for the nation’s young women as they embark on a comeback tour. He is quoted as saying “They work hard, they are clean-living and they were about girl-power”. An outraged reaction has ensued from certain rightward quarters. The News of the World has rejected the secretary of state’s charge as “A Load of Balls” raging against “a catalogue of bad behaviour which would horrify most parents”. Their objections include eating disorders, failed marriage, flirtations with lesbianism and two children born out of wedlock. Yet this seems a dangerously out of touch reaction to reality. Apart from the blatant homophobia on display which flies in the face of the repeal of section 28 and introduction of civil partnerships, surely many parents would recognise aspects of their own lives in this list: indeed such fallibility makes the Spice Girls thoroughly modern mums.
Scratch beneath the surface and not everyone has a fairytale marriage, not all mums are bringing up their kids in circumstances they envisaged at the start of the adventure. People are not all leading the perfect nuclear family centred linear lives of the parenting mags that crowd the shelves of WHSmiths. Influential German sociologist Ulrich Beck has talked of “post-traditional families”.
He has stated: “Even parenthood, the core of family life, is beginning to disintegrate under conditions of divorce. Families can be constellations of very different relationships. Take, for example, the way grandmothers and grandfathers are being multiplied by divorce and remarriage (without any genetic engineering).” This is not theory; it’s fact. Beck also talks about labour market shifts and the balancing act that flexible working brings. The Spice Girls as working mums exemplify all of the above. They are fortunate enough to have been able to take a crèche on tour demonstrates how they are thoroughly modern mums.
Spice Girl support from Balls, a Gordon Brown ally and minister seen by many as his master’s voice, is in itself interesting. This is a band who burst onto the musical-scene proclaiming their adherence to Thatcherism. Exactly 11 years ago the Spectator Christmas edition ran an interview where they asserted that Thatcher was the original Spice Girl prototype. Victoria pre-Beckham declared “Major [is] a boring pillock. But compared to the rest, he’s far better. We’d never vote Labour.” Other views espoused were virulent Euro-scepticism and fears of losing the British identity in a single currency. The article made waves at the time which also ushered in the era of Britpop . Throughout the 1997 General Election party leaders were asked to name all the Spice band members. Blair was shaky at the start of the campaign but with some coaching on the election trail was able to reel them fluently off by the end.
Tellingly the 1996 Spectator interview saw the Spice Girls making pronouncements of families in flux. Lead-singer Geri (now a single mum and UN goodwill ambassador) is quoted as saying “The old-fashioned Victorian family of 2.4 kids is dead forever. But every child needs one decent parent. They must learn honest, openness about sex and tolerance.”
Again this chimes with academic theories of de-traditionalisation and individualisation that have been ground-breaking in twentieth century sociology and beyond. In a pre-New Labour age when Major extolled the virtues of Victorian values, the Spice Girls’ depiction of family values contradicted his cultural canutism and prefigured changes that have continued throughout the twentyfirst century.
The Spice Girls’ union jackery fitted with the prevailing zeitgeist of Cool Britannia which began as a good idea in theory (updating the stuffy image of hidebound Britain) and ended as just toe-curlingly embarrassing. The most noteworthy development British politics since this moment is the advent of the third way and a post-ideological period. It’s unimaginable that the Spice Girls’ 1996 statements would be uttered by any of the current crop of UK pop personnel – contemporary pop like today’s politics is less polarised that in the past.
Jon Cruddas has argued that the Labour/Conservative duopoly is now more Pepsi and Coke than a serious battle between opposing ideas. This post-idelogical shift was discernable when Labour-leaning think tanks in the 90s were advocating identifying with “quality of life” issues rather than a comprehensive programme of nationalisation. The politically restricted unions now offer members cut-price insurance rather than bringing down the government. Yet softer issue-based politics are frequently ill-defined. Women’s issues for example need to be recognised as integral in all areas of decision-making rather than an add-on for the manifesto often reduced to childcare alone.
The demise of polarising politics has also coincided with less interesting pop-stars and the demise of one-time staples of the pop industry Smash Hits and Top of the Pops who fed off personalities mouthing off in interview and on-song. Yes we might have Pete Docherty and Amy Winehouse today but no-one knows their opinions on anything. Their bad behaviour antics make them cartoon characters who provide endless tabloid copy via picture-driven headlines. They are not however the sort of pop-stars of who are capable of generating column inches from the Murdoch mouthpieces for their opinions. For such specimens one must reach to relics from further back in pop-time when pop equated with singles, albums and gigs as opposed to downloads, ringtones and social networking; to the Spice Girls and dear old Morrissey .
With tales of the back-from-the-dead canoeist dominating the tabloid press as the year ends 2007 seems to have been the year of the comeback. The Police, Take That and Led Zeppelin have all toured this year. Meanwhile the News of the World advises Balls, who knows a thing or two about parenting as dad of 3 with his fellow-minister wife Yvette Cooper, that he’d be better justified selecting the Sex Pistols as role-models for today’s youth. Let’s hope the Spice Girls and other 2007 comeback acts keep it special and are not tempted to emulate the hackneyed Pistols regular reunions where gig-goers are patronisingly treated to the pantomime dame Johnny Lydon (nee Rotten) taunting the crowd with his old catch-phrase “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Now that really is what I call a poor show.
I’m not sure what Andrew Marr would make of Peter Wilby’s reflections on his trade in yesterday’s Media Guardian. According to the former New Statesman editor, ‘journalism needs a social category all of its own’ since:
it is not a profession (no esoteric knowledge) nor a skill (many hacks, including me, don't have shorthand) nor a working-class occupation (no manual labour).
Wilby labels journalists as the ‘unskilled middle class’. He backs up this rather odd assessment with quotes from Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi who recently said: ‘If you have no real knowledge or skill set…and you're lazy and full of shit but you want to make a decent wage, then journalism's not a bad career option.”
Taibbi’s assessment of the trade makes for memorable copy but is wrong on a number of counts. The idea that journalists ‘have no real knowledge’ would come as news to the hundreds of correspondents with a specific beat – from the environment to finance to home affairs – who regularly digest the latest reports from government and academics and produce clear copy explaining complex ideas. Some of them even write books.
And as for journalism being a lazy person’s way to ‘make a decent wage’, he’d do well to meet a group of hacks for a drink and time how long it takes until the topic of conversation moves onto how underpaid they are. Magazines and newspapers know they can get away with paying low wages since there is never a shortage of eager arts graduates looking for their first break. That’s why so many move into PR, where they receive much larger sums to write corporate press releases.
Just because Taibbi is full of shit, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all journalists are.
The Centre for Cities, the thinktank recently devolved from the ippr, has put out a report, saying that Aldershot might be the best place to live in Britain. They measured things like average earnings, employment rates and population growth.
So some papers (well, the Guardian) are hailing the rise of 'mini-cities' like Aldershot, Reading, York and Oxford. Big cities such as Liverpool and Glasgow fared much worse, with more working-age people out of work and, notably, more economic inequality.
Government adviser David Lock is also quoted as saying of mini-cities: "They are big enough to support an interesting cultural life, a lively
social life and a choice of schools, but they are small enough for
people to feel they might bump into a friend if they are out for a
night. Big cities are simply more lonely."
But the metropolitan snob in me simply can't accept that Aldershot is a desirable place to live. If Lock appears to be relying on anecdote, I can think of plenty of (admittedly quite dull) anecdotes where I bumped into someone on the tube, or around my area of north London. There's certainly enough 'sense of community' to go round in my local Turkish supermarket.
Talk of economic inequality is admittedly more worrying. But it's unsurprising, when high-tech employers like TAG, Nokia and Microsoft are setting up in Aldershot or Reading, attracting probably already quite well-off, skilled and mobile workers. This group generally doesn't include very poor Liverpudlians and Glaswegians. Or Russian oligarchs.
I'm reminded of the episode in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy where an alien planet successfully tricks its entire population of management consultants, telephone sanitizers and hairdressers into relocating to another world. The other parts of society waved them off, promising: "we'll catch you up ... !"
Thomas Friedman (New York Times) explains Arab tribalism with the example of 100 people, living in a desert, where a waterhole only provides enough for 50 people. It is natural for the tribe to split into two, and for each side to try to kill the other. I wish to push this scenario to its natural conclusion. An intriguing theory emerges, which I call Desert Culture.
If someone from our tribe kills someone in the other tribe, in Desert Culture this would be celebrated, as someone in our tribe would have room at the well, and would live. However, in Western Culture this would be murder, the worst crime of all.
If someone from our tribe kills ten people from their tribe, in Desert Culture this would be heroic. We would be writing folk songs. Ten of us will live. However, in western culture this would be genocide, the work of madmen.
If someone from our tribe killed 10 from the other tribe, knowing that he would give his own life on the mission, this would be the ultimate act of generosity. This is martyrdom in Desert Culture, but baffling in Western Culture, where life is sacrosanct.
The conflict that afflicts the Middle East is often described as a clash between the Western World and the Islamic World, but it has never made that much sense that a peaceful religion should be so embroiled in conflict. If the source of the conflict were Desert Culture, then the evidence does seem to make sense. "You love life and we love death," Al-Qaeda, 2004.
At a recent Progress event, Michael Bailey of Oxfam claimed that suicide bombers from Hamas are completely different to those from Al-Qaeda. I don’t agree. If we imagine a wannabe suicide bomber in Morocco, who has a contact in Hamas and a contact in Al-Qaeda, is it likely that he would choose to kill himself for Hamas, on the basis that he just cannot stomach what Al-Qaeda stand for?
"Desert Culture" does appear to be an interesting theory as to why the Middle East has been so persistently unstable over the last century. Certainly it seems better than the constant application of western standards to try to understand other peoples. Did the Palestinians really vote for Hamas as a protest vote against the corruption of Fatah? Or did they consider that if Hamas give their lives for us, they must be worthy of our vote?
Is the optimism of the west an essential element of all life on this planet, or is it uniquely us, who strive for utopia?
Desert Culture has no hope, because hope is a false sense of security. If your son is to journey across the desert tomorrow, he will die if the well is dry. Hope will not change this. So is Cherie Blair applying Western Culture when she considers that, "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress"?
In Desert Culture, you would not hang a photograph of a live person on your wall; for fear that the well tomorrow is dry. You would not show love for any person close to you. Why cause yourself suffering when tomorrow, inevitably, death will strike? In desert Culture we are reconciled to death, and with death, let all your love and all your emotions pour out, because in Desert Culture, death is the only thing safe and sure. Death is the only thing that can be relied on. That’s why Desert Culture loves death, while Western Culture loves life. Aren’t you glad you were born in the west?
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