Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Fatboy Spin
Please, please, please let Ed Balls win. It will annoy us all intently that such an odious twerp will be front and centre of British politics for five years, but I'm confident that he's the only candidate - and I mean the only one, including Burnham and Abbott - who will certainly cause Labour to win fewer seats than they currently have at the next election. It's a classic case of someone popular in the Party but who the public find nauseating (like Michael Foot, only chubbier, less eloquent and entirely unprincipled). His latest slimy backtracking from the manifesto he fought under is deeply revealing - freed from the burdens of office he feels liberated to promise no cuts of any kind - at a stroke prompting all kinds of disdainful Paxmanesque questioning. How would you explain this to the people of Britain, then, as their Prime Minister, when the bond markets caused havoc as our debt rocketed past £1.5 trillion - that's trillion with a 't' - and we had to be bailed out by the IMF again, this time with 50% cuts in your precious public spending? The official verdict would surely be "not ready for primetime".
Friday, 9 July 2010
What spaghetti sauce teaches us about choice
Malcolm Gladwell's insight on the world, courtesy of TED. Enjoy.
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Abuse from Labour - not surprised, but not bothered either
It's all gone a bit postal over at Lib Dem voice, where a thoughtful posing of the question, "why are Labour activists and MPs going so abusively nuts about the coalition?" has provoked a firestorm of claim and counterclaim about the coalition, between Labour supporters screaming blue murder that the coalition is a betrayal of Lib Dem voters, and that a deal has been done with the devil, and a naturally more modest but nonetheless defiant series of responses by Lib Dem activists who refuse to accept Labour's allegations that they're become the handmaidens to Darth Vader overnight.
In as much as I have a useful contribution to this debate, it is important to set the scene. Why? Because if any Labour activists genuinely want to know why Liberal Democrats have done what they've done, they need to understand the background with an open mind and a willingness to listen.
First, I came into politics because of Thatcher - not because I supported her government, but out of opposition to it. The Tories in the 80s were fairly despicable, and it seemed to me that they cared more for money than people. I was only a kid when the miners' strike happened, when her government seemed determined to break the unions and make 3 million people unemployed, yet it was the poll tax which marked my political awakening. Despite all the attempts to justify it, an 80% rebate still leaves the poorest having to pay 20%. As far as I can see, charging taxes on people who have nothing is corrupt, especially when they get flung in jail or denied their right to vote when they can't. On the day Thatcher resigned, I jumped for joy, despite only being fifteen years old. I bought a copy of Elvis Costello's Tramp The Dirt Down, and sung it with gusto and despair.
But we remember what happened next, don't we? Much of recent political history seems to want to skip over the early and mid-1990s, but we shouldn't airbrush it so quickly. Don't forget, the Tories stumbled on for six-and-a-half years after Thatcher. Of course, by the end they were fairly useless, and after Black Wednesday, the pit closures, the Maastricht Euro rebels forcing a vote of confidence, back-to-basics, cash-for-questions, BSE, the Scott inquiry, rail privatisation, the "tartan tax" straw man, and Major having to resign the leadership of his own Party to assert his own authority, it seemed only humane to put them out of their misery. But however useless and comically split they were, they didn't try to take it out on poor people any more. They stopped the poll tax, and concentrated on more benign stuff like the cones hotline and citizens' charter. People laughed at the Major government, and took pity on them, but they were not evil. And the only scandal the Government got involved in was the Matrix Churchill/arms-to-Iraq stuff, which remains a superb case study of the failures of the British system of Government. Even cash-for-questions gave us odious individuals, such as Neil Hamilton, but not victimisation of the people. No, for that we had to await the full glory of New Labour.
On 2 May 1997, along with many others who were not Labour supporters, I walked around with a song in my heart as the sun shone and the Tories were sent packing. Yet, for those who do not follow Labour blindly, the reality almost immediately kicked in. For every bright spot (devolution, human rights, banning landmines, a minimum wage), there was a massive piece of grit which didn't turn into a pearl, but made us all choke. Tory spending limits for two years. Centralised targets for everything for 13 years. Civil liberties crushed under a weight of jingoistic headlines in The Sun and Daily Mail. Billions upon billions spent trying to alleviate poverty or get unskilled young people into work, for incredibly dubious results, and dogs abuse for anyone who dared to question the motives, methods or effectiveness. More and more nuclear power stations. Means-testing everything. F***ing tax credits, with all the persecution of the poor b'stards who had been overpaid them. Spin. Alistair Campbell. ID cards. The 75p pension increase. The abolition of the 10p tax rate in an effort to confound the Tories, then all the furious backpedalling when they realised that it couldn't justify robbing the lowest earners to buy off the middle class. David Kelly, and stripping the BBC of its backbone and effectiveness because they reported the truth (and whatever Hutton said, I think Gilligan had it dead right). Most of all, the squandering of opportunity to create a better society with massive majorities and a groundswell of public will. And the ultimate betrayal: lying to the people and to Parliament to win support for an illegal, unjustified war so that hundreds of British servicemen and women and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would die in the desert because of a stupid American President's ego trip, and a British PM who was too timid to stand up to him. The denigration of all political debate. Blair. Brown. Mandelson (three times, FFS). Jack Straw. David Blunkett. Hazel Blears. Ed Balls. In fact, the lot of them. Just the thought of all the smug, self-satisfied tw@ts who sat round the New Labour Cabinet table for years makes me retch. Why? Because at the end of the day the Labour Government, despite their claims to stand up for the poor and the vulnerable, basically hated people, especially people who disagreed with them. By their actions, it's crystal clear that they certainly hated pensioners, liberals, teachers, ethnic minorities, soldiers, poor people and foreigners. And all they loved was money, celebrity, power for its own sake, good headlines, and themselves.
And of course it is the grotesque self-love of the average Labour MP which simply cannot allow them to accept or understand that they have been rejected (which they were, decisively). It does not compute. They feel they must have been cheated out of power: after all, the Tories didn't win either. So the real culprit must have been those progressive Judases.
Many Labour activists who are now up in arms are so inclined because they perceived the Lib Dem complaints about the Labour government to be complaints from those who were more "left" than Labour, and never thought for a moment that we would ally with (in their minds) the enemy. It was not criticism from the left, though - it was criticism from the more "sensible" than Labour. Yes, it pains me to say it, but having lived under a Tory government with massive majorities, and a Labour government with massive majorities, the only sensible conclusion is that (for different reasons, to be sure) they were both just as wretched as each other. And although the coalition we have is more Tory than I'd prefer, the presence of even a single Liberal Democrat makes it far, far more tolerable than the thought of Labour all over again.
We owe Labour nothing. Nothing at all. We hate what they did to our country's sense of fairness, freedom and respect for international law. Not because they don't care about the poor or vulnerable: most of them do. But they believe what they've done is helping, and that anything else is not. The reverse is much closer to the truth. And the whole country is better off not having these stupid self-satisfied bullies anywhere near any measure of responsibility for anything. So there is no sense of betrayal here. And if they still can't understand, the shorthand explanation for the coalition is simple: take a long, hard look at yourselves. And their sense of shame when you do that should tell them everything they need to know.
And they have the gall to blame us for cleaning up their mess. How dare they. Labour should stop for a moment and think about the poor and the vulnerable who they're ignoring - the children and grandchildren, some not even born yet, who would have to pay for years for the excesses of New Labour. Shame on them.
Now, all Governments get to be unpopular sooner or later. They're much more likely to lose friends than gain new ones: that's the cost of doing business. Yet the hurt, the betrayal and the anger over the New Labour years has not nearly subsided yet. In fact, Labour's behaviour in opposition so far has made it worse. There are genuinely good-hearted progressive people in the Labour movement, but their Party was taken over by an alien clique. When they realise that, and work towards addressing it, and they get more people to vote for them in an election as a result, we'd be happy to talk. But they must also learn that a coalition programme is not formed by taking 100% of the larger party's proposals and 0% of the other's, as seemed to be their assumption in May. If this whole episode puts them off voting reform, fine: they'll learn the hard way that First Past The Post is no friend to the left (the particular circumstances that led to 13 years of Labour had never been seen before, and are by no means certain to be repeated). But we should all fully expect it to take a long time before Labour realises all this: until then, they'll have plenty more opportunities to experience what the crappy end of opposition feels like, and how tiring it will eventually be for them to keep venting their spleens until there's an opportunity to find out if they're right, and if they can magically gain back the support of the five million supporters they've lost since 1997.
In as much as I have a useful contribution to this debate, it is important to set the scene. Why? Because if any Labour activists genuinely want to know why Liberal Democrats have done what they've done, they need to understand the background with an open mind and a willingness to listen.
First, I came into politics because of Thatcher - not because I supported her government, but out of opposition to it. The Tories in the 80s were fairly despicable, and it seemed to me that they cared more for money than people. I was only a kid when the miners' strike happened, when her government seemed determined to break the unions and make 3 million people unemployed, yet it was the poll tax which marked my political awakening. Despite all the attempts to justify it, an 80% rebate still leaves the poorest having to pay 20%. As far as I can see, charging taxes on people who have nothing is corrupt, especially when they get flung in jail or denied their right to vote when they can't. On the day Thatcher resigned, I jumped for joy, despite only being fifteen years old. I bought a copy of Elvis Costello's Tramp The Dirt Down, and sung it with gusto and despair.
But we remember what happened next, don't we? Much of recent political history seems to want to skip over the early and mid-1990s, but we shouldn't airbrush it so quickly. Don't forget, the Tories stumbled on for six-and-a-half years after Thatcher. Of course, by the end they were fairly useless, and after Black Wednesday, the pit closures, the Maastricht Euro rebels forcing a vote of confidence, back-to-basics, cash-for-questions, BSE, the Scott inquiry, rail privatisation, the "tartan tax" straw man, and Major having to resign the leadership of his own Party to assert his own authority, it seemed only humane to put them out of their misery. But however useless and comically split they were, they didn't try to take it out on poor people any more. They stopped the poll tax, and concentrated on more benign stuff like the cones hotline and citizens' charter. People laughed at the Major government, and took pity on them, but they were not evil. And the only scandal the Government got involved in was the Matrix Churchill/arms-to-Iraq stuff, which remains a superb case study of the failures of the British system of Government. Even cash-for-questions gave us odious individuals, such as Neil Hamilton, but not victimisation of the people. No, for that we had to await the full glory of New Labour.
On 2 May 1997, along with many others who were not Labour supporters, I walked around with a song in my heart as the sun shone and the Tories were sent packing. Yet, for those who do not follow Labour blindly, the reality almost immediately kicked in. For every bright spot (devolution, human rights, banning landmines, a minimum wage), there was a massive piece of grit which didn't turn into a pearl, but made us all choke. Tory spending limits for two years. Centralised targets for everything for 13 years. Civil liberties crushed under a weight of jingoistic headlines in The Sun and Daily Mail. Billions upon billions spent trying to alleviate poverty or get unskilled young people into work, for incredibly dubious results, and dogs abuse for anyone who dared to question the motives, methods or effectiveness. More and more nuclear power stations. Means-testing everything. F***ing tax credits, with all the persecution of the poor b'stards who had been overpaid them. Spin. Alistair Campbell. ID cards. The 75p pension increase. The abolition of the 10p tax rate in an effort to confound the Tories, then all the furious backpedalling when they realised that it couldn't justify robbing the lowest earners to buy off the middle class. David Kelly, and stripping the BBC of its backbone and effectiveness because they reported the truth (and whatever Hutton said, I think Gilligan had it dead right). Most of all, the squandering of opportunity to create a better society with massive majorities and a groundswell of public will. And the ultimate betrayal: lying to the people and to Parliament to win support for an illegal, unjustified war so that hundreds of British servicemen and women and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would die in the desert because of a stupid American President's ego trip, and a British PM who was too timid to stand up to him. The denigration of all political debate. Blair. Brown. Mandelson (three times, FFS). Jack Straw. David Blunkett. Hazel Blears. Ed Balls. In fact, the lot of them. Just the thought of all the smug, self-satisfied tw@ts who sat round the New Labour Cabinet table for years makes me retch. Why? Because at the end of the day the Labour Government, despite their claims to stand up for the poor and the vulnerable, basically hated people, especially people who disagreed with them. By their actions, it's crystal clear that they certainly hated pensioners, liberals, teachers, ethnic minorities, soldiers, poor people and foreigners. And all they loved was money, celebrity, power for its own sake, good headlines, and themselves.
And of course it is the grotesque self-love of the average Labour MP which simply cannot allow them to accept or understand that they have been rejected (which they were, decisively). It does not compute. They feel they must have been cheated out of power: after all, the Tories didn't win either. So the real culprit must have been those progressive Judases.
Many Labour activists who are now up in arms are so inclined because they perceived the Lib Dem complaints about the Labour government to be complaints from those who were more "left" than Labour, and never thought for a moment that we would ally with (in their minds) the enemy. It was not criticism from the left, though - it was criticism from the more "sensible" than Labour. Yes, it pains me to say it, but having lived under a Tory government with massive majorities, and a Labour government with massive majorities, the only sensible conclusion is that (for different reasons, to be sure) they were both just as wretched as each other. And although the coalition we have is more Tory than I'd prefer, the presence of even a single Liberal Democrat makes it far, far more tolerable than the thought of Labour all over again.
We owe Labour nothing. Nothing at all. We hate what they did to our country's sense of fairness, freedom and respect for international law. Not because they don't care about the poor or vulnerable: most of them do. But they believe what they've done is helping, and that anything else is not. The reverse is much closer to the truth. And the whole country is better off not having these stupid self-satisfied bullies anywhere near any measure of responsibility for anything. So there is no sense of betrayal here. And if they still can't understand, the shorthand explanation for the coalition is simple: take a long, hard look at yourselves. And their sense of shame when you do that should tell them everything they need to know.
And they have the gall to blame us for cleaning up their mess. How dare they. Labour should stop for a moment and think about the poor and the vulnerable who they're ignoring - the children and grandchildren, some not even born yet, who would have to pay for years for the excesses of New Labour. Shame on them.
Now, all Governments get to be unpopular sooner or later. They're much more likely to lose friends than gain new ones: that's the cost of doing business. Yet the hurt, the betrayal and the anger over the New Labour years has not nearly subsided yet. In fact, Labour's behaviour in opposition so far has made it worse. There are genuinely good-hearted progressive people in the Labour movement, but their Party was taken over by an alien clique. When they realise that, and work towards addressing it, and they get more people to vote for them in an election as a result, we'd be happy to talk. But they must also learn that a coalition programme is not formed by taking 100% of the larger party's proposals and 0% of the other's, as seemed to be their assumption in May. If this whole episode puts them off voting reform, fine: they'll learn the hard way that First Past The Post is no friend to the left (the particular circumstances that led to 13 years of Labour had never been seen before, and are by no means certain to be repeated). But we should all fully expect it to take a long time before Labour realises all this: until then, they'll have plenty more opportunities to experience what the crappy end of opposition feels like, and how tiring it will eventually be for them to keep venting their spleens until there's an opportunity to find out if they're right, and if they can magically gain back the support of the five million supporters they've lost since 1997.
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
How to make a presentation work
Anyone who's anyone working in a communications environment has had, at some point, to have given a PowerPoint presentation. And yet, most people are truly rubbish at using a wonderful communications tool. By far the best person I've ever seen do it well is Professor Lawrence Lessig who, apart from being one of the cleverest academics in the world, is also a phenomenal communicator. His "style" of presentations is almost jaw-dropping the first time people see it - so here's one of his earlier versions.
Altruism
Oh well. The last of the World Cup teams I drew in the office sweep is out - Uruguay having followed Mexico and France. And yet, despite the promise of a crisp £20 note having disappeared from my desperate grasp, the better team won. Holland still haven't played like a team which deserves to win, apart from a sprightly second half against Brazil, but I couldn't stomach the thought of the light blues making the final after Suarez's last-gasp handball to stop Ghana in the quarter-final.
88 miles per hour
Today's the day Marty McFly, girlfriend Jennifer and Doc Emmett Brown were heading for at the end of Back to the Future. What I want to know is, where are the hoverboards, flying cars and Mr Fusion home nuclear generators we were promised by this time?
Blogging
I have decided - clearly - to start a blog. There's a touch of arrogance to doing this, as it carries a clear implication that my views are worth publishing, and reading. Yet several prominent Liberal Democrat activists have done so for quite a while (see, for example, the excellent Lib Dem blogs), including a few of my friends and acquaintances North and South of the Border. And at a time when Liberal Democrats require to sharpen their argument and raise their voices during the UK's first experience of peacetime coalition since the 1930s, every additional voice helps.
Why would anyone read it? Well, I hope you find it interesting, illuminating and most importantly I hope it makes you think. There will be a fair amount of politics, although not exclusively so.
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