At first they came for the smokers but I did not speak out as I did not smoke. Then they came for the binge drinkers but I said nothing as I did not binge. Now they have an obesity strategy.
It's only another one of those laments about how the Internet might be useful, but is cheapening human experience. This time it is about the fantastically useful digitisation of historical source material. I am eternally grateful for the web sites maintained by institutions and enthusiastic individuals which make obscure 19th century pamphlets and newspapers available on my screen. However, for Tristram Hunt, this smacks of inauthenticity.
But it is only with MS in hand that the real meaning of the text becomes apparent: its rhythms and cadences, the relationship of image to word, the passion of the argument or cold logic of the case... There is nothing more thrilling than untying the frayed string, opening the envelope and leafing through a first edition in the expectation of unexpected discoveries. None of that is possible on an iPad.
He is right about that thrill. I remember a sense of disappointment turning up at a library to discover that the original copies of the Herald of Anarchy that I had been reading only a few weeks previously had been replaced with a microfilm due to the fragility of the paper. But, funnily enough, none of the words had changed and they seemed to mean exactly the same as they did before.
Original documents are a pleasure, a privilege and treasure. They are also a fecking nuisance when you've traipsed all the way to Countytown and the very thing you wanted, had called up about and were told would be there is now being withheld because it is too fragile.
Absolutely, and when you are trying to write something in rural Greece, being able to call up these wonderful sources at a click of a mouse is an even bigger pleasure, privilege and treasure.
In a stimulating piece Iannis Carras writes about the environmental costs of the Greek bailout. He doesn't pull his punches about the self-interested funding pushed by the EU for inappropriate, destructive, large-scale and hugely expensive projects and their contribution to Greek indebtedness.
Much of the debate around the economic, political and societal crisis gripping Greece has overlooked the role of the European Union in fuelling the crisis. Quite apart from the distortionary effects on the competitiveness of peripheral states precipitated by the introduction of the Euro and the subsequent lack of adequate oversight, it was misplaced EU subsidies that resulted in a lack of competitiveness in many sectors of the Greek economy, and misplaced EU subsidies that allowed the dramatic growth of the Greek public sector following the election of Andreas Papandreou as Prime Minister in 1981.
He concludes:
The irony is that the Prime Minister, George Papandreou, whatever his other faults, has thus far stood out for his commitment to the environment... He is now being forced by the EU and the IMF to take responsibility for the worst man-made environmental destruction in the history of the Aegean.
How reassuring then that those self same officials are coming over to take control on behalf of those simple Greeks who just aren't up to running an economy. Reuters reports Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker discussing how "the Greek crisis had been largely caused by itself" through paying too high wages (!) and saying,
"One cannot be allowed to insult the Greeks. But one has to help them. They have said they are ready to accept expertise from the euro zone"
Wow! Insulting? Patronising? Or both? The failure of EU officials to acknowledge even the slightest responsibility for the crisis, all the while developing a new doctrine of bureaucratic infallibility, is profoundly depressing and gives little hope for the future. However, this is Greece we are dealing with and these people should remember that in these parts hubris is inevitably followed by nemesis.
Coming out of a taverna on Wednesday night, the owners rushed out to talk to us. "Today has been a terrible day for Greece. This is no longer a democracy. We are worried for our friends in Athens. The only difference between now and the junta is that today we can talk and we are telling all the foreign people about what has happened." They were agitated and distressed by the shocking level of indiscriminate police violence against peaceful demonstrators (and even diners in nearby restuarants) that also drew protests from Amnesty International. Greece is not Syria, it isn't a dictatorship, they may have been melodramatic, but there are long memories here of the poverty and repression of the years of dictatorship and their anguish was real enough. They were not alone in theirdistress. What was more shocking was the claim by the responsible minister that the gas had been thrown by the protesters. Such a brazen lie shows a government utterly negligent in its duties towards its citizens. It took the police union leadership to show that civic society and democratic values are well and truly alive. He apologised for the violence and called for reform of the police service.
And it is reform that should now be dominating the headlines. Reform of the Greek state has long been seen as necessary and few will demur. Though what strikes me is that though there is much talk about the dangers of a disorderly default, I seem to be hearing little from the mouths of the elite about the dangers of disorderly austerity. No, the Greek people have to accept whatever is thrown at them, suddenly and abruptly. 'Shock therapy' is fine for ordinary people but not for the Eurozone banking system. Even if austerity is necessary (something I would dispute - though that is another argument) surely it can be managed in order to best protect the lives and businesses of the people, phased in with alternate investment and employment schemes to help growth, all the while tackling the real problems of lack of competitiveness and the inefficiency of the Greek state.
Even then, something would still be missing. Where is the EU dimension? Where are the reforms needed to monetary union to deal with the problems that have manifested themselves throughout this prolonged financial crisis? Then there is the democratic deficit implicit in technocratic elitism. Where is the discussion of this? Has the EU seen only external threat or the faults of its constituent nations rather than questioning whether its own structures have contributed to the crisis?
These are indeed the questions being raised by the people of the EU. And whilst the 'indignant ones' of Syntagma re-establish their presence, they now know that they are facing their own mirror image, an elite seething with indignation that anyone could possibly question their wisdom, prepared to defend the status quo - with tear gas if necessary.
Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, the European commission and council presidents:
With today's approval by the Greek Parliament of the revised economic programme, the country has taken an important step forward along the necessary path of fiscal consolidation and growth-enhancing structural reform. But it has also taken a vital step back – from the very grave scenario of default. This was a vote of national responsibility.
Max Johnson of forex specialists, Currency Solutions (and just about everybody else):
And so another 10p looks set to be put into the meter of Greece's financial life support machine. With the Greek economy in intensive care, the Athens government finally has the mandate it needs to prescribe more bitter economic medicine. The Eurozone is now likely to approve a second bailout but there's every danger that the medicine will kill the patient.
Few Greeks look like they will take it lying down either. The popular anger convulsing the streets of Athens with strikes and protests will surely get worse.
There is every possibility that poorer Greeks, who will be hit hardest by the austerity measures, will simply refuse to pay their taxes. If that happens the prospects of a Greek default will go from highly likely to inevitable, plunging the country into the abyss and undermining any benefit the austerity measures may have had.
What Greece is being forced to do is threatening the legitimacy of a democratically elected government and putting at risk the legitimacy of the political system in general. And the question for the EU and IMF is simple: is it worth it?
Riots in Athens, hyperbole everywhere, a general strike today and, back in the UK, a big public sector strike on the future of pensions will take place tomorrow. And I am here, already drawing my pension and feeling incredibly lucky.
Now those same people are staring at an economic crisis that seems scarcely credible. Facing massive state indebtedness, those who worked so hard are now looking at tax rises and at losing significant chunks of their income, if not their jobs. This would be bad enough if it wasn't for the the old stereotypes being trotted out again and again to explain it, basically seeing the crisis as the consequence of the moral failings of the natives. This is why it is nice to see the stereotype being challenged, such as in this refreshing post, even if some of the widely circulated figures are a bitdodgy and brushes with bureaucracy can give another impression.
Now, there is certainly some contributory negligence on the part of the Greeks and there are a couple of good pieces that highlight the history here and here. However, what we are seeing both here and in the UK is a clash between two models of political economy, with a resultant technical argument about how best to resolve problems (with the IMF and ECB's preferred model of austerity looking increasingly non-viable, both politically and economically - even the Economist is arguing for a managed restructure/partial default), and a wider debate about democracy, populism, and the broader purposes of the economy.
The thing that depresses me most is that policies are being presented as if there is no choice at all, as if, to use that lamentable phrase, there is no alternative. The clash of ideas is the very stuff of politics and the lapsing into some sort of post-ideological intellectual mush is one of the great failings of our times. It leads ordinary people to a sense of resignation and to the hubris of political leaders and technocrats alike, convinced that they are being bold when acting cautiously and wise when perpetuating errors. It is one of the oddities of the contemporary left is that foreign affairs have animated a debate (however grim), yet domestic economic policy has been allowed to lapse into consensus.
That consensus has contributed to a political stasis, a failure to deal with the real conflicts that affect everyday lives. Aditya Chakrabortty gives a perfect example of how this works, arguing for the importance of effective, confrontational trade unionism to the health of capitalism.
What's so odd about the current debate on inequality is that everyone deplores it and yet very few will come out and support the mechanisms to tackle it. Perhaps a CEO catching a thought-provoking discussion on Radio 4 will decide to shower his or her staff with payrises. And perhaps one day a plebiscite of turkeys will vote for Christmas.
With the debate on public services being dominated by models of consumer choice, we are forgetting that the bigger choices facing us are about the type of societies we live in, of how we distribute wealth, and on this the political class seem curiously silent, even as crisis engulfs a small, beautiful European country with a rather wonderful climate and hard-working people who deserve better.
As an antidote to some of the appalling stereotyping of Greeks, which generally omits their long working hours and low pay, and to some of the populist rhetoric being dished out, here is a clear-sighted short piece from Amartya Sen in which he actually praises the Greek government -
It is to the huge credit of the Greek government – George Papandreou, the prime minister, in particular – that it is doing what it can despite political resistance ...
Though he also points out that what they are being told to do is the wrong thing.
... but the pained willingness of Athens to comply does not eliminate the European need to examine the wisdom of the requirements – and the timing – being imposed on Greece.
In typically elegant style he writes,
The high morals of "sacrifice" do, of course, have an intoxicating effect. This is the philosophy of the "right" corset: "If madam is at all comfortable in it, then madam certainly needs a smaller size." However, if the demands of financial appropriateness are linked too mechanically to immediate cuts, the result could be the killing of the goose that lays the golden egg of economic growth.
As I think back to the debate over European Monetary Union in the 1990s, I had little idea where I stood. This was partly because the anti-Euro campaign featured prominently some unpleasant and obsessive Tory right-wingers, who mixed up their opposition to the Euro with their general hatred of the European Union as a whole, whilst their Euro-scepticism was being disavowed by a newly enthused Labour Party. Yet those who who opposed the Euro were a mixed bunch indeed. It was a broad coalition that included social-democrats and libertarians as well as the Conservative nationalist right.
Each emphasised different aspects of the argument, which consisted of a range of concerns; the inflexibility of the Euro, the loss of sovereignty and democratic accountability, the built in deflationary biases and the perception that a common currency would not promote convergence, but lead to divergence, between stronger and weaker economies.
This certainly seems prescient today, though we sometimes forget that the conventional wisdom and liberal opinion was pretty much in favour of the UK joining and it was Gordon Brown who fought to keep Britain out when Labour were elected to power.
The result was that the UK was able to respond to the recession with a 25% devaluation and interest rates of 0.5%, strategies denied to the Greeks. (This also begs the question of why the Coalition government have been so determined to keep up with the new trend for cuts).
With hindsight, it appears that the sceptics got it right and, for those who adopted the Euro, political arguments won out over the economic ones. As Sen points out, that has, paradoxically, allowed political democracy to be undermined by the very economic flaws that were conveniently brushed aside. And it is this threat, and the systemic economic failures that have created it, that needs to be addressed, rather than indulging in stupid ethnic stereotyping of conveniently brown-skinned Mediterranean types and the rain-sodden Irish.
The European Central Bank will not countenance the idea of default. That just leaves deflation, and lots of it, as a way of putting the Greek economy back on track and ensuring the single currency remains intact.
This is a crackpot idea for two reasons. First, it runs counter to the basic principles of democracy; the Greek people are clearly not in the mood to bear the spending cuts, the reductions in wages and the sweeping privatisation being demanded of them by the European Union and the IMF as the price of a fresh bailout.
Second, deflation has already made Greece's debt problem worse and more deflation will make it worse still.
Larry Elliott arguing for the need of Greece to leave the Euro. The democracy point is well made here:
After Lehman, there was initial shock and uncertainty – but the collapse of stock, commodity and currency markets did not happen for a few weeks. That was when elected politicians were forced to choose between the demands of voters and markets, and went with the voters.
Greece was bailed out to save European banks, not Greece itself, and that the bailout was only a temporary liquidity measure, when our problem is solvency. I explained back then that a massive recession was on its way and that there's no reason to expect anyone to lend to post-memorandum Greece who would not lend to pre-memorandum Greece, as the country will be more indebted and less capable of growth; hence the importance of reform. Finally, I pointed out in that interview that default has been historically proven to be a workable solution to a solvency problem and is an option for Greece. I still believe this, although people have to realise that timing the default is crucial and getting people to demand one right now is not going to help.
The International Monetary Fund warned European leaders that their hesitant response to Greece's debt crisis risked triggering the world's second global financial meltdown in three years.
Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister who chairs the meetings of the 17 eurozone finance ministers, said he felt for the Greeks: "This is something that affects me greatly. You look at the reaction of the people on the streets. You see they are rebelling. I understand that and I'm touched by that."
But he also said that there was no option but to keep to the existing plan: "There is no other choice than fiscal consolidation in Greece and in other fiscally weakened countries."
Greece is another country that anarchists have a soft-spot for. But instead of loving Greece for the food and the island scenery like most normal North American and European tourists do, they like Greece for it’s anarchist activity...
There’s also another aspect of Greece that’s very exciting to anarchists, the all important riot-porn. If anarchists catch wind of new austerity measures enacted by the government, they all eagerly await when Libcom.org will get a new gallery of exciting imagery of tear gas, broken windows, destroyed businesses, and things on fire. After they get this out of their system, they can all flock to message boards to talk in disgust about the capitalist folly that brought those austerity measures into place.
As I watch a warm afternoon breeze rustle the leaves of the walnut trees and the cat dozes on the wall in the shade of the vine, it is hard to feel as if I am in the centre of a crisis. Yet the turmoil in the urban centres of Greece continues as the government reconfigures itself. In a country where even the dogsriot, there is a sense that the consensus has broken down. This is hardly surprising when the sole answer to the failure of an austerity package is another austerity package.
In the absence of any recognition that this is partly a systemic crisis, threatening the entire European economy and requiring systemic reforms, it seems that the only possible response to Greece's sovereign debt lies in a choice between growth and default. The first is precluded by a policy of artificially imposed austerity, the second is of uncertain consequence though beginning to look increasingly likely. In a thoughtful piece, the historian Mark Mazower concludes,
Thus, whatever the cost-benefit analysis says about default, the pressing issue for Greece and for the EU as a whole is political. People will not accept further cuts if they think this is simply to bail out Europe’s overpaid bankers, and they will not support a government they believe is devoid of any positive strategy for recovery. If that support vanishes, as it is on the verge of doing, the country may head for bankruptcy anyway. That might well be the worse option not only for Greece but for Europe too. The onus is now on Europe’s leaders to rise above the short-termism and the wishful thinking that characterises their responses so far – the latest EU-IMF agreement is more evidence of this – and to frame further assistance as part of a plausible plan for growth. Given their track record, we should not hold our breath.
I think that the last word should be left to Loukanikos.
For a British Rugby League fan, watching the Australian Sate of Origin Series between New South Wales and Queensland is exhilarating and bloody depressing. Why? The standards reached are incredible and then it dawns on you that we will never win a series against them, probably not in my lifetime.
... Britain and its Nato allies no longer believe bombing alone will end the conflict in Libya, well-placed government officials have told the Guardian.
Instead, they are pinning their hopes on the defection of Muammar Gaddafi's closest aides, or the Libyan leader's agreement to flee the country.
"No one is envisaging a military victory," said one senior official who echoed Tuesday's warnings by Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, head of the navy, that the bombing cannot continue much beyond the summer.
What could be more self defeating, more likely to ensure that their desired end is not achieved? Could they have sent a clearer message to Gadaffi that holding on and waiting will give him the victory and the revenge he desires, condemning the Libyan people to yet more misery?
Of course the view of the majority of Libyans themselves is less equivocal. These come from a report in the same paper from the capital Tripoli, not the areas under the control of the revolutionaries.
"Most people want him out and more people can talk about this now than before because he is under pressure. But you still have to be careful. If you are caught, God knows what will happen to you."
"Nato good, good," is a common refrain to be heard from people talking to foreign reporters.
"Look there - plainclothes police," said a taxi driver, driving through an area called Fashloum. "And there, and there. The only people who like Gaddafi are the police and people working with him."
The jungle is cleared and a garden has emerged. However, the rumble over the Greek economic crisis continues. At village level, the bits that I manage to understand or are translated for me, range from delightful people picking gardenia flowers as gifts whilst expounding the most bonkers of conspiracy theories, the general idea that Merkel is the new Hitler (and the glee at the fact that the Germans poisoned themselves with their own bean sprouts, rather than with something grown by one of those recalcitrant Mediterranean types, is palpable), some pretty crude racism, whilst on the news protesters chant about the politicians being thieves. All have one thing in common, the sense that the cause of the crisis is a moral, rather than a systemic failure.
One of Adam Smith's most notable insights was his much misread notion that the strength of a modern, industrial society does not rest on the virtue of its citizens. Instead, small petty desires and self-interest drive economies and sustain civilisation. The target of Smith's writing was the same one that seems to animate popular debate today and thus leads us away from the major questions about the failures in the Eurozone. And, even if moral failure was a key factor, any system that has to rely entirely on the prevalence of human virtue has a major design fault anyway.
So, with the next tranche of bewilderingly terrifying austerity measures about to hit Greece, it was good to read these twoposts from a new blog offering clarity about the systemic failings of both the single currency and the overarching economic model that informs it. This gets it spot on.
Without investment, or/and a dramatic structural change in the economy, to correct any trade imbalances everyone ends up working more for less. The promise is that this is for the short run. The reality is that, while the trade imbalance between the richer and poorer Euro members remain, it is for the very very long term. Under the austerity measures, the poorer states have even less resources to invest in structural changes to make their economies competitive. The ECB/IMF package is massive transfer of resources from the poor.
Instead the blog directs us to schemes such as this, Yanis Varoufakis and Stuart Holland's "modest proposal", and argues consistently that we are facing a EU-wide economic crisis that is not the result of the wayward behaviour of a few swarthy (or Irish) small nations, but an ongoing and inevitable consequence of the failure of the institutional architecture of monetary union.
And so we face a choice between continuing pan-European austerity or a reform that will recycle trade imbalances to allow for investment and development in Europe's poorer nations. I know what my choice would be.
At least that is what the garden looks like. A month away and the combination of rain and sun has led to an explosion of greenery. Time to find a man with a strimmer - Niko!
The rest is more or less unchanging, a new greengrocers has opened and Stavroula comes to my gate to complain about life, speaking in Greek that I can't follow, to ask the usual questions and to warn me about the dubious behaviour and bad character of another of my neighbours before waving a cheerful goodbye. And of course, the moment I opened the patio doors the cat arrived expressing his deep affection and demanding food in return for the benefit of his company when he is not visiting other houses.
We are on the cusp between spring and summer, some of the wild flowers remain and a group of the last of the wild poppies are wearily hanging on amongst the grass and weeds. The most dramatic colour is provided by the pomegranate. The bright red flowers are starting to turn into fruit and it looks like there will be a bumper crop this year, though the bush is still small. Not that I will get to eat them as I will have returned to England for work by the time they are ready.
At least by arriving early this summer I got to taste the cherries. The crop is finished by this time of year but various neighbours had not been as ruthless in stripping the trees as previously and there were a few left.
It is warm, but not hot. The cicadas haven't started making their usual row and have left the cool nights to the nightingales and squabbling dogs. There is a strong gusting breeze and butterflies are flitting through the garden. It is good to be here.
The other delight is to taste real food. Today's simple lunch of tomato and cucumber with feta cheese and fresh baked bread was a gourmet delight. And that was one of the topics of conversation I had on the flight over. You know the years are advancing when a young woman anxiously asks you if you need help putting your rucksack in the overhead locker. Your self image as a young buck dissolves as you realise that you are well into the transformation from sex object to pity object. And when I finally sat down, slightly crestfallen, she, a Greek living in England, confessed that what she was really looking forward to on her return to her homeland was eating a tomato that actually tasted of something.
Yet that was not all we talked about. Our conversation ranged through art and architecture, radical education as well as history and political philosophy as she turned out to be a young and talented freelance animator and designer. She is just starting out, though I think you need to watch out for her name (or names - she seems to have rather a lot of them), she has the ability to go far.
So, summer beckons and as I type this I look through my open window under the klimataria, shaded by the vine, I get that familiar, startled feeling of not quite believing my luck in ending up here, in my own house on an early summer's day.
And crowds there are in Greece, gathered in city centres - with around three hundred thousand outside the Greek Parliament in Syntagma Square last night - to protest at the latest round of austerity programmes which are certainly depressing the economy but making no impact on the level of debt (See too Paul Krugman on the Helenization of a Europe-wide crisis).
Will I be parading my radical credentials at the forefront of a major protest movement? Of course not. I will be in Greece, but hidden away in rural Pelion indulging in escapism. And as I fly tonight, it seems that I will not be alone.
First there is a little rehabilitation to help the sales pitch:
Britain and the United States are pressing for United Nations sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban figures to be lifted later this month in the strongest indication yet that the western powers are looking for a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
Taliban gunmen have killed the headteacher of a girls' school near the Afghan capital after he ignored warnings to stop teaching girls, government officials have said.
As more news seeps out about the crumbling of Gaddafi's army, it seems a good time to look back on some of the recent commentary on Libya from the usual suspects - a study in the pathology of pessimism, a peculiar trait of the Guardianista.
In Libya, there is no end in sight to a campaign which is not succeeding in its UN-sanctioned aim to protect civilians.
Hang on a second. "Not succeeding"? Have I missed something here? Did Gaddafi's tanks and mercenaries actually carry out their slaughter in Benghazi and then move on throughout the East or did the UN action end up preventing it? And even if the conflict is dragging on with its horrible human cost, doesn't stopping Gaddafi's advance and saving the East from his clutches, at the very least, amount to a success? Isn't it a little early to pronounce the whole affair a failure? The revolutionaries certainly do not agree.
And in the second example even Simon Jenkins admits as much. But being Simon Jenkins he is also always good for a bit of light relief.
Britain has done what it said it was going to do – it stopped Gaddafi visiting his wrath on Benghazi. It should then have left, returning only if he did.
Did I read this right? The moment Gaddafi was forced back from Benghazi he should have been left to crush the revolution everywhere else, securing his power, reinforcing and re-equipping his army all the while? Is Jenkins really suggesting that British forces should have been withdrawn to let him get on with it as long as he didn't touch this one city? Extraordinary.
The best way to protect Libya's desperate civilians is for Nato to reverse its mistaken policy of taking sides.
Leaving aside the obvious point that not taking sides is not an act of neutrality but is de facto support for the the side with the best military hardware - in this case Gaddafi - has his moral compass gone completely awry? Should we not choose sides between, on the one hand, a popular democratic revolution and, on the other, a kleptocratic, murderous, family tyranny whose leaders have been indicted for crimes against humanity? Are they moral equivalents to be treated as equals? It is absolutely clear that this is precisely the time to take sides. We should support the struggle for democratic change against the systematic violence of fascistic autocrats. Studious and oh so reasonable sounding neutralism is, in reality, the betrayal of the hopes of people risking everything for the sake of freedom.
The least we can give to the revolutionaries is our solidarity, the best is our help when it is requested, the worst is our disdain for their incredible courage in demanding to have what we so casually take for granted.
One of the many dubious arguments against liberal interventionism is the accusation of bad faith. Somehow, whatever the situation, the action is seen as illegitimate because the ostensible causes are not the real ones - the 'it's all about oil' argument. Chris Dillow nailed this in a post some time ago when he wrote that though there is much talk of 'collateral damage' we seem less willing to acknowledge 'collateral benefit'. In other words, the beneficial results of action are still felt even if the action was conceived for other than purely altruistic reasons. Though this distinction is lost on some of the commentariat, it is not on the Libyan revolutionaries themselves, who continue to fully support the UN intervention. This is a typical example:
“Of course there are interests at play,” explained the man in the graffiti-covered tunic, listing oil and winning broader support among Arabs following the debacle in Iraq as possible reasons behind the intervention. “We’re not stupid, we know Western countries have their own interests when they finally decided to help us.” A man from Sirte who identified as being from Gadhafi’s tribe interrupted him, expressing a widely held sentiment: “It doesn’t matter what the West’s interests are, because we too have our interests—we want to survive and get rid of this regime and ultimately live like the rest of the world, without fear.” The crowd erupted in applause.
...make the same mistake again and again and again. There were those who said that the austerity programme imposed on Greece would induce a deeper recession, reduce government tax receipts (despite tax increases) and therefore increase debt rather than reduce it. Guess what has happened. So the next tranche of debt to pay off the increasing debt comes with ever more stringent austerity measures that some say will induce a much deeper recession etc, etc.
So what will happen? Political agreement is not forthcoming and Syntagma Square in Athens is being occupied in Greece's own Facebook protest. There is no sign of a challenge to the elite consensus, which, with supreme self-confidence, has lapsed back into economic orthodoxy despite its near catastrophic failure in the banking crisis. Politics and protest are confronting the powerful and there is no meeting point. So are we heading for a default in Greece? Who knows, though in a thoughtful article Aditya Chakrabortty argues that it would be no bad thing. I can't fault his conclusion:
So why doesn't Athens just give up? Surely not because its economy would do any worse, but because the banks, in Germany (which holds $26bn of Greek debt) and France (which owns $20bn) and in Greece, would then have another brush with insolvency. But the answer would be to deal with the banks – by giving them more money or just taking them over – rather than crucify an economy.
For Costas Lapavitsas, an economist at the School of Oriental and African Studies just back from Athens, the situation represents only one thing. "It's the triumph of the banks," he tells me. "The lenders in Greece and abroad are being given preferential treatment over the Greek people."
I have a feeling that if the next tranche of austerity is enforced then both will be losers, though the ones that will feel the pain will, unsurprisingly, be the Greek people.
Milia stayed out all night protesting. That night, people were chanting in the new clock square, the one that protesters had dubbed “The liberation square of the governorate of Homs”. Milia’s house is on Hamidia Street, right behind the Khaled Ben Walid mosque. But this Christian neighborhood also harbours one of the oldest churches on earth, the Church of the Holy Girdle and Milia lives right next to this landmark, visiting it every Sunday to receive the archbishop’s blessings.
There is no film of the performance, but the sound is better here.
No real reason for posting this other than to share the moment when I heard a clip of this on the car radio today and thought, I need to have this music. And now I do.
It is late here and I have been submerged in a tunnel of exam marking, one of the most dispiriting tasks known to humanity. Nobody in this time zone should be sitting in front of a computer, so, especially for the odd insomniac who has stumbled on these pages, here is something wonderful to lull you to sleep.
The Library of Congress now has a National Jukebox containing hundreds of historical recordings, which I found out about from Norm and George. So here is Brahms's lullaby, recorded incredibly in 1906 by Ernestine Schumann-Heink.
Even more extraordinary, there is film of her singing in 1927 on YouTube here.
And if you still can't sleep, browse through this amazing collection, listen to some of the gems and give thanks to the Internet for being able to bring you little delights in the middle of the night.
The death of a young woman; a Greek tragedy in Ireland, though one almost certainly being replicated in Greece and elsewhere.
This narrative of Ireland’s recklessness has been seized upon by politicians, ex-bankers, journalists and visiting emissaries from solvent countries like a life-ring in a cess-pond. It has the feel of Greek tragedy about it - we made mistakes and must be punished.
In this tragic narrative the Furies are represented by the implacable markets, and our great mistake, our hamartia, which Aristotle defines as ‘an injury to others’ and which later commentators came to call the ‘fatal flaw’, is to have become greedy. It must be remembered, however, that the hamartia is usually committed in ignorance of its evil nature or the likely consequences. It may even be committed against the best advice. Think of Oedipus who, in desperately avoiding the terrible crime that has been foretold for him by the oracle at Delphi, commits that very crime in ignorance if not innocence. Oedipus was a good man, but he misunderstood the role of oracles. We too have failed to understand that oracles are agents in our tragedy rather than disinterested commentators. Oedipus was blinded for his hamartia. Rachel Peavoy was frozen to death for ours.
And so we continue to offer human sacrifices to the gods of economic orthodoxy in the hope that their propitiation will return us to the good days of self-indulgence and rising property prices. Yet:
The end of tragedy, according to Aristotle, to whom we still turn in these matters, is catharsis. But our catharsis will be long in coming and our children’s children will share the punishment.
To the despair of my friends, I am prone to big speeches. In fact, one of the reasons for this blog was to spare them yet another monologue when we are in the pub. And as for my poor students; a simple question can lead to a long peroration, sometimes relevant and amusing, but by no means always. And so I read this touching and eloquent essay by Christopher Hitchens, on the joy of speaking and its intimate relationship with writing, with great pleasure and empathy. Every academic should read this as Universities can be dedicated to the eradication of good written English by enforcing the use of the impersonal and passive voice that deadens prose. Not Hitchens though,
To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: “How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?” That had its duly woeful effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.
And so his illness is a particular tragedy and of course I feel sympathy, but the main emotion his essay evoked was fear; a deep terror that I should lose my voice, my unique link with the world.
I wish him well for the selfish reason that I do not want to be deprived of regularly reading his prose, whilst his own hopes, characteristically, reflect something more universal.
What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.
I certainly don't agree with everything that is in his article but these quotes from Will Hutton seem to sum up my views on the government's economic policy perfectly.
In a strict sense, the government's economic policies are not a gamble – a gamble has some probability of success ... it is now obvious that we are living through one of the great economic misjudgments of modern times; there were choices last May about how to handle the legacy of private debt, gross misallocation of productive capacity, financial fragility and the need to eliminate the structural public deficit. They were not made; If the Lib Dems had been true to the great social liberal thinkers ... they could never have signed the coalition agreement; The big story is of politics driven by ideas that are wrong.
And, to my despair, there is, as Hutton notes, little sign of any mainstream political party even attempting to breach the consensus, let alone putting forward an alternative political economy drawn from different intellectual roots. And here lies the causes of the failure of the Liberal Democrats in the local elections, the lost referendum on AV and Labour's defeat in the Scottish Assembly. No amount of progressive schmoozing will restore the centre-left to power unless there is a coherent philosophy to unite behind and not the desperately unimaginative, modified conservatism that Jackie Ashley thinks will do the trick.
Labour's revival has to be based on a robust pro-business plan to revive a "making things" economy. It has to build a new relationship with genuine entrepreneurs and tomorrow's employers. Beyond that, Labour needs to be stronger on core issues such as discipline in schools, crime and low pay, which will help win voters back.
And you can multiply this failure a hundredfold if you are to talk of Ireland or Greece. At least the Greeks have a new strategy, er, tourism. Oh well, this might not be that original, but at least I can say that I will do my selfless best to support the Greeks in their struggles. How about you?
I can't believe it. Watching Swinton Rugby League Club is now fun. Scintillating attacking rugby combined with dodgy defence and appalling discipline results in games with lots of points, thrilling finishes, a fight and a win. This is what happened yesterday when having been drawn away to a higher division club, Dewsbury, in the Challenge Cup, Swinton raced to an 18-0 lead before being pulled back to 24-all at half time. They slipped behind at the start of the second half only to rally brilliantly, cruising to a 44-28 lead with ten minutes to go before the obligatory punch-up, two Swinton players sin-binned and a couple of late tries by Dewsbury stretched the nerves. The hooter sounded before they cracked, the fans celebrated with a somewhat optimistic chant about going to Wembley and then Swinton were drawn away to the cup holders, Warrington, in the next round where there will certainly be a lot of points, probably a fight, but the other two ... I don't think so somehow.
At the last general election the Liberal Democrats were brilliantly placed to act as power brokers. I can understand why a coalition with Labour, despite a broad level of agreement on the main issues, did not get off the ground as it would not have commanded a majority in the House and Labour were not the largest party. But to form a coalition with the Tories, where there were huge policy differences, would mean a substantial revision of Conservative Party policy. Of course, this is precisely what coalition government is supposed to do. So how did the Lib Dem leadership grasp this unique opportunity?
1. The single most important area of government is political economy. The Lib Dems vehemently opposed Tory plans to reduce the deficit through rapid cuts in public expenditure. So they agreed to support and actively implement Tory plans to reduce the deficit through rapid cuts in public expenditure.
2. Next in salience comes education. They pledged to abolish university tuition fees and then agreed and defended the policy which has seen them rise to up to £9,000 p.a.
3. Of course health is a big electoral issue. The Lib Dems were opposed to 'top-down' reorganisation of the NHS. They are now part of a government which is attempting a radical top-down reorganisation of the NHS. (Mind you the Tories were also opposed at the general election - just where did that one come from?)
4. Finally, on the constitution, proportional representation was the Liberal Democrat's big issue. This was surely the one policy that was not negotiable. They could hardly enter a coalition that was not prepared to offer PR. So they used this unique opportunity to win a commitment merely to hold a referendum with only one choice between the existing system and a replacement that was not proportional and which they and most other advocates of electoral reform, including myself, rejected. Holding a referendum on something that nobody wanted never looked a winner. And it wasn't.
A radical Tory government has emerged unscathed from deeply unpopular policies; the electoral system, whose unrepresentative nature has cemented Conservative power on minority support for most of the post-war period*, is now unchallengeable; Liberal Democrat support has crashed.
So my question is - you are going to a car dealer's showroom. Who out of our unsavoury political leadership would you take with you to help you negotiate?
*And if you doubt this, look at how ruthlessly the Tories campaigned to retain it.They understand the mechanics of power.
Pausing from my marking for a little light schadenfreude at the expense of Clegg Minor, a sobering thought spoiled the pleasure. Whilst the electorate has been busy punishing Lib Dems for being Tories, nobody seems to have got around to punishing the Tories for being, well, Tories too.
"Whenever you feel that you need a second wind, let Greece charm you. Come out of your sloth and seek for the great passion that will upset your senses, will satisfy your devouring appetites and billow out your inner instincts. These passions are incurable!"
A second wind can certainly upset the senses, or at least one of them, especially after satisfying a devouring appetite. But a passion for Greece is incurable, I will give the author that. And though I am about to set off back to England to face a pile of marking, my return flight is already booked and I am smiling even as I leave at the promise of a long Greek summer, with only a passing grimace at the thought of those exam papers.
The current model that sells higher education for its economic benefits will eventually run aground on the rocks of reality. My campaign would be for an inclusive system that sees education as of intrinsic worth, rather than simply a route to a bigger payslip, and central to that would be adult education as community engagement. Doing this would mean abandoning the patronising language of aspiration raising and, instead, getting down to the hard work of meeting the aspirations that already exist, changing the institution to fit the people, rather than people to fit the institution. To my mind, this would be a progressive agenda that should be a part of any contemporary, progressive political movement and a starting point for the renaissance of an adult education that this time round will not be lost because of the whims of politicians.
From my contribution to Harry Barnes' May Day meeting on the future of adult education. I was invited to it, but Greece just won out over Chesterfield. Read the whole piece here.
Jason Burke, whose book on Al-Qaeda is one that I would recommend, has sometimes been misread as minimising the threat of Jihadi Islamism. In fact, what he has always emphasised is its danger. That danger is, paradoxically, the result of what he sees as its organisational weakness and ideological strength. He argues that Al-Qaeda as an idea has not built a conventional underground network, instead it has spread an ideology of terror that has attracted adherents capable of acting semi-independently, which makes it hard to detect and stop. So It was good to read this from him today.
The events of this spring have shown that Bin Laden and his cronies are definitively drifting to the geographic, political, cultural and ideological margins of the Islamic world. Their attempt to radicalise and mobilise hundreds of millions of people has failed. Crowds shouting slogans of democracy, not of violence, have succeeded in forcing the departure of two dictators and shaken several more. The Arab spring started with a public self-immolation, an act of spectacular violence which impressed because it harmed no other and was thus a clear repudiation of the suicide attacks of the last decade. The few statements from al-Qaida's leadership or affiliate groups have sounded tired and irrelevant.
Whilst in no way minimising the possibility of murderous mayhem emerging from the ideologically deranged, or of the continued threat of organised groups such as the Taliban, the decline of the attraction of Jihadi ideas is to be hugely welcomed. And this is the key point. The Arab spring marks a rejection of both the dominant narratives in the Middle East. A new generation has experienced nothing but corruption and oppression from all the variants of pan-Arab nationalism and now the minority, dissident Islamist narrative is seen as a bitter opponent of the liberties the people are desperate to experience. These revolutions represent the defeat of Islamism not its opportunity.
It has been often noted that one of the consolations of religion is the pleasure it affords in the contemplation of the eternal torments of the non-believer. As an atheist, I do not have that to fall back on. Instead I have Greece. From here I can post items about glorious weather and the beauties of nature, hoping to annoy everyone I know back in the urban drizzle of England. Except that from Saturday onwards, as England basked in glorious sunshine, a cold wind has brought torrential rain and has covered the mountains in snow. This has not put me in a good mood.
My irritation increased when I saw the prominence given to this group in the Guardian. I don't know where they come from these 'useful idiots', the dupes who crawl in obeisance to every grotesque tyranny, who take their 'fact-finding' tours with sanctimonious seriousness and make solemn pronouncements that they 'have seen the future and it works', whilst blocking their ears to the screams emanating from the people. They have no need to take pleasure in the torments of the afterlife when they can perceive those inflicted on the living as both exaggerated and understandable.
However grotesque and murderous a regime, however obvious its attempt to create an hereditary kleptocracy, it will always find its apologists and they will invariably dignify their language by describing themselves as campaigners for 'peace'. The peace they advocate is one where a regime can systematically rob, torture and murder its own people unmolested and out of sight. They make the categorical error that Solzhenitsyn described brilliantly in his essay Peace and Violence,
The 'peace-war' opposition embodies a logical fault. The whole of the thesis is opposed to only a part of the anti-thesis. War is a mass phenomenon - concentrated, clamorous and clear-cut, but it is by no means the only expression of unceasing world-wide violence. The logically balanced and genuine moral opposites are peace-violence.
And the worst is often "systematic state violence" against its own people. And so,
Peace will then be served not by those who count upon the good nature of the men of violence, but by those who are incorruptible, unbending and tireless in their insistence on the rights of the persecuted, the oppressed and the murdered.
These people are no peace activists and they are not just apologists, they are warriors. They are part the battle of language, partisans fighting for the Gaddafi regime with the weapon of words, something that Syrian protesters have pointed out is a key element of any struggle.
The more killings and brutality there is in the street, the more the lies and misleading information. It’s like they are interconnected in a way. Kill, then lie to justify the killing, then lie again to set the stage for more killing.
Mind you, despite being undermined by the farcical blindness of their own propaganda, the cautious hesitancy and the bureaucratic legalism of the UN mission might just do this group's job for them.
Ah well, at least the sun shone briefly this morning until the clouds gathered once more, threatening rain.
With all the focus on the Middle East, the continuing economic crisis in the Eurozone has taken a back seat, but the recession is still taking its toll. Now the women of Greece are rising up, which is apparently more than their men are.
More and more of my female friends increasingly complain about the deceasing performance of their husbands and boy friends. These women, whether married, in relationship or singles, they all unanimously blame the economic crisis and the austerity measures for the poor libido performances.
The solution? Sue the IMF and various assorted politicians for the "physical and emotional stress" of "limitations on activity". And they should beware. As far as politics and sex are concerned, Greek women have form.
The serious point is that as the Arab peoples risk all for political freedom and the sort of life we take for granted, there is another struggle going on. This may be more about subsistence and security in prosperous societies, rather than the desperate courage being shown to bring down regimes built on systematic torture and murder, but it is none the less significant - a challenge to the economic consensus that should be the counterpart of the fight for political liberty.
In the meantime, there seems to be a problem with the celebrated Greek male machismo. You have to worry that the economic crisis isn't making them a little bit, well, English.
I say this to everyone who turns their nose up at my favourite €2 for 1.5 litre bottle of Retsina. You can't tell the difference.
Wine costing less than £5 a bottle can have the same effect on the palate as those priced up to six times as much, a psychological taste challenge suggests.
People might just be able pick out the home made stuff in an old plastic Fanta bottle that I bought for very little in Argalasti market one day, I will give you that. But for anything else you need a real expert.
It appears that Madeleine Bunting wishes to emotionally bond with Ed Milliband, something that gives me a brief pang of sympathy for the man. However, I could see where she was coming from when she wrote,
But there was – and is – another account of betrayal in which a liberal elite, smugly superior in their metropolitan progressivism, championed globalisation and sold ordinary working people down the river.
What does a politics of nostalgia amount to? Cruddas, again, offers pointers: "People yearn for respect, belonging, identity, tradition. They yearn to fight against their insecurity." Jonathan Rutherford talks of a "conservative socialism". What they look back to are strands of early Labour thinking that shared much with Toryism – Romantic, popular, rooted in working-class experience of dispossession and English. But these strands fell by the wayside, marginalised by both liberalism, technocratic statism and internationalism.
Yikes, there is a lot of contradictory stuff packed in there but rather than try and untangle it, I want to explain why I think that nostalgia makes for lousy politics.
1. Nostalgia is not history; it is not even memory. It is a fiction, an invented past. And it is a confection created in the image of a present ideology. A politics rooted in make-believe is hardly convincing.
2. Nostalgia can be totalitarian. The imposition of a fabricated past can be more oppressive than the attempt to create a futurist utopia. Al Qaeda is a perfect example – hey guys, we had so much fun back in the seventh century.
3. It matters what you are nostalgic for: loon pants, Doris Day, the Third Reich? One person’s nostalgia is another’s nausea.
4. We are all nostalgics. We all look back on better times, at least we do when we reach a certain age. We long for our lost youth; and they were better times – we had energy, libido and hair. The trouble is that our personal nostalgia is rooted in our particular era. A politics that offers us eternal youth in a time of our choosing is hardly practical.
5. The reason many things have changed is because they were crap. It is called progress because it is, er, progress.
6. The beneficiaries of change are hardly likely to opt for nostalgia. Oops, there goes the women’s vote.
7. Nostalgia tends towards either an acceptance or a minimisation of conflicts, injustices, hierarchies and oppression; not because they are right, but because they took place in a mythical past that can now be presented to us as something inherently superior to the present.
Instead of nostalgia we need to grasp its opposites. These aren’t futurism and modernism; the opposites of nostalgia are history and experience, both of which require judgement and analysis, not a cosy warm glow. These certainly have an emotional resonance – their own celebrations in custom and music, their own literature - but don’t mistake that emotional attachment with the morass of Chestertonian nostalgia. It is sharp, analytical and angry. And, above all, it is real.
This then points to two things in Bunting’s article that are worth exploring, resistance to change and security.
Her identification of the problem of insecurity is also interesting. However, Bunting seems to be talking about it in terms of anomie, whereas to me, security is not predominantly a social or cultural concept, it is economic. Health care, housing, welfare, education, good pensions – all eminently affordable in rich societies – are what create security. And economic security does not necessarily reinforce conventional values; it gives us freedom. With security we lose the fears that keep us subservient and beholden to others, we can choose the ways we wish to live. Anyway, it is no place of a political party to lecture us about our private lives and besides, any political initiative trying to promote a particular way of life is doomed to failure. Remember 'Back to Basics'?
I can’t help feeling that this whole malarkey is a way of avoiding hard analysis in favour of an undifferentiated conservatism. Change is not a single thing; it is contradictory and deeply embedded in the everyday conflicts of our lives. It is based on the real interests of real people and they may not be identical. Once you accept that, nostalgia, rather than being a basis for a revival of the left, instead becomes a soggy ideological blanket that smothers the important political choices that we should be making right now.
It appears that the government is floundering as its policy of allowing flexible university fees up to £9,000 is not leading to a competitive market, but to a cartel. Most are going for the maximum amount and threatening to bust the budget for the payment of up-front fees.
With an inelastic demand currently exceeding supply, this would be likely. But there is more to it than that. A university education is being marketed as an economic asset and price is not just a measure of demand, but one of quality and status. A lower fee is a symbol of low status. If you are going to dress to impress would you wear Armani or Asda?
Once again we see the contradictions inherent in seeing universities as diploma factories for the purpose of individual gain for a minority of young people. And the big losers are things like adult education, incapable of sustaining higher fees, and those who want a more open, egalitarian university system, addressing a whole range of new markets rooted in access and social equity. This unseemly scramble for maximum income is at the expense of diversity and imagination. Sadly, the dreamers have been defeated - for now.
Spring is the best season in Greece. There is a little chill in the breeze, but the sun is warm. Evenings are cool and the weather can be changeable, though when the sun is out everything comes to life, insects, goats, birds and chainsaws.
There is nothing timid about spring here, it doesn't leave dusty, half open buds lingering around, waiting for the occasional bout of snow and frost to pass. It goes for it with vigour; all the trees rush into leaf and blossom at slightly different times, as if each is waiting its turn so as not to overload the senses.
Everyone's mood is lifted, all is a brilliant green and the light is clear. Soon the nightingales will arrive filling the cool air with song to set against the barking of the dogs as one person walking past a house sets off a chain reaction, echoing round the hills.
Peace and quiet? Whoever thought the countryside is quiet. Certainly not on a perfect day in the Greek spring.
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
Which just goes to show that T S Eliot was, at heart, a miserable bugger.
April is here, with light and promise and ... er ... cool grey skies. Never mind, on Sunday I will be off to Greece again for a month, yet another sign of the privileged existence of someone with an occupational pension and a part-time job.
For the first time in ages I will be sorry to miss watching Swinton Rugby League Club as us Lions fans have the culture shock of a winning team playing dazzling rugby. Last week's 68-24 win away at Oldham was a treat. And there is spring in the air for Widnes as well, as the Rugby League has announced that they will be promoted to Super League at the end of this season. They might even promote Halifax too. It has yet to be decided where the chill wind of relegation will settle. Sports fans may note that this is a rather odd decision to announce at the very beginning of the season, before we know who has won or lost, but this is Rugby League after all and the game has always shown a certain administrative flair.
And as my thoughts turn to Greece with the news there of continuing strikes, small acts of terrorism and economic gloom, I am reminded of our own problems, vastly overshadowed by the events in the Middle East. The extraordinary rebirth of treasury orthodoxy has been joined by structural adjustment in the Eurozone with predictable consequences. But I shall sit in the warm sun with cheap wine amidst blossom and wild flowers and be grateful for the accident of my birth, a baby boomer, the generation that had it better than most.
