Desperately seeking Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm's death has produced a flurry of commentary, not because the quality of his books but because of his belated celebrity status as an historian who was ... shock, horror ... a Marxist.

He might have got away with it if he had not also been a member of the Communist Party and remained a member when colleagues of his resigned in the wake of the Russian suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. People are right to have reservations. I have posted before on his equivocal stance on the history of the nineteen thirties that borders on apologism, as well as his more recent descent into fashionable relativism.  Then again, his work on the nineteenth century is impressive, though I have no doubt that his political allegiance did shape some of his later work for the worse.

None of this is an excuse for some of the shoddy journalism that didn't try and engage with his academic merit, but instead flaunted a smug superiority masquerading as analysis. Some of his old friends have come out with flattery, others have given far more rounded appreciations, especially this one from Donald Sassoon, who balances the merits with the errors nicely. The tendency to lurch into simplistic bluster has also irritated Shuggy who put up a couple of good posts in response. Alex Massie also puts Hobsbawm's much misquoted interview with Michael Ignatieff in context in a well-judged piece.

What I want to argue is that the 'Hobsbawm was a Marxist and therefore a mass murderer' line of writing makes two cardinal mistakes. The first one is a misunderstanding of the term totalitarianism. Here is a typical, unoriginal and self-satisfied example. The old trick of substituting the word 'fascist' for 'communist' for effect is hackneyed and tiresome, yet still people fall for it. Of course what it is really doing is using the notion of totalitarianism to say that because fascism and communism were totalitarian they were both the same. I find totalitarian theory really interesting and useful, however the utility of any theory depends on the appropriateness and the precision of its use. Apply it too loosely or widely and it becomes meaningless. Totalitarianism describes a particular form of ideologically driven, illiberal, authoritarian state or movement that demands the complete subjugation of the individual to some form of common purpose imposed by a particular, unquestionable ideology. It doesn't say what that ideology is. Thus you can get very different totalitarianisms that appeal to different people for different reasons. What is more, it is clear that some totalitarianisms are preferable to others. Just ask a Cambodian whether there was a real difference between the post-Stalinist Vietnamese communism imposed on the country and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge it replaced.

Fascism and communism were both totalitarian, but they were very different variants. And if we want to combat totalitarianism we are beholden to analyse its appeal beyond the notion that all we need to know is that anyone who attaches themselves to any type is, of necessity, a partisan of evil. Whatever you think of Hobsbawm, the one thing that cannot be denied is that he was as determinedly anti-fascist, just as he was stubborn in his, not uncritical, attachment to the Communist Party.

The second mistake is another over-simplification; seeing Marxism solely as a form of political allegiance and not as a tool of analysis. Here is one example of its impact on his work. Just as enemies have emphasised his membership of the Communist Party, his admirers have tended to pick out his seemingly contrary role in the 'modernisation' of the Labour Party. In fact both share the same intellectual roots, a class analysis.  Hobsbawm's hugely influential expanded essay, The Forward March of Labour Halted?, does not argue, as many have said, that the Labour Party was losing its base support because of the disappearance of the working class. Instead, he was writing that Labour was still the party of the working class, but that the working class was changing and becoming fragmented. In becoming so, it developed a range of sectional interests that were sometimes in conflict with each other. One approach to the problem was to try and aggregate as many of those sectional interests as possible. Hobsbawm thought that this would merely encourage division and instead urged a policy that would speak for the core interests that united a fragmented working class - education, health, welfare, housing - at the expense of the pet projects of many party activists.  Though portrayed as moving right, it was an analysis that was rooted in his Marxism. He saw Labour's need to speak for the whole working class, not to move beyond it.

Hobsbawm's Marxism meant more than allegiance to the Communist Party. It was the starting point for his academic interests, including the study of history from below and his work in economic history. These will continue to be read and appreciated - and by non-Marxists as well. His political position was more problematic, mainly due to the tenacity to which he clung to the old faith, hoping for reform from within the party rather than accepting its demise. In this he was hardly alone, even if he was increasingly isolated. He paid for that isolation in hostile obituaries.

And the winner is ...

As austerity programmes dictated by the EU continue to bite, the news is relentlessly bad. Hunger stalks the poorest in the centres of Europe, fascist movements are on the march capitalising on the discontent, riots and protests shake the cities of the periphery and the search for scapegoats is feeding separatism, extreme nationalism, violent racism and growing intolerance. Countries that thought they had escaped the fascism of the past glance nervously over their shoulder at the growing social disintegration. In the face of all this, European leaders stand firm, expressing regret but insisting that there is no alternative to the politics of austerity as they congratulate themselves on their courage in making hard choices.

Just the right time to give them the Nobel Peace Prize then. Brilliant.

Appearance and reality

Decca Aitkenhead has written a rather enjoyable hatchet job on Michael Gove, the Tory Secretary of State for Education. The article depicts him as intelligent, articulate, conscientious and charming. Then it turned on him by examining his writings and opinions, pointing out that, unlike his image as a congenial centrist, he is very much a figure from the centralising Conservative right.

The piece's strength was that it looked at substance, not image. But, as it argued, this is not Gove's own way of operating.

Why, then, do so many colleagues and political opponents see Gove in this rosier, more moderate light? It has to be because of his debater's gift for according courteous respect to opposing views, creating the impression that he's taken them on board, when he hasn't actually revised his position at all. Everyone tells me how carefully Gove listens, but when asked to recall a single occasion when he has been persuaded to change his mind, to their surprise no one can come up with one. It is a case of manners maketh the impression of a moderniser, for Gove's Tories don't need to be "inclusive", or "tolerant". The important thing is to look as if they are.

There is nothing new about this, Graham Wallas wrote about the importance of image before the First World War. However, here we are looking at a chasm between image and reality. Rather than cultivating an emotional response to ideological and policy preferences, what is in effect being created is an act of deception. What is damaging about this is not just its cynicism, thinking that people can only see image and not notice the reality of their everyday experience, but that it also feeds into a cycle of cynicism - the popular view that "they are all the same" or that "they say one thing and then always do the opposite." This has always concerned me; I see it as destructive and alienating. Turning away from the political process with a sneer and knowing smile is a conservative impulse, denying the possibility of change.

Of course it can never last. Reality always wins out in the end, as the coalition is beginning to discover. It is just that it is depressing to see politicians doing their best to prove the cynics right.

Uncanny

A demonstration of the mystic powers of those with special gifts.

Thanks to John A

One nation

From New Labour to Benjamin Disraeli. The future of the Labour Party is the Conservative Party of the 1870s. We live in curious times.

Breaking stereotypes

When the American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was murdered by a jihadi militia in Benghazi, the event prompted an outburst of apologia on one side and rage on the other. The rage was best demonstrated by the popular uprising against the militias, kicking them out of their headquarters and expressing sympathy with the USA. This is not what the apologists and pessimists were expecting.

That may have been the public response, but the private one has been less widely reported. Media intrusion into the grief of his family would not be welcome, but what of the reaction of his tribe. Tribe? Yes, tribe. Stevens was a native American. I wouldn't have known if it hadn't been for this piece from Terry Glavin.

If there were ever such a thing as a blue-blooded American, it would be Chris Stevens. He was a direct descendant of the great tribal leader Concomly, the senior chief of the far-flung Chinook Confederacy who welcomed the American explorers Lewis and Clark to the Columbia River in 1805.

What is the significance of this neglect? I honestly don't know. Except that just as the people of Benghazi did not conform to the stereotype imposed on them, so too Steven's life showed that consigning native Americans to the margins of the modern USA is wasteful as well as unjust. Perhaps the media, fine tuned to a dominant narrative, would have difficulty in recognising a different reality. And was it ignorance or embarrassment that has led to the neglect to celebrate the fact that as prominent a figure as Stevens had more right to be called an American than most?

Playing with fire

Two disturbing reports:

From Greece.

From Spain.

What are they doing? With no sign that they are learning, conflagration becomes more possible.

Other voices

One of the problems with the left's monomania about Israel and the grim determination of 'anti-imperialists' to see everything through the prism of a malign US foreign policy is that it gives us a distorted picture of the aspirations and opinions of ordinary people in the Middle East and beyond. This is mirrored by some apologists for the Israeli right and especially those other rightists who indulge in clash of civilisation fantasies that picture all Muslims as an undifferentiated, savage horde, even if it is a stereotype that islamists and some of the worst regimes in the region seem keen to live up to. Yet in the midst of all this are real people who are utterly disenchanted with the totalitarian fantasies of their oppressors and the cowardice of their apologists in the west.

This book review highlights a collection of essays that allows them to speak. I particularly liked this comment:

Indeed, while Iran, being mainly Persian, is not part of the Arab world, some of the book's most vivid writing comes from there, courtesy of a young Iranian who, after reading George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, realises he is living in his very own religious dystopia. It is, he says, a "perennially self-righteous society", allowing its rulers to justify extraordinary acts of brutality. "While you (in the West) are fighting for the rights of pandas over there, people are still being stoned to death in my country."  He writes that many Iranians are now so fed up of religious rule that if the regime ever falls, “Iran will form the biggest community of atheists on the planet."

We shouldn't be surprised at the existence of these views, after all they have made a whole series of revolutions, even if the consequences remain unknown.

This is symptomatic of the way blinkered and averted eyes fail to spot the obvious. Here Lauryn Oates discusses the latest bout of murderous, manufactured rage and once again tries to make it plain that it is a result of "an obsession over the desecration of symbols, rather than the desecration of people." As she also points out, "no one commits more violence against Muslims than other Muslims, crimes met with a deafening silence. Often this violence is blatantly defamatory of Islam, as when the Taliban sent suicide bombers into crowded Muslim religious ceremonies."

All those muddled accusations of western-centric orientalism are betrayals of the voices of ordinary people in despair at being the victims of the political ambitions of ideologues and kleptocratic elites alike. This myopia is itself the ultimate in western-centrism, seeing America and Israel as the source of all evil, and in orientalism, asserting that the peoples of the Middle East acquiesce in their own oppression because it is somehow authentic. Instead of judging the acts themselves, they define them on the basis of who carried them out. And in doing so they knit together a blanket of verbiage that muffles the cries of those who want a better life; one that is freer, not subject to arbitrary cruelty, and one that is as ordinary and commonplace as those lived by the apologists who condemn them to a live as the perpetual exotic victim, whilst elevating their worst oppressors to the iconic status of heroic liberators.

Integrate or disintegrate

Mark Mazower perfectly summarises the dilemmas facing the EU in the wake of the Euro crisis:

In short, unless there is a plan for integration that prioritises recovery and growth, what we may end up with is not a Europe that is a "democratic federation of nation states" at all but a gradual unwinding of the entire integration process. A prospect to make some Eurosceptics rejoice, no doubt, but replete with dangers of its own. 

Europeans thus have a tough choice to make: the historic preservation of their national institutions, or greater co-operation and derogation of powers. If, as the Dutch elections suggested last month, they would still mostly opt for the latter then the real argument becomes about the nature of the new institutions, their powers and the philosophy behind them.

"The philosophy behind them"... at last someone is pointing out that it is not so much the institutional arrangements that matters, but the model of political economy that underpins them. A completely coherent fiscal union dedicated to doing precisely the wrong thing is not going to help.

But then he finishes on a most peculiar note

What a sad commentary on the state of British diplomacy that what David Cameron's government thinks about this remains entirely irrelevant.

No, surely what he should have written is, 'thank god that the state of British diplomacy means that what David Cameron's government thinks about this remains entirely irrelevant'. Letting Austerity Osborne and the Etonians loose on Greece? Spare them that, please.

Beyond a joke

This is getting ridiculous.

A 27-year-old man has been arrested by Greek police for what the authorities called "malicious blasphemy," according to a HuffPost translation of a press release.
Police allege that the man managed a Facebook page that lampooned the deceased Eastern Orthodox monk Elder Paisios, a widely popular religious figure, using the name "Gerontas (Elder) Pastitsios."
Pastitsios is a Greek pasta dish, and the page parodied the monk and his work in the vein of Pastafarianism, a lighthearted, satirical movement that promotes irreligion. In a screen shot of the group's Facebook page, which now appears to have been removed from the social network, Elder Paisios is shown with a plate of pastitsios.

Yet another example of the current craze for privileging religion above any other belief system, placing it above criticism - and note too the possible link with the far right. And as there are calls for a UN sponsored world wide blasphemy law, this is a reminder that such a law is only a way of allowing governments to punish the incredibly innocent.

Sign the petition here.

And remember to treat the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster with proper respect.

Finger wagging

There is nothing like a bit of violence to send people scuttling for the cover of some semi-apologetics. Whilst the violence has been dutifully deplored all round, it has been accompanied by much hand-wringing about the importance of not denigrating religious beliefs (a bit difficult if you are an atheist like me). This isn't just a failure to stand up for free speech, it concedes that the cause of the troubles was religious offence. By now it should be evidently clear that the YouTube riots were less the result of the rage caused by a naff video clip and more about the continuing attempt at grabbing power by the far right in Islamic countries. And in one place anyway they seem to have won. The minds of much of the commentariat and several foreign offices have fallen into their hands with little resistance.

For example this is a really strange outbreak of isolationism, its contradictions splendidly taken apart by Norm here. But it was the conclusion that got to me:

Islamists need to stop attacking the west, and issuing fatwas against those outside the Islamic belief system. Likewise, the west needs to solve its own problems, rather than insisting on interfering in the affairs of Muslims, while failing to admit that previous interference might have provoked much of the "Muslim rage" that westerners find so "medieval". In fact, the finger-wagging criticism from Islamaphobic zealots is just more of the "We know what's best; you do what you're told" attitude that has already caused such mayhem. It is time for both parties to get a grip.

The assumptions underlying it are the same old stuff. The west is primarily to blame, we have no right to criticise and that if we do it is another example of colonial arrogance. This is, of course, the narrative of the Islamic far right, with the exception of the exhortation to leave us alone and just kill your own people. They would rather like to kill some of us as well.

Of course this 'neutrality' is nothing of the sort. It is a way of accommodating, rather than confronting some spectacularly nasty politics. It is at one with the 'talk with the Taliban' conventional wisdom. Eager to hear the voices of those who would use a suicide bomb to kill skateboarding children, they are deaf to the cries of the Muslim majority being assailed by these political movements. Believe it or not, a fair number of ordinary Muslims rather like the idea of not being oppressed by savage tyrants and appreciate the chance of living in a country that respects civil liberties and human rights. And on occasions they can make their views known:

As fires blazed and protesters danced in the ruined compound of a vanquished jihadist militia, I watched as the citizens of the Libyan city of Benghazi staged a dramatic display of raw people power. Numbed by the murder of an American ambassador in their city, furious with jihadist militias lording it over them and frustrated by a government too chaotic and intimidated to react, ordinary Benghazians took matters into their own hands.

These are the people we should be standing with, the majority. But then solidarity with them would be Islamophobic finger wagging, wouldn't it.

Twittering

You should be careful what you say on Twitter.  Gary Schofield the former Hull, Leeds and Great Britain centre/stand off, was so dismissive about Wakefield Trinity's chances that he tweeted before the Rugby League season began that he would run naked around Belle Vue (Wakefield's ground) if they made the play-offs.

They did and so did he.

WARNING:

This video is not a pretty sight.

Guilt

Simon Tisdall has identified those responsible for the awful murders in Benghazi. No surprises for guessing where the blame lies;

... responsibility may also be traced back, directly or indirectly, to those in London, Paris, Brussels and Washington who launched last year's Nato intervention in Libya with insouciant disregard for the consequences.

(The same way as those who criticised the support for the revolution had "insouciant disregard" for the consequences of not intervening? Just saying ...)

The whole article can be boiled down to two points:

1. Don't be fooled by any of the things that have gone right, only look at the remaining problems because I feel relieved and happy that we are doomed after all.

2. If we had let Gaddafi slaughter them all (and a few tens of thousands of others) and reestablish his kleptocratic reign of terror, they wouldn't have been around to kill US embassy staff. Wouldn't that have been nice?

Oh well, it's the Guardian after all ...

In the meantime, here are some others who chorus 'not in our name.'

UPDATE

A much more interesting piece of analysis from Hisham Matar here.

Homer

How long does it take to recognise failure? What amount of reality is necessary to overwhelm our defensiveness and conquer our cognitive dissonance? What does it take for us to look at something and say, 'sorry, I made a complete bollocks of that'? Judging by Eurozone policies, it needs something of Himalayan proportions.

By the terms it set itself, austerity has failed. Greece should have been growing modestly by now; instead it is contracting at an accelerating rate. There isn't even a sign of growth, there is no remission from the bad economic news, previously viable private enterprises are closing, fascist thugs not only beat up immigrants on the street, they also get elected to parliament, and there are signs of growing hunger - yes hunger - in what should be an affluent, European nation.

Of course the crisis is being felt differentially and an outsider would see little other than the same lovely country and people. Amongst the tales of the despair of the poor and of capital flight by the rich are others of initiative and enterprise, but underneath there are reports of a deepening pessimism.

This excellent post shows where the bailout money goes - straight back to the donors. This is not a rescue of profligate Greeks, but of imprudent financial institutions, in order to shore up a flawed monetary union.

And despite the failure, they still can't lose the habit. The ECB may now be offering to buy bonds to keep down borrowing costs, but as a condition of doing that they are insisting on ... yes, you guessed, it more austerity. At times like this they should turn to the wisdom of Homer - Homer Simpson that is. "If at first you don't succeed, give up."

Hat tip Marcus Walker

In need

What a world of mixed-up values and reprehensible morals. Where our Members of Parliament kick 12 bells out of vulnerable people but allow the extraordinarily wealthy to leap through tax loopholes designed to protect their already huge stash...  

This issue is not about so-called 'scroungers', who - aside from it being a vile, dehumanising term that should be beneath us - are few and far between. Let us not forget that the fraud disability rate is less than one per cent. No, the issue is the basic human needs that this Government is failing to take care of.

From an angry report on disability benefit in the Daily Mail. Yes, the Daily Mail. Indeed, that Daily Mail.

More too in these reports about poverty in the UK, from food banks, through child poverty, to blatantly exploitative loan sharks.

From my comfortable semi-retirement in my second home in Greece I look at both the countries that I have a stake in and wonder what sort of world is being created and whether the political elites have a clue about the consequences of their policies. Are they deluded? Or perhaps they just don't care.

American football

This footballer knows how to write to a politician about gay marriage.

I find it inconceivable that you are an elected official of Maryland's state government. Your vitriolic hatred and bigotry make me ashamed and disgusted to think that you are in any way responsible for shaping policy at any level.

It gets better.  How I wish that when I had written to my MP in the past about adult education I had thought to use the phrase, "Holy fucking shitballs".

Experts

What is the connection between female orgasms and climate change denial? This sounds like the start of a very dubious joke, but actually it isn't. The two were linked in my mind by a couple of very different articles that I read recently.

First up is a wonderfully savage review by Suzanne Moore of Naomi Wolf's new book about, what else, the vagina. There is a lot of malicious pleasure to be had in a stinking review of a book that probably deserves it. Moore set about putting the boot in in a way that would have been far more satisfying than any orgasm. She is particularly rude about Wolf's dipping into neuroscience, "more clueless than someone who has failed her chemistry GCSE but has two TED talks on her iPhone" (ouch!).  And continues,

Yet again we see neuroscience in the hands of the layperson being fused to very determinist ends. Thus neural pathways are formed, chemicals just do one thing, hormones rule. Actual scientists don't think so simplistically, however many rats they have tickled to orgasm.

So we are back in the morass caused by the misuse of misunderstood science; inexpertise leading to a simplistic, 'scientific' conclusion. It is a bad habit, trying to pick out bits of half-digested information to suit a predetermined theory and thereby claim some sort of scientific validity for it. The second article takes on the more serious issue of climate change denial and of a media tendency to abandon any requirement for a modicum of knowledge to help promote the mistrust of expertise by the inexpert. It is a very similar process.

Jay Griffiths writes

Society understands the architecture of academia and knows there are relevant qualifications in different fields, and the media accepts the idea of specialisations and accords greater respect to those with greater expertise. With one exception: climate science. 

When it comes to this academic discipline, it seems that if you are a specialist in public sector food-poisoning surveillance or possess a zoology doctorate on sexual selection in pheasants, editors will seek your contrarian views more avidly than if you have qualifications in climate science and a lifetime's professional expertise. The press is further littered with climate "heretics" almost all of whom have academic backgrounds in history, literature, and the classics with a diploma in media studies. (All these examples are true.) One botanist trying to argue that glaciers were advancing took his data (described as simply false by the World Glacier Monitoring Service) from a former architect.

What these 'sceptics' have in common is the self-image of being enlightened heretics, a Galileo complex. The problem is that their heresy is only lightly adorned by learning. In fact, they are repeating well-worn clichés that have been long disposed of and, though they see themselves as rugged individualists, they are really conservative conformists promoting a vested interest.

So let's think a bit more about expertise. We have a popular image floating around of the lone maverick genius. It doesn't really work that way. A flash of individual insight often can start the process off, but the accumulation of evidence prior to that has already pointed the way. The development of knowledge is as much collective as it is individual. This is why peer review is important. It doesn't guarantee that you are right, but it does point out when you are talking bollocks. This isn't an example of the wisdom of crowds, but of collective expertise harnessed to a common purpose. And this is why scientific consensus is important.

Of course expertise does not confer infallibility. Experts get things wrong, often badly. But that doesn't mean that they are invariably wrong, or that non-experts are more likely to be right. I have always felt that there is no necessary correlation between a position in an organisational hierarchy and expertise, but again that isn't to say that we should give equal respect to those with a smattering of knowledge leavened with a vivid imagination, because they are somehow more 'authentic' or demotic.

I like the way Griffiths ends up

The author has fallen victim to the Galileo fallacy. Just because Galileo was a heretic doesn't make every heretic a Galileo.

And what is more, Galileo was seeking to overturn dogma with data, research and observation. Climate change sceptics are trying to overturn data, research and observation with dogma.

In the meantime, here is an exasperated expert.

Against hysteria

This book looks interesting, one for my post-writing reading list. I have been troubled by the way in which a legitimate concern over jihadi movements has morphed into a general intellectual incoherence. Parts of the left have embraced an apologism for some unspeakable theocratic monsters for fear of being 'Islamophobic', whilst the far right has mobilised into 'football hooligans against Muslims'.  As for the rest, either an embarrassed and faintly patronising silence reigns or the attention rightly paid to Islamist organisations crowds out a broader anti-racism. This book seems to take the sensible line of looking at Muslim immigration in the context of the usual patterns of migration and assimilation, using good empirical evidence and discussing the external political pressures that they are facing.

I suppose it particularly struck home as I am currently re-reading the anarchist Rudolph Rocker's memoir, The London Years, about the organisation of Jewish immigrant labour, which also took place at a time of terrorism, or 'outrage' as it was then known. This was again associated in the popular imagination with foreign immigrants and agitators. History never provides exact parallells, but there are echoes of today's moral panics and political confusions to be found in the sweatshops of19th century London.

Here is a short video of the author discussing it.

And a review from Terry Glavin here.

5,614

A new world record entry for the Guinness Book of Records.  The largest number of people dancing in a single syrtaki in Volos tonight.

UPDATE

An amazing arial view (together with the arrival of the Argo) here.

Blue moon

The second full moon in any month is conventionally known as a blue moon and there will one tonight.

It's bad news for lovers of sardines and anchovies, they can't be caught on bright nights. Although the association with Manchester City may be unfortunate, Rogers and Hart's Blue Moon is still a classic. There are so many versions to choose from ...

Here's an early one - Belle Baker recorded in 1935:



This is another 1935 version by Greta Keller. Then there is the incomparable Billie Holiday. And here are some outstanding Jazz instrumental versions by Art Blakey and Stephane Grappelli.

But I am in Greece, so I have to finish with Haris Alexiou singing Panselinos.

Crisis time is here again

Not that it ever went away. Samaras has been begging for time to get some sort of growth in the Greek economy, but the need to maintain the Franco/German alliance now seems to be standing in the way of French support for a less insane economic policy. Both countries are now putting pressure on Greece.  Much of this pressure is played out as a piece of theatre that consists of the stern authorities demanding obedience from the recalcitrant Greek child.  This article is well worth reading as it unpicks the moral drama without denying the need for reform. The point it makes is that,

To suggest that Greece is in a constant struggle to meet the troika’s fiscal goals because of indifference rather than due to the deteriorating state of the economy or because of the political difficulty of passing unprecedented -- by eurozone standards -- austerity measures is pure subterfuge. 

Pointing out that austerity has most certainly been implemented by Greece, and at immense economic cost, the article continues by saying,

The structure of the Greek bailout ensured that nobody in the official sector has lost money and the creation of an escrow account earlier this year guarantees that everyone who has lent to Greece will be repaid. In fact, when one factors in the interest and lower borrowing costs countries like Germany have benefited from as a result of weakness in other areas of the eurozone, the bailouts have turned a tidy profit. If Greece is a bottomless pit, it is the first in the world to return the money thrown into it with interest.

And then we come to yet another conclusion that says that the Troika have got everything wrong,

A crisis that is eminently solvable is instead being tackled in such a perverse manner that it threatens to erode Europe’s very foundations ...Greece is essentially being asked to pull even more of the rug from under the feet of its teetering economy, and risk the fragile political balance in the country, to receive further loans, which will be used to pay back existing debt. As Nomura Research Institute’s chief economist Richard Koo, who argues that the eurozone is experiencing a balance sheet recession, put it in a recent note, “it is as though a team of doctors insisted on administering the standard treatment for one disease to a patient suffering from an entirely different disease about which they knew nothing.”

And still they are not listening.

Back to school

Especially for Glenn Greenwald and Simon Jenkins, here is a simple lesson in logic.

Hypocrisy: particularly foaming at the mouth accusations of.

Just because it is the pot that calls the kettle black, it doesn't mean that the kettle is not black. If indeed the kettle is black, it means that the pot is absolutely correct. 

Sundry thoughts

Eleni is very frail now. I visited our old neighbour on her trip to stay with her son. At 102 she is no longer mobile and can barely sit upright. But mentally she is a sharp as can be, refuses to take any medicines and can still roar with laughter, especially when I make up for my deficient Greek with mime. My donkey impersonation was especially impressive, if ineffective. This game of charades started with a guess at a rabbit and I gave up when we got to horse, much closer in size. It had to do. I have blogged about her before obliquely here, as well as here and here.

As I left, I pointed out to Eleni's daughter-in-law how her husband must have inherited the same genes for longevity. She looked to the skies and crossed herself in horror – 'Ach! Panagia mou!'

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One of the problems with novels can sometimes be the awkward contrivance of the plot as it bends and twists to create a convenient and conclusive ending. There are ways to avoid this, but there are also genres that celebrate contrivance and make it integral to the art form. One such genre is farce and Michael Frayn has written a gem of one set in Greece, though not about it. Skios is a delight and has been long listed for the Booker prize. It is lovely to see something light hearted get some recognition. There is a profile of Frayn and the book here.

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How about this for the plot of a farce?

An extradition request from Sweden for a man accused of sexual offences, including one count of rape, is finally granted after an exhaustive process of appeals. The wanted man then skips bail and claims political asylum to protect his right to free speech in the embassy of a country with a lousy reputation on free speech, because of the danger that he could be extradited to the USA from Sweden to face the death penalty, despite there being no extradition request and the fact that Swedish law will not permit the extradition of anyone who may be subject to the death penalty. In the meantime he gathers a range of celebrity supporters who either ignore the charges or excuse them ('bad sexual etiquette') and repeat all sorts of strange claims (including it being illegal not to wear a condom in Sweden, which makes me wonder how long it will be before the Swedish population dies out). Transformed into a celebrity victim of the new world order, he gives a balcony speech. Let's call it a drama of self-righteousness, self-pity and self-preservation.

No. Too far fetched.

There are some positives to come out of the affair. It has given an opportunity for an unpleasant individual to be ridiculed, confirms suspicions that there is not an excess of sanity out there and has given the Guardian the opportunity to once again provide a platform for more lunacy.

Meanwhile – here are some facts.

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And all the while I get a visit from a stray cat that looks like Hitler.

More here

The aesthetics of oppression

I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. The whole world now sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, the world sees Russia differently from the way Putin tries to present it at his daily international meetings. Clearly, none of the steps Putin promised to take toward instituting the rule of law have been taken. And his statement that this court will be objective and hand down a fair verdict is yet another deception of the entire country and the international community. 

Yekaterina Samutsevich

Read it all together with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina.

Free Pussy Riot.

Thirteen

I sometimes have conversations about Israel/Palestine, both online and face-to face, with younger people and they disturb me. Their support for Palestinian statehood, something I have long shared, can often be scarcely differentiated from an anti-Israel sentiment that simply assumes the inherent wickedness of the state. It isn't hatred; it is disdain. Above all, what worries me is their certainty. Doubt does not trouble them, nor do they think of Israelis as anything other than oppressors. Does it ever cross their mind that they are Jews, or that the history of the conflict is inseparable from Jewish history and experience? I don't think so. As a result, they carelessly leave an intellectual door ajar and sometimes I wonder what it is that seeps in through the crack from the room beyond.

And so I come to a remarkable series of thirteen posts by the poet George Szirtes about his sense of his own cultural inheritance. It will be well worth your time to read them all. Whenever I read his poetry, I get a feeling that each word is casting a shadow, dappled layers of meaning, which lays bare a moment in time. In the darkest corners of those shadows lurk the ghosts of the worst of the twentieth century. They are not his own experiences; they are a room that he has necessarily passed through. He wrote these posts to try and explain, "…my feelings about Israel, a country I have never visited, based on a religion I have never practised, and a culture I have never shared". And he shows precisely where those young people go wrong.

The metaphor George chooses is a yellow room, taken from a Chagall painting. It is atmospheric and enigmatic; an intimate, welcoming, refuge. Outside it there is an inescapable sense of unease. The only moment that jars is in his eighth post.

Exile 

Roughly similar number of Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs left or were expelled from their previous dwelling places in the 1948 period (c 800,000 Palestinians, c 700,000 Jews from Arab homelands). 

The problem here is not that it isn't true, there was a mass displacement of both peoples with all the pain that involved. But unlike the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, the experience was not symmetrical. Jews had a refuge to move to, one that they were now determined to defend. The Palestinians had nothing, only the camps, only exile. And so they had to invent their own refuge, a room of their own. For the older generation it was constructed from memories of their old homes, something real that they had known and for which they kept the keys and deeds as sacred icons. The younger generation moved in and decorated it with unreality. Palestine became an Eden; one that could be recovered because they had not fallen, they were pushed. It was not made of the mundane; it was a dreamland, a golden room. People kill and die readily for glorious fictions.

And this is the essence of the conflict. Two peoples have become deeply entwined in tragic histories. They have more in common than is often admitted and that is why I repeat the slogan whenever I can that to be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli at the same time is not a contradiction. It is a necessity if we are to untangle these enmeshed tragedies. To practical minds, the two-state solution stands as the starting point for coexistence.

All of which brings me back to these perfectly decent young people and the ideologues who fill them with righteous ardour. It's odd, they never seem to mention the word Jew. Instead they use hopelessly inappropriate analogies – 'colonial settler state', 'apartheid state' and the like. Anything to avoid even thinking that they are talking about Jews and that this noble cause could have anything to do with Jewish people. There is a reason for that of course. We gentiles have a room too. It is part of our history and we don't want to think about it. If we do, it might dilute certainty with ambiguity. The room isn't yellow. Sometimes it is made out of rough planks, sometimes of cement and occasionally it is constructed from neatly dressed stone placed on a picturesque mound in a beautiful northern city. This room is part of our cultural inheritance and it is intrinsically tied up with Jews. It is the room in which we kill them. And so I think I know what bothers me. It is the smell seeping through that half closed door. I can recognise what it is now.

It's gas.

***
Follow these links to read all the posts in order: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12; 13

Friday cat blogging

It is summer and stray cats can spot a mug a mile off.

One is very relaxed with modern technology.

Computer and cat in perfect harmony

The others are just relaxed

Reasons to be cheerful

1. Linda Grant is enjoying the Olympics:

What has happened to London is that, in the space of a few days, it has become filled with hordes of individuals and families who are happy. Who are delighted to be in London, delighted to watch their sport played the very best it can be played, delighted to wave a national flag with the enthusiasm that comes of knowing that, unlike our English football squad, we're actually going to win something. The last time so many people were enjoying themselves as much in London must have been VE Day.

2. Charlie Brooker is enjoying the Olympics:

So yes, thanks, Olympics, for confounding my inner cynic, and not being awful. And for, I suppose, on balance, I admit, I confess, in a whisper – actually being quite good.

3. Holiday makers are coming back to Greece to enjoy themselves - and they will:

Ordinary tourists who might have cancelled holidays when the debt-stricken country seemed close to economic meltdown, two months ago, now appear to have had a change of heart. Over the past few weeks bookings have rebounded to the point that industry insiders expect arrivals to be on a par with those of other peak years, hitting 16 million by the end of 2012.

4. The Daily Mail, once again, make themselves look stupid:

Down with the miserablist tendency!

Sporting class

Peter Wilby bemoans the fact that,

Only football, eschewed by many public schools because of its proletarian associations, remains almost entirely dominated by state school alumni at the top level.

Er, hasn't he heard of Rugby League then? The sport was founded as a specific response to the attempts by the Rugby Union to exclude working class players who were beginning to dominate the upper echelons of the game. I have posted in more detail on this before.

In many ways his article is a fine piece, but Rugby League is a classic example of the interweaving of social class with sport, which is historic, systemic and not solely the result of educational inequality. Ironic too that a working class sport with a strong Northern regional identity should escape the notice of a London-based left journalist writing about social exclusion and social exclusivity in British sporting life.

UPDATE

Much of his analysis (of state school failure, not private school facilities) seems to have fallen apart with a raft of gold medals over the weekend by, er, former state school pupils.  Read John Harris.

In memoriam

Another day in the death of liberal adult education. Hull's Centre for Lifelong Learning, where I spent nearly fourteen years of my working life, formally closed yesterday. It isn't alone. The slow eradication of a service has been almost silent. The press are not really interested, nor do they understand it. Only the millions for whom adult education was both an opportunity and a lifeline mourn.

Here is a story from the other side of the world.

He is one of South Africa's best loved musicians, has toured internationally and made an album that sold half a million copies. But for Sipho "Hotstix" Mabuse there was always something missing: an education.
Forty-four years after he dropped out of school, Mabuse has gone back to the classroom and passed the exams he missed.

Hotstix comments:

"The best empowerment you can give to people is to give them an education. Those who rule over the ignorant will rule in perpetuity."

Draw your own conclusions. I just feel sad.

Hotting up

From sceptic to proselytiser is a well-trodden path, but this one is a very inconvenient conversion for the dwindling band of climate change deniers.

Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Richard Muller here publicising his views in the New York Times.  He is still pugnacious about over what he sees as alarmist claims (including the one about Himalayan glaciers that was withdrawn as an error a few years ago), but gets to the central problem in his conclusion.

I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.

Of course any scientific debate was settled a very long time before his study was undertaken, so what he is really trying to say is that it is time for him to join the party - a little late maybe, but he has turned up. However, if he thinks that this will stop denialist campaigns then he is mistaken. The reason why is in his last sentence. 

Climate change 'skepticism' was never a scientific movement, it was always a political one. Its aim was not to promote scientific enquiry, it was to at least delay, or preferably stop, any corrective measures that could affect the economic interests of its major corporate funders. It attempted to do this through obfuscation. Look at Fox News or the Republican Party in the USA today and you will see that it has had some success. And it will keep up the pressure for as long as it can.

So what will the consequences be? On a less serious level at least Minda Berbeco can offer some consolation. She points out that higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will benefit the growth of cannabis.

In a carbon-rich world 100 years from now, when our environment is over-run with poison ivy and star thistle; where rising sea levels will displace millions of people causing natural disaster refugees; where warmer temperatures will increase epidemic risks and famines globally; I think we’ll be very glad that the cannabis plant is doing so well.  We’ll probably need it.

Maybe this is what the Exxon corporations of this world need to do. Forget oil, go into dope. There's money to be made.

Thanks to Stephen for the links

Being British

I love Greece, but as an outsider. It isn't the same as being part of somewhere. If I was going to say what I love about my own country, I could mention literature and music obviously, the scenery and the townscapes, though not the weather, and that would tell you nothing about what it is like. No, I would pick out a few other things instead. There is our glorious cosmopolitanism. Self-deprecation as a national sport is another; we find ourselves funny. Then there is irreverence, humour, satire, surrealism and, of course, sentimentality. And I have just described the London Olympics' opening ceremony.

It was different. A rural idyll destroyed by dark satanic mills; Blake and Shakespeare (Caliban not Richard II); workers and women on the march. The historian in me was pleased to see that though the WSPU colours were in evidence amongst the suffrage campaigners, the most prominent banners were those of the NUWSS. The Jarrow marchers make an appearance, the Windrush arrives, so do the Beatles, and then a centrepiece celebration of the National Health Service, which has to be saved from monsters drawn from children's literature by an army of flying Mary Poppins. And that was only the beginning. We moved on to the Sex Pistols accompanied by giant bouncing punks, James Bond and the Queen parachuting from a light aircraft, the London Symphony Orchestra featuring Mr Bean ... and ... and ... and ...  before Dizzee Rascal performed Bonkers. Quite.

It avoided being kitsch, which so many of these ceremonies are, pulling back from the brink just as you thought it was going to slip over the edge. It was rarely banal, was often wildly over the top, didn't take itself too seriously and was always supremely, utterly surreal. But then the sentimentality was beautifully understated  - Abide With Me was sung exquisitely by Emeli Sandé.

What impressed me most was that it was populist in the best meaning of the term. It was of and about the people. It celebrated them and their collective experiences, their work and, by the end, their ability to laugh and to party. And when the Olympic flame entered the arena, the guard of honour was made up of the construction workers who had built the stadium. I liked that.

Of course a particularly obnoxious type of Tory MP has gratifyingly ruined his career with his "leftie," "multicultural crap" tweets. Then again it didn't take long for another bit of pious carping to drop into my inbox from someone who would have preferred some sanctimonious agitprop. But that is not what an opening ceremony is for. Wait a minute, what is an opening ceremony for? Er ... Hold on a sec ... Oh well, if we are going to have one, why not something fun - and creative - and entertaining - and touching - and mad - like this. In short; art, popular art.

I'll end on sentimentality. It is a hot day, the cicadas are screeching, this isn't Britain, I feel like a little sentimentality. Here is Emeli Sandé's studio recording of Abide With Me. Listen, lie back, and think of England.

Being English

I was chatting in the lane outside the patio gate and my neighbour was complaining about the heat. I replied to the effect that, 'you are Greek, so of course you moan, but in England we don't see the sun and so when we come here we ...' and then I added an extravagant gesture of bliss; the wordless communication necessary when the command of language is deficient. Martin Amis put it much better in this interview about living in New York:

All I care about is the color of the sky. Have you spent time in England?

He is right - it is the brilliance of the light, the absence of the uniformity of grey, dull skies and the intoxicating, star-filled darkness of a warm night that I relish about being here.

And with the Olympics about to start, this also seemed spot on:

David Remnick said the English feel Schadenfreude about themselves—they delight in their own suffering, they take a sort of grim joy in that. 

The Olympics aren't my sporting cup of tea (to continue with the metaphor of Englishness) but friends of mine have been eagerly chasing tickets and are looking forward to the events with excitement. Meanwhile, those who would rather they turn out to be a failure are having a field day - they absolutely love G4S. There are also the usual contributions from those who hate sport and therefore think that it must be morally wrong to like it and that us sports fans have to be defective, or, even worse, pitiably deluded and unconsciously oppressed. Some leftists seem to cling to the hope that it will all go wrong and bring down the government, others just think that everything is deeply politically suspect. At least the gift for satire (as opposed to cynicism) is still alive and kicking everything within range:



The best anti-Olympic rant is Andrew Rawnsley's, simply because you can't fault his critique of the commercialisation, the costs and his argument that the supposed benefits are unlikely to materialise. He's right. Just ask Athens. Though his conclusion is impeccably cheery and utterly English in its final sentiment.

For all the blunders during the build-up, I have a hunch that the actual event will be largely successful. I hope so. Even an Olympiphobe doesn't want to give to the French the satisfaction of being able to crow that they would have done it so much better.

But for every cheerful sceptic, there is always miserablist waiting in the aisles. Hello Simon Jenkins.

I must balance the pleasure of watching young people competing for medals against dismay at the billions spent turning my city into a tacky shambles.

Dismay Simon? Come on, you're English. You're enjoying it.

I blame the weather.

Prophecy

The sagacity and foresight of that fount of all economic knowledge, the 'Troika' of lenders to Greece, is there for all to see. With confidence and self-assurance they predicted that as a result of their stern but necessary policies:

Greece' economy would contract by 2.6pc in 2010 under the austerity regime, before recovering with growth of 1.1pc in 2011, and 2.1pc in 2012.

The critics scoffed, but the results of their policies were that ... er ...

In fact, Greek GDP has been in an unbroken free-fall. It did not grow last year. It contracted a further 6.9pc, and is now expected to shrink 6.7pc this year ... Roughly speaking, the Troika has misjudged the scale of economic decline over three years by 12pc of GDP.

This from a superb, angry piece byAmbrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph, please read it all.

The response from the policy makers is, of course, more of the same, with a scribbled note added to the bottom of the prescription; "must try harder." And if Greece fails to comply, they will be duly punished. I have stopped thinking that the policies were a product of an ideological fixation that might respond to reality, instead we have gone way beyond even wishful thinking into magical thinking - that if we want something to happen enough, it will - underpinned by the fear that decisive action may cost them real money.

Now the Troika appear to be quite relaxed about letting Greece go. As they wipe away a crocodile tear from one eye, I would recommend that they keep the other on Spain. Already deep in difficulties, the remedies being applied are identical and still the EU think that the results will be different. And if you think the Greek crisis has been a problem - you ain't seen nothing yet.

Knotty problems

There is an excellent article on the Greek economic crisis in the Wall Street Journal from Marcus Walker and Marianna Kakaounaki.

Walker and Kakaounaki look at the impact of 'internal devaluation' on the real Greek economy. This is a brief summary of their argument: 

The IMF admit that the conditions are probably wrong for internal devaluation to work, yet continue to press it on Greece. Export businesses need internal devaluation to increase competitiveness to be able to export. In the meantime internal devaluation is sucking domestic demand out of the economy, thereby hampering the development of the necessary infrastructure for domestic growth and for those self-same export businesses. Borrowing and lending costs are too high and confidence is too low. Whilst tourism, one of the biggest earners of foreign exchange, is less competitive due to the exchange rate. What a tangled mess. They reckon that,

If the euro zone unravels, the deeper reason won't be fiscal indiscipline or political dithering. It will be because struggling nations' euro membership, coupled with Germany's approach to its own economy, leaves them with a route to recovery that some economists say is barely feasible—socially, politically or financially.

Instead of admitting their failures and dealing with the real problem, the EU seem to be following a time-honoured military strategy. Urge the poor bloody infantry in the front line to make increasing numbers of futile sacrifices, whilst securing the home front from the consequences of the inevitable defeat. It never works.

I hate to come over all classical about this, but isn't it Gordian knot cutting time?

Sultry

Another part of Greece not in crisis.

Reality or otherwise

Comment is Free has done it again. This has got a lot of people spluttering on various forums. It is another in the long line of apologias, this time for ... wait for it ... North Korea.  According to the author, a football writer;

... the hypocrisy of using one-sided journalism to label North Korea a rogue, propaganda-led state is surely self-evident and fans the fire of intolerance and animosity.

It is a perfect example of the genre. It is so perfect that I wonder if this could possibly be another version of the Sokal Hoax - where a bogus and utterly meaningless jumble of jargon was accepted in an academic journal. Could the author be testing CiF's editorial control by submitting a spoof? The trouble is they have published so much of the genuine tosh it is hard to tell.

Who knows. I am probably being too kind. What it does show, however, is that the culture of publishing anything contrarian, regardless of its relationship to truth or even, in this case, common humanity, is alive and well in the Guardian's portals. You can almost hear them,  'Let's be reasonable and give a fair hearing to murderous dictatorships old boy. They deserve to have their case heard.' This is the posh paper's version of phone hacking: abandon all standards ye who enter here.

Originally via Norm.

Party time

It was the village's panegyri last night.  There was music and  dancing at the front, taking place against a background hum of inattentive chatter. Later in the evening a hot wind blew, warming an already sweltering night and stirring the sea to join in the general hubbub. I staggered home around three in the morning and as the music faded the wind grew stronger, whistling through the trees around my house, creating a different soundscape.

Bleary-eyed I opened the shutters this morning and the wind had turned round to come from the north taking the heatwave with it. The weather is now gorgeous and though the cat stole my breakfast and spilt coffee all over my keyboard when I chased it off, nothing can really spoil the day.

And all the while, the reportage that I have seen in the UK media suggests that I am in a war zone. Tourist numbers have declined sharply, yet Greek life continues and anyone considering a holiday should not be put off. This is still a lovely country and it needs your money more than ever.

But that doesn't mean that the crisis is not real enough and, of course, it is being felt much more sharply in Athens than in rural Pelion. Today, the IMF announced that both the Spanish and Greek deficits were higher than forecast.  Well, who would have guessed that inducing a recession would reduce income and raise social security costs? What a surprise. So the solution? Let's do more of the same, it might work this time. And if they won't do the wrong things by themselves, let's make sure that we do the wrong things for them, and do them even worse than they could have managed if left to their own devices. No country could have escaped the impact of the global banking disaster and Greece had many vulnerabilities that meant that it would certainly have faced an economic crisis in its wake. But it wouldn't be this one. Not one with 'made in the EU' stamped all over it.

Costas Lapavitsas thinks that we are nearing the endgame as the EU leadership seems intent on changing politics from being the art of the possible into the imposition of the impossible. But in the meantime, book your holiday and remember the message of these two inspirational posters from our local cultural association.

The unconsidered

It is John Maynard Keynes who is credited with saying, "even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long-dead economist." I would add that much of what passes for technical economic diagnosis is underpinned by a whole set of social and moral assumptions as well.

At the moment one of these is that the mere possession of power confers wisdom. So moves to resolve the Euro crisis by creating ever greater integration is phrased in the language of passing control over to central authorities so that they, with a heavy sigh, can do it right. This makes much sense to people who assume that they must be correct in every way. Those of us who look on with increasing bewilderment at their actions have their doubts. Mind you, our protestations are met with disdain from those on the Olympian heights convinced of their own disinterested intellectual gifts. Good, virtuous European citizenship means respect for authority in their eyes. Meanwhile, the people who have to deal with the real impact of their policies, gaze upwards and mumble the word 'idiots'.

Their general contempt for the powerless is compounded by an ungenerous, pinched view of people's suffering. It is rooted in the old notion of the deserving and undeserving poor - a view held widely by the undeserving rich. Their wealth is, of course, entirely merited and the poverty of the poor is solely down to their failures. So they raise their eyes skywards, sugest that some may be redeemable, up to a point suitable for their station, if they pull their socks up and work as hard as the wealthy. But then reality creeps in for the un-deluded and points out that hard work, grindingly hard work, the sort that involves emptying the bed pans of the demented, caring for those whom others would rather forget, is often rewarded with poverty pay.

So, as one version or another of the latest conventional wisdom is endlessly ground out, it is nice to be shaken awake by reading something different. Near the end of David Graeber's intriguing book on debt there is this:

I would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor. At least they aren't hurting anyone. Insofar as the time they are taking time off from work is being spent with friends and family, enjoying and caring for those they love, they're probably improving the world more than we acknowledge. Maybe we should think of them as pioneers of a new economic order that would not share our current one's penchant for self-destruction. 

Even though his perspective is viewed through the rosiest of rose tinted glasses, my heart lifts. Here the most unconsidered and stigmatised are given value - what a generous view of the world. It is a reminder of the closing words of George Eliot's Middlemarch.

... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. 

 An uncomfortable thought for those who are certain of their own importance.

In a heatwave

Find a cool spot and ...

Following on

Nick Cohen's comment that I quoted in my previous post certainly got to George. It is one of those occasions when phrases written to impress upon the reader the urgent necessity to deal with the neglect and exploitation of a potentially 'lost generation' betray deeper social assumptions that take us beyond the words' intended meaning. Basically, there are two such assumptions at play here. They infect political life and public policy as much as our private lives. Although using the language of hard-headed rationality, they are, in reality, moral discourses. And both, in my view, are utterly wrong.

The first is that youth is not a stage in life, but is a virtue. Is it possible to have a party leader who is not under fifty and often scarcely over forty? The fresh-faced, telegenic figure is seen to be the epitome of political cool, a necessity for that elusive asset - electability. Although what I see when I look at the Camerons, Cleggs and Millibands is an almost frightening inexperience. And even if they are intelligent people, and they certainly must have a ruthless cunning, what is intelligence without experience?

The second is that dependency is a state of sin. I have touched on this before. The refrain of the elderly, 'I don't want to be a burden', is a cry of guilt from someone who worries for their children but craves their love and support. I have yet to see any empirical evidence for the much mythologised damage caused by 'dependency culture', but the appalling pain of neglect is evident everywhere.

Instead, I would argue that dependency is a state of virtue. We seek it out, longing for dependents to complete our lives. We form partnerships 'in sickness and in health', we tend gardens that would collapse into wildernesses without our constant care, we keep pets, feed and adopt stray animals, make strong friendships and feel sad when children leave home.

But what of independence? It is liberty, the essence of youth and a joyful escape from constraints. But that too is transitory as we build our own voluntary bonds and slip into dependence on others as others do with us. And that very mutuality makes us happy.

Youth and age, dependence and independence. They are the dialectic of life; unresolvable and inescapable. Our existence is bound by enigma and ambiguity, not brutal clarity. And the mark of a civilised society is one that values it all.

Divide and rule

I am writing seriously at the moment, so haven't as much time for blogging. But a bit of conventional wisdom seems to be cropping up recently that I have a vested interest in and I wanted to comment on it. Why? Well, despite being a young, vigorous buck in my own mind, the empirical reality is that I am not quite in the first flush of youth. And, actually, I have sort of retired.

This all began a little while ago. There was this argument floating around. It started as an attack on babyboomers and it was not without some validity. The notion was that the generation to which I belong had the best of everything, which is true - we were lucky, but when it came to their turn to pay for the next generation to have similar benefits they became parsimonious and demanded tax cuts instead. Now I am not too sure that it is entirely due to all of us being selfish, rather I might just suggest that a change in the elite consensus on how economies are managed could have had something to do with it. And maybe those super-rich enthusiasts for a bit of state-aided redistribution coming their way could take a bit of the flak as well. But never mind, if you have a few million people to blame instead, why not go for them?

Gradually, rather than being venerated for our wisdom and experience, we seem to be becoming the target of 'progressive' opinion. Robert Skidelsky is after retirement itself. Whilst, I may agree with this: 

... the rich and super-rich have raced ahead from everyone else; and there are 13 million households, or 21% of the population, who live below the officially designated poverty line. This group cannot reasonably be expected to trade income for leisure. They must first have more income.
How to bring about those more equal conditions of life needed to realise the promise of leisure for all is the main social challenge facing advanced capitalist countries. 

I am less sure about his view that part of the way to do this is

The abolition of the concept of retirement, with "special needs" to be attended to by a retirement agency. 

Now I have to admit bits of retirement are not easy, especially for someone like me who loved his job and retired earlier than he would have liked in circumstances that he would rather not have happened. But there are benefits, especially today as I can look out on a blisteringly hot day at my beautiful Greek garden that I had the sense to acquire when I was still earning. Now I can contemplate long, extended stays here. Yet this guy sees me chained to work forever, even if I am only working three-hour days (actually too short to do anything meaningful). Yes, state pensions and the idea of a retirement age only came in for the first time in 1908, but it was to replace the workhouse.

A couple of weeks ago in his Spectator blog post Nick Cohen also chipped in about how the Tories are targeting young people, including the horrible proposal to remove housing benefit from the under twenty-fives. Again, he makes a decent point well when he points out the fact that older people are more likely to vote and thus are a much more politically dangerous target to hit. (I would point out that older people actually have taken a number of hits, from pension mis-selling, changes to the way pensions are calculated, the rising retirement age etc., to the hidden ones like the death of non-accredited adult education, which was a lifeline to many of the retired). But then he makes a utilitarian point about the need to invest in the young.

I am sorry to be brutal, but there is no way of phrasing it delicately: the young are our future and the old are our burden. 

Hold on a second. There is a bit of natural justice to consider. Someone leaving school at eighteen has just spent the whole of their lives being "our burden", paid for by the old. The old have worked most of their lives, contributed in other ways, such as by being carers, and coughed up taxes for more than forty years. If we get a few perks to go with our sharply reduced incomes, I would like to point out that we have bloody paid for them! The young have so far paid nothing.

Obviously, youth unemployment is a problem and a far worse one in Greece and Spain. The young need a start and wouldn't it be good if they too could look forward to some liberty at the end of their working lives or even that people should continue to work if they want to? If the problem is about how we enable the young to become the contributors they desperately want to be in a contracting economy, then the problem is the contracting economy, not pensioners. One generation doesn't have to be supported at the expense of the other. Of course, eventually they are the same people. The old were once young and the young, if they are lucky, will be old. And, if I remember correctly, there is something else that differentiates people and their life chances at the moment that seems to be a bit more permanent and pertinent. What is it again? Oh yes; class.

Ethics

Charles, that is what we do - we go out and destroy other people's lives.

Harry Potter and the Ethics of News International