There are some aspects of parenthood which are a disappointment; it so happens that I married someone even worse than sport than I was, and so I have never had the pleasure of standing beside a windswept football/cricket/rugby/hockey etc pitch and shouted enthusiastically while one of my children scored a hat trick or a brisk half century before lunch. My how the tears would have flowed though.
Amidst the many other satisfying things however, my son likes Marquee Moon nearly as much as I do.
Marquee Moon is an LP released by the American band Television in the late 70s. In my view it is the greatest pop/rock record of the era. Perhaps any era. The only threat to its status is perhaps that it is neither pop or rock. Television emerged from the New York underground scene as post-Velvet Underground wannabees, and were embraced enthusiastically as New Wave kindred spirits when their debut LP reached these shores. I saw them play once, at the Manchester Apollo, in about 1977.
Television fulfilled the first and most obvious criteria for a rock band. They looked like a gang. On the front cover, nearly all black, they stand facing Robert Mapplethorpe's camera (yes, that Robert Mapplethorpe) in an uneven echelon, with leader Tom Verlaine looking out from under his centre-parted fringe, an amused Mona Lisa half smile on this face, appearing to proffer something to the viewer. On the inside sleeve they are rehearsing in what is no doubt some trendily bleak NY loft apartment, drummer Billy Ficca waiting patiently to be told what to do, bass player Fred Smith watching observantly while Verlaine chops something out on his Fender Jazzmaster and fellow guitarist Richard Lloyd, hunched over a scruffy Telecaster, tries to make sense of it. The lighting is low and monochrome. They look young, but not naive; they are not jocks, but neither are they nerds; they aren't punks, but they aren't prog rockers either. They are their own genre. Weirdos perhaps. And they belong together.
So much for the cover. The record itself consists of eight songs recorded with a simplicity that belies the laborious care taken to achieve the effect. Drummer Ficca is a million miles away from the four-to-the-floor simplicity of greats like Charlie Watts or Ringo; but he does just enough to keep the music interesting without ruining it by showing off. Bassist Smith is like a great referee - you never notice him. But it is the guitarists that are riveting and make Television's distinctive and much-copied sound (vide the Arctic Monkeys).
Playing Fender guitars through Fender amps gives Verlaine and Lloyd's work a distinctive clarity. And the songs are beautifully arranged, each guitarist playing the absolute minimum, so the sound is full of holes and spaces. And what sounds they produce. In particular Verlaine's Jazzmaster has a glassy chiming ring that is utterly distinctive; no other guitar I know of can make that sound. It has something of the glass harmonica about it. As a soloist, Lloyd is a decent technician, but again Verlaine has the touch of genius. Taking his cue from the nagging lines of Neil Young, his playing, sometimes minimalist, sometimes expansive, has a percussive and modal inflexion to it. He can thrash it, and he can make it sing.
As for the songs themselves, they are not quite as simple as they sound. See No Evil hurries rhythmically along for a few minutes, but most of the tunes are slow, or nearly slow. Prove It has only three or four chords, but is a cheeky subversion of early 60s bubblegum pop with a stop-start chorus. Torn Curtain wanders into strange harmonic by-ways. Elevation is perhaps characteristic of Verlaine's approach to lyric writing - "It's just a little bit back from the main road / where the silence spreads and the men dig holes", he sings, bleating like a disappointed goat. And, "I knew it must have been some kind of set up / All the action just would not let up". In the gaps between he plays some fills that take the breath away.
Who knows what the lyrics mean? "I remember how the darkness doubled / I remember lightning struck itself / I was listening, listening to the wind / I was hearing, hearing something else". Who cares? Verlaine seems to have calculated that if no-one could work out what the words meant it didn't much matter what they meant. "Docks, clocks / A whisper woke him up / the smell of water would resume".
The climax of the record is perhaps the title track, Marquee Moon, a nagging ostinato of three elements cutting across each other, and reaching in Verlaine's solo a tremendous climax in D major (from memory) where, for one of only a very few times on the record an instrument other than guitar, bass and drums appears - some whirling piano arpeggios which clarify that we have reached somewhere. The music subsides, and then restarts, chugging into life as patiently as in the opening.
When I saw Television live, Verlaine did all the singing, and most of the playing. Only on the encore of Satisfaction did Richard Lloyd get the chance to cut loose, which he did dazzlingly. This personal dynamic might have gone some way to explain why the band split shortly after their second LP. In reality there was no need to make another one. Marquee Moon is as close to perfect as you can get. For the young man of sensitive disposition (a category into which my eldest falls squarely) its gnomic cadences are as close to a satisfactory account of the world as you could wish for. Its light still burns brightly after thirty-five years.
Sunday 30 December 2012
Wednesday 19 December 2012
Andrew Mitchell, the police and the press
The Andrew Mitchell case has now become a very sticky soup indeed, with the arrest of a serving police officer on suspicion of leaking the Downing Street incident log to the press. At the same time comes the allegation that an officer - possibly the same one - emailed his MP (a colleague of Mitchell's in the Whip's Office with whom he did not get on) posing as a member of the public. This email apparently states that passers-by and tourists were upset by Mitchell's behaviour during the confrontation.
The second allegation is much more damaging than the first, because it suggests that an officer who was not even present at the scene fabricated evidence against Mitchell.
My involvement with the criminal law did not begin until several years after the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, a piece of legislation passed in the Thatcher government's second term, but it was the cornerstone of every lawyer's practice, inside the police station and out. PACE was designed to get rid of the routine fitting-up indulged in by Police, convinced (often but not always correctly) they had the right man but lacking the evidence to get a successful conviction. After PACE, what went on in a police station and the way evidence was prepared and secured became significantly more formalised, to the frustration of the officers, who now had to go out and investigate suspects properly.
So if it turns out that a police officer tried to stitch Mitchell up by pretending to have seen something he didn't, no one with any experience of how the police operate will be a bit surprised.
Of the two pieces of CCTV footage which have been released, one shows Mitchell, presumably having been invited to use the smaller side gate, wheeling his bike from left to right across the main gate. He pauses while the officer opens the side gate, and then departs. The whole incident is over in about twenty seconds. Mitchell does not even stop walking except for a couple of seconds as the side gate is opened. The second film shows the gates from the outside. There are at the very most one or two people walking by. None of them is close to the gate, and none of them stops.
The CCTV film seems to show that, contrary to the police's suggestion, there is no stand up row, and that there were no horrified bystanders waiting outside the gates. At the very most Mitchell might have had time for the muttered imprecation, which he admits. It looks to me as if we have fallen victim once again to taking seriously, after Stephen Lawrence, after Michael Barrymore, after Hillsborough, what the police say. My professional experience of dealing with the police is that for every officer who is diligent, bright and scrupulous, there is another who is lazy, dim and dishonest where not outright corrupt. That's a ratio which isn't good enough.
But back to the press. I first became interested in the Mitchell story because it coincided with the murder of two WPCs in NE Manchester. It was particularly embarrassing for the government, the po-faced political reporters told us, that Mitchell's treatment of the Downing St police should have happened when officers all over the country were putting their lives on the line for the protection of the public. I pointed out what a selective view of police conduct this was, when there was other police conduct which could have been used for comparative purposes that didn't reflect so well on them.
Where are these po-faced political reporters now? Answer, on the news again last night telling us sanctimoniously that Andrew Mitchell might have been the victim of a gross injustice.
The second allegation is much more damaging than the first, because it suggests that an officer who was not even present at the scene fabricated evidence against Mitchell.
My involvement with the criminal law did not begin until several years after the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, a piece of legislation passed in the Thatcher government's second term, but it was the cornerstone of every lawyer's practice, inside the police station and out. PACE was designed to get rid of the routine fitting-up indulged in by Police, convinced (often but not always correctly) they had the right man but lacking the evidence to get a successful conviction. After PACE, what went on in a police station and the way evidence was prepared and secured became significantly more formalised, to the frustration of the officers, who now had to go out and investigate suspects properly.
So if it turns out that a police officer tried to stitch Mitchell up by pretending to have seen something he didn't, no one with any experience of how the police operate will be a bit surprised.
Of the two pieces of CCTV footage which have been released, one shows Mitchell, presumably having been invited to use the smaller side gate, wheeling his bike from left to right across the main gate. He pauses while the officer opens the side gate, and then departs. The whole incident is over in about twenty seconds. Mitchell does not even stop walking except for a couple of seconds as the side gate is opened. The second film shows the gates from the outside. There are at the very most one or two people walking by. None of them is close to the gate, and none of them stops.
The CCTV film seems to show that, contrary to the police's suggestion, there is no stand up row, and that there were no horrified bystanders waiting outside the gates. At the very most Mitchell might have had time for the muttered imprecation, which he admits. It looks to me as if we have fallen victim once again to taking seriously, after Stephen Lawrence, after Michael Barrymore, after Hillsborough, what the police say. My professional experience of dealing with the police is that for every officer who is diligent, bright and scrupulous, there is another who is lazy, dim and dishonest where not outright corrupt. That's a ratio which isn't good enough.
But back to the press. I first became interested in the Mitchell story because it coincided with the murder of two WPCs in NE Manchester. It was particularly embarrassing for the government, the po-faced political reporters told us, that Mitchell's treatment of the Downing St police should have happened when officers all over the country were putting their lives on the line for the protection of the public. I pointed out what a selective view of police conduct this was, when there was other police conduct which could have been used for comparative purposes that didn't reflect so well on them.
Where are these po-faced political reporters now? Answer, on the news again last night telling us sanctimoniously that Andrew Mitchell might have been the victim of a gross injustice.
Monday 17 December 2012
Ed Miliband, immigration and inequality
A day or so after I posted about Frank Field and immigration, Ed Miliband gave a speech acknowledging some of Labour's mistakes in office. "The capacity of our economy to absorb new migrants was greater than the capacity of some of our communities to adapt", he said.
Now that the leader of the Labour party is admitting unrestricted immigration might not have been such a good idea after all, perhaps the bien pensant will stop calling those of us with reservations about it racists.
Incidentally, when Miliband implies the economy has successfully absorbed migrants he's only half right - most of them got jobs, but that was at the expense of unemployed British people, a disproportionate number of whom have black or brown skins.
Actually that's one of the strangest ironies of the issue - cheerleaders for immigration have always enjoyed the see-I'm-not-a-racist glow which comes with it, deploring us provincials for their alienation from metrocentric multiculturalism. But actually most of the immigrants were white, and many of the people who suffered, either because they were shut out of the jobs market or because their pay levels languished as the liberal middle-classes forged ahead, were black. More bizarrely still, the people most enthusiastic about immigration tended to be the same people jumping up and down most frenetically about the rise in inequality under the Blair / Brown governments.
To return to Miliband, some of the "communities" (oh Lord) who couldn't "adapt" were the out-of-work community, who found themselves competing with migrants for jobs. Then there was the low-paid community, who found that an increase in the supply of labour meant that employers didn't have to compete for staff by raising wages.
Yes, immigration increases inequality and is bad for black British people. Who knew?
Thursday 13 December 2012
Why I love . . . #3 Frank Field
In the last ten years the British population has increased by 3.7 million (2011 census).
More than 500,000 Polish people now live in the UK (2011 census).
In the period of the last Labour government more than 50% of new jobs created went to people born overseas (HMG figures).
UK unemployment figures are currently about 2.5 million. Young black men are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as young white men. More than 50% of young black men are unemployed (Guardian, March 2012).
Fewer than 2 million new homes have been built in last ten years (my rough calculation from NHBC figures).
RIBA calls for an extra 300,000 homes to be built every year (Independent, 26 Oct 2012) to deal with the housing crisis.
Nick Boles, housing minister, calls for 1,500 square miles of greenfield sites to be built on (Telegraph, 27 November).
"The main threat to biodiversity, the variety of species alive on earth, is human activity . . . One of the biggest problems that human activity causes is habitat loss, the physical environment that provides a homes to populations of different species" (Merci, Environmental pressure group).
The UK population is now over 57 million. The population density of the South East is about 450 residents per square km (ONS report), third amongst major countries behind only Bangladesh (1,045 per sq km) and South Korea (498 per sq km).
Most of Britain's population growth in the last ten years has come from immigration (2011 census).
Frank Field, the former Labour minister, said (Telegraph, today 13th December) the population increase should now be treated as a "state of emergency . . . This is not so much a wake up call, it is almost time for the firing squad for politicians who have allowed this to happen". He accused his own party of lacking "humility" over its role in allowing immigration to go unchecked.
That's Frank. Fearless. Even handed. And better still, usually right.
PS A day or so after I posted this, Ed Miliband gave a speech acknowledging some of Labour's mistakes in office. "The capacity of our economy to absorb new migrants was greater than the capacity of some of our communities to adapt", he said. I suppose I should be relieved to find that I am no longer confined to the lunatic fringe. I'm going to post more fully on this in a minute.
More than 500,000 Polish people now live in the UK (2011 census).
In the period of the last Labour government more than 50% of new jobs created went to people born overseas (HMG figures).
Fewer than 2 million new homes have been built in last ten years (my rough calculation from NHBC figures).
RIBA calls for an extra 300,000 homes to be built every year (Independent, 26 Oct 2012) to deal with the housing crisis.
Nick Boles, housing minister, calls for 1,500 square miles of greenfield sites to be built on (Telegraph, 27 November).
"The main threat to biodiversity, the variety of species alive on earth, is human activity . . . One of the biggest problems that human activity causes is habitat loss, the physical environment that provides a homes to populations of different species" (Merci, Environmental pressure group).
The UK population is now over 57 million. The population density of the South East is about 450 residents per square km (ONS report), third amongst major countries behind only Bangladesh (1,045 per sq km) and South Korea (498 per sq km).
Most of Britain's population growth in the last ten years has come from immigration (2011 census).
Frank Field, the former Labour minister, said (Telegraph, today 13th December) the population increase should now be treated as a "state of emergency . . . This is not so much a wake up call, it is almost time for the firing squad for politicians who have allowed this to happen". He accused his own party of lacking "humility" over its role in allowing immigration to go unchecked.
That's Frank. Fearless. Even handed. And better still, usually right.
PS A day or so after I posted this, Ed Miliband gave a speech acknowledging some of Labour's mistakes in office. "The capacity of our economy to absorb new migrants was greater than the capacity of some of our communities to adapt", he said. I suppose I should be relieved to find that I am no longer confined to the lunatic fringe. I'm going to post more fully on this in a minute.
Tuesday 11 December 2012
Viva Berlusconi - no, really
Italian stockmarkets slumped yesterday on the news that Silvio Berlusconi's party had withdrawn its support from the country's governing coalition, prompting the resignation of stand-in PM Mario Monti and early elections next year. Berlusconi has pledged to stand for a fourth term in office.
In a small way this is a good thing.
Why? A year or so ago I wrote a post suggesting that Greece would probably be out of the Eurozone by the end of 2012. I was wrong. A large debt write down following by billions in the way of EZ hand outs has contrived to keep Greece in the game. I underestimated the ruthlessness and resourcefulness of EZ leaders. Of course this has only been possible because draconian austerity policies have been forced on ordinary Greeks (and not just the Greeks - the Portuguese and Spanish too).
Although there have been riots and protests, no EZ country has a major political party with a policy of withdrawal from the Eurozone. Even the Greek Anti-Austerity party doesn't want to withdraw. It's easy to understand why this should be. The current generation of European leaders have been brought up on the idea of European integration. It was in their mothers' milk. They're not going to turn round and admit that the Euro has been a gigantic mistake.
And so the Eurozone slips backwards towards recession, as the deficit countries (just about everyone) tighten their belts and the surplus countries (mostly Germany) look smug and refuse to spend any more.
If it's very difficult to see how this will play out, it's also very hard to see it ending anything other than badly. Growth is going to be in short supply in Europe generally; economies that aren't growing will struggle to reduce their deficits; as economies shrink the pressure applied to the populations will grow and grow. How long will people put up with it? And what will happen when they've had enough? In the mainstream parties there is a vacuum of leadership tailor-made for the extreme Right.
That's why Silvio Berlusconi's assertion that Sgr Monti's policies have dragged Italy "to the edge of the abyss" strikes a chord. It's not that Berlusconi has explicitly called for Italy's exit from the Euro. He hasn't. But any EZ leader willing to stand up and say, "Hang on, this isn't working" is swimming refreshingly against the tide. Hold your nose. Viva Berlusconi.
In a small way this is a good thing.
Why? A year or so ago I wrote a post suggesting that Greece would probably be out of the Eurozone by the end of 2012. I was wrong. A large debt write down following by billions in the way of EZ hand outs has contrived to keep Greece in the game. I underestimated the ruthlessness and resourcefulness of EZ leaders. Of course this has only been possible because draconian austerity policies have been forced on ordinary Greeks (and not just the Greeks - the Portuguese and Spanish too).
Although there have been riots and protests, no EZ country has a major political party with a policy of withdrawal from the Eurozone. Even the Greek Anti-Austerity party doesn't want to withdraw. It's easy to understand why this should be. The current generation of European leaders have been brought up on the idea of European integration. It was in their mothers' milk. They're not going to turn round and admit that the Euro has been a gigantic mistake.
And so the Eurozone slips backwards towards recession, as the deficit countries (just about everyone) tighten their belts and the surplus countries (mostly Germany) look smug and refuse to spend any more.
If it's very difficult to see how this will play out, it's also very hard to see it ending anything other than badly. Growth is going to be in short supply in Europe generally; economies that aren't growing will struggle to reduce their deficits; as economies shrink the pressure applied to the populations will grow and grow. How long will people put up with it? And what will happen when they've had enough? In the mainstream parties there is a vacuum of leadership tailor-made for the extreme Right.
That's why Silvio Berlusconi's assertion that Sgr Monti's policies have dragged Italy "to the edge of the abyss" strikes a chord. It's not that Berlusconi has explicitly called for Italy's exit from the Euro. He hasn't. But any EZ leader willing to stand up and say, "Hang on, this isn't working" is swimming refreshingly against the tide. Hold your nose. Viva Berlusconi.
Thursday 6 December 2012
Crisis at Christmas
In the Guardian and on the news the run of stories about hardship at Christmas is just beginning. Housing benefit cuts and mortgage defaults are putting people on the streets, and the Government's austerity policies are to blame.
This may be true, but the Government's opponents talk of austerity as if it were a choice. The suggestion is that there might be a painless alternative which Ed Balls is just waiting to implement, and as if there will come a point at which it is over. George Osborne's latest prognosis talks in terms of cuts lasting until 2018 or thereabouts, and after that date, we're told, everything will return to normal. If only incompetent Chancellor Osborne didn't keep putting it off!
I think that view is delusional. Austerity is not optional but inevitable. The idea that when your economy is at rock bottom and you are borrowing millions of pounds a day just to stay afloat it might be rational to carry on public spending as before is beyond ridicule. Austerity is with us for the forseeable future, and if, as I expect, Labour returns to power in 2015 we will merely have Labour's version instead.
What will it look like? You would hope they would have learned that there is only a certain mileage to be gained from taxing the wealthy. A week or so ago the Torygraph reported that the numbers of people declaring an annual income of more than £1 million fell from 16,000 to 6,000 after the introduction of the 50p tax rate; the Treasury reckon they lost £7 billion. But I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it. By 2015 the clamour from Labour's natural constituencies for a bout of rich-bashing will be more intense than it is now. It won't plug the hole in the UK's budget, and, like the 50p tax rate, it might cost the Treasury more than it gains; but it'll happen all the same. Parties pander to their supporters.
All of which brings me back to a point I've been making for three or four years, one which is worth dragging out into the light every now and again. It is that the credit crunch is not a crisis of Capitalism. Rather it is a crisis for Social Democrats. Why? Boom and bust is just what capitalism does - capital is misallocated; there is mispricing of risk; it all goes pear-shaped. This was a particularly big one, exacerbated by globalisation. In the decades ahead it will eventually work through the system, as the Far East gets richer and the West gets poorer. In the end the cycle will start again, with any luck featuring better safeguards in future (it probably won't, but one can hope).
Social Democracy, on the other hand, is dead in the water. It is predicated on an extensive system of support for people who have been unfortunate or who have made bad choices. For western countries expecting high standards of living it was unaffordable in the good times; we know Britain couldn't afford it, because overall we ran a deficit during the longest period of economic growth in British history, from Black Wednesday in 1993 to summer 2008. It will be doubly so in the bad times which now stretch away into the future. Way beyond 2018.
Personally I don't think Labour is anywhere near working out what might be a plausible substitute; not that that will spoil their chances in 2015. Most of their natural support haven't even grasped the nature of the problem - it still astonishes me how many people still think it was all the fault of the banks (or Gordon Brown for that matter), without asking themselves what it was the banks were doing. Answer - working out more and more ingenious ways of making it look OK to lend to people and governments that couldn't afford to pay it back. Trying to prop up Western living standards that couldn't be supported without that lending.
No, if I were a Social Democrat I'd be chewing my fingernails. If I were on the Hard Left, on the other hand, I'd be feeling rather chipper.
This may be true, but the Government's opponents talk of austerity as if it were a choice. The suggestion is that there might be a painless alternative which Ed Balls is just waiting to implement, and as if there will come a point at which it is over. George Osborne's latest prognosis talks in terms of cuts lasting until 2018 or thereabouts, and after that date, we're told, everything will return to normal. If only incompetent Chancellor Osborne didn't keep putting it off!
I think that view is delusional. Austerity is not optional but inevitable. The idea that when your economy is at rock bottom and you are borrowing millions of pounds a day just to stay afloat it might be rational to carry on public spending as before is beyond ridicule. Austerity is with us for the forseeable future, and if, as I expect, Labour returns to power in 2015 we will merely have Labour's version instead.
What will it look like? You would hope they would have learned that there is only a certain mileage to be gained from taxing the wealthy. A week or so ago the Torygraph reported that the numbers of people declaring an annual income of more than £1 million fell from 16,000 to 6,000 after the introduction of the 50p tax rate; the Treasury reckon they lost £7 billion. But I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it. By 2015 the clamour from Labour's natural constituencies for a bout of rich-bashing will be more intense than it is now. It won't plug the hole in the UK's budget, and, like the 50p tax rate, it might cost the Treasury more than it gains; but it'll happen all the same. Parties pander to their supporters.
All of which brings me back to a point I've been making for three or four years, one which is worth dragging out into the light every now and again. It is that the credit crunch is not a crisis of Capitalism. Rather it is a crisis for Social Democrats. Why? Boom and bust is just what capitalism does - capital is misallocated; there is mispricing of risk; it all goes pear-shaped. This was a particularly big one, exacerbated by globalisation. In the decades ahead it will eventually work through the system, as the Far East gets richer and the West gets poorer. In the end the cycle will start again, with any luck featuring better safeguards in future (it probably won't, but one can hope).
Social Democracy, on the other hand, is dead in the water. It is predicated on an extensive system of support for people who have been unfortunate or who have made bad choices. For western countries expecting high standards of living it was unaffordable in the good times; we know Britain couldn't afford it, because overall we ran a deficit during the longest period of economic growth in British history, from Black Wednesday in 1993 to summer 2008. It will be doubly so in the bad times which now stretch away into the future. Way beyond 2018.
Personally I don't think Labour is anywhere near working out what might be a plausible substitute; not that that will spoil their chances in 2015. Most of their natural support haven't even grasped the nature of the problem - it still astonishes me how many people still think it was all the fault of the banks (or Gordon Brown for that matter), without asking themselves what it was the banks were doing. Answer - working out more and more ingenious ways of making it look OK to lend to people and governments that couldn't afford to pay it back. Trying to prop up Western living standards that couldn't be supported without that lending.
No, if I were a Social Democrat I'd be chewing my fingernails. If I were on the Hard Left, on the other hand, I'd be feeling rather chipper.
Wednesday 5 December 2012
George Osborne - bash carefully
The Chancellor has been getting some stick recently, and no doubt after today's Autumn statement (delivered on December 5th? - not very Autumnal, George) he'll be in for some more.
I was watching the Ten O'clock News and Newsnight last night. Criticism seems to be two-fold. One, Osborne hasn't got the economy to grow. Two, he's borrowed too much. But considered together these criticisms collapse into a heap.
By universal consent, the economy has failed to grow because of weak demand. How could Osborne boost demand? Only by borrowing more.
You think he's borrowed too much already? Fine. Cut spending. But that would only lead to demand being still weaker.
His critics can't have it both ways. Either he's borrowed too much, or he's at fault for low growth. But not both.
Labour has been at the forefront of having its critical cake and eating it, which is a bit rich because we have ended up with borrowing levels pretty close to what they planned before the 2010 election.
Of course, it's possible that Osborne is to blame for neither. Trying to revitalise the economy when you are up to your eyes in debt, with the eurozone in crisis, America emerging from recession and growth faltering in the Far East is about as near a futile exercise as I can imagine. The truly depressing thing about recent economic news is that it is very difficult to think of anything else the Chancellor could do.
Which strikes me as the biggest and most telling charge to make against Osborne. He is two and a half years into the job, and is probably more fairly described as dogged rather than imaginative. Yes, it's hard, but he is paid to think creatively about the economy, which the rest of us aren't.
I was watching the Ten O'clock News and Newsnight last night. Criticism seems to be two-fold. One, Osborne hasn't got the economy to grow. Two, he's borrowed too much. But considered together these criticisms collapse into a heap.
By universal consent, the economy has failed to grow because of weak demand. How could Osborne boost demand? Only by borrowing more.
You think he's borrowed too much already? Fine. Cut spending. But that would only lead to demand being still weaker.
His critics can't have it both ways. Either he's borrowed too much, or he's at fault for low growth. But not both.
Labour has been at the forefront of having its critical cake and eating it, which is a bit rich because we have ended up with borrowing levels pretty close to what they planned before the 2010 election.
Of course, it's possible that Osborne is to blame for neither. Trying to revitalise the economy when you are up to your eyes in debt, with the eurozone in crisis, America emerging from recession and growth faltering in the Far East is about as near a futile exercise as I can imagine. The truly depressing thing about recent economic news is that it is very difficult to think of anything else the Chancellor could do.
Which strikes me as the biggest and most telling charge to make against Osborne. He is two and a half years into the job, and is probably more fairly described as dogged rather than imaginative. Yes, it's hard, but he is paid to think creatively about the economy, which the rest of us aren't.
My annual Rachmaninov 2
Early next year the Halifax Symphony Orchestra will be playing Rachmaninov's 2nd Symphony. We had the first rehearsal last night. When I was young I had Andre Previn's magisterial version of the piece, recorded with the LSO in the 70s, and in the years before I went to music college and became cynical, its passion and lyricism were often a mental soundtrack to my life.
To describe Rach 2 as sumptuous would be to short-change it. The symphony is nearly an hour's worth of musical velvet. I have conducted it before, an experience I remember chiefly for the long stretches of rehearsal spent cajoling the second violins to play fig. 33 correctly in the second movement; I remember too having to signal to one of the double basses who had turned up late for the concert how many beats I was going to give before the start of the last movement; that and the relief, as the music crested the last hill and began to wind itself up for the exuberant final bars, that we had got through it without disaster; Rach 2 is technically hard for the players, thickly scored and ambitious.
I also remember thinking - and this struck me last night too - "I no longer believe what Rachmaninov is telling me". It might be worth considering what exactly that is. Rachmaninov speaks of present unhappiness and of longing for something that is just out of reach, a longing expressed with almost fetishistic care and obsessive length. Only at the very end do we feel that we might have actually attained it, and it is that feeling of consummation and achievement which makes the final couple of pages so exhilarating.
How useful is that for living? In my experience not much. It may be difficult to get something you really want, and miserable when you haven't got it; but few things are as good (or bad) as they first appear, and an even bigger task is how to be happy once you have got something long desired. Rachmaninov isn't alone in focusing short-sightedly on this near term goal at the expense of what lies beyond it: many other Romantic composers strove to express loss, want and attainment. Why not? They are powerful feelings.
But for me this just makes the more emotionally mature achievements of other composers all the greater - I'm thinking particularly of Brahms, Nielsen and Sibelius. There is a quality of stoicism and resignation in Brahms' music which seems to recognise that the Romantic outlook is only a small part of human experience; as for Nielsen his two masterworks, the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, are explicit attempts to wrestle with how to live as an adult. They are not the most radical pieces of twentieth century music, but they see the world with a clarity and acuity far removed from Rachmaninov's sentimental vision. After writing the Violin Concerto, Sibelius went beyond the subjective play of human emotions into a rarefied musical sphere which reflects the relationship between man and the physical world.
Everyone should listen to Rach 2 once every year or so. It is a great piece of music, challenging and emotional, vividly orchestrated and full of memorable tunes. But it is not the whole story.
To describe Rach 2 as sumptuous would be to short-change it. The symphony is nearly an hour's worth of musical velvet. I have conducted it before, an experience I remember chiefly for the long stretches of rehearsal spent cajoling the second violins to play fig. 33 correctly in the second movement; I remember too having to signal to one of the double basses who had turned up late for the concert how many beats I was going to give before the start of the last movement; that and the relief, as the music crested the last hill and began to wind itself up for the exuberant final bars, that we had got through it without disaster; Rach 2 is technically hard for the players, thickly scored and ambitious.
I also remember thinking - and this struck me last night too - "I no longer believe what Rachmaninov is telling me". It might be worth considering what exactly that is. Rachmaninov speaks of present unhappiness and of longing for something that is just out of reach, a longing expressed with almost fetishistic care and obsessive length. Only at the very end do we feel that we might have actually attained it, and it is that feeling of consummation and achievement which makes the final couple of pages so exhilarating.
How useful is that for living? In my experience not much. It may be difficult to get something you really want, and miserable when you haven't got it; but few things are as good (or bad) as they first appear, and an even bigger task is how to be happy once you have got something long desired. Rachmaninov isn't alone in focusing short-sightedly on this near term goal at the expense of what lies beyond it: many other Romantic composers strove to express loss, want and attainment. Why not? They are powerful feelings.
But for me this just makes the more emotionally mature achievements of other composers all the greater - I'm thinking particularly of Brahms, Nielsen and Sibelius. There is a quality of stoicism and resignation in Brahms' music which seems to recognise that the Romantic outlook is only a small part of human experience; as for Nielsen his two masterworks, the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, are explicit attempts to wrestle with how to live as an adult. They are not the most radical pieces of twentieth century music, but they see the world with a clarity and acuity far removed from Rachmaninov's sentimental vision. After writing the Violin Concerto, Sibelius went beyond the subjective play of human emotions into a rarefied musical sphere which reflects the relationship between man and the physical world.
Everyone should listen to Rach 2 once every year or so. It is a great piece of music, challenging and emotional, vividly orchestrated and full of memorable tunes. But it is not the whole story.
Tuesday 4 December 2012
Boycotting Amazon
Last June I posted about the thorny issue of tax dodging (Jimmy Carr and Amazon), pointing out that "Amazon do millions, if not billions, of business in the UK. But they don't pay any tax here. Amazon have the right to arrange their tax affairs in any legal way they like. But we don't have to buy books from them. I find www.abebooks.co.uk a perfectly good substitute."
I might have added Starbucks and Google to Amazon; and now it appears that Starbucks are going to re-arrange their affairs to increase their tax exposure. Hooray. These people need our goodwill and custom.
Incidentally, if Starbucks were really making no profits from their UK business, why do they have one? Why don't they just close it down? That Starbucks think it worth operating here gives the lie to the pretence that they aren't making any money.
That still leaves Amazon (and no doubt plenty of others). Every pound we don't spend there increases the pressure on them. Come on citizens! Keep your wallets in your pockets!
I might have added Starbucks and Google to Amazon; and now it appears that Starbucks are going to re-arrange their affairs to increase their tax exposure. Hooray. These people need our goodwill and custom.
Incidentally, if Starbucks were really making no profits from their UK business, why do they have one? Why don't they just close it down? That Starbucks think it worth operating here gives the lie to the pretence that they aren't making any money.
That still leaves Amazon (and no doubt plenty of others). Every pound we don't spend there increases the pressure on them. Come on citizens! Keep your wallets in your pockets!
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