The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is in the news again for having written disparagingly about Kathryn Bigelow's new film Zero Dark Thirty. A re-telling of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, ZDT shows Jihadists being waterboarded (ie tortured) by the CIA. I haven't seen the film, but by common consent it adopts a neutral position on waterboarding. When Barack Obama appears on TV announcing the practice will stop, the watching CIA operatives are unmoved.
Zizek is horrified by this. "To depict it neutrally", he wrote in the Guardian, ". . . is already a kind of endorsement. Imagine a documentary that depicted the Holocaust in a cool disinterested way as a big industrial-logistic operation . . . Such a film would either embody a deeply immoral fascination with its topic, or it would count on the obscene neutrality of its style to endgender dismay and horror in spectators. Where is Bigelow here? Without a shadow of doubt, she is on the side of the normalisation of torture".
When his fellow Marxists have been responsible for at least as much torture in the last century as any other political group, it's refreshing to see Zizek keen to display his opposition to the practice.
But surely he is talking hogwash. Is it really art's function to tell us what to think? Would Zizek have liked ZDT any more if Bigelow had come down in favour of torture? Or is he suggesting that the only kind of art worth its salt is the kind congruent with his own political, moral or aesthetic views? If so, doesn't that reduce art to mere Brechtian polemic? And what if someone had made a documentary about waterboarding which didn't adopt a view? Would that be bad too? Should news gathering tell us what to think about world events?
It used to piss me off no end when the BBC News would report an atrocity with the words "the IRA has admitted responsibility". You admit something when it's wrong. I am perfectly capable of concluding that blowing people up is wrong without being told to think so. Someone somewhere will have thought blowing people up was right. That's their prerogative.
No, the point about art is that it allows room for ambiguity. One of the delicious things about Pride and Prejudice is that Austen leaves open the possibility that Elizabeth Bennett finally decides Mr D'Arcy is OK when she sees the size of his, ahem, estates at Pemberley. We are joyously free to make up our own minds what we think about that. Was it wrong of Dostoevsky to just show us Raskolnikov murdering his landlady and feeling bad about it afterwards? Should Camus have included a postscript to The Outsider to the effect that killing Arabs is wrong? I doubt they would have been better books as a result.
Slavoz Zizek's ubiquity is a puzzling thing. He regularly features in the London Review of Books. He holds academic posts at Birkbeck as well as in Slovenia, and has taught widely in the US (Columbia, Princeton etc). And yet every time I read one of his articles I come away thinking, "The man's an idiot".
(A variety of recent experiences suggests that some of these lionised academics are actually not as clever as your average QC - the experience of reading Richard Dawkins on theology started me off on this, and I'll come back to it in future).
Not only is Zizek's faintly bizarre criticism of ZDT baffling (perhaps Marxists just dislike seeing the US get something right), but he also misses a crucial and obvious point about the film.
Director Bigelow and writer Mark Boal were apparently helped to make it by the CIA, being granted access to confidential material. I am not a knee-jerk anti-American by any means, but it seems to me that an Agency which can kill people by unmanned drones operated from the far side of the world and can set up a fake immunisation programme to gain access to the DNA of Bin Laden's children, is an organisation with large resources of money and cunning. It is also an organisation which, rooted in a democracy, has a vested interest in portraying itself in a favourable light.
If the CIA told me it was raining, I'd go to the window and check. And yet Bigelow and Boal were happy to take what they were told and base a film on it. That's naive.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing Zero Dark Thirty, but I have absolutely no idea of whether the story it tells is true in any particular. I won't be any wiser when I've seen it either.
As for Zizek, a story in the paper the other day stated that the Royal Opera House has commissioned four new operas "inspired" by his writings. Yes, that's the ROH, which pays its Music Director over £600,000 (some of it raised from British taxpayers), commissioning work inspired by a Marxist who one presumes despises the privilege and elitism his world-view says it stands for.
Incidentally, the ROH Director at the time this scheme was dreamed up just happens to be Tony Hall, the new Director General of the BBC.
To say this is a situation rich in ironies does not come close to encapsulating its jaw-dropping nature. As so often with Zizek, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Thursday 31 January 2013
Wednesday 30 January 2013
Muslim Patrol and Quadistan
I once heard a young British woman of African extraction say she had never experienced racism. Whilst I expect she's in a minority, it still strikes me as significant that any such person could say so.
In the same way, whilst I don't think it is the end of the world when young Muslim men have been patrolling the East End of London driving away unsuitably dressed women, people drinking in the street and, in one unpleasant incident, a gay man, it clearly says something about Britain now which I think is interesting and baleful.
You can find the videos by searching for Muslim Patrol on Youtube.
Before Christmas the 2011 Census results revealed that non-whites living in London were for the first time a majority. I don't find this as surprising or as appalling as the Tory press seems to. Even when I was living there twenty years ago it was clear that London was an international city rather than a British one (one of the great things about Manchester is that it still retains a good deal of its Mancunian character; London on the other hand lost almost all of its London-ness).
But also I think the issue of skin-colour is a red herring. Who cares if people are white or not? I don't; or not much. For me what's much more important is their culture. I've often observed that I have more in common with my friend of Ghanain origin than I do with most of the white adults I meet in this corner of SK8. Culture is not a fixed thing - it flits across individuals with a fluidity that physical characteristics cannot match.
Are the majority of Londoners British? The answer appears to be yes. It seems that only about a third of people living in London were born outside the UK. That's still an awful lot of people though, and it brings me to why culture matters.
If you can't have a cohesive society where people are treated differently because of their skin colour, neither can you have one where people live in cultural ghettos. I always thought when I was young and idealistic that integration and acceptance would inevitably happen when children met and mingled at school. Unlike some, I have walked the walk, and my children have been to state schools were Muslim children were sometimes a majority. At their inner city Sixth Form College there is, sadly, very little mixing, something which has been formalised to the extent that the quadrangle where the Muslim students go at break is known as Quadistan, whereas the grass where the white kids hang out is called Vanilla Hill. These are names devised by the kids.
One reason why Enoch Powell was wrong about immigration of the 50s and 60s was that he failed to see that people from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean with a common post-Christian heritage would in the end rub along with and happily intermarry whites. I suspect it's the children of those marriages that are making up much of London's non-white majority.
What immigration's subsequent apologists failed to realise was that such integration wouldn't necessarily happen when Muslims came to Britain. Integrating cultures which differ so radically in their attitudes to family life, the role of women in society, relationships between men and women, the consumption of alcohol and sexual behaviour was always going to be much more difficult. The Muslim vigilantes in the East End are British people too. But whilst there are some things about their culture that I admire a lot, the sub-Taliban attitudes of Muslim Patrol are not mine.
In the same way, whilst I don't think it is the end of the world when young Muslim men have been patrolling the East End of London driving away unsuitably dressed women, people drinking in the street and, in one unpleasant incident, a gay man, it clearly says something about Britain now which I think is interesting and baleful.
You can find the videos by searching for Muslim Patrol on Youtube.
Before Christmas the 2011 Census results revealed that non-whites living in London were for the first time a majority. I don't find this as surprising or as appalling as the Tory press seems to. Even when I was living there twenty years ago it was clear that London was an international city rather than a British one (one of the great things about Manchester is that it still retains a good deal of its Mancunian character; London on the other hand lost almost all of its London-ness).
But also I think the issue of skin-colour is a red herring. Who cares if people are white or not? I don't; or not much. For me what's much more important is their culture. I've often observed that I have more in common with my friend of Ghanain origin than I do with most of the white adults I meet in this corner of SK8. Culture is not a fixed thing - it flits across individuals with a fluidity that physical characteristics cannot match.
Are the majority of Londoners British? The answer appears to be yes. It seems that only about a third of people living in London were born outside the UK. That's still an awful lot of people though, and it brings me to why culture matters.
If you can't have a cohesive society where people are treated differently because of their skin colour, neither can you have one where people live in cultural ghettos. I always thought when I was young and idealistic that integration and acceptance would inevitably happen when children met and mingled at school. Unlike some, I have walked the walk, and my children have been to state schools were Muslim children were sometimes a majority. At their inner city Sixth Form College there is, sadly, very little mixing, something which has been formalised to the extent that the quadrangle where the Muslim students go at break is known as Quadistan, whereas the grass where the white kids hang out is called Vanilla Hill. These are names devised by the kids.
One reason why Enoch Powell was wrong about immigration of the 50s and 60s was that he failed to see that people from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean with a common post-Christian heritage would in the end rub along with and happily intermarry whites. I suspect it's the children of those marriages that are making up much of London's non-white majority.
What immigration's subsequent apologists failed to realise was that such integration wouldn't necessarily happen when Muslims came to Britain. Integrating cultures which differ so radically in their attitudes to family life, the role of women in society, relationships between men and women, the consumption of alcohol and sexual behaviour was always going to be much more difficult. The Muslim vigilantes in the East End are British people too. But whilst there are some things about their culture that I admire a lot, the sub-Taliban attitudes of Muslim Patrol are not mine.
Tuesday 29 January 2013
Aditya Chakrabortty repents!
"Likewise, I say unto you," runs Luke 15:10, "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents".
Well there will be rejoicing this morning, because this blog's least-favourite economics commentator, Aditya Chakrabortty, seems to have had a Damascene conversion.
There has been nothing but ridicule, calumny and disparagement for Mr Chakrabortty in the past, for his ludicrous belief that the government can cure its economic ills merely by borrowing a bit more money. So I nearly choked on my home-made muesli when I read in his G2 column the following astonishing revelation:
". . . on the other (hand), you have the equally false position staked out by Ed Balls: that with a wave of a Keynesian wand we can be magicked back to 2006."
If I were a proper writer I'd be able to mimick one of those expostulations beloved of comic book characters, a kind of spluttering onomatopeia of the "WEURGHHLP!?" variety.
In a nano-second Chakrabortty has abandoned his former delusion and made a last-ditch grasp for reality's slender reed. Suffice to say that he has exhausted my capacity to render astonishment in print.
I know I should merely welcome this about-face and leave the carping for another day, but - if neither austerity nor neo-Keynesianism are the answer, what is?
It would be good if Chakrabortty could tell us soon.
Well there will be rejoicing this morning, because this blog's least-favourite economics commentator, Aditya Chakrabortty, seems to have had a Damascene conversion.
There has been nothing but ridicule, calumny and disparagement for Mr Chakrabortty in the past, for his ludicrous belief that the government can cure its economic ills merely by borrowing a bit more money. So I nearly choked on my home-made muesli when I read in his G2 column the following astonishing revelation:
". . . on the other (hand), you have the equally false position staked out by Ed Balls: that with a wave of a Keynesian wand we can be magicked back to 2006."
If I were a proper writer I'd be able to mimick one of those expostulations beloved of comic book characters, a kind of spluttering onomatopeia of the "WEURGHHLP!?" variety.
In a nano-second Chakrabortty has abandoned his former delusion and made a last-ditch grasp for reality's slender reed. Suffice to say that he has exhausted my capacity to render astonishment in print.
I know I should merely welcome this about-face and leave the carping for another day, but - if neither austerity nor neo-Keynesianism are the answer, what is?
It would be good if Chakrabortty could tell us soon.
Sunday 27 January 2013
Censoring Alan Rusbridger's piano
In the old days, before lured by the bright lights of the blogosphere, I used to post on the Guardian's Comment is Free website. The first thing that quickly becomes apparent to CiF users is that, whatever else it is, comment is not free. The threads are moderated by Guardian staff, and anything that infringes their "community standards" gets deleted. You would think this would be confined to personal abuse or bad language; but actually I found it surprising how easy it was to infringe their sense of propriety.
Resorting to ad hominem attacks isn't my style - the last refuge of those losing an argument - but my impression was that the moderators had in mind range of opinions within which it was possible to say what you liked; but woe betide you if you strayed outside. Which I often did.
I was going to write that I have been banned from CiF, but in fact what happened is that my comments were "pre-moderated". That's to say, when someone from the Graun had time to read and approve them, they'd be posted. In theory. Actually once I had been cast out beyond the pale I never once found that they had been put up on the site. But effectively this was a ban anyway, because the charm, if that's the word, of comment sites like CiF is the rapidity with which the argument moves. Delay is fatal. Without immediacy, there's no point in taking part.
What, you may be wondering, does this have to do with Alan Rusbridger's pianos?
Well, although my travails with CiF are of slight significance, it now appears however that the CiF has started "moderating" the Guardian's own staff.
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's donnish editor, is an enthusiastic amateur pianist. He has written a musical memoir, which according to this week's Private Eye, "waxes lyrical about his two grand pianos, one of which is a 1978 Steinway that cost £25,000 and is housed in a specially built extension in the garden of his (second) country house". Rusbridger also had lengthy extracts from his book run in last Saturday's Guardian and in, of all things, the Daily Mail.
Last Sunday, 20th January, a member of staff from the cash-strapped paper posted the following on CiF:
"Afternoon Alan - I'm a member of Guardian staff, posting anonymously. As you know, it's a tough time for your journalists at the moment . . . We're working harder and harder (because we love the papers), coping with dwindling resources and morale, we're badly mismanaged, and trying to cope with the life-changing threat of compulsory redundancies - all a result of the company's long-term financial illiteracy and lavish excess at the top. So I just want to say thanks for the series of articles - three now, isn't it? - about learning to play your Fazioli piano. They're brilliantly timed, and I know they'll lift spirits. We always wondered how you filled your days, how you spent your fortune. Now we know."
How was this bold contribution to Comment is Free received? The Guardian moderators promptly deleted it.
Now CiF is a private website, and I have no objection to its owners running it in the way that they please. What sticks in my craw is the pretence that they are carrying the torch for freedom of speech and debate. They aren't. Moderation is a weasel word for censorship, and although "Community standards" isn't a phrase in 1984 it might just as well have been.
Losing the moral high ground as well as losing money. C.P. Scott must be turning in his grave.
Resorting to ad hominem attacks isn't my style - the last refuge of those losing an argument - but my impression was that the moderators had in mind range of opinions within which it was possible to say what you liked; but woe betide you if you strayed outside. Which I often did.
I was going to write that I have been banned from CiF, but in fact what happened is that my comments were "pre-moderated". That's to say, when someone from the Graun had time to read and approve them, they'd be posted. In theory. Actually once I had been cast out beyond the pale I never once found that they had been put up on the site. But effectively this was a ban anyway, because the charm, if that's the word, of comment sites like CiF is the rapidity with which the argument moves. Delay is fatal. Without immediacy, there's no point in taking part.
What, you may be wondering, does this have to do with Alan Rusbridger's pianos?
Well, although my travails with CiF are of slight significance, it now appears however that the CiF has started "moderating" the Guardian's own staff.
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's donnish editor, is an enthusiastic amateur pianist. He has written a musical memoir, which according to this week's Private Eye, "waxes lyrical about his two grand pianos, one of which is a 1978 Steinway that cost £25,000 and is housed in a specially built extension in the garden of his (second) country house". Rusbridger also had lengthy extracts from his book run in last Saturday's Guardian and in, of all things, the Daily Mail.
Last Sunday, 20th January, a member of staff from the cash-strapped paper posted the following on CiF:
"Afternoon Alan - I'm a member of Guardian staff, posting anonymously. As you know, it's a tough time for your journalists at the moment . . . We're working harder and harder (because we love the papers), coping with dwindling resources and morale, we're badly mismanaged, and trying to cope with the life-changing threat of compulsory redundancies - all a result of the company's long-term financial illiteracy and lavish excess at the top. So I just want to say thanks for the series of articles - three now, isn't it? - about learning to play your Fazioli piano. They're brilliantly timed, and I know they'll lift spirits. We always wondered how you filled your days, how you spent your fortune. Now we know."
How was this bold contribution to Comment is Free received? The Guardian moderators promptly deleted it.
Now CiF is a private website, and I have no objection to its owners running it in the way that they please. What sticks in my craw is the pretence that they are carrying the torch for freedom of speech and debate. They aren't. Moderation is a weasel word for censorship, and although "Community standards" isn't a phrase in 1984 it might just as well have been.
Losing the moral high ground as well as losing money. C.P. Scott must be turning in his grave.
Friday 25 January 2013
Triple-dip and John Lanchester's balloon
George Osborne will be sickened by this morning's news of a 0.3% contraction in the last quarter of 2012. When you consider the effect a fortnight of snowy paralysis will have on Q1 2013, it'll be astonishing if we don't get two consecutive quarters worth and a third technical recession.
I'm sceptical of the notion that this is a problem which can be seen off by a bit more borrowing and a tax cut here or there, certainly not if Britain tries to do it alone. If there is anything more pointless than blogging about the economy, it's pumping money into it at a time when your biggest trading partners are all battening down the hatches. You might as well try and blow up a balloon with a hole in it (this is the John Lanchester approach, and finds favour with those who like to criticise Osborne without the inconvenience of having a plausible alternative).
At a time when growth seems to be flagging everywhere, there is no sum available to HMG big enough to make a blind bit of difference to the economy. Europe is in deep trouble, Chinese growth is faltering and the only reason the US isn't as deeply in the mire is because President Obama has resolutely avoided confronting America's enormous debts. Too many countries (both at government and citizen level) owe too much money and all of them are trying to deleverage at the same time. No wonder demand is flat.
At some point the politicians are going to have to devise a kind of Global New Deal, a mixture of inflation (which quickly erodes the true value of debt), QE, debt write-offs and extra spending by surplus countries to boost demand and confidence.
Things will have to get a lot worse before this happens. In the Cadiz area of Spain, where I hope to be going for my summer holidays, unemployment is at about 40%. Worse then even than this.
I'm sceptical of the notion that this is a problem which can be seen off by a bit more borrowing and a tax cut here or there, certainly not if Britain tries to do it alone. If there is anything more pointless than blogging about the economy, it's pumping money into it at a time when your biggest trading partners are all battening down the hatches. You might as well try and blow up a balloon with a hole in it (this is the John Lanchester approach, and finds favour with those who like to criticise Osborne without the inconvenience of having a plausible alternative).
At a time when growth seems to be flagging everywhere, there is no sum available to HMG big enough to make a blind bit of difference to the economy. Europe is in deep trouble, Chinese growth is faltering and the only reason the US isn't as deeply in the mire is because President Obama has resolutely avoided confronting America's enormous debts. Too many countries (both at government and citizen level) owe too much money and all of them are trying to deleverage at the same time. No wonder demand is flat.
At some point the politicians are going to have to devise a kind of Global New Deal, a mixture of inflation (which quickly erodes the true value of debt), QE, debt write-offs and extra spending by surplus countries to boost demand and confidence.
Things will have to get a lot worse before this happens. In the Cadiz area of Spain, where I hope to be going for my summer holidays, unemployment is at about 40%. Worse then even than this.
Wednesday 23 January 2013
Cameron's hostage to EU fortune
First thoughts about David Cameron's EU referendum announcement -
One, obviously it's being done to stop the leaking of Tory support away to UKIP.
Two, five years is an awful long time in politics, and a lot can change (look back an equivalent distance to the sunlit uplands of early 2008 and weep for glad confident morning lost). It's possible that things will look much better in the Eurozone in five years time, but it's equally possible that things will look even more of a shambles than they do at present. (There's an interesting piece about this in the Torygraph here). Moreover, as discussed on this site a couple of weeks ago, by next year the doors will have been opened to Romanians and Bulgarians to come to the UK and work. If there is anything like a repeat of the Polish debacle ten years ago, public annoyance at our inability to control our own borders will be even higher after the next election than it is now.
In other words, it's possible that disenchantment with all things European will be greater, and that any concessions David Cameron has managed to wring from EU will not be sufficient to guarantee Europhiles winning an In-Out referendum.
I suspect Cameron would want to stay in the EU even if he can't extract any significant treaty changes. In which case he may find himself regretting today's promise. For anyone running a great enterprise - a nation state, an orchestra, a family - it can be a mistake to ask constituents what they want. It won't necessarily be the same thing you want.
Cameron is gambling that no unforeseen event will make his promise look like a mistake. The words "hostage" and "fortune" spring to mind.
One, obviously it's being done to stop the leaking of Tory support away to UKIP.
Two, five years is an awful long time in politics, and a lot can change (look back an equivalent distance to the sunlit uplands of early 2008 and weep for glad confident morning lost). It's possible that things will look much better in the Eurozone in five years time, but it's equally possible that things will look even more of a shambles than they do at present. (There's an interesting piece about this in the Torygraph here). Moreover, as discussed on this site a couple of weeks ago, by next year the doors will have been opened to Romanians and Bulgarians to come to the UK and work. If there is anything like a repeat of the Polish debacle ten years ago, public annoyance at our inability to control our own borders will be even higher after the next election than it is now.
In other words, it's possible that disenchantment with all things European will be greater, and that any concessions David Cameron has managed to wring from EU will not be sufficient to guarantee Europhiles winning an In-Out referendum.
I suspect Cameron would want to stay in the EU even if he can't extract any significant treaty changes. In which case he may find himself regretting today's promise. For anyone running a great enterprise - a nation state, an orchestra, a family - it can be a mistake to ask constituents what they want. It won't necessarily be the same thing you want.
Cameron is gambling that no unforeseen event will make his promise look like a mistake. The words "hostage" and "fortune" spring to mind.
Russell Crowe - traffic warden
In 18th century Italy there was an acknowledged division between opera buffa and opera seria. I have been thinking of this because a year ago two of my children were in their school production of Les Miserables, and I have become reluctantly familiar with its mixture of revolutionary chanting and grand sweeping mush.
We all went to watch the film last week. Hugh Jackman is fantastic, Anne Hathers not bad either and Russell Crowe - more on him in a moment - not as bad as you think he's going to be. Even Eddie Redmayne, whilst departing not one whit from the blubber-lips public schoolboy stereotype, did his Eddie Redmayne thing as well as I've seen him.
I didn't cry, though clearly I was meant to and when Jackman does "Bring Him Home" (or whatever it's called) mid-way through the film, I could see that crying was perfectly possible. Quite a lot of it was going on either side of me. I was palpably moved, although less so when Jackman attempted the climactic top A, an unforgiving note sung softly for any tenor, and an ugly one in Jackman's heroic but grating attempt.
Les Mis is really an opera, so why people think of it as a musical I don't know. If it isn't an opera it's because the music is too sentimental and exploitative. But these are adjectives that could very well be applied to Puccini. Perhaps it's an operetta then. But operetta is meant to be light in subject, which The Glums definitely isn't.
In homage to the old Italian tradition then, I have devised a new category for Les Mis alone - depressing and trashy at the same time, it is an operetta seria.
But back to Russell Crowe. It isn't that he sings badly. It's that his voice is wrong for the part. Javer, the policeman ultimately undone by his corset-tight sense of righteousness, needs to have a voice fit for the day of judgement. Instead Russell Crowe sings him like a traffic-warden.
£60 fixed penalty please Monsieur Valjean!
We all went to watch the film last week. Hugh Jackman is fantastic, Anne Hathers not bad either and Russell Crowe - more on him in a moment - not as bad as you think he's going to be. Even Eddie Redmayne, whilst departing not one whit from the blubber-lips public schoolboy stereotype, did his Eddie Redmayne thing as well as I've seen him.
I didn't cry, though clearly I was meant to and when Jackman does "Bring Him Home" (or whatever it's called) mid-way through the film, I could see that crying was perfectly possible. Quite a lot of it was going on either side of me. I was palpably moved, although less so when Jackman attempted the climactic top A, an unforgiving note sung softly for any tenor, and an ugly one in Jackman's heroic but grating attempt.
Les Mis is really an opera, so why people think of it as a musical I don't know. If it isn't an opera it's because the music is too sentimental and exploitative. But these are adjectives that could very well be applied to Puccini. Perhaps it's an operetta then. But operetta is meant to be light in subject, which The Glums definitely isn't.
In homage to the old Italian tradition then, I have devised a new category for Les Mis alone - depressing and trashy at the same time, it is an operetta seria.
But back to Russell Crowe. It isn't that he sings badly. It's that his voice is wrong for the part. Javer, the policeman ultimately undone by his corset-tight sense of righteousness, needs to have a voice fit for the day of judgement. Instead Russell Crowe sings him like a traffic-warden.
£60 fixed penalty please Monsieur Valjean!
Monday 21 January 2013
Avalanches and being lucky
I have climbed Bidean nam Bian, scene of the weekend's avalanche tragedy, only once, alone on a glorious spring morning in 1990. I climbed up the Dinner-Time Buttress, a low grade rock climb, to a gap in the north ridge of Stob Coire nan Lochan, where the snow began. Then I worked my way round the east side of the Stob, wading through snow already rotted by the strong sunshine, to the foot of a gully, in deep shadow and still therefore solid. It was my first proper snow and ice climb, Grade I, the easiest; but nevertheless a lonely feeling, cutting steps as the drop beneath deepened and Glen Coe came into sight far below, cars crawling along the road like beetles. From the top of the Stob I walked, jelly-legged now, along the short connecting ridge, pitted with the steps of my predecessors, to the top of Bidean.
Bidean is a very steep mountain on all sides, and, for those wishing to return Glen Coe but not wanting to go back the same way they came up, options are limited. The safest way in heavy snow is out north north west to An-t-Sron; but this leads climbers away from their car, and in any case it's a tedious way down, as I discovered many years later with a friend in summer conditions. That first time I went a little way out along this ridge, over the subsidiary top of Stob Coire nam Beith, and then down a shallow coire to the north. The first few feet of snow slope were steep, but it was old hard snow, not unstable wind-slab, and the angle soon eased.
By descending north at the side of the Church Door Buttress, the climbers took themselves into an area that will have been full of drifted fresh snow. It's a more interesting way down than via An-t-Sron, but in the wrong conditions a dangerous one. These poor people were very unlucky - they could have descended a hundred times and not been caught in an avalanche. But if they had stuck to the ridge they could have come down a hundred thousand times without catastrophe - the wind tends to blow snow off the exposed shoulders and ridges and deposit it in hollows and coires, where it can be dangerous until the freeze-thaw cycle cements it to underlying layers.
If it's tempting to say the victims made a mistake, looking back to my own ascent, I did a rock climb unroped; then a snow and ice climb unroped; then descended a steep snow slope, probably glissading part of the way down. If anything had gone wrong, would my family and friends have said, "He died doing what he loved"? Or would they said, "He was a stupid idiot"? I was vindicated by events; last weekend's victim's weren't. As I said, they were unlucky.
If there is a moral, it is that no-one is an experienced mountaineer at 25. Or indeed at 54.
Bidean is a very steep mountain on all sides, and, for those wishing to return Glen Coe but not wanting to go back the same way they came up, options are limited. The safest way in heavy snow is out north north west to An-t-Sron; but this leads climbers away from their car, and in any case it's a tedious way down, as I discovered many years later with a friend in summer conditions. That first time I went a little way out along this ridge, over the subsidiary top of Stob Coire nam Beith, and then down a shallow coire to the north. The first few feet of snow slope were steep, but it was old hard snow, not unstable wind-slab, and the angle soon eased.
By descending north at the side of the Church Door Buttress, the climbers took themselves into an area that will have been full of drifted fresh snow. It's a more interesting way down than via An-t-Sron, but in the wrong conditions a dangerous one. These poor people were very unlucky - they could have descended a hundred times and not been caught in an avalanche. But if they had stuck to the ridge they could have come down a hundred thousand times without catastrophe - the wind tends to blow snow off the exposed shoulders and ridges and deposit it in hollows and coires, where it can be dangerous until the freeze-thaw cycle cements it to underlying layers.
If it's tempting to say the victims made a mistake, looking back to my own ascent, I did a rock climb unroped; then a snow and ice climb unroped; then descended a steep snow slope, probably glissading part of the way down. If anything had gone wrong, would my family and friends have said, "He died doing what he loved"? Or would they said, "He was a stupid idiot"? I was vindicated by events; last weekend's victim's weren't. As I said, they were unlucky.
If there is a moral, it is that no-one is an experienced mountaineer at 25. Or indeed at 54.
Friday 18 January 2013
The Rest is Noise - Two Men and a Dog?
Ivan Hewitt has written an interesting piece in the Torygraph today - Why Challenging Modern Music Demands to be Heard. This is my reply to him.
Look Ivan, it's very simple. We don't submit ourselves to the artistic experience in the way we do, oh I don't know, an enema or a barium meal. We do those things because we know there will be a medical benefit. But art we go looking for because we enjoy it. The brain is a pleasure-seeking organ after all.
Look Ivan, it's very simple. We don't submit ourselves to the artistic experience in the way we do, oh I don't know, an enema or a barium meal. We do those things because we know there will be a medical benefit. But art we go looking for because we enjoy it. The brain is a pleasure-seeking organ after all.
Now pleasure can be quite broadly defined, and even some Mozart is rather harrowing (Idomineo springs to mind); but broadly speaking, we like our art to be enjoyable. God knows there's plenty other stuff in life that isn't.
The public, taken as a whole, doesn't enjoy modern music very much. That's why they don't go to see it much. Have you ever actually been to the Huddersfield Festival and looked at the audience (such as it is)? The audience for modern music is a minority within the audience for classical music, which is a minority in itself. It is two men and a dog, without the dog. In diplomatic parlance, those are facts on the ground.
What about the word "modern"? In so far as the word implies "recent" or "contemporary", Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra are over a hundred years old. And most people still don't like it. So whatever else you can say, it's not modern any more, at least not in that sense. The Rite of Spring on the other hand, that last death-roar of Russian barbarism, got into the repertoire quite quickly because people liked it. Well done, Igor!
What about the word "modern"? In so far as the word implies "recent" or "contemporary", Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra are over a hundred years old. And most people still don't like it. So whatever else you can say, it's not modern any more, at least not in that sense. The Rite of Spring on the other hand, that last death-roar of Russian barbarism, got into the repertoire quite quickly because people liked it. Well done, Igor!
You would have thought the idea that if we just kept getting modernist music spoon fed to us long enough we'd suddenly start liking it had lost all traction. But no. Enthusiasts for modern music are a bit like experimental chefs. We don't like their combination of snails, engine oil and PVA glue? That's our fault. It's staying on the menu until we discover that we do like it. In fact, since we're paying for it, the argument goes, we might as well learn to enjoy it.
Well no. Tastes vary, and it's fatuous to suggest that no-one likes Boulez - some people do. Good luck to them. But don't tell me I'm a Luddite because I don't. And please don't patronise me by telling me that if only I listened to it more I would. I have listened to it, and I still don't like it. And please don't insult me by suggesting that because I don't like modernism much that's somehow my fault. Or that your tastes are somehow better than mine or - and here's the crucial point - more worthy of public subsidy.
Well no. Tastes vary, and it's fatuous to suggest that no-one likes Boulez - some people do. Good luck to them. But don't tell me I'm a Luddite because I don't. And please don't patronise me by telling me that if only I listened to it more I would. I have listened to it, and I still don't like it. And please don't insult me by suggesting that because I don't like modernism much that's somehow my fault. Or that your tastes are somehow better than mine or - and here's the crucial point - more worthy of public subsidy.
No doubt The Rest is Noise fest will be a well-attended success. There are plenty of people in London who like modernist music. The festival will have been paid for by a mixture of corporate sponsorship and tax-payers' money. Alex Ross's book is engaging and well-written, even if it falls into the usual musicologists' trap of mistaking the influential (Varese gets several pages) with the essential (Carl Nielsen, writer of two of the century's greatest symphonies, gets two sentences).
But don't be fooled. Classical music is losing its audience because the oldies don't like squeaky-gate stuff and the young prefer pop. Enjoy your job while you've still got it, Ivan. In a world of indefinite austerity, budgets are going to be squeezed and institutions closed. In case you doubt me, here is Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, writing in the same edition of the Torygraph - "The Arts Council is a body set up to ignore the public's wishes and provide an income to organisations that they would not receive through the free choices made by consumers." That gives a flavour of the times we live in.
In the face of such attitudes, I doubt classical music commands the affection and respect needed to put bums on seats and mount a tigrish defence of state subsidy.
Why not? There are many reasons, but one of them, unforgivably, is that its practitioners forgot that we the audience were meant to enjoy it.
In the face of such attitudes, I doubt classical music commands the affection and respect needed to put bums on seats and mount a tigrish defence of state subsidy.
Why not? There are many reasons, but one of them, unforgivably, is that its practitioners forgot that we the audience were meant to enjoy it.
The Observer - transexuals and controversialists
No blog with pretensions to finger/pulse proximity can afford to let the Suzanne Moore / Julie Burchill furore go by without comment. Particularly when it has in the past railed against the iniquities of legislation restricting the right to offend.
In a Guardian article, Suzanne Moore used the image of a Brazilian transsexual as a simile. She was then smothered in hostile comment in the Twittersphere. Julie Burchill wrote an article in the Observer supporting Moore, an article so rancid in its tone that even I found it quite offensive; if I had actually been a transsexual, Brazilian or otherwise, I would have been pretty cross.
But that's tough isn't it? There is no right not to be offended. Even if there were, what's more important - the transgendered's freedom from abuse, or the right to free speech? I know which I would value most.
The tide of stupidity does at last seem to be turning on this. The government is going to remove the word "insulting" from s.5 of the Public Order Act. OK, this is only where a potential victim cannot be identified, but it's a start. The other day I read Roy Greenslade, ex Mirror editor and now journalism professor, saying that being offensive should only attract criminal sanction where to do so might incite violence. That seems fair enough, and it was where the law stood for a century until politicians started fiddling with it recently.
The equivalent section in the Malicious Communications Act could go too, since it has led to such triumphs of cretinousness as the prosecution of a boy who posted a photo of a burning poppy on the net with the caption "take that you squadey (sic) c$%*s", or similar.
So how did the Observer react to the hoo-ha? It was obviously too late to recall the print edition, so it removed Burchill's piece from its website instead.
I find it hard to overstate how contemptible this is. And not just because a newspaper that purports to be liberal should not be in the business of suppressing free comment.
Burchill has been hired by editors of British newspapers for thirty years because she opens a bottle of wine when she begins writing her column and finishes both wine and column at the same time. No-one knows, least of all Burchill, what's going to come out during the intervening hour or so. Only that it will be sparklingly well written.
Who could possibly imagine that someone hired as a controversialist would, well, write something controversial? Well apparently it surprised the Observer's editor. He or she should grow up fast.
As a final rancid cherry on top of this teetering pile of dung, in steps the Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, calling for Burchill to be sacked. Yes, that's an elected politician in a democracy calling for a journalist to lose her job for writing something she didn't like.
I hope I remember this next time I consider voting Lib Dem.
Throughout this saga support for Burchill has come, surprisingly, from the Torygraph, which first republished the offending article and now prints a sympathetic piece by Allison Pearson. "This is a free country", she writes, "and the price we pay for that freedom is letting silly insults or harmless asides roll off us". When the Torygraph can effortlessly occupy the moral high ground on freedom of speech, the liberal press needs to look to its laurels.
In a Guardian article, Suzanne Moore used the image of a Brazilian transsexual as a simile. She was then smothered in hostile comment in the Twittersphere. Julie Burchill wrote an article in the Observer supporting Moore, an article so rancid in its tone that even I found it quite offensive; if I had actually been a transsexual, Brazilian or otherwise, I would have been pretty cross.
But that's tough isn't it? There is no right not to be offended. Even if there were, what's more important - the transgendered's freedom from abuse, or the right to free speech? I know which I would value most.
The tide of stupidity does at last seem to be turning on this. The government is going to remove the word "insulting" from s.5 of the Public Order Act. OK, this is only where a potential victim cannot be identified, but it's a start. The other day I read Roy Greenslade, ex Mirror editor and now journalism professor, saying that being offensive should only attract criminal sanction where to do so might incite violence. That seems fair enough, and it was where the law stood for a century until politicians started fiddling with it recently.
The equivalent section in the Malicious Communications Act could go too, since it has led to such triumphs of cretinousness as the prosecution of a boy who posted a photo of a burning poppy on the net with the caption "take that you squadey (sic) c$%*s", or similar.
So how did the Observer react to the hoo-ha? It was obviously too late to recall the print edition, so it removed Burchill's piece from its website instead.
I find it hard to overstate how contemptible this is. And not just because a newspaper that purports to be liberal should not be in the business of suppressing free comment.
Burchill has been hired by editors of British newspapers for thirty years because she opens a bottle of wine when she begins writing her column and finishes both wine and column at the same time. No-one knows, least of all Burchill, what's going to come out during the intervening hour or so. Only that it will be sparklingly well written.
Who could possibly imagine that someone hired as a controversialist would, well, write something controversial? Well apparently it surprised the Observer's editor. He or she should grow up fast.
As a final rancid cherry on top of this teetering pile of dung, in steps the Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, calling for Burchill to be sacked. Yes, that's an elected politician in a democracy calling for a journalist to lose her job for writing something she didn't like.
I hope I remember this next time I consider voting Lib Dem.
Throughout this saga support for Burchill has come, surprisingly, from the Torygraph, which first republished the offending article and now prints a sympathetic piece by Allison Pearson. "This is a free country", she writes, "and the price we pay for that freedom is letting silly insults or harmless asides roll off us". When the Torygraph can effortlessly occupy the moral high ground on freedom of speech, the liberal press needs to look to its laurels.
Thursday 17 January 2013
Why I love . . . #5 Big Bang Theory
The obvious reason is, because it's funny. But more on that in a minute.
For those who've never seen it, Big Bang Theory charts the misadventures of four young blokes, staffers of some American university's science faculty. Leonard is the most obviously normal one; Howard wears unfeasibly tight trousers and imagines himself a Lothario; Raj is the Indian one who is too shy to talk to girls (unless drunk); and Sheldon - but where to start? Sheldon is half-human, half-Klingon, the most brilliant, the most self-centred, the most eccentric, effete, dysfunctional and dislikeable.
Howard lives at home with his Jewish mother; Leonard and Sheldon share a flat. Across the hall lives Penny, the blonde wannabe actress with whom Leonard eventually develops an on-off relationship.
Amongst the many likeable things about BBT is the revelation that Penny, for all her lack of education and brains, is in some respects the most intelligent character on display. Whilst the others try and fail with girls, vie with each other intellectual kudos, argue about Star Trek episodes or merely disparage Howard for only being an engineer (the other three are physicists), Penny calmly gets on with her life, working as a waitress between auditions.
Some specific things: first, it is one of the few American TV programmes where the characters look like ordinary people. Actually, quite weird ordinary people, but you get the picture. Even Penny is more girl-next-door than professional blonde.
Two, whilst mocking its characters' nerdiness and pretensions, BBT allows them dignity and humanity in the same way - go on, laugh - Shakespeare does Falstaff. As well as being laughed at, we love them for being the sources of laughter.
Three, the show offers legitimacy for a sort of masculinity - not often celebrated by Hollywood or TV - that is without a trace of machismo. These men may be weedy and ineffectual, but observe their ardour for women!
But back to funny. There's no surer way to kill humour than to try and pin it down, but here is a typical BBT set-up.
Sheldon, Spock's less empathetic nephew, has made friends with a fellow-scientist, the hatchet-faced Amy. In a bar Amy has seen a hunk with whom she feels a powerful physical chemistry. She thinks if she touched him electricity would flow between them. Determined to strike up a conversation with the hunk, she returns to the bar with Sheldon as chaperone. However it turns out the hunk is a brain-dead goon. Disappointed, Amy leaves. As they walk home, she experimentally takes Sheldon's hand. He recoils: "Amy, what are you doing?" She withdraws her hand. "No, thought not", she says.
Did you laugh? No, thought not. Oh well.
I got into BBT because when my wife's away and domestic standards fall, tea is often eaten in front of the TV instead of at the kitchen table. The children look on in amazement as I laugh uproariously at the antics of Leonard, Sheldon and co. "I know why Dad likes it", said one of them the other day. "It's because he's just like them".
For those who've never seen it, Big Bang Theory charts the misadventures of four young blokes, staffers of some American university's science faculty. Leonard is the most obviously normal one; Howard wears unfeasibly tight trousers and imagines himself a Lothario; Raj is the Indian one who is too shy to talk to girls (unless drunk); and Sheldon - but where to start? Sheldon is half-human, half-Klingon, the most brilliant, the most self-centred, the most eccentric, effete, dysfunctional and dislikeable.
Howard lives at home with his Jewish mother; Leonard and Sheldon share a flat. Across the hall lives Penny, the blonde wannabe actress with whom Leonard eventually develops an on-off relationship.
Amongst the many likeable things about BBT is the revelation that Penny, for all her lack of education and brains, is in some respects the most intelligent character on display. Whilst the others try and fail with girls, vie with each other intellectual kudos, argue about Star Trek episodes or merely disparage Howard for only being an engineer (the other three are physicists), Penny calmly gets on with her life, working as a waitress between auditions.
Some specific things: first, it is one of the few American TV programmes where the characters look like ordinary people. Actually, quite weird ordinary people, but you get the picture. Even Penny is more girl-next-door than professional blonde.
Two, whilst mocking its characters' nerdiness and pretensions, BBT allows them dignity and humanity in the same way - go on, laugh - Shakespeare does Falstaff. As well as being laughed at, we love them for being the sources of laughter.
Three, the show offers legitimacy for a sort of masculinity - not often celebrated by Hollywood or TV - that is without a trace of machismo. These men may be weedy and ineffectual, but observe their ardour for women!
But back to funny. There's no surer way to kill humour than to try and pin it down, but here is a typical BBT set-up.
Sheldon, Spock's less empathetic nephew, has made friends with a fellow-scientist, the hatchet-faced Amy. In a bar Amy has seen a hunk with whom she feels a powerful physical chemistry. She thinks if she touched him electricity would flow between them. Determined to strike up a conversation with the hunk, she returns to the bar with Sheldon as chaperone. However it turns out the hunk is a brain-dead goon. Disappointed, Amy leaves. As they walk home, she experimentally takes Sheldon's hand. He recoils: "Amy, what are you doing?" She withdraws her hand. "No, thought not", she says.
Did you laugh? No, thought not. Oh well.
I got into BBT because when my wife's away and domestic standards fall, tea is often eaten in front of the TV instead of at the kitchen table. The children look on in amazement as I laugh uproariously at the antics of Leonard, Sheldon and co. "I know why Dad likes it", said one of them the other day. "It's because he's just like them".
Tuesday 15 January 2013
The EU and the democratic deficit
Poll after poll shows that, after the economy, the subject British voters are most exercised about is immigration. Thankfully Gordon Brown kept us out of the Euro, and so HMG can still pull the economic levers of interest rates, tax and QE without asking Brussels first. But what about border controls?
On 25th April 2005 a Treaty of Accession was signed by EU countries at the Neumuenster Abbey in Luxembourg. It provided that Bulgaria and Romania would join the EU on 1 January 2007. By 2005 New Labour was beginning to realise that its earlier prediction of 20,000 Polish and other East European migrants was way short of the reality (in fact ONS figures show that more than 600,000 were working here in 2012). Alarmed by the prospect of the 2007-accession countries' nationals coming to Britain in large numbers, the Blair government, along with seven other countries, secured an opt-out whereby the right to work would be deferred until 1 January 2014. It seemed a long way off at the time, but in fact it's now next year.
Now obviously if you have 600,000 extra people in your country, that is going to mean extra economic activity: it is idle to pretend there are no advantages at all to immigration. On the other hand, the extra pool of willing labour means that employers don't have to compete for staff by raising wages, thus increasing inequality as the middle-class forge ahead. It also makes it harder for those at the bottom end of society - including a disproportionate percentage of black and asian Britons - to find work . There are consequences for the environment, in terms of housing demand and strain on public services; but I have rehearsed these points many times on this blog.
No, the point of writing this is a larger one about politics generally. If I were a person unhappy at the possibility of several hundred thousand people coming to Britain to compete with me for housing, jobs or services (and if I were a British black or asian person I would be mightily unhappy), how would I express my feelings politically? Unfortunately the issue of who comes to Britain, whether they can work here and what benefits they claim, has like many others been exported to Brussels. We are in the bizarre situation that the issue which concerns voters more than almost any other is no longer something domestic politicians can actually do something about.
Renegotiating treaties, the only option short of outright withdrawal from the EU, is likely to be fractious, divisive and time-consuming. It is very easy to give these powers away, but very very difficult to reclaim them.
If you think we are badly off, spare a thought for the poor Southern European citizen. If you wanted to see interest rates lowered, or a touch of QE to bail out your banks, which political party can offer these things? None of them. Because your country no longer has the power to do any of them. The powers have been given away.
If you wanted a reflationary budget to borrow your way back into growth, no political party could offer that option. That's because countries in receipt of Eurozone largesse have to get their budgets passed by Brussels.
These countries are powerless to pull the levers of their economies because they gave most of the powers to the ECB, either when they joined the Eurozone or when they got into trouble. As a result there is mass unemployment and rioting in the streets.
It's hard to imagine anything more corrosive to the democratic process than the creeping irrelevance which this erosion of power from national governments (and thus their citizens) entails. The damage this powerlessness does to politics, slow and insidious, is playing out across Europe in a big way.
On 25th April 2005 a Treaty of Accession was signed by EU countries at the Neumuenster Abbey in Luxembourg. It provided that Bulgaria and Romania would join the EU on 1 January 2007. By 2005 New Labour was beginning to realise that its earlier prediction of 20,000 Polish and other East European migrants was way short of the reality (in fact ONS figures show that more than 600,000 were working here in 2012). Alarmed by the prospect of the 2007-accession countries' nationals coming to Britain in large numbers, the Blair government, along with seven other countries, secured an opt-out whereby the right to work would be deferred until 1 January 2014. It seemed a long way off at the time, but in fact it's now next year.
Now obviously if you have 600,000 extra people in your country, that is going to mean extra economic activity: it is idle to pretend there are no advantages at all to immigration. On the other hand, the extra pool of willing labour means that employers don't have to compete for staff by raising wages, thus increasing inequality as the middle-class forge ahead. It also makes it harder for those at the bottom end of society - including a disproportionate percentage of black and asian Britons - to find work . There are consequences for the environment, in terms of housing demand and strain on public services; but I have rehearsed these points many times on this blog.
No, the point of writing this is a larger one about politics generally. If I were a person unhappy at the possibility of several hundred thousand people coming to Britain to compete with me for housing, jobs or services (and if I were a British black or asian person I would be mightily unhappy), how would I express my feelings politically? Unfortunately the issue of who comes to Britain, whether they can work here and what benefits they claim, has like many others been exported to Brussels. We are in the bizarre situation that the issue which concerns voters more than almost any other is no longer something domestic politicians can actually do something about.
Renegotiating treaties, the only option short of outright withdrawal from the EU, is likely to be fractious, divisive and time-consuming. It is very easy to give these powers away, but very very difficult to reclaim them.
If you think we are badly off, spare a thought for the poor Southern European citizen. If you wanted to see interest rates lowered, or a touch of QE to bail out your banks, which political party can offer these things? None of them. Because your country no longer has the power to do any of them. The powers have been given away.
If you wanted a reflationary budget to borrow your way back into growth, no political party could offer that option. That's because countries in receipt of Eurozone largesse have to get their budgets passed by Brussels.
These countries are powerless to pull the levers of their economies because they gave most of the powers to the ECB, either when they joined the Eurozone or when they got into trouble. As a result there is mass unemployment and rioting in the streets.
It's hard to imagine anything more corrosive to the democratic process than the creeping irrelevance which this erosion of power from national governments (and thus their citizens) entails. The damage this powerlessness does to politics, slow and insidious, is playing out across Europe in a big way.
Monday 14 January 2013
Richard Williams and the Dinner Ladies
In my piece on the Guardian's Aditya Chakrabortty the other day I wondered aloud why the paper should keep its hapless chief economic leader writer yet get rid of the wonderful Martin Kelner, author of a weekly semi-humorous column on TV sport. After all the Graun's readers couldn't care less about economics, but they do love their darts, in a post-modernist kind of way.
I now learn that another Guardian journo has taken the redundancy cheque and walked, namely Chief Sportswriter Richard Williams. I have mixed feelings about this. Leaving aside the sinking ship aspect of much relating to the Graun these days, Williams was one of its better writers, an intelligent guy in the long tradition of Neville Cardus and Hugh McIlvanney who recognised that sport was something worth taking seriously.
The flip side of this was that Williams was occasionally prone to taking himself too seriously. He once described, without irony, fellow hack Paddy Barclay as a "football critic". You could see in this something of Williams' view of himself: not the E.I.Addio of Private Eye fame, the reporter in the Ford Fiesta with a Yorkie bar and copy of Readers Wives, but an Albert Camus of the terraces, well-thumbed copy of Derrida in one pocket, When Saturday Comes in the other and Stone Roses T-shirt underneath his leather jacket.
There's taking it seriously, and taking it pretentiously. This ghastly tendency to try and think of fancy names for things to try and make them seem more important is not unique to Williams, and is I think one of the curses of modern society. A composer I know of describes on his website a favourite band - The Killers, let's say - as "cultural artists".
No they're not. They're a pop group. Anyway, can anyone think of an artist who isn't cultural in some way? The arts being, well, part of culture generally? No, thought not.
Our local primary school has Lunchtime Co-Ordinators now instead of Dinner Ladies. If he's looking for a job, Richard Williams would feel right at home.
I now learn that another Guardian journo has taken the redundancy cheque and walked, namely Chief Sportswriter Richard Williams. I have mixed feelings about this. Leaving aside the sinking ship aspect of much relating to the Graun these days, Williams was one of its better writers, an intelligent guy in the long tradition of Neville Cardus and Hugh McIlvanney who recognised that sport was something worth taking seriously.
The flip side of this was that Williams was occasionally prone to taking himself too seriously. He once described, without irony, fellow hack Paddy Barclay as a "football critic". You could see in this something of Williams' view of himself: not the E.I.Addio of Private Eye fame, the reporter in the Ford Fiesta with a Yorkie bar and copy of Readers Wives, but an Albert Camus of the terraces, well-thumbed copy of Derrida in one pocket, When Saturday Comes in the other and Stone Roses T-shirt underneath his leather jacket.
There's taking it seriously, and taking it pretentiously. This ghastly tendency to try and think of fancy names for things to try and make them seem more important is not unique to Williams, and is I think one of the curses of modern society. A composer I know of describes on his website a favourite band - The Killers, let's say - as "cultural artists".
No they're not. They're a pop group. Anyway, can anyone think of an artist who isn't cultural in some way? The arts being, well, part of culture generally? No, thought not.
Our local primary school has Lunchtime Co-Ordinators now instead of Dinner Ladies. If he's looking for a job, Richard Williams would feel right at home.
Wednesday 9 January 2013
Aditya Chakrabortty and my own, ahem, beverage report
Aditya Chakrabortty is an old favourite of this blog, a journalist whose outpourings as the Guardian's Chief Economics leader writer have been a regular source of irritation and comedy over the months and, on reflection, years it has been in operation. In so far as I can bear to read his column in G2, it continues to fascinate, appal and amuse in equal measure.
What has Mr Chakrabortty been up to now? Well yesterday he wrote an obituary of the Welfare State as envisaged by Beveridge. "The proximate cause of death was a change in child benefit from being available to all to a means-tested entitlement", he intoned. "That marked the end of one of the last remaining universal benefits, in turn causing a fatal injury to welfare . . . It expired peacefully on Monday 7 January just weeks after marking its 70th birthday". You get the lumberingly humorous picture. Because welfare is apparently only for the needy now, it is dead in the water.
I am sad to report that my family's entitlement to Child Benefit ended on Monday as well. Faced with the information that we would be taxed at 100% on the sum (£150 or so every month for our three children), the neat and tidy thing to do seemed to be to go on to the Government's website and cancel it. Which I did on Friday.
Given that Mr Chakrabortty thinks the loss of Child Benefit for people like me marks the end of the welfare state, he might like to know what my wife and I spent it on.
To be clear, we didn't need the money. Contemplating the vast sums we have forked out endowing our children with i-Pods, i-Phones and finally i-Pads, not to mention expensive and unsuccessful skiing holidays ("There was too much snow", complained one of our daughters), my wife and I decided to spend the Child Benefit, on the whole, on wine. We thought that since we paid tens of thousands of pounds tax every year, we might as well get some pleasure back courtesy of the Government.
To start a wine cellar requires that you buy it faster than you drink it. So in the family cellar there nestle quantities of Wirra Wirra Church Block, Domaine de Mourchon, Auxey-Duresses, Chateau des Carbonnieres, various fruits of the D'Arenburg vineyards in Australia, together with quite a lot of champagne, for which we have a weakness. Sitting somewhere in France there is also quite a lot of Rhone red, mostly from Cairanne, "easily the best of the Southern Rhone villages", according to Hugh Johnson (we prefer the lighter reds to the heavy Bordeaux classics), which will be delivered in due course. 2009 and 2010 were particularly good years, and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the Rhones, which will be drinkable fairly soon.
All bought at the Government's expense. Well, actually at the expense of taxpayers everywhere, including my wife and I, if you think about it.
Amazingly this situation, no doubt replicated in well-to-do households up and down the land, is one which Mr Chakrabortty thinks should continue. Moreover, he thinks that because the Government has put a stop to it that means the welfare state is now dead.
Oh my Lord.
A couple of points about Mr Chakrabortty generally. I haven't got it in for him personally. He is not clever enough to do his job well, but the real idiots are the Graun's management team for employing him in the first place. True, he isn't in the same class of duffer as Polly Toynbee, but then she is out on her own, and, to be fair, was probably quite good once. It must hurt Larry Elliott, the Graun's main economics writer, to see Chakrabortty cavorting across the pages of G2 while his own writings are secreted away in the paper's flimsy business section, perused only by economics geeks like me.
The second thing is that cutting Child Benefit for those who can afford to spend it on wine might be better viewed as an economic necessity for a country that is borrowing about £2,000,000,000,000 every week just to stay afloat.
The Welfare State was set up by Beveridge in an entirely different social context. At that time people worked because not do so was to risk social shame and destitution.. The provision of benefits for the jobless changed attitudes to work irrevocably. Admittedly the time to do something about that was during the Gordon Brown boom rather than now, when it is so difficult to find a job, but it's a stable door that desperately needs shutting all the same.
The real threat to welfarism is not its withdrawal from people like me, but rather the changing economic and demographic circumstances which have rendered it unaffordable as presently constituted. To give but one example, the average life expectancy of a man at the time of Beveridge was 48. It has increased by at least thirty years in the intervening period, with the attendant massive consequences for the amounts, still rising, HMG must pay out in pensions. I'm still hoping there'll be a state pension for me when I'm 66, but I'm not banking on it.
(In fact only days after posting this, a White Paper proposed that the years NI contributions we will need to get the state pension should increase from 30 to 35. As someone who has 27 and was nearly there, this was something of a sickener)
It saddens me that the Guardian thought it a good idea to get rid of Martin Kelner, who until very recently wrote an intentionally funny column on Mondays, but not Aditya Chakrabortty, who still writes an unintentionally funny one on Tuesdays. Go figure.
What has Mr Chakrabortty been up to now? Well yesterday he wrote an obituary of the Welfare State as envisaged by Beveridge. "The proximate cause of death was a change in child benefit from being available to all to a means-tested entitlement", he intoned. "That marked the end of one of the last remaining universal benefits, in turn causing a fatal injury to welfare . . . It expired peacefully on Monday 7 January just weeks after marking its 70th birthday". You get the lumberingly humorous picture. Because welfare is apparently only for the needy now, it is dead in the water.
I am sad to report that my family's entitlement to Child Benefit ended on Monday as well. Faced with the information that we would be taxed at 100% on the sum (£150 or so every month for our three children), the neat and tidy thing to do seemed to be to go on to the Government's website and cancel it. Which I did on Friday.
Given that Mr Chakrabortty thinks the loss of Child Benefit for people like me marks the end of the welfare state, he might like to know what my wife and I spent it on.
To be clear, we didn't need the money. Contemplating the vast sums we have forked out endowing our children with i-Pods, i-Phones and finally i-Pads, not to mention expensive and unsuccessful skiing holidays ("There was too much snow", complained one of our daughters), my wife and I decided to spend the Child Benefit, on the whole, on wine. We thought that since we paid tens of thousands of pounds tax every year, we might as well get some pleasure back courtesy of the Government.
To start a wine cellar requires that you buy it faster than you drink it. So in the family cellar there nestle quantities of Wirra Wirra Church Block, Domaine de Mourchon, Auxey-Duresses, Chateau des Carbonnieres, various fruits of the D'Arenburg vineyards in Australia, together with quite a lot of champagne, for which we have a weakness. Sitting somewhere in France there is also quite a lot of Rhone red, mostly from Cairanne, "easily the best of the Southern Rhone villages", according to Hugh Johnson (we prefer the lighter reds to the heavy Bordeaux classics), which will be delivered in due course. 2009 and 2010 were particularly good years, and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the Rhones, which will be drinkable fairly soon.
All bought at the Government's expense. Well, actually at the expense of taxpayers everywhere, including my wife and I, if you think about it.
Amazingly this situation, no doubt replicated in well-to-do households up and down the land, is one which Mr Chakrabortty thinks should continue. Moreover, he thinks that because the Government has put a stop to it that means the welfare state is now dead.
Oh my Lord.
A couple of points about Mr Chakrabortty generally. I haven't got it in for him personally. He is not clever enough to do his job well, but the real idiots are the Graun's management team for employing him in the first place. True, he isn't in the same class of duffer as Polly Toynbee, but then she is out on her own, and, to be fair, was probably quite good once. It must hurt Larry Elliott, the Graun's main economics writer, to see Chakrabortty cavorting across the pages of G2 while his own writings are secreted away in the paper's flimsy business section, perused only by economics geeks like me.
The second thing is that cutting Child Benefit for those who can afford to spend it on wine might be better viewed as an economic necessity for a country that is borrowing about £2,000,000,000,000 every week just to stay afloat.
The Welfare State was set up by Beveridge in an entirely different social context. At that time people worked because not do so was to risk social shame and destitution.. The provision of benefits for the jobless changed attitudes to work irrevocably. Admittedly the time to do something about that was during the Gordon Brown boom rather than now, when it is so difficult to find a job, but it's a stable door that desperately needs shutting all the same.
The real threat to welfarism is not its withdrawal from people like me, but rather the changing economic and demographic circumstances which have rendered it unaffordable as presently constituted. To give but one example, the average life expectancy of a man at the time of Beveridge was 48. It has increased by at least thirty years in the intervening period, with the attendant massive consequences for the amounts, still rising, HMG must pay out in pensions. I'm still hoping there'll be a state pension for me when I'm 66, but I'm not banking on it.
(In fact only days after posting this, a White Paper proposed that the years NI contributions we will need to get the state pension should increase from 30 to 35. As someone who has 27 and was nearly there, this was something of a sickener)
It saddens me that the Guardian thought it a good idea to get rid of Martin Kelner, who until very recently wrote an intentionally funny column on Mondays, but not Aditya Chakrabortty, who still writes an unintentionally funny one on Tuesdays. Go figure.
Tuesday 8 January 2013
Not being a composer
When I was thinking of going to music college thirty years ago, someone told me, "If you want to be a composer, try not to compose". If this sounds strange, it was the best piece of advice I received, and I have often wished I could have fulfilled it.
If you can possibly tolerate not composing, I read it as saying, do something else. I was too young and too confident of my own ability to read any serious warning into the nostrum, but I've had plenty of opportunity since to savour its truth.
Writing classical music continues to attract an awful lot of bright and talented people. Despite its loss of cultural prestige, there are still enough names that resonate - your Bachs, Beethovens and so on - across a society now largely dedicated to getting its musical kicks via pop. For the ambitious young musician, probably by some way the most able in his or her immediate sphere, the heady prospect of striding the world like a composing colossus has a tempting appeal.
Unfortunately there are an awful lot of other people tempted as well. If I was the most gifted musician in my primary school, there were others at secondary level; at music college there were two or three other composers in my year; and there will have been other young composers at other colleges and universities around the UK. How many spill out onto the streets each July? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred?
For they and I are not the only people who can do what we do. Far from it. There are thousands of people around the country who can harmonise a Bach chorale, who can write a symphony or a concerto. And how many opportunities are there out there for us? Not very many. Scan the concert programmes of the average professional symphony orchestra - how many pieces do they perform each year, and how many of them are premieres? One or two? Half a dozen? Now consider how many other people are competing with you to get their work put on, and work out the chances of it being your piece brought beautifully to life by professional players. Not great.
Ah, I hear you say, but I'm a better composer than the others. Really? Who says so? I have spent years trying to convince anyone who'll listen that there are no objective ways of judging art, and that, once you can reach a minimum standard of technical competence, it's all a matter of opinion. To paraphrase William Goldman, in classical music No-one Knows Anything. No-one knows whether Pianist A is "better" than Pianist B, and no-one knows whether Composer Y is "better" than Composer Z. If you get your piece put on, it won't be because your piece is better. No-one knows what better is.
No, some other factor will have worked out in your favour. At the most basic level, it might be that the person responsible for the programming liked your piece more than someone else's. Clearly that involves a significant element of luck (as well as the assumption that someone could actually read the scores and hear mentally what the music sounded like, a skill more often claimed than possessed). Other factors may be at work too. I have repeatedly heard variations upon, "Of course you know there's a gay mafia". Sometimes it's a Jewish mafia or an Oxbridge mafia.
A friend who is a virtuoso once said to me, "Of course you know why all these beautiful young men get all the Wigmore Hall gigs?" Since he was born in a country far away on the other side of Europe it would have been ill-mannered of me to point out that one of the variations on the Gay mafia theme is the notion that the English, with a curious inverted snobbery, prefer their musicians to be foreigners.
If I've never personally seen any evidence of any of these prejudices, it's certainly a great help to a composer if your face fits, if you are flavour of the month, if you know the right person, if, better still, you have slept with the right person. It helps too if you're young and good-looking. Why is Eric Whitacre so famous? It can't hurt that he looks like Brad Pitt's brother.
So what happens if your ducks do all line up in a row and it is your piece that gets chosen? How much money are you going to make out of the performance? A few hundred quid if it's on the radio, but no more. What if you've written a Christmas carol? How much in the way of royalties will that get you? In my experience about £0.10 per copy sold. So you won't be running a car on your compositional earnings, let alone the deposit on the freezing garret you'll be writing in.
No, even if you are one of the lucky ones and can run to a dozen or so performances a year, you'll need some other way of making a living. But here comes another complication - most jobs don't leave much time for composition. I wrote an early String Quartet as a toilet cleaner, locking myself in the cleaner's cupboard for hours at a stretch, to the fury of my supervisor. But this was a rare opportunity - most jobs demand too much of you - bought at the price of squalor and tedium. At other times I got up early in the morning and put in two hours composing before going off to work. But this was before children came along, with their night-time demands which made staying awake during the day hard enough as it was without getting up at six just for the sake of it.
I was lucky enough to get married to someone who likes classical music (although not all of mine), and was willing to tolerate my writing it and doing the child care while she got on with her career. But you may not be so fortunate. You might have to go out to work and be the main breadwinner. If you really have a vocation to compose it will drive you crazy. During the brief period I worked as a full-time lawyer, I often went and shut myself in the loo (is a theme emerging here?), sobbing with frustration at wasting my time and talent doing something someone else could probably have done better.
Although I have been much luckier than most, I would have to say that the life of a composer, even a moderately successful one (I do consider myself moderately successful, in the sense that I know others significantly less so) is one in which rejection and even humiliation have to be endured on a monthly if not weekly basis. You are competing with a lot of other people for a tiny amount of work, and mostly you will be losing.
I am not trying to put you off composing (although come to think of it if that reduces the competition it's maybe not such a bad idea). But what may seem like an obvious choice aged twenty has consequences which are as far reaching as those of any decision you will ever make. If you can possibly tolerate not composing, don't do it. Do something else (preferably not a loo cleaner though). You'll be better off and happier.
Like most composers, there have been times when I've wondered whether the game is worth the candle, whether the low self-esteem attendant on being only moderately successful (after all, I know other composers significantly more so) might be dissipated by stopping writing altogether, by reinventing myself as something else. But one's mind works in curious ways. In the last few months some ideas have occurred to me consistent perhaps with being part of another String Quartet. The other day I was finishing some piano practice, and was startled to find my hands wandering over the keys involuntarily, producing some new music which, again, sounded as if it might belong in the same piece. That's the way composition works. You don't choose music. It chooses you.
Sunday 6 January 2013
John Lanchester's elephants
John Lanchester, the Left's go-to guy when it comes to economics, has been writing again in the London Review of Books. Lanchester is an engaging novelist and undoubtedly a well-meaning man, but unfortunately his writings on the dismal science reveal a grasp some way short of competence.
My wife has chucked the LRB into the recycling, so I am going to have to do this from memory.
The thrust of the two pages the editor gives Lanchester are that the economy is not growing, and that therefore George Osborne's policies are not working. Osborne doesn't realise, writes Lanchester, that if you cut public spending then GDP goes down as well, possibly by more than the amount you've actually cut. "This", Lanchester intones, surveying the scene, "is what failure looks like".
Well, not necessarily. Lanchester is guilty of assuming that the success of Osborne's policies should be measured purely in terms of growth. But growth isn't the only criterion. Sure, Osborne would be delighted if the economy were growing. But what he'll be really concerned about is the deficit. As long as he can tell the world the deficit is shrinking in real terms, Osborne will be able to say that he is putting the nation's finances in order. And he'll be right. As long as the gilt markets - who don't have to lend to us, remember - believe in the direction of travel, it will be cheap for Britain to borrow the billions we need every week just to keep going.
To put it the other way round, GDP is not the same as tax revenue. If GDP falls because the government has spent less, that doesn't mean the government doesn't gain. If the tax revenue HMG loses and the extra money it has to pay out in benefits are in combination smaller than the savings from the spending cut, the government wins. That is Osborne's calculation, and that is partly why the deficit is going down. I think Osborne will be quietly pleased with the situation.
Here is a list of other considerations that are strangely absent from Lanchester's article. If you haven't read it, you'll just have to take my word for it.
One, there's no acknowledgement of the headwinds Osborne is facing from a Eurozone economy gripped by an existential crisis.
Two, there's no attempt at suggesting an alternative strategy to Osborne's.
Third, although I think we're entitled to assume that Lanchester thinks there is such a strategy, he shows no sign of understanding that this might just be one of those problems to which there is no solution at all. I think it is not stretching matters to say that no-one really knows what to do now, and that Osborne's way is likely to be as good as any. At least, by enabling us to afford current borrowing, it is enabling us to keep going.
Fourth, Lanchester displays no understanding of the wider context in which the economic crisis is taking place, which is that Western governments and individuals, helped along by the finance industry, borrowed for decades to sustain a lifestyle their income did not justify.
Fifth, there is no acknowledgement that in the long run, states, like individuals, must live within their means. The policies of Balls and Miliband merely pretend that this isn't true, but it is.
Sixth, Lanchester displays no understanding of the consequences of this fact for Western Social Democratic parties. The soft Left is dedicated to the creation of societies with high welfare spending to help those at the bottom end. The events of the last few years demonstrate that this isn't fiscally possible at current levels of general taxation, and may not be politically possible at any level.
Seventh, to look at the biggest picture of all, Lanchester doesn't seem to grasp that, at heart, our problems are a consequence of loss of competitiveness to Far Eastern economies. Until that loss can be restored to some extent, the kind of big state solutions Lanchester favours will never be affordable again in Britain.
If John Lanchester really wants to know what failure looks like, he might want to imagine a room containing these seven rather large elephants.
Does any of this matter? If I still counted myself amongst the denizens of the Centre Left I would be exasperated at the failure of my peers to get to grips with the cause of the UK's problems. I would be appalled by their lazy acceptance of the seductive alternative narrative, one which says it was all the bankers' fault, but never asks what exactly it was the bankers were doing (lending us all money) and why (because otherwise we couldn't afford to live the way we wanted).
It may well be that Labour will win the next election anyway - as long as the Eurozone continues to be a zombie economy it's hard to see the UK's fortunes improving markedly or at all. But if they don't, it'll be because they have failed to put before the public a believable economic case. The task of doing so starts further back, with a clear-headed analysis of how we ended up where we are and what the consequences are for Labour's vision of a good society. That's partly the responsibility of the politicians, but also partly a responsibility of Labour's public intellectuals like Lanchester.
Judging by this article, he still can't see the zoo for the elephants.
My wife has chucked the LRB into the recycling, so I am going to have to do this from memory.
The thrust of the two pages the editor gives Lanchester are that the economy is not growing, and that therefore George Osborne's policies are not working. Osborne doesn't realise, writes Lanchester, that if you cut public spending then GDP goes down as well, possibly by more than the amount you've actually cut. "This", Lanchester intones, surveying the scene, "is what failure looks like".
Well, not necessarily. Lanchester is guilty of assuming that the success of Osborne's policies should be measured purely in terms of growth. But growth isn't the only criterion. Sure, Osborne would be delighted if the economy were growing. But what he'll be really concerned about is the deficit. As long as he can tell the world the deficit is shrinking in real terms, Osborne will be able to say that he is putting the nation's finances in order. And he'll be right. As long as the gilt markets - who don't have to lend to us, remember - believe in the direction of travel, it will be cheap for Britain to borrow the billions we need every week just to keep going.
To put it the other way round, GDP is not the same as tax revenue. If GDP falls because the government has spent less, that doesn't mean the government doesn't gain. If the tax revenue HMG loses and the extra money it has to pay out in benefits are in combination smaller than the savings from the spending cut, the government wins. That is Osborne's calculation, and that is partly why the deficit is going down. I think Osborne will be quietly pleased with the situation.
Here is a list of other considerations that are strangely absent from Lanchester's article. If you haven't read it, you'll just have to take my word for it.
One, there's no acknowledgement of the headwinds Osborne is facing from a Eurozone economy gripped by an existential crisis.
Two, there's no attempt at suggesting an alternative strategy to Osborne's.
Third, although I think we're entitled to assume that Lanchester thinks there is such a strategy, he shows no sign of understanding that this might just be one of those problems to which there is no solution at all. I think it is not stretching matters to say that no-one really knows what to do now, and that Osborne's way is likely to be as good as any. At least, by enabling us to afford current borrowing, it is enabling us to keep going.
Fourth, Lanchester displays no understanding of the wider context in which the economic crisis is taking place, which is that Western governments and individuals, helped along by the finance industry, borrowed for decades to sustain a lifestyle their income did not justify.
Fifth, there is no acknowledgement that in the long run, states, like individuals, must live within their means. The policies of Balls and Miliband merely pretend that this isn't true, but it is.
Sixth, Lanchester displays no understanding of the consequences of this fact for Western Social Democratic parties. The soft Left is dedicated to the creation of societies with high welfare spending to help those at the bottom end. The events of the last few years demonstrate that this isn't fiscally possible at current levels of general taxation, and may not be politically possible at any level.
Seventh, to look at the biggest picture of all, Lanchester doesn't seem to grasp that, at heart, our problems are a consequence of loss of competitiveness to Far Eastern economies. Until that loss can be restored to some extent, the kind of big state solutions Lanchester favours will never be affordable again in Britain.
If John Lanchester really wants to know what failure looks like, he might want to imagine a room containing these seven rather large elephants.
Does any of this matter? If I still counted myself amongst the denizens of the Centre Left I would be exasperated at the failure of my peers to get to grips with the cause of the UK's problems. I would be appalled by their lazy acceptance of the seductive alternative narrative, one which says it was all the bankers' fault, but never asks what exactly it was the bankers were doing (lending us all money) and why (because otherwise we couldn't afford to live the way we wanted).
It may well be that Labour will win the next election anyway - as long as the Eurozone continues to be a zombie economy it's hard to see the UK's fortunes improving markedly or at all. But if they don't, it'll be because they have failed to put before the public a believable economic case. The task of doing so starts further back, with a clear-headed analysis of how we ended up where we are and what the consequences are for Labour's vision of a good society. That's partly the responsibility of the politicians, but also partly a responsibility of Labour's public intellectuals like Lanchester.
Judging by this article, he still can't see the zoo for the elephants.
Friday 4 January 2013
Fiscal cliff? - fiscal kerbstone more like . . .
This morning's Graun reprints a handy guide to the Fiscal Cliff currently going round the City. It takes some numbers from the US financial situation so mind-numbingly large that the intellects of ordinary chaps like me reel at the prospect, and removes eight noughts from the end of each. To illuminating effect.
Here's the relevant bit (just add eight noughts, if your brain is up to it):
"Annual family income - $21,700
Money the family spent - $38,200
New debt on the credit card - $16,500
Outstanding credit card balance - $142,710
Total household budget cuts so far - $38.50"
Yes, you read that right. Thirty eight dollars and fifty cents.
Here's the relevant bit (just add eight noughts, if your brain is up to it):
"Annual family income - $21,700
Money the family spent - $38,200
New debt on the credit card - $16,500
Outstanding credit card balance - $142,710
Total household budget cuts so far - $38.50"
Yes, you read that right. Thirty eight dollars and fifty cents.
Thursday 3 January 2013
John Muir Trust - destroying wilderness's head space?
Once again the arrival of the The John Muir Trust's Journal prompts the thought that the £15 or so I spend on membership every year might be better put to use elsewhere in the economy.
The JMT is an environmental charity whose name honours the pioneer emigre Scot instrumental in persuading the US government to found the Yosemite National Park, and whose writings found the intellectual cornerstone of the wilderness movement. The JMT has bought up a number of estates in Scotland (Knoydart, Sandwood Bay, bits of Skye and Ben Nevis) and works to restore woodland to what is, for all its bareness, a landscape thoroughly ravaged by man. I am not one of the original few - the JMT was founded in 1983 - but since I joined membership has more than doubled, and I've seen the Trust develop from humble beginnings into a slick and professional charity.
It's partly this transformation that worries me, but I'll come back to that. According to its Journal, the JMT now considers that its role should include creating "new opportunities for enjoying outdoor learning". You may think - I do - that there are myriad charities and government funded groups better suited to doing that, but I guess you might also say that, amidst Scotlands millions of empty acres, what harm can it do? Except it's not in Scotland. The Trust is "now able to support groups in Carlisle, West Cumbria and Barrow" and the groups "will be supported to explore, connect with and care for" inter alia the Lake District National Park.
That's right: a Trust set up essentially to preserve wilderness areas, optimally by buying them, is now engaged in the business of encouraging people to go to a place whose landscape management problems are best characterised by relentlessly excessive footfall. That environmental point aside, what is wilderness when you are there on your own, ceases, paradoxically, do be so when I turn up as well. More people = less wilderness. Why is the JMT contributing to the process of reducing Britain's wilderness?
Elsewhere in the Journal there is news and a photograph of the new footpath on Schiehallion. Now the old path on Schiehallion was bad enough in winter; it must have been a quagmire in summer. But why did the Trust buy Schiehallion in the first place? It is a small conical mountain near the road, easily accessible from Scotland's Central Belt. As long as Britain's post-Industrial society continues in its current form, Schiehallion will never be a wilderness again. The Trust should have saved its money (sorry - our money) until some more suitable property turned up.
The feeling that the Trust has fallen into the hands of those who don't understand its mission is underscored on p.11 of the Journal, where one Chris Goodman, apparently overseer of the Trust's wider footpath management (because after all the Trust has now got to the point where it can afford an overseer of footpath management) is quoted as saying, "We want to bring every stretch of footpath on Trust property up to a wild land standard". This sentence is actually used as a headline.
There is no sign that Goodman or the writer have any sense of the ironies at work here. The Trust's role is not to question the idea of footpaths in wilderness per se, it is merely to make them better, thus encouraging more people to walk into that wilderness. Because it's obviously vital that in wilderness areas, the footpaths are up to standard!
I'd like to think that at this point anyone from the Trust reading this might go, "Oh, hang on . . . ". But then if they can print Goodman's comment unquestioningly, they really aren't going to get it, are they?
I said I would remark on the Trust's transformation from a few beardy blokes clubbing together to buy wild land to an organisation with a glossy journal, a "footpath project officer" and offices in Edinburgh and Pitlochry.
Aside from the bad decisions it seems to me the Trust sometimes makes, its staff seem blithely unaware that wilderness is a conceptual as much as a physical thing. John Muir, and his disciples who set up the Trust, were sick of industrial society's tendency to commodify and package everything. Wilderness was needed as an antidote to this.
But with its corporate sponsors, its merchandising, its compulsive tidying, with the bland management speak that characterises its official utterances, the JMT is in danger of contributing to the commodification and therefore destruction of wilderness's head space, at the same time as it often does useful work to safeguard wilderness's physical reality.
The JMT is an environmental charity whose name honours the pioneer emigre Scot instrumental in persuading the US government to found the Yosemite National Park, and whose writings found the intellectual cornerstone of the wilderness movement. The JMT has bought up a number of estates in Scotland (Knoydart, Sandwood Bay, bits of Skye and Ben Nevis) and works to restore woodland to what is, for all its bareness, a landscape thoroughly ravaged by man. I am not one of the original few - the JMT was founded in 1983 - but since I joined membership has more than doubled, and I've seen the Trust develop from humble beginnings into a slick and professional charity.
It's partly this transformation that worries me, but I'll come back to that. According to its Journal, the JMT now considers that its role should include creating "new opportunities for enjoying outdoor learning". You may think - I do - that there are myriad charities and government funded groups better suited to doing that, but I guess you might also say that, amidst Scotlands millions of empty acres, what harm can it do? Except it's not in Scotland. The Trust is "now able to support groups in Carlisle, West Cumbria and Barrow" and the groups "will be supported to explore, connect with and care for" inter alia the Lake District National Park.
That's right: a Trust set up essentially to preserve wilderness areas, optimally by buying them, is now engaged in the business of encouraging people to go to a place whose landscape management problems are best characterised by relentlessly excessive footfall. That environmental point aside, what is wilderness when you are there on your own, ceases, paradoxically, do be so when I turn up as well. More people = less wilderness. Why is the JMT contributing to the process of reducing Britain's wilderness?
Elsewhere in the Journal there is news and a photograph of the new footpath on Schiehallion. Now the old path on Schiehallion was bad enough in winter; it must have been a quagmire in summer. But why did the Trust buy Schiehallion in the first place? It is a small conical mountain near the road, easily accessible from Scotland's Central Belt. As long as Britain's post-Industrial society continues in its current form, Schiehallion will never be a wilderness again. The Trust should have saved its money (sorry - our money) until some more suitable property turned up.
The feeling that the Trust has fallen into the hands of those who don't understand its mission is underscored on p.11 of the Journal, where one Chris Goodman, apparently overseer of the Trust's wider footpath management (because after all the Trust has now got to the point where it can afford an overseer of footpath management) is quoted as saying, "We want to bring every stretch of footpath on Trust property up to a wild land standard". This sentence is actually used as a headline.
There is no sign that Goodman or the writer have any sense of the ironies at work here. The Trust's role is not to question the idea of footpaths in wilderness per se, it is merely to make them better, thus encouraging more people to walk into that wilderness. Because it's obviously vital that in wilderness areas, the footpaths are up to standard!
I'd like to think that at this point anyone from the Trust reading this might go, "Oh, hang on . . . ". But then if they can print Goodman's comment unquestioningly, they really aren't going to get it, are they?
I said I would remark on the Trust's transformation from a few beardy blokes clubbing together to buy wild land to an organisation with a glossy journal, a "footpath project officer" and offices in Edinburgh and Pitlochry.
Aside from the bad decisions it seems to me the Trust sometimes makes, its staff seem blithely unaware that wilderness is a conceptual as much as a physical thing. John Muir, and his disciples who set up the Trust, were sick of industrial society's tendency to commodify and package everything. Wilderness was needed as an antidote to this.
But with its corporate sponsors, its merchandising, its compulsive tidying, with the bland management speak that characterises its official utterances, the JMT is in danger of contributing to the commodification and therefore destruction of wilderness's head space, at the same time as it often does useful work to safeguard wilderness's physical reality.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)