Iraq and the Arab Spring

Libya finally announces it is free from the dread hand of Colonel Gaddafi. Tunisia holds its first elections. President Obama announces the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. It's a momentous morning.

I have been wondering what would happen in the commentariat when events of the Arab Spring began to be digested. Someone would look back at the Iraq invasion and try to fit it in to subsequent events. Assiduous readers of this blog will know that I supported the invasion (I believe that it was my support which finally persuaded Blair and Bush to go ahead; Dick Cheney had been particularly hesitant until he found out I was onside), not because I thought it was a good thing - it was self-evidently bad - but because I thought it might be marginally less bad than leaving Saddam Hussein in place.

Anyway, here's Jonathan Steele in this morning's Graun (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/23/us-withdrawal-iraq-defeat-bush-neocons?commentpage=last#end-of-comments) with his take on events. As you'll see, Steele complains that, far from Iraq's fledgling democracy inspiring other North African states, it might actually have put them off. "The instability and bloodshed which the US unleashed in Iraq were the example that Arabs sought to avoid, not emulate", he writes.

Yes, I too had noticed that Libya's awakening was achieved without any bloodshed whatsoever. And things are going well in Syria, where, in the absence of an armed insurrection, President Assad remains in power.

Steele's other complaint is that Iraq's transition to a democracy has given Iran more influence than it had when Saddam was in charge.

I wish he would step off the fence and be a bit less coy. Are we to infer that because Iran now has more influence, things were better during Saddam's era? And if so, better for whom?

We can abuse Blair, Bush, Cheney and Halliburton all we like, but surely the six million dollar question for Iraqis is, Did the invasion make things better for them in the medium and long term?

A clue to the answer lies in Steele's own article. He writes, ". . . when the Arab spring dawned, the Iraqi government found itself on the defensive as demonstrators took to the streets of Baghdad and Basra to protest against Maliki's authoritarianism and his government's US-supported clampdown on trade union activity".

Does anyone remember how street protests or trades unions fared under Saddam? My recollection is that there wasn't much of either. People were too terrified. Does anyone remember Saddam's government being "on the defensive" against its own people? My recollection is that there wasn't a government as such (the word implying something a bit more that a collection of stooges or family members dripping with medals). And for a government to be on the defensive, it must be capable of being attacked. But when Saddam was in power the "government" couldn't be "attacked" because there was no process by which to attack it. There were no elections, and to take part in a public demonstration was to invite one's own death.

To state these things explicitly in reverse, in Iraq there is a government, and an elected government at that. It is imperfect (so is ours), but the government can be "attacked" by public demonstrations or by the electoral process. Are these not gains worthy of some comment by Steele?

Apparently not. Steele has nothing to say about the way in which these things have only become possible because of the 2003 invasion; he only speaks of their current imperfections. If Bush and Blair had done what Steele and his fellow-travellers wanted, Saddam would still have been in power in Iraq. No doubt it possible to construct an argument that things were better then. I would like to see it attempted. But Steele does not even try. Funny that.

Get Gaddafi off the front page

Amidst all the hoo-ha about Colonel Gaddafi's death, the papers are missing today's big story. It is that M. Sarkozy and Frau Merkel are so far apart on a package to rescue the Euro that the announcement of decisions taken at the weekend's big German-French summit has had to be postponed to next Wednesday. Basically, the Germans don't want the EFSF to be leveraged in the way the French would like.

What the Germans are playing at I have no idea. Mrs Merkel must know that the EFSF, at 424 billion (I don't have a Euro sign on my QWERTY), is nowhere near big enough, and that some way must be found to increase it. Whether the ways proposed will work (making the EFSF guarantor of the first 20% of losses is unlikely to satisfy bond purchasers numerate enough to wonder what might happen to the remaining 80% of their money) is another matter.

As if to confirm the tenuous grasp on reality held by European leaders, the Grauniad this morning reports one Michel Barnier, EU internal market commissioner, as saying "Credit rating agencies could be banned from downgrading countries in the eurozone's bailout scheme . . . " The report goes on, "Presenting his proposals to reform trading in financial derivatives on Thursday, Barnier suggested the ban could be extended to downgrades of countries negotiating to join the bailout."

Now no-one much likes the credit ratings agencies (although I don't remember people complaining about them when they were giving the go ahead for the West's enormous borrowing spree), but this is shooting the messenger. All the ratings agencies do is provide the financial markets with information. They are agents of transparency. What would M. Barnier prefer? That bond investors make decisions on rumour or innuendo instead? Does he really think that in a climate where the default position of investors is that a country might not be able to pay its bills, reducing the amount of information available will help to lower bond yields and make it easier for cash-strapped governments? I find it hard to believe, but apparently he does.

This is pretty symptomatic of the way the EU has handled this crisis. The facts are inconvenient? Ignore them. Actually no. Better still. Stop their publication.

Dale Farm and the rule of law

Ugly scenes this morning as the bailiffs and police break down barricades at Dale Farm. I have some sympathy with the occupants, particularly the children: whoever's fault this is, it's not theirs.

And yet the thing which keeps nagging me is the occupants' attitude to the law. They have used the courts to prevaricate and delay the inevitable for years. Each time the courts have ruled in their favour, the residents have expected Basildon Council to respect the judgment, and Basildon have complied, jumping through the legal hoops set for them at vast expense to Council Tax payers.

But when the courts have ruled for Basildon do the occupants comply? No. They barricade themselves in and threaten violence, making necessary this morning's militaristic-looking adventure. The residents can't have their cake and eat it. If Basildon Council had regarded the law in the same way as the residents, the bulldozers would have been into Dale Farm years ago.

The SNP, the NHS and the elderly

I've written before about the NHS's shameful treatment of the elderly (http://nicksimpsonmusic.blogspot.com/2011/05/coming-soon-serbia.html), and it came as a depressing no-surprise to find the Care Quality Commission reporting yesterday that of 100 hospitals it inspected recently, only 45% were providing proper service to elderly patients, and 20% were so bad that they were actually breaking the law.

I'm not going to waste time thinking of terms adequate to excoriate those responsible for this situation. Obviously individual callousness and inhumanity plays a part, but so also do overtraining (nurses with degrees, so the theory goes, are not overly keen to wipe up excrement), overwork and lack of money.

There is a connection between this story and another in the papers today. Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has appalled campaigners concerned about British obesity levels by urging people to eat less and by trying to persuade manufacturers to cut calorie levels in food. Why is this so bad? Because, as Jamie Oliver says, manufacturers won't do it, and everyone already knows we should eat more healthily and exercise more.

About 60% of British adults and 30% of children are obese or overweight. Obese people get ill more and are more likely to end up in hospital. More pressure on hospitals means more work for nurses and more money spent treating people who, frankly, don't have to be there. All of which means worse treatment for other patients; including the elderly.

The Tories, sadly, seem reluctant to do anything which might offend their friends in big business. Lansley has fallen into the error of thinking that a laudable Tory idea ("people should take responsibility for their own actions") can be taken in isolation; whereas in this instance people failing to take responsibility means a drain on NHS resources, with consequences which are only too obvious.

Alcohol abuse probably costs the state even more than obesity, which is why the Scots have proposed a minimum price on drink.

When you find yourself yearning to be governed by the SNP, something somewhere has gone badly wrong.

One long right wing rant

The other day a young acquaintance, messing around with friends, said, "Of course, Hitler didn't really go far enough".

My wife and I were appalled. This person is not the first 16 year old to say something stupid to shock an audience, and won't be the last; he is in truth impeccably liberal in all his views. But I told him that he could get into serious trouble at school if he were overheard coming out with that sort of thing; and as I was speaking I found myself realising that this was actually true. Is that a good thing?

Of course, as well as getting into trouble he ran the risk of offending other people; but I find I mind this less. There isn't any right not to be offended: in a free society people should be able to say that Hitler didn't go far enough without official sanction. The proper sanction is that right-thinking people shun and avoid someone with such poisonous views.

When this exchange was over, my wife told me that a colleague of hers had looked at this blog and said it was "one long right-wing rant"; I could, she said, suffer professionally by expressing opinions openly in a field which is on the whole left rather than right of centre. This may well be true. Whilst conservatives (and I can't really as a Frank Field fan be called a Conservative) regard Lefties as nice but ultimately deluded, the Left sees the Tories as the Nasty Party. It's a shame. Most people interested in politics want the best for society. There aren't many Pol Pots or Stalins. Or Hitlers for that matter.

Recognising that someday I may miss out on a gig because someone doesn't like my politics, it would be tempting to say Adieu to blogging and get on with some work. But I find I can't. And for a reason that is uncharacteristically pretentious.

I am an artist. And artists do not trim.

Ed Balls - cake eater

Hearing the dismal jobless figures on the news yesterday, I was struck by a fresh irony about Labour's calls for a growth policy.

Labour only discovered Keynes when it was too late to do the hard part, when it was too late to put money aside against a rainy day. Labour's policy was, essentially, borrow during the good times, and when the bad times come, borrow even more. In case you doubt me, Labour ran a deficit from about 2001 to 2010, and continues to advocate more borrowing now. Whatever else that is, it's not Keynesian. My admiration for Frank Field - my Favourite Living Politician: charisma-free but scrupulous, far-sighted, and with an intellectual fearlessness Orwell would have admired - went up a further notch yesterday when I heard him say that Labour got the economy wrong, and should apologise, unreservedly, for its misdoings in office.

What's this got to with Labour's growth policy? Well, the Government says, not unreasonably, that it can't pump prime the economy with a Keynesian stimulus because that could only be done by more borrowing; and it would be dangerous to increase borrowing in the febrile atmosphere where countries have been driven by this very course to the brink of default. Only this morning the Torygraph reports James Carrick, economist at Legal & General Investment Management, as saying stimulus spending of the type Balls and Miliband are calling for would help lift growth but hasten a downgrade of Britain's credit rating.

The irony is that if Labour had been reading Keynes in the 2000s, if they had improved Britain's fiscal position, the Government could have done what Ed Miliband is demanding now. In fact it would have been irresponsible for the Government not to do what Labour wants.

It is Labour's failure to act like proper Keynesians when in office which has made it so difficult for the Government to act like Keynesians now. If I were George Osbourne I'd be pretty p'd off at being lectured by Ed Balls, former Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Ed Balls is urging Osborne to eat the cake which he and his former mentor consumed long, long ago.

Steve Jobs - a Luddite speaks

I am writing this as the proud owner of a new phone. For too long, to the genuine embarrassment of my family, I have carted about the five-year old cast-off my daughter had for her 11th birthday. How could anything so relatively new look so old already? Attempting to get it to charge, or looking bemusedly at incoming texts apparently sent three days ago, always reminded me of the moment in Star Wars when Han Solo, unable to get his space ship to start, thumps vigorously on the dash board - cue the lights coming on and the engines firing up.

My wondrous new gadget, an iPhone knock-off with its GPS, email, camera and no doubt all manner of other devices calculated to make the jaw drop, would not have happened, or at least not so soon, without Steve Jobs, finally overcome by cancer yesterday after a long struggle.

Would we have been worse off without stuff like the iPhone? Without the computers which I'm using to write this and you to read it? There's an easy way to tell. Just think back to what it was like beforehand. I don't remember the pre-digital age being so bad. We got by with books, maps and landlines. We certainly weren't tempted to waste time blogging when there was ironing to be done and music to write.

Jobs' iPhone and iPad are things of beauty and ingenuity, but perhaps we didn't really need them. If Apple and Pixar aren't enough to satisfy you as to Jobs' worth, hunt out his Commencement Address to Stanford Students. I heard parts of it on the radio and it makes moving listening. There's a transcription here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/09/steve-jobs-stanford-commencement-address. This speech alone makes Jobs quite a man.