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.
Sunday 27 January 2013
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.
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