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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.