The President's Club - male / female relations in the #metoo age.

We live in strange times.  After Harvey Weinstein and #metoo comes the hoo-ha over waitresses groped at a charity dinner ("the President's Club"), and over the glamorous walk-on girls who titillate the crowd at televised darts matches (I have always wondered whether the darts girls were employed ironically, since the suggestion that anyone could find darts or the meaty blokes who participate sexy is, clearly, ludicrous; Formula 1 racing, just possibly but still no; darts, definitely not). 

If I sat down and thought about it I could have rustled up for this opening paragraph a dozen more examples of things that have recently been the subject of shrill condemnation.

To be clear, groping of the Weinstein / President's Club variety is unpleasant and probably criminal.  On the other hand initiating modest physical contact when you have some hope of getting lucky is just a dating risk. There are other physical gestures - a hand on the knee for example - which have graver implications when the person making advances is your boss.  Male/female relations are complex, and there will be many circumstances where it's hard to know where lies the line you mustn't cross.

What's new, and seems to have burst like lava upon the world, is the slightly hysterical edge and the desire to condemn; and the lack, particularly amongst younger women, of appreciation that wrong turns are an inevitable by-product of engagement with the opposite sex.  The comedian Aziz Ansari was named and shamed by a young woman who, in retrospect, wished she hadn't done all the things Ansari had asked her to do on their first date. He should, she said, have read the non-verbal cues a bit better. Poor Mr Ansari. I hope he got some satisfaction out of his evening.

By all means be quick to criticise, but take some responsibility yourself, and sometimes be forgiving too.

I have long thought that all societies get sex wrong.  The Victorians, so mightily prudish that they concealed the legs of their pianos, were enthusiastic users of prostitutes.  Islamic societies veil their women upon (and sometimes before) puberty.  The Romantics fetishised the beauty ideal and romantic love; women were virgins or whores. Our own time is just as confused.

A recent university study concluded that more and more pop songs are about sex, not love.  That sounds about right for the new times. A focus on sex forgets that intimacy is much more than Sid Vicious's two and a half minutes of squelching noises. In the age of Tinder, sex has become more transactional and, I suspect, dehumanised. In reality it always takes place between individuals, richly textured and complex.  

It strikes me that this transactional stuff is pretty much what a lot of men have always wanted, and it's striking how the idea of sexual freedom seems to have been designed to suit men. When I was young women generally wanted a relationship; sometimes I did too, although there times when I was appalled afterwards to find out that in fact I didn't. Now I gather that many women don't either. I wonder whether the notion of falling in love is now dead, or at least dying.

The notion of Finding the One and living happy ever after is of course a fraud, and whilst I wanted to believe it I never did - the complications and perils were too apparent too early on (Proust's lovely phrase "the intermittencies of the heart").  I wonder whether Tinder has made concrete what in the 70s and 80s we knew to be true in theory - there are always others out there.  Faced with the contingency of your relationship now, who would dare to commit?

Our society is just as messed up as its predecessors.  Young women might shag you on the first date, but woe betide you if you misread the signals and your hand strays a little below the small of her back when she doesn't fancy you.  You can't pay a woman to wear a tight dress and heels and walk to the oche in front of Phil "The Power" Taylor, but porn at the touch of a button is absolutely OK.  People spend thousands and thousands on "themed" weddings (complaining that they can't afford to buy a flat), but break up at the first sign of trouble .

Men will always objectify women, and be willing to delude themselves and others in order to have them.  No amount of burkafication prevents the average young Iranian frotting himself silly at the thought of Islamic totty.  If you think Toby Young is unfit to do a job because of his Twitter comments about women, you must explain why someone who has merely said or thought such things (and we all have) is so much better. Otherwise just don't employ any men.

I remember with affection the scene in Friends (itself now the subject of much Millenial agonising) where Monica asks Chandler, "D'you know nothing about women?"  "Er, no", he replies. It's the answer I'd have given myself, but I contend that most women, particularly young women, don't know much about men either. 

Men desperately want a shag. They will use power to get it, and if society allows they'll bend the rules to do so; some of them will break the law and hurt others.  Yet despite their sexual unscrupulousness, Shakespeare, Mozart, Ibsen, Lorca, Dickens and Hemingway were all men. The true mystery is how such contradictions could nestle within the individual; women might do well to consider that.

We evidently live in times when one step out of line is enough to ruin your career, and I'm glad that I'm not a prominent figure and that my pursuit of sex has been (if not always kindly then at least) pretty ineffectual.  But the political correctness police, intent as they are on rooting out lust and exploitation, will never stop men ogling attractive women and thinking beastly thoughts about them, no matter how hard they try. Attempting to do so makes men into silent hypocrites and blinds women to the miraculous conundrum which is the opposite sex.

A frank exchange of views - Brexit reflections #18

Relationships have sundered over Brexit.  Last week I got together with two old friends, both Remainers, and eventually the conversation meandered round to the inevitable. 

What did I learn about the Remain case?  

One of us was very concerned that the poorest Brits, the people most likely to have voted Leave, would be the people most hurt by it.  He did however concede that it was impossible to tell what the economic outcome would be.  It might be good for those at the bottom end.

One of us had some good examples how reversion to WTO tariffs might hurt British businesses such as farmers.  40% of British lamb is exported, he said.  What would happen when tariffs had the effect of pushing prices up? The fact that lamb might then become cheaper for British consumers would not be much consolation for those engaged in producing it. I tried to suggest that British cars might be more attractive as tariffs made imports more expensive, but I admitted that some sectors would be affected.

There seemed to be acceptance that constriction of the supply of foreign workers might increase wages at the bottom end. How, one of us wanted to know, would that help the NHS? The only way to give NHS staff a pay rise would be to raise taxes.

(I wished I had asked at this stage whether my friend was suggesting low wages for all was preferable to low wages for some).

One of us was indignant at the suggestion that trying to stop Brexit was undemocratic or unpatriotic. I agreed to some extent, but said I thought the tone of the mainstream press actually was unpatriotic in its assumption that everything the UK government did was incompetent or thoughtless whereas (in a strange suspension of the rules of human behaviour) everything done by Barnier, Merkel, Juncker et al was sage and judicious. I thought the UK press had, on the whole, totally failed to grasp (or report) the extent of the EU climb-down over the Irish border issue.

As for undemocratic, I said I thought it very unfair at least that a process for deciding whether to Leave to be implemented, only for the losing side to argue for the process to be reopened because it didn't like the result. I thought the consequence of trying to subvert the process would be devastating for democracy.

One of us said that people only voted Leave because they didn't like foreigners. 

For me this was the lowest point of the evening. It is palpably untrue and in any event insulting to Leavers present. 

One of us was sure the other had only meant it as a joke. The other neither confirmed this nor apologised.

One of us has substantial funds invested in the stock market and stands to lose significantly if higher wages for the low-paid lead to lower dividends for shareholders and thus lower share values. Fortunately it did not occur to me to point this out at the time.

One of us said he was perfectly happy for a top tier of control to be exercised by the EU, in much the same way that a parish council might be subject to control by a county council and by Parliament. I told him he was the most pro-EU person I'd ever met. 

I tried to say that voters in one part of the UK didn't mind people in another part having a say in what laws they lived by because they were after all part of the same nation and people. But a lot of us (me, for example) did mind being governed to some extent by people in different countries (and moreover had no desire themselves to tell people in different countries what to do). The existence of a supranational layer essentially operated to negate the distinctiveness and cohesiveness of nation states and cultures. This was after all the stated aim of the EU. 

I might have added that the quality of decision making of the EU was very often poor - Schengen, the Euro, Mrs Merkel's refugee offer, the failure to accommodate David Cameron in 2016 - and when not poor was sometimes inflexible and draconian - see the sacrifice of Greece to preserve the Euro. Who would reasonably want such people exercising a degree of control over British life?

One of us voted as recently as 2014 for Scottish independence.  He saw no conflict between this position and a fervently expressed opposition to the UK regaining some of its own.

Some injudicious words (carried on a modest tide of beer) were spoken on both sides, but it was an unavoidable and perhaps even necessary conversation.  You can't go around pretending differences don't exist, and anyway there is much to be learned from hearing other points of view and having your own tested.

Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed - Brexit reflections #17.

June 2016 and the Referendum now seem a very long time ago.  We were neophytes then, and in the slow and painful subsequent months both Remainers and Leavers have discovered more about themselves, their friends and cross-border trading arrangements.

I have re-read some of my previous sixteen Brexit reflections, and I'm pleased to record that I don't ever seem to have been a gung-ho Brexiteer.  Before the election I wrote "To be clear, there would be drawbacks and risks to leaving.  This isn't a choice between something self-evidently good and something self-evidently bad.  It's a choice between two almost equally unsatisfactory and dangerous things".  It's also heartening to record that even then I was quite clear that the doom-laden economic forecasts were rubbish, and that the pound was likely to fall, with knock-on effects for Britain's manufacturing and for inflation levels.

What is notably absent from my posts is any sense of the complexities of the situation regarding the Irish border.  I'm not suggesting these weren't aired at all in the media; they probably were (and particularly in the Republic of Ireland).  But they didn't figure largely in the UK campaign, or in the case the Cameron government put for Remaining.

Boy, has that all changed.

First, a quick point about the form of words (I'm not going to call it an agreement, for reasons which will become clear) reached last week which has enabled Brexit talks to move on to trade.  The Irish position - that there could be no trade talks without a guarantee of a soft border - was always unsustainable, both intellectually and politically. Intellectually because we won't know what kind of border there will have to be until we know what the trade deal will look like.  Politically because Mrs May depends on the DUP to remain in office, and the DUP will never agree to a border down the Irish Sea. 

The Republic got itself in this position, I suspect, largely because of the enthusiasm and inexperience of its Premier Mr Varadkar.  The EU has rescued him from his own naivety.

This morning the British press is full of warnings that the deal could unravel because of remarks allegedly made by David Davis (and other Tory politicians) to the effect that the UK hasn't agreed to anything binding.  But Davis, although perhaps tactless, is correct.  For one thing, the text of the agreement makes it clear that the arrangement is subject to contrary agreement between the parties.  But for another, and crucially, the document says at the very outset that it should be read "Under the caveat that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed . . . "  Including, presumably, the document itself.

None of that means that the border issue is one which will just go away.  It is a circle which will have to be squared.  But it does mean that Mrs May has got her way on the sequencing, and that the EU26 have grasped the fatuity of the Irish position.

Where does all that leave us?  The great risk is that the Remainers in the Government will push us towards a deal which leaves the UK paying EU contributions whilst having no say in EU regulations and being restricted to signing trade deals with only those third party countries whose regulations themselves comply with those of the EU.  Undoubtedly this is what the EU would like. 

My second fear is that, as the March 19 deadline approaches, the EU will lure us into complacency.  A deal will seem to be quite near.  Preparations for No Deal - hard borders, new customs provision - would be minimal.  But then, when it was too late for these preparations to be made, a deal would suddenly seem quite far away, unless agreed on terms demanded by the EU.

This second fear plays into the first in the sense that the HMG Remainers (including of course the civil service) are most likely to believe that a watered down version of present arrangements is the best we can manage, and thus the least likely to be arguing that, since No Deal has its attractions, it is essential that we prepare for it, if only to be able to point out to the EU that it is a viable alternative. 

If you doubt the Stockholm syndrome exhibited by HMG Remainers, I would point to the statement by Philip Hammond over the weekend that even if the UK ended up with No Deal we could still end up paying a divorce bill to the EU.  No one on either side of the argument has ever suggested that there is any legal basis for paying a divorce bill. The treaties contain no such provision. Mrs May's £40bn offer is a conditional sweetener for trade talks ("nothing is agreed until everything is agreed"). It can be just as easily withdrawn in the event of No Deal. Philip Hammond is so determined to do a deal, however compromised, that he is willing to surrender the UK's principal bargaining chip - the money. His conduct is extraordinary.

It's becoming clear that, whatever else, the EU is a tremendously powerful and slippery creature (like one of Blue Planet's octopuses), its tentacles reaching into every aspect of British life. Those who say our membership has entailed surrendering little sovereignty might like to reflect on our difficulties in extricating ourselves. They might also like to consider statements made by Messrs Juncker and Schulz in recent weeks concerning the EU's federalist ambitions.

All of these things make me more convinced that voting Leave was the right thing to do. The conduct of the pro-Remain establishment has been smug, condescending and manipulative, although this is a subject for another day. I have absolutely no doubt that Britain can do very well outside the EU, and my worry is that we are presently governed by people who did not believe this before the Referendum and who don't believe it now. There is surely going to come a crunch point for the Tories, where they have to decide what kind of Brexit they want. That will be Mrs May's point of greatest internal danger.

As for the Irish, it's ironic that, having struggled for centuries to throw off the British yoke, they seem petrified of a greater distance between Ireland and Britain.  And that having founded their national story on the fight for autonomy they seem so determined to prevent their countrymen in the North from having it themselves.

New music - no way to run a railway?

The other night I went to a concert.  A friend of mine was having a piece played.  A set of pieces actually, for voice and a small ensemble.  It took place in a small and chi-chi performance room in a reclaimed industrial building with the usual bare brick, entrance through a small temple to cappucino.  

I liked my friend's piece.  S/he is a talented composer.  There was a degree of hip-hoppery, with a bit of minimalism and some Second Viennese School spread over all.  The performers were all young, or aspiring to look young; black clad, with the disappointed but defiant mien that contemporary music specialists share with minor functionaries in a revolutionary state who have just learned that they have been denounced as fifth columnists by former colleagues.

The audience for this event numbered between 25 and 30. As far as I could tell from the social interaction, almost all were either friends, family or students of the composer (and/or the players).

Turning the programme over I saw that the event was made possible with the support of a variety of public funded organisations, including the Arts Council and other usual suspects.

An art that is dying?  A monument to elitism and cronyism?  Or merely no way to run a railway?

Philip Collins, Jeremy Corbyn and the social democratic dream.

"The electorate selects a Labour government to push the nation down the road of progress", writes Philip Collins in the Times today.

Ah, the P word.  A section of political thought describes itself with a self-approbatory adjective, and rests self-satisfied on its intellectual laurels.  So far, so tendentious.

But what's this?  Collins continues, "That effort inevitably leads to an excess of public spending . . . (the electorate) call on the Conservative Party to tidy up".

An admission.  Crikey.  A fascinating insight into the mental world of a Social Democrat, occasionally called to serve as speechwriter at Tony Blair's table.

 Mr Collins is too complacent.  Whilst UK's debt to GDP ratio fell consistently from the highs of WWII, it began to rise again with Gordon Brown's spending spree, doubling from about 30% in 2002 to 60% by the time the coalition government came into office in 2010.  Since then HMG has struggled to deal with the aftermath of the 2008 crash, bearing down on public spending to restore some order to the public finances.

Labour meanwhile has tried to have it both ways, criticising the Tories for cuts as well as for borrowing too much money. The worm in Mr Collins' bud is that, although now marginally falling, debt to GDP is now wobbling between 80 and 90% of GDP.  It has tripled in 15 years.  It would be astonishing if the ratio had dipped significantly by the time this Parliament limps to an end. 

Thus it is overwhelmingly likely that the next Labour government will take office with a background of vastly higher existing debt levels than at any time since the 1960s.   I wonder where Mr Collins thinks a Corbyn/McDonnell government would leave Britain's fiscal position?

The reality is that the cosy dualism Collins describes is broken.  The Tories have struggled to restore the public finances in an age of low inflation.  Public services are undoubtedly suffering (although when we are still borrowing £1bn every week just to stay afloat that's hardly austerity - profligacy lite anyone?).  An incoming Labour government will ratchet up spending still further. A crunch is coming.  The public's expectation of decent public services is meeting economic reality.  The Social Democratic dream is over.  Britain is going to look very different when the progressives wake up.

Finishing War and Peace

I have just finished War and Peace. Like most readers, I endured rather than enjoyed Tolstoy's ruminations on the nature of history and philosophy which interrupt and then bookend the trials and tribulations of Natasha, Pierre, their friends and families.  But I can see their importance, partly because the contingency of the characters' complex affairs makes in a human way the point about history Tolstoy sets out in his theoretical disquisitions.

War and Peace doesn't really finish - it sinks back into the earth, and so imperceptibly that at the end I had to leaf back through the pages to find the last mention of the people in it. That's where the real glory of the book lies.  Tolstoy shows the weaknesses of his characters without ever really seeming to condemn.  His is the magnanimity we might hope for from God.

He also shows something true about life which the translator Anthony Briggs puts so well in the introduction.  "Virtually everyone - even people in privileged or advantageous circumstances - finds the living of life a worrying and difficult business most of the time".

So true; and funny that when I read those words in the afterglow of finishing the book, I thought immediately of Larry McMurtry's peerless Lonesome Dove.  For McMurtry has the same compassion, and the same lofty sense of observing poor humans doing their best to be happy despite their manifold self-inflicted mistakes.  As much wisdom as folly is given to Woodrow F Call and Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove, and you don't have to search far into one of the many fan sites devoted to McMurtry's book (and, more particularly, the TV spin-off which followed) to come across the following.

(Lorie is the young prostitute yearning for the bright lights of San Francisco.  Her interlocutor is McCrae, the lazy, sardonic old Texas Ranger).

"Lorie darlin'", says McCrae, "life in San Francisco, you see, is still just life.  If you want any one thing too badly, it's likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself".

Amen to that.  But of course the genius of Tolstoy and McMurtry is that their characters are poignantly unable to take their own advice.  

I might just have to start on Lonesome Dove again.

Harvey Weinstein - Hollywood is another country

To be clear, if half the allegations against Harvey Weinstein are true, he should have been behind bars long ago.

The crimes of which Mr Weinstein is accused are commonplace in circumstances where priapic men have something approaching absolute power.  So far, so awful.  And so banal.

The fallout really is interesting however.  Actress after actress has come forward to accuse Mr Weinstein if not of rape, then of sexual assault; if not harassment, then threats to their career.  Where have they been until now?  Weinstein did not begin his behaviour last week.

Pressed on this point, a generous number of women have stressed that they feared their career prospects might have been in jeopardy if they reported Weinstein.  But although no doubt true (and unattractively tawdry) as far as it goes, it is not quite the whole story.  For they all must have known that their silence would expose other young women to auditions the Harvey Weinstein way.  

Their calculation went like this.  A - Expose Harvey = career jeopardy, but also the chance to stop Harvey doing it to anyone else.  B - Don't expose Harvey = career advancement, but also other actresses suffering the same fate.  

As we know, none of the people bleating about Weinstein now took option A when they had the chance.  They chose their own career prospects over the chance to protect others.  Few of us can truthfully claim we would have done differently, but it isn't very edifying.  The victims are now spotless.  On the other hand Weinstein has been condemned without trial.

Weinstein has claimed that mores used to be different, and that's true.  But what's really different is that Hollywood is a place where women whose USP is their looks are so desperate for money and fame that they're willing to ignore their moral compass to make it there.  And for every actress who walked out on Weinstein or fought him off there will be dozens more who thought, "Oh well, it's worth half an hour's misery for the sake of getting the part".

The Weinstein affair tells us a lot about Mr Weinstein, and a lot about his accusers.