tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36030182754347444082024-03-13T18:57:14.079-07:00A GERMAN in WALESSome info about myself:
I was born and educated in Berlin (Germany) and moved to Wales in 1996. Since 2000 I've lived in Grangetown, Cardiff and currently work in Liverpool. At the moment I am the co-chair of GORWEL, the Welsh Foundation for Innovation in Public Affairs (www.gorwel.co )
Enjoy the blog! All comments very welcome!jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.comBlogger338125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-41594311689105990612021-04-05T09:24:00.004-07:002021-04-05T09:24:34.057-07:00The gender debate... and why it does not make much sense to me<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Listening to Woman’s hour on BBC Radio 4 this morning, I came across an interesting debate about genderised advertising. TV adverts of a famous chocolate brand targeting a female audience attracted the particular ire of the discussants. Whilst I have no particular view on chocolate advertising, feminine or otherwise, it got me thinking about what our world would look like if the dream of some campaigners came true who advocate gender neutral products, and a gender ‘blind’ life in general. Wouldn’t our world be a better place if we did not ‘see’ gender differences at all?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvfUjcZ8bfb8BiEa5mEOZHXyGyIcpeViONN6hkiPpOblfeNytnUAy_R0bAQgvD7PDdDEUH8LrroXgiHxKy3AGrJ7EY8ANobbnaeE2FZPwtAe0VT_OO49gZeBRgQN5oN7Pk_vKtTEQfPHUO/s605/gender-neutrality.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="605" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvfUjcZ8bfb8BiEa5mEOZHXyGyIcpeViONN6hkiPpOblfeNytnUAy_R0bAQgvD7PDdDEUH8LrroXgiHxKy3AGrJ7EY8ANobbnaeE2FZPwtAe0VT_OO49gZeBRgQN5oN7Pk_vKtTEQfPHUO/w395-h206/gender-neutrality.jpg" width="395" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">He, she ....?<br /> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Copyright: Steve Tobak)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The issue about gender is clearly related, yet distinct, from biological sex. There are few who deny that, biologically, men and women are different. The debate turns around what happens next. Genders are social constructs and, whilst they feel ‘natural’, there is clearly something like internalisation going on: as we are growing up we develop role behaviours, some of which are related to what others expect from us as we are (rightly or wrongly) perceived to belong to either the female or male sex. So, what would happen to us if we achieved something approximating to a gender neutral upbringing and a gender neutral society? <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">It is easy to agree that there are some aspects of our gendered societies we can do without. We all struggle from time to time with the gender stereotypes we are supposed to conform to. But before you say that the world would be a better place without those, try to envision this alternative gender neutral life. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Here is why I have some doubts about the benefits of a place entirely bereft of gender differences. For a start, when we talk about the impact of gender stereotypes we tend to focus on the invidious aspects of them. We highlight our difficulties to conform to exaggerated notions of masculinity or femininity. Wishing these away sounds like opening up a perfect world. What gets less attention is that stereotypes and hackneyed ideas of masculinity or femininity have an important role to play in forming our self-perception as individuals. They are critical in allowing us to identify who we want to be and who we would rather not be. They have a discriminating function that creates choices. It is those choices that evokes agency, the very agency that we then use to take a stand against the very gender notions we refuse to accept. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">So, in essence, gender identities are formed in the crucible of personal struggles that require these very concepts we revolt against. This may not be the best argument to retain a gendered society, but it highlights the contradiction at the heart of the those who advocate a gender neutral world. It is the fact that we belong to something or someone that allows us to rebel and find another place in the world we live in. Without this, our lives may adopt a random quality that may create more problems than today. Thinking about this, I think I can reconcile myself to a bit of gender stereotyping, even though you won’t get me anywhere near a football stadium. <o:p></o:p></p>jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-68800354140339849762020-11-14T04:27:00.001-08:002020-11-14T04:27:08.236-08:00Why we should not be too happy about Dominic Cummings' departure from government<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">As Dominic Cummings carried his cardboard box out of Number 10 Downing Street, the gloating started. It came not just from the usual suspects, those who bemoaned the exit of the UK from the EU and his role in it. They were joined by some on the opposite side of the Brexit battle. Cue Bernhard Jenkins, Conservative MP, an arch Brexiteer, who celebrated Cumming’s exit from Downing Street during a BBC interview saying that (paraphrasing) things will hopefully get back to normal now. Interestingly he did not stop there and noted that, during Cumming’s reign, the Cabinet contained surprisingly few Brexiteers and he hoped that this would now be reversed.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjti1p8kFivY8N0gmXfg8dKfOQ_uC-36NjfAgxzM1VeFRTvpKefcXurAiM_m3NyeYBYSYXqmJ_ovD2qZzHIina-a-F7KRW7Evc4vB8qJEEuI_28177g7H1Uw6HfVavxaHeBqyHIjyDqwVkl/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjti1p8kFivY8N0gmXfg8dKfOQ_uC-36NjfAgxzM1VeFRTvpKefcXurAiM_m3NyeYBYSYXqmJ_ovD2qZzHIina-a-F7KRW7Evc4vB8qJEEuI_28177g7H1Uw6HfVavxaHeBqyHIjyDqwVkl/w400-h225/_115485414_yuimokpawire.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dominic Cummings on his way out <br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">YUI MOK/PA WIRE</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This makes me think… did we get Cummings wrong? By we, I mean the ones on the ever so cosmopolitan, liberal, Europe loving side. Let’s take a step back and look at this from a wider angle. Cummings is often credited for his firm anti-European commitment. But what we may have overlooked with the Brexit battle indignation still red hot in our eyes, is that Cummings’ preference for Brexit was a means, not an end. Cummings had a keen eye for the discontent of substantial parts of the public with the <i>establishment</i>. We may question the validity of this term, but the millions of voters who turned out on the day of the referendum knew exactly what he was talking about. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">For anyone who lives in the North of England, that establishment, real or not, cuts across party lines. In fact, it combines positions as contrary as Labour in North West city councils and traditionally Conservative ones in Yorkshire and the Humber. Conservatives, rightly or wrongly, were loathed for their close contact with money and business, being seen as traditionally favouring those who already made it. Liberals, on the other hand, were perceived as hypocritical as those articulating the benefits of globalisation were often employed in white collar jobs, drawing on European money or benefiting from middle class council jobs with little impact on real lives. Just ask yourself: How many ‘development officers’ were funded by European Convergence funding (my own hand goes up!) and how little impact did they have on suffering communities beyond creating another cushy office job? <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Cummings’ strategy was to bundle those discontented voices and give them a purpose. We may disagree with the thrust of that purpose but the fact of the matter is that he achieved something many on all sides of the political spectrum had long called for: a revolution in democratic participation. People who never voted before used to ballot box to send a signal to politicians across the political spectrum to say they had enough. We may scoff at the simplicity of the political message. But the fact is that Cummings managed what others had long failed at. He revived moribund political life in the UK and drew people into the political debate as never before. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I can hear the shrieks of horror. But at what cost! you may say. So? The fact is that we will all do better if our public debate has more voices in it, not fewer. Cummings has demonstrated to all of us the rewards of listening to the disadvantaged, the ones who stopped shouting for help long time ago. We may not like what we hear, but forcing us to listen to the ones in need is at the heart of a healthy political discourse. It is however, also challenging our misconceived democratic credentials that are often based on the exclusion of those we do not agree with. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">And so we return why we should not gloat about Cummings’ departure. His desire to make us listen to those we disagree with should be reason enough to us in the North West of England to regret his leaving. It may signal a retreat to the status quo ante. And that can only be bad for people living in a corner of England that receives a fraction of the investment that London gets. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">That’s why I worry when I hear Bernhard Jenkins and others, on the liberal side of politics, rejoicing that things will go back to normal now. Where I live, in Walton (Liverpool), this ‘normal’ has not served the people well. It is officially the most deprived constituency of England and Cummings was the first one to be interested enough to listen up. That does not make him a crusader for the dispossessed. But it makes him a champion of democracy. The irony! </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-87340504393500740622018-12-29T05:31:00.000-08:002018-12-29T05:38:46.255-08:00Social science nostalgia - David Riesman's The Lonely CrowdFrom time to time it pays to go back to your (scientific) roots and re-read a classic. The first book I read when studying sociology was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_Crowd" target="_blank">David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd</a> and, recently, I have been lucky to obtain a 1955 abridged edition on a second hand online bookstore. To make things perfect, the book is in pristine condition and comes with the previous owner's name on the front matter with the date and location of its original purchase: New York 1955. Such are the travels of books.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where only the brave may go. David Riesman in 1953. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Copyright: Getty images</td></tr>
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Riesman put forward a fascinating social character study of American society over time. His account falls somewhere in between mentalite and longue duree sociology of social conduct and, in a way, his narrative can only be called prescient. His main thesis is that there are different types of characters generated by the different societies people live in. He starts with the question: why do societies get the type of social behaviour that they need to survive?<br />
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It is a curious starting point, and consequently, he needs to say something about the type of society he wants his social characters to fit into. He distinguishes three ideal types (the work has echoes of Weber's work) of societies, traditional, inner-directional and outer-directional. Accordingly, there are three modes of social behaviour: traditional, inner- and outer-directed characters.<br />
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In traditional societies, people live by norms and standards that are set and rarely questioned. They extend to all life domains and pervade all aspects of social behaviour. Traditional standards do not need to be logical, and obedience to them is policed and enforced through power relations. Any theory of social behaviour somehow has to deal with instances of divergence from norms or non-conformity and Riesman thinks that deviance is 'accommodated' through institutionalised roles where some sort of (abberant) individuality can be lived yet within strictly defined limits, such as the medicine man in tribal societies.<br />
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Inner-directed societies are different to traditional societies in that they accomplish conformity, and thus stability of social relations, through the internalisation of norms and values. Riesman thinks that internalised sets of goals, learned throughout childhood and reinforced throughout adulthood by religous, social and political institutions, are mainly responsible for social peace in those societies.<br />
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The third type of society is the most intriguing as Riesman observes a shift from inner-direction to outward direction of norms and standards of behaviour. People, so he argues, become increasingly sensitised to the preferences and inclinations of others and take those to be the guiding principles of their own conduct. As the inner-directed type of character was epitomised by the Renaissance and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Riesman believes modern (American) man to exemplify perfectly the outer-directed person. Today, he believes, we want to be and aim to behave in the way we see it done by others. As he puts it<br />
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'What is common to all the other-directed people is that their contemporaries are the source of direction for the individual... The goals toward which the other-directed person strives shift with that guidance [from others]: it is only the process of striving itself and the process of paying close attention to the signals from others that remain unaltered throughout life.' (p37).<br />
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Note that this was written in 1950, well before the invention of Instagram. However, apart from the striking resonances with our lives lived through (and by) social media, Riesman does something else very remarkable. His theory is what <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Merton" target="_blank">Robert K. Merton </a>would have called an 'all-embracing, unified theory' and he was highly critical of it. Riesman is a system builder as Marx and Hegel were before him in the philosophical realm and Merton has little time for them. He notes that<br />
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'a total system of sociological theory, in which observations about every aspect of social behaviour, organistion, and change promptly find their preordained place, has the same exhilirating challenge and the same small promise as those ... philosophical systems which have fallen into deserved disuse.' (Robert K. Merton, On Theoretical Sociology, New York: Free Press, 1967. p.45)<br />
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Merton's key criticism is that any all-encompassing theory of social behaviour requires a functionalist explanatory framework which allows all phenomena of social life to fit into the larger theory, something that is achieved only through disregard of much that goes on in life, or through abstraction from much of life's detail. In both cases, observations are made to fit the larger theory by neglecting much else. Consequently, large scale theories are either so general that they say little at all (ultimately failing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability" target="_blank">Popper's test of fasifiability </a>or verifiability), or can only be said to be valid by ignoring much of reality.<br />
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Yet, Riesman's book is still instructive. It is an unabashed attempt to formulate a working interpretation of social behaviour and societal structures. Remember his original question: how do societies generate the behaviour they need to continue to exist? Riesman's quest strikes us as inadmissively functionalist today. Martin Hollis called this type of functionalist or system thinking 'mystical' where societies as purposive systems 'exert pressure' on its parts, the individuals (Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Sciences, Cambridge: CUP, 1994, p.106).<br />
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Yet, Riesman's book is a reminder of what sociological theory once thought possible and to which lengths it went to shape long duree narratives of social behaviour and its relationship with social structures. It was a bold attempt at designing a plausible structure-agency model for social conduct, its audacity <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19540927,00.html" target="_blank">acknowledged in 1954 by Time magazine when Riesman graced its cover</a>.<br />
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And it is still a great read. <br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-79194218788367268032018-12-01T08:28:00.002-08:002020-11-07T03:37:37.343-08:00A superstar is born About two years ago I attended a concert at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall. The main attraction was a shy young man playing the cello, who had just won the BBC Young Musician of the Year award, <a href="https://shekukannehmason.com/" target="_blank">Sheku Kanneh-Mason</a>. He delivered a polished performance, technically secure, at times allowing the audience a glimpse of things to come. He was helped at the conductor's pult by the firm leadership of Vasily Petrenko who is not one for musical extravangance but clear and sound delivery.<br />
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What a difference a year, or two, makes. The Royal Wedding, assorted media performances later and, yesterday, the same person filled the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool to the rafters with people who were dying to hear him (and take a picture on their iphone) at a solo performance, accompanied on the piano by his sister Isata Kanneh-Mason.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRBZJxQSxGCnnBx57uG6qCQIn0dC7lOaUxBFks43d6CIQLRDrCfFwFYqGjEdbJZMcv9PcPJ9HiJdbiZFpWI9U6fo2zZJW4pq3eFes0sLJQ1GMUhULpMgVwu00fHQBzwaTT_UzhmvbyTUjn/s1600/Sheku%252BKanneh%252BMason%252BT%252BJ%252BMartell%252BFoundation%252BjQ9YSN83nKgl.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRBZJxQSxGCnnBx57uG6qCQIn0dC7lOaUxBFks43d6CIQLRDrCfFwFYqGjEdbJZMcv9PcPJ9HiJdbiZFpWI9U6fo2zZJW4pq3eFes0sLJQ1GMUhULpMgVwu00fHQBzwaTT_UzhmvbyTUjn/s400/Sheku%252BKanneh%252BMason%252BT%252BJ%252BMartell%252BFoundation%252BjQ9YSN83nKgl.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sheku Kanneh-Mason at The T.J. Martell Foundation in October 2018</td></tr>
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As I wrote in 2016, there was never any doubt that Kanneh-Mason had the potential for cello stardom. His almost flawless technique prepared him for a steep musical career. The question was how he would navigate the stumbling blocs on the way, not least those moments of fame which were bound to come him as a rare example of a gifted black musician in a country that was (and still is) crying out for more diversity amongst its performers and audiences. As everyone knows who has been in a concert hall in the UK, auditoria here are filled with people from the same demographic: white, middle class and well into pension age, presumably a legacy of the brutal cull of secondary school music teaching in the 1980s. So it is no surprise that a country hungry for a fresh face embraced Kanneh-Mason (and his family) with open arms.<br />
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Yet with fame, especially of the Royal Wedding type, come problems and it was an open question whether Kanneh-Mason would be able to walk the fine line between cashing in on the popular classical music promise and the hard slog of the concert hall performances and studios.<br />
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As more recordings of him were released, the worries increased. Most of the pieces were pleasant yet musically inconsequential nods to popular taste. The real test would be whether he would develop his repertoire and further take on the modern classics, as he did with so enormous success with Shostakovich's cello concerto. The British say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating and last night, the pudding was being served and it was delicious indeed. <br />
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The evening started with an dynamic delivery of Boccherini's Cello Sonata No 6. Brother and sister displayed a special rapport which helped with the rapid tempi changes and Haydnesque flourishes.<br />
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The next piece was Puolenc's Cello Sonata. I must have heard it now perhaps a hundred times, most notably played by Daniel Mueller Schott and Robert Kulek. Whilst studio recordings hugely privilege the cello, as studio technicians can dim the piano sound and heighten the prominence of the cello, both cello and piano were perfectly synchronised last night and Isata Sheku-Mason took the foot of the pedal in the right moments to allow her brother to shine.<br />
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Poulenc's second movement is the Cavatine, a beautiful instrumental
aria. This was where technical prowess was to be transformed into
personality and, whilst I would have loved a less hurried, more longing
interpretation from Kanneh-Mason, he clearly put his own stamp on the
piece which means he has now joined the musical conversation about the
piece's interpretation in his own right, and that at age 19. <br />
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The fourth movement of Poulenc's Sonata was probably the trickiest for both to navigate and both may agree that there were moments that needed extra work still. But even in those moments of strain, if anything, Sheku Kanneh-Mason appears only to be the victim of his own success. His technique is so polished, his dexterity so extraordinary that he sometimes rushes some of the passages instead of slowing them down. Sometimes less is more, and since the first bars of the fourth movement are fiendishly difficult for the piano too, a slower pace may have worked wonders. <br />
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Debussy's Cello Sonata and Brahms' Cello Sonata No 2 followed after the interval. Both brother and sister offered a muscular interpretation of Brahms, and Sheku an energic and forceful pizzicato in Debussy's Sonata's second movement. There were perhaps moments of technical brilliance that lacked the emotional urgency in Debussy but to say that is to take nothing away from a superlative performance of a promising cellist superstar in the making.<br />
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Brahms' Sonata was perhaps the most difficult piece for the hall. Liverpool's Philharmonic has the acoustic characteristics of a barn hall and solo instruments are helped greatly by sparsely instrumented passages. In turn, where composers pull out all the stops, the sound easily gets mixed in with its own echo from the bare walls. So, whilst Poulenc and Debussy were perfect for the hall, Brahms' Sonata got slightly drowned in its own reverberations. Brahms' was clearly a piece ideal for the more intimate, originally scheduled location of the concert. (It didn't help that there is always somebody who finds it difficult to switch off their mobile phone.) <br />
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I tend to close my eyes during performances since the various antics of
performers (conductors and soloists alike) interest me little. Last
night however I couldn't do this. Kanneh-Mason's technical skills were
never in doubt but what he now offers audiences is starting to become a
musical personality, a way of playing that is his very own. His famous
pout notwithstanding (he has publically commented on it) his way of
playing now clearly shows that he is one with his cello. More so, he
dabbles in displays of full control over the instrument yet also
developed a way to indicate critical distance to it. This creative
tension between the player and instrument, a simultaneous unity and separation, is
riveting to observe. <br />
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In Sheku Kanneh-Mason we are blessed with that rare thing, the career of a musical superstar unfolding in front of our eyes. <br />
<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-74336898917807287932018-11-01T08:40:00.003-07:002018-11-01T08:48:35.625-07:00Why the Democrats may struggle to win the mid termsAs Democrats do not tire to remind us, Hilary Clinton garnered more votes than Donald Trump in the presidential election of 2016. Yet, many of those votes were cast in the wrong place. That's the summary analysis of Clinton's defeat widely shared amongst political observers and pollsters.<br />
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The Democratic Party may be heading for a repeat of 2016 in the mid-terms next week. You may ask why. Here is why.<br />
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Perceptions matter and Clinton's campaign was seen to be dominated by niche issues, such as rights for transgender people, LGBT and minorities. This may have been a misperception but Clinton did little to counter it by formulating policies for ordinary Americans. The 'glass ceiling' gimmick at the Democratic National Convention was symptomatic for a campaign that was skewed towards issues which meant little to ordinary Americans.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibFJF9DVGMX4lV1Kiip8KcXGcH1ZhNa37ZY1_rsBwnujQpxpaqznIBC7IvkcCLN6SnXCEyuuWdVRED4DB5J1vBTLFy_S7LIuQOMp7fQQPHE8mCSfDyCoMEP5DHFTMMOeMLcu_qg8Qb0ndg/s1600/WPIMAGE_cmgajcjaybookman_4666.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="750" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibFJF9DVGMX4lV1Kiip8KcXGcH1ZhNa37ZY1_rsBwnujQpxpaqznIBC7IvkcCLN6SnXCEyuuWdVRED4DB5J1vBTLFy_S7LIuQOMp7fQQPHE8mCSfDyCoMEP5DHFTMMOeMLcu_qg8Qb0ndg/s400/WPIMAGE_cmgajcjaybookman_4666.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shards for splinter groups. Hilary Clinton at the Democratic Party Convention 2016</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Listening to her <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bqmmj8" target="_blank">former running mate Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia yesterday </a>the Party seems to be repeating its old mistakes. He praised how reinvigorated the campaign for the mid terms has been and got excited listing pretty much every minority in the book, throwing in a mention of women for good measure.<br />
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LGBT and trans campaigners certainly know how to make noise. They are civil rights campaigners on a mission. And they know how to dominate the airwaves. But beware thinking that their vocal media presence translates into votes at the ballot box. In fact, the most intriguing fact in recent months has been the steady high support of women for Trump and the Republican Party, even in the face of MeToo.<br />
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The reason is simple. The economy is creating the best employment figures for decades and Trump appears to be doing what he promised to do (you may of course disagree that these are worthy things to be done in the first place). The economic message of the Republican Party is clear. The economic policy of the Democratic Party is ... well, unclear, to say the least. It seems that most of the prominent Democratic candidates are more concerned about transgender rights <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/06/ocasio-cortez-won-by-fusing-identity-politics-with-populism.html" target="_blank">focusing on identity politics</a> than how to keep the economy moving.<br />
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It's a curiously topsy turvy picture for anyone who remembers the 1980s (like I do). It seems that the Democrats are waging the cultural wars that Republicans ran under Reagan and (to a lesser extent) under Bush Senior. The difference is however that Reagan's campaigns were targeted at ordinary Americans, coupled with a sound message about economic prosperity, whereas Democrats still appear to have little to say on the economy and focus their cultural electoral signals on minority groups that make up a tiny fraction of the American population. I would be surprised if transgender issues are a big vote mobiliser on November 7th.<br />
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At the moment, the Democrats are expected to win a majority in the House of Representatives, making legislative work difficult for the president. I am growing ever more skeptical of this expectation. Let's see next week. <br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-76387331696773246602018-09-24T11:41:00.000-07:002018-09-24T11:43:57.090-07:00Why there should not be a people's voteOf all people I should be the last one to side with Farage and the like in all matters of Brexit. As a German without a British passport I will lose most of my civil rights on 19th March 2019. However, recently I found myself increasingly frustrated and worried about the calls for a second referendum or people's vote on Brexit. There may be many things wrong with the first Brexit vote, not least our lack of understanding of how social media may or may not have been used (unduly) to influence the outcome of the vote. However, I do not find the various reasons for a second vote convincing. Here is why.<br />
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<u>Argument 1: They did not know what they voted on</u><br />
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This is a bad argument to put forward. Not only does it reak of patronising voters it also cuts both ways. If people had really been ignorant of what the referendum question was about (or what a decision either way entailed) then re-running the referendum assumes that voters can only genuinely cast their vote under conditions of absolute knowledge. This strikes me as a ludicrous condition for voting in a democratic society. Whether we like it or not, frivolous voting is a right everyone has in a free country. And so is voting on grounds of self-declared ignorance.<br />
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<u>The outcome of the negotiations need to be endorsed by the voters</u><br />
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Well, it does indeed. That's what parliament is for. Referenda are a poor mechanism to discriminate between policy options. And if I remember correctly that was also an argument against the first referendum. I still agree with this and hence a second referendum would solve little that cannot be decided by elected MPs.<br />
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<u>We should stop Brexit </u><br />
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That's probably the most annoying argument and one that is most likely to backfire. There is no guarantee that a second referendum would yield a substantial majority for remaining in the EU. Just think about the difficulty of drafting the referendum question. Would it be a three way choice between 'the deal', 'no deal' and remaining in EU? That would split the 'remain camp' and likely deliver a supporting vote for 'the deal', whatever that may be. So, remainers would not get from such a referendum what they wanted (to preserve EU membership). And why would people 'know' more about 'the deal' or 'no deal' options if they, allegedly, were in a state of fateful ignorance about the benefits of EU membership? Are the ramifications of 'the deal' any simpler to grasp? <br />
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So, why are we talking about a second referendum or people's vote? It may be worthwhile to have a look at who is advocating it. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2017/oct/02/anywhere-but-westminster-return-to-brexit-britain-video" target="_blank">John Harris's podcasts </a>are little windows into our divided soul. And it seems to me that the dividing line between us runs somewhere between London/South of England and the rest of England and Wales. I think it's no surprise that this is also roughly the line that divides the well off from the deprived areas in England, those that have benefitted from, and have accommodated themselves with immigration and a global economy and those that have not.<br />
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I accept that Brexit will not rectify the injustices and imbalances between London and the rest of the country. But, living in the North West of England, I also understand those who feel left behind and may now look on with some <i>schadenfreude</i> as London house prices fall and multinational companies start to relocate to other European cities. The movement for the people's vote is born out of a recognition that with Brexit, London and the South of England would suffer (though the rest of England would disproportionately suffer even more). Yet for Londoners who have treated the rest of the country with imperial disdain and contempt for decades, many Northerners thought this was pay back time. And I can't blame them.<br />
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In this context, campaigning for a people's vote appears to be counterproductive. It ties up energies that are really needed to argue for a sensible, smooth exit from the EU. It would make more sense to work out how we can get to an EFTA or Norway solution and how to get this through parliament rather than wasting political capital on preventing something that has democratic legitimacy: leaving the European Union.<br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-78405414573679839592018-08-23T02:58:00.002-07:002018-08-23T02:58:13.402-07:00Why Trump is winningI am reading a lot of poetry these days. Call it escapism. Listening to the news makes me depressed and no one wants to feel low. So, I turned to poetry. A modest investment of about £8 gets you 'The Poetry Review' in your well ordered local bookstore and in a recent issue I found a poem by Mel Pryor called 'Cliff'. It's neat and has some nice turns of phrases such as when she talks about 'these daily unminuted miracles' (The Poetry Review, p.17).<br />
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I guess it's the poem's sense of ending that appeals to me. Recently, things in the political world have felt increasingly like we are standing at a precipice. But, and this is my point, this is a mistake and it can become a serious political error if progressives believe that everyone feels like that. Dread is not a political motivator. So let's look at the facts.<br />
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Trump's popularity with his base feeds on public outburst (and plenty of unacceptable ill-tempered language) about minorities, people he does not like (anymore), and railings against the establishment. The reaction of progressives is instructive. They dislike his foul verbiage, the damage to established institutions he does with his tweets and his exploitation of the presidency for his own gain. They dislike that he offers the American people some populist grub and that many of them take it.<br />
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But here is the crux. Progressives are indignated by Trump's actions and tweets, and as they become more and more outraged they start to believe that, if only Trump was gone (impeached or otherwise) they would win again and everything would go back to normal. They take the messenger for the message. There are already signs that Democrats tailor their mid-term campaign to the tune of Trump. In a sense, they take populism's bait and swallow it hook line and sinker.<br />
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Indignation is always a bad compass in politics. Whilst indignation is the way in which we police our norms of public behaviour, it is in essence a blunt tool. It only reaches as far as our gut feelings last and that's not very far indeed. Remember the little dead boy that was carried on to a Turkish beach by a police officer at the height at the Syrian refugee crisis? I bet you do! And what came of it? Exactly. <br />
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The reason Trump won (and this is what progressives don't want to hear) is that neither the Clinton campaign nor the Democratic Party actually made a positive offer to the American people in 2016. I vividly remember a moment in the primaries during Clinton's first bid for the candidacy of the Democratic Party (in 2006) when she started to tear up and declared that she had 'so many opportunities for this country'. What these were she showed us ten years later in 2016: a long list of things to do for ... transgender people, women, minorities, gays, and any other poor marginalised soul in America. But what she could never say is why any middle of the road, no nonsense American who didn't define himself by his or her sexual or racial identity should vote for her. She never told middle America why she should be in office.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Government jobs for everyone - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Source: Mark Lennihan/AP</td></tr>
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I know some of these words hurt (it's indignation again, see). We all want to do our best for minorities and people on the margins of society. But what progressives often forget is that campaigning on issues that matter to only a handful of people is unlikely to succeed. And so we go again, come the mid-term elections. The latest candidate to make the headlines is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-historic-win-and-the-future-of-the-democratic-party" target="_blank">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> - somebody who says that the border force should be abolished and that everyone should be guaranteed a job by the government. Familiar stuff? Yes, we heard this before. If you are old enough, that is, and your memory reaches back to the 1970 and 1980s.<br />
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So, what's going wrong? The answer is simple. Whilst Trump dishes out populist messages, progressives are sidetracked by their indignation and veer to the extreme left, strengthening those parts of their electoral offer that made them lose the last election: identity politics. The people who may feel less and less represented are those in the centre, the moderates who do not think that transgender toilets are the most urgent thing to instal when there is an opiod crisis affecting communities up and down the country.<br />
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What may break it for Trump is not his ill-tempered language or his tweeting but the economy. At the moment, the American economy is overheating. He is urging the Fed to lower interest rates, which would be catastrophic for inflationary pressures. He may just turn out to steer the American economy into a serious crisis and middle America won't tolerate that. <br />
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The maths show that Democrats are likely to win back the House of Representatives in November, yet are unlikely to win the Senate. But if they think that this paves the way for a win in the presidential elections in 2020 (or indeed for impeachment) they are mistaken. Up till now, they have nothing to offer to those in the centre ground of politics. All they offer is their indignation and their desire to boot out Trump. That's not an electoral programme.<br />
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If they don't change course, then I guess there is more poetry for me.jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-60167353840610263662018-07-22T04:24:00.000-07:002018-07-30T06:23:39.382-07:00The subliminal world of political campaigningIn 1973, a new episode of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069903/" target="_blank">Columbo hit the NBC</a> screens. Robert Culp made another appearance, this time as a devious advertising specialist who used his ability to influence the viewers of his advertising videos to commit a murder. The particular method was to place subliminal stimuli into the videos which prompted one person in a selected audience to feel thirsty and leave the auditorium to seek some relief at a public fountain in the foyer. That's where the murderer struck.<br />
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The use of subliminal messages for manipulation is well known since the 1970s. However has obtained new resonance in our times of fake news and political campaigns using targeted messages.<br />
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Subliminal cues work by inducing brain processes below a threshold of objective awareness. In other words, they are stimuli which we are subjected to without being conscious of. There is some debate as to their effectiveness. Some research indicates that they are less effective than stimuli above the awareness threshold (those we can perceive as such). But all agree that they are basically a form of manipulation. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Never quite what it seems - Robert Culp in 'Double Exposure' NBC</td></tr>
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There is also a clear consensus about what is wrong manipulating people. Manipulating people is not based on the selection of preferences based on human volition and deliberation. Manipulation is in essence a mechanism to avoid what we do when we need to chose, that is to think which options are preferable to us and why. As Hannah Arendt noted, giving reasons for our actions is part of the human condition. Whilst it is a fundamentally flawed process, it is also one that allows others to challenge us and enter into a discussion about the merits and disadvantages of our choices. It is the process by which we relate to each other in mutual respect and recognition of our ability to decide freely in matters concerning the body politic.<br />
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Arendt was clear about the fact that our public and private deliberations were often flawed, conditioned by a lack of knowledge, poor information, and the like. Yet, she contended, there was little else. Beyond the free and fair exchange of ideas in the public arena was only the realm of manipulation and distrust inevitably undermining the political institutions of democracy and civic liberties.<br />
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This is where targeted campaigning and subliminal messaging in advertising meet. As the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44446632?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/ck3ny53xnlet/arron-banks&link_location=live-reporting-story" target="_blank">Leave.EU donor Aaron Banks admitted to the Select Committee of the House of Commons</a>, their campaign 'led people up the garden path' (one of those pretty English euphemisms for something loathsome, namely lying).<br />
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Combined with targeted political advertising, political choices may have become based less on what we know but what others want us to (not) know, a perversion of the notion of choice which is based on voluntary selection of preferences underpinned by an awareness of options and their consequences. As Arendt sees it, it is public civility and respect versus manipulation of behaviour. <br />
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Manipulating voters in political campaigns is similar to placing subliminal cues in product advertising. Voters do not quite know what they are being told. Where campaigners feel no commitment to be truthful, a basic consensus about our democratic decision making falls apart: that within the boundaries of the competition of ideas, falsehoods should not be part of the arsenal of weapons to defeat your opponent. All electoral laws in the Western world accept this basic principle; there are strict sanctions for those who disseminate lies deliberately in the public domain during a political domain.<br />
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Targeted political ads however are not illegal and we may want to ask whether our current electoral legal framework is sufficiently robust for the times of facebook, insta and rogue 'news' outlets.<br />
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In case you wondered, subliminal messaging is illegal in the UK. The BCAP Code defines it as 'misleading advertising'.And yes, Columbo did get his guy in the end. <br />
<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-26787812425251635662018-07-18T12:39:00.001-07:002018-07-18T12:40:59.622-07:00Diagnosis - is the NHS working? BBC The Hour - Thanks for having me!<br />
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Full footage <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bb360w" target="_blank">HERE</a> <br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-68766877684063854252018-02-11T04:22:00.001-08:002018-02-11T04:26:24.545-08:00Charles Ives at Bridgewater Hall A few years ago, I came across a piece by the American composer Charles Ives and I fell in love with it. It is titled <i>The Unanswered Question</i> and starts off with a faint melodious section played by the strings. Whilst the piece initially flirts with romanticism, within a few bars a dissonant call from the brass overlays the strings. As the strings continue, a signal trumpet call gains strength and is undercut by a wood wind theme, subversive to both strings and its brass brothers in arms. (there is a NYPhil version on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXD4tIp59L0" target="_blank">youtube here</a>)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles Ives (1878-1954)</td></tr>
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The piece is only less than 5 mins long but it is impressive and leaves one with a fully painted mental picture. Ives' music, it seemed to me back then, was like a painting by Edward Hopper, only that Ives was painting outside urban scences where Hopper wanted to look into the inside of people's places from outside.<br />
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That Ives composed radically metropolitan scences shows even more clearly in his piece <i>Central Park in the Dark</i>. If you did not know the title, the ever increasing noise of urban sounds swelling to a mighty explosion in the piece would leave you in no doubt that you are in the middle of a city.<br />
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What Ives manages however is to portray the fragile contrast between a city's harmonic background bordering on silence and the discordant hubbub that surrounds us on a daily basis. The piece starts off in near silence with the strings once again setting the scene, this time less melodious, giving off a whiff of a metalic sound. As the wood winds intermittently intersect with the strings, the scene still remains distant in sound and impact on the listener.<br />
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Next, the flute takes up a theme and hovers above strings and wood winds. None of them even attempt to merge or meld into one coherent whole. Finally a singular violin and a piano furnish additional moments of urban sounds, until all climaxes in pandemonium as we know it from the streets of New York.<br />
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Ives added a beautiful note of contrast as the musical tumult cuts out suddenly and the strings are heard to continue to the very end of the piece. It creates a moment of surprise as you realise they have been there all along, no matter how loud the city was.<br />
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The piece's crescendo is difficult to play (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34AqNvhBfVQ" target="_blank">there is a Bernstein/NYPhil version here</a>). In particular, what appears like an unwanted disturbances of the strings by random noise actually requires careful calibration of the sound levels. The BBC Philharmonic conducted by John Storgards gave their all but at times it was not quite enough. In particular, as the flute and piano starts to overlay the string theme, the string section needs to be low enough, almost whispering, so that flute and piano are recognised as distinct voices. The Bridgewater Hall has a decent acoustic but the orchestra did not quite pull it off. From where I sat in the centre of the stalls the flute was not quite audible and the single violin, played sensitively by the concertmaster, did not quite emerge as different from the main body of sound.<br />
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It was more a confluence of music rather than a caleidoscope of discrete notes from different players. Still, it was amazing to hear this piece live for the first time.<br />
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The evening also contained a muscular rendition of George Gershwin's <i>Rhapsody in Blue</i>, delivered with gusto by Peter Donohoe. I prefer the version for Jazz orchestra over the full orchestral arrangement (by Ferde Grofe) but both Donohoe and the BBC Orchestra gave a spirited performance which made me tap along with my foot.<br />
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The evening ended with George Antheil's Symphony No. 6, a pleasing piece of work sitting comfortably somewhere between Stravinsky and Shostakovich and a composition by George Walker called <i>Lilacs</i>. Walker set his music to Walt Whitman's 'When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd'. Joshua Ellicott gave it a rounded sound, perhaps at times struggling against an overwhelming orchestra, and it made me wish to hear more from this song cycle.<br />
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The evening concert was recorded for broadcast on Wednesday 14th Feb as part of the BBC Radio 3 in Concert Series. So you can tune into <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3" target="_blank">BBC Radio 3</a> next Wednesday at 7.30pm to hear it or catch up with it on <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer" target="_blank">BBC iPlayer</a>. <br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-44995403200038981532017-09-09T04:07:00.002-07:002017-09-09T04:07:53.609-07:00What poetry can doI always struggled with poetry. Somehow the metaphors never seemed to connect with me. I suppose I don't have that imaginative mind that is required to read and understand it.<br />
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Since this is a blog charting a personal journey, you can probably guess what's coming next. I had an epiphany... well, not quite. But something like it.<br />
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Recently, the German poet Jan Wagner was awarded the prestigious Georg-Buechner-Preis, one of the highest accolades for writers in Germany. In one of the reviews of his work, someone quoted a line from his poem 'Hamburg-Berlin' (<a href="https://www.amazon.de/Selbstportr%C3%A4t-mit-Bienenschwarm-Ausgew%C3%A4hlte-Gedichte/dp/3446250751/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1504954708&sr=8-3-fkmr1&keywords=Jan+Wagner+Selbstportrait" target="_blank">Jan Wagner, Selbsportrait mit Bienenschwarm. Ausgewaehlte Gedichte. Hanser: Berlin 2017</a>):<br />
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<i>'... in der ferne nahmen zwei windraeder </i><br />
<i>eine probebohrung im himmel vor:</i><br />
<i>gott hielt den atem an.' (p.20)</i><br />
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That's funny on the surface but also intensely moving once you visualise the scene. Well observed and mischieviously subversive, undermining our sense of reality and how the world is supposed to work.<br />
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Wagner's poems are radical in their metaphorical tranformative power. He is playful and his words reveal new vistas on the world; his poems have what a good poem needs to have: it forces us to re-think reality and to discover what is there but was hidden until we read it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The power of the metaphor - it never is what it seems. Flamish 17th cent painting</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">. </td></tr>
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Although I struggle to find the right words to appreciate his poetry I did also notice something fascinatingly limiting in his poetry. Wagner's poetry is strongly metaphorical, yet in its playfulness it lacks the human dimension. His poems are observational, almost resembling the still lifes of Dutch painters, such as a table with decaying fruits. There is beauty in them, but something is missing.<br />
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Enter a poem by an American writer who lived in Britain in the 1960s.<br />
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<i>The Hanging Man</i><br />
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<i>By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me. </i><br />
<i>I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.</i><br />
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<i>The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid:</i><br />
<i>A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket. </i><br />
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<i>A vulturous boredom pinned me to this tree.</i><br />
<i>If he were I, he would do what I did. </i><br />
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This poem is equally densely packed with metaphors that evoke feelings and have tranformative power. But at every line, the words also force us to take position to the story, the story of Christ and Christianity. It is full of mockery as well as respect, it is literal at times yet also figuratively untrue. Yet most of all, it is about us as human beings. It does not shrink from plunging head on into human affairs. The poem was written by Sylvia Plath (from <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ariel-Modern-Classics-Sylvia-Paperback/dp/B0168S8QSK/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504954651&sr=1-14&keywords=sylvia+plath+ariel" target="_blank">Sylvia Plath:Ariel. Faber and Faber: London 2015 [1968]</a>.) <br />
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I may have misunderstood her words, I may miscontrue the meaning of the poem, but I do clearly recognise the differences between Wagner's and Plath's poetic thrust. Wagner's is observational and subversive in a gentle way, reordering our relationship with nature and the things around us. Plath however places herself squarely within the human domain, metaphorically interfering with the social and historical encounters that we have every day. And Plath is nothing short of radical, forcing us to take position on, what she thinks, is a constantly shifting ground.<br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-62676373253068510892017-06-27T08:08:00.001-07:002017-06-27T08:12:01.345-07:00Why no one should be 'gay'Isaac Newton allegedly once remarked that 'If I have seen further than other men then only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.'<br />
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Whilst the sociologist <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Shoulders-Giants-Shandean-Postscript-Post-Italianate/0226520862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498576282&sr=8-1&keywords=merton+shoulders+of+giants" target="_blank">Robert Merton once investigated this as a tenet of scientific progress</a>, nowhere else is it more true than in sexual politics where men and women of the past found the courage to challenge the status quo to allow those that come after them to see further. For me as a gay man the main point of reference are those men who stood up to police repression during <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots" target="_blank">the Stonewall riots</a> in 1969. Their spirited refusal to accept the dominant social and cultural standards inspire awe and gratitude in me as it allowed me to say openly who I am. Vaclav Havel (in a different context) called this with living within the truth. And this fight for equality and rights is not over yet as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39937107" target="_blank">recent headlines about gay people being persecuted in Cheniya </a>and other places demonstrate. Rights to express yourself and live within the truth are still being denied to gay people all over the world, be it in Uganda, where homosexuality is still a criminal offence, or Germany, where discrimination in marriage on grounds of sexuality continues.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gay pride or gay ghetto? </td></tr>
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Yet, we have come a long way and it is perhaps appropriate to look at where we are and where we want to go in those societies that have largely accepted homosexuality.<br />
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Partially the fight against discrimination drew strength from a sense of community amongst gay people which furnished them with a conceptual framework of belonging and collective power. It allowed them to articulate a version of society that was based on inclusiveness of marginalised groups and hence latched on to notions of equality before the law, civil rights as well as group rights.<br />
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In the process of this fight, this sense of community took on a life of its own and we are now quite comfortable with the notion that there is something like a gay community with a specific gay culture. Challenges to this notion of a comprehensive and coherent gay culture have come from unexpected quarters recently. Transgender campaign groups have pointed at the exclusive nature of such a concept of group culture based on a single sexual identity. This has led to an awkward compromise, reflected in an ever growing string of letters in the acronym of cultural politics of recognition (I lost track after LGBT).<br />
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What is less articulated yet probably more fundamental, is to question whether there is indeed something like a gay community based on a gay culture in the first place, or, irreverently, whether or not there should be one.<br />
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The question turns on the role of community in promoting and fostering change through mutual support. But its tentacles reach wider, well into the realm of identity politics and group rights. There can be no doubt that conceptualising and formulating a version of gay collective consciousness has been instrumental in pushing for change on the societal level whilst it has also had tranformative power for individuals. Making a choice to belong to a specific community does not only grant you access to support networks, it also liberates you from the idea that you are alone. Collectives undoubtedly have transformative capacity. Yet they can also be oppressive as they set standards of behaviour and define borders of identity with which any group member has to conform if he wants to belong. This is reinforced whenever notions of sub-cultures and group identities become hegemonic not just within the group of members but more widely by the rest of society.<br />
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Gay critics of the 'gay culture concept' have pointed this out as soon as mainstream culture started to adopt stereotypical portrayals of gays in movies and TV. Whilst early portrayals of openly gay men were often welcome, a feeling of discomfort with their narrow stereotypical appearances soon mounted. The argument essentially was that cartoonish depictions of gay characters in the media allowed straight audiences to accept homosexuality only because it was considerably different from being straight/normal. Acceptance was grounded in the recognition of, and insistence on, difference.<br />
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Empirically this media image of course never had any facts to call upon. Gay men are as diverse as any men in the straight part of society. The critics' point, however, audaciously extended to the collective strategies of culture making within the gay community. Where gays feel the need to go out in their own clubs and segregate themselves from wider society by constructing their own community and marks of belonging, signs of difference are emphasised rather than diminished. Ultimately, groups with sub-cultures to cultivate may spin themselves into a cocoon of collective behaviours that provide comfort but stop challenging society's preconceptions of the group. In other words, what is rebellious becomes orthodox. It's revolutionary potential dissipates and a stale taste of conformism remains.<br />
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So we may want to ask ourselves: do we still need to be 'gay' to be gay? Do we still need to declare ourselves as part of an imaginary community with its rules and cultural standards (policed by prominent members of the group's elite) to be able to say that those of us, who do not live a 'gay life style', can stand on the shoulders of the giants who fought for gay rights? I would hope that whatever somebody says about me in twenty years time, it will not be that I was that 'gay' bloke writing a blog. I would not feel empowered but diminished by such an epitaph. jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-81501411543728017132017-06-26T13:38:00.003-07:002017-06-26T16:50:26.386-07:00The chore of sightseeingI am fortunate to be able to travel within Europe from time to time and I particularly enjoy my city trips. Milan and Florence were the latest destinations. As much as I love my time away, I am dreading the questions from friends and family whether or not I have seen this or that landmark, went to this museum and looked at that painting. Those questions used to always give me a pang of inadequacy, of having missed something out. The fact is that whenever I am abroad, I rarely see anything that would make it into the 'must see' list of any guidebook.<br />
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It's not that I have not tried. I trudged through the Forum Romanum with hundreds of other heavily persperating tourists on a hot Italian summer day. And I have stood at the back of a sizeable group of Japanese tourists staring at a small rectangular painting hung about 40 meters ahead of me on a Louvre wall. I didn't see much but I was told it was the Mona Lisa.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Have you seen me? </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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And yet, if you asked me which way Michelangelo's David turns his oversized head on the famous Florentine Piazza, I couldn't tell you (I did take a lot of pictures though, inexplicably mostly of his backside).<br />
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So why does sightseeing mean so little to me? I think it has something to do with the fact that I do not connect with the artifacts I look at. It does not mean anything to me when I am told that while Boticelli painted his famous picture La Primavera he was deeply in love with the daughter of his neighbour. Quite frankly, who cares? And why should it matter? Sightseeing, it strikes me whenever I have to endure it, is not much than a playground for all stories tangential to the artifact in question. And most of the time, the plots of those stories go off the object just as cheap Aldi fireworks dye out on Hogmanay. <br />
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On a recent trip to Florence, I have had enough of tourists hooked up to earpieces trudging mindlessly through narrow alleys following their guide like lemmings. I packed my bag with a towel and flip flops and left the city centre to go to a nearby open air swimming pool. As soon as I hit the outskirts of the city, everything changed. The tourist shops with the naff souvenirs disappeared. People started to look normal, going or coming from work, others resting in front of their houses after the day and chatting with their neighbours. The swimming pool itself was full of locals and I must have been the only foreign soul there. Total bliss!<br />
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I will never forget those moments I walked down the street in the neighbourhoods of outer Florence or lying next to an Italian couple trying desperately to keep their two small children in check on the green next to the pool. Yet ask me what I saw in the Duomo, for the life of me, I couldn't tell you a single thing. So please, next time we talk about our trips to foreign lands, don't ask me whether I have seen that famous church with that incredible triptychon. I couldn't care less. jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-91535479834077478682017-06-24T04:27:00.001-07:002017-06-24T04:27:08.710-07:00The charity conundrumI puzzled for a while now about how differently I react to requests for charity. Money that is to you and me. It's probably fair to say that I have always given generously and on a regular basis to organisations such as<a href="https://www.unicef.org.uk/donate/" target="_blank"> Unicef</a> and others. In fact, about 15 years ago I promised to myself always to give about 2 percent of my after tax income to charitable causes. So far, I kept that promise, with Unicef the most prominent benificiary over the years. One of the most satisfying instances of giving for me was with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/katine" target="_blank">Guardian scheme in Katine, Uganda</a>, where every pound was matched by Barclays Bank for five years (check it out <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/16/katine-uganda-deposit-fund-guardian-observer-christmas-appeal" target="_blank">HERE</a>, it was an amazing project!). The money was spent on training programmes for schools, midwives and health visitors in several villages in and around Katine and the Guardian and the charity reported annually about progress and difficulties. I enjoyed giving to it since I felt it could make a difference and I had a sense that there are real people at the end of this programme. Also, I thought the money would not be spent on temporary disaster relief but on permenantly building up the community resilience to problems. Sadly the programme ended after five years, perhaps a sign of how effective it has been in improving people's lives there.<br />
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This mix of motifs and incentives also lies at the heart of what puzzles me about charitable giving. What attracted me to the Katine programme was clearly the ability to see firsthand that there were actual people at the receiving end, that the money was used to provide them with help to help themselves, and that there was significant oversight and reporting on progress made.<br />
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Cut to a street in Liverpool or London in 2017 where I am being approached by someone who asks for a pound. No matter how desperate, homeless or not, I simply would not get my wallet out (before you set off in indignation let me add, I used to give on the street as well). Worse, when being confronted by images of poverty in the UK, homelessness and the like, I feel no pull on the heart strings.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Copyright: Peter Shelomovskiy</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Which one would you give to? </b></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Copyright: Telegraph</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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So why is this? There is nothing more concrete and immediate than a person standing in front of you asking for money. I know where the money would go and how it would be used if I was to give any. Why don't I feel the same generosity when I am confronted by the signs of UK poverty as it is when I see it in far away countries?<br />
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I think it has something to do with the differentials in opportunities between both contexts. I recognise that people can get into all sorts of difficult situations where they need help, either from their own family and friends or from the local community. However, there is a crucial difference between the two environments. In the UK, whatever you think about injustices built into the system there are enormous opportunities for education, training and work with a basic safety net that includes homeless shelters. This highlights, rightly or wrongly, the role of personal responsibility in creating your own destiny. It emphasises how much we are all in the driving seat when it comes to forging our own future.<br />
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This heightened role of personal responsibility carries risks of failure for those who struggle to reconcile personal obligations with individual behaviour. In those cases, we are all called upon to help. But the help should be provided, in my mind, by (local) government, not by individual charity.<br />
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The situation of a child (or adult for that matter) in a village in Uganda is considerably different. It's position vis-a-vis opportunities is hampered by ineffective or non-existent government services in the first place, due to state failure or corruption. Here it does not matter whether or not anybody accepts responsibility for their own future. The barriers are simply too great to overcome. Charity in this context is mitigating state failures to ensure that they do not translate into personal tragedies.<br />
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I acknowledge that there are structural injustices in both contexts which conspire to hold people back. Yet, the fundamental difference remains: where states function well, opportunities, however small, exist. None of this means that we should be heartless or cold towards personal suffering wherever it occurs. It does however tell us something about our own agency and how we behave in the face of need. In the UK, as largely in the Western world, we mitigate need through government and its myriad organisations, stressing the sense of personal responsibility. In the developing world we recognise that the failure of government itself is the main cause of poverty and the lack of opportunities. Personal responsibility does not take you far where state institutions have broken down and do not provide the basic infrastructure to allow you to thrive as a human being. It's there that we are all called upon to help. <br />
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jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-40023169750456731722017-06-01T12:14:00.000-07:002017-06-01T12:15:43.802-07:00What welfare really meansThe General Election has brought some of the welfare issues back into the spotlight. This may be because the Labour Party now has a leader who believes in the good of welfare.<br />
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I have often struggled to find good arguments why welfare should not be a universal entitlement. The argument for universal welfare (all the up to basic income) are very compelling. What's wrong with helping people who cannot help themselves? It surely must be their right to be supported in times of need.<br />
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Sometimes, it's worthwhile to go back to what others have written on the subject since nothing is new under the sun, least of all the debate about welfare. So I came across this passage in Michael Lipsky's seminal study of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Street-Level-Bureaucracy-Dilemmas-Individual/dp/0871545446/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496344193&sr=8-1&keywords=lipsky+street+level" target="_blank">'Street-Level Bureaucracy. Dilemmas of the individual in public services'</a>.<br />
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'The ways in which street-level bureaucrats deliver benefits and sanctions structure and delimit people's lives and opportunities. These ways orient and provide the social (and political) context in which people act. Thus every extension of service benefits is accompanied by an extension of state influence and control over their lives.' (p.4)<br />
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Lipsky is no dyed in the wool Tory, he was an American political scientist who investigated the effects of public services on those who delivered them (the local staff) and those who received them.<br />
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The passage is so insightful because he does not opt for the usual perspective on welfare that we commonly adopt when debating public services, focusing on the support function of welfare payments to individual. Instead, he tries to see it as a form of control that is being exercised over people. This resonates with the messages that are often articulated from the extreme left about the injustices of the welfare system such as Ken Loach's recent film <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Daniel_Blake" target="_blank">'I, Daniel Blake'</a> and his critique of the welfare sanction regime. Lipsky's conclusions are different to those of Loach. Whilst Loach wants every one to have unlimited welfare payments, Lipsky articulates the malign effect of welfare on welfare recipients themselves, as welfare payments start to structure their lives and determine the way the behave. <br />
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The answer, Lipsky makes clear, is not to grant street-level bureaucrats more or total control (i.e. universal benefit) but to reduce their influence over our lives. Welfare is not innocuous, he argues, it restricts us and exerts power and control over us. Providing less welfare to all of us in the end liberates us, it allows us to shape our own lives. <br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-15601617930849713132017-06-01T11:47:00.001-07:002017-06-01T11:47:58.815-07:00The Airbnb experienceA couple of years ago, I decided that I had enough of hotel rooms. No more sagging beds despite four stars and unbearable attitude at reception desks, no more plastic kettles precariously placed on a side table with no socket in side, and interior design that would have made my mother cringe. I was fed up with the anonymous feel whilst paying a high price to get a vacuous yet contemptous fake smile at the reception. So I went Airbnb.<br />
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For those of you who do not live in the shared economy, Airbnb is an internet platform that allows you to advertise your own four walls to other people. Airbnb manages all the money transfers between your guest and yourself, takes a fee for this service and guarantees you in turn a potential customer base of several million people across the world who want to stretch out their tired legs in your living room. Over the years, I have found Airbnb nothing but an impeccable service, rapidly responding to my emails or calls when things go wrong.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stepping into someone else's flat. The Airbnb promise.</td></tr>
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The beef I have (and I do have a beef) is with those who embark on the Airbnb path without the necessary skills or readiness to be a host.<br />
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Essentially, Airbnb has two types of 'hosts'. The first type is the private citizen who happens to have a spare room and does not mind a complete stranger putting their feet up in the living room. Making some pocket money at the same time helps. This type of host may be attentive or not, considerate or not, clean or filthy, absent or present...whatever he or she is. You know what you get since you know you will enter someone's private abode.<br />
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More recently, however, Airbnb has attracted a lot of business clients as hosts. These are basically companies (single self-employed investors or large scale investors) who buy up property to rent it out via Airbnb. I doubt that the profit margins are very high, given that those apartments are usually fully serviced but whatever the gain, the problem I have is not with the professional companies playing host (they are not much else but hotels offering apartments instead of single rooms) but the self-employed, self-taught wanna-be host. You know who I mean. The one who has two or three mobile phones, a fake Rolex watch, and drives an Audio A8 (on credit).<br />
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Whilst looking all 'proper business like' (so they think) what they fail to grasp is that running a business like renting out an apartment (or many!) takes good organisational skills and a sense of how to manage your time and resources. That's where they fall down. How often have I stood in front of a locked door at the agreed time, desperately ringing the sole phone number given to me by Airbnb without a host anywhere in sight. If you are lucky, you might get an email saying that, at the present time, your host cannot be at the apartment as arranged but will be there soon. 'Soon' is usually not specified and can mean anything from a couple of minutes to several hours.<br />
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Most of these hosts are in fact nowhere close to the specific apartment you would like to stay in. In fact, it always struck me as extraordinary how many of my 'hosts' where living in Florida or Paris whilst the flats they rented out were some thousands of miles away in the Costa del Sol or Munich. For these 'absent' hosts, luckily there is always the helpful neighbour close by... well, not quite. Since the hosts probably never lived in the flat themselves, they have no relationship with any of the neighbours who lived there for years. In fact, at times, the neighbours often don't even know that the flat is rented out through Airbnb.<br />
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Worse, because these hosts rarely know the flat they are renting out themselves, they rely on the cleaning service to tell them details and sort out problems. Most recently, I arrived at an apartment in a house that was completely scaffolded from floor to rooftop with some builders cheerily hacking off the outside plaster with sledgehammers whilst I was anxiously trying to phone my host to see if any alternative flat would be available. When I got through to the host, he had no idea the house was actually being regenerated and had been gutted from top to bottom. Needless to say I was slightly miffed about this teeny weeny bit of ignorance.<br />
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But that's nothing compared to the 'host' who rents out a flat that isn't even his. This happened to me a couple of years back where, in the second night, someone else came into the apartment who was quite surprised to find me there. It turned out that somebody had rented out a flat that wasn't even his, but which he had shared previously. Having held on to the key of the flat, the fellow thought it would be cool to advertise the flat on Airbnb to make a buck on the side.<br />
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In all this, I have to stress, Airbnb itself has been absolutely without fault. Whenever the hosts messed up, Airbnb bent over backwards to make it right. But I think I am just growing a bit tired of poor organisation, hiccups and absent landlords. I might just have to go back to tiny rooms with kettles on the floor and windows I can't open whilst the aircondition is rattling away. <br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-82419601756451658552017-04-18T09:59:00.000-07:002017-04-18T10:09:39.879-07:00The Malaise of LabourThe date is set, the knives will be out shortly. Well, at least amongst Labour politicians. And those knives are of course not sharpened for Labour's attack on the Conservatives, but for a good fratricidal battle as only Labour can do it.<br />
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Barring a miracle of triple Trump proportions, May will be Prime Minister with a sizable majority in the House of Commons and will emerge strengthened from the June snap election with a decent mandate to negotiate a hard Brexit. The Lib Dems will make some minor amends for their previous nigh annihilation in 2015, and the Greens will tread water as they have ever since they were founded.<br />
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So, what about Labour? Isn't this the big test Corbyn's proponents and enemies talked about? Maybe this is the moment when he will have to resign following what in all likelyhood will be a defeat of 1983 magnitude?<br />
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Nothing could be further from the truth. When was the last time anybody heard Corbyn or anybody from his team speak of 'electoral tests'? The fact is that Corbyn does not think of politics as a battle of ideas to be decided by general elections. He does not attach any significance to elections at all. His is the 'long game' of the socialist revolution (no joke!) where elections are not the litmus test of governability for Labour.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The stuff of dreams - Corbyn and the socialist consciousness</td></tr>
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In fact, if you listen carefully to McDonnell and others, what matters to the Corbyn team is not the victory at the ballot box but the development of a historical consciousness of the proletariat that will emerge as things go worse. In their (contorted) Marxist logic, the more successful the Conservatives will be, the more the country will sink into a 'deep crisis' that will help develop the 'revolutionary situation' which is necessary to establish socialism in Britain. (I recognise that there is an element of caricature in this picture, but only just!).<br />
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The sad dynamics of these illogical theoretical gymnastics of Corbyn are that they leave the UK without a strong reformist opposition with policy ideas that are grounded in real life and speak to people who are at the sharp end of Brexit and Conservative policies in education, health and the economy. Such a viable effective opposition will only emerge once Labour (and the moderate British centre left) will be able to re-appraise the enormous policy achievements of the Blair and Brown governments for a moderate Labour government and stop seeing the last time Labour was in power through the prism of Iraq. The answers of such a re-constructed moderate left will be different to those given by the two last giants of Labour policy but the thrust will be similar: engaging with real life issues, formulating reformist policies in education, health and a rebalancing of the economy.<br />
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Until now, all we have from Labour is 'school meals for all'. jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-59513123323378768062017-01-15T05:22:00.002-08:002017-01-15T05:24:08.299-08:00Why neurosciences can't tell us much about ... human behaviourThere has been a spate of recent books on the insights of brain science on our behaviour. The main news is that we are probably not as independent from our brains as we think we are when making decisions. In fact, there is now good evidence that our brains decide things before we even start to think about things. If that sounds irrational, so it is indeed. Reasoning is out, impetus is in.<br />
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Whilst scientists appear to agree increasingly that our synapses fire before we can think about our options, the jury is out on whether this makes us better or worse when it comes to social behaviour. If neurosciences tell us that our brains make decisions for us and instead of us, do they have a tendency to select one option over another? Are our brains hardwired to be 'social' or 'altruistic' rather than 'egoistic' and 'selfish'?<br />
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Some neuroscientists draw on evolutionary biology and psychological experiments to answer this question. One of the more interesting attempts has been <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Altruistic-Brain-How-Naturally-Good/dp/0199377464/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" target="_blank">Donald Pfaff's book <i>The altruistic brain</i></a>. He develops a theory about why our brains are more likely to select the more 'altruistic' option in moments of snap decisions, rather than the selfish option.<br />
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Pfaff's theory combines evidence from evolutionary biology with recent findings from neuroscience experiments (basically: people in MRI scanners pressing buttons), but his theory has a wider scope and it is there that it runs into considerable trouble. Here is why.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The holy grail of neurosciences but not much space for moral thinking <br />
MRI scanner in action. Foto: NHS Choices</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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There may be sound evidence that our brains are designed in such a way as to pre-empt our reasoning. After all, it makes sense to have a brain mechanism to make the right selection from a range of difficult options when we are in immediate danger. The narratives of evolutionary biologists speak to this issue. We may be likely to protect our closest family members 'without much thinking' as this safeguards our genetic prospects.<br />
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Pfaff's theory however has a larger scope. He gives an instructive example in his book when talking about the firefighter Steven Siller who, on his day off, hears about the attack on the World Trade Centre, and spontaneously decides to pick up his gear and drive himself down to the centre of the attack to rescue people. Steven lost his life while helping others so Pfaff can justly claim that Steven's actions are undeniably altruistic.<br />
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But look more closely and Pfaff's theory of altruistic brain looks a bit more on shaky grounds. Neuroscience experiments say something about the predominance of altruistic or non-selfish behaviour in the moment before our thinking kicks in. That may account for Steven's actions in the moment he hears about the 9/11 attack. But Steven did not stop there. He now faced a long drive to the location of the attack which gave him plenty of opportunity to think hard about what he is doing and why. For this period of time when we contemplate and consider the right course of action, neurosciences can't tell us much. Our reasoning is safely removed from instant brain surges. After all, to assume this separation between the impetus of the brain and our reasoning is the precondition for neuroscientific theories of human behaviour in the first place. Pfaff therefore can't have it both ways. Our reasoning must, at some point, take over.<br />
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Claiming that our brains guide us in our behaviour prior to our considered rational thought can only extent to the domain of instant behaviour. Where behaviour is considered, thoughts always trump the predominance of brain matter.<br />
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Since Pfaff does not want to accept this, he would need to tell us why the brains' altruistic preferences extend not only to the milliseconds before we make a decision but also to the hours and hours when we mull something over and consider our options (and often revise our behaviour).<br />
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Yet, that is not where the difficulties end since Pfaff wants to mould a behaviour moderating mechanism out of his theory. If we knew the brain activity that guides us (prior to rational thinking) to altruistic behaviour, perhaps we can, so he argues, subject criminals to neuroaltering procedures to strengthen their 'good' over their 'bad' behaviour? Sounds familiar?<br />
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Yes, we have been here before. Pfaff walks the path of every other scientist who believes in the ability of his own theory to change this world to the better if only we apply the theory consistently and without much consideration for our own moral compass. Imagine if we could change people's brains, we could make this a better world.<br />
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But his thinking is based on a series of fallacious assumptions. The first one is that, if only we could eliminate 'non-altruistic' behaviour we will all live happily ever after. What he fails to understand is that 'good' behaviour only exists because we can point to behaviour that isn't such. Good things happen because we know what bad things look like, and vice versa.<br />
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The second grave error he makes is to assume that 'altruistism' is something that we can just point to when we see it (unfortunately, Pfaff also uses the terms 'reciprocal' with 'altruistic' interchangeably which is problematic since not all reciprocal behaviour is altruistic). But altruism is not a fixed entity, it requires interpretation and people often profoundly disagree about what constitutes altruistic behaviour and what does not. In fact it takes a lot of thinking (cue our capacity for rational thought) to determine what is altruistic course of action in a given situation. And. ultimately, we might come to different conclusions and agree to disagree of whether or not something is altruistic. Neurosciences can't help us in this search for intersubjective truth.<br />
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There is a fundamental revelation in the Christian doctrine of original sin that reflects this issue of uncertainty. If you look beyond the narrow theological interpretations of the fall of man, one can see that it hints at an irreducable aspect of the human condition. It is the inability to agree and say with certainty what is good or bad (metaphorically also represented in the Tower of Babel and the proliferation of many languages). Neurosciences won't help us to return to a state of innocence. It is up to us, rational human beings, to argue about what is good and what is evil. No MRI scanner can help us in this quest. <br />
<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-1449381265026383742016-12-04T11:50:00.004-08:002016-12-04T11:50:42.826-08:00Tracy Emin and William Blake - from unmade minds to unmade bedsLiverpool Tate are currently running one of those 'compare and contrast' exhibitions that have a slightly didactic thrust. They managed to obtain Tracy Emin's piece <i>My Bed </i>and have surrounded it with sketches and paintings by William Blake from their archives. The connection is supposed to have something to do with the presence or absence of the artist but, the best one can say is that this connection is mainly present through its absence.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At best provocative. Tracey Emin's <i>My Bed</i> - <br />Foto: Tate Liverpool</td></tr>
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Putting the works of two artists together in an exhibition is always a risky thing to do and I am not sure Emin's work will ultimately benefit from this recent attempt to draw parallels where there are few or none. What the exhibition demonstrates most of all is the enormous explosive imagination of Blake and his breathtaking artistic inventiveness that allowed him to borrow (and shape) mysticism and philosophy even centuries later. In contrast, Emin's <i>Bed</i> looks at best 'provocative' rather than a piece of groundbreaking or revolutionary art.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michelangelo Pistoletto: <i>Venues of the Rags</i> <br />Foto: AK</td></tr>
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But then again, the curator's choice of Emin and Blake in one exhibition may have been slightly unfair to Emin given that hardly any artist could hold their own in comparison to Blake's restless mind and his artistic output. The comparison between Emin and Blake also falls down on a different matter and that is the supposed link between a piece of (largely) conceptual art and sketches/paintings. As far as conceptual art is concerned, Emin is herself not the most entertaining or the one with sufficient depth. Interestingly, as a brief walk about on the other floors of the Tate Liverpool reveals, other pieces show more affinity to Blake's philosophical musings than Emin's. Even a funny piece like Michelangelo Pistoletto's <i>Venues of the Rags</i> has more entertaining value than Emin's work. And Rebecca Horn's <i>Scratching Both Walls at Once</i> evokes feelings of haunting and dread.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reaching out. Rebecca Horn's <i>Scratching both Walls at Once</i><br />Foto: AK</td></tr>
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The comparison finally grinds to a screeching halt in a second room where Emin's prints are juxtaposed to some of Blake's. The comparison is not a kind one to Emin and cruelly demonstrate the lack of depth and artistic vacuity of her print work. The exhibition should act as a warning to potential curators: do not match up what is best kept separate.<br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-63229518588837767462016-12-04T03:27:00.001-08:002016-12-04T03:27:58.683-08:00Speenhamland and Free TradeAs the debate about free trade versus protectionism rages on, it may be useful to cast an eye back to another period in history when protectionism was en vogue.<br />
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Karl Polanyi wrote about it eloquently in his <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Transformation-Political-Economic-Origins/dp/080705643X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480850536&sr=1-1&keywords=polanyi+great+transformation" target="_blank">The Great Transformation</a></i>. The essential tension that made protectionism ultimately unworkable, he wrote in 1945, was that capitalism requires three conditions to be met to function properly: labour should find its price on the market (unhindered individual or collective negotiation of wages); capital and good can be exchanged unhindered (free trade without tariff and custom barriers); and the creation of money should be subject to an automated mechanism (an exchange rate established on the currency market or, previously, a fixed rate such as the gold standard).<br />
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To implement but one, free trade, without the other (to tether one currency to another without means of adjusting, or to deny labour to find its price in free and fair negotiations) is to set capitalism up to fail. Polanyi illustrates his argument with a detailed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system" target="_blank">analysis of the Speenhamland practice</a>, something that figures little in history books but was discussed and debated vigorously in 19th century economics. Speenhamland was essentially a system of wage subsidy, where wages would be supplemented by a form of outdoor relief by local taxpayers. In essence, Polanyi writes, it achieved two counter-productive things. First, it undermined the ability of people to negotiate their wages (individually or collectively) to accomplish a fair price for their labour. But, second, it also tied their labour to a specific place, making it impossible to move. The Speenhamland system thus created capitalism without a free and unhindered labour market.<br />
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Polanyi's example is instructive for the current debate on protectionism and free movement of people. Allowing goods, capital and services to move freely but denying the same right to people will achieve only one thing, to undermine capitalism to function properly. A fair market economy can only work smoothly if all three mechanisms of exchange (labour, goods and money) can move freely. Restrict one and you will cripple the others.<br />
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<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-6502721015275655792016-12-04T03:07:00.000-08:002016-12-04T03:07:39.062-08:00Protectionism vs. Free MarketThe election of Donald Trump has thrown up serious questions about the commitment of the future US government to free market policies. Trump has repeatedly voiced his concerns about free trade agreements such as NAFTA and has indicated that negotiating other free trade agreements is out of the question. This does not bode well for the Brexiteers who find themselves in the awkward position to have advocated leaving the largest free trade zone (the EU) with the hope of engineering new ones with Britain as the driving centre. Given the preference of current populist leaders for protectionism, Britain could easily find herself in a free trade zone of one.<br />
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With public opinion increasingly favouring protectionist policies in the US and elsewhere, it may be worth reminding us of the rationale for free trade. The prime example of tariff and customs union remains the European Union which has underpinned the free trade agreement with a contractual framework ensuring that all participating countries implement the same standards of products and environmental protection. The idea was that free trade can only work for the benefit of all if everybody has to adhere to the same level playing field, hence free trade has to be supported by the same trading and production standards. How the Brexiteers will pull off a similarly comprehensive agreement with China, Australia or the Asian Sub-continent within the next couple of years is difficult to see. Although they have been critical of the pace of negotiation by the EU with Canada on the (finally agreed) CETA free trade agreement (it took the parties 7 years in total), the reason is less a unwieldy Bruxelles bureaucracy then to buttress the sustainability of any free trade deal with a comprehensive deal of similar standards on customer and environmental protection. Free trade is not worth the name if it only extends to exchange of goods. Those goods also need to comply with the same standards to ensure producers are on the same level playing field. Otherwise competition between free trade partners won't be fair.<br />
<br />
The second issue relating to free trade concerns the movement of people. Brexiteers have been highly critical of the fact that free movement of goods and capital is linked in EU law to the free movement of people. They paint free movement of people as an anachronism in times of high geographical mobility. Where the world is on the move, countries need to regain control of their borders to steer migration.<br />
<br />
The four freedoms of movement (capital, goods, services and people) are however linked within EU law for a specific reason, one that features less in the Brexiteers argument. It is one of equity between employers and employees, between capital and labour. To grant capital the right to move wherever it wants within a free market zone yet deny people the same right establishes serious imbalances between the two forces that shape our economic life. It is a question of equity to ensure that people have the same rights as capital.<br />
<br />
The sum total of the Brexiteers case thus amounts to a muddled bag of inconsistencies. They would like to leave the largest free trade area to establish their own. They criticise the slowness of the EU's negotiating practice but fail to acknowledge the complexity of free trade agreements based on similar agreed product and protection standards which contribute to the protracted nature of these negotiation. They want more competition but trade agreements without similar standards will decrease the chances of fair competition between future trading partners. In addition, they want free movement of goods, services and capital (City of London) but deny the same right to people, therefore enshrining an imbalance in opportunities and freedoms between capital and labour. They want to boost free trade on a world wide stage at a time when the electorate in their ideologically closest ally (US) has given the strongest signal yet that protectionism is the word of the day. Britain may find itself in a world of its own, in a trade zone of one very soon if the Brexiteers' wish comes true.<br />
<br />
<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-69870413130365820412016-11-10T10:09:00.000-08:002016-11-10T10:09:28.958-08:00The pace of change ...As everyone is scratching their heads wondering how we got here (The UK, a large economic power, leaving a single market and the US, the main superpower, having a president who would like to erect walls and impose tariffs) it may be useful to remember the following words.<br />
<br />
'Nowhere has liberal philosophy failed so conspicuously as in its understanding of the problem of change. [Its] common sense attitude toward change was discarded in favor of a mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be. ... It should need no elaboration that a process of undirected change, the pace of which is deemed too fast, should be slowed down ... so as to safeguard the welfare of the community.'<br />
<br />
'The rate of progress have turned the process itself into a degenerative instead of a constructive event. For upon this rate, mainly, depended whether the dispossessed could adjust themselves to changed conditions without fatally damaging their substance, human and economic, physical and moral.' (The Great Transformation, p.37ff)<br />
<br />
Karl Polanyi wrote this in 1944. His words remind us of the destructive character of change if we do not mitigate its worst consequences on communities through governmental intervention. Whilst he wrote this about change that came in the wake of enclosures in England, it equally applies to today's transformation by immigration, globalised markets and rapid technological progress. The liberal case for unfettered change depends in large measure on tarnishing everyone who struggles with the speed of change as a reactionary, or worse a racist and xenophob. Karl Polanyi was none of that. But he did recognise that communities cannot survive unless the moral, social and economic fabric is altered gradually rather than being torn apart in the name of economic progress that only benefits a small professional elite.<br />
<br />
<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-31968620379791699952016-11-07T10:12:00.002-08:002016-11-07T10:30:09.204-08:00The agonising choiceIf sanity prevails and the pollsters are right then Americans will elect the first woman president tomorrow. By voting for Hilary Clinton, the majority of voters will reject misogyny, overt racism and dog-wistle politics, and instead give a mandate to the most competent and experienced politician who ever stood for office. And yet, they will also have elected a politician with one of the most obnoxious personalities and probably one of the most corrupt one of modern times. I do not envy American voters having to chose between Scylla and Charybdis. With Trump they would elect somebody who makes you worry about the welfare of people. With Clinton they would elect somebody who makes you worry about the welfare of American politics.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clinton's problem - a lack of honesty<br />
Copyright Washington Post</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Despite Trump's best efforts to give the election away to the Democratic candidate, the polls still indicate that the final tally in the electoral college may be close. That is quite an achievement on the side of Hillary Clinton and her team who have been up against one of the least accomplished Republican candidates, someone who failed to get the support of his own party and managed to alienate more than half of the general population with derogatory comments about women and ethnic minorities. In short, pretty much any candidate would have had decent chances against Trump and it speaks of the widely held mistrust against her, that Clinton will probably just about scrape into the highest office.<br />
<br />
So, what went wrong in an election that was her's to lose all along? There appear to be reasons that have to do with the nature and history of the candidate as well as some reasons that relate to Clinton's policies. Let's look at the latter first.<br />
<br />
The American society and economy never quite recovered from the shock of the 2008 crisis. Whilst the Obama administration showered some industries with subsidies and bail outs, it could not arrest the long term decline of manufacturing that had started in the 1990s. Whatever you think about the forces of globalisation (cheaper consumer prices in the shops; mobility of labour and capital), it left an entire stratum at the bottom of society bereft in a sea of hopelessness. Those who benefited from globalisation were largely the intellectual and professional elites in urban places. Neither Clinton nor the Democratic Party in general ever found a formula to address the concerns of those left behind.<br />
<br />
That should not surprise us. Liberals (the American left) are most comfortable with the language of universal rights, unfettered by notions of place and belonging. It is this universalist perspective that prevents them to grasp the anger amongst many Americans with illegal immigration which, incidentally, provide the large Latin American workforce cleaning the houses and mowing the lawns of the country's elite.<br />
<br />
It is this vacuum that Trump managed to fill and which, whatever the electoral outcome, politicians on both sides need to find answers to if they want to prevent a repetition in four years time of the dog-whistle politics so successfully championed by the billionaire.<br />
<br />
The second aspect of Clinton's candidacy and the deep reservations it evokes amongst Americans is personal in nature. Clinton comes with baggage, not least a philandering husband, and the thought of Bill Clinton roaming the White House to sexually target young female interns fills most ordinary people with horror. Yet, the personality problem extends beyond her husband and goes to the very core of her own character. Hilary Clinton must appear to most Americans as one of the most dishonest politicians of modern times. Lying her way through the Benghazi Committee hearings must surely be the pinnacle of a political career that was marked by deviousness, double-dealing and betrayal. Despite having deleted thousands of official emails, and thereby violated any rule in the book for government officials, her sense of entitlement to the presidency is palpable and must be grating for everyone who thinks that politicians are in office by virtue of the democratic will of the people. Her lies and distortion would be the stuff of comedy (see Saturday Night Live) if they would not have been so serious and contributed so much to the disenchantment of Americans with politics in general.<br />
<br />
In the end, it must be the most agonising choice Americans ever faced: to chose between a Republican who is unfit for the office of President and a woman who is a disgrace to her fellow Democrats. One hopes that a majority prefers the corrupt liar over the misogynist.<br />
<br />jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-24060114487159027302016-09-26T05:12:00.000-07:002016-09-26T05:13:41.778-07:00Where did it all go wrong? The Labour Party after the second coming of the Messiah<div class="Body" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 141.75pt 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 460.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">As
Labour MPs pick up the pieces after their battle with the left wing extremists
led by their leader and his enforcer John McDonnell, it may be time to take
stock and assess where to go from here. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The
(second) election of Jeremy Corbyn (to his supporters, the second coming of the
Messiah) demonstrates a deep shift in party politics. The question is whether
this transformation of the Labour Party heralds a fundamental change in the
attitudes of the wider electorate as well, signaling the long expected ‘move to
the left’ once announced by Corbyn’s predecessor Ed Milliband. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">There
can be no doubt that societies in the developed world have undergone a
significant alteration of the political radar since the economic crisis in
2008. What used to be an attitude to wealth and income inequality best
described by Tony Blair as ‘relaxed’ made way to a vibrant debate on social
justice. At the forefront of this debate is the issue of wage stagnation since
the 1990s in the US and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as Thomas Piketty argued, the growing income inequality fuelled by rising income from assets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Where
the picture veers into the strange is when we look at the responses to the
crisis by the individual parties. Centre right parties moved gradually to the
centre and tried to develop policies to counter wage stagnation, broadly
trusting in the power of the economy to lift everybody’s boat at some time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The
left of centre parties, many of which were in fact in power when the crisis
hit, showed a staggering lack of ideas. Gordon Brown’s inaction at the
moment of economic disaster was symptomatic. Tired of Brown’s dithering, his
chancellor, Alistair Darling, had to take the reigns and protect the banking
sector by bailing out some of the largest lenders. The next two years were largely wasted with inactivity by the Labour government. Not a single policy was launched by the Brown
government to counter the growing wage gap. It was as if Labour politicians who
had started their tenure in 1997 with so much gusto were frozen like rabbits caught in
the headlights before the car bumps them off the road. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Following
the 2010 election, the Conservatives continued to move into the centre with
modest welfare reforms under George Osborne, the introduction of the national
living wage and fiscal consolidation. The next five years are
generally acknowledged to have been a wasted opportunity for the Labour Party. Under Ed Milliband’s
leadership an endless number of policy reviews was conducted with very little
outcome or impact. As the next election was nearing, Labour struggled to put a
manifesto of pledges together that amounted to a coherent programme for
government. Instead it opted for an oversized tombstone inscribed with
several vacuous statements that prompted ridicule and laughter in the wider
public. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Thus,
in a sense, Jeremy Corbyn’s election to leader was actually the first proper
response of the Labour Party to the economic crisis and its related problems such as wage stagnation and income inequality. And this is where the
story assumes surreal proportions. Instead of embarking on a profound reassessment
of Labour policies and a wider debate on how to tackle social injustice under
conditions of low productivity, how to address the disappearance of low skilled jobs and the rise
of the professional classes under conditions of a fiscal straightjacket that is likely to
continue for the next decade, Labour members opted for a type of unrestrained
sloganism, a simplistic populist left wing version of Donald Trump. The most
notorious aspect of this move to populism is the striking absence of any hard thinking
about policies, the slavish adherence to abstract slogans, and a determination
not to let reality impinge on the simplistic worldview those slogans purport. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">An
important side effect of this return to the 1970s is that Corbyn’s ideas show little traction with the
working class voters he pretends to represent. As so often before, the
proletariat appears to refuse to play along with the Marxist leaders. Corbyn
acolytes appear to be mainly young middle class voters who should have little
investment in a Marxist worldview that assigns to them a diminishing political
role as the proletariat ‘gains class consciousness’. But then, as so often,
paradoxes abound in English Socialism, once led by an aristocrat, Tony Benn,
who virulently campaigned against the very educational standards he benefited
from. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Where
does that leave the political landscape in England? Labour’s move to the
extreme left may just open up some electoral space for moderate social
democrats and liberals. LibDem’s leader Tim Farron seems to sense that when he
appealed to disenchanted moderate Labour voters to join the Liberal Democrats.
It is customary in the British media to write off the LibDems but the party
still has a significant number of councillors and some parliamentary
representation (at Westminster and in Cardiff), more than other fringe parties
such as the Greens and UKIP. Councillors are usually the knights in shining
armour when it comes to trudging through the English rain to deliver leaflets
to potential voters or placing calls to the ‘pledged voters’ to go to the
polling booths. So, the LibDems are electorally in a better position than the
Greens and UKIP. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The
biggest threat to Conservative rule is however amy come from inside the Tories themselves, through a prime minister who ditches the
moderate compassionate Conservatism that served David Cameron so well in the
last 6 years. Part of the reason why Labour shifted to the extreme left was
that the Conservatives firmly occupied the centre ground with progressive
policies once popular under Labour, such as national minimum wage, welfare
reform and the academy programme. The biggest mistake Theresa May could do is to vacate this centre ground and encourage moderate Labour politicians to
formulate their own policies. Let’s hope she is a closet Cameroonian. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
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jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3603018275434744408.post-52255608358650525572016-08-29T13:14:00.001-07:002016-08-29T13:14:39.263-07:00The moral tyranny of the free marketAs the Labour Party battles out who will lead them into the next election defeat, it becomes clear that the dominant theme in the party is now one of 'nationalisation' of industries and services. Both candidates advocate taking the railways into national ownership, a call more easily made than done, as the recent<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/27/railway-nationalisation-jeremy-corbyn-virgin" target="_blank"> Observer editorial </a>argued.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxzjPw-mCjjVHC2euDpKGGd3UPpA5R-Z5DLxm5kz-nbcoapdlh0QqGABG46mt1MM1bdmXDLypcmmO0PreQlLAadhA2oijcDhieOEMuc5vVZJ099wPfCBMd6GSFAJM_AHhtWzD1SonNVoZg/s1600/ncbc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxzjPw-mCjjVHC2euDpKGGd3UPpA5R-Z5DLxm5kz-nbcoapdlh0QqGABG46mt1MM1bdmXDLypcmmO0PreQlLAadhA2oijcDhieOEMuc5vVZJ099wPfCBMd6GSFAJM_AHhtWzD1SonNVoZg/s400/ncbc.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Those were the times - Nationalisation in 1947</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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In a space best characterised as an echo-chamber, the rank and file of the Labour Party are competing for the most extremist positions, underpinned by what Hannah Arendt once called the 'emancipation from reality'.<br />
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However, the more interesting question is why leftists have such a visceral hatred for the market in the first place. Marx himself was by no means disinclined to let market forces do their work in the inevitable demise of the capitalist order. And Lenin himself used the free market in the brief New Economic Policy period to improve people's material lives following the deprivations of the Russian Civil War. So, why do socialists a la Corbyn have such as dislike for free markets?<br />
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Much of this appears to do less with where Corbyn and others want to take the country than with where they have been. Corbyn seems to cherish the old nationalised railways exactly because the image of British Railway branded carriages criss-crossing the country offers the certainties of old times. His and his supporters' desire to nationalise industries are motivated more by the past than any exciting vision of the country's future.<br />
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A second reason may however be a fundamental misunderstanding of the moral nature of the free market. When asked about the role of private providers in the NHS Corbyn reliably talks about profit in healthcare (conveniently denying the fact the GPs are running business as well which need to make a profit too). Corbyn does not seem to understand that profit is not the only, and often not the main motivator for people to set up businesses. The main reason why people become self-employed is because it gives them the opportunity to shape their own destiny and be in control of their lives.<br />
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Running a business is thus a fundamental manifestation of personal freedom. As people establish businesses they exercise a right which is tied up with personal responsibilities, such as making and keeping mutual promises and entering contracts. Running a business thus has a moral side as people operate in a contractual sphere which imposes civic obligations on them which in turn allows them to disclose their moral commitment to civil society. The recent focus on those who have tried to escape their contractual commitments (Philip Green e tutti quanti) only reinforces this point as they are the exception to the norm.<br />
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It is this moral aspect of economic activity that Corbyn and his left wing comrades refuse to acknowledge when they argue in favour of nationalising industries. Where such a policy would lead is clear for everyone with only a cursory knowledge of the sophisticated discussions amongst Marxists and Revisionists since the 1880s. Or, alternatively, if once prefers the Soviet Russian debate, one may look it up in Trotzky's critique of Stalinism. Nationalising an industry only achieves one thing. It puts the 'means of production' into the hands of a bureaucratic elite whilst removing the notion of personal responsibility for success and failure of economic activity from everyone. Where everyone owns everything, no one feels responsible, and the result is usually a steady but inevitable decline. Anyone remember British Leyland?jojohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15649969899895506614noreply@blogger.com0