A Very Public Sociologist

Top 10 Dance Tunes of 2011

2011-12-30T16:05:00.000Z

The blog maybe deader than England's chances at the European Championships next year, but in 2011 the quietude of its crypt was regularly disturbed by an array of top dance and electonica. As per tradition, here are the greatest tunes the year has brought us. May 2012 match and surpass it!

10. My House by Hercules and Love Affair

9. Graduation by Gemini

8. Promises by Nero

7. The Call by Raized by Wolves feat. Tom Smith

6. Another World (Shogun Remix) by Cerf, Mitiska and Jaren

5. Niton by Eric Prydz

4. Tears (Aurosonic Progressive Mix) by Headstrong feat. Stine Grove

3. Titanium by David Guetta feat. Sia

2. You Belong To Me by Bobina and Betsie Larkin

And number one is ...

That is all.

An Ex-Blogger, Blogs

2011-08-07T22:26:00.000+01:00

Former regulars still knocking about may be disappointed this place has been left to the tumbleweed. On the other hand, some might find the lack of blogging a big improvement.

Unfortunately, my inclination to blog sputtered out at the start of the year (see here). This isn't because I've run out of opinions. It's down to the nature of the work I now do. While I'm not going to divulge a great deal about it, it does require writing thousands and thousands of finely-crafted words every week and demands the brain be fully engaged at all times. It's certainly different from the factories and checkouts of old, when I could just switch off; or my stints in academia where I pursued my research interests and theoretical inclinations. If you want to flirt with Marx's theory of alienation, for most of the week my thoughts are disciplined by and beholden to a power outside of myself. And so I find myself caught up in an alienating process, one that has left me too knackered and frazzled to spend evenings and weekends hunched over a computer composing yet another screed. Whereas politics used to be pretty much all I did, my species-being now finds fulfillment in sleeping, the pub quiz, and collecting retro video games.

While the days of AVPS blogging are over for the time being, there are a couple of projects I am involved in - one party political, the other a great deal less so - neither of which I cannot say too much about at present. Both require this ex-blogger to take up the cudgels again, albeit elsewhere and under my real name.

This place will not be consigned to the gnawing flattery of spambots, however. I intend to use this for reposting my odds and sods from the other platforms and maybe, just maybe, play host to a couple of pieces that do not fit the other two. And music videos.

So the time for writing the blog's obituary has not arrived, and may yet prove to be some distance off.

NB Quick plug: Don't forget to check out Collective Invective, the new(ish) blog by Lawrence Shaw of the NUJ and the ex-Trot Unicorn quiz cadre.

Eurovision Preview

2011-05-08T22:45:00.000+01:00

We are less than a week away from the competition that really matters. No, I'm not talking about Stoke City vs Manchester City in the FA Cup Final but rather the intercontinental cheese fest that is Eurovision 2011!

As per the custom round these parts, this calls for a weary eye to be cast over this year's entries.

The one thing, the main thing that jumps out from this year's entrants is just how serious it has become. Dozy media bosses in Western Europe have finally woken up to the fact that East European countries win because they actually enter A-List acts with regional profiles. Take Alexej Vorobjov, Dino Merlin, and TWiiNS, for example. They are big names. It's all about the fame game and has nothing to do with block voting. Therefore this year, Western Europe has rolled out some very big guns indeed.

First up, Ireland is offering none other than X Factor irritants Jedward. Their tune, Lipstick isn't bad by their execrable standards. Though you have got to ask how their ropey vocals will stand up to the rigours of a live performance. Still, they have hokeyness on their side and should, if they get through the heats, pick up a fair amount of points from the UK audience.

Germany, having toasted their first victory in 28 years in 2010 are determined to hold on to the Eurovision crown. They're sticking with Lena who will be singing Taken By a Stranger. It's alright and the song shows of her strange mockney warble, but it isn't anywhere near as catch as last year's Satellite. But still, could her new found star power pull Germany through?

The UK has got its act together and plumped for someone that not only have us pommes de frites heard of, but have had success on the Continent too. I am of course talking about Blue and their choon, I Can. As entries go it is much better than the dross the UK usually embarrasses itself with. It sounds like a proper Blue record, not underpowered nasal Eurovision fodder. And (and!) because of European chart success, they definitely won't be doing a Jemini and disgracing our good name.

France, however, could pull off something of a coup with their entry. Sognu by Amaury Vassili is a Corsican operatic number that's actually quite good. Mindful of the People's Operatic Societies of the East under the late and unlamented Stalinist regimes, France could pull off quite a coup on the far side of the Danube. And people fed up with Eurodisco married to folky beats might give it a punt for its sheer freshness.

But by far the biggest beast of the Eurovision jungle is none other than Dana International for Israel. It doesn't matter her song, Ding Dong isn't as good as Diva, her 1998 performance was a culturally defining media moment. And with a fan base in practically every European country, by rights she should be a hot favourite.

Well, you would think so. After all, I remember thinking tATu would walk it in 2003. I have instead read the tea leaves and consulted the Oracle and believe the crown will go to either Lena or Eric Saade of Sweden. But expect very strong challenges from Ell and Nikki of Azerbaijan, Hungary's Kati Wolf, France, and, of course, our Blue.

And so, in tribute to Our Boys, here's the UK's entry:

Stoke Local Elections: Thoughts

2011-05-08T16:44:00.001+01:00

Until approximately 2:30 Friday morning, Stoke-on-Trent was famous for four things: the pottery industry, Stoke City Football Club, Robbie Williams, and the BNP. But no more. As Labour powered to a 24 seat majority, voters across the city decisively turned their backs on the far right. All five of their sitting councillors were dumped out of the chamber, their challenges elsewhere came to nought, and the unashamedly racist England First (née the White Nationalist Party) could only make up the numbers as fascist also-rans.

This doesn't mean the city can be declared a BNP-free zone, as tempting to do so is. The 3.4% city wide vote mustered by the BNP downplays the scale of their support. In the 10 wards where they fielded a candidate, they polled 2,528 votes out of 35,467 cast, or 7.12%. Despite losing every seat, having an organisation falling apart at the seams, running no real campaign to speak of, and seeing a wedge of its soft support returning to Labour, the fascists are still polling at historical highs for the far right and the local rate is many times greater than their piddling national vote share.

The problem is many of the conditions that allowed the BNP to spread like a cancer through the city's body politic still remain. Persistent unemployment, welfare dependency, poor prospects, housing shortages, and further cuts form the noxious soup from which the fascists can draw sustenance. But they won't necessarily make a comeback in four years time for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, undoubtedly having a thinly-diguised outright Tory government at the country's helm blunts the animus the city's electorate has felt toward Labour this last decade. When it was in power it is hardly surprising some of the anti-politics sentiment it fed assumed radical right wing forms at the ballot box. And already the ruling coalition of the centre right has inspired left-wing street movements, though this has not (and is, in my opinion, unlikely to) make itself felt electorally.

Secondly, Stoke-on-Trent Labour has undergone a significant sea change. The faction fight immediately prior to Tristram Hunt's selection for Stoke Central CLP cleared out a ruling clique focused on resolutionary socialism, hobby horse obsessions, and bone idleness. This has allowed a new campaigning culture to take hold committed to rebuilding the local party and labour movement. And the initial results - 12 out of 14 constituency council seats, the disposal of the BNP, strengthening relationships with the trade unions, and a growing membership - vindicates our proactive approach to politics. Provided this strategy is deepened, and there is no reason to believe it won't be, the BNP and sundry anti-politics independents will have a very difficult time countering it.

The bigger longer term challenge for Labour is tackling persistent low turn outs. While this year is not significantly worse than the usual numbers voting in local contests (as second order elections, they tend not to "matter" as much), it can be dispiriting traipsing from door to door encountering (usually, young) people who are either indifferent to, completely alienated from, or say they do not understand politics. Some readers might like to think this is the outer shell of an immature bolshevism. In fact it is symptomatic of the accumulating break down of civic/political culture that has been ongoing as neoliberalism and deindustrialisation has ravaged the land. Celebrating it as a rejection of discredited mainstream politics is completely misguided - a socialist society cannot be built with ignorance as its foundation. Labour has to go against the grain and rebuild itself from the ground up, as an organisation that has a real community presence beyond the bi-monthly news letter and occasional knock on the door.

So while what Labour has done in campaign terms this last year is impressive, it is but the first step on the long road to the city's political rejuvenation.

Now, of course, something would be amiss if I didn't take the opportunity to comment on the far left vote. Standing as 'Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts', the local Socialist Party branch stood in six seats in surely what must constitute the biggest far left challenge in Stoke-on-Trent since, well, ever. The results were less than stellar and mirrored their outcomes elsewhere, which saw three sitting councillors lose their seats. In the city, TUSC polled 486 (3.8%) out of the 12,656 votes cast in those wards. While this isn't too bad in far left terms (the standard poll a far left candidate can expect is between one and two per cent), considering the scale of cuts forced on the City Council, this is pretty poor. To put things in perspective, town clown and friend-of-the-blog Gary Elsby polled almost twice the total combined TUSC vote. Or, to put it in even starker terms, this vote is less than what the SP achieved standing only in the old Abbey Green ward in 2006. Of course, I have no doubt the success of the campaign will be weighed in terms of x number of leaflets delivered, y number of papers sold, and z number of new recruits. But if you're in the business of building a new workers' party, which the SP claims to be, you will never convince the bulk of Labour-supporting trade unionists to break away on the basis of such trifling numbers.

With Labour's grip on the most politically conscious layers of the working class growing, it's pretty obvious where socialists should be.

Image credit: Pits n Pots

Blogging Imminent

2011-05-06T19:23:00.004+01:00

It's been a busy old few months since I let blogging lapse and, of course, a great deal of nonsense has been cluttering up the interwebs in my absence. I think it's time to dust off the keyboard, flex them fingers, and begin again exposing the contents of my head to your reasoned scrutiny.

Well, not quite yet. Yesterday's hectic campaigning plus a near all-nighter at the local election count and a full day at work has left me almost as knackered as the BNP's immediate prospects in Stoke-on-Trent. Instead, have some music until a few thoughts materialise on the elections here, and the far left's totally unexpected dismal results.

Urban Decay in America and China

2011-04-19T23:17:00.001+01:00

Urban decay and regeneration is the political and social challenge right at the heart of local politics here in Stoke-on-Trent. With the major industries stripped out and a further assault on the local public sector thanks to the Tories' demented cuts, this isn't a problem that will be solved any time soon.

But spare a thought for poor Detroit. Nothing in this country comes close to the devastation deindustrialisation has wreaked on Motor City. The video below is a glimpse of a once mighty city rapidly going to seed. There is more here too.

Remarkably, China too is beginning to experience a similar problem for very different reasons. As the old industrial cities of the Rustbelt fall into rack and ruin, grossly underpopulated cities are springing up in China. Economic collapse is tearing down Detroit. An incredible property bubble is driving the construction of massive, empty metropolis. See this fascinating video:

Chris Bambery Resigns from the SWP!

2011-04-11T13:20:00.002+01:00

The SWP were always going to get me back into blogging ...

Letter to CC and SWP

10 April

Dear Charlie,

After 32 years membership of the Socialist Workers Party, during which I was National Secretary for 17 of them and editor of the Socialist Worker for five, I am resigning forthwith both from the Central Committee and the Socialist Workers Party.

The relentless factionalism in the organisation, driven by the leading group on the CC, shows no sign of ceasing and is doing enormous damage to the party. It is a cancer eating away at its heart.

At the special CC held on Friday 8 April I was told by Martin Smith I played a 'filthy' and 'disgraceful' role in the party, a 'foul role in Scotland' and despite the CC 'fighting hard' to integrate me I had 'spent the last year and a half organising against the CC.' Such accusations were repeated by Martin's supporters and were not refuted by yourself as National Secretary.

While not recognising the reality of such slanders, I pointed out if you believed them immediate action would be required against any CC member believed to be involved in such behaviour. None followed.

It is simply untenable to sit round a table or work with people who believe, and are spreading, such slanders.

These slanders are not just aimed at me but those who have worked closely with me in building the party and wider initiatives, particularly so in Scotland which I've held responsibility for since 1988 until I was asked to step aside this year to help prevent 'factionalism'. This step was criticised at a Scottish steering committee by some members who argued my role in the significant development of the Scottish districts, particularly amongst younger members, had been important. They too have been subject to similar slanders.

The party has been afflicted by factionalism for four years and grips the leading group on the CC who seem addicted to it.

It has damaged our united front work in all the campaigns - Right to Work most obviously but in all others. Stop the War is now treated with derision by leading CC members.

In recent weeks there has been no lead or drive from the CC in turning the party towards building the growing anti-cuts movement. The current article in Socialist Review and the post 26th party notes on the way forward after 26 March both have virtually nothing to say on anti cuts campaigns.

Martin Smith has attempted to blame me personally for the weaknesses of Right to Work despite the internal arguments which have held it back from its inception and which have brought it near to derailment.

While all of us wanted to see the party grow the stress on party building has increasingly meant 'intervening' from the outside rather than recruiting whilst working alongside those who are building the movement.

Since Friday's CC I have been made aware that a major factional attack was being once more orchestrated against myself.

The SWP prided itself on being free from factionalism and on its record in helping initiating and building strong and genuine united fronts. That has been damaged.

I was one of the only two remaining CC members who had worked with Tony Cliff in a leadership role. Having worked closely with him on a daily basis for many years with, I believe the CC's current approach goes against everything he stood for. His analysis of Lenin's ideas laid great emphasis on taking a firm grip on the 'key link in the chain'. Its been clear for some time that the question of austerity would dominate the political scene, yet we've failed to position ourselves at the heart of the anti-cuts movement and our influence is not what it could of been. This is not the place to go into detail about the party's recent history, but Right To Work was initiated in bizarre circumstances (I learned the news from Party Notes) and the CC as a whole has never applied systematic pressure to push the formal position through the party.

For all of my 32 years as a member I have given everything into building this party, even making serious financial sacrifices including loaning considerable sums of money during the financial crisis which has affected the party in recent years, money I am still owed.

A revolutionary party is an instrument for making a revolution. If it is blunted or broken another must be built. I maintain the firm conviction that a party rooted in working class struggle that fights constantly for Marxist ideas whilst building unity on the basis of action is essential for the battle for socialism. For that reason, to take this road is not an easy decision, but it is one I have been forced to take.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Bambery

Ladytron - Ace of Hz

2011-04-10T21:14:00.002+01:00

Superb

The Tiësto Remix is worth a listen too.

Crank It Up, Comrades

2011-04-04T13:37:00.000+01:00

She Wrote the Book

2011-03-14T20:41:00.002Z

Ms Beth Ditto's delightful ditty, no?

On Not Blogging

2011-02-27T14:29:00.003Z

It's been a fortnight since I last sat down in front of my computer and wrote something for this here blog. And, if I'm honest, I don't know when my next foray into topical commentary is going to be. For three and a bit years I have blogged continuously. On days I didn't write a post I was invariably thinking about doing one. Throughout that time it was as if an opinionated coal was burning in the centre of my brain, and that coal was the fuel for hundreds of posts about nearly every topic under the sun. And now, I'm afraid to say, I think it's gone out.

Instead of feeling a desire to mouth off I just want to spend some of my free time reading books and following what other bloggers have to say. In other words, I have rediscovered the pleasures of not blogging. So, I think it's time for an extended break similar to the one I had in 2007. I could finally get round to using my time for papers I've been meaning to write but failing to deliver for a long time. I might also start penning that novel.

But I can't see myself staying away forever. Accusations of selling out, of orientating to 'useless layers', of being a stooge for the Labour Party's regional office, all this exercises a pull no one could resist indefinitely. So I'm going to retire to my sofa with a cuppa and a selection of other bourgeois comforts for a wee while knowing I'll be back for another stint.

See you in the next blog post, whenever that will be.

Slowing Down

2011-02-12T16:55:00.004Z

Unfortunately I'm going to have to slow down my rate of posting for the foreseeable future. I've been working since mid-November and after increasing my hours I am finding it very difficult to summon the time and motivation to keep abreast of everything that's going on and come up with something half-decent to write. Now I'm moving into a period where my political and trade union activity will be ramping up I can't justify spending most nights churning out my bits 'n' bobs.

But for those who think I've betrayed my class by joining Labour, or imagine I spend my time plotting the return of the elected mayoral system in Stoke-on-Trent, I'm sorry to say I ain't giving up completely. As the blog downshifts into a more sedate pace of life hopefully I can take my time and offer up smarter, better, and deeper posts. There is, for instance, still the series on Gramsci to polish off - a series that has never lent itself well to knocking out something in 90 minutes. And there are plenty of debates about socialist strategy still to be had, theoretical issues to be addressed, historical developments to be commented on, and a constantly mutating popular culture to be critiqued.

I may not be able to respond to recently broken stories or whatever crap in the Daily Mail has outraged the Twitterati that morning, but with a dash of luck and a bit of effort I'll be able to weave some Hegelian magic and manage the tricky passage from quantity to quality.

"Better fewer, but better", one of the Old Beards once said. Fewer? Yes. But better? We shall see.

Victory!

2011-02-11T20:30:00.006Z

Image Source

Labour's Policy Review

2011-02-08T20:04:00.000Z

As readers will doubtless be aware, Labour has instigated a two year root and branch review of party democracy and policy. This hasn't gone down well with everyone as there's a general unease that Labour have little to say while the Tories and LibDems launch the most vicious attack on working class people since the 1980s. Nevertheless the policy review offers an opportunity for the party as a whole to reflect on 13 years of government and, more importantly for the left, allows us to agitate for the kind of party and politics we need. The 'fresh ideas' website (okay, not the best of names) is available here.

As part of the policy process around 50 members of North Staffordshire CLPs met at the Unity building in Hanley a week last Saturday to kick it off locally. In an interesting departure from the labour movement practices I'm most familiar with, there was a top table but it didn't dominate the afternoon's discussion.

After a brief introduction by West Midlands MEP Michael Cashman, Stoke South MP Rob Flello provided us a bit of context. He said the current political situation was marked mainly by anger toward the "too fast, too deep" cuts. It also seemed as if the Tories were becoming emboldened by each cuts announcement, driving them to make ever more outrageous and damaging proposals. But because of the callous and devastating nature of the attacks "our people" face the Labour party does not have the luxury of time. They cannot afford to have the party out of power for a generation, therefore we need to learn the lessons of 13 years of government now to prepare us for victory at the next election.

To this end every member of the shadow cabinet is heading up a section of the policy review. The party as a whole needs to hear members ideas on how to grow the economy and strengthen society, and how more power can be devolved into the hands of the people themselves. This extended dialogue with and between members has to examine previous mistakes. In Rob's opinion, Labour were wrong to tilt the economy in finance's direction. It was also wrong to appear overly technocratic and push through policies that struck out people's basic senses of self security. Labour must recognise people were working harder than ever but had little extra to show for it. And the party was too blasé about people's alienation from the policy making process and politics generally. That said, there were successes too - but these are now in the Coalition's firing line. If the Tories are successful in carrying through their programme, the next Labour government will inherit a weaker society, a low growth economy, and a divided country.

After Rob's talk, we split into breakout sessions. We were all issued with copies of the review booklet, which formed the basis of the subsequent discussion (it is hoped members will fill it out with their policy preferences, suggestions, ideas etc.). Our table spent the next hour or so discussing the economy, communities and party structure.

On the economy, the overall theme was on the need to provide an alternative to Tory economic strategy (in as far as it exists - it appears little more than cutting and hoping for the best). Nation-wide issues got a good airing - opposition to privatisation, media support for cuts, the lessons of the 1930s, strategies for 're-balancing' the economy, and the promotion of advanced manufacturing and "new industries". Locally, we looked at how Tory-run Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council had frittered away funding surpluses and reserves on council tax freezes, the lessons of pottery firms who who didn't outsource their manufacturing but had stuck it out in Stoke-on-Trent with some degree of success, and the level of local business rates.

On communities there was a consensus around giving greater powers to local authorities, a need for them to access the sorts of expertise available to government, time to build up their own stores of knowledge (over 25 years of continuous attacks on local government have seen a stripping out of specialist knowledge and an increasing dependency on costly consultancies), and strike a better relationship between local and parliamentary representatives.

In the last section on party structures, we visited the much-mooted Movement for Change (the David Miiband/Jon Cruddas brainchild aiming to rebuild Labour as a community-based organisation), the need to stop treating the unions as a piggybank, ways of promoting trade unionism, creating and atmosphere and implementing a strategy for recruiting more union activists to the party,and generally taking them more seriously as a source of policy generation. They should not be locked under the stairs like an embarrassing relative.

The tables then fed back into general contributions from the floor. Issues that came up were the role of trade unions, the hidden costs of the cuts, the assault on the NHS, the leadership's track record of distrusting local government, abolishing Trident, the need for a strong party identity, efforts to improve communication within the party, and a 'new narrative' with radicalism and idealism at its heart.

Returning to the top table, Rob Flello reiterated some of his earlier points and spoke of areas where Labour had delivered locally - the first new hospital since the 19th century, Surestart centres, more police, and a regeneration process finally beginning to bear fruit. He also added that, in response to some criticisms made of the LibDems, Nick Clegg was being used as the handy human shield for Tory policies. Labour should not fall for the strategy concocted by Number 10 and concentrate its critical fire on the main enemy.

Tristram Hunt (who has subsequently been appointed a parliamentary private secretary with special responsibility for the policy review) said our starting point has to be the loss last May. He said Labour has to take the South East so it can deliver in its heartlands. But that doesn't mean we should eschew creativity or radical ideas. While we got things wrong Labour needs to be forward thinking and realise the battlefield of 2015 - assuming the Coalition lasts - will be different from the one we're fighting on now. The policy review is our chance to be creative and forge a new vision for Labour.

Wrapping up, Michael Cashman added that even though Labour lost in 2010, the party as a whole didn't feel defeated. Far from it, if anything the defeat and the Coalition government had invigorated the membership.

Of course, there will be comrades reading this who believe the policy review won't change a thing. And after 16 years of New Labour authoritarianism, who can blame them for thinking this way? But cynicism is no substitute for analysis, and I think there are two reasons for cautious optimism.

Firstly, if members take it up in large numbers the upwelling of ideas from below cannot be ignored - especially as Ed Miliband's position in the party isn't entirely secure. The leadership have therefore created an opening through which they can be pressured. It would be completely daft for the left not to take this up. And second, the exercise should not purely be seen in terms of getting better policies in the next manifesto. To mangle Bernstein, the process is everything, the end nothing. The review is an opportunity for party members to talk and debate among themselves. It gives us an opportunity to examine not just the lessons of the New Labour era but critically reflect on the history of Labourism as a whole. In the parlance of Leninist politics, Labour has committed itself to becoming a 'cadre school' for members and activists. And with a growing mass membership of a clear social democratic colouration, socialists need to be fully part of the process.

New Left Blogs

2011-02-06T15:20:00.002Z

Here are the clutch of new left blogs that have crossed my desk this month. Enjoy!

1. .Zeitgizzed (Australia - Unaligned)
2. Clare Short (Unaligned)
3. Cllr Steve Reed (Labour)
4. Clydebank Trades Union Council (TUC)
5. Collective Resistance (Unaligned) (Twitter)
6. Dr Matthew Ashton's Politics Blog (Unaligned) (Twitter)
7. Exposing the EDL (Unaligned/Anti-Fascist) (Twitter)
8. Glasgow Against Education Cuts (Unaligned/Anti-Cuts)
9. Latent Existence (Unaligned)
10. Little Miss Wilde's World (Unaligned) (Twitter)
11. Network X (Unaligned/Anarchist)
12. Passing Nightmare (Unaligned) (Twitter)
13. People Before Profit Mid-Ulster (Ireland - People Before Profit) (Twitter)
14. Radical Dandy (Unaligned/Anti-Cuts) (Twitter)
15. Shabogan Graffiti (Unaligned) (Twitter)
16. Small Nation (Unaligned)
17. Socialist Doctor (Unaligned) (Twitter)
18. Student Theory (Unaligned)
19. The Opinionated Northerner (Labour) (Twitter)
20. The Radical Left (Unaligned)
21. Thought Things (Unaligned) (Twitter)
22. To Future Humans (Unaligned)
23. Tunisia Scenario (Tunisia - Unaligned)
24. What Would Clement Do? (Labour)
25. WilliamBowles.info (Unaligned/Anti-Imperialist)

That's your lot for January/February. If you know of any new blogs a year or less old and haven't been featured before, drop me a line via email, the comments or on Twitter. The new blog round up is posted on the first Sunday of every month.

Go See This Play

2011-02-06T14:07:00.000Z

Nottingham. Home of Rock City, Robin Hood, and The Pink Windmill Show. And now a subject of a play by local boy and all-round good egg, Daniel Hoffman-Gill. Our Style is Legendary is about growing up in the grim surroundings of 1980s Nottingham - a place that made the contemporary Stoke-on-Trent look like boom town Beijing. Maybe. More details are available on the dedicated blog, or simply scroll down to view the flyer.

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt

2011-02-06T13:27:00.004Z

The statement below was first posted on Socialist Unity by johng here. The Revolutionary Socialists are a current unaligned with any international tendency but are influenced by and have friendly relations with the SWP's International Socialist Tendency. For an overview of how they have related to the thorny issue of the Muslim Brotherhood, see here. And John Rees of Counterfire has recently returned from Tahrir Square in Cairo - you can view his talk here.

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialists Egypt:

Glory to the martyrs! Victory to the revolution!

What is happening today is the largest popular revolution in the history of our country and of the entire Arab world. The sacrifice of our martyrs has built our revolution and we have broken through all the barriers of fear. We will not back down until the criminal ‘leaders’ and their criminal system is destroyed.

Call to Egyptian workers. Statement from the Revolutionary Socialists, Egypt:

The demonstrations and protests have played a key role in igniting and continuing our revolution. Now we need the workers. They can seal the fate of the regime. Not only by participating in the demonstrations, but by organising a general strike in all the vital industries and large corporations.

The regime can afford to wait out the sit-ins and demonstrations for days and weeks, but it cannot last beyond a few hours if workers use strikes as a weapon. Strike on the railways, on public transport, the airports and large industrial companies! Egyptian Workers! On behalf of the rebellious youth, and on behalf of the blood of our martyrs, join the ranks of the revolution, use your power and victory will be ours!

Form revolutionary councils urgently.

This revolution has surpassed our greatest expectations. Nobody expected to see these numbers. Nobody expected that Egyptians would be this brave in the face of the police. Nobody can say that we did not force the dictator to retreat. Nobody can say that a transformation did not happen in Middan el Tahrir.

What we need right now is to push for the socio-economic demands as part of our demands, so that the person sitting in his home knows that we fighting for their right. We need to organize ourselves into popular committees which elects its higher councils democratically, and from below. These councils must form a higher council which includes delegates of all the tendencies. We must elect a higher council of people who represent us, and in whom we trust. We call for the formation of popular councils in Middan Tahrir, and in all the cities of Egypt.

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialists, Egypt, on the role of the army:

Everyone asks: Is the Army with the people or against them?
The army is not a single block. The interests of soldiers and junior officers are the same as the interests of the masses. But the senior officers are Mubarak’s men, chosen carefully to protect his regime of corruption, wealth and tyranny. It is an integral part of the system.

This army is no longer the people’s army. This army is not the one which defeated the Zionist enemy in October 73. This army is closely associated with America and Israel. Its role is to protect Israel, not the people. Yes we want to win the soldiers of the revolution. But we must not be fooled by slogans that ‘the army is on our side’. The army will either suppress the demonstrations directly, or by restructuring the police to play this role.

Daily Mail Caught Distorting MPs' Expenses

2011-02-05T11:35:00.002Z

If you dipped into the pages of The Daily Mail yesterday, you might have caught this story about MPs' expenses. As you might expect they've all got their noses in the trough again, according to the anonymous reporter who threw the piece together. Despite being on a hefty salary, we're told Stoke North MP Joan Walley claimed £4.95 for a map of the constituency she's been representing for 24 years. Sheryll Murray had the nerve to claim for 20p parking costs outside a surgery. And, most relevant to my interests, my local MP - Tristram Hunt - claimed 4p for 'travel within the constituency'.

Read that again. 4p. Four pence. 4% of one pound. Claimed by someone on £65,738/year.

It's an outrage!

Now, I wouldn't believe The Mail if it told me I was on fire, so I checked the story out for myself. And what a surprise. At best you could describe the 4p claim a deliberate distortion. At worst, it's an outright lie.

The 4p was part of a *breakdown* of mileage claimed by a member of staff from the Stoke Central constituency office. It works like this. If a meeting has been arranged with someone around the corner before a surgery at the other end of the constituency, instead of claiming for the total mileage of the trip the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority rules state this should be treated as two separate journeys. This is exactly what happened here. In fact, I believe the total claim was something in the region of 20-odd quid.

So there you have it. The Daily Mail have massively distorted a non-story in a rather desperate attempt to cash in on anti-politics cynicism. Seeing the 4p bit of their feature is complete bollocks, what's the betting the rest of it is little more than a colourful interpretation of the facts?

PR Against AV

2011-02-04T20:54:00.000Z

The Labour No2AV campaign launched today and thought I'd reproduce the below piece from their site while I muck around writing another blog post.

Socialism is, among other things, about organising society along democratic lines. In the here and now that means favouring more democratic systems of governance so the state becomes more amenable to the pressures and aspirations stemming from below. This is the reason why I favour the proportional representation generally and the single transferable vote in particular (see here). The first pass the post system we have now has the distinction of having only one voting system worse than it from this standpoint. And that is the system we're having a referendum on on May 5th.

What about Proportional Representation

It is important to remember this referendum is about the Alternative Vote system. NO to AV does not take an official position on proportional representation.

Some of our supporters back PR – such as Labour MP Margaret Hodge – while others prefer the current system.

There are strong principled arguments for and against PR, and it’s a debate worth having. The Alternative Vote, however, is a step backward rather than a step forward.

AV combines the weaknesses of both systems; it is less proportional than First Past the Post, and AV ensures that the BNP will gain more votes and more legitimacy, while not giving any help to small parties like the Green Party.

Before it became the principal financial and logistical backer of the Yes to AV campaign, the Electoral Reform Society (who were previously called the Proportional Representational Society) said of AV:

"AV is thus not a proportional system, and can in fact be more disproportional than FPTP... It does very little to improve the voice of traditionally under-represented groups in parliament, strengthening the dominance of the 'central' viewpoint."

This is the wrong referendum at the wrong time, and risks saddling the UK with a system that even the supporters of the Yes2AV Campaign don't want.

Nick Clegg has acknowledged that there won't be another change in the voting system in the foreseeable future, saying:

"you can't constantly ask people. Referendums have a fairly definitive feel to them...I wouldn't be expecting another one."

Cooperative Councils?

2011-02-02T20:19:00.001Z

It's not very often this blog features material from Progress, but the post reproduced below from last Friday is very interesting. As readers may or may not be aware, Lambeth Council is embarking on an experiment to become Britain's first 'cooperative council'. It certainly sounds worthy but whether such an ambitious plan like this can be delivered in the context of £37m worth of cuts and an increasingly gloomy economic situation remains to be seen. In other words, if Lambeth communities are going to suffer in terms of fewer local government jobs and the decline of businesses that depend on them, you've got to question where the resources are going to come from to fund some of these mutualised schemes.

Nevertheless while socialists should approach the experiment with a critical eye, no doubt many valuable lessons are about to be learned on creating more participatory and democratic forms of local governance. 'Lambeth Launches the Cooperative Council' is by Council Leader Steve Reed.

NB: Readers interested in a critical Marxist appreciation of cooperatives would do well to consult Arthur Bough's blog posts on the subject.

...

Today Lambeth council launches plans that detail how we will become Britain's first cooperative council. So why are we doing it, what difference will people see, and are there wider lessons for Labour politics?

Public services in Britain have reached a tipping point. They are under attack from a rightwing government that wants to marketise services using, where possible, the language of empowerment to mask what they are up to. But public services are also under threat from falling public confidence which, if it is not addressed, will create the space the right needs to implement large-scale privatisation. Falling confidence in services as different as the health service and the police, despite massive investment in recent years, arises from a sense of disempowerment and remoteness people feel in the face of top-down public services that owe their shape to the Beveridge-inspired postwar settlement. To give public services a sustainable future we need to combat that loss of confidence by handing more power to individuals and communities as part of a rebalanced settlement between the citizen and the state. In handing more power to the people we can expect public services to change dramatically as they shift to meet people's real needs.

That's the theory and the purpose, and we explored it in detail through Lambeth's Cooperative Council Commission. The Commission consulted with over 3,000 Lambeth residents and heard from over 50 organisations nationally that have experience in delivering services in ways that put the users rather than the providers in control. But people want to know what difference they will see, so here is some of what we plan to do.

Youth services will be run by the community using a model called ‘community-led commissioning'. That involves the council supporting communities to decide what kind of youth services will best meet their needs, then helping them buy the appropriate services from whoever is best able to provide them. Sometimes that will mean community involvement in delivering the services - such as running groups or activities. Sometimes the services will be delivered by qualified professionals or voluntary organisations, depending on the needs the community identifies.

Adults receiving care services will have more control of their own budgets, and some buildings - such as Lambeth's Disability Resource Centre - will be transferred to mutual ownership including service users. That means people who are supported by services including home helps, respite care, day centres or support for disabled people to live independently at home, will decide what help they need and where they get it from using their own personalised care budget. They will be offered professional guidance to take their decisions, but the key is that the people using the services will be in control of their own lives instead of finding themselves under the control of others.

Lambeth will encourage local schools to become cooperative trusts, forming strong bonds with the local community and other schools in the area. This gives the local community a bigger say over how the school is run, and it creates communities of schools that can share or pool resources so children at each school benefit.

We are exploring putting all our libraries into a trust owned and run by the local community. This model works well in the borough of Queens, New York, where the foundation library attracts outside investment and provides services that better meet the needs of local people. Any libraries that have to close because of government funding cuts will be offered to the community as a standalone mutual or trust.

There are a range of different models for cooperative housing, which makes up a tiny fraction of the housing market in the UK compared with other countries including Germany, Sweden and Canada. The options range from tenant-managed estates where ownership remains with the council, through to shared equity models where the housing is owned by a company in which every resident owns a share. This model allows mixed-income communities to develop where people on lower incomes can own shares in their own home without running the risk of defaulting on a mortgage if their income suddenly collapses as, in that case, they can simply reduce their monthly equity purchase rather than lose their home. Lambeth's estates will be able to choose which housing model best suits them.

Local communities will be encouraged to develop neighbourhood micro-plans and to help take decisions over how their share of the council's overall budget is spent in their area. The council will make sure that all parts of local communities are listened to so the plan isn't run in the interests of only one part of the community.

Residents will be encouraged to take part in shaping or running local services through a Lambeth Cooperative Incentive Scheme. This will take the form of credits that people can use for discounts in local shops, for local leisure or sports facilities, or as a council-tax discount. To make sure the money is spent locally, any credits will be awarded in a new local electronic currency, building on the success of the Brixton Pound that already operates in the borough and is the UK's only local currency in an urban area.

What's clear from this small sample of services is that the model operates quite differently in different services but the principles of empowerment and cooperation remain the same. Local communities and the people who use services will be in the driving seat instead of the people who deliver those services. In this way services will become more accountable to local people, and more responsive to local need. By allowing people to exercise more choice we expect both better services and higher levels of confidence in those services. This transformation offers a radical new vision of what Labour local government can become by supporting the development of cooperative communities.

There are similarities with some of the rhetoric of the ‘big society'. That is inevitable because the Tories are deliberately stealing Labour's language to mask their cuts agenda. It is imperative that Labour reclaims that language and shows what empowerment really means. A quick look at Tory councils like Barnet or Suffolk shows that while they talk about empowerment all they're really doing is privatising services and dumping unprofitable services on communities ill-equipped to manage them. The Tories want to roll back the state, while Labour's task is to change the role of the state by putting it under the control of local people. That is true empowerment. It offers us the chance to rebuild confidence in public services while making a reality of that long-held rallying cry of progressive politics: power to the people.

Egypt: Revolution, Democracy, and Stability

2011-02-01T16:22:00.000Z

As I write hundreds of thousands of people have poured into Tahrir Square in Cairo to demand the resignation of the increasingly beleaguered and pathetic-looking Hosni Mubarak. When a people have lost their fear there are few things more wretched than a tyrant clinging on to power while it crumbles away beneath his grip. With over a million out on the streets across Egypt and a pledge by the army not to intervene, surely even Mubarak has to realise the writing's on the wall. Things just cannot carry on as they are. With mass mobilisations, an army refusing to follow presidential orders, a general strike crippling the country, and international calls for him to step down in the name of stability, something has got to give. If the army aren't backing the regime the only social forces with a direct interest in the dictatorship - big business, police (both overt and secret) and other dependents of the security apparatus - appear to lack the weight necessary to drown the uprisings in blood.

Unsurprisingly there has been some talk of what comes next. Assuming Mubarak and his regime are swept away by the end of the week (protesters have given him until Friday to leave power), who will fill the vacuum? While there are reports of the formation of neighbourhood committees, a development ironically spurred on by the random violence of National Democratic Party thugs, we are not in a situation of dual power. Yet. As the movement continues to grow and the labour movement revives off the back of strike action, these community defence organisations could put on more flesh as they organise to meet food shortages and make up for the collapse of local governance. Clearly for the revolution to assume a socialist colouration leftists on the ground will likely be doing everything they can to participate in them and encourage their development further.

All this represents a massive headache for the US and the main European powers. They neither want Egypt to fall to the Muslim Brotherhood in a latter day repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution (which doesn't look all that likely anyway given the character of the protests so far and a certain reluctance by the Brothers to get stuck into recent social struggles). Nor a prolongation of the stand off between the Mubarak regime and the people. The more it carries on, the greater the likelihood of civil war and/or the return of the spectre manifesting itself in embryo in the neighbourhood committees.

Egypt is, of course, home of the strategically crucial Suez Canal. An Egypt opposed to Western interests, be it Islamist, nationalist or, (dare we say it?) socialist, would represent a major defeat of their geopolitical strategy as it would restrict access to Middle Eastern oil and the markets of India, China, and South East Asia. I imagine there's been a few sleepless nights at the US State Department.

Amid much handwringing and the semi-ritualised "Egypt's government is a matter for the Egyptian people" (an oft-quoted principle that got stuck down the memory hole in the lead up to the Iraq war), Hillary Clinton and Alistair Burt have been singing from the same hymn sheet. They of course "deplore" the violence and call for the return of stability.

It's stability that's the key here. Political revolutions against corrupt and authoritarian regimes are not a rare occurrence in the era of declining American hegemony. They come with the geopolitical territory. Provided they're relatively quick and don't challenge US and Western interests, the State Department has learned to live with them (how different it was before the collapse of the USSR). But the longer the Egyptian uprising goes on, the more worried the US will be. This is why it is very keen to encourage an "orderly transition" from the ancien regime to some form of democratic governance.

One of the key lessons the global ruling class have learned is liberal democracy remains the best and most stable forms of government for the continued rule of capital. Over a century's experience in its heartlands has demonstrated its effectiveness incorporating and blunting radical challenges to the prevailing order. In Western Europe and North America liberal democracy in the post-war period has more or less successfully contained religious, regional, racial, and class contradictions. Dictatorships on the other hand are very brittle. They're good for a short sharp fix, like seeing off mass communist parties or other undesirables, but ultimately instability will return to haunt them. This maybe a reality the US has learned to live with, but it is also one they'd rather do without. Hence Western powers' warm words about democracy and human rights aren't just ideological window dressing for resource and market grabs in the developing world. They're also about propagating the political, institutional, and cultural underpinnings that can sustain the rule of capital over the long term.

With this in mind, it's perhaps a little bit more than coincidence that a lot of media attention has been showered on Mohamed ElBaradei (this report is typical of the coverage). Of all the leaders of the domestic opposition ElBaradei is a known quantity to North American and European foreign ministries. As a former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and recipient of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, he is a safe pair of hands. And his intransigence in the face of the US case for Iraqi WMD is a boon for those who wish him to oversee a transitional government. Despite making his career outside Egypt, that episode demonstrates he's no American puppet.

ElBaradei however appears to have few supporters in Egypt - there is no social movement as such with which his name is associated. The 'National Association for Change' of which he is head has a minimum programme for democratic change but is itself an umbrella organisation set up by various opposition leaders and civil society actors. He is therefore a figurehead nominated by social movement organisations and parties rather than a leader in his own right. That said this could be his strength in any post-Mubarak carve-up. Without a firm base of his own he could be seen as a neutral figure above existing and emerging political factions. Ahead of presidential elections his person is the perfect stop gap acceptable to Islamists, liberals, and sections of the left.

While the importance of ElBaradei to a slow transition scenario (outlined here) is obvious, I very much doubt the revolution will accept nothing less than Mubarak's resignation with immediate effect followed by the formation of a provisional government. That outcome, which seems most likely at the moment, could still see the West-friendly ElBaradei play the role outlined above.

After Egypt the question is whether revolution will spread. Given the pivotal cultural and economic position Egypt occupies in the Arab world it's hard to see how it cannot. North Africa and the Middle East are almost exclusively ruled by dictators and self-styled monarchs, and frustration and anger from below is in anything but short supply. Some have taken action to head revolution off at the pass. Others are sitting and waiting to see if the fire catches their countries. It will also be interesting to see if it spreads northwards into a European Union being forced fed a diet of unnecessary and ideological cuts. This isn't to say the likes of Ireland, Greece and Britain are staring revolution in the face. But I would be very surprised if numbers taking to the EU's streets aren't swelled by hundreds of thousands inspired and encouraged by the scenes from Suez, Alexandria, and Cairo.

Blue for Eurovision

2011-01-31T13:39:00.001Z

Longtime readers know this blog is one of the few standard bearers for Eurovision in the British left. In my self-declared role as its champion in our ghetto I am happy to report that, for once, the UK is in danger of entering a contender. The BBC have shown a bit of Eurovision nous and has selected an act those pesky continentals will have heard of, and that act is the recently-reformed Blue.

It seems the lessons have been learned from last year's debacle. Contrary to popular myth, the UK has performed dismally in recent years not because of the Iraq War or the Putin/Gazprom-orchestrated block vote. The explanation for our dismal scoring is more mundane: one, our songs have been crap; and two, they've been fronted by complete nobodies.

Blue aren't to my tastes, but they are known to the European record-buying public. They have scored number ones in Italy and the Netherlands, and top ten hits in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland. Will this be enough to see off the regional star power of other entries? We shall see.

Sadly, Blue's song, I Can, isn't available anywhere at the moment. So allow me to play out with this wonderful ditty from last year's contest. This choice had absolutely nothing to do with Paula Seling.

Unison Socialist Party Members Vindicated

2011-01-29T11:12:00.000Z

The press statement below from the Socialist Party is very good news. There is a long and sorry tradition of bureaucratic proscriptions and bans being used against "undesirables" in our movement. The court judgement against Unison could mean their day is done:

At a time when 150,000 council workers are facing redundancy and another 100,000 have been told they will be sacked if they don’t accept cuts in their pay and conditions UNISON members would rightly expect that every minute and every penny of union resources be spent on fighting the cuts.

However, UNISON’s leadership have spent three years and tens of thousands of pounds witch-hunting some of its most effective fighters. Today an Employment Tribunal has ruled that campaign of bullying to be unlawful. All of the trumped up charges against the four UNISON activists and Socialist Party members – Glenn Kelly, Brian Debus, Onay Kasab and Suzanne Muna – were thrown out. UNISON is now required to reinstate all four to their positions in the union including Glenn Kelly being put back on the National Executive of the union.

UNISON members will be lobbying the National Executive on 8 February to demand that this is immediately carried out.

Egypt's Day of Rage

2011-01-28T20:33:00.000Z

You wait years for a revolution, and then two turn up at once. With the revolutionary process at an earlier stage than Tunisia, Egypt nevertheless stands on the brink.

At the time of writing Hosni Mubarak's regime is looking very shaky indeed. The excellent coverage on Al Jazeera this evening has broadcast images of the National Democratic Party's Cairo headquarters being looted and then torched without any kind of intervention from the security forces (simultaneously, protesters are apparently protecting the the priceless artifacts housed in the Egyptian Museum, making attempts by the BBC to portray them as "a mob" look lazy and unsustainable). Evening news broadcasts on terrestrial channels have shown footage of protesters and riot police squaring up and fighting running battles earlier in the day. But now, Al Jazeera is saying the police have left the streets and been replaced by the army. Again, like Tunisia, the army were welcomed by some sections of the uprising as a power that will protect them from the regime. On the other hand, as troops approach strategic infrastructure (TV and radio stations, security apparatus ministries) the protesters are giving the military's an increasingly frosty reception.

Again, as with Tunisia the army can play a Bonapartist role in the Marxist sense of the term. According to Ibrahim Arafat of Qatar University, the army and the rest of the security apparatus are institutionally separated in the Tunisian and Egyptian dictatorships. Because the military played no overt role in the day-to-day repression of the two regimes it could appear as an entity standing above and apart from the rest of society, in a manner analogous to Britain's constitutional monarchy's relationship to mainstream politics. Therefore it can pose as the repository of all manner of hopes and illusions - as guarantors of the constitution, as protecters of the nation, and so on. This institutional separation is the basis of an ideological cloak that hides the fact the military top brass are as much a part of the ancien regime as Ben Ali's and Mubarak's secret police henchmen.

Nevertheless the army is not immune from the forces demolishing the regime's foundations. The army is overwhelmingly working class in composition. The military brass value their own necks. This underlines the main question: which direction will the army swing? Will they dampen down the protests and obey the president's increasingly desperate decrees, or refuse to carry out his orders? And if so, what role will it go onto play in a post-Mubarak society?

With any luck, Hosni Mubarak will follow the footsteps of his son and hightail it out on a plane. I wouldn't be surprised if an underling's already been on the phone to the retirement home for washed-up despots in Saudi Arabia. In the mean time not only will other North African and Middle Eastern dictatorships and monarchies be biting their fingernails, the USA itself will be concerned for its strategic interests. Along with Israel and Saudi Arabia, Egypt is the third key US regional ally. The protesters are fully aware the self-proclaimed champion of democracy and universal human rights have been training and supplying the security apparatus for many years. And US planners know one mistaken step could see their carefully-crafted geopolitical strategy unravel as quickly as Mubarak's legitimacy.

NB: Excerpts of a translated Egyptian protest manual are available here, and follow the uprising's Twitter topic here.

Tommy Sheridan Sentenced To Three Years

2011-01-26T11:50:00.002Z

Karen Greensheild, a reporter with STV News at Tommy Sheridan's sentencing this morning tweeted "Scent of blood, anticipation in the air, wonder if this is what it's like at a Public Hanging?" How could the atmosphere be otherwise? Since being found guilty of perjury charges on December 23rd the presiding judge Lord Bracadale told Tommy he could expect a prison sentence.

In a 45 minute long mitigation speech to the judge, Tommy refused to admit his guilt, but talked about his low risk of reoffending, the length of perjury sentences, his and Gail Sheridan's health, and his caring responsibilities toward his Dad. Sentencing, Lord Bracadale said he thought Tommy was a "hard-working and effective politician" but that he "brought the walls of the temple crashing down on your own head", before imprisoning Tommy for three years. What a shame. What a waste.

No doubt this sentence will lead to another round of bilious infighting and denunciation. There will be more than a few people shopping around the far left for an organisation that suits them who stumble across what passes for the Sheridan "debate" and decide to take their time and effort elsewhere. And I can't blame them.

The whole process of the trial from the notorious SSP executive meeting on a November evening in 2004 to its denoument today has exposed an ugliness at the heart of the far left, an ugliness you wouldn't expect to find not in a movement built on solidarity and socialist values. Tommy's expectation that his comrades should lie for him so he could trouser £200k from the News of the World was contemptible, as were the shrill attacks on those who refused to risk perjury charges and told the truth in court. But equally appalling were the pre-and-post defamation trial actions by those SSP members who ensured Tommy's confession was leaked to the press, went out their way to collaborate with the police, and of course, have done nothing to disavow the actions of George McNeilage - the former best man who taped his admissions.

But what I find most disturbing is the frenzied attacks by those who reside in England and have absolutely no connection to the trial whatsoever. This hatred - for that is what it is - by members of nominally Trotskyist outfits closely resembles what you'd expect from a cult. When Scientologists are criticised, no one is surprised they intimidate and denounce opponents. That is, after all, what cults are all about. But for socialists to ape this behaviour? It speaks volumes of the fundamentally unhealthy organisational practices of self-described Leninist groups. Democratic centralism - a principle of organisation Lenin thought appropriate to mass parties, not tiny groups of a couple of thousand - tends not to be exercised around action, but rather is a principle for regulating the boundaries of permissible thought. Freedom of discussion becomes circumscribed discussion. Unity in action is, in practice, unity behind the positions formulated by the opaque and unaccountable executive/central committee. This is no recipe for generating critically minded working class politicians and Marxist cadre. But it does create a small following happy to swallow it all and regurgitate it when occasion demands. Such as when one of their key allies gets in a spot of bother with the law.

If there are political lessons to be drawn from this episode, they have to centre on the far left's culture, on its promotion of and slavishness toward charismatic leaders, its pronounced tendency toward group think, and its inability to handle disputes in anything but a mature fashion. If some good is to come from the tragic and shameful waste of Tommy Sheridan's fate, a thorough rethink of all this would be it.

Socialist Party on NSSN Anti-Cuts Campaign

2011-01-25T16:07:00.000Z

This has been circulated to Socialist Party activists after Saturday's conference of the National Shop Stewards' Network agreed to set up its own anti-cuts campaign. This letter from Linda Taaffe is reproduced here for readers' info.

I want to thank everyone who attended and helped organise yesterday's excellent NSSN Anti-Cuts Conference in Camden. Well over 500 shop stewards/workplace reps, community campaigners and students debated whether the NSSN should launch an anti-cuts campaign. It was a model of democratic debate with both sides having the same number of speakers and equal speaking time. After 2 and a half hours of discussion, the trade union delegates at the Conference voted to launch the anti-cuts campaign by 305 votes to 89. We then went on to elect a Campaign Committee. As we received 11 nominations for the proposed committee of 10, Conference agreed to accept the slightly enlarged committee, which will meet over the next couple of weeks.

We are now looking forward to working with all other forces fighting the cuts. We will especially welcome the suggestion in Matt Wrack’s (Gen Sec FBU) letter last week for a Unity conference called by the Trade Union Coordinating Group (TUCG). We will also follow through on the initial contacts made with the other anti-cuts organisations to see how we can work together more smoothly. Just before the Conference, the NSSN signed a letter along with Coalition of Resistance, Right to Work and others to the TUC offering our assistance to build for the biggest possible turnout at the demo in London on March 26th.

We will lobby on that march and in all other arenas for the unions to organise co-ordinated strike action to defeat the government's cuts. We also believe that the platform of speakers on the day should include those workers and students who are currently fighting the cuts. Our NSSN campaign has been launched on a clear 'Oppose ALL cuts' platform and will therefore call on Labour councils to refuse to implement the cuts. We will organise protests and support industrial action against them if they vote to pass the attacks onto workers’ jobs and services.

The character of the NSSN will not change as a result of Saturday’s decision. We will still play a crucial role in bringing together and developing trade union activists at the grassroots, which we hope and believe, will help revitalise the trade union movement. The continuing attacks by the ConDems on trade union rights are clearly linked to trying to prevent workers fighting back against the cuts and the bosses’ offensive.

The next meeting of the NSSN Steering Committee will be on February 19th, where we can begin to discuss, amongst other things, the planning for the annual NSSN conference in the summer, as well as how the Network will continue to organise rank and file workers. We appeal to whole of the Steering Committee to recognise the democratic decision of the Conference and play a full part in the development of the NSSN. We are confident that the decision yesterday will actually bring us in contact with a whole new layer of workers as they confront this brutal cuts package.

Linda Taaffe (NSSN Secretary)

Melanie Phillips: Marketing Bigotry

2011-01-24T17:31:00.002Z

There are days I wish Melanie Phillips would act like a proper troll and only sally forth from under the bridge to harass passing goats. But as the Daily Mail columnist you love to hate, Mel wouldn't be doing her job if she didn't cause a shit storm once in a while. And that's what she's gone and done this morning with her latest rant, 'Yes, gays have often been the victims of prejudice. But they now risk becoming the new McCarthyites' (you can read the snappily-titled piece here without having to visit Mail Online).

In her latest broadside against The Permissiveness Undermining Our Nation and Endangering Your Children, Mel uncovers a secret plot hatched by the cunning homosexualists who pull the government's strings. As "part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very concept of normal sexual behaviour" the biggest threat to kids are no longer the perverts hanging round the school gates, but the gay propaganda infiltrating exercise books and course content. Witness the shocking imminent changes to the curriculum:

"In geography, for example, they will be told to consider why homosexuals move from the countryside to cities. In maths, they will be taught statistics through census findings about the number of homosexuals in the population.

In science, they will be directed to animal species such as emperor penguins and sea horses, where the male takes a lead role in raising its young."

Trigonometry exercises illustrated by pink triangles, crafts geared around the production of soft furnishings, French replaced by Polari, and Year Ones not progressing until they've learned how to spell 'tribadism' can only be a fey handclap away. In short, unless we stop this sick filth now our schools will become madrassas for queer fundamentalism. People will stop having babies, Britain as we know it will vanish and this sceptered isle will be open to colonisation by the Allah-worshipping hordes.

In the real world and not the one existing inside Mel's bigoted brain, it is entirely proper the curriculum normalises trans, lesbian, bi and gay folk. The Tories especially have a historical debt to pay as Section 28 was introduced on their watch - a debt Dave himself has acknowledged and apologised for - and any positive moves to making good on that should be welcomed. But despite the massive strides made in gay acceptance legally, culturally, and socially these last 30 years, homophobic bullying remains an unwelcome rite of passage for LGBT and straight kids alike. As this BBC Report from 2007 shows, far from schools being the gay-friendly spaces Mel imagines them to be bullying remains endemic.

Not that Mel and her ilk particularly care. Like the seriously deranged big mouths across The Pond, Mel is a professional right wing provocateur. She knows as well as anyone her career as a columnist and media pundit would be done if she ceased raiding the circa 1981 Monday Club ideological grab bag. She ain't going to shut up as long as there's a buck to be made.

This material interest in continued exposure fits those of Mel's employers as snug as a bug in a rug. A market exists for reflecting back the bigoted prejudices of the angry and the alienated, and is one The Mail has long since cornered. But in Britain it has pioneered the capturing of a new and growing audience interested in right wing news 'n' views: that of the outraged left/liberal/Labourist/Graun/Indy/C4News milieu. DMGT doesn't care what those muesli-eating Marxists and the occasional lefty celeb are tweeting about, just as long as the newest slice of reactionary bilge upsets them enough to drive more people to the website so they can be disgusted and angered, and who in their turn drive more people to the website.

In short what DMGT have is a business model for successfully attracting large numbers of relatively well educated, relatively affluent people who wouldn't ordinarily touch their toxic rag with a pair of hazmat gloves. It's a stroke of genius: exploit your opponents' right-on politics and they will market your putrefying product across their social media networks for you.

Just remember that next time Melanie Phillips says or writes something stupidly bigoted and controversial.

Too Many Cooks?

2011-01-23T23:12:00.001Z

It's done. Yesterday a special conference of the National Shop Stewards Network voted by 305 to 89 to set up yet another anti-cuts campaign. As I've said before what with UK Uncut, Right to Work, Coalition of Resistance, Trades Councils and various localised groups already organising opposition, I'm not convinced an additional group patronised by a Trotskyist organisation is anything other than surplus to requirements, especially as many of the charges the Socialist Party makes against their RtW and CoR rivals are somewhat economical about their real positions. But such is life on the far left. With self-defeating sectarianism like this, who needs satire?

We shall now see if Son-of-NSSN offers anything superior to what's already available as it's tested in the white heat of the anti-cuts movement. A conference report from the SP's Judy Beishon can be read here. A more critical take from Martin Thomas of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty is here so comrades who weren't present can make up their own minds.

One thing surprisingly missing from the SP's website at the moment is a report on the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition conference that took place immediately afterwards. I think the comrades involved are on a hiding to nothing (as demonstrated by TUSC's election results) and are set to do poorly at this May's local elections, in spite of their anti-cuts politics. But that's for another post. Anyway, here's Pete McLaren's report of the conference.

REPORT FROM TUSC CONFERENCE JAN 22 2011-01-22

Dave Nellist opened the Conference by expressing the need for hundreds of candidates in the May elections to fight the cuts and provide opposition to the BNP.

Michael Lavellette (SWP) spoke about his 9 years as a Socialist councillor in Preston. He argued we must stand together against the cuts. Five Labour councillors had informed the local TUC they would oppose cuts only to vote for cuts in the Council vote. He still thought we needed to find ways of working with those 60,000 new members of the Labour Party who had joined since the General Election.

Clive Heemskerk (SP) called for candidates rooted in the anti cuts movement. Councils were at the forefront of the struggle, but, as the TUSC platform spelt out, they did not need to implement cuts. Councils should set a “Needs Budget” and demand the government makes up the rest, as Liverpool did in the 1980’s. Surcharging was no longer a major issue as it only now existed for individual fraud. Any Councillor accused of breaking the Code of Conduct, according to the Standards Board, would be entitled to a hearing, which itself would be a focus for mass protest, and at worst case could only result in a 5 year ban from being a councillor! Councillors should use reserves and prudential borrowing powers.

Owen Herbert (RMT) apologised for arriving late. He outlined how Labour had betrayed the working class and was now calling for cuts, but a slower pace. The results were the same. In Swansea, the Labour Council had threatened to sack its workforce if they would not accept its cuts package and then re-instate workers on new inferior conditions. The Welsh TUC was doing nothing, and a TUSC intervention was essential.

Alan from Darlington UNISON moved the one amendment to the platform - that council tax could be raised above inflation if approved by the electorate.

The platform was opened for discussion, and 22 individuals spoke – 11 from the SP, 2 from the SA, 1 from SR, 3 from the SWP and 5 independents. Points made included the following;

* We need to work with Labour Party members
* There is no evidence of activism amongst the new layer of Labour Party members
* There should be national issues in the TUSC local elections platform
* There needs to be a new Party, and it should champion democracy
* There should be something on pay and conditions within the TUSC platform
* Candidates need to be involved in local campaigns
* We need to build TUSC. The fortnightly Bulletin should help.
* TUSC should stand in Barnsley to help establish itself
* The TUSC Steering Committee has agreed to there being an Independent Socialist Network within TUSC to encourage involvement from independent socialists
* We should use the TUC Demo to publicise TUSC
* We should oppose all cuts, rent and council tax increases as they are all attacks on the working class
* TUSC provides a political direction for the anti cuts movement
* Setting up a local anti cuts group can persuade local trade union activists to come on board, and in the longer term this could be a basis for a new workers’ party
* We should not include Labour councillors as part of our campaign unless they are prepared to vote against cuts
* TUSC should be opened up and become fully democratic
* We should work with all who oppose the cuts, whatever their label
* Green councillors do not vote against cuts in Council meetings
* TUSC should work with Labour councillors who do vote against cuts whilst standing against those who don’t
* We should write to ask Labour candidates whether they would vote against cuts
* We need to discuss our position on police cuts
* We should add our opposition to any attacks on pay or conditions to our platform position

In their replies, Michael Lavalette explained that all SWP members opposed all cuts. He went on to argue there needed to be a clear alternative to Labour, adding that if a Left Councillor was elected it boosted workers’ confidence.

Clive Heemskerk argued for as many TUSC candidates as possible, adding that ‘Trade Unionist & Socialists Against the Cuts’ had also been registered. He accepted that TUSC was a work in progress.

Dave Nellist concluded proceedings by putting the proposed TUSC platform to the vote. It was agreed unanimously. He went on to announce that the TUSC SC would discuss AV, and reminded delegates that TUSC candidates would need formal nomination so there would be a need to communicate with the TUSC SC

Pete McLaren 22/01/11

Blogging Language and Criticism

2011-01-22T17:41:00.002Z

In the comments on the recent Ed Balls post (below), Modernity asks "Why is it that ex-Trots in the Labour Party seem to dance around criticising the LP leadership? If I read you, Dave Osler or even [Andy] Newman, instead of saying the LP leadership are right-wing shite and utterly useless politically, instead of that I find understatement, careful wording and opaque criticism."

I can only speak for myself. And I don't accept this is the case.

Since joining Labour almost a year ago and thereby ending my association with Trotskyist politics (though I haven't regarded myself a Trot from long since before joining the Socialist Party), I've penned 18 pieces looking at some aspect or another of Labour's leadership. In the few months since Ed's election as Labour leader I think seven blog posts could be described as commentary on his leadership (that doesn't count guest posts like this). One - the most recent - might utilise understatement, but previous reflections on Ed Miliband certainly do not. This and this critically analyse the position of the Labour party leadership in relation to the contradictions emodied by the organisation as a whole. This piece criticises Ed on workers' struggles ("on further commitments he's proving more slippery than an eel dipped in KY jelly"), and here and here criticises Ed for his appointment of Alan Johnson and the subsequent evolution of their economic "alternative" to the Tories' sole preoccupation with deficit reduction.

True, they fall well short of explicitly calling out the Labour leadership as "right-wing shite and utterly useless politically", but then again, so are this blog's many critical posts about the Tories and LibDems.

As far as I'm concerned what's written here is part of a political project. My arguments are an effort to persuade readers of the merits of my positions. They are not, like many a Trotskyist denunciation of Labour and trade union leaderships, exercises in revolutionary identity politics. They're an attempt to grasp hold of the political situation to see what can be done to push things in a socialist direction. The language used and the form adopted by critique are conditioned and disciplined by these concerns. And it should go without saying that when you're pitching these arguments to left and labour movement audiences there's no need to extraneously drop in the fruity stuff when it's obvious your default position is critical.

Ed Balls: Let Tories Tremble

2011-01-20T19:14:00.004Z

I never believed Ed Miliband was going to lead the Labour Party into a glorious socialist future, but I was disappointed when Alan Johnson was appointed shadow chancellor. I was then and remain convinced this had more to do with the internal balance of forces in the party and the desire to squash the 'Red Ed' label than anything else (see here). With a political career not exactly synonymous with economics, this decision didn't show Ed's leadership in its best light.

But now Alan Johnson has stepped down for 'family reasons' and Ed Balls has been shuffled into his position. Good.

Of the Labour leadership candidates during last summer's contest, only Balls and Diane Abbott offered a decent alternative to the 'slow and shallow cuts' consensus of the other three. And of the two Balls offered a comprehensive and serious critique of Tory/LibDem economic policy. In my opinion, Abbott's shopping list of left demands were worthy but lacked the necessary grasp of the issues. It was also obvious the Tories feared Balls and his Keynesian agenda more than any other contender.

What does this mean now for Labour's economic policy? Ed Miliband has said the new appointment will not effect his economic policy. This is not, strictly speaking, true. The Miliband/Johnson orientation (it would be mangling the language to call it a policy) said more things about investment and growth than the Tories, but were fundamentally in agreement with them on the necessity for cuts. Balls's strategy boils down to placing more emphasis on the former than the latter - his Bloomberg speech does accept a role for cuts, but it is entirely swamped by the argument for economic activism. Luckily for Ed Miliband, policy up until now has been so vague that Balls could take it in a more Keynesian direction while allowing Ed to save face by pretending this is what he favoured all along.

As far as I'm concerned, Ed Balls doesn't go far enough. There is absolutely no reason for cuts. Period. As Paul Mason explains in his "interview" with Marx, this crisis is one part a crisis of investment. It follows if private capital in its totality is fighting shy of investing, the state has to step in to get things on the move. The multiplier effects of creating jobs and stimulating demand creates conditions more conducive to private investment. Cutting only worsens the climate and makes the private sector-led recovery Osbourne and Dave are pinning their hopes on fanciful and utopian, and their actions irresponsible and dumb. As the world's economy is jittery, as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium aren't looking good and the unwelcome spectre of currency wars is frightening economists and chancelleries, investment at home is the strongest inoculation possible the UK economy can take against a global economic chill.

That said, Ed Balls as shadow chancellor is a step in the right direction. With a strong advocate for investment over cuts in one of the most influential political positions in the land, the hand of the labour and anti-cuts movement has been strengthened ahead of the fights to come.

N Staffs Against Cuts Conference: 26th January

2011-01-18T20:51:00.000Z

Press release and statement of conference aims. I'll be going, are you?

North Staffs Against Cuts Press Release 17/01/2011
North Staffs Against Cuts (NSAC) will be holding an anti-cuts conference on the 26th January at the Forum Theatre, Hanley Museum, 7pm.

Speakers invited from local anti-cuts groups and trade unions

Everyone who wants to fight back against the cuts are invited to attend this very important conference for the local anti-cuts movement.

NSAC Chair Matthew Wright says: "We must prevent the government's and local council's inevitable attempts to divide the anti cuts movement by playing off one campaign against the other (“If we save this swimming pool we will have to close that children's centre”) .

Therefore we will maintain a firm commitment of opposition to all cuts not just in words but also in deeds. “Not a Single Job Lost Not a Single Penny Cut!”

As real concrete cuts are revealed and their effects are felt, campaigns will spring up across the area. NSAC will offer support to these campaigns and strive to link them together into a general anti-cuts movement."

Press contact:
Matthew Wright (Chair) v1w02 at students.keele.ac.uk 07817772531
Jason Hill (Organiser) nstuc at burslem.demon.co.uk 07778913528

Conference Statement

Aims:

- To build a NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE AGAINST CUTS FEDERATION
- To assist in the struggle to Stop ALL CUTS

Two sections are key to stopping cuts
a) Trade unions, still with a potential power of 6 million organised workers, have a crucial role to play together with workplaces where no trade union representation yet exists.
b) Anti-cuts campaigns - as well as student groups, welfare claimants, tenants, pensioners organisations, disability groups etc.

For unity in opposition to all cuts, closures and privatisations:
We must prevent the government's and local council's inevitable attempts to divide the anti cuts movement by playing off one campaign against the other (“If we save this swimming pool we will have to close that children's centre”)

Therefore we will maintain a firm commitment of opposition to all cuts not just in words but also in deeds. “Not a Single Job Lost Not a Single Penny Cut!”

As real concrete cuts are revealed and their effects are felt, campaigns will spring up across the area. NSACF will offer support to these campaigns and strive to link them together into a general anti-cuts movement.

For a democratic and effective structure:
A federal type structure, where each affiliated body is free to pursue its own independent campaign but can in turn draw on the support and united strength of NSACF and all its affiliated bodies, is the most effective method of organising a democratic and united opposition.

Each individual organisation, community group etc will be asked to affiliate to NSACF. A committee will be elected to represent all affiliated organisations and campaigns plus a chair, secretary and other officers where necessary. All affiliated bodies will be asked to send representatives to form this committee with each representative having full voting rights.

Finance:
Raising money to produce leaflets etc will be vital so all affiliates will be asked to make a donation (a minimum of £15). We will set up a bank account and elect a Treasurer to oversee our finances.

Immediate tasks:
• Continue to inform people about the true facts and involve the public in our campaigns against cuts.
• Relentless lobbying of councils, councilors,and other bodies, to persuade them NOT to vote for cuts.
• Organise a march in North Staffs and build for a strong contingent for the TUC demo in March.

Image Source

Chomsky on Poststructuralism and Postmodernism

2011-01-17T20:13:00.000Z

Many thanks to Brian of Mindful Pleasures for doing some cyber archaeology and digging this out of a rusty late 20th century server (his blog post failed to mention whether he unearthed a series of small walls as well). Around the time this first appeared on t'internets I was undergoing a crash course in postmodernism at the feet of Clive Wiltshire, my Nietzschean-anarchist hall mate and comrade. When I wasn't carrying his gangly inebriated form *to* the union bar or preventing him from crawling into the communal oven, we whiled away many an evening talking about philosophy and radical politics. Clive introduced me to anarchism and the work of Noam Chomsky and forced me to think more deeply about the Marxism I had imbibed via A-Level Sociology and the crap working conditions at Derby Morrison's (Clive will be revisited if I ever get round to writing another 'my influences' post).

As he was a big fan of Chomsky the linguist as well as Chomsky the dissident, I remember asking Clive what question would he ask if he ever got to meet the man. Clive said he would have asked his opinion on structuralist linguistics, whether they're compatible at all with his own position, and what he made of the poststructuralist revolution in philosophy and social theory more generally. Well, the below piece touches on this sort of material and remains - according to Brian - Chomsky's only considered statement on matters PoMo. In the unlikely event you're reading this Clive, I hope it goes some way to answering your question 15 years after you formulated it!

Regarding Chomsky's positions themselves I'll probably write something more on this over the next week or so.

---

I've returned from travel-speaking, where I spend most of my life, and found a collection of messages extending the discussion about "theory" and "philosophy," a debate that I find rather curious. A few reactions --- though I concede, from the start, that I may simply not understand what is going on.

As far as I do think I understand it, the debate was initiated by the charge that I, Mike, and maybe others don't have "theories" and therefore fail to give any explanation of why things are proceeding as they do. We must turn to "theory" and "philosophy" and "theoretical constructs" and the like to remedy this deficiency in our efforts to understand and address what is happening in the world. I won't speak for Mike. My response so far has pretty much been to reiterate something I wrote 35 years ago, long before "postmodernism" had erupted in the literary intellectual culture: "if there is a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to the conduct of foreign affairs or the resolution of domestic or international conflict, its existence has been kept a well-guarded secret," despite much "pseudo-scientific posturing."

To my knowledge, the statement was accurate 35 years ago, and remains so; furthermore, it extends to the study of human affairs generally, and applies in spades to what has been produced since that time. What has changed in the interim, to my knowledge, is a huge explosion of self- and mutual-admiration among those who propound what they call "theory" and "philosophy," but little that I can detect beyond "pseudo-scientific posturing." That little is, as I wrote, sometimes quite interesting, but lacks consequences for the real world problems that occupy my time and energies (Rawls's important work is the case I mentioned, in response to specific inquiry).

The latter fact has been noticed. One fine philosopher and social theorist (also activist), Alan Graubard, wrote an interesting review years ago of Robert Nozick's "libertarian" response to Rawls, and of the reactions to it. He pointed out that reactions were very enthusiastic. Reviewer after reviewer extolled the power of the arguments, etc., but no one accepted any of the real-world conclusions (unless they had previously reached them). That's correct, as were his observations on what it means.

The proponents of "theory" and "philosophy" have a very easy task if they want to make their case. Simply make known to me what was and remains a "secret" to me: I'll be happy to look. I've asked many times before, and still await an answer, which should be easy to provide: simply give some examples of "a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to" the kinds of problems and issues that Mike, I, and many others (in fact, most of the world's population, I think, outside of narrow and remarkably self-contained intellectual circles) are or should be concerned with: the problems and issues we speak and write about, for example, and others like them. To put it differently, show that the principles of the "theory" or "philosophy" that we are told to study and apply lead by valid argument to conclusions that we and others had not already reached on other (and better) grounds; these "others" include people lacking formal education, who typically seem to have no problem reaching these conclusions through mutual interactions that avoid the "theoretical" obscurities entirely, or often on their own.

Again, those are simple requests. I've made them before, and remain in my state of ignorance. I also draw certain conclusions from the fact.

As for the "deconstruction" that is carried out (also mentioned in the debate), I can't comment, because most of it seems to me gibberish. But if this is just another sign of my incapacity to recognize profundities, the course to follow is clear: just restate the results to me in plain words that I can understand, and show why they are different from, or better than, what others had been doing long before and and have continued to do since without three-syllable words, incoherent sentences, inflated rhetoric that (to me, at least) is largely meaningless, etc. That will cure my deficiencies --- of course, if they are curable; maybe they aren't, a possibility to which I'll return.

These are very easy requests to fulfill, if there is any basis to the claims put forth with such fervor and indignation. But instead of trying to provide an answer to this simple requests, the response is cries of anger: to raise these questions shows "elitism," "anti-intellectualism," and other crimes --- though apparently it is not "elitist" to stay within the self- and mutual-admiration societies of intellectuals who talk only to one another and (to my knowledge) don't enter into the kind of world in which I'd prefer to live. As for that world, I can reel off my speaking and writing schedule to illustrate what I mean, though I presume that most people in this discussion know, or can easily find out; and somehow I never find the "theoreticians" there, nor do I go to their conferences and parties. In short, we seem to inhabit quite different worlds, and I find it hard to see why mine is "elitist," not theirs. The opposite seems to be transparently the case, though I won't amplify.

To add another facet, I am absolutely deluged with requests to speak and can't possibly accept a fraction of the invitations I'd like to, so I suggest other people. But oddly, I never suggest those who propound "theories" and "philosophy," nor do I come across them, or for that matter rarely even their names, in my own (fairly extensive) experience with popular and activist groups and organizations, general community, college, church, union, etc., audiences here and abroad, third world women, refugees, etc.; I can easily give examples. Why, I wonder.

The whole debate, then, is an odd one. On one side, angry charges and denunciations, on the other, the request for some evidence and argument to support them, to which the response is more angry charges --- but, strikingly, no evidence or argument. Again, one is led to ask why.

It's entirely possible that I'm simply missing something, or that I just lack the intellectual capacity to understand the profundities that have been unearthed in the past 20 years or so by Paris intellectuals and their followers. I'm perfectly open-minded about it, and have been for years, when similar charges have been made -- but without any answer to my questions. Again, they are simple and should be easy to answer, if there is an answer: if I'm missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand. Of course, if it's all beyond my comprehension, which is possible, then I'm just a lost cause, and will be compelled to keep to things I do seem to be able to understand, and keep to association with the kinds of people who also seem to be interested in them and seem to understand them (which I'm perfectly happy to do, having no interest, now or ever, in the sectors of the intellectual culture that engage in these things, but apparently little else).

Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out.

Again, I've lived for 50 years in these worlds, have done a fair amount of work of my own in fields called "philosophy" and "science," as well as intellectual history, and have a fair amount of personal acquaintance with the intellectual culture in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and the arts. That has left me with my own conclusions about intellectual life, which I won't spell out. But for others, I would simply suggest that you ask those who tell you about the wonders of "theory" and "philosophy" to justify their claims --- to do what people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc. These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames.

Specific comment. Phetland asked who I'm referring to when I speak of "Paris school" and "postmodernist cults": the above is a sample.

He then asks, reasonably, why I am "dismissive" of it. Take, say, Derrida. Let me begin by saying that I dislike making the kind of comments that follow without providing evidence, but I doubt that participants want a close analysis of de Saussure, say, in this forum, and I know that I'm not going to undertake it. I wouldn't say this if I hadn't been explicitly asked for my opinion --- and if asked to back it up, I'm going to respond that I don't think it merits the time to do so.

So take Derrida, one of the grand old men. I thought I ought to at least be able to understand his Grammatology, so tried to read it. I could make out some of it, for example, the critical analysis of classical texts that I knew very well and had written about years before. I found the scholarship appalling, based on pathetic misreading; and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I've been familiar with since virtually childhood. Well, maybe I missed something: could be, but suspicions remain, as noted. Again, sorry to make unsupported comments, but I was asked, and therefore am answering.

Some of the people in these cults (which is what they look like to me) I've met: Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using language that was perfectly comprehensible --- he speaking French, me English); Lacan (who I met several times and considered an amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan, though his earlier work, pre-cult, was sensible and I've discussed it in print); Kristeva (who I met only briefly during the period when she was a fervent Maoist); and others. Many of them I haven't met, because I am very remote from from these circles, by choice, preferring quite different and far broader ones --- the kinds where I give talks, have interviews, take part in activities, write dozens of long letters every week, etc. I've dipped into what they write out of curiosity, but not very far, for reasons already mentioned: what I find is extremely pretentious, but on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate, based on extraordinary misreading of texts that I know well (sometimes, that I have written), argument that is appalling in its casual lack of elementary self-criticism, lots of statements that are trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or false; and a good deal of plain gibberish. When I proceed as I do in other areas where I do not understand, I run into the problems mentioned in connection with (1) and (2) above. So that's who I'm referring to, and why I don't proceed very far. I can list a lot more names if it's not obvious.

For those interested in a literary depiction that reflects pretty much the same perceptions (but from the inside), I'd suggest David Lodge. Pretty much on target, as far as I can judge.

Phetland also found it "particularly puzzling" that I am so "curtly dismissive" of these intellectual circles while I spend a lot of time "exposing the posturing and obfuscation of the New York Times." So "why not give these guys the same treatment." Fair question. There are also simple answers. What appears in the work I do address (NYT, journals of opinion, much of scholarship, etc.) is simply written in intelligible prose and has a great impact on the world, establishing the doctrinal framework within which thought and expression are supposed to be contained, and largely are, in successful doctrinal systems such as ours. That has a huge impact on what happens to suffering people throughout the world, the ones who concern me, as distinct from those who live in the world that Lodge depicts (accurately, I think). So this work should be dealt with seriously, at least if one cares about ordinary people and their problems. The work to which Phetland refers has none of these characteristics, as far as I'm aware. It certainly has none of the impact, since it is addressed only to other intellectuals in the same circles. Furthermore, there is no effort that I am aware of to make it intelligible to the great mass of the population (say, to the people I'm constantly speaking to, meeting with, and writing letters to, and have in mind when I write, and who seem to understand what I say without any particular difficulty, though they generally seem to have the same cognitive disability I do when facing the postmodern cults). And I'm also aware of no effort to show how it applies to anything in the world in the sense I mentioned earlier: grounding conclusions that weren't already obvious. Since I don't happen to be much interested in the ways that intellectuals inflate their reputations, gain privilege and prestige, and disengage themselves from actual participation in popular struggle, I don't spend any time on it.

Phetland suggests starting with Foucault --- who, as I've written repeatedly, is somewhat apart from the others, for two reasons: I find at least some of what he writes intelligible, though generally not very interesting; second, he was not personally disengaged and did not restrict himself to interactions with others within the same highly privileged elite circles. Phetland then does exactly what I requested: he gives some illustrations of why he thinks Foucault's work is important. That's exactly the right way to proceed, and I think it helps understand why I take such a "dismissive" attitude towards all of this --- in fact, pay no attention to it.

What Phetland describes, accurately I'm sure, seems to me unimportant, because everyone always knew it --- apart from details of social and intellectual history, and about these, I'd suggest caution: some of these are areas I happen to have worked on fairly extensively myself, and I know that Foucault's scholarship is just not trustworthy here, so I don't trust it, without independent investigation, in areas that I don't know --- this comes up a bit in the discussion from 1972 that is in print. I think there is much better scholarship on the 17th and 18th century, and I keep to that, and my own research. But let's put aside the other historical work, and turn to the "theoretical constructs" and the explanations: that there has been "a great change from harsh mechanisms of repression to more subtle mechanisms by which people come to do" what the powerful want, even enthusiastically. That's true enough, in fact, utter truism. If that's a "theory," then all the criticisms of me are wrong: I have a "theory" too, since I've been saying exactly that for years, and also giving the reasons and historical background, but without describing it as a theory (because it merits no such term), and without obfuscatory rhetoric (because it's so simple-minded), and without claiming that it is new (because it's a truism). It's been fully recognized for a long time that as the power to control and coerce has declined, it's more necessary to resort to what practitioners in the PR industry early in this century -- who understood all of this well -- called "controlling the public mind." The reasons, as observed by Hume in the 18th century, are that "the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers" relies ultimately on control of opinion and attitudes. Why these truisms should suddenly become "a theory" or "philosophy," others will have to explain; Hume would have laughed.

Some of Foucault's particular examples (say, about 18th century techniques of punishment) look interesting, and worth investigating as to their accuracy. But the "theory" is merely an extremely complex and inflated restatement of what many others have put very simply, and without any pretense that anything deep is involved. There's nothing in what Phetland describes that I haven't been writing about myself for 35 years, also giving plenty of documentation to show that it was always obvious, and indeed hardly departs from truism. What's interesting about these trivialities is not the principle, which is transparent, but the demonstration of how it works itself out in specific detail to cases that are important to people: like intervention and aggression, exploitation and terror, "free market" scams, and so on. That I don't find in Foucault, though I find plenty of it by people who seem to be able to write sentences I can understand and who aren't placed in the intellectual firmament as "theoreticians."

To make myself clear, Phetland is doing exactly the right thing: presenting what he sees as "important insights and theoretical constructs" that he finds in Foucault. My problem is that the "insights" seem to me familiar and there are no "theoretical constructs," except in that simple and familiar ideas have been dressed up in complicated and pretentious rhetoric. Phetland asks whether I think this is "wrong, useless, or posturing." No. The historical parts look interesting sometimes, though they have to be treated with caution and independent verification is even more worth undertaking than it usually is. The parts that restate what has long been obvious and put in much simpler terms are not "useless," but indeed useful, which is why I and others have always made the very same points. As to "posturing," a lot of it is that, in my opinion, though I don't particularly blame Foucault for it: it's such a deeply rooted part of the corrupt intellectual culture of Paris that he fell into it pretty naturally, though to his credit, he distanced himself from it. As for the "corruption" of this culture particularly since World War II, that's another topic, which I've discussed elsewhere and won't go into here. Frankly, I don't see why people in this forum should be much interested, just as I am not. There are more important things to do, in my opinion, than to inquire into the traits of elite intellectuals engaged in various careerist and other pursuits in their narrow and (to me, at least) pretty unininteresting circles. That's a broad brush, and I stress again that it is unfair to make such comments without proving them: but I've been asked, and have answered the only specific point that I find raised. When asked about my general opinion, I can only give it, or if something more specific is posed, address that. I'm not going to undertake an essay on topics that don't interest me.

Unless someone can answer the simple questions that immediately arise in the mind of any reasonable person when claims about "theory" and "philosophy" are raised, I'll keep to work that seems to me sensible and enlightening, and to people who are interested in understanding and changing the world.

Johnb made the point that "plain language is not enough when the frame of reference is not available to the listener"; correct and important. But the right reaction is not to resort to obscure and needlessly complex verbiage and posturing about non-existent "theories." Rather, it is to ask the listener to question the frame of reference that he/she is accepting, and to suggest alternatives that might be considered, all in plain language. I've never found that a problem when I speak to people lacking much or sometimes any formal education, though it's true that it tends to become harder as you move up the educational ladder, so that indoctrination is much deeper, and the self-selection for obedience that is a good part of elite education has taken its toll. Johnb says that outside of circles like this forum, "to the rest of the country, he's incomprehensible" ("he" being me). That's absolutely counter to my rather ample experience, with all sorts of audiences. Rather, my experience is what I just described. The incomprehensibility roughly corresponds to the educational level. Take, say, talk radio. I'm on a fair amount, and it's usually pretty easy to guess from accents, etc., what kind of audience it is. I've repeatedly found that when the audience is mostly poor and less educated, I can skip lots of the background and "frame of reference" issues because it's already obvious and taken for granted by everyone, and can proceed to matters that occupy all of us. With more educated audiences, that's much harder; it's necessary to disentangle lots of ideological constructions.

It's certainly true that lots of people can't read the books I write. That's not because the ideas or language are complicated --- we have no problems in informal discussion on exactly the same points, and even in the same words. The reasons are different, maybe partly the fault of my writing style, partly the result of the need (which I feel, at least) to present pretty heavy documentation, which makes it tough reading. For these reasons, a number of people have taken pretty much the same material, often the very same words, and put them in pamphlet form and the like. No one seems to have much problem --- though again, reviewers in the Times Literary Supplement or professional academic journals don't have a clue as to what it's about, quite commonly; sometimes it's pretty comical.

A final point, something I've written about elsewhere (e.g., in a discussion in Z papers, and the last chapter of Year 501). There has been a striking change in the behavior of the intellectual class in recent years. The left intellectuals who 60 years ago would have been teaching in working class schools, writing books like "mathematics for the millions" (which made mathematics intelligible to millions of people), participating in and speaking for popular organizations, etc., are now largely disengaged from such activities, and although quick to tell us that they are far more radical than thou, are not to be found, it seems, when there is such an obvious and growing need and even explicit request for the work they could do out there in the world of people with live problems and concerns. That's not a small problem. This country, right now, is in a very strange and ominous state. People are frightened, angry, disillusioned, skeptical, confused. That's an organizer's dream, as I once heard Mike say. It's also fertile ground for demagogues and fanatics, who can (and in fact already do) rally substantial popular support with messages that are not unfamiliar from their predecessors in somewhat similar circumstances. We know where it has led in the past; it could again. There's a huge gap that once was at least partially filled by left intellectuals willing to engage with the general public and their problems. It has ominous implications, in my opinion.

End of Reply, and (to be frank) of my personal interest in the matter, unless the obvious questions are answered.

Tunisia: A Domino Falls

2011-01-16T20:47:00.001Z

There are moments when history speeds up, when mighty events are compressed into and play themselves out over a matter of hours and days. So it has been with the ignominious collapse of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's 23 year rule in Tunisia. No long and drawn out process. No gradual assumption of the president's power by parliament. The Tunisian masses took to the streets in the face of brutal repression and toppled Ben Ali's gang from high office. And now the dictator has fled to Saudia Arabia, long the Costa Brava of forcibly retired tyrants, Tunisia's remaining political and military elites struggle to funnel the uprising down the constitutional road.

Ben Ali's regime is the first to meet its end by revolutionary means since the onset of the economic crisis in 2008, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer fella. Bu while the events in Tunis and elsewhere are inspiring is there a possibility Tunisia could be a retread of Eastern Europe's colour-coded revolutions? These were, to dust off a Trotskyist concept, political revolutions. Corrupt and authoritarian governments were swept from power by concerted mass action from below, but capitalism generally and the oligarchical spawn of mass privatisations particularly retained their class power and class privilege. They were very much a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss - albeit punctuated by a revolutionary interregnum.

The Tunisian revolution however significantly diverges from this "model". The Ben Ali regime was prepared to use violence, torture and repression against its own population to a degree not seen in Eastern Europe. This meant grievances and contradictions accumulated without outlet for a long period of time to the point where all of society was a tinderbox. What passed for liberal democracy was even more transparently fraudulent. Both meant the upwelling of anger was stronger and more self-sustaining than the colour code revolutions. And once the revolutionary tide rose and swamped the security apparatus, the military point blank refusal to put down the uprising.

This point is particularly interesting because of its possible strategic consequences. While the military are currently occupying key parts of Tunisia's infrastructure the agencies directly responsible for attacking demonstrations and murdering protesters have more or less dissolved. The head of Ben Ali's secret police has been arrested by the army-backed interim government, neighbourhoods are organising their own self-defence squads and, according to the Tunisia Scenario blog, all that is left of the police are the murderous elements most associated with the regime. Indeed, it appears the military has acquired some prestige because it appears to stand above society, helping push out Ben Ali when the writing was on the wall and making half-hearted efforts at protecting the people from death squads and other regime detritus.

If the latter interview with a CWI correspondent is accurate and no revolutionary opposition exists that can deepen the process at the moment, it seems unlikely the political revolution will pass over into social revolution. The stance of the military, whether by the general staff's deliberate design and/or fear of a rank-and-file revolt may have the effect of dampening anger toward it and the Tunisian ruling class because of its disassociation from Ben Ali. But it is too early to say. Rising food prices were responsible for touching off a conflagration of the accumulating contradictions and were in turn amplified by Ben Ali's stupid brutality. At present the interim government have announced an election within the next 45 days but crucially the underlying grievances - spiralling prices, a slowing economy, mass youth unemployment - remain unaddressed.

Elections are traditionally a tool used by ruling elites to diffuse a revolutionary situation, but if underground parties like the Workers' Communist Party or legal but hitherto supine left opposition parties such as the ex-communist Movement for Renewal can merge with the masses and make their demands their own there's an opportunity a blow could be struck for democracy and the road be opened to a socialist future. If the nascent and ad hoc neighbourhood self-defence groups remain, the trade unions - driven from below - continue to press their claims, and the people carry on flooding the streets with protests and demonstrations the coming election could be a moment in the revolution's consolidation, not its dissipation.

Tunisia could light a touch paper that spreads like revolutionary wildfire across the Arab world and beyond. Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt can already feel the flames licking at their feet. Even Saudi Arabia has experienced a rare protest! The overall balance of forces are beginning to shift across the region. With sustained struggle and determined action, the dictatorial obscenities of the Middle East could be entering their final days. Let despots everywhere tremble as the revolutionary gale howls about their ears.

A Note on the Oldham East Turnout

2011-01-16T11:49:00.001Z

I might be late to the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election commentary party, but there's something I'd like to add about the turn out (see Boffy for a wider analysis, and Andy on Ed Miliband's subsequent love bombing of the LibDems).

I've come across the odd Tory or two trying to rubbish the wide margin by which Labour held the seat. Their argument goes that a majority of 3,558 is hardly encouraging when turnout was down to 48% from the 61% of the general election (if this should be a sobering result for Labour what does a feeble 4,481 votes mean for them?). But the Tories do have a point, don't they? Should a 13% fall in turnout be cause for concern?

Not really. Political science distinguishes between first and second order elections. The first order are taken more seriously by the electorate at large and refer to general and presidential elections. i.e. Those determining the political colours of a national government. Second order is every sort of election below this level. Falling into this category in the UK are the Scottish parliament, Welsh, Northern Ireland, and London assembly elections, European elections, local elections, referendums and by-elections. In the eyes of the electorate these tend not to matter so much and therefore turnout is invariably depressed compared with general elections. To illustrate, turnout at the May 2010 general election was 65.1%. Elections for the devolved governments were 51.8% for Scotland and 43.7% for Wales in 2007 (Northern Ireland saw a turnout of 62.1% - reflecting the higher levels of politicisation in the province). The 2008 London Assembly election saw 45.3% and at 2009's European elections it was only 34%.

Therefore attaching any kind of significance to a by-election result depends in large measure on how its turnout compares with other second order elections. In Oldham East and Saddleworth's case its 48% holds up very well in comparison to recent mainland Britain elections. The same is true of the by-elections fought during the last Parliament. In reverse order the last five before May 2010 were Glasgow North East (33%), Norwich North (46%), Glenrothes (52%), Glasgow East (42%), Haltemprice and Howden (34.5%).

It stands to reason the strengthening of Labour's support in Oldham reflects the wider turn to the party reported in poll after poll - whatever grumbling Tories might think.

Dave and Employment Law

2011-01-14T00:08:00.001Z

Guest post by Lawrence Shaw, NUJ Assistant Organiser (North and Midlands of England). Personal capacity.

Does anyone recall the momentous day in the spring of 2008 when the Tories hired an envoy to approach trade unions after more than 25 years of not talking to each other?

This trivial shift of posture was exaggeratingly hailed as a major change in Conservative Party ideology. No longer did “the old antagonisms” between the Tories and the unions exist, the corpulent Eric Pickles told a bemused Tory conference in Manchester in 2009. The appointed Tory emissary Richard Balfe spoke in glowing terms of unions as “great voluntary organisations” and assured union leaders in cosy private meetings that there were “no plans” to change employment law.

Justifying himself, Balfe drew on the many criticisms made of New Labour's approach to employment law that came from within the union ranks. He argued that as Labour was so bad to unions the Tories couldn’t possibly be any worse – somewhat ironically a very similar position to that taken by ultra-left parties and sects.

Now, less than a year after the general election, huge strikes loom large, the Tories want to weaken employment law and the trade union envoy who assured us everything would be OK is nowhere to be seen. Intriguingly, Balfe now doesn’t even like to mention his time as the Tory trade union envoy on his CV.

Senior Tories like Boris Johnson are openly salivating at the prospect of further restricting some of the most restrictive laws on taking industrial action to have ever existed in the developed world, seemingly ignorant of the fact our un-elected judiciary has been doing the job already over the past few years.

Outrageously, the Tories also plan to double the length of employment service required for individuals being able to claim unfair dismissal at a tribunal.

This will mean that anyone in a job for less than two years can be sacked for no reason, with no legal recourse or compensation available whatsoever. The fact they may have up to 23 and half months unblemished, loyal service will matter not a jot.

It also leaves the sacked worker potentially unable to claim jobseekers benefits for up to 6 months following dismissal. As for the private mortgage or income protection insurance people buy into, it is always hidden in the small print that in the event of a “dismissal for misconduct” the insurer is not obliged to pay out. And, of course, all-important references to try to secure future employment are impossible to obtain so people often have to pretend they haven’t been working at all. Anyone who has ever faced this situation knows that longer the gap on your CV, the more difficult it becomes to disguise where you have been and that you got sacked.

An unfair and unjustified sacking on the abstract grounds of “misconduct”, especially at a time when jobs are scarce, can quickly throw an individual or a family from relative security straight over the edge of the precipice into poverty and destitution. I have seen it happen to people, and it can often affect individuals more deeply and fundamentally than a violent crime or chronic health problem.

The ludicrous justification put forward by Cameron for planning to raise the threshold is to limit the number of “vexatious claims” that go in front of the employment tribunals and, in doing so, make it “easier for employers to hire people”.

Not one shred of statistical or analytical evidence that stands up to any scrutiny has been put forward by him, or anyone else, to back up this wild claim.

As the TUC has correctly pointed out, the move to raise the unfair dismissal threshold will not create a single job. There are no crowds of entrepreneurs and investors waiting for the unfair dismissal threshold to rise to two years before they rush in and splash the cash in a jobs-creation bonanza. The estimated £600bn record corporate cash surplus sitting idly in the banks isn’t going to be freed up and invested in the country because you can sack workers a bit easier.

There is even an argument that making it easier to sack people actually goes against the hallowed labour market flexibility and social mobility that neo-liberals venerate. People are less likely to risk the upheaval of moving to another employer as they lose rights and face a longer period of insecurity, and end up staying in a job where at least they know they are relatively safe from sacking, meaning the natural churn of the job market slows.

The one-year threshold that currently exists is, in itself, an on-going national scandal. Only yesterday I was contacted by a union member concerned at the number of casual staff being taken on at his workplace. After completing 10 months service the casuals are forced to take a one month unpaid “sabbatical” - sacked to anyone else - then taken on in the same job again once the continuous service is sufficiently broken.

It is abundantly clear through examples like this that employers can easily find routes and loopholes around existing laws if they are so minded to do so. So what is the real rationale behind Cameron’s plans?

In weakening employment law, Cameron wants to send a message to employers that they can get away with being unfair towards their staff. This is because he wants to create a greater climate of fear amongst people considering fighting back. Worried that the on-going political demonstrations flaring up are likely to spill over into the workplace, Cameron now wants to put fear in the minds of individual employees, particularly younger people who are unlikely to have continuous employment of more than two years. The message coming down from on high is that daring to question anything you are told to do by authority – be it from the state or from your management - will see you out of a job and destitute. And that you can basically forget about getting any sort of retrospective justice, even if you’re innocent.

Quite how all this squares with the Lib Dems assurances on delivering “fairness” prior to the election remains to be seen.

It’s true to say that New Labour's improvements to employment laws and rights were imperfect and in many cases only implemented because of European pressure rather than through any genuine desire by Tony Blair to help ordinary workers.

But there were significant improvements nonetheless, and improvements that have made things fairer for people at work and for union reps. To dismiss them now as minor is to wilfully ignore the reality facing union reps and officials on the front line fighting for every job. The many real improvements we have seen since 1997 are all now very clearly under threat.

People join unions, in the main, for protection from bad treatment at work. It is the bread and butter of trade unionism, and what ties up the vast majority of union officials – both paid and voluntary - on a day-to-day basis. The ultra-left mantra that full-time union officials simply sit there colluding with managers to preserve capitalism is not based in reality. Fact is that four days out of five, all officials I work with and know are tied up in lengthy and complex talks over individual and collective situations to try to win justice for members, spending whatever time remains trying to organise and encourage demoralised members to collectively fight back against constant attack.

Our ability to protect union members on a day to day basis relies on both the law AND the wider general political climate which is why the number one priority for trade unionists and socialists must be to get the Tories out of office and a new government elected on a clear mandate of protecting existing employment laws, and improving them in the future.

The lies being peddled by Cameron on the unfair dismissal threshold cannot be justified on any factual or scientific basis and the plans will negatively affect all workers at all levels, from headmaster to classroom assistant, from Michelin-starred chef to McDonald’s staffer. The Labour party would be pushing at an open door to highlight and build widespread opposition to this straightforward workplace injustice that cannot be seriously defended, and should be doing so as a key priority. That is, if the Labour party wishes again to solidify a base amongst the very many politically aware trade unionists in workplaces across the country.

A Car in a Skip

2011-01-12T20:41:00.003Z

Blogging might be a touch slower this week, what with having to work and showing my face at a couple of evening events. So I thought I'd share this gem snapped by my nearest and dearest. This is what life on the mean streets of Stoke-on-Trent looks like:

Your eyes do not deceive you. That is a car. In a skip. In an already-full skip.

What I'd like to know is a) if the car was fly tipped (makes a difference from mouldy old mattresses) and b) how the car got into the skip in the first place.

Photo by Catherinebuca.

Glenn Beck on the Arizona Shootings

2011-01-11T22:59:00.002Z

Hard right demagogue Glenn Beck has come under sustained fire in the aftermath of the Arizona shootings. Along with the Ann Coulters, the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O'Reillys, and the Sarah Palins few have done more to poison American politics with outright lies and violent language. Quite rightly there has been an outpouring of criticism against this style of politics but as warranted and wide ranging it has been, it doesn't go far enough. How American politics became synonymous with smears and bombast owes everything to the generalised violence that suffuses US culture, as Dave explains here.

Whether violent political rhetoric played a direct part in the conditioning of Jared Lee Loughner is hard to say. But we are all stamped by culture. It underpins every action, every thought. It makes us possible as thinking, feeling human beings. To get on in life, let alone climb the greasy pole, we unthinkingly practice the mores we've imbibed since birth in 1,001 everyday actions. Mumbling something about the weather to strangers, saying thanks after handing money to a checkout operator, we do these things not because we're cultural dopes, but because they help us rub along. They're the small things culture uses to haphazardly glue our variegated and antagonistic society together. If you live in a 'happy' society, the stronger the glue and the social solidarities it throws up. If you live in a climate of fear, the weaker the ties and the greater the atomisation. These is a reason why the Scandinavian social democracies are much less violent societies than the United States.

Therefore, what makes a man murder is a complicated business. Psychological problems are often cited, but human psychology is only possible through sustained exposure to the socialisation process. When Jacques Lacan said the unconscious is structured like a language, he wasn't wrong. Experiences and ideas react with each other in an unending dialectic of thought and action, which is at all time and always conditioned by one's relation to the world. Everything is full of meaning, and how that is received depends on one's (conditioning/conditioned) mentality. It is difficult to tease out, but culture is right at the heart of the process. The weight with which cultural expressions of violence impinge on individual psyches vary from person to person and how that plays out in their lives and their actions varies, but it's real, and it's always (already) there (more here).

It would be naive to expect a nuanced appreciation of the relation between cultural expressions of violence and acts of violence on Monday night's installment of Glenn Beck's show on Fox News. It's just as well I was anticipating nothing of the sort.

Sat on his desk like a doey-eyed jabberwock it wasn't long before faux sincerity gave way to the polemical rumblings of a rant. Once he heard about the shootings he chose to stay silent, and ordered his staff to do the same. What he claimed he was waiting for was a member of America's political establishment to talk common sense. Instead figures in the media and politics fell over themselves to score points. They, aided and abetted by the Washington establishment, had turned a tragedy into a political opportunity.

As criticisms go, this is about as reasonable as Beck gets. There is a semblance of an argument here. Without a shred of evidence, the "left" (i.e. anyone not sold on Fox's diet of repetitive propaganda) has tried to pin the shooting on the right. From the moment the first pundit began speculating about the shootings the weight of liberal media bias was thrown behind spinning the story to suit their anti-Palin, anti-Beck, and anti-Limbaugh agendas. The only outlet not to engage in "wild speculation" was Fox itself. While this is true (even Beck occasionally utters a truth), it was certainly a first for them. Were Jared Lee Loughner of Middle Eastern descent I doubt this uncharacteristic even handedness would have been much in evidence.

At that point Beck goes off the deep end. "Progressives" such as Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and CNN have seized upon the tragedy to drive forward their agenda, which is nothing less than the schema of communist revolution. You see, having poured over the Old Beards Glenn knows the tricks of the revolutionary trade and sees them at work everywhere where liberals have influence. The schema goes something like this. The communists/progressives/liberals have a solution, they get people into government, they use their position to stir up social problems, the system collapses, the people rise up, and the revolutionary elite can rescue the situation by imposing their top down solution. Et voila. Communism.

Progressive policies in their entirety can be boiled down to this project. Here lies the danger represented by the Tea Party, Palin and Beck. They can spy the elitist and totalitarian core at the heart of the Obama administration and the progressive agenda and this is why they do everything possible to shut the right down (Beck's own activities are suppressed to the extent he sold five million books in the 2003-2010 period, and Palin regularly packs out rallies).

Jared Lee Loughner therefore is a convenient idiot in the left's grand plan. Unfortunately for them their attempt to use him as foil is flawed because there is no evidence he had any politics as such. As far as Beck's concerned the most dangerous people in America are 9/11 troofers, those who think the moon landings were hoaxed, and people who only believe in big government solutions (of course!). And, surprise, surprise, Loughner was a troofer, believed the Mars Rovers were faked, and his favourite books were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf: the two tracks of the same totalitarian train [sic].

In Beck's eyes, Loughner wasn't a right wing or a left wing nutjob. He was just a nutjob. Violence just happens. It's not a problem of political ideas, it's a problem of people. You can't change human nature.

Of course, while denouncing the political blame game Beck isn't above turning it round into a new crusade, or, as he calls it, 'Glenn's Challenge'. In a rambling statement Beck makes a series of mom-and-apple-pie demands that boil down to keeping violence out of politics. Referring to a blackboard behind him, he confidently predicts that of the various political and media personalities stuck on there only Sarah Palin will sign his statement. I guess he forgot his own image was up there too.

There you have it. In a remarkable act of self-deception Beck rubbishes and (intentionally?) misunderstands the points his critics have made about the violent discourse of American political culture. At the same time he rules out the very possibility of wider explanations of the shootings, crushing all the detail, all the complexity down to dumb old human nature and insanity. The result? The dehumanising language of Beck and his stable mates have zero culpability and, if anything, the right comes out of the shootings with the moral high ground, a high ground Beck has few scruples using to hit back at his opponents. Cue the resumption of politics as usual and clear consciences for right wingers everywhere.

Beck does have a high profile. It's to his credit he's toxified American conservative politics to the extent where he and his inimitable brand of frothy hyperbole is identified with mainstream US conservatism at home and abroad. But it's worth remembering his political base is very small in the grand scheme of things. In the first five months of 2010 his TV audience figures halved. His radio listeners amount to around nine million, though there are signs this is declining. In a nation of some 300 million people this is small fry indeed - his top position as a "highly rated" TV and radio personality says more about the fragmentation of the American media than any real social weight.

This isn't to say Beck isn't dangerous. Nor does it negate criticisms of his never ending torrent of rubbish. But his power needs putting in perspective.

Image Source

Cuts, Class, and LGBT Communities

2011-01-10T21:36:00.000Z

Originally posted on the Labour Representation Committee website. This is from Thierry Schaffauser of Left Front Art and the LRC.

Part of the current homophobic discourse is to portray LGBT people as economically stronger than the “general population”. We’ve heard about the so called “pink pound” and the expression “double income, no kids” which present us in the mainstream media and advertisement industry as a new target market of the consumerist society.

These representations tend to feed the conspiracy theories that describe the “gay lobby” as imposing the “values of a minority” to the defenceless silent majority who continues to raise “hard working families”. Some people continue to think that homosexuality should not be the concern of the working class which has better priorities to defend like opposing the government cuts.

They don’t realise that we are actually as much if not more concerned by the cuts. If some gay men are indeed very powerful and influential, the majority of LGBTQ people are in fact less advantaged economically. It is true that white middle class gay men are often the leaders of the gay movement and indeed more visible because they have more power which allows them being visible. The “pink pound” in a capitalist society allows them buying better acceptance.

However, what about those who are not middle class? Do you think that homosexuality is stranger of the working class? Ask yourself why trade unions are still dominated by straight men. Why is it still so difficult for many to come out among their comrades? The reality is that we do exist but LGBTQ issues are still considered as less serious, less important, a secondary struggle which divert the focus from what really matters. This way of thinking is actually the best way to divide the working class when we should be all united.

It erases our existence and therefore our oppression and our struggles. Moreover, homophobia does not operate in the same way according to your class, gender, race, etc. Homophobia may be less a problem when you are a Minister and have a body guard, but it can be very violent when you are working on the streets as a sex worker and that people see you as an easy target that doesn’t deserve police protection. Lesbians as women don’t benefit the same economic power that gay men when Trans’ people are often excluded from the labour market. Also the HIV epidemic has had a tremendous impact for many gay men in terms of economic disempowerment.

Many people remain silent in their workplace about their identity because they know that in a difficult economic period they may be the first ones to be made redundant. They know that the cuts in their sector will target them more than others. They will have to continue playing the discreet ones, sometimes lying, and listening to all the family stories of their colleagues acquiescing in silent. They will give some money to help a widow colleague with the funerals of the loved husband she lost while nobody said a word when his husband and half his friends died of AIDS a few years earlier.

The cuts will affect the LGBTQ communities more because we are never a priority. The “real families” will always come first, even when we have children too. They will have to save the most important and we know that we’re not. Many LGBT charity organisations are already losing their funding like Galop an organisation helping victims of hate crimes; LGBT youth services which many have already closed, or Broken Rainbow that helps people suffering domestic violence within a same sex couple.

The cuts imposed on students and the rise of tuition fees will obviously have a greater impact on those students who are not supported economically by their family and among them many LGBTQ students are more likely to be in that situation.

Many HIV services and health organisations are also at risk, with a greater lack of means to support people living with HIV and with fewer consultations available for STD’s testing and less prevention campaigns in a critical period when young gay men are currently very vulnerable to HIV infections.

There will be even less funding to investigate hate crimes when they are already underfunded. Yet, the difficult economic period is conducive to higher level of homophobic and transphobic attacks because people are looking for scapegoats for their own problems. The lack of staff in public transports or the cuts in public lighting will also reduce the safety of those who need it the most.

Most schools don’t educate pupils about feminism or LGBT issues despite an obligation to mention them at least for LGBT history month in their programs. If schools have less funding, many teachers will consider that they must focus on the “fundamentals” without wasting time for less important items of the programme. Nonetheless, education is the best way to fight hate crimes committed often by very young people and to reduce the problems of school bullying or the high levels of LGBTQ teenagers’ suicide.

Many LGBTQ people are in need of protection such as asylum seekers. Most of them are denied their rights and deported back to countries where they face persecutions and death. LGBTQ asylum seekers who are only seen as an additional cost will struggle even more to be recognised by the Home office as deserving protection.

The list is long and I probably forget other issues but what is clear is that we will suffer a lot from the cuts. In that struggle, we will need more than ever the support of the Labour movement because the gay movement has for the moment nothing to say about the cuts. However, more and more LGBTQ activists refuse the commercialisation of their pride and sociability places and the de-politicisation of their identities. Some like me use the term “Queer” politically not only to reclaim the insult but to question the normalisation of the gay identity and in particular regarding the issues of class and race.

We are more and more who prefer to invest our energy in the Labour movement because the oppression we suffer is not only about homophobia and that the homophobia we suffer is different to those of white middle class men. New forms of activism such as UK Black Pride, Hackney Pride, Queer mutinies, or the work of LGBTQ trade unionists try to include and analyse the intersection of class, race, sexuality and gender in their struggles. Left Front Art is one of these organisations and we have affiliated to LRC because we want these issues to be part of the progressive Labour agenda.

Condemning Violent Political Discourse

2011-01-09T16:29:00.000Z

Excellent comment from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on yesterday's shootings in Arizona:

The Stephen King Books Meme

2011-01-09T16:03:00.003Z

To write a novel is a desire common among pretentious pseudo-intellectual 30-somethings. And I'm no different. I have an idea, a vague notion of a plot, and a yearning to get trashed by Natalie Haynes on the Review Show. But writing fiction's a different kettle of fish to this blogging lark and academic writing, innit? This in mind I've recently read Stephen King's On Writing (2000), a book that deftly combines memoir and writing tips into one seamless whole. King doesn't draw character profiles or sketch out plot road maps. He has a couple of ideas and throws some characters into the situation. I have a similarish approach to blogging and found his advice very useful and suited to my way of doing things (especially on the evil that is passive voice, a monster I didn't eradicate entirely from the old PhD thesis). In short, I was very impressed so On Writing comes with a great huge AVPS recommendation.

At the back of the book, King provides a bibliography of best books he read during the composition of On Writing, From a Buick Eight, Hearts in Atlantis and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. This sounds like ideal meme fodder to me.

Of his list of 93 books how many have you read? Those in bold are books I've read. Those in italics are books I own. And if they're bold and italicised, well. I think you can work it out.

A Perfect Crime by Peter Abrahams
Lights Out by Peter Abrahams
Pressure Drop by Peter Abrahams
Revolution #9 by Peter Abrahams
A Death in the Family by James Agee
Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis
Regeneration by Pat Barker
The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
In the Night Season by Richard Bausch
The Intruder by Peter Blauner
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley
Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
Werewolves in Their Youth by Michael Chabon
Latitude Zero by Windsor Chorlton
The Poet by Michael Connelly
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Family Values by KC Constatine
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Cathedral by Nelson DeMille
The Gold Coast by Nelson Demille
Oliver Twist by Charles Dicken
Common Carnage by Stephen Dobyns
The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns
The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle
The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Beach by Alex Garland
Deception on His Mind by Elizabeth George
Gravity by Tess Gerritsen
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
The Fifties by David Halberstam
Why Sinatra Matters by Pete Hamill
Hannibal by Thomas Harris
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
Dirty White Boys by Stephen Hunter
A Firing Offence by David Ignatius
A Widow for One Year by John Irving
The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce
The Devil's Own Work by Alan Judd
Good Enough to Dream by Roger Kahn
The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
Survivor by Tabitha King
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Into Thin Air by Jon Kraukauer
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Our Guys by Bernard Lefkowitz
The Ignored by Bentley Little
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
Ancient Shores by Jack McDevitt
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry
Zeke and Ned by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien
The Speed Queen by Stewart O'Nan
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
No Safe Place by Richard North Patterson
Freedomland by Richard Price
Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
One True Thing by Anna Quindlen
A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendall
Waiting by Frank M Robinson
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
Mohawk by Richard Russo
Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwartz
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
The Crater by Richard Slotkin
The Illusionist by Dinitia Smith
Men in Black by Scott Spencer
Joe Hill by Wallace Stegner
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler
Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Ax by Donald E Westlake

I say, only 13 books read and 16 owned is a jolly poor show, what? And I consider myself to be quite well-read! What's your tally?

Can you put my acquaintance with literature to shame? Seeing as it's a Sunday and perhaps some comrades will be looking for blog filler I hereby tag HarpyMarx, Jim Jepps, Splinty, Dolphin Maria, Carl Raincoat, James Bloodworth, Madam Miaow, Alex, and The Third Estate.

Readers with a penchant for bigger lists might want to take a gander at The Graun's 1,000 books you must read.

Sarah Palin's Targets

2011-01-08T20:00:00.003Z

Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has been shot at a 'Congress on your Corner' event. Reports coming from the US suggest 19 people were shot, with five people dead. There was some confusion whether Giffords survived the attack. She is currently in intensive care.

Whatever the gunman's motivation, questions are bound to be asked after the liberal-voting Congresswoman was "targeted" by Sarah Palin's campaign for voting for Obama's health care bill. As Palin's site is down, I'll reproduce her list of targets:

Not only does Giffords' name appear under crosshairs, her election recent opponent ran events "targeting" Giffords prior to her election.

Strangely, Fox News are using this occasion not to speculate. Must be a first for them.

Kenneth Tong and the Fame Game

2011-01-08T17:21:00.006Z

This is Kenneth Tong. Until my significant other began ranting about him this morning I hadn't heard of him. But he's famous. His celebrity is based on a six day stint in the 2009 series of Big Brother and ... um, that's it. Why then am I introducing this towering luminary to AVPS readers? Because young Kenneth is sitting at the heart of a Twitterstorm. Kenneth fancies himself as something of a self-help guru, except his idea of self-help is encouraging women to starve themselves down to a US size zero. His Twitter profile declares "Proudly endorsing managed anorexia. Nothing tastes as good as thin feels." Here are some of his pearls:

Curvy is another word for fat when used by you. Stop hiding behind such a broad word that does not apply to your context. You are just fat.

Should be approaching lunch hour in Britain, although you really shouldn't take notice of this if you're not a size zero, carry on working.

All you non size zero girls need to keep a food diary, noting everything you eat & drink - review it daily and see how imperfect you are.

Females who do not aim nor want to be a size zero are simply uneducated and ignorant. To be skinny is to be perfect. Personify self-control.

There is no excuse for a Girl not to be a Size Zero. It is perfection. Skinny is so sexy, show's [sic] self control and is the epitome of beauty.

When Kenneth is not regaling Twitter with his observations on size zero he's busy channelling Conservative Future. Look:

Truthfully, when you are as wealthy as I am, you can say, do and think anything without penalty, as you have no one to be accountable to.

Lifestyle is far better out here, as "rich" as London is, poor people are far too prevalent and venues too accessible for the latter.

I do not do charity unless it adds a tangible value into my life.

Used to spend my days chasing and bedding Glamour Models, now I look at my £200,000 watch, counting down my next protein fix.

You'd think someone comfortable with their privilege and free from inadequacy wouldn't need to lord it over his 17,000 Twitter followers.

As you'd expect, Twitter has gone apoplectic. That said, I'm not going to critique this man's idiocy, especially as it's already been done. But there are some interesting things Kenneth Tong says about Twitter's dynamics and how it can be used to play the fame game.

As far as I can tell, describing Kenneth as economically wealthy but socially useless fits him like a glove. Born into money he boasts about bedding models, holidaying here, there, and everywhere, and making cash on the currency markets. He is every inch the personification of Engels's 'coupon clippers'. But the one thing his wealth cannot buy him is recognition. Even in the world of the famous-for-being-famous, celebrity has to be rooted in something. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian launched themselves as TV and paparazzi fodder off the back of sex tapes. Kerry Katona was a (minor) pop star-turned reality telly regular. Katie Price/Jordan was a glamour model. Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse sing. Anyone can do Big Brother, but only Jade Goody, Craig Phillips, Kate Lawler, Anna Nolan, and Brian Dowling went on to bigger things. Those without an identifiable talent or reason for being in the celebrity firmament find their star falls very quickly indeed. And Kenneth is of this category. Apart from a blink-and-you'll-miss-him stay in Big Brother and a couple of minor TV credits there is no rhyme nor reason why he should attain lasting celebrity. And this must be an affront to a man with an overblown ego. Why should he be eclipsed by others, especially "overweight" women from working class backgrounds?

Well, Kenneth has found a possible way into celebrity: the public display of obnoxiousness. The "fame" housemates acquire through BB is sufficient to land them gigs opening bars and clubs. And it's just enough to translate into a few thousand Twitter followers too, as hardcore fans of the show like to keep tabs on former contestants. Some celebrities count themselves among their number and will, like everyone else, correspond with (though not necessarily follow) ex-housemates and retweet them when they say something telling or funny. This reaches their own large non-BB audience driving further rounds of retweets and funnelling hundreds/thousands of followers toward them.

Kenneth's pig ignorant comments about anorexia were almost designed to take advantage of these dynamics. David Schneider said this. Professor Green has jumped in with this. Simon Cowell(!) has got in on the act. US actor Sophia Bush publicised Kenneth's Twitter feed by writing an 'open' tweet, and finally - and no doubt much to Kenneth's satisfaction - Rihanna brought his name to the attention of her 2.7 million followers. Well done, celebs! Aware he's a hot internet property for the moment he's asked if Justin Bieber, Katie Price, and Gordon Ramsay would back his size zero campaign. And to wind the celebs up further he gleefully retweets any criticism coming his way.

Does it matter? After all, Kenneth only has 17,000 followers (though rising fast, he's gained a few hundred in the couple of hours since I started writing this). It's not as if we're talking masses and masses here - a point noted by Loz on the reach of political blogging and tweeting. But it's a case of quality, not quantity. Because some serious A-Listers have taken offence to the moronic Mr Tong and he has successfully made himself a worldwide trending topic, I would be very surprised if the affair goes unmentioned in the Sunday papers or the mid-week glossies. I expect follow up interviews asking Kenneth to "clarify" his statements too, allowing him to enhance his notoriety. And who knows, more media appearances, more column inches, and perhaps further reality TV invitations off the back of the new man-you-love-to-hate await.

At the moment it looks like Kenneth is on the cusp of sustained fame. I wonder how long it will be before the penny drops and our celebrities realise that by condemning a monster, they've created one.

NB Gordon Ramsay fell for the trap.

Sally Hunt vs the SWP

2011-01-06T16:59:00.000Z

I can't remember which comrade said it, but someone recently quipped the left has become relevant enough to witch-hunt again. And one place where the ducking stool has come out from the cupboard is in the University and College Union.

This morning's Times Higher reports the union is in the throes of a political crisis. On the one hand there is a strong UCU Left challenge to incumbent general secretary Sally Hunt. On the other union officers are threatening strike action after being criticised for their role in previous protests and moves to increase their accountability to lay members.

As with the NUS, the fees protests were bound to produce stresses and strains within the UCU. Like the students there are significant numbers of academic staff who've been lifted by the militant mood and would like their union to reflect that. The decision of a large number of NEC members to critically but unconditionally back the winter protests is not the action of an unrepresentative minority, but reflects wider sentiment among the union's members.

Facing a barrage of criticism and a possible challenge to her position, rather than defending herself politically Sally Hunt has reached for her weapon of choice: red baiting. In the THS piece, she is quoted as saying other HE-related unions are viewed as "appendages" in the UCU Left's grand strategy, and this itself "seems to be directed by bodies outside UCU rather than our own members".

Hmm. Haven't we been here before? In her 2006 election campaign she tried to stir up support by attacking the SWP. She then wrote “I believe that UCU should be a politically independent, industrially confident union and I am disappointed that political parties such as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and others are seeking to influence this election. I think they should leave the decision to you - the members”.

Her dark mutterings about outside influences is indicative of the bureaucratic mindset Hunt inhabits. It's beyond her ken that members might be unhappy with her four years of steady-as-she-goes leadership and her backing of the lacklustre NUS president Aaron Porter and chums. In this view of the world, opposition springs not from legitimate grievances but the machinations of a cabal of Trots intent on annexing the union to their nefarious schemes. It's a logic readers of the mainstream press are familiar with. Outside agitation is the explanation of choice politicians, bosses, media worthies, and bureaucrats sezie upon to write off incidences of sustained protest and unofficial strike action. It's a convenient trope, a simple (and simplistic) narrative that avoids the inconvenience of realising the state of affairs they preside over isn't all that, and shields their egos from detailed and devastating criticisms.

What about the substance of her accusation, that leftist UCU members are pursuing a strategy determined outside the union? I'd say that's bollocks. The SWP is strong in the UCU because it's active and its members have built up a base for the party through industrial and political struggle. Put simply, it has support because it's won support. I'm not the SWP's biggest fan by any means, but I know a thing or two about how revolutionary organisations are run. As a general rule union fractions of Leninist parties are operated and directed by the trade unionists who belong to that fraction. They know better than anyone else in their party the balance of forces, the mood of the workforce, and the operation of the union bureaucracy. In theory they're subject to the diktats of the industrial department/organiser, but in practice it just doesn't play out like that. A union fraction run directly by the central committee is a fraction that won't make much headway. What Hunt finds particularly objectionable is not "outside groups" per se but the fact SWP members are the backbone of an internal movement seeking to hold her to account.

The UCU doesn't wear fences, tank traps and pill boxes like a necklace. It is not North Korea. It's a trade union made up of members with their own opinions and politics. SWP members have as much right to promote their party and their alternative strategy inside the union as anyone else. Hunt might not like it, but that's life in the labour movement for you. Unfortunately for he, this time round the witch-hunting language won't wash. The next gensec election will be more about policy, vision, and strategic direction than the last. If all Hunt can say for herself is "oh noes, the SWPs are teh evilz", then she's up shit creek before the campaign has started.

Ed Miliband's Policy Holiday

2011-01-05T17:16:00.000Z

Guest post from Brother G

There has been growing hysteria inside and outside the Labour Party about the performance of Ed Miliband. Criticised for being ‘weak’ and a ‘ditherer’, a number of commentators and activists have been quick to attack the perceived lack of leadership coming from the top. Exhibit A amongst the evidence cited is the lack of concrete policy proposals coming from the shadow front benches.

It will come as a relief to those people then to see Ed Miliband finally make a decisive policy announcement, though not the kind his critics might have been hoping for. Because the policy is ... there is no policy. As Miliband reached his 100th day in office, he announced he will be waiting two years before establishing a complete set of policies for Labour.

This hasn’t gone down too well. Among my circle of comrades, several are frothing at the mouth and clawing at the walls in their frenzy to condemn this ill-judged descent into contemplation and self-reflection. Such an attitude is hardly surprising. For many comrades of a certain age, being a party member meant being a paid-up spokesperson for New Labour. Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown policy was something which was dictated down to members from on high, not developed through a process of democratic negotiation.

For many who've only experienced activism under the shadow of an incumbent Labour Government, the sharp shock of being cast adrift without the safety blanket of Downing Street diktats must be a strange and unsettling experience. For 13 years discussion of, and opposition to, party policy has not only been ignored but sometimes discouraged. The result has, in too many cases, been disillusionment among more idealistic comrades and a worrying anti-intellectual streak of the many time-servers who still clutter up CLP executives up and down the country. It could well be this attitude to policy that allowed Gordon Brown to stumble through the government's twilight years with nary a hint of the radicalism which defined our movement, or that man’s own youth. They do say, after all, that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

However, those of us who've been looking for opportunities within the labour movement to encourage a return to left-wing ideas, this change of pace should be viewed as an opportunity. As someone who voted for Ed Miliband in the leadership election I can say I've got what I voted for: a chance to redefine the way policy and debate is handled within the Labour Party. Some may see this as a lack of leadership on Miliband’s part, but I ask you: in the media saturated 21st century, what could be a better example of decisive leadership than refusing to participate in the tit-for-tat policy soundbites that have pervaded our political landscape in recent years?

It is incorrect to suggest a lack of official policy proposals will hinder Labour in local elections. Such elections can only be won by reconnecting with voters, and this cannot be achieved by pulling populist policies out of a hat. It must be done by rebuilding ourselves as part of a serious mass movement, by defending the hard won victories of working people not just in words but in deeds, and by mobilising the grass roots of our party to share their time, their energy and, most importantly, their ideas.

On Quitting Socialist Blogging

2011-01-04T18:07:00.000Z

Can you remember when right wing blogs "dominated" the blogging scene? They bestrode the internet like a colossus, telling anyone who'd listen that blogging naturally leant itself to conservative politics. The left was too thick and too wedded to tribalism to appeal to non-partisan audiences. Not ever being noted for modifying their opinions on the basis of evidence, the right have consistently underestimated the spread and reach of left wing blogging. Just a year ago Guido and Iain Dale were looking forward to an interesting 12 months, but I don't think either of them seriously thought their hegemony was under threat. And now as we enter 2011 Guido has slipped down the Wikio rankings (determined by the number and "weight" of incoming links), and Iain has abandoned the field altogether. Liberal Conspiracy and Left Foot Forward rule the Wikio roost, and Labour List and Labour Uncut are not far behind.

Some might say that Wikio doesn't really matter, and that's right. Audience figures do. If you take Alexa's word for it, Guido's site is currently ranked 1,698 in Britain. For Liberal Conspiracy and Left Foot Forward it's 4,157th and 10,115th (yours truly is currently 37,784th - well above most of Britain's Trotskyist outfits). So Paul Staines and his sidekick, Harry Cole/Tory Bear still rule the blogging roost. Or do they?

As I have argued before right wing dominance, such as it was, rested on shaky foundations. Apart from Conservative Home, which doubles up as an online resource for Tory activists, the Guido/Iain model was all about Westminster gossip. Beyond that the next tier of Conservative and "libertarian" bloggers, such as Dizzy Thinks and Archbishop Cramner busy themselves with ephemera, opinion and polemic. Others, like John Redwood 'do' economics, but as a whole tthe right's collective blogging output is within the bounds of conventional politics and opinion. The left, defined here as the most mainstream Labourite to the angriest class struggle anarchist, has a much wider purview. Left bloggers do all of the things right wingers do, and more. The left, collectively, is as much at home deconstructing sexism and racism in the media, and advertising and reporting on protests as it is commenting and critiquing the comings and goings of establishment politics. With the explosion of student protest and occupations a few months ago, the collective network of left blogs not only helped the actions organised by UK Uncut go viral but provided a ready made space for the existing left and newcomers to think and debate the way forward.

Simply put, the left has more to offer internet-travelling audiences. I've said it before: right wing bloggers offer politics. Left wing bloggers offer politics plus.

The change in government and the high profile of the student/anti-cuts movement is pregnant with opportunities for getting socialist ideas out to a wider audience. But, strangely, it's not just right wingers like Iain Dale, Tom Harris MP, and Mr Eugenides who have dropped out since the coalition's formation. The left has been affected too. Splintered Sunrise has gone (though may be back) and Susan Press's Grimmer Up North has closed, ostensibly because Twitter offers more opportunities for engagement. Of the dozen or so Socialist Party blogs I used to promote while I was a member, about half have fallen into disuse. Labour Twitter "celebrities", like John Prescott and Ellie Gellard have seemingly thrown in the towel too, and approximately a third of the blogs covered in new blog round ups over the last year have gone. Is this the normal churn of blogging life? Is something else going on?

Possibly.

As a Marxist it is a truism that social being conditions consciousness. I remember a conversation with a Coventry SP comrade a few years ago. We were talking about political activity and the problem of substitutionism, of, in some instances, far left organisations having to take up the initiation and prosecution of campaigns in the absence of wider public involvement. I can't remember the answer, but one of us asked what happens when things start to move? Would some activists habituated to being "in charge" of campaigns and the routine of stalls/interventions/paper sales find it hard to adapt to circumstances when large numbers of people are getting involved in protest activity, trade union struggle and community campaigning? And if so were they likely to drop out or retreat to specific forms of activity where they feel they're making a contribution?

The hard left are perennial oppositionists and, in practice, the passage from Labour to the Coalition has meant little beyond dusting down a few old anti-Tory slogan. It has, of course, effected mainstream Tory, LibDem and Labour bloggers in different ways, but I find it hard o believe any Trotskyist blogger hanging up their keyboard because the Tories and LibDems got in. Burgeoning anti-cuts activity, however, is a different kettle of fish. Whether the viral shop occupying stunts of UK Uncut or the student protest/occupation movement, both have more or less swamped the far left and bypassed them. For all of the previous hard work the authority the far left has in the wider movement is extremely low. Faced with the prospect of having to build up a party's profile in more activated circumstances, I can imagine some rank and file members of Trotskyist organisations are disoriented by the spontaneity and not having a handle on things, despite the constant emphases their leaderships have historically placed on the likelihood of explosive struggles.

And if it can happen to them, wrapped and coddled as they are by party discipline and perspectives documents, what about lefts outside those organisations? Many have got stuck in (and have abandoned blogging to do precisely this), but there are others who will be all sixes and sevens. What's the point of churning out socialist criticism to a small online audience when the placard and the sit-in gets those points across more effectively? Or, if you're a more mainstream Labour blogger, what could you possibly say to radicalising youngsters when your politics are wedded to 'slow and shallow cuts' and electoralism?

It is possible the shift in the real life 'political being' of activism is working its way through left wing political blogging and might help explain why apparently large numbers are upping sticks. Just as some are inspired and fired up by the movement, others are at a loss on how to relate to it. Therefore no one should be too surprised that at the moment left blogging stands on the edge of the political big time, the casualties from within its ranks continue to mount.

(Image Source)

Political Leadership and City Regeneration Part 2

2011-01-03T22:25:00.001Z

In the previous post we examined Mike Tappin's critique of Stoke-on-Trent's political leadership and looked at some of his recommendations. Continuing this theme, albeit on a broader canvas, on 14th December I was invited to the Centre for Cities-organised Rebuilding Britain's Cities: Lessons from the UK and US event at Portcullis House in London to launch their latest report, Grand Designs? A new approach to the built environment in England's cities. By addressing the thorny issue of regeneration strategy it immediately brought to the fore the problems Mike tackled - of direction, vision, and, most importantly, where the impulse for regeneration would come from. It was in this vein the discussion's chair, Stoke Central MP Tristram Hunt, opened with, noting that the government's spending cuts means there is little or no role the public sector can play in regenerating cities.

The morning's first speaker was Alexandra Jones, chief executive of Centre for Cities. Grand Designs? set out to assess existing regeneration strategies and asked if they achieved the best possible outcomes for the people and built environment of declining cities. It was also interested in how cities adapted to changing population trends, whether strategies were often political exercises in official optimism, and what lessons can medium-sized cities take on board from elsewhere.

Alexandra observed that populations tend to migrate to clusters of economic activity, which helps explains current population decline in the north of England. But the developmental model this implies, i.e. industrial growth followed by postindustrial depopulation, is not an iron law of economics or anything else. Large cities of the Midlands and the North have bucked this trend to an extent because they have adapted to the new climate.

Why have they been successful while others haven't? Alexandra suggested that much of the built environment of northern cities is not appropriate to the demands of the postindustrial economy, and neither were some of the regeneration programmes. Centre for Cities found that on the indicators used to measure the predicted positive impacts, nearly half (48%) of physical regeneration projects underperformed. Similarly of economic strategies aimed at revitalising particular areas, 40% failed to meet job creation targets. As a way of illustrating the disconnect between strategy and economic/demographic reality, one such scheme saw the building of 12,000 new properties in Liverpool ... while over the same period 5,000 people left the city.

One possible way of coping with city decline is to swim with the tide rather than stubbornly setting one's face against it. Instead of a 'build it and they will come' approach, Alexandra pointed to a number of examples from overseas. Youngstown, Ohio has received attention for its adoption of 'smart decline'. Rather than planning for growth (in 1950 there were 172,000 inhabitants, by 2000 only 82,000) it has allowed nature to reclaim run down neighbourhoods and is concentrating resources on core infrastructures (see here). Variations on this theme have been tried elsewhere. Flint, Michigan has aggressively moved to demolish vacant properties so public services don't have to stretch so far. Philadelphia has transformed its vacant lots into green spaces, which in turn has increased land values and seen people beginning to return to what has become a more desirable city.

Off the back of these exampled and the lessons learned from UK regeneration, Alexandra suggested five guiding principles for regeneration strategies:

a) The built environment must adapt to economic and population change.
b) Strategies must be focused on the best outcomes for people: mega projects are of limited utility.
c) Regeneration needs to be sensitive to and tailored toward the needs of different neighbourhoods within cities.
d) Community engagement is essential and not an optional extra.
e) Circumstances should be kept under constant review: a regeneration process has to have some flexibility built in.

The next speaker was Bruce Katz from the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington DC-based think tank. His talk focused on the experience of South East Michigan and how it is meeting the 'new economy'. Here there are a number of things going on that lend themselves to regenerating UK cities. The first is the role of philanthropy. In the US there is almost a cultural expectation that business elites "give something back". In SE Michigan's case this has assumed the form of a $100m fund raised from the largesse of wealthy philanthropy. This fund is too small to address all the problems of such a vast territory, but what it has been doing is providing grants to new start ups as a means of kick starting the internal economy, of strengthening organic processes of recovery and, hopefully, producing a raft of new businesses with commitments to the region.

Secondly, in the wake of the recession local businesses have been forced to think strategically about the future. Before the 2008 crash, under the conditions of the housing-led consumption bubble the SE Michigan economy could not compete. Now that has collapsed there are a number of advantages it has over places like, say, Las Vegas, who did extremely well under the old model. Key to prospering in the global economy now are design and innovation, advanced manufactories, low carbon and green technologies. If recovery is to be export-led then Detroit, which didn't look healthy under the previous regime of accumulation, is now very well-placed: it is the 12th largest exporting economy in the United States. Hence regeneration policy now is about repositioning and retooling old industrial cities and making the most of what they've got.

Therefore Bruce's lessons were, firstly, the emphasis on economy. Land interventions - whether demolition, refurbishing housing stock, or building a mega project - must be tied into the economic context. If there is a disconnect then chances are they won't succeed. Secondly local government and regeneration planners have to think about different economic models. The assumptions underpinning renewal strategies of the boom years are outdated. If export growth is the way out of economic stagnation then appropriate policy responses at the local and regional level have to be developed and implemented.

The morning's final speaker was Newsnight economics editor (and occasional leftist) Paul Mason. He played a short piece taken from his film on Gary, Indiana. This once-booming industrial city has seen its population fall by half from its 1950s peak to just 100,000 today. On his blog Paul describes Gary as a city "suffering from one of the most advanced cases of urban blight in the developed world. Its city centre is near-deserted by day. The texture of the urban landscape is cracked stone, grass, crumbled brick and buddleia." Since its heyday deindustrialisation has literally pulled the guts out of the city, leaving it populated by hundreds of abandoned buildings, among which are colleges, schools, and other trappings essential to the infrastructure of any modern city.

For Paul, Gary is locked in a spiral of depopulation and decapitalisation. The collapse of industrial employment triggered the decline, but subsequent depopulation has meant the critical mass of organic social capital isn't there to help the city help itself. But this is a question of distribution rather than total sum. In most former industrial cities social capital (the cultural ties that bind communities together, make them cohesive, and enable them to do things - see here) have high levels of social capital thanks to the social solidarities that grew up in the previous era. It does tend to be highly localised and often obstructed by the atomisation of populations and, in Gary's case, high levels of crime and morbidity. Therefore recovery strategies have to think about mobilising and harnessing this capital.

Paul suggested the means of accumulating social capital lends itself to the new economy (at least the creative, innovation-driven side of it). He argued the semi-private spaces of coffee shops, shopping centres, library IT suites, cyber cafes accommodate the nomadic workspaces of those whose working life is, in large measure, portable and dependent on internet access. Whether at work or play these are becoming sites where new social relations are forged in conjunction with the new economy, from which all kinds of real world cultural and business spin offs can emerge. He suggested one way of fostering this sort of micro climate would be for local authorities to open up empty shop fronts for use as informal work spaces.

Tristram then opened the the discussion up to questions. One representative from a city that has been through a successful regeneration process asked how to make the connect between existing "low aspiration" residents and the new hi-tech, high-innovation economy his city has managed to grow? Where does the aspiration to be socially mobile come from? Rupa Huq raised the issue of the place suburbs occupy in regeneration strategies, and observed the official optimism that conditions all projects is an effect of politics, of the need to promise the electorate a pot of gold at the end of the regeneration rainbow. But often this flies in the face of realities local governments face. In my contribution, I picked up on Paul Mason's argument and said his concern with social capital is focused on the working and middles classes (from which his new intellectual workers are overwhelmingly drawn), but what about the level of elites? They network among themselves but how to get their accumulation of social capital to trickle down to contribute to the cultural renewal of declining cities? Is it possible?

On suburbs Alexandra Jones replied that, generally speaking, big employers tend to locate in or very near a city centre because of its amenities. She cited one example where, during the construction boom, one company threw up grade A office space in a suburban location and has since remained empty. Therefore building projects have to be tailored to people and economics, otherwise it's a waste of time. But she fully agreed with Rupa on optimism. There is a conflict between the realistic, pragmatic approach to regeneration and its politics. As difficult local authorities and politicians may find it, some honesty has to be injected into the expectations they project. On local elites, Bruce Katz recommended trying to pool what philanthropy exists and suggested universities play a good role in facilitating this. And on aspiration, Paul Mason reiterated his points on social capital, calling for more 'local capital markets' where this can grow.

There was an awful lot to digest from this session and a great many things that could inform regeneration policy in Stoke. Like other industrial cities its population has been in measured but long term decline. There have been clearances of old terraces but without the building of new commensurate homes. Instead there was, until recently, a move to provide the sorts of identikit urban flats as well as modern three and four bed room semis and detached housing. Before the housing pathfinder scheme was junked by government cuts there were more plans for more new builds of this type. Now this is not going to be built for the foreseeable future, the Stoke-on-Trent city scape is blighted with voids. Small wonder Matthew Rice, MD of local pottery firm Emma Bridgewater, recently compared the local built environment to Helmand province. And, at present, there is nothing coming from the City Council on what should be done with these sites. That is apart from planting down clovers to keep the ground uneven so kids don't play on them (for arcane legal reasons, of course).

There there are our own mega projects. A hypermodern campus for Stoke Sixth Form College has recently opened on Leek Road, and next door to it Staffs University are building a science and technology innovation centre. These do seem like the sort of things the city needs, especially as the latter will be part and parcel of the university's continued commitment to providing 'incubation units' for graduate start ups. But the other mega project due to arrive - a new bus station in Hanley (current one pictured) - appears to suffer the hubris that comes with building-led regeneration. Its replacement, which looks swish and modern, apparently promises to bring more investment into the city. As welcome as a replacement for the awful and shabby bus station is, I am worried there is more than a soupçon of official optimism swirling around. For starters which ever way you arrive at the bus station you have to first go through the aforementioned blighted lands and derelict properties. When your official gateway is prefaced by devastation will potential investors come away with a favourable impression? As for utility, it will certainly create the space to improve Stoke's public mass transit and, who knows, perhaps it might win a major architectural prize, but does it meet the city's current and likely future needs? I'm not entirely convinced.

This returns us to the question of political leadership. If Stoke (or any other city in a similar position) is to be renewed, questions have to be asked about what kind of regeneration it wants, what economic advantages it has that can be capitalised on in the new climate, what can be done to sponsor "homegrown" growth and, ultimately, what is the realistic assessment of its prospects. I think Stoke's transport links, pottery industry, social solidarities, and growing educational capacity are grounds for optimism. Even the space left by clearances could be turned to its advantage. But unless the city intelligently, creatively, carefully, and pragmatically addresses the challenges facing it, there's every danger the promise of a regenerated Stoke-on-Trent is one that goes unfulfilled.

Defend Socialist Unity from Murdoch

2011-01-02T14:54:00.002Z

Incredible. In the wake of the Sheridan trial Euan McColm, political editor of the Scottish edition of News of the World has called for the police to take action against Socialist Unity. John Wight has the story here.

McColm takes umbrage at threats supposedly made against witnesses for the prosecution in SU's comments boxes. While the recent threads were some of the most unpleasant I've seen (you've got to ask what someone new to socialism made of them), this reflects real life feelings around an issue that has become a dividing line for large parts of the far left. What threats there are were the kind of silly bravado you expect to surface in any heated internet dispute. If one wants to be consistent, applying McColm's definition of 'threat' would see about 90% of Britain's political blogging scene come under police scrutiny.

This move has to be located in the context of Murdoch's campaign against the Sheridans and their supporters. Having seen Tommy lose the court case it is not enough NOTW appeal the original civil action that started this whole mess. Murdoch's minions have to demonise Tommy and anyone associated with the defence. If successful NOTW's appeal will bankrupt Tommy, but News International want to see him and, conveniently, the politics he represents destroyed.

I've made my feelings about the Sheridan case pretty clear. But now this has spilled over into an outright media witchhunt against a section of the left, the labour movement cannot stand aside. Murdoch and his goons should back off, and Socialist Unity be defended from any and all attempts to shut it down.

New Left Blogs

2011-01-02T11:53:00.001Z

Here's the first batch of new(ish) blogs for 2011. Hopefully the first of many!

1. Andy Worthington (Unaligned/Anti-Imperialist) (Twitter)
2. AlysAnalysis (Labour)
3. Camden School Sit-In (Unaligned/anti-cuts) (Twitter)
4. Dress to the Left (Unaligned) (Twitter)
5. Her sins were scarlet, but her blog was Red (Labour) (Twitter)
6. Homo Economicomical (Unaligned) (Twitter)
7. Housmans Blog (Unaligned)
8. Jonesblog (Labour) (Twitter)
9. Last Lefts (Labour) (Twitter)
10. Left Central (Unaligned) (Twitter)
11. March the Fury (Labour) (Twitter)
12. Mid-Ulster Marxist Discussion Group (Unaligned)
13. North London Communist Party Blog (Communist Party of Britain)
14. North West Communists (Communist Party of Britain)
15. Sheffield View (Unaligned) (Twitter)
16. South Devon Communist (Communist Party of Britain)
17. Stirling Communists (Communist Party of Britain)
18. The Way I See Things (Labour) (Twitter)
19. Today I Learnt to Whistle (Unaligned) (Twitter)
20. Valley's Mam (Unaligned)

That's your lot for December/January. If you know of any new blogs (a year or less old) that haven't been featured before, drop me a line via email, the comments or on Twitter. The new blog round up is posted on the first Sunday of every month.

My Ten for the Orwell Prize

2011-01-01T14:05:00.001Z

It's new year. As blogging comrades stumble out of bed nursing aching skulls and wobbly stomachs, they're probably looking for some filler that doesn't overtax the much-abused synapses. If that's the case may I humbly recommend digging through the 2010 posting archives and selecting ten pieces for the Orwell Prize for Blogging (entry form here). Not only have you an excuse to introduce new readers to your best writing, but also you might be in with a chance of winning fame and glory. Perhaps.

Here are my selections:

Mary Daly: Death of a Feminist: A short reflection on the works of the controversial radical feminist theologian, Mary Daly.

Some Reflections on the Leaders' Debate: Back in April election coverage was dominated by the televised debate between the party leaders. This is what I thought about them.

Raoul Moat and Class Pride: How can we forget Raoul Moat, the psychotic steroid-addled killer the media turned into a folk hero? This is an examination of the sympathy Moat stirred up from some quarters.

Socialism and Space: Exactly what it says on the tin.

How Labour Can Win Again: In August Blairite think tank Demos put out a report arguing Labour lost the election because it was too left wing. This is a response to that absurd argument.

The Pope and Atheist Identity Politics: There was something deeply unsettling about the protest against the Pope's state visit to Britain. At least I thought so.

Dave and BigSoc: Dave talks an awful lot about the 'Big Society'. This post has a look at what it's all about.

Alan Johnson's "Alternative": So Ed Miliband's decision to make Alan Johnson shadow chancellor was a bit of a surprise. This is an analysis of the economic policy trajectory Johnson set out in his first speech after taking up the post.

Between Protest and Parliament: What Ed Miliband's collapse in the face of Sayeeda Warsi's letter of complaint over comments allegedly made by John McDonnell says about Labour's contradictory political position.

Tommy Sheridan: Tragedy and Farce: My take on the Tommy Sheridan trial.

I doubt I'll make the short list, let alone stand a chance of winning. The judges know a zeitgeist when they see one and I would be very surprised if the feted face of the new generation doesn't romp home with the award. And why not? She knows how to turn a phrase. But if there is any justice the blogging prize should go to James Doleman for his excellent coverage of the Tommy Sheridan trial. For an issue divided by hard partisanship and entrenched positions James managed the tricky job of navigating the choppy waters of pro and anti-Tommy sentiment. He conveyed the tension and drama of the trial brilliantly and left the mainstream press floundering. So well done, James. Should you decide to enter I wish you the best of luck.

Interested comrades need to be aware that the competition closes to new entrants on 19th January.

Top Ten Dance Tunes of 2010

2010-12-31T11:14:00.004Z

One year. Ten top electronic tunes. 'nuff said.

10) Rocket by Goldfrapp
9) Could This Be Real by Sub Focus
8) Stereo Love by Edward Maya and Vika Jigulina
7) Orbion by Armin van Buuren
6) Remember Love by DJ's United
5) This Night (Alex MORPH Remix) by Filo and Peri feat. Audrey Gallagher
4) Always Loved a Film by Underworld
3) Chasing the Sun (D Mad vs Matt Darey Radio Mix) by Matt Darey and Aeron Aether feat. Ridgewalkers
2) Not In Love by Crystal Castles feat. Robert Smith

And this beast is number one ...

Don't forget to check out the top 100s of the 00s, 90s, and the 80s.

Support for Students Falling? Probably Not

2010-12-30T18:11:00.000Z

Guido today leads with the news that Britons are "saddened, ashamed and disgusted" by the demonstration that took place on December 12th.

In a series of questions, polling firm Angus Reid asked the 2,000 or so respondents what they felt about the demonstration, with significant numbers selecting shame, sadness, disgust and anger. They were also asked whether "all things being considered" if kettling was justified (53% yes, 37% no) and whether the use of water cannon at future demonstrations would be justified (55% yes, 36% no).

It's interesting Angus Reid asked what respondents felt rather than what they thought about the demonstration. They are asking people what could be complicated and conflicted feelings to a single word (or, in this case, four single words). Were people angry at the demonstrators, the troublesome minority, the police, the subsequent tête-à-tête with the royal personage, or the wall-to-wall coverage? Did people feel disgust at the actions of demonstrators or the police? What was the consistency between anger, shame, etc? I guess the subsequent questions on kettling and water cannon makes things slightly less fuzzy, but as a scientific exercise in providing a sociological snapshot it wouldn't, let's say, get past the peer review stage. Had Angus Reid been interested in accurately reflecting what people thought above results that lend themselves to glib headlines, perhaps they could have asked respondents what they felt about the actions of the students and police. Or who they blame: students, a "troublesome" minority, and the police. What they thought/felt about the media coverage too. And whether these events have affected their opinions on the issue. Had Angus Reid done that, I bet a more complex picture would emerge.

Nevertheless, I can imagine wannabe careerists ensconced in various student unions looking at these figures and thinking the game is up. Indeed, Guido comes to that conclusion: "... the student demonstrations are doing the students no favours, every demo costs them support." Is that really the case?

While it's self-evidently obvious violence doesn't play well, I think the public are more sophisticated than Guido implies. I'm certain they can separate a bit of argy-bargy on the streets out from the wider injustice of tuition fees. You don't have to take my word for it either, here's a couple of poll results. According to YouGov, way before the protest movement kicked off, a 14th October poll found 37% supported the rise in tuition fees while 45% were against. There were 18% who didn't know. Go forward to 6th December - after the violent turn taken by protests - and we find the figures are 38% for and 49% against. For what it's worth, an Ipsos MORI poll dated 13th December (but undertaken prior to the demonstration that took place the day before) only 28% of respondents supported the government's plans, while 64% were opposed. Make of that what you will.

UK Minimum Wage "Manifestly Unfair"

2010-12-29T18:36:00.001Z

The Council of Europe's Committee of Social Rights has published an assessment on its 47 member states' progress on the European Social Charter, which was initially signed by ten founding members in 1961. This commits signatories to providing various social and legal protections, such as health, housing, recourse to the law and employment rights.

The conclusions the report makes on employment in the UK makes grim reading for workers and trade unionists. Here are the lowlights.

On annual holiday with pay: "The Committee concludes that the situation in United Kingdom is not in conformity with ... the Charter on the ground that workers who fall ill or are injured during their holiday are not entitled to take the days lost at another time."

On weekly rest period: "The Committee concludes that the situation in the United Kingdom is not in conformity with ... the Charter on the grounds that there are inadequate safeguards to prevent that workers may work for more than twelve consecutive days without a rest period."

On increased remuneration for overtime worked: "The Committee concludes that the situation in the United Kingdom is not in conformity with ... the Charter on the grounds that workers do not have adequate legal guarantees ensuring them increased remuneration for overtime."

On trade union activities: "The Committee concludes that the situation in the United Kingdom is not in conformity with ... the Charter on the ground that Section 15 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which makes unlawful for a trade union to indemnify an individual union member for a penalty imposed for an offence or contempt of court, and Section 65 of this Act, which severely restricts the grounds on which a trade union may lawfully discipline members, represent unjustified incursions into the autonomy of trade unions."

On the right to take collective action: "The Committee concludes that the situation in the United Kingdom is not in conformity with ... the Charter on the following grounds:
 the scope for workers to defend their interests through lawful collective action is excessively circumscribed;
 the requirement to give notice to an employer of a ballot on industrial action, in addition to the strike notice that must be issued before taking action, is excessive;
 the protection of workers against dismissal when taking industrial action is insufficient."

Perhaps most damning is the committee's conclusions on "the most successful policy of the last 30 years", the minimum wage. It's worth quoting this section of the report verbatim:

"Paragraph 1 - Decent remuneration
The Committee takes note of the information contained in the report submitted by the United Kingdom. In its previous conclusion the Committee held that the situation was not in conformity with Article 4§1 of the Charter on the ground that the minimum wage fell far below the threshold of 60% of the average wage.

It now notes from the report that in 2008 the adult rate of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) amounted to £5.73 (€6.90) gross per hour. According to the report the NMW has increased substantially faster than both average earnings and prices, especially since 2001. Since it was introduced in 1999, it has risen by around 59% up to October 2008. The Government takes advice on NMW rates from the independent LowPay Commission. The aim when setting the rates is to help the low paid through an increased minimum wage, while making sure that no damage is done for their employment prospects by setting these rates too high.

As regards the minimum wage as a per cent of median earnings (the so called NMW bite), the Committee observes from the report that it is higher in low paid sectors such as hotels and restaurants, cleaning, hairdressing etc. On average, in all sectors it represented around 50% of the median wage in 2008. The report also describes the system of tax credits which aims at achieving fairness combined with flexibility in the labour market. The Committee observes that when combining the NMW with tax credits, a single person in October 2009 earned £197 (€237) per week.

The report does not provide information on the average wage. The Committee notes from Eurostat that the average gross annual earnings in industry and services in 2007 amounted to € 46,050. The Committee notes from OECD2 that the minimum relative to average wage of full-time workers represented 46%.

Taking all elements at its disposal into account, the Committee still considers that the situation is not in conformity with the Charter. Despite a number of efforts aimed at improving the overall situation of minimum wage earners, and notwithstanding the fact that the pound value of the minimum wage has gone up during the reference period, this wage remains low and cannot be considered fair in the meaning of the Charter.

Conclusion
The Committee concludes that the situation in United Kingdom is not in conformity with ... the Charter on the ground that the minimum wage is *manifestly unfair* [my emphasis]"

You can read the full UK report here.

Shamefully, the UK was one of the ten founding signatories of the social charter. Some progress.

(H/T Stronger Unions on Twitter)

Why Ed Miliband Makes Me Angry

2010-12-29T16:11:00.001Z

Guest post from Sister C

I didn’t vote in the Labour Party leadership election. I didn’t for a number of reasons but if I had voted I would have done for Ed Miliband. His campaign impressed me as a move away from Blairism was what the party needed.

When Ed Miliband was announced as the new Labour Party leader I was as pleased as punch, and not just because I won a lot of money by betting that he would win.

However since Ed became leader I have constantly been angry at him. The thing that first started this off was his cabinet appointments. I will begin with the obvious: ALAN JOHNSON over Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls for Shadow Chancellor? What was he thinking? What a complete waste of the talent we have in the Parliamentary Labour Party. The party would of had a full set of alternative economic policies and a spring board from which to annihilate Osbourne at the despatch box. But no.

Talking of policy, what policies does Labour have at the minute? I don’t know one policy other than we don’t like the Tories and Lib Dems. I go out and doorknock for the party and when people ask me about Labour’s economic policy I can’t answer. Likewise on education policy we have no answer. All I can do is reel off our record over the last 13 years. But if for argument's sake all the Tory and Lib Dem MPs got blown up tomorrow and we had to take charge of the country, I don’t have a bloody clue what the Labour cabinet would do.

On top of this, as a party we have not landed one hit on the coalition government, not one. Why? Well we have no policy, and we have a leader who's failing to take a lead. All his energy from the leadership campaign has gone and all we're left with is a great void.

So what is Ed Miliband doing? Messing about with Labour Party policy is all well and good, but now shouldn't be the time for naval gazing. Instead we should be attacking the coalition government and presenting the public with a strong Labour vision.

If my annoyance wasn't enough, the penny membership wheeze has made me beyond angry. Joining a political party you should be about making a financial and time commitment to the party. A peppercorn subscription is not a financial commitment by any stretch of the imagination, in fact it morally undermines the contributions made by others as well as the standing of the new recruits who've taken the party up on its offer. The only time I can imagine this sort of thing being acceptable is for the unemployed, others dependent on benefits, and the very low paid.

Yesterday "the leadership" has proposed a cap on donations as low as £500 that would mean that the party is no longer funded by trade unions. The mind boggles. How on earth do you expect to raise enough small donations for party staff, party buildings, oh and those little things known as elections. The Labour Party is already in financial problems and this policy is just going to make things worse.

The leadership also wants to give “Labour supporting” members of the public 25% of the votes in leadership contests (with MPs, trade union members and party members each taking a quarter of the votes). If this happens I may as well give up my membership up now. Why the hell should I stay a member if members of the public are going to be given a vote in my party? On top of that, that last thing we really, really need is a more complex leadership election system. Ed Miliband was once said to be the emissary from Planet Fuck. Which one is he on now?

Now don’t get me wrong. If David Miliband had won things would hardly be rosy. The Blairites must be having a field day with what Ed's doing. I can understand why some people believe Blairism was the only way to make the Labour Party electable because the "alternative" we are currently presented with is anything but credible.

Ed Miliband's fuzzy policies and softness in the face of the Coalition is emboldening the Blairites and strengthening the hand of the told-you-so's. His half-hearted shuffle away from the common sense of the previous era will, if the opinion polls remain in Labour's favour, support the argument that sticking to the say-nothing middle is the right course. But in the mean time we're not connecting with the public, not motivating the party, and not having alternative policies. This is a crying shame. But we're still not far into Ed's leadership. Wiser heads may come to the fore and a shift in direction may prevail. But what are the chances of that happening, eh?

Political Leadership and City Regeneration Part 1

2010-12-28T16:55:00.001Z

Over the last couple of weeks I've been on a short adventure in city regeneration policy. A fortnight ago I was down at Portcullis House in the Big Smoke for a morning discussion on 'Rebuilding Britain's Cities: Lessons from the UK and US'. And the Friday before saw a day conference at Keele on the 'Socio-Political Challenges of Medium-Sized Cities' concentrating on neighbourhoods, health, and political leadership. The changes to health policy and the persistence of areas associated with deprivation, unemployment, crime, high morbidity were discussed in some rigorous detail, but I would like to concentrate on that day's final paper by former MEP and council leader, Mike Tappin. His topic not only serves as a bridge to the Portcullis House discussion but is one of crucial importance for all cities negotiating the treacherous rapids of regeneration: the problem of political leadership.

Mike's paper, 'The Governance Challenge for Stoke-on-Trent: A Study of System, Economic and Political Failure' didn't pull any punches. It really was look at the multiple contributors to Stoke's decline. First, Mike flagged up the spatial dimension. Rather than following the "traditional" centre/periphery model of cities, Stoke is a polycentric city. It is as if drawn out along a South East to North West axis. It comprises the six towns that federated to form Stone-on-Trent in 1910, but in practice (according to previous work undertaken by Mike) the city is sub-divided into 56 more or less discrete "villages", which lends The Potteries a very strong cultural and political localism. This is reinforced by the bypassing of Stoke-on-Trent by the M6, poor internal road networks (for example, Potteries Way - the inner city ring road - has been only half built for over 20 years), and a not altogether praise-worthy public transport system. When 34% of city households are without a car this is a big problem.

Like many medium-sized industrial cities Stoke has suffered economic decline. In the 1950s 70,000, 10,000+, and 20,000+ were employed in ceramics, steel, and mining respectively. By 2001 those figures stood at 6,000, 200, and zero. In the 1971-81 period (before Thatcherism began to bite), that decade saw the loss of 28,000 manufacturing jobs and the closure of two local collieries. Also because of the dependence on the potteries, Stoke possessed a counter-cyclical economy. When Britain entered into recession the devaluation of sterling boosted Stoke's exports abroad, allowing it to buck the trend. Since 1981, for all intents and purposes the potteries are the only significant economic survivor of the early period. Manufacturing - including ceramics - accounts for below 20% of local employment. Distribution and retail have taken up the slack of private employment.

The unemployment figures more explicitly tell the story of Stoke's decline. In the 50s and 60s unemployment averaged at around 3% - roughly 2,500 people. Through the 70s to most of the 1990s it hovered around the UK average, but in this last decade it has become a major problem. In February 2009, at the start of the recession, 24.1% of the workforce were unemployed, and 43% of that jobless total had been out of work for five years or more. Taking together JSA, incapacity benefit, and income support 55,550 people were dependent on benefits in some way in North Staffordshire. For Mike, this has bred a 'culture of contentment' whereby aspirations are atuned to the income one receives from benefits, therefore helping to culturally lock Stoke into a perpetual cycle of economic water treading. This can be seen in educational attainment. Whereas the West Midlands average for NVQ levels 2, 3 and 4 are 61.6, 42.3 and 24.5 for the working age population, in Stoke it's 53.8, 32.3 and 14.4.

Mike argues the city's economic problems are exacerbated by its political difficulties. From 1977-96 Stoke was governed by the County Council situated in Stafford, reducing the Potteries to the status of a district council. This led to a two-tiered political culture where the brightest and the best "went south" while the "b team" remained at home. In 1996 the city was made a unitary authority (Mike would have preferred a broader N Staffs authority commensurate with the city's economic footprint) and off the back of the national wave against the Tories, Labour romped home that year with 60 councillors to nil. From 2000 on the Labour party begins imploding, seeing its vote collapse from 40.75% at the start of the decade to just 25% in 2008. Matters aren't helped by a switch to an elected mayoral system in 2002, only for it to switch back six years later. Independents and the BNP started making inroads at Labour's expense, but were checked at the 2010 local election. Labour gained 13 councillors off the back of the general election turn out, and has since recruited another councillor who crossed the floor. Labour now governs in a coalition with Conservatives and Independents alliance, LibDems and the City Independent group.

So much for the form of local politics. What of their content? Mike identified five interrelated problems. One, the poor quality of local councillors. Two, a clear lack of bold strategic thinking in any of the local parties. Three, the culture of localism. Fourth, the absence of a civically-minded educated middle class. And lastly, the tendency of the system and parties to store up long term political animosities.

On top of political instability, there has been a constant churn in the city's administration. Between 2001-10, the council got through six chief executives, five directors of social services, and three finance officers. This lack of inbuilt expertise has seen the council pay out (on average) £6m annually to various consultancies. Even worse, up until the government's bonfire of the quangos, city governance was parcelled out among the city council, the Renew Housing Partnership, the N Staffs Regeneration Partnership, and Local Strategic Partnerships. It's pretty clear who was responsible for the traditional functions of local government, but which body was in charge of the regeneration process?

These problems have been partially addressed by a governance commission that was appointed in 2007. Its brief was:

1) To consider options about future governance arrangements for Stoke-on-Trent Council to deliver that strong, effective and accountable leadership that the city needs to address the economic, social and cohesion challenges which it faces.
2) To give consideration to governance across the wider public/private sector and to the importance of economic regeneration and community cohesion.
3) To consider the relationship between Stoke-on-Trent and the wider sub-regional/regional/national bodies including other Local Authorities and their partners within the region.

It recommended the setting up of a further body - the 'transition board' - to make further recommendations for sorting out the city's governance. It concluded by favouring all-out four-year elections, single member wards, fewer councillors, member development, more devolved decision-making, working to improve the council machinery, and improving community engagement. After much wrangling councillors will be reduced from 60 to 44, and council ward boundaries redrawn with the majority of them becoming single member (owing to behind the scenes fudges, some will move to two member wards, and one will remain three member). For Mike this strikes at the root of many of the petty rivalries that have grown up between councillors representing the same patch, and the move to four-yearly allows the necessary space for longer term strategic planning.

But this doesn't go far enough. He would like to see the council concentrate on core functions and facilitate voluntary organisations and social enterprises take over some of the ancillary services it currently provides. He wants to see a drive to develop the civic capacity of Stoke's communities to produce the ambitious and competent cadre of politicians the city needs.
And Mike also called for more cooperation between N Staffs councils, businesses, quangos and other interested bodies to deliver a proper plan for the city and its hinterland.

While I didn't agree with all of Mike's presentation, it did provide plenty of food for thought. Regards 'civic capacity' this is where political parties come in. At the moment Stoke Central CLP is in the process of renovating itself. For the first time in years it's been conducting regular political work inbetween elections, which is starting to reap the benefits from in terms of new recruits and, for want of a better word, "reconnection". Similarly internally the party's rolling out a programme of political education in conjunction with activism to develop all members' strengths. The culture of bureaucracy and deference is slowly being eroded, allowing space for new members to grow and assume responsibilities. But this process is long, slow and painstaking.

A civic culture is, according to Will Hutton, one of the "soft" cultural props a successful and sustainable capitalism depends on (and, I would argue, an essential component for socialism too - but we'll leave that by the by for now). Its absence in Stoke is one of the contributing factors to a generalised lack of internal capital accumulation that could see the city out of its doldrums. Therefore this isn't just a problem that can be boiled down to atomised working class communities and privatised individuals: it's one that afflicts existing business elites too. I don't want to say much more as I'm involved in a couple of projects on the issue of civic culture and political participation, but as we shall see in the next post, there are important lessons that can be drawn from American experiences of declining cities.

Lastly, one cannot disagree with Mike's view of time-scale. Whatever regeneration strategy tickles your political fancy it has to be long-term and consistently pursued. I grew up in and around Derby. Though it has its own set of problems and advantages, 20 years of consistent and tenacious pursuit of a coherent regeneration strategy has transformed the city to the point where it has the highest workplace wage base outside the South East. While Stoke's situation is such that it's unlikely to achieve parity with its more affluent neighbour, it is a useful exemplar of what vision and determination in local government can do.

Top 100 Tweeting Bloggers 2010

2010-12-27T12:30:00.008Z

Find below 2010's list of the top 100 UK-based tweeting political bloggers. Follower numbers were those yesterday evening.

1) (1) Alastair Campbell (52,095 followers)
2) Jon Snow (36,962 followers)
3) Johann Hari (33,656 followers)
4) Krishnan Guru-Murthy (32,917 followers)
5) Nick Robinson (27,337 followers)
6) Tory Radio (21,166 followers)
7) (5) Guido Fawkes (20,864 followers)
8) Caroline Lucas (17,465 followers)
9) Toby Young (15,504 followers)
10) (4) Tom Watson MP (14,910 followers)
11) (18) Kevin Maguire (13,994 followers)
12) (90) Laurie Penny (10,838 followers)
13) (14) Paul Waugh (10,776 followers)
14) (15) Tim Montgomerie (9,655 followers)
15) David Allen Green (9,558 followers)
16) Boulton and Co (9,475 followers)
17) (13) Labour List (8,569 followers)
18) (66) Left Foot Forward (8,551 followers)
19) (45) FT Westminster Blog (8,197 followers)
20) Robert Peston (8,178 followers)
21) (7) Kerry McCarthy (7,590 followers)
22) Paul Mason (7,502 followers)
23) (10) Enemies of Reason (7,234 followers)
24) Michael White (7,180 followers)
25) (63) Will Straw (6,953 followers)
26) Mehdi Hasan (6,685 followers)
27) (26) Sunny Hundal (6,666 followers)
28) Michael Crick (6,575 followers)
29) Life on Wheels (6,387 followers)
30) (6) The Wardman Wire (6,033 followers)
31) (20) Gideon Rachman (6,013 followers)
32) John Rentoul (5,832 followers)
33) (24) Harry Cole (5,775 followers)
34) (44) Liberal Conspiracy (5,687 followers)
35) (38) Daniel Hannan (5,538 followers)
36) (28) Benedict Brogan (5,479 followers)
37) (8) UK Progressive (5,472 followers)
38) (19) Cath Elliott (5,382 followers)
39) (37) Andrew Sparrow (5,369 followers)
40) (62) Political Scrapbook (5,358 followers)
41) (22) Lynne Featherstone MP (5,187 followers)
42) UCL Occupation (4,549 followers)
43) (9) James Cleverly (4,411 followers)
44) (35) Next Left (4,320 followers)
45) (27) Think Politics (4,130 followers)
46) 38 Degrees (4,121 followers)
47) (33) LibDem Voice (4,081 followers)
48) (23) A View From the Public Gallery (4,000 followers)
49) Charlie Beckett (3,910 followers)
50) (21) Obnoxio the Clown (3,773 followers)
51) (32) Mark Pack (3,711 followers)
52) (31) Bloggerheads (3,577 followers)
53) Police State UK (3,563 followers)
54) Labour Uncut (3,533 followers)
55) Jonathan Isaby (3,484 followers)
56) Gordon MacMillan (3,449 followers)
57) Jim Knight (3,442 followers)
58) (48) Douglas Carswell MP (3,316 followers)
59) Hannah Nicklin (3,308 followers)
60) (67) Labour Matters (3,276 followers)
61) (43) Adam Smith Institute Blog (3,123 followers)
62) (55) Adam Bienkov (3,073 followers)
63) Iain Martin (2,972 followers)
64) Conservative Home (2,901 followers)
65) (34) Jon Worth's Euroblog (2,899 followers)
66) Lisa Ansell (2,823 followers)
67) (65) Boris Watch (2,762 followers)
68) James Delingpole (2,660 followers)
69) (49) Eric Joyce MP (2,607 followers)
70) Progress (2,590 followers)
71) (75) Martin Bright (2,590 followers)
72) False Economy (2,517 followers)
73) (54) Dizzy Thinks (2,510 followers)
74) Tristram Hunt (2,506 followers)
75) Hopi Sen (2,491 followers)
76) James Kirkup (2,442 followers)
77) Old Holborn (2,434 followers)
78) (89) Angry Mob (2,420 followers)
79) (88) Cardiff Blogger (2,318 followers)
80) (64) A Very Public Sociologist (2,230 followers)
81) Lenin's Tomb (2,037 followers)
82) (95) Luke Bozier 1,937 followers)
83) (50) Greener Leith (1,864 followers)
84) Bright Green Scotland (1,852 followers)
85) (70) Mark Reckons (1,817 followers)
86) Crash Bang Wallace (1,810 followers)
87) F for Philistine (1,801 followers)
88) (40) Kirklees Unity (1,794 followers)
89) New Left Project (1,746 followers)
90) (82) Liberal Burblings (1,732 followers)
91) Big Brother Watch (1,694 followers)
92) William Green (1,690 followers)
93) (61) Andy Reeve's Running Blog (1,675 followers)
94) Archbishop Cranmer (1,671 followers)
95) (39) Cllr Lisa Northover (1,610 followers)
96) (77) Local Democracy Blog (1,583 followers)
97) Heresy Corner (1,579 followers)
98) Tom Miller (1,556 followers)
99) (78) Stephen's Linlithgow Journal (1,531 followers)
100) (86) Caron's Musings (1,530 followers)

Now for the analytical bit. The normal churn of political blogging has claimed several high profile casualties over the last few months. In fact, apart from the Tom Harris's and the Iain Dale's some 31 other bloggers who were on last year's list didn't make it through 2010. Some of them are still active on Twitter, like John Prescott, Bevanite Ellie, but their blogs have seen better days. As before bloggers are excluded from the list if either their blog or Twitter feed has fallen into disuse for 40 days, are ensconced behind a pay wall, or have announced their retirement. The only exception to this rule is Obo the Clown who, despite announcing his departure, is still gracing the blogosphere with his inimitable pearls of wisdom.

The 2010 list sees 41 new entries, meaning that a further eight bloggers from last years weren't able to break through the floor, which now stands at 1,530 followers (last year it was 641). But what is most striking about the new list is the number of professional bloggers it contains. By my reckoning, journalists, think tank'ers and the like account for 33 positions. Last year it was 11. This change can only be partly explained by my casting the net wider too. Some new "stars" operating out of mainstream media platforms have made a splash, such as the cartoon reactionary James Delingpole. Bloggers like Harry Cole (AKA Tory Bear) and Laurie Penny came up through independent blogging and have been incorporated into the media apparatus - Cole is now an "editor" at Guido's, and Penny is now hosted by the New Statesman and is a Graun regular. Also a lot of liberal, left and leftish bloggers have done paid for bits and bobs for Comment is Free. As I'm not a Telegraph regular I don't know if it's fulfilling a similar role on the right.

The preponderance of professionals, particularly near the top, raises some interesting definitional issues. It seems a blog has become de rigeur for the disconcerting broadcaster and media name. But these are very much bolt-ons to their existing work. Often their blogs are tired, uninspiring and, in the case of the BBC, have to shy away from controversy for "impartiality's" sake. The question is would anyone bother reading them if there wasn't an established name attached?

On this basis it's easy to assume this list is a measure of blogging influence as determined by number of Twitter followers, and might suggest the position of indie bloggers is slipping. But not all things are equal. You can be pretty certain people follow Guido because he's a blogger. Likewise, I imagine Jon Snow has many more followers ... because he's Jon Snow.

Does this mean anything? It doesn't follow that independent blogging is an endangered species. There'll always be room for people to mouth off and an opportunity to build up a blog audience, but with limits. I think the path is closed for one-woman and one-man bands starting out now with aspirations to become their party's version of the next Guido or Iain Dale. But this has more to do with the rise of collective blogs than the eminence of "celebrity" bloggers.

It's strange. In many ways the route to blogging "fame" is easier than it once was. The existence of popular collective blogs can short circuit the slow process of building up and getting to know an audience. The advantage is instant prominence, but at the price of always being at the mercy of the blog's editor and having to compete with up to six or seven other posts a day for attention. But this way there's a chance you might catch a newspaper or magazine's eye and be snapped up. For most who go down this route it's more likely their name is lost among the prodigious output.

So, to venture a prediction. Even with the likely upsurge of radical protest-related blogging this coming year I reckon the list will look very similar toward 2011's end. The professionals will have squillions of followers, more of them will dominate the list and those capable of keeping up are prominent personalities attached to collective blogs. The number of indies will fall through being crowded out or by their absorption/incorporation by the collectives or traditional media. It would, however, be nice to get proven wrong.

Update 28.12.10: The list has been updated now for the last time. If you have been missed off it's hard lines, basically. But do let me know anyway via the comments below so you'll be considered when it's compiled next year.

Doctor Who's Christmas Carol

2010-12-26T15:57:00.001Z

It's as Christmas as Noddy Holder and selection boxes. It may have only been going since 2005 but the Doctor Who seasonal special has become a firm festive favourite. According to overnight figures, it managed some 10.3m viewers - second only to Eastenders. So Steven Moffat and the Cardiff crew can cheerfully raise a glass to a job well done. And if I was wealthy enough I might get them a round in too. Because, for once, the Christmas episode was quite good.

Doctor Who's A Christmas Carol is, as you might expect, an adaptation of the ever-green Dickens favourite. High above a neo-Victorian planet a space liner is threatening to crash with Amy and Rory on board. Oh noes! Their fate rests in the hands of the Scrooge-like oligarch Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon). Kazran is the owner of a device that keeps the cloud decks away from the surface, and with it the sky-swimming scools of sharks and other fish. He can use his spire to guide the liner in to safety but refuses to do so - and the Doctor is helpless to intervene directly because its controls are biologically-bonded to Kazran's person. The subsequent plot (described in detail here) sees the Doctor travel into Kazran's past to try and guide his development and maturation down a gentler, compassionate path while loosely following the themes of Dickens' book.

As you'd expect it's completely daft, featuring scenes of a shark-propelled rickshaw and enough time paradoxes to keep the nitpickers scratching their heads until the next series. But there was something that didn't sit easy with me, a bit like one too many mince pies.

Straight away we are (sort of ) introduced to Abigail (Katherine Jenkins), a young woman kept by Kazran in cryogenic deep freeze. Because he refuses to release her into the custody of her (impoverished) family for Christmas day on the grounds that she is collateral for a loan they have yet to pay back, he is set up as the Scrooge-like character. Half way through the story the reason for her suspension is changed. In his attempts to reform the young Kazran, the Doctor begins disinterring Abigail from her icy crypt every Christmas eve. They whisk her away to all the desirable locations - Venice, the pyramids, a Frank Sinatra party in Vegas. Each time she returns at the end of the evening the counter on her capsule inexorably decreases by one. With only eight to begin with and one left on the tumbler, it's not long before we learn her secret: Abigail is dying. The numbers indicate the days she has left, and all the cryogenics are doing is delaying the inevitable.

There's a little bit of gender politics at work here. Stripped of Who's derring-do and down to brass tacks, this is a story about an old man who keeps a woman in a box in his basement. He not only refuses to part with her (after all, she is his property), but because she's on ice he - aided and abetted by the Doctor - controls her freedom. Rather than allowing her eke out her last days with her family, Abigail is let out for jolly japes with the boys. They determine what she can do. They determine how long she's out for. And at the end of each adventure they put her back into the box. With only one day left on the counter, Abigail is called on again many decades hence to sing, which reverses the polarity and saves the day for Amy, Rory and the others on the doomed space liner. In other words she is kept under lock and key until she becomes useful. This time however she's left to her fate, and we leave Abigail to her unpleasant fate riding a shark-drawn carriage with Kazran.

Criticism and interpretation of film, books and TV is a tricky business. But Sci-Fi has form as far as dodgy gender issues are concerned (see some of the critical material at Feminist SF, for instance). Doctor Who's case isn't helped by Steven Moffat himself, who authored yesterday's episode. In an installment of Doctor Who Confidential, the BBC Three behind-the-scenes documentary of every Who episode, he discusses the casting of Karen Gillan as the Doctor's new companion. After seeing an audition tape of Gillan sitting down, Moffat is on record as saying "And I thought, 'well she's really good. It's just a shame she's so wee and dumpy ... When she was about to come through to the auditions I nipped out for a minute and I saw Karen walking on the corridor towards me and I realised she was 5'11, slim and gorgeous and I thought 'Oh, oh that'll probably work.'"

If this is the key criterion for Moffat's casting decision it's small wonder A Christmas Carol has an uncomfortable subtext. I wonder how many of his other episodes do, too?

Happy Winterval!

2010-12-25T09:57:00.000Z

We've tried so hard, but yet again the left's War on Christmas has failed to destroy the festive season. Bah humbug! Better luck next year ...

Tommy Sheridan Around the Blogs

2010-12-24T18:33:00.002Z

Yesterday's guilty verdict was always going to result in vicious rounds of denunciation on the left. And the various blogs that make up part of its online infrastructure would be first port of call for comrades hungry for analysis and with a spleen to vent.

In the pro-Tommy corner, Lenin's Tomb makes a number of stinging criticisms of the SSP leadership's conduct from the moment the allegations surfaced to the role they played in providing the perjury trial key evidence. Andy makes a similar argument on Socialist Unity. Andy's position is one well-travelled since 2006, when he backed the SSP against the Tommy faction. I can see where both comrades are coming from and their arguments are much more credible than the transparently self-serving explanations put out by interested parties (see here). They are right to criticise the SSP and like them I believe it will be a long time before the organisation regains a modicum of the reputation it once had. But in Andy's and Lenny's rush to put the boot into the SSP, Tommy is let completely off the hook. It's as if expecting comrades to lie in court (risking late perjury charges and imprisonment), for no reason other than the protection of Tommy's personage is of zero consequence. I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. In attacking the SSP's unprincipled behaviour they obscure the fact that ultimate responsibility for the mess rests on the shoulders of one man and those who egged him on.

Elsewhere, Journeyman asks which side are you on? in a post more nuanced and thoughtful than the title suggests. In his 'Solidarity with the Sheridans' Riversider claims "a whole host of blogs are literally salivating with glee ..." at the prospect of Tommy getting sent down. Apart from the Scottish Socialist Youth blog, just who these unnamed others are is a mystery. Unfortunately Riversider sticks rigidly to the "class battle" frame in discussion of the issues, a frame I've argued massively distorts what really happened and what the issues were.

On the other side of the debate, Dave Osler cuts to the quick. Likewise Jim argues that Tommy's arrogance and lies are rooted in a far left culture of personality cultism and deference. Louise in Gender, Class, Sexism and Tommy Sheridan reiterates all these points while exposing the attacks on the SSP's feminism as a rather poor attempt to dress Tommy's court case up as a principled struggle. However, even though he liked my analysis of the trial, Ian Bone's contribution comes across as bitter and vindictive.

Away from the hot house atmos of the far left, how has Tommy's conviction been received by others outside our tiny circle? As we never tire of hearing Tommy's standing in Scotland, what do Scottish political blogs have to say? Lallands Peat Worrier subjects the case to a legal analysis and throws up some uncomfortable questions Tommy's supporters have yet to answer. The Firm (magazine for Scotland's legal establishment) offers an alternate legalistic view and suggests the Lord Advocate was leaned on by Murdoch's minions to give the perjury investigation the go ahead. Will Patterson locates Tommy's hubris in his ego and foresees a Scottish left cleared and ready for the return of the Gorgeous One. Similarly Bella Caledonia isn't looking forward to Galloway's imminent return, and argues a new leadership is needed in Scotland to rally its progressive forces.

Strangely the chief props of mainstream blogging have little to say. Harry's Place has posted nothing. Paul Staines, the enfant terrible of establishment politics is similarly silent. Legal blogger David Allen Green is presumably too busy handling the mince pies to write anything. In fact, south of the border you'd be hard pressed to find anyone outside of the sunlit uphills of far left blogging giving much of a toss at all. So much for Tommy's case being a vitally important political event. However, Dave was cross-posted to Liberal Conspiracy. In the subsequent thread questions are raised about the public interest/money spent on the prosecution and Tommy's judgement. But most unnerving of all is reading a discussion of the case free from rancour and entrenched positions. Political Scrapbook mischievously runs with a parallel first suggested by Tommy at the outcome of his 2006 defamation action. But as one of the commenters notes, "I take exception to any argument that challenging Goliath justifies lying ... Tommy Sheridan has actually done News International a big favour because now any time someone accuses them of dishonesty they can legitimately argue "well, that's what Sheridan said and he was a liar too!""

The recriminations and the arguments will see the left nicely into the new year. But hopefully people will soon start looking beyond the case. As Bella Caledonia notes, "The time for raking over one individuals life is thankfully over and the new task is to work out how the future looks for the left in Scotland – where energy can go and where alliances can be made. 2011 should be the year when the agenda is reclaimed by those more interested in the opening future than the inglorious past."