Gloworm - Carry Me Home

How did this not make my top 100 90s dance tunes? I'm at a loss to explain myself, so to remedy the omission five years after the event, here it is. Hey, it beats blogging about Danny Alexander's alternative budget.

George Osborne's Core Vote Budget

I don't know where this idea originates from but apparently, at least among Conservative Party circles, George Osborne is considered something of a political genius. Then again, among his people Michael Gove is thought of as an "intellectual". So we're talking a very low bar here. Yet wanting to see the best in everyone, I've patiently tracked Osborne's performance over six budgets, five autumn statements in the middle of winter, and seen too many interviews with Gormless Gidders. Each time I look for that spark. I've even borrowed the Large Hadron Collider to scrutinise Osborne for particle-sized flashes of brilliance. Nothing has shown on the scanners. How big does an atom smasher have to be or, in this case, how long should scrutiny carry on before you affirm the null hypothesis?

See today's budget as a case in point. Stung by claims that another Tory-led government would take public spending back to the 1930s as percentage of GDP expended, Osborne furiously backpedaled and is proud to say his target now matches the figures from 2000. However, in easing the austerity pain he neglected to wax so lyrical about this:

The Tory and Liberal Democrat cuts plan (remember, they've signed off on this too) invites reductions bigger than anything we've so far seen in this Parliament. Then, inexplicably, spending shoots up above 2009-10 levels in the final year of the next term. It's almost as if there's an election at the end of that spending round.

Then there is this so helpfully provided by The Speccie:

They're moaning about this because while education and NHS budgets are "protected" under Osborne's plans, military spending is set to be cut. I'm more bothered by the devastation to be wreaked on the public sector - particularly local government-provided services - and the butchering of social security for the poorest and most vulnerable. The figures might not say 1930s, but living standards on the ground certainly will.

Not to worry though. Tax credits, disability, unemployment, housing benefit, council tax support, etc. are all due to be raided so corporation tax for Britain's largest and richest businesses can come down further, but at least those feckless scroungers and those happy to put up with low pay and zero hour contracts can look forward to a penny off the pint, and tuppence from cider. Nothing says contempt quite like a Tory booze duty cut.

As for the rest, raising the basic tax threshold benefits the better off disproportionately more than the poor, subsidising wannabe house buyers saving for a deposit is bound to see more cash flow to those who don't really need it, and stealing Labour's bankers' tax levy to show they're getting really tough on City abuses. The rest is hardly stop the presses stuff. The annual limit on "normal" ISAs will be raised by a few hundred quid, Manchester gets to keep its business rates, church roof repair funds get a £15m bung, and that really is about it.

The Tories think this is a clever budget. The delivery was slick, even if it was taken apart by an increasingly assertive Ed Miliband afterwards. And, at first glance, it doesn't read like a red in tooth and claw manifesto for class war. Already it's being spun as a budget for everyone. It's anything but. Few apart from the already convinced will be persuaded of the merits of Osborne's case, and the huge and totally unnecessary cuts to come (plus the small matter of vote Tory, get UKIP) is pretty much enough to ward everyone else off. This was a core vote budget, and that isn't a sign of genius: more a signal of defeat and an  acknowledgement of impending doom.

Ain't I a Lefty?

Late to the party, but like I care. Tim Lott wrote about being castigated as a lefty because he doesn't toe the party line on a number of issues. This sees him denounced, defamed, and condemned to the Lubyanka. Well, he did admit he quite liked Spiked.

The big sticking point however, is this. Permit me to quote Tim at length:

I believe the jury is still out about whether gender identity is entirely constructed. I question whether the gender pay gap in Britain is as large as is sometimes suggested, and wonder whether it may have as much to do with the way it is calculated and with the choices women make after having children as it does with patriarchy or prejudice (although the government could do more to close the gap by funding childcare better). There is huge work to do to liberate women from the very real yoke of patriarchy. But I would venture – checking my privilege – that this is not a crisis in Britain in way it is in the developing world.

Fair enough, Tim has doubts about accepted lefty wisdom when it comes to gender divisions. Surely though the point is not to carry on with doubts but to take the trouble to investigate the issues further. I know it's a rarity in politics generally, but I usually find it helpful to get to know a subject matter before pronouncing on it. That's not a particularly left or right wing course of action, but it's the correct thing to do. What doesn't help Tim's case is the flimsy character of the positions he's built up to write oh-so-controversial words about.

It is not orthodoxy that gender identity is socially constructed. I believe it is and I think the bulk of evidence in this direction is overwhelming, but there are plenty who do not including quite a few feminists. On gender pay gaps, the evidence is there for all to see, irrespective of whether one thinks it's large or not. And it is a nonsense to suggest that feminists aren't aware that caring responsibilities attached to motherhood affect earnings, nor that women in rich, Western societies as a rule are better off than those living in mediaeval hellholes like Saudi Arabia. With a little bit of digging Tim could have found this easily out if he thought it an issue important enough.

Tim then goes on to moan about 'assumption creep': the idea of you have sorted views on one or a range of issues, you'll be sound on everything else. Well, in my experience no one expects this, except perhaps inside the SWP and annoying practitioners of performative piety - you know who you are - on the internet.

And this is the biggest problem with Tim's piece. I don't know what Tim does. He could be a hyper active trade union militant, a volunteer with the Kurdish YPG, the leader of a noisy and radical residents' association, or just a quiet activist doing his bit here and there. I suspect he's not any of these because he would have written about them otherwise. All that matters here is a certain presentation of left self à la Goffman in a world where all that matters are identity markers. Sounds a bit like Twitter, Facebook, or, for the really radical, Urban 75. 

If that is what "being left" now means, Tim or whoever wants that label are welcome to it.

Is Labour Doomed?

Tucked away in a barely-publicised corner of The Telegraph's web edition is this piece forecasting Labour's possible extinction. There isn't much to the article, the paper quotes Jon Cruddas (who else?) speculating about the possibility of Labour's death before moving on to attack Ed Miliband's pledge to introduce compulsory profit-sharing schemes.

Let's come back to Cruddas. In the context of a discussion about the situation in Greece and whether Labour might not exist a decade from now, he reportedly replied "There is no safe ground for any orthodox parties and the stakes could be high potentially. They could just disintegrate in real time. And I include in that the party that I represent." Unfortunately, I agree with Cruddas. The passing of the Labour Party is an outside possibility. The same is true of the Tories too. The difference is the Conservatives appear hell bent on hastening their own destruction, while there are very small signs Labour has glimpsed the precipice it's shuffling toward and is pondering whether to turn.

In the wake of Syriza's election victory, there was much excited chatter in left wing circles about the PASOKification of the Labour Party here. The argument goes that Pasok, as Greece's main working class party, had deep institutional links with the unions and a loyal voter base. It regularly formed governments on its own, the last being in 2009. Then when the economic crisis hit PASOK oversaw the ruinous austerity imposed on Greece, and in their turn were ruined as their support melted away and transferred more or less wholesale to Syriza. From commanding governments elected with 48% of the popular vote, in 2015 it just squeaked over the four-and-a-half per cent line. A commitment to austerity by Labour, so the argument goes, will see the same happen to it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating of the SNP, a nominally anti-austerity party, into Labour's Scottish strongholds.

This argument has a grain of truth buried in wishful thinking and nonsense. First, the guff. Britain in 2015 is not Greece. An Obvious point to make, but one that needs stating all the same. Austerity here has hammered the poorest and most vulnerable, but it has not been nor will it be - even if the Tories win - remotely comparable to what Greece has gone through. Effectively, a quarter of its economy has disappeared in the last five years. The reason PASOK has fallen and smashed like so many plates is because they oversaw austerity measures that walloped practically everyone who lives on a wage, a salary, draws social security support, and had a pension. Had the Tories and LibDems here implemented a programme as brutal, wide, and deep as this, the opinion polls wouldn't be level pegging right now. On that basis, and sorry to disappoint the Greens and 1917 reenactment committees, Labour's not about to do a PASOK any time soon.

The second nonsense is seeing the SNP surge as part of the PASOKification process. It isn't. The precipitating factor in Labour's collapse north of the border wasn't austerity but it stupidly and foolishly chumming about with Tories in the Better Together campaign. Had the party made a positive case for staying in the union, the damage might not have turned out that severe. But it didn't. Ed Balls lined up with George Osborne to spell out the dire consequences should Scottish voters support separation. It portrayed itself part of a bullying Westminster establishment, and is getting punished accordingly. But the causes go back decades. Crap MPs, shrinking memberships, zero campaigning activity, these are symptoms of a deeper malaise.

You know the story if you've followed this blog for a while. By the time Thatcher came to power the tectonics underpinning capital in Western Europe and North America were starting to slip. The spread of the microchip touched off the development of new information-based economies, and stimulated growing service-based industries. Consumerism was generating new sub cultures, new styles, new ways of living. Employers were reconfiguring workplaces to undermine the ever present potential for worker solidarity and, where possible, outsourcing jobs to the far east. None of these were natural forces that should have been accepted as facts of life,and what Thatcher did - by accident and design - was accelerate the development of these processes as a consequence of the Tory class war against the labour movement. The result was not just the liquidation of entire industries, but evaporating with them went ways of life, whole communities. The labour movement, the institutional expression of proletarian resistance and interest in its relationship with capital, was battered. Locked out - sometimes literally - by employers, defeated by a hostile government, and with shifts in economics and culture away from collectivism so its ranks started to wither.

New Labour was one possible response out of a number of approaches the party could have adopted. As the trade unions started losing strength, so the institutional and community supports that had nourished the party in the post-war era shriveled up. New Labour and Tony Blair were symptomatic of weakness, and they tried short circuiting the difficult task of rebuilding the party and movement by attempting to get business and others, including the LibDems, on board. This coalition worked for a while, albeit at a price that left Labour's roots a-shrivelling, until the crisis claim and blew apart. Gordon Brown avoided a depression, and British capital showed its gratitude by completely abandoning his government.

Meanwhile, in Scotland and various safe Labour seats across England and Wales local parties and the regional machinery carried on much as it always had. The myriad links between constituency organisations, workplace trade union branches, and the community grew ever more attenuated. And it suited many local party bosses fine. As members died or dropped off the rolls, all that was left was a brand and a hollowed out organisation ran by cliques of time servers that could nevertheless dispense largesse thanks to a loyal voter base that scarcely needed engaging with. Who else were they going to vote for? Labour parties became more distant, unwilling and incapable of addressing the problem of their malaise, and treated the communities they were set up to represent as voting fodder.

Belatedly, some sections of the party are slowly waking up to this. Say what you like about Jim Murphy, but he is one of the few leading party figures that works consistently all year round on bread and butter constituency campaigning. It's necessary, but not enough and again, despite his rather hawkish Blairism (hello there Henry Jackson Society), even he has been forced to turn Scottish Labour to the left while his hapless predecessor, a supposed left winger, spent her leadership lambasting the SNP from the right. Elsewhere, moribund CLPs in supposedly safe seats are stirring into life.

This is where the grain of truth our PASOKists speak of comes in. Labour can stop the rot. There is no reason why party membership and organisation should slide once the traditional general election uptick has dissipated. The old ways of doing things in the postwar period are gone and not coming back, but for as long as there are workers there will be the battle for workers rights, of the struggle for security, wages, and against encroachments on time outside of work. A new set of arrangements can be built, a new flow of recruits and influence can flow up from workplaces and our communities into the party. But only if it pursues policies that do not attack our constituency.

This might sound naive. After all, as another erratic Marxist I know the state isn't some neutral embodiment of the general will but an apparatus that supports, defends, and prosecutes the interests of capital. Anything capital has conceded, such as the NHS, has had to be imposed upon the state by powerful movements that straddle official and extra-parliamentary politics. Therefore it's silly to expect Labour to get into power and nationalise the top 100 monopolies, but as the legitimately-constituted government of the day it does have enough room to abandon the cuts agenda precisely because capital itself, and the bureaucrats that populate the state at all levels are also divided about its efficacy. A pro-business, pro-capital case against austerity can be made. Indeed, it's been explored here enough. It's not the case, as the far left have fooled themselves into thinking, that if Labour dispensed with the cuts that political support would mechanically follow. But by shutting down austerity and implementing policies that promote economic and therefore job security, building homes, cleaning up the precarity the Tories have deliberately inserted into social security, investing in education, and so on, new coalitions of worker interest can form around them. By pursuing this "sectional" strategy, the universal interest - that of the overwhelming majority of the population - is served and situation for positively resolving the crisis of the labour movement and Labour Party becomes much improved. Sticking with austerity-lite imperils all this.

Is Labour then doomed. Does PASOK hold up an image of the party's own future? I don't think it does. That fate, however, cannot be avoided by hoping it will go away. It has to be actively avoided, and that requires as many labour movement people as possible to get involved in their party now.

Farage's Defeat-Courting Tory Deal

In an announcement that caught no one on the hop, Nigel Farage has announced that his clutch of UKIP MPs would happily prop up a minority Conservative government if it concedes a referendum on EU membership by Christmas. I can't see that happening myself for all kinds of practical reasons (no time for Dave's EU renegotiation strategy to kick in for starters), but the Tories have shown no compunction whatsoever in sacrificing the wider interests of their class for perceived short-term political advantage.

Having spent a week successfully toxifying the UKIP brand (and then backpedaling), NF makes to further suggestions that won't help his cause. The referendum question should be fixed along the lines of "do you wish to be a free, independent sovereign democracy?" and, with a logic that could cost the Tories dear should it become widely known, Farage would like to see four million EU citizens barred from voting in it. I doubt he will be so squeamish when it comes to the legions of retirees domiciled in Spain.

The question remains whether Farage will ever be in a position to to deliver. Annoying, and contrary to my predictions, it's looking like NF might find himself returned to Parliament. Yet will it be him and Carswell; him, Carswell, and Reckless; and that bunch and another clutch of cronies? We'll see. This announcement, however, could have a bearing on the outcome. In one sense, it does mark Farage out as different from the other party leaders. When there is prevarication and question-dodging over who will play footsie with who after the election, UKIP have put down a clear marker. As ever, like him or loathe him, you know exactly where he stands.

More likely, however, is a net negative effect. More recent UKIP recruits may have fallen from the decomposition of the Tories, so Farage has moved to keep that coalition of voters on board by reassuring them they can still vote UKIP and get the Conservatives. More problematic is the core, so-called statement voters and members. A great many of these were picked up during Labour's 13 years in power. They don't like immigrants and find the world a scary, hostile place; but there's a reason their efforts and votes bypassed the Tories: they hate them. The more Farage bangs on about his intentions, the easier it is for Labour supporters to swoop in and play on residual anti-Tory feeling. To be honest, it's a gift to our doorstep toolkit.

It's also something of a headache for Dave and the Tories too. The more the party makes hay with Alex Salmond, who they might be surprised to learn isn't a household name in England and Wales, the more the spotlight falls on their would-be UKIP enablers. The problem for them is this. There are a layer of Tory activists and voters who despise the Nigel Farage fan club. These, as you might expect, are mostly found on the more moderate wing of the centre right political spectrum. For them UKIP is a reminder of Conservative ghouls past they'd rather not be associated with. They do not feel represented by them and find their platform as a whole rather distasteful. The question then become one of 'vote Tory, get UKIP'. The idea of being held to ransom by Farage is not a palatable one, and will, of course, helpfully crop up in conversation between Labour supporters and wavering Tory voters between now and polling day.

Negative campaigning is said to have a marginal impact, but in an election that is wide open in ways none other has been, Farage's remarks could scotch his hopes of becoming kingmaker.

The Great UFO Conspiracy

Turns out you and I are wasting our time pratting about with politics. The struggles of us mortals do not matter because our actions are manipulated by shadowy elites and alien forces. Even this blog post is an instant in this conspiracy. I might think this is being written from words chained together in my brain according to arguments and points arrived at through the process of independent thought, but aha! No. I am programmed, under a spell, having the messages fed to me. What I think is my interior consciousness is a sham.

At least that is apparently the case according to some of the outlandish claims made on this evening's The Great UFO Conspiracy. Part of an aliens night on More4, comedian Dan Schreiber takes us on a potted tour of Britain's UFO conspiracy culture to get the low down on the latest conspiracies out there.

His first victim guest is Tony Topping. Something of a star of the UFO scene, Tony's made a name for himself as a speaker on the conference/convention circuit. When we turn up at his house in Selby, Tony tells us that UFOs nearly ruined his life. What started as a simple sighting above his house in 1999 turned into an obsession. Subsequently, he went out determined to film evidence which led to an extraordinary encounter. He was standing in a nearby field watching UFOs, bent down to replenish his camera batteries, and then one descended a few hundred feet away. There was a stand off, as if some intelligence was beholding him before it flew off. Since then he has been harassed over the phone and followed by persons unknown. There was even one occasion where an unmarked green helicopter appeared to be filming him as it hovered above a local intersection.

We then meet with Timothy Good, the Godfather of contemporary UFO conspiracy theories thanks to his 1987 book, Above Top Secret. Based around a "leak" of documents purporting to be sourced from the US military, these 'Majestic 12' files "prove" the existence of a secret military cabal determined to cover up all things alien. For instance, did you know Armstrong and Aldrin saw alien craft on the Moon? No, nor did I. Apparently these aliens have access to world leaders and, most shocking of all, the Catholic Church are in on the act. The virgin birth, the fantastic powers ... proof positive that Jesus was an alien, a secret the church is determined to protect. Also, our Timothy claims to have met one of "them". In an Arizona diner in 1963, he spotted a young girl in the queue. There was something about her that struck him, and he began wondering where she could be from. Shortly afterwards, she walked by his table, did a bow, and wandered off. Obviously evidence of a telepathic extra terrestrial, I'm sure you would agree.

The next "expert" was Miles Johnston, who Dan notes has probably been to more alien/UFO conventions than anyone else. Tony and Timothy were, if we put it charitably, pretty much out there, then Miles is totally off the page. His contention is that a conspiracy exists (between evil aliens called the Nephilim, and the military of perfidious Albion) and their joint aim is a cyborg humanity that will see us enslaved. Yet such is their confidence that they act in plain sight. The stuff about aliens is a false flag operation - instead of scouring the skies they're here and acting right in front of us.

This story found corroboration (of sorts) in the tale of Max Spears. His interests include the use of genetically engineered, part-human super soldiers (just like The X-Files), and scrutinising the minds of our hidden rulers. His is a variant of the David Icke conspiracy, that the world is run by dynasties of shape-shifting reptilians from 13 bloodlines. However, they don't particularly care about keeping themselves secret because they know how absurd their existence sounds. Instead, they like to toy with the humans they rule by liberally sprinkling culture with evidence of them. This evidence includes Superman's 'S' symbol, because that is obviously a serpent. Ditto for McDonald's fame golden arches, and the fact the company became what it is under Ray Kroc. The motif of torches, which figure prominently in Western culture (that held by the Statue of Liberty, the Olympic flame, the torches lit at JFK's and Diana's funerals, etc.) denote the lizards' belief in the eternity of their rule, and so on. Well, that's enough to convince me.

We meet with Miles one last time after he learned Dan had met with Mark Pilkington, the screenwriter for the Mirage Men film, a work that cogently and convincingly argues that the conspiracy - if it can be called that - was to sow disinformation about top secret American military projects. It's not that the government are covering up ETs, it's that, effectively, aliens are keeping black operations and top secret technologies from public view. There were even some suggestive files from GCHQ on this matter dumped by Edward Snowden onto the web. It's by no means a new theory. Fox Mulder was suggesting it twenty years ago. Nevertheless, it's heresy as far as Miles goes. Pilkington is "in on the conspiracy" and we will "try and programme you". Reasoned argument based on evidence is dangerous, it seems.

The truth, as Miles understands it is this. During the Falklands War, the British found a black goo that responded to electricity, and shipped it back to Blighty for weaponisation. Further experimentation revealed it to be sentient and, for whatever reason, they ended up dumping the stuff in the sewers. Since then it has penetrated every living thing, and if we don't sort ourselves and the planet out, it will delete us. Yikes.

We've been here before. As Dan observes, conspiracy theories anchor the world in a particular way. Uncertainty and chance is crowded out by a conscious, hidden totalitarianism. The world therefore is rendered terrifying yet knowable and predictable all at once. The centrepiece is an insight or idea that is worked backwards, in which "facts" are disembedded from the rules of evidence and reinserted in a new discourse that proves the theory. This, of course, isn't a property exclusive to conspiracy theory, but is the most extreme manifestation of mistaking the frameworks with which we understand the social world as the world itself. The possibility of rational argument is forever foreclosed because anyone critical has to be in on the conspiracy too.

Ultimately, for all their outlandishness conspiracy theories, be it about aliens, fake Moon landings, September 11th - take your pick - are profoundly conservative. Only hidden elites and other worldly powers have agency. The rest of us are mere sheeple too thick or too complicit to ever change. We're passive and powerless, doomed to be eternally duped. Thankfully the world is not like that and we have the potential to forge it anew, if the great mass of people will it.

Is Red Nose Day Secretly Subversive?

Asked nobody ever, but stay with me. I can just about remember the first Red Nose Day. In the build up there was a palpable sense of excitement among us kiddy-winks. What crazy capers could we get up to? Our school alas, while paying lip service to the possibility that the dull norms of classroom life could get breached, ruled out stunts like walking-backwards-for-a-day and clowning about on a pair of stilts. It was 'elf and safety gone mad before it, um, went mad. As with most things, the advance hype didn't match up to real life. A few kids wore their red noses to school (not all day, those bloody things hurt!) and one really got into the swing of things ... with a sponsored silence. The biggest deal at the time was watching the Comic Relief show on telly. It's difficult to countenance now, but it was very rare then for so many celebrities to share a billing. It was very novel. Remember, the celebfest of Band Aid had only topped the charts a few months previous.

Now, when it comes to charity I'm not too charitable. I occasionally patronise charity shops, use them to offload unwanted but otherwise functional gear, and will back someone's stunt if they present a sponsorship form at gunpoint. Oh yes, the occasional emergency appeal when something ghastly happens somewhere might get a contribution, but that's your lot. Like a lot of political people, my thoughts about charity are heavily conditioned by the critique of it. For the right, their argument can be taken as a rationale for I'm-alright-Jack selfishness. i.e. Giving to charities and supporting needy people renders them dependent, they don't look to their own agency to get themselves out of a pickle so why should I help? You can almost hear Scrooge snapping "so much the better to help reduce the surplus population." The left critique is superficially similar: charity dresses recipients up as a deserving poor fallen on hard times and erases the various structural configurations of power and resource ultimately responsible for this sorry state of affairs. The answer therefore is political activity, not hand outs.

Charity has its own political economy. As of September last year there were 164,097 registered charities with a combined income of £64bn. Just shy of 70% of this cash flows to the top 1,990 organisations with an annual take it excess of £5m. Examining this anatomy is a none-too-pleasant task. At the top of the tree the chief executives and big fundraisers can take home quite a packet. Some have proven more than happy to link up with businesses to provide a human face for an outsourcing arrangement or takeover of a former public asset. Pay for many workers in the charity sector is low and can be highly exploitative, as any of their "self-employed" contract fundraisers who go door-to-door or stand in high streets affecting faux bonhomie will tell you. And where there is a market, there is inevitably duplication of effort and much waste.

Not everyone is aware of the machinery behind the collection tin, but it is difficult to avoid charity's ubiquity. No town centre is complete without Shelter, Age UK, Scope, Douglas MacMillan, Sally Army stores, and the very local charity shops (my favourite is Stoke's own Iris's Cats in Need). Yet the shops and the chuggers, the telethons and conspicuous displays haven't put Britons off giving. As our institutions suffer a crisis in confidence (except for the Royals and the military), charitable giving goes from strength to strength. As does Red Nose Day. Since its 1985 debut, Comic Relief has hoovered up over a billion quid. Last night a further £70m was given/pledged, so how does it escape the the cynicism and the sneers so successfully, especially now it's very much an establishment fixture?

Part of Red Nose Day's early success was its very clear pledge that money raised would go to UK-based charitable concerns as well as needy people overseas (if my hazy memory of contemporary pie charts serves, at the outset some 20-25% would stay here). For miseries who'd grumble about sending cash abroad while not tackling poverty at home, their proto-UKIP consciences could rest easy. Also, riffing off the infamous Michael Buerk report from Ethiopia, from the start Comic Relief/the BBC parachuted celebrities into God-forsaken places to report how awful things were, and who for their part were clearly shaken by their experience. In subsequent years TV crews would return - as they still do - to see what difference donations have made. What Red Nose Day makes visible is what was previously taken on trust, the TV screen links the giver to the recipient. It also helps that - for most - Red Nose Day's televising is quite entertaining, as is Children in Need, the other BBC charity juggernaut. That probably helps explain why ITV's Telethon, which ran continuously for over 24 hours, was only repeated the once.

There is more to it than collapsing the distance between donor and recipient. Many a social theorist, particularly Bakhtin have been fascinated with the occasional eruption of the carnivalesque. Back in the days of serfs, squires, knights, and lords the carnival was more than a few days of feasting and debauchery. Social roles were also upended. Think of it as mediaeval cosplay, albeit an occasion when social relations were disinterred from the dressing up box. Peasants could strut about town like aristocrats, children could subvert the authority of their families, and where the local baron and his clique of high born hangers on would have a right larf pretending to be poor. This palaver had a purpose. Not only did it throw together locals and yocals in a rare display of social mixing across a highly stratified society, but reminded them of their interdependence. Red Nose Day is a very safe, modern analogue of the same. It appears it's virtually compulsory in schools for children to dress up and get down with the sanctified fun. Adults can regress to big kiddery too by going to work in fancy dress or doing something else really wacky. It doesn't serve to heighten a sense of interdependence a la our feudal predecessors, but it helps create affective bonds between participants. How many of yesterday's little kids who spent their school day reciting bad jokes, doing The Conga, and having a good laugh can draw on a nice convivial memory to look back on in future years? More widely though it's all being done for charidee the collective act of fundraising allows for a temporary suspension of self-seeking behaviours. Sure, if we want to be cynical we can point to celebrity participation as typical profile-raising, but not so for the hundreds of thousands who did something daft and raised a bit of cash.

In a primitive, half-formed and distorted way, Red Nose Day's carnivalesque prefigures a society in which instrumental relationships between people are kept in a box, and where affection, solidarity, mutual support are the hallmarks of what it means to be human. This, however, is but a glimpse of one pole of future possibility wrapped in all mass acts of popular charity. To work, charity has no choice but to play on summoning a particle of that in the here-and-now. That dependence on the very best of human feeling is harnessed and delivers social goods to those who need it. Yet at the same time it subsidises social problems that shouldn't be left to the beneficence of private individuals, and has the baleful consequence of reinforcing the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor or, in this case, recipients. The solidarity of charity therefore is solidarity in its lowest form. Any subversive potential is immediately recuperated. That glimpse, however, can lead some to politics and the struggle for a better world, but that has to take place outside of charity's confines.

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett, who died today from complications arising from a rare form of Alzheimer's disease, was a life lived well. He used his talents to entertain millions in the decades where books supposedly fell out of fashion, and with his diagnosis in 2007 he used his platform to raise awareness about Alzheimer's, and some of his fortune to fund much-needed research.

Pratchett was feted by an establishment that bestowed him a gong and a knighthood, TV adaptations were made of his books, and yet somehow he remained immovably niche. Indie kids moan when their favourite acts swap the exclusive cool of the underground for the bright lights and big pay cheques of mainstream success, but Pratchett managed to combine both. He was a big hitter but stayed forever geeky, interacting with fans via the internet and convention circuit. He knew well his tribe and shall always be known as one of its greatest chieftains.

It might come as a surprise to some that I never got into the Discworld series. The Colour of Magic is the only one of his that can be marked off as read. I'm much more familiar with the recent Long Earth series, which was a collaboration between him and super-hard science fiction author Stephen Baxter. Three books into the sequence and you can see Pratchett's influence lessen with each subsequent book. The first has its playful moments, like dimension-sliding devices powered by potatoes and a near-omnipotent supercomputer that claims to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle mechanic. By the third however you find the dread 'going forward' cropping up in characters' speech and the little nods to absurdism largely absent. 

Nevertheless, growing up geeky in the late 80s and early 90s you could not avoid his ubiquity. A bit like Doctor Who when it was off-air, I had no contact with Pratchett's works but his presence was felt in role playing culture, video game mags of the day, and nearly every nerd boasted a complete collection of his works. Despite his passing, that presence will remain.

The Meaning of Jeremy Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson has been suspended by the BBC for an alleged "fracas" with a producer for Top Gear. Innocent until proven otherwise and all that, but it does come after years of nudge, nudge, wink, wink racism and associated vicious stupidity. Needless to say, I don't particularly like him and avoid his shows like the plague. Yet Top Gear and his contrived alpha male personage is popular and millions tune in every week for fast cars and funny haha cheeky banter. Far be it for me to stop them.

Yet in the celebrity firmament Clarkson occupies something of a unique position. There aren't many out-and-out right wing celebs knocking about in a culture where a paper-thin veneer of leftyism is usually de rigeur. And he also trades on this too. He says what he thinks, won't be cowed by the PC brigade, and is not afraid to acknowledge that he shares the dodgy bigoted views of some of his fans. He's the carefully constructed maverick, the outsider whose huge BBC salary, media appearances, and member of the Chipping Norton set who's anything but. Reminds you of any other faux anti-establishment media personality?

In fact, the parallels with Nigel Farage are quite striking. Then again, one right wing demagogue is interchangeable with another. It's all about saying the unsayable, of cocking a snook to a largely imaginary lefty establishment, of rubbishing climate change because we sometimes still get snow, etc. etc. But what Clarkson shares above all with Farage is less a man-of-the-people thing - the media commentators keep getting that one wrong - but as someone primarily middle aged men can relate to. As most working class blokes during their lives have come across a gaffer who showed his workers a grudging respect and gave it to them straight, as per NF, Clarkson has been middle aged since Top Gear first broadcast in the late 80s. He's not so much what they call these days 'a lad' and more a down-at-heel playboy. You know the sort. Could never be bothered to get married. Always seemed to have a new sporty motor. Owned his own home. Boast about his womanising down the pub. Clarkson isn't any of these things, of course. He's a happily married got-lucky journo, but the hair (as was), the jeans (oh my life, the jeans), and the swagger evoke a personality millions of people can place in their social circle.

His politics too have a certain coherence about them. In the mid-80s, Mike Dreher, another terribly tedious but oh-so-anti-establishment hard right populist founded the Motorist Party of Switzerland. This before climate change was widely accepted by scientists and politicians, Dreher campaigned against conservation measures and denounced claims about acid rain. Like the kippers today, the acceptance of scientific evidence was not his strong suit. The Motorist Party also wanted speed limits raised on the country's roads, especially on motorways so they could let rip. It was so-called libertarianism before the internet made libertarianism a thing. You can see how car ownership is a handy condenser (and propagator) of this kind of politics. Cars give drivers freedom to roam. The road is their domain to push the motor to its limits, of being free from all authority in one's enclosed four-wheel personal space. Bikes, pedestrians, buses, they all get in the way and should be kept off the roads. Nothing should interfere with the right to drive.

This ideology of the road also underpins (traditionally American) lifestyles, and is not-so-subtly promoted by Top Gear itself. Clarkson could be Dreher too - he doesn't like cyclists, thinks the state is too nannying, and rejects climate change because it threatens his inalienable right to tear arse around the world in growling, gas-guzzling, CO2 emitting monsters. He is a living, breathing middle finger to anyone who wants to make the world a half-decent place to live in, and instantiation of all that is petty, small-minded, and selfish. Unfortunately, a not inconsiderable minority of voters habitually relate to this stuff.

That is why Clarkson is so potent. He bridges the gap between political mindset and social circle familiarity. When you think about it, Clarkson is perhaps the ideal celebrity replacement for Farage should the great leader come unstuck in South Thanet. What an awful thought. If that's the case, Save Clarkson!

Would You Take a Donation from this Man?

Tony Blair wants to give 106 Labour candidates fighting marginal seats a thousand quid. For CLPs used to campaigning on a shoestring, that could stretch a long way. Yet because this largesse comes from Blair's pockets, some parliamentary candidates have a problem with it. All perfectly principled reasons of course, and I respect the right of these comrades to snub the cash. But they're wrong to do so.

We know Blair is a problematic character for a lot of Labour members and supporters for all sorts of reasons, not least the Iraq war. Yet this is a problem not shared by everyone. By now most voters are quite indifferent to Blair and his works. Those that were opposed to his war, which was a majority at the time, might feel negative vibes toward him but few, if any, are going to be basing their vote this May on what happened 12 years ago. In a very few places, like Norwich South, rejecting Blair publicly as Clive Lewis has done might add a sprinkling of Green and wavering left-Laboury votes to his tally and push him across the finish line, but he's virtually unique in that position. For most voters, the principled stand of their Labour candidates will barely register.

Were I a candidate, that money would be going into my campaigning war chest. This for three reasons. In the first place, a cheque from Blair's office won't be dropping through the letter box of your CLP secretary - the cash is going to the national party and then distributed out to marginals. Second, if Blair was dangling a thousand quid with the promise of future favours, or getting chummy with Progress, that is a problem. If Blair was trying to engineer backing for a policy agenda, that is a problem. Yet it's none of those things. The donation is no-strings attached. The money is being distributed without fear or favour, regardless of candidates' politics, on the basis of what the party defines as a marginal.

Most importantly, comrades who want to turn down the money have to remember that ultimately, this campaign isn't about them. This general election really does matter, it's between a party absolutely determined to screw our people and another that will provide some of the poorest and most vulnerable immediate relief. A thousand quid can help in seats where the Tories have been throwing dosh round like confetti, it can help ensure we get most votes, most seats, and get the party vaulting that overall majority hurdle.

My advice is take the money and carry on campaigning. There's more than your possible future parliamentary career at stake.