The new Bomber Command Memorial

Remembrance Sunday, and so I thought I would write about a visit I made to the new Bomber Command Memorial a few weeks ago.

The memorial is in the form of a Doric propylaeum, and was designed by Liam O'Connor.  It is located in Green Park.  It was dedicated by the Queen in June.

At the heart of the memorial is a sculpture of an air crew.  I tried to wait for a moment when there was no-one around so that I could take a photograph without visitors in the shot, but the entire time I was there new people were arriving.  Despite the busy road the mood in the building was hushed and respectful.

It is a very beautiful structure - beautiful in terms of architecture, location and atmosphere.

Rowan Moore, who writes on architecture for the Observer, hated it.  In a long article about the memorial he criticised every single aspect of the building - the decision to build it, the location, the "defiant and triumphant" tone, the classical style ("amnesiac") etc.  In all these criticisms he is wrong, as a visit to the memorial very quickly proves.

One line in the Moore denunciation puzzled me:  "ranks of Doric columns surmounted by a weirdly puny balustrade, a version of historic architecture that never precisely existed".  Perhaps he is saying that architects using the classical style should not be free to innovate?  To my mind when I first saw the memorial from Green Park it immediately reminded me of Moor Park in Hertfordshire, which includes (Corinthian) columns and a balustrade - the house was used as an RAF head quarters during the Second World War, and it seems entirely appropriate that Liam O'Connor has captured this aspect of the RAF's history.

http://www.bombercommandmemorial.co.uk/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/24/bomber-command-memorial-london-review

http://www.moorparkgc.co.uk/mansion/ 

There is nothing you can do except focus on the most urgent thing - the past week at work

Monday

Another bad night and I did not sleep at all.  I was comfortable and warm, and the room was quiet, but for some reason I could not sleep.  Eventually, after seven hours of sleeplessness, I got up and got ready for work.

On the drive to the office I stopped to buy four cans of sugar-free Red Bull.

Angry e-mails from Head Office which I replied to politely (this is not aimed at me personally, but is trying to undermine the Institute and deliver it into the hands of Alec Nussbaum).

Lots of bureaucratic hassle concerned with the Exhibitions programme bookings.  I am beginning to think it might be better to give this up to someone else.  Perhaps offer it as a sop to Head Office.

In the afternoon the Institute's Director Vijay Singh called a meeting to discuss the EGM which will decide the future of the Institute.  I have been given the practical task of booking the venue and arranging the the event.  Instead of just an afternoon meeting (which Alec Nussbaum is expecting) Vijay Singh wants to expand it into the two-day mini-conference with the actual EGM on the end when the members (150 people who actually "own" the Institute) will be convinced of the importance of our work.

Ferocious warnings about not disclosing our membership database to Head Office.  I kept quiet at this point as I did not want to embarrass Vijay Singh by reminding him that he had already asked me to share our membership data with the Membership department at Head Office.  In any case, I am fairly sure that Terry Solomon (who runs Head Office Membership) will not know what the data is as it was included in a spreadsheet of publication sales and listed under the anonymous heading of "Potentials".

Tuesday

More e-mails from people at Head Office, hostile and asking questions.  Anne Boswell-Urquart seems to be leading this campaign.  I just replied in a non-committal way, sidestepping their demands.

More fuss over the Exhibitions programme, and I am beginning to think this is an area that is going to plague me. 

When I get back to the office after lunch I reopened my PC (we have to log-off if we leave the office) and to my surprise found messages of support from Publications and from Legal in Head Office ("not everyone down there likes Mr Nussbaum" said Vijay Singh when I showed him the messages).

Wednesday

A backlog of work has built up, but sometimes there is nothing you can do except focus on the most urgent thing and let all the rest sort themselves out.

Thursday

Huge row between Admin and Finance over the heating.  Marcia Walsh (Finance Manager and Acting Deputy Director) has been turning it off in the afternoons because the Finance section, which is right by the boiler, was too hot.  This leaves the women in Admin freezing. 

After exchanges across the open-plan floor Vijay Singh called in Donna H (Supervisor of Admin) and afterwards Marcia Walsh into his office.

It was clear that Marcia Walsh had been reprimanded as she emerged in a state I can only describe as fuming, and sulked the rest of the day.

Friday

So busy today it was ridiculous.

And yet what did I really achieve?

The new Chinese leadership has promised to double average incomes

Dateline London on BBC2 this afternoon discussed the change of leadership in China.

Writer Diane Wei Liang said that the new Chinese leadership has promised to double average incomes within ten years.

Surely that will release a huge amount of inflation into the Chinese economy?  "Too much money chasing too few goods" as Lord Barber said.  And how will they prevent wages in the developed eastern cities from being undercut by desperate internal migrants from the impoverished west of China? (unless they have an incomes policy, and that would put them in the Jim Callaghan bin of economic competence).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nzbz6/Dateline_London_10_11_2012/

http://www.dianeweiliang.com/

Newsnight is now in a similar position to the now defunct News of the World

Listening to John Humphrys interview the Director General of the BBC George Entwistle on the Today programme (I listened to a repeat on BBC News 24) I got the sense that the Director General was floundering.

In many ways Newsnight is now in a similar position to the now defunct News of the World.

As a scapegoat offering will the programme be enough?

The Lord McAlpine defamation scandal

All of the day the news reports have been full of the Lord McAlpine defamation scandal (he has been the subject of the most disgusting smears and innuendo orchestrated by a small number of left-leaning social media commentators with the presumed objective of damaging the Conservative Party and deflecting attention from the BBC's role in the Jimmy Savile sex and rape scandal).

Now the smears have been exposed as untrue (by the Guardian of all newspapers - and published on the Guardian's front page).

I asked the Institute's library whether they had any information on Lord McAlpine, and after a little while Matthew brought to my desk this volume of memoirs.  Although I have only had a quick skim of the book it appears that Lord McAlpine is a sophisticated and cultured politician of great wit and intelligence.  It appals me that his reputation has been so thoroughly trashed by nothing more than spite and malice and endlessly repeated lies.

Since the innocence of Lord McAlpine has been established by the Guardian the "Twittersphere" has been very quiet on the subject (whereas up until yesterday every left-wing Twitter microblog seemed to be damning Lord McAlpine with gusto).  Tom Watson MP, who started the wave of innuendo, has been uncharacteristically silent on the subject.  He claims that criminal sexual depravity and corruption can be found at the heart of Westminster and Whitehall, and yet so far he has produced no evidence (is it not a criminal offence to with-hold evidence of wrong-doing from the police? - why are the police not interviewing him?).   

Perhaps I am being cynical, but it does seem to me that when the BBC came under intense pressure as a result of the Jimmy Savile rapes it was very convenient for Tom Watson MP to announce in Parliament that leading members of the Conservative Party were involved in the criminal rape of children (claims made with no proof or substantiation).

If it turns out that the "privileged" statements of Tom Watson MP, the Twitter frenzy, the lurid newspaper reports, the Newsnight allegations, and even the stunt on This Morning (by a former BBC presenter) - if all this turns out to be an informally co-ordinated attempt at a cover-up to protect the BBC then one wonders what is the point of going on with the Corporation.

Much as I like Newsnight, if it is implicated in a cover-up then I would want to see that programme permanently taken off the schedules.

Is it enough for the Twitter baiters of Lord McAlpine to simply apologise for their mistake and "move on" (as George Monbiot, another former BBC presenter, has tried to do)?  Somehow I don't think it is enough.  Lord McAlpine's life has been ruined, and we need to see prison sentences for some of the people involved in doing this.

An example of how Twitter acted:

In a seemingly harmless exchange of Twitter banter Guardian journalist Aditya Chakrabortty and Independent writer Owen Jones joke about the sexual reputation of a former Conservative Cabinet Minister from the 1980s, adding a reference to Lord McAlpine.

Of course, on one level this was just joshing among alpha-male lefties.  Just a harmless bit of fun.  "Everyone" hates the Tories so it doesn't much matter what you accuse them of.

But this interaction was on a very public social media site and would have been seen by tens of thousands of "followers" who would have assumed that these two journalists knew inside information about what they discussing.

As you can see, someone called Bernard Collier has even made the Lord McAlpine jest a "favourite" and this endorsement would have been seen by tens of thousands of followers who would assume that Bernard Collier had a reason for doing what he did.

Which is why I think we cannot let this go.

For the good of society, and an example pour encourager les autres, George Monbiot and Paul Mason and Tom Watson MP should see the inside of Wandsworth Prison for a couple of months.

Prison sentences would be applicable if there was a conspiracy to defame Lord McAlpine. 


This article looks at the role of Tom Watson MP http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2012/11/harman-i-have-no-idea-about-the-strength-of-tom-watsons-evidence/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=harman-i-have-no-idea-about-the-strength-of-tom-watsons-evidence

UPDATE 12TH NOVEMBER

  











It would appear that Owen Jones subscribes to the Dr Goebbels school of news management (accuse your opponents of doing to very same misdeameanour that you have been caught doing). 

The new Archbishop of Canterbury

Lunchtime I usually try to see Daily Politics on BBC2.

Today they were discussing the new Archbishop of Canterbury and Rev Giles Fraser (no poppy, despite the last five wars being started by the Left) has just said "The job of the Church is to speak truth to power".

And there you have the central problem of the Church of England.

The job of the Church is to minister to the people.

But so many priests are wannabe political pundits that this point is lost.

Above:  Krishnan Guru-Murthy commenting on the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Is Krishnan Guru-Murthy (Channel 4 News and a self-identified Hindu) sneering at the sincerity of the faith of Anglican Christians?  Is he not aware of the Creed that all "English" (his racial term) Anglicans subscribe to, including the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary and the resurrection of the body?  Am I being over-sensitive in thinking this is a hate-crime and an example of the unthinking institutional racism within Channel 4 News?

https://twitter.com/krishgm

Above:  comments (all negative so far) Samira Ahmed has made on her Twitter microblog about the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Why does Samira Ahmed (BBC writer, journalist and broadcaster and a self-identified Muslim) feel the need to make carping comments about someone else's religion?  Is women's leadership roles within the world's religions a major concern of hers, and does she have a long trackrecord of campaigning for Muslim female clerics, imams and ayatollahs?  Or is this just a subtle little bit of racism against an institution she knows will not retaliate?

https://twitter.com/SamiraAhmedUK

It is time to start seeing immigration as a constitutional issue

Among all the analysis about the American election, my eye was caught by a report on the New York Times website that indicated demographic change in America propelled Obama to victory.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/

Whether you regard this as a good thing or not is immaterial.

But it certainly has a warning for the United Kingdom on what can happen when immigration is out of control for a sustained period of time - we can literally see dispossession taking place before our eyes as one of the two major American political parties is pushed away from power.

The left would like immigration to be seen as a race issue.  Immigration is good because it creates diversity.  Only bad racists oppose immigration and they do this because they are both bad and racist and for no other reason.

In reality the left wants immigration because it provides them with a steady source of new voters.

It is time to start seeing immigration as a constitutional issue - the allocation of voting rights to millions of incomers, and the use of those voting rights to decide the rate of taxation and the allocation of resources.

The British Conservative Party needs to see the writing on the wall - they either bring gross immigration down to zero or they are going the way of the Republican Party.

There is still time to do this, but not much time.

Quote:  "It's not hard to understand why Obama won the US election, it was because of the healthcare issue, he did the usual left-wing trick of bribing the electorate with their own money. And who's to say he was wrong!"

IPPR report Oceans of Innovation - 15

Barack Obama’s words in his 2011 state of the union address: ‘We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world’ - it seems that he is good at analysing a problem, poor at doing anything about it - but why this obsession with what the Americans are doing?  Britain is not America and what might work there does not necessarily work here.

By what processes are future teachers attracted, selected and trained? - the politicisation of teacher training in the United Kingdom is one of the key issues that need to be tackled.

McKinsey 2007 report, How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top, highlighted three lessons emerging from an analysis of high-performing school systems: ‘The quality of an  education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers; the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction; and achieving universally high outcomes is only possible by putting in place mechanisms to ensure that schools deliver high quality instruction to every child’ - unfortunately the quality of teachers in British comprehensive schools is poor, mainly because of the security of employment they have enjoyed, making it impossible to get rid of bad teachers.

The 2010 McKinsey report, How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better, went a step further and analysed how the top performing school systems continue to improve. The work concluded that a system could become better, no matter what its starting point, given a sustained leadership and a focus on key interventions necessary for systematic improvement - this seems to be the Deming formula of continuous improvement.

PISA and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study)... if Australia, New Zealand and Canada, each of which generally does reasonably well in PISA and TIMSS, are added in as Pacific countries, the region could certainly be said to lead the world. (In addition, Chile is the most improved Latin American system in the last two decades) - this is worth knowing.  And sometimes, reading this report, it sounds as if the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (大東亜共栄圏 Dai-tō-a Kyōeiken) is coming into fruition but under Chinese hegemony not Japanese.

The video for Can You Hear Me Ayayayaya

For many decades Jimmy Savile was a celebrity in the world of popular music and was a well-known presenter of Top of the Pops.  He was feted by the broadcasting establishment and continually surrounded by impressionable young people keen to be associated with a pop music celebrity.  Today the name "Jimmy Savile" has become notorious and he is now regarded as a dirty old man who preyed on young women and raped and assaulted hundreds of young girls.

A leading publicist has been contacted on behalf of several pop celebrity contemporaries of Jimmy Savile who are concerned they will be found guilty by association.  The leading publicist tells us that the 1960s and 70s were "a different world" when female groupies would throw themselves at music performers offering sexual favours.  The implication is that this sort of thing is not happening today.

Let us now draw a line under these two paragraphs.

____________________________________________

Having drawn a line let us now consider in the same blogpost Can You Hear Me Ayayaya the latest offering by Wiley (Richard Kylea Cowie).

The lyrics include the following:

See the fireworks, celebration, team winning the Grey Goose amazing
Send them Jaeger bombs I got a craving
So many women I don't wanna stop raving
They should know I got tunes for the gyal dem
Once the ladies are there see the man dem reach
They wanna leave there with a number
Check the peng ting she's gonna hang with me
I'm skanking all round the party I'm skanking
I got girls to the left and girls to the right
When we're at the bar we ain't ramping

Notes:  
Grey Goose is a brand of vodka, Jaegar is a powerful German liqueur.
gyal dem can mean "gyaldem is like a gang of girls usually about 30 to 50 dat get together everyday to sit around looking bored and glassyeyed on walls cos there really isnt nothing else to do,smoke weed and wait out side schools to start fights" - from Shanna, Urban Dictionary.
peng ting can mean 1) a seriously attractive person, male or female or 2) a high grade of drug, normally cocaine.
skanking can mean a slang term for a promiscuous person.

Alexis Petridis, writing in the Guardian describes the "comically polarised" fans Wiley attracts:  "At one extreme, its sonic experimentation has attracted the kind of people who run music blogs... at the other extreme, it is favoured by inner-city teens who appear to communicate entirely in an impenetrable mix of street slang and patois."  http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/apr/23/popandrock.shopping4

The video for Can You Hear Me Ayayayaya was edited by Sam Ostrove and directed by Rohan Blair-Mangat, and it is not clear whether "Wiley" had any creative input to the production.  Music videos are of course highly stylised and mediated works of art.  But they are also influential among the target audiences they are aimed at (which is why considerable amounts of money are invested in them).

Let us look at a few scenes:

Above:  are these the comically polarised fans described by Alex Petridis?

Above:  how old is this young woman?  18?  22?  30?  Is she a peng ting?  Is she sufficiently conscious of her surroundings to be able to give informed consent to whatever might happen next?

Above:  how old are these young women?  16?  18?  22?  Are they part of the gyal dem?  To quote Wiley Light skin with a beautiful body like Kim so I had to get my Kanye West on She told me she's feeling my jewellery (getting "a Kanye West on" and "feeling my jewellery" may of course be completely innocent remarks and no doubt Wiley would tell us the words should not be taken out of context).

Above:  how old is this young woman?  Is she inebriated with Grey Goose and Jaegar?  Later in the evening will she become the target of various skanking individuals?

The video in full:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbQaCCb_Gzc

Prime Minister's Questions 7th November 2012

Stunning performance by Nick Clegg at Prime Minister's Questions.

Who would have thought he had it in him.

Leaden ungracious unwitty Speaker as usual.

I think I will probably watch the American election results on the BBC with Jeremy Vine and Emily Maitlis.

Inspired by the Big Society

My notes from Sunday:

I have been a member of the county's architectural trust for a few years now, but have always been a passive observer.  Inspired by the Big Society I have now volunteered for the committee (in a very humble position) and have started going out on field trips to "inspect" work carried out as a result of grants given by the trust.  Mostly these inspections consist of drinking cups of tea and making encouraging remarks (I am not qualified to do much else).

Sunday afternoon I went to a lowland hamlet in the south east of the county.  The church was built in 1889 and has an extraordinary appearance.  You cannot drive to it, you have to park by a row of houses and walk down a long narrow cinder path. 

The church comes suddenly into view, built of harsh yellow and pink stock bricks with crude pointing.  The tower has on top a little octagonal turret built to commemorate George V's Silver Jubilee in 1937.  The turret contains eight tubular bells (the sort made famous by Mike Oldfield).

Despite the ugly composition the building is a place of exceptional charm, obviously loved and cared for.  Inside I met the female vicar and her daughter - two very formidable women, but also kind and helpful.  We looked at the repairs and talked about damp.

Preparations were being made for the Remembrance service on Sunday.  The war memorial is a stained glass window of St Martin and St George, with a large enamelled brass plaque.  All the Second World War veterans had now died.

Another stained glass window was in memory of a former verger.  "He bought allotments which he bequeathed to the church" said the vicar.  "The rents pay for our Lay Reader.

I drove away from the hamlet along a long narrow straight road bordered with stately trees, past the fragmented ruins of a medieval monastery (now forming the picturesque adjunct to a white sixteenth-century farmhouse).

IPPR report Oceans of Innovation - 14

"Cities that sprawl across the landscape because suburban land is (or was) cheap, such as Phoenix in Arizona or Houston in Texas, are less creative, innovative places than cities where people are more likely to jostle together and less likely to be isolated in their cars" - but there is a price to pay in terms of mental health from cramming people together where they are likely to become neurotic and crave access to nature.

"A third key theme for public policy is the attitude countries take toward openness both to the world and to their citizens. In Saxenian’s later work, The New Argonauts, she highlights the vital issue of immigration. Over half of all new companies in Silicon Valley since 1995 have been founded or cofounded by immigrants, and immigrants to the US register patents at twice the rate of non-immigrants" - this is a very alarming argument, since it seems to be promoting the idea of a pan-global intellectual oligarchy (which is fine for the quasi-Oxbridge innovative types able to travel the world and settle where they like, but condemns to serfdom the non-elite who are currently in theory able to control nation states through majority-rule democracy).

"Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel argues that this openness and interaction across the European nations in close proximity to each other was a major factor in their global dominance" - personally I think the Protestant Work Ethic created the conditions for European dominance of the world.

"...if the Pacific is to provide global leadership, how does the region’s capacity to innovate stand up against the criteria set out here? Or to put it differently, how much further must China and other countries in the region travel in the direction of openness?" - they would be foolish to swop rule by a communist (sic) oligarchy for rule by an international oligarchy of perpetual-tourist elite people endlessly moving around the world between their different properties and not staying long enough in any one place to pay taxes.

China is also choosing a new leader

In all the blanket coverage of the American election we should not forget that China is also choosing a new leader this week.  Tania Branigan wrote about it in yesterday's Observer, but otherwise there is not much on the subject.  Will Jon Snow be travelling to Beijing to cover Thursday's leadership process? (that was a rhetorical question).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/04/changing-of-the-chinese-old-guard

Who is Xi Jinping?  What are his thoughts towards the United Kingdom?  Will Andrew Neil be broadcasting a live edition of This Week from Beijing on Thursday evening? (or perhaps hosting a boatload of celebrity commentators on the Chaobai river).  

Will the BBC be covering the 18th party congress live on the Parliament channel?

Another self-immolation?  ANOTHER one?  Who is advising the Chinese government?  

Surely they realise this cannot go on.  

Even the most positive friends of China are sickened by this.

Associated Barack Obama with the word "socialist"

In an otherwise exemplary article in today's Guardian Gary Younge refers to the Obama Hope posters as "socialist-realist".

(above image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Sorry if this sounds pedantic, but the posters are certainly not socialist-realist, which was a hyper-real style that made illustrations look like photographs (or in some cases more literal than photographs).  The Obama posters are, as you can see, relatively abstract.  Perhaps Gary Younge and the Guardian sub-editors who are meant to check his work subconsciously associated Barack Obama with the word "socialist". 

IPPR report Oceans of Innovation - 13

"...creativity and innovation have major implications for public policy. Most significant are the implications for education systems..." - to a certain point, but I am not sure we can order creativity into existence in some kind of Goethean will to power, people are either creative or they are not.

"A major tendency of academe in the past 50 years has been increasing specialisation and therefore increasing expertise in ever-narrower fields" - pure research by universities leads to the greatest amount of innovation, rather than chasing all sorts of leads that subsequently turn out to be dead ends.

"True breakthroughs and large stepchanges will take precedence and need to be rewarded accordingly" - and also subjected to democratic control as we cannot tolerate innovations such as GM food that are pushed through against the will of the majority.

"...the Pacific Asia region is at the forefront of urbanisation and is likely to continue to lead the way. By 2030, over 60 per cent of China’s population will live in cities..." -this is very interesting as presumably we can expect in the next twenty years or so an anti-urban reaction and intense nostalgia for a pre-urban pre-industrial China profound (with Sino pre-raphaelites, Sino bucolic poetry, a Sino wandervogel movement etc).

"...the bigger the city, the greater its power to drive innovation" - not sure this is true, Vienna in 1900 had a population of 2 million and produced "Freud, Mahler, Mach, Wittgenstein, Schnitzler, Herzl, Trotsky forged the world we know today - a meeting point of individualism and collectivism, of egotism and idealism, the erotic and the ascetic, the elevated and the debased" (Lebrecht) but these were individuals, and it is not sure whether their creativity streamed from the size of the city, the geographic location in the heart of Europe, the psychological security of the Habsburg monarchy, or any number of different factors.  To ascribe the brilliance of 1900 Vienna to the size of the city seems an over-simplification.

The Wanted's latest video, directed in London by Chris Marrs Piliero

Further to my last post, The Wanted's latest video, directed in London by Chris Marrs Piliero, seems to reference the Chav demographic (I am using the verb in its cultural-historic sense). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r8G3SEGIV0

Above:  we see a chav gang, complete with intimidating dog, dressed in designer gear and walking with an unmistakable sense of menace.

Above:  architectural details suggest they are walking on, or near, a London council estate.

Above:  after a scenes of realistic and graphic inter-gang violence they break into a room where an attractive blonde woman is apparently being held captive, but instead of freeing her they...

Presumably the video is meant to be provocative. The majority of The Wanted fans are teenage girls.  Perhaps I am missing references that might make this narrative intelligible (I thought for a moment that the tied up woman might be a reference to Fifty Shades of Grey but I have not read that book, and have no intention of reading it, so I cannot say for sure).

Kaya Genç: Plebs and Chavs: On Textual Representation of Class

Writer Kaya Genc, whose work occasionally appears in the Guardian, has written a two-thousand word essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books on the issue of class in the United Kingdom.

http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=1145&fulltext=1&media=

There are a number of errors with this essay which I would like to correct:

Margaret Thatcher did not struggle to make class obsolete – she championed “Victorian values” (no society was more class conscious that Victorian England); she revived baronetcies (hereditary knighthoods), a title which had effectively been abolished in 1965; by the testimony of her opponents (including John Prescott) she waged “class war” against internal enemies such as the miners.

There are far more than three classes in the United Kingdom, and class is one of the main ways in which people define their identity (as opposed to America where race is a primary factor).  The socialists ridicule the Etonian “posh boys” in the Cabinet, and yet the true aristocracy will often sneer at parvenus in the Conservative Party (grandee Lord Heseltine was ridiculed as “someone who had to buy his own furniture” instead of inheriting priceless heirlooms).  Only an idiot could say that the “upper class” is powerless – the British elite has maintained itself in power by continuously recruiting so that the Anti-Establishment becomes co-opted into the New Establishment and the New Establishment becomes co-opted into the Old Establishment (and are given titles and peerages and profitable positions on the boards of companies so that thrusting newcomers such as Michael Heseltine, Martin Sorrell, Peter Mandelson over a period of time are ennobled and enrich themselves and “almost” become accepted as gentlemen – but only “almost”).

What has changed since 1997 is that the previously expanding comfortable “middle class” has seen standards of living falling so that they are becoming effectively “upper working class” (renting instead of buying property, scrabbling to maintain positions in professional employment even if that means working part-time, seeing their children unemployed and unable to afford university).  Perhaps they still self-identify as middle-class, but they no longer have the material lifestyle to justify that claim.  Against that reality John Prescott’s description seems like a hollow jibe (and let us note that former firebrand John Prescott is now Lord Prescott, and doing very well for himself and his family).

No journalist, from left or right, today seriously uses the description “chav”.  It has entirely lost its meaning.  When current commentators use the word “chav” as a verb the context is either historic, ironic or satirical.

Owen Jones may have many qualities as a writer and commentator, but he is not comparable to Charles Dickens.

Eric Hobsbawm may have described Owen Jones’s book Chavs as “a passionate and well-documented denunciation of the upper-class contempt for the proles that has recently become so visible in the British class system” but we should bear in mind that Owen Jones worked for Eric Hobsbawn as a researcher and editor of his papers and so the great historian might understandably be allowed to big-up the work of his protégé without our reading very much into the endorsement.

When discussing the riots that followed the shooting of Mark Duggan, I think Kaya Genç has become confused (not surprisingly, as it was a confusing episode).  Although people on Twitter may have used the word “chav” it is not really applicable to the rioters, a large percentage of whom were black (to the best of my knowledge chav has never been applied to black people, who usually have to endure far worse insults).  The subsequent court cases included many examples of middle class individuals who were arrested for looting, which indicates that the riots were an upsurge by amoral and opportunist materialists rather than an example of class war per se.

The way historian David Starkey (who is just as eminent as Eric Hobsbawm) was treated on Newsnight was a disgrace, and an example of how anyone attempting to discuss race in the United Kingdom is publicly hounded and silenced – presenter Emily Maitlis should really accept responsibility for not managing the discussion more firmly.

No-one has convincingly demonstrated the etymological origin of the word “chav”, but it appears to be a corruption of the place name Chatham (a working class docks area where, incidentally, some of my maternal ancestors hail from).

The example quoted of Andrew Mitchell’s supposed use of the word “pleb” does not, to me, quite ring true.  Is it likely that an experienced politician would be so indiscreet, no matter what the provocation?  And Kaya Genç fails to point out that the police have a vested interest in turning opinion against the government in the hope of gaining concessions over pension funding (and as for the claim that the police would not tell lies in writing up their notes, the police have been exposed as liars on numerous occasions to the point where one is astonished now when the police seem to be telling the truth).

I am perplexed by Kaya Genç’s claim that Chavs is a “work of art”.  It is many things, some good and some bad, but it is not a work of art.  I am sure that Owen Jones does not make this claim, nor does his publisher.

Early in the piece Kaya Genç describes Owen Jones as “an activist from the middle class who had no patience for middle class complacency”. 

I am perhaps too lazy to be an activist, but I am from a genuine working class background and I have no patience with middle class intellectuals telling the lower classes what they are and what they should think.  I have met many aristocrats and people from the upper classes, including some who were at Eton at the same time as the Prime Minister.  On the whole I do not enjoy the company of these people but I do not hate them – my loathing (and it is a loathing based on fear) is reserved for the members of the United Kingdom’s Labour party who, from the best of intentions and with the best of motives, repeatedly bully and enslave the working classes and seek to keep them in their place far more determinedly than Andrew Mitchell MP and his like ever could.

Towards the end of Orwell’s Animal Farm there is a moment when the revolutionary pigs morph seamlessly into the despotic humans.  The Anti-Establishment becomes the New Establishment becomes the Old Establishment.  You are always safer with the true patricians than you ever will be with the revolutionaries.

If he was undecided, why the meeting? - the past week at work

Monday

As usual, there were many e-mails waiting when I opened up my computer, and it took most of the morning to reply to these.

I am plagued by David L at Head Office asking about the Exhibitions programme (which I had rashly volunteered to co-ordinate).

I wrote some posts for various web forums - who knows if this sort of work is worthwhile. 

When I left the office I wondered where all the day had gone.

Tuesday

Late in the afternoon an unexpected meeting - all the heads of department were called into the office of the Institute's Director Vijay Singh.  We were addressed by Alec Nussbaum who told us that Head Office was undecided about what to do about the Institute (if he was undecided, why the meeting?).  Originally the Institute had been set up in "the dark days of nineteen seventy-three, to act as an intellectual crypteia" (his words) "and should logically have closed in seventy-nine when its goals were largely accomplished..."

The Institute did not close in 1979, but continued in various forms and under different Directors, often with no very clear goals or achievements.  Although ostensibly run by Head Office, the Institute is "owned" by 150 members who pay an average subscription of £1,000 a year.  This had been a lot of money in 1973, but now barely covers core costs.

The move out of London a few years ago and sale of the original offices had raised a substantial sum, but this money had been badly invested and is fast running out. 

The options before us are:  merger into Head Office (including relocation back to London); putting up subscriptions so that they cover all costs (unlikely to be able to do this, given the nature of the members); closing the Institute.

Vijay Singh then intervened and said that a fourth option was to raise money from a different source, and described a recent very substantial donation.  Alec Nussbaum just said "Hmm".  Marcia Walsh (Accounts and also Acting Deputy Director) shuffled her papers, as if bursting to say something.

We then discussed the Library, which is located on the ground floor of the building.  Since the move from London very few people had used the reading room, and it could not justify three staff (Manager Stan, who was at the meeting, and Library Assistants Gary and Matthew).  Alec Nussbaum wants to move the Library back to London immediately and had already located rooms for it to go into.

Nothing could be done without the agreement of the members, and so an EGM is to be held.  Probably this will be in the New Year, January or February.  Until then the Institute would continue as normal.

Wednesday

After yesterday's bombshell we gathered in Vijay Singh's office again, this time without Alec Nussbaum, and talked about what might happen.  Vijay Singh dismissed the Nussbaum proposals, saying they would never be approved by the members.  The Library, however, might have to go.

A few of us stayed in the office over lunch, and watched Prime Minister's Questions on the television.

Gavin's birthday, and I signed the office card which Stan later presented to him.

In the afternoon I wrote a rebuttal for a magazine.  I had to deal with more hassle from Head Office, especially over exhibitions.  Abi Reed (Reseach Manager) and myself called into a meeting with Vijay Singh to discuss "downsizing" possibilities for the Institute - significantly Marcia Walsh was not in this meeting and we were asked to keep things to ourselves.

Thursday

We seem to have gone on the offensive.  Vijay Singh uncovered a meeting planned between Alec Nussbaum and our Development Manager Tim Watts.  It caused quite a stir in the management meeting and a shamefaced Tim Watts had to explain what he was up to (obviously he was trying to secure his own future in the event of any move back to London).

New projects announced looking at Canada and China.  These plans were so interesting that I stayed late to work on them.  I was the last to leave the office and switched off the lights and set the alarm.

Friday

Slightly demoralised that the papers I had laid out on Monday were still there on Friday - it is so difficult to get things done (I am a "finisher-completer" according to the Belbin test, and do not like things hanging around).

In the afternoon a meeting with the Birmingham office - if necessary they can operate independently from the Institute and so are not greatly affected by the Nussbaum proposals.

Very tired when I got home so that I laid full out on the sofa in the Sitting Room to doze while listening to Channel 4 News, the dog sleeping at my feet like a medieval recumbent effigy.

Caterpillar

Green caterpillar on a fallen autumnal leaf.

I think this is the caterpillar for the Angle Shades moth or Phlogophora meticulosa.

IPPR report Oceans of Innovation - 12

"The growing emphasis in business organisations on greater equity for women and minorities should pay dividends" - but no mention of the white working class who are (male and female) the majority and yet entirely unrepresented (putting a few privileged women and "exotic" people onto boards is not going to lead to cultural change).

"An opportunity to bring diversity to bear that is often missed is to bring young people into positions of leadership" - younger people have a different attitude to risk, and will take risks that are often unnecessary.

"Jugaad innovation, jugaad being the Urdu and Hindi word for improvisation" - this is interesting, I have not heard this concept before.

"Innovation requires people with the right skills and attributes" - this seems to be a tautology, and rather a meaningless statement.

"Innovation requires... individuals selected and combined into effective teams... with diverse backgrounds and perspectives" - this sounds like an ideological statement rather than an explanation of how innovation happens.  Innovation is the result of new connections made between two attributes of the existing world (whether ideas, processes, products etc) and anyone can make these connections at any time, and anywhere.

"Organisations should be structured to be cross-functional and have fluid organisation roles" - this seems to be an argument against specialisation.

"Society must furnish a culture that is progressive and open to the transmission of new ideas, welcoming of diversity and rules-based" - again this sounds like wishy-washy ideology rather than anything practical.

Alastair Campbell

A rambling and incoherent blogpost from Alastair Campbell about the significance of the lack of retail outlets at a major French airport:

http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog/2012/11/04/on-frances-non-economy-german-efficiency-and-helmut-schmidts-view-of-the-world/

He tries (unsuccessfully) to do some shopping, he reads a magazine, he reminds us of his former importance (prefixing it with a mock self-depreciating "allegedly").

None of this would matter except that Mr Campbell concludes his little essay with sweeping assumptions about world political and economic trends.

Is this how policy was developed in the Blair years?  In the bored intervals between consuming things and bigging themselves up the former masters of New Labour read a magazine, chucked down a few thoughts and presented the result as a fully finished weltanschauung to be taken seriously by a slavishly cowed media.  No wonder Labour activists today distance themselves as much as possible from that time and those people.

How are the mighty fallen.

Six point plan to improve my health

I have not been feeling well recently.  Especially I have been feeling tired all the time, I keep catching colds, and sometimes I struggle to breath (a horrible experience).  My GP says he can't find anything wrong with me, so I went to see Helen's mother who is a nutritionist (I offered to pay her for the appointment, but she wouldn't accept anything).

She has given me a six point plan to improve my health.  It covers diet, exercise, sleep, stress, food supplements and phyto-nutrition.  I have my doubts but I am going to try it for a month.

Diet

Most GP's have no training in nutrition, and yet it is the single most important factor in maintaining good health.  Poor diet is the cause of most chronic (non-infectious) disease.  Bad diet leads to heart disease, cancers, depression etc.  I am supposed to be giving up bread (which I know is impossible, but rye bread is allowed), red meat, sugar.  No processed food of any kind.  Replace with fruit and vegetables (10 portions, ideally including at least three apples a day), lean meat, occasional good quality dark chocolate (high polyphenol).

No alcohol (I might last a month), no tea or coffee (no chance of this), no fizzy drinks.

Exercise

I'm aiming to run three miles a day.  Because the weather is so cold a wet now I am stopping off at a gym on my way home and using a treadmill.  Walking also counts, so at the weekends I will walk the dogs for three miles.

I also need to increase muscle mass, which helps metabolic rate.

So I am looking to Paul Amos for advice http://www.theactivechannel.com/player/abman-ripped-365

Sleep

My bed from a recent stay in an hotel. Not enough sleep is one of the areas I know I must improve.  Most nights I am lucky to get 5 hours when really I should be aiming for 8 hours.

The trouble is I am usually wide awake at 11pm (Newsnight) when I should be preparing to go to sleep.

Stress

I find the easiest way to relieve stress is to walk the dogs in the countryside.  If I miss this for any reason (overwork, going away, bad weather) I start to feel stressed.  Stress is a big killer, so needs to be addressed.

Food supplements

Your GP will tell you that you can get all the nutrients you need "from a balanced diet".  This overlooks the fact that it is almost impossible to eat an old-style balanced diet without spending lots of time in preparation and cooking and lots of money buying high-quality fresh food.  I have been told to take magnesium and chromium, and I am working my way through these giant tubs of capsules.

Phyto-nutrients - eating the right plants

This is the area that is probably the most controversial part of the advice I was given.  Basically Helen's mother has developed an interpretation of nutrition inspired by Goethe's Urpflanze theory.  Humans evolved from primates over a period of millions of years, and for almost all of that time they ate only plants, wandering in enormous continental circuits and consuming roots, barks, leaves, berries, nuts, flowers etc from a continuous rotation of edible plants.  As the seasons changed different plants came into season, and so the diet was varied on an almost weekly basis.  The evolution of the human body was intimately linked to the consumption of these plants, and without them our bodies are susceptible to disease (this is supposedly because the wet internal surfaces of the body are home to billions of microbes which regulate our health, and over the course of evolution these microbes were modified by the plants eaten by primitive humans). 

Apparently there are 350 different plant parts you need to consume each year to maintain optimum health and keep disease at bay (so roughly one different plant per day).

You don't need much, perhaps only a little of each plant extract, but the important thing is to keep up the variation and rotation.  There is evidence that suggests in the paleolithic period a travelling "stock-pot" of plants was kept on the go, supplemented with new plants on a daily basis and providing a sort of paleolithic superfood.  In the comments section I have listed the majority of plants, many of them have constituents which are anti-inflammatory (the importance of this depends on whether you believe cancer is inflammation that is out of control).

Caveat - I have no idea whether any of this is true, and I record this mainly because Helen's mother is notorious for not writing up her work.  Also some of the plants are poisonous.  I have no intention of trying all of them (you can buy most of the plants extracts from Neals Yard in Covent Garden, but they are not cheap).

Anyway, I freely admit I have my doubts about this theory, and will probably just try one or two and see how it goes.

This is an affidavit

Extremely misleading article about the East End by professionally-provocative priest Giles Fraser.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/nov/02/vast-wealth-divide-tower-hamlets-fairness?CMP=twt_gu

It was not the Thatcherites who destroyed the East End communities, nor even the Nazi bombs (although my father and grandparents were briefly driven away during 1941, then went back, then left for good in the 1950s).

The East End communities were destroyed by the post war "planners" and unrestricted overwhelming third world immigration which crowded into the area because it was the home of poor people no-one in the elite cared about.

This is not the trendy opinion of an ignorant middle class Anglican poltroon.

This is an affidavit (because I swear it) by the son of an East Ender, and the grandson of East Enders, and the great-grandson of East Enders and the great-great-grandson of East Enders (you get the picture) all settled in Lambeth (mother's family) and Limehouse at least as far back as the 18th century.

The East End in 1945 was not an "empty land" waiting to be settled, it was my father's home (and, poor as it was, my cultural heritage).

Now the lie is peddled that the East End has always been a "melting pot" with vast numbers of immigrants flowing backwards and forwards (this lie can easily be exposed simply by looking at the census returns for all of the 19th century which give the surnames and places of birth and family relationships - you will find very few people who are not English).

So fuck off Giles Fraser.  Leave my culture alone.  Go and colonise someone else's past.

Spoof invoices "created" by Denis MacShane

Listening to Eddie Mair on PM (BBC Radio 4) reading out a seemingly endless list of spoof invoices "created" by Denis MacShane for computer equipment.

Surely this amounts to a fraud?

The fake expenses claimed would presumably have been listed on his tax return and therefore HMRC should be investigating?

Denis MacShane posed for years as a champion of the working class, but if any genuine member of the working class had worked this fiddle the authorities would be pulling them to pieces.

All Souls Day

Today is All Souls Day, a very solemn holy day (holy meaning "set apart").

Across the county at church services the names of the recent deceased (and some not so recent) will be read out.

A day for eating soul cakes - which are like hot cross buns but harder and flatter and made from oats.  Very few bakers sell them so you will proabaly have to make your own.  If you wanted a short-cut you could soak some Oatibix in milk then form them into round disks about an inch thick, mark them with a cross and cook for 30 mins. (eat hot or cold).

Update:

Ben Bradshaw is MP for Exeter.  Educated at a grammar school.  Formerly a reporter for the BBC's World At One.

Watching This Week on BBC2 discuss British continued membership of the EU.

The idea that in a 21st century globalised world we should decide our political and economic alliances on the basis of geographic proximity is laughable.

What do we get from the EU?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

IPPR report Oceans of Innovation - 11

"Sometimes there will be flashes of light enabling a breakthrough - these will often occur when routines are broken" - this seems to be an argument for revolution, and yet Mao's "permanent revolution" sent China backwards.

"At other times it will be a matter of persistence and slog" - this is generally my experience.

"There's often no substitute for hard work" - this argues against the current culture of instant gratification.

"Creativity flourishes neither in complete chaos nor in complete order; it appears to require a combination of the two" - yes, but some examples would have been useful.

"Increasingly, scientific and technological breakthroughs are made by teams not individuals" - this may be true, but the reasons need not be logical, it might just be a case of contemporary society valuing teams rather than individuals.

"The days of Isaac Newton, who read literally everything there was to read about physics in a year before proceeding to develop his laws of motion, are long gone" - it is still possible to read "everything" in a particular sector, obviously not a whole branch of science, but certainly a sub-branch of a sub-branch.

"The breadth and depth of knowledge as well as the size and scope of experiments are simply beyond the compass of a single individual" - I cannot accept this, individuals can still change things.

Immigration policy can only be valid if it has the consent of the majority

Yet another dishonest article about immigration, this time by Alex Hern in the New Statesman:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2012/11/government-has-lost-economic-argument-around-immigration

Dishonest because he is pretending that the argument is economic.

The issue is not one of economics but of democratic consent.

It is not for Alex Hern, or Lord Heseltine, or Gus O'Donnell to decide immigration policy, deciding among themselves what is "good" for the country.

Immigration policy can only be valid if it has the consent of the majority.


If a political party is so sure that immigration is economically good for the United Kingdom all they have to do is publish it in an election manifesto and ask the people to vote for it.

As this has never been done, perhaps Alex Hern will forgive me for pointing out that none of the post-war immigration has been valid, which places many millions of people in an unacceptably false position (please do not point to the small print of various acts of parliament - on big issues pointing to the small print is a bogus argument).

Update

Immigration is, of course, one of the topics you must not criticise otherwise you will be called a racist (and far worse things) and hounded until you are silenced.

Why should this be?

Surely we should be able to criticise any aspect of social change, especially where that change has occurred without democratic consent.

Perhaps Nick Cohen, on his Twitter microblog https://twitter.com/NickCohen4 has unwittingly given us a clue:

Finally have time to read the newspapers.

Fascinating article by Maev Kennedy about the discovery of a Beowulf-style feasting hall.

One of the reasons I love the Guardian is that they are prepared to devote half a page to what most would consider a minor archaeological discovery.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/30/lyminge-kent-anglo-saxon-hall

PS if the newspaper is to go "digital" presumably technology will allow the printing of a hard copy Berliner version at designated printing shops?

All Saints Day

Today is All Saints Day, a fact acknowledged by Andrew Neil on Daily Politics this lunchtime (although seemingly no mention elsewhere on the BBC).

On the front page of today's Guardian an article about the need for an evangelising Archbishop of Canterbury to increase attendances (preferably a High Church evangelist, as low church jellies are not to everyone's taste).

All Saints Day means the singing of my favourite hymn For All The Saints, and if I am back in time I may try to get to 6.30 Evensong at St Nicholas (the highest church I know).

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia! 

IPPR report Oceans of Innovation - 10

"The key (to Atlantic supremacy) has been politics and more especially political institutions" - can we ascribe the decline of the West in part because of the decline and corruption of political institutions?

"Niall Ferguson in Civilisation... competition is one of the six explanations Ferguson puts forward to explain the path of Atlantic dominance.  The others include science, property rights and the growth of consumerism..." - socialism repudiates all of these except for science.

"...inclusive, pluralistic institutions which allow extensive debate of ideas and possible ways forward combined with a consumer society whose demands are met by continuously competing and therefore innovative businesses whose property rights are protected in law.  The individual, therefore, is simultaneously consumer, worker and citizen" - I really like this definition, and it indicates why British society is sometimes faltering - public policy needs to encourage individuals to be simultaneously consuming, working and participating fully in issues of citizenship.

Is it possible that David Cameron has just taken the Labour Party hostage?

Remember that the Prime Minister is a long-standing Euro-sceptic and not averse to leaving the political union in Europe (but not the economic free trade area).

In that respect there is no real split in the Conservative Party - the issue is one of timing, not direction.

By fighting the next election on a Euro-sceptic platform it is possible that he would neutralise the credibility of Ed Miliband and the Shadow Cabinet.

Observance of rituals is a deep-rooted human need

Today is All Hallows Eve.  Tomorrow is All Saints Day.  Friday is All Souls Day.

The local minster (which is high church Anglican) has designated from today until Sunday as "All Souls Tide".

The Anglican church has debated recently about the creeping nature of pseudo-Harry Potter fun-paganism that is infecting "Halloween".  They need to counter this by taking back public commemoration of the day.  For instance, they could reinstate the ringing of church bells on All Hallows Eve - meant as a tribute to the living mourning the dead.

Observance of rituals is a deep-rooted human need and will not go away.  The Anglican church needs to either take control of ritual days or recognise that if they don't they will be ceding control to others.  Allowing "Halloween" to develop along its present course and to continue to influence the imaginations of children is not good for society.

Perhaps Nairns could bring out an annual "special edition" oatcake for All Souls Day as oatcakes are a ritual food associated with the day.

"One thing that has changed over the last year towards Europe is that a British Prime Minister is now talking easily about using the national veto, and that's a genie that's not going back in its bottle."

"The problem with Michael Heseltine is that no-one takes him seriously.  In the one big moment of his life he lost, and he has never overcome that aura of being a loser.  Bringing him back now reminds me of Gordon Brown bringing back Peter Mandelson, it smacks of desperation."

(I cannot attribute these words unfortunately).