Category Archives: Rants&Rambles

Political, Rants&Rambles

Representation

If you don’t go to university, if you’re not a “professional” who speaks for you in political terms? Who even knows what you want or what your aspirations might be for yourself and for your kids?

In theory, in a democracy, the majority should influence — some would even say determine — the distribution of income. In practice, this is not the case.

Over the past few decades, political scientists have advanced a broad range of arguments to explain why democracy has failed to stem the growth of inequality.

Most recently, Thomas Piketty, a French economist who is the author of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has come up with a straightforward answer: Traditional parties of the left no longer represent the working and lower middle classes.

In a January Power Point presentation, “Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right,” Piketty documents how the domination of the Democratic Party in the US (and of socialist parties in France) by voters without college or university degrees came to an end over the period from 1948 to 2017. Both parties are now led by highly educated voters whose interests are markedly different from those in the working class.

The result, Piketty argues, is a political system that pits two top-down coalitions against each other:

In the 1950s-60s, the vote for left-wing (socialist) parties in France and the Democratic Party in the US used to be associated with lower education & lower income voters. It (the left) has gradually become associated since 1970s-80s with higher education voters, giving rise to a multiple-elite party system: high-education elites vote for the left, while high-income/high-wealth elites for the right, i.e., intellectual elite (Brahmin left) vs business elite (merchant right).

Changes in the structure of the electorate emerged in force during a period of unprecedented upheaval in the 1960s, when a combination of liberation movements — committed to civil rights, women’s rights, sexual freedom, the student left, decolonization and opposition to the Vietnam War — swept across Europe and the United States.

In support of Piketty’s argument: In 1996, according to exit polls, the majority of voters who cast ballots for Bill Clinton were what demographers call non-college. That year, his voters were split 59 percent non-college to 41 percent college graduates. Twenty years later, the majority of voters for Hillary Clinton were college graduates, at 54.3 percent, compared with 45.7 percent non-college.

Exit polls show substantially larger numbers of college-educated voters than the surveys conducted by American National Election Studies. But the ANES data also shows a sharp increase in the percentage of voters with college and advanced degrees supporting Democratic presidential candidates. In 1952 and 1956, for example, the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson, got 29 and 31 percent of the college-educated vote. In 2012, the most recent year for which ANES data is available, 53 percent of those with at least a college degree voted for Barack Obama.

One of the most important of Piketty’s conclusions is that constituencies that feel unrepresented by the new partisan configuration will be drawn to populism.

The Piketty report is a significant contribution to the growing collection of studies analyzing the inability of democratic forces to adequately counter inequality.

Five years ago, Adam Bonica,  a political scientist at Stanford, published “Why Hasn’t Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?” Economic theory, he wrote, holds that “inequality should be at least partially self-correcting in a democracy” as “increased inequality leads the median voter to demand more redistribution.”

Starting in the 1970s, this rebalancing mechanism failed to work, and the divide between the rich and the rest of us began to grow, Bonica, Nolan McCarty of Princeton, Keith T. Poole of the University of Georgia, and Howard Rosenthal of N.Y.U. wrote.

They cite five possible explanations.

  1. Growing bipartisan acceptance of the tenets of free market capitalism;
  2. Immigration and low turnout among the poor resulting in an increasingly affluent median voter;
  3.  “Rising real income and wealth has made a larger fraction of the population less attracted to turning to government for social insurance.”
  4. The rich escalated their use of money to influence policy through campaign contributions, lobbying and other mechanisms; and finally,
  5. The political process has been distorted by polarization and gerrymandering in ways that “reduce the accountability of elected officials to the majority.”

In the five years since their essay was published, we’ve seen all of this play out; in the case of campaign contributions in particular, the authors provide strong evidence of the expanding clout of the very rich.

In recent decades, there has been a large increase in the number of people who contribute to political campaigns: In 1980, there were 224,322 individual contributions, the four authors write, and by 2012, that number grew to 3,138,564.

On the surface, those numbers would seem to suggest a democratization of campaign financing. In fact, as the courts have steadily raised the amount an individual can contribute, megadonors have become all the more influential.

The share of contributions donated by the top 0.01 percent of the voting age population grew from 16 percent in the 1980s to 40 percent in 2016.

In other words, if money buys influence over policy, the top 0.01 percent bought nearly triple the influence in 2016 that it purchased in the early 1980s.

Daron Acemoglu, an economist at M.I.T. who has stressed the power of economic elites to set the policy agenda, voiced some skepticism of Piketty’s analysis. In an email, he wrote that what Piketty found can be explained in large part by racial hostility, the adverse effects of globalization on white manufacturing workers, and the decline in social mobility:

It’s not a new thing. This is what George Wallace and Ronald Reagan were about also. Its current reincarnation is almost surely due to the fact that both globalization and technological changes have left behind vast swathes of the country. But why have these people found a home in the Republican Party, not in the Democratic Party? That’s less clear, but if I were to make a guess, I would say that this is related to the fact that economic hardship does not work by itself. It needs to tap into other grievances, and in the US context these have been related to pent-up hostility towards blacks and immigrants (and perhaps their own albeit slow upward mobility). If so, it is natural that it is the Republican Party, with its southern strategy and more welcoming attitude towards soft racism, that has come to house this discontent.

Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale who writes extensively about inequality, praised Piketty’s work but noted that he and others

have argued that the Democrats were cross-pressured by rising inequality because they wanted to maximize campaign cash as well as votes and because they got most of their institutional support from a coalition of single-issue groups. This cross-pressure, in turn, contributed to their weak attempt to maintain the allegiance of the white working class.

Like Acemoglu, Hacker argues that the Piketty analysis does not place enough emphasis on race:

It doesn’t seem very fundamental to Piketty’s story. Yet it’s impossible to deny that the realignment of the parties around race created the opening for the GOP to gain the support of white voters — especially downscale white voters — by exploiting resentment of racial and ethnic minorities.

Dean Baker, a co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, was the sharpest critic of Piketty.

“I’m not sure this analysis is all that useful,” Baker wrote me.

I see Piketty is missing the way in which markets have been restructured to redistribute income upward and to take away options for reversing inequality and promoting growth in ways that benefit low and middle income workers.

Piketty, in Baker’s view, “sees the market outcomes as largely given and redistribution just means tax and transfer policy.”

Baker argues that correcting inequality requires adoption of a much broader policy agenda. Citing the argument in his book “Rigged,” Baker calls for radical reform of exchange rates, of monetary policy, of intellectual property rights and of the financial sector as well as reform of the institutional protection of doctors, dentists, and lawyers and of corporate governance rules that now allow “C.E.O.s to rip off shareholders.”

Baker is not optimistic about full-throated economic liberalism in the Democratic Party.

“Because the party has largely supported an agenda that redistributes upward, they have lost much of their working class base,” he wrote in his email to me:

The friends you keep matter. The speeches that folks like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama give at Wall Street firms are not a good look. The banks don’t hand you huge honorariums if they think you are going to take their money and put them in prison.

There is “an ongoing battle,” Baker continued,

in the Democratic Party as well as in most of the left parties across Europe. There are those who would like to accept inequality and focus exclusively on issues like gender equality and anti-racism. I would never minimize the importance of combating gender inequality or racism/nativism, but if that means ignoring the policies that have led to the enormous inequality we now see, that is not a serious progressive agenda.

If Democrats must adopt a broader agenda to counter inequality, Piketty’s study is indispensable. He demonstrates that the highly educated constituency currently controlling the party has been ineffective in protecting the material interests of the less well off.

For one thing, the well-educated leadership of the left is thriving under the status quo. The economic gains of those with college degrees — now, remember, the majority of the Democratic electorate — are shown in the accompanying graphic. From 1988 to 2012, the inflation-adjusted income of college graduates increased by 16 percent and for those with advanced degrees by 42 percent.

In contrast, those with some college but no degree saw a 1 percent increase; those with a high school degree saw a 0.3 percent income growth; and those without a high school degree saw their income decline by 13 percent.

There is no question that the Democrats’ loss of non-college white support has deep roots in the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. The fight for equal rights for African-Americans resulted in the full-scale regional realignment of the South toward the Republican Party and turned once solidly Democratic precincts in working class sections of Chicago, Boston, Milwaukee and other major cities into partisan battlegrounds.

These upheavals have left the party of the left ill-equipped to tackle not only inequality but economic mobility more broadly and with it the pervasive decline of much of what has become red America.

This in turn raises the question: Can a party split between an upscale wing that is majority white and a heavily minority working class wing effectively advocate on behalf of a liberal-left economic agenda? The jury is out on this question, but the verdict could very well be no.

Rants&Rambles

Grief

My friend died.

We visited on the Friday after our trip to Japan to catch up with him and the wife he loves so much and cares for and as we were leaving he jumped up out of his chair and said “See you next week” as he often did.

The call arrived Sunday afternoon. He had died suddenly, waking unwell that morning with a doctor called just too late, if there ever was a chance to save him from the aneurism.

And I have never cried so much or felt such loss, such absence.

He was someone who made my life brighter and lighter and now he’s gone. I have just begun to understand my loss.

And to all of those well-meaning people who tell me how good I have been for visiting an old man, as if our friendship were an act of charity, your suggestion makes me incandescent with rage.

My grief is for my loss, mine.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Crimes & Misdemeanours

A recent article in the Times newspaper looked at the Labour strategy in the recent election.


Hidden from staff, this version was updated 15th Nov and leaked by a trade union (1/5)

It reveals that despite polls Labour targeted 60 seats and defended just 26

The list includes Tory seats with majorities of more than 5,000 like Stourbridge, Dover and Gloucester

Echoes Murphy’s claim that Labour would reject polling. “We ripped up those rules,’ she said. (2/5)

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It included Labour’s secret list of target seats for the election It reveals Murphy and Milne, policy makers and shakers for Labour, fought a “deranged” offensive campaign focused on Tory Leave seats

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Hidden from staff, this version was updated 15th Nov and leaked by a trade union. It reveals that despite polls, Labour targeted 60 seats and defended just 26. The list includes Tory seats with majorities of more than 5,000 like Stourbridge, Dover and Gloucester Echoes Murphy’s claim that Labour would reject polling: “We ripped up those rules,’ she said.

Unsurprisingly this kamikaze strategy resulted in just 1 win (Putney) out of the 60 seats targeted and multiple losses in undefended seats, as the so-call Labour “red wall” crumbled.

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Some seats targeted appear to be political – for example Labour continued to target Luciana Berger in Finchley and Golders Green but it did not prioritise Ruth Smeeth in Stoke on Trent North . Similarly with several Corbyn sceptics abandoned as resources were marshalled elsewhere.

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The source for the article said that the campaign was based on three motives:

– disprove the defensive approach of 2017

– show that Lab support concentrated in non-Remain areas

– internal politics, change complexion of PLP “Unite are behind this,” they say

With the largest defeat in generations it certainly seems to have provided a clear answer to all of the above.

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A defensive strategy would most likely have resulted in another second hung parliament, not a win but certainly not a loss for Labour.

The sources for the article were clear that the Labour leadership was warned but chose to keep this document as their central strategy, refusing to develop a new plan.

“Murphy and Milne are responsible for the most catastrophic defeat in almost a century.”

Political, Rants&Rambles

Labour’s Big Challenge

Ex-PM Tony Blair made a speech after the recent General Election which basically summarises the challenge for the Labour party.

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This Election was no ordinary defeat for Labour. It marks a moment in history. The choice for Labour is to renew itself as the serious, progressive, non Conservative competitor for power in British politics; or retreat from such an ambition, in which case over time it will be replaced.

The Election can be analysed in conventional ways – and here it does not take political genius to work out what happened.

I feel deeply for those good Labour MPs and candidates who lost through no fault of their own and the thousands of Party workers and volunteers who, as I know well, are the backbone of the Party.

Of course, Brexit was an issue. It was a Brexit General Election – which was why it was a cardinal error for Labour ever to agree it. But an already difficult situation was made impossible by the failure to take a clear position and stick to it.

I take very seriously the argument that we ‘deserted’ or ‘disrespected’ our working class voters by reopening the referendum result.

But the problem with this position, is that there was no way of uniting the country over Brexit. Britain is deeply divided over it. Now that Brexit will happen, we must make the best of it and the country must come together.

But until the Election settled the debate, as unfortunately it has, if Labour had gone for Leave it would simply have alienated the half of the nation that opposed Brexit; as well as the vast bulk of Party members

Post Election polling shows that between 2017 and 2019, we lost only a small number of voters who were Leave and all the way through we had more than double the number of Remain voters. The biggest percentage fall in Labour voters between 2017 and 2019 was amongst young people, probably dismayed by the ambiguity over a Brexit they detested.

What we should have done, following June 2016, is accepted the result, said it was for the Government to negotiate an agreement but reserved our right to critique that agreement and should it fail to be a good deal for the country, advocate the final decision should rest with the people. Ultimately, we might have lost the most ardent Brexit support, but I believe, with different leadership, we would have kept much of our vote in traditional Labour areas, whilst benefiting from the fact that even in those areas, the majority of those voting Labour, were Remain.

Instead we pursued a path of almost comic indecision, alienated both sides of the debate, leaving our voters without guidance or leadership.

The absence of leadership on what was obviously the biggest question facing the country, then reinforced all the other doubts about Jeremy Corbyn.

What is important is to understand why his leadership was so decisively rejected.

This is not about Jeremy Corbyn as a person. I have no doubt he is someone of deeply held and sincere beliefs, who stayed true to them under harsh attack.

But politically, people saw him as fundamentally opposing what Britain and Western societies stand for. He personified an idea, a brand of quasi revolutionary socialism, mixing far left economic policy with deep hostility to Western foreign policy, which never has appealed to traditional Labour voters, never will appeal and represented for them a combination of misguided ideology and terminal ineptitude that they found insulting.

No sentient political Party goes into an Election with a Leader who has a net approval rating of – 40%.

The takeover of the Labour Party by the Far left turned it into a glorified Protest Movement, with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible Government.

The result has brought shame on us. We let our country down. To go into an Election at any time with such a divergence between People and Party is unacceptable. To do it at a time of national crisis when a credible opposition was so essential to our national interest, is unforgiveable.

Anti-Semitism is a stain. The failure to deal with it, a matter of disgust that left some of us who voted Labour feeling, for the first time in our lives, conflicted about doing it.

So, at one level, sure let’s have a period of ‘reflection’; but any attempt to whitewash this defeat, pretend it is something other than it is, or the consequence of something other than the obvious, will cause irreparable damage to our relationship with the electorate.

Let us demolish this delusion that ‘the manifesto was popular’. The sentiment behind some of the policy reflected public anxieties, but in combination, it was one hundred pages of ‘wish list’. Any fool can promise everything for free. But the People weren’t fooled. They know life isn’t like that. And the loading in of ‘free broadband’ run by Government was the final confirmation of incredibility.

So, Messrs Johnson and Cummings had a strategy for victory, and we had one for defeat. And I noted the cockiness of the Johnson visit to Sedgefield to rub salt in the wound!  But I would like to see their strategic brilliance measured against a team other than one whose striker was directionally oblivious, its midfield comatose, the defence absent in the stand chatting to a small portion of the fans and its goalkeeper behind the net retweeting a clip of his one save in a 9-0 thrashing.   

For the Labour Party the choices are stark, starker than it realises.

It is gearing up to fight an ‘ultra Thatcherite’ Tory Party.

But Boris Johnson also understood that the country can’t be united over Brexit. So, his strategy is to do it and then treat it as an uncomfortable fact of life but not one defining the Conservative Party. He will adopt centre ground rhetoric on everything other than Brexit and possibly even on that; expect to see some former rebels back in the fold and the Lords; and having turned Brexit from a Tory problem into the nation’s problem, expect the tenor of the debate around Brexit to change.

His challenge will be formidable not least on the new trade deal and the threat to the Union, quite apart from delivering on all those promises to Northern former Labour voters.

But most people would not bet against 10 years of Tory Government.

The first rule of politics, however, is there are no rules of inevitability.  

Labour can keep with the programme and positions of Corbyn with a new Leader. In which case it is finished.

Or it can understand that it must recapture the Party from the Far left, make radical changes and begin the March back.

But the biggest necessity is understanding the challenge didn’t begin in 2015. It is rather the culmination of political and socio-economic changes over the last half century and the circumstances of Labour’s birth more than a century ago.

This is a moment where either we use the lessons of defeat to build a progressive, modern political coalition capable of competing for, winning and retaining power; or we accept that the Labour Party has exhausted its original mission and is unable to fulfil the purpose for which it was created.

As the 19th Century Industrial Revolution gathered pace, the Whig Party became the Liberal Party and the effective alternative to the Conservative Party. The Liberal Party suffered the stresses of Home Rule for Ireland and the cleavage between the Radical elements represented by Chamberlain and the more conservative remnants of Whiggery and then later still had to cope with Chamberlain’s departure from the Party and shift to a populism combining support for the working class and Imperialism; but it was the main instrument of social reform and could still win the election of 1906 and govern up to and through 1914 and the outbreak of World War 1.

 A competitor appeared: the newly formed Labour Party born out of the Labour Representation Committee, a trade union based organisation designed to bring true representatives of the working class into Parliament; and socialist.

In time, the Labour Party took over as the main alternative to the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party retreated to minority status.

So, Lloyd George a great Liberal reformer and Clement Attlee a great Labour reformer ended up in different parties.

 But the division in progressive politics had long term deleterious consequences. In the last century with the Labour Party and Liberals separated, Tories have been in power much longer than the Opposition, including winning 8 out of the last 11 elections, whereas in the years of Tory/Liberal Party competition, the Liberals were ahead .

The Labour Party became reliant on traditional working class organisations and constantly pulled towards a socialism which blunted at crucial moments its appeal to the aspirant working class. It had its Liberal wing represented by the likes of Roy Jenkins, but it was always viewed with some suspicion.

The traditional left and right of the Party – Bevin and Bevan – were themselves often uncomfortable bedfellows, but they united around: Labour as a Party of Government, Parliamentary not revolutionary politics, pro NATO and the Transatlantic Alliance, and within the mainstream of European socialist and social democratic politics.

Then there was a third strand of leftist politics which derived from Marxist/Leninism and was an early thorn in the side of the Labour leadership. From the beginning, the leadership shoved this strand to the fringe of Labour politics. It mounted an assault on the Party’s commanding heights through Tony Benn in the 1970s and 80s, but it was repulsed under Michael Foot who supported Denis Healey against Benn and moved to expel the Militant Tendency.

Throughout this time, something else was happening. The economy and society were changing. The middle class grew and those instruments of collective power like unions lost their industrial base.

And as the State also grew, in size and authority, it became clear that though it was a means of social progress, it could also be a vested interest, and the limitations of the State in an era of individual choice and increased income became more apparent.

The trade union and industrial base became hollowed out. The Labour Party structures had shown themselves vulnerable to infiltration. The values remained strong; but the offer to the People weak and outdated.  

New Labour was an attempt to reunite the Liberal and Labour traditions of progressive politics. Both traditional left and right of the Labour tradition were expressly included, symbolised by me and John Prescott; but the Far Left was back to the fringe.

A study of Labour history showed that in the 20th C it had governed only intermittently. The longest unbroken period of power was 6 years. Never had the Labour Party won two full successive terms.

So, the Party programme was reshaped around an appeal to aspiration as well as social justice, to business as well as unions; culturally it was strong on defence and law and order but also socially liberal.  

We won three successive full terms and governed for more than twice the length of any previous Labour Government.

The Party reached out beyond tribe but didn’t neglect its traditional voters.

It placed itself firmly on the side of the victim, not the criminal.

On the side of the working class who believe you must earn what you get.

On the side of the patient and pupil interest, not the producer interest.

It championed investment in public services but matched it with reform to ensure this money was spent wisely.

It explicitly rejected the anti-Western worldview of the far left and was on the side of people who were patriotic about their country.

It was not – for all the caricature since we left office – a project of the metropolitan liberal elite.  It assembled a new coalition of traditional working class voters, aspirational voters who had previously turned to Margaret Thatcher, and it fused together the progressive vote that had been split in the previous century.

The extraordinary thing is the Labour Party’s desire to re-write its only period of majority Government in half a century in negative terms.

We did not ‘neglect’ those traditional Labour heartlands in some appeasement of the middle class. We made the largest ever investment in schools and hospitals in those communities; re-distributed wealth through tax changes and tax credits; cut pensioner and child poverty; took the homeless of the streets; and through Sure Start, the Minimum wage and a host of other programmes helped those who needed help most.

And we kept their support. In 2005, in Sedgefield, my majority was almost 20,000. In Bolsover, it was 18,000.  In Scotland we had 41 of the 56 seats, including two with increased majorities over 2001. The support we lost was mainly amongst the middle class especially over tuition fees and Iraq.  

The point is not to go back to the policies of New Labour, but to understand New Labour’s place in Labour’s history, so we better understand how to forge Labour’s future; and to set it within the history of progressive politics in Britain where Labour sits, but not in sole occupation.

This defeat is seminal. We cannot afford to repeat 1983, moving crab like towards reality. You know the narrative. Among the far left, ‘we won the argument’ it’s just for some inexplicable reason the British people having accepted we were right, decided to vote for the other guys.

Among others, it is: many of the policies were really popular, but too many of them, our leadership was a problem but did inspire a lot of people, it wasn’t that we were too extreme but we allowed ourselves to be portrayed that way, we now have to stand with our communities in the assault which will be mounted upon them by the Tories etc. etc. plus a bit of we need to be with  working class communities against the ‘liberal London elites’ sort of populism.

If we go down this line, it will be 15 years more of Tory Government.

The country won’t tolerate this. There are people disenfranchised in our politics today, angry at the way the country has been let down by its non Conservative opposition, and feeling hopeless. And for the country, there is a generation of smart, capable, politically conscious people who will never be Tories but have no place in Parliament because of the state of the Labour Party and whose talent is therefore shut out.

Two things must happen.

First, there should be a parallel debate in and out of the Labour Party about the future of progressive politics, how it is reconstructed and reshaped into a winning coalition. This should include Labour, traditional left and right, the Lib Dems, those disenchanted with both main Parties and those not at present engaged in any Party. It must be a Big Tent debate, open and frank.

Second, we need urgently a new policy agenda for progressive politics. At the heart of it will be understanding and mobilising the Technological Revolution, the 21st C equivalent of the 19st C Industrial Revolution. It will mean a complete re-ordering of the way State and Government is conceived and organised; huge focus on education and infrastructure; new ways of dealing with generational poverty; a recasting of corporate governance and responsibility; a stimulus nationally and internationally of the science and technology for environmental change; and very specific measures to connect communities and people left behind by the changes driven by globalisation.

We need policy for the future. Radical but modern. The agenda of the Far Left is not progressive; it’s a form of regression to an old Statist, tax and spend programme of the 60s and 70s.

I understand why for some it has real attractions. It speaks to the intense feelings of marginalisation and desire for radical change.

It is a cry of rage against ‘the system’.

But it isn’t a programme for Government.

To win power, we need self discipline not self indulgence; listening to what people are truly saying, not hearing only the parts we want to hear; understanding that you can’t play with passion alone, but require strategy, preparation and professionalism; winning the intellectual as well as political battle.

In 1983, after my first Election, having been out on the doorstep for several weeks listening to Labour voters telling me that they were voting Labour despite the state of the Party rather than because of it, I attended a meeting in my constituency organised by the Far left, still strong after the Bennite surge, entitled ‘Learning the Lessons of Defeat’ or some such.

Dennis Skinner was the main speaker. At the outset, the Chairman urged us to be honest. Naively, I took this instruction literally. I did speak honestly. I said we were way out of date in our thinking, were far too left, seemed like we were living in the era of black and white TV, in an age of colour, and so on.

I was heard in silence. Right after me, came Dennis, who tore me limb from political limb.

I came out of the meeting in shock. My very wise agent John said to me: ‘you were the only person talking sense, but in future learn to say it better.’

By 1994, when standing for the leadership, I had learnt to say it better. I chose my ground carefully. I didn’t unnecessarily offend.

But, no one doubted where I stood.

The Labour Party is presently marooned on Fantasy Island. I understand would be Leaders will want to go there and speak the native language in the hope of persuading enough eventually to migrate to the mainland of Reality.

But there is a risk that the only people speaking the language of Reality to the Party are those who don’t aspire to lead it.  

Unfortunately, 2019 is much worse than 1983.

Then was our second defeat; now is our fourth. The country is different. Politics is different. The country is less fixed in political affiliation. Politics moves at speed accelerated by social media.

We don’t have the luxury of the Slow March back.

We can correct our historical and contemporary weaknesses; or be consumed by them.

But that choice is unmerciful.  

And before us, NOW.  

Political, Rants&Rambles

Brexit (or how bad can it get?)

I have moved through the various stages of grief and appear to have hit resignation. This does not (and never will) mean that I believe brexit to be in any way shape or form the right direction for my country but I am totally convinced that it’s happening: convenient given the outcome of the recent general election.

So now we wait to see where this road leads us.

I am told that with such a very large majority Johnson, the prime minister will suddenly tack to the centre and towards a more gentle version of leaving the single market. These same people tell me that in terms of domestic policy he will become more liberal, a gentler, kinder version of Conservatism.

In other words, I am told that he will basically make a mockery of his recent campaigning. I am told to rely upon the fact that he has not meant anything he has said for the last twelve months, to rely upon the fact that he is a liar.

It is possible that these people are right. Let’s hope so. The country has elected a person who is on record as describing people such as my gay daughter as sub-human, someone who should not have the same rights as other people and who, as well as writing on the topic, has voted in parliament accordingly.

So aside from brexit, I have very real concerns about where this world of mine is heading and what it might mean for my children.

Home, Rants&Rambles

Privilege

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Stephen Jay Gould.

My parents both left school before they were 13 years old. My father left to take up an engineering apprenticeship, that would ultimately lead to a materially successful life. My mother left school to work in the local factory, to help support her parents and eventually to marry my father.

They were clever people, but born poor, working class.

My father went on to sit his OND and HND engineering exams, scoring the highest marks in the country for mathematics. He went to work for the Arabs, travelled the world, became their senior engineer, one of the very few able to sign off on newly built ships out of the S Korean shipyards for Lloyds Insurers.

My mother passed her 11+ exam aged 9, not because she was especially well-taught in the state local primary school but because she really was just that smart. Like most working class girls, being clever served no purpose, so she valued her looks more. Maybe it was a realistic trade-off since it brought her my father with his upwardly mobile career and money to spend. It made her miserable though, living that half explored life.

When I read articles written that suggest successful people somehow deserve their success, because of some intrinsic merit, it seems that the authors themselves were almost always born lucky, in denial of their inherited wealth and luck.

My parents were born in poverty and it defined their lives, their expectations and achievements. My father worked hard, but he was also born lucky enough to be in the right place to be given the chance to escape poverty through the old apprenticeship system when Liverpool was still a world leading port and engineering powerhouse.

My mother’s luck was even more fickle: she was born beautiful.

My sisters and I were the first generation to stay in school past sixteen, the first to make it to university. We went to the same primary school attended by our parents, years before and the same secondary school. My father was keen on the idea of university, my mother not so much.

At the time, maybe 5% of the overall population attended university. From a state comprehensive school such as mine, with around 1500 kids, that translated into around 5 kids getting to university each year, about 2% because at that time, the private schools were sending around 95% of their pupils to universities.

So when my privately educated friends talk about how “everyone” went to university for “free” from our generation, they’re not so much lying, as just describing their own privilege. Almost everyone they knew did go to university. They were rich and well-educated, so of course they would.

Almost everyone else, everyone from my kind of school, stayed in their towns, got a job at the factory or signed on the dole. And thanks to the occasional catch-up on social media, it’s obvious that they’re still there. My peers went out to work and paid their taxes to fund the rich kids “free” education

But at every stage of academia reached, the one obvious truth to those of us travelling from the poorer side of town was that there were plenty of clever but poor people left behind, plenty of quite stupid but wealthy kids somehow pushed forward.

At university I was struck time and time again by just how many well-educated but fundamentally stupid people could be found.

It started early on, with the kids at primary school whose parents just didn’t see the point of school. They’d probably left alongside my mother aged 13, to go work in the local factories or shops and just expected their kids to do the same. They didn’t have shelves full of books of their kids to read, so their kids didn’t read unless the teachers made them read in class.

But some of the kids were incredibly smart. It showed up in maths mostly. At least to start with, numbers were something that you could either grasp or not. It wasn’t something any of us practised at home.

Sometime around the transfer to secondary school, the ability to read kicked in as an issue just because the maths problems became more verbal, and some of the kids with the best grasp of numbers just disappeared from the top sets never to appear again.

One boy would be absent weeks at a time only to re-appear, pick up wherever we were in maths at the time and seemingly miraculously pass the tests each year for the top set. It lasted up until we were 16, when the maths started to involve more learned skills.

It’s difficult to imagine what that boy might have achieved if he had been supported to the full extent of his ability – we lose so much talent so carelessly.

My children have been well-educated at expensive schools. They have been taught the social “code” of the middle classes along with their algebra. If they struggle in life, they have our financial support to carry them through which means that they can afford to take risks. They have been gifted with every possible financial advantage and privilege.

It is a bitter thought but there will be kids out there, smarter and more talented than mine, born into different circumstances, maybe the children of my peers discarded by academia all those years ago, who could have cured cancer, painted the modern Mona Lisa or written a world-changing polemic.

What responsibility do we have for people less privileged than ourselves? Is it enough to vote for a redistributive political party at each opportunity or is more demanded of us?

Rants&Rambles

Little Old Lady

Increasingly I find myself embracing my inner little old lady.

Little old ladies are scary buggers. They are not the people to mess with, if you’re ever given a choice. Whilst some of the little old ladies that I know can be the sweetest people alive, they also give the fewest fucks about living up to expectations, and just occasionally, they are the meanest humans to ever walk this earth. Never ask a little old lady what they think of your looks, your clothes, your politics, or anything really, unless you’re happy with a brutally honest reply.

So a few years ago, I finally decided that I’d sat for long enough in a hairdresser’s salon, and allowed my hair to revert to its natural colour. I like to describe it as silver, but I’m entirely ok with the idea of steely grey. When I turn around, people are shocked with how much younger my face looks than my hair colour might imply – and you never really want it to be the other way around.

Last Summer, I spent my entire life living in a version of the same free-flowing linen dress, which could plausibly be described as a bit “Maid Marion”. It’s not quite a sack as it fits too well cross the shoulders but it’s certainly not shapely, not hugging my menopausal waistline. It does happen to be incredibly comfortable, easy to wear and has pockets, something most women’s clothes seem to bizarrely lack. Trousers make no sense to me whatsoever at this stage of life.

Having worn my little-old-lady dresses to death, I’ve invested in similar free-flowing linen dresses for this year. I can dress them warm with leggings and thin under-layer long sleeve t-shirts or just wear them as they are on the warmer days. And forget heels. I’m wearing flats these days because they just feel better on my feet. And when I write flats, I mean comfortable well-made flats, none of that trendy platform nonsense, though clogs are tempting.

I will not be one of those tiny “attractive” flirty little old ladies. I am growing into a battle-axe persona with considerable joy.

When someone beeps their horn behind me as I drive along, I’m now more likely to stop my car, get out and politely ask them if there’s a problem that I need to know about. When some young men look to be hassling a young girl on the metro or bus, I’m almost certain to ask the girl if she’s ok and, if pushed, tell the young men that they should be ashamed of themselves for being such bullies.

I am also much more interested in my garden, my tennis, visiting galleries with girlfriends and playing bridge, because this stuff is fun. The people that I meet through all of these activities are entertaining and exasperating but mostly out to have a good time, rather than pick a fight or score points on some unknown cosmic ego scale.

And all of this means that I spend more time with women than men, which is just a lot more pleasant. Men are harder work than women in everyday life and at each stage of life, and I’ve reached a point where mostly they just don’t seem to be worth the effort anymore. My partner is obviously worthwhile, but other people’s men, not so much. men are just too convinced that they’re entertaining intrinsically and without effort. It’s just not true and never has been.

The world pretends young men’s opinions have some value out of politeness, just as parents pretend everything their toddlers do and say has some significance, but now if men are basically talking bollocks, it seems entirely reasonable to point it out or just note that I disagree with them without a need to make an argument at all. Why dignify a half-arsed opinion with a logical rebuttal?

Maybe men die earlier, often when they retire because no one can be arsed to spend time with them anymore, not even their own wives and daughters. Men do not seem to age well. I have run out of patience for sitting at a party asking a man questions, waiting for them to ask anything about me or my life, where they mistake my politeness for interest and their own monologue as conversation. Fuck off.

I’m a little old lady now and if you want me to pay you some attention then be interesting or interested. Only family get a free-pass for my time and attention.

Rants&Rambles

Tattle Tale

If your son sent an unsolicited dick pic, would you want to know?

Would it change your answer if they were 14 or 24 years old? 34 or 44 years old? Does it change your answer if you have a teenage daughter who has just been sent such a picture?

Someone sent my daughter an unsolicited dick pic in her first year at university. She was 18 and he was probably the same age. It was neither the first nor the last unwanted picture of a man’s genitals she has received.

The man involved was someone whose name she knew. She had come across him at some social event, but hadn’t had any kind of conversation with him. He was entirely peripheral to her experience that evening. Two days later he sent her a few pictures of his penis. & when I received a picture file on-line from an unknown telephone number, his name was mentioned in passing. His pictures were unsolicited but not anonymous.

& knowing his name, meant that I could look him up on the usual social media sites, so I know he has parents (also easily contacted on-line) and siblings, though not a sister.

I wonder whether his mother knows or would want to know what her son is doing to random young women. & I wonder how big a step it is from sending unsolicited pictures, to making unsolicited comments, threats and abuse on-line. How big a step is it from on-line abuse to real-life abuse?

When did the kind of behaviour ever start to seem reasonable?

Home, Rants&Rambles

Vaccines

My entire family is vaccinated against most common illnesses but that wasn’t always the case.

We didn’t routinely vaccinate or get the standard baby batch vaccinations and even now, there are some that I probably wouldn’t bother with if they weren’t part of a batch vaccine with something more useful.

As long as we’re in the UK, polio is pretty much pointless as a vaccination since it’s a disease eradicated from our country, though it was one we signed up to straight away once we started traveling around the world with the kids.

Pertussis or whooping cough has a vaccine with limited efficacy requiring a booster shot every 4-5 years but since it’s part of the DTP shot, we keep up to date with it.

There are some other vaccines that just aren’t very effective such as the flu vaccine so the elder members of our family have thought hard about using them. At the end of the day, there are just too many versions of flu around for any shot to cover everything but the downsides to this vaccine are low to non-existent side-effects outweighed by any coverage to catching flu so it’s worth having the shot for the elderly.

Standard UK vaccinations include diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough (DTP) polio, Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) and hepatitis B. My daughters, like most girls in the UK, are also vaccinated against HPV. Since we’ve all caught chickenpox, we should have lifelong immunity.

Travel vaccinations that we’ve also added to our list include HepA and obviously we all take antimalarials where necessary.

We have never fallen sick (beyond my uncomfortable food poisoning in Laos travelling up the Mekon) and considering that we’ve been visiting developing countries since our kids were toddlers, that’s a pretty good outcome.

It’s something we attribute in large part to decent preventative measures such as basic hygiene i.e. eating only hot cooked food, hot drinks, bottled water for drinking and brushing of teeth, water purifying tablets if required etc. and the use of preventatives such as nets over beds, insecticide sprays around rooms, and ones designed to sprayed on the body as well as basic long sleeves and trousers. It’s pretty simple stuff bit always surprising to find out how many people seem to get it wrong.

I’m not convinced that I’d vaccinate my kids if I didn’t think there was a direct risk of them catching the diseases listed i.e. if we weren’t travelling. Herd immunity, the protection of other people’s kids, is a cold reason to stick a needle into your baby and I’m just selfish enough for it not to weigh too heavily.

But the risk of catching one of these diseases is very real given the places we travel and the results of catching those disease can be horrendous, so we vaccinated.

Other, better, less selfish parents should vaccinate immediately. They work 85-95% of the time. The vaccine side effects are minimal whilst the effects of catching the diseases themselves can be devastating. Your baby will cry, possibly scream, when they get the shot but that can be countered with an ice cream. They may even have a slight temperature which will need some calpol (baby paracetamol). These symptoms are nothing compared to the actual symptoms of any of these diseases.

As the cases of measles rise in the UK, it’s worth remembering the symptoms. Measles lasts 7-10 days, starting with flu like symptoms, a runny or blocked nose, sneezing, watery eyes and swollen eyelids, sore and red eyes, a high temperature of upto 40C, small greyish spots in the mouth, cough, no appetite, tiredness, irritability and a general lack of energy.

This is followed by a rash around 2 to 4 days after initial symptoms.

Complications can include liver infection, misalignment of the eyes if the virus affects the nerves and muscles of the eye infection of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord or infection of the brain itself.

Some children will die from contracting measles. A vaccine is a small price to pay to reduce that risk for my kids.

Rants&Rambles, Travel

Desert

For a very very wet country, Iceland felt very similar to some of the many deserts we’ve visited over the years.

Lava Fields with moss, Iceland

In large part, though for obviously different reasons, it felt very barren and obviously very empty. The almost complete lack of anyone else around us as we made our way around the country still surprises.


Driving through the uplands, across the lava fields with nothing and no one in sight, just reminded us of countless drives across the salt flats of Etosha, Namibia or Uyuni, Bolivia

Or long ago, across the desert in Yemen.

We even found the remains of trees, very reminiscent of Namibia. Iceland was essentially deforested with the original influx of people from Scandinavia.

Perhaps it was just the scale of the landscape, the huge empty spaces and vast skies.

But there was also a surprising overlap in terms of the cliffs in the Negev and the cliffs of Iceland.

Negev cliffs
Iceland cliffs
Negev Cliffs

Or even the mountains of the Yemen or Namibian hills.

Yemen

And obviously there are signs of volcanic activity across many of the parts of the world we’ve visited.

Basalt columns, South Iceland
Negev, Basalt Column
Namibia Basalt

Even the glaciers reminded me of the dunes carving their way through the African landscape.

There is something mesmerising about empty landscape, something very very beautiful. I’m not sure many of us would be comfortable in that stark landscape, aside from the obvious difficulties of surviving the environment but it’s certainly an environment plenty of us find very satisfying to visit.