Feb

8

Dont Bug Me (but i think i’m an anarchist)

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The recent revelation that Muslim human rights lawyer and labour MP, Sadiq Khan was bugged by the police authorities during a prison visit to a constituent who is being sought by the US for extradition on terror sponsorship charges, has again put the spotlight on the beleaguered political establishment. Jack Straw the Justice Minister was back at the dispatch box attempting to explain away, or more accurately exonerate, ministerial involvement in this latest contravention of the rules. Quite why, given his manifest deception regarding government knowledge of “extraordinary rendition”, any of us should believe him, is another matter. But on this occasion, his fallback in addressing the House was a reference to the guidelines on the issue given by Harold Wilson in the 60s.

BBC Commentator Nick Robinson’s paraphrase of the Wilson doctrine goes something like: ”We wont bug you unless we do, and if do, we’ll tell you about it when we can…”

This perfectly captures the vagueness of principle governing fundamental rights of professional confidentiality and allows ministerial fudging on some of those very issues of liberty which, after all, we’re supposed to be celebrating as a cornerstone of Brown’s Britain.

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In fact, the prime minister’s national project aside, this is a Britain already widely acknowledged as the world’s most developed surveillance society. Frederick Forsyth, the celebrated spy thriller writer would rather call it the “snooper state” although exactly at what point the snooper state becomes the surveillance society is surely a matter of personal taste. Apparently there are now around 800 different bodies and organisations in the UK which have both the means and the right to collect hold, and use personal data about us.

Some might consider this a virtue, but a squint at the body of related literature carries uncomfortable clues which indicate that monitoring on this scale is indicative of a state with totalitarian tendencies. And with that in mind, a degree of critical vigilance would not go amiss. As of now, much of the personal detail in question is held by companies whose motive is to further their business and improve customer service. But with such a large and growing infrastructure of information, and quite apart from the hazards of loss and theft already witnessed recently, the transition to something more sinister could be achieved without much difficulty were an escalation of state security to be considered desirable or necessary. And this is perfectly conceivable if the Home Office’s current logic on the extension of detention periods is accepted. According to Jacquie Clark’s thinking, it’s best to have counter terrorism legislation in place so that it’s there to be used if and when it is needed. This amounts to eroding civil liberties as a precautionary measure. And that really should make us feel insecure.

In response to the Sadiq Khan fuore, the BBC website’s vox pop posed the question as to whether MPs should be exempt from police “bugging” . But this seems to me to miss the larger issue. Members of Parliament should certainly be subject to the same rules as the rest of us in matters relating to national security. However, and ignoring for the moment what the actual criteria might be for assessing a national security risk, the question should really be the entire validity of confidentiality.

Is the democratic relationship between MP and constituent, or the “legal privilege” that exists between solicitor and client sacrosanct or not? If the dangers of the times dictate that our traditional, and perhaps rather quaint, liberal principles be reined in, then lets do just that and be done with it. The situation, as currently seems to pertain, where we continue to vaunt our credentials of freedom, openness and democracy yet, at the same time burrow beneath them from within the system and with nobody owning up to it, is the worst of both worlds, and squalidly unsporting. Either the state comes clean with the country and concedes that all persons, and dialogues between persons, regardless of status and context are liable to surveillance, or not. We either have our cake, and proudly keep it in the robust old tin labelled democratic freedoms and civil liberties, or we present it for eating as a comfort food to quell our fears about the enemy within and simply accept this inevitable loss as the price of our safety. We cannot have both.

Sadiq Khan was one of the joint signatories to a latter addressed to Tony Blair in 2006 expressing concern about British foreign policy and its negative impact on the safety of UK citizens, both home and abroad. Even members of the government have since been forced privately to accept that the warmongering of recent years has probably harmed our cause in this respect. But past activism on the subject of this was obviously enough for Khan to be deemed “subversive” by police personnel involved in the bugging scandal, and even if the decision to secretly record his conversation was entirely to do with the person to whom he was talking, the “subversive” the epithet is telling. It reminds me of a story related by a senior social worker friend of mine who once attended a workshop including police officers. It only took her to articulate a point of view somewhat at odds with establishment wisdom to be branded an “anarchist” by a member of the constabulary who was present. But despite the obvious pleasure she took in evoking such a radical retort from a servant of her majesty, the implication of such a response is clear. Any significant deviation from the prescribed view, especially by those in public service, or in positions of influence has a capacity to cause concern, and this trend is only likely to intensify in such a time of perceived threat to our security and way of life.

Curiously, Sadiq Khan is now a labour whip with special responsibility for the Ministry of Justice, the very department now under scrutiny for its apparent lack of knowledge in the bugging affair. As a politician apparently committed to the national ID Card scheme, and supportive of the ongoing formation of counter-terrorism legislation, there is a degree of comedy in the spectacle of somebody caught between personal indignation and rank-closing behaviour with regard to the very institution he works to serve and defend. But it’s also tempting to speculate on the strategic motivation of a decision to bring an individual previously conspicuous by his radicalism firmly into the body of the church. Maybes somebody is playing a smart game.

But talking of anarchism, I’ve long been aware that my mate’s wife’s sister was one half of the celebrated “McLibel” duo, who refused to be intimidated by the snapping jaws of corporate litigation and, after the longest running court case in English legal history emerged in 1997, at least morally victorious in their effort to highlight the shortcomings of the global burger chain’s labour practices, marketing strategy and nutritional values. So, when i saw Helen last weekend, up from London for a family birthday celebration, i was determined to make acquaintance, despite the obvious risk of exasperating her with all the lines of questioning that have surely bedevilled her life ever since.

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The legal case, it’s subsequent escalation to the European Court of Human rights and all the issue arising are very well documented, but what struck me most about the person in front of me was the rare level of adherence to a set of ideals of which the battle with McDonalds was only one, and that a partly accidental, manifestation.

Most people, myself included, will happily talk the talk of conviction politics, but remain half-cocked in following it through. Helen, it would seem, theorizes and pontificates less, but thoroughly lives her principles. Apart from anything else, this exposes the shallowness and lazy cynicism all those inclined to criticise the McLibel protaganists, as some did following the Ken Loach documentary in 2005, for seeking to exploit their own hard won story.

Helen declared herself to be an anarchist, a political persuasion way too easy a target for ridicule to be worthy of any brownie points for hitting. But it was only after some thought, and a little systematic unpicking of my own ideas and attitudes, that I realised I might be one as well! A cursory look on Wikipedia presents a wide variety of flavours and subdivisions of this ideology, and as yet i could not possibly say what particular type of anarchist I am, but there is no doubt in my mind that government, in the modern sense, is largely harmful and at least partly unnecessary.

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A recent radio program I tuned into discussed the notion of ‘the Social Contract’, taking in the various philosophical musings of messrs Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau et al. It was a reminder of the first principles of government, of the reason why government exists, and the relinquishment of freedoms we apparently agree to, implicitly or otherwise, in exchange for all those benefits, tangible or not, which accrue from the state .

I always find such reminders to be instructive, because so much of the heat and light generated by mainstream politics revolves around the manoeuvring for power, and the squabbling over those often marginal policy differences which determine electoral contests. Some proper analysis within the political sphere which involves questioning the very fundamentals would surely lead to a recognition that the ‘Social Contract’ is well overdue for refurbishment. But the political game has always been self-serving, and given that its players merely reflect the society and culture into which they were born, there is little prospect of the kind of progressive reform required to bring the levels of liberty and equality more into line with the concept’s originating spirit.

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Cue Anarchism. Not the violently confrontational variety of course. Nor the sort which simply disengages from the current social and political structure in despair, but one which seeks to build an effective alternative based on mutualism and reciprocity. The biggest challenge in a world dominated by Hobbes’ bleak view of human nature, reinforced as it is by the Christian notion of original sin, is to encourage recognition that we are actually a lot nicer than we are told to think, and that a world built on shared purpose and collective interest in the very noblest sense, really is possible.

Feb

5

Blair’s war crimes finally under investigation

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Anybody who knows anything about existing international law in relation to warfare will understand that Tony Blair, his Attorney General, and other accomplices have, at the very least, a case to answer over the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, and the catastrophic loss of innocent civilian life that resulted.

In the current culture of almost McCarthyite levels of obsession with all those involved with, or sympathetic to, not only Al Qaeda activity which may threaten UK homeland security, but Jihadist causes across the world, it would seem a grossly inconsistent commitment to upholding the law by those who bend so much energy towards protecting us, and the world, from Islamic terrorists, if the allegations against Blair and co were not investigated.

Well, after years of campaigning by various activist groups, this issue is finally being addressed.

The War Crimes division of the Counter Terrorism branch at Scotland Yard have now done the decent thing and summoned the courtesy to respond to perfectly legitimate reporting of crimes which come quite squarely within their sphere of interest.

It doesn’t take a great legal mind or an especially partisan political disposition to see the correspondence between certain acts and their consequences as covered by International Law and those perpetrated by our government.

That being so, there is still no guarantee of conviction, Indeed, given not only the opposition to this entire exercise by senior figures at the Met, but the vast collective weight of the establishment interests, there is surely no such chance.

However, even if correct application of the law must be stymied to forestall national disgrace, it must be hoped that this dramatic development, albeit as yet untrumpeted by mainstream media, will re-ignite debate and lead to further safeguards to ensure that no such legal contraventions can ever happen again.

Feb

4

The MP, his wife, her son, and the researcher

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The latest parliamentary indiscretion, this time the payment of his son by Tory MP Derek Conway for a bogus position, can only further heighten the volume of debate about the collective integrity of our elected representatives. If there is still any stomach for debate that is, as most people now seem to be reduced to relinquishing their democratic rights and muttering into their beer.

Various apologists of the political class attempt to mealy-mouth their way through justifications and mitigations but the simple truth is that MPs, as a vocational grouping are as well represented by chancers, and sleazemeisters as any other middle class profession with inbuilt opportunities for securing that extra bit of income. Whether it’s tax avoidance, exploitation of labour markets, or creative expense accounting, the white-collared world is full of people who will take any opportunity to increase income, or minimize expenditure for that extra bit of financial comfort. And why seek to portray career parliamentarians as any different. Of course, there are conviction politicians out there, for whom a sincerely felt and overriding desire to assist in improving the world or helping it to run better is the prime motivation in their lives, but with an ever lengthening list of MPs, across all parties, who employ their own family, whether spuriously or otherwise, to draw down from their generous expense account, there is little sense in trying to spin the reality any other way. Politicians, as a profession are as self-interested as any other.

This being the case, and especially as it is tax payers’ money at stake, not corporate profit or private wealth, there should now be new regulations drawn up governing how MPs get to use their extra-salary allowances and in a way that is seen to be fair. Even if, as is no doubt the case, many of these wives and children are both competent and honest, and provide acceptable value for money, the current practice still represents a form of nepotism which would not be tolerated in other areas of the public sector. At the very least, the posts in question should be advertised and selected for, although to my mind, the temptation presented by holding the purse strings should be removed altogether and the matter of an MPs “staff” administered more formally. Even the Review Body on Senior Salaries recently conceded that there is scope for abuse in the current system, whereby expenses of up to £43k in any multiples below £250 can be claimed for without

the need for receipts.

In truth, the reputation of MPs is already very low and it requires more than the virtually no brainer decision to waive the 2.5% pay rise offered and instead take the 1.9 that police and other public servants were forced to accept, to convince anybody that our politicians are any less venal than the plumber or the company chairman.

Feb

1

Whose man’s burden now? The colonial legacy of Kenya

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In all the recent media coverage of Kenya’s current internal problems, reference to the country’s evolution and a proper historical context for the inter tribal violence now disfiguring that East African country has been conspicuous mainly by it’s absence.

Last night’s More 4 News included a short report covering Britain’s historical involvement in that story and for the first time on mainstream TV questioned the extent of our culpability for the present state of crisis. I know little of Kenya, nor it’s evolution, and decided to conduct some research of my own to address this. I really should have guessed at the grim colonialist truth of it all.

The entire east african coastal region of which Kenya forms a part, was once bossed by Omani Arabs. The Portugese also turned up early on to flex their own maritime trading muscles, and even Germany had some interest in territory which included what is now Tanzania, but the late 19th century was Britain’s undisputed era of imperial supremacy and once they had taken aim at the area, there was only going to be one outcome.

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The initial establishment of British “influence”, as it is so euphemistically called (a brutally-won occupation strikes me as a far more honest description) was carried out in the late 1880s by the Imperial British East Africa Company, founded by a scottish grocer, the Campbelltown born William Mackinnon. And where first a British trading company went, a crown colony was almost sure to follow sometime soon thereafter, allowing the commercial exploitation of both natural resources and manpower to be further consolidated by the full machinery of administrative control. The area became a protectorate in 1895 and finally the Kenya Colony in 1920.

The process of land grabbing that unfolded followed a rationale typical of most such imperialist enterprises. Seeming mostly empty, the territory was considered freely available for acquisition and nomadic hunters, most notably the Maasai in this case were simply not considered legitimate occupants.

Even if the benefit of doubt were given to the Commisioner of Lands about assumption of vacancy, there is no ambiguity about the exclusivity of distribution. The White Highlands of Kenya were a spectacular going concern in the early 20th century. Indeed the uplands around the rift valley were so temperate and so fertile, and the encouragement of immigration by the British East Africa colony so successful, that by 1920, there were already around 10,000 British settlers there. With land leases then being granted to other Europeans, and Americans, this wealthy community of tea and coffee farmers had mushroomed further to around 30,000 by the time the post war depression years were hitting the west.

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But it wasn’t only native Africans who were denied rights to the best bits of land. Many Asians too, who had arrived en masse to assist with the building of the inevitable colonial railway scheme, now also wanted a piece of the pie. They were also duly denied. Furthermore, the land policy rules laid down by the British Crown were refined to ensure that no such land could find its way into non-white hands through the back door:

“There shall by virtue of this Ordinance be implied in every lease granted under this part to a European covenant that he shall not without the consent of the Governor in Council appoint or allow a non-European to be a manager or otherwise to occupy or be in control of the land leased”

(section 36, Crown Land Ordinance, 1915)

As if colonising the land wasn’t bad enough, the carrier corps was formed by the British protectorate in World War I which conscripted Africans into supporting the military struggle against European rivals. During the course of the organisation’s existence, over 400,000 African men were drawn away from their tribes and subjected to considerable suffering as part of a campaign to contest what for them were irrelevant foreign causes.

Of course, rebellion against this imperial yoke was just a matter of time.

But the manner in which tribal differences were exploited as part of the British attempt to hold on to power is important in considering the economic disparities and ethnic divisions which now lie at the heart of the current strife.

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The kikuyu tribe were the main victims of land confiscation, and although some of these chose to collude in their own subjugation, gaining some tenancy rights of their own in due course, many more, impoverished by their white masters, began migrating to Nairobi in search of work. These urban Kikuyu formed an association and, together with a nascent trade union movement began fomenting resistance.

After failed negotiations with the British for greater say in their own affairs the urban radicals hijacked the hitherto loyalist Kenyan African Union. They were able to use its apparatus to form a central committee which gained enough hold to force independence onto the official agenda for the first time. From this, evolved the guerilla group which came to be known as Mau Mau.

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Kenyan independence, when it finally came in 1963 was generally seen as a cause for celebration, but the years of turbulence that led to it were characterised by that particular orgy of murder and suppression more respectably described as an imperialist rearguard action. The British colonial government did everything in its power to stem insurgency. Even association with Mau Mau during the height of the terror was a capital offence, and although the rebels were certainly guilty of some brutal massacres themselves, the final casualty tally of Kenyans was hugely disproportionate.

Operation Anvil had been launched in 1954 and featured huge scale internments, detentions and deportations, not just of active rebels, but anybody suspected as complicit or sympathetic. The overwhelming burden fell on Kikuyu, who were systematically herded into controlled villages or reservations. Such places were more like concentration camps and the occupants were subjected to treatment and conditions which would now blow UN Human Rights charters wide apart.

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Caroline Elkins, a modern historian who wrote a book on the subject called “Britain’s Gulag” claims to have encountered robust obstructionism from the Colonial Office (now part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) in her attempts to research the records. If this is so, it is little wonder that the population at large is so unaware of the unpalatable facts of Kenya’s long and bloody birth.

If by Britain’s ruthless repression of the Mau Mau, the intention was to ensure a transfer of power to moderate forces, then the accession in 1963 of Jomo Kenyatta (at one stage of the struggle, like Mandela, a political prisoner) as first President of an independent Kenya might be considered a success.

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However, in the policy of reconciliation that followed, Britain and its array of white Kenyan settlers were largely indulged the accountability which their behaviour rightly deserved. A kind of collective, post-colonial amnesia about the “Emergency” years became settled over the country’s coffee plantations and mango orchards, and it is an amnesia which still pertains today. The current problems in Kenya may be an embarrassment for the apologists of British colonial policy, but the vast majority of newswatchers see only a clash of machete-wielding ethnic clans, and remain oblivious to the real cause of the land-ownership issues which lie at the heart of the conflict.

Having been forced to bow to the unstoppable momentum for national independence, Britain could not leave without laying down its colonial values of governance, ensuring that the new rulers were hand-picked to best protect its own economic and geopolitical interests, and seeking to lock in ethnic differences for better manipulating the power balance to its own advantage.

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The “divide and rule” legacy of Britain’s colonial past may perhaps be over-exaggerated in the debate about Kenya’s current ructions, but what is indisputable is the ethnic favouritism inherent in the political structure bequeathed to a fledgling African government. This allowed corruption and elitism to flourish, together with all the social and economic inequities which inevitably followed.

The succeeding decades in Kenyan politics have been characterised by a pattern similar to that in other countries formerly under British control, like Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Iraq. Corrupt, and often dictatorial the leaders have failed to address the fundamental issues of its people as a single nation. It has allowed the gross inequities consequent upon past iniquities to continue unchecked, and it is the bitter harvest of this which, sadly, is now being reaped.

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Jan

29

losing it in the Lost Valley

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As one of those iconic, even cult venues for a combined activity which, to many, is the definitive Scottish experience; namely getting hammered by the elements followed by a piss up, then the Clachaig Inn, nestled in an unchallenged position at the western head of Glencoe, is right up there with the top contenders. If the residents lounge suffers from the discreetly-fitted atmosphere extractor, then the boot-friendly hikers bar at the rear, with its flagstones, wood-burning stoves and the animated chatter of outdoor enthusiasts, is a place that will easily swallow you up after a wearying tramp, scramble or dangle in the surrounding terrain, disgorging you several hours later the worst, or best, for wear, depending on your point of view.

Precedents are always useful things for justifying the repetition of otherwise gratuitous indulgences, and given the happy coincidence of a lads weekend at the Clachaig during the past two Januarys, a certain sense of tradition was invoked by booking another such trip this year.We set off on Saturday in the knowledge that our route to Glencoe from Edinburgh was blocked in two separate places by flooded roads and so were forced to take a detour around Loch Lomond before reconnecting with the A82 at Crianlarich. The sheer volume of rain over recent days had turned mountain streams into raging torrents, and even through the misted, rain-streaked windows of the car, the angry white ribbons of tumultuous water streaking down distant hillsides were an impressive feature of a landscape heaving under the strain of coping with a grey, endlessly sluicing sky.

Glencoe is now a familiar destination and I’ve begun to notice how often certain observations are made at the same points along the road. Jimmy Saville’s house being a case in point (see top picture). He didn’t appear to be at home on Saturday. But if the positioning of his house, set right on the bend of the main road is a tad voyeuristic, then it is equally exhibitionist. The absence of net curtains or any other window covering allows a view deep into his front room, triggering speculative thoughts as to how he might occupy his time on long dreich winter days such as this.

This year the usual personnel were supplemented by a new boy. He was sporting gear of the highest quality but it’s pristineness spoke volumes. For some of the older hands, the foulness of the weather had already been grasped as the perfect get out clause for dispensing with the strenuous part of the weekend, but the recruit was pawing at the car door for his encounter with the elements and we couldn’t deny him. Error (ERROR_PLATFORM_FAILURE)

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The Lost Valley is the ideal moderate walk for sampling the grandeur of Glencoe’s toweringly rugged landscape. The geology vividly describes a great heaving ice cap, partly trapped in its downward slide to the sea, and then forced to gouge its way out. The end result of this pre-historic event is spectacularly evident. At the hanging end of the sculpted basin, where it plunges into a ravine that leads down to Glencoe’s main valley floor, a great heap of boulders, the detritus left from the slow scouring movement of ice, provide an entertaining barrier to the hidden valley itself. From the scramble over this awkward bed of dark, judderingly split stone, the ground suddenly opens out as a secret surprise; a lonely river-streaked plateau leading gradually upwards to a headwall, and from there onto the col connecting its neighbouring mountain to Bidean Nam Bian, Glencoe’s highest peak.

With each passing year, I register with some dismay the increasing risk aversity displayed in my hill-walking behaviour. I would like to think this is more down to the decreasing regularity of my hiking trips rather than a terminal decline of moral fibre, but in years gone by, I could haul my way over steep wet rock with such certainty of purpose that the trifling matter of worn boot tread or the possibility of land slippage made no impact on my thoughts whatsoever. However, on Saturday, a trivial navigational blip meant re-crossing a river which, though not especially deep, was sufficiently swollen by rain to be a noisy foaming surge which, in my minds eye i could already see myself being borne helplessly away on. I must have looked for all the world like the clumsy hesitant urbanite I fear I may be becoming, as, several times, I leant my weight gingerly on a semi-submerged stone only to retract it and try another. Episodes such as this have an escalating power to demoralise, for even as you remind yourself that lack of confidence is the greatest hazard, so you fall even further into self-doubt. As it turned out, the new boy, maybe sensing my own unease and bridling at the lack of progress, found a reasonable crossing point of his own and executed the necessary sequence of steps, crouches, and jumps with little trouble before extending a hand of friendship to the group’s most senior member and kindly steadying my own final jump onto the opposite riverbank.Error (ERROR_PLATFORM_FAILURE)

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I experienced less of a challenge with the drinking leg of the proceedings. As if its location and convivial atmosphere were not encouragement enough, the Clachaig also boasts a good range of hand-pumped real ales, so once the bar is reached, full ensconcement inevitably follows.

During the course of the evening, one of the guys with us was recognised by a middle-aged couple known to him from previous involvement in a mountaineering club. They were touring mainland Scotland in an ageing campervan and their sheer jauntiness, she, ruddy-faced and unbrassiered, he, jokingly rueful about said vehicle’s mechanical shortcomings, brought a breath of wholesome, clean-living air into a bar room otherwise full of loud groups, ourselves included, set on a determined pursuit of drunkenness.

Westerly winds had been forecast to increase dramatically over the course of the day and by the time I emerged from the bar in the early hours of sunday morning for the scurry round to our adjacent chalet accommodation, the great vertical darkness of Glencoe was an ocean of noisy air. In one of those spontaneous moments of wonder for the power of nature I stepped beyond the lights of the Hotel and faced towards the invisible bulk of Clachaig Gulley, a great wall of a hillside which drops down from the Aonach Eagach ridge and provides the most direct, but torturously long and steep descent home for beer-bound mountaineers. With knees screaming for relief, and the picture of a full pint firmly fixed in the mind’s eye, the sight of the Clachaig Inn’s warm lights winking right below you for so long but without ever seeming to get nearer is one of Glencoe’s less endearing experiences.

On this wild January night, the deep gash of the gulley and the pathway that snakes down along its side were lost in the black, but its looming presence was unmistakeable. Huge slabs of thunderous, air, racing in from the Atlantic were the irresistible force meeting the immoveable object of this bulwark of granite and quartz. Their collision resulted in a roar of such sustained ferocity, I could almost feel the fear of being somewhere up there, caught in the crossfire of an elemental engagement to which all human life was inconsequential.

The following morning, through the groggy blur of barely focussing eyes, we saw the middle-aged couple again. They were emerging from their camper van and were just as jaunty as the previous night, if not more so, taking obvious, mischievous delight from the fact of their use of the hotel car park, complete with all related facilities, free of charge. The van may have been old, but it’s structural integrity, I felt sure, was better than that of my own after a night whose beer tally had gone beyond any ability to keep count. I took some consolation from the thought that although my risk tolerance on the hill might be on the slide there’s no tangible deterioration, as yet, in executing the other half of that cultural combination for which the Clachaig Inn provides so well.

Jan

25

as good as it gets? a bit of a ramble…..

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If you happen to be one of those people convinced that the whole world is going to the dogs, then the last few days’ news stories have been a rich source of material to support your position. And all during a week declared by the experts in that sort of thing as the hardest of the calendar year for us hapless northern europeans.

In the wider world, the economic jitters stemming from a few dollars more too far in the US threaten to spark off a global recession, while in the middle east, the state of Israel ups the ante with it’s latest squeeze on that ghetto called Gaza, simultaneously sticking up its metaphorical and well used middle finger at a largely disapproving world.

At home, another of our political leaders is forced to quit on account of legal misdemeanours, a suicide cluster of Welsh youngsters rears its sinister head, and on the streets of London, the police, looking for all the world in their white baseball caps like well dodgy geezers, march in protest against the government they are paid to serve.

Of course, the international stock exchanges may well recover again as the the world’s’ politico-corporate elites cook up some further deals on the never never. A period of ceasefire might break out between Gaza and it’s jailer, allowing homemade rockets to be replenished and Israel to bolster it’s much depleted store of propaganda points for restraint. The suicide cluster will be just another rare, if tragic, phenomenon, though aided and abetted by online forums, which will themselves attract futile debate and equally futile attempts to regulate. Peter Hain will be back at some point, because he’s a sound politician and was too busy trying to prove that to notice the electoral transgressions he is guilty of. And the police will end up coming quietly simply because they have no choice. At least not yet.

But on the basis that all of these things are symptomatic of where we are headed, I suggest that any amelioration is temporary.

And if this tumble of contrarily cynical negativity is partly a reflection of these grimly draining January days, it’s also one of those periodic questionings of the entire premise on which, as humans, we base our criteria for progress. It’s a questioning spirit that flows naturally from a week in which, after a three year gap, I finally got around to reacquainting myself with Maharaji, the Indian born teacher whose simple message of hope slices effortlessly through every other political pipedream, and concept about life, the universe and everything that I have ever come across. That’s not to say he is the only one to articulate such wisdom, nor that the many achievements of human endeavour, in all their various expressions, have no force. But the reminder of an ultimate perspective based on the most basic facts of existence has much the effect of an enema, sluicing out stagnant, compacted ideas and assumptions that simply dull the appetite and rigidify the mind. Doubtless my restless nature will quickly regenerate a build up of bulky material to negate the detox, but i will never lose my fundamental conviction about the limitations of what our ideologies offer.

On the bright side, slavery is gone, at least as a large scale institutionally integrated practice within the “civilised” world. Ditto for apartheid. For the purposes of us all sharing the planet happily together, the nation state is now the model of choice and through certain basic and agreed principles, of which sovereignty and the sanctity of borders is core, a functioning level of order is maintained. A separatist cause here, a tribal struggle there, and the ever destructive presence of sectarianism, together with the occasional outbreak of mass killing (prompting the first world into a paralysing discussion as to whether or not it’s actually genocide), continue to foul the waters that bear us on through history. But those great bastions of ideology, those articles of religious, political or economic faith, conceived by prophets and thinkers but misconstrued and implemented by thugs and egoists, are at least held in check by internationally agreed structures, principles and rules, even if the worst of those said thugs and egoists choose to bypass them.

If all of this is far from perfect, then many will declare it to be the best that can be expected, and it is very easy to get lost down a mental labyrinth in the search to understand why this should be so. But the dynamics of human interaction can be observed at any level, in any social situation, and for me, provides the best insight into how and why “the best that can be expected” may indeed have to be enough.

Man was certainly born equal (in the eyes of God at least), but there is no point denying that some people have more initiative and drive than others, and that these same people, in whatever context, will generally pull the rest along with them. So far so good. But where wills of equal strength are matched, those with a greater urge to control will compete for ascendancy. Of those with comparably controlling natures, the crueller ones will prevail. And in the great struggle between the cruel ones, those best able to harness the means to destroy the other will finally triumph.

If this is a bleak angle on the way things are, it doesn’t mean there’s not huge amounts of good in the world, just that a great deal of it will be naturally filtered out of the machinery used to dominate the world’s material agenda.

I, like so many, often grapple with the issue of how much, and to what purpose, one engages with this material agenda, if only as a means to restrain the instincts of the cruel ones. But one thing is for sure. The material agenda is just one aspect of our condition on earth, and one which all too often receives disproportionate importance in how we respond to the challenge of living good and meaningful lives.

Jan

22

that special relationship, some Northern Rock and the ‘C’ word

Filed Under Uncategorized, World, current affairs | Leave a Comment

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1In December 2006, Britain finally completed it’s repayment to the US on a debt stretching all the way back to World War 2. This removal of material indebtedness to our uniquely special friend and ally, if only partly symbolic, might hopefully lead to a more general decoupling of some of the political, economic and ideological ties that have bound us in to common, and often highly dubious, cause with the 20th Century’s now undisputed global power. An even more significant development in the re-shaping of that 60 year old “special relationship” between the UK and the US was the sight this week of Gordon Brown’s UK plc roadshow heading East rather than West, as his instinct to avoid the recession in America that some observers insist is inevitable, draws him towards the huge new markets in China and India, and with a smiling Richard Branson on his shoulder to boot.

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The oft-quoted metaphor is that when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold, but there are real signs that this level of dependency may soon go into decline, triggering an end to the dollar’s hitherto iron grip on the global economy and opening the way for that new world order which so excites the historians and political theorists. For the time being, all eyes are on the banking strategists, those power-brokers able to tweak the numbers and the percentages, to see if their insight and resourcefulness is able to effect a landing for the financial markets which is at a survivable speed.

160px-NYSESecurity

Of course, the irony at the heart of the current crisis in the US is that the very aspirational ballsiness which made it the most successful economy in history can now be seen at the heart of it’s own undoing. In Britain it is the Northern Rock fiasco which has brought the scale of the wider problem to public attention, but this home loan specialist is but one casualty of an irresponsible upward spiral of unsecured borrowing which has been led from the front by those sub-prime sharks across the Atlantic. And it’s not just blind greed, but the false representations and deceptions, of which the Enron fraud case is probably the highest profile example,which has created this potential “nightmare scenario”.

For those of us who have long found ourselves at political odds with a rampant capitalism powered by a system of thinking so self-regarding that it took the collapse of the soviet union as a signal of it’s own untouchability, the current so-called credit crunch and related hand-wringing, provokes a certain amount of unavoidable smug satisfaction. If the motto could be refined to say “give the bonus-chasing, porsche-toting, ruthlessly risk-addicted, unscrupulously opportunistic money men enough rope, and they’ll hang themselves”, then a growing line is forming at the self-service gallows and all those whose own interests have been gambled or compromised by these people must surely appreciate the prospect of some comeuppance for them.

For anybody with even the most basic understanding of how the financial market operates and in the light of such dizzying levels of loan-driven spending over recent years, the current state of affairs comes as no surprise. The chains of risk, that sequence of institutions and speculators who fund a package of debts at a profit but then re-package it and sell on to an even ballsier institution or speculator, plays out like some inverted form of pass the parcel. In this game, layers go on rather than come off, and the person holding the parcel when the music stops is the loser.

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Whatever the final solution for Northern Rock happens to be, it seems inevitable that some degree of taxpayer subsidisation will be required. It is now the task of governments and the more honey-tongued spokespeople of the high-finance industry to neutralise the accompanying criticism by convincing the public that the banking industry, together with all it’s ranks of wealth creating money grabbers playing their games of financial smoke and mirrors, is core to the prosperity of all of us. The common interest which nowadays links business and politics so strongly represents a combined front of such power that there’s barely a question about whether this can be pulled off. Nevertheless, the screaming hypocrisy at the root of the entire episode should not be allowed to pass without widespread acknowledgement and a pledge to overhaul the way things are done.

Eearlier this week, and Even as Prime Minister Brown was perhaps finishing his peking duck and still haggling with Branson about a fair return on public money, Vince Cable was contributing to a Commons debate on the subject. With characteristic pithiness he pointed out that our current market-based model of wealth creation allows for an iniquitous situation, such as the Northern Rock failure highlights, whereby profit is privatised but liability is nationalised. Our government will happily turn a blind eye to tax avoidance wheezes, and predatory corporate behaviour in order to facilitate the activity of tycoons and private investment companies because, despite their apparent ruthlessness and eye-popping remuneration, we are told, they are necessary drivers of national wealth. They are worth this status primarily because of the extraordinary risks they are prepared to take. However this apparent quid pro quo is now blown clean out of the water. The banking sector chips have turned down but the risk-takers will not be expected to bear the full brunt. If nothing else, the plain facts of a government policy which so brazenly puts the best interests of domiciled taxpayers behind the comfort and convenience of asset-stripping millionaires, should be exposed for what they are.

Even as i write, the radio waves creak with the weight of various industry authorities and commentators pontificating on what, why and how. Financial markets tend to overreact in both directions, they say, and this fall following as it does the latest surfeit of pride need not lead to economic recession, the ‘R’ word. These days ,reference to tipping points is a popular way to understand the nature of the world’s most pressing problems, but the intriguing thing about the economic one is both it’s intangibility and it’s unpredictability. Scientists may argue about the specifics in the global warming debate, but with a physical phenomenon such as this, there is a cause and effect principle that follows a set of absolute, and measurable events, even if we dont yet know them precisely. The fate of stock markets, and from that the general fortunes of an economy, pivot around something altogether more mysterious; human confidence.

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Confidence in the microeconomic world (ie how individuals, households and companies make decisions about the use of their resources) is usually taken to describe our behaviour as consumers. In that respect, and so long as we believe that times are good and so far as the ready availability of cheap money really does make us think that we can have tomorrow’s jam today because there’s heaps of the stuff, then the feelgood bubble of borrow and spend will continue to expand.

Indeed, knowing as they do the central importance of the ‘C’ word in the mix, the overwhelming emphasis from the earnest voices of experts and analysts emanating from my radio is on the positive because it is in the perceptions of the consumer that the battle for capitalism’s spoils is won and lost.

But this time, the dyke-plugging of consumer confidence may need more than some light fingering of interest rates or big picture platitudes from the politico-corporate axis. The mere discovery of quite how precarious the whole financial house of cards is, and the recent media exposure of our formerly homely, trustworthy banks as dodgy salesmen, happy to deceive, obfuscate, penalise or just plain lend their way to profit at our expense, may yet affect confidence badly enough to trigger the tipping point for recession.

Some of us might even secretly welcome such a thing, in the hope that a particularly nasty modern day expression of free market capitalism will be reined in and the paradigm shift in consumer culture which is so essential to a sustainable future, will start to roll out.

Jan

19

kite flying in kabul

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Like so many of the world’s distant and troubled regions, whose traumas and injustices are an almost incessantly gnawing background presence in the life of the mind, Afghanistan, though glimpsed on newsreel and subject to the simplifications and stereotyping of political and military spin merchants, exists more as an abstraction, upon which the grim unfolding of world affairs are partly contingent, than a place of people and sunsets, tea shops and small talk, where we could imagine our own selves exercising the daily round of animal needs and small pleasures.

But it is in the delightful absorption of storytelling that these barriers can often be transcended and the mysteries of otherness unlocked.

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The film adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s hugely acclaimed novel The Kite Runner, is a case in point. Spanning nearly thirty years and straddling the cultural canyon between a comfortable life in the US and the torrid struggles of the world’s most problematic failed state, the drama revolves around the lives of two young boys from Kabul. It’s almost fable-like opening sequence depiction of pre-Soviet invasion, pre-Taliban and ruggedly photogenic Afghanistan consists of gudparan gazi (kite flying), bustling markets, excited children howling down the city’s alleyways and perfect blue skies.

The brutality and betrayal which intervenes to split them apart is compounded by war and enforced emigration. As the narrative moves to America and then back to to a Talibanised Afghanistan, the narrative twists gain pace, but the cinematic rendering of historical context and geographical location allows the harsh reality of life in this tragic region to resonate in ways that no amount of opinion pieces or hand-wringing politicians could ever muster.

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Kite flying in Afghanistan is an obsession, and has long been not just the national sport, but the most popular vehicle for male competitive behaviour. As a form of human enjoyment, and therefore banned by the Taliban during it’s period of control in the nineties, the subsequent interventions of NATO and Operation Enduring Freedom have rolled back the grip of fundamentalism enough for the practice to have returned with vigour. The time-honoured, home-made method of ground glass and adhesive to coat the kite twine for it’s crucial cutting edge has largely been superseded by manufactured razor wire from China and elsewhere, but on Fridays, the muslim day of prayer, the skies above Kabul are full of darting, fluttering multi-coloured fabric as the city’s male population do battle with each other.

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Amir, the privileged side of the boyhood pair, whose father’s servant’s son his own cowardice betrays ends up as a successful writer in San Francisco, and the moral challenge he faces in making good his perfidious past, by returning into the viper’s nest of his homeland, parallels the larger spectre of destructive US intervention, and it’s subsequent efforts to bring peace and stability for it’s people. “Now there is a way to be good again” says Rahmin, a family friend, to Amir as his moral weakness and conscience grapple for ascendancy. And a letter from his childhood friend speaks with poignant nostalgia of the Kabul they both grew up in. “I dream that flowers will bloom in the streets of Kabul again, music will play in the sound of our houses and kites will fly in the skies”.

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But such uplifting sentiment is sadly at odds with what is happening. Post 9/11 saw the Americans lay waste to an already ravaged infrastructure and the bloody reach of Taliban activists has recently extended it’s way back to the streets of Kabul, cruelly subverting that city’s hitherto cautious sense of recovery. Amir excels himself to overcome personal fear and half a lifetime of emotional cowardice, but the rescue operation benefits only his own flesh and blood and while Sohrab may have his chance to grow up as a good person in the land of the free, the packed orphanages and horrific deprivations are all left behind. Amir may have done the best he could in redeeeming himself, but in the great scheme of things, it’s nowhere near enough.

The choice of thematic backdrop for The Kite Runner is full of symbolism, for moving as the pivotal moments of the story are, it is difficult not to reflect on the wider issues against which this powerful tale of redemption unfolds. If the fortunes of such a broken society can be likened to one of it’s own iconic kites, then, for all that the military and propaganda machines of the west may insist on the progress being made, and as far as the current airworthiness of the Afghan kite is concerned, there is much craftsmanship still outstanding before it even flies, far less competes.

Jan

17

january blues, cabin fever, and the paralysis of choice

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It’s only now that I have embraced, however temporarily, the life of the leisured, creatively aspiring mid-life career breaker that I fully appreciate quite how well a desk job has so far insulated me from the soul-gnawing angst of January. Life in an open plan office may seem like a fluorescent-lit tedium of unsupportable futility from the inside, but those semi-comatose days, only occasionally enlivened by somebody else’s fuck up or a stab of job insecurity now seem like a structured certainty of almost benevolent proportions.

That’s not to say that meandering from one Wifi-enabled coffee shop or bar to the next, hoovering up the state of the world from the web, raking the newspapers and endlessly picking over one’s slate of potential projects for the week or month ahead with regular interludes for exercise and fresh air is not a highly attractive prospect. Because it is. The problem lies in the difficulty of turning such a prospect into reality.

Even when a cunning plan for the day seems to be forming itself at around the second cup of tea of the morning stage, a steady build up of other possibilities can quickly form a mental logjam, seriously undermining the structural integrity of the initial purpose and triggering a form of domestic paralysis through surfeit of choice. Before you know it, lunchtime has come and gone and the short day is being drawn back to the darkness from whence it came. And with each new morning, an even bulkier project slate to ponder over.

Caught so pitifully thus, in a cabin-fevered incarceration of one’s own making, it is often only the interventions of others which present any hope of getting out. It was my daughter’s day off work yesterday and she kindly suggested a city centre rendezvous. A tangible arrangement such as this could brook no prevarication and in this respect represented, unwitting though it may have been, a supreme act of mercy towards the old man. Yet another attempt to navigate the impenetrable communication defences of Vodafone to query my latest extortionate phone bill would have to wait. This was my ticket to the outside world.

It’s a world I have seen little of during my winter confinement. But it was also one I could have predicted. The shopping mall at St James Centre was a sea of grazing grannies and retail-sedated young mums and even on relatively quiet days such as this, the floor staff in the audio department at John Lewis were fleet-footed enough around the aisles to avoid easy apprehension.

Apart from some overdue catch-up with my offspring, I was charged with the task of buying one of those, ‘whoops sorry I’m late’ birthday cards for a family in-law. These are always funny or cute, as if either is really enough to offset the fact that some trivial life event has proven to be more important than a timely greeting. The only place I could find such a specialised variant on the birthday theme was in a traditional greetings card shop, one of those strangely anachronistic institutions, like seaside rock and Christmas crackers, which pander to a kind of perpetual sentimentality and are indulged accordingly, despite their evident lack of fitness for purpose in our modern, sophisticated world.

I still buy cards for my parents from places like this. Not because I couldn’t design and print a decent homemade one of my own, together with self-penned and heart-felt words to boot, nor because I couldn’t buy a nicer, though doubtless more expensive one elsewhere, in one of those arty, designer card shops where less seems to be more (the top end cards are mainly blank inside for your own message). But because my parents actually like the formulaic, mawkish drivel that these cheaply produced cards invariably contain.

On the top shelf of the shop lie the really big ones, designed for those who want to make the ultimate statement to their nearest and dearest. Each one fashioned from a small tree and stuffed with goodness knows how many full fat cheesy rhyming couplets inside. Now I consider myself a big-hearted kind of guy, but there’s nobody in the world that I love THAT much!

I bought the belated card, but it’s still lying on the sideboard today. As if simply remembering to remember to get the card to apologize for forgetting was enough. That was the hard part done. The rest may take longer……if ever. After all, the project slate is expanding by the hour.

Oct

20

It’s a hack’s life

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On Friday afternoon, i was metaphorically skipping away from the Scotsman building for the last time having secured the inclusion of my museum piece in the following day’s edition. After a three day informal placement stint on Holyrood Road which started out as a nonchalant exercise in jounalistic make believe but ended up, on Friday afternoon, with me dashing up and down the stairs of the University’s music faculty in full reporter mode, i was actually going to get my name in print.

The initially mooted 600 word page leader complete with photograph was downscaled, but i was still asked to beef up my initial 250 words to 400 and i gladly obliged. Turning a few words into many has never been a difficult task for me.

And so it was, when i feverishly thumbed my way to page 13 of today’s Scotsman, that i all but choked on my indignation to discover that said article had been reduced from 400 words to some 225, and that both style and content had been heavily reworked. Such was my distracted state while taking leave of the newsdesk team that i had not fully absorbed the fact of this last minute editorial change, and i took the foreshortening much harder than i had any right to.

It was a salutary, if bitter lesson in the harsher realities of the trade. Doubtless a paid and fully accredited member of the newsdesk team would have had more input into the reworking of their output.However, new stories emerge all the time, their relative significance shifts constantly as details accumulate or anticipated leads wither, and in a world as dynamic as this, substance will always triumph over style.

The constrictions of page layout are a further telling reflection of the industry; advertisements are the first items to be inserted and all remaining content must be trimmed, hacked or stretched to fit. In such an environment, a writerly “voice” is a luxury that the imperatives of timely story breaking does not need.Error (ERROR_PLATFORM_FAILURE)

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1 As my eye roved disconsolately over page 13, i noted the story which, in this case proved my undoing and deprived me of the 600 words together with picture of 18th Century French hurdy-gurdy which seemed in prospect for a large part of yesterday. “Boeing jet is holed in accident as it prepares for take-off at Scots airport”.

Of all the days for some dozy tow truck driver to be over-zealous with his pedal foot, he chooses the day i’m poised to make my journalistic debut. What chance has a static collection of musical instruments against such a hairy tale of near disaster. Oh well, back to the storyboard…..

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