As much of the world breathes an unnecessary sigh of relief that the Mayan Apocalypse did not come to fruition, at least one person in the United Kingdom must be wishing that it had. But unfortunately for David Cameron, he really does have to lead the government right up to the next election and (one suspects) not a second longer.
Rarely can John Lennon's perennial inquiry "And so this is Christmas and what have you done?" resounded more reproachfully in a British politician's ears.
Now, Sordel must acknowledge from the off that Gordon Brown did little more of any actual value, but at least he must have been fully occupied by whimpering, chewing his nails, mopping his nose with a dirty handkerchief and, of course, holding his breath when anyone came into his office looking for him.
Cameron, however, seems to be completely idle. Which is perhaps hardly surprising that he has no money to do anything. If he had an elder sister looking for some quality smooching time with her boyfriend, she would have to advance him the tuppeny bit to get himself down the pictures and take the long way home. Rarely has someone of high net worth been so administratively down on his uppers.
The measure of the situation is perhaps given by the way the government approaches problems these days. Rather than actually read the Leveson Report, for example, Cameron came straight out and said that he was not minded to legislate on it, but would the press please come up with their own ideas?
Faced with tax evasion by big corporations, the government did not actually attempt to close tax loopholes, but instead invited the British Public to shame those corporations into paying up.
Defeated by the complexities of the education system, the government now encourages people to set up their own local schools, and hospitals cannot be far behind. Indeed, if its relationship with the police continues in the direction it has been taking, it won't be long before social order is delivered by posse.
Perhaps not all of this, however, is a bad thing. Upset with civil war in Syria, Cameron wondered aloud who would rid him of this troublesome Assad, but otherwise kept his head down, an approach whose lack of heroic statesmanship is at least offset by a little practicality and humility.
Doing nothing has a virtue all of its own, as demonstrated by the fact that no one at the BBC got into any trouble at all for shelving that Newsnight investigation into Jimmy Savile. Perhaps not doing something is the new doing something.
Personally (and as demonstrated by the thin nutshell pickings of recent months) Sordel feels rather ahead of the fashion in this respect, and welcomes Cameron to join him on the sidelines, where we shout just as much but are not required actually to break a sweat.
Whatever else happened in 2012, we can expect less of it in 2013.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Changing Trains
In the grand scheme of things, the fiasco surrounding the award of the West Coast rail license to FirstGroup counts for little, but unfortunately it reminds us of what we already knew: ministers are responsible not for their departments, or to ordinary people. The only responsibility of a minister these days on which he or she will be evaluated by his or her prime minister is the fervour with which they hold the line.
Richard Branson & Virgin Trains said, over and over again, that FirstGroup could not possibly run the West Coast line on the terms upon which the contract had been awarded to them. Possibly that sounded like sour grapes from an incumbent who had been cheated of a lucrative contract but - if it were you or me - I think we might have just checked.
After all, the accusation from Virgin was not vague.
Time and time again, however, those tasked with defending the decision came out and said that everything was fine, no need to worry. Justine Greening, then Transport Secretary, is subject of an article in the Belfast telegraph from 28th August that is retrospectively damning. The article points out that the award to FirstGroup had been called into question by Virgin trains, The Labour Party and the Commons Transport Select Committee yet she still intended to sign the contract.
She was only prevented from signing the deal - and thereby committing taxpayers to a deal which would have cost them hundreds of millions of pounds - by legal action on the part of Virgin.
Moreover, her successor was hardly less staunch. Last month he told the Transport Select Committee: "I am satisfied that due diligence was done by the department and therefore the intention is to go ahead with the contract when we can. We are determined to press ahead with the award that we have made[.]"
When a Minister of the Crown tells MPs that he is satisfied with his department's due diligence, that satisfaction is supposed to predicated on something. Yet now the government is trying to shrug their failure on this question. We are told that "ministers could not be expected to delve into the minutiae of the [..] complex deals."
But of course, there was no need to delve into details. Virgin had already identified where the problem lay, and all it needed was for one of out Transport Secretaries to have the humility to think: "these guys are suing us ... maybe just check that out."
Had they done so, the scale of the blunder would have been immediately obvious, because FirstGroup was essentially placing a one-way bet against the UK taxpayer. A company worth £900 million was saying that if enormously optimistic forecasts of growth were achieved, then it would pay back £13.3 billion in cash by 2028. Repayment was staged in such a way that FirstGroup repaid comparatively little until almost nine years into the contract term.
In order to secure the considerable revenues of the West Coast line (£824 million last year) FirstGroup were only being asked to guarantee a sum of £190 million, which would have been what the taxpayer would have been able to recoup if FirstGroup went bust as the higher payments fell due.
You don't have to be a Dragon to reject this deal, yet at least two ministers backed it with extraordinary zeal, just as (one need hardly add) Jeremy Hunt backed the Sky deal before them. Presumably they, like FirstGroup, calculated that if a week is a long time in politics then 2021 was an eternity away.
The immediate loss to the taxpayer is being estimated at £300 million, which we can doubtless measure in terms of the firm cost-saving measures favoured by this government.
Richard Branson & Virgin Trains said, over and over again, that FirstGroup could not possibly run the West Coast line on the terms upon which the contract had been awarded to them. Possibly that sounded like sour grapes from an incumbent who had been cheated of a lucrative contract but - if it were you or me - I think we might have just checked.
After all, the accusation from Virgin was not vague.
Time and time again, however, those tasked with defending the decision came out and said that everything was fine, no need to worry. Justine Greening, then Transport Secretary, is subject of an article in the Belfast telegraph from 28th August that is retrospectively damning. The article points out that the award to FirstGroup had been called into question by Virgin trains, The Labour Party and the Commons Transport Select Committee yet she still intended to sign the contract.
She was only prevented from signing the deal - and thereby committing taxpayers to a deal which would have cost them hundreds of millions of pounds - by legal action on the part of Virgin.
Moreover, her successor was hardly less staunch. Last month he told the Transport Select Committee: "I am satisfied that due diligence was done by the department and therefore the intention is to go ahead with the contract when we can. We are determined to press ahead with the award that we have made[.]"
When a Minister of the Crown tells MPs that he is satisfied with his department's due diligence, that satisfaction is supposed to predicated on something. Yet now the government is trying to shrug their failure on this question. We are told that "ministers could not be expected to delve into the minutiae of the [..] complex deals."
But of course, there was no need to delve into details. Virgin had already identified where the problem lay, and all it needed was for one of out Transport Secretaries to have the humility to think: "these guys are suing us ... maybe just check that out."
Had they done so, the scale of the blunder would have been immediately obvious, because FirstGroup was essentially placing a one-way bet against the UK taxpayer. A company worth £900 million was saying that if enormously optimistic forecasts of growth were achieved, then it would pay back £13.3 billion in cash by 2028. Repayment was staged in such a way that FirstGroup repaid comparatively little until almost nine years into the contract term.
In order to secure the considerable revenues of the West Coast line (£824 million last year) FirstGroup were only being asked to guarantee a sum of £190 million, which would have been what the taxpayer would have been able to recoup if FirstGroup went bust as the higher payments fell due.
You don't have to be a Dragon to reject this deal, yet at least two ministers backed it with extraordinary zeal, just as (one need hardly add) Jeremy Hunt backed the Sky deal before them. Presumably they, like FirstGroup, calculated that if a week is a long time in politics then 2021 was an eternity away.
The immediate loss to the taxpayer is being estimated at £300 million, which we can doubtless measure in terms of the firm cost-saving measures favoured by this government.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Not Just A River In Egypt
Occasional anti-hero of these pages Lazarus Galloway has been in the news this week for suing, or threatening to sue, the NUS for libel. Apparently some spotty would-be Labour MP from the NUS has described Galloway as a "rape denier".
Strictly speaking, the person doing the denying would be Julian Assange, who has consistently claimed to be innocent of the charges made against him by two women by Sweden. Galloway managed to get himself in trouble by claiming that these charges themselves, if proven, did not amount to rape. (Leave aside for a moment the considerable issue of whether they could be proven to a reasonable legal standard of certainty.)
Whatever Assange's likelihood of successful prosecution, however, Galloway clearly fancies his chances of suing the NUS. His record on legal actions is, of course, enviable, having relieved The Daily Telegraph of a considerable sum and agreed out-of-court settlements with The Christian Science Monitor (libel) and The News of the World (phone hacking). Libelling Galloway is like putting Brer Rabbit in the briar patch.
In any case, the "rape denier" charge is a bizarre one. Galloway wasn't denying that rape takes place, or that rapists should be prosecuted & punished. If the model for this form of deplorable behaviour is - as seems likely - Holocaust denial, then the pattern fits very poorly. Holocaust deniers - in the face (it needs hardly be laboured) of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - assert that the systematic execution of Jews by Nazis never happened. Galloway was claiming that if it happened as reported, it wasn't a crime.
(The rape, that is.)
One thing is nevertheless clear from all this. If Assange did rape two women in Sweden, then his crime was very felicitous indeed to his opponents, since it is a crime which very few people (and not even someone as outspoken as George Galloway) will defend.
Maybe the U. S. government is just that lucky.
It's a strange wind, though, that brings windfalls to both the U..S. administration and George Galloway.
Strictly speaking, the person doing the denying would be Julian Assange, who has consistently claimed to be innocent of the charges made against him by two women by Sweden. Galloway managed to get himself in trouble by claiming that these charges themselves, if proven, did not amount to rape. (Leave aside for a moment the considerable issue of whether they could be proven to a reasonable legal standard of certainty.)
Whatever Assange's likelihood of successful prosecution, however, Galloway clearly fancies his chances of suing the NUS. His record on legal actions is, of course, enviable, having relieved The Daily Telegraph of a considerable sum and agreed out-of-court settlements with The Christian Science Monitor (libel) and The News of the World (phone hacking). Libelling Galloway is like putting Brer Rabbit in the briar patch.
In any case, the "rape denier" charge is a bizarre one. Galloway wasn't denying that rape takes place, or that rapists should be prosecuted & punished. If the model for this form of deplorable behaviour is - as seems likely - Holocaust denial, then the pattern fits very poorly. Holocaust deniers - in the face (it needs hardly be laboured) of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - assert that the systematic execution of Jews by Nazis never happened. Galloway was claiming that if it happened as reported, it wasn't a crime.
(The rape, that is.)
One thing is nevertheless clear from all this. If Assange did rape two women in Sweden, then his crime was very felicitous indeed to his opponents, since it is a crime which very few people (and not even someone as outspoken as George Galloway) will defend.
Maybe the U. S. government is just that lucky.
It's a strange wind, though, that brings windfalls to both the U..S. administration and George Galloway.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Your Cheating Heart
The Times leader today has a lesson for those of us interested in the ethical status of tax avoidance: "Tax avoidance is not justified solely by the plea that it is within the law. Tax avoidance is a way of playing the system to gain reward that has not genuinely been earned. It is, indeed, a form of cheating."
Not so, O mighty Some-guy-behind-an-editor's-desk. If a game has rules and you play within the rules, then you are not cheating. There is no "spirit of the rules" to a game: Fool's Check is not a friendly thing to do to someone, but it is an exploitation of a position on which the rules of Chess pass no comment. In Chess, if you're stupid enough to walk into Fool's Check, tough luck.
While tax avoidance does, therefore, seem to have some sort of ethical character, it is precisely not cheating. (Which is just as well, because I'm not sure that cheating is immoral either, in and of itself.)
You might counter: this is not a game, it is people's lives & livelihoods. And you'd be right. But for someone to be cheating on the tax non-game, you'd need to show that there are two parties to the relationship, and most of us do not sign up to be taxed.
In the extreme, it's like saying that you would be cheating not to mention the fiver you have in your back pocket in the course of being mugged. Tax money is not a voluntary payment and most of us have it subtracted by our employer before we ever get our hands on a wage.
Before you tell me that there's an implicit Social Contract ... who told you that? Was it the guy who has your wallet, by any chance, and is haring down the nearest ally to blow your money on foreign wars and bail-outs for bankers? Did he mention that he was only going spend your money on the National Health Service and the Police Services before or after he relieved you of your watch & wedding ring?
Moreover, HMRC does not play within the rules of a game: it makes the rules. But the most ghastly rules ever made with regard to taxation is this: you are now regarded as morally culpable if you do something deemed intended to avoid tax.
Imagine that you are driving your car at 49 mph in a 50 mph speed limit, when you are pulled over by the police. It seems that driving at 49 mph is now deemed as penalty avoidance and the police rely on those penalties to support policing in the area. You have a car more than capable of 130 mph, you wealthy bastard. Stop grinding the faces of people who can only afford a bicycle.
Then when you get home there's a letter from HMRC condemning you for attempting to avoid VAT by saving your money rather than spending it: they have ordered a new television for you and charged your credit card accordingly. Oh, and they find that you could afford the mortgage on a house in a higher Council Tax band, so the furniture van will be calling next Thursday, some time between midnight and midnight.
Oh, and if it's against the law to enter into a scheme to avoid paying tax, there will be a lot of people after the next election looking very shame-faced ... because avoiding tax has always been the strongest reason for voting Conservative.
Not so, O mighty Some-guy-behind-an-editor's-desk. If a game has rules and you play within the rules, then you are not cheating. There is no "spirit of the rules" to a game: Fool's Check is not a friendly thing to do to someone, but it is an exploitation of a position on which the rules of Chess pass no comment. In Chess, if you're stupid enough to walk into Fool's Check, tough luck.
While tax avoidance does, therefore, seem to have some sort of ethical character, it is precisely not cheating. (Which is just as well, because I'm not sure that cheating is immoral either, in and of itself.)
You might counter: this is not a game, it is people's lives & livelihoods. And you'd be right. But for someone to be cheating on the tax non-game, you'd need to show that there are two parties to the relationship, and most of us do not sign up to be taxed.
In the extreme, it's like saying that you would be cheating not to mention the fiver you have in your back pocket in the course of being mugged. Tax money is not a voluntary payment and most of us have it subtracted by our employer before we ever get our hands on a wage.
Before you tell me that there's an implicit Social Contract ... who told you that? Was it the guy who has your wallet, by any chance, and is haring down the nearest ally to blow your money on foreign wars and bail-outs for bankers? Did he mention that he was only going spend your money on the National Health Service and the Police Services before or after he relieved you of your watch & wedding ring?
Moreover, HMRC does not play within the rules of a game: it makes the rules. But the most ghastly rules ever made with regard to taxation is this: you are now regarded as morally culpable if you do something deemed intended to avoid tax.
Imagine that you are driving your car at 49 mph in a 50 mph speed limit, when you are pulled over by the police. It seems that driving at 49 mph is now deemed as penalty avoidance and the police rely on those penalties to support policing in the area. You have a car more than capable of 130 mph, you wealthy bastard. Stop grinding the faces of people who can only afford a bicycle.
Then when you get home there's a letter from HMRC condemning you for attempting to avoid VAT by saving your money rather than spending it: they have ordered a new television for you and charged your credit card accordingly. Oh, and they find that you could afford the mortgage on a house in a higher Council Tax band, so the furniture van will be calling next Thursday, some time between midnight and midnight.
Oh, and if it's against the law to enter into a scheme to avoid paying tax, there will be a lot of people after the next election looking very shame-faced ... because avoiding tax has always been the strongest reason for voting Conservative.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Some Guy Behind The Editor's Desk
Sordel learnt a valuable lesson from the example of Jonathan Aitken.
For those too young (or perhaps too old) too remember him, Aitken was one of what seemed at the time a great many Conservative politicians forced to resign by various scandals last century. This one is rather more interesting to us today than some of the others because it involved the Saudis, but what people tend to remember is not the scandal itself but the speech that Aitken made when embarking upon a catastrophic libel action that landed him in prison for perjury:
If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play, so be it, I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it.
And the lesson that Sordel learnt from this episode is that the clearest evidence available to us that someone is a scoundrel is the grandiloquence with which they appeal to high principle.
At which one turns to Michael Gove.
Gove - whom under normal circumstances one would have dismissed as a pompous nitwit perhaps shortly before he opened his mouth but certainly shortly thereafter - has managed to hold much of the country thrall beneath his mesmeric, piscine glassiness during his tenure as Secretary of State for Education. He is rather like an unsettling child who, having been liberated from the need to blink by genetic abnormality, settles all arguments with a staring competition.
"Good fellow, Gove" we mutter nervously, leaving him in the classroom at break to eat flies and cogitate on future improvements to the English Baccalaureate.
His appearance before the Leveson Inquiry yesterday revealed, however, the man's Inner Aitken as he proceeded to lecture Lord Leveson about the Freedom of the Press and admonish him pre-emptively for seeking to curtail it in any way.
Gove (like Aitken as it happens) is a former journalist who finds himself on the Westminster side of a revolving door. Presumably having been rendered giddy by passing through it, Gove seemed to have forgotten himself completely, regarding his testimony as an opportunity to bloviate insufferably in a manner that is fairly characterised by Esther Addley in The Guardian.
Clearly his dizziness was infectious as well, since it was clear from the tone of voice employed by both Robert Jay and his judicial master that their eyes were rolling almost as persistently as Gove's vainglorious oratory. Go watch the full performance if you can find the time.
Clearly such a man is not to be contained in my Promethean nutshell: like the Press itself he strides free of such bounds bearing the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play.
Still: it might be appropriate for him to remember that those editors of whom he speaks in tones befitting deities did all put their trousers on one leg at a time. The Press is all very well in abstract, but in particular some of them might prove to be the sort of odious tick who would presume to lecture a judge on his public duties for the sake of striking a public pose.
In such cases it is surely justified to extend the right to freedom of speech only grudgingly and with scant reason for celebration.
For those too young (or perhaps too old) too remember him, Aitken was one of what seemed at the time a great many Conservative politicians forced to resign by various scandals last century. This one is rather more interesting to us today than some of the others because it involved the Saudis, but what people tend to remember is not the scandal itself but the speech that Aitken made when embarking upon a catastrophic libel action that landed him in prison for perjury:
If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play, so be it, I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it.
And the lesson that Sordel learnt from this episode is that the clearest evidence available to us that someone is a scoundrel is the grandiloquence with which they appeal to high principle.
At which one turns to Michael Gove.
Gove - whom under normal circumstances one would have dismissed as a pompous nitwit perhaps shortly before he opened his mouth but certainly shortly thereafter - has managed to hold much of the country thrall beneath his mesmeric, piscine glassiness during his tenure as Secretary of State for Education. He is rather like an unsettling child who, having been liberated from the need to blink by genetic abnormality, settles all arguments with a staring competition.
"Good fellow, Gove" we mutter nervously, leaving him in the classroom at break to eat flies and cogitate on future improvements to the English Baccalaureate.
His appearance before the Leveson Inquiry yesterday revealed, however, the man's Inner Aitken as he proceeded to lecture Lord Leveson about the Freedom of the Press and admonish him pre-emptively for seeking to curtail it in any way.
Gove (like Aitken as it happens) is a former journalist who finds himself on the Westminster side of a revolving door. Presumably having been rendered giddy by passing through it, Gove seemed to have forgotten himself completely, regarding his testimony as an opportunity to bloviate insufferably in a manner that is fairly characterised by Esther Addley in The Guardian.
Clearly his dizziness was infectious as well, since it was clear from the tone of voice employed by both Robert Jay and his judicial master that their eyes were rolling almost as persistently as Gove's vainglorious oratory. Go watch the full performance if you can find the time.
Clearly such a man is not to be contained in my Promethean nutshell: like the Press itself he strides free of such bounds bearing the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play.
Still: it might be appropriate for him to remember that those editors of whom he speaks in tones befitting deities did all put their trousers on one leg at a time. The Press is all very well in abstract, but in particular some of them might prove to be the sort of odious tick who would presume to lecture a judge on his public duties for the sake of striking a public pose.
In such cases it is surely justified to extend the right to freedom of speech only grudgingly and with scant reason for celebration.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Cameron Behind
A report in The Huffington Post this morning suggests that Tory activists have been using tactical voting methods in the London mayoral elections in an effort to push Liberal Democrats candidate Brian Paddick into a humiliating fourth or fifth place.
Even The Huffington Post's own article suggests that the number of voters using this tactic may be very low, but it is sadly indicative of the times that it should even have been formulated.
Ever since the Tories romped back to power, they have behaving like someone who has stepped in something, desperately scraping the soles of their shoes in order to remove the Lib Dems. Indeed, for the first year of the coalition government both Labour and the Conservatives found common ground in their desire to return the Lib Dems to their former state of total unelectability.
That was all very well when the Conservatives were working towards the idea of a clean victory in 2015, but right now hopes of that seem to be draining away.
Moreover, events may yet conspire to strengthen the Lib Dems' hand. Remember Business Secretary Vince Cable, whose responsibilities to oversee News Corp's bid for BSkyB were removed from him and given to Jeremy Hunt? At the time Cable was made to look very stupid by a Daily Telegraph sting (which was later the subject of a successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission). Now, however, he looks remarkably like the only British politician to shake hands with the Murdochs and retain his small change & pocket watch.
To a different extent the same can be said of Clegg himself. Having been variously depicted as hapless, clueless and ineffectual, he can scarcely be portrayed now as having anything more than a bystander role in the policies that have proved most unpopular for the coalition. While George Osborne was preparing his politically catastrophic budget, Clegg & Cable were pushing the idea of a "Mansion Tax".
As fig leaves go it may be small, but it beats going around stark bollock naked.
Of course, the recovery in Lib Dem fortunes has been predicted more often than the end of the world, the only difference between them being that at some point the world assuredly will end. Of less concern to the Conservatives than the rise of the Lib Dems, however, will be their own fall: something in which they are likely to prove the principal architect. Had they kept the Lib Dems relatively strong, they might have prevented Labour from jumping from third place into first in the Birmingham council elections last night.
In an ideal world the Lib Dems could act like a hedge fund for the Tories: an opportunity to invest both in ice creams and umbrellas. Right now - as Britain wrings out its prematurely knotted handkerchiefs beneath the pitilessly grey Spring skies - Cameron seems to have gone full-tilt into the ice cream business.
Even The Huffington Post's own article suggests that the number of voters using this tactic may be very low, but it is sadly indicative of the times that it should even have been formulated.
Ever since the Tories romped back to power, they have behaving like someone who has stepped in something, desperately scraping the soles of their shoes in order to remove the Lib Dems. Indeed, for the first year of the coalition government both Labour and the Conservatives found common ground in their desire to return the Lib Dems to their former state of total unelectability.
That was all very well when the Conservatives were working towards the idea of a clean victory in 2015, but right now hopes of that seem to be draining away.
Moreover, events may yet conspire to strengthen the Lib Dems' hand. Remember Business Secretary Vince Cable, whose responsibilities to oversee News Corp's bid for BSkyB were removed from him and given to Jeremy Hunt? At the time Cable was made to look very stupid by a Daily Telegraph sting (which was later the subject of a successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission). Now, however, he looks remarkably like the only British politician to shake hands with the Murdochs and retain his small change & pocket watch.
To a different extent the same can be said of Clegg himself. Having been variously depicted as hapless, clueless and ineffectual, he can scarcely be portrayed now as having anything more than a bystander role in the policies that have proved most unpopular for the coalition. While George Osborne was preparing his politically catastrophic budget, Clegg & Cable were pushing the idea of a "Mansion Tax".
As fig leaves go it may be small, but it beats going around stark bollock naked.
Of course, the recovery in Lib Dem fortunes has been predicted more often than the end of the world, the only difference between them being that at some point the world assuredly will end. Of less concern to the Conservatives than the rise of the Lib Dems, however, will be their own fall: something in which they are likely to prove the principal architect. Had they kept the Lib Dems relatively strong, they might have prevented Labour from jumping from third place into first in the Birmingham council elections last night.
In an ideal world the Lib Dems could act like a hedge fund for the Tories: an opportunity to invest both in ice creams and umbrellas. Right now - as Britain wrings out its prematurely knotted handkerchiefs beneath the pitilessly grey Spring skies - Cameron seems to have gone full-tilt into the ice cream business.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Unqualified Writer Questions Qualified Writer's Qualifications Shock
Writing in The Times yesterday, Kevin Maher took to task Lucy Worsley for introducing herself as "Dr. Lucy Worsley" on what he rather high-handedly terms "the BBC's pop-history show" If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home. Evidently the only people permitted to refer to themselves as doctor are those who kiss Kevin's boo-boos and allow him to take a lollypop from the jar.
Naturally it's not that Maher is just bothered about the doctor thing: he has another axe to grind with her and just lampoons her obvious self-importance as a side-swipe. To show that he is no mere sneering oik, however, he does let drop that he is quite au fait with this education business himself and has an M.A. ... but naturally (being the sort of person who sets these gew-gaws at a clear-sighted estimation of their importance) he got over that some years ago and is no longer clinging to it.
Let's just compare those two qualifications then, shall we?
Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. "She's also a winner of the Royal Historical Society's Frampton Prize, a visiting professor at Kingston University, and one of the few beardless Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries." (God help us ... even Sordel is beginning to go off her!) She is the author of several books about history and her doctoral thesis was written on a subject in the history of architecture.
One might almost think that she introduces herself on her programme as "doctor" to reassure the audience that, unlike many people who present programmes on television, she is actually qualified to speak on her subject with authority. (And let's just leave on one side the additional defence that she was probably encouraged to style herself so by the BBC programme-makers.)
Now, Kevin Maher.
He may not have written his biog on The Times website, but he might have at least proofread it: "Kevin has been a film editor forThe Face magazine, a film pundit for The Big Breakfast, and a film researcher for Channel 4. He now writes about film, because he can" [sic]
Exactly what he "can" is left unsaid, or at least unpunctuated, but at least we have discovered that film is Kevin's metier.
Well, Film Studies is perhaps not the most elevated of academic subject ... but we should certainly congratulate Kevin on sticking to what he loves and making a career of it. A Masters degree is, after all, still a Masters degree and Film Studies need fear no bullying from the likes of Architectural History.
Except Kevin's Masters dissertation is not in Film Studies. Its title - as he mentions in his column - is "Beyond Good and Evil: A Post-Feminist Analysis of Charlotte Brontë's Villette With Respect to Nietzsche". [sic]
Does it perchance become crystal clear why Maher is so opposed to academic willy-waving when he has no relevant qualifications in the field in which he writes? (And this despite the fact that there must be suitably-qualified writers queuing around the block at all nearby Job Centres.)
Moreover, those schooled in reading dissertation titles will be ready to set at nought Kevin's endeavours with even more zeal than he himself modestly brings to bear. A dissertation advancing a "post-feminist" analysis reading one novel by Brontë (1816-55) in the light of the student's almost certainly superficial acquaintance with the work of Nietzsche (1844-1900) ... that's basically university code for "here's a load of crap I made up to look interesting to girls".
A show of modesty when one has so much to be modest about is scarcely virtuous, Mister Maher.
Naturally it's not that Maher is just bothered about the doctor thing: he has another axe to grind with her and just lampoons her obvious self-importance as a side-swipe. To show that he is no mere sneering oik, however, he does let drop that he is quite au fait with this education business himself and has an M.A. ... but naturally (being the sort of person who sets these gew-gaws at a clear-sighted estimation of their importance) he got over that some years ago and is no longer clinging to it.
Let's just compare those two qualifications then, shall we?
Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. "She's also a winner of the Royal Historical Society's Frampton Prize, a visiting professor at Kingston University, and one of the few beardless Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries." (God help us ... even Sordel is beginning to go off her!) She is the author of several books about history and her doctoral thesis was written on a subject in the history of architecture.
One might almost think that she introduces herself on her programme as "doctor" to reassure the audience that, unlike many people who present programmes on television, she is actually qualified to speak on her subject with authority. (And let's just leave on one side the additional defence that she was probably encouraged to style herself so by the BBC programme-makers.)
Now, Kevin Maher.
He may not have written his biog on The Times website, but he might have at least proofread it: "Kevin has been a film editor forThe Face magazine, a film pundit for The Big Breakfast, and a film researcher for Channel 4. He now writes about film, because he can" [sic]
Exactly what he "can" is left unsaid, or at least unpunctuated, but at least we have discovered that film is Kevin's metier.
Well, Film Studies is perhaps not the most elevated of academic subject ... but we should certainly congratulate Kevin on sticking to what he loves and making a career of it. A Masters degree is, after all, still a Masters degree and Film Studies need fear no bullying from the likes of Architectural History.
Except Kevin's Masters dissertation is not in Film Studies. Its title - as he mentions in his column - is "Beyond Good and Evil: A Post-Feminist Analysis of Charlotte Brontë's Villette With Respect to Nietzsche". [sic]
Does it perchance become crystal clear why Maher is so opposed to academic willy-waving when he has no relevant qualifications in the field in which he writes? (And this despite the fact that there must be suitably-qualified writers queuing around the block at all nearby Job Centres.)
Moreover, those schooled in reading dissertation titles will be ready to set at nought Kevin's endeavours with even more zeal than he himself modestly brings to bear. A dissertation advancing a "post-feminist" analysis reading one novel by Brontë (1816-55) in the light of the student's almost certainly superficial acquaintance with the work of Nietzsche (1844-1900) ... that's basically university code for "here's a load of crap I made up to look interesting to girls".
A show of modesty when one has so much to be modest about is scarcely virtuous, Mister Maher.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Gang Aft Aglay
The question posed by the Book of Job can now be recast. No longer do we wonder what it is that mankind has done to earn the wrath of God. Instead we can boil it down to a single person.
What has David Miliband done to have deserved being so cruelly smitten by The Lord?
Daviband (for lo, thus is he known in nutshells) has been awaiting the moment of his brother's downfall with the patience of Richard of Gloucester putting in the monthly order for barrels of Malmsey. His Acme 100-ton weight was already nicely hanging from the merest of canine whiskers above his brother, and - in the event that this failed - his denizens (betoga'd and fully equipped with the contents of a Sabatier display case) were ready to greet Ediband on the steps of any convenient government building.
Yet Ediband - and not through any great display of competence on his own part - seems about to saunter past every lethal trap with the slightly distracted air of one standing upon a precipice to admire butterflies.
Cameron (the swinish toff) had gone and messed it all up on the metaphorical eve of the May council elections, falling so precipitously in the public esteem that the only precedent is said to be the pride & joy of Old Mother Brown. Since becoming as unpopular as Gordon logically necessitates the occurrence of a miracle, we can be sure that The Creator Himself has His thumb in the scale.
Not since Pharoah hardened his heart has a human been blighted more pitilessly than Daviband. His Lamentations must indeed constitute a Jeremiad ... not least given the Culture Secretary's looming presence at the end of the list of plagues.
Why do bad things happen to such good people?
Only a vile Manichaeist, surely, would suggest that Daviband's ultimate goal of leading Labour to the Promised Land has been scotched not by the malevolence of God but by the actions of t'other fellow.
Yet ... take a look at that photo and tell me that horns and a tail wouldn't complete the picture.
What has David Miliband done to have deserved being so cruelly smitten by The Lord?
Daviband (for lo, thus is he known in nutshells) has been awaiting the moment of his brother's downfall with the patience of Richard of Gloucester putting in the monthly order for barrels of Malmsey. His Acme 100-ton weight was already nicely hanging from the merest of canine whiskers above his brother, and - in the event that this failed - his denizens (betoga'd and fully equipped with the contents of a Sabatier display case) were ready to greet Ediband on the steps of any convenient government building.
Cameron (the swinish toff) had gone and messed it all up on the metaphorical eve of the May council elections, falling so precipitously in the public esteem that the only precedent is said to be the pride & joy of Old Mother Brown. Since becoming as unpopular as Gordon logically necessitates the occurrence of a miracle, we can be sure that The Creator Himself has His thumb in the scale.
Not since Pharoah hardened his heart has a human been blighted more pitilessly than Daviband. His Lamentations must indeed constitute a Jeremiad ... not least given the Culture Secretary's looming presence at the end of the list of plagues.
Why do bad things happen to such good people?
Only a vile Manichaeist, surely, would suggest that Daviband's ultimate goal of leading Labour to the Promised Land has been scotched not by the malevolence of God but by the actions of t'other fellow.
Yet ... take a look at that photo and tell me that horns and a tail wouldn't complete the picture.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Lazarus Galloway
A Google search for "George Galloway demagogue" yields nearly fifty thousand hits (probably, after today, more) which is hardly surprising. Demagogue is generally the term of abuse hurled at politicians in lieu of more openly mocking the people who vote for them.
Sordel is, as regular reader of these pages will know, thoroughly disaffected with the democratic system of government, but it has its moments, and last night's ringing endorsement of Galloway by the electors of Bradford West was one of them. Rather than celebrate this vindication of a system that most people regard as an unequivocal good thing, however, many commentators will conclude that Galloway was elected because most of the people voting were too stupid or gullible to recognise a scoundrel when he stood before them demanding their voices. Unable to say this openly, for fear that their implicitly racist position will be seen for what it is, they use the word demagogue.
Labour Blogger Mark Ferguson nicely epitomises this view: "Voter ID and anti-Tory campaigning was, on this occasion, insufficient up against the onslaught of demagoguery."
The Times today - covering the event as though it were a massive electoral upset and smack in the face for Ed Miliband - gave a brief summary of Galloway's career taking in, as highlights, his deselection as a Labour MP in 1988 for admitting to sexual carryings-on while in Greece (surely the most bizarre career-threatening scandal ever); his support for Saddam Hussein; his expulsion from the Labour Party for opposing the war in Iraq; his defeat in the Poplar & Limehouse constituency in 2010; and, his subsequent failure to win a seat in the Scottish Parliament. "His credibility as a serious political figure appeared to have been finished by his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006, where he was shown pretending to lap milk like a cat from the hands of the actress Rula Lenska."
The Times's account at no point suggests that the voters would have had a good reason to vote for Galloway; nor does it provide any analysis of the background to a victory in which Galloway got more than twice the votes cast for his Labour opponent and 60% of the overall vote.
So, let's do it for them. (I have laboured for several minutes on Wikipedia to bring you this special report.)
The Bradford West election was precipitated by the fact that the previous MP, Marsha Singh, stepped down through ill health. The Labour candidate was Imran Hussein, a former Labour councillor, who announced that he would not attend hustings with other candidates. (Not that Sordel would like to do battle with Galloway, but it's hardly the act of a political lion to run away.) Galloway's campaign was run by the defecting Labour campaign manager who had previously overseen Marsha Singh's victory.
All was clearly not well in the Labour camp.
Having inherited the Labour political machine, Galloway was in a strong position to mobilise popular sentiment. When his campaign manager was helping Labour, this was doubtless called "mustering grass-roots support", but now that he was helping RESPECT it became the "onslaught of demagoguery".
RESPECT has had a troubled few years due to a split between the Galloway faction and the Socialist Workers Party faction within what is a fairly small political organisation. Nevertheless, the core of its policies are focused on social values that might reasonably resonate with any voter: the rights of refugees and immigrants; redistributive taxation; an increase in the minimum wage; and implacable opposition to military adventuring.
On the face of it, then, Bradford voters would be making a rational and broadly self-interested decision to elect George Galloway as their MP. Regarding them as having been hoodwinked is an understandable slur on Galloway himself by his political opponents, but a revealing glimpse of their true estimation of the value of "democracy".
Sordel is, as regular reader of these pages will know, thoroughly disaffected with the democratic system of government, but it has its moments, and last night's ringing endorsement of Galloway by the electors of Bradford West was one of them. Rather than celebrate this vindication of a system that most people regard as an unequivocal good thing, however, many commentators will conclude that Galloway was elected because most of the people voting were too stupid or gullible to recognise a scoundrel when he stood before them demanding their voices. Unable to say this openly, for fear that their implicitly racist position will be seen for what it is, they use the word demagogue.
Labour Blogger Mark Ferguson nicely epitomises this view: "Voter ID and anti-Tory campaigning was, on this occasion, insufficient up against the onslaught of demagoguery."
The Times today - covering the event as though it were a massive electoral upset and smack in the face for Ed Miliband - gave a brief summary of Galloway's career taking in, as highlights, his deselection as a Labour MP in 1988 for admitting to sexual carryings-on while in Greece (surely the most bizarre career-threatening scandal ever); his support for Saddam Hussein; his expulsion from the Labour Party for opposing the war in Iraq; his defeat in the Poplar & Limehouse constituency in 2010; and, his subsequent failure to win a seat in the Scottish Parliament. "His credibility as a serious political figure appeared to have been finished by his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006, where he was shown pretending to lap milk like a cat from the hands of the actress Rula Lenska."
The Times's account at no point suggests that the voters would have had a good reason to vote for Galloway; nor does it provide any analysis of the background to a victory in which Galloway got more than twice the votes cast for his Labour opponent and 60% of the overall vote.
So, let's do it for them. (I have laboured for several minutes on Wikipedia to bring you this special report.)
The Bradford West election was precipitated by the fact that the previous MP, Marsha Singh, stepped down through ill health. The Labour candidate was Imran Hussein, a former Labour councillor, who announced that he would not attend hustings with other candidates. (Not that Sordel would like to do battle with Galloway, but it's hardly the act of a political lion to run away.) Galloway's campaign was run by the defecting Labour campaign manager who had previously overseen Marsha Singh's victory.
All was clearly not well in the Labour camp.
Having inherited the Labour political machine, Galloway was in a strong position to mobilise popular sentiment. When his campaign manager was helping Labour, this was doubtless called "mustering grass-roots support", but now that he was helping RESPECT it became the "onslaught of demagoguery".
RESPECT has had a troubled few years due to a split between the Galloway faction and the Socialist Workers Party faction within what is a fairly small political organisation. Nevertheless, the core of its policies are focused on social values that might reasonably resonate with any voter: the rights of refugees and immigrants; redistributive taxation; an increase in the minimum wage; and implacable opposition to military adventuring.
On the face of it, then, Bradford voters would be making a rational and broadly self-interested decision to elect George Galloway as their MP. Regarding them as having been hoodwinked is an understandable slur on Galloway himself by his political opponents, but a revealing glimpse of their true estimation of the value of "democracy".
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Dining With The Tax-Collectors
One of the things that her Majesty's Government has recently been banging on about is what a terrible thing it is to avoid tax "aggressively".
(I'm not sure how much aggression goes into that, to be honest: most individuals with high net worth would delegate the job of cutting tax payments to their accountants, who are not typically of the attack-dog demeanour. Perhaps Mr. Osborne should be more worried about people avoiding tax ploddingly.)
Be that as it may, the cry of the Coalition has gone out that evading tax is morally wrong.
But are they right?
The usual citation from Revealed Theology on this one is Christ's admonition - when asked if the Jews should continue to pay tax to their Roman occupiers - to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". The point of this story is that His political adversaries were trying to whip up some trouble and had set this question as a trap, which He nimbly sidestepped. The answer, then, was really a nice piece of verbal sleight-of-hand.
In any case, very few people today look to revelation for their moral attitudes (what with all the stoning and eye-putting-out 'n' all) so the more usual question is whether there is a rational reason for thinking that evading tax is ethically a bad thing.
If one considers tax to be a form of charity or wealth distribution (a way to fund healthcare and social security for those less fortunate than those with taxable income) then I suppose one can argue that taxation serves a socially benign purpose. There is no logical reason, however, why someone who dodges taxation may not contribute to charity at least as much money as they withhold through avoiding tax. Charity may have a definite moral character that paying tax does not, since it is voluntary.
Moreover, not all taxation has a socially beneficial function. There is theOffence Defence Budget for a start. And before you complain that were everyone to withhold tax revenue then we could not nationally benefit all citizens such as the military, police and fire services: the responsibility for funding these services has an equal benefit to all, yet all citizens capable of paying for them do not contribute equally. The redistributive function of taxation and the social contract element should not be confused.
People who avoid taxation tend to top-slice their payments: they still pay at least as much as is required for essential services and often tens of thousands of pounds more.
Tax avoidance is generally intended to mitigate disadvantageously high tax regimes, and the people best placed to use it are the ones who have such wealth that they can pretty much afford to switch tax regime at will. Try sheltering your assets when you have no assets to shelter. The ultimate sanction of those wishing to avoid tax is therefore to emigrate, at which point we lose not only income tax, but also the many other sources of taxation to which the rich, and the rest of us, are usually subject. Such as V.A.T. on purchases.
The wealthy live under no moral or ethical obligation to pay tax. The politicians and media who - with increasing frequency - treat as wrongdoers those who take practical steps to husband their resources are, on the other hand, venturing onto very perilous moral & practical grounds.
(I'm not sure how much aggression goes into that, to be honest: most individuals with high net worth would delegate the job of cutting tax payments to their accountants, who are not typically of the attack-dog demeanour. Perhaps Mr. Osborne should be more worried about people avoiding tax ploddingly.)
Be that as it may, the cry of the Coalition has gone out that evading tax is morally wrong.
But are they right?
The usual citation from Revealed Theology on this one is Christ's admonition - when asked if the Jews should continue to pay tax to their Roman occupiers - to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". The point of this story is that His political adversaries were trying to whip up some trouble and had set this question as a trap, which He nimbly sidestepped. The answer, then, was really a nice piece of verbal sleight-of-hand.
In any case, very few people today look to revelation for their moral attitudes (what with all the stoning and eye-putting-out 'n' all) so the more usual question is whether there is a rational reason for thinking that evading tax is ethically a bad thing.
If one considers tax to be a form of charity or wealth distribution (a way to fund healthcare and social security for those less fortunate than those with taxable income) then I suppose one can argue that taxation serves a socially benign purpose. There is no logical reason, however, why someone who dodges taxation may not contribute to charity at least as much money as they withhold through avoiding tax. Charity may have a definite moral character that paying tax does not, since it is voluntary.
Moreover, not all taxation has a socially beneficial function. There is the
People who avoid taxation tend to top-slice their payments: they still pay at least as much as is required for essential services and often tens of thousands of pounds more.
Tax avoidance is generally intended to mitigate disadvantageously high tax regimes, and the people best placed to use it are the ones who have such wealth that they can pretty much afford to switch tax regime at will. Try sheltering your assets when you have no assets to shelter. The ultimate sanction of those wishing to avoid tax is therefore to emigrate, at which point we lose not only income tax, but also the many other sources of taxation to which the rich, and the rest of us, are usually subject. Such as V.A.T. on purchases.
The wealthy live under no moral or ethical obligation to pay tax. The politicians and media who - with increasing frequency - treat as wrongdoers those who take practical steps to husband their resources are, on the other hand, venturing onto very perilous moral & practical grounds.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
From Eton To Cheatin'?
Had Sordel started cracking this particular nutshell little over a week ago then its kernel might well have been the resilience and avuncular charm of David Cameron. Obviously one distrusts anyone who rises far in British Politics, since one cannot be a Snake Charmer without (at the very least) having more access to venomous serpents than is decent or proper in any human being. Nevertheless, Cameron has an air of broad decency that is difficult to gainsay.
If Cameron has a type, it is surely that of the young housemaster: unfailingly smooth with parents and boys, capable of the winning joke but also with just enough steel to suggest that one wouldn't want to be carpeted by him for smoking in the dorm. He gives the impression of being utterly fair-minded, though his dealings with Miliband Minor also have the sort of cheerful brutality that might send a fat boy on an impromptu cross-country run.
Quite how the nickname "Flashman" has attached itself to Cameron is hard to say, since he is very much more the type to have handed Flashman his prefect's badge.
Except that now he faces the dual accusation of swiping Granny's gin-money and pocketing a sizeable series of donations to the Conservative Party in return for an invitation for to dinner.
Where did it all go so wrong?
Part of the problem, of course, is that Cameron (being fair-minded himself) doesn't expect others to be such colossal bounders. Such is his innocence that he honestly believes that decreasing the highest taxation rate from 50% to 45% will encourage those previously evading tax to pay it. It would never occur to him that this is akin to a shop's offering reduced prices in an effort to appease shoplifters.
Another thing that Cameron's straight bat will not block is the politician who wants to spin a broadly neutral tax measure as a swinging tax increase for the elderly and infirm. Only the Conservative Party at its most ingenuous can believe that it would be given the benefit of the doubt when cutting pensioners' tax allowances, but ingenuousness is Cameron's stock in trade. One might call it his Achilles' Heel were he not so clearly more of the Hector stamp.
And finally, it would never occur to Cameron that there was anything in the least improper about opening up pot luck chez David & Samantha to wealthy business interests. These are just the sort of fellows that he's been dining with all his life, after all, and what greater evidence of personal integrity than kicking in a couple of hundred thousand to the club funds?
The problem is not so much that he might be cheating himself, then, as that he might be cheerfully oblivious to the illicit still in the prefects' common room.
A gentlemanly bearing is all very well & good ... so long as one is only required to deal with gentlemen. But when, as a politician, can you count on doing that?
If Cameron has a type, it is surely that of the young housemaster: unfailingly smooth with parents and boys, capable of the winning joke but also with just enough steel to suggest that one wouldn't want to be carpeted by him for smoking in the dorm. He gives the impression of being utterly fair-minded, though his dealings with Miliband Minor also have the sort of cheerful brutality that might send a fat boy on an impromptu cross-country run.
Quite how the nickname "Flashman" has attached itself to Cameron is hard to say, since he is very much more the type to have handed Flashman his prefect's badge.
Except that now he faces the dual accusation of swiping Granny's gin-money and pocketing a sizeable series of donations to the Conservative Party in return for an invitation for to dinner.
Where did it all go so wrong?
Part of the problem, of course, is that Cameron (being fair-minded himself) doesn't expect others to be such colossal bounders. Such is his innocence that he honestly believes that decreasing the highest taxation rate from 50% to 45% will encourage those previously evading tax to pay it. It would never occur to him that this is akin to a shop's offering reduced prices in an effort to appease shoplifters.
Another thing that Cameron's straight bat will not block is the politician who wants to spin a broadly neutral tax measure as a swinging tax increase for the elderly and infirm. Only the Conservative Party at its most ingenuous can believe that it would be given the benefit of the doubt when cutting pensioners' tax allowances, but ingenuousness is Cameron's stock in trade. One might call it his Achilles' Heel were he not so clearly more of the Hector stamp.
And finally, it would never occur to Cameron that there was anything in the least improper about opening up pot luck chez David & Samantha to wealthy business interests. These are just the sort of fellows that he's been dining with all his life, after all, and what greater evidence of personal integrity than kicking in a couple of hundred thousand to the club funds?
The problem is not so much that he might be cheating himself, then, as that he might be cheerfully oblivious to the illicit still in the prefects' common room.
A gentlemanly bearing is all very well & good ... so long as one is only required to deal with gentlemen. But when, as a politician, can you count on doing that?
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Some Guy Behind A Desk
Here at Bounded, we take research pretty seriously and our policy research team has really been putting in the hours. In fact, we are offering our expertise to all media outlets as The Association of British School Leavers.
Seriously.
Any newspaper running a story on the subject of, for example, University fees, or voting preferences amongst young voters, or drug use, or Post-Compulsory Examination & Accreditation Standards, can now ask Sordel and - as a representative of The Association of British School Leavers - I am authorised to give a view on that in the name of the Association, for attribution.
Sordel has been inspired to do this by the Taxpayers' Alliance which, as you will be aware, regularly comments on public policy and which, since it has a name, must be a thing. Personally, I always assumed that it was a bit like Mumsnet ... which, for all I know about Mumsnet, it might be. It is, after all, Britain's Non-Partisan Grassroots Campaign for Lower Taxes and Better Government. They say so themselves.
They're on Question Time and everything, so it must be true. (Note to BBC producers: The Association of British School Leavers is able to furnish spokespersons for broadcast events.)
Yet, for a grass-roots campaign, The Taxpayers' Alliance does not have especially "grass roots" origins. A rather elderly article from The Guardian informs me that they are or were actually funded by a small number of affluent businessmen. Nothing wrong with that, of course: millionaires are taxpayers too, after all, nearly as much as the rest of us.
The representatives of the Taxpayers' Alliance are also, quite probably, taxpayers. (Sordel did, at some point in the distant past, leave school.) But they aren't exactly canonical examples of your concerned taxpayer. For the most part they are right-leaning policy wonks & bloggers, much as one would expect of an organisation with a professed hostility to increased public sector expenditure.
If you want, you can join the grassroots side of their campaign, although on their site the section on Our Branches is "Coming Soon". (We at The Association of British School Leavers hope to get details of our University Liaison Programme up even sooner. Watch this space.) Careful how you use that site, though, because if you happen to leave your name there, then you just joined their campaign.
There is absolutely nothing sinister about any of this, except for the fact that our response to a story might be very different if the newspaper decoded its source slightly more than it does.
It's not The Taxpayers' Alliance, speaking for millions. It's not The Association of British School Leavers. It's just some guy behind a desk.
Seriously.
Any newspaper running a story on the subject of, for example, University fees, or voting preferences amongst young voters, or drug use, or Post-Compulsory Examination & Accreditation Standards, can now ask Sordel and - as a representative of The Association of British School Leavers - I am authorised to give a view on that in the name of the Association, for attribution.
Sordel has been inspired to do this by the Taxpayers' Alliance which, as you will be aware, regularly comments on public policy and which, since it has a name, must be a thing. Personally, I always assumed that it was a bit like Mumsnet ... which, for all I know about Mumsnet, it might be. It is, after all, Britain's Non-Partisan Grassroots Campaign for Lower Taxes and Better Government. They say so themselves.
They're on Question Time and everything, so it must be true. (Note to BBC producers: The Association of British School Leavers is able to furnish spokespersons for broadcast events.)
Yet, for a grass-roots campaign, The Taxpayers' Alliance does not have especially "grass roots" origins. A rather elderly article from The Guardian informs me that they are or were actually funded by a small number of affluent businessmen. Nothing wrong with that, of course: millionaires are taxpayers too, after all, nearly as much as the rest of us.
The representatives of the Taxpayers' Alliance are also, quite probably, taxpayers. (Sordel did, at some point in the distant past, leave school.) But they aren't exactly canonical examples of your concerned taxpayer. For the most part they are right-leaning policy wonks & bloggers, much as one would expect of an organisation with a professed hostility to increased public sector expenditure.
If you want, you can join the grassroots side of their campaign, although on their site the section on Our Branches is "Coming Soon". (We at The Association of British School Leavers hope to get details of our University Liaison Programme up even sooner. Watch this space.) Careful how you use that site, though, because if you happen to leave your name there, then you just joined their campaign.
There is absolutely nothing sinister about any of this, except for the fact that our response to a story might be very different if the newspaper decoded its source slightly more than it does.
It's not The Taxpayers' Alliance, speaking for millions. It's not The Association of British School Leavers. It's just some guy behind a desk.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Hard Times for Dickens
It must be a very slow day at the offices of The Times (and, for that matter, at Sordel Villas) since they've decided to devote an entire article to the decline in readership for the works of Charles Dickens.
Claire Tomalin (whom, probably quite unjustly, Sordel can only imagine as a Miss Flite character, poring over her clippings and promising a large colony of domesticated cats their liberation on the day that the royalties come in on her biography) has popped up to complain that young people have destroyed their attention span by watching television and playing videogames and are therefore incapable of sitting still long enough to sup at the whiskery nipple of her favourite author.
"Children are not being educated to have prolonged attention spans and you have to be prepared to read steadily for a Dickens novel and I think that’s a pity." So says Claire, but she does not tell us which of those two things is a pity.
What she does tell us is the reasons for reading Dickens in the first place. For example: "You only have to look around our society and everything he wrote about in the 1840s is still relevant — the great gulf between the rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt Members of Parliament, how the country is run by Old Etonians, you name it, he said it."
Of course, if you want to know about any of those things, you could just read about them in some august periodical of the day (such as ... The Times) for, though far-sighted, Dickens did not actually know more details about those matters as they concern 21st Century Britain than Wikipedia. Equally, it might be felt that the little toerags have whittled their attention span to the point at which they could only tolerate a column-inch of newsprint. Is it strictly necessary to read a six hundred page novel for the benefits to the young in terms of their awareness of current affairs?
What else have you got, Claire?
"When he went to America in 1842, one of the points he made was that the ‘unimportant’ and ‘peripheral’ people were just as interesting to write about as ‘great’ people."
Do we really need Dickens to make this point today when we have Eastenders? Surely you were only droning on a minute ago about the country being run by Old Etonians ... it seems to me that you are the one with a disproportionate interest in 'great' people ... but, pray, tell me more.
"He has gone on entertaining people since the 1830s and his characters' names are known all over the world."
... and his reputation is thus surely safe without being read by the lovable ragamuffins of today ..?
Sorry, Sordel's attention span just came down like the blade of the guillotine upon Sydney's Carton's neck. Even a nutshell is proving tiresomely protracted these days.
My point, though, would have been this: there is nothing innately laudable about bringing up the young to read Dickens. Dickens is actually good. Where the work would be required would be ... to get someone to read a biography of Dickens.
Or was that her concern all along?
Claire Tomalin (whom, probably quite unjustly, Sordel can only imagine as a Miss Flite character, poring over her clippings and promising a large colony of domesticated cats their liberation on the day that the royalties come in on her biography) has popped up to complain that young people have destroyed their attention span by watching television and playing videogames and are therefore incapable of sitting still long enough to sup at the whiskery nipple of her favourite author.
"Children are not being educated to have prolonged attention spans and you have to be prepared to read steadily for a Dickens novel and I think that’s a pity." So says Claire, but she does not tell us which of those two things is a pity.
What she does tell us is the reasons for reading Dickens in the first place. For example: "You only have to look around our society and everything he wrote about in the 1840s is still relevant — the great gulf between the rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt Members of Parliament, how the country is run by Old Etonians, you name it, he said it."
Of course, if you want to know about any of those things, you could just read about them in some august periodical of the day (such as ... The Times) for, though far-sighted, Dickens did not actually know more details about those matters as they concern 21st Century Britain than Wikipedia. Equally, it might be felt that the little toerags have whittled their attention span to the point at which they could only tolerate a column-inch of newsprint. Is it strictly necessary to read a six hundred page novel for the benefits to the young in terms of their awareness of current affairs?
What else have you got, Claire?
"When he went to America in 1842, one of the points he made was that the ‘unimportant’ and ‘peripheral’ people were just as interesting to write about as ‘great’ people."
Do we really need Dickens to make this point today when we have Eastenders? Surely you were only droning on a minute ago about the country being run by Old Etonians ... it seems to me that you are the one with a disproportionate interest in 'great' people ... but, pray, tell me more.
"He has gone on entertaining people since the 1830s and his characters' names are known all over the world."
... and his reputation is thus surely safe without being read by the lovable ragamuffins of today ..?
Sorry, Sordel's attention span just came down like the blade of the guillotine upon Sydney's Carton's neck. Even a nutshell is proving tiresomely protracted these days.
My point, though, would have been this: there is nothing innately laudable about bringing up the young to read Dickens. Dickens is actually good. Where the work would be required would be ... to get someone to read a biography of Dickens.
Or was that her concern all along?
Friday, January 20, 2012
Today's Robin Hood
That bandwagon leaving town has Kim Dotcom on it, probably in manacles, leg irons and, for all we know, nipple clamps depending on the proclivities of the people who arrested him.
Millions of people who have never heard of him before are scrambling to don the Lincoln green and enlist themselves as his merry men. As far as casting goes, he would probably make a better Friar Tuck, yet the ability of multi-lateral policing to create heroes seemingly knows no bounds.
Like Julian Assange, Kim Schmitz has been largely complicit in his own fall. He is a self-professed (nay, self-acclaimed) hacker and has had several brushes with the law. Unfortunately, though, people who demand due legal process cannot always draw their clients from a cast of orphans, waifs and choirboys. The fact is that the legal assault on Schmitz has treated someone whose alleged crime is copyright infringement as though he were, at the very least, a drug kingpin.
This was an arrest targeted mainly at the press: if you can treat someone publicly enough as a criminal, you might be able to convince the world that he is a criminal: something which (by the way) may be very difficult indeed to prove at law.
The indictment rather cheeringly refers to the alleged criminals as the 'Mega Conspiracy', which sounds like something that falls beyond the remit of the U.S. Justice Department but for which Batman or his ilk would be the ideal investigators. The indictment then goes on to describe many felonious features of the Mega Conspiracy, many of which sound uncannily like the business habits of any other internet business: the use of advertising, the desire to push users onto premium accounts; reliance upon third-person links for dissemination and advertising etc. etc.
Often the claims in the indictment are largely unsupported: "the popularity of the infringing content on the Mega Sites has generated more than $25 million of advertising revenue for the Conspiracy". (Well, perhaps, but it remains to be demonstrated that it was the infringing content that brought to the site the traffic that generated those advertising revenues.)
Some of the Mega Conspiracy's practices may, however, look more questionable. Having struck a deal with copyright holders to provide an "Abuse Tool" (satirists, start your engines!), Megaupload agreed to suspend any links that accessed infringing material: in fact, however, most links terminated in common files that were not actually being deleted. Nor did the Mega Conspiracy kill other links that accessed the common file. The Mega Conspiracy (I'm going to keep typing that until it gets dull) thus created the illusion of complying with copyright holders while actually continuing to make the material available through alternative links. This may well prove to be (and here Sordel shall employ a metaphor wholly improper to the crimes under consideration) the smoking gun.
More interesting, though, are the endless emails cited in the indictment in which one thing becomes quite clear: however much the principals of the Mega Conspiracy were involved in a criminal activity, they certainly do not seem to have been conscious of being so. Certainly they were aware that there was a problem with hosting copyright material, and their habit seems to have been to comply with copyright holders to what they judged to be the minimal standard to establish cooperation for legal purposes.
The test of their strategy will certainly be the court case when they will advance the safe haven defence and the prosecutors will attempt to show that such a defence has been rendered null by their elevated awareness of the copyright infringement facilitated by their site.
Many onlookers will nonetheless share Sordel's concern at what amounts to commercial rough-housing being turned (not metaphorically but literally) into a federal case. I know that the "slippery slope" argument has been overused in an internet context but malicious prosecution should not be allowed to displace normal commercial litigation. Wouldn't the Justice Department's time and resources be better spent on turning criminals into convicts than in turning businessmen into criminals?
Millions of people who have never heard of him before are scrambling to don the Lincoln green and enlist themselves as his merry men. As far as casting goes, he would probably make a better Friar Tuck, yet the ability of multi-lateral policing to create heroes seemingly knows no bounds.
Like Julian Assange, Kim Schmitz has been largely complicit in his own fall. He is a self-professed (nay, self-acclaimed) hacker and has had several brushes with the law. Unfortunately, though, people who demand due legal process cannot always draw their clients from a cast of orphans, waifs and choirboys. The fact is that the legal assault on Schmitz has treated someone whose alleged crime is copyright infringement as though he were, at the very least, a drug kingpin.
This was an arrest targeted mainly at the press: if you can treat someone publicly enough as a criminal, you might be able to convince the world that he is a criminal: something which (by the way) may be very difficult indeed to prove at law.
The indictment rather cheeringly refers to the alleged criminals as the 'Mega Conspiracy', which sounds like something that falls beyond the remit of the U.S. Justice Department but for which Batman or his ilk would be the ideal investigators. The indictment then goes on to describe many felonious features of the Mega Conspiracy, many of which sound uncannily like the business habits of any other internet business: the use of advertising, the desire to push users onto premium accounts; reliance upon third-person links for dissemination and advertising etc. etc.
Often the claims in the indictment are largely unsupported: "the popularity of the infringing content on the Mega Sites has generated more than $25 million of advertising revenue for the Conspiracy". (Well, perhaps, but it remains to be demonstrated that it was the infringing content that brought to the site the traffic that generated those advertising revenues.)
Some of the Mega Conspiracy's practices may, however, look more questionable. Having struck a deal with copyright holders to provide an "Abuse Tool" (satirists, start your engines!), Megaupload agreed to suspend any links that accessed infringing material: in fact, however, most links terminated in common files that were not actually being deleted. Nor did the Mega Conspiracy kill other links that accessed the common file. The Mega Conspiracy (I'm going to keep typing that until it gets dull) thus created the illusion of complying with copyright holders while actually continuing to make the material available through alternative links. This may well prove to be (and here Sordel shall employ a metaphor wholly improper to the crimes under consideration) the smoking gun.
More interesting, though, are the endless emails cited in the indictment in which one thing becomes quite clear: however much the principals of the Mega Conspiracy were involved in a criminal activity, they certainly do not seem to have been conscious of being so. Certainly they were aware that there was a problem with hosting copyright material, and their habit seems to have been to comply with copyright holders to what they judged to be the minimal standard to establish cooperation for legal purposes.
The test of their strategy will certainly be the court case when they will advance the safe haven defence and the prosecutors will attempt to show that such a defence has been rendered null by their elevated awareness of the copyright infringement facilitated by their site.
Many onlookers will nonetheless share Sordel's concern at what amounts to commercial rough-housing being turned (not metaphorically but literally) into a federal case. I know that the "slippery slope" argument has been overused in an internet context but malicious prosecution should not be allowed to displace normal commercial litigation. Wouldn't the Justice Department's time and resources be better spent on turning criminals into convicts than in turning businessmen into criminals?
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
An Inactivist Writes ...
As though Sordel needed an excuse to down tools and interrupt the all-too terminable process of binding in nutshells: tomorrow will see a pointed not-working to rule as I join the masses doing precisely nothing to prevent the passage of a U.S. law.
Wednesday 18th January sees a web-wide protest against two pieces of legislation: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). These laws, if passed, will give copyright holders wide powers to close or block online sites holding copyright material. Moreover, they will make sites such as YouTube and (for that matter) Blogger responsible for hosting material that infringes copyright. They will also extend the U.S. legal position on copyright throughout the world by forcing U.S. companies (such as PayPal) not to trade with sites subject to allegations of copyright infringement.
The provisions of SOPA are wide-ranging, and cannot be reduced to the most obvious infractions, such as a website set up to stream pre-release copies of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. To take one example, if one assumes that the material published by Wikileaks was the intellectual property of the U.S. government, then it would be the case that Google could be placed under an injunction preventing it from linking to Wikileaks as part of a web search.
Moreover, the holder of the intellectual property does not need to prove an infringement; it merely needs to notify third parties of the infringement. A hosting service would have to withdraw all services from Wikileaks immediately once notified by the complainant and - if it resumed those services on the basis of a satisfactory counter-notice from Wikileaks - it would itself be vulnerable to legal action on the part of the complainant.
Moreover, if Google (for example) decided that it were safer to comply with the complaint and remove the Wikileaks site from its engine, it would be immune from action by Wikileaks even if the complaint were never upheld by any court. Voluntary suspension of services is specifically defended by the law, but there is no protection for a company that continues to extend services to a site, even if that site has provided reasonable evidence that it is not infringing copyright.
Moreover, what if the site, rather than being Wikileaks, were to be, say, a British newspaper reporting a U.S. government leak?
Effectively, then, SOPA enables limitless penalties to be levied upon any site whatsoever without the complaining party ever winning a legal action. Most of the legal liability falls not upon the complainant or even on the alleged copyright violator: it falls instead upon the companies that provide points of access to internet content.
(It would, by the way, become a civil crime knowingly to make a claim of intellectual property against a site where no such claim existed, but then the site owner would require the means and the evidence to sue the complainant, and the complainant would have to be wealthy enough to make such a suit viable.)
Sordel's opposition to SOPA is staunch but, in the interests of full disclosure, I do source a large number of my factoids from Wikipedia, which is leading the protest and will be closed tomorrow. Anyone seeking to conclude that the drawing down of Nutbinding shutters makes a virtue of a necessity would, of course, be quite quite wrong.
Wednesday 18th January sees a web-wide protest against two pieces of legislation: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). These laws, if passed, will give copyright holders wide powers to close or block online sites holding copyright material. Moreover, they will make sites such as YouTube and (for that matter) Blogger responsible for hosting material that infringes copyright. They will also extend the U.S. legal position on copyright throughout the world by forcing U.S. companies (such as PayPal) not to trade with sites subject to allegations of copyright infringement.
The provisions of SOPA are wide-ranging, and cannot be reduced to the most obvious infractions, such as a website set up to stream pre-release copies of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. To take one example, if one assumes that the material published by Wikileaks was the intellectual property of the U.S. government, then it would be the case that Google could be placed under an injunction preventing it from linking to Wikileaks as part of a web search.
Moreover, the holder of the intellectual property does not need to prove an infringement; it merely needs to notify third parties of the infringement. A hosting service would have to withdraw all services from Wikileaks immediately once notified by the complainant and - if it resumed those services on the basis of a satisfactory counter-notice from Wikileaks - it would itself be vulnerable to legal action on the part of the complainant.
Moreover, if Google (for example) decided that it were safer to comply with the complaint and remove the Wikileaks site from its engine, it would be immune from action by Wikileaks even if the complaint were never upheld by any court. Voluntary suspension of services is specifically defended by the law, but there is no protection for a company that continues to extend services to a site, even if that site has provided reasonable evidence that it is not infringing copyright.
Moreover, what if the site, rather than being Wikileaks, were to be, say, a British newspaper reporting a U.S. government leak?
Effectively, then, SOPA enables limitless penalties to be levied upon any site whatsoever without the complaining party ever winning a legal action. Most of the legal liability falls not upon the complainant or even on the alleged copyright violator: it falls instead upon the companies that provide points of access to internet content.
(It would, by the way, become a civil crime knowingly to make a claim of intellectual property against a site where no such claim existed, but then the site owner would require the means and the evidence to sue the complainant, and the complainant would have to be wealthy enough to make such a suit viable.)
Sordel's opposition to SOPA is staunch but, in the interests of full disclosure, I do source a large number of my factoids from Wikipedia, which is leading the protest and will be closed tomorrow. Anyone seeking to conclude that the drawing down of Nutbinding shutters makes a virtue of a necessity would, of course, be quite quite wrong.
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