CoffeeHousers' Wall, 9 February - 15 February

wrinkled weasel

These days, low-level officials often take it upon themselves to make arbitrary calls on the lives of other people, based upon their own prejudices, and because we are in a predominantly liberal-nihilist phase of the cultural cycle, their decisions reflect this world view.

There is a dangerous propensity of government and bureaucracy to believe they know what is right for us, when in fact, they don’t have a clue. But it’s worse than that. They are poisoned by prejudices of which they are unaware.

There is a cliché that all blog threads eventually come around to Hitler or spontaneous human combustion.

The question of why the population of Germany supported National Socialism has puzzled me for decades and the answer, or part of the answer, is beginning to dawn on me.

So it goes something like this:

You don’t start by gassing Jews, you start by restricting their freedom and declaring it to be in the public interest.

The lumpenproletariat and their apparatchiks coalesce through fear, intimidation and ignorance. It is at this point that the tyrant has won the first stage of his power play, ignorance being the strongest tool, which is why Maximilien Robespierre wrote:

“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant. ”

The tyranny of which I write is inculcated by a raft of statutes that have given certain groups uncritical carte-blanche and government sanctioned hegemony. The paucity of intellectual rigour and values accompanying these statutes has combined to allow what you might call “lowest common-denominatorism” in which values, morals and ideas, have diminished to the extent that they no longer have any meaning.

AngloWelshDragon

Sorry to be so trivial (particular after the brilliant kick off from wrinkled weasel but...

Can someone tell me why Shula on The Archers has fallen out with the vicar and doesn't go to St Stephens anymore? I am a reformed Archers addict who caught a 5 minute burst on the way to the feed merchants yesterday. I need someone to fill me in and satisfy my curiosity without having to listen to an episode and thus fall off the wagon.

Wilhelm

Could someone please, please tell me in the name of God, what exactly is the point of the BBC ?

When was the last time they made a decent programme ? The Black and White Minstrel Show and It Aint Half Hot Mum. These 2 programmes are never repeated but they repeat everything else. They have simply vanished like Adolf Eichmann, why is that ?

Reg Varney

Mr Weasel - You won't know me under my present moniker but we once exchanged some vaguely salacious banter about Hazel Blears cooling off in the Trevi Fountain and it is always a pleasure to read your posts.

I rather like the characterisation made by Thomas Sowell ("The Vision of the Anointed: Self Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy" (1995)). He draws the basic distinction between the tragic vision (directly related to the Biblical fall) and the vision of the anointed (as held by the sort of people you are talking about). I quote from an online review.

"Without a sense of the tragedy of the human condition, and of the painful tradeoffs implied by inherent constraints," Sowell argues, "the anointed are free to believe that the unhappiness they observe and the anomalies they encounter are due to the public's not being as wise or virtuous as themselves. . . . It is a world of victims, villains, and rescuers, with the anointed cast in the last and most heroic of these roles." This is why political correctness in politics, education, culture, history, and literature is so important to these anointed social engineers. Through this means, they hope, the human mind can be wiped clean and filled with the preconceived ideas and myths that will enable them to control those whom they desire to have mastery over. [End of quote]

While I agree with the thrust of this, I think the analysis is incomplete. The jack-in-office class consists not wholly, probably not even mainly, of starry-eyed zealots and social engineers. Its typical member is more likely to be heedless of the effects of official policy, so long as their implementation of it serves some fashionable abstract value such as inclusivity or "the environment" (biofuels might be one example). To quote from A N Wilson's rather enjoyable biography of Tolstoy, "He [LT] put the sanctity of his own conscience above the public good."

CB-W

AngloWelshDragon: Shula had an affair with the doctor while he was going out with the vicar's wife, Usha Gupta (a long time before she married the vicar, obviously). Then Shula made some incautious comments about the vicar's proposed marriage to a Hindu, reported in a local paper, which seemed to suggest that she disapproved of the vicar marrying a Hindu and/or an Indian. This led to difficulties, from which they've never recovered, now that Usha is the vicar's wife.

I should probably go off now and get a life.........

Donald Fraser

I'm speaking as Generation X. Can I add my bit of advice to this post for generation Y? I'm "X" because I'm too young to have been a Yuppie. I celebrated my 40th birthday last month. When I left University during the crash of 1987, naturally I found no job in the city. Subsequently accountancy boomed & no one tried to enter "the city" straight from school. Generation "Y" are too young to be "dotcom" entrepreneurs before the crash of 2000 and now the crash of 2008 puts banking (or private equity) out to pasture. So what next for them?

Generation X is half-way to Generation Y in terms of digital literacy (Paul Gilster’s book “Digital Literacy” on knowledge assembly provides my definition of it.) My advice is focus on "traditional Keynesian theory" with an eye to future dotcom jobs. One advantage Generation X has over Y is they remember a process of Monetarism replacing Keynesianism. So my chief advice is to be very wary of bankers & "baby boomers" talking up Keynesianism in the media - for the following reasons.

Firstly Keynesianism is highly complex, but not on the same "maths level" as Monetarism. Generation Y in terms of social networking technologies (Web 2.0) already has a natural affinity with the complexities of "managing society". The lack of fixed rules on what "society" is does not mean that all views are of equal value. Current efforts by bankers & monetarists are unlikely to work. That is because the new rules on "society" are most likely to emerge directly from the demands of Web 2.0 users. For instance a new national ID system would not be about "card-carrying" (indeed it should be card-less) but instead exist to verify online logins and limit the damage of ID theft.

Those not already possessing hundreds of logins, cannot be expected to think a complex "cost-benefit" for society to discuss even exists. So the debate is reduced to a "privacy" and "card cost" argument. Web 2.0 Keynesianism would dictate the argument is card-less to begin with and the real issues are about "privacy behind the scenes" and how to mitigate the potential damage of ID theft. This type of open public discussion is simply not possible at the level required at the moment because of the subject complexity. Only direct experience of the technology itself enables meaningful discussion. It is not an elitist discussion required, only the will to engage fully and directly with the worlds of Web 2.0 before becoming part of the discussion.

That is why Keynesian governments are by nature "less open" because the complexity of the debate on how to "manage society" is fruitless if it requires scope reduction at every stage. This is why Keynesianism is complex in a non-maths way, just as money supply figures behind Monetarist policy are not normally aired in public - because the public would not understand. The fundamental obstacle to full recovery from the 2008 crash is that the new policies required are not about maths - so everyone feels entitled to discuss their opinion. That is not going to work because "the devil is in the detail". New Keynesian policies designed to “manage society” are doomed to failure if each proposal needs reduction in scope to the level at which every non Web 2.0 user feels able to discuss them. This is the nature of televised debate and the celebrity culture, something the Web 2.0 worlds are in principle far removed from.

Hence the recovery will be delayed as long as it takes for the demands of Web 2.0 users to emerge, be packaged into new governmental policies and be implemented by decree not consensus. There is a lot of water to cross and the Web 2.0 world will be rocked by many "electronic pearl harbours" before that, accelerated by worsening social & economic conditions in the real world it is governed by.

Secondly Keynesianism looks for efficiencies both in terms of national infrastructure and export potential. From nuclear power stations to support "cloud computing" to micro-manufacturing capability to support digital media export. It is a global crisis & consolidating Web 2.0 as a trusted investment platform will require new global regulatory objectives. For a global perspective, consider the importance of the ICANN versus UN debate over creating TLDs. Even question why if the @ sign should continue to be used when the pronunciation of it is extremely harsh in English and thus a barrier to social transfer. Regardless of the weight you place on that, the discussion of the cost-benefit of changing it (say to a circled P) is a valid exercise in regard to taking stock of where we have got to and what the future holds for us, globally.

Generation X like Y can envision real government by cyber-democracy. There are very big issues at stake & the next few years will see many failed programs. Generation X is currently split between the lure of "green solutions" & the potential wealth creation from pump-priming web 2.0. Keynesian works best on a massive ("economies of") scale, including planned development of transport & power systems. Future social unrest is likely to scupper most "green solutions" as non-pragmatic, given time. That will place pressure upon the “non-green” generation X to come up with solutions.

Generation X will need to appeal directly to Y to politically endorse "new Keynesian theories". Such theories will be largely unrelated to how Keynesianism is being discussed at present. So hold on to your Web 2.0 skills & be ruthlessly sceptical of baby boomer's (& bankers) detached from using the very technologies they are discussing as the future. They can name the technologies but cannot accurately evaluate the synergies new Keynesian theory will require addressing via "economies of scale". Generation Y can, but it may require a refresher course on why the Keynesian term "mixed economy" is being used with great theatrical license after nearly 30 years of Monetarism. What we have now could not be further from a mixed economy (except for agriculture which is partly protected as a legacy of the World Wars and the implicit dangers of a nation being unable to feed itself).

Keynesianism is meaningless term without developing first some form of "state protectionism" for the types of jobs people are most willing to do. That is what a “mixed economy” is. It does not mean “mixed” because it is a blend of activities dictated by the comparative trade advantages. So again, be ruthlessly sceptical of “baby boomers” (& bankers) advocating Keynesian theory while at the same time warning about the global dangers of protectionism. Humans are imperfect capital since efficient output is related to abstract things - such as motivation & belief. 2 million plus "community care patients" is the strongest evidence that Monetarism has an unresolved core weakness. So Keynesianism must discuss what type of protectionism is required because although some is counter-productive, there is a primary objective of creating new types of jobs to fit certain types of people and hence manage society.

That is why current global fiscal policy is just a lot of emergency spending. It may indicate the start of Keynesianism but at the moment is it simply a retrospective justification. The spending does not reflect any real theory behind it because those authorising it are not yet able to plan what new types of jobs are needed. There will need to be “selective protectionism” when proper plans start to emerge, although it is likely to be more reactionary than progressive. That is because it will probably begin in earnest only in response to social unrest. If generation Y were to “save the world” (as Gordon Brown famously inadvertently put it) they need to pre-empt the ability of Generation X to come up with solutions. Simply put, any type of “Web 2.0 protectionism” is good, all other forms of protectionism is bad. However that becomes less simple once the scope and intent of Web 2.0 is under discussion.

On the other hand, “sweep of the hand” policies might work. These only require large scale ideological flip-flops and much less new theory or attention to detail. That is because they are based on a potential new model that technology now makes available to Keynesian theory. Social engineers could treat society as already mapped out by the existing computer networks. Large scale economic and social changes can be made swiftly by any government simply prepared to risk unplugging one network and swapping it with another. For instance, the synergies released by swapping control of JANET (Joint Academic Network) between the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the National Health Service (NHS). In effect the NHS would then control the future funding of the Internet and the NHS "community care patient" networks would initiate a new computing core of the academic networks. However unless generation Y is also capable of rapidly assimilating the history of the anti-psychiatry NSM (New Social Movement) that ran parallel to the heyday of 1960's Keynesianism, there would not be enough technicians to plug back in all those loose wires.

Jenny

That's the truth, wrinkled weasel. New Labour has been working on its legislative handcuffs and straightjacket for years, they leave no wriggle-room at all.

They've got us all where they want us: just where they can screw us.

Result: people are looking to the BNP, not because they particularly like the BNP, but because they know it would take something like that to free us from this straightjacket.

Silent Hunter

Any chance of an article questioning the Home Secretary about her second home in London and how it doesn't quite ring true?

This story seems to be getting hidden - one might almost think it a conspiracy. LOL

Paul B

Congratulation to Tony McCoy on riding his 3000th winner yesterday
http://tinyurl.com/cjncyy.
Hes won me (and in truth lost me) a fair few bob over the years especially his partnership with Pipe stables.

On the sporting front- nothing to say about England's inept second innings performance, holds head in shame.

As a Chelsea supporter, I'm aghast at Big Phil's dismissal, football really is a most brutal performance driven industry.

Lastly the best you can about England's win over Italy at weekend in the 6 Nations, is that a win is a win. I will take that.

mac

Is Bright going to offer anything interesting on his new blog? The dispatches from Portmeirion are lightweight tosh.

AngloWelshDragon

Thank you CB-W. You have saved me from myself!

AngloWelshDragon

I just wanted to say what a w**k name I think 'Faith-Based' is for the new religion blog.

My blood pressure rises everytime I hear a news story about about 'faith leaders', 'faith communities', 'faith schools', 'faith groups' etc.

What is wrong with the word 'religious'?

Its as much of an irritant to me as 'hardworking families'!

AngloWelshDragon

@ Mac

At least they haven't employed him as an art critic!

pragmatist

In response to Silent Hunter surely the whole issue of MPs and Peers'"allowance abuse" requires radical reform. There has been endemic abuse for years and no politician can properly address individual cases because so many at Westminster have skeletons, large or small, that won't bear too much scrutinity because of ingrained "dodgy but accepted practices". Even if an MP investigator comes to this with clean hands he will have party colleagues who will be embarrassed by the very issues he is seeking to expose in opponents. Result is totally unsatisfactory stalemate, and the issues are insoluble in practice, and the sums involved probably irrecoverable - both economically and politically.

What about a radical approach?

Grant an amnesty for past behaviours and practices, (possibly except clearly criminal behaviour). Allow a moratorium of say 14 or 28 days to allow all MPs and Peers to "recalibrate" their personal allowance claiming practices/portfolio.

This should break the logjam of past misbehaviours preventing proper scrutiny of current scandals.

Any politician too greedy or stupid to re-organise his affairs properly forward then deserves all he gets by way of embarrassing disclosures.

Any better ideas?

egh

All re the not-so-bright-blog:
at least thank goodness he's not showing too much red at the moment (unlike the Speccie page layout).

Also, thank goodness he's not augmenting Phillips' rants. I've decided she's Pro-euSSR and Anti- anything at all that's really British.

Personally, I'm pro-semitic: Christ was a Jew, and without the Bible we'd never have got anywhere. I'm also very glad we played our part in defeating Nazi Germany and liberating the Jews.

I am, however, proud to be British - regardless of the cultural invasion techniques that Phillips' is presently augmenting. Actually, I say she's finally showing her true colours (and I think it explains the strange contradiction of her tenure with the beeb).

Verity

Well, he may walk on water, but Obama's proving himself considerably more inept on land. First, that hilarious photo of him standing in the snow, trying to get in a White House window under the impression that it was the door to the Oval Office. And now, today, he waved from the top of the steps to Airforce One and turned his head smartly, only to have it collide with the plane. Mr Suavity is morphing into Jerry Lewis before our very eyes.

Archbishop Cranmer

It appears that a head teacher has been ‘forced out’ for making Muslims attend assembly

His Grace may surprise his fellow CoffeeHousers by agreeing that so she should have been.

There has been an awful lot of anti-Muslim reactionary nonsense written about this story. But she allegedly told staff she wanted to hold school assemblies or ‘daily acts of collective worship’ which encompass all faiths. The clueless journalist for The Daily Telegraph who ignorantly writes ‘Muslim parents should obey the law of the land’ manifestly has no idea at all of what the law actually says on this matter. His or her ignorance has only served as swill for the bigotry of other journalists who speak about Muslim ‘ghettos’ and splutter their usual ignorant ad hominem pontifications on the matter, simultaneously bloating their own egos whilst feeding the trolls.

Cranmer has no doubt that Julia Robinson was a well-meaning head teacher, quite possibly very able, and even ‘marvellous’. She was also undoubtedly not ‘racist’. But her grasp of the statutory guidelines was flawed to the extent that she was presuming to override what Parliament decided upon in 1944, reiterated in 1988, and affirmed again in 1996. As The Telegraph observes, these education acts do indeed stipulate that pupils ‘shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship’ which should be ‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’.

But neither The Telegraph nor Mrs Robinson appear to be aware that a head teacher may apply to the Local Education Authority for a determination to have this requirement lifted if it is deemed to be inappropriate for their school (Section 387, Education Act 1996). And neither do they appear to be aware that parents have always had (since 1944) the option of removing their children from these acts of worship, and that over the past 60 years Jews, Roman Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses have proportionally considerably outnumbered the Muslims (and Sikhs and Hindus) in withdrawing their children from what is perceived to be an inappropriate act of induction.

And no-one has spoken about Jewish, Catholic or JW ‘ghettos’ being created as a consequence.

Let us turn this around for a while, and consider Labour’s drive to expand faith schools in the state sector. There is a statutory requirement upon these schools to take in a quota of students of other faiths or none. Those who deplore the actions of the Muslim parents in withdrawing their children from Mrs Robinson’s multi-faith assemblies would doubtless be the first to insist that their children were not subjected to the ‘acts of worship’ led by Imam Ali or anyone by the name of Mohammed.

Those who decry the accusation of 'racism' levelled at Mrs Robinson are likely to be the first to hurl 'bigot' at those who express a faith which dares to question any tenet of theirs.

Muslims are simply agitating for what Roman Catholics have enjoyed since 1902 – a state funded education system which is free to dissent from the Protestant establishment and manifest a religious ethos which is distinct from Anglicanism.

Since 1944, schools have been on the frontline of a rapidly-changing society. While the school act of collective worship had traditionally been uniform and predominantly confessional up until the 1960s (reciting the Apostle’s Creed, saying the Lord’s Prayer, singing hymns and listening to a mini-sermon), immigration and the advent of other religions, coupled with the process of secularisation, has forced change. As Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks observes, the UK has seen ‘a wider disintegration brought about by the loss of what Peter Berger called “the sacred canopy”, that overarching framework of shared meanings that once shaped individuals and society. In its place has come pluralism: the idea that society is a neutral arena of private choices where every vision of the good carries its own credentials of authenticity’.

And this pluralism demands change. All this fuss over one school is mind-boggling when one learns from The Guardian that the ‘weekly Muslim assemblies were led by a teacher and (were) open to children of other faiths’.

Muslims having one assembly in five which is open to children of other faiths is hardly ghettoisation. And it must be observed that Mrs Robinson sought to end a decade-long tradition, which Muslim parents and students had doubtless come to value.

Cranmer is not commenting on the merits or demerits of having a separate weekly assembly for Muslims, for he is not concerned to encourage faith per se. But he does wish to confront the manifest ignorance in the assertion that Mrs Robinson ‘was simply observing the law of the land’.

She was not.

She is free to ‘celebrate the diversity of our pupils and the community’ to her heart’s content. But she is not free to make the school’s daily act of collective worship ‘multi-faith’. And if she were to do so, then every Christian parent would have the right to withdraw their children from it, or request that the school provide something suitably orthodox.

Segregating children within a school may not be viewed as good practice. But if not within, why without? Why should the children of any community be divided by faith? Those who favour faith schools (as His Grace does) must accept the logical corollary that faith groups within ‘secular’ schools may wish to do things differently: indeed, why should a ‘multi-faith’ or ‘secular’ ethos be permitted to become the prevailing orthodoxy?

Church schools were founded for the education of the poor, whoever those poor were. They made no distinction between class, colour or creed. Those schools which today are majority Muslim, or which operate with a significant proportion of Muslim pupils, are still carrying out the Church’s mission of providing service to those who need it. It is the essence of loving one’s neighbour.

Paul B

Thank your Grace, most enlightening.

The Jumbo Jet, or more correctly the Boeing 747 (in its many different variations) is forty years old this year. Is there a finer example of what capitalism can achieve?

Its provided affordable mass transportation to countless millions (possibly billions?) of people who would never have been able to afford long haul holidays/travel before its advent. Its therefore been of more benefit to ordinary men and women than any state funded socialist policy has. Its created millions of jobs, from the brilliant engineers who first dreamed of it and then designed it. To building of the plane and its engines and the thousands of parts it contains. The pilots job and cabin staff jobs. Jobs at airports, jobs at travel agents and their destinations. Simply to many to quantify. All along it has served the world safely, with only a half dozen or so major accidents to my knowledge- if anyone says profit and safety do not go together, just point at the big bird.

All along the way this has been privately paid for and whats more the industries it has created have paid billion upon billion of tax revenues into virtually all sovereign states of the world.

Its a formible of example of mens & womens brilliance, a towering shining icon of the Amercan Capitalist system and dream, a virtual re-invention of the wheel. I salute you big `un, happy fortieth birthday.

Anglica

Paul B - Must admit I (hated) [sorry - another useful English word down the drain] er - didn't want to know about the thing when it first came in. However, as you say, it has served us well.

Still - in this country, I bet we'd find that most of the airport/airline jobs didn't go to indigenous workers...

Maximilian

Archbishop Cranmer (Feb. 10 at 6:39 pm)

Thank you, Your Grace. You did indeed surprise me, at first. You argue your case very cogently and you have now convinced me that your view is the correct one.

Alf Tupper

Donald Fraser.

Hell's bells man. Ease up would you?

egh

Red Pages at the Speccie. Red Herrings on the Pages.

I suspect the Reds in 'control' are running scared of a very Red Revolution.

So here they keep us busy red rabitting while they quietly complete their removal of anything that looks like a British Right (pun intended).

PS: I just saw an international news bulletin quoting that wet millipede as defending Britain's poor beaten up mozzy minority of 2M. He said, Wilders would incite hatred if this so-called government let him in.

Oh Boy Milly. How come he doesn't know he's creating hatred where it never was? Wait until unemployment really hits!! Just watch those bulldogs hit the streets.

MahatmaCoat

Paul B - Thanks for reminding us of the merits of the 747. And while the wicked capitalist USA was designing and building it, socialist, Labour Governed Britain was designing and building the Concord(e), whereby poor taxpayers got to subsidise jet setting millionaires. A typical Labour project really - totally uneconomic and only available to the rich.

wrinkled weasel

His Grace argues his point with characteristic erudition.

As for mine,thank you Reg Varney and others. I don't remember the Hazel Blears conversation, but I am convinced I must have had it. Would it have been a a leather-clad frollicking in the Trevi Fountain or a drowning?

I would like to add your bit of the debate to my blog piece on this. Thank You

Forlornehope

Guy Herbert makes a valuable point on CiF today. Our esteemed Home Secretary seems to be putting in place the legislation for her personal police force. If true, what are the opposition doing letting this past:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/12/police-law

Aidan

I just heard an interesting rumour. The reason for postponing the Budget until 22 April is because they plan to call a General Election immediately afterwards, to take place on the day of the European elections. In the Budget the Government will reduce the basic rate of income tax to 18% and bring forward the increase in higher rate to 45%. They will then challenge the Conservatives to oppose the change in tax rates.