Australian Chamber Orchestra

8:26am

We were lucky enought to hear the wonderful Australian Chamber Orchestra in Melbourne last year, on our honeymoon. On Monday they performed at the Wigmore Hall, playing Handel, Bach and Haydn, as well as a new piece by Roger Smalley.

They are truly a marvellous group of players - worth dropping everything for. Add to the mix Mark Padmore, by a country mile the greatest Bach singer in the world - and, I would argue, the best tenor bar none at the moment, whose Lieder singing is exquisite and whose baroque performances are truly magical - and you have a concert which had to be heard.

The review in today's Guardian is spot on:

A visit from the Australian Chamber Orchestra always raises questions. Does violinist Richard Tognetti, its leader for 19 years, have a slowly mouldering portrait in the attic? Can ugly players even audition? More pertinently, let's ask about what we settle for from music-making in the UK - why do so few of our ensembles present their music with this kind of ear-grabbing vigour?

I'm afraid you'll have to travel to the Continent now to hear them on the rest of their European tour. But I'd heartily recommend their recording with Angela Hewitt - another musician worth dropping everything for - of Bach's Keyboard Concertos, which bristles with excitement.

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Hillary is right

8:07am

Deary me, there's been some drivel written about Hillary Clinton's remarks about Iran. Here's what she said:

Mrs Clinton, who on Monday released a television commercial using images of Osama bin Laden that ended with the question “Who do you think has what it takes?” made her comments about Iran during an interview with ABC.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” she said after being asked what she would do if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel. “In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

That prompted, for instance, this from Richard Silverstein:

Is this really the type of president Americans want? One who so demonises Iran that she's prepared to go to war at the first sign of conflict in the Middle East? Do we want to create a Middle East cold war like the one we had with the Soviets for four decades?

There's a lot more in similar vein elsewhere. Not least from Obama:

In response, Mr Obama said: "Using words like 'obliterate' - it doesn't actually produce good results, and so I'm not interested in sabre-rattling." He said only that Iran should know he would respond "forcefully" to an attack on any US ally.

And it's all grade one nonsense. Oliver Kamm spells out some basics of deterrence:

It does of course sound a terrible thing to say. But Senator Clinton is right and Obama wrong. For nuclear deterrence to hold, it is essential that Iran - a regime that is autocratic but aware of costs - understand the consequences of nuclear brinkmanship. To say Iran would meet a "forceful" response in the event of a nuclear strike is a feeble comment that would not effectively deter. The only response to a nuclear strike that could prevent military victory by an aggressor is a countervailing nuclear strike. Leaving open the possibility, even implicitly, of a purely conventional or even a diplomatic response is to soften deterrence.

I think Hillary's campaign has at times been decidedly unpleasant. But what an impressive candidate she can be - and her stamina is clearly spectacular, which is not something to be disregarded in choosing a President.

It may be that an Obama victory would be, in many ways, a good thing. But if it isn't going to be McCain - which I hope it is - the rest of the world should hope that it's Clinton, who not only appears to understand the reality of the world better than Obama, but also has serious advisers rather than the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski, possibly the worst National Security Adviser of all time. As Tom Gross writes:

If it was only one, or two, or even three, of Obama’s close advisors who have adopted anti-Israeli and anti-American positions (and in some cases used anti-Semitic language), one might possibly excuse Obama. But Obama has chosen to surround himself with many such persons.

Again, if Obama had appointed even one reliable, experienced Democrat, such as Richard Holbrooke, to his foreign policy team, one might feel more comfortable that he won’t make disastrous foreign policy mistakes if elected. But he hasn’t.

...A previous dispatch on this list referred to Obama advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski (who served as Jimmy Carter’s disastrous national security advisor), Robert Malley (a relentless apologist for Yasser Arafat), and Samantha Power (who has called for the elimination of foreign aid to Israel and its redirection to “Palestine”).

...(Incidentally, although Power had to withdraw from the public face of Obama’s campaign after calling Hillary Clinton a “monster,” I am reliably told that she remains in close contact with Obama and would almost certainly be given a senior posting were he to become president.)

 

 

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Pluck your twangers

8:00am

Never let it be said that this site doesn't offer elevated commentary...

The Rainbow 'clip' below reminded me of this. For anyone of a certain age, it's simply the best:

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Bungle...

7:55am

(Via Three Line Whip)

I haven't laughed so much in ages:

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Affordable homes ain't no crisis

7:19am

I rarely disagree with Eamonn Butler but, vaualble as his piece in today's Times is, I think he's got one fundamental point wrong:

[T]he blame for our present mess cannot be pinned on the greed or profligacy of bankers. It lies squarely at the doors of governments. It's for them to fix, and the Bank of England's extraordinary move in swapping bank assets for £50 billion of government-backed bonds is probably the right one.

...The authorities' very anxiety to keep customers safe has made them introduce more and more detailed and onerous regulation. The only banks that can afford to deal with this bureaucracy are the big ones. Regulation has made the banks fat - and their customers complacent. It would be much healthier if the banks were competitive and customers eyed them up more carefully before trusting them with their savings.

Indeed, not even the regulators themselves seem able to see the wood for the trees these days. The market knew that Northern Rock was taking some big risks, but all this complex regulation seemed unable to stop it. Some old-fashioned, simple rules on reserve requirements might have done the job better.

Certainly, some bankers have sailed close to the wind, taking risks to get new business. And when things are booming, that is a perfectly rational strategy: when nearly all customers are getting richer, grab as much as you can. But governments simply added to the frenzy by keeping interest rates low for years. Politicians and central bankers love it when things are booming. But cheap credit is a heady drug. You need more and more of it to get the same high. Before long, you run out of cash and then the hangover begins. It's the politicians, by creating the boom that encouraged us all to borrow too much and made bankers lend us too much, who are ultimately responsible for our financial hangover today.

Well, yes. But the authorities' failure to set more prudent reserve requirements provided the opportunity for banks' profligacy. It did not force banks to be reckless. I have, for instance, a card with a credit limit which seems to me preposterously high. But I choose instead to pay off my bill in full every month. Were I to make use of the full extent of my available credit and 'invest' it on the horses, would that mean that it was the card company's fault when it all went wrong, because they didn't stop me behaving like an idiot? Certainly the company would have a share of the responsibility, and its pleas for recompense when I lost the money would deserve to be met with deaf ears. But the real responsibility would be mine.

And the same analogy, surely, applies to those people who took out reckless mortgages which they couldn't really afford on houses which were stupidly priced, and are now in panic because their low fixed rate has come to an end. Whose responsibility is that? Yes, the lender should be pilloried for being so incautious as to make such stupid loans, and for luring customers in to take them out. But the real responsibility lies with the people who took out the loan.

Taking responsibility for one's actions is, though, becoming an alien concept, as I argued recently in another context.

That said, Eamonn makes one telling point:

In all the discussion of the American sub-prime mortgage market, few people have pointed out that the US Government actually compels banks to make loans to poor people in poor neighbourhoods, regardless of financial prudence. It started with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which aimed to support community groups, but in 1995 the Act was beefed up to give regulators far more powers to punish banks who refused lending to poor neighbourhoods - so-called redlining - because they considered the risks too high. As a result, sub-prime loans mushroomed in the late 1990s, and now the whole world is suffering the consequences.

Indeed, Alice Miles made a related point last week:

Nothing could be more immoral, then, in the current climate, than using government efforts and taxpayers' money to encourage first-time buyers to enter the housing market in order to stabilise the dodgy situation that banks and incautious borrowers have got themselves into through overlending and overstretching themselves: row, row harder, keep us all afloat! Yet that appears to be what the Government's strategy is.

"Here's a nice deal for you, love”: Gordon Brown has turned into Del Boy, and I suppose that would make Alistair Darling his Rodney. They are trying to tempt the banks into continuing to offer cheap mortgage deals on properties that are simply not worth the astonishingly high amounts they have been flogged at in recent years. And trying to encourage you to sign up for them.

Quite. So much for Prudence. So much for Brown's moral compass. But the real point is this:

It isn't as if, to most of the rest of us, a fall in house prices is such a big deal anyway. To most of us, for whom a house is a home, not part of an investment portfolio, tumbling values make sense. To most of us, the loss of 4,000 estate agents isn't much to worry about. Nor is the loss of tens of thousands of City boys.

To most of us, the housing bubble has been an alarming, nonsensical boom that we have scrabbled to keep up with for fear of being left behind, not out of greed but because we wanted a home to live in, one that we owned.

For most of us, a sharp correction will come as a blessed relief. House prices might make some sort of sense again; investors from the City and overseas will leave us alone and stop buying up the places we need to live in. A decent house in the country might become affordable once more for a local person, not just for someone from far away, paying cash. ...For most of us, the mortgage hasn't suddenly become wildly more expensive (coming to the end of a fixed-rate deal? Tough. What part of Two-Year Fixed Rate didn't you understand?). The house might be worth a bit less than yesterday, but so what?

Even negative equity is irrelevant unless you want to sell. All that matters to those of us for whom a house is a home rather than a get rich quick scheme is the cost of the mortgage. And as Alice says, what kind of idiot thinks a fixed rate deal doesn't come to an end, and is surprised that the rate changes? Housing crisis, what housing crisis? More affordable homes ain't no crisis in my book.

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Useless at everything

7:44am

So Prescott wasn't just a useless minister.

It looks like he was a useless bulimic, too.

(I realise that the phrase 'pot calling kettle black' is particularly apposite here, but then no one - least of all me - has ever called yours truly a bulimic.)

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Who'll notice?

7:38am

This headline

Teachers' strike could shut 1000 schools

reminds me of this story

Belgium is heading for a record 150 days with no government

Belgium was able to function perfectly well without its government. Given this sentence:

Schools in the urban heartlands of the National Union of Teachers will be particularly affected

perhaps I'd not be entirely flippant in suggesting that pupils might even be better off?

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Sex, Science and Money

8:31am

I have a piece in today's Jewish Chronicle based on Terence Kealey's new book, Sex, Science and Profits. Here's an extract:

Kealey’s basic thesis is that commerce is an activity based on trust and that, in order for trust to work as the binding agent for commerce, humans have evolved instincts such as guilt, shame and pride. This is not speculation — it’s based on scientific observation, revealed in functional magnetic resonance imaging scans which show activity in the brain. The relevant parts of the brain light up when stirred. As Kealey writes: “They [brain scans] explain how we evolved to make money, since emotions such as guilt and shame represent the internalisation of the cooperation and trust that shift an economy.”

That explains what happens. As for why it happens: “[T]he selfish genes ensure that our enlightened emotions are challenged by Manichean ones, and the triumph of one set of emotions over the other is determined by the social conditioning of childhood.” That’s where the more specific relevance to Jews comes in: Jewish culture and thus a Jewish upbringing. 

...The evidence of history and economics is that there are three prerequisites for economic growth: a market, private property and the rule of law. Jewish culture and rules provided the foundation for just that from the very start.

But there’s another notably Jewish aspect to the making of money: its subsequent giving away. All the great cultures of the world have institutionalised philanthropy. Islam has the wakf and Hindus have ahinsa. Judaism is far from unique in that respect. But it is Israelis who today give away the largest percentage of a country’s GDP. Hardly surprising, given that Judaism is the only culture in which the word for charity — tzedakah — is the same concept, let alone from the same root, as justice.

...To make money, we might have to behave as a profit-maximiser. However, as Kealey puts it: “[O]nce that person has made their money, they may well barter it for the currency that really matters, approbation.”

So the renowned generosity of Jewish philanthropists follows both biologically and culturally: biologically across the human species from the accumulation of wealth, and culturally from the Jewish religion.

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Ken and the Jews

5:34pm

There's an excellent report in the Standard today about Ken Livingstone's relationship with Jews. I don't label him an antisemite; I just don't know.

Contrary to what some commenters here assert, I'm very careful about making such accusations, and only use that label when it is open and shut, such as with David Irving.

When there's any ambiguity or doubt, it's vital not to confuse making comments about Israel with comments about Jews.

But one thing has long been clear: the Mayor has an issue with Jews. Keith Dovkants' piece is thus especially useful in going back two decades and beyond:

At the height of his celebrity for Left-wing incendiarism, Ken Livingstone sounded an alarm that echoed around the world. There were in our city, he warned, "paramilitary groups which resemble fascist organisations". It was 1984, a date laden with portent. The IRA was active, as were Hitler-worshipping elements of the National Front. What had Ken discovered?

Nothing more terrifying, it seemed, than the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It was they who were putting together the "paramilitaries", Ken said. In a tirade against the deputies made in an interview with an Israeli newspaper, he claimed the board had been taken over by the extreme Right wing and, he alleged, the venerable institution was being run by reactionaries and near-fascists.

As troubled Londoners scanned the streets in vain for cohorts of fascistic Jewish paramilitaries, Ken - not for the first time - began to look rather silly. And the total lack of evidence, then or now, to support his warning invited a question: why did he launch into such a bizarre outburst?

Many Jews in London think they know. Ken, they say, hates us.

...How can London stay ahead as a great world city, Ken was asked, with a Mayor who says things like Israel should not have been created?

Ken did not reply directly but he said a former Chief Rabbi had himself stated that maybe it would have been better if Israel had never come into being.

Ken has said this before, on a number of occasions. He says he is quoting an interview with Lord Jakobovits in the Evening Standard, just before he retired as Chief Rabbi in 1991. In reality, Lord Jakobovits said no such thing. He was critical of Israel's policy towards the Arabs but he did not say the state should not have been created.

...The party [the WRP] also peddled a virulent anti-Israel and anti-Zionist - some would say anti-Semitic - message through its daily newspaper, News Line.

Ken Livingstone was with them every step of the way. He was an editor of Labour Herald, a soft-Left paper many suspected of supporting Trotskyite entryism into the Labour Party. The paper was printed by a firm based in Runcorn, Cheshire, which also printed News Line and publications sponsored by the Libyan government.

...Although no one doubts Gaddafi was subsidising News Line and Labour Herald there is absolutely no evidence Ken knew about it. But he did support the WRP when it published an extraordinary anti-Jewish rant in News Line.

On 20 March 1983, BBC2 ran an investigation on its Money Programme. Its central thesis was that the WRP's newspaper, Ken's Labour Herald and other publications were being funded by Gaddafi. Looking at the transcript today one sees a thorough, rather measured, piece of journalism. The response was quite different.

Under the heading The Zionist Connection, News Line published an editorial denouncing the Money Programme's investigation. It blamed a "powerful Zionist connection" that ran through the Labour Left, Mrs Thatcher's government, to the BBC. It cited the placing of Stuart Young, a director of the Jewish Chronicle, as chairman of the corporation and the appointment of his brother, David Young, to head the Manpower Services Commission. The Jewish Chronicle, the editorial noted, gave "support and advance publicity" to the Money Programme.

On the day of its hysterical editorial News Line ran a piece in which Ken suggested the Money Programme report was indeed the work of Zionists. In the same piece he blamed "smears" against him on agents working for Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin's government.

...After the News Line tirade, Ken was tackled about anti-Semitism by Sean Matgamna, the Trotskyite theorist and an iconic figure on the Left. Matgamna, now in his mid-sixties, was one of the WRP's most severe critics.

He told me: "The WRP ceased to be a political organisation and was merely a group paid for by Islamic regimes. They were spying on dissident Arabs and Jews for Gaddafi and Saddam, here in London.

"The WRP was taking money from Libya to subsidise Livingstone's paper. He had an accommodation with the WRP. After they ran that piece in News Line, we said to Livingstone: 'That editorial was anti-Semitic - where do you stand on it? Should we shrug our shoulders and accept that anti-Semitism is a legitimate part of the Left?' Livingstone didn't answer."

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Culturally aware BBC

8:49am

How typical. There's been quite a lot of coverage in advance for what sounds like a fascinating Radio 4 documentary:

A rage in Dalston

Alan Dein uncovers a little known story of postwar conflict. For four years after 1945, London and the South East witnessed vicious confrontations between the remnants of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists and Jewish ex-servicemen organised in the 43 Group. Operating beyond the law, the latter were fuelled by rage, guilt at the fate of Europe's Jews, and British policy in Palestine. Their goal was to drive fascism from the streets and silence its message forever.

I was eagerly looking forward to listening, as I'm sure were many other Jews. (My uncle had a shop in Ridley Road market.) So when is the BBC broadcasting it?

Saturday 19 April 2008 20:00-21:00

Genius. This Saturday evening is the first Seder night (the first night of Passover) when not a Jew in the land will be able to listen. They really couldn't have found a worse time to broadcast had they tried.

I suppose the repeat is on Yom Kippur.

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