Friday, 30 November 2007
The state of arcania
Scotland awakes | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "When I mention the argument over independence, Cosgrove affects a happy kind of indifference, once again suggesting something that my time in Scotland has brought up time and again. When it comes to the country's current collective mindset, focusing on frenetic debates about secession from the union, shrill voices in the Edinburgh parliament and the endless tussling between the SNP and Labour perhaps misses a crucial point: that if independence is at least partly a state of mind, a large number of Scots have got there already. 'A lot of that debate feels so arcane,' he says. 'The truth of the matter is, apart from some key institutions, maybe it's already happened. That's the thing: Scotland already is independent, isn't it?'"
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
When the alternative is impossible, what’s left?
The Herald : Features: Ian Bell: "All governments fail and all governments behave badly, sooner or later. New Labour's problems are deeper and, in the horrible word, institutional. They have less to do with moral and intellectual exhaustion after a decade in office than with ideology's answer to original sin. Nothing complicated: as it turned out, they didn't believe in anything much. It shows.
The "project" as devised by Blair, Brown, Mandelson and those who went along for the ride was, remains, an empty thing, dead and deadly. Though they claim otherwise with a kind of desperation, the motives behind New Labour were never animated by a guiding principle. The ideals they did hold dear were tawdry things. And they never could, even in opposition, distinguish between means and ends. That has consequences.
You want a true scandal, an authentic example of how New Labour's appetites have eradicated the remnants of a political movement? It didn't make the front pages. Nevertheless, the Commons public accounts committee has at last obliged the Treasury - Gordon Brown's Treasury, until recently - to admit the actual cost of PFI schemes, Gordon Brown's PFI schemes, to the taxpayer. Over the next 25 years we will pay out £170bn for deals generating huge profits while services decline and the pretence of competitive tendering evaporates. The Labour Party did that.
Blair gave us wars and "reform", the surrender of public services to private ends and means. Brown gave us targets and managerialism, the unchecked growth in inequality and the PFI scam. A government dedicated to the attitudes and aspirations of the right, in other words, and a government freely elected. But what does Labour do, what does Labour become, after the "new" party comes finally to grief? What's left?
Who could name the leader likely to follow Brown, or say what he or she might stand for? Who still counts on the Liberals as a social-democratic alternative? Scots inclined to exempt the SNP from the rightward drift of these islands should read a recent interview with Alex Salmond in the Spectator: tax-cutting and Tory nationalism are prominent in the discussion.
There is nothing ordained about a "left alternative". Even the phrase can be made to sound quaint, these days. But Blair and Brown did more than talk. They did their very best to make sure that alternatives would seem forever impossible. Now nothing remains, save shabby means disguised as hypocritical ends"
The "project" as devised by Blair, Brown, Mandelson and those who went along for the ride was, remains, an empty thing, dead and deadly. Though they claim otherwise with a kind of desperation, the motives behind New Labour were never animated by a guiding principle. The ideals they did hold dear were tawdry things. And they never could, even in opposition, distinguish between means and ends. That has consequences.
You want a true scandal, an authentic example of how New Labour's appetites have eradicated the remnants of a political movement? It didn't make the front pages. Nevertheless, the Commons public accounts committee has at last obliged the Treasury - Gordon Brown's Treasury, until recently - to admit the actual cost of PFI schemes, Gordon Brown's PFI schemes, to the taxpayer. Over the next 25 years we will pay out £170bn for deals generating huge profits while services decline and the pretence of competitive tendering evaporates. The Labour Party did that.
Blair gave us wars and "reform", the surrender of public services to private ends and means. Brown gave us targets and managerialism, the unchecked growth in inequality and the PFI scam. A government dedicated to the attitudes and aspirations of the right, in other words, and a government freely elected. But what does Labour do, what does Labour become, after the "new" party comes finally to grief? What's left?
Who could name the leader likely to follow Brown, or say what he or she might stand for? Who still counts on the Liberals as a social-democratic alternative? Scots inclined to exempt the SNP from the rightward drift of these islands should read a recent interview with Alex Salmond in the Spectator: tax-cutting and Tory nationalism are prominent in the discussion.
There is nothing ordained about a "left alternative". Even the phrase can be made to sound quaint, these days. But Blair and Brown did more than talk. They did their very best to make sure that alternatives would seem forever impossible. Now nothing remains, save shabby means disguised as hypocritical ends"
Hell mend
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Another fiasco, but Brown is forever a sucker for business: "The truth is that New Labour has been a sucker for "business" from the moment in the early 1990s when Blair and Brown decided to curry favour with the City. Eager to seem business-friendly, Brown abandoned his pledge to reverse Thatcher's union legislation and privatisation. He decided never to raise income or business taxes, and bizarrely chose Geoffrey Robinson as his buddy. His only act of delegation, ever, was to the one profession he trusted, the financiers of the Bank of England.
The word business still mesmerises Brown. To most people the occupation is about making money. To Brown it is a mysterious priesthood of infinite competence. To build a school or hospital, run a prison or plan an urban renewal, you must pledge partnership with a "businessman". Private money is always good, public bad.
If business wants a new runway at Heathrow, Brown orders one. If business wants the planning regime collapsed, he will collapse it. If business worries over capital gains tax, it will be heard. Never was the maxim, what is good for General Motors is good for the nation, so enshrined in one man. Any theory that Brown is not a real Thatcherite is rubbish.
In Brown's Britain there is no longer a public service ethos, only a business ethos applied to public services. No longer do Presbyterians render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Everything goes to Caesar under a private finance initiative.
After a decade of getting their fingers burned by business links to politics, Brown and his colleagues should surely have been streetwise. Apparently not. Despite reforms requiring openness in donations in 1997, despite the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and despite the trauma of cash-for-honours, nothing was learned.
As Brown thrashed about yesterday he decided there was no rescue from within. He showed the depths of his despair when, as if on his deathbed, he summoned a lawyer and a priest, Judge McCluskey and the former Bishop of Oxford, Lord Harries, hoping for the umpteenth time to "restore trust in the political process". They may save his party from the courts and his soul from damnation. But what do they know of business?
Brown has been woefully served by his infatuation with high finance. Men and women whose sole skill is the pursuit of money have been corralled into the public sector and given tasks way beyond their vocation. They have been honoured with jobs, gongs and contracts. Their money has been taken under the counter. Civil servants have been demeaned and demoralised, and public service has rotted in the process."
The word business still mesmerises Brown. To most people the occupation is about making money. To Brown it is a mysterious priesthood of infinite competence. To build a school or hospital, run a prison or plan an urban renewal, you must pledge partnership with a "businessman". Private money is always good, public bad.
If business wants a new runway at Heathrow, Brown orders one. If business wants the planning regime collapsed, he will collapse it. If business worries over capital gains tax, it will be heard. Never was the maxim, what is good for General Motors is good for the nation, so enshrined in one man. Any theory that Brown is not a real Thatcherite is rubbish.
In Brown's Britain there is no longer a public service ethos, only a business ethos applied to public services. No longer do Presbyterians render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Everything goes to Caesar under a private finance initiative.
After a decade of getting their fingers burned by business links to politics, Brown and his colleagues should surely have been streetwise. Apparently not. Despite reforms requiring openness in donations in 1997, despite the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and despite the trauma of cash-for-honours, nothing was learned.
As Brown thrashed about yesterday he decided there was no rescue from within. He showed the depths of his despair when, as if on his deathbed, he summoned a lawyer and a priest, Judge McCluskey and the former Bishop of Oxford, Lord Harries, hoping for the umpteenth time to "restore trust in the political process". They may save his party from the courts and his soul from damnation. But what do they know of business?
Brown has been woefully served by his infatuation with high finance. Men and women whose sole skill is the pursuit of money have been corralled into the public sector and given tasks way beyond their vocation. They have been honoured with jobs, gongs and contracts. Their money has been taken under the counter. Civil servants have been demeaned and demoralised, and public service has rotted in the process."
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Apt comment
haveone November 21, 2007 1:17 AM
"Be careful what you wish for indeed....the sad fact is that when Labour finally gets thrown out (which is looking more likely to be sooner rather than later), it is their more progressive accomplishments that will be reversed, not their failures. The Conservatives will continue the Thatcherite pulse of the the 'New' part of Labour, while devastating the meager redistributive legacy of Brown's tenure as Chancellor...it is bit demoralizing, but it shows how pandering to the swing vote is never a sustainable policy becasue you may get power, but you can't ever be bold enough to make truly significant and sustainable changes....NewLab was always leaning too much toward the minimalist reforming reactionary social stance that made the LibDems seem like radical freedom fighters (quite a task really). Ah yes, the sad, yet inevitable decline and death of an idea (NewLabbism) that should never have really been allowed into adolescence."
astute comment on run of the mill grauniad article
Jonathan Freedland: The sheer gormlessness of Discgate theatens Labour's claim to power | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics
"Be careful what you wish for indeed....the sad fact is that when Labour finally gets thrown out (which is looking more likely to be sooner rather than later), it is their more progressive accomplishments that will be reversed, not their failures. The Conservatives will continue the Thatcherite pulse of the the 'New' part of Labour, while devastating the meager redistributive legacy of Brown's tenure as Chancellor...it is bit demoralizing, but it shows how pandering to the swing vote is never a sustainable policy becasue you may get power, but you can't ever be bold enough to make truly significant and sustainable changes....NewLab was always leaning too much toward the minimalist reforming reactionary social stance that made the LibDems seem like radical freedom fighters (quite a task really). Ah yes, the sad, yet inevitable decline and death of an idea (NewLabbism) that should never have really been allowed into adolescence."
astute comment on run of the mill grauniad article
Jonathan Freedland: The sheer gormlessness of Discgate theatens Labour's claim to power | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics
Monday, 12 November 2007
Elizabeth my dear
Tear me apart and boil my bones
Ill not rest till shes lost her throne
My aim is true my message is clear
Its curtains for you, elizabeth my dear
Ill not rest till shes lost her throne
My aim is true my message is clear
Its curtains for you, elizabeth my dear
Sunday, 11 November 2007
Clock this
BBC NEWS | Magazine | Spring forward, fall back: "whenever politicians turn their attention to calendars and clocks, we should take a long hard look beyond the apparently innocuous practical benefits proposed. There is bound to be something more considerable at stake than an extra hour in bed. "
Friday, 9 November 2007
Cash... but no honour
BBC NEWS | Politics | Blair accused of 'gold-digging': "Tony Blair has been accused of 'gold-digging' and 'money-sucking' after he reportedly charged £240,000 for giving a speech in China. The China Youth Daily newspaper said the address had been like 'listening to some domestic county or city-level official' and had given 'nothing new'."
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Roots: #66
Take it Easy in Winslow, Arizona | Music | Guardian Unlimited Music: "...while Paul Klee was holed up in Switzerland painting pictures of cute little kitty-cats, Adolf Hitler was wiping out European civilization. And at the very same time that Led Zeppelin IV and Exile on Main Street seemed to be dominating the airwaves, the folk-rocky Eagles were dominating a different frequency on the airwaves with what came to be known as the California sound...while many people believed that they were living through the era of Bowie and disco and heavy metal and punk, the most popular band of the era was writing songs about standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. This proves, incontrovertibly, that there is no such thing as 'reality,' that it all depends on your age, ethnic group, and how much liquor you've consumed."
How true. In many ways for us The Eagles were the enemy, the kind of band the blowdried girls we kind of fancied fancied and not us. The bittersweet pain of having to learn how to play Take It Easy, to actually perform Already Gone, to have to listen to Hotel California on every jukebox in a one jukebox town. I even still like Desperado. Now I remember what The Clash and Joy Division were trying to save us all from. Did they manage?
How true. In many ways for us The Eagles were the enemy, the kind of band the blowdried girls we kind of fancied fancied and not us. The bittersweet pain of having to learn how to play Take It Easy, to actually perform Already Gone, to have to listen to Hotel California on every jukebox in a one jukebox town. I even still like Desperado. Now I remember what The Clash and Joy Division were trying to save us all from. Did they manage?
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