Those who follow the political mafia on Twitter could be forgiven for wondering whether any real work was done in Westminster yesterday. The Twits seemed concerned only with the arrival of Larry the new Downing Street cat.
In one way you can see why. Animals have offered a new set of political allegories to the metaphor-impoverished scribblers of the lobby since the appearance of rats on camera behind tv reporters standing opposite the famous black door of No 10. References to sinking ships and the lack of boomtown times followed apace.
David Cameron’s press people were promptly asked whether another cat was in the offing to replace Humphrey, who quit during the Blair era. The Coalition denied it, and then, in a major political U-turn, announced the imminent arrival of Larry. Much talk of fur flying followed. Now expect copious references to Tory fat cats, especially since it turns out new arrival is 6.9 kilos, which is not just fat but positively obese in the cat-weight tables.
That will not be all. A Downing St spokesman immediately announced that the former stray is “a good ratter”. By contrast insiders at the Battersea Dog and Cat Rescue Home disclose that the neutered male four year-old’s track record so far is confined to chasing fluffy mouse toys. Where Larry stands on voting reform has yet to be disclosed.
FollowPerhaps it tells us something about the difference between art and science. Scientists have discovered that a bright yellow pigment used by Vincent Van Gogh in some of his most famous paintings turns brown in sunlight. They are trying to work out why as the first step in reversing the process.
And yet there is in art something which celebrates the transience of life rather than seeking to arrest it. Sometimes it is dictated by the medium: Giotto’s frescoes are fading from exposure to light, even the greatest of Turner’s watercolours is not fixed, and now it seems Van Gogh’s yellow has been abreacting with his pigmented white.
But the exquisite poignancy with which earthly pleasures slip through our mortal fingers been one of the great insights of human consciousness. The Buddha spoke of impermanence. The slave next to the general in the triumphal processions of Ancient Rome whispered in his ear memento mori, remember you must die. The Dutch painters of the 17th century specialised in the vanitas, symbols of death and decay, like the skull and the morbid still life, or of fleeting evanescence, like soap bubbles or butterflies.
As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone. But don’t expect science to give up quite so quickly.
Biggest is not the same as strongest when it comes to the Chinese economy
Don’t be fooled by the figures. China may have now officially overtaken Japan to become the world’s second biggest economy with a GDP of $5.9 trillion. This is an important symbolic shift for the country whose economy will eventually become bigger than that of the United States, an inevitability in the long run given that it has four times the population. But second biggest is not second strongest, as People’s Daily newspaper acknowledged in Beijing yesterday.
The average Japanese earns almost $40,000 a year compared with just $3,600 per head in China. Though Shanghai and Beijing now boast luxury boutiques, hundreds of millions of Chinese still live in severe hardship, particularly in rural areas – from which people are migrating with such breakneck speed that China will have 221 cities of over one million inhabitants each by 2025. China’s rapid economic growth has had costs in pollution, frustrated civil liberties and poor infrastructure (with less than a quarter of the railway lines that America had in 1916).
China is the world’s manufacturer in some areas. It makes nearly 60 per cent of the worlds clothes and 80 per cent of the world’s toys. One day its population will constitute a huge consumer market for the West’s goods, but at present it buys just 2 per cent of UK exports. Huge trade deficits will remain for some time and pressure will increase on Beijing to allow its currency to rise in value.
China’s hunger for natural resources and energy will also drive up the cost of commodities and raise the potential for conflict. It will also mean trade deals in Africa, Latin America and Asia which undermine the human rights and good governance reforms desired by the West. Gentle pressure will need to be maintained on Beijing on that. The same is true of global warming for no meaningful international deal can be done without China, though, given the country’s lack of per capita wealth, it will still be the West that needs to lead on climate change.
What is clear is that the Chinese economy, which has more than doubled in size in the past 10 years and will double in size again in the next 10, is becoming an important engine of global growth. That should be an investment opportunity for the richer world, rather than a cause for apprehension.
Why David Cameron makes me feel physically sick
The prospect of David Cameron continuing to peddle his brand of illiberal populism makes me feel physically sick. No need for such violent language, I hear you chide. Indeed. That is pretty much what I thought when the prime minister said that his gorge literally rose at the idea that Britain might be forced to give the vote to people in prison. I don’t suppose he paused to wonder what those in jail might feel when they heard his vomit-inducing vocabulary.
Who cares what prisoners think? Not many of our elected representatives, to judge by the overwhelming vote – 234 against just 22 – when MPs were asked to vote on a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Britain is wrong in its present blanket ban on prisoners voting.
Of course it does not help that the test case on the issue was taken to Strasbourg by an ex-convict called John Hirst who killed his landlady with an axe, while out on parole from a two-year burglary sentence, bludgeoning her seven times before calmly making a cup of coffee. At his trial the judge described him as “an arrogant and dangerous person with a severe personality defect.” In 35 years behind bars he became Britain’s most litigious prisoner. On the television the other day he came across as both sinister and smug.
But hard cases make bad law. As a society we should not predicate the way we live, or make law, on the most extreme cases. We should consider what is best for us as a society overall. And on this issue the House of Commons got it shockingly, but totally unsurprisingly, wrong.
Multiculturalism through the looking glass
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
The word this week is multiculturalism. It has as many definitions as there are experts to give them. Enthusiasts say it is about people of different races and faiths living side by side, without surrendering their identities. Critics insist it is fostering a divided society which allows minorities to behave in ways that should not be tolerated in a civilised democracy.
Meaning has shifted over the decades. In the Sixties it was an enriching “live and let live” tolerance of steelbands, saris and samosas. Then in the Eighties it expanded to the idea of celebrating different cultures as a way of countering routine racial discrimination. But after 9/11 hope turned to fear and the emphasis in multiculturalism shifted subconsciously from valuing diversity to avoiding conflict.
A similar shift seems to have taken place more rapidly within David Cameron. In opposition in 2007 he went to Birmingham to spend two days and a night with a Muslim family in Sparkbrook. To make a more cohesive society, he wrote afterwards, integration must be “a two-way street”. Minority communities had responsibilities but so did wider society to offer attractive values and quality of life. “Many British Asians see a society that hardly inspires them to integrate,” he wrote, quoting Edmund Burke: “To make men love their country, their country ought to be lovable”.
Ironically he warned against the “lazy” use of language which fuels demonisation of Muslims by routinely associating the word Islamic and terrorist. “By using the word ‘Islamist’ to describe the threat, we actually help do the terrorist ideologues’ work for them.” We need to guard against “soft bigotry”, he said, concluding “we cannot bully people into feeling British; we have to inspire them”.
As prime minister he appears to have forgotten what he learned in opposition. His recent speech in Munich linking the “failings” of multiculturalism to terrorism handed a propaganda coup to the extremists of the English Defence League as they launched one of the biggest anti-Islam rallies ever staged in Britain. Mr Cameron’s speech was full of the dog-whistle “soft bigotry” phrases to appease the fearful Tory right (and “muscular liberals”) who objected to last month’s warnings by the Tory chairman, Baroness Warsi, that Islamophobia is being sub-consciously legitimised in polite British society.
How are you? I hope you’re not one of those dysfunctional people who takes such a question literally. I don’t really want a forensic analysis of your mood, psychological state or – worst of all – a blow-by-blow account of the progress of your latest operation or physical ailment. I am enquiring merely as a conversational pleasantry – an opening acknowledgement of mutual respect – before we get down to the business of the day. You may offer in reply a sentence or two, to which I’ll nod sympathetically, but spare me the detail. There is such a thing as too much information.
Some of the purblind people now running the country appear not to understand this. Ministers in the Coalition government have come up with a scheme to put on the internet “crime maps” covering every street in England and Wales and showing how much anti-social crime, mugging, violence and burglary goes on there.
This is – pardon my weariness – the latest offering in the arrival of the Big Society, as it is known in Cameroonian philosophy. The Home Secretary, in what must be the ultimate blurring of the old distinctions between left and right, has pronounced, without evident irony, that the scheme will give “power to the people” in the matter of law and order. The new website will make us all feel safer because we will all be able to monitor local crime trends and do something about it.
But what exactly are we to do? Not, presumably, set up Cairo-style roadblocks at the end of the street. No, information is power, it seems, and we are supposed to approach our local beat officer or attend a public meeting armed with the latest statistics. In that way we will “drive the priorities” of the elected police commissioners who will be the Government’s next wheeze. Public meetings. That should drive fear into the hearts of local hoodlums.
Fear in the heart is a key determinant here. I once had an elderly relative who was made paranoid by the ceaseless hysteria of the local evening paper which seemed to subsist on an almost exclusive diet of outraged crime stories. So afraid was my relative that she actually screwed shut all the windows of her home for fear of burglars. She also limited the number of times she would make her 500 yard mid-morning walk to the local shops for fear of being mugged.
In vain I pointed out the low statistical likelihood of anything horrible happening to her. There were comparatively few burglaries in the area, and the victims of unprovoked street violence were largely young men aged between 18 and 25 in the town centre after 11 at night. She was at far greater risk of being trapped in a fire in the window-fastened prison that had become her home than anything else. But no mathematical reality could counter the oracle that was the Evening Gazette.
The idea that the culture of different ethnic groups should be nurtured and celebrated, as the basis for social harmony, has been the cornerstone of Britain’s attitude to its minority communities for over three decades. Multiculturalism was never popular with the little Englanders of the right. But in recent years it has increasingly been attacked by the liberal left.
It is the critique of these so-called “muscular liberals” that David Cameron has adopted in his surprisingly hardline speech.
The shift began after the traumatic terrorist attacks of 9/11. Many of those who like to think of themselves as liberals then began exhibiting a new intolerance, demanding that minorities should assimilate more. Multiculturalism must not be allowed, as the prime minister now says, to encourage different cultures to live separate lives, sometimes behaving in ways that run counter to “our” values.
But he, like so many illiberal liberals, has resorted to caricature to make his case, citing practices like forced marriage as an example – a practise that is, as distinct from arranged marriages, generally condemned as unacceptable throughout most minority communities.
What the West must not be panicked into doing over Egypt
Pity the poor intelligence expert who reassured a session in Davos last week that – despite an overthrown government in Tunisia, violence in Yemen and food price protests in Algeria and Jordan – Egypt was too stable to succumb to popular protest. Others were less surprised by the turn of events.
The countries of north Africa have many problems in common: escalating food prices, increasing unemployment, and corrupt, inefficient and sclerotic leaders whose power is sustained by oppressive, if not downright repressive, police states. The region has felt like a pressure cooker waiting to blow.
Now that the vent is released the old covert forces are once again surfacing. The price of Brent crude oil has surged to $100plus a barrel for fear that production will fall or a closure of the Suez Canal might disrupt supplies. Oil is not just vital to the economies of the West. It has allowed Arab states to fund large armies and secret police organisations.
Suddenly worries are raised that Egypt, Tunisia and the rest could become extreme Islamist theocracies. Fears for the security of Israel are being cranked up in the United States, where the nation is seen as a bulwark of American interests in the Middle East, and where no serious US politician wants to risk losing the massive American Jewish vote.
Vested interests conspire to promote the idea that the countries of the region might fall, one by one, to the Islamic bogeyman. In Israel the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Egypt could become like Iran after its 1979 revolution. And in Cairo the regime withdrew police from the streets, and instructed secret police to masquerade as looters to give the impression that without Mubarak the country will descend into chaos.
Once fat was a sign of prosperity. A goodly portly frame was a measure of success and status to our Victorian forebears. Now the opposite is the case. It is the poor who are fat and the better-off who sport slimmer healthier physiques.
But we are all getting fatter, the latest stats show. The rate of increase in average Body Mass Index measurements for British men is second only to that for our fat friends in the United States. No wonder we need wider stretchers in our ambulances. Yet we are the lucky ones. We can afford the drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, which keep us alive.
The causes of this tsunami of worldwide obesity – fatty food, sugary drinks, smoking, and the office-based sedentary lifestyles that come with urbanisation – are now spreading through the world’s poorer nations. The women of Southern Africa are among the fattest in the world.
In all but the very poorest nations traditional staples like rice are being replaced with Western-style fast foods. As a result a global pandemic of cardiovascular disease looms which could kill tens of millions of people. But poor countries are not in a position to pay for the drugs their thickening populations will need. Such is the paradox, and peril, of development.
Young people today will be the first generation for 100 years who will end up worse off than their parents. So the Labour leader Ed Miliband will say in a speech today. It is a profound insight into what could become the defining political issue of the decades to come.
The generation which shaped the modern world grew up in an era in which, as the then prime minister Harold Macmillan put it, people had “never had it so good”. So it proved. Average incomes soared, life expectancy rose, infant mortality plummeted. Modern medicines staved off cancer, heart disease and countless other diseases. University was free. Jobs were plentiful. Pensions were sound. House prices climbed inexorably, creating nice equity nest eggs for owners who sat back and did nothing.
But the last generation got too greedy. It deregulated financial markets, dooming its kids to job competition with cheap globalised labour. And it crowned its achievements with a global financial meltdown and an inheritance of climate change which will sentence the next generation to decades of picking up the bill. The unwritten covenant – that parents create better lives for their children, and in return those children finance the care of their parents in their old age – has been broken.
The generation of post-war Baby-Boomers, having raised the expectations of their kids, are leaving behind a world set to frustrate those aspirations. For the first time in more than a century there is a risk that today’s young people will find it harder than their mothers or fathers did to continue in education, find a decent job and own their own home. Mr Miliband has put his finger on something here which the nation intuitively knows to be true. Polls show a deep sense of pessimism among voters. Almost three-quarters of the nation believes life will be harder for our children.
Yet having crystallised this perception Mr Miliband now needs to formulate the policies to deal with a world in which Britain is going to have a lot more older people who will need a lot more looking after – and far fewer younger folk to pay for it. That long-term demographic imbalance could prove a more grievous legacy than our current economic doldrums.
Here’s one law the police may not have expected they would have to uphold: the law of unintended consequences. Politicians, on the other hand, ought to be better acquainted with the notion, and better prepared for it. read more…
The sap from England’s greenwoods runs in our yeoman blood
No one knows where the Green Man came from. His origins are lost in the undergrowth of history. But examples of a bark-gnarled, leaf-bearded face – with shoots and branches sprouting from his hair or mouth – are to be found carved in the stone of the oldest buildings standing on these isles. Perhaps he is a pre-Christian symbol of the seasonal cycle of new life. What we do know is that he was not called the Green Man until he was so dubbed by an aristocratic folklorist in 1939. We have to guard against romanticism when it comes to the countryside and our heritage.
It would be easy to mock. Many did when a host of celebrities – from Tracey Emin and Annie Lennox to Julian Barnes and the Archbishop of Canterbury – recently wrote an open letter descrying the government’s plan to sell off half the woodland owned by the Forestry Commission, in the largest change of land ownership since the Second World War. “We have relied on them since time immemorial, yet we are only a heartbeat in their history,” they wrote with poetic flourish. What could such people know of forestry, some scoffed.
But if there is something romantic in the way we may speak of Britain’s ancient woodlands there is something deep about our attachment. The Green Man tells us that, even if we have only found a name for him comparatively recently. Our bond with our greenwoods goes back to sacred druidic groves and beyond. It is rooted in yew trees which have stood two thousand years or more, longer than the ancient churches beside which they stand. It survives through the myth of Robin Hood and in the history which followed.
And one of the constituent qualities about the sacral soil on which these trees stand has been the persistent issue of ownership. “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?” asked that prototype of the turbulent priest, John Ball, during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. He was hanged, drawn and quartered for his railing against “the unjust oppression of naughty men”.
