| Labour Election Strategy Sir - Imagine the scene. You’re in 10 Downing Street, tasked with devising a new strategy that will deliver Labour an unprecedented fourth election triumph. Challenges don’t get much tougher. Way behind in the opinion polls, the party has a leader that even a lot of its members want shot of, never mind the country. Struggling to find effective attack lines, Labour keeps bashing away desperately at the ones it has, hoping if the messages are repeated often enough people will be scared off voting Tory. Conservative cuts will leave the poor high and dry, Labour ministers cry, while Eton-educated David Cameron’s wealthy pals will get even richer. Give them a microphone and they will remind you again, again and again of the Tories’ plans to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1m. Ditto tax breaks for married couples, which they say will unfairly penalise the dumped mother struggling to bring up a child on her own, and be a bad use of public money at a time when big spending cuts will have to be made. Leave aside the fact the inheritance tax policy will be paid for by levying the super-rich ‘non-doms’, Cameron has been sensitive to the charge that the poor will be worse off if he makes it to No 10, and has had some success in blunting Labour’s attacks. The Tory leader has promised to divert more NHS and education funding to deprived areas, to restore the link between state pensions and the rise in average earnings, and ensure a right to move for social housing tenants. On the economy the real choice is how soon and deep the cuts in public spending will be – a gloomy subject for a British public that could do with a little cheering up. Do you remember the reason Gordon Brown gave for calling off the ‘election that never was’ in 2007? He said it was because he wanted time to implement his ‘vision for change’. One of my first acts as election supremo would be to ban the prime minister from talking about his ‘vision’ for a ‘fairer, stronger and more prosperous’ society. His speeches on the subject are usually jargon-filled gobbledygook and either send people to sleep, spell out the blindingly obvious (who wants a weak, unfair society?) or descend into ambiguous nonsense. Forgive me for stating a simple fact, but what Labour needs is policies that are going to make people vote for it. If you have been in power for 13 years, a ‘steady as she goes’ approach is not going to win over an electorate sick to bloody death of you. Labour desperately needs some signature policies that will energise the public. The 64-million-dollar question, of course, is what they should be. If Brown promised to raise the minimum wage to £7 an hour, it would be a key issue at the election, a potential ‘game-changer’. There would be an outcry from business leaders and warnings of a huge rise in unemployment at a time when there are already nearly 2.5 million people on the dole queue. But at least it would be a clear policy to give millions of low-pay workers a reason for voting Labour, unless they calculated that earning a higher wage was not worth the risk of losing their job. Legalising assisted suicide would be hugely controversial, yet it would concentrate minds at the ballot box, and help reshape the election debate. A transformation of the tax system, with people at the top paying more to ease the burden for those at the bottom, is a Liberal Democrat proposal that would not look out of place in a Labour manifesto. I am not arguing that these policies should be adopted, but making the point that capturing the public’s imagination with some radical ideas is the only realistic hope for avoiding election defeat. If Brown and co can’t think of any, maybe being in opposition is the best place for them after all. Harri Aston Living Modernity Sir - Living in this great metropolis of ours, my thoughts turn continually to the green, green grass of home and my deep sense of hiraeth; which for the English amongst you is something akin to homesickness but a deeper, heartfelt longing for one’s homeland. London is the opposite of my home. Lots of people, pollution and buildings. Everything that is definable as all that is wrong with modernity. Dirty, wasteful, materialistic, polluted and immoral. Yet it is seductive. And what’s more, it is strangely fulfilling to live in this most decadent and divided of cities; this glittering jewel in our crown. Why is this? When you really think about it, modernity IS distasteful, dirty, destructive and unpleasant; but it is better than the alternative, more alluring than the alternative and definitely more fun than the alternative.
While we sit here and criticise our modern time because it’s fashionable to be self hating, we need to sit and think, why have I bought in to it, am I an idiot? Or am I attracted to a better, longer and fuller life? While we sit here in our dilapidated luxury and moan about the evils of the modern world, we should consider whether those people not privileged enough to enjoy our standard of living would wish to trade places. I’m sure they would jump at the chance. But would you, realistically trade with them? I know I wouldn’t.
Modernity has given us the chance to moan about it. Post-Modernity allows us to worry about the environment, human rights and the failings of the world and maybe change it for the better.
So until you want to stop drinking coffee, stop consuming imported anything and stop living in London, spare a thought for modernity, the thing which gives you the ability to winge.
Adam Benson-Davies The Politicians we Deserve Sir - Glasgow North East may be, geographically, next door to Glasgow East, the constituency in which Alex Salmond with typical bombast, proclaimed to be the site of a political earthquake, but there the similarities end. It’s fair to say that that the assorted boffins at the Geological Survey were probably not having a sleepless night at the prospect of a Glasgow by-election worrying the Richter scale again.
Blink and you might have missed it. The campaign was spectacularly unspectacular, and Labour cantered to victory with a margin of comfort that must remind them of how it was to be popular.
Lets not sugar-coat things; Glasgow North East is not in a good way. It has huge social problems, terrible housing, and little or no employment. It is a place devoid of aspiration, hope or prospects. The forgotten residents of Glasgow North East will die years earlier, after enduring a much unhealthier life than the average person.
In other words, it is like any number of desolate urban communities across the UK that are home to the British political underclass. Would-be politicians will shower them with platitudes, with talk of ‘partnership’, and what ‘we’ will do. But bear in mind their last MP, the former Speaker Michael Martin, didn’t even have an office in the constituency, never mind live there.
And yet, these people have returned another Labour MP, like they have every time since George Hardie, brother of the esteemed Keir Hardie, held the seat 74 years ago. 74 years, the last 40 of which can be characterised by steep decline, followed by social stagnation; and yet the people have voted for the status quo.
Why? Why are people in the UK so wedded to one political party? People still proclaim with great working class pride that they are a ‘loyal labour voter’, yet it is coming on fifteen years since Labour ceased to be a socialist party. Does the Labour voter of Glasgow North East really believe that the front bench of Labour, made up of the Oxbridge educated middle classes from the home-counties could even find Glasgow North East on a map? And if they did, I can tell you right now they wouldn’t want to be there for long.
This misplaced loyalty is actually counter-productive to all sides. It encourages political parties to slip into complacency, to take the people for granted and to use safe seats to place rising stars and give them an easy ride into parliament. It means voters are selling themselves short by returning those parties which have a record of spectacular failure, like in Glasgow North East. And it inflicts on us all governments who pander to their swing voters, and take their core vote for granted.
They say that people get the politicians they deserve; I don’t know if that is true or not. But when we reward failure out of misplaced loyalty, perhaps we do deserve to be treated with contempt. The people of Glasgow North East have rejected change, by overwhelmingly returning the party that has represented them as they have slipped to the bottom of almost every social, health and wealth indicator.
Why should people expect change to happen, if they are not prepared to vote for it? Keith James | | A Parallel Universe Sir - A glimpse into an alternative world, a parallel universe, another you. Is this a good thing? Do you want to see the ways in which your life would have been different if you had taken a different choice? To use a matrix analogy so beloved of one of my former lecturers when discussing post-modernism, do you really want to know what your life would have been like if you had chosen the blue pill?
I don’t have any social networking sites myself, but in the odd moment of weakness, I have looked at profiles via friends’ sites; I was struck by a strange feeling, a feeling that is halfway between nostalgia and melancholy.
You realise how old you are, when you see ex-school friends with whom you have long since dropped any pretence to ‘stay in touch’ posing in their profile photos with children, or in their wedding outfits. Female school friends have unfamiliar surnames. Everybody looks almost the same, but never quite; you think about how you must look. Do you have less hair? More chins?
Then there is the fact that your imagination immediately starts placing these photos in the most fantastic (and I’m sure, the most incorrect) context. People have all become social marketers; obviously you don’t put any old photo on your profile, you put the one taken in as exotic a location as possible, or with the most interesting background, to solicit the exact response which I am trying to describe; is he on holiday, or does he actually live in a penthouse apartment…
Then are the relationships that never were; sweethearts from childhood who are now married, connections that were almost made but never quite. How different would you life have been? You can rediscover old affections, or feel acrimony rising from old wounds that you had long since forgotten about.
Is there such a thing as an ex-friend? Or are there just active and inactive friends? You can see a picture of someone that you were close with, and lost touch for no good reason; laziness, selfishness? It is a strange phenomenon.
The lyrics of Dougie MacLean’s Caledonia spring to mind…. “lost the friends that needed losing…”. Did you need to lose all of these people? This is the melancholy.
Because when you see the name or photo of somebody to whom you are indifferent, you may feel mild curiosity, amusement, or just ambivalence. But when the name of someone with whom you were really close pops up, someone you might genuinely miss, you are overcome with nostalgia and sadness; the melancholy.
Think of the nights out you had, the laughs, the sitting around playing Mario Karts, the shared experiences; first time you got drunk, first time you pulled. Why did you lose touch again….?
Before you know it your mind is racing over all manner of things; perceived slights, fall-outs, fights, choices that you made, choices that they made. In a matter of seconds you have run-through years of history and remade every decision that led you to the point you’re at now, from where you peer into this static time machine.
I have to admit, I have thought quite seriously about setting up a site. In a moment of genuine excitement, I thought about contacting so many old friends. But it passed. The reality is that it’s all history, trying to snatch back a few stolen moments from my past. Times I enjoyed yes, but that are past, gone, forgotten?
What could I possibly say to them? That old social chestnut, “what’ve you been up to?” How do you even begin to answer that question about ten of the most formative years of your life? And would I even care about the answer? Does it all just go back to us being social marketers, looking to ‘benchmark’ our progress against our ‘competitors’?
I think I must have come to the conclusion that it is, because I never did sign-up. Is being able to nose about somebody’s profile, to voyeuristically look at their photos, to judge their life and yours really worth it?
Maybe there was a reason we lost touch, maybe we are just different? Does reducing the last umpteen years of life to a few flippant paragraphs really constitute a conversation? Is swapping some mindless chat and making some quick comparisons going to rekindle a great friendship after not speaking for years? Of course not. But it will give you another ‘friend’ for your profile… Keith James
The Times, They Are A-Changing.
Sir - A cheque-shirted hick, playing the banjo whilst holding a bottle of bourbon? Then heading on down to the recording studio in a pick up truck, but not before having an argument with their partner, with whom they are, somehow related? If your immediate thought is country music, then I suspect you are not alone.
I admit I’m being a little over-zealous.
When the genre first came to be a truly commercial vehicle in the late 1920’s, the likes of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers were established as the founders of Country music; the former seen as the “First Family” and latter regarded as the “Father of Country Music”. The quality of material they produced is still influencing musicians and being re-recorded to this day. Theirs was a sound with which families could identify during the Great Depression. “In The Jailhouse Now” or “Can the Circle be Unbroken”; both tell of stories that the average American might have experienced during the time of the Depression.
The emergence of one Hank Williams and his band “The Drifting Cowboys” in 1947 has often been cited as a milestone, one that saw the evolution of the genre, from the parochial to the populist. Hank, nearly an illiterate, but with eleven number one records, wrote songs about the everyday man and the troubles that his audience - and in fact himself, experienced. He and wife Audrey were known not to get on, often fighting about Hank’s occasional drinking binges. On many occasions, Hank even found himself locked out of his home.
Indeed, this tragic figure eventually fell victim to such binges; he was controversially found dead in the back of a limousine courtesy of a drugs overdose on the 1st January 1951. Despite his demise at the relatively young age of 29, his recording career, lasting barely a decade, has influenced many since. Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Jimmy Buffett are just a few of the many to list Williams as the artist that most influenced them and their down-to-earth, home-grown tunes, which sold by the million.
In 1999, a song recorded by contemporary stalwarts George Strait and Alan Jackson was released. Titled “Down on Music Row” it criticised country music for favouring pop instruments, such as the drum, over instruments which are traditionally associated with the genre, such as the banjo or fiddle. Country Music Radio was not spared either, saying that the past-greats of country music, such as Hank Williams, wouldn’t be given the same opportunities in the modern era.
The 2000 film, “O Brother Where Art Thou?”, a Coen Brothers film, had a soundtrack that included artists deemed to produce offerings that were true to the heritage of country music. Alison Krauss, the darling of the bluegrass movement, who recently co-released “Raising Sand” with former Led Zeppelin star Robert Plant and The Whites added to the album’s credibility. Even a version of Jimmie Rodgers’ “In the Jailhouse Now” was included. The landmark album won a Grammy Award after selling more than seven million copies and suggested the possibility of a renaissance for country music.
Seven years later, that promise has yet to manifest. Over the summer, the only albums in the country charts are from acts that are well-established. Taylor Swift’s last two albums have maintained their top ten status for a total of 169 weeks – over three years. Lady Antebellum has seen 61 weeks in the top ten. It must be recognised that popular names will always be at the forefront of any genre of music and will remain in the charts for some time; yet such examples illustrate that in country music at least, the current crop of commercially successful artists and bands offer little hope for the future of the genre. Russell Hill | | Room for Reflection
Sir - According to Edmund Burke, “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites... society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less there is within, the more there must be without.”
The United Nation’s World Prospects Report of May 2005 notes that the population density of the United Kingdom is 253.745 people per square kilometre, the 51st most densely populated country on Earth. This can be compared with Germany (229.348 -55th), France (117.994 - 93rd), Italy (199.789 - 60th), Belgium (352.284 - 33rd) and the Netherlands (399.604 - 28th).
Britain finds itself, even by European standards, rather crowded. In contrast, the other English-speaking countries of the World are enjoying the fruits of their colonial origins, Canada has a population density of 3.403 people per square kilometre, giving them a ranking of 228th, the United States (32.043 - 178th), Australia (2.882 - 233rd) and New Zealand (15.953 -200th).
These latter are countries all characterised by endless plains or untouched terrains. The cleft stick that we Brits find ourselves stuck in is that we share the same circumstantial problems as our Western European neighbours, but much of the political culture, historical experiences, and social attitudes as our Anglophonic cousins. But Britain has never had any Australian outback, any Canadian prairies, any American frontier.
The recognition of ‘Space’ as a significant concept has been influential in social and cultural studies for decades now, but its important relationship to the underlying behavioural norms and ideological assumptions of our political culture are rarely noticed. Granted, the concept has had an important place in administrative micro-policy choices from the mid-Victorian philanthropic social reformers through the post-war urban planners and social engineers right up to the present. Nevertheless, the mistaken idea seems to abound in our society that there exists no contradiction between our increasingly cramped condition and many of the fundamental assumptions of our Anglo-Saxon social and political world view.
I’m talking here fundamentally about the dominating ideological assumptions derived from the popular understanding of negative liberty – a product of a pre-industrial and rural 17th Century Britain and the outcome of the great constitutional struggles of that era. I’m talking about the contemporary incarnations of that Hobbesian view of liberty, where human association is understood simply as a set of constantly colliding particles in perpetual differential motion, where one can do as one pleases “as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else”. The only problem is that in a crowded room one can’t help but elbow someone in the face just by turning round to ask the time.
The result of this now ubiquitous view of liberty is a descent into an ideologically and dogmatically asserted collection of clichés that mistake licence for liberty, and which masque unrestrained personal appetites behind a thin veil of semi-intellectual arguments regurgitated from a gross misreading and simplification of the great liberal thinkers, such as John Mill and Adam Smith.
To be sure, I’m not talking here about the commitment to certain civil, legal, and institutional guarantees which have been the proud foundation of our nation’s relatively long and fairly sound political history. What I do mean, is that kind of hyper-individualistic and atomistic credo that serves as an excuse for everyone to clamour for instant gratification and to pursue their own ends regardless, plunging us into a war of all against all. In a land of ever expanding capacities and frontiers, this kind of ideology might not put undue strain on the social fabric, such as in the United States (‘just a little bit further out West’). However, in such a densely populated territory as ours there will be a price to be paid for this blindly asserted and doctrinaire aspect of our political culture.
Some reflection on a couple of exemplars like housing and transportation can highlight the point quite well.
Look at attitudes to transportation. Despite arguments that some other European countries have more cars per capita than the UK, one must realise that the prevailing sentiment in those countries is that this is not an ideal situation and that public transportation is the most responsibly sustainable, socially virtuous, efficient, and environmentally sound way of getting about whenever possible. In contrast, since the 1980s we Brits have continued to ape North American norms of car ownership, and the behaviour that comes with it. This is clear from the ever rising numbers of freudianly huge and anti-social 4x4s, the spread of sneering contempt for public transport amongst the young, the bitter resistance to fiscal and regulatory attempts to curb the inconsiderate habits of many drivers, and the growing inability to walk to the shops for a pint of milk. The often ingenuous argument that the relative costs of ‘PT’, fear of local crime, and road traffic accidents, can account for this behaviour misses the point that a vicious circle has arisen, where policies of reform and expenditure find little support and legitimacy amongst a population that is simply unwilling to move out of its own personal comfort zone. Political leadership will only go where there’s a chance that people will follow!
Similarly, consider the historic ad hoc quality of British road construction due to the very English aversion to coordinated action and forward planning. Whilst any trip to continental cities leaves one with the impression of spacious and well-thought-out thoroughfares, we find ourselves with urban roads which are usually turned into parking-lot obstacle courses when the schools chuck out. When was the last time you saw a grass verge without a dirty great big tyre furrow ploughed straight through it?
When it comes to housing and the civic landscape, it is axiomatic that Britons (mainly in England, as Scottish cities have quite a continental urban heritage) is driven by the suburban aspiration encapsulated in the detached house. This is a legacy of the 19th Century middle-class flight from the Georgian town house out to the peripheral green belt and away from the environmental and social decay of the industrialising inner cities. Nevertheless, circumstances drove people out and circumstances will drive them back in. Already house prices and government action are drawing younger folk onto ‘brown field’ developments closer the centre, which in the final analysis is because we have insufficient space for everyone to be a “king in his own castle”. Despite this, there is immense cultural resistance from the ingrained tradition of suburban home ownership, something we share with other Anglophonic nations.
However, when one looks to other European cities, ceteris paribus we see larger populations actually living more comfortably in smaller urban areas. Comparing Leeds (770,800 people living in 213 sq mi.) with Vienna (1,680,266 in 160.2 sq mi.), we can see that in the latter city more than twice the people are living in 75% of the space. Such a comparison is quite typical throughout much of continental Europe. This is because the Viennese are willing to live in apartments, use public transportation, walk, and commit to coordinated long-term strategies – things that John Bull at present finds rather repugnant. This contributes to Vienna being one of the most peaceful, pleasant, and prosperous cities on the planet, whilst we all sit in rush-hour traffic jams ironically complaining about house prices and anti-social behaviour. So despite actually having statistically less dense cities, our attitudes condemn us to choking congestion, forests of parked cars, and tense interpersonal friction which constantly erodes the quality of our daily lives.
In light of the quote of Edmund Burke at the top, are we then surprised that speed cameras are popping up like buboes across the land, that traffic wardens are morphing into intransigent pedants, or that the motorist is being singled out for a good hiding?
Cars abandoned in the road outside shops with ‘legitimising’ hazard lights flashing away; neighbours parking their multiplying fleet of cars in front of other peoples’ houses when they have sufficient space (thought slightly inconvenient for them) on their own drives; ad hoc parking spaces halfway across the footpath officially sanctioned by painting a car-sized box half on the pavement in resignation to the fait accompli. These are just some of the sights now common on British streets. Can we not see that the authoritarian reaction of government agencies is in fact a social reaction as Burke’s aphorism predicts, a defence mechanism stimulated in the body of society itself. It seems that we are behaving more and more under unconscious libertarian political assumptions that are turning us into a country of atomised, mutually alienated and self-maximising individuals, when the social and physical reality cannot sustain it. The result is an ever greater ‘controlling power’ exercised ‘from without’ combined with the breakdown of the social fabric that is so essential to our status as a civilised society.
What can we do? Well, we must first recognise that political culture is the soil in which institutions, policies, and laws will grow. It determines the legitimacy and the amount of support possible for the political tools at our disposal to shape our collective lives. Without a change in attitudes, policies of reform and amelioration will be condemned to malfunction or rejection by the people, just as a patient might reject an incompatible organ transplant. The task is to begin a process of educating each other in the creation of social and political norms of behaviour that are compatible with the spatial imperatives of the times and that will improve the quality of our lives. We have to rationalise our personal expectations ourselves and not rely on a blurry-eyed presumption that the ‘market mechanism’ will do it for us in the long-run. We must each own up to the social effects of our daily actions and attitudes and be mindful of their wider social consequences – all of us!
We British have a deep and proud historical corpus of political principles, civil traditions, and social assumptions. However, we must come to realise that they have changed over the centuries to meet historical exigencies. In a post-industrial Britain at the beginning of the 21st Century they must adapt once more, this time to the need for a sustainable and socially conscious way of life in an environment of diminishing elbow room. Clichés of unbridled individualism and illusions of cost-free personal gratification fed by imitation of our English-speaking brethren will just not cut it. For inspiration, we must look to those countries that share our circumstances and problems – that means Europe. As for solutions, it’s up to us to translate what we learn into a British context appropriate to our history and culture. John Welch | |