Regarding James Slack on Lords Reform

On MailOnline on Monday, "RightMinds" blogger James Slack pontificates about the proposed reformation of the House of Lords, which would make 80% of our upper chamber elected. The Lib Dems are pressing for the change, but the plans are expected to be defeated, as 70 Tory MPs plan to rebel and cause the coalition's first legislative Commons defeat.

In his eagerness to offer nothing of substance on the subject, Slack wheels out an alarming number of clichés in his latest column - ones which nonetheless form the crux of the discourse surrounding the issue. Once again, we prove that as a country we are incapable of actually talking about an issue because party politics, grudge matches, cheap point-scoring and blatant ignorance are valued far more than worthwhile discussion.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2171019/House-Lords-reform-Nick-Clegg-cheek-compare-Churchill.html

To listen to Nick Clegg lecturing a packed House of Commons this afternoon, you’d think he was the towering political figure of our times.

Politicians should presumably refrain from sophisticated turns of phrase and the like.

He’s jabbing his finger, accusing MPs of ‘dragging their feet’ over House of Lords reform, like a man with a Parliamentary majority of 200.

Everyone knows that in a democracy your opinion only counts if over half the country agrees with you. This would seem to indicate that there is currently no valid opinion to hold.

He seems to have forgotten – perhaps it’s the lobotomy he thinks he may have had? – that he actually lost seats at the General Election. He has no mandate for anything.

Whereas the Conservative party have a mandate for... hang on a minute.

Most striking is Mr Clegg’s tone, which is one of absolute intellectual superiority. 

It’s as if his plan for a largely elected Lords – in which hundreds of party placemen will be granted one-off, 15-year terms during which they will be accountable to absolutely no-one – are infallible.

The alternative, of course, is the current system, which is less accountable and where terms have a longer duration. It's fine to disagree, but don't cite your opponent's weakness as a weak punch if you yourself have no arms.

Tory backbenchers who think there are better things for the Commons to be concentrating on at a time of economic tumult are being swatted aside. 

The old excuse that "there are more important things to be focussing on," is intellectually dishonest and a disgrace to the notion that our democracy matters. The same tired drawl is in the background of every contentious parliamentary debate.

He has the manner of a teacher addressing six-year-olds.

Have you heard the House of Commons lately?

Most irritatingly, Mr Clegg is pretending that he’s doing Britain a favour by reforming an Upper Chamber which all concede is not perfect, and in need of some change.

Just not now. And not until the country is perfect in every other capacity.

But, in reality, his specific plan is intended only to rig the British constitution for his own party’s electoral advantage, by creating a Lords which – because it will be elected by PR - would be permanently hung.

OH GOD MAYBE LET'S CHANGE THE QUOTA OR SOMETHING THEN MATE.

The Lib Dems – so attached to their ministerial cars, and greedy for power – will be left holding the balance of power for eternity. No government will be able to properly function without their 

Oh, I remember this chestnut from the AV debates. Nick Clegg has cunningly devised a plan to make the Lib Dems (who we're quick to remind you are a dead party so they have no mandate to have ideas) the only party that matters in UK politics. Quite how this contradiction plays out is beyond me.

During the early stages of the debate – which will culminate tomorrow – he showed his sense of self-importance by apparently comparing himself to Churchill.

Full of himself, he said that, in 1910, Churchill – like the Great Clegg, presumably – had been in favour of House of Lords reform.

11) Thou shalt not quote people with whom you are not directly comparable.

Churchill’s comments were delivered (as the great man's grandson, Nicholas Soames MP, quickly pointed out) at a time of great conflict between the Commons and the Lords, totally incomparable to today.

And Churchill’s opinion later changed – though Mr Clegg conveniently decided to overlook that fact. Clegg and Churchill? They share the same dream, he wanted the country to believe.

What, I wondered, as I watched the Deputy Prime Minister over the despatch box, are the chances that - in 100 years’ time - there will be an MP on his feet quoting ‘Clegg’?

If they are, it will be with reference to an act of great constitutional vandalism, performed out of naked self-interest. 

This is an ad hominem attack as stupid as Clegg's desire to use Churchill's "support" in favour of Lords reform.

GOD I HATE POLITICS.

Straight-up Hypocrisy

Straight-up hypocrisy

The Internet changed the way news outlets view profits and distribution. It meant that in order to find out what's happening in the world you no longer needed to wait for the 6 o' clock news or go out and buy a physical newspaper; you could log on and find out the latest happenings within a minute of being curious. But outlets recognised a loophole in this development which allowed them to exploit the nature of Internet advertising - namely, the fact that voyeuristic celebrity stories attract a huge number of hits and are easy to waste time upon. This leads to MailOnline - the website of the Daily Mail - intermittently printing requests for celebrity stories, and taking up about a quarter of their homepage. A serious publication indeed, what with all the deep analyses of Amy Childs' hilarious antics.

But, I mean, whatever. Heat magazine exists. We all know that celebrity gossip columns and the whole circus surrounding them has become an accepted form of pseudo-journalism; there are those of us who view it as a way for people to distract themselves from important issues, and those of us who think it's just a bit of harmless fun. I'm not here to pass judgement on the nature of that type of reporting - not for now, anyway. I'm here to call out publications which do pass such judgement on our "celebrity culture", all whilst contributing to it.

Of course, they never actually pinpoint the source of the problem, which is not the celebrities themselves, but the publications which choose to take notice. And they rarely, if ever, take up arms against the celebrity press, choosing instead to speak in abstract terms. But what they do is use a tone which suggests that they're sat, tutting away, at all these people who dare to be famous. Take this article, for example:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2073889/X-Factor-2011-Amelia-flashes-knickers-Sophies-chest-X-Factor-wrap-party.html

whose first paragraph actually declares that:

It may have been Little Mix who walked away with The X Factor crown, but that's not stopping the other contestants fighting to prolong their 15 minutes of fame.

the implication, of course, being that these people are attention-seeking. This may or may not be the case, but it wouldn't matter if there were no photographers there and if you didn't publish the resulting photographs in your so-called newspaper all while implying that it is these people who are in control of whether they remain famous or not. Of course, you understand this, but being the so-called newspaper that you are you have to take a moralising stance on TODAY'S YOUTH and MODERN CULTURE all whilst you propagate it because it gets people onto your website and you make money from advertising revenue every time someone clicks the god-damn link. You need them more than they need you, but good job pretending.

What About My Human Rights?

The notion of "human rights" should not be a complicated one to understand, but in the priveleged society we find ourselves in, it's easy for people - especially having been fed falsehoods and exaggerations - to fail to understand quite how fundamental and crucial the rules laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are.

The rules governing essential human rights do not concern themselves with the things you read about in the newspaper. They advocate, encourage and enforce a system which provides dignity and a basic standard of physical, emotional, mental and societal welfare to the most vulnerable people in society, and to the rest of us as well. Some of these rules are ones that we in our comfortable countries wouldn't even think twice of - article 4, for example, which deals with slavery.

Others are immediately relevant to our culture and the narratives taking place in our country right now. Unfortunately, we don't always get it correct on rights concerning free speech and expression, freedom of religion, and the like: we seem to have forgotten about the former when it suits us (i.e. the woman on the tram you've probably seen by now) and filled in invisible gaps on the latter (i.e. when we support people's rights to wear jewellery just because it's shaped like a crucifix). When we screw up on these things, it's because we've forgotten why human rights exist.

But in our world of plenty (cue Band Aid) some people manage to convince themselves that any injustice they feel should be remedied by their "human rights", totally ignoring the essence of those rules. So no, there isn't a human right which makes your tax money go exactly the way you want it to. You don't have the human right to watch the man who murdered your daughter be lethally injected. These are not human rights. They're wishes. Send them to Jim'll fucking Fix It. Alternatively, your local MP. But stop weakening the backbone of a dignified society by comparing it with your petty fucking first world problems. It makes you look like a dick.

Conflating the Voice

Oh, hey. Been a while..

I'd like to thank the Daily Mail (I know, what?) for giving me an easy ride back into blogging. I stopped writing here a while ago for a variety of reasons but recently I've noticed a lack of incision regarding press dynamics where there used to be sharp teeth in abundance. Thankfully, this story is particularly easy to get your teeth into once you realise what the Mail are trying to achieve.

The story I'm on about is one which appears on the Daily Mail's website as White working class Britons 'don't get a fair deal compared with ethnic minorities'. As soon as I read the headline, I thought to myself: I wonder what their sources are, asserting such a thing! Perhaps there has been a controlled study into the treatment of whites and non-whites. But no. Despite the presentation of the headline as a statement of fact, the Mail's justification for the story is a survey of the public. So it should really read:

White working class Britons 'don't feel like they get a fair deal compared with ethnic minorities'

And that survey? Carried out in Birmingham, Coventry and London, three of the most racially diverse areas of the country.

Heh.

But whilst the article is full of dogwhistle racism like this:

However, the white working classes remain proud of their identity and the values they stand for.

These include working hard, looking after each other and having pride in their community.

the real issue is the device that the Mail are employing here, which serves to perpetuate the opinions they choose to hold and to present those as fact to their (bewilderingly) large readership. I'm not, as ever, interested in the real dynamics of the housing queue; I leave those things to other people, who have the time to do real research into those areas. What this blog cares about is how the media and the press are capable of twisting things, and here, the Daily Mail achieve this by following a certain formula:

1: present and promote the idea that the white working classes are losing out because of ethnic minorities

This is done on a daily basis and is rooted in every piece of subtly racist journalism the newspaper has ever printed. Stories about the housing queue and the continued conflation of "immigrant" and "asylum seeker" contribute greatly, but so do stories about English-speaking doctors and the likes. This narrative plays on people's fears and their insecurities; it gives people a group of people to blame for the things in their lives that might not have gone to plan (your life sucks? immigrants' fault!) and it plays of fear of people different to yourself.

2: ask the people most likely to have absorbed your rhetoric on issue X what they feel about issue X

This is a key point. Granted, the survey in question wasn't carried out by the Daily Mail but it's fitting that the paper chose that survey given the places in the UK upon which it focused.

3: present those people's feelings about issue X in such a way as to return to step 1, thereby contributing even further to the sense of injustice

Most people won't get anywhere close to reading/caring about the true source of the assertion made in the headline, and the Mail know that, so they print a headline and an opening 3 paragraphs to the story that make those things sound like almost-undisputed facts. This adds to the narrative.

This whole thing smacks of a similar phenomenon to the first post I ever wrote here regarding the public's perception of Kate Middleton, which was pretty much solely determined by how she was portrayed in the media. This is similar, in that the Mail advocates a certain angle on a story, finds a survey that's almost bound to agree with them, presents that survey as a study, and presents that study not as a bunch of their mates' opinions, but as truth.

It's the equivalent of telling your mate something 20 times, waiting until they bring it up in their own conversation, and then going to the pub with a different group of friends and using your mate's words to prove your own point.

And it sucks.

'These Are No Protests'

It's a fairly unusual (though increasingly common) situation that we find ourselves in, when anonymous and unknown commentators speak more sense than those we trust with our country, but in the aftermath (or, perhaps, midst) of the London riots it appears as though anybody with a reputation is incapable of expressing an opinion which goes any further than standard rhetoric. 'Justice' and 'mindless criminality' are the buzzwords of the hour, and though it is absolutely crucial that those with the capacity to do so condemn this violence and, indeed, mindless criminality, in the strongest possible terms, they also have a broader and frankly more important responsibility, and right now it is one that they are shirking.

As they career down the path of short-term firmness, they use the ongoing crisis as an excuse to dodge questions about the source of the unrest which has swept through London's streets. It is logical to prioritise safety and order ahead of diagnosis in this case, definitely; we should probably stop our capital city from burning before we start to survey its charred remains. And yet, the ones evading these issues are not doing so in order to liaise with the police; they have the time to take an interview on BBC News, so they should have the time to answer a question about the possible causes of what we're seeing. It's not that these people are leaving the answers until later - I can't count the number of times I've heard the phrase 'there are debates to be had' in the last couple of days - it's that every single last one of them is scared of sticking their neck out.

They're scared because of the state of politics in this country, and the state of media coverage, particularly where politics is concerned. They won't answer this question because they have a reputation to uphold and because they know that as soon as they begin to debate the reasons behind this mayhem they will be quoted and demonised and their opponents will seize the opportunity to claim that they are making excuses for the rioters. It's already happened with Ken Livingstone, and while I don't agree that the riots are a result of the cuts (they're far more deep-seated than a year's worth of economic policy) it is unfair that the media have jumped on his attempt to explore the complex issues which have led to brainless looting and violence and turned him into a sympathiser.

The problem is that on the whole we are incapable of distinguishing between an excuse and a reason, between the individual, selfish, stupid acts of each person in this mob of gang members and opportunists and the simple fact that there is a mob of them. Nothing excuses the way these people have conducted themselves and anybody convicted of theft or arson or criminal damage should be punished to the full extent that the law allows; we have to be seen to uphold our system of law and order, and that is the first priority. But adopting the attitude that these people are outliers is by this point demonstrably wrong: it is so clear that the happenings of the last few days are symptomatic of something dark. It is far more damning that nobody can point to a specific cause (ignoring the shooting of Duggan whose death is an excuse, not a reason) - it suggests a systematic failure.

These people are not outliers, and nor are they mavericks. The simple fact that they don't have banners and slogans does not stop the riots that have hit London from being a display of protest. I do not mean to imply that they are in any way reasonable; I will provide the caveat one last time that the people responsible should be jailed or punished accordingly. But it is very simple. There are two reasons why anybody does anything: firstly, because something caused them to do it (here, it is almost impossible to find such a trigger); and secondly, because nothing stopped them from doing it. It is the second of these criteria which clearly applies strongest to the smashing up of communities we are witnessing right now. Any person who is capable of destroying charity shops and family-owned businesses in the area they themselves live in does quite obviously not feel a connection to that area or its community, and whatever your political position, you cannot possibly believe that's a good thing.

What is happening here is not the random malevolence that many attribute it to: when such an unmotivated, unfounded explosion of in-fighting and released anger occurs, it is only really possible to see one answer to the question why: what we are witnessing is the last step in the collapse of the concept of community, a notion which has long been disintegrating and one which, right now, is more in need of rebirth. I would argue that these attacks are more dangerous to our livelihood than the 7/7 bombings ever were; I think they illustrate something about Britain which is very sinister indeed and, yes, Mr. Cameron... broken.

Charlie Gilmour: Status, Crime & Punishment

There's something very, very wrong with the decision today to sentence Charlie Gilmour (that's Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd's son, for context) to 16 months imprisonment. It's an intriguing story, I think, because of the obvious undertones of all the things that aren't actually related to the crime, which came to the fore as a result of a media backlash and have remained there. For those who aren't aware, Gilmour was snapped numerous times doing idiotic things during the tuition fees protests (which, subtly, areas of the press have taken to calling the 'tuition fee riots' as if that were the true organised nature of the event).

For example, Charlie Gilmour swung on a Union Flag attached to the Cenotaph, then claimed he didn't know (despite being a History student) what the structure represented. This makes him at best ignorant, at worst an absolute moron, but he didn't face trial for that. Despite this, though, the judge still saw fit to pass comment on his actions in that regard. In and of itself, I don't think that's an awful thing to have happen, although I would argue that Charlie Gilmour has probably realised by now that he was a fucking idiot on that day.

What Gilmour was on trial for, though, was the attack of the royal convoy for Charles and Camilla that spawned all those sensational pictures of them both looking veritably terrified as angry rioters threw things at their car. Charlie Gilmour was found to have launched a litter bin at one of the cars in the convoy, sat on a protection officer's car, and smashed a window. Can I just repeat for you the length of the sentence he was handed? 16 months. SIXTEEN MONTHS.

That alone is pretty fucking atrocious. 16 months - of which he'll serve half - for smashing a window and jumping on a car bonnet? But it's worse - far worse - when you realise why it is that the price is so high. Judge Nicholas Page said that "it would be wrong to ignore who the occupants" of the car were.

Hang on a minute.

Judge Nicholas Page thinks that if Charlie Gilmour smashes your window, and jumps on your car's bonnet, and throws a trash can at your car, it is not as bad or important as if he does it to that of a royal.

There are so many things wrong with this that it's difficult to know where to begin. We could start with the fact that, given Charles and Camilla's obviously extensive protection arrangements, it's probably not as dangerous physically or emotionally to them as it would be to somebody else. But I think this is missing the point entirely, actually, and the point is this: somewhere, someone, at some point, has decided that the royal family is more important than you, and more important than me. I'm not about to argue that it's the inverse; that would be foolish and counter-productive.

Because I searched through articles galore to make sure I wasn't mis-reading the quote from Judge Nicholas Page, because for quite some time I thought that, surely, what he actually said must have been that it would "be right to ignore who the occupants" were. Alas, I find myself dumbfounded. In the rooms where people make decisions which affect people's lives in the long-term, we have men who think it's okay to, with very little disguise at all, assert that it is more of an issue if someone attacks the royal family than if they attack what I can only assume they refer to as the plebs.

Charlie Gilmour is an idiot but he's got a hell of a long way to go before he's as much of a muppet as Judge Nicholas Page.

The Sinister Smiles of CCTV Signs

Most of the criticism I post here is about news outlets, primarily because these are the sources which most explicitly change our perception of the world. But in a way, these things are pretty harmless if you're a little bit aware of the hazards involved in consuming them. Sort of. I didn't just call the Daily Mail harmless. But what I'm getting at is that there are more subtle ways people, and particularly organizations, affect our outlook on certain issues:

I don't know about anybody else, but this sign makes me a million times more nervous and scared than I can ever imagine feeling on seeing a sign that said You are being filmed and recorded for the purposes of security and safety. I don't find the smiley face funny; I find it terrifying as hell. I don't find the laid-back and presumably hilarious tone of the text cute; I find it actually pretty sinister.

There are certain things that don't need joking about. If the point of CCTV is to make the world safer, surely trivialising its use to the extent that you're making faintly Orwellian wisecracks at the expense of actual information is a poor communication decision at best. But maybe it's not. No, maybe it's deliberate. Maybe the companies and organizations that use uncomfortably nonchalant signage like this are just paving the way for a tipping point where people stop noticing that they're on camera. Maybe they know that.

Make no mistake: they do. It's a process of desensitisation, of making people unconsciously numb to a blasé and relaxed approach to the idea of a stranger taking thousands of pictures of them every minute. If this sounds like a conspiracy theory, I'm not saying CCTV is Satan incarnate. I'm saying that there are debated to be had about its impact on freedom and privacy, and that signs like that piece of shit up there^ do no justice to the seriousness that even MAKING a sign so apologetically awkward implies. If you accept people need to be made to feel less uptight about CCTV cameras, the best way to do it is not to make light of their fear in the first place.

It terrifies me that someone somewhere, by way of either stupidity or treachery, thought this a good idea.