Loose Red

The credulous Guardian. Again.

2012-01-25T09:48:00.025Z

The Guardian website is currently running this video of Chinese military trainees playing 'hot potato' with a 'live' grenade:

It is headlined and captioned, without questioning, as footage of recruits playing with live explosives.

Yet it is so obviously not. On the second angle shown, the package is not dropped in the hole from where the explosion then emanates. The package also has some sort of Wile E Coyote Acme Bomb fuse, for Mao's sake! And if it was truly a fragmentary grenade going off, hurling yourself a few yards away like a sychronised breakdance crew wouldn't do much to protect you.

There may be some training points for the PLA squaddies around coordination, speed and other drills. And I'm not saying those soldiers are having a picnic - it's probably a smoke bomb and some sort of controlled charge - or that this is how I'd like to spend my spare time. But it is not

"Footage of soldiers in the People's Liberation Army of China [which] shows how a live grenade is passed around in a training exercise."

While desperately trying to row back from its own credulousness, The Atlantic has the best explanation of what is going on: a slightly Pythonesque attempt at propaganda. Which is, of course, the real story.

I've covered before The Guardian's black-is-white approach to 'news' videos. Is this gullibility, laziness or just ideological?

Welsh Communist thinks he's a 19th century African.

2012-01-16T13:32:00.000Z

This is Rick Newnham. He is Secretary of the Welsh Communist Party.

Rick Newnham. Not a 19th century African.

He's a very confused chap. In Friday's Guardian, he claimed that Wales and the Welsh people face a threat comparable to that imposed on an entire continent by the "Scramble for Africa":

"proposals...showing the same imperial sensitivity as those who carved up Africa in the late 19th century...Lugard, Kipling and Baden-Powell would be delighted."

Now, I've been to Wales quite recently and I am ashamed to say that I failed to detect the onset of any policies that might result in massive depopulation, conflictual territorial division, and aggressive exploitation of natural resources.

That's because Mr Newnham is talking about proposals from the Boundary Commission for Wales to reduce the number of Westminster Parliamentary seats from 40 to 30, as part of a UK-wide reduction from 650 to 600.

Now maybe losing 25% of your seats, when the overall loss is about 8%, could be seen as disproportionate. But 30 seats for Wales will mean about 48,000 people per MP. In England, the Boundary Commission's proposed reduction to 502 seats will mean a ratio of 98,000:1. Let us not forget, too, that the Welsh also have a 60 seat Assembly for Wales (to which they voted even more powers, last year).

And just by-the-by, tax raised in Wales in 2007-08 was £19bn. Public expenditure in Wales in 2007-08 was £25bn. Now where did that extra £6bn come from, comrade?

Anyway, isn't representative democracy a bit bourgeois and historically obsolete? Aren't you worried that your defence of it against supposed dangers might lead to (how did Marx put it?) "parliamentary cretinism"?

While you're making your mind up, if you feel the need to comment on devolution matters and the like in the meantime, please, before opening your mouth, ask yourself: "lack of perspective, much?".

Are the RMT going all predator capitalist on us?

2012-01-11T18:11:00.002Z

Kieron Merrett (@kieronam) has raised an interesting question regarding the RMT's latest analysis of the decision to give the Thameslink fleet contract to Siemens, rather than Bombardier. If the contract was agreed in euros and the euro is now losing value, shouldn't the contract now being costing us less?

Now I'm not an economist or a Forex expert (forgive me), and so I'm perfectly prepared to blog corrected here if a more knowledgeable commenter can help out. But I don't think the RMT have got their sums right and even if they had got them right, I don't think they could describe the result as an increase in the cost to the taxpayer. The only way I can see that they can claim an extra £140 million must now be spent is as folllows.

Let's say that when the contract was awarded in June, £1.4 billion was worth €2.1 billion. So an exchange rate of €1.5 to £1 (for argument's sake).

6 months later, as the Eurozone's woes have escalated, the euro has devalued by 10%. So in our universe, £1 is now worth €1.65 and £1.4bn is worth €2.31bn. Siemens is therefore getting €210m more than it was expecting in June. €210m at the new exchange rate (€1.65 to £1) is just under £127.5m. At June's exchange rate, it's £140m.

Can we really describe that as an increase in cost to the British taxpayer? Probably not. Which is why even the RMT appears to row back slightly and call it a "subsidy". Let's say the euro had gone up in value by 10% so that we were now paying £1.4bn for €1.89bn worth of Siemens' services, would the RMT be praising a "saving" of £140m? No.

Given that the RMT's argument is based on the assertion that the contract was agreed in euros, the only way that this could be costing us more is if the original deal was struck at, say (to use our example), €2.1 bn, the euro had increased in value to, say, €1.35 to £1, and we now had to pay £1.54bn (an extra £140m).

But the RMT can't have it both ways. Either it's a euro sum we're paying and the euro's gone down in which case it's costing us less; or it's a fixed sterling sum we're paying, in which case Siemens took on the exchange rate risk and have benefitted without us losing out. Fact is, Siemens probably (or certainly? anyone cleverer than I able to confirm?) mitigated the exchange rate risk through some sort of insurance or hedging, or had it underwritten by the German government, so that overall the exposure was flat.

Which brings us to the question of what exactly are the RMT asking for in such circumstances? Let's say that it is wrong that Siemens are getting their extra - but worth less against the pound - €210 million. Or that if the euro had strengthened, we would be shelling out more. What would the solution be? As this all comes down to exchange rate uncertainty, the solutions are as follows:

1. Only purchase from within your own currency zone. As the UK's currency zone is only the UK, this could only be guaranteed by putting out to tender in the UK, in flagrant breach of EU rules. So we would have to radically renegotiate our treaties with the EU or leave altogether. Can we expect RMT funds to be supporting the parties most closely associated with those policies at the next election?

2. Join a wider currency zone, which in our case would be the Eurozone. How's that worked out for the workers of, ooh, I dunno, let's say Greece?

3. Hedging foreign exchange risk through something like a currency pair in the spot markets.

I guess we should look forward to some desk space being cleared in Chalton Street for a decent Forex broker.

Whoops, there goes another year. Whoops, there goes another pint of beer.*

2011-12-31T17:54:00.000Z

Time to look back on last New Year's Eve's predictions for 2011:

Multiple Lib Dem defections? Yep.

A Mumsnet Revolution? Nope. But this could be the year if they get the right issue. And they've certainly added to their clout in 2011.

Lobbying scandal? Yep, yep-ish, and sort of.

Successful use of Judicial Reviews? Yep. (And I was wrong to suggest that they are not a legitimate alternative to persuasive campaigning).

Campaign groups emphasising what they're for? Well, I meant that one sarcastically, obviously, so yep, again, in that they mostly remained negative. There were some impressive and positive campaigns, but the most headline-grabbing one, Occupy LSX, was just a big whinge which ended when things got a bit nippy.

So what does next year have in store? I'm only making one prediction. It's a long-shot, but here goes:

This time next year, we'll be living under a Tory minority government.

There's a possible confluence of just enough issues and incidents to make this happen as Cameron is dragged to the right by his Party, and Clegg to the left by his. Starting with Chris Huhne's resignation when the CPS decide to go ahead with prosecution over the alleged transfer of speeding points.

Anyway, time for that beer. We're off to The Wedding Present gig at Dingwalls.

Have a great start to 2012, everyone. Thanks for reading and commenting in 2011. See you after the jump.

*#3 in a series of ongoing attempts to get a title, lyric or reference thereof from every Billy Bragg song into the post titles.

Mission Accomplished? Why UK Uncut's battle is only just beginning.

2011-12-28T17:43:00.000Z

The most appropriate quote with which to start this post (covering, as it shall, matters of hubris) is probably the warning given by Harvey Keitel, playing Winston Wolf, in Pulp Fiction:

But what I have been most reminded of in the last few days, by the mutual backslapping amongst Occupy, UK Uncut and their various cheerleaders, is this:

The battling Sunny Hundal has now demanded repentance from those of us who have been less than respectful about UK Uncut's intentions and effectiveness. Apologies are now to be laid at the altar of direct action because the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons has published a report confirming what everyone knew: there is an enormous great load of cash in dispute between Her Majesty's Customs and Revenue, and some large companies. HMRC say a hefty old chunk of this cash is due in tax. The companies disagree.

Campaigners are claiming that this happened because an activist base has, at various times over the last year or so, sat on steps outside St Paul's. Or in shops. Or in banks. Or in Parliament Square. The awareness which this raised has, according to their arguments, led to this unstoppably revolutionary moment: a Parliamentary committee agreeing that there is something to argue about.

Let's leave aside the possible post hoc ergo propter hoc fallaciousness of this. I have never doubted that, to quote Margaret Mead, a small group of committed, thoughtful citizens can change the world. Sometimes campaigning and protesting is raindancing. Sometimes it really is the only way to start change. Sometimes it's a complex mixture of both.

However, I would be more willing to accept the UK Uncut/Occupy claims of "Victory!" if they had at any point proposed (or simply foreseen) the crucial role that they now claim PAC is playing. Indeed, haven't these people spent a great deal of time and rhetoric claiming quite the opposite? Aren't they usually somewhat contemptuous of Parliament and its MPs? Almost, in fact, violently opposed to this sort of democracy? Well, its good to see them falling in with us brainwashed masses who think that national, representative forums are still the best way to address issues.

My second problem is that those blogging a jig over the alleged success either completely ignore the other factors that have made up the campaign, or subvert these factors as secondary to the direct action.

The Guardian's John Harris is particularly at fault here. After three and a half paragraphs of near-religious adulation for Uncut's shop occupations, he blithely mentions the judicial review process, led by the movement's off-shoot, UK Uncut Legal Action.

About this time last year, I unfairly mocked the possibility of campaign groups using judicial reviews. I was wrong to do so. They are a legitimate and effective form of activism. And, alongside the reporting from whistleblowers and other journalistic investigations, have been the real reason why PAC started taking on the issue of the tax disputes - in July. Mr Harris seems to be arguing that the money to support the judicial review process would not have been raised if it were not for the storming of the High Street. That seems a particularly blunt way to fundraise in the age of internet-based, small total, large volume donations. So far, UK Uncut Legal Action has raised £13,000. That's not to be sniffed at but it hardly suggests a mass, sustainable campaign that has brought people with it on their revolutionary journey.

Not that it matters: the lawyers working for UK Uncut are doing it on a no-win, no-fee basis, anyway. Money may be needed if they lose (not that anyone in Uncut even considers their arguments anything other than 100% correct) but it's not needed at the moment.

So what do we have to show so far for a year and a bit of occupations and demos? A select committee report agreeing that there is an issue (which everyone said there was anyway); and a small amount of money raised (that isn't needed).

Forgive me if I'm not kitting out the cellar with everything needed for a life post-capitalism, quite yet.

But don't be disheartened, Mr Harris and Mr Hundal have other successes to point to.

First, Sunny is grateful for support from what he believes to be an unusual quarter:

But no one had ever tried to raise public awareness of corporate tax avoidance in this way before, and certainly no one had got the Daily Mail on side on it either. Only UK Uncut managed that.

Any student of media or politics should be wholly unsurprised by the Daily Mail joining in here. It's entire business model is predicated on reducing complex issues to a a single headline or slogan, pushing opinion as fact, ignoring countervailing arguments, and generating mock outrage based on self-generated half-truths. As an old-fashioned lefty sort, I'd be very wary if the Daily Mail took up a campaign of mine. The "new left politics", apparently, revels in it.

Harris goes even further with his welcome to new, supposedly surprising, allies:

First, there is the small matter of Occupy LSX's achievements: sending the Church of England into such a spin that Rowan Williams suddenly had to align it with what he termed "deep exasperation with the financial establishment"; prompting no end of coverage of the byzantine Corporation of London; and playing a huge role in the pushing of a host of issues around equality that began to snowball in the culture from mid-October onwards.

You're kidding, yeah? The time when the CofE could be described as "The Tory Party At Prayer" is long past. In the last 20, arguably 30, years it has jumped on every populist, trendy liberal bandwagon that's passed down Great Smith Street. Especially so under Rowan Williams. Of course, none of this desperate issue-chasing has had anything to do with declining church attendances. Oh, no. They've all been faith critical, of course. Sharia law, Middle East conflict, republicanism, 'broken Britain', positive discrimination, paganism, ecology, international development. Have I missed anything? If I were John Harris, I'd have been worried if Lambeth Palace did not align with UK Uncut and Occupy. But unsurprised when it did.

The point on City of London transparency is a better one and has the potential for a popular, constructive campaign. But just as it was beginning to gain momentum, Occupy overplayed their hand, mixing sensible proposals for local government reform in the Square Mile, with silliness such as a "truth and reconciliation commission" (lack of perspective, much?) and claims the Corporation is above Parliament.

My favourite bit of his eulogy to Occupy, though, is this:

For sure, their self-comparisons to the rebels of Tahrir Square can easily grate.

To which I would only like to add:

For sure, a Guardian journalist's support for anti-tax avoidance campaigns on the pages of a newspaper owned by a company that practises tax avoidance can easily grate, too.

But I digress.

He ends with a call to "highlight failures which are truly systemic" and to promote them to even greater prominence.

Highlight. More prominence. Yawn. It is way past time for this phase of the campaign.

The danger now for UK Uncut and its network is that even the argument on tax avoidance can still be lost, despite The Great Leap Forward of the PAC report. As the Committee's inquiry progresses, Uncut's targets will have their "day in court". The case for the defence of Vodafone, for example, has been well articulated here (and that's just one example). Nowhere has there been a rebuttal of points such as these. Nowhere has Uncut or Occupy truly engaged with the debate. They repeat - endlessly - their initial positions and beliefs. They offer little by way of constructive argument.

I certainly want to see the promotion of solutions that do more than take us back to a status quo ante. And I want to see an effective vehicle for radical and effective challenges to the mistakes that got us to where we are now.

But, on their current trajectories, neither UK Uncut nor Occupy will be it.

2011 has ended without one cut being reversed, and without any extra tax income being identified and collected. Is there any reason to assume that 2012 will be any different?

But what would I do? (Thank you both for asking).

Occupy: as you were. Seriously, don't change a thing.

Uncut: first, pray for warm weather and hope that Occupy will take advantage and continue the trend for trustafarian urban camping, with all the leaderlessness and nebulousness and general irritatingness that comes with it. That'll give you something to define yourself against from the other side and position yourself as a practical alternative, dealing with the effect of fiscal policy on real people's lives.

That's the easy bit. To take advantage of that, you'll also have to better reflect the current debate. Maybe start by admitting your own mistakes (e.g. the attack on Barclays in February, which was an unfortunate misunderstanding of how business works, and was very off-putting). Then recognise that alongside the benefits of taxation and public spending, there are also costs (embodied in concepts such as tax incidence and the Laffer curve) and opportunity costs. You could even start discussing what sort of (whisper it) public sector reform could and should be taking place in our post-Credit Crunch world. This will all establish a context for negotiating in from your current unsustainable positions of rejecting each and every cut and wringing every last penny of possible tax from business.

That's my (before tax) two shekels' worth, anyway.

In short, the issues are coming of age. It's time UK Uncut were, too.

The ruling class may oppress them...

2011-12-25T23:01:00.000Z

...but to really hate the masses, that takes a Guardian reader:

Unlike readers of the Tory-owned press, we take the Guardian for opinions with which we can agree or disagree and make up our own minds based on facts provided elsewhere in the newspaper or other media.

I still find myself rendered speechless by such snobbery, despite it being commonplace amongst the Pretend Left.

If writing were like tweeting...

2011-12-15T14:10:00.008Z

It's tough being a Guardian reader

2011-12-07T15:54:00.000Z

From yesterday's Guardian letters page and the file marked "First World Problems":

I put my cashmere elbow in the pot of hummus on the arm of my seat while watching the relay of Rodelinda from the Met last Saturday. There is reason why cinema food is traditionally dry – like popcorn and crisps (Should a cinema be a restaurant too?, G2, 6 December).

I hope some of those so-called anti-poverty campaigners have a whip-round for the dry-cleaning bill.

Bell Pottinger's "magical" digital reputation team don't know how to use Google

2011-12-06T09:50:00.001Z

I know it's missing the point about the murky claims made by the Bell Pottinger lobbyists* but as someone who has seen a number of these stings (one from quite close hand) over the last 13 years or so, I found this element particularly puzzling.

Tim Collins described David Wilson's digital reputation management team as "magical". Yet they appear to not be able to use Google properly.

The name of the fake client created by The Independent and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism was the Azimov Group. If you put "Azimov Group" into Google, you get 57 results (at time of writing). Seven of which are links to The Independent story, or news aggregrators or blogs also covering the scoop. One of the pages is what appears to be a failed attempt to set up a page about the group on a Japanese Wikipedia-type site.

The Azimov Group's website is simply a holding page with a name, address and mobile phone number.

Now I know that the schtick was that it was a relatively unofficial, secret, clubby clique of business people. But seriously? Only 50 hits and it didn't start any alarm bells ringing?

In the age of Wikileaks, Wikipedia and 24-hour crowd-sourced coverage of, well, just about everything, you found just 50 hits about an international investor group with links to a dodgy Central Asian regime and thought, yep, seems like it's all legit and not made up at all.

Ooooh-kay.

*FWIW, I do draw a distinction between what Collins, Richmond and Wilson claimed as an extreme form of marketing, and the actual truth of their influence. But what a way to earn a living. And I say that as somebody who has had a career in this field. Though always, I hope, knew where to draw the line. (Somewhere several thousand miles before cotton harvesting child labourers in Central Asia, by the way).

Charisma community outraged at omission from BBC #SPOTY nominations.

2011-12-01T10:06:00.001Z

People with personalities expressed outrage today after the BBC refused to re-open nominations for the 2011 Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY).

Leading figures in the charisma community have demanded that, next year, the public broadcaster casts a wider net amongst those journalists nominating the shorltist of 10.

Storm McDazzle, the editor of Twinkle In The Eye Quarterly, said:

"No one wants to take away from the achievements that this year's top ten have grindingly achieved while not over-stimulating anyone. But when all you have is the likes of people called things like Colin and Brian from little read organs such as Angling News and The Independent picking their favourites, then you're not going to have a very representative list".

Excitey De La Blonde, who was one of the first People-With-Personality to qualify for next year's Olympics, added:

"It's been nearly two decades since anyone who wasn't a monosyllabic, media-trained, yawn-merchant won BBC Sports Personality of the Year. To have no one on the list this time with even the slightest history of alcoholic capery or serial shagging is a major set-back for equality."

12 year-old Jody Rascal, a 12 year-old, has pleaded with the BBC to re-think:

"It's not easy growing up as a Charisma Positive young person interested in sport. We need our role models to help us overcome the prejudices we face from other kids whose parents think Tim Henman is a dangerous iconoclast."

A spokesman for SPOTY favourites, Jonathan Boring and Simon Boring (no relation), was asked for a response. After two Red Bulls and a packet of Pro-Plus, she lifted her head and said "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

Black is white, according to the Guardian. Well, orange is purple at least.

2011-10-28T19:58:00.000+01:00

Let me start by saying that my frustration with the "Occupy" London protestors is that if they put their energy and idealism into promoting practical ideas to reform the cronyist brand of capitalism that abetted the economic crisis, rather than throwing a temper tantrum against the vaguely identified system as a whole, or obscure structures of local governance (talk about going from one extreme to the other), then we might get somewhere.

I am all for protesting about this sort of thing - but performance art (as Hopi has put it) isn't protesting.

"Occupy" are not helped in their detachment from reality by the cheerleading of the likes of The Guardian. Maybe I'm going a little mad or blind (or at least colour blind) but can someone explain this to me?:

The Guardian website heads this up with a claim that it proves that thermal imaging photography doesn't work when someone's in a tent and so all those pictures of purply-blue tents taken late at night do not mean that everyone's popped home for a shower, hot meal and to catch up with TOWIE, rather than comitting themselves whole-heartedly to the New Jerusalem.

Butbutbutbutbutbut....the tent turns orange doesn't it? Doesn't it? The activist pops inside for five seconds and the tent starts glowing orange, no? And as soon as she leaves, it stops, yes?

It's like something out of Orwell. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. And orange is purple. Or maybe they should have captioned it with "All tents ARE purply but some are more purply than others".

And one other thing. Well done Anti-Capitalist Hero Woman on getting hold of some state-of-the-art technology, quickly and cheaply. I wonder what sort of socio-economic system might allow us all to do that?

What? Oh.

UPDATE: And yes, I agree, the original thermal photograph probably didn't prove very much about tent occupation as it was taken at 11 pm-ish when probably hardly anyone had gone beddy-byes. But its "Occupiers" themselves who have been quite open about the optional nature of the overnight stages of this adventure in urban camping.

The importance of punctuation

2011-10-28T10:58:00.001+01:00

From Tuesday's London Evening Standard:

"Carey Mulligan collects an award for best supporting actress wearing a black Bottega Veneta dress with a spaghetti strap neckline".

I've no doubt that she deserves it, but the specificity of the award does rather undermine its value, no?

How to make that perfect #bbcqt audience contribution.

2011-10-20T22:43:00.002+01:00

The two-screen viewing trend (one eye on the box, one on Twitter) has reignited my enthusiasm for BBC Question Time. Although reading the #bbcqt stream can sometimes make you feel like a Georgian voyeur taking in the spectacle at Bedlam, the ability to express an immediate 140-character thought or two on proceedings rather helps relieve the urge to throw something hard and angular at the TV screen.

Maybe one day I'll even apply to be in the audience. You can sign-up online.

But there's no official guidance on how to ask a question or make a comment from the studio floor. As always, I'm here to help:

1. Affect mock outrage over the issue under discussion, preferably in a way that suggests you have lost all sense of proportion.

Tip: use the formulation (how dare/can [panellist] say/claim [opinion expressed]) + (when [large number] of [interest group] are [emotion/sufferance]).

Example: "How dare the minister claim that not every senior citizen needs a free bus pass while hundreds of thousands of pensioners are still angrily awaiting a hip replacement?"

2. Make an ideological non-sequitur.

Tip: if you're Pretend Left, then feel free to use "neo-con" and "neo-liberal" interchangeably (don't worry about the distinction) to describe anything that suggests a market solution; if you're right-leaning, then "Soviet" is a good catch-all for anything that might require the State taking an interest.

Example: "And if the government was really serious about helping people reduce roadworks in their communities then it shouldn't have imposed Soviet style targets on local councils, should it?"

3. Throw in a dubious personal anecdote.

Tip: make sure that the subjects are just far enough removed from you for you to plausibly deny any further knowledge if questioned.

Example: "My son's girlfriend was made redundant [while her boss was paid a massive bonus] / [when the Health & Safety shut down her office].

4. Confuse the rest of the audience.

Tip: put a left-wing thing at the start of the comment, then make a sharp right and throw in something out of that morning's Daily Mail letters page. Employ the other three techniques above, and you have what I like to think of as the Question Time Money Shot.

Example: "How can an MP that wants to take us back to the days of Thatcherism just sit there and criticise the millions, like the parents of the kids I teach, who rely on benefits to avoid starvation and who want to work but can't...because all the jobs have been taken by immigrants?"

If all goes well, it should inspire one of those weird half-cheer/half-boo rumbles that sounds like everyone simultaneously throwing up in their mouth a little bit.

How to really campaign against idiots.

2011-09-05T16:08:00.000+01:00

There's been oodles of grandstanding idiocy over the last few days. Some really superb examples for us curators of far-right and far-left dim-wittedness.

First, we had those who wish to boycott, apply sanctions against, and divest from Israel taking their cause to the heart of the Genocidal ZioNazi American-Imperialist Death Machine by disrupting a rendition of Webern's Passacaglia. (No, me neither. If it's not been used in a TV ad or over the opening credits of the coverage of a major sports tournament, then classical stuff rather passes me by).

Brendan O'Neill has best articulated the unease felt by non-idiots at this.

Second, we had the English Defence League's protest in Aldgate. We're all familiar with EDL grassroots idiocy but I do just want to highlight what a fancy-dress wearing, not-quite-identity-hiding, tabloid myth-believing idiot their leader is.

And finally, we had so-called anti-fascists reflecting the EDL's idiocy straight back at them, and celebrating the physical assault of a woman while particularly delighting in the fact that she was ugly. I would love to be a fly-on-the-wall when "Ben" and "Anthony" (Ed: "Anthony's a bit bourgeois isn't it? Are you sure he's not a "Tony"?) are next in a meeting with their Unite Against Fascism branch's Women's Officer.

Some wish to respond to such behaviour with various bans. Others, with counter-demonstrations. I've sympathy with the thinking behind both tactics. But I don't like banning things. And I don't like to get drawn into endless cycles of banner waving, slogan chanting barricade-manning. I'd much rather undermine Pretend Left idiots and Really Right morons by annoying and humiliating them.

The Freakonomics guys recently highlighted the power of reverse incentives. African-American comedian and activist, Dick 'Greg' Gregory appears to have been the master of such an approach:

"Last time I was down South, I walked into this restaurant...then these three cousins come in, you know the ones I mean, Klu, Klucks, and Klan, and they say 'Boy, we’re giving you fair warning. Anything you do to that chicken, we’re going to do to you.' So I put down my knife and fork, and I picked up that chicken and I kissed it."

And:

"I enjoyed campaigning with him, especially when a street hustler would sidle up and ask what he could do to help. Greg would laugh and say, 'really be something else if the rumor got out that Mayor Daley’s precinct captains were paying $20 a vote this year, then, when they come around with the usual $2, folks be so mad they run him out of town'."

Not forgetting:

"...a heckler in the back yelled, 'Nigger!' Greg said, 'Say that again, please. My contract calls for fifty dollars every time that word is used'."

The principle has been put to good effect in the US by the Pledge-a-Picket scheme which annually raises funds for a family planning centre by having people 'sponsor' every picketer at demonstrations outside its clinic. More recently, a comedian has ended up donating $50k to a gay health charity in the name of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Reading through the comments at Freakonomics also turns up Pennies in Protest:

"A friend from New York gave us the idea that started this all out: when the WBC had visited his synagogue, the synagogue had asked congregation members to pledge $1 for every minute the WBC was there. They raised $10,000 in one hour."

With sites such as justgiving making it possible to get a sponsorhip scheme up and running quickly and easily, I think we all know what can be done next time the Palestine Solidarity Campaign decide to block a shop, or a neo-Nazi groupuscule busses itself into the East End.

We could even take demonstrators' own, and often massively exagerrated, estimate of how many people they managed to get to attend.

Would UJIA or Hope Not Hate be happy beneficiaries?

What Vincent Hanna (not that Vincent Hanna) taught us about capital punishment. (And why it could undermine our jury system).

2011-08-01T15:52:00.000+01:00

David Allen Green, Charon QC, Tim Worstall, Sam Butler and Jerry Hayes have already done a fine job dismantling Paul Staines's arguments for restoring capital punishment (and pointing out the dissonance of hearing such a vociferous campaign in favour from a leading libertarian).

I'll simply and humbly offer one further argument here, courtesy of Al Pacino, playing Lieutenant Vincent Hanna in Heat.

The 1995 film's plot pitches his team of detectives against Bobby (he lets me call him Bobby) De Niro's team of armed robbers. In an early scene, one of De Niro's new recruits goes freelance and unnecessarily shoots the guard of an armoured truck they're knocking over. Within seconds, the second guard and the driver are killed, too.

Hanna arrives on the scene with one of his 'tecs:

HEINZ

You recognize their MO?

HANNA
Yeah. Their MO is that they are good. Once it escalated into a Murder One beef for all of them after they killed the first two, they popped guard number three 'cause it didn't make any difference anymore, so why leave a living witness? Drop of a hat? They'll rock and roll.

OK. So it's the movies and it's LA and it's squibs and blanks. Of course, the reality of murder is no less abhorrent but far less cinematic than that. But the macabre game theoretic strategy applied by De Niro and his crew was the right one given the options made available to them and the options they understood would be available to the other "players" in the criminal justice system.

So in a hypothetical circumstance where a victim has already been killed and others are still endangered, could capital punishment be not a deterrent, but potentially an incentive to commit further murders?

I'm happy to accept that such a scenario is so unlikely in reality as to be irrelevant in the formulation of justice policy - and that it is hardly ideal to base such policy on a Michael Mann screenplay.

But wildy extrapolating as I am from the imagination of the creator of Miami Vice, it does highlight how the noose/chair/needle does not really result in the outcomes that its proponents wish.

A better example is the suggestion that in a judicial system based on securing an argument beyond reasonable doubt, jurors are less likely to convict when they might be responsible for the imposition of the death penalty. Perhaps only incrementally so but enough to change the dynamic of our courtrooms.

In the US, the recognition of this has ended up undermining the very concept of trial by jury of one's peers. Thanks to the "death qualification" potential jurors are excluded from hearing capital cases if they are personally opposed to the death penalty:

"Today, in some California trials, that means nearly 40% of prospective jurors are excluded simply because of their qualms about the death penalty...the result of the process is a jury less inclined towards justice and more inclined towards conviction, no matter what the evidence shows."

Usually, Guido Fawkes and his supporters are (rightly) the first to rail against the Law of Unintended Consequences, and the ignoring of human nature, when ideological policies trump common sense and evidence. It is odd, to say the least, that this is not the case when dealing with the most important power the State can wield.

A random thought on the Olympics.

2011-07-28T16:03:00.000+01:00

Why isn't wheelchair racing in the Olympics? The actual Olympic Games. Why does it only take place under the auspices of the Paralympics?

If "foot cycling" is in the Olympics, why not hand cycling? If propelling yourself around a track or along a road by transferring power from your legs to wheels is one of the 39 disciplines, why isn't doing similar with your arms?

Spot the difference.

Look at it this way: if a world-class cyclist were to lose, say, a lower arm, but, with a prothesis, could still operate the handlebars, would they nonetheless have to start competing as a Paralympian? And if so, then why?

The Laurie Penny Drinking Game

2011-07-13T17:33:00.006+01:00

Younger readers may find this hard to believe but, not so long ago, the New Statesman was a source of serious news and commentary, widely read and admired; and interesting and brave in what it published. Two years off its centenary, it is barely recognisable from the magazine which, 13 years ago this week, and in the face of a wider media frenzy over an appalling child murder, made the right call on an innocent man (scroll to bottom of page).

Traditional news media have suffered depleted advertising revenues and leaky digital versions. The responses have varied. The Daily Mail gave up all pretence of being a newspaper a long time ago. The Times is now best known for its paywall. The Independent has had some (ahem) innovative journalistic practices. Similarly, certain tabloids. The Guardian is now defined by its Comment Is Free platform.

Many outlets have turned to multi-contributor blogging as a means of driving traffic to their sites and recouping some of that lost advertising cash. The Spectator's success in this regard has not been without its problems but you can understand the New Statesman's attempts to emulate it over the last 14 months or so.

There are some impressively knowledgeable, genuinely witty and refreshingly insightful bloggers such as Dan Hodges, David Allen Green, Steven Baxter and Olly Grender.

There's also Laurie Penny. Who writes beautifully. Do feel free to make your own judgment on whether such beautiful writing is employed in the service of good or bad ideas. But whatever your overall view of a journalist's skills and opinions, there should surely be times, in the face of rushed or lazy submissions, when an editor intervenes and helpfully suggests that one of his or her writers simply abandons a piece or re-writes it. At the very least, they could refuse to publish it in the hard copy version of their organ. Jason Cowley is apparently not such an editor. Which appears to be how something like "The Question Time drinking game" gets to not only sully our screens but our newstands, too.

Let's start with the sub-heading.

"A new drinking game based on the ubiquitous programme..."

"New"? "Based on"? OK. This may have been the first time that such a bingo-type drinking format has been applied to Question Time but it's hardly an innovation. Games like this have been fixtures of TV-watching and spectator sports for years. Penny's "it happened like this" revelatory tone makes her sound like an aged judge reeling at the explanation of a hitherto unknown element of popular culture.

And while we're here: "ubiquitous" means existing or being everywhere at the same time. Question Time is on for an hour a week for a few months of the year.

"...gives much away about the robustness of political debate in Westimster (sic)."

Yes. If only debate in Westminster or on current affairs programmes could be as robust as the polemics of Brighton's finest. So just to test this out, I proudly present The Laurie Penny Drinking Game:

1. Point browser to Penny's blogposts at the New Statesman website.

2. Pick one of the many fine posts.

3. Open a bottle of perfectably drinkable wine/whisky/beer. Preferably purchased from that lovely new Tesco in Stokes Croft.

4. Click on the grid below to drink as directed:

Loose Red would like to remind you to read the New Statesman in moderation.

My contribution to Pragmatic Radicalism

2011-07-11T11:15:00.000+01:00

The whirl of ideas and activity that is the great John Slinger will be launching Pragmatic Radicalism alongside Lord Wood and Luciana Berger MP tomorrow night.

My contribution to the pamphlet looks at how "in a globalised, highly-networked world, crises are becoming more everyday and more impactful." And why

"reacting to, and exploiting and exploring, such vulnerabilities requires a greater understanding and embedding of resilience. The second half of the equation – exploitation and exploration – is too often forgotten. As a policy theme, resilience should not simply be about bounce-back from a crisis to the status quo ante. It is about recovery being superceded by transformation and renewal; innovating and thriving on change."

Read and comment on the full version here.

Life after death: the kindness and wit of David Cairns.

2011-05-10T14:34:00.000+01:00

Before I became a dedicated Walthamstower last year, David Cairns, and his partner Dermot, lived in the same ward as me in Islington South. I'd known Dermot since student politics days, and was getting to know David when I was given the fantastic opportunity of going to work alongside him at Labour Friends of Israel. He was LFI's convenor and soon to be Chair. His first stint in the role.

David Cairns MP, 1966-2011

David was determined to break new ground in the debate over Israel/Palestine, washing away any hint of rose tintedness applied to either side, and railing against the lazy thinking and weak assumptions that characterised so much analysis of the conflict. His speech in March this year on the progressive case for Israel (delivered by John Woodcock MP, as David's illness had already struck) was but one example of his principles, eloquence and knowledge. He had understood, on a pilgrimage to the Galilee some years before, about the importance of coming and seeing the region for oneself. He was dedicated to persuading others of such and I was greatly privileged to organise a delegation he led to Israel and the West Bank in September 2004.

He changed British politics, too. His biggest contribution coming arguably before he even entered Parliament. It is extraordinary to think that at the turn of the 21st century, former Catholic priests were still banned from becoming MPs, under early 19th century laws. David had served as a priest for three years from 1991-94 and so the "House of Commons (Removal of Clergy Disqualification) Act 2001" was required to allow him to stand in that year's General Election.

In May 2005, he had just picked up the phone to me when I heard his mobile go and he abruptly hung up, explaining that it was Downing Street. A few minutes later he called back, the delight and thrill flooding down the line as he told me he had been appointed as a junior minister in the Scotland Office. He still wanted to know what I'd been calling about and I asked him about some minor point of LFI business. He responded simply "sod that!" and reminded me again of his news. We were gutted to be losing him as our Chair but delighted that such a talent would finally be playing a direct role in government.

By 2007, he was Minister of State, and had Northern Ireland added to his portfolio. But, under Gordon Brown, his time with the red boxes ended during a particular turbulent period of briefings and back-biting. He resigned in September 2008, believing that a serious debate over leadership could no longer be avoided.

A few days later, he was kind enough to attend some unusually tedious corporate event I'd helped organise in the Jubilee Room. He seemed melancholy but at ease, indulging some gallows humour by describing this new phase in his career as "life after death".

Prior to a hospital visit a few weeks ago, I'd last seen him just before Christmas, with Dermot and some mutual friends. A Friday night in Marylebone with odd-coloured drinks, a genuine cockney knees-up, and David regaling us of his tales and impressions of the casts of Doctor Who and Upstairs, Downstairs, whom he had been to meet that day at BBC Cardiff. As funny and articulate and enthusiastic as ever. That Great Constituency In The Sky has got one hell of a new representative.

What the Michael Winner impression really tells us about Dave.

2011-04-27T17:29:00.001+01:00

David Cameron's attempt at a humourous riposte to a Labour frontbencher's heckle plunged the banter at PMQs to new depths today.

As the Prime Minister used the remarks of former MP and current GP, Howard Stoate, in favour of the Coalition's NHS reforms, he could not help noting the erstwhile Parliamentarian's loss to a Tory at the 2010 General Election. Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Angela Eagle, excitedly attempted to point out that Dr Stoate had stood down before the election.

"Dave" decided that this was a great moment to prove how funny and in-touch with the masses "Dave" is, by employing a popular (?) advertising catchphrase to regain the debating initiative:

Some are triumphantly claiming this as proof of the Tories' institutional misogyny. Maybe.

I think it gave us a more interesting peak behind the Wizard's curtain, though.

If he wanted to raise a laugh, he should have responded to Ms Eagle along the lines of "yes, you're quite right, he stood down - like the rest of the country, apart from the Leader of the Opposition, he knew that Gordon Brown was a lost cause." OK. Hardly Juvenalian satire. But more effective than not quite mimicking Michael Winner.

Which brings us to the question of exploiting popular culture to prove just how normal you are. The correct way to co-opt ESure's grating motto is via the formulation "calm down, dear, it's only a X". Hence, "Dave" should've gone for "calm down, dear, it's only a weekly Parliamentary procedure". Again, no Perrier Awards being handed out, to be sure. But a clearer indication that you are trying (even if failing) to be funny rather than condescending, and without leaving that patronising and sexist "dear" just hanging there.

Cameron and his advisors have invested a lot of time in fashioning his chummy, just-one-of-the-guys image to counter his true alleged nature: slightly aloof, a little bad-tempered, and desperately wrestling with his patrician instincts.

I offer no judgement on anyone's personality. And I think the fact that Cameron has faced very little scrutiny in this respect, compared to the near-continuous media psychoanalysis experienced by Brown and Blair, is a good thing. Nonetheless, whispers and asides do occasionally creep out about his high-handedness with colleagues.

Again, not a problem as far as I'm concerned. Different styles of leadership for different styles of leader. Fine. Except that Coalition requires a specific style of leadership. One that deals with conflict constructively whilst maintaining an inclusive and welcoming stance.

The Times reported yesterday of Lib Dem complaints about being excluded from the day-to-day business of government (£):

Concerns have been raised at ministerial level about deliberate tactics of exclusion, as one Tory in the Government even likened the Lib Dems to “yapping dogs”, suggesting they had to be tolerated but largely ignored.

[...]

While some of the recent “rows” have been carefully stage-managed as Lib Dems and Tories seek to underline their differences over the alternative voting system, there is a real breakdown of relations in several government departments between ministers.

I wonder how many on the Lib Dem benches listened to Dave's reaction to Eagle today and thought "yep, normal service from the guys we work for".

It's just getting freaky now. The General Franco washing machine...

2011-04-01T12:00:00.000+01:00

Has the Gang of Four been reincarnated as a bridge?

2011-03-31T11:01:00.002+01:00

After the house that looks like Hitler...the car that's the spitting image of Mussolini!

2011-03-30T15:14:00.003+01:00

Questions from the Guardian's letter page to which we know the answer.

2011-03-30T09:26:00.000+01:00

"Andrew Keogh (Letters, 28 March) contends that horses don't know when it's their birthday. How does he know they don't?"

Because. They're. Fucking. Horses.

"We simply had no choice": why Nick Clegg might want to get some advice from Ehud Barak.

2011-01-18T15:38:00.000Z

It's always good to start with a joke. Even when discussing the chaos which is Middle East politics.

The Israeli Prime Minister meets the British Prime Minister. The latter holds his head in his hands. His Israeli counterpart asks what is wrong. "Oh, you wouldn't understand. You are Prime Minister of 8 million. I am Prime Minister of 60 million!" comes the reply.

"Ah," responds the Israeli Premier. "But you are Prime Minister of 60 million people. I am Prime Minister of 8 million Prime Ministers."

(Next week: some juggling!).

Given the fragmentation of their political parties, the population of Israel may not be far off realising the jocular PM's nightmare of them all having a turn at the head of the cabinet table at some point.

Ehud Barak's decision to leave the Labor Party but remain in the Likud-led coalition, has led to much rending of the Israeli left's outer garments, including this over-wraught absurdity by propagandist Gideon Levy, which includes the line:

"Events yesterday did not propel masses to the streets; nor did throngs of viewers watch the television news."

Well, yes. In a unicameral, pure proportional representation political system, such splitting and fusing between parties is inevitable. (Though a merger between Yisrael Beiteinu and the United Arab List may be a little way off still).

In many ways, any situation where a coalition exists makes such manoeuvres inevitable. As Barak's co-defector to the Atzmaut faction, Matan Vilnai said:

"At every meeting, you never knew who was with you and who was ready to quit and join a different party...In order to advance our own ideas, we have decided to separate and go on a new path...We simply had no choice."

The centrist element of Labor's internal coalition has decided that their chances of achieving policy goals in the long-term lie in a closer relationship with the right-of-centre senior partner in the current inter-party coalition.

The more progressive wing of the Israeli Labor Party is now free to pursue constructive opposition to the governing coalition (hopefully under Isaac Herzog, who would be a brilliant, pragmatic and inspiring choice for leader). maybe joining with other social democratic parties such as the New Movement (pdf).

Now. What does all this remind me of?

Nick Clegg has not always been the crunchiest afikomen in the matzo stack when it comes to his commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict. But I bet he's taking a deeper, more analytical, interest in the region's politics at the moment.

Have you seen this man?

2011-01-10T11:23:00.006Z

Christopher Huhne - known to his friends as "Chris" - of Cowley Street, London, SW1, went missing late last year. He had recently returned from a trip to Mexico for a conference believed to be connected with his job as Secretary Of State for Energy & Climate Change.

MISSING

HAVE YOU SEEN CHRIS?

Christopher "Chris" Huhne MP

Police have noted reports of a sighting in Oldham East over the weekend but stressed that they remain unconfirmed.

Mr Huhne, 56, was last seen wandering around the Chamber of the House of Commons on 16 December 2011, muttering to himself about "emmission reductions pledges" and a "framework for REDD plus".

Friends of the MP for Eastleigh (majority 3864) remain mystified as to why he is so unwilling to be associated with either current campaigns of the Liberal Democrats (polling nationally at 10%); or with Nick Clegg (personal approval rating of -30), who beat Chris for the Party leadership in 2007 by 1.2% of the vote.

His partner said: "Chris, if you're reading this: please come home. I bought you a copy of the 'Liberal Democrat Leadership Election Rules' for Christmas, with the bit about how an election is trigerred pre-highlighted. It's waiting here still wrapped, when you're ready."

You said this would happen and you were not wrong (tbc 31st December 2011)*.

2010-12-31T19:37:00.001Z

It has been an extraordinarily busy and eventful year at Kwatta Fox. Of which this blog has been a big part. Thank you for reading. I hope that it has informed and amused.

And with the latter in mind, we can all have a laugh around this time next year when the following predictions for 2011 prove to be wider of the mark than a Liberal Democrat student politician's credibility gap:

1) The end of the beginning of the end of the beginning of the end of the Lib Dems as we know them begins.

There are multiple Lib-Dem-to-Labour/Lib-Dem-to-independent "floor-crossings" in Council chambers throughout English local authorities in the run-up to the May elections. And similar (but smaller scale) in the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament.

Somebody with a Westminster IP address mysteriously registers the domain name www.newsocialdemocrats.org.uk

The Patent Office receives a request that the trademark "The Party Formerly Known As The Liberal Democrats" be applied to a symbol of a yellow bird twisting itself into knots.

2) The Mumsnet Revolution.

Inspired by a number of issues, the para-military wing of Mumsnet takes to the streets on the "Motherhood March".

Theresa Mays resigns when a memo leaked days later suggests that she had pre-authorised the use of water cannons.

Guardian columnists drive themselves to clinical insanity trying to shoe-horn references to tea-making into reports of kettling, without sounding sexist.

3) A cash-for-access style lobbying scandal hits the Tories and Lib Dems.

The public affairs industry is once again exposed. The print and broadcast media (who have no public affairs capability whatsoever and never lobby about anything) drag out the outrage for a record 276 straight days.

4) Judicial Reviews become the campaigning tool of choice for NGOs.

Bored by various failures to actually persuade anybody of anything, and backed by celebrity funding, "campaigning" groups turn to the judiciary.

Revolutionary goals are suddenly deemed compatible with making judges more influential, and legal professionals even richer.

As barristers and solicitors become the new commentariat stars, the Law Society adds talks from Max Clifford to its programme of Continuing Professional Development seminars.

5) The Year Of Being For Something.

Various "anti" protest groups actually get somewhere with their campaigns when they change strategy and start being for an idea/policy.

(Can be filed under "Hope" rather than "Expectation).

Happy New Year, everyone. See you after the jump.

*#2 in a series of ongoing attempts to get a title, lyric or reference thereof from every Billy Bragg song into the post titles.

Things that no one should ever care about in any way whatsoever #1

2010-12-14T15:35:00.001Z

Which political party Colin Firth used to support, supports now, or will support in the future.

Christmas Trivia #1

2010-12-08T18:33:00.001Z

Is the awarding of World Cup 2022 to Qatar a Zionist plot?

2010-12-06T15:46:00.000Z

There has been much disquiet expressed over FIFA's decision to award the 2022 World Cup finals to Qatar. The New Statesman's Mehdi Hasan even goes as far as to call it Qatarphobia.

And in the same week that saw the usual idiocracy suggesting that Wikileaks' latest information dump is all part of Israel's undue influence on world affairs, I'm amazed that there haven't also been calls to boycott Qatar 2022 because of this:

"A few years ago, the Qatari Olympic Committee helped fund the construction of a new football stadium for the most successful Arab club in the Israeli premier leage, Bnei Sakhnin (اتحاد أبناء سخنين‎). While I am sure that there were political overtones to this, I thought that this was a wonderful gesture. Northern Israel, where Sakhnin is located, has a slight Arab majority (about 52% Arab +/- 5%) and is very much underdeveloped."

Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are too busy finding the sweeper system to be suspiciously cosmopolitan. Or something.

Things They Said Will Kill Or Destroy Us But Haven't.

2010-12-02T16:52:00.006Z

When I was a younger, more scared, less intellectually developed man (and we're talking about a period that lasted well into my thirties, mind) I thought that the ability to ban something was an important tool in the progressive box. So many things were so obviously "bad"; their prohibition, so unchallengeably good.

I think that the only thing I have ever directly been a part of trying to get banned myself was Holocaust denial literature from my university's library. An act of which I am profoundly ashamed. Not because I'm now of the opinion that well, yes, 6 million does seem a little bit high, now you come to mention it. But because a) the idea that my fellow students would overnight become neo-Nazis based on reading such works was absurd and offensive, and b) even if they did, I had the arguments ready to deploy in defence of the truth.

I was reminded of my childishness in such matters by my own short post on Monday on the putting away of childish things, by @johnrentoul's highlighting of Richard Thaler's things we used to believe but were wholly wrong, and by this article about anti-comic book campaigner Fredric Wertham.

These also got me thinking about all the objects or media or ideas or cultural phenomena that have have been, in my lifetime at least, the subject of moral panic or dire warnings about adverse effects on health, life and civilisation as we know it.

They all, of course, turned out to be either completely safe or passing fads or a lot less fatal and dangerous to Western society than "predicted".

So. I'm starting a list of Things They Said Will Kill Or Destroy Us But Haven't (TTSWKODUBH). Please add your own in the comments below.

#1 Tamagotchis...
...were going to disrupt classrooms, and turn children into gambling addicted, emotional wrecks.

Last seen: interesting only elderly, obsessive collectors. And NEITHER disrupting classrooms NOR turning children into gambling addicted, emotional wrecks.

#2 Mobile phones...
...were going to give us all (especially the young) brain tumours and other types of cancer.

Last seen: forming part of a Teenage Cancer Trust survey about cancer myths. And NOT causing cancer. Especially not amongst the young.

#3 Harry Potter...

...was going to turn children into occultist satan worshippers, gathering in covens to practice witchcraft and wizardry, rather than doing their trigonometry homework.

Last seen: Hmm. Not sure. Might be a new film out or something, I think. Anyway. Trig homework is still getting done. With slide rules*, not wands.

*Yeah, alright. Calculators.

The Girl With The New Statesman Blog.

2010-12-02T10:46:00.001Z

Just saying.

Erin Boag will certainly have her work cut out.

2010-11-30T16:07:00.003Z

I wonder what ballroom-enthusiast-turned-cabinet-minister Vince Cable is really like on the dancefloor? Will he, on the Christmas special of "Strictly", be a twinkle-toed, terpsichorean genius? Or will his footwork and lines be as clunking and shapeless as a Lib Dem activist's winter wardrobe?

Not that I'm one to judge. Until the BDC introduce an indie-dance section (feet together, love, keep the head-bowed, WATCH YOUR ARMS DON'T LEAVE YOUR SIDES DURING THE DOWN BEAT ACCENTS!), it is unlikely to be worth my while squeezing into a sequinned jumpsuit at the Winter Gardens.

I just wouldn't feel able to commit to the choreography. But, Vinny, my friends, also has commitment issues.

As I type, students, schoolchildren and various aggro-seekers are out on the streets, keeping warm in the snow by shouting about tuition fees (and offering up suggestions for viable alternatives*) and scampering away from the police.

(I don't mean to be too dismissive here. I'm just jealous that student protests in my day were far, far duller affairs. On one occasion I was even a steward on some NUS march against something, wearing a reflective waistcoat and showing due concern when a fellow undergraduate started getting a bit provocative with a placard. I mean, that's nothing to tell the grandkids, is it?)

Anyway, as the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills, the person most directly responsible for the piece of legislation that is inspiring all this running about is one Rt Hon Dr Vincent Cable MP. Whatever your views on increased tuition fees, then, you may not feel it unreasonable to expect that he will be voting for it himself. In fact, to even entertain the thought of not taking a stroll through the aye lobby on this one would be, to say the least, a most courageous decision on his part:

Oh.

On Sky he went a little further, having the good grace to admit that he does at least have a "personal inclination" to vote for the policy.

Let's hope he does not bring such attitudes to his yuletide rhythmic lark with Kiwi hoofer Erin Boag. For it is one thing to duck responsibility for unpopular fiscal measures; quite another to place the onus on your dance partner for a cross-body lead.

*Not really.

Childish things.

2010-11-29T14:32:00.009Z

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child that A New Hope was the best Star Wars film; but when I became a man I put away childish things and understood that The Empire Strikes Back was by far the most superior of the trilogy.

RIP Kersh.

No it isn't.

2010-11-26T14:08:00.001Z

From today's Guardian letters:

Interesting that 29 April was also the date on which Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun (Royal wedding, 25 November).

But it's nice to see Godwin's Law fulfilling its potential for memetic evolution.

Lessons From The Guardian Letters Page Module #2 - nothing is so bad that Israel isn't worse - homophobia's OK as long as it's about celebrities - and (in the interests of fairness) one great piece of TV trivia.

2010-09-17T14:20:00.003+01:00

One thing that certain elements of WWUTCTL excels at is taking any controversial issue/person/organisation/nation and making some tortuous link to Israel in order to supposedly demonstrate that however bad that issue/person/organisation/nation is, it is not as bad as Israel because Israel is the worst thing ever:

I share the criticism of the Catholic church and Pope Ratzinger made by Stephen Fry (Letters, 15 September). But I wonder if they would extend their stance to rejection of state visits by other heads of theocratic states guilty of gross human rights abuses (Iran, Israel)?

Anybody familiar with the history of the Middle East would struggle to deny a religious aspect to some (but only some) of what Israel does. As is the case with countries in Europe. And America. And Africa. Oh, and Asia, too. To deduce from this a nasty theocracy in action is absurd. To give it equivalence with totalitarian Iran is the sort of unabated willful stupidity that you only see exercised by really, really clever people.

The sort of people who would sneer at others for making jokes about gay men being defined by their preference for a certain style of sexual intercourse, and the counter-productive state of our prisons.

Unless, the subject of the joke is a celebrity, in which case, apparently, it's perfectly OK for a woman to write:

Loads of men around 24/7 and cannabis supplied on demand (Wham! Michael jailed for eight weeks, 15 September). George Michael must think he's died and gone to heaven!

Don't get me wrong. Jokes about the unique - how you English say? - culture to be found in prison can be amusing. But to be amusing, jokes have to be funny, strictly speaking. And original. The unabridged version of that letter probably implored him to drop the soap in the showers.

More than that, though, would it have been published had it referred to a normal punter convicted of an offence who happened to be gay? Or if it had been written by a male correspondent about a lesbian celebrity off to Holloway nick?

At least this week I have genuinely learnt something:

Your report on Harley-Davidson's woes (Unions vote for deal that stops Harley motorbikes moving out of Milwaukee, 15 September) named the Fonz as a Harley-riding icon. Despite being a native Milwaukeean, he was more commonly seen on British bikes, including the Triumph 500 Trophy seen in Happy Days' opening credits. Perhaps he anticipated the company's future woes.

I might even have to respond, working in references to the five (yes, count 'em) Happy Days spin-offs.

Can we ever really trust internet polling?

2010-09-16T11:15:00.004+01:00

Apparently not, if the results of a new study published in Computers In Human Behaviour are to be believed.

Two academics from the Universities of Vienna and de Deutso (Bilbao) have found that we simply do not pay enough attention when filling out surveys on line.

Their UserActionTracer (UAT) may have been developed to check the seriousness with which participants took psychological data collection. But the behaviours they identified (such as 46% clicking through at a suspiciously fast rate) point towards weaknesses in all web-based surveys.

A neat summary of their findings is here.

Neanderthal author captures geist of the ice zeit.

2010-09-14T09:57:00.003+01:00

Working alone in his office in the Neander Valley, the greatest author of our and any other time, Jonathan Paintstone has finally completed his new cave drawing, entitled "Why Hunting Is All You Need And How The Choice To Gather Means We'll Never Progress Beyond The Altay Mountains".

The long-awaited follow-up to "Is It Getting Warmer Or Is It Just Me?" (which anticipated by a few weeks the beginning of the inter-glacial period) has been hailed as the Scrawl of the Pliocene-Quartenary.

The story revolves around an upwardly mobile Cro-Magnon couple, Sue and Jake, who move into a rundown area of Lascaux in anticipation of it gentrifying as it attracts ever more reasoning sub-species of Homo sapiens.

On the surface, Sue and Jake are happy, but there is a strong undercurrent of misery and dissatisfaction in their lives thanks to the onset of the Modern Stone Age.

Unable to cope with their new found freedom - to bury their dead intentionally, worship fertility, appreciate art for aesthetic sake, and apply basic principles of nursing to the sick and wounded - they forget to keep breathing and disappear up their own backsides (surely "sometime around the mesolithic age" - Ed.).

Barney and Betty Rubble said:

"We, too, used to be happy, simply breaking down mammoth hides with flat-backed tools. But since they opened the Bedrock Bowling Alley and we had that pigosaurus waste disposal installed, our lives have been hell. And you should have seen what buying a woodpecker that plays gramophone records off its beak did for Fred and Wilma's marriage."

Lessons From The Guardian Letters Page Module #1 - how the real problem with the world is that there just aren't enough anti-bourgeois, anarchistic, surrealist, cultural anti-war movements anymore.

2010-09-10T12:01:00.001+01:00

The Guardian letters page, etymologists of the future will conclude, was what the phrase "beyond parody" was invented to describe.

On 8 September, it published this:

I'm horrified that Martin Kelner (Screen Break, Sport, 6 September), in quoting the theme song from Bonanza, omitted "da da" before the final "dum". He should leave this kind of thing to us music lovers.

A little arch, perhaps, but amusing and admirably brief. This isn't what I'm talking about.

But this, today's response to it, is:

We shouldn't lose sleep over a dropped "da da" from Bonanza (Letters, 8 September), but focus instead on the absence of Dada in our modern world. This creative movement was founded in 1915 to highlight the horrors and pointlessness of the first world war. Sadly, the movement lost its way during the 1920s. Would "A Journey" have chosen a different path, and how many thousands of lives would have been saved, had Dada still been alive in 2003?

At least it, too, is brief.

Or am I missing the point? Perhaps it is parody. And I'm the one being a po-faced, joyless, obsessive, pretentious, tortuous, tedious, ahistorical, esoteric waste of pixels.

Wouldn't be the first time.

"Where they burn books...

2010-09-08T10:15:00.002+01:00

...they will also ultimately burn people".

While the Ground Zero Mosque is not a mosque and isn't at Ground Zero, the controversy has now thrown up another poorly named building in the form of the Dove World Outreach Center.

If the title is supposed to suggest peace and understanding throughout our sceptred globe then I think they might have lost sight of their mission a little, with plans for an international Burn The Koran Day.

As someone who can both breathe and think at the same time I don't really like seeing any books burned, banned or censored in any way.

I've never read the Koran in its entirety. Though this is pretty much as I understand it: religious text claiming to be the word of God through direct revelation or via the representations of agents, containing some ethical and moral guidance that transcends time and remains pertinent, and some other stuff that fails to take account of contemporary values and expectations.

Not unlike the Old and New Testaments which have also, at various times, found themselves interpreted to inspire and justify extremist acts.

However, such acts are not in and of themselves religious and are certainly not so in their consequences. Rather, they are political.

The motivations of those who carried out 9/11 had far more in common with communism and fascism than with any theological insight.

Unless I'm missing something. So rest assured, Pastor Terry Jones! Fear not, good congregants of the DWOC! Your planned actions have inspired me.

On 9/11 this year, I will, as always remember those who died on that day and in the conflicts which followed. Anyone who knows me will know the sincerity of this and that nothing I would do could ever be intended to disrespect them. And with that in mind, I'm also going to buy, rather than burn, a Koran, and read it, and learn a little more.

Buy A Koran Day. Can anyone suggest the best English translation?

Is this the worst political metaphor ever?

2010-09-08T08:20:00.001+01:00

Political wit is a tricky business and one of that discipline's subsets is especially difficult: the employment of a memorable metaphor or similie to illustrate a particular controversy.

In 1992, Dennis Skinner sought biblical inspiration for his assertion that sterling rejoining the ERM would be akin to

"a dog returning to its vomit".

I seem to remember the leader of the then-MSF union, Roger Lyons, describe Michael Portillo's 1994 promotion to Secretary of State for Employment as

"like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank".

Simple points, well made. But cliches, even then. Which is perhaps why politicians attempt new comparisons in the search of that sharp piece of argument-closing rhetoric.

Do think it through first, though. Otherwise you end up, like Lib Dem Treasury Spokesman Lord Oakeshott, saying this sort of thing (of the appointment of Bob Diamond as Barclay's new Chief Executive):

"you don't put the chief croupier in charge of the casino".

Err. Yes, you do. A chief croupier's job is, amongst other things, to make sure that all the gambling is being carried out within the rules. He or she will understand risk, probabilities and financial irregularity better than most.

If anything, we should be encouraging career-changes from The Strip to the Square Mile.

Sharp elbows and slippery slopes: the problem with 'nudging'*.

2010-08-11T17:55:00.000+01:00

It has finally leaked out that Number Ten have established a rather Orwellian-sounding behavioural insight team, or "Nudge Unit" (registration).

While recognising its limitations, it's fair to say that I'm a little more than agnostic about the so-called "nudge agenda". The ideas that continue to emerge from the fields of social psychology and behavioural economics can support our daily interactions with each other and our personal professional development. Businesses have felt the benefit of the analyses provided by the likes of Robert Cialdini and others.

We're not, however, all going to become Derren Brown - and the State certainly isn't - by reading a few self-improvement books (for that's basically what we're talking about here). Even if, beyond the illusory elements of his act, there are some easily replicable examples of nudging that may have an everyday application:

If you like that sort of thing.

Does all this mean that government should be pursuing policy goals by seeking to influence and persuade individuals to take certain courses of action based on these "libertarian paternalist" principles?

Liberal concerns focus on the abuse of the term "irrational" to describe human behaviour (as Tim Worstall and Stuart Derbyshire explain). While the scope for greater individual freedom within any government initiative is welcomed.

Those of a more social democratic bent can be more comfortable with such attempts to find a balance that provides the maximum utility for society while retaining free choice.

Most importantly, the question of who decides what is best (and how), before designing the relevant nudge, should interest us all.

Either way, it seems to me that any policy led by "behavioural insight" faces huge challenges if it is to be effective in the long-term. The danger is that it will either fail to have an enduring impact. Or evolve into direct compulsion.

The first of these is due to the very human nature that it seeks to exploit. As policies based on behavioural insight become more common and more obvious, people will become more aware that they are being nudged. What starts as a gentle, maybe barely perceptible, little push in the right direction, can start feeling like a very sharp elbow indeed.

Fig 31 of the Nudge Unit's new manual

had attracted much controversy

At this point, naturally rebellious streaks might kick in, as individuals seek to reassert sovereignty over themselves.

What happens then? Does the State start indulging in reverse-psychology with the citizen? Will Downing Street have to start endlessly gaming double, triple, quadruple bluffs in pursuit of the desired behavioural scenario? Or we will simply have to revert to more traditional regulation?

On the point about controlling the evolution of the process, those who are enthusiastic about policy led by behavioural insight need to explain how nudging can be prevented from slipping all too easily into compulsion. Anarcho-capitalist David Friedman points out that:

[It] depends on leaving the individual free, at no significant cost, to make the choice you don't want him to make. But if you don't want him to make that choice, it will be tempting to make it more and more difficult...to neglect to tell him that...the alternatives you don't want him to choose are available. There is thus a serious slippery slope problem, making it possible for libertarian paternalism to be used as the justification for government actions that end up as paternalism, or compulsion for other purposes.

He highlights the following from his own experience:

It was the beginning of my daughter's first year at college and the college sent us a bill, a list of charges and a total we were to pay. One of the items in the list, included without explanation, was ten dollars for the "Green Edge Fund"...it was a fund to subsidize environmental projects by students. It had been voted in the previous year—as an optional ten dollar per pupil payment.

"Optional" means that you don't have to pay. We sent in our check minus the ten dollars and I sent an email to the president of the College, pointing out that he was billing parents for money they did not owe. I received back an apologetic email from an administrator, explaining that the program was a new one and they had not yet gotten everything set up properly.

A month or so later I received a bill from the College for ten dollars. I wrote back...pointing out that they had billed me, and all other parents, for ten dollars we didn't owe.

[...]

A few weeks later, I received a second bill for ten dollars—shortly followed by an email from the administrator telling me that the matter had been taken care of and I could ignore the bill.

Recently, we got our bill for the second semester. It included a form for our daughter to sign and hand in during the first two weeks of the semester requesting a waiver of the charge for the Green Edge Fund.

[...]

The bill did not include any mention of the fact that the College had, in the previous semester, charged parents for some tens of thousands of dollars that they did not owe, nor any offer of a refund to any parent who wanted it.

It starts out as advice and through a mixture of bureaucratic incompetence and political motivation, it becomes compulsory. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with compulsion per se. It's just that it might be fairer and more honest if we started from that point in the first place.

But if the challenges of evolving compulsion and obsolescence can be overcome then a welcome for the behavioural insight team, and its attempts to work with the grain of human nature rather than against it, is due.

*As per the Grand Universal Blogging Clichés Directive, I hereby embed that Monty Python sketch in order to comply with Rule #94 concerning all posts dealing with the "nudge agenda":

You don't have to be mad. But...

2010-07-30T14:10:00.010+01:00

Theodore Dalrymple in today's Times (£) highlights the inflation in the official recognition of syndromes, manias and psychoses, as meticulously documented in and promoted by the ever-expanding Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Which got me pondering as to how the Labour Party leadership candidates are bearing up as we enter the thirteenth week of campaigning. With the DSM as my guide, I think I may have noticed a condition or five that point towards everyone needing to take a few days off:

SERRACUMMUSICUS INSILIOMANIA

an irresistible compulsion to jump on bandwagons

HYPERBOREAN TOURETTE'S

inability to stop mentioning one's regional provenance

PEDAGOGICAL INTERROGATIVE APHASIA

a speech impediment presenting as tongue paralysis

when asked a question about education

HEALEY'S PARANOIA

unavoidable anxiety experienced by those
diagnosed as the frontrunner
(see also Heseltine Syndrome and Acute Portilloism)

CLP-TYPE MICRONUMEROPHOBIA

severe aversion to smaller than expected returns

from the local party nominations

The good news is that most of these are reckoned to be seasonal disorders and that everyone should be cured by the 25th September.

Insistent upon themselves: Peter Griffin, The Godfather and Compass

2010-07-29T17:14:00.001+01:00

Five blog posts in and I finally get to mention Family Guy (what took you so long? - Ed) thanks to Compass - Direction for the Democratic Left.

Unfortunately, all AV clips of the relevant scene have been taken down but the script can be scrolled through here:

Get This Quote - Find more at TVLoop

When I first saw that, I didn't really know what "insists upon itself" meant. Then along comes Compass and pretty much offers the definitive insistence upon oneself by holding their own Labour leadership ballot.

As Luke asks, why?

Although it is all of a piece, I suppose. The superimposition of Compass-supporting MPs' pictures over the "A New Hope" title at their last conference. The employent of tautologies such as "existing incumbents". The giving of "primacy not to ends, but to means."

It all just, I don't know...insists upon itself.

But to be fair, just like Peter, we haven't seen the end yet.

On the Che Guevara Information Super-Highway* with a Castroist Councillor

2010-07-28T18:39:00.000+01:00

I really do try not to get too drawn in to circular debates in the comments sections of other people's blogs. No. Really. I do. But the peculiar obsession with Cuba held by the more Jurassic elements of What We Used To Call The Left (WWUTCTL) has a certain resonance for me: it was the last issue I ever debated at a Branch Labour Party meeting before discovering better things to do with my Tuesday evenings.

The problem began when the Secretary tearfully described the joy he had felt at seeing the expression of wonder and gratitude on a Cuban child's face at being handed a state-funded textbook that was going to help her learn to read - an occurrence that was apparently unique to Cuban communism. When I asked if, once she had learnt to read, whether she would be allowed to read whatever she wanted, I was told that I was a sucker for American propaganda. As I was for pointing out the inconvenient truth about the island's human rights record.

One of my older comrades, for reasons that remained unclear, was especially proud that drugs traffikers got executed in Cuba. She then said that she wished she lived in Cuba. I said I was glad that I did not. At which point I was told that I had no right to comment at all, as I had never been to Cuba. Of course, this hastily introduced Rule Of Not Self-Righteously Ponitificating On Countries For Which We've Not Got The Passport Stamp did not apply to them and their international bogeymen in the Middle East and other parts of the world whose timezones remained as familiar as the moon's.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was grateful for the opportunity afforded by Councillor Terry Kelly to revisit the debate when he excitedly posted on his blog about how Fidel Castro isn't dead yet.

In response to which, I posted in the comments section, challenging the view of Cuba as a collective, progressive paradise. I was being awkward, true. Just because Cuba ranks 179 out of 194 in the UN Human Development Index for hosting an immigrant population doesn't necesarily mean that nobody really wants to live there. And maybe the 2.5 million tourists in 2009 really did go for the immersive revolutionary experience, rather than the sun, salsa, ropa vieja and mojitos before getting on the plane home.

Councillor Kelly then explained that any imperfections in Cuba's economy, society and legal system are due to the over-arching need to "defend the revolution".

Which, if you view the world through a Marxist-Leninist prism, is internally logical. But for the rest of us, it's just more of the moral relativism that infects WWUTCTL. You can roll out the "defence of the revolution defence", if you like. But you can't then claim to be universalist, internationalist or really all that socialist.

*#1 in a series of ongoing attempts to get a title, lyric or reference thereof from every Billy Bragg song into the post titles.

The Tragi-Comedy of the Square

2010-05-26T09:08:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, a lot of people were getting very excited about Parliament Square as police tried to enforce some sort of security and/or tidiness upon it.

As irritating as the sight of assorted members of What We Used To Call The Left (WWUTCTL) pitching tents, banners and placards on the Griswald's favourite London attraction is, I reckon Winnie, Abe, Dave, Ben, Jan, George, Edward and Pam might have benignly approved. (As Nelson is still alive, he can speak for himself). It's all very tame compared to the political upheaval of their days. And that is what is truly irritating about Democracy Village: its faux radicalism that typifies WWUTCTL. If there was any coherency to what these people were doing, their despoilment of a world heritage site might attract a tad more sympathy.

According to the Democracy Village website, this whole operation is a "peace strike". Hmm. A "strike", eh? Cool. Workers strike, don't they? Those horny-handed sons (and daughters) of toil. Betcha Dad's told you all about the miners' strike, hasn't he? Now that, that was a strike. And what the BA cabin crew are doing. Phew. That's almost too exciting to bear! Not only are they striking but, in the process, they are also grounding those CO2-spewing aeroplanes.

Hold on, though. Surely to be a strike, you have to be witholding something that that those whom you are striking against want. Now the ruling classes are a sensitive lot, I know. And I'm sure they'd prefer a nice, unobliterated view out of the windows of the Houses of Parliament while they quaff cognac from hollowed-out diamonds and gently caress the capitalist lap-dogs curled up in their Saville Row-tailored crotches. But refusing to be "not in Parliament Square" falls short of a proper strike, don't you think?

Fear not. I'm sure you've got a few other ideas up your sleeves. Like these three, who set out several yards from Democracy Village to drape a protest banner over Westminster Abbey:

Woah, woah, woah, woah. Wait a second. What's going on there? Soldiers home, please? PLEASE? Soldiers home bloody comma please?! There is no greater pedant than me. No one more admiring of the correct use of a punctuation mark. But are you demanding an end to a war which you insist is illegal? Or ordering breakfast? The woman leading this heroic act of peace even described it as "a little bit naughty". What is this? "Carry On Smash The Imperialist Conflict-Mongers"? I'm still not sure exactly what it is you're trying to achieve but I strongly suspect it might take more than being "a little bit naughty".

Help. Please. Help me understand. What's that? Ryan'll sort me out? I can just go along to the Information Stand? Lovely. Now we're going somewhere. I'm starting to get it. Democracy Village is the Ideal Campaigns exhibition. Will you guys be at Olympia, next year? Ryan won't, I'm sure. He'll still be too busy "worrying" about the war in Afghanistan. Pete Phoenix might be, though, as long as there are some suitable "network experiences" to be had.

Perhaps he'll be the one handing out free senses of humour at the entrance:

"The most controversial speaker was a mouthpiece for the
Tories who encouraged us anarchists to register as such in
return for mind-altering substances. A few Villagers didn’t
seem to have a prior understanding of satire and became
quite riled at the ‘Tory’s’ opinions; one lady began shouting
about the Village being funded by oil and arms companies…
and the Israelis."

You can begin to understand when the original long-term Parliament Square protestor, Brian Haw, is said to be less than impressed with his new-found co-habitors. Though if he had a grasp of basic economic theory he would have known that this tragi-comedy was all very predictable. (We know he doesn't have a grasp of basic economic theory through his insistence that the Iraq War was all about the oil when everyone else knows it was about serving the interests of Jewish bankers*.)

Thanks to its unique location in the heart of our political district, Parliament Square can provide great publicity for an issue and the opportunity to communicate with decision-takers. If that opportunity is over-exploited, that provision is depleted. While individuals may benefit from their experience in Democracy Village, the cost - of incoherency, dissipated responsibility, inaccessibility, and counter-productive campaign tactics - is borne by all.

Through his strangely pointless but impressively stubborn nine-year long sit-in on the Square, Mr Haw has established its status as a shared resource for protest. Like all such resources, it has now become vulnerable to the Tragedy of the Commons.

*As this is a new blog and the web is full of lunatics, I rather suppose I should point out that this remark is what is tecnically known as "a joke".

10 questions for the Labour leadership candidates

2010-05-25T11:02:00.002+01:00

Dear Andy, David, Diane, Ed B, Ed M and John,

So you're all agreed that we've become "disconnected" from our "core vote". Break it down for me. What, or rather who, is our core vote?

Everyone's also quite clear that we need to "listen" more. Listening is good. But so is leadership. Is there any conflict between the aspirations of our core vote and those of the voters we need to attract (or attract back) to regain power? How would you balance this?

Specifically, one of the oft-cited reasons for the disconnection is our failure to satisfactorily address immigration. Is putting the case for immigration part of the solution here? If so, how would you articulate this?

More generally, do science and evidence-based policy-making play a large enough role in determining Labour's direction and ideas? If not, how would you ensure they do?

Let's imagine that it's the morning after the next General Election. Labour is in the same position that the Conservatives were on May 7th this year. You are standing pretty much in David Cameron's shoes and having to intiate coalition discussions. What are the main principles of negotiation in such circumstances? What is your experience of leading similar negotiations?

Alternatively, Labour win that election with an overall majority. It's minute one of your time in Downing Street. What's the first thing you announce? Or, in other words, why do you want to be Prime Minister?

Yours, in genuine curiosity,

Dan.

There is much in the Con-Lib programme that we can and should support - and much we can't and won't.

2010-05-11T22:44:00.039+01:00

During my two decades of political activism, I had never got round to attending an election count. I put that right last week. And it was magical. Like a democratic technology at which those from a different era or political system might only wonder.

As the papers spilled out, we could be sure that nobody had been physically threatened during their journey to and from the polling stations. No gangs had tried to disappear a ballot box or two. No bribes had been offered to (let alone taken by) those counting what had been cast. Relief that the campaigning was over mixed well with a certain pride that an election free and fair was culminating in the trays of neatly clipped papers piling up in front of us. The Sunday Times completely missed the point with an article fretting about the non-requirement of ID. Damn skippy we do not have to prove who we are to polling station staff. Long may it remain so.

It is easy to take for granted the pacifity with which one elected representative is chosen over others in our body politic. For while magical, it is no illusion.

That said, I make no claim for our democracy as the optimal reflection of the collective choice, effortlessly creating a consensual vision of the future around which a cohesive national effort for unstoppable reform and progress is launched. For now, we find value elsewhere in the decisions taken on 6th May 2010 - and 1st May 1997, 3rd May 1979, 28th February 1974, 18th June 1970, 15th October 1964, 30th May 1951 and 5th July 1945. On these dates, incumbent governments were essentially given their notice by voters who wanted them out for reasons (both real and perceived) of incompetency, leadership failure, simple over-familiarity, or the alternatives being better.

Political scientists talk of "change" elections. I think a better description is "safety valve" elections, in which frustration is expressed and then relieved. The choices made under such circumstances may not be postitive but they are no less significant for that.

Which is why as progressives we can feel disappointed with the General Election result but, on democratic principle, satisfied with the outcome of coalition talks. The people spoke. And their will has been alchemised into an administration.

Ultimately, renewing ourselves in government turned out to be nigh on impossible. In opposition it will be much easier but riskier. Our approach must be measured and pragmatic. This was no 1997-style wholesale rejection of a long-standing government but we did lose badly and the message has been clear: while there is much to be proud of in the indisputable progress of the last 13 years, there is also room for contrition and some in-hindsight recognition of when we got it wrong. Equally, there is much in the Con-Lib programme that we can and should support - and much we can't and won't.

The Left's rather odd (and one would think contradictory) propensity for reactionary and elitist responses has already been glimpsed in the Take Back Parliament campaign. What if the electorate made the right choice? Not "right" as in what we agree with. "Right" as in what people felt about the parties, their leaders and the policies. Just because the Lib Dems didn't do as well as you ~~hyped~~ hoped, does not mean that the election was "broken".

We are already in danger of tying ourselves up over process and nurturing a resentment of what ordinary men and women think while real opportunities to influence pass us by. Choosing a different direction over the coming weeks will ensure that our experience of being out of power this time is for years, maybe months, rather than decades.