Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

But I'm still scribbling thoughts down when I can.

If you're interested, I can now be found at:

https://medium.com/@d4nf0x

http://www.certainripening.com/

https://twitter.com/d4nf0x

Two thoughts on Bob Crow (RIP).

I shared perhaps only one or two of the many political stances of Bob Crow, who has died at 52, but, boy, did he show what a union could do if it stays focused on a sector and on the radical concept of promoting members' needs. While the rest of the union movement has been cannibalising itself into super-unions, the three covering rail - Crow's RMT, plus ASLEF and TSSA - have resisted the temptation and appear to be all the more effective for it. Pay and conditions for tube workers are the envy of the majority of those they transport every day. And good luck to them. Their General Secretary certainly understood the 'conservatory principle'.

A conservatory, yesterday.

In addition, RMT provoked its own disaffiliation from the Labour Party in 2004. Now I'm proud of the union link and would hope that at some point the rail, maritime and transport workers will be reaffiliated to Labour in the new system. But that's 10 years now of RMT members and officers not fannying about at GCs, AGMs and selection processes and, perhaps, finding better things to do. I wonder whether a union's priorities can get skewed. For if it's a choice between a union that gets above inflation pay deals for its members but is out of direct party politics, or one that has, say, a major employer close on its watch while its local officers are perhaps a little distracted by (ahem) helping to select the next Labour Party PPC...well, I'll take the former, thanks. Like I say, focusing and prioritising matter and Crow was good at both.

My second point though is that, while admiring what he achieved in the present, he never really seemed to address the future. Today's £50/60k-plus and the rest is great for tube drivers in their fifties and sixties who will continue to work in that role until retirement. But in 10 years' time the job of Tube Driver won't exist anymore. Meanwhile, public transport commuting won't be as necessary (home and remote working, flexible hours, personal hover-boards*, etc). So the rather blunt tool of striking to shut down the Underground for a day or two won't be as effective in negotiating on behalf of a dwindling membership. The RMT knows that this is the way of things. Look at what containerisation and GPS has done to those under the 'M' part of their name.

Like nearly all industries and professions, mass transit systems will eventually move from high numbers of semi- or un-skilled workers to low numbers of skilled workers. And overall, this is good. But what we want for workers in the transition is re-skilling, so they can adapt to the changes within their sector or transfer into new ones. Crow and the RMT were defensive on this, rather than seeing the opportunities. 

But at least he, and under him the union he shaped, were not afraid of their members' aspirations in the here and now. And as of today, I bet there's a few members of the choir invisible measuring up for a new conservatory and eagerly awaiting Mr Crow's representation.

(*Shut up. A boy can dream).

On Remembrance and Reminding.

As sure as Remembrance Sunday falls on the second Sunday of November each year, you can also set your calendars to the Pretend Left in the fortnight beforehand indulging in their conspicuous bouts of Remembrance rejection.

I do not, as it happens, jump quickly to criticise those who actively avoid marking the days designed to respect our war dead. Remembrance can be complex and for those genuinely conflicted, I can accept, while not agreeing with them, when, having thought about it, they come down on the side of making a personal choice not to participate.

What must be challenged however is the way in which certain individuals and groups misrepresent acts of Remembrance in order to promote their particular and fringe interpretations of the world. For them, the whole Remembrance gig is an inauthentic imposition upon an ignorant, misled proletariat. It is a façade behind which the ruling classes hide their culpability for war while harvesting undeserved support for waging it and continuing their socio-economic oppression. This year and last, such approaches have been best illustrated by the student politicians of the soon-to-be-abolished (oh, the irony) University of London Union.

It is forgotten now, after 12 years of fatalities and casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, that in the mid-90s, Remembrance in this country had fallen somewhat into disrepair. The Sunday was still an event, but the two minute silence on the 11th itself was not widely marked and you could get away with appearing on TV without a poppy in your lapel. Football matches on the Remembrance weekend just kicked off, with no silence observed beforehand.

It was popular recognition of this fading of tradition that led to it being taken more seriously again. I think it was 1996 that saw the 11 November at 11 am silence return to a greater prominence. I remember because I was working in a high profile politician’s office at the time and we were convinced the Daily Mail was going to call during it to see if we would be disrespectful enough to answer.

This re-invigoration of Remembrance was not imposed by an elite or exploited to justify or sanitise ongoing wars (it was a relatively peaceful, post-Cold War, pre-9/11 age, after all). It happened because the people wanted it. This should be obvious to all those who criticise Remembrance today.

Let us imagine that history had left us war-free until last year and that Remembrance had never been necessary. Then a conflict emerged to which we sent troops. 12 months on, would not local communities want to commemorate those local men and women who had died? Would not the nation as a whole expect national commemoration? Surely we would expect, nay demand, that our nation’s leaders also attend and pay their respects. In short, we would end up with Remembrance traditions pretty much exactly the same as we have now.

Ultimately, this is the problem with contempt expressed for Remembrance: it is also contempt expressed for the millions who organise and attend the services and wear the poppies. Each one may do so for various reasons. None do so to show support for those who made the decisions to go to war. None of them are there as some sort of reinforcer of the class system. In fact, it is quite the opposite. 

For those who have served or fought, or have lost friends and family who have, or who simply want to acknowledge the sacrifice in a dignified and meaningful way, Remembrance is ours. Military, civilian, affected directly, or not. And, as such, it is good that we do so alongside the 'ruling class' or whatever you want to call them. It is about Remembrance, after all (clue's in the name, eh?). And that is inextricably linked to Reminding, as well. Reminding those political, civic, institutional and military leaders that war is, yes, in the end, about the men and women, sons and daughters, flesh and blood that get sent to fight it. It is good and civilised, therefore, that politicians get to parade and lay wreaths not so much alongside citizens, soldiers, veterans and the media at these services, but surrounded by them. They absolutely should lay wreaths and we should be able to see the look in their eyes as they do it. 

In amongst the commemoration of the heroism and sacrifice, and the pride, there is, then, a strong element of defiance and chastening of our leaders. Sure, it is not as obvious as a demonstration or a riot or a rally or a fringe meeting or a conference or a pamphlet or a blogpost. But it is there. And most of us have the intellectual ability to attend Remembrance services in both those spirits. If you do not have that capacity, then perhaps it is time you took a closer look.

This year I will be in a place more appropriate than most, thanks to my work. My second Remembrance Sunday there. And for the first, I was in uniform myself.

But for most Remembrance Sundays of the last 10 years, I have been deeply honoured to march with my army cadets (I was an adult instructor in the ACF until last month) from a unit bang in the middle of Holloway, North London, one of the poorest wards in the country. The kids involved do not need any lectures from the left on the challenges of economic inequality (nor from the right, for that matter, on the importance of individual responsibility).

Those parades to Islington Green count as some of the proudest moments of my life.  After the service at the war memorial there, the march back up to Highbury Corner goes via a particular backstreet that always has a handful of veterans, pristine in their blazers and berets, waiting to salute the parade. When the salute is returned, it is a simple but special moment. One generation saying to another, thank you for what you did. And that generation, in turn, saying thank you for remembering.

The rest of those days are spent at the MOTH (Memorable Order of Tin Hats) ‘Shellhole’ in Hackney. Young and old, military and civilian. The drinks flowing, the buffet table collapsing, and the cadets taking the veterans for a dance or two. It is touching, dignified, melancholy and, even with the likes of me present, deeply working-class.

One year, a veteran called Billy, who died a few months later, took me around the small collection of memorabilia housed in a room upstairs. With his old headdress sat proudly upon his head, he seethed over the recent abolition of his former regiment, a political decision, about which his views left little room for deference to or sanitising of our leaders. Like most of those who have served, Billy had a healthy cynicism of those who make the decisions about what the military does and even healthier respect for those, especially his comrades, who have had to carry them out. Inspiring and utterly typical.

Of course, if the various trotskyists and more immature members of my own Party who criticise Remembrance ever deigned to actually lower themselves into the communities they claim to care about – and to enjoy these moments of social solidarity which they say are so important and so missing from our modern lives – then they would recognise all this. Though I doubt they could understand it.

Which is fine. No one needs your understanding here. If you are too monotone yourself to appreciate the complexities of Remembrance, so be it. If all you see when you look out over a Remembrance service is the simple masses bowing and scraping unthinkingly to our rulers, well OK. Best you stay in bed, after all, this Sunday with the curtains drawn, and dream of your student union resolutions and of leading revolutions. But please be assured that you are not avoiding it all for the benefit of the ordinary men, women and children of this country who do take part. When you choose not to Remember with them, at least do them the honour of remembering that.

As per the rider on this blog’s front page, the author writes in a personal capacity and the views expressed are his alone. If you enjoyed this post, please consider making a small donation to the Royal British Legion. Or even if you hated it, in fact.

Wayne Madsen analyses the Syria conflict.

Back in June, The Guardian/Observer published a front-page story based on quotes from former US naval officer and NSA employee, Wayne Madsen. The wave of publicity generated by the paper's publishing of Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's electronic espionage activity was still cresting. The new 'evidence' from Madsen, naming six European countries as having secret deals with the US to hand over information to the NSA when requested, would certainly have let them ride that wave for a little longer.

Except that within seconds of the story going live on their website, the interwebz lit up with a mixture of indignation and derision that a serious (ahem) publication could so unquestioningly carry the claims of someone who, a quick Google search would have revealed, is a paranoid, 9/11 truther, anti-Obama fanatic, 'Zionism'-obsessed, conspiracy theorist.

In short, simply not sane or reliable enough to have a contribution to the letter's page published, let alone dominate the front page. The Guardian/Observer quickly took down the website story. But it was alas too late for the print edition.

Now Madsen has given us the benefit of his thoughts on US involvement in the Syria conflict. This is a screenshot from his site taken tonight:

The heading of the otherwise paywalled column is:

Obama's "Rosh Hashana War". Obama's war on Syria is made out of whole cloth from a talit prayer shawl.

Now what could he possibly mean by that?

Sci-Fi Noir Pedantry Fun With The Guardian

I've often pondered the possibilities of devising a Voight Kampff test for the Pretend Left. You could ask a question such as "Do you want to ban things you don't like?" or "Have you checked your privilege today?". If the subject's pupils start dilating with excitement at the suggestion of banning something and their muscles twitch in disgust at their shame in not being as pure of class, ethnicity, gender or sexuality as they would like, then what you have is not a genuine, principled liberal but a sort of lefty Replicant that doesn't even realise that they're not what they think they are.

If you're still not sure, you could start burning a copy of that day's Guardian in front of them and see if they have a heart attack.

In the meantime, I've got another Blade Runner-related reason to frazzle the 'left''s favourite newspaper: one of its star columnists has gone and got the whole plot wrong.

Zoe Williams, in an article about mitochondrial transfer (or introducing a third donor's genetic material to IVF treatment) asks "are three-parent babies the first step towards a Blade Runner future?":

is it defensible to make alterations at a genetic level whose impact on future children we simply don't know? Is there any fundamental difference between screening out diseases and screening out undesirable traits? The spectre is sometimes conjured of a Blade Runner future, in which the rich can modify their foetuses to perfection while the poor have to take what nature throws at them. I personally am of the view that, if we do end up in Blade Runner, genetic modification will be one of our lesser problems, but that doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about.

A replicant, yesterday.

The creations that everyone's worried about in Blade Runner are not genetically screened to weed out any supposed imperfections. They are replicants: bioengineered robots which have been genetically engineered but not genetically selected or modified. There's no breeding, foetal modification or rich/poor differentiation at all.

If only there was some sort of well-known, freely available, easily accessible database of films and their plots that hard-pressed, deadline-pressured journalists on a quality, digitally advanced publication could use when they're trying to seem all popular culture relevant and classic movie savvy. What? Oh.

A vision of campaignbots traipsing around the marginals like canvassing Terminators

Labour Uncut are kindly carrying a post from me, expanding on the idea with which  I won last week's Top Of The Policies on supporting entrepreneurs: data development loans.

However, before we get too caught up in a vision of campaignbots traipsing around the marginals like canvassing Terminators, we should also consider the policy significance of Big Data. Although it has not been a great couple of weeks for data of any kind – in the news for all the wrong reasons as the full extent of the surveillance of the personal variety has been exposed – this must not distract us from the thousands of positive, world-changing uses of mass data collection and analysis.

If it's you're sort of thing, you can read it all here.

If foreign policy drove Adebolajo to commit the Woolwich atrocity, why does he know so little about the subject?

For a person claiming that war, foreign policy and what is happening in other lands drove him to his act of terror, Michael Adebolajo, who addressed an onlooker's mobile phone video yesterday after murdering a soldier in Woolwich, seems to know remarkably little about these things.

First,  he 'apologised' for having hacked a person to bits in broad daylight in front of women and children while explaining that women and children in 'our lands' have to see that sort of thing everyday. I'm going to make an assumption here that 'our lands' refers to a country such as Afghanistan which is overwhelmingly Muslim, and has been the focus of a 12 year war involving soldiers such as the one he targeted. Which is odd. For sure, there have been hugely regrettable civilian casualties throughout that war.  But the slicing and dicing of unarmed men in busy streets? Well that's a habit of the Taliban, this murderer's co-ideologists. If he knew anything of 'our lands' he would've known this and perhaps, to say the least, raise the matter in a different way.

Second, he's clear that British involvement in wars in which Muslims have been killed, inspired his actions as direct retribution. Again, I'll assume something here: that he's talking about Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, we pulled out of Iraq four years ago and we're well into draw-down in Afghanistan. British troops are doing less and less and less. 

 

A similar argument, on a much grander scale, pertains to 9/11. Those attacks were commited at a time when the US was teetering on a return to isolationism under a realist George Bush. Not completely, no. Nor necessarily irrevocably, indeed. But the world pre-9/11 was a lot closer to how Al Qaeda would like it to be than it is now. 9/11 made the neo-cons, not vice-versa.

 

So to return to Adebolajo, if you were going to get yourself so worked up about UK soldiers in 'our lands', shouldn't you have really done so a bit before now? Again, if he knew anything of these wars, he would know this, and perhaps realise that killing an off-duty soldier in London to make a point about deployed soldiers in Helmand may lack a certain logical consistency - at any time, let alone when you've basically got troops gone or going. OK, maybe the thirst for vengeance is so great that it doesn't matter that we're out of Iraq and nearly out of Afghanistan. History matters. Of course, you may have trouble selecting a cut-off point if that's your view ('what the Romans did to the soil around Carthage on land which was later to be part of the Caliphate is an outrage') but I can basically take your point.

 

However, you can't just pick and choose. In 1998, for example, NATO went to war in Kosovo specifically to defend an ethnic group that happened to be Muslim. And if Muslims being killed is the source of your rage, could you not have found time for a shout out to Syria? There's a regime, considered un-Islamic by fundamentalists, which has spent the last two years slaughtering Muslims on an industrial scale. This isn't wotaboutery. Consistency and a holisitc view matter when you're going to act so extremely out of such self-proclaimed high principle. If global politics is what supposedly whips you into a bloody frenzy then at least have the decency to establish a perspective that is both, er, global and goes back a bit further than the 10th September 2011. Again, if he knew anything about foreign policy, Adebolajo would've known this, and perhaps act on different matters other than Iraq and Afghanistan (and hopefully, as urged above, in a different way).

 

Third, why this? If your co-religionists being threatened in Afghanistan is such an unbearable thought, why kill that soldier where you did and when? There are all sorts of ways to contribute to the welfare of Afghans more directly. There are countless NGOs operating there that need money and personnel, for instance. You could even, if you wanted to (and I'm obviously not encouraging or advocating this, but if you wanted to) do insurgency properly and get over there and get trained and join in on the ground, doing that whole eye for an eye thing for real. And so again, if Adebolajo really knew about the war, he would know this and have been able to take a different path, closer to what he claims to care about. Or was it just that actually fighting properly for what you believed in would have meant having to get out of your Stone Island clobber, give up your X-Box, and not talk to girls anymore?

 

I'm going to go with the latter, actually. That video of Adebolajo was not reminiscent of any jihadist but rather of a narcissistic yet obviously inadequate pub bore or school bully. You know the sort. Kind of bloke who claims that he's never being showed enough 'respect' and who can only lash out when he realises that no one is the slightest bit interested in him.

 

Of course, foreign policy can be radicalising - personally, I found that Al Qaeda's foreign policy made me look at the world in a decidedly radically different way - but it is a massive leap to go from that to saying that the Western version is responsible for people like the Woolwich murderers acting as they do.

 

In the same way that they twist their understanding of Islam, they also twist their understanding of 'foreign policy' to justify their violence. Projections of Western power often leave much to be criticised and condemned. But the last decade has not been about a 'War On Muslims' or 'Wars for Oil'. Sure, you can certainly caricature it as such and propagandise around that (in the same way that you can caricature a religion and build prejudice against its adherents) but it will lead you further from understanding the true complexities and being able to address the wrongs in the right way. In this, Islamists have been ably supported by useful idiots in the West itself who share a similar disdain for our politcs and society, and whose knee-jerk reaction to terrorist acts on our streets is to blame ourselves first. They are complicit in promoting the idea that UK foreign policy is so irredeemably destructive that it can only be met with analagous destruction. It is a world view that is almost as simplistic and extreme as those who take the Koran as justification for their hatred. And they therefore share a responsibility for the fanaticism that leads to the sort of violence we saw perpetrated in Woolwich yesterday.

In a crowded field, the award for this year's snobbiest, most elitist Guardian letter may have already been won.

From a Guardian reader in Lancashire, on the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson:

I have no interest whatsoever in this bloke who tells an overpaid bunch of oiks how to kick a ball about. What if somebody really significant in the creative arts retired? Say Seamus Heaney declared he was retiring from poetry – would we get a supplement about that?

'Oiks'. Charming.

Just how far will Stephen Hawking take his boycott of Israeli academia?

Professor Stephen Hawking has withdrawn from the Fifth Israeli Presidential Conference, in order to support the academic boycott of Israel.

The conference organisers do not need me defending them. They're doing that perfectly well themselves:

The academic boycott against Israel is in our view outrageous and improper, certainly for someone for whom the spirit of liberty lies at the basis of his human and academic mission.

Ably supported by the Fair Play campaign:

Prof Hawking could have joined the Conference and explained his views on the conflict in the region, just as many other participants have done. By boycotting the conference, he has thrown away this opportunity and will help nobody.

But if he'll forgive me the indulgence (and the assumption that he's an avid reader of this blog), I've got a couple of questions.

Just how far are you prepared to take this boycott? Would you, for example, boycott the academics, and urge others to do so, who are currently working on a phase 2a dose-escalating trial to evaluate experimental stem-cell therapy in ALS, at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem?

As you know, ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

UPDATE
Hawking trip NOT cancelled due to Israel boycott:

Professor Hawking's spokesperson has confirmed that he will not miss the conference in Israel due to a boycott, but rather because of health reasons.

So now the question is, will BRICUP apologise?

FURTHER UPDATE

Nope. He really is supporting the boycott. Thereby proving, yet again, one of Fox's Iron Laws of Politics: that it takes really clever people to be really, really stupid.

'Mummy! The #BBCQT audience gave me a clap!'

BBC's Question Time continues its 34-year run tonight, with an episode from Dover.

My enthusiasm for the show was rekindled a couple of years ago when it also became a regular Twitter event. The two-screen phenomenon has meant ordinary punters being able to add their two shekels' worth immediately - in return for 140 characters' worth of praise or obloquy - rather than just rage alone at those moments when the contributions tip over from robust and controversial into idiotic and pompous.

However, an especially irritating (post-broadcast) aspect of the programme these days goes mostly unchallenged. Some panelists seem to treat any approval they might have received from the audience as instilling them with a certain political or moral legitimacy. Which they then bang on about on their blog or in their column as if there could be no further possible challenge to their view of the world. All because they got clapped the previous Thursday in a town hall with some TV cameras in it.
 
These insistences usual go along the lines of "opinion X is ignored by [person or organisation] Y but when I expressed it on Question Time last week...", followed by a description of how rapturous the audience response was because the truth, as expressed by our intrepid columnist or celebrity, had finally been spoken. It's like a child in the park asking their parents if they saw that special handstand they just did and how impressed all the big boys and girls were.

Such self-regard is premised on the belief that Question Time audiences are somehow an accurate cross-section of the Great British Public - when what they in fact are is a cross-section of that part of the Great British Public that thinks turning up to express support for one's existing views should be not just the beginning but also the end of the democratic process, because of the apparently unquestionable correctness of what one thinks. So the Question Time studio is an echo chamber, with the audience merely a reflection of the panel. Just without the time, inclination or luck to have become a politician or professional rent-a-gob themselves.

To claim them as some sort of frustrated, silenced majority for your cause is like divining significance from me shouting excitedly at Loftus Road when QPR score. It satisfies my demand for an event I believe is all too rare but the fans opposite will feel quite differently about it. Not to mention the absent thousands who will also find no joy in the scoreline. And millions of others still who could not give a damn either way. If Harry Redknapp claimed in the post-match interview that all the QPR fans roaring with delight when QPR scored proves how popular QPR is throughout the land, he'd be thought of as delusional. Yet similar claims from Question Time guests abound: supporters in the studio of what I say cheered when I said something so the whole country must really like what I say.  I'm sure a warm round of applause from a Question Time audience, re-(tw)heated in the days that follow, must be very reassuring as the modern world refuses to match your model for it. But real politics, this is not.

To pick two subjects which seem to bring out the worst in both #BBCQT panels and audiences: when a guest tries to persuade an audience of socially-housed single parents of the virtues of the latest welfare reform, then they will be able to write about it as some sort of heroic venture; when they attempt to justify their views on the Middle East conflict to an audience of Israelis and Palestinians, then they will be able to claim some sort of significant contribution to a debate.

And when they start understanding that the programme is entertainment and not factual, then they will be able to better appreciate what role it has as a political weather-vane. None.

LIFE ON TABLETS: FIFA regulations.

Only Arsenal and Man City were happy with the new FIFA regulations requiring manager and team names to match by at least one syllable.

BREAKING NEWS FOR TABLOID HATERS: Your Newspapers Are Rubbish As Well.

Let's begin by differentiating 'readers' from 'Readers'. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Guardian Reader, even though I used to read the Guardian (every day for over a decade). Nor am I a Daily Mail Reader, even on the rare occasions when I happen to read the Daily Mail. Of all the things I get up to of a day or a week, where I get my news from is one of the most irrelevant in defining who I am. You might call me a reader of The Times, as that is my current daily download, but I am not a Times Reader. Especially as, in our digital-leisure age, it's one of dozens, if not hundreds, of information and entertainment outlets covering my screen hour after hour.

For others, it is different. When one Guardian Reader wrote of raising her daughter as another Guardian Reader, in the same way others enforce a religious upbringing, it was with tongue lightly caressing the inside of her cheek, rather than firmly emplaced so. To a certain breed of self-righteous pomposity-monger, their choice of newspaper is a badge of honour, worn to demand respect from those whom they deem to be less wise in their selections. Take this, from the Guardian's letters page in 2011:

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 31 words, he manages to sum-up those who self-describe as Readers of certain newspapers: defining yourself against others whom you regard as the ignorant masses, just not as clever or ethical as you because of what they read. Such attitudes prevail on social media where even the mildest questioning of some ideas or campaigns gets you accused of being a mere conduit through which Rupert Murdoch or Paul Dacre channel their every nefarious desire.

Or look at these two quotes from the writer of a blog which charts the hypocrisies, exaggerations and lies of the tabloid press in general, and the Daily Mail in particular:

"Freedom in this sense is merely the freedom for anyone to set up their own press as an outlet for their own biased and perhaps blinkered view of the world".

"There are elements of our society that are fearful,vulnerable and simply not intelligent enough to know when they are being lied to".

(My emphases).

In highlighting such illiberal and elitist views, I am not seeking to defend the Fleet Street titles being attacked. I also have no respect for them nor any truck with their politics or views. But here's an exclusive especially for the Readers of supposedly more high-minded sources: your papers are rubbish as well. They also lie, exaggerate, print slanted copy, and promote their owners' and editors' biases. Sure, they may do it over matters of greater importance than their Murdochian, Northcliffe and Desmondite counterparts. But that arguably makes it even worse. 

If you think the press is too influential in our lives and want to make it less so, then fine. Lead the way. Stop treating The Guardian and The Independent and New Statesman as if they were the first three books of a Third Testament. You want people to pay less attention to the likes of Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips? Great. Then set an example. Stop taking every word the likes of Polly Toynbee and John Pilger write as some sort of infallible truth.

And in the meantime, stop referring to yourselves as "unlike readers of the Tory-owned press". Because you are not unlike them at all.

And 'Patronise Americans Month' comes to an end.

Now anyone who knows me, knows that I love America. During a recent business trip there, my four colleagues kept on comparing me to the Fast Show's Brilliant Kid (before asking me to shut up):

It's a great regret that I've never had the chance to live and work there properly. But 12 years ago, I have to admit that I indulged in an almighty bout of snark against the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

In the wake of the disputed 2000 Presidential election, and after an evening spent joking about it in the pub, I drafted up a spoof memorandum from HM Government to the American people, revoking their independence, and e-mailed it to 13 friends. It went viral and you've probably seen it a few times since in various expanded and elaborated forms (usually after each successive US election). 

(And, yes, you're probably thinking well who's this guy trying to kid, claiming he started it? Well, all these things start somewhere and I did write about it at the time on various communications and politics websites whose digital footprint has now been washed away (oh, how convenient, eh?). So you'll have to take my word for it. Some traces remain here and here).

Judging by some of the e-mails that came back my way, there were a whole load of people on the other side of The Pond taking it as intended and who gave as good as they had got ("...and regarding World War Two: you're welcome!"). Sadly, a few were also offended.

God knows what either of those groups makes of the attitudes directed towards US voters on social media in 2012.

The mass attempts at patronising them into voting the way that bien-pensant British citizens would vote (if only they could) began in earnest in 2004 when Guardian readers (that ever-reliable weather-vane of how the majority of the world thinks) wrote to the voters of swing-state Ohio in the appallingly misconceived Operation Clark County to urge them not to re-elect George W Bush. It successfully managed to increase Bush's vote in the county by five times the 2000 result.

This time, the Guardian's readers (both of them) are aching for Obama to win. Fine. But dear God, my fellow non-Americans, do you never learn?

Take this, for example, doing the rounds on Facebook today:

Or the endless, sanctimonious orders, disguised as pleas, on Twitter to vote the 'correct' way, because us clever people in the Old World know better than the reckless and ignorant populace of the New.

Now if I were an undecided 'Merican voter, in this election which could be the closest for 12 years, and the Rest of The World was trying to patronise me into supporting the incumbent, I wonder which way I'd go.

Perhaps I should write a memo about it.

Who is Dr Helen Wright really talking about?

Today's Times (£) trails the speech of a Headteacher at a private boarding school for girls, to be given tomorrow at the Institute of Development Professionals in Education:

Girls are pressured to think that being the hottest woman in the world is more important than academic success, a leading headmistress will say this week.

[...]

Dr Wright lambasted a recent men’s magazine cover, featuring (Kim) Kardashian posing provocatively in skimpy lingerie.

She said: “It is not too strong a statement, I venture to suggest, to say that almost everything that is wrong with Western society today can be summed up in that one symbolic photo.

“The descent of Western civilisation can practically be read into every curve (of which, you will note, there are indeed many). Officially the hottest woman in the world? Really? Is this what we want our young people to aim for? Is this what success should mean to them?”

I wonder what the pupils (and the fee paying parents, for that matter) of St Mary's Calne school in Wiltshire think about their most senior educator, Dr Helen Wright, offering this sort of analysis of world history? I suspect that, for £21k-£30k a year, they would hope for something a little less simplistic.

I am only peripherally aware of the Kardashian family and their various forays into celebrity. To be honest, when I first heard of the TV programme that launched them, At Home With The Kardashians, I thought it was a Star Trek spin-off. So I have not studied, as Dr Wright has, the bodily contours of that clan's most famous daughter. Nor am I a young woman. So there's at least two reasons, right there, why I am unable to speak authoritatively to Dr Wright's claim that the effect of images of a semi-naked actresse/model on teenage girls is correlated with the crumbling of civilisations.

But then I also don't happen to subscribe to Dr Wright's central assertion that the West is in some sort of absolute, terminal decline. Let's just run with the idea, though. For argument's sake. For there are those, from former cabinet ministers to Astronomers Royal to well-meaning but counter-productive urban campers to sections of the press, for whom this is a core belief. Various reasons given for our supposed descent include:

• rapacious capitalism
• catastrophic climate change
• conflict in the Middle East
• 'peak' oil
• risk-adversity
• political correctness
• family breakdown
• abandonment of religion

Maybe it's overly presumptive of me to question somebody of such vision and experience, but I find it a little difficult to find any of that (never mind all of it) inextricably symbolised in a magazine cover featuring a charismatic socialite in her undies. 

Of course, I don't think that Dr Wright really does either. She is employing hyperbole to underpin a more basic point: that young people, particularly young women, are overly influenced, and made less happy and healthy and ambitious, by the pressures exerted upon them by such images. Her world is, apparently, full of otherwise intelligent, aspirational, confident girls who are reduced to simpering, sexualised, celebrity-obssessed wasters by Zoo, Nuts, lingerie advertisements, those videos which accompany songs currently in the Hit Parade, and 'reality' TV.

Now maybe all these things are destroying the will and well-being of our nation's female youth and maybe they aren't. I'm sure if I were a parent, that my attitude towards such images would be a lot less liberal. I am happy enough (for the moment) to defer to the media studiers, psychologists and feminist theorists amongst my readership (you're both familiar with these areas, aren't you?).

However, reading about the second half of Dr Wright's proposed speech, in which she calls for less state interference in schools, a solution struck me: she and her staff should just do their job.

For is it really the case that "this is what young people see around them all the time: online, in magazines, on TV". Really? ALL THE TIME? Even for the seven or eight hours a day that they're in your classrooms? I do youthwork two hours a night, two nights a week in one of the most deprived wards in the country. On those evenings, I help 12-18 year olds, both boys and girls, learn some new things, apply for qualifications, and generally shape their ideas of what they want their training and education, and future careers, to be. Now maybe the boys are just humouring me and they all intend to be Premiership footballers, and maybe the girls are highly skilled at masking their true desire to be the next star of The Only Way Is Essex. But I doubt it.

The good teachers of St Mary's Calne have far greater opportunites to influence their charges than just about any other educators or mentors in the country. If they're concerned about 'bad' role-models for their pupils, then why not use the expansive curriculum to introduce them to some good ones? If they think that Zoo and Nuts are too prevalent, why not stick some copies of Wired (with its excellent coverage of female entrepreneurs) or Intelligent Life in the library? Surely a learning support fee of £30.90 per lesson would stretch to the subscriptions? Why not use your critical thinking and personal development lessons to address the issues you have raised?

Of course, all this is predicated on the fact that Dr Wright is talking about St Mary's Calne pupils. I mean, that's who she means, doesn't she, when she frets about youngsters turning into superficial, undisciplined adults? She couldn't just mean the less privileged young women of the world who don't have the benefit of experiencing her school? She surely could not be stereotyping girls from more urban and lower-income backgrounds. Could she?

Modern communication #2

From my recent trip to Bogotá:

Something satisfying about a Ministry of Communications covered in graffiti. 

A best as I can establish, "UCMC" and "UPN" references universities of those initialisms. CAF is the Development Bank of Latin America. The "UDPTE" and "GRABO" references elude me.

I think the unfinished swastika has a half-hearted line going through it as if to say "No to Nazis!". But whether CAF and UCMC are being accused of National Socialism, or are being urged to oppose it, only the artists may know.

Somebody spare us from these idiots raging against the social media machine.

Another week, another patronising article telling us that we're all going to virtual hell in a social media handcart because Facebook and the like are (I hope you are sat down reading this) changing things. That's right: changing (*shivers*) things.

Today, it's the FT's San Francisco correspondent, April Dembosky (who is on neither Facebook nor Twitter), telling us, in the strapline of her latest article, that "therapists fear that social networking is changing the way we relate to each other". The correct reactions to this assertion are:

1. I don't give a creamed turd what therapists think about anything...

2. ...but, yes, social networking is changing real-world networking. Well done for noticing. While you're here, could you explain me to what that rather ursine-looking creature is doing in that area of heavy flora? (See, anyone can sound 'scientific' if they try).

3. And, anyway, this isn't a bad thing.

For a start, it enables the wonderful practice of fisking. Allow me to demonstrate:

Then the groom pulled out his iPhone. “I wrote my vows on Evernote,” he says, referring to the note-taking application for mobile phones. “I pulled out my phone to read my vows.” Technically, it was a breach of the couple’s pre-nuptial agreement: no mobile phones at the wedding, no checking in on Foursquare, no posting to Facebook, Twitter or Path, the social networking site where Matt works.

[...]

Technology is pervading every moment of our lives – even the most sacred of our most intimate relationships. 

It is perfectly sensible to put restrictions on where and when anything distracting can be used. I'm sure the couple didn't want people juggling coconuts, reading newspapers, listening to transistor radios or playing cards during their wedding either. But the fact that something necessary to the ceremony was written in pixels on a screen rather than scratched on to paper with ink does not equate to some pernicious invasion of our lives. Let alone the most sacred bits of the most intimate bits (whatever the Blackberry that means).

(We then get some statistics demonstrating that a lot (I mean, like, OMG loads!) of people use the internet and that a lot of those people use social media).

As much as platforms like Facebook have become an online scrapbook for people’s lives, they have become public portals, almost performance spaces, for people’s relationships. They are not only places for sharing momentous events in a couple’s history – engagements, weddings, first dog – they are also a play-by-play chronicle of the couple’s every date, love note and even fight. As Matt says, “A guy will get in a fight with his girlfriend, then post photos with his arms around other people.”

Etiquettes are still evolving concerning the levels of privacy and think-before-you-post dilemmas on such sites. If you are naturally self-obssessed, boorish and indiscreet then the temptation to be self-obssessed, boorish and indiscreet on your Facebook timeline is probably too much to resist. It is unpleasant, to be sure. In terms of the charting of human relationships, it is not a massive leap away from the hatch-match-despatch sections of local newspapers, making an ex jealous by dancing with your new paramour at the local discotheque, or boasting about a conquest at the office party. Social media may amplify the outcome of how we behave. It does not change that behaviour, per se.

some relationship counsellors and mental health experts are concerned that online socialising is compromising the quality of real-life relationships

And those whose livelihood does not depend on therapeutic claptrap, are not concerned. In fact, quite the opposite. For there are equal claims that social networking improves the quality of our real-world relationships and increases the quantity of meaningful social contacts.

These sites are so engaging, so addictive, that people are choosing to spend time in front of their screens instead of face to face with their loved ones. “People are coming home and getting on their computers instead of having sex with their partners,” says Cameron Yarbrough, a couples therapist in San Francisco and a friend of the reporter. “I see couples break up over this stuff. This is real.”

Interesting anecdote. Show me the statistics. While you're looking, how about disentangling cause and effect? What really happened with these couples? Were they at it like rabbits, morning, noon and night? Did they hourly test the structural integrity of every piece of furniture in their house to destruction every day? Then one of them got an iPad and that was it? Or was it, rather, that the spark and chemistry had long since gone and interacting with technology filled the gap? The same way that TV used to. And reading did before that. And cave-painting before that. "Oh I don't know, Dr Ug. He used to have my bearskin off before he'd barely got in the cave after a day's hunter-gathering. But now he's just addicted to drawing pictures of spears and mammoths with his mates on next door's wall".

Some people, young and old, are choosing to communicate with each other through texting and social networks specifically to avoid the ambiguity and awkwardness of telephone and in-person conversations.

You're damn skippy we do! And we also use medical technology to avoid the awkwardness of dying (up to a point, obviously).

But it is through those ambiguous, awkward moments that people truly get to know one another. It is by interpreting facial expressions, tones of voice, and half-finished sentences that we figure each other out, and become sympathetic to others’ points of view.

Relationships that happen only through the prism of Facebook updates, blog comments or Twitter @s are, of course, very different from those that occur through working and playing in meatspace. However, I'm not convinced (and no science is offered in the article) that bantering with someone on my virtual timeline tells us that much less about each other than mixing it up over a pint. But even if it did, why can't you just do both? We're complicated and messy beings. Take the simple pleasure of restricted-character communications at one time; enjoy the opportunity for deeper face-to-face psychological insight at other times.

Some experts worry that the more people habituate themselves to these rational, binary communication channels – thumbs up, thumbs down, smiley face, frowny face – the less they pay attention to, and tolerate, the nuances of emotions.

So far we've had "concerned" experts and "worried" experts but no actual evidence-offering experts.

Our brains are increasingly colonising our hearts.

To be sure, our interaction with technology can influence what we think and how we behave. From Marshall McLuhan's assertion that "the medium is the message" to B.J. Fogg's captological Persuasive Tech Lab, the link is clear. Dembosky can't have it both ways, though. On the one hand, we're being told that social media is making us more simplistic, more reactionary and less able to understand each other properly. On the other, that cognition and knowledge are becoming too influential over raw emotion. I think the author actually means that hearts are taking over brains. Either way, and as I've said, humans are complicated. We don't always get the balance right, especially during periods of great upheaval and transition, whether political, social, economic or technological. But we do get it right in the end. We've learnt to co-exist, thrive and immeasurably improve the vast majority of lives across the globe while adapting to and exploiting, for example, radio, individual motor transport, the telephone, mass international travel, birth control, television, smaller households, the internet, e-mail and mobile telephony. I very much doubt that social networking will defeat us. Quite the opposite.

“Those parts of who we are as human beings are becoming less available as we become more attached to our technology,” says Michael Klein, a clinical psychologist and couples’ therapist in San Francisco. 

Oh, give it a rest. We're not Borg. You're not Captain Picard.

An ex-Borg. Yesterday.

“It has a very negative impact on relationships.” In the past few years, Klein and other therapists have also noticed an increase in extramarital affairs facilitated by Facebook. “People reconnect with old flames from college or school, and there’s this easy way to flirt or chat,” he says. “And when people are dissatisfied in their marriages, which is a fairly chronic condition in our society, it’s easy for those flirtations to catch fire.”

OK. So it's very bad for some relationships. And apparently absolutely flipping fantastic for others. If you want to write an article on the fragility of marriage, be my guest. Just print it in the Lifestyle, not the Technology, section. 

There is little quantitative research on these points. Various studies have been conducted about people’s use of technology and social media platforms, but few have examined the kinds of sensitive issues that arise in therapy offices on a larger scale. Many questions remain to be asked, let alone answered, about the effects online social networks have on our closest relationships.

Correct. So obviously it is better to write 4000 words for an international newspaper, wildly speculating about all this, based on a few tales from your commercially-interested mates, rather than do or commission the necessary research yourself. Good work.

We are in a transition. Humans have always created technology before figuring out how to manage it socially. Both benefits and pitfalls emerge, and humans adapt. Many people praise mobile phones and social networks for keeping them connected to loved ones, especially those they must be apart from – for work, school, or even military service. Humans are still identifying and balancing the pros and cons. Online social rules and etiquette have yet to be codified. But the trend is forging ahead, and people, young and old, are increasingly living their relationships online.

Think I've already dealt with this. Agree wholeheartedly. In which case: relax.

Silicon Valley is a land of introverts. Scores of geeks flock to the area to join or start their own technology company. They are idealistic and passionate about the computer code stored in their laptops. But social charmers, there are few. Many, though certainly not all, are painfully shy, quiet, awkward. They are reluctant to make eye contact, staring at the table while they describe how they get people to connect with each other online. They detest talking about themselves. And yet these are the young men Valley venture capitalists call “the geniuses of social”.

How these engineers define social in the online context is, of course, markedly different from how their psychotherapists would define it.

[...]

“When we tweet and have lots of friends follow us, we get surges of dopamine and other neurochemicals that make us feel excited,” says Stan Tatkin, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a psychobiological couples therapist. “These reward circuits activate, and we want to do it again.”

[...]

It is the ultimate revenge of the geeks.

Absurd, pseudo-psychological non-analysis, which laughably attempts to anthropomorphise social media platforms with the flaws of their creators. Grow up. Some people invented something that other people like doing. Get over it. Decent debate on this requires more than having watched The Social Network.

The article then meanders off into territory that it has already well covered, arguing that social media encourages us to denude our lives and self-promote, while avoiding dealing with real issues, concluding that:

It remains to be seen what kind of cases this shift will deliver to therapists in 10 or 20 years’ time. They could grow out of certain social networking habits in the same way teens grow out of a range of behaviours, and arrive in their adult relationships no worse, or better, than their parents did. Right now, all generations are navigating the lines of public and private, deciding what to share or not to share, according to their own starting points.

In which case (and I know I'm repeating myself here): relax. We're different at work to how we are at home. Different at, say, a football match, than having dinner with the family. Different in a world of 140 characters and quickly snapped photos to a world of lengthy conversation and true love. Sometimes all our worlds, the different corners of our lives, overlap. Occasionally, they may be incompatible. 

Overwhelmingly, we adapt and adopt until we're comfortable. Then we find another complication. And its brilliant. 

Now excuse me but I've got to share this post with my followers and friends before the cold sweats breakout.