Here's another year's crop of letters-to-editors. So few are printed that it sometimes seems a waste of time. But the writing keeps me thinking and responding to the news and views that come my way. If I'm agile with words, it's probably because I got an early start in answering my mother back and pestered teachers at school. Couldn't I have just swallowed my reactions or let them float away? Would I or the world have been happier? Now that the letters are composed and hanging about in email form, it's easy to gather them up in a single blog - an open file, with my love, for anyone who cares to look.
South Wales Evening Post
02.07.2013
Swansea
- that's us - now has an important choice to make, not just for
ourselves but for our children and theirs. We're being offered, or
threatened with, two radical new sources of future energy. Both
options have been floated over the last couple of years, but now the
pressure is building up with dire threats of nationwide power cuts
and mouth-watering promises of jobs and prosperity if we strike
lucky.
On
the one hand we have two new tricks for tapping fossil fuel
ever-deeper under ground: hydraulic 'fracking' with chemicals to
release shale gas, or gasification to burn out the gas from coal in
the seams where it lies. On the other hand, a new sort of seapower:
no Severn barrage but a relatively unobtrusive tidal lagoon between
the Neath and Tawe estuaries, a marine reservoir with turbines
driven by the tidal ebb and flow.
Drilling companies with names like
Clean Coal, Coastal Gas and Eden Energy talk of billions of tons,
trillions of cubic feet and a £70 billion boost for the Welsh
economy. But they need a
lot more test drilling to find out if those figures are fact or
fiction. If not pipedreams, then a nightmare according to opponents
of the drilling plan and they cite an earthquake in Blackpool,
mysterious illness around US drilling sites and water catching fire
at kitchen taps. Although shale gas is already replacing
foreign imports in the US, conditions and prospects here are much
less clear.
On
the seapower side, what's on offer is a world first: a five-mile
loop of seawall offshore from Swansea docks with
a walkway round the top and turbines at the seaward end. and an
underwater cable to feed current to the national grid at Baglan. No
promise of megabucks or megajobs here, just gigawatts. With all the
uncertainties that go with such a new venture, the the lagoon
company hopes to generate enough power for 120,000 homes for 120
years.
It's
a choice between the fossil-fuel devil and the not-so-deep blue sea.
For some of us, the choice is already clear. By drilling deeper and
giving fossil fuels a new lease of life, we help prolong our
potentially fatal addiction to carbon waste. Unless we change course
now to more sustainable energy, we condemn our children and
grandchildren to irreversible climate change.
Already
food prices are rising as worldwide drought, hurricanes and floods
meet ever-rising rising population, consumption and inequality.
Icecaps are melting, sealevels rising. In the past two centuries,
we've burnt the stored up carbon of a million years. The world's
population has more than doubled in our lifetimes. Although it's
hard to believe in this chilly neck of the jet-stream,11 of the past
13 years have been the hottest on global record.
If
we let rip on a new rush for gas, we dig ourselves a deep black
hole. If not a grave for our grandchildren, the end of life as we
know it in the natural world.
The
Observer
30.06.2013
CHOICE
OF TWO:
ANSWER
TO DAVID REED
What
can we older people do with surplus savings? Wasn't that what banks
and building societies were for, to borrow from those with money and
lend to those without?
It's
time we went back to basics, including democracy. A good bank or
building society would be owned by stakeholders - savers, borrowers
and staff - and legally committed to useful investment for
a reasonable return all round.
SNOOPER-TROOPERS
If
we're not all terrified by overmighty Intelligence, this may not be
because we've nothing to hide or trust Big Brother to have our
interests at heart. Rather we doubt the state's capacity to sift and
process the internet trawl. Granted, such limited competence has its
own dangers, in misidentification of suspects etc. And a
disproportionate increase in intelligence budgets means less for
more productive services.
But
as snooper-trooper forces multiply, so will the minority of
dissident clerks and analysts who leak and whistle-blow the game
away.
The
Observer
16.06.2013
ONE
FIST OR IRON, AND THE OTHER OF STEEL
If
the right one dont get you then the left one will... That's from
Sixteen Tons, the anti-corporate US hit of the 1950s with its chorus
'St Peter dont you call me, cos I cant go, I owe my soul to the
company store.'
Last
Sunday the Observer bared two fists for common humanity in the twin
attacks by Andrew Rawnsley and Will Hutton on corporate alienation
of public funding and public space.
Bravo
both!
The
Observer
04.06.2013
SOCIAL
ECONOMY
Yes,
mankind's survival requires a great leap forward, but it's not just a
matter of controlling new technologies. The threat to our future and
natural world lies not in technology as such - nor even in human
nature - but in a particular 'social economy' that is neither
social nor economic.
It's
more than half a century since President Eisenhower marked his
retirement with a solemn warning against 'unwarranted influence...
by the military-industrial complex.' As with gun-control in
the US today, the risk to human life lay not in weapons technology
but the power of corporate interests to subvert the will of society
and government.
The
danger is real and global, but human nature
and technology are not inherently catastrophic. The necessary leap
forward will also be a picking up where we left off, to make 'social
democracy' mean what it says in society and within essential
industries. Failing that, our votes and words mean less and less as
cynical 'Free Markets' give license to a cohort of the super-rich to
gamble with our common destiny.
The
Observer
17.05.2013
NOT
JUST MADNESS
The
Woolwich murder was not, as your editorial suggests, simply the act
of a mad individual, nor is it best addressed (Nick Cohen) by ritual
condemnation of violence from left and right.
Granted
that madness is never far away and violence triggers violence, it
makes sense to reduce the sort of systematic provocation and
alienation most likely to give rise to it.
At
a time of economic, social and environmental stress, it makes no
sense to finger claimants, immigrants, Muslims or blacks, adding
insult to the injury of those who already often know the worst. Much
better focus on another small minority, those with the money, power
and position to preserve or change an unstable structure of their
own making.
The
Observer
13.05.2013
ZOMBIES
There's
plenty of Peter Preston's 'zombie territory' in South Wales, even
where the coal seams did not run out. Many valley homes were never
fit for the heroes dislodged from underground, or the wives who put
up with them. But any home is better than none if you can eke a
living.
In
and around the valleys, public services and benefit have mostly
secured the survival of people and settlements, but the welfare
state never quite lived up to its name. What was not forthcoming was
the investment, opportunity and work essential to wellbeing.
Without
the state, many Welsh towns and villages would have disappeared.
Even their names, perhaps, since Glyncorrwg and Ystradgynlais trip
less easily off English tongues than Bonanza or Silver Creek. With a
better combination of state rations and investment, who knows what
these places might have, might still become?
Tied
up with jobs and benefits are house-prices, which remain cheap in
limbo because those who can afford to choose dont want them. And
because it's cheaper for a metropolitan state to keep the poor
contained, away from jobs already in short supply. Out of sight and
mind.
The
crippling disparity in house-prices is not just a function of
market forces. Or rather it was state policy that let those market
forces rip. Thatcher's enforced sale of council houses combined with
a ban on equivalent new build. Before that, in 1973, another
Conservative government had forced councils to raise their rents in
line with private sector rates. With the public sector anchor cut,
the property balloon took off.
The
Observer
30.04.2013
EQUALITY
FOR UNEQUALS
In
his plea for benefits to women, Nick Cohen nails a common
conservative ploy: the invocation of freedom and equality to serve
the opposite. So parents are to be left to choose - freely and
equally - between themselves which shall receive a tax credit. The
predictable result - until patriarchy is truly dead and buried
- is that men will often benefit at the expense of women and
children.
Cohen
extends this reasonable caution from homely to Holy family, to
include the twinning of atheism and religious bigotry as equal and
opposite ideological vices. Although atheists as well as bigots have
sometimes destroyed their enemies' churches, they do not claim for
themselves the authority of one true God.
More
importantly in the present economic climate, Cohen might have noted
how our social democratic presumption of equality in a divided
society combines with Free Market and Free Press to perpetuate the
subjugation of the poorer many by a richer few.
South
Wales Post
09.04.2013
HEAVY
LIFTING
I'm
76, in favour of recycling and glad of some physical challenge in
the process. But I do wonder why the Derwen Fawr site sets us an
assault course on the way to the skips for timber, furniture and
garden waste: up a flight of open steps, along a catwalk, and then a
head-height lift over the side of the skip.
I
arrived with a neatly-loaded builder's bag that I had just been
able to lift into the hatchback of our car. When I realised I might
have problems getting it into the high skip, I asked a site worker
if he could give me a hand. He told me politely that this was not
allowed for safety reasons, in case the lifting damaged backs. Then
he relented, took one side of the bag and helped me up with it.
For
now, and as a rule of thumb, it should be no more difficult to
download rubbish at the civic site than it is to upload it to a car
at home. Otherwise there will be more pressure on council
collection services and more fly-tipping. There will also be more
strain on global climate and resources, not to mention people's
backs.
(Since this was published, the recycling company has made a ramp up to the highest skip)
The
Observer
10.02.2013
TAKE
YOUR PICK:
DEREK
AT RBS
What
should Derek say when he goes for a job at the RBS? Perhaps he
could ask his interviewers the questions raised by Carole
Cadwalladr. 'How does the company square concern for community and
the poor with duty to to shareholders and customary generosity to
senior executives?'
When
I went for my first big job, at Reuters, I left the questioning to
them, taking for granted that the name of the game was objective
reporting. Only later, when I complained about our unbalanced cover
of the Vietnam war, did I get the answer from the horse's mouth.
'We're not in the business of discovering the truth, whatever
that may be,' said the then managing-editor (ed Brian
Horton) 'but providing our subscribers with the information
they pay for.'
A few
months later, I got my first posting.
If
there's one thing more dangerous than international terrorism, it's
international counter-terrorism. Extra-judicial killings, torture
and covert action sans frontieres are more dangerous because they're
backed by state resources and the power of the executive to suppress
the truth - it's the CIA not the more accountable Pentagon that runs
the US killer-drones. Worst of all, the undermining of liberal law
and democracy from within leaves us all with less to build on or
worth defending.
HEALTH CARE AND HUMANITY
Compassion,
like charisma, is hard to train for. On and off over the past 60
years I have worked, been treated and visited in hospitals.
Standards and morale varied from time to time, hospital to hospital
and ward to ward. What often struck me was how much difference one
person could make, whether a nurse, a porter, doctor or patient.
Obviously the success or failure of a system cannot be reduced to
individual personalities or instances - gestures or jokes, insight
or action beyond the call of duty.
But
too much emphasis on training and technique, procedure and
professionalism - with the hierarchy and specialist division that
entails - can block out the confidence, compassion and pleasure of
common humanity.
The Observer
14.01.2013
PENSION
PERKS
Like
Henry Porter I have sometimes felt uneasy about the free travel and
other perks - winter fuel and now TV license - I get on top of my
state-pension. On the bus, as I repocket my plastic, I see
a parent with young children paying good paper.
I
guess that unlike me this family has no car at home. Surely I
could afford at least £1 a ride... But on second thoughts it
would be better if these childen too could ride free, the
cost of our bottom-up benefits met by more progressive taxation from
the top.
Once
in thinking mode - another perk of pensionable age - I see
this may still be shifting scraps around the plate: we should
be looking to how real fortunes are made and commonwealth
abused. Not just tax-havens. How is it that most of us are
routinely taxed on necessary transactions, from income tax and VAT
to stamp duty, when trillions of speculative dealings go untaxed?
Why
is capital gains tax not graduated over time -
regressive/progressively - so as to encourage productive
investment at the expense of short-term profit taking? How can old
landed wealth remain not only untaxed but unregistered? And why have
we no democracy at work to give us a voice in what we do and
how the proceeds are shared?
The
Observer
10.12.2012
FRACKERS
Hurrah,
this once, for Hutton and Rawnsley. Rawnsley exposes our
government's gas-brain frackers as a threat to energy-stability,
green industry and a habitable world. Hutton reasserts the
values of equality and a social contract at a time when Labour seems
to be reconsidering its demeaning focus on deserving poor and
'squeezed middle'.
Hutton
didn't quite say it, but a fairer deal for the poor, in our out of
work, would benefit the whole economy. Tax credits to those at work
are a subsidy, like it or not, to low-pay employers. And
poor people, unlike banks and corporate beneficiaries, spend
all the money they get, thus helping to keep the rest of us in work
and paying tax.
As
with benefits, so with economic equality more generally: it is
not just the poor who suffer from widening differentials in
wealth and earnings and would gain from narrowing them. Social
security and social cohesion go together. As the rungs of the ladder
pull apart, the strains within and between us increase.
Effects on health and well-being become measurable the whole
way up.
Rawnsley
rightly condemns the rush for shale oil as a diversion from green
investment, but neither he nor Hutton makes clear the link between
their respective arguments. A society riven-driven
by competition, fear of failure and destitution, may be
fatally diverted from the more inclusive threat of climate
chaos, and from what can still be done to avert it.
In
the Britain of WW2, civilian health and morale were improved by
rationing and a sense of common struggle. What we're up against
now is not a foreign invader but the global impact
of business-as-usual. By burning up what's left of our
fossil fuels in pursuit of short-term profit, we corrupt the whole
fabric of life as we know it. For our children and grandchildren
that promises a fate far worse than debt. For them, the
material world that has cradled us will stand as implacable enemy.
The
Observer
25.11.2012
(sorry, but this section's got stuck in bold type)
NO
ALIBI
Yes
(Ian Birrell) I was one of those distracted by the latest blitz on
Gaza from that other bloody attack on Goma, and how can the
killing of 160 people in the Congo count for less than a
similar number of Palestinian deaths in more or less the same few
days?
But
if sanctions are the proper response for Rwanda's disregard of human
life, rights and international law, the same goes for Israel.
Without radical redress the Gaza ceasefire cant hold.
The
prolonged seige of 1.5 million people is nothing if not
collective punishment, Israel's military occupation
and settlement of the West Bank have always been illegal, as is
the annexation of Arab East Jerusalem. Ditto the arbitrary
detention of suspects, assassination of resistance leaders and
disproportionate use of force as evidenced this month in the
death of about 30 Palestinians to every one Israeli.
From
the inception of Israel, Jewish democracy and security have been
allowed to serve as alibi for violent subjugation of native
Arab Palestinians. To exempt Israel from the rule of
international does no favours to Israelis. If the present
government completes a greater Israel with what's left of West
Bank Palestine, that will saddle Jewish democracy with an Arab
majority and a truly existential choice between indefinite
apartheid, ethnic cleansing or self-dissolution.
For
Britain, waiting on Obama is not good enough. As former mandate
power, we bear special responsibility. The 1917 Balfour declaration
which licensed the Jewish national home in Palestine made it a
condition that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil
and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.'
There
can be no peace without a measure of justice, and one obvious
sanction at our disposal is implicit in the EU agreement
of Association. This governs access of Israeli goods and also
includes a human rights clause. Meanwhile, Palestinians deserve a
stronger voice in determining their own destiny. Britain should
support, not obstruct, the current Palestinian bid for recognition
at the UN General Assembly.
Weekly
Guardian
23.11.2012
ONE
LAW FOR ALL
The
latest blitz on Gaza solves nothing and the same goes for the
latest ceasefire. Jonathan Freedland is right that there's no
military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but both he
and your report from Cairo focus too narrowly on power play in the
Middle East.
Just
as important, for Palestine, Israel and the rest of us, are
the credibility and effectiveness of international law and
human rights. We all have an interest in the rule of law - one rule
for all around the world.
As
former Mandate power in Palestine, the UK bears special
responsibility . In 1917 Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour licensed a
Jewish national homeland in Palestine on condition that 'nothing
shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of
existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.' These rights
were endorsed by the League of Nations and spelt out in more
general terms by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and Geneva
Conventions after World War 2.
Despite
such solemn undertakings, Israel was allowed to shape and
extend its boundaries by force, expropriation and expulsion. Since
1967, the Security Council and World Court have affirmed, but
failed to prevent, the illegalities of military occupation and
settlement in the remainder of Palestine, and the long seige of
Gaza is nothing if not collective punishment. Arab East
Jerusalem, with its holy places, is unilaterally annexed while
resistance leaders are routinely detained without trial, if not
assassinated.
Israel
has been effectively exempted from international laws,
conventions and agreements drawn up to prevent that sort of thing.
Western guilt over pogrom and genocide have combined with fears of
a monstrous Other - Red Peril or Evil Axis - to indulge and arm
a prodigal state. Jewish democracy has become an alibi
for the oppression of indigenous Arabs.
The
US and emergent Arab states may be key players, but Britain and its
European partners had better honour the international
commitments we are party to. The EU Association
agreement that gives privileged access to Israeli goods is subject
to a human rights clause: it should be suspended, not reinforced,
until those rights are realised. Since the Oslo acccords nearly 20
years ago, Britain and other European governments have been
committed to a viable Palestinian state including Gaza and the West
Bank on 1967 lines. We should now support, not obstruct, a
Palestinian bid for recognition at the UN General Assembly. This
would at least give Palestinians a firmer platform and clearer
voice in determining their own future.
South
Wales Evening Post
19.12.2012
THEIR
WARS AND OURS
'Let's
not repeat war history' was the message atop today's letters page,
and earlier in the paper you carried picture and report of a Swansea
protest over yet another war in Palestine.
No
British soldiers or children dying in the Israeli blitz on Gaza,
but a closer look at history makes clear the link between their
wars and ours.
Palestine
was taken from the Turks by the British in World War
1 and it was Britain who gave the go-ahead to a Jewish national
home, without consulting the existing Arab population. After World
War 2, as the state of Israel was extended by conquest and
expulsion, Britain played a leading part in German war-crimes
trials, the Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Conventions and UN
resolutions - all designed to stop that sort of thing for ever.
Back
in 1917, the Balfour Declaration which licensed the Jewish
colonisation of Arab land, also guaranteed that 'nothing shall be
done which prejudices the religious and civil rights of the
non-Jewish population.'
How,
we must now ask, does all this square with Israeli military
occupation and illegal settlement in West Bank Palestine, with the
annexation of Arab East Jerusalem and its holy places, with the
long seige of a refugee population in Gaza or the assassination of
their leaders?
And
why does Britain sit for ever on the fence, aping the US and
blaming the victims rather than holding Israel accountable
like any other country to international commitments signed by
their government as well as ours?
Four
years ago, after the last invasion of Gaza, I joined another
protest meeting in Castle Square. I carried, or rather wore, a
placard painted on a cardboard box. . Last Saturday I found it
behind a cupboard, no need to change the words (as shown in
your picture) SAVE GAZA, STOP ISRAEL, FREE PALESTINE.
The
Observer
18.11.2012
ONLOOKERS
Izzeldin
Abuelaish, the doctor who lost two daughters in the last blitz on
Gaza, asks how many more massacres we onlookers can tolerate,
and the Observer urges Obama to insist on an Israeli
pull-back.
But what,
if anything, can British onlookers do about it? Britain, as
the former Mandate power which licensed a Jewish national homeland
in Palestine, has a special responsibility. Commendably, William
Hague was quick to caution Israel against a ground invasion, only
to slip back into line by heaping blame on Hamas.
Your
editorial recalls Obama's Cairo promise of a new
beginning in 2009 and our own Foreign Secretary should recall the
conditions set by his predecessor Lord Balfour in his Jewish
homeland declaration of 1917: 'nothing shall be done which may
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine.'
These
rights, spelt out in later Geneva Conventions and UN
resolutions, are incompatible not only with the
continuing blockade of Gaza, but with Israel's annexation of
East Jerusalem and the gunpoint colonisation of West Bank
Palestine.
With legal
rights go duties for signatories. To apply them
in dealings with Israel and Palestine is not to be antisemitic,
to disregard Nazi genocide or condone the rocketting of
civilians. It is in the interest of Israel as well as Palestinians
to reassert the rule of international law in the Middle East.
Jewish
democracy cannot be an alibi for the expulsion and subjugation of
Arabs. Among Palestinians of all parties and faiths, the mantra
'No peace without justice' is at once an observation from
experience and an urgent demand for change, in cruel facts
on the ground and the wider hypocrisy that allows them.
Britain
should support, not obstruct, the current Palestinian bid for
recognition at the UN General Assembly, if only to give Palestinians
a firmer platform and more equal voice. We cannot tell the US or
Israel what to do but we can decide with our European partners
to suspend the EU Association agreement that governs trade with
Israel until its human rights conditions are met. The
same goes for arms deals and military co-operation as long as
Israeli forces are deployed in military occupation, the
advance of illegal settlements, summary executions and a seige
that amounts to collective punishment for 1.5 million people in
Gaza.
London
Review of Books
30.10.2012
ON
THE STREETS
David
Runciman makes a fair job in demolishing Occupy claims to stand for
the 99%. If only things were that simple. For all the
statistics, strong ties and weak, our little camps on Wall
and other streets have not as yet ignited wider protest or effective
change.
It's
some consolation, as he notes, that some of us who coincided on the
cobbles DID discover real and unexpected attinities. Students,
academics and pensioners like me bivouacked with people more
accustomed to homelessness, including ex-soldiers and a former
trader or two. Mostly we got along alright. The same was true
of those who met on the cobbles of Paris 68: I admired the
voyoux who already knew about setting cars alight and
turning busses on their sides.
In
his search for more plausible statistics and potent common
interests, Runciman settles on a more manageable 5%. From
a US campaign among the older unemployed of the 1930s - bypassed
by the New Deal - he shifts the focus to a forgotten younger
generation in Europe today, our so-called NEETs - under 25,
uneducated and unemployed.
'They
are the 5% and we should do something about them.' Of course we
should, but Runciman somehow misses two other important
points: the point of occupations, and subject of his piece, is what
people can do for themselves; and, in the UK at least, the
riots of summer 2011 found his target cohort on the
streets with a vengeance.
To
our shame, the rest of us united in condemnation of what we should
at least have understood. We nodded as young people who might have
been our children were picked up by matching CCTV images
with previous police mugshots - petty criminals of course - to
be vindictively locked up.
This summer
2012, police expected the worst but rain intervened. Instead we
watched new fusions on screen from torrid Greece and Spain. We
aint seen nothing yet? As recession and climate change close
in, people of all ages even here may find themselves unemployed,
under-paid, unable to keep up or living in hopes. Survivors of
occupation and riot could find themselves on the streets again, the
mob multiplied by more general bafflement, in common cause
or common sense.
The
Observer
28.10.2012
INEQUALITY
MATTERS
Upward-mobility becomes
more possible, as Will Hutton suggests, if the rungs of our
social and economic ladders are not too far apart. He's also
right that 'inequality matters,' and if we begin with a presumption
of equality, then the ladders themselves are a problem.
Faced
with 'soaring costs of childcare', Labour looks to co-operative
models, collective provision for common need with profits shared. If
this is good enough for (mainly) women and children in the margins,
why not the rest of us?
State
socialism is dead, but why no more concerted move to common
ownership in mainstream businesses, employment and finance?
Some
of us will always be more able than others at this or that, so
ladders will remain, but they might then lean towards and not
away from common goals.
Most
of us would prefer to work with and for others as well as ourselves,
towards a better - at least habitable - world for our children.
(As a foretaste, some will have seen 'The Choir: Sing while you
work' on BBC2, though spoilt by the knock-out competition at
the end.)
The
Observer
22.10.2012
WASTE
OF ENERGY
In
your exposure of the government's energy shambles, you highlight the
need for longterm clarity and commitment in government policy
and private investment.
The
two are linked, and the short termism of recent government is not
just the product of an electoral cycle and ministerial
merry-go-round. Convential politics, and social democracy,
are trivialised when all major parties are wedded, resigned or
sold-out to the myth of a Global Free Market.
In
conceding economic sovereignty to corporate plutocracy, our
political class has thrown away the plot, condemning themselves
and us to a dispiriting routine of knee-jerk reaction and
quick-fix change.
As
capital is geared to quick profits, so current politics is geared to
the quick success of electoral point-scoring and personal promotion
(as our education is geared to marks and degrees). What's missing is
any longterm concept, strategy or deeper commitment to
social well-being and sustainable growth.
State
socialism is dead, but somewhere between old Red and new Green,
we may find the outlines of a more liberal vision. To make
sense of our lives and world, we must re-join the spheres of
economic and social development. We share a finite, fragile planet,
and our social democracy is hamstrung without effective
ownership: from the power of capital to the land we call
'our country' and the everyday practice of working life.
Most
of us would like to be working for ourselves, each other and a
habitable world for our children. We need to know what we're doing
and why, that it's not just a waste of energy.
The
Observer
15.10.2012
VOTE
CANUTE
If
British political leaders are 'failing to reach the electorate'
this could be because they have so little purchase on the
financial and economic decisions that most effect our lives.
Yes,
a better government might set a living wage a bit above the
minimum, tax from the top and make life more tolerable at the
bottom. Milliband's one-nation Labour contrives at once to give
the poor some hope and reassure the rich while Cameron
cashes in on Olympic victories and grooms Britain as off-shore
base for predators in Europe.
What
none of these decent chaps dares admit is that no party
line of theirs can deliver most of us decent jobs,
steady prices, a secure future or realistic expectations in a
global market that is beyond the control of any one nation or
democracy.
Europe's
in a mess, but the main threat to national well-being does
not come from Brussells, and a reworked European Union might still
turn out to be our best defence.
If
British politicians have little to offer, this is because
a growing global super-class has more money, land and resources to
hand than any government. The financial and corporate institutions
of plutocracy have no commitment to national government.
Except to maintain and punish any threat to business as usual.
Since those who pay the piper call the tune, their tunes are what
we get and our leaders offer variations on a theme.
The
Observer
07.10.2012
BRITISH
DISEASE
Capitalism
gone mad? Was Midas Money ever sane? We can still thank the Observer
for an ongoing diagnosis of what may sometimes seem like a
British disease.
Here
are some symptoms noted in the past two weeks: Britain's real
economy, the goods and services we produce and use, is largely owned
by foreign companies while a national government
trumpets independence; British business leaders tell
government that things are looking up, while refusing to reinvest
company hoards in industry and employment; top British
companies yet afford to bet on favourites in US elections.
Who
and what are they betting on in Britain? Patriotism apart, the
underlying nonsense is global: just as broadsheet Business
pages are set apart from news-in-general, so the real
business of our lives - what we do for a living, and how the
proceeds are distributed - is formally not our business. Social
democracy, along with legal ownership, stops short of working
life and essential resources.
As
in company law, so with 'our country.' Real
ownership is, quite legally, out of our hands. It is not
just in the US that our bosses buy power in the name
of companies constructed from our lives. Nor should we depend
on redistributive government, even our own, to give us back in tax
and benefit what we've already earned and paid for as workers and
customers.
'Predistribution'
is not a pretty word, but yes need it, and that does require a
'revolution in ownership.' At stake is simply the grounding
of top-down social democracy, a re-joining of human will and
agency in the core-purpose of companies in which we combine.
South
Wales Evening Post
02.10.2012
B
for Botanical
The
Glyn Vivian gallery has been closed for repairs all summer, now,
with autumn closing in, I'm told that the Botanical Gardens are to
be shut down at weekends over the winter. I hope I'm wrong, because
that's just when the glass-houses offer a bit of fragrant warmth and
shelter from the rain.
Of
course buildings have to be repaired, and Swansea cant escape the
cutting craze. But this looks like a cut too far, wrong place,
wrong time.
Maybe
the Parks department, or whoever makes these decisions, could
follow the example of many galleries and museums. If cuts in
opening hours are unavoidable, let's close the gardens on Mondays
and keep them open on Saturdays and Sundays when working people,
grown-ups and children, are free to enjoy them. Whose gardens are
they anyway?
(After publication of this letter, the weekend closure order was withdrawn)
Weekly
Guardian
28.09.2012
SALT
IN WOUNDS
Yes
(Seumas Milne) the uproar over an abusive little film can
only be explained by real injury to Arabs and Muslims, not just
in a promiscuous war on terrorism but over centuries of
colonial occupation, economic exploitation and political
corruption.
If
we look to an Arab Spring or Moderate Islam for balanced
responses or transformation from within, the best we can do is pull
back, put our own houses in order and make amends where our
help is most widely sought. A good starting point would be
respect of international law and human rights in Palestine.
The
Observer
23.09.2012
PLEBS
Who
are the new Plebs? Somewhere between the 50% who stand to lose
even if growth returns and the 90% of us who earn less than £45,000
a year and own less than half a million. Either way, that looks like
a clear majority for the sort of changes recommended by the
Resolution Foundation.
The
alternative, as made clear in your report, is a deepening
trickle-down of poverty and corresponding trickle-up of wealth. The
prospects of the wordy and the working classes diverge, the middle
is squeezed to vanishing as skilled production jobs are
replaced by casualised catering, caring and leisure.
Suggested
remedies include the raising of minimum and women's earnings,
affordable childcare, more and better vocational education. All
these measures are amenable to government action if only we could
be induced to vote in our common interest.
Other
measures, also open to legislation, might enable us to even
things up within companies, with joint decision-making where
wages, salaries and profits are distributed.
What's
holding us back, and what can we do about it? One problem is that
the lower we are on the ladder, the more hand-to-mouth our
lives and the more we're inclined to take the world as presented to
us. Those who present it are better-placed to see for
themselves, but also to to hide what suits them and keep us
scrabbling.
The
first 'Plebs' to catch my attention were not police but a
bunch of rebel Ruskin students who declared, in a
manifesto of 1909: 'We want neither your crumbs nor your
condescension, your guidance nor your glamour, your tuition nor your
tradition. We have our own historic way to follow, our own salvation
to achieve...'
What
became of them? Lost, almost, like the Lollards and Levellers,
or the voice of the young virgin Mary. The god she praises in
her Magnificat is one who brings down the mighty, fills the
hungry with good things and sends the rich empty away.
These far-fetched
stories have a point: electoral politics are futile unless they
draw on deeper hopes and fears, shared image and experience. A clue
as to how much may still be shared lies in your quote from the
'getting richer' PR manager, Candida, who says: 'There's not
much joy in being successful if you are paranoid about those
who are less successful.'
The
Observer
16.09.2012
PRINCESSES
AND PROPHETS
Monarchy,
like prophesy, must be seen to be believed. Princesses and prophets
are nothing without personal publicity and can afford to take
the rough with the smooth.
The
Prophet, bless him, may count on a merciful and compassionate God to
deal with stupid insults. The Princess, blessed with much in
this world, has little to forgive: in a country
where fashionable women bear their breasts to sun and
sundry she does the same.
As
Catherine Bennet suggests, the speculation around Kate's womb is
also par for the course. Perhaps the next time we see her
unwrapped, she will be breasteeding. What's good enough for the
Virgin Mary...
South
Wales Evening Post
05.09.2012
NOT
THE SAME
I still
feel uneasy about the Paralympics. It's great to make the best
of abilities and overcome disabilities. But that doesn't
put the Olympics and the Paralympics in anything like the same
league. This came home for me when the amazing Oscar Pistorius got
beaten and complained about the winner's blades. Imagine ifI Bolt's
sprinter mate and challenger had said 'Now measure that man's
legs.' Not as odd as it sounds, as long as able-bodied boxers
are sorted by weight.
The
point is we've all got abilities and disabilities, some more
obvious than others. If we believe in equality, as I do, that does
not mean pretending we can be the same. The Olympics
play on strength and speed, full
stop. Paralympians juggle with a complex of strengths
and weaknesses, new technology and fine definitions.
We
all want and deserve respect, and we shouldn't have to jump
through the fashionable hoops to get it. Because we're all
different, and that's what being human means, there is no
one-size-fits-all, no level playing field or perfect arena. To
respect each other means recognising we've all got something,
imperfect but unique. That's the scientific long and short and tall
of it.
At
school I became OK with words and found a niche for myself as
hooker in the scrum because I was not fast or heavy enough to score
in other ways. In maths, I got some satisfaction when at last
I worked a problem through. But like everyone else I knew who was
best and it wasn't me. I liked the maths teacher, because it wasn't
his subject either. He was able to make things clear to me
because he found them difficult himself.
But
what I really liked about this teacher was that he seemed to
recognise something else in me, and something more in life, than
maths.
Come
to think of it, the truth about one size not fitting all
applies just as well to women's boxing or gay marriage. Men or
women, gay or straight, abled or disabled, why should we all make
promises we cant keep, or hit each other in the face?
The
Observer
02.09.2012
BOYCOTT
There
is nothing bigoted about a cultural boycott of Israel, any more
than there is about Desmond Tutu's call for Bush and Blair to be
prosecuted for warcrimes, or the disruption of a Condoleza Rice
appearance in Tampa, Florida. In each case, legal and non
violent means are deployed against systematic illegal force.
In
Iraq the issue was an illegal invasion and occupation that has cost
at least 100,000 lives and rising. With Israel, it's the
illegal occupation, colonisation and seige of conquered territory in
Palestine.
The
fact that other states are also be guilty of violations does not
preclude action in either case, rather the reverse, or
Tutu might have been calling for an end to pursuit of war-ciminals
in Africa rather an its extension to US and UK.
Jackie
Kemp's old companion at Batsheva's Edinburgh gig was right when
he said 'This is not Kristallnacht.' A closer comparison might
be Israel's everyday raids and demolitions in what's left
of Palestine. As Jewish Israel extends
remorselessly to enclose and dispossess a similar number
of non-Jewish Palestinianss, what's at stake is no holocaust, but an
implacable choice between apartheid, ethnic cleansing and/or the end
of the Jewish state.
The
Observer
26.08.2012
ARE
THESE MEN A LIABILITY?
'Is
this man a liability?' Your headline refers to George Osborne,
and your editorial implies the same question about Prince Harry.
Some
of us may find Harry's behaviour less offensive than Osborne's
policy, but the two men are caught in the same cross-hairs: do they
represent a hard-pressed country and its people, or a privileged
class that floats above, even as it mimics commonness?
Floats?
While the born-prince Harry drops his captain's pants in Las Vegas,
a born-rich Osborne calls the shots that hit the poor. It's no
good blaming or indulging these players. As your editorial
reminds us, it's we who write the script and this is not the sort of
comedy we need.
The vice
that really threatens us has nothing to do with nakedness and
the fumblings of a novice chancellor signify little as the jaws of
economic stagnation and climate chaos close in.
Between
us we can vote and legislate to clear the way. From day to day,
it's up to us to choose how best to live and save the only
world we've got.
South
Wales Evening Post
24.08.2012
A
1944 edition of Picture Post from Swansea Museum, dedicated to the
people of Swansea valley and edited by Tom Hopkinson. While UK was still at war, this mass circulation magazine was talking to people in the ruins about the the sort of reconstruction needed afterwards. Hopkinson was sacked by Tory owner Edward Hulton and moved to the daily News Chronicle. It was there, in 1955, that he printed my first
newspaper piece on Algeria.
The
Observer
20.08.2012
CHEAP
KILLS
Peter
Beaumont is right that to be killed by a drone is no worse
than to be killed by a cruise missile or highflying bomber. And, as
he says, drones may be less indiscriminate in their
targetting.
But
in the current blossoming of drone warfare, we see another
dangerous disproportionality: not in the quantity or quality of the
carnage but in the cheapness and ease of delivery.
US
drone pilots interviewed by CNN say it is easier to be
accurate, less stressful when you can observe and target
the 'bad guys' free from G forces and distractions of
enemy fire. In effect, the drone attack is a leisurely
hit-and-run, no screaming tyres or smoking gun. A drone may get
written off but the driver is safe, and the cost in material
and manpower much less than with a conventional aircraft
or missile platform.
Effortless
killing is morally repugnant. Was it Graham Greene who posed the
question: what would you do if you could win a fortune by wishing
the death of a stranger in China? More to the practical point, the
ability to kill without detection or loss is an incentive to war
criminals.
Drones
are relatively cheap and may prove more easily replicable and
transferable than more cumbersome offensive technology. Iran is
reported to have secured a US model, and other less cautious
customers will be lining up. The more weapons around, the more
people of all sorts are likely to get killed by them.
Present
practitioners are not confined to US and Israeli forces: I have
a letter from a UK defence minister earlier this year confirming
that RAF pilots are flying Reaper missions alongside USAF
counterparts in the United States.
South
Wales Evening Post
15.08.2012
PITY
THE LOSERS
Here
at home it was a shock to come across some of the news that got lost
in the mayhem around Team GB. More soldiers dying for nothing
in Aghanistan, and satellite images confirming the worst fears about
melting ice-caps and climate change. Apparently,
computer-modellers cried when their results came out, and
higher food prices are promised after record drought in the US
corn-belt.
In
life and death, as in sport, losers mostly outnumber winners. The
Afghan death toll is ten or a hundred times the number we rightly
mourn when the bodies are flown home. For every price-rise at
the supermarket, someone starves in India or Africa, which is why a
man as young as Mohammed Farah invests his winnings in a foundation
to feed children.
As
I write, there's an unseasonal gale across Swansea bay, and I cant
help feeling the weather's not looking good for the human
race. Last week, at risk of sermonising, I said the name of
the most important game was life. It still is, we've only got one
each, and the aim is not to be first past the post. Come to
think of it, this is a sermon, but with a difference: like John
Lennon believe that heaven and hell are on earth, if anywhere, and
of our own making.
Life
is a serious game, and for all of us. The human race is a sort
of relay and the older we get the longer the hand-over. As we pass
the baton and slow down, or hang about and wait to pick it up, we
may have time to wonder what it's all about and what comes next,
for ourselves, our children and other people's.
I'm
not bothered about dying, though it took me some years to get over
my childhood fear of the dark. Now I sleep easy because I trust
that things will carry on OK without me and the world will still be
in good shape when I wake up. Death is no great sting if I
know that people I care for will still be around in a world
that they can enjoy as much as I do.
But
what if the best years are over, for everyone? What becomes of
our world and people if those climate predictions are true, as most
of the science suggests? How much of what we love best will survive
chaotic weather as rising sea levels cut out cities and
fertile lowlands, and grainlands turn to desert round the world?
In my lifetime, the population of the world has more than
doubled and we're all driven to consume as much as we can get?
Does
it matter that there are fewer swallows every spring and this is
the first year I can remember not hearing a cuckoo?
For
me, the most moving moments in the Olympic closing ceremony were
the inset videos of John Lennon and Eddy Mercury, with thousands
of living voices round the stadium, and millions more at home,
singing along with them. Imagine 'no need for greed or hunger, a
brotherhood of man.' And not just men, hardened muscles and
minds. The Queen singer died young but his song ends on a
different note: 'old man, poor man, pleadin' with your eyes
gonna make you some peace some day.'
'We
will rock you' is also a lullabye. If Eddy Mercury didn't
hear his mother sing it to him, he learned it at his English school
in India. You dont have to be a Christian to identify with a
homeless mother and child: 'Mary's little baby, sleep, sweetly
sleep,
Sleep
in comfort, slumber deep;
We
will rock you, rock you, rock you...'
South
Wales Evening Post
10.08.2012
NOT
JUST SPORT
The
Evening Post Olympic panel was divided into Sports Lovers and Sports
Haters, with me down as a hater who got converted. In real
life, I never hated sport: fast running is like fast food, great
until you get too much of it.
What
your panel questions did was set me thinking. And, because I'm vain
I bought a couple more papers than I might have otherwise.
We
all like to shine, we would all love to do something really well,
and it's great to see it when somebody else does. That goes not
just for sport, but for a lot of other arts and skills from singing
and dancing to cooking and gardening, to steel-erecting,
brickaying or stitching up a wound.
In
the Olympics it was a joy to see people of many races,
nationalities, genders at the top of their games. I was proud when
our lot won, and hurt with them when they failed. The trouble is
that for every winner, there are ten, a hundred or a thousand
also-rans. And millions more like me who only sit and watch.
But
it's not quite as simple as that. Although I'm not a regular sports
fan or follower of one team, I'm all agog if someone turns a big
game on. When Swansea got promoted, and earned its premier
place, my spirits were raised. This is partly because I live
in Swansea, and partly because I have enough experience of various
games to identify with those who do - even if they're
overpaid.
I'm easily
hooked because I was lucky to go to schools which gave me a raft of
different games and skills outside the usual, often boring,
syllabus. That was good for me because it gave me more choice, more
chance to find something I could do well. It also gave me an
insight into other people's games.To understand and feel for other
people - in all walks of life, not just sport - you have to have
some base of shared experience. It's the overlap of lives and
activities that bind us an enables us to work effectively
together.
As
I said, I was lucky and able to try my hand at arts as well as
sports, and offbeat things like glasswork, gardening and
caving. Now that the Games are ending, there's a lot of talk about
legacy and striking while the iron is hot. Remember that ring of
molten metal in the opening show? The priority now, especially when
the outlook is bleak, is to more opportunities to more of our
children, not just in sport but in arts and other skills.
That's
not just personal touchy-feely thing. We hear that our future lies
in a so-called 'knowledge economy.' But knowledge is nothing unless
it's grounded in practical skills and fired by imagination.
That's
especially true now that the age of full employment and cheap food
may be coming to an end. At the end of the day, as the saying
goes, it's NOT all about winning and it may turn out to be about
surviving. We'll all need our wits about us, with all the
abilities and mutual support we can muster. The biggest, most
challenging game may turn out to be life itself.
Weekly
Guardian
09.08.2012
AKA
ARMED CONFLICT
I
wish I shared your confidence that Britain only deploys
killer-drones where there is a UN mandate for force. In answer
to my questions earlier this year, defence minister Nick Harvey
confirmed that Reaper drones are 'remotely piloted by UK RAF pilots
based in the United States.'
He
also said, in his reply addressed to my MP, that UK forces in
Afghanistan operated under Nato command, in accordance with
International Humanitarian law - 'also known as the Law of Armed
Conflict' - and UK rules of engagement.
What
he did not say was whether RAF pilots working with USAF partners
from US bases counted as 'UK forces in Afghanistan.' Nor what
those British pilots might do if suspects crossed the unmarked
border into Pakistan. It could be a case of 'Over to you, buddy?'
And the buck might then be passed from the USAF to the CIA,
more specialised in killing sans frontieres.
What
about Yemen or Somalia where British and US interests may coincide
and our military and intelligence be presumed to work
together?
It
may be reassuring that the UK, unlike the US - and Israel and Sudan
- remains committed to the International Criminal Court: punishment
of war criminals as distinct from extermination of those we
may from time to time call 'terrorist'.
Criminals commit
the crimes they can get away with. The main problem with drones is
not that they are by nature indiscriminate or disproportionate,
rather that they enable those with the resources and technology to
pick, track and hit any target of their choice with little risk of
direct reprisal or discovery.
The
Observer
05.08.2012
STRANGE
AND NEW
Can
we now look forward to something strange and new arising from the
murky water between Cameron's Big Society and WIll Hutton's Good
Capitalism?
Could
an expanded National Citizen Service combine dissident
youth of Tottenham with Newnham's 'Personal Best' and the nationwide
enthusiasm of Olympic volunteers?
Could
that 'spirit of inclusion' harness and replicate the
'dedication and self-sacrifice' (not to mention resources and
ambition) of Olympic medal-winners?
Can
a scattering of charities and local partnerships now join and
match the power and vested interests of Serco, a 'value-led'
international company whose operations cover tagging and
surveillance, probation services, prisons and detention-centres, GP
services and NHS hospitals, local authority schools, atomic
weapons research, ballistic missile warning systems and Barclay's
bicycles.
29.07.2012
The
Observer
HAPPINESS
So
happiness goes with Marriage, Jobs and Home-ownership...
If Labour's right and that's a statement of the bleedin' obvious, how
do we explain that the happiest age-groups are 16-19 and
65-79 - the cohorts least likely to tick all those boxes?
Your
three examples give some clues. The Student likes sleeping,
sunshine, and reading/talking/writing at university. She has
friends who doodle on her face when she sleeps, and peaks
on her written assignments (acclaimed by tutors and peers?). The
Father, from a north Indian family, escaped the worst of UK racism
and found a way out of menial work through education. He attributes
present contentment to career, wife and children, values his
parents' tradition and feels for friends and rioting youngsters
whose prospects are less clear. The Octogenarian was twice widowed,
brought up three children then got an O-level and office job.
On retirement, she suffered depression. On doctor's advice she took
up voluntary work and now chairs an elderly self-help group. After
a fall and two operations, she counts herself a happy survivor.
With loving family and friends, she plans to live to 100.
What
comes through these sketches is not reducible to Marriage,
Employment or Home-owner status. All three presumably have have
enough to live on, but their confidence and energy - Happiness? - is
also rooted in personal, social and practical
engagement. They know and are known by what they do, who
for, and who with, in a wider world of which they're all aware.
What
that unlikely Olympic opening achieved was to make this commonplace
dream a shade more real. (Not that we can all live happily ever
after, or reduce all carbon emissions, eg breathing, to pretty
pixels.)
The
Observer
15.07.2012
GOOD
KING?
Can
Will Hutton's Good Capitalism cure the 'shocking divide that casts
adrift the children of the poor'? Could a Good King cure
the plague? And what if Capitalism IS the plague?
The
real task for Labour is not simply to replace a flimsy Con-Lib
coalition and bring unruly bankers to heel. The challenge is to
overturn the unholy partnership of capitalism and social
democracy. Social democracy must move in on the
strongholds of corporate capital: big companies must be made
accountable to the people who work in them and communities that
depend on them; they must be committed in law and practice to
clearly defined social objectives as well as to whatever profit is
necessary to keep them in business.
Meanwhile,
with economic and environmental crises converging, we dont need war
and military service to bring together young men in common
cause. With a million young men and women unemployed we could bring
in a constructive work and training programme for ALL
young people. Not only poor NEETs but those deformed
by 'public' schools could benefit from a new mix of work
experience, social interaction and self-management.
Weekly
Guardian
07.07.2012
LABOURISM
I
share George Monbiot's anger and sadness over the failure of the Rio
earth summit. The negligence of our elected absentees may one day be
seen as a crime against nature and humanity.
Like other
distinguished analysts, Monbiot targets 'consumer capitalism' but
the emphasis on market-driven consumption should not distract from
the other side of the capitalist equation: our market-driven
labour. What does the damage is not just the dubious goods we buy,
but the working time we sell to produce them. We are as
resigned to wage-slavery as we are addicted to consumption. As we
set foot on employers' premises, we routinely drop any claim
to democracy and self-determination.
This
resignation was illustrated to me by a 2005 NOP survey cited
in Tim Jackson's 'Prosperity without Growth.' A pie-chart of
'factors influencing subjective well-being' showed partner and
family relationships at the top with 47% followed by health (24%)
and money and finance (7%). Last, apart from dont-knows, came 'work
fulfilment' with 2%.
However
we interpret the figures, they indicate an intolerable waste of
human time and energy.
The
Observer
01.07.2012
WARPED
If
'our whole society has been warped by the City,' why count on
shareholders who are so much a part of that City to bring
bankers to heel?
It
is not just a case of cultural collapse in the financial
sector. Banks and other city bosses work to the same ground
rules as other capitalist corporations. They are accountable to
their shareholders, including themselves, but their constitutional
function - and culture that entails - is to make money for
owners. Capitalist enterprise has no built-in commitment to social
justice or wider prosperity, let alone morality.
An
early Barclays heir cast off his Quaker drab to be painted in
hunting pink.(*) More recently, the movement has been in the other
direction as sons and daughters of landed families joined street
traders and greedy graduates in the City hunting grounds.
Shareholders and bosses - with politicians never far behind - united
in the chase.
Not
only banks, but the national and global economy - and natural
world - is a hunting ground for the rich and those most able
and eager to join them. To change that 'social market' requires not
just regulation from above but a radical restructuring within,
nothing less than the introduction of social democracy to the
preserves of corporate economy.
Banks
and other industries must be made directly accountable
to customers, communities and society on which they depend
- just as we all depend on them. Voting shares must include
employees - whose life-shares include an intimate knowledge of
process and an immediate interest in products and how
proceeds are distributed.
I
banked with Barclays before moving to the Co-op (Move your Money!),
and recently met a group of Barclays local managers who were eager
to talk about farming and industry in Wales, ashamed of high
jinks at Canary Wharf. Casino banks could be broken up and
brought back to earth, into the hands of people who know and care
what money does.
