London's Calling

Who remembers 2008?

Remember when public servants made irresponsible and unsustainable financial deals with a view to enriching themselves massively?

Remember when firefighters tipped Lehman Brothers over the edge?

Remember when nurses took the Royal Bank of Scotland to the edge?

Remember when it was the fault of teachers that there was no financial regulation?

No. Me neither.

So why should they pay for a crisis not of their making with the rest of their lives? The fact is that under the pension reforms, those who really have enriched our society in some way; who educated us, who treated us when we were sick, who rescued us when we were in danger, they are going to be forced to pay for the crisis made by the banks for the rest of their lives.

The Tory press has again constructed the narrative of public sector vs. private sector pensions, pay and conditions. There may be a difference, but that’s not to say that the way forwards is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator - this isn’t Greece, you can’t retire on 80% of your salary in the public sector either.

But you know something, this strike isn’t irresponsible, the unions could potentially win - the public support is with them. The latest polling suggests that whatever the Tory press says, around 50% of the population back the strike action on June 30th, with only 35% against. That’s a hell of a lot clearer mandate than Cameron got.

Which leads to the second reason they may win - Cameron isn’t out to take a tough line on the unions - he doesn’t have the legitimacy or the political capital to crush them. Thatcher may have beaten the Nation Union of Mine-workers, but she was at least reasonably popular - with majorities in parliament. Also, this isn’t 1984, not everyone alive today is embittered by the strikes of the 1970s that brought the country to its knees, public opinion isn’t as strong as it was against the unions.

But thirdly, and staying with Cameron, I don’t think he wants to be seen in the same light as Thatcher, indeed for him, Thatcherite though he may be deep down, he doesn’t want to be seen as the unflinching ideologue that Thatcher was. That would be toxic to him, as are all comparisons to Thatcher. Cameron worked hard to try and get rid of that uncaring, cut off image of the Tory Party, and so, unlike the Iron Lady, Cameron is most certainly for turning. And he may turn again in the face of these strikes.

Let us hope so, at least. And good luck to anyone reading this who will be on a picket line tomorrow!

So first of all I’m just going to declare that actually I quite like a lot of Hari’s interviews, or ‘intellectual portraits’ as he calls them. I find them far more engaging, readable and ultimately illuminating of the subject than the majority of junk interviews that you see in newspapers these days. And I don’t really think that my opinion had changed - despite the allegations of ‘plagiarism’. 

I put plagiarism in inverted commas because to be honest I feel that what Hari is alleged to have done is hardly plagiarism in the way that many of us would understand it. He didn’t steal someone else’s work and pass it off as his own, he simply used quotes from his subject’s books in order to get clearer answers. I think there’s a slight problem with Hari adding dramatisations to these quotes, but it’s not a major problem in a lot of ways - it still conveys the thrust of what the interviewee was saying.

For me the bottom line is that Hari embellished his interviews with quotes from his subject’s books (which he openly admits on his website), without making this explicit to the reader. He certainly did mislead his readers, but not in any meaningful way, or to any real political goal. He didn’t mislead his readers in the way that many other publications, such as the Mail or the Express actively mislead their readers to further their political ends. That is damaging to our discourse, what Hari did really isn’t.

Brian Haw died yesterday, having spent the last 10 years protesting around the clock against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

His family said:

“It is with deepest regret that we inform you that our father, Brian, passed away this morning. As you know he was battling lung cancer, and was having treatment in Germany. He left us in his sleep and in no pain, after a long, hard fight.”

His loss should be felt all across the world, and it would be a better place if only there were more people like him.

May he rest in peace.

This lunar beauty
Has no history,
Is complete and early;
If beauty later
Bear any feature
It had a lover
And is another.

This like a dream
Keeps other time,
And daytime is
The loss of this;
For time is inches
And the heart’s changes
Where ghost has haunted,
Lost and wanted.

But this was never
A ghost’s endeavour
Nor, finished this,
Was ghost at ease;
And til it pass
Love shall not near
The sweetness here
Nor sorrow take
His endless look.

I just don’t feel like there’s anything I can say about Pratchett’s film, save that it was well made and incredibly provocative and moving. 

I wrote this before, a few months ago, and the film served to reinforce my opinion

We have certain rights in this country.

We have the right to life. But we also have the right to dignity.

As far as I’m concerned if those two become incompatible (as a result of illness or disability for example) if you have the mental faculty then you have the right to choose between them.

I also think that it’s been a long time since the BBC has made such a brave and provocative documentary, and I hope that this is the start of a trend, as opposed to a one off. This is what the Licence Fee is for.

On the one hand Cameron claims Labour has no plan for the deficit, characterising the Labour party plan as:

It’s called ‘let’s deny there was a problem with the deficit and let’s not do anything about it’. That’s an absolutely hopeless plan.

And on the other, Osborne says that Labour would have cut the same, or even more than the Conservatives are doing:

In his closing statement delivering the comprehensive spending review, Chancellor George Osborne said the 19 per cent cuts across Government departments was less than the 20 per cent suggested by the Labour government ahead of the election.

So which is it then? 

I wander thro’ each charter’d street, 
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,  
And mark in every face I meet 
Marks of weakness, marks of woe. 
   
In every cry of every Man,  
In every Infant’s cry of fear, 
In every voice, in every ban, 
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.   
   
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry 
Every black’ning Church appalls;  
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh  
Runs in blood down Palace walls. 
   
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear 
How the youthful Harlot’s curse  
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear  
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

Here, as Orwell once wrote ‘…is more understanding of the nature of capitalist society in a poem… than in three-quarters of Socialist literature.’

Amen to that, I say.