Bibliography, 2010

As before, here my summary of the year

January - E. Burke, Reflections on the revolution in France
February - R. Gildea, Children of the Revolution
March - N. Gordimer, None to remember me
April - Homer, tr. Lattimore, The Iliad
May - V. Seth, The Golden Gate
June- D. Erasmus, Praise of Folly
July - L. Sciascia, The wine dark sea
August - M.Banffy, They were found wanting
September - G. Elliot, Scenes from clerical life
October - W. Faulkner, Go down, Moses
November - M. Druon, La Louve de France
December -J. Banville, The Untouchable

Interesting. I read a lot this year (145 books, just short of 2008's record 148), but very differently. Must less fiction, only about a third, compared to well over half in the last three years. A lot of history - more (for fun) than fiction for the first time since 2005. However for BOTM, a different picture. No 'cultural' books, and a step up in fiction and history: last year's 6:5:1 has been replaced by 0:8:4. The fiction / non-fiction divide here is a little blurred, but the Iliad should be History, and Druon is historical fiction. Neither are books of the year.

Instead, Fiction has to go to The Golden Gate - a modern classic, even if it has taken me about eight years to read it since someone recommended it to me. Banffy was great too, but nothing like the unrestrained exuberance of what surely will be Seth's only real survival in a generation. His other stuff is fine, but limited. An honourable mention to Banville, but it's just not as good.

Non-fiction is more finely poised: Burke, Erasmus and Gildea were all excellent. But Burke's treatment of the revolution is magisterial, and his language a glory to behold. Brilliant. Everyone should read it; even if everyone doesn't agree. I, of course, did.

Bibliography, December 2010

Acquired (6)
O.S. Card, Xenocide
S. Hill, Howard's End is on the Landing
W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz
A. Trollope, The way we live now
M. Twain, A Tramp Abroad
H. Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
 Read (16)
BOTM: J. Banville, The Untouchable

J. Austen, Northanger Abbey
O.S. Card, Xenocide
E. Cruikshanks (ed.), The Stuart Courts
A. Gide, La symphonie pastorale
D. Goleman, Social Intelligence
R. Mistry, A fine balance
S. Hill, Howard's End is on the Landing
A.W. Montford, The Hockey Stick illusion
A. Ross, The rest is noise
A. Trollope, The way we live now
M. Twain, A Tramp Abroad

H. Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

M. Willaert, Servir au Congo
E. Zola, J'Accuse

New acquisition has begun!

Anyway, book of the month was Banville about the Cambridge spies, which was excellent. Finely tuned, and achingly sad. I think the ending was unnecessary, as the pathos has already happened, the final betrayal wasn't needed, and in some senses was a little overneat. However, it was within acceptable parameters. The rest was very sound indeed.

It's a fascinating area, our western Communists, and I've read a few novels on them. It remains to me astonishing how so many of our elites could be seduced by it, but that's hindsight for you. Christopher Hitchens put it well I think in the Blair debate, when he spoke of communism, in the context of the ANC and the brilliant intellectuals. I'm not sure I believe, as he does that it 'represent[ed] some high points in human history' though it clearly wasn't worth it. However, the attraction of the ideal was a real one, though as this novel shows loaded with ambiguity, self-delusion and a total inability to understand the reality of the game being played. As such, a tragedy for all concerned.

The end of the project, in numbers

With Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, I am done. There are no readable books in the house bought by or for me that I have not read. And with Christmas round the corner, I am ready for new blood. Anyway, I've been running the stats from 2009 - 2010, and here's the summary. In those 23.5 months:

• I started with 320 unread books
• A further 37 books were bought (excl. Reference)
• Hence the eligible base was effectively 357
• I read 228 of the books
• I threw away 129 books unread
• Hence 36% of the books I hadn't read, I will never read

That last stat is a bit hideous. Essentially it points to my criteria for book acquisition being less stringent than my criteria for reading them; and that's a recipe for disaster. That's changing, and we're not allowing the buildup of such a large backlog again. No more than 25 unread books (c.1%) in the house from now on, especially as there are some pretty good selections of Anna's that I haven't fully excavated.

The project overall has been a triumph though. There have been a stellar set of books over the last two years that I am not sure I would have got round to reading, but were excellent. Of the books of the month, almost all were bought some time ago, and some were real gems. I'd single out:

• Catch 22 (Read Feb 09; bought 1997)
• Trollope's Palisers, but especially Phineas Redux (May 09; bought April 07)
• Kendall's biography of Louis XI (June 09; bought March 06)
• Tremlett's Ghosts of Spain (Sept 09; bought Jun 07)
• Burke (Jan 10; bought Feb 08)
• The Golden Gate (May 10; bought Jan 06)
• Praise of Folly (June 10; bought Sept 02)
• Faulkner, Go down, Moses (Oct 10, bought Jul 07)

Heller and Erasmus spent an impressive amount of time on the shelves unread, but were trumped. In December, I finally read this prize I won for maths in Belgium (M. Willaert, Servir au Congo) - more than 17 years after being given it; it was rubbish.

Otherwise, it's been a triumph. I'm off to read Susan Hill's book about reading all her books now (actually, due to the snow delay, I'm not. I'm downloading free books on the Kindle instead - Mark Twain for now)

Bibliography, November 2010

Books read (9)

BOTM: M. Druon, La Louve de France

Anon, Gawain and the Green Knight
M. Druon, Le Lis et le Lion
M. Druon, Quand un roi perde la France
B. Goldacre, Bad Science
J. Hannam, God's Philosophers
M. Keen, History of England in the Later middle ages
G. O'Collins, Christology
F. Raphael, The glittering prizes

Remaining - 9

Nearly there.

I struggled to find a Book of the Month, as many were flawed: Hannam, though interesting, seems to be labouring under the delusion that the Sixteenth century was in the medieval era; Goldacre was great fun, but too obviously his columns stitched into a book. Le Lis et le Lion, the conclusion of Druon's sextet, to which the seventh (shit) book was added later, was hugely enjoyable, but did have a dull start about law. So, that leaves me in a quandry. Druon's preceding work overcomes it. In English, the She-wolf of France, his account of the siezure of power by Isabella and Roger Mortimer was great. The whole lot were good though and I'm delighted I've read them, even though it is nearly two years since I was bought them at Christmas. Apparently, they are very famous in France; I can see why.

Bad numbers; bad reporting

Apparently, most of the US Congress are millionaires. The Guardian reports this with glee as a sign they are out of touch, ranting on out about how governments should be representative.

Toss.

There are two major problems with this analysis. Firstly, the philosophy behind it is flawed - I don't want a representative elected chamber, having a lot of stupid people doesn't make government better. But the second point is more important. The logic of the numbers are misleading.

How so, well:

• Firstly, they are dollar millionaires, so £650k in net worth. Still a lot, but less than reported
• Secondly, they are paid quite well. The salary of a congressman is $174k p.a.
• And taxes in the US are low, about an average of 33% (somewhere here), which means actually $115k p.a. post tax, so almost immediately on election, they won't be poor
• They have been around a while - average length of term 10 years, rising to 12 years in the senate
• And they are quite old, average age 57

So, suddenly this all seems stunningly uninteresting. After 10 years on $115k, which we might assume they put aside $40k on mortgage or savings, so paying $400k over the period + a bit of appreciation takes you to $500k on average. Given this solely refers to the half that are millionaires, probably a bit more than that.

Plus, we're not talking about slackers here. They've been working for say 25 years before then, so an average of $20k per annum payments into property or savings, or $1,500 per month is hardly the stuff of which legends are made, though not poor.

Actually, I am pretty sure that money does have too much of a role in congress; I just don't this stat illuminates it very well. In fact, it illuminates successful people in well paid jobs are pretty wealthy. That's not a story. Quite frankly I'm surprised that more of them aren't millionaires.

The rhetoric ends by saying we don't want poor people who made good. By definition, if they're in congress, they have. Thus, the author is a moron. Anathema.

And we're 0-1. Fucking hell. OK, no 10-1. Still rubbish.

We were wrong

One of the many reasons why I could never be a politician, apart from my lack of interest in people and general unlikeability, is that I could never do the evasions that are necessary.  For years I thought that successful politicians simply lied about their past beliefs out of opportunism. Recently having seen it first hand, it seems to me that they simply don't believe they held those positions for those reasons in the past at all.

Now we all do that to a degree, but I think it's important to recant when you're wrong. I've been wrong about many things in my time, and this won't be the last, but it's pretty spectacular: I spent much of the late 90s and 2000s on the wrong side of the single currency debate. At the outset of monetary union most of the fears seemed unjustified, and there is still some overblown rhetoric around - like this.

But, some of the issues were real, and poor judgement and lack of discipline about entry and membership has had the inevitable effect, as Ireland has shown and I suspect more will. There's a longer set of thinking about what it shows though. It doesn't mean that this was automatically doomed. Remember Benelux was yoked to the Mark for years before the Euro, and we've had currency union with Ireland in the past. Rather the experiment was too big, too soon, and with too little structure. I believe in the European project, but it needs discipline, and caution - things lacking in this construct and which I was too quick to overlook.

I don't think we're owed an apology from those who held a view that has turned out to be right, but I do think we should recognise we were wrong. For once, we were better off out.

Tough choices

I'm told we have to make these now, on account of the no money left.

However, few can be harder than this. On the same weekend next August:

• The fourth and final England - India test match, at the Oval
• The 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, in Bulgaria

I don't think I can go to both - a crisis.

Bibliography, October 2010

Read (14)
BOTM: W. Faulkner, Go down, Moses

Anon, tr. R. Davis, The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes S.C. Barton, Holiness
S.C. Barton, Holiness (partial)
J. Conrad, Twixt Land and Sea
A. C. Doyle, The adventures of Sherlock Holmes (K)
U. Eco, How to travel with a Salmon
R. Fletcher, Bloodfeud
R.H. Haggard, The Wanderer's necklace
Ignatius the Deacon, Letters
Leo of Synada, Letters
Marco Polo, Travels
Sebeos, Armenian History
Usamah, An Arab Gentleman during the crusades
Villehardiun, A history of the Crusades

Remaining - 20

Sometimes, when you read, I find that it can take a long time for the key to turn. I've read several of Faulkner's before, always feeling that there are snatches of genius amidst some fairly heavy going. In some cases, the ratio was worse. And somewhere along the line in Go down, Moses, the key turned. In fact, it turned about half way through the second story, and it opened it all up. I'm keen to reread all the others that I've never quite got, and go and buy the remaining books in his extensive series. There's always been something about the rhythms of the language he uses that insistently first lulls then hammers at you, but until now, I've tended to get bored during the more extensive passages. I suspect the interlinked story format works well for it in any case, and am delighted I found it. Well worth perservering with.

Nearly there now, and I've bought a Kindle as a reward for getting below the 1% unread level - I obviously had to buy a book to read on it, and that's the (K) in the list. Looking good for new books in December now. That's very exciting.

Wellington boots and suncream

I promised when I did a post on the golf, this is what I'd call it, as, on the Monday, though the sun was out, it was still boggy underfoot. Hence the need for both boots and suncream. It's been a while, so I no longer have a great deal to say about the golf, save:

• I was there
• It was ace
• We won, and it was great to watch a crowd cheer for Europe. 

What I thought I would comment on briefly is the import of it all. At one point, when it was looking at bit bleak, Andrew said to me 'of course it's not important.' Now I've always thought this too, until recently. Obviously in the grand scheme of things it isn't, but then nor is much: only footballers think sport is 'more important than life or death.' However, in public service broadcasting orthodoxy, Sport is important as it brings people (usually the country) together, so I said that. And as the day unravelled, I think it proved to be true. The people on the bus back from the course with us won't be able to attack the Germans quite as vociferously as they might have because they were discussing the merits of Martin Kaymer (though given his Monday performance, they might). 


Now, the Ryder cup is an odd infrequent event, but most sport is simple, regular and about country (or smaller units), and it generates a common passion which is hugely positive. Patriotism, or love of country, is unfashionable now, but its actually key to all our civilised impulses. Logically, there is no distinction between me funding the poor in London or Lesotho. They both need money. Yet, obviously we tend to want to support those in country. Social fragmentation is dangerous because it means people don't want to support those less fortunate because they don't feel part of the same unit. Sport helps avoid that (it can do it internationally too, like in Anna's friend's excellent cricket charity), and that is critical. 


So, sport is important, and a force for good. Apart from Association Football obviously. That is anathema.

My first sermon

I gave my first sermon on Sunday. It seemed to go well. Here is the text, give or take. It was stewardship Sunday, hence the reference to giving:

I’ve been waiting a long time to give this sermon: I’ve been coming to St Michael's for eight years; I’ve been treasurer for five years, and I’ve had a theology degree for four. Depending on how you count it, I’ve seen off at least one priest (though it’s a pleasure to have Fr Nicholas here again), and yet there’s been a strange reluctance to let me speak to a captive audience.


And when Philip asked me to do this, I discovered why. He thinks I’ll be incredibly boring. Obviously, he didn’t put it quite like that: instead he used words like ‘short’, ‘concise’, ‘relevant’, which I think translates as don’t talk too much about the fifth century. Nor do I think that I’ve been given the most interesting of topics: broadly, today’s readings are about leprosy. Philip has also spent the last few days dropping hints about what to say. Those of you who are friends with Philip on Facebook will discover that Philip thinks having leprosy is a bit like taking a bike on a train.

No it isn’t.

Leprosy is key to our gospel today so it’s worth us getting it right. I had to look some of the symptoms online – apparently parts of your body don’t drop off, which I thought they did, but it’s generally a fairly unpleasant disease where your flesh becomes diseased; it was thought to be highly infectious (though it isn’t) and thus, in the time of Jesus, those suffering from it were confined outside the town as they were when Jesus meets them. It’s also fatal; and in the first century uncurable, though it is curable now, if only recently. To search for a modern equivalent, we’re better off looking at AIDS than at ‘getting your bike on a train.’

Which is why healing lepers is a big deal. In our first reading, the whole chapter is about by the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian and his search for healing. Naaman is a an important man, captain of the armies of Syria, the great Empire of the time, yet he is forced to go to small kingdom on the edges of his world, to a prophet he has never heard of and be healed by being dipped in the Jordan, not his river. And as a result, he is converted to the worship of God: he gives thanks, makes sacrifice, and does not worship other Gods. It’s a turning point in his life, literally I suppose because otherwise he was going to die, but also spiritually.

The story of the lepers in the gospel is different. It’s still a big deal. For all ten lepers, being healed by Jesus will have been a literal changing round of their lives, they are no longer doomed to death. But it is done in very matter of fact way. There is no crowd, no ritual, no being dipped in the Jordan. Jesus simply says, ‘Go’ and they are healed. The miracle of healing is present, but it is not central.

Instead, what is central is what happens next - or rather doesn’t. Instead of the life-changing conversion of Naaman, nine of them vanish. We neither hear nor see them again. We can speculate on what they are doing, but they’re off. Charitably they may have had a busy appointment to get to, or family to attend to, but more likely they’re just ungrateful. One isn’t though - he comes back. And Jesus blesses him and sends him on his way. His faith has made him whole.

What happens to the nine? It’s not clear. Our other reading today may suggest it may not work out well for them: In verse 12, the epistle writer argues, ‘if we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us.’ Not coming back to give thanks feels like denial to me. This doesn’t bode well.

But I don’t think that is what happens. The bible is not shy of cautionary tales. In the later verses in Kings leprosy is visited on an Israelite who follows Naaman, hoping to get the money that Elisha refused. If the lepers had been punished for not returning to give thanks, we would have been told. Nor is the miracle of Jesus made conditional upon returning, he simply sends the lepers on their way, immediately healing them.

In theological jargon, we would talk here about the unlimited grace of God, his unlimited love for us. Hans Urs von Balthasar, my favourite modern theologian speaks of God as an eternal ‘yes’, and what he means by that is that the path to salvation is always open, even in death. For the lepers, and for us, the act itself has already happened, the healing of humanity has already taken place. God’s love has acted on us and continues to do so. Now, we should respond. And this is what we do at church every week. But Church doesn’t get you to heaven, it is our way of saying thanks for no longer being doomed to death.

We do not come back because of some kind of transaction or obligation, but rather because we are freely responding to God’s love. And this can be seen in the epistle, where the author endures all things for the sake of Jesus.

But make no mistake, there is a reproach for not coming back. Jesus asks ‘Were there not ten cleansed? but where [are] the nine?’ But it does not mean that love is withheld.

There are no lepers in Britain, though this is not true in other countries. But there is much we are given by God, not least that there are no lepers in Britain. Like the last leper, we should give thanks joyfully, because we want to give thanks to God, not because we are obliged to. If I am allowed a brief excursus on the fifth century, in the early church people did this in very odd ways. My favourite are the stylites, who stood on top of pillars all the time, through winter and through the Syrian sun, sometimes for over 30 years. Dedicating themselves to God.

I am not asking you to do that, but I am going to ask you to look at the money you give. Giving has a fine and noble tradition in the church, stretching back to the tithe (a tenth of what you earned owed to the church), and the first fruits, where the best of everything goes to the church. We do not ask that now, and we should not give because of an formal obligation like that or some kind of tick-box exercise for salvation, or from fear that God will abandon us. Instead we should give – time, resources, money - because God has given to us. Not in obligation, but in thanks.

All are healed, but not all gave thanks. We should be striving to be the leper that returned, not one of those who stayed away.

Bibliography, September 2010

Read (9)
BOTM: G. Elliot, Scenes from clerical life


A. Christie, Sleeping Murder
M. Druon, La Loi des mâles
E. M. Forster, Maurice
M. Haag, Alexandria
R.P. Jhabvala, How I became a holy Mother
P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
S. Lowe and A. McArthur Is it just me or has the Shit hit the fan

T. Sizgorich, Violence and belief in Late Antiquity

Books remaining - 33

I'm theming these you'll notice. This takes care of most of the remaining 'Empire' lit, with a couple of books on the subject thrown later as I ran out of time. I'm doing all the remaining middle Byzantine books next month, and then the Medieval west in November. December will sweep up whatever's left.

Anyway, I'd expected to have to wait, much like the Lord of the Rings films and the Oscars, for the last of the series of give book of the month to Druon, but this was almost there. Unfortunately it was let down by a stupid baby swapping plot about John I of France, so it pulls up short. Instead, Elliot, once again, does well. I love Eliot, even the (by her standards) poor books like Felix Holt are good. Her debut work here was not a great, but was acutely observed, smartly written. Some veering towards melodrama, but pretty much caught, and a pleasure to read.

Nearly there now, though I'm falling behind on the overall list. I need a good October to finish by Christmas. Wish me luck.

Can the Unions actually count?

Innumeracy is a problem, a blight on our society. It's distressing, and more should be done to stop it. However, I'm sceptical that placing sufferers at the head of Trades Unions is a solution.

In fact. I'm fed up with the general tenor of the discussion of the budget: here is a fascinating table from the HoC library (page 8), showing government spending between now and 2015-16, current (i.e. non capital) and total:

Current and Total expenditure (£m, real at today's prices)
2010-11:     637.3     696.8
2011-12:     639.0     686.8
2012-13:     637.4     682.1
2013-14:     634.5     675.1
2014-15:     630.6     671.4
2015-16:     630.6     671.5
%change:     -1%        -4%

Overall, the change in public expenditure 2010/11 - 2015/16 is 4% down in real terms, actually a substantial rise in nominal expenditure. The budget report (page 45) points out pretty clearly that nominal expenditure rises by about £60bn over the period, or around 10%.

Here are the Unions on that today:

• "A savage and opportunistic attack on public services ... [that] goes far further than even the dark days of Thatcher"
• "What they take apart now could take generations to rebuild. Decent public services are the glue that holds a civilised society together and we diminish them at our peril. Cut services, put jobs in peril and increase inequality, that's the way to make Britain a darker, brutish, more frightening place."
• And predictably, Bob Crow has called for a campaign of "civil disobedience"

I don't think this is justified over a 4% reduction in real expenditure, and in fact I think pretending it does makes you a moron. Although, I don't deny the debate is important and there is a sound discussion over what the right economic policy is: for example, a good retort would be that comparative spend is what matters, and broadly I would agree they are right: a quick check on this reveals that expenditure is forecast to stabilise at 39-40% of GDP (budget report above, page 16), or to put it more plainly, higher than the levels for the entire period 1997/98 - 2003/4.

So I would like to ask politely, could everyone just get a grip on the numbers before they debate them; and if you don't know or cannot understand the numbers, could you just shut up. For I think commenting on economic policy when you can't count does make you worthy of the anathema.

Unedifying

There's an irony in commenting on things that you disapprove of being commented on, so I will restrain myself on Hague save to say the whole thing is a little unedifying. There may be something to this; there may not, but the crass crowing of Guido over the success of his campaign is unpleasant, though I do owe it to him for this faintly absurd comment from the Mirror which seems to argue that if only we had Palmerston in power, all would be better - not something I ever imagined them saying.

They are of course right, though for the wrong reasons. It would be better if we conducted our institutions along the lines of what they imagine the nineteenth century to be, without a spiteful, envious electorate seizing eagerly on any real or imagined hint of unorthodoxy or irregularity in their affairs. And instead let what are undoubtedly able men get on with running the offices of state (and lambast them when they fail), rather than this gossip laden and ugly interlude before real politics starts again. Even if there is a little dodge on public money, it doesn't matter; there are more important things at stake.

Not that this is new. I'm reading this account of the career of Athanasius, the fourth century bishop of Alexandria, and the travails attending his somewhat chequered career. His opponents couldn't distinguish the important from the unimportant either.

Just as he did, I hope Hague has no hesitation in using the anathema, though I fear it may have the same mixed effect: Athanasius spent much of his episcopate in exile.

Bibliography, August 2010

Read (11)
BOTM: M.Baffy, They were found wanting

M. Banffy, They were divided
A. Christie, Death in the Clouds
M. Druon, Le poisons de la couronne
B. Ehrmann, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
M. Gogol, Diary of a madman and other stories
G. Greer, The female Eunuch
J. Kelman, How Late it was, how late
I. Murdoch, The nice and the good
L. Sterne, A sentimental JourneyK. Williams, The Kenneth Williams Diaries

Remaining - 41

In exciting news, I've found my commonplace book again. I've not written in it for a year or so. This went in though:

'But Mannestreue, that old German tradition that a man must be as good as his word, did not only apply to the glamour and chivalry of medieval knights: heroism and self-sacrifice could be just as noble in the grey obscurity of ordinary people in a little country town.' (Banffy, They were found wanting, 398)

They've been great, the Banffy triptych; I don't know why I failed to finish them when I read the first book some years ago. Still, a wrong has been rectified - another triumph for the project. Their wonderfully evocative of a very appealing and fascinating time at the turn of the century when the Habsburg Empire was essentially doomed by forces within it that would themselves be doomed by the outcome. Hungary is the most obvious, but I imagine the Croatian nobility and the Bohemians were pretty surprised how it all panned out as well. The melancholy of the age is echoed by the plot, which, in it's final denouement, just stays on the right side of genuine sadness rather than melodrama. Obviously autobiographical, and none the worse for that, while also well drawn and most moving. I think this middle book the best of the three; and I just need to persuade A that we need a trip to Transylvania now.

Grade inflation

A-levels out tomorrow, with a new A* grade, which - if we're honest - we all know is stupid. There's nothing concrete about an A, it just means best, so what is the point about making more people get them or variants of them. Not that is matters much - the grading system could be 1,2,3,4, or scored like Tennis, provided it ranks. The real problem is summed up by the often reliable Mary Beard pretty well:

I fear I can see now what will happen. We will have used that bright new shiny A* grade to help us distinguish, just like we were told it would, the very very very good from the merely very good applicants. When/if it turns out that independent schools have monopolised the new grade, we will get blamed for not being sufficiently committed to access and social mobility.

There's a long version of this complaint about social mobility, but I haven't the energy. I will however briefly note that the problem as it seems to me is a lack of an underlying vision of what education is for. It isn't about citizenship, because that doesn't mean anything; it certainly isn't about skills in the workplace, for if so, it's an astonishingly inefficient system we've devised here. It's about intellectual enquiry, what has been called the 'life of the mind', and the ability to cultivate that on an ongoing basis, not stopping at 18 (or 21). Along the way, a slew of other skills get picked up, and of course a lot of people fail to properly engage with the ambition, so those skills are pretty useful. But they aren't the point, or at least not the point of education, rather than training..

And Michael Gove's 'liberation' of schooling seems to me likely to founder (regardless of other issues) unless he makes it clear what the ambition is for schools. I don't disagree with reform of the history curriculum for example, but devolving decisions about purpose down to the school level just leads to fragmentation and incoherence. I wish Michael Gove would sort this out rather than buggering around with structural reform that while not entirely bonkers, I suspect limited in positive impact.

The love that dare not speak its name

I went to the Cambridge Folk Festival on Sunday. It was brilliant, and I've spent most of the week listening to Kris Kristoferson, who headlined, and buying CDs by the Carolina Chocolate Drops who are my new favourite band, or more accurately my favourite new band.

But, and this is very small but, these are country artists. Kristoferson lives in Nashville and is Country royalty and the Drops are really old style country - banjo, fiddle, jug and occasional kazoo - not folk. It's not worth getting overexercised between the distinction between the two genres genres, they in many ways overlap, and I think it's one of those areas where, as the man himself said on my version of Me & Bobby McGee, 'if it sounds country, that's what it is.'

Not that we say this in England* - viz. the 'folk' festival. Somewhere our collective consciousness got stuck with rhinestones, line dancing, and bad check shirts (and Billy Ray Cyrus' ill advised haircut), so admitting to Country tends to be met with surprise if not horror. Where, against their better judgement, mainstream opinion does find it likes country, then we tend to adopt one of three overlapping tactics :

1. Adopt another term (see Americana, usually used to describe Johnny Cash's last albums), but a cursory look at the people involved reveals its obviously country and in fact the official definition has it as 'based on the traditions of country'.
2. Consider it ironically, ideally with obvious country elements downplayed, see Dolly Parton
3. Put it in another genre, see Folk above, though many other things have been tried. Gram Parsons coined the phrase 'Cosmic American Music' which mysteriously never caught on

But these are nonsense: Cash is always country; listening to Dolly Parton's My Tennessee Mountain Home, Please don't stop loving me, or Daddy was an old time preacher man should put to bed any notion that she exists in a camp vacuum; while everyone files Parsons under Country now, though they add a hyphenated 'rock' to it (which, listening to his cover of the Louvin brothers’ Cash on the Barrelhead, feels slightly optimistic).

And I love country, though inevitably not all the more modern manifestations of the genre. Done right, it includes not only some of the most poignant songs of loss ever recorded (Haggard’s Long Black Limousine or Kristoferson’s original Sunday morning coming down – in fact, ideally as I heard it on Sunday), but also the most uplifting (I defy any anyone to listen to Lester Flatt’s Roll in my sweet baby’s arms or Emmylou Harris’s New Cut Road without smiling) and even indeed funny (Kinky Friedman’s honky tonk They ain’t making Jews like Jesus anymore being my personal favourite). Nor is it – as it is often accused of being - parochial of limited in range or topics. I’ve yet to hear a better charting in music of the changing role of women than Loretta Lynn’s string of 1960s hits (Take for example One’s on the way juxtaposed with The Pill); Cash’s Bitter Tears takes swipes at Custer, the American icon about the same time the Beatles had graduated to saying that the Queen was a ‘nice girl’). And some are simply beautiful both the string of famous hits, but also the obscure like the Flatlanders’ Bhagavan Decreed. And I’ll be burying my mother to the Carter Family’s Will the Circle be Unbroken. I’ve noted the ones that leapt into my mind above, but I could repeat the exercise many times over, and I’m not sure what other genre I could do the same.

There are many reasons for this, and now isn’t the place to cover them, though it’s worth noting that Country also, like folk, places a high premium on the repeat and the cover. I have endless covers of several songs, and this gives it a texture that most modern music lacks, though classical has the same benefit of depth, though to an even greater degree. I’m broadly conditioned to like things that do this, and this is no exception. It's epitomised for me in Waylon Jenning's Are you sure Hank done it this way - where the modern star compares his life to that of Country greatest son. Unfavourably it would seem, though quite how even Jenning's self-destructive life comes out worse than Williams I am not sure. Nonetheless, this strong streak of conservatism, which also manifests in a broader range of political opinion that the soft left of pop, is core to Country and helps make it great.

Do you think we could reflect that in festival naming please.

* And it is only England. One of the joys of the iPlayer is that I can go beyond the single hour long Radio 2 Country offer and tap into larger and more interesting offers from Northern Ireland and Scotland who seem much more interested in the genre

Unlikely allies

Sometimes, just sometimes, I worry about the Today programme. Not in any way enough to make me listen to anything else, and certainly not when such excellent items as this piece by Dr Murray are recorded. But other times, like this morning, when they had a silly woman on to respond to Giles Fraser's attack on wedding trivialisation on the Thought for the Day slot yesterday (are you keeping up?). She burbled a bit and after arguing initially that nothing had changed and that weddings had always been a celebration, she then wittered a bit about how Giles Fraser was old fashioned and they had to change. She was shit, and we could have had a better discussion if they'd asked some nine year olds what the answer was. We then went on to today's Thought for the Day, which was a platitude filled paragraph of pointlessness - something about being nice. I forget.

And it was a shame, because while Giles Fraser is usually boring and platitudinous himself, or, as they pointed out this morning, 'modern' (and thus usually a bad thing), he actually had something to say. I didn't agree with all of it, but I enjoyed it, especially because was a full blown rant. His thesis, that we have got the focus of weddings wrong, is probably true. Most of the weddings I have been to are good at preserving the sanctity of the ceremony, and in making it a solemn occasion, even the secular ones, which normally don't count. But they don't always, and very often we guests don't treat them as such - we've all thought "glad that's over; where's the bar?", or at least I have. And that's a shame: for us, for the couple, and indeed for God. Not for nothing is marriage, in sacramental terms, unique, as the priest does not play an essential role, the couple alone are the ministers of the sacrament. And this says a lot about the church's teaching on marriage, which is far from the caricature painted by this and other silly critics. I've been deeply affected by good weddings, when I've been concentrating on what it means and the commitment it proclaims: a reminder both of my own and of the covenant of God with his church. Weddings are magical not because of the very welcome free booze, but because of the important bit at the start. The more we spend on the back end, the more the service risks being overshadowed, and that is anathema.

And, deliciously, this was a Thought for the Day that provoked debate - good and welcome; it would be even more welcome it we'd then actually had one. Someone should fix that.

Bibliography, July 2010

Acquired (5)

B. Goldacre, Bad Science
R. Fischer, Wiffle lever to full
J. Hannan, God's Philosophers
A.W. Montford, The Hockey stick illusion
L. Sterne, A Sentimental Journal though France and Italy

Read (6)
BOTM: L. Sciascia, The wine dark sea

Adamson, The European courts 1500-1700
Cragg, The Church in the Age of Reason
R. Fischer, Wiffle lever to full
J. Hale, The Civilisation of Europe in the renaissance
Penguin History of Britiain: the Tudors

Remaining - 53

New books starting to creep in, though all save Sterne were gifts. Sterne I was reading about in Slightly Foxed (which, by the way, is lovely) and then saw the next day for a pound - serendipity such as this should not be blocked.  It's also starting also to be a bit of a slog. Hale is long and while good, I feel it's a thesis that could have been expressed quicker. In reaction perhaps, Sciascia is my book of the month. I first read him on holiday in Sicily and then picked this up later. He's a delight, especially in this collection of short stories, though his novel The Day of the Owl is also excellent. They're biting, brilliant evocations of his native Sicily, where, as he observes, the sea is never 'wine dark'.

Could everyone stop saying things that aren't true

I'm getting bored already with the cuts and voting narrative now, and it's only been a month or two. I wonder if we can bring the AV referendum and the Spending Review forward if only to shut people up. That said, I cannot resist correcting two points that have come up this week. They're both obvious rubbish and the commentariat should really not be repeating these:

1) Budget cuts. Opening a paper today you would have been greeted with the shocking news that less a month after the budget the Tories have pushed cuts from 25% to 40%. Or rather, it would be news if it wasn't bollocks. The Observer, whose chosen party are in power, subtitle their headline as 'Shock demand as ministers step up cost cutting across the public sector'. But any reading of the document in question reveals this to be drivel. I'm sure they are asking what the impact would be if they went up and down on a 25% benchmark on the various items of spend; quite frankly, I'd be appalled if they weren't looking at the ranges. Overall, that 25% is real, as they have clarified, probably trying not to sigh loudly as they did so. There was a tedious Union man on the radio last night who couldn't quite understand the numbers, but was convinced this was 'ideological'. I have never really understood as an insult, as it represents people doing what they think best according to their view of the world. In the 1980s, the Left's objection to Thatcher wasn't that she was 'ideological', but that her ideology was wrong. There is a debate to be had on cuts, but it's about 25% vs 20% (Labour's plans), not 40%.

2) Less importantly, voting reform: we keep hearing that the 'Alternative vote' system will "guarantee" that someone is elected with a majority of votes cast. But that's only true if everyone remembers to preference all the way down on their forms. We know they don't. About 400,000 didn't bother to give a second preference in London in 2008, and they only had to do two.

Here's how it would work. Imagine that in a tight three horse race (far from inconceivable) with a - simplified electorate of 11k. Votes in first pref go as follows:

• Con - 4,500
• Lab - 4,000
• LD - 2,500

Elimination of Liberals (excellent) and they have a string of second prefs, which split equally between Lab, Con and not bothering, say 800/900/800. Hence you get:

• Con - 5,300
• Lab - 4,900

Con win (hurrah) with 48% of the vote. And these outcomes are not uncommon. Actually I am guessing the attrition rate will be higher than this because of the minority party effect. So, AV might get more people over the 50% line (eventually, based on the spurious 'least worst' option). But not all. That may be OK, but can we just say so, rather than talking nonsense again.

In both cases, I'm not opposed to having the arguments, but these are lies and attacks at strawmen, belittling to the people who do it. And really really boring.

Anathema.

Bibliography, June 2010

Read (14)
BOTM: D. Erasmus, Praise of Folly

R. Bultmann, Primitive Christianity
E.H. Carr, What is History
D. Defoe, Journal of the plague year
M. Druon, La Reine étranglée
J.C.L. Gibson, Language and Imagery in the Old Testament
H. James, The Golden Bowl
J. Jobling and I. Markham, (eds.) Theological Liberalism
E.T. Long, Existence, Being and God
H. Netland, Dissonant voices
Tertullian, Apologia
B. Unsworth, Morality Play
M. Warner, Between heaven and Charing Cross
J. Ziesler, Pauline Cristianity

Remaining - 68

I hesitate to call some of these 'read' to be honest. I picked up a set of mediocre theology a few years back and have just polished them off. Most were rubbish. It's inspired a savage and brutal cull of other remaining books as well. I've taken out about forty books in June (though I've audited my collection and added a handful as well). As a result, the finishing line gets ever closer, and I really can see it now: six months, slightly over ten books a month to get through - all be over by Christmas.

That said, I don't think I can cope with another month starting like this one. Getting through James nearly killed me, and while good (amongst the best in fact), I wouldn't try it again for a long time. Elsewhere though, this drive for completion has highlighted the gems I have sitting on my shelves. I was taught about Praise of Folly in 1995, when I started doing the Reformation for A Level, and bought this copy in 2002. Yet I failed to read it. How irritating, because it's amazing: a funny, scathing and engaging critique of the world and the church, which echoes down the ages. I can hear the account of the importance of frivolity resurface in Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, and the attack on the monks, though as old as the monastic vocation, could have been written today. I only wish my Latin were good enough to read it in the original, so I could get all the puns (my copy has extensive notes).

It's also a sensible size, clocking in at c.150 pages (incuding footnotes); people should take note: it does not take 500 pages to make an argument, or a novel - yes, Henry James, that's you we're talking about.

Bibliography, May 2010

Acquired (1)
W. Scheller, Great Estates



Read (8)
BOTM: V. Seth, The Golden Gate

D. Acheson, Present at the Creation (partial)
I. Banks, The Crow Road
D. Cruickshanks, Adventures in Architecture
I. Gilmour, Whatever happened to the Tories
V.Nabokov, Pale Fire
C. Potok, In the Beginning
W. Scheller, Great Estates



Books remaning - 105

It's been a bit of a disappointing month on the book front, though I am delighted with my book on the great estates of the US. I really struggled to read much in the States, for which a variety of factors are to blame. I was ill, we drove a lot (1,280 miles) and M doesn't read, so we didn't have that period of time where we just sat down and read for an hour or two. Finally, I foolishly embarked on The Golden Bowl which like all Henry James, I can't really get into (300 pages in) and I am really struggling to finish. I will do so, but The Ambassadors has gone in the recycling box as of yesterday.

Anyway, the books themselves were pretty good. Seth's I've pulled out as the best, but all of the novels were ones I would recommend. However, even it if hadn't been good, I would have been tempted to give the plaudits to Seth for writing a novel about Silicon valley in verse. It's a masterful feat of literary pyrotechnics. That alone wouldn't have been enough, but it's also moving, pretty rather than beautiful, and - unexpectedly - funny. It was a delight to read and whizzed by (which is just as well given the above. I read it in the appropriate surroundings of San Francisco and the wine country where it is set). I heartily recommend it, even if you aren't by the Bay.

Not wearing flowers in your hair

They've stopped the flower-wearing in San Francisco, or at least I didn't see any. Which is probably just as well.   Instead we did see what I would call the first real city of the holiday, and most welcome it was too. I still feel that like LA, it must be more fun to live in than to visit, but we had a great day pounding the pavements of San Francisco. And, while we missed out on a few things, I would liked to have got further round the Asian Art Museum than the cafe, though that was excellent, I think we did well. We were helped by having kind hosts to stay with - many thanks to A & K - and therefore did well on food and drinks also. As a city, it's clearly hard to go wrong with such spectacular natural geography as the bay area, and taking the trip to Alcatraz really highlights the glorious setting (and it's a great tour). It also means they appear to have built part of it before the roads came, and that makes a real difference.

However, the highlight for us came yesterday. I'm currently on our last US morning. Up first and sitting within sight of a winery and touching distance of vines, having spent yesterday cycling - increasingly shakily - round the local tasting rooms. We're by Healdsburg, staying in one of the wineries' own cottages, and it's been pretty close to perfect. The weather has been sunny, but not too hot (it's actually hotter in London today), the wine great, and with generous tasting options and we had a very jolly day indeed.

I'm not too surprised (though it was better than even I expected); I like the way Americans do their wine. Everywhere we have been here since LA, serving staff have been knowledgeable and crucially enthusiastic about the wine they carry. And in the vineyards, both here and New York State where I went some years ago, it's been relaxed, informal and very enjoyable to meander through the country sampling their wines. Of course, it also turns out very expensive - not of necessity, in fact most tastings are free - but we've just ended up buying quite a lot of very good wine, and we'll probably get some more today (A should have a present from this trip after all).

So, an unqualified success, and a great end to this Californian run. I'm left with the unexpected feeling that I'd really quite like to do much of this again. Next time I'll do the Vancouver - SF run south, though that's 1,500 miles, nearly 2,000 if I went to the Grand Coulee Dam (which I'd have to). That may take another fortnight, and I'd have to get A to learn to drive. I'd hate to come to these vineyards again without her. Though whether she would have approved of the right wingery on show out here is another matter. I wore my new Reagan centre T-shirt, which drew at least one approving comment and the winery we're staying by has a picture of the Governator on their bar. It's a long way from flower power, but certainly a more productive outcome.

On the road again

We’ve hit San Francisco now, having spent much of the last three days on the road. Since leaving LA, M & I have gone up Highway 1 up to Monterey, crossed the state to Yosemite and rolled into SF. We dropped the car off today with 1280 miles on the clock for six days, and I didn’t even crash once.

The places we managed to get to on the road have been the highlight of the trip so far: Highway 1 itself, especially around Big Sur, was beautiful; Hearst castle barking, yet brilliant; and getting to Yosemite, though a brutal drive on the way, was worth every minute (hour). We've also eaten well on the way. The food and wine in Cambria and Groveland (outside Yosemite) was exceptional, especially Cambria. 

For me, it's the first time I've really done a driving holiday; rare are the occasions that we venture out of the confines of cities and public transport normally (this is why I haven't read much this time, in contrast to my normal demolition of a book every few days, this time, I'm only on book two). But it makes sense in America, and it has helped me makes sense of the country as well. Firstly, it's so big. I feel like we drove for ages, but we never really got very far from a small number of centres. Secondly, transport is a major deal. We went to the Wells Fargo museum in LA, where the centrality of the railroad in the development of their fortune and American prosperity is rammed home to you. These have both contributed to a decentralised and local approach that is is marked contrast to the European. There are lots of reasons for this, but I think I needed to go see the other bits of America to get a sense of this, and it helped by listening to all their election broadcasts on the radio.

They were odd, but I loved the country and want to spend more time around it; for the first time, I can look back and say I wish we'd spent more time driving, more time in the country, and cut the cities a bit.

LA

We've not had the best runs into LA. Firstly, I was ill; secondly, on arrival, M became ill; thirdly we appeared to be staying in what I hope isn't representative of motels in the country, but I suspect is.

We fixed most of these things pretty quickly. After a good sleep (and some excellent Japanese art), I was fine. M recovered though towards the end of the stay, both helped by a switch after one night (and a dreadful morning with no hot water) to a new hotel. We did some good things too. The LACMA was excellent, and the source of the Japanese art in question above; downtown interesting; Dodger Stadium and the baseball exciting and the Getty a fantastic site as well as a decent repository of art. The last hampered by the fact that the its exhibitions put the whole thing into unfortunate perspective. The best thing there at the moment is Donatello’s Bearded Prophet on loan.

I still don't really get it as a city though. It’s sprawl is notorious but really is debilitating to any conception of the city as a whole, and having been to a number of its various neighbourhoods, I cannot think of any of them that I would wish to live in, in fact few I would want to visit again. It’s as if the city has just sprung out of the boulevards, rather the other way round, and it still takes ages to get anywhere.

In fact the most exciting thing of our time in LA was on the exit when we called in on the Reagan Presidential Centre, which is amazing. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to stay and do the tour but we did look at the grounds and the giftshop. I’ve got a great T shirt now.

Beyond the back of beyond

No-one goes to Nipton. That's not quite true, but even the car hire people hadn't heard of it. You should though (go, that is).

We went there straight out of Vegas (based on the visitors' book, so had several others) and wanted to find a tranquil place to sleep and attack the Mojave the next morning (you should go there too). It was bliss, as far from Vegas as can be imagined, though physically near enough for our hotelier to go there frequently for shopping. It felt like a relic from the American past with a working railway line through it, freight only and no stopping, a small store that did everything and a community so straightforward that our hotel just left the hotel open and a envelope with the key in a postbox outside. Then we found them in the bar next door (they run that too). The countryside is also beautiful, as you'd expect near the desert parks.

There's very little to do, but it does it well. Skip Vegas and go. From the look of the visitors' book, Matt tells me that's most people wished they'd done.

Viva Las Vegas?

So, Vegas. I thought I would hate it; and I wasn't keen, though not for the reasons I had imagined. 

Everybody who'd been (and those who hadn't) told me it was clearly not my thing: modern, brash, not enough classical ruins and so forth. But actually those things were fine. Clearly there aren't enough classical ruins, but its tackiness is somehow glorious. I spent a day going up the Strip looking at the horrifying badness of the various hotels. While many were absurd, Caesar's palace remains my favourite on account of both the pool and the - wait for it - animatronic statues in the mall. Similarly, gambling isn't unfun, especially if you win, which we seemed to. I pocketed $230 in the two days. And none of it was a surprise: you know what you are getting with Vegas - they'll be gambling, and drinking, and overblown nonsense, I'm happy to roll with it.
But, although there is a lot of the flash and the plastic and the rest, it's still all a little bit desperate and worse a bit, well, dirty. I don't mean literally, though that's also true, especially in Paris, despite it's half scale Eiffel Tower, where I was poisoned by a poor lunch, incapacitating me for days. Take the sleaze for example. I know that there will be dancing girls in shows; I know there will be prostitution and strip clubs somewhere, but I don't want my taxi driver home to suggest he take me to one, and get me free drinks. It's ugly. Likewise, gambling, I know people will come and some will win and more will lose, but nothing had prepared me for the cud chewing ranks of the middle aged cranking out slots. Where's the fun in that. They certainly didn't seem to having any. Not that the young were any better. Nowhere else have a seen a hotel which had an off-licence on the premises and watch various groups of people retreat to their rooms with a six pack of beer. If you don't want to drink here, why have you come?

I had fun (until the food poisoning kicked in), but as a backdrop, it left a lot to be desired.

A week is a long time in politics (V): reflections on the revolution

In the end, it wasn't the revolution we expected. No Liberal breakthrough; tragically for them, though amusingly for me, the Liberals managed the same number of votes and fewer seats than last time. That was funny. FPTP was revealed in all its glory: hounding out Lembit; expelling Peter Robinson, making an unlikely hero of Margaret Hodge, and - yes - sadly keeping Ed Balls. The swing was all over the place, making the polling look sensible, but luckily so. And we've produced the most exquisite torture for the Liberals we could have devised. A great election; but a terrible result.

I'm hopeful that we (the country) can get something out of this. Secret negotiations with Labour notwithstanding, I think we will have a Lib-Tory coalition by the end of the week; possibly the end of the day. I think that's probably the right answer. Being on the Tory left, I'm pretty happy with that as an outcome, especially if we can swap Osborne for Cable (not that I am particularly pro-Cable, but Osborne is overpromoted and it will mean the sainted one can take some blood and mud). Anything else would be a disaster. I'll reflect on what we get when it happens, but in the meantime, here some more general thoughts on the result. People should remember these next time:

1. If you wanted to keep the Tories out of power, you should have voted Labour. The web and the vox pops are alive with people horrified that they 'voted for change' but that the Liberals seem likely to bring the Tories back. These people should clearly never vote again: the Tories were on course to be the largest party, Clegg had said priority would go to the largest party, then he - er - started talks with the largest party. That's what coalition building is about. If you wanted to push the Labour led coalition, vote Labour.
2. Ironically, but predictably, Liberals aren't very good at decisions. If we get PR, we're in trouble, as the already difficult task of coalition building is going to become nightmarish. For decades the Liberals have been telling us how much better life would be if there was PR and they could hold the balance of power in every election (they tend not to mention the last bit). Now they've got it, and they're complaining about how difficult it is. If, and Menzies Campbell I mean you, it's unacceptable for the Tories to get in then either say so up front, or join the Labour party. This is grown up politics. Decide.
3. There is still a growing unsavoury element. We're rightly pleased that the BNP was sent packing in Barking, but the party as whole is now more popular than the SNP and more than doubled its share of the vote - 12 MPs under PR. Between them, UKIP and the BNP (and they are not the same, but I'm not very fond of them either) would have 5% of the vote, and 32 MPs under PR. This is worrying. And as a aside, I'm fed up with the smug, 'oh but that's democracy' argument in favour of this. It usually comes from people who don't want democracy (and rightly) for the bringing back of hanging, public funding for arts (don't imagine that's well supported), pull back from the EU etc. But suddenly are happy to defend the votes for the racists because voting reform is 'so important.' Rubbish.
4. The voters should remember we're electing a parliament, not a president. I am fed up with Tories bleating on about having not elected the PM; and Blunkett did it this morning. If some tedious modernising 'progressive' wants to make that a prerequisite of the government, then they should. But we elect a parliament, on a constituency basis, and they select their leader who commands confidence. Deal with it; it's a good and proper system.
5. Finally, someone needs to remind Scotland they are a small, poor, country that doesn't have a moral remit for the rest of us. Salmond was on the Radio this morning banging on about how they didn't approve of a coalition of the third and fourth parties (i.e. their ranking in Scotland, they're his words) being in government. Taking his logic, as the SNP are sixth in the UK, they shouldn't form any government, even in Scotland. Absurd. Speaking very slowly, someone should remind them that 90% of people don't live in Scotland, this is a UK parliament, and their aversion for the Tories just isn't very relevant for that because England is different and there are more of us.

So that's my immediate thoughts. A brief coda on where next:

• As I say above, I think we're close. We have to bring the Liberals in, otherwise disaster lies. They must share the pain, and therefore the power. A referendum on voting reform - which I think we'd win - is a price worth paying, but it must be a referendum on a system. The rest is fine.
• Elsewhere, it's time for a radical Tory Scottish policy. I'll sketch this out in more detail later, but we need to offer the Scots a referendum on independence. And we need to do it soon. Done right, it's a win-win: win and there's a Tory majority and either a lower cost (or at least breakeven). But lose, and this is the best bit, we spike the SNP guns and offer a chance for the Tories to be taken seriously north of the border. It's the way forward.
• Anyway, we'll be back to the polls soon, likely in 6 months, almost certainly in 2 years.

It's been fab.

A week is a long time in politics (IV): Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government

It begins.

After long tussles, I yielded to loyalty and voted Tory down the line. I almost voted for my local Labour MP, as Kate Hoey is excellent on a number of issues and really pisses off the animal rights lobby. But, with the shadow of PR hanging over me, I didn't want to face tomorrow having not voted the right way. There's going to be a lot of this today and we're in for a very exciting night.

So, only two observations from me on this today:

1) News on election day is really boring. Honestly, Today had nothing to say. The only interesting thing to have happened is the Farage's plane crashing. I know this is slightly unpleasant, but it is funny, especially as it was a misguided publicity stunt to fly a banner outside. Idiot (though glad he's not dead).

2) Everyone else gets a bit overexcited. Facebook, admittedly, not an indicator of people's sober views, is full of a lot of hyperbole from both sides, banging on about liberty or wrecking the recovery, often ill-informed anti-Tory / Anyone but Gordon rhetoric. This is overstated. There are ideological dividing lines; and that's good. But no-one is threatening to dismantle the post-Thatcher free-market consensus; not is anyone seriously expecting to drop the raised bar on public services that Blair spent the recovery money on. Everyone will have to raise taxes and cut spending. There will be differences of detail, and we should debate them, but everyone who tells you either side will lead to Armageddon is a) wrong, and b) probably best avoided.

Finally, a prediction: It's going to be close, and I don't think we're going to get there, but we'll be close, closer than uniform polls say. So:

• Con: 315
• Lab: 220
• Lib: 85
• Other: 30

Tory minority government; new election within two years.

A week is a long time in politics (III): The yellow peril

I appear to have missed a day, imagine this as overnight campaign much in the style of Cameron, only without having to actually go anywhere. I blame having rather too many drinks with an old school friend last night.

So, I am delighted that we are using the metaphor for xenophobia to East Asians to describe the rise of the Liberals (I know we're supposed to call them Liberal Democrats, but I'm with Gordon on this - it just sounds wrong). I'm not quite sure why this is acceptable when so much else isn't. One presumes it is because people don't know their history, and this is butressed by the continual belief that they are some kind of new party, when they're older than a decent number of countries.

Anyway, regardless of their antecedents, they need to be stopped. This 'anti-establishment' surge has gone far enough. Looking back, one of the nicer things about older elections, apart from the tendency of the Tories to win, is the decent numbers of votes who actually voted for sensible parties, even when they were wrong. The BBC - who else - has a decent list of post-war elections here. Scroll back to 1951 for my favourite, where 96.5 % voted Conservative or Labour. Last time that percentage was roughly 67.5%. You can interpret this trend anyway you like, and people point to an anti-politics feeling, a fragmentation of society or similar. But it's also essentially a tedious narcissism that pushes people away from the proper debate. To my mind, where there are political battles to be fought at a national level, you essentially only have two options. Either join in and support one side or give up, say smugly that you didn't vote for them, you believe in Fabian socialism or Transcendental meditation or the like. With the possible exception of the Nats, (but they have local and now national elections for these issues), it's pathetic. In the UK election, you have to pick a side, because your vote will do it for you anyway. A vote for UKIP doesn't help you get out of the EU, it helps the Tories lose. A vote for Plaid usually doesn't advance an independent socialist Wales, but undermines Labour (thanks for that). These small parties, and their voters, are incoherent and muddled and, well, pointless.

And at the broadest level, the Liberals are the examplars of this approach. The current lot are better than previous incarnations, better calibre than any since the mid 80s; better and more consistent policy. But, deep down, I'm not entirely sure what anyone thinks they achieve by joining and voting that they couldn't do better in the main vehicles. If you are dissatisfied with the Tory or Labour direction, better to stay in the major parties and fight. I've got time for some of Clegg's liberalism and compassion, but that's what the One Nation Tories argued for. Where are they now: in the Liberals. Vince Cable may want to regulate and impose strict controls on the banks, that's right wing Labour, and in the Liberals. Unpack the Liberal coalition and there are a range defectors and the dissatisfied. They encompass a wide variety of contradictory policy and principle. Some of them are talented and principled, they're also wasted and have no stomach for the fight - remember the SDP were those who left the Labour party rather than fight Militant. Where they do turn the screw, we know they are opportunists: witness Nick Clegg failing to point to a single issue of principle that would determine who he would form a coalition with; remember the campaigns in Cheltenham in 1992 and Southwark in 1983. There's no shame in taking what you can get, and no shame in not wanting to fight for the highest prize. But it's not a reason to vote for them.

Luckily, the squeeze is kicking in as polling day approaches. Today's polls have the Liberals down with votes distributed to others. People are unprepared to vote Yellow (or Orange - see, they cannot even decide on a colour) when it matters. Now, I'd like to think this is because they see the importance of making a real decision, but I suspect it's because of the electoral system. That may not be fair, but I'll take it. If only we could get rid of most of the others as well.

A week is a long time in politics (II): The Government of England is destroyed

For those who believe political hyperbole is new, that quotation is Wellington, after the Reform act of 1832, which grew the franchise from 11% to about 14% of the country. Which, in my more reactionary moments, I also tend to view as the mortal wound to the constitution, after the grievous harm of the unlawful removal of the King in 1689 (after all, that's what real Tories think). We'll pass over where Lords reform sits in this schema as more important matters are at hand.

However, the historical perspective is important here. We have (and should continue to) evolve our constitutional arrangements. But we're becoming bad at constitutional reform in the UK (and the 'UK' part is an example of one of the things we get wrong a lot). While we have traditionally avoided the excesses of the French (best joke here) by making small changes infrequently, we now seem to fudge and fiddle on a frequent basis, leaving it in a compex mess. There is now a real prospect of the venerable and successful system we have for parliament being replaced by fantastical variants of PR. My father-in-law and I have been having a long debate on this over the last few weeks, which has tempered my objections in many cases, but fundamentally I reject this and I reject the premise on which the debate is bring conducted. Here's why (in short):

Firstly, we should be clear about what we're trying to achieve by an election. Ultimately we're seeking to ensure an effective government in the interests of the people. I would argue that's enough, but others will insist we're also trying to have one that reflects the wishes of the people. These are not the same thing, but let's allow both to stand. Banging on about 'democracy' is a sham. No democracy works perfectly, we are engaged in assessing which imperfect system is best for the country.

Secondly, the discussion needs focussing. Everyone wants some kind of reform, even if it just to regularise the population-bias against the Tory held seats or to solve some of the mess that the botched devolution settlement has created. But, as the only game in town is the Liberal party (I am ignoring Gordon's insultingly obvious last minute conversion to AV, which the liberals don't want), we should discuss that. It's not that easy to find the specifics on the LD website, their manifesto says they will introduce 'fair votes', which later you find means multi-member constituency STV. I'm familiar with this. It's not a bad system, though highly complex, and assuming you have large enough consitituencies, you get a roughly proportional legislature. It's still a bad outcome.

1) It's complex and disenfranchising at a local level

• Methodologically, it is really complicated. When you're reallocating third preferences against fourth preferences at values of 0.04 of the vote (and these matter; I got elected on them once), this is not going to make sense to people. And I think any argument for more democracy that involves a system people don't understand is morally flawed.
• It undermines local accountability. For example, I went to my local husting last week; interesting, but long: there were 7 candidates. In a 5 member constituency, there would be up to five times that. Each major party would put up five, though the small parties wouldn't. I'm not going to care about these people; I'm going to find it hard to have a personal stake in them unless they really fuck it up. I'll just vote on party lines in an essentially random preference list. So it's a fig leaf; the results will be the same as lists, except there is no real way to determine who is the senior party member.

2) It creates all the problems of PR at national level:

• Under PR, the appearance of democracy is pretty illusory. The government in a PR scenario commands no 'majority of votes cast' as it's supporters argue, but rather an invisible political fudge with no loyalty to bind the government together. Those in favour argue that a coalition will represent the blend of policies that appeal to most people, but there is no real evidence that this will be the case. Currently, despite most people voting for parties opposed to PR, the price of Liberal support will be PR - doesn't sound 'democratic' to me.
• Similarly, given the limited shifts in the vote, this more 'democratic' solution pushes us towards stagnation. PR leads to a more remote and possibly unchanging governing class. In Austria, voting simply didn't matter for fifty years as the same parties were always in power, just with slightly different allocations of portfolios. Eventually they got so fed up with this that they elected a Nazi. In the UK, every post-war election would mean that the Liberals held the balance of power between the Tories and Labour. No wonder they support it; it's no reason we all should.

3) It encourages further fragmentation and looniness

• On the other hand, the altrnative is worse. When PR doesn't lead to stable grand coalitions, it collapses into a miasma of competing and shifting alliances. This is a bad outcome. It's important that individuals and parties can be challenged on their record. It is right that we know that Labour's senior politicians in the 1990s were maddo unilateralists; it is an appropriate challenge to the the Tories that they do defend their attitude to homosexuality in the past. I've lost track of the French right wing parties since the Gaullists, and Italian parties change with each election.
• And when parties fragment, they go mad, and PR gives the mad ones power. Israel has spent a while in hock to Shas, who are mad and corrupt, because they held the balance of power. In the UK, in 2005, you'd have had 13 UKIP MPs, and 4 BNP. Actually you might have more, as the penalties in the system do stop people voting for them. I'm discomforted by the thought of the Liberals as kingmakers, I'm horrified by most of the others (and that includes Plaid, who are so moronic they think it is a legitimate policy to have a maximum wage, but not for Welsh entrepeneurs).

4) Finally, first past the post works

• It is right that the most popular person in your area represents you; it is right that collections of those people govern. If the 'progressive alliance' feels very strongly about it, they can not run in clashing marginals. This is real politics, not petty squabbling (the same goes for UKIP). If they cannot agree whether to run a candidate in Basildon, they aren't going to be able to agree an education policy.
• We need decisive, stable government. FPTP gives us that; most PR systems don't do this well. Italy is usually a basket case, Belgium takes four or five months to form a government each time, the Netherlands government has just fallen 18 months ahead of time. Some work, but because they aren't really PR: France has a directly elected President, Spain has tiny constituencies. Germany alone is good, and they operate a stable, two alliance system that looks very much two-party government to me.
• Finally, don't believe the hype. This election is an anomaly, not the harbinger of a new model for politics. It's a very exciting anomaly arising from the Liberals effectively triangulating to hold right-wingers in the south and pick up lefties in the North. It cannot stand and it won't in the long term - there simply isn't enough consistency within the party.

Ultimately, all constitutional reform will struggle to deliver what everyone wants. They start with people talking about legitimacy, and end with piecemeal political calculation. Change should be long considered, and rarely implemented. Constant tinkering distracts from the main business of politics. And that makes for bad government.

A week is a long time in politics (I): full of sound and fury

I am in fact so excited about the upcoming election that even A is bored, so I've decided to hit the blog instead. As I reckon this could take more than Thursday to get the result sorted out I've decided Harold Wilson's adage best captures the period to a new government (please God*). If it takes longer than Saturday, I will have gotten bored and anyway will be in California so won't care.

However, the adage is wrong. A week really isn't a long time in politics anymore. Either things happen instantly, or nothing happens at all. Here are some polls (both YouGov):

Today: Tories - 35; Liberal - 28; Labour 27
17 April: Tories - 33; Liberal - 30; Labour - 28

Two weeks, bigotgate, two more debates - all that, and basically Cameron and Clegg have mopped up a few 'don't knows.' Now, those may prove critical (based on the BBC's rough seat calculator, this converts the outcome from Labour lead to a Tory lead in seats), but it's not very much. In 1992, where on he 16th March Labour led the Tories 43-38, when by 8 April (the eve of the election) they were tied on 38. Now that's proper movement. But when the relative shares haven't really moved, it's hard to see this entire election campaign as anything other than the playout of the first debate.

Now, this is partly because, bigotgate aside, no-one has done anything stupid, and that both Cameron and Brown have absorbed the lessons of the first debate. But it also points to the fact that campaigns only change when new information is given. Depressingly, about 10% the electorate appear not to have heard of the Liberal Democrats before the debate on the 15th, and Plaid and the SNP are quite right to point out the debates will hurt them (though it shouldn't get them on the podium) and people will simply forget them. More significantly, the intense scrutiny of politicians through expenses and economic crisis has meant and people have already pretty fixed views of their votes. While politicians actions can shift polls, it's their actions before the campaign that do so, not their actions on it, hence the collapse of the Tory lead from the beginning of the year. On this note, it's been striking to me how bad the themes of the main manifestos have been. Labour's soviet-like banner has given the electorate nothing to hold onto and the Tories' manifesto is just terrible electioneering. As a result they've done anything to the vote and they're unlikely to. Similarly, bigotgate was wonderful car-crash television, but it didn't change many people's mind. If you cared about Gordon's temper and paranoia, you already weren't voting Labour.

May 6th is going to be fascinating, not lease because of the bewildering complexity of our splendid electoral system (I'll be covering that later in the week), but we could almost have had it three weeks earlier and nothing much would have changed. The only thing we have really learnt is that for all the nonsense about new media, it's been peripheral - what's changed the game is a debate, on traditional, live, Television and Radio, based on a format that was created in 1960. Otherwise, it has been a campaign full of sound and fury, but for last twenty days it has largely signified nothing.

*about both the new government and the timing of getting one in

Bibliography, April 2010

Read (12)

BOTM: Homer, tr. Lattimore, The Illiad

P.F. Bradshaw, Ordination rites in of the ancient churches of east and west
Caesarius of Arles, tr. W. E. Klingshirn, Life, Testament, Letters

R. Cholij. Clerical celibacy in east and west
A. Christie, Crooked House

G. Flaubert, Salammbo

K. Fraser (ed.), The Worst Journeys in the world
Hilary of Poitiers, tr. L. J. Wickham, Conflicts of Conscience and Law in the Fourth-Century Church

Homer, tr. Lattimore, The Odyssey

Plutarch, Parallel Lives (Loeb vol 1)

R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

T. Shah, In Arabian Night

Unread remainder: 118

A better month, though with the depressing realisation that I really should have done Classics, and definitely should have gone to Turkey at eighteen. Not much stellar though I did enjoy Keith Fraser's collection of travel literature. But reading the grown-up version of the Illiad was any disappointments elsewhere (the Odyssey I could have left). It's magnificent, and revelatory. I grew up reading children's versions of classical myths endlessly and I don't really remember how I dropped the ball on the transition to adult versions, because they've been stunning. One of these days I'm going to get through bugger in Greek, but I may wait till the doctorate is done, as it's a lot of wasted Greek to work through when Sozomen beckons.

Bibliography, March 2010

Belatedly,

Books Read (7)
BOTM: N. Gordimer, None to remember me

Fl. Josephus, Life of Herod
H.-I. Marrou, L'Eglise dans l'antiquite Tardive
K. Meyer and S. Brysac, Tournament of Shadows
E.P. Saunders and M. Davies, Studying the Synoptic gospels
B. Unsworth, After Hannibal
B. Unsworth, Land of Marvels

Remaining: 136

Not a good month; in fact a pretty poor one, with limited exciting or high quality reads, and this likely explaining my lack of enthusiasism for actually doing much reading. This made BOTM is tricky, but the best of a bad bunch was Gordimer, whose novel about South Africa post-Apartheid was good. However, I wouldn't really recommend it compared to other BOTMs.

Fighters for Justice

I once went to a church where we prayed for the Unions as 'fighters for justice' in the same week that they tried to block companies from offshoring (i.e. sending western money to poor countries). It was the second time that the church in question inserted some socialist drivel into the liturgy, and I've never been back. Their comments on the Unions were admittedly better than the previous week where they compared Thatcher to Hitler, Stalin and Mao. In the name of transparency, it was St Giles, Camberwell, and I'll never set foot in it again.

Anyway, the Unions and I have form. I loathe them; they tried to destroy the country, and I appear to have mentioned them already this year. So, I won't devote much time to their latest transgression in the BA affair, in which I have a very personal stake. A is on tenterhooks, knowing if this strike goes ahead a) we may not get to go on holiday and b) she'll have to listen to me shout about Unions for much of the year.

However, it's worth me just outlining precisely what I object to here. Firstly, this isn't about Unions per se:

• I have no problems with Unions as collective associations for all manner of things, essentially like a building society for employment-type insurance, legal advice, action against bullying etc.
• Nor is this about the political campaigning and block funding, though I have issues with those. However, they're a little complex and not relevant.

So, let's look at striking. There are a number of issues here:

• Contractual and legal protection: existing staff have a protected contractual position and a host of - for the most part - good legal protection in the body of Employment law. These protections have multiplied in the last half century, and especially the last 15 years. These are well protected workers from unfair actions by management, in a way that may well not have been the case in the past. These are not the exploited masses of yesteryear.
• Nor would I stop them withholding their labour. I defend their right to stay at home, just not their right to get their job back afterwards. It's not a defence the company can use: sorry, we've decided not to pay you today, but we will tomorrow. The company, quite rightly, would be sued, and would lose.
• To this last, it will be protested that their is essentially asymmetric power, viz. people are powerless and companies powerful, so they need protection. Here the law - in my limited understanding - is now simply unfair. Unions are sanctioned collusive behaviour, companies are not allowed to operate in a a cartel-style; employees are protected by a growing body of law; management has only limited procedural options with regard to a strike, regardless of the merits of the case. The best management outcome in a court is therefore the status quo, yet must invest significant time on these matters. Industrial relations is a legitimate cost of doing business for companies, but should be based on engaging with the grievances of individual workers, not the ambitions of Union barons.
• Finally, the leaders of these Unions should be ashamed. Anna points out that the membership is probably stupid and unable to understand the recession will bankrupt them soon. Heartening though it is to see that A has adopted many of the principles of my general theory, it's a damning assessment of the leaders of the Union. They know the context, the massive losses, the bleak economic outlook, and they press on with this. History does not judge overbearing and destructive Union leaders kindly (though, unlike Scargill, they appear to have balloted their members properly this time)

I make no comment on the rights and wrongs of this particular case, though I note that the cabin crew in BA are exceptionally well paid for their job, as much as twice as much as some competitors (the Times discusses it here, the table is here), but that's not really the point. I'm sure there are problems, but legal protection is now imbalanced, this is not the right response, and the law should not allow it.

Two final observations:

• If this does ahead, BA will be bust or taken over in a year. And the the scale of job losses will be greater and benefits cut more. The unions won't know what hit them - good riddance.
• A is holding the socialist line on the right to strike on this very well. Even though its her holiday that will be damaged, she's still defending them. Like so many times before, she proves herself consistent and willing to take the hit from from her own logic. That's why she is better than other socialists, who too often turn in the wind; and one of the many reasons why I love her

Sleeping at night

I don't have time to really meditate on this, but I'd recommend everyone who missed it listen to this very moving interview with Denis Avey this morning. There's some backstory linked to on the site about his role in the war and his actions in the camps. He's obviously an astonishing man, but more importantly, represents a sense of moral obligation that I don't think we've lost exactly, but we don't really consider in same way.

When he speaks of what he did, he explains that without doing it, he couldn't sleep at night; now, when we are called to do something as trivial as give some money to the poor, we expect the state to organise it for us, which - of course, they don't. We shouldn't exaggerate this, plenty of people volunteer and do an enormous amount, and not all men in the 40s were heroes. But, we do miss that feeling of moral obligation, obfuscated by a discomfort about moral absolutes, which is both facile and dangerous. Stories like this remind us of the prize for not thinking like that.

I'm not entirely a fan of a British national commemoration of the holocaust, and I'm glad these cases are - as is proper - being looked at by Yad Vashem as well. For Mr Avey though, I'm delighted, and much moved.