A tale of two manifestos

Notoriously, a major part of the Liberal collapse last election was their failure to follow through on their pre-election promise on tuition fees, leading to one of the best uses of autotune in history. It also reflected an understandable, if intellectually confused, howl of outrage about politicians - namely they don't do what they say they will do. I think that was unfair on Liberals as they were in coalition, but it's not an insane position and it's a common complaint. It was repeated endlessly, usually with some variations on a theme about how we thought the Liberals were different and they're not. All of which was tedious, ill-informed and silly.

Five years later, the same electorate is aghast and appalled by the Conservatives, this time not in coalition, doing exactly what they said they would do before the election. Before the election, the party made it very clear that they would take £12bn out of welfare and they would protect pensions. This must mean brutal cuts to benefits, mostly if not exclusively targeted at the poor. It was one of the main reasons why I was unable to vote for them. Just as they promised, the government has sought to bring in those kinds of cuts - they've had two major failures about it in the last six months (remember the tax credit reversal). Both times, they have been savaged, both within and outside the party, and the cuts have been reversed. I'm pleased the cuts have been reversed. They were bad policy, done badly. But the approach and the numbers were in the manifesto. Where is the outrage on an election manifesto being broken before the year is out?

Generously, one might argue that these particular cuts were not in the manifesto. Indeed they were not, but the numbers were there, and people wrote about them - here's a nice long article in the Telegraph, not behind a paywall, that outlines the issues. They were discussed at length by news programmes. It is not credible that anyone even vaguely interested and intellectually semi-competent can have been unaware of the numbers. Were it only the single cut that people opposed, I would have some sympathy, but the fact that it has been disastrous twice over suggests that the issue is not the specifics, but about the money, and the money was known. The government is doing what it said it would do.

Alternatively, we might believe that people voted for the Conservatives despite the welfare cut plans because they thought other issues were even more important. There is no evidence for this position in any post-election discussion and I just can't see what those issues would be. The people who really wanted an EU referendum above all else were already voting UKIP. I remain confused as to why people were so hostile to the SNP, but the number of people placing it above everything else was small. A decent number did vote Tory because of economic competence, but that is based on deficit reduction through this policy.

Instead, we must conclude that people voted for a policy they didn't actually want. This does not reflect well on the people, though it does not surprise me. Pertinently, it makes a nonsense out of those who complain that our politicians never keep their promises. Here they have, and we attack them for it.

Late night library

Last night, thanks to Anna covering children and my new policy of drink less, doctorate more which I'll be adopting till the damn thing is finished (hopefully December. They'll be a party), I spent an evening in the Library. I haven't spent an evening in a library for a long time. I used to. I remember very fondly coming out of the Bodleian at closing time at 10pm and into the pub. I should stress that outside of Finals panic, I had rarely got the Bod before lunch on said days.

Anyway, I certainly haven't spent any time in the Maughan library (that's KCL's) late at night. Here my reflections:

1. Late night usage is very different from the day. When I visited during the day in the spring, there were sections where I was alone once the motion sensitive lights went off). It was bustling in the evening. And everyone was a bit louder. Disappointingly, this didn't seem to be because they had been drinking.
2. KCL has a very curious cataloguing system. While I have a some sympathy for idiosyncratic approaches to taxonomy (see long and short posts), even I struggle to see why the Late Roman should be split from the Byzantines, but combined with modern Italy. I faced a wall that held biographies of Constantine and Cavour, but not Cantacuzenus. 
3. Despite the fact that everything has changed at university because they all have to pay and they can get all the articles online, undergraduates are still prone to a good old fashioned essay crisis. In the four hours that I was there, two of them sat next to me attempting to write an essay. They didn’t get very far and seemed to be settled in for the long haul. They were quite annoying and seemed to working on sociology (they obviously hadn't figured the cataloguing system out either), but I mellowed towards them through the evening.
4. As a result, I felt exceptionally smug. I also remembered how much better I work in the library compared to being at home, and how much more I enjoy working in them, even at night.
5. That's even true given the now common disregard for basic library etiquette. While I was there, one of my undergraduates got through two cans of Red Bull. Given I was there from 6:30 and 10:15ish, God knows how he was going to get through the small hours. More important, who thinks it's acceptable to drink sticky drinks in a room full of someone else's books?
6. I am very glad I didn't go to London. Regardless of the quality of the library environment, it's always a long way home. For all of my time at college, it was never more than ten minutes walk.
7. That said, cycling home through the centre of London late in the evening is simply amazing. I haven't done that for ages either, but spinning through the centre when the streets have started to clear, but everything remains lit up is magical. Not even a slightly malfunctioning gear changing mechanism can spoil it
8. My bike needs a service and possibly a new gear box.

It was great, and I got loads done. Unlike the undergraduates next to me.

A love letter

Last week, after nearly eight years, I left the BBC (I started at WaterAid on Monday). What follows here is my love letter to the Corporation. It's not a technical argument for it, though I am happy to have that argument (if increasingly sceptical of its value) nor any kind of defence of some of our unsavoury employees anymore than it is a tribute to the wonderful colleagues I have left. This is simply my farewell. It does of course repeat many of the things I said at my leaving drinks so isn't worth reading if you were there.

I shall miss the BBC terribly. I've been lucky enough to work across almost all of it, though I've seen some bits more closely than others. And I loved it because I got to defend things I loved. 

My affection for those things is deep rooted. When I think about the BBC, it comes saturated with memory. So saturated that some of those memories come from a time before I was born. I remember being played classic radio comedy as a child from the 1960s, so that I can still recite sketches from Round the Horne (e.g.,) and I'm sorry I'll read that again. I'm not alone in this - think of the Dr Who fanatics younger than me who can go back to the same decade. As a twelve year old, I fell asleep to the 1992 election coverage on Radio 4 amid the glimmerings of the great victory. Obviously I woke up the following morning to Today, but I've done that since the age of about eleven. About the same time, my whole family always watched Noel's House Party. I still have an enormous soft spot for Mr Blobby. (This, with Will Carling, is objectively brilliant)

So far, I've got to about 1992 and the list could roll on and on, but there are plenty of more comprehensive lists out there. My own consumption has waxed and waned over the years in entirely predictable ways - when I watched Benedict Cumberbatch play Stephen Hawking in 2004 I was watching very little, but it was still one of the most extraordinary pieces of television I have ever seen. My current favourites are shaped by my child centred timetable and would be dominated by Radio (note especially this this wonderful gem on Shakespeare last month), News, Politics, and CBeebies. And Pointless. It would have drama in, but I rarely have the energy to engage with much now, and I can't bring myself to watch War and Peace until I've reread the book again.

However, my favourites aren't really the point. That list could be entirely different and just as strong. The BBC is a place where magical things get made, lots of them, and many done in ways that commercial TV and Radio can't do and certainly can't sustain. This time last year, in the grip of a small baby and a lot of hours to fill, I listened to Serial. Frankly, I was dreading it being better than regular speech radio. It wasn't, though it was fine: a good story, told well. We do things that good every week on Radio 4, some better, and many times over. Serial, which lost money, has found it harder to replicate its success. Our music is unsurpassed, Radio 4 inimitable, and our News coverage wider, better and more diverse than anyone else. I wouldn't be without the Spectator and the Economist, but I rely on BBC News. And I know no-one else has as many correspondents in as many places because I've counted them.

I found that experience typical. Working for the BBC only increased my affection for most of the output, if at times straining my patience with the internal and external constraints. Working in News taught me not just to appreciate, but to love, the English Regions. My favourite BBC statistic remains that the regional current affairs strand Inside Out has higher audiences than Panorama. The BBC taught me how to think about digital with the whole audience in mind. BBC Radio, which is the best part of the BBC, gave me such pleasure. There, I got Radio 2 Eurovision approved and saw, brilliantly, Brad Paisley in session. It was marvellous.

This isn't a structured policy argument about the BBC. The technical arguments for and about funding are a reasonable argument to have, though not always had reasonably. There are things one could and should change about the BBC. However, I think this misses the point. The BBC's future has been dressed up in technocratic discussion for over a decade, yet for me it's never been about that. It's been about the institution. And any position anyone takes on the debate is about how they feel about the institution and I suspect institutions generally. David Hatch, quondam Controller of Radio Four, talked about running that station as like inheriting a long-established country estate that has to be handed on intact. I feel that about the whole BBC (and indeed the great estates). It should be handed on. I fear it won't be.

For now though, I feel honoured to have manned some of the barricades. It was an enormous privilege.

Bibliography, February 2016

BOTM: H. Trevor-Roper, The hermit of Peking (1976)

B. Aldiss, Hothouse (1962)
M. Atwood, The year of the flood (2009)
M. Atwood, Maddaddam (2013)
G. Maxwell, The Rocks remain (1963)
G. Maxwell, Raven seek thy brother (1968)
B. Malzberg, Beyond Apollo  (1972)
E. Rogan, The fall of the Ottomans (2015)

I seem only to have read in pockets this month. All the fiction was science fiction; the rest mostly consisted of the lives of oddities; and the Ottomans. Anyway, of all the oddness, the life of Edmund Backhouse was the best. Hugh Trevor-Roper (unfairly described as a discredited historian by my boss) never did get round to producing a masterwork. This isn't even close, but it is a compelling and extraordinary tale of one of the most fantastic chancers in modern history. That Trevor-Roper kept getting distracted by projects like this undermined his claims on posterity as an historian, but it is great fun.   

How to sound heartless (What are sieges for?)

As of this morning, aid is flowing into seven Syrian cities most affected by sieges from both rebel and regime forces (details here). Populations in dire positions will have food and other supplies they desperately need. But I'm not sure what the point is, and I'm not even sure it's a good idea.

Everyone seems very shocked that people in these cities are starving (in some cases to death). But of course they are starving; they're being besieged. Starvation is the point of sieges - it's a way to win without having to fight a battle; it's the only way to win if the defences are stronger than your army. This isn't comparable to helping refugees in camps or even people in large areas controlled by government. The deprivation of the people inside isn't a byproduct of the fighting, it's the point of the fighting. Hypothetically, if everyone in the contested towns were willing to concede , the sieges would stop. Obviously, because of reprisals and scare resources, it's more complicated than than, but it's still true that you don't besiege your own side. 

Of course, many people aren't on any side and, hideously, are simply caught in the middle. Their lives are awful and they die in numbers in ways I cannot imagine. But they are dying because there is a war on. They need that war to stop. Ultimately wars stop for two reasons: a) somebody wins, b) every sits down and plays nicely. The latter in this kind of case often because someone else is threatening you unless you do. I don't see how supplying cities under siege helps brings either of those forward. It very clearly prolongs the war. Cities that presumably were about to fall will now not fall, so we can do it all again next year. Similarly, I don't think entrenching existing positions makes anyone more likely to compromise.

Defenders will say that this is a precursor to a ceasefire which will pave the way to peace. God, I hope so. What follows makes me sound like a total bastard, but if it makes it worse by prolonging the agony, then this emergency aid hasn't done anything but make us feel better about ourselves at the expense of an already broken country. I'm not sufficiently expert to answer that question, but I really hope someone has thought about it very hard. I hope they decided it was worth it, and I hope they were right. I'm not sure either is true.

Bibliography, January 2016

BOTM: G. Maxwell, The ring of bright water (1960)

K. Amis, Take a girl like you (1960)
R. Crowley, Empires of the Sea (2005) 
R. Graves, Seven days in new Crete (1949)
F. O'Brien, The third policeman (1967)
J. Roth, The Spiders web (1932)
K. Stockett, The Help (2009)
T.H. White, [The Once and Future King]
_________ The Sword in the Stone (1938)
_________ The queen of air and darkness (1939)

_________ The ill made knight (1940)

_________ The candle in the wind (1958)

_________ The book of Merlyn (1977)

This was tight. I almost gave it to The Help, which I thought was outstanding. In fact I almost gave BOTM jointly, but that's pathetic (Yes it is Masterchef the Professionals 2012). It's always possible to make to choice. So, although I know it's partly because I have a weakness for barking mad aristocrats, it's Gavin Maxwell's account of how he kept an otter as a pet. That description does the book a disservice - it's a well known classic. Nonetheless, it is essentially about a man deciding to upend his life to keep an otter. As such, it's charming, what makes it brilliant is that he manages to do it while both avoiding tweeness - in fact the fairly bloody diet of otters is well documented - and anthropomorphising - he is very good on the animal personalities of the otters without projecting further. Also, impressive in a slight book, it manages to pack in delightful snippets of memoir (I then had to look him up properly) and a string of evocative segments on the region and the natural world. The reading public of 1960 were right; it sold millions.

As an aside, the reading public of 1960 cannot entirely be congratulated. Kingsey Amis' book of the same year, lauded at the time, is deeply unpleasant and though the reviews found it highly comic, I fear this has faded. The climax of the plot is exceptionally unpleasant.

It's not the side effects of the cocaine

I found this post very hard to write; I'm not sure I've done it justice. I don't think I realised before last Monday how much I would care when Bowie died. I definitely didn't imagine I would ever lay flowers at his mural, but I did. In a way, it's no surprise, I was obsessed by Bowie in my teens - he accounted for about half of all the CDs I owned at one point - to put this into context, I owned sixteen of his albums before a single one by Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones. I adored him, and this was despite my teens coinciding with his prolonged creative slump and his ill starred foray into drum and bass. But I spent more of the 2000s excavating the roots of pop music than delving into modern experimentation, listening to people who grew up with Johnny Cash, not those who listened to Bowie. But when he died, I realised I remembered every album in far greater detail than almost anything else I've ever listened to.

I don't think I'm alone in that. I've read a lot of of the appreciation, and the analyses of how important he was and why. I note that you'd be a lot better off if you started reading about Wednesday because the first few days had some dodgy analysis in, by some people who clearly hadn't listened to everything recently either. There were pieces banging on about the 'Berlin trilogy' which only namechecked tracks from 1972-4 (As an aside, I find the term Berlin 'trilogy' lazy and inaccurate. Lodger has very little in common with the other two). But I'd also note that the devotees of Bowie didn't talk too much about all the the weirder, more experimental music they then listened to, but rather how much he inspired other acts, almost all of whom were closer to the mainstream than he. That's no bad thing. While the coverage repeatedly praised his uniqueness as an artist, they also point to the unique role in Britain we've accorded him. He was our accepted window onto the weird stuff; the acceptable face of the avant-garde.

Now no-one starts there, and the vision, brilliance and bravery to aim for that and deliver is extraordinary. Given the volume of the tributes, I don't have to do any detail here. I did like this by Dylan Jones (see the end) and I thought the Economist was typically judicious in a rare two page obit about where the real value is (I've mentioned this before). They had a lovely graphic as well. Even the inevitable from Fact to Fiction was mediocre, rather than typically terrible. It is also definitely worth listening to Mitch Benn's the Fat Pink Duke which we've repeated from last year. We should luxuriate in this level of coverage; we will only get this again when Dylan dies. None of it really explains why I loved him. For some, his being an outsider crashing into the mainstream made all the difference. I am obviously not an outsider, but I am very grateful that he brought the esoteric to pop and kept it there. I am very much in favour of the esoteric.

Most people aren't, which is why Bowie was so important - transgressive, inventive, endlessly curious. There is no comparable artist that took such a range of odd, weird interests and obsessions, made them central to their output, sold in the millions, and then changed everything because they got bored. There are plenty of odd people with strange interests. They tend not to be pop stars. They certainly aren't very successful pop stars. That's a testament to his artistic ambition, but it's also a testament to his charisma: that magnetic, shape-shifting personality and wonderful cleverness that remains on view throughout. And I think that's an essential component, because while the restlessness that made him search out ever more obscure new genres makes him fascinating to follow, it does make him exhausting. And no-one can possibly like it all. When I was first discovering Bowie (early 1970s version), he released Earthlings, which, although on a re-listen is nowhere near as unpleasant as I remember, is never going to be the genre for me. A friend of mine told me it was the only Bowie album he'd ever thought was any good. All pop frontmen are charismatic, but few if any attempt to get over that hurdle of proving yourself again every time. He was an exceptional man.

And he leaves a body of work that is genuinely special, affecting and wonderful. Others can and have said much about the fashion and the theatre and the rest, but the quality of the music is what everything rests on. After he died, I listened to everything (except Tin Machine - I've always been scared to listen to Tin Machine). Some of them I haven't listened to for a long time. Some were really bad, and there is no disguising that everything after Let's Dance just isn't as good as what preceded it - soberingly too, I realise now I am already older than Bowie was when that was released. But the volume and pace of output through the 1970s is still bewilderingly brilliant. For me, though Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Station to Station remain the obvious pinnacle, there is so much scattered around the rest in almost all his albums that it's a hopeless task to gather up the pieces. Better instead just to listen to them, and be very grateful that you can.

In the end, I think I loved him because I couldn't believe he existed. There is no way anyone would imagine that mix of cleverness, art and weirdness being transmuted into the music he made. I won't see his like again and I will miss him terribly; we all should.