Reflections on a referendum (I): the war against maths

I can't resist. We're three days out, other people have started weighing in with their thoughts, and I've found this whole campaign so appalling, I don't think I can let it finish without a small rantette. I was going to start Thursday but it felt wrong. However, that it's truncated is probably a blessing - I'll only have a chance to do a handful of these, to everyone's relief. I'll aim to keep the most important things.

So let's start with numbers (I'll come back to democracy and identity another time), because I think of all the dreadful things, numeracy has been one of the most dreadful. I know this isn't news - I've discussed before how politicians can't do basic calculations and that the electorate doesn't know how to interpret counting. Nor is this a partisan point, Remain have been guilty of absurd hyperbole, though their basic trajectory is I think right. Leave have been cleverer and have used numbers better, but in a fundamentally misleading manner. It's good politics in the short term, in the long term it fuels expectations that cannot be met.

Let's start with the most infamous - the £350m a week to the EU claim. Everyone who reads knows this is a meaningless number, though it's emblazoned on every Leave bus. It's been attacked by all and sundry. We've spent what feels like a month talking about it, yet the majority of people still believe it to be true. I am entirely prepared to have a debate about the real number, but this is impossible if people cannot grasp addition, and campaigners have no qualms about manipulating that. I'm tempted to blame Leave for using it. I really blame the electorate for falling for it.

That said, however it's cut, the number is still big. The net number is £100m+ a week, £8.5bn a year. People keep asserting that's a big number. But the world is really big, even the UK is pretty big, Our GDP is £1.8 trillion; government spending is around £600bn; the NHS alone is over £100bn. So the number is less than 0.5% of GDP and only just over 1% of government spending. Even if you don't believe Sir John Major that the NHS is as safe as a hamster with a python under prominent Leavers, £8bn won't solve it. More importantly, it's irrelevant anyway. Nobody thinks Brexit will be neutral on the economy, and it would be fantastical if they did: either erecting barriers to our main markets hammers the economy (I include to this view), or in the future, the UK as a open trading nation booms as the Singapore of Europe (I do not incline to this view, but it doesn't matter), as soon as that impact is 0.5%, then the £8bn has vanished. And all this is before we talk currency. If you are weighing up the economic consequences of leaving, don't even bother to talk about the payment, talk about growth - not for nothing is compound interest the most powerful force in the world.

Finally, the most important number: immigration, announced at the end of May as a net 330k. For most people, Brexit is really a debate about immigration. I spent an evening with ex-colleagues last week where the Brexiteers all talked a good game about everything else, but they're a minority in their own campaign and the country. The only thing that's moved the polls is immigration. I would note that 1) 330k isn't actually that many people. It's easy to talk about a the size of city it represents, but we have a lot of small cities. It's 0.5% of population, the same increase as from our natural birth rate. High, sure, but neither unprecedentedly so nor impossible to manage. People who think Britain is full need to spend more time in Wales. And 2) Half of it is not from the EU. Where we can cut migration as we wish, we are not doing so. It's curious that we thus think the whole thing is out of control. This isn't to deny that there may be localised impacts, but it is now and will be in the future much smaller than people think. This is clear from the perception research: people think the EU-born population (including, I presume, me) is three times larger than it is. There's a positive and a negative case to be made around immigration. They both start with counting. We haven't got there yet.

Democracy tomorrow

Bibliography, May 2016

BOTM: T. Capote, In cold blood

K. Amis, The alteration
B. Bainbridge, The bottle factory outing
W. Fiennes, The Snow geese (from last month. I forgot)
A. Leckie, Ancillary Sword
A. Leckie, Ancillary Mercy
C. Mieville, Railsea
S. Rohmer, The mystery of Fu Manchu

K. Vonnegut, Cat's cradle

I think The Alteration is one of Kingsley Amis' best books - far better than the dire offerings I've read recently - though it's not in Lucky Jim's class. It is clever, and done very well right through the end, which I think is a nice subversion of the conventions of such novels. I have read it several times, but I'm rereading it as part of my plan to read all of the John W. Campbell award. However, although excellent, partly because of the frequency of reading, I've given BOTM to Capote's classic, which does not suffer from being overlooked. It's a book that spawned a genre. And, though true crime is not a genre I've read a lot of or intend to, this is outstanding. It's tense, even though we know the outcome, which is no mean feat. Above all though, it brings the human dimension not just to the victims, but to the murderers and the wider 'cast.' I also think it does narrative perspective well: it bring vividly to life the way such actions upend some lives and communities, but quickly wash through others. I gather bits of it are slightly made up, but I have no quarrel with that.

Bibliography, April 2016

BOTM: R. Graves, Goodbye to all that (1929)

J.E. Chamberlin, Horse: how the horse has shaped civilizations (2008)

G.G. Marquez, Memories of my melancholy whores (2004)

I'm really struggled last month, and not just because of my long standing concern that I can't decide whether Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes under G or M when cataloguing. Regardless, it was mediocre. I'm also really struggling with volumes. I haven't got the hang of my commute and I got stuck on both the BOTM and on an as yet unfinished Bainbridge. I'm unconvinced of the merits of the latter, but Graves is excellent. It's been lauded from the start and I won't add to them. The only wonder is that I've not read it before. 

Bibliography, March 2016

BOTM: R. George, The big necessity (2008)

A.C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama (1973)*
J.M. Le Clezio, Fever (1965)
R.K. Narayan, The painter of signs (1976)
W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants (1992)
P.G. Wodehouse, The small bachelor (1927)

I'm not sure about this. Rama is really good, even twenty years (at least) since I last read it. And it was a lot more uplifting then a book about excrement. However, although this is partly the new job talking, Rose George's book is important and highlights things I had never even thought of. With hindsight they seem obvious and terrifying. In fact, it's a tribute to the skill of the writing that the fairly depressing survey of what happens to the world's faeces does not drags. I wish I'd read it years ago. Someone at work recommended to me on my first week. I'm very glad they did.

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.