More real motives behind ‘moral’ interventions

What taboos shall we break, or toy with breaking, this time? Mediocratic ideology has so many buttons to press. As is often the case, the official party line contains an inversion of this. In theory, it is awfully easy (and rewarding) to shock ‘conservatives’. The popular image is of a Colonel Gusset-Smythe type, spluttering into his gin and tonic. In reality such types, if they ever existed, have died out. Nowadays everyone falls over themselves to prove how ‘relaxed’ they are about, say, discussing the intricacies of their sex lives. (Ageing BBC presenters confessing they left it terribly late to lose their virginity, at age 11 or whatever.) In practice, the person spluttering into their G&T, or fainting in the aisles, is now much more likely to be a Guardian than a Telegraph reader.

* * * * *

Why have we tolerated so much intervention in our lives over the past twenty years? To the point where civil liberties are arguably the lowest of any peacetime period for at least a century? Because the changes forced on us have supposedly been driven by ‘good intentions’. Double jeopardy is abolished, phone calls and emails can be tapped by local government staff, babies are removed from mothers by social workers within hours of delivery – but it is all done “for the good of others”. The sum of human misery produced by all this poking, prying and bulldozering must be frightful.

Good intentions has been the excuse that has fuelled the inexorable rise in statism. Even under Thatcher, the rise was merely slowed not reversed.

Libertarians seem to be no different in being taken in by this rationalisation. Recently a columnist on the Sunday Times bemoaned the degradation of the British university system, but then echoed the usual mantra, “no doubt all this was done with high-minded intentions”. Is it automatically “high-minded” to aim for an outcome in which more of us receive a shoddy product, compared to fewer of us receiving a decent one? Plenty of people behave as if it is, so perhaps the columnist in question thinks so too. [1]

That is why the revelation, publicised earlier this year, that the Labour government’s drive to have mass immigration was motivated at least in part by the desire to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date” was so interesting. (For “Right”, it is probably necessary to read “bourgeoisie”.) It is the first time that I can recall seeing an admission that the real agenda behind a do-gooding cover story was about doing down the wrong kind of people. Unless you count former BBC head Greg Dyke’s “hideously white” slogan.

A certain right-wing magazine downplayed the radical implications of this newly emerging anecdotal data, but to my mind this merely illustrates how collaboratist [2] with left-wing ideology the Right has become.

One of the ways in which Celia Green’s writings are unique is that she has dared to suggest that the motives behind intervention are typically destructive rather than benevolent. This idea seems to shock most people, libertarians included. Perhaps now there may be a bit more willingness to take it seriously.

I have compiled a table of other possible hidden motives. There are many other areas of intervention which could be added; I am sure you can think of some for yourselves.

Libertarians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your belief in good intentions.

• The coalition's proposals to roll back some of the worst of Labour's anti-libertarian legislation are in the right direction (I suppose one should acknowledge that this is one area in which the Lib Dem influence is positive) but they do not go far enough.
Incidentally, I am not reassured by Mr Cameron trying to influence what appears on Facebook. Perhaps he has been reading the Daily Mail too much. There may be some poisonous stuff on the internet — hero-worship of a criminal seems relatively tame — but that is the price one pays for a new communication technology. As soon as you get into the game of trying to keep out offensive content, we shall have the dead hand of the state involved, and are likely to end up with something like this, according to which you can be imprisoned for writing 'terrorist poetry'.

• Have you ever met an interventionist? You know, a person who wants people’s behaviour restricted, allegedly for the benefit of some needy social group. I hesitate to call such persons socialists, since it is now the fashion among ‘conservative’ politicos to adopt a similar position. In my experience, such people would not necessarily cross the street to help someone who was bleeding to death. Yet we are expected to believe they care deeply about (e.g.) the possible educational under-attainment of someone living in a different part of the country, and coming from a class they would not dream of mixing with socially. I reserve the right to remain sceptical.

• Predictable hand-wringing from the ‘socially concerned’ about the proposed cutbacks. “Think of the children! Many more will die because of too few social workers! There will be differences in educational opportunity!” No wonder the country is in a mess. These people seem not to be able to grasp that (a) we cannot afford it, and never could, that is why there is a black hole in the public finances, (b) the policies did not, and could not, work – state intervention to correct social ills is inherently doomed, and inevitably authoritarian.
On the other hand, the relative mutedness of the moaning causes me to suspect that the proposals are not nearly swingeing enough to properly tackle the problem.

• According to the Financial Times, our universities minister has written a book "emphasising the unfairness of the distribution of wealth across generations". If I had the time, or someone was willing to pay me, I would wish to read this book and draw attention to the many absurdities and dodgy arguments which I would expect to find in it. Unfortunately, we have a state-sponsored cultural system which carefully selects against people who might criticise too damningly products that endorse what is now the dominant ideology.
The idea itself of sounding as if you care, or writing as if you think your readers will, about "intergenerational equity" is absurd. Does anyone care that it might be unfair that my colleagues and I are excluded, on ideological grounds, from a system that is supposed to allow people like us to have intellectual careers, and that we are left struggling in poverty [3] as a result? Not that I have noticed. Yet one is supposed to believe that people give a hoot about the possible unfairness of divvying up the cake between two major subgroups of the population.
Few enough people 'care' about intergenerational (or any other sort of) efficiency, but at least that concept has some intellectual basis. The notion of 'equity' is completely subjective and observer-dependent, notwithstanding that entire 'economics' books (and indeed entire careers) have been built on this pseudo-concept.
Re caring, the basic position has always been that everyone is out for what they can get, although you may get occasional exceptions if you are lucky. This is still very much the case, except that — as the lucrative careers of people like Tony Blair demonstrate — money and power can now be acquired by pretending that you, and others, care about unfairness.
If Mr Willetts really cared even a little about inequities, he would contact us to enquire about our position and our views; directly, rather than taking advice from those who, unfortunately, have to be regarded as our rivals and enemies. As universities minister, this would seem an obvious and natural thing for him to do.
If he cared a lot about inequity, which I realise may be rather far-fetched, he would donate a percentage of his annual income to our organisation.

* * * * *

• “Why oh why are the English so bad at sports these days?” Thousands of column inches are devoted to this question every time our latest tennis star drops out of Wimbledon, or the European/World Cup is lost. My colleagues and I think the answer is simple: Britain, and England in particular, has a hang-up about winning at anything, because it has given itself a guilt complex about the past. It was too wickedly dominant in a previous era (c. 1850-1950), so now it has to prostrate itself. Subgroups less frowned upon by the ideology – e.g. Scots, women, ethnic minorities – tend to suffer less from the problem and its symptoms.
Perhaps by 2050, enough penance will have been done, and Britain can start again with a clean slate. By then, we may well have turned into the underdog of Europe, which will also help to motivate our sportsmen.

• An ideology which hints that intense ambition is pathological probably does not help either, if we embrace it more enthusiastically than other countries. I have noticed, for example, that it seems to have become obligatory for male tennis stars to have a g/f on show. The tabloids expect one, whom they can photograph looking supportive and reasonably gorgeous. A sporting prodigy who failed to demonstrate the ability to fit some regular good old-fashioned sex into his busy schedule, or at least some kind of relationship, would I suspect be regarded as exhibiting lack of balance, and as potentially iffy.

* * * * *

• Sad to hear about Beryl Bainbridge. She had charisma, if of a somewhat brittle kind. I met her once at a book party, wearing her regulation black and nicotine. The impression I got was of a cross between a cynical senior female executive and Lewis Carroll's Alice. She was probably one of those people who require an individualistic publisher willing and able to support mavericks — like Colin Haycraft, the former powerhouse behind Duckworths, though he was a bit of a bully. It was Haycraft who took a chance on The Power of Life or Death when every other publisher had turned it down (“too radical”). Unfortunately, he died suddenly of a heart attack not long after I met him. Without him, dealings with the old-school publisher, now increasingly marginalised in a world of mass markets and mega houses, have been far less rewarding.

• On the subject of hatch & despatch, can I be the first to wish Jimmy Wales happy birthday. I am not sure of the date (some time in August) so I am getting in early.
I predict that in a few years' time, Wikipedia will generally be agreed to be the best thing to have come out of the internet [4]. It has certainly improved my own quality of life — I seem to consult it on average five or six times a day. It may occasionally be unreliable but, in my opinion, no more than the average book.
Kudos to you, Mr Wales, though I am puzzled as to why Wiki should be uncertain about the precise date of birth of its founder.

• All my favourite actresses seem to keep coming out of the woodwork to give us their views on society, the universe and everything. First Joanna Lumley states that she strongly disapproves of moaning, especially about being bored, when there are so many things to keep one occupied — like darning socks. Then Kristin Scott Thomas, who (I once patiently explained to a female academic) was definitely the sexier one in The English Patient, even if Miss Binoche was on some measures more beautiful (she — the academic — didn't get it), told us about the importance of a stiff upper lip. Now The Thorn Birds' Rachel Ward, niece of the Earl of Dudley, informs us that upper-class men are particularly horrible.
Where would we be without our dear thesps? What they say is mostly nonsense, but they say it so charmingly! Next, I should like please to read about Natascha McElhone extolling the virtues of home and hearth. Thank you.

Oxford Forum is a research organisation which was set up to oppose declining standards and increasing ideological bias in mainstream academia. Its aim is to expand into an independent college cum university which would generate and publish research in several areas including philosophy, the psychology and physiology of perception, and theoretical physics. We are actively seeking potential patrons to provide funding for its activities.

1. It should be noted that ‘good intentions’ is not top of the list for silly justifications. There are worse ones. The Telegraph’s Jenny McCartney, for instance, argues in favour of compulsory breath testing for pregnant women on the basis that having children has already become an extraordinarily intrusive business, thanks to the rise of the interventionist state. “If you’re looking for a life free from intrusion, it might be wise to sidestep the baby notion altogether” she primly admonishes, adding that “there are times when a pregnant mother must be made to feel uncomfortable”. Meekly agreeing to new rebarbative interventions, because one has already got used to so many others? An awful-awful-person prize looms.
2. I reserve the right to make up new words when existing ones fail to do the job. Both 'collaborative' and 'collaborationist' have senses which are inappropriate in this context.
3. I am allowing myself the use of a relative definition of poverty.
4. Did I hear someone say Twitter? Please.

Any colour you want, so long as it’s left

The theory of democracy is that everyone’s view is given equal weight. In practice, if no genuine alternatives are offered, the weight of each voter’s view is zero. In a mediocracy, the political elite proceeds largely as it wishes, with the electorate’s contribution limited to derision. (Mediocracy, p.66)

What do you do if an ideology, to which you do not subscribe, has become so dominant that your own viewpoint ceases to receive significant representation? You could either (a) buckle under, and change allegiance; or (b) accept you have become a minority which will be increasingly marginalised.

Or you could try pretending you've changed position, get into a position of power, then fight against the mainstream from the inside. More on this strategy in a moment.

* * * * *

I think I am beginning to understand why certain people claim the British press is “right-wing”. What they mean, perhaps, is that much of the press has a long-standing preference for the Conservatives rather than Labour. However, if you think about the current state of the Conservative Party, does that reference make sense?

I am not convinced even that much is true. In the halcyon days of New Labour, only the Telegraph and the Mail (possibly the Express) remained sceptical of the Left, and even they were slightly breathless with admiration for Mr Blair. But ‘right-wing’ bias in Fleet Street? According to Wikipedia's definition, “the Right”

generally regards most social inequality as the result of ineradicable natural inequalities, and sees attempts to enforce social equality as utopian or authoritarian. Right-wing economics leans to decentralized free market economy and civil liberties, whereas left-wing leans to centralized control.

If we take The Times as the paper which represents the ‘centre’ of the British broadsheet spectrum, I cannot recall seeing more than perhaps one or two articles in it over the past few years which have argued that we should move in any of the directions indicated by the above definition, i.e. that we should
• worry less about social inequality on the grounds that it is “ineradicable” and “natural”; or
• see interventions to reduce inequality as authoritarian; or
• have more free market; or
• increase civil liberties (as opposed to allowing them to be dismantled).

Nor can I recall a member of the current Shadow Cabinet making any of these arguments. On the contrary, they have more often been making the opposite case.

* * * * *

The list of statements made by contemporary Tories which sound like coming from the mouths of New Labour is by now very long indeed, and it can no longer be doubted that the Conservatives have carried rebranding to the point of ideological inversion. The only question which remains is whether this is genuine, or simply a way of gaining power in the face of a 'liberal' hegemony under which it has become impossible to advance the traditional Conservative arguments.

Andrew Lansley:*
“It will become normal to be obese if we do not act now ... what we really need is action — not gimmicks or one-off initiatives, but a sustained plan ... The plan must start with nutrition in pregnancy and early years ... My colleague in the European Parliament, John Bowis, earlier this year led a parliamentary initiative to ban synthetic trans fats in Europe.”

Michael Gove:
[will say today that] the Tories would invest in an enhanced universal health visitor service to offer advice on childcare and provide other services during the first months of a child's life. “It's because we want to nudge those who would benefit towards the services that Surestart provides that we're prepared to invest in an enhanced universal health visitor service ... the government has an active role to play in delivering social objectives.”

Oliver Letwin:
“Conservatives are leading the way on low pay ... Conservatives have adopted the aspiration to end child poverty ... A green paper on schools proposes policies to deliver root-and-branch improvement in education for the most disadvantaged ... change is essential if we are to bring the least advantaged into line with the rest of us ... It is one of the ironies of the political scene that the leading advocates of radical change to achieve progressive goals are now to be found in the Conservative Party.”

David Willetts:
“Government can help society to pick between the many competing [social] equilibria which may be available ... If it wishes to shift on to new equilibria, it has some tools for creating new equilibria.
[Some argue] that you cannot legislate to change morality. But who can deny that precisely such a transformation has taken place?
The Government ... must break down co-operation which it does not think is good.”

George Osborne:
“Well look, no one takes pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others, but that is a function of capitalist markets.”

* * * * *

The quote from the Shadow Chancellor is particularly worrying. While there are typically losers as well as winners in most financial speculation, there are very few areas where the phrase "out of the misery of others" is apposite. Possibly the acquisition of assets in a fire sale. The use of this phrase suggests someone who either (a) does not understand financial markets; or (b) is so desperate to appear on the side of popular opinion that he will concede criticisms of his (supposed) ideological territory when he shouldn't. Either possibility does not augur well.

Earlier this year the Financial Times carried an analysis of the post-Blair ideological landscape, in which it got close to some of the key issues. Its argument that both main parties are trying to grab "the centre" is revealing. For "the centre" is now apparently the area where one is irrevocably committed to very high levels of intervention, above and beyond minimum welfare, education and medicine. "The centre" seems to mean such things as monitoring of families, compulsory parental training, extension of compulsory education, progressive reduction of civil liberties, and various interventions to bring about greater equality of outcome.

Some dubious analysis from Anthony Browne of Policy Exchange is quoted in the article.

Anthony Browne ... agrees that Mr Blair's decade in power convinced many in British politics — including an initially sceptical Mr Brown — that the state was not always the best answer. "It was as if the Labour party needed to go through this massive expansion of public spending to educate the Labour party it wasn't just about spending."

If this means what it seems to mean — i.e. that key people in Westminster think that Blairism taught us that we now need to reduce the state — it is surely poppycock, and chimes with nothing else I have read. On the contrary, key players in the two main parties now seem agreed that the problems generated over the past ten years need to be addressed with more state, or possibly the same size of state but differently deployed.

[Anthony Browne] says that while voters may be confused — or bored — by the similar rhetoric on choice and reform, Britain could benefit enormously from a period when politicians seem to agree. "When you have that consensus, you know there will be reforms of public services. In that respect, this could turn out to be one of the most exciting elections. When we look back in history, I think we will see this as an extraordinary time of reform."

A Panglossian and uncynical take on the current mind-numbingly monotonous political scene, as is the FT writers' own explanation for the narrowing of debate: they attribute it to "globalisation [which] has limited politicians' room for manoeuvre on economic policy: footloose capital can pick and choose between the most favourable tax and business environments." The theory that competitive pressure results in less diversity is original, but hardly fits well with empirical data.

The FT writers get closer to what is likely to be the more pertinent factor when they point out that

British politics has become more personal ... It has also become nastier.

Politics and political debate have become mediocratised. There is little room for genuine analysis, because most issues must have a single, instant, obvious answer that needs to be compatible with a dumbed-down electorate and a monolithic ideological consensus.

* * * * *

The puppetmaster pulling the strings behind the Tories' bizarre ideological signalling is presumably that PR wizard Mr David Cameron. To give him credit, Cameron himself has never (to my knowledge) made any noises quite as blatantly leftist as those quoted above. He sometimes seems on the verge of making statements that would traditionally be associated with the Mail-reading constituency, but never gets as close as you might expect, and certainly not as close as his critics on the left like to project.

According to the Guardian, for example, Cameron recently claimed that “the poor, obese and lazy spent too much time blaming social problems for their own shortcomings.” However, that looks like a bit of tendentious rewriting on the part of the Guardian since, as far as I can make out from other media coverage, what Cameron actually said during his tour of Glasgow in July is that “social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.” The distinction between the quote and its misrepresentation is illuminating, since the people who blame ‘society’ for poverty, disease and so forth are not typically the poor themselves, but the il-liberal elite (e.g. Guardian writers).

Cameron, like some other right-wing commentators, speaks about a "broken society" but I am not sure he has grasped the core of the problem. He talks of Britain becoming a "de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries ...". But the problem is not that Western society now has no morals, but that its current moral ethos — while superficially based on fairness and rights — expresses a selectively reductionist agenda according to which collectives, the state, and agents of the state are respected, while it is correct to sneer at individuals, particularly individuals taken to embody capitalism, and regard them as contemptible and degraded. (Big Brother is not an expression of individualism, as many of its critics claim, but of anti-individualism.) The new ethos is often referred to as 'egalitarianism'; however, it is not really about equal opportunities but about equalisation. It isn't even about political equality, since we end up with more entrenched and exclusive elites than before.

* * * * *

So much for the theory that the British media is biased towards rightism. The same must go for the supposed empirical finding that most of the industrialised world is currently ruled by "centre-right" governments. This is only true if by "centre-right" you mean something like Germany's SPD in the seventies. The fact that a party is labelled as right-wing, or once was right-wing, or is notionally to the right of another party which is left-wing, is not sufficient to make it actually right-wing. The definitions have changed, the ground has shifted, and terms such as "centrist" and "moderate" now apply to policies which would have horrified many Tories of the Heath era.

Of course, you can say, it is not the job of a political party to defend an ideology; its job is to try to win an election. Or is it? Let's assume for the sake of argument that it is certain the Conservative Party could not win an election without converting to soft leftism. Nevertheless, should it do so? Is it really possible to switch back to the right after election victory, provided you have defined your policies vaguely enough? And if you don't switch back, what was the point? The arguments against it are that (a) it is too short-termist since it permanently undermines the Conservative brand; (b) it contributes to the deterioration of genuine political balance and debate; (c) it reinforces the leftist cultural bias, because it signals to the nation (and outside observers) that conservatism has now become so ideologically unacceptable that even its own party disowns it. As one senior member of Mr Cameron's team has said, "We may win power, but for what purpose?" Quite. What is the point of replacing one leftist party with another, apart from the fact that it briefly puts the government under a bit more scrutiny than would otherwise be the case?

* via ConservativeHome

Sport shall be political

Mediocracy combines the demand that everyone should be regarded as identical — thus weight of numbers is the principal criterion — with a certain anti-intellectualism. (As an adjunct there is an official high culture, but it may only be performed by accredited operatives, and is not really intended for consumption outside its official spheres.)

Sport satisfies the requirement that culture provide pleasure for the masses but in a way that is relatively uncerebral and unthreatening. Like cookery, therefore, it has begun to take on the status of trivia-elevated-to-high-culture.

One might think that sport, which seems to dominate the public arena as never before, is already sufficiently mediocratic. The willingness of New Labour to pronounce on issues of sport, even when clearly outside its jurisdiction, provides a clue as to how the activity is now viewed. "We" (the mass, represented by our leaders) are encouraged to believe "we" own sport and have a right to determine what happens in it. I am thinking, for example, of Tony Blair and the Glenn Hoddle case.

It appears, however, that sport in some ways still falls foul of mediocratic standards. As I wrote here,

mediocracy is not about empowering the mass but about disempowering the individual. Mass taste is to be exploited in so far as it contributes to the agenda of degradation: encouraged where it does so, discouraged where it does not. ... The mass is not entirely to be trusted since its instincts are not always mediocratic. ... The mass is liable to be sceptical about the intellectual pretensions on which mediocratic ideology depends.

From a different angle, then, big sports presents a serious problem for mediocracy, because it represents power of a kind that is still relatively uncontrolled by the state or the mediocratic elite. Although there seems little likelihood that a stadium full of football spectators might rise up against the phoney ideology of its masters, you can never be entirely sure.

This may explain an article in December's Prospect, by David Goldblatt, demanding that sport become more politicised.

sport should be ... judged by the same standards of transparency, sustainability and democracy that we expect elsewhere in public life ... How are we to police the line between the realms of power and play, economic space and social space?

Specifically, we are given a number of recommendations for policing:

Michel Platini's UEFA and the EU have [made] proposals for salary restrictions, limits on foreign players, spreading Champions League money more evenly and enshrining sport's distinct status in EU legalisation. But we also need to re-examine the whole question of ownership in sport. We should consider placing stricter limits on private investment in clubs (as in France and Germany) or making it easier to experiment with other forms of ownership, such as the fan-owned model in Spain, where senior club officials are elected.

... at a time when no aspect of social or political life can absent itself from the debate on climate change, sport needs to take a lead. The prevalence and low cost of air transport has been a key factor in the geographical expansion of sporting competition. ... Governments generally should be making more effort to hold the aviation industry to account, but surely a slice of the €500m income that the Champions League generates, or the billions that flow to FIFA, should be spent on some kind of offset.

Given the article is written by a former Labour adviser, we should perhaps not be surprised that it is a classic example of Marxist/mediocratic cultural analysis, which typically works as follows. (1) Private human activity is reinterpreted from a collective social perspective. This is not exactly uninteresting in itself, though you can take it or leave it. (2) It soon becomes obvious that the theoretical perspective has a practical political purpose, i.e. to justify collective interference.

Sport's ... apparatus of challenges, contests, competitions, unknown outcomes and final results is like a vast polymorphous machine for generating improvised and compressed stories.

the crowd is unquestionably the chorus, not only supplying ambience, commentary and income, but actively shaping the tone and the course of the game. The opportunity that this provides for the collective dramatisation of identities and social relationships, both spontaneous and organised, is without parallel ...

organised sport illustrates one of the central insights of classical social theory, from Tönnie's distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gescellschaft* to Weber's theory of rationalisation: that the modern world is founded on an institutional separation of the realms of instrumental reason and value-driven action. The separation of state and civil society [... continues in this vein]

'Stories', 'identities', 'relationships', 'instrumental reason' — the vocabulary of the left wing sociologist: strong on resonance and ideological implication, not so strong on testable hypotheses.

Whose fault is it that we have so far failed to treat sport with sufficient socio-political respect? Goldblatt manages, by various sleights-of-hand, to point the finger at the usual suspects: Victorians, the upper class, men, Britain.

This absence of politics has apparently affected histories of sport, with undesirable consequences.

All modern sports revel in their own histories and use them to manufacture contemporary meanings and pleasures ... Narratives of clubs, tournaments and traditions of styles of play provide a rich seam of interest in sporting competition. However, in both official and popular idioms, it has been mainly ersatz history that we have been offered: deracinated, concocted myth, hermetically sealed from the wider economic social and political context in which it has occurred.

What gives Arsenal continuity is the accumulated social capital amassed by generations who have attached significance to the narratives generated by the team's performances. This network of memories, meanings, identities and rituals constitute a precious form of value which cannot be owned by anyone and should not have its fortunes exclusively linked to the vagaries of private capital ...

Fortunately (Goldblatt writes) "a few rare sportswriters, such as Simon Barnes at the Times, have broadened their horizons, geographically and contextually, and looked for something more than the same old narratives and vocabulary." Is this the same Simon Barnes who appears regularly in Private Eye's 'Pseuds Corner'?

At the end of the article, Goldblatt makes a number of interesting counterpoints, but seems unwilling to let them affect his thesis.

I recently heard David James, Portsmouth's politically aware goalkeeper, ask a football punter whether he thought environmental issues should be a priority for his club. In reply, he received a groan of irritation.

(Despite the majority always being right in theory, the mass's scepticism about ideology arises from having insufficiently tutored minds, and must therefore be rejected.)

one of the strongest arguments against taking sport seriously is the dismal record of those ideologies that have sought to do so in the past: muscular Christianity in the service of imperialism; varieties of social Darwinism and ultra-nationalism bent on hardening the nation for war; the ludicrous bread and circuses of fascism, Latin American populist authoritarianism and European communism ... But abandoning politics or pretending it doesn't matter is not an effective response.

(Mediocracy has the right to ignore the lessons of history.)

The world of sport is ... a social space that is dependent on the state and the market but knows how to hold them both at arm's length.

Clearly, for Mr Goldblatt, the world of sport needs to start being a little less effective at keeping the state at a distance.

* sic; correct spelling is "Gesellschaft".

(Absurd but) please tell me who I am

Quoting myself (as one does) from my comments on the Commission for Integration and Cohesion: "The government will, it seems, give us back our sense of identity, suitably remodelled."

Recently, we got more of the same, this time directly from the Ministry of Justice, and Mr Notblair*:

... there is common ground between British citizens, and many cultural traits and traditions that we can all recognise as distinctively British. The Government believes that a clearer definition of citizenship would give people a better sense of their British identity in a globalised world. British citizenship — and the rights and responsibilities that accompany it — needs to be valued and meaningful ...

(My emphasis throughout.) Yes, we need to be told what British values are before we can have them. And, naturally, we shall need a national motto. This is because identity is really only possible within a strong communitarian context. Indeed, many sociologists tell us that identity simply is position in social space.

Identity is important because it shapes people’s sense of self. Some components of our identity are given to us and are matters of fact. But others are the subject of at least a degree of choice: faith, political affiliations, occupation, for some, nationality. Yet even those elements that are ‘chosen’ are not the result of a completely free choice. The influence on identity of family, geography, education, ethnic background and origin, and how we are perceived by others, is huge.

Huge, I tell you. And, of course, young people must receive appropriate indoctrination instruction in what it means to be a British citizen.

The Government will now launch a Youth Citizenship Commission which will examine ways to invigorate young people’s understanding of the historical narrative of our country and of what it means to be a British citizen ... The Commission will examine what support schools in England need to improve the ways that they prepare young people for their life as an adult citizen. It will look at how citizenship education can be connected to both a possible citizenship ceremony when young people reach adulthood ...

So young people will have a citizenship ceremony to look forward to. They will, however, need to be more adequately prepared for this than they are at present.

Ministers have agreed to recommendations made by Sir Keith Ajegbo, a former head teacher and government adviser, who argued that children had to be taught Britishness alongside cultural diversity. Lord Adonis, the schools minister, said: 'Learning about the make-up of British society and British values will help promote greater understanding and tolerance.' (Guardian)

What is this so-called "fourth strand" of citizenship lessons — adding British Values to the existing three strands of Responsibility, Community and Politics — going to be like? Here we have to descend into the obfuscating jargon of education/history academese. (The purpose of which is to emphasise that we shall continue to be restricted to ideologically correct versions of Britishness, without however making this too explicit.)

[from Sir Keith's report] We believe that if children and young people are to develop a notion of citizenship as inclusive, it is crucial that issues of identity and diversity are addressed explicitly. Inherent in the relationship between the citizen and society is the role that identity, or a sense of belonging plays within this relationship. This is because the motivation for citizens to participate in society is logically predicated on a sense of belonging, or ‘identification’ with, the context where they are participating.

We advocate that an understanding of issues of identity and diversity in the context of citizenship is best approached through a political and historical lens.

It is important to recognise that whilst learning about history clearly has a place in Citizenship, getting the pedagogical approach right will be critical. There were also concerns expressed through our consultations that it would mean a return to the old curriculum of British constitutional history and civics, undoing the work of the last four years.

Such concerns are probably unnecessary, as Chris Waller, professional officer of the Association of Citizenship Teaching, explains:

‘It is about empowering young people with the knowledge and understanding and aspirations to want to participate, to want to know, to want to engage with their community at school, at home and so on. The character of Citizenship must retain its critical and practical focus. Citizenship is about grey areas. It’s not about whether I’m right or wrong, it’s about me trying to understand my own explanations and explain those to others.’

The overarching aim is to develop ‘active citizenship’ that is informed by relevant evidence, drawing on contemporary history to examine issues of contemporary importance around the themes of identity and diversity in a political context in the UK.

No worries there, then — the fourth strand will simply be more of the same, i.e. the usual multiculturalist ideology ('change is good', 'diversity is good', etc).

Next year, apparently, pupils will be treated to a ‘Who do we think we are?’ week "involving all schools in an exploration of identities, diversity and citizenship. This will give all young people the chance to foster a stronger sense of their own identity and what it means to be a British citizen." Lucky them.

All the talk of a "national debate about British values", and encouraging open and frank discussion of the issues, is of course just phoney pseudo-democratisation. It's as dishonest and misleading as citizens' juries and Blue Peter pet naming. Only answers which conform to the elite's preferences will be considered.

The real purpose of boggling over 'British values' is to block genuine analysis and debate. Boggling signals that an issue has become taboo — in a more potent way than if it was simply not discussed at all. There is no intention of considering, say, that what makes Britain unique might be world leadership in the original bourgeois virtues. That particular response, like others which deviate too far from the ideal answer determined in advance by those in power, is not admissable.

Boggling helps to confuse potential critics of mediocracy, if they are naive enough to be taken in by it.

* Dr Brown

Opportunities for equalisation

Peter Wilby on educational opportunities:

... more than ten million Britons still work in manual jobs. And as a report published this month reminds us ('Reducing Inequalities' by Leon Feinstein et al, from the National Children's Bureau), many of their children still suffer inferior opportunities compared to their peers from professional families. ...

Wilby does not define 'equal opportunities'. Does he mean 'the same likelihood of socioeconomic success given the same level of innate ability'? But it's not clear whether Wilby (or Feinstein et al) believe in innate ability at all. If they did, they would have to consider heritability, which would mean a correlation between success and parental status, even with perfectly equal opportunities.

The government has two big answers: school improvement and early intervention.

Early intervention? To prevent — what? The correlation from working?

Both have a role, but perhaps not as big as the priority given to them suggests. As another report published this month points out ('Experiences of Poverty and Educational Disadvantage' by Donald Hirsch for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation), only 14 per cent of the variation in children's performance can be accounted for by school quality.

"Only 14 per cent". Does this mean children are only 14 per cent blank slates, only 14 per cent mouldable by the educational process?

As Feinstein shows, the rest is not necessarily set in stone by early home environment.

So the rest must be home environment, except interventionists needn't worry that it is all early home environment?

Politicians now frequently quote research showing that, by 22 months, it is too late for many children because their development has already fallen far behind that of their peers in middle-class homes. This finding, shocking as it is ...

How terrible and shocking: the possibility that by 22 months, it is already too late for interventionists to achieve equalisation of individuals.

This finding, shocking as it is, misses the bigger picture. As Feinstein reports, even those children from the lowest socio-economic groups who are doing well at 22 months then tend to fall back relative to other children. The process continues throughout childhood, and it operates both ways: the initially low-achieving middle-class children improve their position, while the position of the high-achieving working-class children declines. ...

Could this have something to do with the fact that schools spend more and more of their time imparting ideology and propaganda, and less and less of it actually teaching? So that only children whose parents are prepared to compensate for the lack of teaching at school are actually able to learn anything? In any case, the opposite effect could equally well be spun to the same propaganda purpose. Say there was more stability in the performance of working class children, while the position of middle class children was relatively mobile. Then you could argue that schools unfairly benefited the middle class children, allowing them to realign by reference to ability, while the working class children failed to benefit at all, leaving them in the same position as when they started (whether high or low).

In other words, during their school years, children's performance, far from being equalised, is aligned more closely with their social origins.

(My emphasis.) So clearly equalisation is what Mr Wilby thinks schools should be aiming at.

This might seem a depressing conclusion, but Feinstein argues it needn't be. As he puts it, children's educational development is "malleable", and if everyone were more aware of that, we might make more progress in equalising opportunities.

Children are malleable. Let's make educators and psychologists even more aware of this tenet.

But the answers, Hirsch suggests, probably don't lie entirely, or even mainly, in educational quality as conventionally measured. The nub of the problem for the disadvantaged, he argues, lies not only within classrooms but "in what happens across children's lives". Drawing on a large body of Rowntree research, he suggests that many deprived children "feel powerless as learners" and experience school as a coercive and controlling institution. ...

Extending compulsion, as now seems to be on the agenda, is unlikely to help with that particular problem.

If we are to give less advantaged children a chance, Hirsch argues, we need to rethink educational relationships. He favours, for example, extended school days

I thought it was just implied schools should be less 'coercive'?

but says these shouldn't be more of the same classroom-based, compulsory learning.

Presumably it will be compulsory to attend, just not compulsory to learn anything particular. So we are back to the problem of not learning anything while at school, which is unlikely to help those children from working class backgrounds who do actually want to learn and who would rise socially if they were actually taught anything useful.

Working-class children fall behind because their homes ... don't and often can't provide the same support for formal learning as more affluent homes. Given there's a limit to how much we can change the homes, we may have to consider changing schools, and the way they treat children and parents, more radically than we have done so far.

We can't change homes enough to achieve equality of outcome, so we will have to change the schools. Perhaps by making state schools even worse for middle class children?

Rhys died "because of capitalism"

Jeremy Seabrook in the Guardian on why inequality is to blame for the shooting of Rhys Jones:

Most people agree that the growing gulf between rich and poor is dangerous for society. ... Government has tried vainly to address the wealth gap, but its efforts are pitiful, compared with the extravagant rewards distributed upon its favourites by the free market.

The metaphors used by official Britain — the rising tide that lift all boats, the level playing field — are euphemistic evasions of the deeper ideology. This determines that poverty can be healed only by the creation of much more wealth; that is, economic growth in perpetuity. But this model actually makes poverty incurable: when being poor is defined as having less than 60% of average income, it will robustly survive any amount of wealth-creation.

This is technically correct. With poverty now defined in relative terms, no amount of increase in wealth, however equally spread, can eliminate it.

Concern has focused on the excluded, people taunted and tantalised constantly by goods, services and experiences available to those with money. ... under the influence of a permanently growing economy [and the influence of a relentlessly promoted egalitarian morality?] no one ever feels quite rich enough. This feeds a "need" for yet more economic expansion. But this is the very mechanism that leaves millions of people stranded on the desolate margins. And these also threaten the wellbeing of the mainstream: although the rich may live in separate areas and live in the enclosures of home, car, work and places of leisure, there are still intersections where the lives of the privileged are crossed by those they fear ... Fear of violence, mugging or personal attack is the other side of guilt ... [The 'privileged' are guilty, and have only themselves to blame?]

We are all products of the same culture of a savage individualism [the i-word, again]. Those who successfully gain the prizes congratulate themselves on their merit; the unmeritorious — the "losers" in the elegant argot of the age — are supposed to contemplate their absence of merit and to acquiesce in it fatalistically. But human beings invited constantly to consider their own expendability and lack of a function cannot be expected to yield without a struggle ['struggle' = expression of murderous impulses?] to this bleak evaluation by others of their lives.

The cult of violence is an aspect of a cult of inequality; the uneasy coexistence of people in a world over which people feel they have forfeited all control.

Governments that for the past generation have insisted upon deregulation and liberalisation have also disinterred from its shallow grave the ideology of laissez faire, in which the fate of the poor has become a kind of waste product in the universal generation of wealth.

Laissez faire? Meaning lack of government intervention with respect to medicine, nutrition, education, childcare? This seems to be a serious misreading of the data.

Asymmetric intonation

Janet Daley in the Telegraph:

I've always suspected that when the Conservatives finally got round to talking about tax cuts, Labour would begin by shrieking "lurch to the Right" and end by plagiarising the best ones.

George Osborne has put it beyond doubt that the Tories ... will take only baby steps on to this territory, thereby allowing Labour to jam up behind them with a Brownite version of reduced death duties and fractionally higher income tax thresholds. By the time the election is called ... there will scarcely be a gnat's whisker between Gordon Brown and David Cameron on tax.

The true test of an ideology’s hegemony is the degree to which its enemies feel they can criticise it only on its terms, or oppose it only by relinquishing their original principles. In this way, mediocracy’s would-be opponents become implicit defenders of the status quo.

There are two preferred positions for the enemies of mediocracy. They can reinforce the mediocratic position by demonstrating a complete lack of self-belief. “Don’t support us”, they imply, “we are not worthy”. Alternatively, they can play by the prevailing ideological rules, and compete by offering a more aggressive brand of mediocracy, with emphasis on authoritarianism and/or military activity. Either way, the dominance of mediocracy is reinforced.

A mediocracy cannot permit genuine dissent. Apart from the fact that its ideology must not be questioned, there is the risk that its culture will be exposed as valueless. The solution is to create an ethic according to which any deviation from the consensus is treated as opposition to egalitarianism, to progress, and to fairness. The description ‘conservative’ does not necessarily mean much beyond a failure to subscribe to the prevailing shibboleths. However, to be labelled as such becomes anathema in most contexts.

To the right? Heaven forfend!

"Why do we believe so passionately in public services? Because they are what community is all about. They bind us together. ... Public services will never be just another customer service."
Tony Blair

Chris Dillow writes

Rising house prices … are no argument for scrapping IHT. And the fact that the Redwood report seems to cite this as the only reason to do so shows just how weak IHT's opponents are.

Chris seems to be implying that it shows just how weak the arguments against inheritance tax are. Well no, the fact that the Redwood report does not mention any other reasons is more likely to indicate the fact that certain arguments have become morally taboo. E.g. that people should be allowed to do what they like with what they have managed to save out of their taxed income, even if that involves permitting inequality, and the transmission of inequality to the next generation.

And media reactions to the report confirm this. Daniel Finkelstein, for example, hastens to defend the Tories from accusations of lurching to the right.

stability will always come before tax cuts … this does not mean ruling out the Redwood ideas. But it does mean being very disciplined.

Even the Adam Smith Institute seems to think that the strongest possible argument against IHT is that

most of the super-rich at whom the tax is aimed don't pay it on huge amounts of their income as they are able to make use of trust funds, foundations and clever tax breaks to ensure that wealth continues to cascade down the generations.

Cutting taxes for its own sake has, it appears, become philosophically indefensible. It requires reducing some aspect of state activity, and any such activity — being of a ‘public’ nature — is automatically presumed to be ‘a good thing’.

Chris also says

it's theoretically possible — though I know of little empirical evidence — that inheritance tax deters business formation and hard work, as providing for one's children is a major motive for both.

Well, it seems highly likely, given what we know from evolutionary biology, that this motive is indeed important. But it is difficult to imagine the ESRC funding a project to provide evidence for such an ideologically incorrect hypothesis.

There is an interesting selectivity at work here: it is generally thought (on equally little evidence) that the sexual drive provides a significant share of male motivation for work and achievement. Yet the desire to provide your children with advantages is not similarly recognised as a legitimate drive. Rather, it is seen as something that deserves to be opposed.

Bourgeois vs bourgeois

Why is the bourgeoisie so hated? And, more curiously, why is it hated particularly by people who are members of it themselves? It's one of the central riddles of capitalist societies, though not one I have seen anyone grapple with. I tried to give a very tentative answer in the Mediocracy book, but even so had to resort to fable to do it. It really is a flaming mystery.

In today's Independent, Joan Smith gives a good illustration of bourgeois anti-bourgeois ranting. She presents a model of "Middle England" which is at least as insulting and remote from reality as anything that would be labelled as racist were it talking about other races.

If anything is loathed by the property-owning middle classes, who are almost Methodist in their approach to other people's enjoyment, it is recreational drugs and gambling. Another of their pet hates is immigrants who come here and break our laws, so the news that foreign rapists are to be shown the door — the home-grown sort is, of course, a different matter, given the terrible tendency of British women to make things up — is calculated to make them tremble with pleasure. ...

Prepped by the right-wing press, Middle England is quite prepared to believe seven impossible things before breakfast about those dark forces usually referred to as "Brussels" or "Europe".

It's a bit like Ms Toynbee's claim that the press is "right-wing": define your terms perversely enough and whatever prejudice you want to believe can be supported. But the version of "Middle England" portrayed here isn't one I recognise.

Just another ideologically motivated assumption

Belabouring, for once, an earlier point.

Chris Dillow seems to think that increasing affluence is a principal cause of rising divorce rates.

... economic growth raises people's aspirations - it encourages the belief that you can have more, "because you're worth it." This in turn creates dissatisfaction, with the result that a wife with a mediocre spouse is less likely to stand by her man.

And, judging by the comments to my earlier post, James and Jeremy both seem to agree with him.

But where is the evidence, please?

1907 middle class: (a) fairly wealthy (servants, handmade furniture, private carriage), (b) attitude to divorce: conservative, (c) low divorce rate.

2007 middle class: (a) fairly wealthy (no servants, fancy holidays, two cars), (b) attitude to divorce: liberal, (c) high divorce rate.

Now this 'data' is not meant to prove anything. But to give some basis to the idea of a wealth-and-family-breakdown link you would have to show a correlation between affluence and divorce, having somehow stripped out the factor of changing social attitudes. Could I have a link to such research please? Because without it, this is just an opinion. And opinions, according to Chris, are "just worthless".

Blair's "new relationship" in action

Not Saussure has a fascinating post at Educational Conscription about 16-year-old Kayleigh Baker, whose school tried to force her to take 'extra lessons'. Because she refused, the school are penalising her in various ways, e.g. expelling her from netball team, banning her from prom.

I think this case is highly illuminating. It illustrates two key themes of mediocracy: *

1) "Education" (the compulsory institutional variety) gradually encroaches on more and more of people's time — more age groups, longer hours of the day, outside term time, etc.

2) Society is presumed to have inalienable rights over the individual (cf. absolutism).



This is perfectly exemplified by Tony Blair's new concept of the state's relationship with the individual.

Blairspeak: we should "be aiming for a more explicit statement of the contract that covers both the service offered by the public sector (what is in and what is not) and what is expected from citizens (beyond paying taxes and obeying the law)."

Translation: The responsibilities are from citizen to state, not the other way round.

Kayleigh's headmaster ("Chief Executive" in Mediocspeak): "At the school we have standards and we extend these to the children. They have rights but they also have responsibilities too."

* as well as being characteristic of certain other major political ideologies, one of which I am prevented by Godwin's Law from mentioning.

E-C update
New post up by Roger Thornhill, highlighting the absurdity of stick-and-carrot tinkering to produce the ideologically preferred end result du jour — threatening teenagers with prison one minute, and promising them fees for passing their A-levels (or mountain bikes for behaving) the next.

More praising with faint damnation

... this time from Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty. I don't want to be too critical of Ms C, since she seems to arouse hostility among a few bloggers for reasons that are opaque to me, but this — on compulsory checks for children — is not what I'd call sticking up for civil liberties.

Why is it that, everywhere I look at the moment, I seem to see people who ought to be defending the principles of liberty, sounding lukewarm?

"Now then, let's consider the idea that it's okay to torture people if we suspect them of having information about criminal activities. While this may seem attractive and reasonable at first sight, I would personally argue that ... bla bla bla." *

Don't these people realise that key political debates are not won by wishy-washy arguments which sound like you've already conceded the main point? Shifts in consensus depend largely on underlying moral assumptions, and hence happen more by feeling than by logic. And they're resisted the same way: by sounding like you mean it, not by trying to prove you have a "balanced" perspective on the matter. Sorry Chris, but I think you've oversimplified the issue.

* not an actual quote

"The Trap": fallacies #8 to #12

I have been watching Part 2 of the BBC's The Trap. (Again, a summary of the messages — I hesitate to call them arguments — is available at Blairwatch.) If I had time, I'd love to unpack (and fisk where appropriate) every statement Adam Curtis makes — many are pregnant with absurdities and/or unanalysed assumptions. As I don't have time, I have to confine myself to pointing out what strike me as being a few of the more obvious fallacies.

To those from Part 1:

• the Prisoner's Dilemma has been used primarily to reinforce a model of humans as essentially selfish (no it hasn't)

• John Nash invented the PD in response to the Cold War (no he didn't)

• the PD involves the assumption that opponents are bent on your "destruction" (no it doesn't)

• the PD had an important influence on Cold War politics (I know of no evidence for this)

• R D Laing was associated with the movement of psychiatry away from subjective self-assessment towards mechanical quantification and treating individuals like robots (no he wasn't)

• game theory has been an important factor in making us think of people as selfish individuals (extremely doubtful)

• there was a drive to free us from the control of experts (on balance, I'd say there has been, all along, a drive to bring us more under the control of experts)

we can add the following from Part 2:

• "Governments were committed to creating freedom of choice in all areas" (I can't see how that applies to the present British government, which has surely added more legal restrictions per annum than any previous peacetime administration).

• "Politicians have given away much of their power." (I wish — where's the evidence?)

• The Arrow Impossibility Theorem has been used to demonstrate that it is "logically impossible for politicians to express the will of the people" (no it hasn't).

• Curtis talks several times as if there are only two alternatives: (a) market (= selfish) and (b) big government (= public-spirited, at least formerly). Conveniently ignoring the fact that there are plenty of private transactions that happen outside the market system. The whole issue of whether "nice", unselfish actions are more or less likely with state involvement is left unanalysed.

• At one point Curtis elides two completely distinct ideas, in a way which seems ideologically motivated but is actually very revealing once you think about it. He says that free market philosophy undermined "the very ideals of democratic politics and the politicians' belief that they could change the world". Whatever you may think about the desirability of politicians wanting to change the world, I don't see what this has to do with "democratic politics". It is a completely separate and independent issue. It could be argued that the two things are incompatible: democratic politicians shouldn't want to change the world, they should simply want to do what they were voted in to do.

Interestingly, at another point Curtis skips from discussing the "application of markets to public services in the name of freedom" to implying this was expected to mean "freedom for public servants". Very telling, though probably unintentionally so.

On the plus side, there are some themes (e.g. reductionism) drawn on by The Trap which are worth thinking about, although Curtis's explanations of them seem to me seriously misplaced. I will try to comment on this in a subsequent post.

Unintentional humour
Having told us how modern psychiatry has become a bit like The Stepford Wives, i.e. obsessed with changing behavioural symptoms from 'unhappy' to 'well-adjusted', Curtis wheels on John Nash at the end of the programme, now (we are told) cured of his former paranoid schizophrenia (during which he made up all those horrid game theory models). Now, surprise surprise, the 'enlightened' Nash partially renounces his former models, saying they overemphasise self-interest. This makes me wonder: if certain other people, e.g. Richard Dawkins or Germaine Greer, were to be admitted to psychiatric care, what other interesting intellectual conversions might result?

PS
I suppose it demonstrates how starved we poor graduates are these days of programmes with a bit of intellectual meat, that a lot of people seem to be getting rather excited about The Trap. Even I, who find every minute of it grating, have to admit that it's a pretty exceptional programme (by current standards) that makes reference to people such as John Nash, James Buchanan and R D Laing, and actually manages to convey some information about them — albeit in a hopelessly biased way.

There is a more sympathetic discussion of Part 2 at Not Saussure.

Surviving in a mediocracy (part 2)

The full article can be read here.

Brave New Academia

I consider myself an academic who has been deprived of his livelihood. What do I mean by that? That doing research of significance is what I’m cut out for, but that the academic world over the last fifty years has metamorphosed into an institution in which people like me can no longer make careers.

The larger part of academia has become obsessed with jargon and formalism, at the expense of meaningful content. An academic’s principal options in fields such as economics, psychology or sociology are now (1) become a number-cruncher (do tedious empirical research with plenty of highly technical statistical analysis, much of which is likely to be questionable), or (2) generate pseudo-theory of a kind which reproduces the currently fashionable terminology. In either case, taking care to say nothing that conflicts with received wisdom. In fields such as literature or philosophy, there is only option (2). The high level of technicality and referencing typically masks the triviality — or absence — of genuine content.

The purpose of academia has changed from producing real insights to generating reinforcement for the preferred world view. Academics are encouraged to generate spurious legitimacy for anti-individualistic social trends such as the abolition of civil liberties, or the ‘rights’ of doctors and psychiatrists to make decisions about people’s lives. This started happening some time ago, but we have now reached the point where it is being espoused openly, by e.g. education ministers. According to the Chief Executive of HEFCE, "it was once the role of Governments to provide for the purposes of universities; it is now the role of universities to provide for the purposes of Governments."

An obsessive belief in the value of training and certification has helped to buttress a culture of technocracy, in which experts are seen as appropriate arbiters over people's lives, even though there is little evidence that the technicalities of academic training result in decision-making or other skills that improve on those of the average person. Academics have helped to shift the centre ground in the direction of more state intervention. This has been done partly by changing norms in areas such as moral philosophy. What was once extreme, e.g. killing handicapped babies, has become “moderate”. What was once moderate, e.g. reacting strongly to infringements of liberty, has become “extreme”. While one can't expect academics to have no ideological biases, the collectivised way the academy is nowadays run was bound to generate a monolithic consensus. Once established, we end up with a kind of ideological closed shop, with dissenters refused entry or hounded out.

To be continued.

Update: BBC dissident comes out

A former BBC journalist (Robin Aitken) seems to have had experiences similar to mine. Except he first managed to have a 25-year career. Greg Dyke, a typical member of the New Elite, emerges from Aitken's story as characteristically mediocratic: pseudo-egalitarian, intolerant, foul-mouthed, vicious. What a surprise. And demonstrating that exclusive cliques are not confined to the upper class or the right wing.

Faith in medical professionals

Zoe Williams stirred up a bit of a hornets' nest among Guardian folk last week when she suggested that

in its total lack of foundation, its passion, and its unshakeable grip on the political and moral consensus, our faith in the NHS resembles nothing so much as our one-time faith in God.

Of course, as her article appeared in the Guardian, it barely questioned the principle of having a state medical monopoly, supposedly dispensing free health care to all who need it — while in practice severely rationing it. Williams confined herself to mildly musing whether people expect too much from the NHS, and tentatively hinted in the most pussyfooting way that perhaps doctors might be a teeny bit arrogant.

The comments from readers are, however, instructive. Some of the most vociferous complaints of the type "how dare you criticise the darling NHS" came from people who don't live in the UK. Take this one, for example, from BriscoRant:

I live in Australia ... a truly free health service is one thing Britain has left to be proud of. The medical system is based not on self-assessment, but on having a trained professional assess you. And for good reason. Probably they are a little calmer than you; they are trained in medicine; they are more objective than you about the signs and symptoms of your condition.

We recently had a great example — from the US — of self-prescribing. A little old lady got a bit worried about her health, so booked herself in for a full body CT scan, just as a check-up. The scan, of course, picked up some signs of ageing, and the radiologists report detailed these, particularly some narrowing of the coronary arteries. So the old dear took the report to her GP. The GP of course, having been notified of an abnormal finding, had to investigate it — more tests for the old dear, including angiogram and cardiologists fees. This confirmed, yes, there were abnormalities, but not at the stage where anyone would bother intervening. Those, Zoe, are the risks of self-assessment, and self-prescribing.

BriscoRant doesn't seem to have heard of the risks of assessment and prescribing when initiated by NHS professionals. E.g. the phenomenon whereby healthy people are placed under pressure to be screened, but where the results may be dangerously misleading.

There are other examples of touching (disturbing?) faith in the benevolence of NHS workers, rather confirming Williams's point. E.g. from Suraci:

The NHS in the UK is held in reverence I suspect because we know that if we get ill no amount of money will be spared to help us. ... When I woke up from a three day coma to find that concerned, supremely comforting and calming professionals had spent enormous sums of money keeping me alive without any suggestion I pay it back, I felt overwhemingly grateful to the NHS. We should give it up to the meddling of the Blairs of the world with extreme caution. They may not have our best interests at heart.

Some curious attitudes here. "No amount of money will be spared"? Er, I don't think so. "Overwhelmingly grateful" to people for applying funds which were confiscated from you to begin with? Of course Blair & Co. don't have your best interests at heart, but do doctors? These days, healthcare workers are explicitly told to take account of the needs of other patients competing for scarce resources. This now forms part of their "ethical" training, so it affects private practice as well as the NHS.

Similar spluttering from people with misplaced faith, or vested interests, can be found in the comments to Carol Sarler's suggestion in the Times that the GP "gatekeeper" system (the system whereby you can't get any serious medical product without your GP first giving approval) might be a waste of time.

Shiny happy people (by decree)

Why can bigwigs not stick to their supposed area of expertise? In particular, why can't senior, highly paid economists stay out of politics and propaganda?

A whole flotilla of economists are now veering into territory that has nothing to do with economics, but without prefacing their books/articles/etc by saying "I am going to sound off on a topic which, while it may appear to be economics, really has nothing to do with the subject for which I received my Professorship/knighthood/barony".

I am talking about the new "science of happiness".

If I, or Joe Bloggs, wrote a book suggesting that the government's priorities ought to include the promotion of "happiness" as an objective measurable variable, it would be ignored. But when a highly respected economist writes it, this kind of nonsense is taken seriously.

The worst recent case is Richard Layard ("Lord Layard of Highgate") writing about Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. Well, it's not science, it's ideology. You can make the obvious point that GDP doesn't measure everything which people value, but beyond that it isn't really economics but politics. Especially if it is turned, as it is, into arguments about what the state ought to do to make things better.

One important thing GDP doesn't measure, of course, is degree of personal liberty. You can judge how ideologically slanted the work of Layard — and others of his ilk — is by the fact that they barely mention liberty, if at all.

The following extracts from Layard's book will give you a clue as to what it's really all about. I'm surprised this line hasn't yet been trotted out to attack City bonuses. I suppose it's still too cutting-edge.

A person who earns more may gain, but other people lose, because their relative income falls.

The point here is that it's supposed to be relative wealth/poverty which makes people happy. Keeping up with the Joneses and all that. (Someone recently got the Nobel Prize for working that out, don't you know.) So if Smith gets richer, Jones — whose wealth stays the same — gets less happy. This turns, hey presto, into a justification for government intervention. (Here is one plank of the the alleged academic 'proof' that envy is justified, which I mentioned in my post last week on Peter Wilby.)

The person who earns more does not care that he is polluting other people in this way, so we must provide him with an automatic incentive to do so. Taxation provides exactly this incentive.

In other words, to make everyone happier, we must increase taxes. Now isn't that just wonderful, children? (Layard's point here is that, by confiscating part of Smith's extra wealth, we increase Jones's happiness. So taxation is actually intrinsically desirable as a social instrument, even if the proceeds are frittered away on pointless state expenditure. Do keep up.)

Note the tendentious use of the word 'pollute', based on the theory that an increase in an individual's income can (given the aforementioned claim that happiness is a function of relative wealth) be regarded as an externality. That's right, those City boys are polluters — one more excuse for hating them, this time in the name of the environment.

A healthy note of scepticism about this whole new trendy "happiness-is-a-science" nonsense is injected by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (of whom I'm not usually a fan) in Monday's Independent. She notes that

we now have a heap of devoted civil servants working to increase the nation's quotient of happiness. The Whitehall Well-being Working Group (W3G) is seeking innovative ways to make citizens of these isles feel less grumpy and more cheerful.

A report written for this jovial W3G by Paul Dolan, professor of economics at Imperial College, who aims to quantify a reliable unit of joy, has come up with a list of what makes us light up. Long marriages and lots of sex, apparently; walks, gardening, and gossiping over your fence with a friendly neighbour. Oh, and divorce and grey rain make us sad.

Well, it's lucky we have highly trained and eminent economics professors to tell us these useful things. And now that these esoteric facts have been professionally ascertained, we shall no doubt soon be on the receiving end of some wonderful new legislation and/or tax-funded government initiatives, to ensure that we really do increase our happiness levels, as is good for us — whether we want to or not.



Picture of Michael Stipe (top) courtesy Warner Bros.

You awful, awful man

Sorry, I don't really mean to get personal. I'm sure Ben Rogers of the Institute for Public Policy Research (New Labour think tank) is no worse than a lot of other leftists working in the overlap between Labour politics and "research" on "social welfare" (= statism studies).

But I was mildly sickened to see two horrible articles by him in a row. First, via the current Prospect, comes his assessment of the recent advances in including social engineering in the objectives of state schools.

With studies showing that early-years experience is crucial in shaping character and capacity, nursery care and schools have become the new frontier not only of the "welfare state" but the "opportunity state"

he notes approvingly, and goes on to conclude that

by and large, the new expectations being placed on schools represent a reasonable reaction to [recent social changes].

Of course it is all nonsense, and demonstrates why you cannot have education provided by the state. A welfare state will never restrict itself to duplicating the services offered by the private sector (which roughly correspond to what people actually want). So not only is the actual real teaching provided by state schools rubbish, because it is completely immune to market forces. You don't even get decent education being aimed for, but rather some vague nebulous programme of making things fairer, improving chances, promoting inclusion. To the extent this comes out as anything other than mere chaos and anarchy, it means indoctrinating children with pro-state ideology.

Then, clicking on the next available article by the same author, I was appalled to find that it consisted of Dr Rogers promoting compulsory voting. (His paper on the issue can be found here.)

Compulsion seems to be the currently fashionable option (= "counsel of despair") favoured by lefties who realise that all their tinkering to produce justice, fairness or whatever else they spout about, doesn't actually achieve what it's supposed to and in some cases results in the opposite. This is partly because their goals are unachievable (e.g. making the working class produce the correct proportion of university graduates) and partly because their policies aren't really motivated by, say, wanting to see clever children from poor backgrounds do well. (See earlier post.)

Thus, for example, since there is still too much educational disparity between the classes, working class children are to be forced to stay on at school after 16.

In the case of voting, the ideology which has inspired New Labour - phoney democratisation, expressed as dumbing down and style over substance - has resulted in fewer and fewer people having enough confidence in the political process, or belief in the importance of principles such as civil liberties, to be bothered with voting.

Solution? Try to address voters' concerns and suspicions? Rethink the current political ideology? Perhaps consider the possibility that recent attempts at populism were unrealistic and disingenuous, and therefore bound to be phoney? No, force the buggers to vote.

Which, according to Rogers, "does not violate any important liberties". Well, they may not be important to you, Ben, but they're important to me. And I don't care one iota that Belgium already does it. Belgium has done some pretty dodgy things in its time, such as human rights abuses in the Congo. Even if a majority of European countries did it (they don't), that isn't really an argument in favour. You have to consider a proposal to tinker with civil liberties on its own merits. In 1942, most of Europe was busy organising or condoning the extermination of Jews.

More detailed analysis of Rogers's article is over at Not Saussure.