Notes from the Panopticon

South Pacific and the terrorist threat

"At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being" ~ Friedrich Otto Hertz 1878-1964

Last week I went to a lively, enjoyable and well-played amateur performance of South Pacific. When Lt. Cable was asked to marry his Polynesian girlfriend, Liat, he replied that he could not. And when my wife quietly asked why not, I whispered the N word in her ear.

Later Lt. Cable launched into what must be one of the shortest songs in the American musical. I had completely forgotten it.

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Let us not forget that the legacy of this attitude lives on in the land which boasts in its founding documents that all men are created equal and have a right to the pursuit of happiness. Rodgers and Hammerstein felt so strongly about the message of this song that they were willing to risk the entire show when faced with opposition (including a law introduced in Georgia outlawing entertainment containing "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow.")

Despite the progress made by the Civil Rights Movement, the chances of a black man going to prison are still massively higher than the chances of a white man doing so. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, by the end of 2005 there were 3,145 black male prison inmates per 100,000 blacks in the United States compared to 471 white male inmates per 100,000 whites. And according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Philadelphia, the chances of a black man being executed are 38% higher than for a white man. Clearly, the lesson has been very carefully taught; forty or fifty years of efforts to eradicate this teaching have barely scratched the surface.

Last week I also heard a programme on the BBC World Service about the origins of the Jihad. It included the following extract from a text book for thirteen-year-old boys currently in use in Saudi schools:

There should be total enmity between believers and polytheists. Believers are not allowed to love polytheists or support them, even if they are close to them. Religiously sanctioned love is only allowed towards Muslims. As for the polytheist he should be hated for his unbelief even if he is close to you.

Polytheists include Sufis and Shiites, whom the Wahabis (the dominant clerical group of Saudi Arabia) accuse of idolatry.

It is frightening to think what effect this teaching is having on young Muslims. It is frightening to think what effect it had on previous generations, many of whom are now engaged in "charitable" programmes to fund Muslim schools across the world. It is important to make a distinction between ordinary Muslims and Muslim fundamentalists, but if this is the kind of material that is being offered in general education in an important Muslim state, we should be very worried indeed.

After all the Nazis succeeded in turning much of the German population into a group willing to tolerate mass murder of the disabled, the gypsies, homosexuals, and notoriously, the Jews and others that they considered to be inferior races.

They invoked what they called "Holy Hate"

Now there is war! The Jews forced us into a struggle for life and death ... It has also forced us to give up the "politeness" that in reality is a weakness ... We as a people will survive this war only if we eliminate weakness and "politeness" and respond to the Jews with an equal hatred ... If we do not oppose the Jews with the entire energy of our people, we are lost... Our holy hate will bring us victory and save all of mankind.

Bigotry is everywhere. It is only by recognizing it and rejecting it in our own sphere of influence that we can succeed in fighting it in countries and communities where it is threatening to become mainstream. The teaching of hatred is a danger to the world and must be resisted at all costs.

Kyoto – hot air? A review of Bjorn Lomborg’s book: Cool It

"Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this." ~ Doris Lessing (1919- )

My subject this week is the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and specifically Bjorn Lomborg's new book on climate change Cool It. According to Lomborg there are two major problems with Kyoto:

• It is expensive to implement.
• The beneficial impact on the physical consequences of climate change will be limited.

So why is the world so enthusiastic about it?

• Cutting CO2 and our carbon footprints are eye-catching policies which are easy to sell.
• Because the predicted effects of climate change are relatively long term (best predictions forecast it will take more than 90 years for sea levels to rise by 1 foot or 30 cm), the implementation of carbon reduction is not urgent (the world has already coped with the same rise in sea level which occurred over the last 150 years)
• Politicians are taking advantage of this lack of urgency. It is easy to advocate policies which require that little money is spent during their own terms in office, but laying the burden at the feet of their successors.

At the same time, while talking up the importance of climate change and giving the impression that it is being treated as top priority, pressure is taken off spending on other aid priorities.

Global warming deniers

I have been a fan of Bjorn Lomborg ever since I came across his book The Sceptical Environmentalist. I eagerly awaited his new book on global warming and it has certainly not disappointed.

There is a lot of misinformation about. It is dangerous to rely on newspaper reports and I lack the scientific knowledge to make my own judgements. I am, however, suspicious of a scientific establishment that attacks on its opponents for being global-warming-deniers and "flat-earthers" (Al Gore's defence of his exaggerated presentation of his case). Global warming, after all, remains a theory, with much supporting – but circumstantial – evidence.

Political verdict

So why do I trust Lomborg? Firstly, because his first book has weathered the vicious attacks from arch-environmentalists. The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) used information published by Lomborg's critics in the Scientific American magazine to brand his work as "objectively scientifically dishonest". But after a year's study, the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation found the DCSC report to be "dissatisfactory", "deserving [of] criticism" and "emotional." It also found the DCSC's ruling to be "completely void of argumentation" and "an almost totally political verdict." 

Right wing American propaganda

Lomborg, a university professor, first became sceptical of environmental claims when he "read a Wired magazine interview with economist Julian Simon claiming that the environment, contrary to common understanding, was getting better, not worse". His instinctive reaction was that this was "right wing, American propaganda".  It seemed an ideal class project and he set out, with his top students, to prove Simon wrong. Much to everyone's surprise, they found that most (although not all) of what Simon had said was right.

Lomborg's approach is to re-examine the very same research used by the environmentalist lobby to make their case. He and his students found that data is often used selectively to support a preconceived view, rather than allowing the data to direct them to a conclusion.

Case for carbon reduction

He has used the same approach in preparing his new book about global warming. The book is short and to the point and it exposes the dishonesty of much of the case for carbon reduction as a means for tackling global warming.

My friends scoff at my scepticism at what I see as "environmental correctness" (A subset of political correctness, which I despise). So I was glad to receive my copy of Cool It soon after the High Court in London ruled that "Al Gore's apocalyptic vision" presented in his film An Inconvenient Truth was "politically partisan" and "not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change." This made it even easier for me to accept and support a judgement made by someone whose objectivity I trust.

The argument in a nutshell

Lomborg's argument in a nutshell is:

• It is likely that human activities are contributing to a significant warming of the atmosphere.
• The consequences of the degree of warming predicted by the various scientific models are nothing like as dire as the environmentalist lobby would have us believe; nor is it not imminent
• Some of the worst consequences in human suffering and financial cost have more to do with social change than with the effect of weather (notably, people have moved into zones affected by flooding and extreme weather so the same amount of extreme weather has exacerbated the consequences)
• Global warming has positive as well as negative effects, but only the negative impacts are mentioned in newspaper reports and by environmental lobbyists (e.g. the number of additional casualties caused by hotter summers is far outweighed by the extra people who survive because of warmer winters)
• The money that needs to be spent on CO2 reduction to deflect global warming is huge and will have only a small benefit. (e.g. the consensus of studies show that, for Kyoto to be fully implemented, high fuel taxes would have to be introduced; the benefit achieved would be that a 1 foot rise in sea level, predicted by the end of the century, would be postponed by just 4 years).
• The enormous cost of Kyoto will deflect resources from other programmes which would have a much larger impact and more immediate effect on human welfare (e.g. malaria protection, HIV/AIDs treatment, flood prevention, and R&D on alternative energy).
• Money spent on these alternative programmes would alleviate suffering and release people to become productive individuals creating resources to tackle the effects of Global warming as better strategies and technologies are developed.

Polar Bears

So let's put a bit of flesh on the bones. Lomborg starts as he means to go on by exploding the polar bear argument (the claim that global warming will melt the Arctic ice and wipe out a beautiful and unique species by destroying its habitat). This is a great media story with inspiring illustrations of polar bears drifting helplessly on ice floes or swimming to exhaustion. The reality, according to studies by the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union, is that the polar bear population has risen from 5000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today. The reason for this increase is hunting control. And only two groups of bears are declining in numbers, both of which live in an area that is becoming colder. Meanwhile, two other groups which are increasing in numbers live in an area that is becoming warmer.

The most studied group of polar bears lives on the coast of Hudson Bay. Its numbers have grown from 500 in 1981 to 1200 in 1987. Since then, numbers have fallen to 940 in 2004, but this is still almost double the number in 1981. The headlines also fail to mention that, of the 300-500 bears that are shot every year, an average of 49 are shot in the area of the Hudson Bay colony. So hunting – not global warming – has the most significant effect on bear numbers.

Scientifically dishonest

This example shows how the environmental lobby, aided by the media, short changes the public in the presentation of its case. Tim Higham, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Programme, has been disarmingly frank about this. The official summary of the Programme's 2001 report was changed from a milder draft version ("There has been a discernable human influence on global climate") to a stronger statement ("most observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.") Higham explained this change as follows: "there was no new science, but the scientists wanted to present a clear and strong message to policy makers."

It gets worse. One unnamed scientist is reported to have written to a "fellow believer," proposing that an earlier period of climate warming (known as "the medieval warm period") should be "covered up" from the history in order to avoid undermining the climate-change argument.

There are also numerous examples of how political rhetoric is at odds with reality. For example, in 1997, the British government promised to cut emissions by 10% by 2010; instead emission have increased by 3%.

Better alternatives

Having exposed the dishonesty that characterises the case for tackling CO2 emissions through the Kyoto approach, Lomborg argues that there are more effective alternatives:

• Instead of imposing a massive financial burden in both the rich and poor worlds through carbon taxes, cheaper measures such as malaria control would improve the health and welfare of many poor people. They would better placed to implement more cost-effective solutions to the problems of global warming. History has shown that richer countries have a much better track record for tackling environmental damage than poorer ones.
• Discouraging development in vulnerable areas subject to flooding and extreme weather hazards would cut the human and financial costs far more than carbon emission reduction.

One review of Cool It claims that Lomborg is doing the equivalent of describing the tipping point in an experiment where fruit flies are sealed into an airtight container with food but limited air – they breed successfully until the air runs out and they start to die. This critic has been sucked in by the hype. The current predictions by the same scientists that are quoted by the ecology lobby are not dire; the time we have to deal with the problem is relatively long.

We don't need eye-catching but inefficient policies that allow today's politicians to take the glory for their vision and foresight, but leave paying the bill to the next generation. Instead we need more carefully considered strategies that avoid the inappropriate use of resources and we can afford the time to improve our capacity to deal with the problem. In short: more haste less speed.

Picture credits

http://motls.blogspot.com/

generation-z.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

www.whackynation.com/?cat=3

Victory by Athol Fugard, starring Richard Johnson, Pippa Bennett-Warner and Reece Ritchie, director Cordelia Monsey

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises; and oft it hits

Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."

-William Shakespeare (1564-1616), All's Well That Ends Well

Athol Fugard's play Victory in the Peter Hall Season at Bath's Theatre Royal is short and sour. The anger that was Fugard's muse during the apartheid era has been replaced by despair.

It is easy to understand his disappointment. He had risked much as a white liberal working and waiting for the overthrow of the apartheid regime. The thrill of seeing his objective achieved as Nelson Mandela walked free and universal elections took place must have been euphoric. But then he had to face the realisation that political change made little difference to the day-to-day lives of many of his black compatriots.

The new regime has done little to improve the economic welfare of the country. On average, it can be classed as a middle-income economy but the reality is that South Africa has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world. It also faces an epidemic of HIV/Aids, with 20% of its adult population infected, and is having to cope with an influx of refugees, especially from Zimbabwe (a country which provides a stark example of what South Africa could have become).

The government's efforts to expand the economy by increasing the rate of privatisation and by cutting government spending is opposed by organised labour, one of the reasons why growth has not been strong enough to reduce the unemployment rate. Poverty, unemployment and lack of economic empowerment are still endemic among disadvantaged groups. And corruption is a serious problem.

It is not only white liberals like Fugard who have to live with disappointment; at least they have the option of moving away. The people who remain in the slums have little to look forward to and perhaps this is why crime has exploded. South Africa has the second highest level of violent assaults in the world per head of population, and the second highest level of murders. It is top in murders with firearms, top in rapes.

With this background, it is not surprising that Fugard's play is so bleak. A young black couple attempt to rob the house belonging to Lionel (Richard Johnson), a liberal white man. Vicky (Pippa Bennett-Warner) is the daughter of Lionel's dead housekeeper. She was born at the time of Nelson Mandela's release from prison and named Victoria, a symbol of the hope that came with the creation of the Rainbow Nation.

Lionel has recently been widowed and, in his despair, he failed to answer Vicky's calls for help as she faced poverty, abuse and hopelessness in the slums. So she has brought her boyfriend Freddie (Reece Ritchie) to steal money which she saw in the house as a little girl. Freddie too is facing poverty and hopelessness; in his mind, the only way forward is to join the gangs of Cape Town.

Fugard has waited thirteen years to write this play which is based on an incident in his own life. He is remarkably honest. It is difficult to admit that the hopes of your entire life have been dashed, which is what he has done in a thinly-veiled allegory for the despair that has replaced the hopes of South Africa's first free election.

One wonders if Lionel is actually Fugard himself, who has now abandoned his home country to live in California – just as Lionel has abandoned Vicky. He recognises that his liberal ideals failed to change the reality of life for the majority of South African blacks.

It must have been hard to hold up the banner of freedom against the vicious white supremacist regime, but Fugard's socialist liberal ideals which helped defeat apartheid no longer offer a better future for the country. Free market ideology has been successfully espoused throughout much of the East (including Communist China and socialist India) as the route out of poverty. But in Africa and the Middle East, regimes cling on to the discredited economics of the 1960s and 1970s, and are surprised when poverty remains and social unrest erupts.

The despair of Fugard's play belongs only to the text. The director (Cordelia Monsey) has brought the best out of an excellent cast. Johnson, Bennett-Warner and Richie present three tortured individuals whose lives are filled with disappointment. They have no hope for the future.

Picture credit

news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/entertainment/1910559.stm 

http://theater.nytimes.com/ref/theater/hirschfeld/index.html?rf=date%2Fdetail_15.html

How can I fuck things up today?

Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

I have just been reading Andrew Alderson's graphic account of his time in Basra. (Bankrolling Basra) It describes how, from a standing start, he established an organisation which took over the roll of the defunct southern branch of the Iraqi Central Bank. Under Saddam, Iraq was run Soviet fashion. All economic activity was owned by the state and wages were paid out of central funds. When the state operations were abruptly ended by his overthrow, there was no money to pay the workers. This led to a simmering resentment which threatened security. Alderson, a merchant banker and volunteer member of the Territorial Army, was given the job of kick-starting the economy because of his financial background. He re-established a flow of funds to pay wages to get vital utilities and social services working again. Over the months, he built an international team of experts in each field who helped Iraqi managers restart operations under the interim regime.

Less directive and "colonial"

As the time for the handover of power approached, civil servants in London decided that the organisation Alderson had built should be replaced by a transitional authority which would be less directive and "colonial". This decision took no account of the inexperience of Iraqi managers in operating without central control. The civil servants sent over to implement the new approach turned up with no understanding of the situation on the ground, of what had been achieved, or why it had been tackled in the way it had.

Alderson returned from his meeting with them deeply frustrated. A colleague who was on the receiving end of his vitriolic description of what had passed replied 'Andrew be reasonable, these guys don't get out of bed each morning and say "right, how can I fuck things up today?"'.

Challenge my prejudice

Followers of this blog will understand that this is a comment I have to take seriously because it reflects pretty closely what I think about bureaucrats in general, and civil servants in particular. And put that way, it requires careful reflection because it is a forceful challenge to my prejudice.

So let's get down to it. Bureaucrats have power. They have been put in a position from which they can MAKE other people do what they want, or STOP them from making their own choices. This power is circumscribed by two types of limitation:

• legislation
• procedure

Legislation is made by politicians, who make laws and institute policies to achieve goals, move society in chosen directions, or control people. (Though bureaucrats do have a lot of power over how legislation should be interpreted.) Procedure is the method used by bureaucratic institutions to ensure that individual civil servants are pulling in the same direction and treating the citizens over whom they exercise power fairly. Procedure is also there to ensure that money spent is properly accounted for, and that acts carried out by bureaucrats of all types are consistent with policy.

Bramble thicket of bureaucracy

So what can go wrong? Kafka, in The Castle and The Trial graphically describes the way that bureaucracy can turn itself into a bramble thicket which can catch the unwary citizen and not let him go. Procedures are quickly set up by different departments. They can be impenetrable to the uninitiated and may be contradictory. The 1980s television series, Yes Minister, lampooned the way that civil servants ran rings round a fictional minister and tied him in knots of self-contradiction. Joseph Heller coined the phrase Catch 22 to crystallise the way that, by fulfilling one requirement, the unwary citizen can be caught by another – conflicting one.

In this maze of rules and regulations the bureaucrat is in a position to impede the citizen with procedural requirements, forms to complete and offices to visit. The effect can be stifling.

Proving black is white

Bureaucrats are also skilled at generating whole vocabularies of jargon and acronyms which make it easy for them to obscure their true motives and objectives. Above all, through a combination of ever shifting jargon and weasel words, it becomes possible to prove that black is white and white is black, a carefully-honed skill which can be a double-edged sword for their political masters. Civil servants can either use it to protect ministers or a threat to keep them in their place.

One of the reasons for the economic stagnation of India and South and Central America up to the 1980s was the overweening power of bureaucracy. In India's case, the curbing of bureaucratic power has led to an extraordinary economic resurgence. This is less evident in South America where bureaucratic interference is a deliberate policy. It helps political oligarchies retain power and ensures that competition does not threaten their lucrative monopolies.

Pressure cooker of hierarchies

This takes us back to what bureaucrats say to themselves when they get out of bed in the morning. They live in a pressure cooker of hierarchies, jealousies, office politics and backbiting. But, at the higher echelons, they don't have to worry about their jobs or pensions. They don't have to produce anything that anyone else wants. (The rest of us do because, ultimately, our wages our paid because the organisations for whom we work make or provide things that people are willing to pay for, whereas civil servants' wages are paid out of taxes that no one wants to pay.) So what can they do? Top civil servants can make their jobs bigger and more important by making more work for themselves or by taking over colleagues' portfolios. That type of activity provided a lot of material for Yes Minister. And, of course, they can boss people about; it is rare that they have to face the consequences of any damage they do.

So if I allow myself to be totally cynical, I could speculate that they do ask themselves "how can I fuck things up today?" Why? Because they have the power, because they don't have to face the consequences, and because they operate in a parallel world where incomes are always secure and they have nothing better to do. But that, I am sure, is unfair.

Battle in the corridors of power

So let's return to Basra. The internal battle in the corridors of power in Whitehall was lost by the Foreign Office (FO) – just watch the acronyms flow – and won by the Department for International Development (DFID). It was the DFID civil servants that arrived in Iraq with news that the structures set up to regenerate the economy of Southern Iraq were "colonial" in their approach. Instead they were to be replaced by an "aid" structure. And the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was to be replaced by a Transitional Advisory Team (TAT).

Alderson had built up the CPA South team and had battled for money to rebuild some of the State Owned Organisations (SOE). The central plan had been either to let these businesses wither and die or – more fancifully – to sell them on the international financial market. The team, realising that these SOEs were essential to the economy had had a measure of success in keeping them going, had kept people in jobs and reducing discontent.

Tight financial control

This was achieved because, with his commercial background, he was able to recruit specialists and keep a tight financial control. His organisation was effectively in charge of ensuring that the money was being channelled and spent properly by his own team and by others whose budget he oversaw. At the same time, the Iraqi managements were helped to develop their own decision making and financial management skills.

Despite the relative success of this approach in difficult and deteriorating circumstances, Whitehall decided that it was inappropriate and that instead a cadre of "nation-building specialists" should be brought in to "help existing government institutions take charge". But in post Saddam Iraq, there were no functioning institutions and the new ministries were too weak to undertake the responsibility.

Frightening example of misplaced priorities

Still, the policy had to be implemented and, in a frightening example of misplaced priorities, a woman was sent out from Scotland to prepare a report on gender issues. And this at a time when dangerous riots, a worsening security situation, crippling economic problems, and a shortage of staff were making it difficult to provide adequate health, education, water, power and finance services.

Rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic

The organisations which were trying to tackle these issues were dismantled. In their place, consultants – "experts in institutional capacity building" – were appointed. They arrived in Basra and interviewed members of the departing team and asked each of them three questions:

• what do you do?
• what should we do?
• do you want a job?

The civil servants who came up with this idea may not have asked themselves "how can I fuck things up today?" but they might as well have done. Something had to change, so they decided to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Image credits:

http://culture.indian-network.de/ushascorner/usha_bureaucracy.htm

http://www.josephbau.org/BW_pics/bureaucracy_low.jpg

http://www.toddmarrone.com/images/artwork(images)/computer(images)/Bureaucracy.gif

The Waltz of the Toreadors by Jean Anouilh starring Peter Bowles and Maggie Steed

It is not the lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 –1900)

Chichester Festival Theatre's revival of Waltz of the Toreadors (in a new translation by Ranjit Bolt) is played unashamedly as a farce – and a good thing too because its farcical elements made the audience laugh out loud. At a deeper level, the characters are a uniformly miserable bunch.

Anouilh classified this play, written in 1952, as a pièce grinçante (grating), roughly equivalent to Bernard Shaw's plays unpleasant. The play is set in 1910 and Peter Bowles plays General Leon Saint Pé, whose life has been blighted by one big mistake: he remained with his wife instead of following his heart with Ghislaine, a girl with whom he had danced (the Waltz of the Toreadors) 17 years before. Saint Pé had spent those years salving his wounds by rodgering every servant girl who crossed his path, while his wife feigned paralysis to retain control over her husband. She saw him as her object, her possession, although she responded to his moral (but unconsummated) infidelity with Ghislaine by conducting a series of affairs of her own. Meanwhile, Ghislaine wasted her youth, remaining pure and waiting for Saint Pé for 17 years.

Existentialism was the intellectual core of French culture in the mid-20th century and Anouilh was an author of his time. His story is an existentialist parable: you must act in order to validate your existence – otherwise you are nothing. But beneath this philosophy lies the romantic notion that, by acting on feelings engendered by a passing moment of happiness, you will find true fulfilment. In fact, this is no more than an escape from reality, from the need to make the best of the hand you are dealt in life.

The essential theme of the play is therefore an empty one. The resolution – that Ghislaine finds happiness with Gaston (the General's secretary) who grabs his existential opportunity when she throws herself over a balcony and lands on his head – is both trite and unbelievable. The director, Angus Jackson, was right to play for laughs, but he failed to pull off his idea of turning Saint Pé's daughters into a pair of pantomime ugly sisters.

It was Maggie Steed who rescued the play. Her appearance as the General's tortured wife was magnificent. She injected humanity into the suffering of a woman who found herself trapped in a loveless marriage and was unable to distinguish ownership from feeling. Her performance was a startling contrast to the wooden performances of most of the cast who struggled to convey emotional depth in a wordy text.

Picture credit

http://www.russianparis.com/litterature/authors/anouilh.shtml 

Campbell on TV

Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken ~ David Hume (1711-1776)

In the television version of his diaries, Alistair Campbell revealed far more than he intended. The three things that I took away from the programmes were:

• Campbell is a vain and deeply disturbed individual who should never have been entrusted with such power
• Tony Blair's poverty of judgement in picking his friends places Campbell in the company of other star choices (Bush, Berlusconi, Blunkett, Mandelson, as well as Cherie's indispensable confidente, Carole Caplin)
• A large part of Labour's (and Blair's) failure to engage the public in positive aspects of its policy agenda was because of Campbell's paranoia and exclusive focus on danger.

His strategy wreaked havoc because, instead of deflecting attention and cooling the impact of events, his actions poured petrol on the flames. His uncontrolled ill-temper and contempt for those who opposed his views enraged his victims who, in turn, sought every opportunity for revenge.

A telling moment was when he showed sympathy for John Prescott and the notorious egg/punch incident. Clearly, Campbell would have done the same, but more restraint is required of a Deputy Prime Minister or Chief Press Secretary.

The culmination of Campbell's career was his involvement in the dodgy dossier, the Gilligan incident, the death of Dr David Kelly, and the Hutton Inquiry fiasco. Campbell had drawn his friend Blair into territory where it was impossible for him to win. Whatever Blair said, whatever he did, he would not be believed. Campbell was his Svengali and he wrecked any moral authority Blair might have had.

The style of the diary is self-serving and pathetic, as shown by the empty note of sympathy for Dr Kelly's widow. But Blair chose to listen to him and, even after Campbell resigned, said that he would telephone him every single day. Campbell was his crutch, so indispensable that Blair insisted that he attend cabinet meetings. He needed Campbell in the same way that Cherie needed Caplin. Hole in the head comes to mind.

Blair and Campbell were a double act, although it is difficult to decide which was Laurel and which was Hardy. It is easy to imagine Campbell muttering "another fine mess you've got me into", but it was Campbell who sexed up the dossier (whatever Hutton concluded). Neither man had the innocent charm of Laurel and both shared the self-importance of Hardy. Their performance would have been comic if it had not been tragic.

Campbell's role in politics was a sorry episode which did much to undermine trust in public life, and in the men and women who populate that world. A sad story of a talented but flawed man, driven by a need to succeed in achieving narrow goals, diminished by an uncontrollable urge always to be right.

Picture credit:

www.weirdwildrealm.com/f-laurel-hardy.html 

The art of the blog: a reply to Polly Toynbee’s article in The Author based on her Bagehot Lecture

…it behoveth him to have a vigilant eye to the proceedings of great princes, and to consider seriously of their designs ~ Sir Walter Raleigh (1554 –1618)

Before I started to publish this blog, I asked a friend for comments. She was very upset by what she read, believing it to be carping and critical. I took her comments to heart and have softened my tone and moderated my language. At the same time, she berated me for not voting because she believes that voting is the right way to take part in the democratic process. My opinion of political parties, however, is unchanged. Based on their behaviour and their attitude to the electorate, my feeling remains – a plague on all your houses.

Instinctive sympathy for the political process

My friend directed me to an article in The Author magazine by Polly Toynbee, "The art of the column", which I read with interest. Toynbee offers two golden rules for columnists:

• "If you are going to try to explain the world of politics to the world outside you need to have a strong instinctive sympathy for the political process and for the politicians who face the very difficult task of getting anything done"
• Spend … "a good long time as a reporter first … both a general reporter and a specialist in some particular subject … for politics is not about the miasma of Westminster … it is about policy and the real world."

Attack on the blogosphere

Toynbee's attack is on colleagues who are "overtly and strongly opinionated" and on the "alternative Rory Bremner voice (that) has become mainstream". She says there is a risk that the style of the blogosphere, its "unmediated sound and fury" coming from "unknown sources with unknown intentions", is "forcing conventional columnists to shout louder, to take up contrarian postures for the sake of it."

Towards the end of the article, she provides some good advice, referring to "the skill of crafting a column with a beginning, a middle and an end, a coherent argument, at least three facts that readers won't know, and information gleaned from talking to the leading players in the case."

Once you have gutted what Polly Toynbee is saying, it comes down to "clear off you amateurs and leave the job to us professionals, you contaminate us". And maybe she has a point. Tony Blair was an amateur when he leapt straight into the job of Prime Minister – and look how we, and more tragically the people of Iraq, have paid the price. This is despite the fact that Blair was ably assisted by Alistair Campbell, a professional journalist who had passed through Polly Toynbee's career development mill. Yet it was only at the end of Blair's career that one glimpsed how much he had done for Northern Ireland and how admired he was in Sierra Leone. With a professional journalist at his side, how did he fail focus public attention on these not inconsiderable successes?

Two objections

I have two greater objections to Polly Toynbee's position:

• First, she turns inclusion in the cosy, inward-looking, elitist world that is professional politics into a virtue for the columnist. How would she cope if the BNP, UKIP or an extreme Islamic party became mainstream? (Not out of the question – let us never forget how quickly the Nazi Party took power in Germany in the 1930s).
• Second, she places emphasis on the moderating effect of working for a newspaper, its editor and its publisher . My thoughts may come from an "unknown source", but I can assure her that I have never worked for Robert Maxwell, Conrad Black or Rupert Murdoch.

On one point I must agree with her – "… if you fail to be entertaining no-one will read you. It takes bravado to go out there and tell the world what you think." Finding readers is many, many times harder in the blogosphere. The blogger does not have the benefit of passing traffic as Toynbee does from the comfort of her newspaper column.

But even without readers, I benefit from the process of writing. With its discipline, I clear my thinking and there is always the faint chance that some passer-by may read and be interested in what I say. I have no illusions.

Incandescent fury

My original motive for starting to blog was an incandescent fury at having to live in a country led by the shallow and inconsequential Tony Blair, whose mindless actions led to the deaths of tens of thousands in Iraq and the erosion of civil liberties and the right to free speech at home. Only fundamental constitutional reform will protect us from another leader of his ilk: simultaneously besotted by his own convictions and propelled into knee-jerk policy-making by a hysterical and hostile press. I am heartened that Gordon Brown sees a need for constitutional reform and I now watch and wait for a better future.

Smell of competence

Polly Toynbee's article, and my friend's original criticism, have made me focus on what I can bring to the party. I want to do better than Richard Littlejohn who sees his job as "sitting at the back and throwing bottles". I try to look at what people do and not at what they say. For example, my wife and I have often argued about the merits of Gordon Brown. Whatever criticism was made against him, I was unable to get away from the fact that he has run the economy much better than any Chancellor in the twentieth century. He just smells of competence. His first days as prime minister feel right too. I will not make a firm judgement until the honeymoon period is over – I am only too well aware that politicians are masters of the finesse. I could not care less about his performance in Prime Minister's question time. For the moment he is making the right noises. If he follows through with liberating policies, with opportunities for better, freer lives, and if he doesn't view the public as potential criminals who need to be watched or as children unable to look after themselves or to make their own choices, I shall breathe a sigh of relief.

I am however, cautious about his reputation for bullying, autocracy and bad temper. But again, his willingness to give up power, first to the Bank of England and now to the Commons, belies this reputation. And if his bad temper was the result of watching the moronic antics of the Blair/Campbell double act, I am inclined to sympathise.

Unnoticed in the stalls

I find I have digressed but hope the diversion has strengthened my defence of blogging. I have one big advantage over Ms Toynbee and other political columnists – I am sitting here and watching from MY vantage point. I might not have a front row seat, but from up here in the gods I occasionally spot things – juxtapositions of actors, things happening off stage – that may go unnoticed in the stalls.

One more point: in democracy, no-one is an amateur. We all pay our taxes or receive our benefits, we all have a right to vote (or in my case not to vote), and we can all have our say, despite Blair's efforts to stifle free speech. The internet has yet to settle but it has the potential to be massively democratising, to become a moderator of the power of the cosy elite to which Ms Toynbee is privileged and proud to belong.

And finally, to show that I have been paying attention, here are three facts that are not well known. In the 2005 general election:

• For every 96,482 votes, the Liberal Democrats won one seat
• For every 44,306 votes, the Conservatives won one seat
• For every 26,031 votes, Labour won one seat

So what is there to sympathise with? To my mind, these figures – alongside other weaknesses – seriously undermine the legitimacy of the political process.

I have slipped in a few harsh words here and there to satisfy Ms Toynbee's prejudice against bloggers.

Picture credits:

www.safecom.org.au/lawrence03.htm

www.lboro.ac.uk/.../pages/07-commending.html

Little Nell by Simon Gray, directed by Sir Peter Hall

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies ~ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Little Nell by Simon Gray and directed by Sir Peter Hall is a controversial play. After the first preview performance, a member of the audience told Michael Pennington, who plays the part of Charles Dickens, that she would never read a novel by Dickens again. And my wife and I have been arguing about the play ever since we saw it at the Bath Theatre Royal, where it had its debut in advance of a tour with the Peter Hall Company's 2007 season.

The story is that of Dickens 13-year secret affair with a young actress Nelly Ternan. He met and fell in love with her when she, her mother and one of her sisters were performing in one of his plays. After she left the stage, he set her up as a "kept woman" in a house in Slough. He then sent his wife away (claiming she was mad) and installed his sister-in-law as his housekeeper and carer for his ten children.

The play is based on Claire Tomalin's appropriately titled book, The Invisible Woman. It is structured around a meeting between Nelly's son, Geoffrey Robinson (played convincingly by Tim Pigott-Smith) and Dickens's son, a meeting which took place several years after Nelly's death. Geoffrey's life was blighted by the lies which Nelly used to cover up her scandalous past and preserve her lover's reputation, a deceit which enabled her to rebuild her life, marry a schoolmaster and have two children, with no-one knowing the truth of her past life.

The controversy is this: who was to blame? The facts are:

• Dickens seduced a 17 year old girl from a family of actresses and installed her as his mistress while he continued his life in the public eye as a celebrity who occupied the moral high ground.

• Nelly had to maintain a low profile, both as a kept woman and in order protect her lover's status, and so sacrificed her freedom to live a normal life.

Who was at fault? Dickens for taking advantage of Nelly's youth with his fame and charisma? Nelly for allowing it to happen? Society which put such great store on sexual propriety?

Was Nelly a victim? Did she make the sacrifice willingly because she enjoyed Dickens's attentions? And finally, why did no-one mentioned Dickens's one undeniable victim: his wife Catherine?

Peter Hall, in answering my wife's question about Nelly's invisibility in a talk at Bath's Royal Crescent Hotel, said that he had tried to balance the argument. The result is an intriguing play, directed and staged impeccably and blessed with a breathtaking performance by Loo Brealey, so far best know as "shake me up Judy" Smallweed in the television adaptation of Bleak House. See it if you can.

Picture Credit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Ternan

Justice Under Siege by Eva Joly

"Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase." ~ Charles Caleb Colton(1789-1832)

The French title of Eva Joly's Justice Under Siege is "Do we want to live in a world like this?" The tragedy is that we do live in a world like this, a world riddled with corruption in the highest echelons of power even in our democratic part of it.

Eva came to France as an au pair from Norway and married the boss's son. She qualified as a lawyer and was working as an investigating magistrate when the Elf corruption file landed on her desk.

Her story of the investigation that followed is frightening. Efforts were made to stop her work and they originated at the highest levels of the French political elite. Evidence was tampered with and her life was threatened. Her story is one of dogged tenacity through eight years of laborious work.

I first became aware of the story when I heard Eva interviewed on Woman's Hour. She was speaking of the British government's decision to abandon the investigation into the BAe bribery scandal. Her comment was that, despite a vicious campaign by the corrupt managers of Elf and their political cronies, the French legal system was sufficiently independent and robust to face off the attacks and that her investigation was brought to a successful conclusion. The perpetrators who had relied on what they thought was the impunity of their position, were in the end unable frustrate the process of the law. Her freedom to operate with the support of her superiors contrasted with the weakness of the British system where the government continually struggles to push itself above the law and often succeeds.

At the end of her investigations Eva returned to Norway and has represented her country on international bodies set up to fight corruption. She estimates that the scale of these crimes runs into billions of dollars every year.

She dedicates her book to 25 individually-named investigating magistrates and journalists, in all parts of the world, who were killed because of their efforts expose corruption and to bring highly placed-criminals to book.

This story of intrigue should be read by everyone (It is due to be republished in early July). It will change your view of highly placed politicians and businessmen forever.

For more information see:

http://www.norway.org.uk/culture/literature/evajoly.htm

The Last Confession by Roger Crane starring David Suchet

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

I doubt that The Last Confession by Roger Crane and starring David Suchet will be particularly well received when it reaches the Haymarket Theatre on July 4th. This is a pity because the play is well acted, well constructed, and well directed, and has an impressive set. It also has an excellent cast of thousands (actually 21 men and 1 woman, but you see what I mean). Above all, it retells a story that deserves to be remembered.

When Albino Luciano was elected Pope John Paul I in 1978 it would have been more appropriate if he had adopted the name Innocent XIV. For naïve he was and innocent he died. The play recounts the battle waged – and the victory won – by the reactionary Curia (Vatican Civil Service) against the reforms proposed by John XXIII in the second Vatican Council in 1962. The Cardinals in the Curia held back those reforms during the 15 year pontificate of the indecisive Paul VI after John XXIII's death. When Paul died, the Church's liberal faction – especially cardinals from Africa and Latin America – engineered the election of John Paul I, "The Smiling Pope."

John Paul I believed that, as the head of the church, it was his responsibility to decide on the Church's future direction, he wanted reform. But this was a naïve belief and he seriously underestimated the power and determination of his political opponents. When he told the world that he would carry out the promises of Vatican 2 and would brook no opposition, his enemies dug in their heels.

In his 33 days as Pope, he decided to rid the Curia of its arch reactionaries, including Cardinal Villot, (Bernard Lloyd) the Head of State, the most powerful man in the Vatican. He was also on the point of sending home to Chicago the corrupt Bishop Marcinkus (Stuart Milligan), head of the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank, who controlled the Church's purse-strings. Marcinkus, a native of Cicero Illinois (the home town of Al Capone) was involved with the Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Masonic Lodge, and the Roberto Calvi affair. (In case you have forgotten, Calvi was known as God's Banker and was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London.) John Paul had crossed swords with Marcinkus before when the bishop facilitated the sale of the Catholic bank in Venice to Ambrosiano at a knock down price.

In order to frustrate his reforms Cardinal Villot had set about burying the new Pope under an avalanche of paperwork. During the night of the 33rd day of his pontificate, John Paul I died mysteriously in bed, still working through the papers. The previous day, he had told his three main opponents that they were about to be dismissed; he planned to sack Marcinkus the following day.

No autopsy was performed after the death of a man who had no history of illness and had complained of no symptoms of ill-health. A poorly conducted Vatican inquiry revealed a number of inconsistencies and discrepancies in witness accounts of the hours leading up to his death and the discovery of his body. And outright lies were told by officials. Since then, there have been a number of well-documented conspiracy theories suggesting that John Paul I was murdered, including an extensively-researched book by David Yallop (In God's Name), an author who specialises in investigating unsolved crimes.

The Last Confession is Roger Crane's first play. He is a lawyer based in New York and he tells his story well. He focuses on the fictional last confession of Cardinal Benelli, a powerful and ambitious Vatican Politician with a liberal outlook.

Masterfully portrayed by David Suchet, Benelli is instrumental in ensuring the election of Luciano in the hope that he will institute reforms. But his vanity is offended when the new Pope, brilliantly captured by Richard OCallaghan, does not immediately invite him to become Head of State. So he leaves his newly-elected protégé unprotected and surrounded by the wolves in the Curia.

Benelli confesses the guilt of this sin of omission, as well as a second sin, this time of commission. When he is tempted by the opportunity to be elected Pope himself, he abandons the inquiry into the John Paul I's death.

The confession is made to a priest who doubles as John Paul I's replacement Cardinal Wojtela, creating a link between this extraordinary story and the next pontificate.

However, despite the clever way in which all this is brought together, and the excellent use of narrative to bring out issues of conscience, the play lacks a soul. There was a 20 minute discussion between the actors, the director and the audience after the performance that I saw in Bath. I was bemused to hear that some of those involved in the production had had their faith strengthened by it. After watching a man of integrity and decency crushed by naked ambition and lust for power, I find it difficult to understand how anyone could maintain respect for the Catholic Church – whether Pope John Paul I was murdered or not.