There Is No Alternative

The other day, suspicious as I am of free-market Capitalism, I looked through a Communist newspaper. It was full of prefabricated screaming slogans. (A bit like the X-Factor build-ups, but with long words.) Nevertheless, from its pages I learned many things.

Firstly, I learned that the Syrian government is “magnanimous”, its agenda “peaceful” and its people “heroic and dignified”. (I will accept the last point.) And I learned that Colonel Gaddafi – who harboured Yvonne Fletcher’s killer and feted the Lockerbie bomber as a national hero – was “great” and that his works command “a feeling nothing short of awe”.

I’m aware that the West has an agenda. We routinely intervene in (say) Libya or Iraq, but not in Zimbabwe or Rwanda – which see equal atrocities but don’t have oil. Funny, that. But if we elect, or tolerate, people like Bush and Mugabe, that doesn’t suddenly make Saddam and Gaddafi good guys.

Secondly, I learned something about the Royal Jubilee. I don’t mean the revelation that the royal family (and all rich people) are a bunch of parasites. I wouldn’t expect a Communist newspaper to say anything else. I’ve blogged elsewhere (Sons and Daughters) about the useful role a ceremonial head of state plays in a democracy: but I don’t suppose democracy interests Communists any more than it does Capitalists.

No:  the surprising news about the Jubilee was quoted from an online commentator, who wrote: “The only sentiment allowed to be expressed in the media was pro-monarchial.”

Fair enough, it’s not everyone’s plate of cucumber sandwiches. But the only sentiment allowed? I’m sorry, but this is paranoid nonsense. The press includes reds as well as redtops. You may produce The Morning Star as freely as The Daily Star, and I may as freely buy it. There are countries where this would be impossible: where one cannot speak (much less write) against the establishment.

A more interesting question might be: why do we overwhelmingly buy newspapers with a pro- Establishment slant?

But maybe it’s a trick question. The attitude of the mainstream press (and its readers – chicken and egg) is more complex. In 1992, when Royal Divorce memorabilia was selling 3-for-2, the papers were largely anti-monarchial. The church, the Lords, the banks, politicians in general, are routinely pilloried. Fat-cat salaries and dodgy Middle East wars are fair game.

True, the mainstream press doesn’t really question Capitalist assumptions. The Guardian (for one) has a go, but it doesn’t hack at the roots. The redtops don’t even behave as though the questions exist. They would rather tell us about Wayne Rooney or … well, Kate and Wills.

And perhaps that is the problem with the coverage of the Jubilee. It has become another celebrity story with which the redtops fill their front pages. And they are free to do so.

The Communist press, by contrast, is quite happy to hack at the roots of the system. (Not with subtlety; nor with evidence of independent thought on the part of individuals. That’s OK.) Or they too can obsess about the royals. And they are free to do so.  

There are places where this precious freedom does not exist. Syria springs to mind.

There are other countries whose leaders oppose sanctions against the Syrian regime. (Perhaps because they look at its actions and they see nothing wrong: they see normality: they see themselves.) Which countries would those be? Ah, yes, of course.

Thatcher said “There is no alternative.” She was wrong. There is an alternative. There has to be an alternative. But this isn’t it.

Rangers: good riddance?

Many of us, sick of the obscene overpayment of footballers by the richest clubs, are secretly (or openly) pleased at the prospect of a top club going out of business.

If (as seems likely) Rangers are refused entry to the Scottish Premier League, that is surely where the road leads. For why should the Scottish League let them in? Surely the only ways into the League are by relegation from SPL or promotion from feeder leagues. Do they join at the bottom of the pyramid, or what?

But hold it. Barclays Bank has been accused of – well, I can't quite make out what. But it looks as if we have all been thoroughly swindled. A serious financial penalty is in order, for starters. But nobody speaks of punitively closing the bank down: because it would solve nothing, serve no-one, and punish the innocent along with the guilty. A major bank going out of business would destabilise the whole sector.

So it is with Rangers. The punishment should be severe, certainly: but (effective) extinction – even if we don't think it too harsh – would have difficult consequences for the rest of Scottish football.

Here are two possible alternatives:

(1) The other clubs could vote newco Rangers into the SPL: but then apply such a points penalty that the team is immediately relegated. (Presumably instead of one of the teams currently going down.) That would give the new club legitimate entry into the League, as a club relegated from the SPL.

This would limit the punishment suffered.  Of course, a year out of the SPL and a further year (presumably) out of European competition would represent a sizable hit, and rightly. Or:

(2) The approximate financial weight of that penalty could be calculated. Then the newco could be fined the equivalent amount, to be paid over those two seasons, but spared the actual relegation.

Then Rangers have to live within restricted means, as if they had been relegated.  But the SPL as a whole keeps Rangers in their portfolio when touting for TV and sponsorship deals – and receives a healthy bonus in the form of the fine levied. So the SPL does not take a financial hit, and newco Rangers do not gain financially from the sins of oldco. (But are not crushed out of existence.)

Or let Rangers die, and no doubt serve them right, and see what happens to all the other clubs when there are no Rangers matches in the calendar.

Morality and the free market

The other day David Cameron said Jimmy Carr's tax arrangements, though legal, were morally wrong. Then yesterday the courts said the same about HBOS's actions towards Farepak savers.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that, for money earned (and unpaid), Carr pales into insignificance alongside many sly businesspeople whom Cameron obviously doesn't want to upset.

The puzzling thing is to find a committed free-market capitalist suddenly discovering morality. Milton Friedman (Thatcher's monetarist guru) famously said that the only "social responsibility" of business is to make maximum profits for its shareholders. You do what is profitable for you, I do what is profitable for me. In this world-view, the only "immoral" thing is to go against the dictates of greed. The market knows best: the market is the only wisdom, the only morality.

It's not a new philosophy. Friedman just pushed an old one to a new extreme. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" means my happiness, not my neighbour's happiness. He should pursue his own happiness. That is why the talk is always of a Bill of Rights - not a Bill of Responsibilities. That is why there is no such thing as society: and I am certainly not my brother's keeper.

Ed Miliband said: "I'm not in favour of tax avoidance obviously, but I don't think it is for politicians to lecture people about morality." Nor for the courts, perhaps. But it is for politicians to legislate against wrongdoing, and it is for the courts to interpret legislation accordingly (by the spirit, not the letter, one might say).

To challenge Carr, or even HBOS, is to miss the point. We might rather question the whole ultra-captialist experiment and the (often unstated) assumptions on which it is founded. Perhaps, to reverse the flow of Ed Miliband's comment, it is for people to lecture politicians about morality

When I were a lad

A few days ago Geoff Boycott said on a BBC cricket blog:

“Harold Larwood had to walk eight miles just to go the cinema. And then eight miles back.”

Two things strike me about this comment. Firstly, it sounds like the Four Yorkshiremen, with their competitive tales of childhood deprivation.

“Cinema? You were lucky! We used to walk twenty miles to look at a hole in t’ground.”

“Oh, we used to DREAM of looking at a hole in t’ground. We walked a hundred miles before breakfast to look at a cardboard box.”

“Breakfast? Ha!”

(And so on.)

Secondly, I am struck by Boycott’s evident surprise that the distance was the same in both directions. Maybe that’s what went wrong with his running between the wickets.

Digger scrapes bottom (of barrel)

The England football team has a new manager, and all The Sun can do is snipe at his speech impediment. They then publish a similar jibe at “Wossy” (that’s Jonathan Ross – I’m helpless with laughter here) as if that makes it OK.

Let’s leave aside that Roy Hodgson’s rhotacism has not stopped him speaking five languages (while many Sun journalists struggle with one). It’s not about Hodgson and it’s not about Ross. They are successful enough, secure enough in their skill and vocation, not to care tuppence what jokes a semi-literate “newspaper” makes about them. It’s about the thousands of kids with lisps and stammers, who suffer endless piss-taking, and who now see this bullying (for that’s what it is) encouraged by a national red-top.

Mind you, are the broadsheets much better? In yesterday’s Independent, one page made comments similar to the ones I make above. On almost the next page, a story about the Russian president referred to “Mr Medvedev, a diminutive lawyer”.

Excuse me? What has his height got to do with anything? (And no, it was not in the context of describing his treatment by satirists. It was a throwaway word which added nothing to the thread of the article.) What about: The fat Mayor of London? The bald Foreign Secretary?

How about if a new teacher addresses kids as “Spotty” or “Big Nose”? It’s disrespectful, it’s damaging, it’s degrading. It’s bullying and encourages further bullying. It leads to depression, and in some cases suicide.

I expect this rubbish from the tabloids (sadly). But in my estimation, The Independent ranks higher. And you can pronounce that as you will.

Famous for 15 minutes

A man was arrested for swimming into the path of the University Boat Race. With almost equal stupidity, the media told us his name, thereby giving him the publicity he craved, and advertising this as a route to fame. (At least he kept his clothes on, unlike some others who disrupt sporting events.)

There are many ways to yell “Look at me,” if that is what you live for. Some people get a car number plate that declares their name. Like Postman Pat or Noddy. (Bless.) Some people try to catch the coat-tails of someone else’s fame – for example, by shooting them. One general (whose name is ironically only approximately remembered) had his shot at fame by destroying the Temple of Diana.

A very popular method these days is to sign up for a reality show on TV. Of course, you have to choose carefully. You need a grain of talent to gain a place on Masterchef. (Unless of course you are already famous for something else. In that case you are readily offered further fame regardless of talent, as a chef or dancer or ice-skater. To him who has, it will be given.)

But those lacking talent can still get their 2 minutes of fame (falling short of Andy Warhol’s utopian 15) on the freak-show of the X-Factor auditions.  Or simply Big Brother, which openly embraces the fact that its participants simply want to be famous.

I have a proposal for the next series of Big Brother. At the start of this piece, I objected to our being told the name of the boat race swimmer. Following the same logic, I would like to see the identity of the next lot of self-publicists carefully concealed. Let them preen into the Big Brother house in front of a crowd of carefully-chosen unbelievers, who will dutifully wave and cheer and then utterly forget the utterly forgettable. They will be there again, when the suckers emerge.

Let there be cameras all over the house, and let no film be made. (This seems to work quite well with CCTV. The bad guys see cameras and tailor their behaviour accordingly.)

And then (this is the clever bit) comes the “real” reality TV. Let secret cameras follow each emerging contestant into the outside world, and let us all watch their bemused response as they realise that nobody knows who they are.

But above all: we do not want to know their names.

(Or maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe Big Brother is a necessary conduit. Maybe without it, people would be reduced to shooting people, destroying religious buildings, wrecking sports events, or demonstrating their catastrophic inability to sing.)

How to save the planet

My wife remarked the other day how many baby-wipes we get through with our toddler. It's a small thing, but it reminded me of a question on QI a year or two ago, about environmental damage. And it seems that if you're looking for the biggest carbon culprit, you can forget about dogs or horses: and presumably the Porches and petrochemicals and fossil fuels and fighter planes which sustain our democracy. The greatest carbon damage, it turns out, is achieved by having children.

That is: to save the planet, stop having children. This will probably work: but taking the human race out of circulation seems a little drastic.

I expect there are some with an agenda who would approve. Our extinction would doubtless be well-deserved, might be pursued (by quicker methods) by certain religious sects seeking divine approval, and is also  the logical end of eco-terrorism. I don’t know whether there are militant nihilists out there, who reckon creation “ex nihilo” was a bad move, and would like to restore our bit of the universe to its pristine chaos.

I wonder, though, about the Buddhist take. The end of the world would free us all from that troublesome reincarnation business: but I don’t think Buddhists are actually meant to kill people. So would Buddhists approve the “QI agenda" of letting humanity die by simply not having children? It is probably the surest way of saving the planet.

But what does it mean for the path to Nirvana? If I’ve got this right, current reincarnation arrangements allow you to be - as it were - promoted (eventually to a life as a monk, and thence to Nirvana) or relegated. Someone relegated to (say) a flea can presumably work their way up through the leagues of newts and newspaper magnates.

But if all the human divisions are removed, will it be possible to gain Nirvana? Or will the spiritual Premiership forever be out of reach? It’s like removing the Championship and League One and Two, along with the various feeder leagues: so that qualification for the Premiership will depend on improbable performances in the pub leagues.

Meanwhile we are rapidly filling the air, sea and soil with stuff with unguessable side-effects. It’s quite likely that we will all soon be infertile, the QI agenda will be fulfilled, and the planet will be saved. (Without abandoning the consumerist agenda! Win-win.)