David Landon Cole – Page 18 – David Landon Cole

Liberal criticism of the BBC

Posted on March 3, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

As I have said before, I am fan of the BBC. That does not mean it receives my unqualified support.

I’m afraid I think that the arguments of the ‘Biased BBC’ et al. are rather mean-spirited. Although I disagree with it very strongly, there is a perfectly respectable argument against the BBC’s existence. You could, for instance, say that for a government to have its own broadcaster is dangerous or that it gives the state control over the EM spectrum that would be better dealt with as private property. Although I disagree with them, they are serious arguments that bear consideration.

There is also an argument to say that the BBC is biased. I know Labour activists who consider the BBC to be anti-Labour at the moment (having been anti-Tory during the Thatcher years). There are, as we know, people who feel the BBC is incorrigibly left-wing. These are both arguments for change or reform, but they do not address the rationale behind the BBC’s existence. Funnily enough, I know people in the Labour party who are convinced of its anti-Labour bias; Cameron’s comments are picked up more readily than Brown’s, Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson are there as commentators and the BBC really had it in for Blair over Iraq. Some of the criticisms of the pinko-liberal-Guardianista-limp wristed-vegetarian BBC as trying to force multiculturalism down our throat may be defused by the ‘White’ series that is about to start; we shall see, but you cannot say that the BBC does not grasp the nettle. To try to remove something you don’t like by running it down rather than honestly expressing your arguments is, if nothing else, profoundly undemocratic and expressive of a despair of convincing others of your opinions.

It also makes it harder to constructively criticise the BBC. There are some specific criticisms I would make.

One of the great things about the interweb in general and blogging in particular is that anyone can say what they want, run it up the flagpole and see if anyone else salutes it. It allows for personal, intellectual development, communication and entertainment. That doesn’t mean that everything, much or anything that’s said is worth saying. Much like the end of the film version of Fahrenheit 451, it is impossible to make out a single book because everyone is talking. On the internet, real estate is cheap or free, so it doesn’t matter. BBC News 24 has a grand total of twenty-four hours per day; broadcasting time is limited. Given that I can find out what Barry from Bognor thinks by looking on the internet or ‘pressing the red button’, I fail to see why newscasters feel the need to read out the blitherings of people trying to make a soundbite.

I have a particular complaint against newsreaders. The key there is reader; someone who reads from a prepared script and, if the VT fails, might have to apologise and come back to that story later. They are not there to interview; some of the questions they come out with are particularly uninformed. Why would they be anything else? I am happy to hear a correspondent’s opinions because they specialise in a subject. My concentration span is not so short that I need a thirty-second spot broken up into sub-bite-sized chunks.

Emotive words are another bugbear. Part of the BBC’s remit is to report the facts; describing something with a phrase like ‘terrible atrocity’ attaches an emotive content that the BBC has no right to do. I similarly object to the hand-waving tendency. Watch any news broadcast, BBC or not, and you will see an awful lot of gesticulation. I fear that the reason for this is much the same as the emoting and interviewing; journalists want to be the centre of attention. Someone else cannot be allowed to take the screen during their face time and not only must their story be the most important but we must know that it is their story and we are privileged to receive their opinion. A competent telling of the facts is not enough for them. The genesis of this trend is obvious enough – the emotional impact of certain exceptional stories, like Michael Buerk’s reporting of the famine in Ruritania and the rise of celebrity newscasters. It would be entirely fair to say that I want the BBC to talk about ‘a dying child in the same tones as one would talk about the parts of an internal combustion engine’. The BBC has a strict duty to neutrality that the leader of the Labour party simply does not.

This is part of a general dumbing-down of news. I think the phrase is a little unfortunate; it is rather a dumbing-down of us, the audience, in the opinions of the news broadcasters. This is, I think, due in no small part to the baleful influence of the market’s tendency towards replication of successful models. While Sky News may well make money, they are a commercial organization that makes profit in a manner that the BBC does not. I would also raise the issue of Rupert Murdoch. It is true that the BBC cannot be biased and it is true that interference by the state in broadcasting is, at the very best, seriously problematic and at worst dangerous. However, if all the media subscribes to a given view or set of views, it becomes increasingly difficult to generate and sustain a reasoned debate. Rebekah Wade’s recent appearance at Parliament notwithstanding, I do not believe that Rupert Murdoch exercises no editorial influence over his large stable of media.

As I mentioned above, some of the criticisms made of the BBC are not unreasonable. It would be wholly wrong of the BBC to come out and say that Gordon Brown is the second coming or that David Cameron is like mayonnaise¹. There is an implicit bias whenever private, emotional qualifiers are attached to a bare-facts story. This doesn’t mean that investigative shows cannot go on or that Paxman can press people on Newsnight. It doesn’t mean that people and their actions cannot be criticised by the BBC. It does mean, though, that the separation needs to remain and to be clear.

Alex Deane, in what can only be a portent of the last days, has said that there is something positive on the BBC: the Larkin Tapes. I think he accepts that this is a “good thing” that would not be provided by the market. I disagree with Alex’s sentiment inasmuch as I don’t think the BBC should just be producing things that are high-quality but not likely to be produced by the market (or programming for the middle classes); it should be, in the same manner as its news programming, be providing a spur to improve the general level of programming by closing the option of producing endless, cheap programming to commercial broadcasters. Now, it’s easy to see how that happens with David Attenborough. I am unconvinced that ‘What Not to Wear’, ‘Changing Rooms’ or ‘Airport’ meet that test as good value for public money. The amount of money that some presenters – notably but not exclusively Jonathan Ross, who earns £4.5m a year – earn is out of proportion to what could be bought with that money given that the BBC doesn’t need to compete in the chat show market.

In short, I think that the BBC could fulfil its remit more effectively by having less programming but programming that forces other channels to avoid a race to the bottom.
There is a similar debate to be had around sports. This may just be because I don’t particularly like most sport, but I don’t know that chasing after the top sports is a good use of public money given that it’s available on satellite television in (what seems like) every public house in the land. Equally, there is precious little coverage of teams lower down the leagues. If I think of the town where I was born – Yeovil – the football team³ is a major part of the life of the area. It’s the only decent football team for some distance around. Promoting it on the television would do more for the area and the team than showing a Manchester derby, for instance, particularly as there seems to be no shortage of coverage of the top flight. I suspect the same is replicated across the country and for other sports. Under its new Charter, the BBC has to apply a public value assessment that I am not sure this meets. The counter-argument – that this is part of our culture and so needs to be available to all – doesn’t hold up to even the most cursory glance and, in any case, applies as much to the first and second divisions as the Premier League.

BBCi, the name for Auntie’s collective online offering, generally works pretty well it complements and isn’t trying to usurp the TV or radio. I hope that the revamp that will be happening soon goes well and isn’t too slavishly ‘Web 2.0’. My criticism of letting the passenger on the Clapham omnibus have their 160-letter text read out doesn’t apply as web real estate is very cheap and close to limitless. That having been said, I hope it remains a very minor part; most of the comments on the forums are, frankly, worthless. Moreover, I hope the BBC stays away from social media and similar

I am very supportive of the idea of the iPlayer and I hope it’s extended so that more of the classics from yesteryear are available. However, the Beeb has chosen to limit its iPlayer content to that you have to use Microsoft Internet Explorer on a computer with Microsoft Windows XP or Vista for full functionality. Anyone using an older version of Windows or any flavour of Mac or Linux is shut out. This is a reversal of its previous policy of platform agnosticism. DRM is controversial and, at best, deeply flawed. I will save rehearsing the arguments but will say that if the BBC insisted you used a (say) Panasonic TV to watch a programme in colour, we’d be up in arms. This is precisely what is happening with iPlayer. Quite aside from giving a commercial advantage to a single commercial company, it is a particularly bad company to have chosen. It has recently announced Service Pack 1 for its new operating system, Vista. There is nothing unusual in that, except that it might stop programmes working. An advantage of platform neutrality (and, but not necessarily, open source) is that it is much harder for a single actor to cause serious damage. Equally, Microsoft has courted controversy for its attitude towards free markets. Having just been fined €800m (yes, eight hundred million euro) for anticompetitive practices, Microsoft finds itself being hauled up by Neelie Kroes once again.

I hope that the basis on which I support the BBC is clear; it should not be a government-funded version of Sky News or CNN, ITV or UK Gold. It should be making things available that wouldn’t be otherwise and providing such things as might be available at a certain quality that provides a benchmark. The commercial networks don’t seem to achieve this. Channel Four’s unusual setup seems to work, but it does have a lot of misfires.

I have not addressed the World Service, which I think is wonderful; I wish that BBC News 24 were more like it. I hope the BBC continues; I just hope that it is not another source of dross.

xD.

1 – Rich, thick and oily²
2 – and smells faintly of eggs
3 – I declare an interest; my brother is a physio at Yeovil Town FC.

We still can’t turn them away

Posted on February 26, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

The government is continuing to fail to live up to its responsibilities to Iraqis who worked for the UK in Iraq and, now they are being hunted down as collaborators, need our help. I hand over to Dan Hardie to tell the latest chapter in this story:

Iraqi Employees: Fine words, shabby deeds

Do you like reading fine words? Here is the Prime Minister on the subject of Iraqi ex-employees of the British Government, speaking in the House of Commons on October 9th, 2007: ‘I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of our civilian and locally employed staff in Iraq, many of whom have worked in extremely difficult circumstances, exposing themselves and their families to danger. I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff, who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in what we know are uniquely difficult circumstances.’

Fine words. What about deeds?

A small number of Iraqis – fewer than a dozen, according to people close to the operation who are in contact with me- were removed from Iraq in the early autumn of 2007. Since the Prime Minister’s admirable declaration of October, how many Iraqi ex-employees have been evacuated from Iraq? According to all the Iraqis that I am in contact with: none.

Here are the words of an Iraqi employee in Iraq, emailing me, today: ‘I am still in Iraq…I hear nothing from your Governmet yet!’

Here is what this man was told on February 3 by a conscientious British Civil Servant, out in Iraq to arrange the evacuation of Iraqi ex-employees and clearly shocked by the lack of progress: ‘‘I’m sorry that everything is taking so long to complete. Please note that we are waiting to hear what happens next from London and I can assure you all that I will personally contact you as soon as I receive instructions from London to confirm the next arrangements.’

Here is why he is hiding: ‘They (the militia) keep asking my relatives and my family’s neighbors about me and they keep moving in my family’s street and keep their eyes on our home… they told them: anyone know anything about A__ he should tell us immediately and also they said: we will never give up until we catch A__ .‘

And here is what the Right Honourable Bob Ainsworth, Minister of State for Defence, wrote to David Lidington, MP, about this same man on 16th January: ‘Mr Hardie expresses concern over the handling of a claim for assistance by a former employee of British Forces, Mr A_ … Mr A_ is eligible for the assistance scheme, and we have passed his details on to the Border and Immigration Agency who will take forward his request for resettlement in the UK via the Gateway programme. Assuming that there are no problems with Mr A__’s immigration checks he should be able to leave Iraq by the end of January…’ I added the emphasis, and I can also say that I have it in writing from the MoD that there were no problems with Mr A__’s immigration checks.

The Border and Immigration Agency is the Home Office Agency handling the last phase of the operation to resettle Iraqi ex-employees. And it is the BIA, according to every source of information that I have, that is delaying the evacuation of the Iraqis.

It is also supposed to be the Home Office that is co-ordinating the provision of housing to those Iraqis who do get resettled in the UK. In the House of Lords last month there was a debate on Iraq at the request of Lord Fowler, whom I had briefed on Iraqi ex-employees. Lord Chidgey, later backed by the Earl of Sandwich, asked a very pertinent question of the Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch Brown, and he did not get a good answer: ‘…on the resettlement of Iraqis at risk under the Gateway Protection Programme, the Minister will be aware that its success is dependent on a sufficient number of local authorities participating. There is considerable concern that this is not the case at present. Will he advise what steps the Government are taking to ensure that local authorities will come forward?’

There are many operational and logistical difficulties in the way of an operation: I know that. But the Government has known about these people for at least six months, and has been publicly committed to helping them for over four months. That is enough time to plan for the difficulties- far more time than you usually get in a war.

The Home Office is dawdling while people are threatened with death.This is either incompetence in the face of a crisis, or it is a deliberate policy of putting bureaucratic obstacles in the face of fugitives. Neither is acceptable.

And beyond that, the policy itself is being used to keep out Iraqis who can prove that they worked for British forces, and who can prove that their lives are at risk as a result. One man, Hamed, worked for British forces on Shaibah Logistics Base for over two years, as the Government accepts. He was threatened by the militias, and gunmen went to his house, so he moved his family to Syria and slept on the base’s floor. He continued to work for the British. Hamed finally was given ‘notice to quit’ Shaibah when the base closed, and fled to Syria, where he cannot legally work and where he and his family are safe (so far) but hungry. The British Government knows who Hamed is. A British Army NCO who knew him has confirmed every detail of his story to me, saying that he knew that Hamed had reported the threats against him to the military authorities. The Government has written to Hamed to reject any claim for help, since he was ‘not directly employed’ by the military.

Another man, Waleed, was directly employed by the military, in 2005 and 2006. He worked as an interpreter for one Army unit for its six month tour, during which time he was fired upon and chased by militiamen as he made his way to the base; he started work for a second unit, after which he received a threat on his mobile phone detailing where he lived, what he did, and what would happen to him if he ‘collaborated’ any more. He was also hunted in Iraq, and has also fled to Syria. A British Government letter, which I have seen, informed him that he would not be assisted since he had not worked for the twelve-month period specified by the Government’s policy- which, alas, the militias do not seem to respect.

We got the Government to admit to its moral responsibilities. Now we have to get them to match their deeds to their words.

Please write a letter to your MP. His or her address is The House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA. If you don’t know who your constituency MP is, go here and type your postcode in. When you’ve sent a letter, follow it up with an email: his or her address will normally be SURNAMEINITIAL@parliament.uk – for example BROWNG@parliament.uk

Two or three days after you have written the letter, call the Parliamentary switchboard on 0207 219 3000 and ask for your MP’s office. Repeat your concerns to the secretary or research assistant you speak to (and be nice: most of these people work damn hard for little reward), check that your letter has been received, and politely request that the MP ask questions of Ministers and reply to you. In your email, your letter, and your phone calls, you must be courteous: insulting an MP or a research assistant will discredit this cause. Talking points for the letter are below:

The Prime Minister announced a review of British policy towards its Iraqi ex-employees, due to the threats of murder they faced, on August 8th 2007, and he announced a change in that policy on October 9th, 2007. The Foreign Secretary made a more detailed policy statement on October 30th, 2007.

Nearly four months later no Iraqis who have applied under the scheme have been evacuated from Iraq.

Not one Iraqi ex-employee living as an illegal immigrant in Syria or Jordan has been resettled under the scheme.

A debate in the House of Lords on DATE contained several references to resettlement being blocked by the failure of the Home Office to provide housing in the UK. The Home Office has had between four and six months to plan for this eventuality: it is inexcusable that they have not done so.

Would the MP please put down written Questions to the Home Secretary asking why the Home Office is unable to live up to the Prime Minister’s publicy expressed commitment to rehouse Iraqi ex-employees whose lives are at risk for having worked for British forces?

Would the MP please write in private to the Home Secretary, and to the Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne MP, asking what provision their department has made to implement a policy decided in early October, and further asking them if they are aware that lives are at risk and that rapid action needs to be taken?

Would the MP also please write to the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary asking how many Iraqis who are ex-Employees of their departments have been resettled, and asking why Iraqis who are at risk for having worked for British forces are being abandoned for having ‘worked for less than 12 months’?

Can the MP please forward these letters to the Prime Minister, who personally approved the change in policy.

And finally, can the MP please reply to you with details of any Government response.

If you want: you can give your MP my name and email address (danhardie.blog@gmail.com ) and tell them that I am in contact with a number of Iraqi ex-employees inside and outside Iraq, none of whom have received help from the Government, and that I would be happy to brief them with confidential details of these cases, either by telephone, email or in person at their Parliamentary offices. They should feel free to contact me.

When you get a reply to your letter, email me (again, at danhardie.blog@gmail.com ) -it’s very important that I know which MPs are sympathetic and what the Government is telling them. And email me if you have anything else that needs saying. Thank you.

xD.

Dhimmitude

Posted on February 11, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

Dhimmitude is a pejorative term that refers to people in the West who, in the opinion of users of the word, are guilty of surrendering to Islam. Islam, it would appear by reading the profferings of people who use the term, is the greatest evil out there and it seeks to insist that all non-Muslims under its sway live in conditions analogous to the worst varieties of dhimma; that is to say, subjugation for non-Muslims. As a dhimmi (as I understand it), certain rights were protected to varying degrees depending on the secular political situation but, in all variants, there was an exclusion from the political arena inasmuch as the decisions could only be taken by Muslims.

I mention this in light of the debate around my post on Liberal Conspiracy and, more broadly, the furore around Dr Rowan Williams’ comments on sharia. My favourites come from the Daily Mail website, which includes this gem from ‘Alastair’

What so many Muslims seem to conveniently forget is that Britain is not an Islamic country. If they want to live under Sharia law, they should go back to an Islamic country. If you live in Britain, obey its laws’

As I have tried (at length) to point out, sharia law is not necessarily a replacement for current law; it is not even a single entity. Rather, it is a manner of thinking. Much of the opposition to Dr Williams’ remarks is Islamophobic inasmuch as it is based on an irrational fear of Islam. Much of the rest, as above, is on this idea that you have to accept Britain as is and that the laws, as they are, are a positive expression of ‘Britishness’ and that any deviation from that is to be stepped on while people who want to live differently should be grateful for being able to associate with Britons. This unBritishness, according to the Bishop of Winchester, extends to homosexuality. Sounds a bit like… dhimmitude.

Earlier in the same thread, ‘David’ (no relation) said:

Oh yes, Lambeth Palace says the Archbishops comments are too academic for the population at large.

QED.

xD.

In defence of the Archbishop of Canterbury

Posted on February 9, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is in trouble over his comments on the incorporation of Sharia law into UK law.

It is my opinion that Dr Williams’ suggestions deserve reasoned consideration; that they do not require a change in the nature of the law; and that much of the opposition to them, implicitly, requires a very grave change in the law from defining what is illegal to defining what is legal.

I think it’s important to work out exactly what the most reverend Primate is saying. It has generally been reported as ‘sharia law is unavoidable’ along with cries of Londonistan and dhimmitude.

According to this transcript of an interview between the Archbishop and Jonathan Landau, what Dr Williams believes is that

“the application of Sharia in certain circumstances if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion seems unavoidable”

What I intend to do in this post is briefly to sum up Dr Williams’ argument before giving my reasons for supporting it. I will then seek to show not only that the arguments used to oppose his comments are based on misconceptions, accidental or otherwise, of his opinions and that they, in fact, to a great deal to damage community relations in the UK. Finally, I will reflect on the implications of Dr Williams’ comments and the reaction they have provoked.

I apologise if it seems a bit pretentious to lay things out like that, but this is going to be a longer post than usual.

1. Dr Williams’ argument.

I am basing this section on the aforementioned transcript and the text of his lecture that can be found here.

Dr Williams can probably cast his eye towards Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, declining attendances and growing secularism and realise that, one day, the Church of England will be disestablished. He is, in essence, preparing the groundwork for the Church of England to retain some of its privilege and position when that occurs. Within that framework, I think that sharia is being used a shorthand for the principle of providing a statutory framework for the implementation of religious law, within bounds set by civil law, where all parties concerned consent.

The first things that Dr Williams says are; that sharia is misunderstood; that there is no single conception of sharia; and that he does not advocate the extreme interpretations of sharia that exist.

“far from being a monolithic system of detailed enactments, sharia designates primarily – to quote [Tariq] Ramadan again – ‘the expression of the universal principles of Islam {and} the framework and the thinking that makes for their actualization in human history’”

and

“what most people think they know of sharia is that it is repressive towards women and wedded to archaic and brutal physical punishments”

He is also at pains to point out that acceptance of sharia law categorically does not mean rejection of civil law. Indeed, the examples he gives are:

in modern times, the clearest articulation of this was in the foundation of the Pakistani state under Jinnah; but other examples (Morocco, Jordan) could be cited of societies where there is a concept of citizenship that is not identical with belonging to the umma

The implication of this is that someone can choose to submit themselves to religious law but (from the point of view of the Weberian state) has no choice but to submit themselves to civil law.

Williams goes onto identify three, specific implications of the concept. They are, in short, greater attachment to law based on personal belief than state-membership; effective persecution of the most vulnerable members of society being facilitated; and the lack of necessity of exercising legal rights to any or their full degree.

Williams openly accepts that some people claim religion as a defence for all sorts of odd actions:

A recent example might be the reported refusal of a Muslim woman employed by Marks and Spencer to handle a book of Bible stories.

His answer, simply, is to say that this is a cultural trait, not a religious trait. By the terms of Williams argument, this is a non-issue. While there is a debate as to what extent some things are cultural or religious and while there are primitivist interpretations of Islam , the general principle is that people cannot claim religion to explain their actions or lack of actions without reason behind it.

The second implication is that supplementary legal opinion-givers could be used to compel weaker people to accept their judgements. This is essentially a question about social pressure. Williams’ solution is prior consent. For what its worth, I find that unsatisfactory. I would prefer prior consent to the system and consent before each individual binding judgement; it is not a problem if it is in an advisory capacity.

The third point, here, is key. Under English law, I am entitled to file for divorce from any spouse I may have. That does not mean that I have to file for divorce at any given time, or at all. If I file for divorce, a (properly constructed) pre-nuptial agreement or parting on good terms may make things all pretty easy to decide. If not, arbitration can be used without the intervention of the state. All Williams suggests is that Islamic jurisprudence should be considered as a possible source of reasonable arbitration.

Unfortunately, Williams, in a somewhat academic fashion, comes round to his point by a circuitous route. He is essentially saying not just that people should be able to choose, where the choice is freely made, an arbiter in certain legal processes but that an Islamic arbiter could have an official recognition that makes it the source of arbitration of choice, increasing the extent to which its judgements are exposed to critical assessment.

At all times, civil law would retain its absolute, unqualified primacy; any body giving opinions under sharia would not be able to go beyond what is prescribed by law.

2. The weakness of the opposition

The opposition to Dr Williams’ comments comes, to my mind, in three forms. They are wilful misinterpretation, Christian traditionalism and republican culturalism.

To deal with the wilful misinterpretation, I turn to the great organ of the state, The Sun, which asks:

YOU THE JURY
SHOULD the Archbishop of Canterbury be sacked for his comments on Sharia law?

The Archbishop of Canterbury serves at the pleasure of the Queen; I would have thought that The Sun would not want to encroach on HM’s remit.

Earlier, The Sun says

FOR many, Sharia law will forever be linked to the grainy images smuggled out of Saudi Arabia or Iran of people being beheaded or even stoned to death.

It is Rowan Williams’ belief (and it is one I share) that there is no one, singular, authoritative sharia. To conflate the extremes of Wahhabism with Dr Williams’ proposals is intellectually cheap and, to be honest, morally bankrupt.

Melanie Phillips’ has a slightly different misinterpretation. To be fair, I think that it is less deliberate; Phillips, while I disagree with her profoundly, is intellectually honest. Quoth the raven:

Either way, his proposal would also mean that Britain would simply abandon its female Muslim citizens whose parlous position in respect of forced marriages, honour killings and all the other horrors that follow from their second-class religious status would be institutionalised by giving sharia law official recognition. Dr Williams says such women should still retain the right of appeal to the English courts if their human rights were breached under sharia. What absurdity is this? It is the cultural assumptions which flow from sharia which lead to the oppression of Muslim women. How is the right of appeal to human rights law going to help women who are beaten and killed by men who do it in the name of religion? In order to protect our female Muslim citizens, we need to remove from them the yoke of sharia law, not institutionalise it with the seal of official approval.

Dr Williams does not merely say that there would be a right of appeal, but that there would have to be prior consent. Equally, there is a feminist current within sharia that Williams, I think, seeks to encourage. Certainly, I know a couple of observant, Muslim women who cannot be characterised as other than feminist in the Western tradition. They happen to bolt on to this the wearing of a veil based on a practical suggestion from the Koran – that men ogle women.

The next current of opposition is Christian traditionalism, for I which will turn to Danny Finkelstein.

As I argued in my column yesterday, this is a Christian country, even if (unbelievably) the Archbishop himself wishes it were not so. Everyone is entitled to worship any religion or none but this under British law and with due respect for the way that British traditions hold in public space.
Fortunately these traditions include remarkable tolerance for others, a welcome and interest in the practice of others and great generosity of spirit. But such values are not abstract one, conjured out of nowhere. They are rooted in this country’s history and practice as a Christian nation.

Which is, frankly, bizarre. It was Christianity that led to the expulsion of the Jews, for starters. It is Christianity that led to blasphemy being a crime that is still on the statute book. It is a subset of Christians who are trying to keep it there and keep it used. It was Christianity that led to persecution of Catholics because they were the wrong sort of Christian. It is true that Christianity also motivated (say) William Wilberforce or countless other doers of good works. To say that there is such a thing as monolithic Christianity in the UK is, frankly, ignoring several hundred years of inconvenient truths; indeed, there is a decent argument to be made that the strength of the Liberal Democrats in the far South West of England is due in no small part to arguments between Church and Chapel.

Finkelstein says:

“There are any number of places in the world where people can live under Sharia law. This isn’t one of them.
Nor should it be.”

In other words, he is saying that people cannot have a moral code different to the minimum enforced by the State so long as it does not go beyond the bounds laid out by the State.

This Christian traditionalism goes as far as to invent for itself a mythology. Ruth Gledhill’s article in the Times is accompanied by some pictures. Do please take a look at them; they represent one aspect of Islam out of many and I will say no more than that I do not believe that they help the debate.

Gledhill says that:

The Church of England was born out of an express desire to rid Britain of a foreign, ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Article 37 of the 39 says: ‘The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.’ Queen Elizabeth I early in her reign decreed that the Crown had restored to it ‘the ancient jurisdiction over the state ecclesiastical and spiritual, abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same’.

Which is an almighty assumption. The Church of England was not born out of any one desire, but a combination of the spiritual and political desires of certain, militant clergymen with the financial wherewithal to visit parishes across the country, the King’s coveting of the monasteries’ wealth and the desire of Elizabeth I, in choosing the Via Media, to keep the country together. Equally, Henry VIII was not motivated solely by spiritual concerns but very temporal concerns, including, for instance, cosying up to the German Lutheran states in case of actions by the Holy Roman Empire in the form of Charles V.

Article Thirty-Seven of the Thirty-Nine articles does indeed refer to the Bishop of Rome. Sadly, Gledhill doesn’t quote the full article, which runs:

“The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England and other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not nor ought to be subject to any foreign jurisdiction“Where we attribute to the Queen’s Majesty the chief government, by which titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended, we give not to our princes the ministering either of God’s word or of sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen doth most plainly testify: but that only prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself, that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers. The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.

“The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences.

“It is lawful for Christian men at the commandment of the Magistrate to wear weapons and serve in the wars.”

It is not my belief that the Queen is ordained by God, as article XXXVII suggests; equally, it is as much about saying that the singular Catholic authority had no power, as it claimed, in either the temporal or spiritual affairs of England. Firstly, that is a fiat. Secondly, it was written in 1563 and as such may not be completely adequate for today’s world. Thirdly, they have never been universally accepted; indeed, the Archbishop of Armagh said, as long ago as 1643, that

Some of them are the very same thing that are contained in the Creed; some others of them are practical truths, which come not within the proper list of points or articles to be believed; lastly, some of them are pious opinions or inferior truths, which are proposed by the Church of England to all her sons, as not to be opposed; not as essentials of Faith necessary to be believed by all Christians ‘necessitate medii’, under pain of damnation.

The argument I have most often heard for maintaining the position of the Bishops in the House of Lords is that they can do the detailed thinking on moral issues for a predominantly Christian country. The debate on the issue has been reduced to hectoring and invalid heuristic by not just the gutter press but by papers like The Times, the newspaper of record, with a heavy dose of wilful ignorance of and outright hostility to Islam because it is the fashion of the day.

We then have what I term republican culturalism. That is to say, the promotion of an official state culture with what are, essentially, republican goals on the French model. The most succinct example I have found of that so far is on Donal Blaney’s blog:

The maxim “when in Rome, do as the Romans” springs to mind. If muslims want to live under sharia law or a caliphate they are of course free to do so – outside Britain. Our country is based on the rule of law and equality before the law. If these extremists who so hate Britain want to leave, maybe we ought to offer to pay their airfares. For if we truly want social cohesion, the adoption of sharia law is the worst thing we can do.

I reject, in the very strongest possible terms, the maxim that Blaney cites for two reasons. There are many things about our polity that I dislike and I do what I can to change them; I consider it to be an obligation on a citizen. Sadly, most people do not, and I would not like people to let their beliefs slide and not try to enter into debate around them; that is moral cowardice. Secondly, the Muslims in question are British. They are, at any rate, at least as British as George III was. Although he said, in his first speech to Parliament, that

born and bred in this country I glory in the name of Briton

he was the son of immigrants, the first Hanoverian to be actually born in England and was also a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and latterly King of Hanover. I reject the territorial assertion of nationality; it is a much more complex, nuanced matter.

It may well be that some people who confess the Islamic faith wish to do live under a caliphate. I do not; however, I believe that they have a right to argue for Britain to become a caliphate. I believe that if they want to use the provisions of English law in new, innovative and legal ways, they should be congratulated on their ingenuity, wished the best and made it clear that I won’t stop saying that I disagree with their choices.

These are not people who hate Britain; they can, quite easily, go to other countries. However, the many advantages of living in Britain mean that they would rather stay here. All that Dr Williams has suggested is that we might, within the existing spirit of the laws, make some accommodations. I will return to this theme in my closing remarks.

3. Effects on social cohesion

As I have said, I believe that some people have deliberately misconstrued Dr Williams’ words. The effect is to suggest to the readers of, inter alia, The Sun that there is a realistic possibility of Saudi-style sharia becoming the primary source of law in the United Kingdom and that the Primate of All England supports the idea. That raises a hostility that becomes misdirected from its misbegotten birth.

What Dr Williams has suggested is that the strict delineation that some seek between ‘Western’ or ‘Christian’ sources of law and ‘Eastern’ or ‘Islamic’ sources of law is not in any way helpful as it leads to unnecessary tensions between culture, religion and citizenship. His argument is that these can be ameliorated by, as occurs with the battei din, accommodations within the existing legal framework. This goes on an informal basis, but formalising it could improve the situation by increasing transparency, visibility and accountability.

Let me turn to the comments of one of my favourite bloggers, Iain Dale:

I don’t want any form of Sharia Law in this country at all. Ever. That is not being Islamaphobic. It’s my opinion and it’s one shared by 99 per cent of the British people, as well as, I suspect, by the majority of British Muslims.. Sharia Law has nothing in common with British values and parts of it could fairly be desribed as downright evil. Anyone who believes that women and men are equal in the eyes of society and the law could not countenance it.

Let us replace sharia law with Jewish law, and see how that sounds. The battei din exist and get on with life without the approval or otherwise of Mr Dale. Even Nye Bevan, who declared in no uncertain terms his views on Tories:

No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party

did not seek to ban Tory rule. I would have hoped that Iain – as someone broadly within the liberal tradition – would have recognised that I can live my life as I see fit and, so long as I remain within the law, his opinions matter not a hoot. What is being proposed by Dr Williams is the same.

It suggests to me that a great deal of the problems around Islam in the UK at the moment is due to the rampant paranoia expressed by some commentators, aided and abetted by a general anti-religionism (and no, I don’t mean anti-clericism) of the Dawkins variety.

I turn to the effects of Dr Williams’ proposal by looking at one particular aspect, mutah. I do not present myself as expert, so let me explain that I understand mutah to be a concept within the Shia interpretation of Islam that provides for temporary marriages which, for the duration of the marriage, lay certain obligations on both parties analogous to a ‘full’ marriage and whereby any offspring cannot be disowned by either party after the expiration of the body of the arrangement. It is, in fact, a contract, as is marriage. Making an allowance for a contract of this nature would (it can be contended)

4. Implications

If I have a contract with someone and we wish to renegotiate that contract, there is no obligation for that renegotiation to have any recourse to the state. English law says what is illegal, not what is legal; there is no prescription of the ‘good’ life. Therefore, I can conduct myself, within the law, in any manner I see fit. If someone has a problem with that, they are welcome to polemicise and to remonstrate, as am I. From this principle, we have arbitration. In (say) a labour dispute, parties can accept the binding judgement of a third party as to what is ‘fair’. If we change that, we are fundamentally changing the nature of liberty in the UK.

I find it deeply worrying; people who set themselves up as defenders of liberty are, in fact, falling on half-understood interpretations of religious texts from some centuries past in what is, in effect, the result of the fear of the unknown.

These are sensitive issues; sobriety is needed. The reaction of many sections of the press – to put words into the Archbishop’s mouth that are quite different from what he said – inflames tensions in the name of money. God and mammon, indeed. The assertion of Christianity, tradition, history and cultural norms I find repugnant as it is an appeal to the dead and not to reason. Equally, the assertions are based on misinterpretations, which makes me think that they are phobic of Islam; they have an unreasonable, pathological fear. There are, for instance, sections of Islam that would shut themselves off from all who don’t agree with their interpretation of the world. Making any generalisation about contemporary Islamic practice on the basis of such a group is like comparing the Church of England to the Exclusive Brethren. I would add that the official Christian tradition in England is, at least since the first Elizabeth, that of the Via Media. It is a tradition of accommodation and delaying unnecessary conflict in the hope that it dissipates.

I state the point again, because it is important. The right to arbitration exists already; formalising it could actually improve some of the problems with extremists in British Islam at the moment.

If people want to go to arbitration, they can choose whichever arbiters they like, whether I’m happy about it or not. Equally, to suggest that looking at alternate sources of law is totally unreasonable – particularly when the call comes from a religious figure who presumably wants some sort of Christian law – and not even worthy of debate is a little strange; after all, we have a mix of sources of law in the UK already, statute and precedent.

I suppose you could say if Mohammed will not come to the magistrate, the magistrate will have to come to Mohammed.

xD.

1 – I recommend Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars for more on this era

PS I have written this at a rate of knots, and so apologise for any offence I have caused by by mode of expression; it is unintentional.

Why I intend to vote for Ken Livingstone

Posted on January 29, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

The issue that affects me most on a day-to-day basis that falls within the Mayor’s power is transport. It is my experience that transport – mainly the buses – has improved. There are more buses; they are new and clean; night provision has improved; and there are more routes.¹ The Oyster card has worked brilliantly, the only opposition to it coming from some mainline train operators; apart from being quicker to use, it offers good value, particularly considering daily rate capping.

Beyond that, there is a vision for London’s transport; Crossrail, the Croydon tram, the cross-river tram, support for cycling & walking and the aforementioned Oyster card are examples of a decent, integrated multimodal transport system. London Overgrouns, though, has to be one of the best things to happen to transport in London for some time. When the project is complete, the London Borough of Hackney will actually have tube stattions, for one thing, but it is also a remarkably effective way of loadsharing as the first step towards an orbirail system. By highlighting on the map the existence of these lines and shifting from a timetable to metro system, ridership and accesibility is increased with minimal laying down of track.²

The congestion charge was incredibly controversial when it was brought in; it has been so successful that even Mr Johnson talks in abstract terms of reform and efficiency but not of scrapping it. Again, Mr Livingstone had a positive vision for London that he offered to London and implemented successfully before standing on his record.

The next thing that concerns me is housing. Whatever protestations Boris Johnson may make, boroughs controlled by his party do worst in terms of building affordable housing. Wandsworth successfully built three units in 2007. Where Messrs Johnson and Paddick say they wish to cooperate with the boroughs, Mr Livingstone is rather more in touch with reality by looking at how the boroughs actually behave.

A large reason for me for voting for Ken is ‘equalities’. That covers a multitude of different issues – race, disability, gender, sexuality, religion, income &c. – but it is essentially the answer to the question “what kind of city do I want to live in?” The answer, for me, is one where I can do what I want so long as it doesn’t stop anyone else doing what they want and where anyone else can do what they want so long as they don’t stop me doing what I want. That, after some philosophical studies at LSE, is the best definition of freedom I’ve come up with. It requires not just the absence of racism or the silence of homophobes, but an active recognition that diversity is needed for London to continue as a preeminent cultural and financial centre. It requires, beyond that, an acceptance that diversity is good in and of itself. It also requires practical support for people at the bottom of the pile; the Mayor’s steps to address transport poverty suggest to me that he has a good grasp of what’s going on.

Much of the criticism of Ken, including the Despatches programme, falls, I think, into two categories; criticism of the LA and criticism of the office of the mayor. In the first instance, it refers to the failure of AMs to push their work locally – local papers, groups and so on. Quite a lot of the blame I direct at those AMs who have two full-time jobs. The other criticism is effectively that the Mayor doesn’t have enough power, and so can’t tackle issues like education and waste. I have strong sympathies with both these arguments, as does Mr Livingstone with the second, but they are not the subject of the upcoming election. The irony is that the first criticism would mean a return to the GLC and the second means the same and shows that the Mayor has been effective in persuading people to work together.

The GLA has other competences – fire, development, crime, improving deprived areas, the environment and so on. I may well return to them in future; the above are my, positive reasons for voting first preference for Ken Livingstone.

xD.

1 – the bendy bus and Routemaster are red herrings; there aren’t many
2 – objections around privatisation don’t hold up as the contracts can be unwound and there is no transfer of ownership

Opposition response to the state of the blogosphere address

Posted on January 24, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

Like Paul Evans of Hot, Ginger and Dynamite, I hail from Somerset but live in London. Paul has given a ‘State of the Blogosphere’ address in advance of President George W Bush’s final State of the Union address. In anticipation of the final opposition response to a State of the Union address by Bush, this is my opposition response to the State of the Blogosphere address.

Mr Speaker,
Mr Vice President,

Mr Evans began his State of the Blogosphere address by saying that

“Today, we are regularly advised that the blogs are the new fifth estate of British politics.”

The term ‘fourth estate’ was coined by Burke, according to Thomas Carlyle. Prior to the rise of the newspaper, people relied on the priest and the pulpit for news. The power of the fourth estate came from being able to report, independently and verifiably, the news of the day, principally from the galleries above the Houses of Lords and Commons. Here was something genuinely powerful; no longer could time, distance and obscurity protect the powerful in Westminster and Whitehall.

Or so we thought.

Power is not confined to a few acres along the banks of the Thames. It lies also in company boardrooms, and sure enough we see companies – into which I include charities – not only influencing politicians directly but also subverting the press, sometimes with the collusion of members of the press, to promote their agenda, be it sales, policies or influence. Equally, power is not confined to a few acres along the banks of the Thames. It lies also in town halls, devolved assemblies, political parties and any pub or front room where one person sits down to convince someone of something.

News reporting, though, is difficult. You have to check facts, interview, probe and search but most of all, in today’s competitive world, you have to cover an awful lot of ground. While blogs may well be able to highlight what’s going on at the council, they’re not going to be able to say what’s going on in a municipality on the other side of the world; they won’t know if something important is happening. What they can do, though, is act as a filter. I could read, in the New York Times, for instance, about what’s going on in New York city and highlight it for my readers. That is only a worthwhile effort, though, if I say why it’s important or, more generally, why I’m interested in it and why they, the readers, should be as well. Immediately, it is commentary and is filtering (despite the protestations of some about getting rid of the filters) and is biased. None of these things are bad, but they do mean that we should and, I think, do take them with a pinch of salt.

If it is commentary that it is valuable – if it is argument that can change the world – and not reporting the reported, there seems to be little point in half the UK blogosphere linking to a BBC News article on Peter Hain’s resignation. Tell me what you think, tell me why it matters but don’t be surprised if I don’t bother reading your blog if you just tell me that it happened. It would be even better if people wrote intelligently.

‘Intelligence’ comes from the Latin intellego, meaning ‘I understand’. If someone understands the situation, they would, I hope, do more than simply say ‘I like’ or ‘I dislike’. Swearblogs are one of the worst for this; while an acid tongue can help get a point across, many would do well to realise that vitriol is not invective and impudence is not satire.

I therefore question the assertion by Mr Evans about the state of the ‘left’ part of the blogosphere. The Euston Manifesto is changing thinking, for one thing, and I would venture that, as a general rule, more thinking by bloggers, at the moment, goes on towards the Labour end of the spectrum. This is not to say that all is well, or that all is bad on the right; that would clearly be false.

The great poverty of the Conservative-leaning blogosphere is that it did start first, and so it had a few stars at the beginning. Quite why people try to emulate Paul Staines in ‘breaking’ ‘stories’ is beyond me, as he, it seems, blogs more-or-less full time, which most people can’t do, and the stories he breaks are often inconsequential or plain wrong. There wasn’t a second email system and whether Brown picks his nose or not is of supreme indifference. Unfortunately, people seem to be taking the commenting habits of those early blogs as well. What good are fifty posts congratulating an author on a post? If it is a new, struggling blog then, yes, by all means congratulate, but don’t just say ‘good’ or ‘bad’; don’t resort to shorthands like ‘NuLab’ or ‘GuF’. If that’s all you have to say all the time, develop your ideas or get one page on a free host and shut up.

We have here two views of blogging. The one says that politics is best measured by noise; the other says that politics is complex and not measured by a single metric. Mr Evans concludes by saying that “The litmus test of the political blogosphere will be its capacity to sway opinion in the country at large”. On that basis, it will fail. There are too many blogs; they must be aggregated. If it is done by the media, Mr Evans’ thesis falls. If it is done by large blogs, they act in the same way as the media, and Mr Evans’ thesis falls.

Litmus is a crude indicator. Universal Indicator differentiates more finely than lichen extract, and allows us to judge the effects of the political blogosphere not just by its capacity to sway opinion but to improve opinion, to foster debate and hopefully – and this is a lot harder than throwing mud – increase, if not turnout at polls, engagement in civic society. That is something worth blogging for.

And may Tim Berners-Lee bless the netizens.

xD.

PS – The text of Carlyle I mention above, the Hero as Man of Letters, can be found here. Much of Carlyle’s work can be found here on Project Gutenberg.

Stop the War Coalition and Channel Four

Posted on January 14, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

A group has been set up on Facebook called (in capitals, so it must be important) ‘Vote Stop the War Coalition for Channel 4 News Award’. It reads rather like the headlines of spam emails and the content of the group is similarly inaccurate. The award in question is ‘most inspiring political personality of the last decade’ and the Stop the War Coalition are not (repeat: not) up for the award.

Stop the War Coalition logo ‘Anti-Iraq war protestors’ are up there along with Tony Blair, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness, Ken Livingstone, Alex Salmond and the Countryside Alliance. Have a look on the Channel Four website. The fact that the award goes to a rather nebulous group of people rather than one of the organisations behind the protests is interesting. It suggests that the brand identification of the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) is negligible and Channel Four have to copy Time Magazine‘s ‘person of the year 2006’¹ in going for a non-entity. This is rather surprising, given that the Stop the War Coalition’s logo is really rather good – easy to remember, easy to identify and easy to reproduce – and its message was supported on a grand scale.

Why, then, has the StWC declined from public view?

Part of the answer is in a previous post of mine:

If the Stop the War Coalition was going to continue as a meaningful force, it needed to attract and retain the soggy left of the ‘Various People Against Nasty Things’ variety. Providing placards that said ‘Victory to the Resistance’ was, at risk of being controversial, not the best way of building a broad coalition. It was a very good way of alienating the people who don’t consider the Socialist Worker newspaper to be some of Fleet Street’s finest editing and putting the few remainders a short step from carrying SWP banners.

although now I would add ‘We are all Hizbullah’ to ‘Victory to the Resistance’. In short, the aim was not to build a mass movement, but to increase the number of members of the SWP, StWC and RESPECT. If the hitrate for long term, useful members was (say) one in a thousand, that would still have yielded two thousand members from the Day X march alone. It made sense to the SWP; given that they believe we are in a permanent arms economy anyway, the war going ahead or not would have been largely immaterial.
Equally, the StWC didn’t represent all of the anti-war movement; it was one of three organisations, the others being CND and MAB, that called the protest. A lot of the people who opposed the war and marched under the StWC’s roundel never felt any particular attachment to it as the representations made by Lindsay German et al. never really resonated with the Chelsea tractor drivers. The messages were about imperialism, when what people felt was either that Britain was a client state or that it was just a wrong decision, badly taken. Imperialism – the desire to cow the Iraqi people – didn’t enter into most people’s opposition because they didn’t believe it to be so.

I am not sure of this point, so forgive me if sounds a bit strangled, but the StWC also sought to forge links with the Muslim communities in the UK. The questions there are which Muslim communities? and who’s linking to them?. Had the StWC really been about preventing a racist backlash in response to the Iraq war, it would have done a lot more to bring groups together. It didn’t, the evidence being the quite common anti-Muslim sentiment we see expressed in the press. I’m not blaming StWC for racism, but I am saying that they failed to do as much as they could have done because they were more interested in building a political movement that wasn’t there to be built.

There was never single set of ideas behind the brand; in essence, there never was a brand. The StWC had an organisational role that it could have used to advance political knowledge in the UK. It squandered the opportunity so that, a few years later, all people remember is that a lot of people were quite annoyed about …something.

There is, at the time of writing, no mention of the award nomination on the Stop the War Coalition website.

xD.

1 – I’m thinking of including ‘Time person of the year 2006’ on my CV.

The fourth plinth

Posted on January 13, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

The shortlist for the new installation on the Fourth Plinth have been announced. They are The Spoils of War (Memorial for an unknown civilian) by Jeremy Deller; Something for the Future by Tracey Emin; One and Other by Antony Gormley; Sky Plinth by Anish Kapoor; Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare; and Faîtes L’Art, pas La Guerre (Make Art, Not War) by Bob & Roberta Smith. Clicking on a link will take you to the relevant page on the London government website.

Models of the pieces are on display at the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square until 30 March.

One and Other Antony Gormley’s piece calls for 8,670 people to stand on the plinth for an hour each over the course of the year. Off the bat, I rather like the idea. I’m not entirely sure why, but something about putting ordinary people on the plinth is attractive to me. People could do whatever they want (I would probably take a table, chair and pot of tea) but it also emphasises the person on the street amongst the heroes of Trafalgar Square, particularly as some of the heroes aren’t very well known¹.

There is also a comparison to be made with Tracy Emin. Gormley is known for his metal body casts that have been on the skyline around the Hayward lately, but moved on to come up with something new, particularly as something similar to the ‘Gormies’ had already stood on the Plinth – Ecce Homo. Ms Emin did not.

Something for the Future I am not a fan of Tracey Emin. I have no problem with conceptual art, but I think the concepts Emin chooses to explore are uninteresting and her methods derivative. In fairness to Ms Emin, I was probably biased against her from the start. The rubric for Something for the Future reads

For some years Tracey Emin has been interested in the social behaviour of meerkats, small mammals that live together in an egalitarian order in the Kalahari Desert, southern Africa. She has noticed that ‘whenever Britain is in crisis or, as a nation, is experiencing sadness and loss (for example, after Princess Diana’s funeral), the next programme on television is Meerkats United’. Emin proposes to place a sculpture of a small group of meerkats on the empty plinth as a symbol of unity and safety.

This is an example of selection bias, as there are events as tragic that affected one person that did result in the meerkat effect (the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, for instance). It also misses the fundamental point about meerkats – they’re permanently at risk and so are always on guard. Meerkats are an example of perpetual terror, danger and flight, not unity and safety and certainly not anything I would like to feature in my future. Meerkats also have a hierarchical society, with alpha males leaving their scent on subordinates so that everyone knows who is in charge. It is also effectively nicking the aesthetics of a previous statue on the Fourth Plinth, Ecce Homo.

Make art not war The Smiths’ piece could have been very interesting. Its size would rival Nelson’s Column and I like the idea of highlighting an anti-war message on a square named for a great battle and with statues and busts of military leaders, particularly as Trafalgar Square has been the culmination for several large rallies opposed to various wars over the years. I also like the idea of powering a dynamic installation with solar and wind power. However, it falls down on one significant point: aesthetically, it’s rubbish. It is displeasing to the eye and looks like a child has cobbled together some Meccano. I don’t see why it has to be in French, and the message could be slightly more subtle than ‘make art, not war’, particularly as the presence of a huge piece of art suggests that war isn’t preventing people from making art.

The Spoils of War is trying to do the same as Make Art not War, but isn’t (to my mind) as interesting. Where Alison Lapper Pregnant or Hotel for the Birds challenge preconceived opinions, I don’t think people, given the amount of televisual and pictorial reporting, think that war is not destructive. It is interesting, though, that the shortlisting committee chose two pieces directly related to war, which I suspect is because of Trafalgar Square’s return to prominence as a place of protest following its pedestrianisation and redevelopment.

Anish Kapoor’s Sky Plinth could work and could offer some interesting photos, but I feel that something less abstract is needed following Hotel for the Birds. I would add that a brief examination of the model did not reflect the ceiling.

Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle presses all the buttons for me. It is aesthetically both striking and interesting and has multiple layers of interest – the bottle, the ship and the sails, which will be made of designs based on batik. The sails are, apparently, presumed to be of African origin, when they are more accurately a product of the mix of cultures in London and it will fit in well with the history and name of the square. The ship in a bottle also appeals to me as something quirky, which seems appropriate for eccentric London.You can leave comments on the London government website as well as here. It will come as no surprise that my preferred choices are either Yinka Shobinare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle or Antony Gormley’s One and Other. I would very much like to hear what other people think in the comments.

xD.

1 – While everyone has probably heard of Horatio Nelson, James II and George Washington, I wonder how many have heard of Henry Havelock, Charles James Napier or Andrew Cunningham.

Photos from Paris

Posted on January 10, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

Alice and I went to Paris shortly after New Year for a few days and had a lovely time. Although a bit cold, damp and grey, we thoroughly enjoyed it. A few photos follow below for your delectation. Clicking on a photo will bring it up full-size.
The Louvre pyramid

The pyramidal entrance to the Louvre is fantastic. As well as being attractive, it works well as an identifying mark for the Louvre and is functional, pouring sunlight into the basement hall beneath. The reflection of the pyramid on the edge of the fountain caught my eye; it just happened to have been drained, showing what I think is polished granite.

Veiled statues

I peered through the wooden gate you can see at the back of the photo and saw this scene from behind, but couldn’t find a decent shot. I was delighted when I could get this from the other side. Despite the Louvre being quite busy, this seemed like an ocean of calm. The sign said that it was a set of statues that had been put there to protect them from flooding. There was something very strange about these statues; they almost seemed to object to their treatment.

A rose by any other name

Talking of melancholy, this statue caught my eye. The grey days didn’t make for good photos, but you can just about see that the flower she holds is a live rose placed by someone. She seems to be choosing between love and wealth, judging by the dog next to her.

Colours

These three are just random colours together; the first is a stack of berets in a touristy shop near Notre Dame while the other two are from shops selling material in Montmartre.

xD.

Video killed the radio star

Posted on January 7, 2008January 11, 2019 by David Landon Cole

Tom Watson links to a fascinating article on Rolling Stone magazine’s website about the deleterious effects MP3s are having on the quality of music, both in terms of fidelity and whether it’s worth listening to at all. The article, which is worth reading in full¹, essentially says that people want to make music with more loudness² so that more people will listen to it (or rather, notice it) and, because of the technical restrictions on MP3s, this can only be done at the expense of sound quality. It is an interesting thesis, but it doesn’t quite give the full picture.

The problem started with MTV. Video may not have killed the radio star, but there’s pretty good evidence for GBH³. The first problem is the ‘tele‘ part of Music Television. Quite apart from television being a chimera of a Greek and a Latin word (and so no good could ever come of it), it is designed for speech, not music. This affects how the signal is modulated, transmitted, received, decoded and – most importantly – reproduced. The speakers on televisions are, as a rule, not of particularly high quality. They are more than adequate for speech programming, but they’re not going to faithfully reproduce every nuance of music; they’re not designed for it. As MTV grew, the ‘vision’ became the problem. A record label only has so much to spend and so an increasing amount is spent on the video; after all, that’s what the kids want, as they’re watching MTV. This means less spent on the recording and mastering. The easy (read: cheap) workaround to making your song good is to make it noticeable by increasing the amount of loudness.

There is another problem; music is played in pubs. I don’t object per se to music being played in pubs, but I object very strongly to music being played so loudly that I can’t have a conversation with the person opposite me without raising my voice or the choice of music being discordant with the surroundings. I have been in otherwise lovely, Victorian pubs with happy hardcore playing over the speakers. Whether or not you like DJ Sharkey, he doesn’t go well with a pint of stout. The result, though, is an increased demand for (and, through royalties, reward for) music that, in essence, sounds alright over okay-ish speakers in a loud room.

All this means that people come to expect a certain quality of music and are quite surprised by how rich music can actually sound. There is no desire to look for better quality because there is no awareness of its existence, and, where there is, no means to access it.

This process continued with the advent of the MP3 format, but it did not start the trend; indeed, one of the songs used to initially assess the quality of sound recorded as MP3 was Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega. Whether you agree with me in liking Suzanne Vega is irrelevant; Tom’s Diner is a detailed song. MP3 became popular because of limited storage space and download times; the sacrifice of quality for small size seemed attractive. This isn’t as much of an issue now – iPods and the like store huge amounts of information in a small box and a terabyte (a thousand gigabytes) drive is available for £150 – and so MP3s encoded at higher rates are more realistic. Sufficiently realistic, in fact, that Deutsche Grammophon are now offering MP3 downloads of their entire back catalogue. Given that DG place a high value on the quality of their sound recordings, I think it suggests that MP3 does offer viable, good sound quality.

However, people don’t have the means, as I mentioned, to access that quality. A good example of this is the habit some people have of playing music on their mobile phones on the bus. The speakers are rubbish and any sound that comes out (quite apart from the lyrical delights of Soulja Boy’s wonderful hit, Crank Dat (Soulja Boy), which exhorts us to watch him do before cranking it ourselves, possibly without the necessary safety equipment) will be offensive to the ears. It appears to be an increasing norm or in-group signifier amongst some subgroups to engage in this behavior. I’m sorry if I sound sanctimonious, but it is inconsiderate and ill-mannered behavior. If you’re playing your music on your phone, there’s no way for you to appreciate decent quality music. Equally, a lot of music seems to be written so as to go directly to the lucrative ringtone market; quality is not important but catchiness – loudness – is.

This process has been going on since before 1994. I hope that the advent of digital broadcasting, faster internet and larger, cheaper storage means that more people will become aware of how good sound can sound. A better solution than MP3 is FLAC, which aside from being open source (with all the benefits for free software, in both senses of the word) is lossless; it’s been taken on by EBU (the people behind Eurovision) for their radio broadcasts. I’d venture that DG isn’t offering FLAC because people aren’t familiar with it (yet) as MP3 stole a march.

xD.

1 – if for no other reason than that, on page four, it has scientific proof (illustrated with pictures) that the Arctic Monkeys are rubbish and that U2 have become rubbish.
2 – which is not the same as loud music; have a look at the Wikipedia entry on loudness.
3 – I know of at least one barrister who reads this blog, so I’d appreciate it if m’learned friend could correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I believe, although there was no intent, that as there was foresight and recklessness and the harm occasioned is particularly grievous, a charge of GBH is more appropriate than ABH.