Another reason to be nice to your turkey this Christmas

There are lots of reasons for eating turkey meat at Christmas: pound-for-pound, turkeys are a cheap way of feeding a lot of people; turkeys are traditional at Christmas (well since the 1960s anyway); and there are lots and lots of recipes, online and in books, for how you can improve the tasteless dry meat of the turkey. The last reason gives the game away: no-one enjoys the taste of a turkey. I have asked numerous people and have yet to find a single one who believes that roast turkey tastes better than roast chicken, goose or duck, or roast beef or lamb. People eat turkey for non-food reasons - to stuff themselves with tasteless food and to conform to some idiot tradition. So follow the words of the great Brummie poet Benjamin Zephaniah and be nice to your turkey this Christmas.

See also: Have yourself a merry/melancholy/some other emotion Christmas

Human rights and human wrongs

Britain is the only country in the World in which there is a sustained political campaign against the idea that its citizens should have human rights. There are of course many countries which abuse, torture, murder or neglect their inhabitants. But almost all have some written guarantees of citizens’ rights in their constitutions and/or are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) and (in the case of all European countries except Belarus) its European equivalent, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

This campaign against human rights is puzzling for two reasons. In the first place, the United Kingdom played an important part in drafting both the UNDHR and the ECHR. The lead role in both was played by Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, who, as Lord Kilmuir, ultimately became Lord Chancellor in the Conservative government led by Sir Anthony Eden. The UK acceded to the ECHR in 1951, and also supported the establishment of the European Court of Human Rights, which was set up in 1959. The second reason is that England produced some of the earliest declarations of human rights in World history, with the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Bill of Rights of 1689. Some of the clauses in these documents, particularly the right that punishment should only follow the due process of law, appear in both the UNDHR and the ECHR.

Human rights laws are not abstract statements of philosophy: both the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights were a practical response to the experience of tyrannical government. They were an assertion of the minimum standards that citizens (or, in the case of the Magna Carta, ‘free men’) should expect in their dealings with those in power. The UNHDR and the ECHR were likewise a response to tyranny, albeit one far more evil than those of Kings John and James II. Nor are statements of rights some strange innovation: all public laws define rights and obligations for classes of people. For instance, landlord and tenant acts define the rights of each group, and the actions they are obliged to carry out (paying rent, maintaining the property etc). Likewise, human rights laws define rights (in this case of the people living within a territory) and the obligations of the governments of that territory.

Why then the opposition to human rights laws? One reason is that the UNDHR and the ECHR are international, with the ECHR enforced by a European court comprised of judges from different countries. Citizens in countries which have signed the Convention (ie every European country except Belarus) can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights if they believe their rights under the ECHR have been breached by the actions of their national government. Even though the European Court of Human Rights has no connection with the European Union, it still includes the dread word ‘European’ in its title, which is enough to enrage the xenophobes on the extreme right-wing of British politics. This opposition extends to the 1998 Human Rights Act, even though this had the aim of repatriating cases from the European Court of Human Rights. Before the Human Rights Act, the UK did not have an legally-binding declaration of human rights, with the result that there were many appeals to the Court from the UK. One of the aims of the Human Rights Act was to reduce the number of these appeals by writing the ECHR into British law, so that our Supreme Court could adjudicate in place of the European Court of Human Rights. This has been successful, and the number of applications from the UK to the Court has halved in the last two years.

A second possible reason for the campaign against human rights is the fear of judicial activism, in which policy decisions are made by judges rather than elected legislators. This is a reasonable fear, based on the ghastly example of the US Supreme Court, which has become de facto the most important legislative body in the USA. Issues which in European countries have been decided by parliaments (like abortion law reform, the funding of political parties and public health insurance) have all been decided in the USA by a highly-politicised group of judges. However, the European Court of Human Rights has so far avoided this kind of judicial activism, and has tried to take account of the variations in the moral values of different European states. In any case, campaigners against human rights have grossly exaggerated the degree to which the Court has made rulings that contradict UK government policy. Cases of this kind are extremely rare, as shown in this expert blog post by Merris Amos:
http://ukconstitutionallaw.org/tag/european-court-of-human-rights/.

Reporting of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights has often involved not just exaggeration, but also outright lies. Merris Amos cites the case of three convicted murderers serving whole-life prison sentences who appealed to the Court on the grounds that such sentences constitute ‘inhuman or degrading punishment’ under Article 3 of the ECHR. The Court ruled that whole-life sentences were compatible with Article 3 provided that there was a possibility of reviewing the sentence after (it suggested) 25 years in prison. A review, of course, is not the same as a release. This did not stop the Telegraph reporting that the Court had concluded that whole life tariffs were inhuman and degrading treatment. The Times reported that the Court had ruled ‘that whole-life sentences for the most notorious murderers are unlawful.” The Sun described the judgement as “a bombshell ruling banning British courts from giving our worst killers whole-life sentences.”

This dishonesty is a clue to the third and possibly the main reason for the campaign against human rights laws: a commitment to corporate-compliant government. Human rights laws aim to prevent governments from committing arbitrary and unjust actions against their citizens. They thereby challenge the power not just of governments, but also of the vast corporations that increasingly dominate policy-making. Oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch (who owns the Times and Sun) will therefore tend to favour governments which give them a free run. This is hardly a popular policy, and deception is therefore required to help the public surrender their rights.

See also:
Xenophobia against who?

Living the dream

Dreams are supposed to give you messages about your secret desires and fears. If this is the case, then what I most desire/fear is boredom. My dreams in recent years have become staggeringly dull. The dullest of all was experienced two nights ago. In the dream, I was working in an office. The other people there were friendly but unstimulating. The office-building was a drab three-storey building from the 1950s with long corridors. There must have been a factory behind the office-block because I saw large groups of workingmen arrive and leave through some ornate gates in front of the building. In the dream, I was still living with my parents in Shirley, and I would catch a number 18 bus from a stop on the Stratford Road to get to the office, which seemed to be somewhere in Birmingham. The dream was devoid of any mystery or sense of strangeness, except that the number 18 bus never seemed to arrive, and I was forced to take other buses with unfamiliar routes and destinations.

It is possible, of course, that dreams do not reveal desires or fears, but just re-assemble new and old memories into narrative strings. I did once work in a 1950s office-block in front of a factory during a university vacation in 1967. This was repetitive work using a primitive adding machine called a ‘comptometer’, recording the orders for ice-cream collected by the team of saleswomen in the office who were on the phone all day to various shops. I caught the number 18 bus to work not at that time, but later in my life when I lived and worked in Birmingham. What evoked these memories and connected them to present experience? Perhaps it was the realisation that although my life includes satisfaction and stimulation, it also has its share of tedium.

The ratio of tedium to stimulation has shifted in the last week with the end of my teaching this year for the University of the Third Age (U3A). This involves leading a two-hour session once a fortnight to a group of very bright retired people. Each session deals with a different topic in social sciences, such as religion, learning and skills, crime, and  ageing. I have previously studied only a few of these topics, and so most sessions require a frantic search through the relevant social science writing and recent research to assemble my presentation. This is certainly stimulating mentally, and so are the following discussions. Teaching starts again in January, with a session on happiness. So my dreams should become less mundane next month.

A bar in La Herradura

There came a point in the life of our family when we could afford to go on holiday to a villa with a swimming pool. So in April 1994, we flew to Malaga, picked up a hire-car, and drove to a villa on a hillside overlooking the sea near the village of La Herradura. After a week there, we moved for the second week to a villa in a quiet street near the centre of Nerja. This was a happy time. My children were nine and five years old, and were full of curiosity and excitement. The villas were excellent, and the surrounding area has many fascinating places to visit. My wife and I could lie on our bed in the villa at La Herradura at night, and look out across the sea at the distant flickering lights of fishing boats. We travelled to Frigiliana (a beautiful white village full of flowers), visited  the Alhambra, threw snowballs at each other on the Sierra Nevada, wandered round the old city of Almuñécar, and travelled through the white mountainside villages of Las Alpujarras. We visited the caves of Nerja and strolled along the Balcón de Europa. We ate fresh fish cooked in a small café on the beach.

One day I walked down to the village centre of La Herradura, and went into a local bar for some beer. Sitting against the bar, smoking, was a gloomy-looking Englishman. He told me he was not on holiday, but was a local resident. “I left England because the country’s going to the dogs”, he said. “It’s full of bloody immigrants. They don’t learn our language and don’t learn our ways”. “Do you speak Spanish”, I asked a little later. “No, never bothered”, he replied.

The next week in Nerja, I saw a more impressive example of the English abroad. It was clear that the town had a substantial population from North-West Europe. The British had contributed to the culture of the place in a positive way. There were some pleasant cafes selling salads, tea and cakes, and an English-language bookshop. An English-language  newsletter reported meetings of ramblers (walking in Winter rather than Summer), a local history group and an animal welfare society. The British residents were essentially re-creating the middle-class life of their home country in a foreign land. But their very success in this task may have impeded their participation in the general life of Spanish society. Did the English immigrants to Spain ‘bother’ to learn Spanish? The magazine advertised Spanish classes, but it is hard to become fluent in a second language, particularly when you start learning late in life.

I too was struggling to learn Spanish. On the last week we stayed in Nerja, I saw a big headline in one of the Spanish papers. I translated it to read that Ayrton Senna was dead. ‘That can’t be true’, I thought. 'I must have made a mistake'.

How church buildings learn

From where I am sitting in my house, I can see through the winter trees to our parish church. St. Peter’s Church in Martley was built in the 12th Century, from red sandstone, quarried nearby. The church was extended in phases over the next 200 years, with a fine tower added in the mid-15th Century. The latter contains a ring of six great bells, cast on the site in 1673. It is claimed that these are the oldest complete set of bells in England. At some time after the Reformation, pews and an West gallery were added to the church, but these were removed when the church was restored in 1909. What remains after all these changes is a standard medieval English village church, made of local stone, shaped like a long box with a tower at the West end. From a stroll round the building, between the ancient gravestones, it is easy to see how parts have been added and taken away over the centuries.

The church at present is warm and welcoming. More important than that, it exudes a sense of holiness, accrued from generations who have prayed and voiced the liturgy. Despite the nine centuries of its existence and the many changes in the styles of worship over that time, the parish church serves its purpose well.

Eight miles away, the Church of England is demolishing a much younger building. Holy Trinity and St Matthew’s in Worcester was built in 1965, in what was then a fashionable circular form. Problems accumulated with the building. There were boiler failures, condensation and leaks. The church closed for worship in 2012 after part of the roof collapsed. The Parochial Church Council found that it would have cost half a million pounds to fix the building, and decided on demolition and replacement.

A faulty round church built in the 1960s is a minor example of crapitecture, but it also illustrates the wisdom of Stewart Brand, set out in his great book How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built . Brand proposed that buildings should be made from low-cost, standard designs that people are familiar with, and which can easily be modified. People are then able to gradually change their buildings to meet their changing needs. Martley parish church is an example of a simple design (a stone box with a wooden roof) that was a widely-understood standard design for a small church in the Middle Ages. Bits were added over the centuries. If Martley had grown into a town instead of remaining a village, aisles would have been added and the roof raised. Perhaps the nave would have been lengthened. All of this would have been carried out by skilled stonemasons who occasionally experimented, but usually employed tried-and-tested methods.

Brand contrasted his preferred approach with that used in much of architecture today. The modernist idea that ‘form follows function’ (ie buildings should be designed according to how they should be used) is wrong because the functions of all buildings change (often before construction is completed). Designing a building for a specific set of functions can thus impede necessary adaptation. The use of exciting new materials and techniques may win architectural prizes, but it makes the building an experiment in which its occupants become the guinea-pigs. The round drum-like building of Holy Trinity and St Matthew’s was designed for a specific purpose and could not easily be adapted. It used new techniques which failed to keep the building dry. Let us hope those who design its replacement learn from church buildings which have stood for 900 years.

See also: A guide to crapitecture

Xenophobia against who?

Xenophobia occurs in all societies. There are always those among us who hate and fear people they see as fundamentally different. They may do so because they or their family have suffered at the hands of people similar to those they dislike. But xenophobia is usually an expression of a person’s inner anger, directed outward to a group of people they regard as an acceptable target. There are many candidates for being a target-group: people from different religions, people with a different appearance, people with a different sexual orientation, and of course foreigners. The selection of targets for xenophobia depends on local circumstances, or, more specifically, the availability of people to hate. An unscrupulous leader can then build a following by legitimising the  persecution of this target-group. This gives his followers a shared sense of purpose, relieving them of the sense of guilt they might otherwise experience when they express hatred and act cruelly. Attacks on targets can even have a joyful quality. Philip Dray’s research into the lynching of Afro-Americans in the Southern USA (published as At the Hands of Persons Unknown) shows how ‘Lynching was an undeniable part of daily life, as distinctly American as baseball games and church suppers. [White] Men brought their wives and children to the events, posed for commemorative photographs, and purchased souvenirs of the occasion as if they had been at a company picnic.’ The souvenirs in some cases were body parts from the lynched man.

Joyous horror of this kind arises when there are available targets who, in the opinion of the dominant group, need to be kept in their place. Lynching was celebrated by the white population in the Southern USA because it confirmed their sense of superiority and hence their very identity. In other circumstances, xenophobia can instead be associated with a sense of inferiority to the target population. This seems a characteristic of some anti-Semitism, which involves a strange combination of fear of the different religious practices of Jews (including the invented blood libel) and suspicion of the distinctive dress of Orthodox Jews, but also a resentment at the astonishing success of Jewish people in many walks of life.

Inferiority may also arise because of a fear that a person’s culture and way of life is threatened by a dominant neighbour. The English are, for the Scots, the most available and conspicuous group of different people. They not only dominate the island and the state, but are present everywhere in Scotland and every night on television. Scottish xenophobia takes the form of sullen resentment (shown in the way many Scots support any football team playing against England) combined with a strident assertion of the distinctive nature of the Scottish people. SNP politicians may attack the ‘Westminster system’, but their followers know this a polite code for getting at the English.

English xenophobia, on the other hand, rarely involves a dislike of the Scots. Instead, African-Caribbean and Muslim populations provide a more identifiable set of targets, and fringe political parties like the BNP and the EDL aim to mobilise hostility against these groups. However, the most successful political party in England to use xenophobia is UKIP. This has a formal policy of opposing UK membership of the European Union, but its basic appeal is a dislike of all foreigners, irrespective of race. Indeed, the European Union is regarded by UKIP as the supreme committee of foreigners, eclipsing in their mind all the other international organisations like the UN, NATO, the OECD, the World Trade Organisation and so on. The European Union is therefore seen as being responsible for all the unsettling changes in the lives of many older people, from decimal currency to mosques in our cities. The leader of UKIP has even said that he feels uneasy hearing foreign voices on underground trains. Well I was a student in London in 1965 and I remember lots of foreign voices then, even before we entered what was then referred to as the ‘Common Market’.

A key part of being a xenophobe is a sense of betrayal - in particular the belief that our people have failed because our leaders have betrayed us. Hitler (and many others on the right-wing in the Weimar Republic) argued that the German Army had lost the First World War because it had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by a conspiracy of communists and democratic politicians, secretly orchestrated by the Jews. UKIP and many Conservative politicians claim that Britain only voted to remain a member of the forerunner of the EU in the 1975 Referendum because the politicians of the time told them that they were only being asked to support a trading alliance. This is about as true as Hitler’s ‘stabbed in the back’ argument. The official leaflet issued by the Government before the Referendum discusses the need for the UK to be part of a wider alliance:

    “... in the modern world even the Super Powers like America and Russia do not have complete freedom of action. Medium-sized nations like Britain are more and more subject to economic and political forces we cannot control on our own. A striking recent example of the impact of such forces is the way the Arab oil-producing nations brought about an energy and financial crisis not only in Britain but throughout a great part of the world. Since we cannot go it alone in the modern world, Britain has for years been a member of international groupings like the United Nations, NATO and the International Monetary Fund. Membership of such groupings imposes both rights and duties, but has not deprived us of our national identity, or changed our way of life. Membership of the Common Market also imposes new rights and duties on Britain, but does not deprive us of our national identity. To say that membership could force Britain to eat Euro-bread or drink Euro-beer is nonsense.”

At that time, the ‘Yes’ vote for remaining in the Common Market was supported by most of the Labour Party, all the Liberal Party and almost all the Conservative Party. But there was a vigorous ‘No’ campaign led by sections of the Labour Party, a few Conservatives and the Scottish National Party. This argued strongly that the Common Market meant a loss of British sovereignty. This view was countered by the Yes campaign, which said that policy in the Common Market was decided by the national governments acting together, and that in a community of only nine members, Britain could veto any measure with which it did not agree.

At the time, this was true, but the European enterprise has changed greatly since 1975, partly because of British pressure. The UK Government, then as now, regarded the European Union as primarily a trading organisation, regulating a large free market in goods, capital and labour. Inter-European trade was impeded before 1987 by border controls and petty regulations in each individual country designed to protect their local industries from the products of other member-states. The Thatcher Government supported what was essentially a new treaty called the ‘Single European Act’ which was aimed at overcoming these obstacles. This brought in qualified majority voting (voting weighted in favour of the larger countries) to speed up the process of standardising product regulation. Customs post came down, and steps were taken to facilitate the free movement of labour.

It is ironic that it has been this very drive to create a more effective single market that has caused most political opposition. The European Union remains an astonishingly powerless organisation, nowhere near the ‘superstate’ of right-wing mythology. It has no armed forces, police force or inspectorate. It relies totally on its member states to enforce (with varying degrees of thoroughness) its regulations. The various crises on its borders, in Yugoslavia and the Ukraine, show it to be ineffectual in foreign policy. But the single market has meant that every regulation, even those passed unanimously by its member states, can be presented by the opponents of the EU as a ‘dictat from the bureaucrats of Brussels’.

But the greatest political opposition to the EU is a result of the free movement of labour, which followed the Single European Act. This coincided with a massive expansion of the European Community from a club of a few prosperous Western European nations to an association of almost all European states West of Ukraine. Before the banking collapse of 2008 and the subsequent Greek debt crisis, there was a rough balance in the number of British citizens leaving this country to work and live in the rest of the EU, and the number of citizens from the rest of the EU coming to these shores. But massive unemployment in Southern Europe in the last five years has resulted in a rising number of people seeking work in the UK, coming mainly from Spain, Portugal and Italy. At present, the excess of people arriving over people leaving is about 200,000/year. This sounds a lot, but the UK population is now over 64 million, so net migration amounts to an increase in population of a third of one percent/year. At present, there are 2.34 million people from the rest of the EU living in the UK, compared with about 1.8 million British citizens living in the rest of the EU.

Of course, immigration is never spread evenly over a country. Huge international cities like London have always attracted diverse populations, but smaller communities can be profoundly affected by a rapid increase in strangers from other countries. This can, at least for a time, cause fear and concern about greater competition for jobs and houses and even for sexual partners. Xenophobic politicians can use this fear to build support. So we now get tirades in the press about foreigners who are supposed to be taking our jobs while mysteriously also living in idleness on our welfare benefits. UKIP leaders suggest that foreigners may also be disease-ridden, bringing HIV and now Ebola Virus to this land. These unpleasant claims are rarely challenged by our cowardly Government, which appeases UKIP and thereby continues to strengthen it.

Those of us who are not xenophobic do not hate and fear people because they are different. Instead, we find that people from different lands come with new ideas and experiences, and can therefore be stimulating company. They also bring their own tastes in food, which over time has greatly improved our own once-deficient cuisine. We do not automatically fear change, but believe that it may bring welcome improvements in our life. We think that the diversity of nationalities and cultures in our largest cities is far more exciting than the dreary grey places remembered from childhood. We do not talk of the past as being ‘in my day’, but believe we live in the present, whatever our age.

Of course, I am biased. Like many English people, I am the descendent of an immigrant. Two of my cousins have retired to live in other countries of the EU and, thanks to EU regulations, are eligible for local health services. My son completed a masters programme at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and paid the same (very low) fees as a local student. The EU has given us the chance to cross borders with ease to work, retire, trade and study. This is unsettling for those who prefer the idea that the world is divided into distinct and totally-separate nations, each restricted to own piece of territory, each a prison of the mind.

In Coromandel

The Coromandel is a long peninsula in the North Island of New Zealand, named after a ship named after a coast in India. The ship was built in 1798 in Calcutta for the East India Company and named the ‘Cuvera’. She was bought by the Royal Navy in 1804 and converted into a warship as HMS Malabar. After action in the West Indies, she was converted two years later into an armed storeship. In 1815, she was re-named as HMS Coromandel, and was fitted out to transport convicts to Australia. To make this voyage less costly to the Exchequer, she was refitted again to enable her to carry a return cargo - in this case, timber from the tall straight kauri trees of New Zealand. In 1820, HMS Coromandel called at a small harbour on the North Island to load lumber, and gave its name to the harbour, the small town that developed around it and eventually the entire peninsula.

My wife and I visited Coromandel in 2010, as part of a family holiday. We drove from Rotorua, up the coast of the Bay of Plenty, and then across to Coromandel town by the unsurfaced (and rather exciting) 309 Road through the deepest wooded hills. We stayed in the Gold Miner’s Cottage on a hillside overlooking the vast Hauraki Gulf. The cottage had a secret: behind the sofa was a door, which opened into the old goldmine. A short way along, there were glow-worms.

Goldminers in the Coromandel have now been replaced by artists and people seeking an ‘alternative’ lifestyle. One such incomer in 1973 was an Englishman, Barry Brickell. He set up a pottery collective North of the Town, but found that he needed to fetch clay and timber (for fuel) from up the hill. The answer was to build a 15-inch gauge railway. This was slowly expanded over the next quarter of a century to become a public attraction. Now called the ‘Driving Creek Railway’, it zig-zags up the steep slope, through tunnels and over bridges through kauri plantations. The line ends high above the pottery at an large octagonal wooden building with vast wide views over the tops of trees and across the Gulf. More than 30,000 people visit the Railway each year, showing the enduring attraction of scenic railways - even ones built in the recent past. It is bizarre that New Zealand, like Great Britain, destroyed many of its scenic railway lines because they were  not profitable. Perhaps it was just that the wrong people were running them.

There are many other things to see in the Coromandel, and details are at this website:
http://www.coromandelfun.co.nz/

Some reasons people do stupid things

Network Rail has issued the video above, which shows the stupid things people do at railway level crossings: people who ignore flashing red lights, loud sirens and descending gates (or descended gates) and still cross the railway line. All the people in the video escaped death, but only just. In fact, level crossings are still the main location for fatalities on the British railway system. In 2013/4, there were eight deaths on level crossings, none of which were found to be ‘industry-caused’ according to the subsequent enquiries. There are many other kinds of hazardous stupidity on daily view in our city streets: cyclists on busy roads who wear earphones and are thereby unable to hear traffic behind them; people who start walking across a road junction just as the lights change; people who walk out into the road looking at their mobile phone and not at the traffic; and people who drive their car while on their mobile phone or even while reading a map.

There are many explanations for stupidity of this kind. One is alcohol, which magically robs us of the burden of thought. Drunks have been seen sitting on the railway tracks in the town of Poole, where there is a level crossing between the high street and the shopping centre. A second explanation is that some people (especially young men) enjoy the sensation of danger, while at the same time believe themselves to be immortal. A third explanation is the simple failure to appreciate danger. For instance, children may not understand why it is important to wear a seatbelt until they see a re-enactment of an accident. Many adults too respond more to visual than written information, and hence may not appreciate that their behaviour is dangerous until they experience its consequences, personally or vicariously.

But I think that the main reason people behave stupidly is because of they way in which they process information. More specifically, many people typically to respond to only one stimulus at a time. So the people who crosses the road even though the pedestrian light is on red do so because they have glanced ahead and seen stationary cars in front of them. They then react to that information and walk, ignoring other contrary information (such as the red light). At level crossings, the one dominating piece of information is a clear road ahead, which eliminates awareness of the red flashing lights and the descending gates. Mobile phones are an extreme example of a dominating piece of information because they emit an alarm signal (their ringtone). When hearing this, people are tempted to suspend all practical activity, such as driving a car in busy traffic or even speaking to another person in front of them.

For some people, the dominating piece of information is not what they see in the road or the level crossing, but what other people are doing. This means that they cross the road despite the warning signs because they see other people doing it. Indeed, some people live their entire lives as an act of imitation. This can be a successful life-plan, for people who are wrong with the crowd are usually more popular than those who are right by themselves. But crowds can err, can panic, can even carry out acts of violence and cruelty. Saying “I did it because everyone else did” is no defence in law. Nor will it protect you from getting run over by a train.

See also: Not staying focussed

The secret geography of childhood

All children have a personal geography, of places they know well and regard as their own familiar territory. There are the usual roads, streets and fields, but also special hiding-places, places for exploration and places with their own names, unknown to adults.

It is strange to visit these places as an adult and realise how small the houses are and how compact are what once seemed limitless fields and woods. But for me, the biggest difference between my childhood memories and the world I now see is not size, but the absence of children playing in the roads. I attended Haslucks Green Primary School in Shirley, a suburb of Birmingham. My family lived in Stroud Road, one of several long straight roads of semi-detached houses, each with front and back gardens. There were no garages attached to the houses because, when they were built, few people owned cars. Instead, there was an unpaved access drive leading along the rear of the properties, and some families had built small garages at the end of their back gardens.

Stroud Road and the surrounding estate in the 1950s was astonishingly free of cars. I could look down the road from my front gate, and could see no parked cars, let alone moving ones. The lack of traffic also applied to what are now busy main roads. On the way back from primary school one dinnertime, I walked along Haslucks Green Road. One boy at school was notoriously naughty (we would probably now regard him as having a ‘challenging behaviour’), and one day sat in the middle of this road. “Come back”, we shouted at him, “a car might come”. No traffic meant safe places to play, and I spent a lot of my childhood in the street outside my home, among large groups of local children. There was a craze at one time for trolleys, and my father made one for me from pram wheels and planks. It could be steered with strings attached to the movable front axle. There was of course no brake. It was possible to lie head-first on the trolley and speed down the middle of Stroud Road.

Sometimes, a small group of boys would head off on an expedition, usually visiting the long stretches of waste ground that lay between the back gardens of neighbouring roads. These could be accessed by numerous small alleys: old rights-of-way across what had once been farmland. A longer expedition was to the River Cole, which was then a brook between open fields. We would fish for sticklebacks and eels. Even further was the Aqueduct. This is a vast brick construction which carries the Stratford-upon-Avon canal over both a road and the River Cole. We could get to the top of the Aqueduct via some gravel yards, or along the tow-path. This was all amazingly dangerous. There were no guard rails or fences on the top of the Aqueduct, and the canal was at that time semi-derelict.

How has modern traffic affected children’s personal geography? In the village in which I now live, children still seem to wander around the streets and nearby fields. But it is possible that they do so less often in the Stroud Roads of today. It has become less safe for children to cross main roads, and children (and even adults) are increasingly seen as ‘vulnerable’, in need of permanent oversight. So some parents drive their children even quite short distances to school, thereby increasing the danger on the roads and the risk of child obesity. It is also possible that children may be less eager than in the past to explore their neighbourhood in each others’ company. Homes are now full of personal entertainment. Children need no longer stare out of the windows with frustration on rainy days, but can instead look at the little flashing screens of their toys. Parents may also prefer to see their children in front of a computer screen than exploring their locality or noisily playing football in the park. Parents too play with their toys. I often see parents walking with their children, not talking to them but instead giving all their attention to their mobile phone. In this new world of electronic toys, children may lose the social skills they would otherwise have learnt in play - more will be diagnosed as having an ‘autistic spectrum disorder’. Indeed, this has already happened.

The strange story of the murky mayor of Worcester

And now for another municipal horror story. Earlier this month, Worcester City Council elected a new mayor. This is usually a quiet matter. Like almost all English towns and cities, Worcester operates a parliamentary system of government. The political party (or coalition of parties) with a majority elects a cabinet and a leader of the council, who is a sort of prime minister. The mayor is therefore not the executive leader, but rather a regal figurehead, responsible for promoting good causes, visiting local events, and generally representing all that is worthy in the City. Being a mayor is regarded as an honour and an envied reward for good service. As a result, the job is shared around and a new mayor is elected each year, usually from the most long-serving councillors. After election, the mayor is inaugurated in his or her robes and chain of office at a special service at the Cathedral.

Until this year’s May elections, Worcester City Council was controlled by the Labour Party with the support of two Liberal Democrat and one Green Party councillors. One of the Liberal Democrats was defeated in the election by the Conservative Party, with the result that the new Council had 17 Conservative, 16 Labour, 1 Liberal Democrat and 1 Green. The last three parties came to an agreement to maintain the Labour leadership of the Council for the annual general meeting on 3 June. But to (almost) everyone’s surprise a Labour councillor, Alan Amos, defected from his Party to become an ‘independent’, voted to give power to the Conservatives, and was elected Mayor. This all smacked of a deal, in which Amos had abandoned his party in exchange for the mayor’s robes. The local paper, the Worcester News, began referring to him as the ‘murky mayor’. To make matters worse, he announced that he would not attend the mayoral inauguration service at the Cathedral because he had booked a holiday for that date.

This is not the first time that Amos has switched parties. In 1978, he was elected as a Conservative councillor in the Borough of Enfield near London. Nine years later, he advanced to became Conservative MP for the Constituency of Hexham in the far North of England. Amos was notable in Parliament for his extreme right-wing statements, including advocacy of flogging criminals and his opposition to abortion. All fell apart just before the 1992 general election, when he was arrested and cautioned by the police for an act of alleged indecency on Hampstead Heath. His local Conservative Association deselected him, and his Parliamentary career ended. An approach to the Conservatives in Enfield was rejected, and he joined the Labour Party. In 2002, he was elected as Labour councillor in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. He lost his seat at the next local election in 2006, but reappeared only two years later as the successful Labour councillor in the Warndon Ward of the City of Worcester. He was later also elected as a county councillor.

Amos’ transition to Labour was accompanied by an apparent change in political beliefs. These now were on the extreme left and republican. On a television programme on the monarchy, he shouted that the Queen was responsible for “this nation’s dreadful decline”. She was “head of a rotten, class- ridden, corrupt social and political environment”, and the royal family were “parasites and hypocrites”.  As a Worcester City councillor, he proposed that the City be twinned with Gaza. It will be interesting to see whether Amos will now become an extreme independent.

In the meantime, there have been two other examples of murkiness in Worcestershire politics. The Conservative deputy leader of Wychavon District Council, Councillor Judy Pearce, has also been elected (in May 2014) as a district councillor in South Devon, 185 miles from her other council post. South Devon does indeed seem to be her main place of residence, although she does rent a flat in Wychavon. Her Wychavon work includes chairing the committee that has prepared the appalling South Worcestershire Development Plan. This proposes to cover large areas of the County with new houses - a fate Pearce has escaped by moving to South Devon.

The final murkiness is more mundane. Dave Small was elected as a UKIP councillor in Redditch at the May elections, but resigned after six days. His party had disowned him for bringing the party into disrepute, after it was revealed that he had posted comments on his website that were allegedly racist and homophobic. Small was 81 years old at the time of his election, and does not seem to have had any previous experience of public service (apart from editing a football fanzine called ‘Zulu’, named after a hooligan gang which supports Birmingham City Football Club). UKIP councillors and MEPs have a reputation for being expelled or resigning from the party, but Small’s six days must be the current record.

These cases of murky politics could be seen as a disease of politicians. But outright opportunists, chancers, and people with antediluvian opinions exist in all occupations. So do people who fiddle their expenses. In these respects, politicians are probably typical of those who elect them. But I suspect most people wish our leaders to be more capable, honest and public-spirited than the average citizen. If we are to achieve this, then more people must take some interest in their community and be prepared to serve it. After all, how many people In Redditch knew about Dave Small before his election, had any idea of his opinions or even what UKIP stands for beyond its policy of blaming the European Union for all the ills of our society.   

Read also: The Dark Heart of Suburbia

My father and the books

The 6th of June 2014 was not just the 70th anniversary of D-Day, but also the 100th anniversary of my father, George John Cumella. My father died as long ago as the year 2000, but I think about him every day. I had considered writing here about his life, but it has proved difficult to make a narrative of a mass of incoherent memories of my father, from when I was a child and an adult. Almost all of these are fond memories of a kindly man who loved his wife, children and grandchildren. But there are also memories of the quirks of behaviour that mark one personality from another. I can not fit these into a single short account, and so I will speak instead of one part of my father’s life that says much about him and his influence on me.

My father came from a reasonably prosperous family that lost its money. The only secondary education available was at a local fee-paying school. He passed the exam for a free place, but ‘failed’ the interview. As a result, he left school at 14 with no qualifications and did not become apprenticed. He worked in a wide variety of unskilled occupations, including lorry driving (before any driving test was required), chauffeuring, coal-hauling, and being a clerk in the local workhouse. He had psoriasis, and so was found medically unfit to serve in the forces in the Second World War. At some point after the war, he completed a trade qualification as a welder, and from then until retirement worked at the Land Rover factory. I remember him cycling to work through rain and snow, with his sandwiches in an old bag across his shoulder and a beret on his head.

Nowadays, my father would have gone to university and been a good student. He had considerable powers of application, loved reading and had a great respect for learning. In the absence of formal schooling, he educated himself by reading the books in our small local public library. Each Saturday afternoon, he would visit the Shirley Library and stay until the desperate staff begged him to leave at closing time. He was initially limited to the maximum of four books/lender allowed by the library. But as first myself and then my brother went to university and left home, he took over our tickets (as well as our mother’s tickets) and would return home on Saturday with a collection of 16 books. No-one could read this many at once, and so they were renewed from month to month. I suspect that he took pleasure from simply having the books around him.

My father’s respect for learning combined with his own lack of educational opportunity  made him transfer his frustrated ambition to his children. My brother and I were sent to the best local grammar schools and were encouraged to apply for university. Secondary school was for me a miserable experience, but I still became a sort of educational guided missile, eventually collecting three university degrees. My father did not seem to have any clear ambitions for us after we left university - it was sufficient that our education gave us the chance to escape work on an assembly-line, and he was very pleased that we had escaped his fate and had succeeded in finding well-paid white-collar jobs.

See also: Surviving school

What I did on my holidays (a long time ago)

One of the standard tasks that traditionally faced children when they returned to school in September was to write an essay called ‘What I did on my holidays’. I remember writing several such essays - what I do not remember at all well are the holidays that were their subject-matter. My earliest memory is from a holiday in North Wales when I was two. I remember being led by the hand over a railway line. My parents had rented a cottage with another family, but I recall none of that.

The first holiday I really remember was in Brynmill, in a boarding-house by the seaside just to the West of Swansea City Centre. This was particularly exciting for a small boy because getting to the beach involved crossing the Swansea and Mumbles tramway, and then passing under a tunnel which carried the British Railways branch line to Mumbles. To make things even more exciting, we were warned about a nearby unexploded bomb, left over from the War.

After that, family holidays involved trips to the seaside in North Devon. I can not remember how many times we went, but I do recall the ordeal of getting there. My father was an industrial worker, and therefore had the same two week break in August as the rest of Birmingham and the West Midlands. Each city in Britain had its usual holiday destination, and for Birmingham this was Weston-super-Mare and points further South-West. This meant that the holiday fortnight began with a massive migration in the same general direction by train, bus and car. My parents did not own a car until I was about 16, but for holidays they either shared a car with friends, or hired a car. There were no motorways, and all main roads led from one high street to another. Travel therefore involved a sequence of traffic jams of a scale completely unknown today, even with four times as many vehicles on the road as in the 1950s. Strangely, the worst such jam was on one of the few by-pass routes, around Exeter. Cars might wait here for hours - thirsty motorists brewed up tea by the roadside, while salesmen walked along the queues of cars selling ice-cream. Journeys were also prolonged because the cars of the time were unreliable. As a result, a trip to North Devon from the family home in Shirley near Birmingham could take from early morning to nightfall. I remember one journey ending one night as the car we were travelling in broke down trying to climb Porlock Hill in Somerset.

Our holidays in North Devon included a stay in (I think) a boarding house in the attractive village of Combe Martin. But later, we stayed in caravans further along the coast near Woolacombe. I did not like caravan sites, with their grubby toilets and showers, while some sites involved a long walk along the edge of muddy fields to get to the beach. Once on the beach, we spent our time doing very little. We made sand-castles, swam in the sea and used surfboards. It never occurred to us to stand on them. As I got older, I became bored with beach holidays. I remember wandering into the cinema in Woolacombe by myself to see Carry on Nurse. I was much taken with Shirley Eaton, and remember a growing frustration that I did not have a Shirley Eaton of my own.

In my later teenage years, our holidays changed after my parents bought a car. However, they were not intrepid travellers, and the limit of their ambition was to visit Scotland, which they regarded rather as Australians view the outback. This focussed particularly on touring what they called the ‘real Scotland’, by which they meant the Western Highlands. They were thereby immune to the glories of Edinburgh or the wonderful scenery of the Borders. While travelling in Scotland, my parents developed what in hindsight seems a strange daily routine. After a full fried breakfast, we would drive on the next stages of our tour and eat sandwiches for lunch. After a further drive, there would be a search for a bed and breakfast for the night. After that, we would drive to some lay-by or parking place and cook a meal on a primus stove, using food from tins. We had several windswept and generally unsatisfactory meals by this method.

After I finished my A-levels, I went on holiday by myself, although I did travel again with my parents once or twice thereafter. I do not of course write any essays on what I have done on my holidays, but I store photographs and retain the urge to write the occasional blog post about my travels.

Won’t vote, don’t care.

Another round of local elections in England have finished - this time coinciding with elections for the European Parliament. As usual, only a third of the electorate voted. This is less than in national elections, where turnout in 2010 was 65%. But this still means that after intense publicity in television, radio and the press, the distribution of leaflets and polling cards to every household, and meetings by candidates with hundreds of thousands of potential voters, a third of the adult population chose not to perform the minimal tasks of switching off their television, leaving their settee, and walking a short distance to cast their vote. 

There are a few people (mainly Jehovah’s Witnesses) who do not vote for strongly-held religious reasons. But most non-voters seem to explain their inactivity with a limited range of rationalisations, including the (manifestly untrue) statement that the political parties “are all the same”, or that politicians “are all in it for themselves”. Political commentators have more sophisticated explanations for non-voting: that the political parties are failing in some way to communicate with voters, that the voters are disgusted by the expenses scandal involving some Members of Parliament, and that voters dislike politicians.

All of these explanations for non-voting have one thing in common: they assume that the public are passive consumers of politics. They are no longer to be viewed as citizens, sharing responsibility for the governance of their society, able to stand for elections or organise and campaign on issues that concern them: instead, they are seen as purchasing political parties with their votes, as if the parties are products on the shelves of a supermarket. If none of the products appeals, they will leave the supermarket without voting. This all resembles much of the debate about education: failures of students to learn are attributed to the incompetence of their teachers - never to the lack of desire for learning among the students themselves or the unwillingness of their parents to encourage them to study.

The replacement of the active citizen by the passive consumer can also be seen in the behaviour of national and local governments. Some years ago, my son and I were on a road trip through Yorkshire. We stopped in Ripon, an ancient city with a cathedral and a fine market square. But although it has a population of over 16,000, Ripon no longer governs its own local affairs: it is instead part of the ‘borough’ of Harrogate - in reality a conglomeration of many towns and villages. The borough’s noticeboard referred to the local inhabitants as ‘customers’, as if they were purchasing their libraries, cleansing, planning and so on from a commercial enterprise.

This coincidence of political consumerism and the loss of local autonomy may not be a coincidence. The act of voting has generally been not just a choice, but also a statement of allegiance, to a religion, a social class, a set of ideas, or a local community. The ties that have bound people to each other through religion, social class and even marriage have greatly weakened in recent years. The local government ‘reforms’ of the 1970s and onwards added to this social disintegration by depriving many communities of their local leadership and the chance to select it. Instead, their councillors have become petitioners of distant and very large authorities, run by professional managers. This has weakened people’s allegiance to their local authority and their sense of community. No-one feels passionate about what happens to such arbitrary geographical conglomerations as ‘Malvern Hills District’, ‘Mole Valley District’ or even, I suspect, the ‘Borough of Harrogate’.

See also:
The rise of X-Factor politics

Overheard in the Turk’s Head in Penzance last week

A waitress approaches elderly American couple and asks them what they would like to drink. The American woman asks what beers they have. The waitress describes the various real ales available (including one brewed on the premises). A long pause follows. Eventually, the American woman replies “I’ll have a glass of water”. After bringing the drink, the waitress asks the couple what they would like to eat. The American woman asks what fish dishes they have (even though the menu and the daily specials blackboard lists these in detail. The waitress goes through the various options. This takes some time because the Turk’s Head has an excellent cook and the meals use a diverse range of fish and ways of cooking them. Another long pause follows. The American woman then orders: “I’ll have fish and chips”. 

This American woman, needless to say, is not typical of other Americans my wife and I met during our brief holiday in Penzance this month. As a group, these (mainly elderly) Americans were well-travelled and adventurous. The woman in the Turk’s Head is more a representative of the phenomenon of choice-exhaustion. This is when, presented with a bewildering range of unfamiliar and complex options, we resort to the simple and familiar. Choice-exhaustion occurs when we go to very large supermarkets, and see 20 different brands of mayonnaise, or 30 types of vinegar. We are daily presented through the mass media with an endless range of food, sofas, cars, holidays, bank accounts, clothes, and products which reverse the signs of ageing, and make us slimmer and more attractive. To help us make appropriate choices, there is another and increasing range of websites and publications which compare and rate financial products, consumer goods, motor cars and so on.

Rather than revel in this wonderland of choice, many people experience a sense of inadequacy and threat. How much easier if someone could make the choices for you. This, in fact, is the strategy used by some wealthy people - they employ ‘lifestyle advisors’ and ‘personal shoppers’ to make choices on their behalf. These will usually choose whatever is fashionable at the moment, and, more especially, whatever can be recognised as expensive and fashionable. By these means, the wealthy become a kind of walking assemblage of brands, ever sensitive to how their personal appearance and possessions compare with those of other wealthy people. Spouses and partners can also come to be regarded as a kind of brand, to be traded in when they age or cease to be fashionable.

In the absence of paid choicemakers, the rest of us struggle along as best we can, relying on our own personalities, being loyal to familiar people and places, living the way we have always done, occasionally venturing to try something new.

Gratitude inflation? Absolutely!

Once upon a time, English people expressed their gratitude by saying ‘Thanks’. As a child, I would also sometimes say ‘Thank you’ on more formal accessions, such as when my brother and I were paraded in front of relatives to express our gratitude for the Christmas presents they had given us. Over time, ‘Thank you’ completely replaced its abbreviated version, and was eventually replaced by ‘Thank you very much’. This in turn gave way to ‘Thank you very much indeed’. As English people frequently express their thanks (even when receiving change in a shop!), this all became very tiring. But lo! The last year has now seen the arrival of the phrase ‘Thank you so much’. This usually has a stress on the ‘so’, but some people contrive to also add a stress on the word ‘much’.

These changes do not mean that English people are more grateful than they were in the past. Instead, they can be seen as examples of verbal inflation. This is when words are added to our speech like barnacles to the hull of a ship, perhaps to impress or possibly for no reason at all. For instance, we now live in an era in which all tragedies are ‘Greek’, and in which all opportunities come equipped with windows. There has more recently been the trend to add ‘up with’ to the word ‘meet’. It is no longer possible to meet a friend, one now has to ‘meet up with’ him or her.

Even the word ‘Yes’ has been replaced - in this case by the unnecessarily affirmative word ‘Absolutely’. Whole conversations take place in which each participant exchanges their absolute agreement with each other. This is of course after they have met up with each other.

Thanks for reading this blog.

See also: A cliche rears its ugly head

Smelling the past

There are memories not just of sights and sounds, but of smells. My childhood in the 1950s was full of smells that I encounter much less frequently today. On the way to school each day, I would smell coal dust from the fires that heated every house. Coal dust made winter days foggy and old buildings blackened with soot. It was easy to dismiss the architecture of the past because it was so filthy.

The other memorable smell was from people. This was usually a combination (among men especially) of tobacco and sweat. Tobacco because most people smoked cigarettes most of the time. They scattered nub-ends, used packets and used matches around them. The top decks of buses and public buildings usually had a layer of this detritus on the floor. One of my first summer vacation jobs, in 1965, was as an airport hand (temporary) at Birmingham Airport. I spent most of each day pushing a broom, cleaning up after smokers.

The smell of sweat was because deodorants were regarded by many men as being unmasculine, and because people bathed and showered much less often than now. This was more a matter of attitude than opportunity. When I became an undergraduate at the London School of Economics in 1965, I moved into digs with a family in Streatham. I was shocked to find that they (father, mother and daughter) would share a bath serially. When one had finished, another would then occupy the bath. This all occurred quite quickly before the water got cold. Like most families I knew at that time, they bathed once a week.

When I became a social worker in the early 1970s, there were new smells - of filth and neglect. I visited houses where my feet stuck to the carpet, where a choking smell of dog faeces would emerge when I opened the door, where unwashed nappies were piled in a corner. I suspect that these smells remain and are suffered by a new generation of social workers and health visitors.

There were better smells. I remember especially the perfume of the first girl I took to an Italian meal in London (appropriately in Sicilian Avenue, Holburn), and the wonderful smell of olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and pesto sauce. I last saw that girl in 1968, but the Italian food has thankfully remained one of the continuing pleasures of my life. 

New political fantasies for old

The most striking change in politics in my lifetime has been the turnover of political fantasies. By ‘political fantasies’, I mean those visions of a better future which are proposed as being the ultimate aim of a political movement, and which have the following characteristics:

1.    The fantasy proposes not only a better world than the one we live in, but also one that is much simpler. The nature of this desired simplification varies from one political movement to another. Nationalists look forward to their nation being free of its irritating ethnic minorities or immune to the external power and cultural influence of an overweening neighbour. Communists and socialists wish for a world free of the immense complexity and demands of the market economy, to be replaced by one in which the rewards of society are allocated rationally to those with greatest merit. Islamists envisage a world living in accord with Sharia law, organised on lines resembling the first Muslim empire.

2.    The fantasy involves a belief that, once attained, it will result in a fundamental change in human nature, in which a new kind of person will emerge. Depending on the particular political fantasy, people in the new world will be fitter, kinder, more supportive of each other, prouder of their heritage, more devout, or more entrepreneurial and self-reliant.

3.    The fantasy is coupled with a programme of political action, presented as the initial steps on the road to the new world. As a result, these measures are invested by supporters with a sort of sacred quality which over-rides any consideration of their effectiveness. Socialists believed that the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy were the essential first steps to achieve a socialist society. The 1964 Labour Government was therefore committed to renationalising the steel industry as a statement of faith rather than as a calculated measure to improve the organisation or efficiency of this industry. The process by which the fantasy is to be achieved beyond this initial programme is never made clear. As a result, political movements often seem to run out of steam once their initial programme is complete. Fantasy is postponed, then redefined, then forgotten.

4.    Some land (preferably one of which we know little) is seen as either embodying the fantasy, or at least leading the charge towards it. This usually involves a good deal of wishful thinking, followed by disappointment. Communists at first regarded the Soviet Union as the land closest to achieving their preferred fantasy. Disillusion was prompted not by the mass murder of ‘collectivisation’ or the show trials of the 1930s, but by the admission of its leader in 1956 that mistakes had been made. Many communists then became refugees of the mind, looking for a succession of beacons, from Yugoslavia, China, Cuba and, for some, even Albania. Scottish nationalists provide a less dramatic example, when their leader spoke in the 1990s of a future independent Scotland becoming part of an ‘arc of prosperity’, including Ireland and Iceland.              

Political fantasies, for all their faults, provide hope (or an array of alternative hopes) for ordinary people. They appeal particularly to the young because they have the most to hope for. But they also speak to people who have suffered poverty, discrimination, or a sense that their familiar world is under threat. The political movements that are committed to fantasies therefore have an energy and an appeal not found among political parties committed to implementing gradual improvements, whose language is boringly technical and pragmatic.

In my teenage years, the dominant fantasies were those produced by communists, social democrats (such as the British Labour Party) and by various sorts of nationalists. Since then, the social democrat and communist fantasies have become almost completely extinct. There are still various socialist and communist parties in power in various countries, but they no longer offer any prospect of a brighter future beyond a (very limited) redistribution of personal wealth. Nationalists, however, continue to offer fantasies. The SNP proposes that, if ‘independent’, Scotland would be an immeasurably better place, full of hope, yet also reassuringly unchanged, retaining the monarchy, the pound, the BBC, and a place in the European Union. The equivalent of the SNP in England is UKIP, which offers a simpler world, without the European Union, immigrants, decimal coinage, comprehensive schools, working mothers, recycling, and metric weights and measures. This is an appealing fantasy to all those who feel the world has been passing them by for several decades. But other people’s fantasies can be hell for the rest of us.

See also: Where have all the Marxists gone?

Dawlish and the need for redundancy

On the 4th of February 2014, a major storm destroyed the railway along the sea front in the town of Dawlish in South West Devon. Rails were left hanging over an abyss in front of a raging sea. This event cut the only rail connection to a large area distant from the capital. There is a 100 miles of peninsula to the West of the City of Exeter, while Penzance (the Westernmost town in Cornwall) is further from London than Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The railways have long been aware of the vulnerability of the line at Dawlish. In 1937, the Great Western Railway secured an act of Parliament to authorise a new inland by-pass line. Work began, but ceased at the outbreak of war. There were, however, at that time two other inland alternatives: the Teign Valley Line (just West of Dawlish) and the Okehampton Line across Dartmoor. Both were closed in the 1960s, the latter as part of the major programme of closures proposed by Dr Richard Beeching in his notorious reports of 1963 and 1965. The Department of Transport is currently considering the need to re-instate the Dartmoor Line at a possible cost of £100 million. Meanwhile, repair work continues in Dawlish, probably also costing several million pounds. The business lost to the South West because of the closure of the line has been estimated at £20 million/day.

How was it that a seemingly-rational accountant like Dr Beeching (supported by assorted politicians, senior civil servants and media commentators) implemented the closure of the only alternative to a strategic but vulnerable railway line? The answer, I believe, lies in the kind of flawed rationality dominant in political decision-making both then and now. The key flaw is to equate ‘efficiency’ with the maximum possible use of resources. Resources that are not being used are regarded as costly and redundant, and are to be stripped back. For Beeching, this  involved eliminating railway lines that duplicated routes between cities. The Dartmoor Line was one of the two lines remaining between Exeter and Plymouth, and was therefore deemed redundant.

But this definition of ‘efficiency’ only makes sense if the demand for resources is constant and unchanging. If demand fluctuates or if some mishap closes down a key resource, then public services fail without a stock of redundant resources that can be quickly deployed. Heathrow Airport experiences long delays when there is a snowfall or extremely cold weather. This is not because the airport is inefficient or badly-managed, but because in normal conditions it is highly efficient in its use of its resources. Its two runways operate to near-maximum capacity, and there is therefore no stock of ‘redundant time’. In very cold weather, it takes longer to prepare planes for flight because they need to be de-iced and swept. As a result, the number of flights/hour is reduced, and delays inevitably increase. A similar problem occurs with the many hospitals which usually operate near full-capacity. During spikes in admissions (often during very cold weather), staff face the option of either transporting patients at great expense to a distant hospital, or discharging patients before they are ready to return home. Failing to allow redundancy can therefore be very expensive.

As well as short-term fluctuations in demand, there may also be long-term shifts. Another common flaw is to assume that any long-term change will be a continuation of the most recently-observed trend (called the ‘extrapolation error’). Dr Beeching had noted the steady decline in rail traffic in the 1950s, and assumed this would continue until rail travel was reduced to a few inter-city mainlines. This assumption was widely-shared among policy-makers at the time, and was based on a belief that the USA offered the path to the future. This vision of apparent modernity was characterised by motorways, cheap petrol and a sharp decline in public transport. The USA is, of course, a very different place from the small crowded UK, and a better model for modernity would have been the other countries of Western Europe, which generally kept their extensive rail networks and urban tramways (as well as building motorways).

In the years since privatisation, there has been a continuing expansion of rail transport in the UK, with a 50% increase in passenger-miles in the last ten years. This has led to major investment in expanding the rail network, and in creating urban tram systems. In many cases, this expenditure restores systems torn up in the 1950s and 1960s. Edinburgh once had an extensive tram system, which was closed in 1956. The Scottish Government has now spent over £700 million to build a smaller (and much-delayed) network. Another, and cheaper, example is the doubling of some of the railway track between Worcester and Oxford. This only(!) cost £70 million, but it involved restoring track that had been removed in the 1970s. There are many other examples.

The closure of the Dartmoor Line shows a further kind of flawed rationality. As a good accountant, Dr Beeching attempted to estimate the profitability of each individual part of the business (in this case, railway lines between specified destinations). But this assumed that a railway line is a self-contained entity rather part of a system. People therefore use one railway line to reach another one. The closure of the Dartmoor Line meant that Tavistock, a town of about 11,000 people, no longer had a railway station. Before the closure, people living there who wished to go to, for example Taunton or Bristol, would have caught the train to Exeter and changed there for a main-line train. After the closure, they could have driven to Exeter and then caught a train. But of course, once in a car, they might as well complete the journey up the M5. Closure of small lines therefore reduced passenger numbers on the main lines that Dr Beeching had calculated were profitable.

This failure to see society as a complex system is endemic in political life. Long-term psychiatric beds are closed, and there is an unexpected rise in the number of homeless people and people with mental disorders in prison. Local authority expenditure on social care is drastically reduced, and there is a sudden mysterious rise in emergency hospital admissions. This complexity marks out public life as a very different matter from running a business. In a business, there is a limited and defined list of products, each of which is targeted at a particular set of customers, while there a simple and appropriate measures of success (sales and profit) can usually be calculated. This simplicity is appealing for politicians and senior civil servants, and a series of businessmen (beginning with Dr Beeching) have been brought into government to ‘solve’ complex problems. Governments have also turned to management consultants, who invariably suggest outsourcing public services so that governments act as a ‘purchaser’ in a sort of quasi-market. In the absence of indicators like sales and profits, endless sets of ‘targets’ are specified, leading to demoralised and confused staff, and simple-minded decision-making.

Needless to say, the contracts for these outsourced services costs millions of pounds to negotiate, for both the government as purchaser and the provider agencies. A substantial proportion of these millions is of course spent on buying advice from the management consultant agencies that recommended the whole system in the first place.

See also:
Not staying focussed

Those who hate

I am driving along a country road. I see ahead the front end of a car beginning to pull out of a side road. I suspect that the driver has not seen me. I give a brief toot on the horn to warn him. He stops his car. As I pass, he loudly sounds his horn. I glance and see him gesturing angrily at me. As so often, he is a balding, red-faced man. He is angry because I may have saved his life. The driver would not have explained it that way at the time. In fact, I suspect he would not have explained it all, except to use words to express his dominant emotion of anger. His anger probably arose because he regarded the horn I sounded as an admonition and hence, to him, as an act of aggression.

I suspect that if I met the same man some time later, the anger would have cooled. We might even chat over a glass of beer. This is because, for most people, anger is transient  and rarely converted into hate. A few people seem to live in a permanent state of anger, but hatred is usually a colder feeling, like that of Iago for Othello - a compulsion to destroy another person, even someone with whom the hater is outwardly on good terms. Like Iago, the hater can not usually explain why they hate. There may be a feeling of envy or contempt for the object of hate. Or the person might be a member of some despised group. But in most cases, these explanations only provide a rationalisation for what is a primary, dominant and inexplicable emotion.

Those who hate have a supreme purpose in life. Those who are hated have much to fear. I remember many times when I have felt angry, usually because of my impatience or  because of frustrated ambition. I can also remember disliking some people. But I have never felt hate. I have, however, been on the receiving end of others’ hatred. After I left my job in the NHS, I went to the wedding of a former colleague. I met someone who had been a fellow NHS manager - by now rather drunk. The alcohol revealed the true man, and I listened with horror to his expressions of loathing for me - from someone who I had always counted as a friend. Sometime later, I encountered a junior female work colleague who seemed polite, quiet and very competent. I used my efforts to promote her career until I discovered that she was relentlessly using her efforts to destroy mine. Discussion and mediation failed because hating me seemed to be the main purpose of her life. She seemed to resemble a character from a crime programme, like Midsommer Murders - the person who appears up to the last ten minutes as pleasant and helpful, but who is then revealed as the crazed murderer.

We are tempted to explain the pleasure some people get from hatred, cruelty and destruction as products of their childhood or other experiences. They may collude with this biography to gain sympathy. But they rarely admit that hatred and the opportunity to impose pain and destruction on others gives them supreme pleasure. There are no reluctant torturers.. I have learnt from bitter experience that attempting to compromise does not work with those who hate - they will see it as either deviousness or vulnerability. The rest of us also need to accept that such people will always be among us, and do our best to unite against them. This is easier said than done. People who hate have a singleness of purpose and a passion that sometimes endows them with a ghastly charisma. People who are troubled and unsure in the world will respond to their leadership. At times of great crisis, most people are in such a state of mind. Their leader then emerges, singling out their enemies, towards whom all collective human venom is directed.

See also: No sympathy for the devils

Reading list for December 2013

Here are the books I finished last month.

Agemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A: Why Nations Fail. The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (2013). A good span-of-history book, which asserts the importance of political institutions in explaining why some countries are rich and others poor. The authors show how countries are impoverished by kleptocratic rulers who steal their countries’ resources on a massive scale and obstruct local enterprise by allocating monopoly to their families and other cronies. The authors also note how several states (such as Columbia) fail at their most basic task of maintaining control over their territory, and how others (such as Argentina) have systematically looted the savings of their ordinary citizens. However, the authors do not discuss how democratic political institutions can themselves become corrupted such that wealth is increasingly concentrated in elites who become secure from taxes or effective regulation.

Armstrong, John: In Search of Civilisation (2009). This is a short but engrossing discussion of the meaning of civilisation. Armstrong is able to put philosophical ideas into simple language, illustrated by poetry, literature and history. I would have liked some discussion of how civilised ways of life can co-exist in the same society with gross barbarity.

Galbraith, Richard: The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013). This is a tremendous thriller, written by JK Rowling. There is a wide range of loathsome suspects, each of whom typifies a different aspect of the corrupting wealth of London society. The detective is at first presented as the cliché of the man with integrity who has failed in his personal and work life. His new temporary secretary appears empty-headed. But the reader’s understanding of both of them is transformed as the book progresses. This is the best murder mystery I have read.

Goudsblom, Johan and Mennell, Stephen: The Norbert Elias Reader (1998). I dipped into this book, which summarised the work of the great sociologist Norbert Elias. Unlike most of his kind, Elias knew that a good understanding of history is essential in understanding social stability and change. His work was highly-regarded by such eminent historians as Eric Hobsbawm. I read one Elias book in November, and will tackle others later this year.

Lyman, Robert: Japan’s Last Bid for Victory. The Invasion of India 1944 (2011). This book filled a gap in my knowledge of the brutal campaign in Assam, when Japan began an invasion of India in the hope that this would set off a popular uprising against British rule. Each stage of the campaign is described in details, including the appalling siege of Kohima, when the British and Japanese fought without a break for days across opposite sides of a tennis court. The staggering brutality of the Japanese army is described, and how this strengthened the determination of the British. If you knew that the Japanese killed all their prisoners, then you never surrendered. 
                               
Suchet, David: Poirot and Me (2013). This was a Christmas present from my daughter Rosemarie. It was signed by David Suchet at the Chepstow Literary Festival. Rosemarie met the great man, gave him a picture of Poirot she had drawn, and then burst into tears. The book is an engaging read, and illustrates how a great character actor works hard to understand the character he plays. 

There was also one book I began but did not complete:

Schama, Simon: The Story of the Jews, Volume 1 (2013). This is a fascinating subject, but proved frustrating to read. Schama seems uncertain of his readership. It would have been helpful for those of us who are not Jews to have had more background information about Jewish religion and customs. The main problem, however, is that Schama is not a narrative historian, and that the book was developed from a television series. As a result, the book seems oddly episodic.

Thinking about the Good Samaritan.

The parable of the good Samaritan appears in Chapter 10 of the Gospel of St Luke. Jesus was posed a question by a lawyer, as follows:

    Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, [Deuteronomy 6:5]; and your neighbour as yourself [Leviticus 19:18].” He said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.” But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?”

    Jesus answered, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he travelled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’ Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbour to him who fell among the robbers?”

    He said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Like many such parables, the story of the Good Samaritan can be interpreted in several ways. The simplest reading is that Jesus commended giving time and money to strangers who are in desperate need. It is the opposite, in other words, of the common statement that ‘charity begins at home’. This interpretation of the parable is exemplified by the organisation called the ‘Samaritans’, which recruits volunteers to answer phone calls from people confronting despair and contemplating suicide. The effectiveness of the Samaritans is shown by the suicide rate in the UK, which is among the lowest in Europe.

The parable of the Good Samaritan also says something important about the nature of love. Love is not just an emotional state or ‘feeling’, but an emotion expressed in action. To be saved, therefore, Jesus proposed that a person must both love God and directly help those in distress. Just loudly proclaiming that you are ‘born again’ is insufficient. Note too that the command expressed in Leviticus also requires us to love our neighbour as yourself. In other words, we are unlikely to effectively express love for others (even strangers) if we despise ourselves.

There are two further questions we can ask about this parable. The first is why Jesus specifically mentions a priest and a Levite (a tribe which had priestly functions). It may be that Jesus specified these respected members of Jewish society as a dramatic contrast with the Samaritan. But another reason may be that both priests and Levites at that time would be concerned with maintaining their ritual purity, which would have been lost if they had contacted a dead or ‘half-dead’ man. Jesus (despite the behaviour of many of those who claim to be his followers) was never critical of Judaism, but was a religious reformer. In particular, his parables and sayings emphasise that we judge people’s actions by their intent and consequences, and that this takes priority over adherence to religious law.

The second question is why the benevolent person in the parable is specifically a Samaritan. The Samaritans are a religious group (which still survives in Syria), with patterns of belief similar to Judaism. At the time of the parable, there was intense and violent rivalry between these two religions, similar to that today between some Sunni and Shia Muslims, or, in the recent past, between Protestant and Catholic Christians. So the audience for the parable would have viewed a Samaritan as an enemy. So much so, that the lawyer can not bring himself to say the name ‘Samaritan’ when Jesus asked him the question at the end of the parable.

So Jesus argued that all people - even strangers - even our enemies - are our ‘neighbours’, and therefore deserve our love. Throughout history, no words of Jesus have been betrayed as much as these. The last two millenniums have been a grim record of genocide between people from different factions of Christianity, or by Christians against people from different religions, against people who speak different languages or salute different flags, and against people with allegiance to rival ideas of how society should be organised. One example will suffice. The First Crusade, in which European Christian warriors captured Jerusalem, began with the slaughter of 8000 Jews in Germany and concluded with the mass murder of 70,000 people all religions in Jerusalem. The victorious knights literally waded in blood up to their knees on the way to church to celebrate the man who told them to love their enemies.