A little light: Chilean Winter

(Editor - Welcome to the final article of 2011 - part three of a series of articles just for wintry December, looking for a little light as the dark nights get colder. We will be back on 2nd January, in our usual Monday evening slot. A big thanks to all of the readers who visited the blog through 2010-11 and we hope to see you again in 2012.)

Whilst the Occupy protesters worldwide regroup, they can take hope from the success of other peaceful protests taking place elsewhere around the world. In particular they can look to the influence of the events of the Chilean Winter throughout the past year.

For eight months these protests have now been running - lead by students of Chilean universities. In that time (in spite of the aggressive tactics deployed to break them up) the movement has had a real affect upon public policy - even getting so far as to have spokespeople from the movement enter sit down negotiations with ministers and even the President (IBT, 2011).

One student spokesperson in particular, Camila Vallejo Dowling, has become something of a symbol for the movement (Margolis, 2011).

"You have to recognise that beauty can be a hook. It can be a compliment, they come to listen to me because of my appearance, but then I explain the ideas. A movement as historical as this cannot be summarised in such superficial terms.

"We do not want to improve the actual system; we want a profound change – to stop seeing education as a consumer good, to see education as a right where the state provides a guarantee.

"Why do we need education? To make profits. To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development? Those are the issues in dispute."

Camila Vallejo Dowling, in the Guardian; 2011.

However, she is just one of several leaders of a movement driving demands for better education, standardised education and fairer state financing (Jones, 2011). And these protests have support - attracting as many as 250,000 people (Sehnbruch & Donoso, 2011).

In the face of such a well supported movement, better education, cleaner politics and fairer finance are demands that can't be ignored forever. In Chile the senate education committee recently approved a bill that will seek to restrict profit seeking education establishments seeking state entitlements - one of the major demands of the student movement (Nunez, 2011). Breakthroughs can be made.

Even in nations under diktat, the demands of people have won out through peaceful protests - even in the face of hostile authorities. Tunisia, Egypt, and Chile have all shown the power of popular movements to be a force for good. They have also shown the willingness of young people to 'get political' when they perceive an avenue through which their voices might be heard. Both of these are modest but solid sparks of hope in the midst of dark times.

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References:
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+ IBT's 'Chile's student leader Vallejo arrives for a meeting with President Pinera at the La Moneda Presidential Palace at Santiago'; 3 September 2011.

+ Mac Margolis' 'Hard-Left Heartthrob'; in The Daily Beast; 3 October 2011.

+ Jonathan Franklin's 'Chile's Commander Camila, the student who can shut down a city'; in The Guardian; 24 August 2011.

+ Oliver Jones' 'Camila Vallejo and the Chilean Student Protests -- how to actually change policy'; in Asylum; 9 November 2011.

+ Kirsten Sehnbruch & Sofia Donoso's 'Chilean winter of discontent: are protests here to stay?'; in OpenDemocracy; 21 August 2011.

+ Maria Paz Nunez's 'Comisión de Educación del Senado aprueba proyecto que pone fin al lucro y pasa a discusión en la sala'; in Politica; 31 August 2011.

(Ed - For the not-polyglots, I suggest a trip to Google translate when checking non-English sources)

A little light: Tunisian elections

2011 has been an action packed year filled with wars, riots, protests, crackdowns and disasters:

'Overall though, the most startling thing about the year as a whole is just how densely packed with incident it's been. Last year, a woman dropping a cat in a wheelie bin was notable enough to make headlines across the globe. This year, so much has happened it's impossible to remember it all in one go. Massively significant events just drop out of your memory, only to surprise you again when you stumble across them later.'

Charlie Brooker, 2011.

Since the Arab Spring, we have seen a year of protracted clashes between the establishment and protesters. In Libya this escalated into civil war. In Syria and Bahrain, there have been allegations of systematic oppression by their governments (CBS, 2011; Irish Times, 2011). In Egypt, the military established a government after President Mubarak resigned following lengthy protests against his leadership - recently holding democratic elections to appoint a new government (Clarke, 2011).

And now in Russia protesters are out en masse claiming electoral fraud, forcing President Medvedev to take to Facebook to stress that the government was listening to the people's voices (BBC, 2011).Amongst these events, the Arab Spring sparked hopes for the emergence of a new democratic spirit; something that has made Tunisia a light during dark times. For those still engaged in the struggle against authoritarian rule, the Tunisian elections in October came as a well timed reminder of what lies at the end of the tunnel (Fernando & Mahmood, 2011). Reports have so far been complimentary of the way the elections were conducted in difficult circumstances.

Tunisia has set an example and people have taken notice.

Governments are now learning the costs of pushing ahead with unpopular policies in the face of mass public opposition - and the people are being shown what an informed and democratically committed population can do to arrest authoritarian regimes and corrupt policies.

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References:
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+ Charlie Brooker's '2011 has been like an end-of-season finale. 2012 doesn't stand a chance'; in The Guardian; 11 December 2011.

+ CBS' 'Bahrain troops lay siege to protesters' camp'; 16 March 2011.

+ Irish Times' 'Syria's crackdown'; 31 May 2011.

+ Sean Clarke's 'Egyptian elections: the buildup'; in The Guardian; 27 November 2011.

+ BBC's 'Russian election: Medvedev Facebook promise draws ire'; 12 December 2011.

+ Shehani Fernando & Mona Mahmood's 'Tunisia's voters go to the polls in Arab spring's first election'; in The Guardian; 24 October 2011.

And now for something completely different...

BBC4's Holy Flying Circus was a nice piece of television, wonderfully self-referential, and also a sad reminder of the departure of Graham Chapman, gone 'to meet the great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky' (Cleese, 1989).

Towards the end of Holy Flying Circus, there is a particular scene that will strike a chord with many of the people trying to navigate the world with reason. By the end of the infamous debate between the Pythons, Michael Palin & John Cleese, and their opponents, Palin had become badly upset. Palin stormed from the stage as soon as the debate closed, Cleese following him backstage to hear him vent his feelings:

Cleese:  I understand why you're angry, of course I do...
Palin:     They didn't listen, they didn't debate. They just shouted us
               down and played to the gallery. We took it seriously and
               they took the piss.
Cleese:  I know.
Palin:     And I thought you were going to be swaggering
               and offensive?
Cleese:  Yes. Well, I was kidding about that.
Palin:     Oh, shame. Might have actually been useful out there.
Cleese:  You've changed your tune...
Palin:     They mauled us, John! They tore us to shreds.

This point is laid out well in Ben Goldacre's Bad Science (2008). In the introduction, he writes 'You cannot reason people out of positions they didn't reason themselves into', echoing the words of Jonathan Swift:

'reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired...'

Jonathan Swift, in a Letter to a Young Clergyman; 1720.

Reason is the most magnificent mechanism, yet those who refuse it persist in their attempts to stymie questions and stifle debate using stubbornness, charisma or sheer volume. Bad Science is a great book for uncovering these sorts of unreasonable attempts to close down the space used for meaningful thought.

But what drives us towards such closed mindedness?

'That's the thing that's scary about monsters. Indoctrination. All it takes is one bite, one facehugger egg or one pit stop into the swamp of sadness and suddenly you're out there on the fringe - bombing abortion clinics or driving a Prius with a co-exist sticker down to your local Co-op. Human fear is nothing more than the manifestation of our aversion to the archetypal other, and our nagging doubt that we and they are one and the same. You know, Hegel, Satre, whatever...'         - Katie Willert, on After Hours at Cracked.

Cracked's team gets towards the heart of this issue, about the way our fear, particularly of the the implacable, the insatiable, the unwaveringly fundamental, can drive us towards closing our mind. It can send us running to the redoubts of belief for the protection we fear moderacy won't offer.

The American Republican Party serves as a particular example of this right now; American conservative speechwriter and commentator Mr David Frumm (2011):

'In the aftershock of 2008, large numbers of Americans feel exploited and abused. Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn’t conservatism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation.

I refuse to believe that I am the only Republican who feels this way. If CNN’s most recent polling is correct, only half of us sympathize with the tea party. However, moderate-minded people dislike conflict — and thus tend to lose to people who relish conflict.'

To what, then, may moderates turn to for comfort?

It is worth knowing that Asquith sealed a majority for the British Liberal Party at the1906 election with monotonous statistics; combating Joe Chamberlain's soaring stump speeches with well-evidenced argument and a calm reasoned approach.

It is worth knowing that Attlee became Prime Minister, not through wartime rhetoric, but through the hard work of home front civil administration during the second world war.

And it is worth seeing how Holy Flying Circus ends; because Michael Palin is still a national treasure; and no one knows who the Bishop of Suffolk or Malcolm Muggeridge are, beyond two people who were, once upon a time, mean to the nicest man the world.

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References:
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+ BBC4's 'Holy Flying Circus' 19 October 2011.

+ Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science'; Fourth Estate, 2008.

+ After Hours' '4 Terrifying Psychology Lessons Behind Famous Movie Monsters'; from Cracked.com.

+ David Frumm's 'When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?'; in New York; 20 November 2011.

Responsibility, Checks & Balances

Article Two of the United States constitution (balanced with articles one and three) lays out the powers and responsibilities of the President and the checks against that power. But despite these guidelines, those powers have been disputed and interpreted differently over time (Burns, 1963).

In Britain, the matter of oversight of the head of state's power became an exchange. The royal family would submit the revenue from the crown lands to the Treasury. In exchange they would receive a fixed sum to cover expenses in the form of the civil list. This tied the head of state's power to its dependence upon Parliament for money.

In Canada, the gaining of budgeting powers and responsible government were defining aspects of the country's foundations.

"...the keen fight has always been that of the right of the assembly to levy taxes and distribute it alone."      - Louis Joseph Papineau, 1867.

The civil list, in much the same vein, was a means of reining in the power of unelected bodies by ensuring that all matters of money came through the people's elected representatives - including a clear presentation of the funds to be spent - allowing the elected members to scrutinize and approve how the people's money is spent.

The latest efforts to reform this method of funding Britain's head of state, proposed by the Tory dominated government, became an act of parliament in the past month (BBC, 2011). It unites the sovereign's funds into a single grant, rather than several from different government department budgets. Yet the reform does little to ensure upfront disclosure of the way public money is spent, making it hard to see how cutting a cheque for a set amount (to be 15% of Crown Estate profits, in 2013 approx. £34m), represents much in the way of reform at all.

There are important reasons why this constitutional body must clear all of its spending with the taxpayer's delegates - explaining who is being employed, for what and for how much - before money is handed over not in the auditing process afterwards.

How to find a form of association which will defend the person and goods of each member with the collective force of all, and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys no one but himself, and remains as free as before.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762.

If Rousseau's proposition is going to be the case, then those allowed to wield exceptional power - particularly the spectacular privileges royalty enjoy - must have definite checks against that power and transparency in the dealings that power enables; whether that power is invested in one body, like the US President, or a few like the US Congress.

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References:
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+ James MacGregor Burns' 'The Deadlock of Democracy: Four-Party Politics in America'; Prentice, 1963.

For more on the United States' founding documents:
Pauline Maier's 'The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States'; Bantam, 1999.

+ BBC's 'Royal funding changes become law'; 18 October 2011.

For more on the Sovereign Grant Act, that replaces the civil list:
HM Treasury's 'Sovereign Grant Act', under Consultations & legislation.

+ 'Speech of the Hon. Louis-Joseph Papineau before the Institut canadien on the occasion of the 23rd anniversary of this society'; 17 December 1867.

+ Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 'The Social Contract'; 1762.

*Correction: 15% elaborated to 15% of Crown Estate profits.

Constitutions & Enshrining Ideas

Anyone who reads the United States constitution, or any of the great documents of declaration; those that espouse high virtues of liberty and brotherhood; the commonwealth of mankind; anyone who peruses these texts with some little understanding cannot help but be moved by such grand ideals.

But is there a real danger in such reverence?

In the United States the constitution faced a major test early in its life in the Dartmouth Ruling. The 1819 ruling showed that the revered document was not an infallible vehicle of the popular will. In this case the courts found government interference with private education to be unconstitutional.

And last December the Virginia healthcare ruling (Tomasky, 2010) followed a similar course, effectively barring Federal government attempts to interfere in healthcare provision, on the grounds that it was unconstitutional and set up a supreme court date to resolve the matter (MacAskill, 2011).

But there are just as recent and much more troubling attempts to use the US constitution to prevent the federal government using its mandate to enact various socially progressive measures. Arizona Bill SB1433 has been described as all but secession (Montini, 2011), leaving people in Arizona angry at attempts to legitimise, after-the-fact, controversial legislation (Sullivan, 2010), such as Arizona's discriminatory immigration laws. That such a bill made it to the senate of Arizona all, let alone come as close as just six votes from passing (del Puerto, 2011), demonstrates the difficulties that documents like the US constitution face.

Here lies the difficulty of sovereignty. When the old authorities are cast down and republics set in their place, the way in which the people shape the world they share to the benefit of the community has to be very carefully laid out. In the case of the US constitution, it has become a battle ground for interpretation, much as Voloshinov described language in his works.

Whatever our words, we must never be careless in our use of them. Thomas Jefferson, the principal force behind the words in the Declaration of Independence and the Federalists behind the US constitution, held a duty not just to ideals, but also to clarity. Meaning is never so set that an author can be held entirely to blame for the reception of those ideas by an audience. But this shouldn't lessen the responsibility, on both author & audience, to be clear.

We must remain wary of reverence, lest we enshrine ideas to such a degree that we can no longer effectively scrutinise them and our pathways to opposing injustice become blocked.

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References:
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+ Michael Tomasky's 'Healthcare repeal votes and Democratic strategy'; in The Guardian; 3 February 2011.

+ Ewen MacAskill's 'Obama faces re-election hurdle as health reforms go before supreme court'; in The Guardian; 14 November, 2011.

+ E.J. Montini's 'Arizona to secede (without OFFICIALLY doing so)'; in The Arizona Republic February 2011.

+ Laura Sullivan's 'Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law'; on NPR.org; 28 October 2010;

+ Luige del Puerto's 'Senate says ‘no” to state nullification bill'; in Az Capitol Times; 2 March 2011.

Personality Politics

With the advent of leadership debates in 2010, the UK has seemingly accepted the inexorable rise of personality politics.

Mr Blair's New Labour project sparked a new era in 1997 and his success, both at winning elections and maintaining a strong majority for a full decade, forced a reaction from other politicians.

'I am the heir to Blair'

    -David Cameron (Pierce, 2005)

Mr Cameron has certainly been heir to a certain brand of Blair's populism, willing to go in directions his own party members dislike in order to ensure success (Kirkup, 2011). Satirical memes, such as 'Call me Dave' (Western Mail, 2006) have done little to slow down Mr Cameron's rise to the Premiership. But despite these memes tying this populism to conservatism, it is not just a conservative trend.

From 'Call me Tony', to Mr Obama the nerd, to Mrs Hillary Clinton drinking for the cameras, those who find themselves on the progressive side of politics are just as often drawn into these personality contests. A particularly uncomfortable example were the desperate attempts to make Mr Gordon Brown smile.

Mr Brown was still further forced to be a public personality, a role he never seemed comfortable with, which led the former PM to some unfortunately high profile mistakes (Greenslade, 2010).

It seems that the question in 2010 became whether Mr Brown's Premiership could continue if his private comments reflected his feelings about the British public. Yet was this relevant to his ability to do the job?

Do these matters of personality affect a person's ability to 'lead'?

Why would we seemingly want, why do we seem to believe, that the people best qualified for important roles, of trust and responsibility, are those who are best at imitating our good friends or better neighbours?

Is the person best suited to a task the one we like most on a personal level?

It seems unavoidable that we should use personality as a means to measure the potential of others. But if we are to do this we must always be clear about our subjectivities: what qualities we look for, what they mean to us and why.

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References:
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+ Andrew Pierce's 'Horror as Cameron brandishes the B-word'; in The Times; 5 October 2005.

+ James Kirkup's 'EU referendum: David Cameron "loses control of backbench" in biggest Conservative rebellion'; in The Telegraph; 25 October 2011.

+ Western Mail's 'Labour in shambles over leadership, says Cameron'; from Wales Online; 29 September 2006.

+ Roy Greenslade's 'It's all over, Gordon - how the press greeted his disastrous "bigot" gaffe'; in The Guardian; 29 April 2010.

The Allure of the Rebel

Rebels have long held a special place in our hearts. From Han Solo & the Rebel Alliance to Mal Reynolds & the Independents, these rebels are often the protagonists and most loved characters.

But what is it that we like about these rebels?

Starting from a new perspective on Asch's experiments, Moscovici began a line of study looking at the effect of minorities upon majorities (Gross, 2005). These minorities are often the source of pioneers & innovators, of new angles & new perspectives, which usually leads them into conflict with the status quo.

This provokes an alternative question. Why might we dislike the status quo?

From the perspective of protagonists like Han Solo and Mal Reynolds, their enemies are usually tyrannising minorities; in Star Wars the rebellion fights against an empire founded upon a small religious cult and a military-industrial complex; in Firefly the Independents oppose the alliance of wealthy core worlds that seeks to impose its rule on the poorer and wilder fringe worlds. Both were rebellions seeking to free individuals from the establishment's deeply conservative attachment to an idea of societal order.

Has an aspect of this meme been transposed to our real world perception of authority?

There certainly seems to be something to the idea that a government, from a certain perception, is always (regardless of mandate) a separate minority ruling over the majority (Fulcher & Scott, 2003). If this is the case, it certainly casts our favourite rebels in a different light. Rather than favouring them for their individuality or as outcasts, we instead identify with them as an embodiment of the majority. The 99% who wish to be out from under the influence of a minority.

This leads us back to the earlier forms of these characters - the noble barbarians - Aragorn, Conan, Othello and treatment of semi-historical figures like Arminius & Calgacus by Tacitus. What tends to elevate these protagonists, whether through charisma & personality or effective leadership techniques, seems to be a perception of them as being positive & pure examples of our ingroup identities.

We are however, it is worth remembering, somewhat prone to generalisations. And it is something that makes the romanticised notions of rebellion difficult when applied to the real world - in situations like the American Civil & Boer Wars - where the politics & ideologies of both sides make such simplistic notions as 'rebels are good' and 'authorities are bad' seriously problematic.

What can be salvaged is that the rebel is an aspirational character, representing elements of what we hope that we & the majority could be - independent thinking individuals who justly question authority and maintain a constant vigilance.

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References:
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+ Richard Gross' 'Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour'; (5th Ed); Chp 26, Conformity and Group Influence; pg 446-449; Hodder Arnold, 2005.

+ James Fulcher & John Scott's 'Sociology'; (2nd Ed); Chp 19, Politics, Power and Protest; pg 783-784, Elitist Theories; Oxford University Press, 2003.

Remember, Remember

When lighting your bonfire or fireworks tonight, please remember these old words:

'Remember, remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason, why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.'

And as you dwell on them, keep in mind its message of resistance to tyranny - opposing the use of terror & violence as a means of getting what you want. Take care of yourself & your pets tonight and have a safe 5th November.

Charismatic Leadership

Newspapers argue every day over what qualities make good leaders. In the UK the focus is on the failures, where lies, association and incompetence are held up to disqualify individuals from positions of responsibility. Meanwhile in the US, being a mother or an outsider can be used to prop up political campaigns. The personal qualities of leaders are consistently used to justify or disavow beliefs, ideas and policies.

However, tying authority to a personality makes a leader's position unstable. In his work exploring authority, Max Weber tackled the role that personalities play (1994), classifying such leadership as charismatic authority. And where power is tied to the individual qualities of a single leader, there lies instability. This is due to continued power being dependent upon the ability of a charismatic leader to repeatedly 'prove their powers' (Hughes et al, 2003).

In practice this means a tyrant must always inspire fear, a mother must never lapse in devotion to family values and the democrat can never be seen to do the sorts of deals that other politicians make every day.

Such a system invites uncertainty, but can also be an effective means of generating a base around which to rally support. Personal qualities become the justification behind many actions; both means and ends. This offers a great flexibility to charismatic leaders, often enabling them to support the achievement of dissonant ends - with the ends justified as right by virtue of the leader's qualities.

Rational authority has a much more difficult time in making its case. Such leadership and authority has to depend upon reasoned, rational & consistent logic - where political means and ends are legitimate because they have evidence to support there conclusions.

However, Joe Chamberlain & HH Asquith discovered in the run up to the 1906 UK election that rational authority is immensely strong when good evidence is available and is well distributed. Chamberlain's soaring rhetoric was undone by Asquith's own approach - travelling up & down the country to address crowds and put the evidence to the people (Marr, 2009).

Charismatic Authority can (and has been) a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. Yet it remains a seductively powerful one. If we are to have real & legitimate democracy, those who would support a more accountable politics would do well to mix campaigning with the scientific method - to bring strong evidence to the ears of voters everywhere. It is a method whose effectiveness has precedent.

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References:
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+ Max Weber's 'Basic Concepts in Sociology'; Chp 4, Pt 4: Bases of Legitimate Order; Citadel 1994.

+ John A Hughes, Peter J Martin & Wes W Sharrock's 'Understanding Classical Sociology: Marx - Weber - Durkheim'; Chapter 3: Max Weber; Power and Forms of Domination, Pg 112; Sage, 2003.

+ Andrew Marr's 'The Making of Modern Britain'; Pt 1: Living in the Future; Joe's Great Rebellion, Pg 34-35; Macmillan 2009.

The Voice of Identity - Barack Obama & Ron Paul

The US Presidential election of 2012 could mark a watershed moment in international economics. It appears as if it will be the battleground on which the last holdouts of the Keynesian School will face off against the austerity led economics favoured by the IMF (Chu, 2011).

However, in order to have this meaningful debate, the primaries must first produce candidates who can best express the benefits of each school of thought. The candidates who have repeatedly shown themselves capable of that task have been President Barack Obama & Senator Ron Paul. Each of them firmly and intelligently represent their sides in the Keynes versus von Mises debate, respectively.

'No matter who I've met with, whether it was the business leaders today or the labour leaders I met with last week, my message has been the same: the American economy is at its strongest when we have a common set of values that it reflects - when we reward not just wealth but also work and worker's who create it, because what we've relearned in painful fashion over the past few months is that Wall Street can't thrive so long as Main Street is struggling. So to strengthen our long term economic competitiveness... we need to build an economy that lifts up all Americans. Now if we're serious about making America more competitive in the 21st century, we also have to finally solve our energy crisis... When America wanted to send a man to the moon, we put the full resources of our federal government behind it and spent over a $100 billion dollars, in today's dollars. Well I want to make an even bigger commitment to free this nation from its addiction to oil and that's why I will invest $150 billion over the next 10 years,... investments that will create up to 5 million new green jobs, that pay well and can't be outsourced and that will create billions of dollars in new business. That's the kind of leadership we need to realise the potential promise of green energy, our economy, our safety and our security and that's the kind of leadership I will offer as President of the United States'

- Then-Senator Obama, 26 June 2008.

'Government is literally out of control. Spending, taxes, regulations, monetary inflation, invasion of our privacy, welfarism to both the rich and the poor, military spending, and foreign adventurism around the world will one day precipitate a crisis that will truly test our will to live in a free society. If government were not so much out of control, would not the most conservative president of the last 50 years be able to do something about the runaway deficits? The deficits have tragically only gotten very much worse under Reagan. All the problems we face, high interest rates, inflation, deficits, vicious business cycles with accelerating unemployment are serious problems indeed, but the real threat under the conditions to come will be the potential loss of our personal liberty. Without liberty, prosperity is lost and equality of poverty prevails

- Then-Representative Ron Paul, Congressional Record - US House of Representatives, September 20, 1984.

Due to the global impact of the American economy, this is a contest that will have a huge impact on the next decade of economic thought. Considering then the importance of the debate, it seems right that it be between two of the United States' finest orators, campaigners & public thinkers.

So to supporters of libertarian small government or liberal public intervention; of free speech, free press & free peaceful assembly; of local decisions being made by local people; of constitutional rights that apply to all equally -

• getting an Obama versus Paul debate means challenging attempts to manufacture candidates and filter the news that reaches you;
• getting an Obama versus Paul debate means avoiding the inaccurate rhetoric and 'personality politics' of political popularity contests and allows for a real discussion about how people live;

- so to supporters of all sides, regardless the winner of this primarily economic presidential contest, an Obama versus Paul debate will give America a president that fought hard, a president that won the argument and a president that will likely set the tone internationally for the next decade.

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References:
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+ Ben Chu's 'Did the IMF preach austerity?'; in The Independent; 21 September 2011.

+ Senator Obama on the Economy and Energy, on YouTube; 26 June 2008.

+ Ron Paul's speech from the Congressional Record — US House of Representatives, 20 September 1984; in the article 'The Economics of a Free Society'; on Mises.org; 23 May 2008; excerpted from Ron Paul's 'Pillars of Prosperity'; Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008.

The Go Between - John Bercow

Since Mr John Bercow was elected Speaker by Parliament in the wake of the expenses scandal, he has been fighting to make it a better place.

This has meant spending a lot of time combating the bad habits of members. So far a number of MPs have felt the sharp end of the Speaker's tongue:

'Order. There is far too much shouting in the Chamber and the Secretary of State for Education should not be shouting his head off — it is a very bad example to set to the nation’s schoolchildren'

- Mr Bercow rebuking the education minister, Mr Michael Gove.

'Order! I say to the Children's Minister, try to calm down and behave like an adult; and if you can't, if it's beyond you, leave the chamber, get out, we'll manage without you... no it's not funny, only in your mind, Mr Loughton is it funny. It's not funny at all, it's disgraceful'

- Mr Bercow rebuking the Children's Minister, Mr Tim Loughton.

Speaker Bercow isn't alone in his appreciation of the need to clean up Parliament's behaviour (Hodder, 2011), nor do the Speaker's attempts to clean up Britain's political sphere end at the door to the Palace of Westminster. In interviews he has been outspoken against certain media establishments and their comments, amongst others, on how his wife ought to act due to his role as speaker:

'I think there is a good deal of old-fashioned chauvinism. The notion that somehow my wife has got a duty either to agree with me or to say nothing. My wife is an independent person, she's entitled to her own views'

-Mr Bercow comments on attempts by critics to 'attack him through his wife'.

From the Speaker's lectures (BBC, 2011) celebrating the centenary of the Parliament Act to hosting President Obama, who spoke at Westminster Hall earlier this year; Speaker Bercow is steadily trying to manage Parliament's identity towards positive goals through celebrations of its heritage, rather than just swatting bad behaviour as it rears its ugly head.

When our ancestors reined in monarchs through control of taxation and budgets, and Responsible Government became a reality, the Speaker became a powerful political figure as Parliament's representative to the king. Around the empire, Speakers became important voices for democracy, such as Louis-Joseph Papineau in Canada.

In those days it would be the Speaker's job to rally parliamentarians to challenge & restrain the excesses of the executive. With the advent of responsible government and a virtually powerless monarch, the Speaker has been increasingly required to focus upon improving the reputation and perceived image of Parliament, to clean up the public image of how a government conducts its business.

The 'character' of a leader or leadership institution in itself is not enough for legitimate governance, but it can serve to improve the confidence of stakeholders in the arguments and decisions being made within those institutions - generating trust through accountability and transparency.

Reicher and Haslam (2007) had three propositions about the nature of leadership:

• Proposition 1: The emergence of leadership is related to the development of a shared social identity.
• Proposition 2: Leadership serves to facilitate the development of shared social identity.
• Proposition 3: The success of leaders relates (i) to their ability to convince others to accept their proposals as valid expressions of group identity, and (ii) to their ability to create a social reality which corresponds to their definition of social identity.

Mr Bercow's job has been to drive Parliament towards a reform of its identity, not just to change the outward perception of Parliament, but to change Parliament's perception of itself. This has meant strenuous efforts to promote parliamentary scrutiny, respect for procedure and working hard to reform what it means to be a public delegate; sometimes in the face of an abject flaunting of the rules of conduct pertaining to members (BBC, 2011).

For more on Mr John Bercow, see the BBC's 'The John Bercow story' & Prospect Magazine's 'Getting the House in order. For more on Reicher & Haslam's research take a look at wikipedia's page on BBC's 'The Experiment'.

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References:
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+ Hodder Education, 'Parliament and Politics: A study in how not to debate'; 6 July 2011.

+ BBC Democracy Live, 'Speaker's lectures: Centenary of the Parliament Act'; 2011.

+ Steve Reicher & S.Alexander Haslam's 'Identity entrepreneurship and the consequences of identity failure: The dynamics of leadership in the BBC Prison Study'; in Social Psychology Quarterly, 70, 125-147; 2007.

+ BBC's 'Defence Secretary Liam Fox quits'; 14 October 2011.

Life as a Leader - Gordon Brown

Since his resignation, Mr Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister and Chancellor, has kept himself close to the public's view. Despite failing to secure a new term in power for Labour (even with his resignation), the former Premier is still showing much of the bullish resilience he displayed in office.

The former Labour leader's comeback came with a speech on behalf of his constituents - and the British shipbuilding industries - on the matter of maintenance for British aircraft carriers (BBC, 2010). Mr Brown seemed to take a good deal of confidence from the reception he received for this speech. So much so that his name had been one of those in consideration for Head of the IMF, until an alleged intervention by Mr Cameron blocked his appointment (Stewart, 2011).

However his role in combating the financial crisis while in office, back in 2008, was so prominent that he nevertheless received the Chair of another economic policy committee, the World Economic Forum (WEF, April 2011). In this role he has been a voice in the background of global economics, pushing for a more International response to the ongoing crisis, calling for nations to recognise their interdependence (WEF, September 2011).

Mr Brown has stressed that European nations need to 'invest in infrastructure', a economic policy clearly at odds with the more conservative austerity programs dominating policy-making in the largely conservative governments of the EU (Guardian, 2011).

This quietly made case is good for the Labour party opposition in Britain, and the policy framework it is developing as alternative measures to deep cuts (Kettle, 2011; Balls, 2011).

The ex-premier is using the influence of that role well to demonstrate an important aspect of leadership. This particular aspect is known as framing work, describing the way a leader tries to shape both the identity of a group & its aims - managing the relationship, not just between leaders and followers, but also relations between followers and the future. In all seeking to create a unified message that those who identify with the group can get behind (Johnson et al, 2001).

Mr Brown's work is invaluable to the Labour Party in their attempts to break out of the routine of opposition and present a real alternative that people can understand and get behind.

==========
References:
==========
+ BBC Democracy Live, 'Brown makes first Commons speech since leaving No 10'; 8mins 10; 1 November 2010.

+ Heather Stewart's 'Gordon Brown wins economic consolation prize after IMF rebuff'; in The Guardian; 22 April 2011.

+ World Economic Forum, 'Gordon Brown to Join World Economic Forum as Chair of New Policy and Initiatives Coordination Board'; 22 April 2011.

+ World Economic Forum, 'Globally Coordinated Action Needed to Put World Growth Back on Sustainable Path'; 16 September 2011.

+ Sheila Pulham, Chris Fenn, Garry Blight & Guardian Research Department's 'Left, right, left: how political shifts have altered the map of Europe'; in The Guardian; 28 July 2011.

+ Martin Kettle's 'Ed Miliband has offered an alternative – but will anyone vote for it?'; in The Guardian; 29 September 2011.

+ Labour conference: Ed Balls unveils five-point plan for growth - video; in The Guardian; 26 September 2011.

+ Alan Johnson, Colin Barker & Michael Lavalette's 'Leadership & Social Movements';
Manchester University Press, 2001.

Lies, Damned Lies & Reporting

There have been two examples in the last week of the mistakes that the media can make. Two major news outlets were caught red handed, on the one hand pre-empting the news and on the other outright revising it.

On 1st October, the New York Times was caught changing the angle of its coverage of the Brooklyn Bridge incident, to present a series of events less friendly to the protesters and more friendly to the police.

This late alteration by the New York Times illustrates some problems:

• first, that vested interests in a particular message can (it would not be unreasonable to believe) encourage our confirmation bias, making it harder to see anything but the information that agrees with our own views;
• and second, that information is now spread so quickly that reporters have little time between events and deadlines, which has had consequences for the amount of time available for editorial scrutiny.

This short time window has generated a need to map out stories in advance of events. And it was this practice that caught out the Daily Mail, which incorrectly reported that Amanda Knox's appeal had been rejected by the Italian courts.

It is not always enough to regulate publishers, editors and the news media. They exist in a competitive market where your attention is the prize. Therefore the reader must always be vigilant - reading diverse and credibly sourced material to filter out the subjectivities of any single publication. The reader must now be a researcher and investigative journalist themselves in order to expose subjectivities behind reporting and get to the facts.

==========
References
==========
+ Kevin M. Lerner's coverage of the Times report & the internet's reaction.

+ Malcolm Coles discusses the Mail's slip up, along with similar slips by other news outlets.

October: One Year of Le Rouge Journal

Welcome to the second year of this blog. Thank you to the thousands of visitors we've had in the past year and we hope you'll stick with us into the future.

Our new year begins with a new layout; a few tweaks to make us a little more user friendly and friendlier on the eye.

In the next few months we'll have:

+ personality profiles of some high profile politicians;
+ a discussion of the role of personality in politics;
+ a review of the contenders in the US Presidential race;

... and much more besides.

And last, but certainly not least, we hope to collect articles to be available in book form in the next few months, both paperback and electronic.

The Burdens of Ambition

British society is inarguably the most affluent it has ever been. British people have never lived so long, in a greater degree of comfort or with greater opportunities than right here, right now. British society has virtually overcome poverty, even if the very bottom line of social security for citizens is charity.

So how is it that our society can still throw up riots, theft and looting such as was seen around England in August?

'Towards the end of the century, ...a change began to manifest itself. The working classes, whom popular education had made, for the first time, articulate, became increasingly discontented with their lot. The glamour faded from the material progress which had seemed such an inestimable blessing to their fathers. They came to take this progress for granted, and to turn questioning eyes on the gross inequalities which progress had done nothing to diminish. The more prosperous society as a whole became, the more indefensible did it seem that the great mass of the people should be condemned to live lives which, even though they represented a real improvement on preceding generations in elementary physical standards, where none the less narrow stunted lives, unillumined by hopes, and haunted by the constant terror of a plunge into extreme destitution in the event of accident, sickness or unemployment'
-Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 1928

One argument that can be made follows the suggestion that greater affluence breeds greater consciousness - which in turn generates discontent, as the remaining injustices shine out exposed, made clear by the contrast.

Amongst these injustices are the burdens placed upon the less fortunate, the burden of making ends meet, of finding & keeping work, of staying healthy enough to earn your basic life's needs. But there are burdens of another kind too. As more wealth is created, so increases the burden to achieve the ambitions that affluence gives light to.

And that burden can be crushing.

Yet the opportunties that help relieve that burden are no greater: income inequality has increased and the poorest children in Britain during the last decade have not taken as much of a part in post-16 education as the richest. When things go wrong, even the bottom line of support in Britain, charity, suffers as it attempts to help. Charity has found itself become a degrading option, due to the stigma against handouts, which prevents those who need help most from seeking it out (National Assembly for Wales, 2011).

People are caught between these twin burdens of need and want. They struggle to make ends meet while being fed lifestyle marketing, that drives ambition to attain things and their associated status. But the inaccessibility of wealth makes those ambitions a source of frustration, one permeates our society and cannot be shaken off. Those burdens continue to be added to in pursuit of our ambitions - mortgages, student debt, cheap credit. It has become the foundation of our economy, to use credit to overcome unequally distributed wealth (Harvey/RSA, 2010).

These factors coincide with a politics that is trapped in an unhelpful 'us vs them' rhetoric. In 2010 we saw the Liberal Democrats subjected to a vote 'squeeze', caught at the middle of the the left-right dynamic. This sort of thinking has been used by politicians, lobbyists and others to rally support; typified here by Brendan Barber, General-Secretary of the TUC (2011), on the Tory-Liberal coalition:

'Liberal Democrats risk ending up on the wrong side of the fundamental divide in British politics'

These are cheap, negative tactics. They build upon basic 'ingroup-outgroup' mentalities to manage, corral and organise followers, promoting a divisiveness that has turned into a social reality.

When all these economic and political factors are combined with...

- a parliamentary system that is inspiring disinterest, elite societal figures persistently exposed as connected to corruption but remaining un- or insufficiently punished;

- a capitalist system that encourages ambitious, single-minded & intensely focused self-interest; while isolation from positively reinforcing communities increases;

- with, not just unrequited, but unrequitable ambition, the achievements of which we are driven to believe to be the key to 'happiness' or 'success' or 'self-worth';

...you breed a toxic brew that is festering within our communities.

Right now, our problem is no longer one of creating more wealth, but of finding a way to allow that wealth to be more widely, not just spread, shared and enjoyed, or redistributed, but accessed through greater opportunities for that wealth to be earned.

The coalition, in its attempts to create smaller government, seems to have heard of burdens:

'identify areas where central government can get out of the way, reducing burdens and bureaucracy'
-'Open Public Services' White Paper, 2011.

They need to reapply those ideas to welfare policies - to reduce the burdens upon people, not services, and in doing so set them free. Free to live lives with real chances to earn reward by merit; and free from the 'constant terror of a plunge into extreme destitution' (Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 1928).

'the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them... One's regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living'
-Oscar Wilde, 1891

'the end of political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they may have it more abudantly'
-Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 1928

==========
References:
==========
+ 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; also known as the 'Yellow Book'; chp 1, pg 5-8; Ernest Benn, 1928.

+ National Assembly for Wales' 'Follow up inquiry into child poverty: eradication through education?'; Chair's Foreword, pg 5; Children and Young People Committee; February 2011.

+ RSA presents David Harvey's 'Crises of Capitalism'; on Youtube; 28 June 2010.

+ TUC's 'Lib Dems are "abandoning centre-ground"'; 11 March 2011.

+ The Coalition Government's 'Deregulating the Public Sector', pg41, ch6 - Ensuring Diversity of Provision; in 'Open Public Services' White Paper; July 2011.

+ Oscar Wilde's 'The Soul of Man under Socialism'; London, 1891.

Capital Punishment

It is sad that in the face of doubt a man, Troy Davis was executed - despite public demand, including a high profile Amnesty International campaign, that the execution not take place.

Le Rouge Journal has previously discussed the United States' complex relationship with human rights and their enforcement, with 'Bystander's Affect':

'Ms Power showed a consistent invocation of isolationist stances by the US, even where lives were very likely to be lost. There is even a suggestion that the resolve of the aggressors was strengthened by American inactivity (Power, 2003);'

and its struggle for legitmacy in holding other nations to account in 'Shifting the Focus', due to the double standard that capital punishment creates:

'[an] example is the Iranian Government's anger at being singled out for its sentence of death for a convicted woman. They deflected accusations by pointing to an American 'Double Standard' (Dehghan, 2010), as the United States at the time held a woman awaiting death for an arranged murder, who allegedly suffered mental health problems.'

We now have a new inconsistency to add to this list: going ahead with an execution in the face of mass public objection flies in the face of the idea of policing & government by consent of the policed & governed.

==========
References:
==========
+ Samantha Power's '"A problem from hell": America and the Age of Genocide'; Harper Perennial; 2003. See an extract by clicking here.

+ Saeed Kamali Dehghan's 'Iran accuses US of double standards over woman's execution'

Still Paying for Education

News in recent weeks reports that an 'unexpected' number of universities have taken up the option to charge the highest level of fees for tuition (Vasagar, 2011).

This education finance system was considered to be a tempered approach to raising university funding at a time when the state is trying to otherwise cut back on its spending. In particular the IFS (2010) issued a report that stressed that the system provided no real terms winners and losers. All except, of course, the treasury, which was able to convert a large government debt that provided the funding for universities into lots of smaller, yet still quite large, private debts.

Now there were mechanisms to prevent universities from simply charging the highest price bracket immediately. In return for charging as much as £9000 per year for tuition, each establishment is supposed to provide proof that they are providing scholarships and working to assist students from poorer backgrounds to get the higher education they deserve.

But there is also a fundamental element of market economics that English Universities must apply before taking the decision to charge such a high price.

As the costs of education rise, so must then the demonstrable quality of the education and qualification provided. This is fundamental to a market as described by Adam Smith. However there are worries that the degree is already becoming a devalued commodity (Daily Mail, 2011).

Since the introduction of fees, there has also been some discussion of much cheaper fees to be found in Europe, for instance £435 per year for a course at a Swiss University (Bawden, 2011). Such a price disparity, £1,305 for three years on the continent and £27,000 in Britain, could lead first to a large number of students abandoning Britain for a spell in Europe, and potentially a future 'brain drain' if those students adapt to the lifestyle and decide to stay.

This is something that aught very much to trouble the sleep of British economists.

In 2000, Britain took part in the European Council special meeting in Lisbon that concluded that European nations need to cooperate:

'to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth'

Due to the international economic situation, where super-states such as China and India are able to provide masses of cheap labour, the average EU worker now has to have a much greater degree of training & skills in order to compete. If senior British political figures still adhere to such a position, they should not be so quick to create conditions that drive people away from the higher end of collegiate and university training in Britain.

And this is the purpose behind the ideological and reasoned support of free at-the-point-of-use, paid for by taxation, higher education. Education is so utterly essential to society as a whole that we cannot afford to price ourselves out of its pursuit. We all benefit from the skills of any individual, whether those skills are used in the field of science or art or household gadgetry. Everything we can do to encourage the pursuit of higher training & skills is a step in the right direction. If it is paid for out of general taxation, then the issue of who should contribute what is already dealt with; in our system of progressive taxation the rich contribute a larger share than the poor - we already have a system in which we give in relation to our means.

The government has set its position towards higher education funding. One half, the Tories, seek to offload the burden of debts for the costs of our nation's university education to the students, and individuals more generally; while Liberal Democrats chose this path as the best of a bad bunch. But at the moment this is still only a stop-gap measure.

And there is still room to shift in other directions.

If the Tories can gather the voter base to consolidate their position and govern alone, they will almost certainly complete the move to a full market competitive system of funding.

So where to turn to save education? The first place most will turn is the long-time enemy of, opponent to and bastion against the Tories: the Labour party. They did after all come to power in 1997 on the slogan 'Education, Education, Education'.

However, despite manifesto promises not to, Mr Blair's Labour government, in the words of Ms Naomi Long MP (2011):

'established the principle of tuition fees, the principle of market forces in education and are now upset because those same market forces are negotiating the terms'

Inspite the lack of clarity in the positions of Britain's parties of the left, they have all shown some willingness to cooperate; a particular example, albeit of a failed attempt, was Mr E Miliband sharing a stage with Lib Dems and Greens to campaign for a Yes vote in the AV referendum (Wintour, 2011).

Mr Clegg has developed a catch-phrase of late, that we should not 'let the best be the enemy of the good', and it is a catchphrase that all those opposed to tuition fees should keep close to heart when trying to find alternative solutions that can get cross-party backing.

==========
References:
==========

+ Jeevan Vasagar's 'Tuition fees rise will mean fewer university entrants, warns LSE study'; in The Guardian; 7 September 2011;

+ IFS Press Release 'Graduates and universities share burden of Browne recommendations'; 12 October 2010;

+ Daily Mail's 'Is it worth it? Value of degree questioned as research shows two-in-three graduates fail to find suitable work'; 17 May 2011;

+ Anna Bawden's 'A few years in Lausanne?'; in The Guardian; 6 September 2011;

+ Lisbon European Council's 'Presidency Conclusions'; 23-24 March 2000;

+ Naomi Long MP, 'Higher Education Fees' debate; 9 December 2010;

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Ed Miliband shares cross-party platform to promote AV'; in The Guardian; 29 March 2011;

+ Smith, Adam, 'Wealth of Nations'; 2008.

The Trouble with Taxes

The way we finance a nation-state is back in the news, due to fears over the slow recovery from recession (BBC, 2011). At the centre of these matters is taxation.

Taxation is a disputed necessity. In the United States it is the focus of struggle for the libertarian Tea Party. Everywhere it is the foundation of many taken for granted utilities & public services. And it has been the provocation of outrage.

The threads of many famous revolutions have been brought together; from the English to the American to the French; and civil unrest ignited by taxation of society's poorest to pay for the excesses of the rich and the imprudence of the state. In France it was the Estates' attempt to pay off war debts (Harvey, 2006), in England it was the struggle to reign in a monarch through control of taxation (Purkiss, 2006), and in American it was opposition to 'Taxation without Representation'.

In all of them, it has been an ongoing struggle to ensure that people maintain the right to regulate how their money is used.

A student of history, such as Chancellor Osborne, might be expected to be wary of the dangers of levying heavy taxes while cutting funding to services (PA, 2011; Vallely, 2011); particularly when those tax funds are redirected to paying off public debt to banks and insurance companies (Reuben, 2010).

What are the alternatives?

People do not object to taxation. Rather they object to tax funds being used in ways that are not properly justified, such as paying off financial institutions - some of which depended upon public funded bailouts for their survival.

So if austerity measures are as unpopular as they appear, both in the UK and elsewhere in Europe; what alternative methods might a student of history take into consideration?

Well the traditional rival to this classical libertarian approach of government austerity and low interference with businesses and their profits, is Keynesianism. Keynesian solutions are based around 'stimulus'. The idea is for governments to fund increases in spending to pick up private sector slack (Atkinson, 2011); for instance, increasing public sector employment to offset job losses from private company cutbacks.

Mr Brown's Labour Government used this kind of intervention through 'stimulus packages' during the financial crisis (Swaine, 2008), a policy copied around the world. This meant investing huge sums of public money into private institutions. The hope was that this would capitalise these businesses sufficiently to allow them to (1) avoid lay-offs - ensuring people have a means of earning an income and (2) keep prices down - ensuring people still spend the money they earn. In theory, this combination would keep confidence high and create the stable conditions that encourage people to invest their money in new businesses - something that creates new jobs.

Commentators such as Johann Hari have pushed the case for public financed intervention (Hari, 2011). They point to previous successful application of these Keynesian approaches, such as FDR's New Deal in the US of the 1920's and 30's and post-war Labour governments, in public projects such as the NHS.

Keynesian measures have however been criticised as insufficient to manage some of the realities of modern economics  (Atkinson, 2011), much as the classical libertarian approach was denounced in the late victorian era - and again now  - to be insufficient to address the unfair and imbalanced nature of the the market (Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 1928).

The current Labour leadership has tried to drive a moderated course so far in opposition, one between the cuts and the need to 'stimulate' the economy. The Labour leader Mr E Miliband has pressed this view, as has his Shadow Chancellor Mr Ed Balls (Owen, 2011). The former Labour Chancellor Mr Alistair Darling believes that the measured approach put forward by the party is a credible alternative, but one that faces an uphill battle for acceptance (Aitkenhead, 2011).

Other political parties have also shared Labour's slow down and 'stimulate' plans.

Liberal Democrats campaigned on a 'green stimulus plan [to] ...create 100,000 jobs', that involved:

'Investing up to £400 million in refurbishing shipyards in the North of England and Scotland so that they can manufacture offshore wind turbines and other marine renewable energy equipment'

These plans carried much in common, not just with Labour, but with earlier Liberals who worked on the 'Liberal Industrial Inquiry' of the late 1920s. These proposals where later reigned in by the coalition with the Tories.

Conflicts of Interest

Whichever way public money is to be spent, the system must always be clear & fair. Taxation allows the government to intervene and curb the excesses of businesses in the pursuit of profits, but its processes must be transparent. Transparency helps to avoid embarressing incidents such as setting up a new system of administering schools, and then fast-tracking a lump sum of money to a close friend's business in that sector, which could appear to be a less than scrupulous use of public funds (Vasagar, 2011).

And the amount of collection and spending must also be tempered, in order to avoid the dangers pointed out by the last President of the Soviet Union, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev in the later days of the communist superpower (1987):

'It is natural for the producer to "please" the consumer, if I may put it that way. With us, however, the consumer found himself totally at the mercy of the producer and had to make do with what the latter chose to give him'

==========
References:
==========
+ BBC's 'New recession fears as weak US jobs data causes markets to fall'; 2 September 2011;

+ Robert Harvey's 'The war of wars: The epic struggle between Britain and France: 1789-1815';
chp 1, pg 9-15; Constable, 2006.

+ Diane Purkiss' 'The English Civil War: A people's history';
chp 4, pg 93; Harper Perennial, 2006.

+ Press Association's 'Public sector workers will have to pay up to £3,000 a year to keep pensions'; in The Guardian; 28 July 2011;

-See also:
The Telegraph's 'Public sector pensions: high earners face bigger rise in contributions';
The Telegraphs's 'Danny Alexander: public sector pensions must be rebalanced';
The Telegraph's 'Andrew Lansley attacks government's public sector pension reforms';

+ Paul Vallely's 'Are the Government's welfare policies creating more homeless people?'; in The Independent; 9 June 2011;

-See also:
The Guardian's 'Tory peer attacks government's welfare to work programme';
The BBC's 'David Cameron sets out Welfare Reform Bill plans';
Department of Work & Pensions' 'Welfare Reform';

+ Anthony Reuben's 'Who owns the UK's debt?'; 26 February 2010;

+ Rob Atkinson's 'The Trouble With Progressive Economics'; Summer 2011;

+ Jon Swaine's 'Gordon Brown hails £500 billion bank rescue plan'; in The Telegraph; 8 October 2008;

+ 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; also known as the 'Yellow Book'; chp 1, pg 5-8; Ernest Benn, 1928.

+ Johann Hari's 'The biggest lie in British politics'; 29 March 2011;

+ Paul Owen's 'Ed Balls sets out alternative to coalition spending cuts as he warns of double-dip recession'; in The Guardian; 27 August 2011;

+ Decca Aitkenhead's 'Alistair Darling: "You can't just tell half the story and still be credible"'; in The Guardian; 8 September 2011;

+ Jeevan Vasagar's 'Whitehall emails reveal the hidden costs of promoting free schools'; in The Guardian; 30 August 2011;

+ Mikhail Gorbachev's 'Perestroika: New Thinking for our country and the world';
Collins, 1987.

Immaturity, Innocence & Experience

It is very easy to get even with someone. Paramore's 'Misery Business' is moulded around the hopes of oppressed young people that justice will be served to their tormenters - that they will get even.

And getting even feels good. That's where the problem lies.

Getting even, getting square and getting vengeance are fleeting outcomes. Those moments will fade leaving behind rushes of adrenaline and roots untempered.

Simon Pegg's Tim Bisley in 'Spaced' put it best:

'Life just isn't like the movies, is it? We're constantly led to believe in resolution, in the re-establishment of the ideal status quo and it's just not true'

And life isn't like the movies because, as Dr Manhattan explains in his parting shot to Ozymandias in Alan Moore's 'Watchmen':

'Nothing ever ends'

'Misery Business' perfectly captures the temporary high of an eye for an eye. But there is sadness to be found in such cathartic acts. It would be easy to suggest that the tragedy of catharsis was simply lost on Paramore because of their youth. But the Tories are only too happy to prove that theory wrong.

Following the England riots, Tories have been quick to play down 'phoney human rights' considerations (Watt et al, 2011); they have been quick to use it to push their anti-gang rhetoric (Telegraph, 2011) and they have been quick to call for force to be met with 'greater force' (Davies, 2011).

It is mature but naïve innocence to acknowledge how empowering catharsis can feel; but the wisdom of hard earned experience lies in the acknowledgement of its temporary nature. The catharsis of lashing out is ultimately unsatisfying.

We must reject reactionary conservative doctrine of meeting force with greater force; before we are trapped by an inevitable escalation, taking an eye for an eye until no one can see.

==========
References:
==========
+ Nicholas Watt, Sandra Laville & Vikram Dodd's 'Tories on riot policing: too few, too slow, too timid'; in The Guardian, 11 August 2011;

+ The Telegraph's 'England riots: David Cameron declares war on gangs'; 15 August 2011;

+ David Davies, MP for Monmouth, in the 'Public Disorder debate' in the House of Commons; 11 August 2011;

Manifesto Promises

Accusations from audiences on BBC's Question Time have voiced a belief that many seem to hold, that Liberal Democrats haven't been fulfilling their promises. Usually this revolves around two factors:

+ Liberal Democrats going into a coalition with Tories;

+ and the highly publicised choice of Lib Dem government ministers to drop their opposition to tuition fee rises as part of the coalition agreement to get other policies;

The Liberal Democrats have made it clear that they are counting on being able to demonstrate what they got in return for compromises - in return for dropping student fees - at the end of a four year plan (Daily Mail, 2010).

'Maybe in three or four years time, people will look and say they were a little bit harsh to the Liberal Democrats'
-Paul Scriven, the Sheffield Lib Dems leader (Guardian, 2011)

Amongst those achievements will be the increase in personal allowance on tax to an eventual £10,000, deferring Trident weapons spending and encouraging a green investment bank. They may also stress that the party gave people a choice on a voting system with the AV referendum, even if those people rejected the proffered system.

The full extent of hits and misses by both partners in the coalition can be found at The Guardian site, plus policies committed to but not yet presented to parliament.

In terms of policies the Lib Dems have offered a lot of results considering they came third in a general election. But is that a good enough measure? Will that salve the wounds of those that voted Lib Dem on the issues that were dropped?

I fear the Lib Dems risk falling into the trap of judging means by ends. The party leaders could have, and should have, been clearer about the nature of negotiations and what could be given up and what might be gotten in return (Watt, 2010).

This goes for all parties.

Labour have made noises about a number of issues, in particular EMA and social housing, with Shadow Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, Mr Chris Bryant, describing the government's social housing policy as 'sociological cleansing' (BBC, 2010).

It is with some interest then, that we can see the same policy appear in the Labour manifesto for the most recent election (Labour, 2010). Furthermore, Labour backed AV for elections and yet failed to support it wholly in the referendum and for a progressive party are acting in suprisingly anti-Europe ways (D'Arcy, 2011).

This forces me to ask: what exactly is the purpose of, and the point of, a manifesto that we must treat as unreliable?

==========
References:
==========
+ Daily Mail's 'Clegg admits it will take four years to "rebalance" Britain but tries to offset fears about savage cuts'; 9 September 2010;

+ Polly Curtis, Patrick Wintour & Helene Mulholland's 'Liberal Democrats have taken "big knocks", says Nick Clegg'; in The Guardian; 6 May 2011;

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Revealed: Lib Dems planned before election to abandon tuition fees pledge'; in The Guardian; 12 November 2010;

+ BBC's The Record covering Labour accusing the Coalition of "Sociological" Cleansing; on YouTube; 27 October 2010; from DPMQs, '...How does he propose to make electoral provision for those displaced people?'; 26 October 2010;

+ Labour's 'Living Standards - Prosperity for all not just a few'; Chp 2, Pg 3; in 'Labour Party Manifesto 2010 - A future fair for all';

+ Mark D'Arcy's 'Labour vote against more IMF funding raises questions'; in BBC; 6 July 2011;
   Mark D'Arcy's 'Surprise timing helps IMF funding passes Commons'; in BBC; 12 July 2011;

Majority Politics

Disagreements in the coalition are once again in the news, in response to the English Riots (Helm & McVeigh, 2011). This is just the latest split: from Cable on Murdoch to Lib Dem backbenchers on Health Reform, the struggles within the government have been highly visible. There have been claims that this is the most transparent government in history, which seems fair considering how often the coalition's dirty laundry has been aired in public.

Yet there is something satisfying about seeing the two parts of the government challenging one another in the public eye, then having to work together and stand by collective decisions back at the office. Considering the social issues gulf between liberals & conservatives, it's a wonder that the centre and left parties failed to find as much in common to tackle in government.

It may be that some senior figures in the Labour Party where not yet willing to give up the party's internal struggle to find policies with which they can monopolise the entire bredth of leftist & moderate supporters. With Mr Blair & his heirs having departed, the internal wrestling has moved on too; focusing on how to claim that monopoly. These contests are not new to Labour. For instance, the party once saw a struggle between the left-wingers aligned with Mr Tony Benn and Social Democrats.

Today's struggle is between the New Labour we have come to know; business friendly and big spending; and the new contender, Blue Labour, described as more conservative, more hands on and more antagonisic (Fabian Society, 2011). Blue Labour has already antagonised its opponents enough to inspire Mr Peter Mandelson, an important figure for New Labour, to accuse the movement of clutching 'at straws and grab[bing] at any passing sentiment' (Wintour, 2011).

Fragmented Majorities

The reality is that political parties are themselves coalitions, groups of similar groups, all with their own policy agenda, all trying to get to the top of the party pile. And every party has this baggage; the factional strife & dealmaking is not the reserve of formal coalitions.

The Conservatives, the epitome of a Unionist party, has its own factions and tensions. Shortly following the 2010 UK general election, Mr Cameron muscled his way onto the 1922 committee, a Tory backbencher's group, in a way that made some senior party members rather upset (Tebbit, 2011).

Even the Liberal Democrats are not immune to a bit of intrigue. The Liberal Democrat Party developed out of an alliance between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (many of which where the same social democrats who had vied with Labour's left-wingers). Since then, that divide has been replaced by two major factions in the party, the Orange Book group and the Social Liberal Forum.

The senior party members at present, such as Messrs Clegg, Alexander, and Laws (Assinder, 2008) are broadly supportive of the economic liberalism focus of the Orange Book (2004) - that is low taxes, free markets & less state intervention.

The more left-leaning Social Liberal Forum, who's ideas are heavily influenced by Brack, Grayson & Howarth's 'Reinventing the State' (2007), have been visible of late due to the SLF's involvement in opposition to the planned Health Reforms, led by member Dr Evan Harris.

And let's not forget either that Labour sit in parliament as an American-style caucus - being formally two parties that sit as effectively one, due to an electoral alliance with the Cooperative Party.

Consensus Politics

The reality of majority politics is that it, and not coalition politics, is politics behind closed doors. Majority politics is the system where news breaks six years after the fact of suspected plots & schemes within parties (BBC, 2011).

Labour have shown what happens when you are unwilling to cooperate or compromise. This stubborness can be found at the heart of the party splits of the 70s & 80s, and the fragmentation of worker's parties, not to forget Labour's inability to keep office in a hung parliament following the 2010 UK general election (Wintour, 2011).

It is a stubborness that breeds an extreme all or nothing mentality, that Alan Moore's (1986) famous creation Rorschach symbolised:

'No. Not even in the face of armageddon. Never Compromise'

The left has always had divisions. The competition of ideas is key to scientific progress in politics. But these debates must stay above the gutter level rhetoric, the 'us-or-them' mentalities; the fear & blame tactics that created our polemicised left-right political culture.

In order to overcome the alienation produced by this system, the left could learn something from the coalition and the code of Cabinet Collective Responsibility. Plural parties of the left can support choice from plural interests, while still allowing for a united front in the face of intolerance & injustice and in support of common ideals. The Labour leader sharing a platform with representatives from the Green Party and Liberal Democrats to campaign for AV was a good start and a bold, new direction for the left in regaining the interest of voters.

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References:
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+ Toby Helm & Tracy McVeigh's 'England riots: coalition row grows over "kneejerk" response'; in The Guardian; 13 August 2011.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Peter Mandelson lambasts "anti–immigrant, Europhobic" Blue Labour'; in The Guardian; 26 July 2011.

+ Norman Tebbit's 'The scandal of the 1922 Committee putsch'; in The Telegraph; 20 May 2010.

+ Nick Assinder's 'Clegg's orange revolution'; on BBC News; 14 January 2008.

+ Paul Marshall & David Laws' (ed.) 'The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism'; Profile Books, 2004.

+ Duncan Brack, Richard Grayson & David Howarth's (ed.) 'Reinventing the State - Social Liberalism for the 21st Century'; Politico's, 2007.

+ BBC's 'Leaked memos: Ed Balls denies plot to oust Blair'; 10 June 2011.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition hopes end in recriminations'; in The Guardian; 11 May 2010.

+ Alan Moore's "Watchmen"; Titan Books, 1986.