It's Not You - It's Me

“In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve,” said Joseph de Maistre. He didn’t mean it in a good way.

I have lived through quite a few general election campaigns and paid good deal of attention to the last few. I have never witnessed one this depressing.

It has, however, at least given us something new – alongside the traditional all-you-can-eat dogshit buffet – in the form of parties campaigning on the basis of who a vote for them would exclude from a future coalition government.

That the political parties and the media have utter, naked contempt for us – the voters – is not new.

But in the past, the voters have always at least been allowed the “king for a day, fool for a lifetime” privilege of being treated as though it was them who choose the government. Not this time. Now we are being treated to the spectacle of post-election coalition wrangling before any ballots have even been cast.

As anyone who voted Lib Dem or Conservative in 2010 – and cared – will have noticed, you can’t be sure that what it says on the tin bears even the scantest resemblance to what’s inside any more. Not, of course, that you ever could, I suppose. It was a “coalition” of a different sort that inflicted the Iraq War on the world.

I'd much rather have than one of these than a school for my kids

It’s a common lament that the political media focuses too much on personalities and not enough on policies. That’s true up to a point: apart from being pretty sure that whoever wins, taxpayers like me will be expected to stump up £100 billion for Trident (the most expensive sock stuffed down the underpants in human history), I have very little idea what else the various parties are offering. Or rather are pretending to offer right now in the hope of fooling enough of us peasants into putting them in power so that – much like Charles I – they can do whatever the fuck they like without reference to us for five more years.

OK, so the political class despises us and we despise them. But considering how many needy neurotics the British public is clearly made up of, it surprises me how rarely anyone seems to wonder “what if it’s not everyone else – what if it’s me?”

What if the public gets held in contempt because it never disproves that it is WORTHY of contempt? In the past, people could kid themselves that it was the papers shoving “who is the best-dressed leader’s wife?” articles down their throats – now the analytics will prove that THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT, if they have to have politics at all.

So what’s the answer? Well, clearly not voting isn’t it.

A year or so ago (back when I used to blog regularly...) I wrote in praise of Russell Brand and his anti-voting point of view. Actually, it was less a blog about Russell Brand and more of an opportunity to quote long passages from HG Wells, with whom I was then obsessed.

Over a hundred years ago – A HUNDRED YEARS AGO! - Wells said that democratic elections give ordinary people “an exasperating fragment of choice between the agents of two party organisations, over neither of which he has any intelligible control”.

All that’s changed is the number of party organisations.

Best-dressed party leader, 1922

Churchill said:

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

I sympathise a bit with the idea of refusing to participate in a charade of democracy. But then I have no doubt whatsoever that the people who make it most frequently and loudly are precisely those who would shirk the responsibility of an active, participatory democracy most vigorously.

It IS much easier to criticise than to come up with a constructive alternative - and it's even easier to parrot criticisms other people have thought up for you. 

That doesn’t mean that your criticisms should be ignored just because you don’t have all the answers. But if all the carping about politicians all being the same etc was put to some constructive use – who knows? – maybe an alternative that doesn’t equate everything that is not precisely what we have now with totalitarianism or dictatorship could be figured out.

We get bland mannequins like Cameron and Miliband because we demand them. We have earned them. 90% of government is administration and the remaining 10% is presentation (mostly making out that the other is Hitler or Mao or whatever).

Come on! The difference between “destroying the NHS” and “saving the NHS” is a fractional difference in budget and private sector involvement AND YOU KNOW that any promise made on these points will be treated as negotiable in future. What we are seeing on a large scale is the narcissism of small differences literally played out in all its tribal idiocy.

They don’t believe it. You don’t believe it. So why are we doing this at all?

The Illusion of Safety

If it is remotely possible, I am not going to go within one hundred miles of London during the Olympics.

That’s not as a result of a curmudgeonly refusal to join in the spirit of things. I do quite enjoy watching the Olympics. When else do you get to see women’s weightlifting and doubles table tennis in the same day?

Anyone who watched the Beijing Modern Pentathlon show jumping event in 2008 – complete with untrained race horses charging headlong into the fences – will know that there will be some great stuff buried away on the red button coverage.

No, I will definitely watch some of the Olympics – but on TV. I once went to a live sporting event (the 1995 Oxford-Cambridge boat race) and it was crap. Never again. You can’t see properly, there’s no commentary to explain what’s going on, you can’t go to the toilet (in peace, at any rate...) and there are too many people.   

The reason I will not be going anywhere near London if I can help it because if I wanted to live under martial law in a place where the interests of the native population are subordinated to impressing visiting dignitaries, I would go to China or Bahrain. 

As the government installs missile batteries on the tops of buildings in London, one has to wonder exactly whose benefit they are doing this for. Because – and if any counter-terrorism experts or military brass are reading this, please feel free to correct me - if you shot down a hijacked airliner over any part of London, bits of flaming wreckage are almost certainly going to fall into heavily populated areas, aren’t they?

Apparently, some 19,000 military personnel are going to be deployed in London to make sure that foreign investors...I mean sports fans...are kept safe. More than are currently in Afghanistan.

Which brings me on – in my mind, at any rate – to this “little” device I was recently given on opening a new bank account.

I put in my card, type in my PIN and it gives me an access code which I can use to log in to internet banking.

If I don’t have it with me though (or if I have broken it my attempting to put it into my wallet and then sitting on it), I can log in using a number they sent me...in a letter.

So as well as being too big to carry around with me other than in a large bag, the machine is actually pointless because the security it offers is hopelessly undermined by the “back door” Nationwide have kindly provided.

Both the rooftop stingers and Nationwide’s calculator (which doesn’t even do maths) are designed to give the illusion of safety. In fact they create more risk by encouraging complacency about real threats.

Things we did on our holidays - pt 2

Why can't air travel be more like rail travel?

By that, I don't mean "please double the prices, delay more aircraft and cram them so full of standing passengers that you can hardly breathe, let alone move, and god help you all if there's an accident".   

No. What I mean is, why is it beyond the wit of man to make air travel a walk-on affair?

Obviously, there are a few good security reasons that slow things down unavoidably. Then on top of those, there are the ludicrous post 9/11 overcompensations introduced for the sake of being seen to do something, regardless of any actual effect on security.

You know what I'm talking about. On going through Leeds/Bradford airport on our holiday:

1. Three-year-old Roger Junior was frisked down and made to take his shoes off, because he was the nth passenger through the security scanner. I was not subjected to any kind of search. Now, while Roger Jr can be a handful, I'm fairly sure it's beyond his capabilities to hijack or bring down a passenger jet.
2. We had to hand over some unopened cartons of juice – presumably to be destroyed in a secure environment where there would be no danger of hazardous spillage.

All of which begs the question why it's perfectly acceptable to carry anything you like onto a train without being checked. Many a train I have been on has seen the passengers all shut in and unable to get away for longer than a lot of long haul flights...

OK, you've also got to allow some time from bags being handed over to get them onto the plane. And clearly separating all the bags that obviously belong to the same family and making sure they go into different compartments of the hold - so as to ensure the maximum gap between the first and last piece coming out on the luggage carousel - doesn't just happen by itself. It requires careful planning as well as a powerful throwing arm.

So that's two sets of quasi-legitimate reasons.

I suppose part of this is our own fault. Check in usually opens around two hours before departure for European flights – but they close 40 minutes or so beforehand. Guess which timescale I have worked on EVERY SINGLE TIME I've been on an aeroplane? Correct. We always get there for the opening of check in, guaranteeing ourselves:

1. As many queuing experiences as can be crammed into a day.
2. Maximum waiting time – relieved only by the opportunity to buy things we did not feel the need to pack when considering what to take with us or which we were not allowed to bring through security.  

As long as you've got seats reserved, it doesn't matter when you check in, does it? How I wish I could be one of those people whose names are announced over the tannoy, warning them that the plane is waiting for them.

But I can't. I am too English, too middle class and – let's just admit it – still too in awe of the fact of air travel to treat it casually.

Airlines and airports want you to still believe that air travel today is like air travel in the 1950s. It's luxurious! It's exclusive! Cabin crew are there to feed you grapes and champagne, not to hard sell you wilted sandwiches and high street perfume at astronomical prices! Fly on a plane and be part of the jet set, queue for 20 minutes every time you want a piss and then get dumped on a wind-blasted airstrip miles from your final destination! I don't know about you, but I fall for it every time. 

Who do you think? The Libyans!

So, goodbye then Colonel Gaddaffi, you crazy old bastard.

It may not have all been over by April at a cost of a few hundred quid, and it may have required a little more force from NATO than was strictly mandated by the UN, but what is it they say?...ah, yes...the ends justify the means.

That's the moral authority and military hegemony of the West re-established then. No longer can it be said that democratic states will tolerate tyrants; even ones who pose no harm to anyone anymore except their own citizens; even ones who make themselves useful from time to time.

Let that be a warning to all you other dictators out there. You hear that? That's the Clash of Civilisations in the distance! Put a foot wrong and BANG, we will mess you up real bad. Are you listening Hu Jintao? No, I didn't think so.

Anyway, now the brave people of Libya can elect a modern, secular, centre-left (or even centre-right! It really is up to you!) liberal democratic government of their own - just like the people of Egypt did earlier in the year.

Hooray for democracy.

By which I mean "fingers crossed, but not getting my hopes up for democracy".

In the meantime, remember the good old days?

PS – The image above is a John Yates classic.

Like Berlin 1930

Anyone who thinks that identifying the beginning of the rise of the next wave of neo-fascism in Europe will be as simple as keeping an eye out for bulk purchases of Matalan's discount black shirts is going to be disappointed and surprised.

1930s fascism was totally discredited – more than any other ideology, ever – by the comprehensive defeat of all of its exponents in the Second World War. The trouble is, the stresses and urges that created it haven't gone away. In fact, I'm worried that they are back big time and that an inability to stop obsessing about the superficial exterior forms of 1930s fascism – specifically the Nazis – is blinding us to this.

OK, I completely accept that it would be utterly ridiculous to suggest that there has been any catastrophic dislocation remotely comparable to the First World War and its aftermath in recent times.

I don't think it would be crazy to suggest, though, that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have altered the nature of the relationship between the government, the military and the public in this country.

Eight years of unsuccessful war and a steady drip-drip of casualties have directed public sentiment against the government's conduct of the war, while boosting sympathy for the "betrayed" armed forces. The meteoric rise of very new groups like Help for Heroes is evidence of this.

At the same time, the wars have, if not themselves created, then cemented and reinforced the position of a visible enemy without and within – "radical Islam".

The Cuts, meanwhile, are shortly going to be putting thousands of demobilised ex-military personnel onto the streets without much hope of getting jobs. Many of them will have been fighting overseas, ostensibly for their country against radical Islamism, and they will find themselves out of work, back in a country that – in their eyes – is being infiltrated by the very people they've been trying to kill for nearly a decade. The government and the political class, they will quickly conclude, have given up on them and on the cause they were fighting for.

So, we will soon have a whole lot of trained fighters who are anti-Islamist and very pissed off at being stabbed in the back by the political class on our streets.

Enter groups like the BNP and, I think more significantly here, the English Defence League. "Political militias" were at the heart of the rise of 1930s fascism – alleged patriots defending their nation from communist conspiracies, by going out and kicking the shit out of their enemies.

Of course the EDL don't dress up like a bunch of South American paramilitaries and give Hitler salutes to one another (not officially, at least). Expecting them to do that is to fall into the trap of imaging that fascism is all about appearances. That's like expecting Nick Griffin to sprout a toothbrush moustache overnight. They probably won't use as much BrylCream or have such good posture as Oswald Mosley either.

Surveillance technology today means that thugs – political and apolitical – go around hooded and masked, not wearing their medals.

Ah, surveillance technology... don't forget that most European fascist movements never actually came to power, but instead created atmospheres of disorder and subversion where the governments moved further and further to the authoritarian right, on the one hand to co-opt them against the communists and on the other to suppress them. Again, the uniqueness of the Nazi example blinds us to the perhaps more relevant examples of Romania, Hungary and indeed Italy where battling crazies on the streets led to governments turning to dictatorship in the name of "order".

Civil liberties in this country are being eroded as we speak, thanks to the "enemy within" trope (maybe with Iran playing the role of the Soviet Union).

At the same time, what have we got? Collapse of faith in the political class as a whole and "conventional" political institutions? Check. Unfocussed anger against "international finance"? Check. Unemployment AND inflation? Check. A whole load of newly-democratic East European countries under massive economic and social strain? Check. Popular anti-science sentiments, belief in social decadence and growing millenarianism (only this time environmental rather than "biological")? Check.

Gosh, it does look remarkably like history is repeating itself. Just don't expect them to come wearing tell-tale "baddie" uniforms this time.

To the shores of Tripoli

So Boy George reckons the Libya war (we might as well get used to calling it that) is going to cost £2 million a day, and that it will all be over by April.

Bargain!

Unless, of course anything at all goes wrong. When you consider that one Eurofighter Typhoon costs 90 million euros, that figure could quite easily prove to be a little on the conservative side.

Intervention in Libya is bonkers. The UK, apparently, can't afford hospitals, schools etc, but it can afford to play soldiers in the desert all over again.

And for what? At the risk of being an armchair general, surely the best that an aerial campaign can hope for is exactly what it achieved in Kosovo – ie de facto partition that lasts precisely as long as the West sticks around to protect Free Benghazi from revenge.

The West missed its chance to topple Gadaffi during the couple of weeks he was in Venezuela (or "resting" at a mental hospital or whatever), before the repression started. He's not going to step down politely now, is he?

And it's been clear that regime change is not part of the mission - so he'll sit there like a malevolent toad eyeballing his former eastern provinces and waiting for his chance. I suppose the hope is that there will be a mutiny and a military coup. Well, hope springs eternal, eh?

But here this country goes again, imagining that it's a global power all over again. Why won't any governments accept that the 20^th century happened? Let's adjust our ambitions to our budgets, not our budgets to our ambitions.

One law for them...

Thailand is extraditing Viktor Bout to the USA. Bit of a change of pace from the usual tales of stolen pumpkins and corvine paranoia, Roger? That's right. Today, we're talking international injustice.

I read all about Viktor Bout in Misha Glenny's excellent "McMafia". Allegedly, he ran a fleet of former Soviet transport aircraft, in which he was prepared to transport anything, anywhere. And usually, this meant weapons into war zones – generally for people who would struggle to get hold of them on legitimate markets.

The Nicolas Cage movie "Lord of War" is supposedly based on Bout's life. I haven't seen it, but I suspect that to be successful in his chosen profession, Bout is a little more low key than the reliably scenery-chewing Coppola nephew.

So, Bout was arrested in Thailand in a US-led sting, after offering to supply weapons to Colombia's FARC. Earlier this week, he was extradited and faces life in prison in the USA on charges of:

"Conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to kill US officers or employees and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile".

Bout is a Russian citizen, and the Russian government is understandably a little put out at the whole situation. Set aside the likelihood that Bout is a former Soviet officer and so probably knows rather more than the Kremlin would like to see revealed in open court. Set aside any possibility that figures in the Russian establishment ever helped or benefited from anything Bout got up to. My point is not that Russia may or may not have turned a blind eye to "Sanctions Buster" (aka "Merchant of Death") and/or obtained any benefit from doing so.

Indeed, Bout insists he's innocent and – rather optimistically – believes that the trial will exonerate him. Good luck, Viktor – but I think you may need a very good lawyer.

No, my point is the naked hypocrisy of the USA in pressurising Thailand to extradite Bout – a Russian citizen – for crimes allegedly committed nowhere near the USA, when the USA outright refuses to have anything to do with the International Criminal Court (and historically, has refused to have anything to do with any international arrangement that could see its operatives indicted by foreign courts).

That the USA (and the UN) have used Bout's services to ship equipment and personnel into trouble spots themselves is beside the point here. If a Russian can be extradited from Thailand to the USA for offences committed in Africa because American citizens were affected or because he aided organisations listed as "foreign terrorists" in the USA – the implication is that American law has global reach and application. So how would the USA respond to an extradition request from the Iraqi government to hand over the Abu Ghraib jailers, for torturing Iraqi citizens in Iraq?

Apparently, some countries' laws matter more than others. Hardly a stunningly novel conclusion, but it's not every day you see blatant Realpolitik dressed up as international justice. Or maybe it is.

Imperialism begins at home

If I had huge amounts of debt in personal loans, which I was struggling to repay, and yet every time I saw a charity collector I gave them whatever was in my pocket, you'd think I was an idiot. Not only an idiot – as a husband to Elvira of Castille and father to Roger Jr and Tancred – you'd think I was irresponsible.

So why is it that at a time when the UK has the biggest peace-time deficit in history, the decision to ring-fence international development budgets is not being treated with the scorn it deserves? People in this country are about to have their benefits cut (whether they contributed to them via National Insurance or not), services cut, lose their jobs etc etc – but it's a question of "morality" that the UK continues to hand money over, more often than not, to corrupt, incompetent and barely democratic regimes in the developing world.

Doesn't charity begin at home? For the religious moralists, isn't there something in the Bible about removing stuff from your own eye before worrying about other people's? For the liberal universalists, if the principle of equality demands the relief of absolute poverty wherever it occurs, (i) shouldn't we give vastly more and (ii) why are we so selective in who we give to?

In my humble opinion (which, while you are here is what you will be subjected to, like it or not), the idea that the government can make a "moral" decision to dole out taxpayers' money overseas while taking away services from people in this country, is just more evidence of the fundamental misconception of the role of the state that pervades our political class.

By which I mean, they think it's their money, not our money, that they're spending. They think the state has a status as something more just a means to the end of facilitating our living together in harmony and comfort.

Which brings me onto defence spending. And if you thought from the above that I'm a right-wing maniac, you may begin to realise that my general position does not quite fit onto the simple left-right spectrum.

The UK is currently engaged in one foreign war in central Asia, which has been going on for nine years. Until its recent glorious, spectacular withdrawal – reminiscent of Dunkirk in its heroism - it was involved in another one in the Middle East. British forces were in that one for seven years.

For what?

I think even the most rabid supporter of The War Against Terrorism (hereafter, TWAT) acknowledges that two wars with a combined duration (so far) of 16 years have not made the UK safer. So, the state has failed in its primary function there.

Is there any other justification for the UK being involved in these foreign wars or laying off teachersandnurses (not a typo, simply a portmanteau concept for the "good" public sector) for the sake of having a new aircraft carrier in six years' time?

You know what it is? Let me tell you. Imperialism. The UK just can't let go of it.

We are a medium-sized country and economy with a colossal debt. Why on earth do we need to spend billions on nuclear weapons everyone knows we'll never use?

Forget about the past and any justification there might have been for them during the Cold War – that has NOTHING to do with upgrading Trident today. Are Germany, Japan, Canada, Brazil etc etc any less safe, any more vulnerable to invasion or foreign subversion or any threat that exists in the real world today than the UK because they don't have nuclear weapons? Is Britain taken any more seriously anywhere because we do have nuclear weapons? I don't think so.

Having armed forces that can (on paper) be projected around the world, like giving away charity, is at the grubby level of Realpolitik about nothing more than securing influence. Getting favours by bullying, protection racketeering or bribery.

At the psychological level, both are about willy-waving. About being seen as the big man. The USA can do it because they are the big man. China can do it because they are the big man. Everyone else – including Russia – mistakenly believes that the 20^th century never happened.

Let's finally drop the 19^th century imperialist notion of the "nation state" as something with any justification or mission outside its borders. Look where that got us in the last 200 years. States exist to serve their own citizens and nothing else.

Postscript:

I readily acknowledge that there are counterarguments to the various things I've said here, and that my position simplifies things. Who knows, maybe something I said sounds a bit like something someone else who I wouldn't agree with once said. But if wars can be started because one man thinks "it's the right thing to do", I don't see why I should have to give all viewpoints an equal airing. This is my bloody blog.