Why ‘nonsense on stilts’?

BENTHAM – quite  a character!

The phrase was coined by one of my great philosophical heroes, Jeremy Bentham. Living from the mid 18th century and well into the 19th century, Bentham defined as the “fundamental axiom” of his philosophy the principle that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong”. He became a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known in recent years as an early advocate of animal rights. Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights, calling them “nonsense upon stilts“.

His influence has therefore been a profound one and I don’t feel that the political left give him enough credit for that influence. He does, however, continue to influence philosophical thought today, and this is why Massimo Pigliucci, professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, chose “Nonsense on Stilts” for the title of his book examining the ambiguity surrounding science today. It looks at how science is conducted , how it it is disseminated, how it is interpreted and what it means to our society, in this age of rampant capitalism and social media. The book is very accessible and should be a read by everybody with a genuine interest in understanding the world we live in. David Shenk, acclaimed author of the book/film “The Forgetting: Understanding Alzheimer’s“, describes the book thus:

“This is such an important book and a great read. It is not an overstatement to say that our future survival may depend on the public’s ability to distinguish between science and pseudo-science. With patience, precision, and humour, Massimo Pigliucci charts a careful course for all scientists and communicators to follow”.

Why am I writing about this today?

Someone that I have come to know quite well and hugely respect through the anti-fracking movement turns out to be an anti-vaxxer. That huge respect is therefore being severely challenged and I am hugely saddened by this. I am struggling to come to terms with the reality that hugely intelligent, passionate campaigners, inspirational and influential personalities can be so right on some things and yet so wrong on others.

Before anyone starts accusing me of having the arrogance to assert that I am never wrong, or the like, this would be to miss the point entirely. I have not done the research to establish the scientific truth of anything. I know nothing other than what my own senses and intellect have told me and I have come to realise, with ever greater frequency, just how fallible both those things are. What I do have is a half-decent grounding in science and philosophy. With the tools these have provided me, it allows me to discern sense from nonsense; the credible from the incredible; the reasonable from the unreasonable.

This is not always an easy thing to do, and there are many issues where I remain unconvinced one way or the other, either because the science itself remains inconclusive, or more likely because I simply cannot get my head around what the science is telling me. However, in the tradition of philosophers like David Hume, Thomas Paine and Jeremy Bentham, I do believe we have a moral duty to do our best to distinguish sense from nonsense. As Pigliucci points out, however, this can be a difficult task that is patently beyond many people. It requires an understanding of the nature and limits of science, of logical fallacies, of the psychology of belief, and even (perhaps especially) an understanding of how politics and sociology impact on all this.

I am often accused of being closed-minded and intolerant. This reflects flaws in my personality rather than the truth of my disposition. My mind is always open to sound evidence. I have changed my position on many issues in the light of newly revealed evidence. I do not change my mind just because forceful personalities encourage me to do so. As a professional teacher, I have always been tolerant with people willing to learn. I am also very tolerant of ignorance that is the result of circumstances beyond a person’s ability to control or do anything about. On this basis I can respect most people who hold all manner of religious beliefs, as I understand how indoctrination of the young works and how hard it can be to break free from its controlling influence on your mind and your daily life. It was a difficult journey for me to make myself, being brought up in the Roman Catholic church. I am, however, increasingly intolerant of the mindful ignorance in those that have the intellect and education to do better than be conned into anti-scientific crusades. The get out clause there is the word ‘conned’, as this is what they have been. Pigliucci’s book does a fine job of explaining how this comes about.

A good starting point is Karl Popper’s famous “demarcation problem”. The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how to distinguish between science and conscience, including between science, pseudoscience, and other products of human activity, like art and literature, and beliefs. The debate continues after over a century of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields, and despite broad agreement on the basics of scientific method. Essentially, Popper believes that fields like psychoanalysis and sociology are unscientific because they are “unfalsifiable”, while true sciences, like physics and chemistry, are never absolutely proven because they are always open to the possibility that new evidence will falsify them. It is often categorised as either ‘hard science’ or ‘soft science’. The latter may well use the scientific method, but the nature of the subject matter and the evidence involved results in the demarcation problem. This does not mean soft science is not science, but just that they have additional problems in terms of their degree of certainty (which, remember, is never 100% for any science).

Another issue is that of quasi-science – i.e. ‘almost science’, if you like. On the one hand, it happens around the fringes of the acknowledged ‘hard’ sciences like physics. When physicists start philosophising about things beyond their ability to currently apply the scientific method to, such as multiverses and the multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics, often based on little more than mathematical modelling, then we begin to see “the potential mathematical elegance being far removed, or even alien to, physical reality” (Lawrence Krauss ‘Hiding in the Mirror‘).

Quasi-science is not the same as pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to the scientific method. A field, practice, or body of knowledge can reasonably be called pseudoscientific when it is presented as consistent with the norms of scientific research, but it demonstrably fails to meet these norms. Pseudoscience is often characterised by the things listed to the left. The term pseudoscience is often considered pejorative because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science. It is, either innocently or corruptly, the product of faulty thinking. Accordingly, those labeled as practicing or advocating pseudoscience often dispute the characterisation.

As Pigliucci concedes, everyone has the right to be irrational, but rampant irrationality is, at best, highly wasteful, and at worst, highly destructive and harmful. Pigliucci takes particular look at the following areas of pseudoscience:

1. AIDS denialism in Africa
2. Astrology
3. UFOs
4. The paranormal

The list of pseudoscientific topics is mind-bogglingly extensive . Most are harmless. Some are almost certainly beneficial to some extent (things don’t have to be scientific to be beneficial – some people even derive benefits from religion after all).

Pigliucci then goes on to discuss the role the media plays in advancing pseudoscience and assorted bunk. Newspapers, television and social media lap it all up (although, surprisingly, he overlooks social media, which I think has a hell of a lot to answer for in terms of giving bunk traction with intelligent people). He follows this up with the role of ‘think tanks’ and ‘public intellectuals’- much beloved of the media to give all sorts of bunk a veneer of supposed credibility. This is not to say all think tanks and public intellectuals are corrupt or heretics. But we all have our favourites that we take to be reliable and therefore rarely question. For me, I much love Noam Chomsky and Carl Sagan, along with the work of Compass and the New Economics Foundation, but on the other hand, Newt Gingrich, David Starkey, the Centre for Social Justice and Adam Smith Institute can all go to hell. But therein lies the problem. One person’s intellectualism is another person’s spindoctorism! (Pigliucci’s prosaic term, not mine).

In dealing with the interplay between science and politics, the classic example simply has to be global warming. Most reading this will not need me to go into this topic, there simply is no scientific debate on the realities of global warming – merely some minor debate over rates of change and extrapolating the complexities of the causal factors. Dissenters use pseudoscience and blatant corruption to give the illusion of a debate as this suits the interests of corporate paymasters.

Some absurd bunk serves nobody’s interests, yet can be so passionately subscribed to that it raises questions of where we should draw the line between what is acceptable and unacceptable to society as a whole. The example that Pigliucci focuses on is the battleground between evolution theory and intelligent design theory that ended up in American courtrooms to ascertain their relative merits on the science curriculum of american schools! I have dealt with issues of christian fundamentalist schooling elsewhere. Current Conservative education policy opens up the prospect of us having to fight similar battles here, although currently creationism is not allowed to be taught as part of the science curriculum (in theory at least).

This resurgence in ‘Dark Ages’ mentality links in with the section of Pigliucci’s book that looks the history of scientific thought from the Egyptians and Babylonians. For me, it was the Socratics of Greece, and Lucretius in particular, that demonstrated just how lost humanity, in Europe at least, became after the fall of the Roman Empire with all its great applied science/technological achievements. While acknowledging that medieval times were not entirely without their achievements – ironically enough especially in Islamic countries – the role of the christian church in undermining rational thought and consigning much science to the status of heresy cannot be ignored. Indeed, another prompt to this article is witnessing another friend of mine ‘finding’ religion and openly professing biblical fundamentalism of the creationist and ‘flat earth’ variety. It is bewildering and sad to witness in an otherwise intelligent, creative and articulate person. That may come across as patronising, but only to those that think such views are acceptable. I find that attitude far more patronising. As an educationalist, the peddling of nonsense can never be acceptable and we owe it to all involved to be steadfast in challenging it.

There are, of course, legitimate questions as to whether we have grown to trust science too much. Pigliucci examines this in detail. I think the bottom line here is that good scientists never trust that they have the final definitive answer. In many cases there can often be more than one correct answer, for a start. Furthermore having scientifically correct answers is not the same as having the best solution to a problem. This is one reason for ongoing friction between scientists and philosophers on some issues. The problem is among people that do not fully appreciate the scope and limitations of science. Nonetheless, science remains by far the most effective way of gaining knowledge (and power, as Francis Bacon famously pointed out) over the natural world and improving the human condition. This is why we simply have to rein in the extreme versions of science criticism that have developed over the last few decades.

Thus the question that we now need to pose is whether we have come to trust science too little. Pigliucci tackles this issue by focussing on the impact of postmodernist scepticism. He focuses in particular on people like Paul Feyerabend, who he cites as “the quintessential example of what goes wrong when science and the humanities collide”. In essence he demonstrates how Feyerabend deliberately created controversy by stating outrageous things that he didn’t really believe for the express purpose of selling some books. Controversy, per se, is an important element in any form of intellectual discourse, and I agree with Pigliuccis that we ought to respect people who have the guts to to say what they think regardless of how popular their positions may be, irrespective of whether they turn out to right or wrong, but spouting things that are are demonstrably untrue for personal gain is an intellectual travesty and pernicious fraud.

For me, it saddens me to see people being taken in by these charlatans. In the left wing circles that I tend to spend a lot of time, I see a lot of people rightfully mistrustful of “Big Pharma” and the distortion of science by corporate interests. However, this seems to have a created a propensity to be taken in, all too easily, by the quackery of what I now call “Little Pharma” peddling all manner of supposedly naturalistic approaches and remedies. It appeals to Earth loving souls, pagans and avowed hippies in particular. Kindly, gentle souls with their hearts very much in the right places; it can be a painful experience trying to point out how it is they are being conned and fleeced in much the same way as big pharma cons and fleeces governments and health professionals, but with even less hope of successful outcomes.

So taking a look a the anti-vaxxers in particular, examination of a typical Facebook thread – one that has appeared on my timeline just this week for example – is illuminating. It starts with the eye catching headline:

Studies Prove Without Doubt That Unvaccinated Children Are Healthier Than Their Vaccinated Peers

taken from the ‘Circle of Docs’ website – a chiroprac website (chiropractice being an ‘alternative’ therapy to the somewhat more rigorous and sound ‘osteopathy’, but neither of which have any expertise in vaccines). The study that supposedly proves without doubt that unvaccinated children are healthier than their vaccinated peers consisted of a study in New Zealand that was merely a questionnaire survey of 245 families, with a total of 495 children – 226 vaccinated, 269 unvaccinated. Its conclusion:
“While this was a very limited study, particularly in terms of the numbers of unvaccinated children that were involved and the range of chronic conditions investigated, it provides solid scientific evidence in support of considerable anecdotal evidence that unvaccinated children are healthier that their vaccinated peers.”

If it is not clear to anyone reading this that this is a million miles away from proving anything “without doubt”, or that indeed these findings are absolutely riddled with doubt, then you may as well stop reading now.

After a bit of ding-donging from mothers wrestling with what they perceive to be a difficult decision, we come across a very telling contribution that says: “I just thought I’d share I never vaccinated [daughter] when she was little. Before we went to India last year I had a couple of precautionary vaccinations given to Her. She was almost 9 at the time. She was then and remains one of the healthiest children I have ever met.” I guess there is nothing like hedging your bets! I could not resist: “I am curious as to why you thought it was a wise precaution to have vaccinations before going to India, but not while in this country. Is it, perhaps because virtually everybody in this country has been vaccinated and largely elimianated the threats whereas the lack of a comprehensive vaccination programme in India means that the threats are much greater?“ No response from this mum as yet!

Having been accused of being patronising and intolerant, I simply posted a quick barrage of articles highlighting the resurgence of many diseases in response to the undermining of vaccination programmes by people opting out. This was met by the another resort to supposed authority in the form of Kelly Brogan, MD. She describes herself as ‘a holistic women’s health psychiatrist’. Mind games very much to the fore and, of course, she has books for sale with all the answers and you can even have your own personal consultation in her Madison Avenue office suite – for a price of course! ($1000 for the initial hour, then $450 per 40 minute follow up appointment). Nice work if you can get it. And it appears that a bit of brazen tenacity and a lack of a conscience is all that is needed. She is neatly dissected here, and the discussion thread at the end makes interesting reading too.

Even when more credible experts are brought in by the anti-vaxxers, there are problems. The Facebook thread follows up Brogan with a reference to an acknowledged expert in HPV vaccines, namely Dr Diane Harper, under the headline “Chief HPV Scientist Admits Vaccines Are A Deadly Scam”. Which scientific journal was breaking this news? It was YourNewsWire.com, who make a speciality out of running with conspiracy stories.  However, a little digging reveals the extent of the mis-reporting going on here. The concerns raised were not over vaccines in general, but Gardisil in particular. And the concerns were not that Gardasil is ineffective, not that it’s dangerous, but that its benefits might be oversold, which is not an unreasonable concern in this capitalist world of ours. Indeed Harper is quoted as saying: “I remain a vaccine supporter; and am grateful that GSK and Merck have developed the vaccines”.

Of course Kelly Brogan is just one of a wide array of charlatans preying on the vulnerable and gullible. Pigliucci offers a guide for helping discern a real expert from a phoney. He presents Alvin Goldman’s five point checklist which can be summarised as follows:

1. Examine the merits and quality of the arguments presented (being especially alert for logical fallacies and non-sequiturs I would suggest)
2. Look for evidence of agreement from other experts (who pass the same analysis of their credentials as an expert – charlatans endorsing other charlatans is not uncommon)
3. Look for some independent evidence that the expert is an acknowledged expert (sound qualifications and peer-reviewed papers in their fields of expertise)
4. Look for potential biases and vested interests at work that may undermine credibility (political and religious biases; corporate connections, products they market etc.)
5. Ideally a proven track record in their field – which may be hard on young prodigies, but their time will come.

On this basis, Pigliucci demolishes Deepak Chopra, supposed expert in ‘quantum mysticism’, and Michael Behe, supposed expert on ‘intelligent design’. George Monbiot nominates Christopher Booker as the ‘patron saint of charlatans’ for his efforts in undermining asbestos science and climate change denialism. I expect we can all offer up our ‘favourites’. Con artists can often be viewed as loveable rogues for their audacity and charm – but they all leave trails of victims in their wake, and many of the issues I have alluded to here have the potential for deadly consequences on a large scale.

Flat earthers can be pitied and/or ridiculed for there are few if any consequences to their stupidity. What is the worst that can happen, even if they are proved right? A crash in demand for round the world flights and cruises is about as far as I can imagine.

Climate change denialists have probably already condemned us to a future full of catastrophic consequences. It remains just a question of how soon and how severe the worst of consequences hits us. Related conspiracy theories, like chemtrails, leave me with some unanswered questions, but I remain very sceptical that there is anything going on a global scale as some would have us believe.

GMO crops is an interesting one. I remain in the anti-camp despite firmly believing the technology offers great scope to advancement, but I simply don’t trust the people an corporations involved to do the science rigorously enough to mitigate the potential risks.

At the end of the day, we all have to make our own judgements on what we believe to be true on all manner of issues. A belief in the rigorous application of the scientific method as the best way we have of getting as close as possible to the truth. The challenge before us is how to ensure that this is properly understood by in a world full of mischief, deceit and ignorance.

And if all else fails …..

P.S. The anti-vaxxers have a new focal point for their campaign in the form of a film called Vaxxed, which opened in New York three weeks ago, featuring the work of the discredited Dr Andrew Wakefield – barred by by the GMC and now to be found making a very comfortable living in America.

Review of film by an autism parent: https://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2016/04/02/movie-review-vaxxed/

An interesting approach to presenting the case against Dr Andrew Wakefield can be found here (screenshot below): http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html

In both cases read the discussion threads that follow the main content.

Organised by: Cynnal Cymru, Wildlife Trusts Wales, Hub Cymru Africa, Wales Environment Link, Christian Aid Wales, Tearfund, Love Zimbabwe, WWF Cymru, Renewable UK Cymru, Stop Climate Chaos Cymru, NUS Wales, Sub-Saharan Advisory Panel, Welsh Centre for International Affairs, Sustainable Places Research Institute: Cardiff University, Wales Council for Voluntary Action, National Federation of Women’s Institutes – Wales, Size of Wales, Fair Trade Wales, Disability in Wales and Africa, Friends of the Earth Cymru, NUS Wales, and Cardiff University People and Planet student society.

The hustings, chaired by veteran political broadcaster Glyn Mathias, aimed to address some of the biggest long-term global issues affecting the lives of people in Wales and around the world and how the different political parties propose to address these if they were to form the next Welsh Government.

The hustings brought together representatives from the main political parties in Wales to discuss, in particular, how their party would work towards developing their vision for the implementation of the Future Generations Act in Wales.

Representatives attending:

William Powell – Welsh Liberal Democrats
Alice Hooker-Stroud – Wales Green Party
Llyr Gruffydd – Plaid Cymru
Anna McMorrin – Welsh Labour

Ross England – Welsh Conservatives
UKIP did not respond to the invitation

With the focus very much on the Future Generations Act and its implementation, this was a key hustings event from the perspective of Frack Free Wales and Egnio Cymru. My main objective was to seek out the candidates views on these group’s main objectives and try to gain their signatures for their ongoing petitions to Welsh Government. In summary:

BAN ON FRACKING IN WALES

• William Powell – LD – unequivocal support and signed the petition
• Alice Hooker-Stroud – GP – unequivocal support and signed the petition
• Llyr Gruffydd – PC – unequivocal support and signed the petition
• Ross England – Con – not in his constituency!! Refused to sign the petition
• Anna McMorrin – Lab – ‘isn’t our moratorium great?’ Refused to sign the petition

MOVING TOWARDS 100% RENEWABLES

• William Powell – LD – yes in principle – reservations over large onshore wind farms – signed the petition
• Alice Hooker-Stroud – GP – unequivocal support, including for large scale projects, and signed the petition
• Llyr Gruffydd – PC – unequivocal support and signed the petition
• Ross England – Con – yes to more renewables if cost effective and part of a mix that includes fossil fuels etc. Refused to sign the petition.
• Anna McMorrin – Lab – yes to community renewables in particular, BUT refused to sign the petition.

I’ll cover a few points in more detail below, but the basic divisions were consistent and clear:
To the left, we had Plaid Cymru, Greens and Lib Dems all largely singing from the same song sheets, but with subtle differences in emphasis, as we would all expect and indeed hope. Most importantly of all, they were all singing the songs we want and need to be hearing, if there is to be any substance to the potential for change embodied in the Future Generations Act.
To the right we also had remarkable harmony, but in terms of shallow, meaningless pap. Both Tory and Labour candidates were happy to mutter greenwash platitudes, and cite achievements that are anything but when scrutinised, but when pushed to put their names to the meaningful change embodied in our petitions, they had nothing to say but a point blank refusal.

I have to make special mention of Llyr Gruffydd’s performance. I cannot ever recall a politician saying exactly what I wanted to say, and even in very similar manner to the way I would have wished to deliver it. It was almost as if he was my mouthpiece. He completely demolished the Labour pretence that there is a moratorium on fracking in Wales . He also demolished Labour claims to have done anything meaningful to support Community Energy to date, despite McMorrin citing it as a glorious achievement of the Labour administration. Even on other issues, he took my own position regarding the M4 relief road; that something has to be done, but that the Black Route is incompatible with the essence of the Future Generations Act, but that the Blue Route could be an acceptable compromise. When I first encountered Llyr, probably about 5 years ago he did not convince me that he could handle the Sustainable Communities, Energy and Food portfolio he was given. He has consistently grown into the role and clearly worked hard to improve his understanding and knowledge base. This in turn has made him a much more relaxed and assured performer. He helps to allay my fears (a little) that Plaid Cymru do not have enough talent to form a competent government.

I also have to make a special mention of Alice Hooker-Stroud’s performance. I have to say that the more I see of her, the more impressed I become. She has the calm assurance of someone who actually understands what she is talking about (ain’t that a refreshing change after the PB years?!). She does however have a rather academic, almost school ma’am manner, that is fine with a educated audience but unlikely to engage the disaffected. I have no hesitation in saying that she would make an excellent Assembly Member. There is a small chance that all the stars may align and let her squeak in. That would be real bonus for all concerned. Sadly, the Greens have not done enough on a consistent enough basis to make it happen this time around. As good an AM that I think she could be, I don’t think she has what it takes to be the effective leader that the Greens in Wales desperately need in order to become an election force. Until they sort out their priorities for the use of their limited time and financial resources, they will continue to fritter both away on vanity projects that impress too few, rather than doing the hard graft needed to win elections.

Enough of personalities, to conclude, here are a few collected soundbites from the evening that give a little food for thought:

• RE says Tories voted against the Future Generations Act in part because they were concerned local authorities were being given extra responsibilities without the extra funding to enable them. (Hmm…… whose fault is that then, Ross?)
• Both AM and LG highlighted the important role that the Future Generations Commissioner will have in helping implement the Act. The first Commissioner took up her role on 1st February this year. What do we know about Sophie Howe? There appears to be a distinct lack of environmental strength in her background, which does not augur well, but she is also a former Labour councillor and Deputy Police Commissioner (for Labour), and seeing FoTEC’s response to her appointment as possibly ‘compromising’ the role, is not a good start!
• There was general consent that the survival of the Welsh steel industry was important, if for no other reason that steel has a crucial part to play in just about all major infrastructure projects, be if renewable energy generators, or railway lines. Attitudes towards protectionist tariffs however took typical party lines.
• The best idea that came from RE for the Tories (and therefore I doubt it is their actual policy!) is a proposed annual review of progress with carbon emissions to monitor and hopefully ensure the desirable direction of travel with these.
• AHS made a slightly unusual (in the sense of not a typical Green position) case for big scale renewable projects, citing figures I did not quite get about logarithmic efficiency gains.
• WP raised legitimate concerns over TAN8 guidance on renewable energy projects and its inadequacies. A review and rewriting of TANs (Technical Advice Notes) is something that LG also supported. The lack of any TAN appropriate for fracking activity will not be a problem, of course, if we get it banned.

So, for what it’s worth, my marks out of 10 for the candidates before us at this hustings:

1. Llyr Gruffydd – PC 9/10
2. Alice Hooker-Stroud – GP 7/10
3. William Powell – LD 5/10
4. Ross England – Con 4/10
5. Anna McMorrin – Lab 3/10
6. DNS – UKIP 0/10

Most will be aware of my long involvement with the fight against fracking and my involvement with Frack Free Wales. I am pleased to report on my growing involvement with a new and growing campaign that focuses on the other side of the energy coin. If fracking is the downside or tails, an energy self-sufficient Wales using 100% renewable sources is the upside or heads. Egnio Cymru is a campaign focussed on achieving this within 20 years.

The Egnio vision is laid out here and the roadmap to achieving is being laid out here. The website is still being written and prepared, but I am not the only one involved who is currently focussing on the more immediate priority of engaging with the politicians in the run up to the 2016 Welsh Government Elections, and will do so over the next few weeks.

In this respect, we have a “Fr-action Plan” that tackle both sides of the coin over the coming weeks – and which you can all contribute as well! If you look at the fr-action pack section you will see the three-pronged approach laid:

• Digital Eco Warrior section for those able to help out from home
• Street Teams section – for those, either independently or through linking up with others, able to spend a little time in High Streets and the like
• Elections Hustings section – for those able to get to any of the elections hustings events going on all over the place in the next few weeks.

The packs contain advice on what you can do to help us ensure that our twin goals of a Frack Free Wales and safe, secure, dependable energy future are achieved, or underway to being achieved by the next Welsh Government.

Personally, I will be focussing on hustings and other opportunities to directly petition as many candidates as possible. I will post regular reports on the main hustings I get to, and we will collate candidate responses in time to help everyone make a properly informed choice by election day. Watch this space!

In fact I’ve been to my first big set-piece hosting at Cardiff University this evening – focussing on the Future Generations Act. It was high quality event and there is a fair bit to report on – I’ll try and do just that tomorrow.

By unhappy coincidence, quite a few people that I have been acquainted with in various ways have died recently.
I would not have witnessed any of this had I acted upon suicidal thoughts I was having myself, about 12 months ago.

I wrote a chapter on death in my book, The Asylum of the Universe, a good few years ago. The book was published 5 years ago and the Death chapter was one of the first I wrote – probably 3 or 4 years before that. I have felt inclined to revisit it recently.

The one major difference is that I no longer hold onto the belief that life is worth clinging to, no matter what. More than anything, I think this represents me making a transition from middle-age comfort towards older decrepitude and a growing realisation that very old age has little to offer, especially the way the world continues to shape up. I therefore offer this chapter I wrote 8-10 years ago, unedited, in this context, but for no real reason. If it opens up any useful discussion anywhere, then that will be a bonus.

DEATH

I overheard my wife chatting on the phone to her sister the other day. She was updating her on my father-in-law who has had a serious stroke recently. Last year he had his second kidney removed due to cancer. He has also had three heart attacks. She also mentioned my in-laws’ cat in the same conversation. It is 18 years old – around 90 in cat years, I am reliably informed. It seems to suffer some form of dementia. It will stand leaning against walls for ages. It walks into things. It is a nothing but skin and bones. You can stand on its tail and it doesn’t notice! The thing is, I wasn’t sure whether they were talking about the man or the cat when I heard my wife say that he probably cannot have too long left; that he has no real quality of life; that death will be a blessed relief. Hmmm!

It doesn’t really matter who they were talking about, does it? A blessed relief!! To whom would dying be any sort of relief? I struggle to conceive of a relieved corpse, so the relief must be that of the people relieved of the duty of care for the now-deceased. This is one of the main arguments for euthanasia, if I am not mistaken. And as for real quality of life, how much of that is there when you’re dead? It is the same line of argument that says, “Better dead than red”. Bollocks is it!

I do, of course, understand that people can decide that they have had enough and choose to terminate their own lives. These people fall in to two main categories: the religious and/or spiritual who wish to hasten their migration to the ‘other side’ for many reasons, including that curiously compelling concept called ‘martyrdom’; and the suicidally depressed whose mental state inflates their perception of life’s problems to the exclusion of life’s joys. The former choose to deny the finality of death, while the latter, if not also in this group, see the empty void, the nothingness, as preferable to the continued negative experiences that are swamping them at the time. It essentially boils down to a fear of living being greater than the fear of dying.

Although I fear death, in the sense that I would prefer to live forever than be non-existent, there can be absolutely nothing to fear in being dead. Epicurus, as so often, explained it well (centuries before Jesus):

It is religion that engenders fear of being dead – as it generally invokes concepts of judgement. We rarely feel comfortable being judged, but when the verdict of the judge is perceived to have eternal consequences, it is no wonder believers are nervous about it!

I find the concept of martyring oneself for a cause an interesting one. Belief in an afterlife must certainly make it a lot easier option to face up to. As I lack such beliefs myself, I tend to feel a sense of pity for these poor misguided fools who make the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of supposedly bettering the lives of other believers while securing themselves a place in paradise. But hang on minute. Where is the sacrifice in taking a short cut to heaven?

This is the religious con trick, currently so beloved of Muslim fundamentalists, but utilised by many religions throughout history. Making such a sacrifice out of a selfless sense of love for others is far more impressive I would suggest. I could accept the oblivion of death in order to perpetuate the lives of my kids, as they are my only stake in the future beyond my own existence. I cannot imagine sacrificing my life for anyone else.

Empirical evidence for life after death tends to focus on observations from ‘near death’ experiences. Research has revealed a fair degree of common features reported from people in these  circumstances. These include seeing bright lights, sensation of levitation, feelings of serenity or, alternatively, fear and out-of-body sensations and visions. Research has also uncovered, however, a range of scientific explanations that include hormone releases, residual effects of psychedelic drugs, and ‘reflexes’ in the sensory autonomic system, lucid dreaming and psychopathological symptoms.

So what forms of ‘life after death’ are on offer to those that are prepared to buy into various religious ‘deals’?

• Christians and Muslims are particularly keen on heavenly paradises for the worthy and eternal suffering in hell for those that do not make the cut.

• Christians have had cute notions of sprouting wings and metamorphosing into angels, if you are lucky enough to go to heaven, or sprouting horns and, possibly, a wicked sense of humour if you go to hell.

• Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Wiccans have a fine range of reincarnation options on offer.

• Ancient Egyptians had a special offer, whereby if you subjected your corpse to mummification you could get to ride with the Sun. Sounds exciting!

• Zoroastrians get to spend three days with either a beautiful maiden (if you are good) or an ugly hag (if you are bad), before descending to a mildly unpleasant sort of hell. I am not sure if the women get exactly the same deal or what!

• Ancient Greeks and Romans had access to an underworld populated by the dead, but which could be visited and returned from in certain circumstances.

• The Vikings had Valhalla – a heaven available only to those that died heroically in battle. A cool army recruitment tool, don’t you think?

• The Jews have ummed and ahhed a bit. Death as a form of limbo before resurrection has been popular, as has re-incarnation. Kabbalists and the Orthodox Jews are still quite keen on this.

• Mormons have three degrees of ‘heavenly glory’ available: CELESTIAL – the ‘gold standard’ heaven where you get to actually sit with God; TERRESTRIAL – ‘silver’ heaven, which is another dimension somewhere here on Earth for honourable people that failed to embrace God; and TELESTIAL – more like the wooden spoon than ‘bronze’; it is like a holding pen for sinners and deniers of God, and they will be the last in the queue for resurrection.

The devious, as well as the deluded, can manipulate people who buy into these brands of nonsense to the point where they will opt for martyrdom – invariably for political ends. There is no denying the impact that martyrdom can have as a political gesture. I am not sure that Jesus qualifies as a martyr, but his death has certainly had an impact on the world.

The same is certainly true of some lesser-known martyrs. Emily Davison was the suffragette who died under the feet of the King’s horse at the 1913 Derby. In her autobiography, Emmeline Pankhurst wrote:

“Emily Davison clung to her conviction that one great tragedy, the deliberate throwing into the breach of a human life, would put an end to the intolerable torture of women.”

I am not sure she managed anything quite this ambitious, but between them Emily and Emmeline certainly changed the lives of women quite dramatically for the better. It does however prove that it is the dramatic that grabs the attention and forces people to take notice. Check out this image for example:

You may, possibly, recognise it as the image from the eponymous album by Rage Against the Machine. When I first saw it on this album cover, I simply had to find out what was going on. The guy is just sitting upright, perfectly still and in control as he burns to death!!

Hòa Thượng Thích Quảng Đức, was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June 1963. Thích Quảng Đức was protesting against the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam’s Ngô Đình Diệm administration. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime. Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for this iconic photo of the monk’s death, as did David Halberstam for his written account. Thích Quảng Đức’s act increased international pressure on Diệm and led him to announce reforms with the intention of mollifying the imm Buddhists. This self-immolation is widely seen as the turning point of the  Vietnamese Buddhist crisis which led to the change in regime.

The difficulty I have with such gestures is that for every instance that hits the headlines and that leads to change, there are countless other examples of martyrdom in vain – because nobody noticed or nobody cared. Dozens of other Buddhist monks incinerated themselves and achieved very little. It was Malcolm Browne’s photo that had the impact, not the act per se. The 9/11 Twin Towers attack had plenty of coverage, but any claims to martyrdom disappear under the blanketing act of mass murder. And as yet, it is hard to discern anything resembling progress for anyone from these acts. So, all in all, I will stick with the conclusion that martyrdom is for the thoroughly misguided and gullible.

Another group that has been in the forefront of public debate in recent times is the terminally ill, especially those suffering debilitating disabilities that need assistance in exercising the option of suicide. Typically, countries that treat their citizens like mature intelligent adults (e.g. Switzerland) have civilised policies that allow people to ‘pass away’ discreetly and with dignity. Equally typically, nanny states (e.g. the U.K.) feel the need to protect their citizens from themselves and evil people who might be a bit too keen to shuffle them off this mortal coil. Obviously, there needs to be safeguards, but unlike the Swiss, the British cannot be arsed to put them in place, so it is simpler and cheaper to simply deny the option.

This suits me just fine, as I am committed to the idea that any level of suffering and indignity is better than being dead. But unlike those with religious ‘righteousness’ informing their ability to judge for other people, I am happy to let sane intelligent adults come to their own decisions.

Death is, of course one of life’s great inevitabilities. Most of us don’t like thinking about it, but of course we do. We don’t like talking about it, but we probably should. Living with my wife has taught me on numerous occasions that talking things through, although difficult, invariably brings greater clarity and makes things easier.

For this reason I have a lot of respect for people facing up to life threatening illnesses, and other potentially deadly situations, that are prepared to open up and share their experiences. Roy Castle was inspirational, and it is the only worthwhile thing that I am aware Jade Goody ever did, sad to say. The artificial celebrity created for the conspicuously talentless and intellectually challenged Jade, allowed her the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution as she shared her trials and tribulations battling cancer with the nation. It was a sad reflection on the society in which we now live that some sick people saw fit to revel in her despair. There was even a website that invited people to guess the precise moment she would take her last breath.

Such sick attitudes only serve to reveal just how casual many people are about death. There is something about the whole notion of death that engenders all manner of strangely contorted attitudes. What should we make of anti-abortionists who murder medics who perform abortions, for example? One idiot of a judge in Kansas has declared that he will consider a voluntary manslaughter or “necessity” defence for psycho Scott Roeder who readily admits to the killing of an abortion practitioner. It would probably mean just a five-year sentence for Roeder and open season on abortionists in Kansas at least.

How we view death, especially other peoples’, is a matter of  perspective. To me, my life is of the utmost importance. To my nearest and dearest, my death may cause some transitory consequences and maybe a little grief. To the rest of the world it will be of no real consequence at all.

Death is, after all, an everyday mundane event. According to the World Health Organisation, there are about 154,000 deaths per day worldwide (over 100 per minute). We probably cry over less than one of these per decade. In terms of geological timescales, if we compare the history of planet earth to a 24-hour clock, the whole of humanity has existed for less than the last second – leave alone my own pathetic lifespan of a few decades. So, on the one hand, my life is the most precious and important thing; while on the other hand it is utterly inconsequential. To quote Tim Minchin, yet again, ‘I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon’.

Those of a religious bent will tend to deny the finality of death and concoct notions of some sort of afterlife as a consolation. Their shows of grief at death reveal their true beliefs. If their belief were profound, surely death would be an event to celebrate or even a cause of envy.

As already mentioned, there is nothing to fear in death, as the Epicurean thinkers and teachers pointed out a few centuries before Jesus perpetuated an old tradition of peddling false hopes of an afterlife. The most eloquent Epicurean writer was undoubtedly Lucretius. His epic poem On the Nature of Things is unsurpassed in its beautiful exposition of the simple truths of the world we live in.

Considering he wrote it around 60 B.C.E., the quality of the scientific observation and deduction are also remarkable. Lucretius described the body and soul as being atomically constituted, like everything else in the universe, and therefore, like everything else, both body and soul will  disintegrate and disperse after death. He argues that our mental development tracks that of our body through infancy, maturity and senility, such that we should expect the breakdown of our mental faculties as our body begins to fall apart. He concluded that there could thus be no life after death, no reincarnation, and no punishment in Hades/Hell. He found the notion of a benevolent creator utter nonsense; as such a creator would surely have ensured that his creations would be everlasting. On top of this, he recognised that the world is hostile to human existence, in the same way that all living creatures have ongoing battles for survival. He describes (mockingly I suggest) newborn babies tears on emerging into this worldas admirably prescient considering all the troubles that lie ahead for it.

It is as if they know they have arrived in the asylum of the universe!

Live while you love!

I read a bit of research recently that suggested that depression, mental illness and emotional stress are very common among libertarian political activists. As I am enduring bit of a slump again, and I tend to turn to reading and writing to help me regain some persecutive, I am going to have a bit of a closer look at this phenomenon.

As I think about the people I have met through campaigning and activism over the years, I can certainly recognise a loose correlation between those that are more committed to their activism and mental health issues of one kind or another, broadly ranging from depressive disorders to delusional complexes. Sometimes the activist community is very supportive and helpful. On other occasions it can feel alienating and harmful.

If I offer any advice at all, it is purely based on my own experiences and learning (often the the hard way). My first bit of advice is therefore not to consider anything read in blogs as a substitute for professional medical advice. That I would not have said this 10 years ago is, in part at least, because I have found that the understanding of mental health problems among GPs, in particular (as most people’s entry point into the medical support system), is hugely better than it once was – while recognising that there is a bit of a lottery in just how competent (in this regard) your particular GP may be. I do, however, think that it is highly likely that at least one GP in any practice is likely to be good in this respect, so it may be worth asking to see whoever is regarded as strong with mental health issues in a practice, rather than, perhaps, seeing your usual GP if you suspect that they are not so hot on mental health issues. I remain very critical of certain aspects of mental health treatment, especially an over-reliance on medications (while acknowledging that they usually have a part to play in managing some conditions), but if you are suffering from severe depression or considering harming yourself, then there really is a need to speak to someone straight away.

Living with depression is not easy. All too often mental health issues are overlooked and/or ignored – by everyone from the sufferer themselves, by people around us (that don’t understand what is going on), through to workplaces and wider society. Sufferers are too seen seen as weak or overreacting. Beside the personal sense of alienation that often goes with mental illness, the institutions of capitalist society offer sufferers very little control over their treatment. Typically, mental health treatment is fragmented and commodified, complete with hierarchies to negotiate, elements of coercion and the pressures of budgets, profits and bureaucracy.

Mental health facilities in schools (for both staff and pupils) are woefully lacking (although some recent attempts to introduce mindfulness to the curriculum and INSET programmes is to be welcomed). There’s generally no problem ringing in sick at work with physical ailments, but very few employers have any provision for for mental health leave. In my experience, short-term absences for mental health issues are regarded as highly suspicious – if you are going to be off with mental health problems, then at least make if a full-scale meltdown and have three months off!

In this context, it really ought to be a given that the class struggle community, in particular, should take issues of mental health seriously. It should be discussed and there ought to networks where sufferers can turn when they need support. This happens informally at best, but given the high incidence of sufferers as already pointed out, there is usually someone nearby that can at least offer genuine empathy. It is important for sufferers to realise that they are by no means alone. Talk to someone. They will understand and often be able to point you in the direction of further help. Don’t forget that the very essence of class politics is all about solidarity and helping each other.

I would always encourage people to try to find someone in person if you can, and I am far from alone with that advice. Telephone helplines, medical ones and the Samaritans in particular, can be valuable too. But be careful about relying on online forums and web advice. Self-diagnosis is full of pitfalls. Self-help after professional diagnosis and initial guidance is fine – and the way I have learned to cope.

As blokes in particular, we often resist reaching out and/or talking about ‘girly’ things like feelings and emotions. We need to recognise that these are symptoms of the divisive culture and false identities imposed on us by a ruthless and uncaring capitalist system. Whether we suffer from depression or not, as social animals, we all need to discuss our feelings and emotions. It not only helps us as individuals, but strengthens us a movement when we develop a healthy culture of discussion and support.

Part of the reason we get involved in politics is because we want to make the world a better place. That means most activists are happy to support comrades in need of a bit of emotional support. There are not enough of us to allow comrades to fall by the wayside. Sharing a sense of solidarity and common purpose makes comrades potentially solid pillars of support. We get great satisfaction from looking out for each other, as if we cannot look after our own, how could we ever expect to extend similar values to a wider society?

Being realistic also means recognising that being involved in politics can bring more stress than enjoyment. We therefore also need to recognise that we, ourselves and every comrade, need to be able to take a step back from time to time. A few months off from any given group or project can help recharge the batteries, gain fresh perspective and help avoid things getting in ruts and stagnating. Similarly, we must all be wary of over-extending ourselves or expecting too much from others. It is never about people pulling their weight – it is about being comfortable with what you are contributing and being grateful for everybody else’s contribution, no matter how great or small. It is not good anarchist or socialist practice to have one person carrying too much responsibility within a group – and not conducive to good mental health either.

Be realistic about how much time you dedicate to a project and be open with others when you need help. If you are not getting the assistance you need, speak to others involved, let them know and give opportunity for others to step up. Ultimately, do not feel the burden is on you to make things work.

Despite our commitment to the cause, it’s always important to have other interests, preferably without any overtly political dimension. I would say that it is also important to maintain those friendships with people that do not share your political perspectives and involvement. This is achieved in no small part by avoiding political discussions and judgements. If nothing else, it will help maintain some broader perspective in your life. Hobbies and sports are great ways of keeping body and mind healthy – which again will benefit your political activities as well. We all need a break from contemplating the ills of global capitalism, lest it overwhelm us.

In essence, it boils down to being good, kind and respectful to each other. But sadly, far too often that proves beyond us. I read an interesting short essay recently entitled: Be Good to Your Comrdaes: Why Being a Prick is Counterrevolutionary. It made the point, that any of us familiar with party politics in particular will recognise, that political activism tends to attract a bunch of egotistical pricks, at least disproportionately. Many of the nicest people I know are leftie political activists that are caring altruistic, generous and giving. But I can also real off a list of people that are harsh, condescending and sometimes downright bullies. Politics shares a tendency with religion for people to take entrenched positions, even over small matters with people supposedly on the ‘same side’. When we have our own ideas and beliefs attacked, we tend to lash out in defence of our position, even if it is an untenable one.

Many of us have developed very thick skins over the years, but that can make us prone to using words or tones that can hurt our thinner skinned comrades. When we become so full of bitterness about the state of the world around us, we can tend to take out on those around us, even when those nearest, ought to be our dearest allies.

What happens, of course, is that people quit. It also make people reluctant to get involved. I quit the Green Party and I am reluctant join Plaid Cymru. Anarchist groups seem to have a better handle on this sort of nonsense, perhaps because it truly part of the core values of everyone therein. Party politics is inherently competitive and confrontational.

Even anarchist groups will attract their share of strident revolutionaries who can overstep the mark. Whatever the organisation, however, if has to be recognised that interpersonal meanness will always be counteractive to the greater cause. It sabotages the change, the revolution, that we want to see. When people act like pricks, they end up driving people away. Nobody wants to share the company of people that make them feel like crap. If they are not driven away completely, they can be tipped into a downward depressive cycle, lose their self-confidence and withdraw. They stop sharing their ideas or volunteering for activities. Meanness and bullying causes our numbers to be fewer and our remaining comrades to be less effective. This has to be intolerable for a group whose ultimate raison d’être has to be persuading the majority of the population to our way of thinking. If we think we can achieve this by humiliation and intimidation, or by ostracising critics, we may as well go straight to taking up arms and ‘persuading’ people at the end of a rifle.

We need to be comfortable with expressing criticism and disagreement. This is the only way we truly change minds. Being forthright should not prevent us from remaining friendly and respectful. It requires collective responsibility to deal with individual transgressors. Various tools can be used to structure debates, and training in effective chairing is worth considering. One suggestion that I have rarely seen implemented is that someone is assigned the task of monitoring the level of respect in meetings (a kind of behaviour referee if you like), someone other than the chair. Some sort of ‘three strikes‘ rule can then be implemented. But hey – it is down to each group and organisation to find some arrangement that works for them – so long as that is what they do.

The bottom line is that if someone’s pattern of intimidating or humiliating others doesn’t stop after ongoing intervention, then this person has to go – expelled or at least suspended – because whatever assets they bring to the group, they will be doing more harm than good.

To conclude – the number one thing we can all do to advance the causes we hold so dear is to value our comrades and be good to each other. In terms of looking after each other’s mental health, let’s pledge to stop giving our comrades yet another reason to be depressed!

(Draws heavily on an anonymous booklet entitled Class Struggle and Mental Health, published by Freedom Press, 2015)

As a member of the Green Party until quite recently, with many friends and respected comrades still in the party, it was driven home to me today that, outside of the Green Left faction within the Green Party, the overall image of the Party is a pretty shocking one amongst left wing activists and anarchists operating outside of the Green Party. This came about when I attended the Cardiff Anarchist Bookfair today. Although there was some acknowledgement of some genuine ecosocialists within the Party, there was a lot of scorn poured on the records of elected Greens and especially the record of the Brighton administration.

It wasn’t until I got home, and started going through literature that I had picked up during the day, that I found an article in ‘Resistance‘, the paper of the Anarchist Federation, that encapsulated and, perhaps, informed this attitude towards the Green Party. It was entitled “Tories on bikes”: the Green Party in power, with quote being ascribed to a striking Brighton bin worker.

The article examines what it saw as the evidence of Greens selling out, with the inference being that we had been led to expect a lot better. I know that I and many members of Green Left can relate to this.

For those not familiar with what happened in Brighton, the article summarised it succinctly. It pointed out that Greens had long trumpeted a commitment the living wage (and still do), but that they (led by Jason Kitkat) tried to impose a “pay modernisation” scheme on low-paid council workers with the support of the council’s Tory group. The article alleges that this meant pay cuts of up to £4000 a year for some. More damning than this figure (which I suspect is an exaggeration) is the accusation of “acting like the worst kind of union-busting boss“, by threatening workers that if they refused the new terms, they would be sacked and re-employed on the new contract. In other words, acting like a bunch of Jeremy Hunts! Sadly, this is pretty accurate and the bin workers responded with a wildcat occupation of their depot.

Caroline Lucas comes in for some criticism that does not quite fit my recollections of events. It acknowledges that she voiced her opposition and said she would join the picket lines. I thought that she actually did do this at one point, but the article suggest that she never showed up. It does, however, say that she was seen picking up litter during the strike in June 2013, contrary to a statement from the bin-workers asking people not to do so, as it would undermine their strike action.

The bottom line here, and the point that discredits the socialist credentials of the Party in other’s eyes, is that when faced with tough choices, they fell into line and did the neoliberals bidding for them. The article describes it as underlining the sense of “a world of perpetual disappointment when your elected representatives betray you“.

Anarchists, of course, have come to expect nothing else. They rightly point out that the problem is not with who is in power or even with how they exercise that power. The problem is with political power itself. Notable anarchist, Noam Chomsky, points out that “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum“. In this context, the article concludes that the Green’s might well be on the fringes of that spectrum, but they remain part of the party political system that has been established to keep us quiet and compliant. This, ultimately, is why I gave up on the Green Party and party politics altogether.

The ironic thing is that it was good friends within Green Left that introduced me to people like Proudhon, Kropotkin and Bakunin – the veritable godfathers of Anarchist thought. They remain, to the best of my knowledge, committed to fighting the cause from within the Green Party. I am left wondering whether I should consider them to heroically battling to shape the Party into something truly worthy, or whether to consider them as naive fools, wasting their time and propping up an inherently flawed system. Discuss!

James Meek is a writer for whom I have huge respect. His extraordinary novel The People’s Act Of Love, set in Siberia, post-Russian revolution, was nominated for the Booker Prize and won The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize in 2005. More recently, his journalistic writing has also picked up awards. Just last year, 2015, he won the Orwell Prize for political writing of outstanding quality for his book, Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else. He also is a contributing editor of The London Review of Books, and it is his most recent contribution to this, entitled Robin Hood in a Time of Austerity, that forms the basis of the rest of this piece. (It is a transcript of this lecture given at the British Museum recently.)

We are all familiar with the legend of Robin Hood. Taking from the rich to give to the poor – redistributing wealth – has long been seen as a programme of the left. James Meek, however, suggests most convincingly that the legend has been twisted and usurped by the right, with the considerable assistance of their friends in the media. He explains it something like this:

• The traditional poor (unemployed, disabled, refugees etc.) are accused of sponging off the state to live in big houses, wallowing in undeserved luxury, while not needing to work.
• The rich, meanwhile, are redesigned as the ones who are ‘hard-working’ but forced to support the undeserving poor-who-are-considered-rich.
• The Sheriff of Nottingham in this narrative is played by the assertive leftie whose modus operandi is to plunder the honest, hard-working peasants hard-earned wealth to give to the dishonest, lazy, social parasites, given more than they deserve.
• Thus, the ‘Sheriffs’/baddies are played by Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Hugo Chavez, Russell Brand and their like, while the ‘Robin Hood’/good guys are played by George Osborne, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Clarkson and their like.
• This is all pedalled as the reality by rags like the Daily Mail, with their stories of immigrants getting £1000 social security cheques, malingerers with 11 sprogs living in 10 bedroom mansions at taxpayer’s expense, and slagging off any attempt to pick your pocket with tax-gathering devices from speed cameras to inheritance tax.

As I have pointed out before on this blog, the key signifier is the phrase ‘hard-working people’. This is a clever catch-all to draw in everyone from struggling shop worker to multibillionaire business people. They are all encouraged to take on the mantle of the put-upon peasant struggling to fend off the sheriff’s cruel tax raids. Thus we have society divided between the ‘hard-working’ and the ‘work-shy’. We are encouraged to speculate as to why some are not working hard and ‘doing their bit’ in these ‘difficult times’. They are probably plain lazy, feigning disability, benefit tourists from far-off shit holes, commie strike-inclined trade unionists, or any combination of these and more. They expect food on their tables, roofs over their heads (spare bedrooms even FFS), Sky TV and money for fags , full and free access to public services – and all the while contributing sweet FA and taking everyone else to be mugs. That’s all rather rich, isn’t it! Thus the poorest and most vulnerable in our society have been transformed into the despised ‘rich’ (those with more than they deserve).

Meanwhile, in the wake of the banker-induced financial crisis, I and many Greens and other lefties got involved in a campaign to introduce the prosaically named ‘Robin Hood Tax’ on financial transactions. This was designed to discourage the reckless speed with which bankers and fund managers were shifting vast, destabilising amounts of money around the globe. The campaign has resulted in 11 European countries embracing the idea, but this will not include the UK unless Corbyn becomes Prime Minister. It is an idea that Thomas Piketty would like to see taken further to become some sort of global tax on capital, with the principal objective being reducing the extreme inequalities inherent in the capitalist system. Well, I guess we all can dream.

A socialist version of Robin Hood was very much alive and well for much of the twentieth century. It wasn’t just about robbing the rich; it was about taking back from the rich the excessive wealth accumulated by owners of capital and returning it to the creators of wealth – the shop-floor workers. A socialist Robin Hood is not just interested in confiscating the ‘box of silver coins’ and redistributing it; he would demand control of the system to shift the burden of taxation onto the rich, and spend the revenue for the common good. It can be argued that Elizabethan Poor Laws were a starting point, followed by these landmarks:

• 1842 – Robert Peel’s first peacetime income tax
• 1908 – the first means tested old-age pension
• 1920s to 1980s – the era of high progressive marginal rates of income tax, peaking at 95% tax rates paid by the super-rich (referred to in the Beatle’s song ‘Taxman’ by line 2: “There’s one for you , 19 for me‘)

It was, in fact, the USA that set this last trend, on the back of the belief that it was the actions of the rich that caused their Great Depression. They were seeking to avoid becoming a class-bound society of aristocrats and peasants. They wanted to learn from the mistakes of old Europe in their brave New World. It worked for them for a long time. It was a golden era of nationwide (relative) prosperity and reducing inequalities. However, the elephant in the room was always the growing levels of debt. The traditional medicine for reigning in national debt has always been by some combination of tax increases and public spending cuts. Keynesian wisdom has always maintained that cuts are more harmful that tax rises – but that message has been increasingly lost since the Thatcher/Reagan era.

Thus we have two mainstream, but opposing, political narratives about what has happened in Britain in the last 15 years or so.

• The Conservative ‘austerity’ narrative: Labour went on a reckless public spending spree in the years running up to the crash of 2008. As a consequence, like a household with too big a mortgage (and there were plenty of these about who related to the analogy), the answer is to cut spending deeply and sell off possessions. In this context, the tax take was flittered away and wasted. Tax is therefore a necessary evil at best that we should seek to reduce. Public austerity is therefore the only option.
• The Labour ‘anti-austerity’ narrative: Gordon Brown didn’t borrow or spend excessively at all. The crash was down to the irresponsible borrowing and lending practices of major British banks. A country is not like a household. With its own currency, it can’t become bankrupt through excessive spending. The debts are easily managed. Austerity is an ideological choice by a Conservative Party intent on shrinking the state at whatever costs to those it protects. In periods of low interest rates, debt should be increased to stimulate the economy. Taxes on the rich (who are, almost by definition, hoarding their capital) should go up for the same reason.

James Meek points out the fundamental problems with both of these narratives.

The Conservative austerity narrative is based on lies. Gordon Brown had reduced the national debt that Labour inherited from the Tories in 1997. The crash was not caused by excessive spending, but by excessive saving. Vast sums of money (the lubricant of the economy) were syphoned away by countries like China and Saudi Arabia as they hoarded foreign currency reserves. Large corporations followed suit – hoarding cash instead of re-investing it. Wealthy individual capitalists were allowed to legally suck wealth out of firms and into their personal hoards. While the majority of us hit hard times, the mega-rich became conspicuously richer.

Countries like the US and UK found themselves hit by a double whammy. They had become reliant on imports from resource giants (like Russia and Saudi Arabia) and the manufacturing powerhouses (like China and Germany), and as if this was not bad enough, they had also allowed what was left of our manufacturing and energy production to fall into the hands of foreign owners, thus exporting much of the value-added that we could still muster.

Market economics meant that with such a glut of hoarded money looking for a somewhere to sit and attract interest, interest rates plummeted. So how were the bankers to attract the hoards of cash? Where was the easy money to be made? Well, look in the mirror. It was you and me, through the means of easy credit and, especially, sub-prime mortgage lending. It worked for a while. The banks grew and grew, and just like Mr Creosote, a waffer thin mint eventually caused them to go pop.

So the crash was not the result of crazy public spending, but it induced spending during the crisis to repair the mess and avert the threat of an economic depression unseen since the 1930s in the USA. Brown just about managed to achieve this. By comparison, Osborne’s austerity agenda stagnated the recovery and leaves us in no doubt that the real agenda is shrinking the state for ideological reasons.

Somehow this thin veil of lies, promoting the austerity agenda, have proved popular enough to see the liars elected to run the country. Labour singularly failed to defend Brown’s record and promote his achievements. Instead, they somehow conspired to let Brown’s major failings become the story – his failure to regulate the banks properly and thereby avert the crash in the first place. It really was all his fault! Northern Rock, in 2007, was one of the first dominoes to fall. Some of the things that were going on there beggar belief, but the regulators never saw a problem. Perhaps this is because there were pages on the Tearsury website explaining how to do it all!

Labour simply cannot pretend it didn’t know what was going on. The New Labour project took a gamble on trusting the bankers and financiers in order to counter a sense that Old Labour could not be trusted with the economy. It back-fired spectacularly as it turned out that the bankers and financiers were even less competent! The problem Brown faced was that if he had reined in the banks, it would have inevitably made it harder for ordinary voters to get mortgages and credit that they had come to expect and rely on. The Daily Mail headlines would have been full of Brown strangling the economy and killing off jobs. I guess that is the price you pay for making a pact with the devil!

So now we have Labour grass-roots supporters seeking a return to the policies of their halcyon days through the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. This is echoed across the pond with Bernie Sander’s advance at the expense of Blairite Hillary Clinton. Piketty’s timely book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has provided the intellectual support for this movement. Its main conclusion demolishes the position of the modern populist right. Piketty finds that throughout most of history capitalism can only ever increase inequalities, no matter how hard those hard-working families without capital assets work. Returns on capital will always outstrip the rate of economic growth as a whole. The only time when this was not the case was those years of big investment in public services and high tax rates on the rich in the mid-20th century.

There are some telling subtleties in Piketty’s analysis. For example, he concedes that taxing the mega-rich will not generate enough in itself to plug the holes in a country’s budgets. The biggest benefit of high tax rates on huge incomes is in the reducing of the concentration of wealth in too few hands. In other words, taxation is far from a necessary evil – it is a necessarily good thing. He qualifies this by conceding that citizens in wealthy countries need to retain ample income to generate the demand for all sorts of goods and services provided by the private sector. To this extent, Piketty can be seen as a centrist rather that a leftist. It is about getting a workable balance. As Meek points out, with a bit of money, a middle class family might legitimately choose send their child to a private school; but they cannot individually provide a universal education system and markets won’t provide it. Likewise, you can buy any car of your choice, but by yourself you cannot build and maintain a road network to use it on, and the market won’t provide that either. Be it education, health, roads, social security, energy or water, we all rely on common networks to meet our universal needs. Privatising them runs the risk, the near certainty in fact, that they will not remain universally accessible. We are seeing this already, are we not?

What this amounts to is the abdication of responsibility for meeting people’s basic needs by our government. Our public services, instead of being universal networks, are being run by global companies and overseas investors, disproportionately funded by the imposition of taxes, fees, and duties by the poorest sections of society, further impoverished by the levels of debt they have been lured into by legalised loan sharks.

I have long held the sadly cynical view that as long as the majority of the population feel that they are doing alright, an elected government can get away with squeezing the poor and pampering the rich. But this has to be seen as a horribly high risk attitude when our government is systematically decimating the public services and infrastructure we all rely on, while simultaneously handing over control of what is left to multi-national corporations, ultimately accountable to no-one but their shareholders.

This leaves us, on the left especially, with an enormous challenge, as James Meek puts it at the very end of his article:

“To make and keep universal networks requires the authority of the state, an authority that has been absent; and it’s hard to see where that authority might come from if the people don’t find a way to assert their kingship.”

We have to find a way. Personally, I believe that we have to focus on the things that unite the assorted factions of the left, along the lines of SYRIZA, and take that to the people – before it is all too late!

Election pact talks between Plaid Cymru, Welsh Liberal Democrats and Greens break down

So says the headline on the ITV news page today.

First of all, let me applaud the Plaid Cymru leadership for taking the initiative. It shows that they are beginning to learn some harsh truths for a start. They are not going to form a government on their own in May and they seem to finally be acknowledging this. As no party is going to form a government on its own in May, it is time to stop all the ridiculous posturing and get down to some serious politics.

The knee jerk reactions from Labour and Tories tell you all you need to know about these two parties that have grown ever closer, especially since Blair’s red toryism so beloved of Welsh Labour, on the back of the inbuilt injustice of our electoral systems.

Thus we have the anonymous Welsh Labour Spokesperson saying:

“By trying to stitch up local contests, these three parties have essentially tried to subvert the electoral process….. also a complete lack of respect to Welsh voters.”

Electoral alliances enhance democracy if done properly. It is not stitching up a local contest, it is giving a broader range of opinion a chance of getting representation. I vote for the chosen alliance candidate is a vote for the common elements of all the alliance parties. If Labour gets 50 % of the vote it still cannot be beaten, but a system that allows them to constantly clean up with 30 to 40% the vote – that is a system that shows contempt for the electorate. But it is a system that suits the big two – as they can regularly have all-powerful absolute majorities with a third of the vote – which given the typical turnout figures can mean less than 25% of the electorate. (Don’t forget, the Labour hegemony in the Welsh Assembly, with all those careers it has provided for the likes of Carwyn RT Jones, owes itself to that initial 50.1% of a 49.9% turnout in the referendum that created the Assembly in the first place!)

A similarly anonymous Welsh Conservative Spokesperson uttered the same disingenuous drivel, adding:

“it makes a mockery of their claims to be the Party of Wales if they were willing to leave some constituencies uncontested”

This may have superficial credibility, but I would assert that this depends on the integrity of the alliance put before people. If it is purely self-serving opportunism, then Anon Tory is right. But if it is a genuine alliance, rather than a mere electoral pact, then we are really talking about something noble that really does seek to address the needs of the Welsh people in increasingly dire times. It is exactly the path trodden by the Greek people in response to the ravages of ideologically imposed austerity as they rallied behind the SYRIZA alliance of more than a dozen anti-austerity parties, that otherwise would have never have been heard at all. The Party of Wales, with the interests of the people ahead of its own interests, needs therefore to become the driving force for the Welsh Ecosocialist Alliance that will contest every constituency on that basis. (An idea I put forward in November 2013)

This is almost certainly a long way from the tentative discussion reported this week. Although it may be the reason the Lib Dems ran away from the idea. While once upon a time they may have been convincing as libertarian (mild) lefties, they have no credibility for such a description these days, since Clegg’s neoliberal Orange Book. In fact, I am a bit surprised that PC even saw fit to try and include them. However, Tim Farron has some anti-austerity credentials and was a commendable gesture to at least talk to them. That they chose to walk away probably saves problems down the line, although I would have thought that anything that might help them maintain a presence in the Assembly would have been welcomed by them. They have a few very good people that are going to be lost to the Assembly for sure now.

As for the Greens, it is a huge relief that post-Bartolotti, Wales Green Party is back in the real world. Even before the ‘love in’ between Leanne Wood, Natalie Bennett and Nicola Sturgeon, in the run up to the General Election, I was sounding out the prospects of developing working relationships between PC and Greens at all levels. There was considerable potential at one time, scuppered by Bartolotti’s ego and and some unseemly sectarianism. It is encouraging to see the new leader off the Welsh Greens, Alice Hooker-Stroud, talking more pragmatically:

“Our electoral system in Wales needs a good shake up. Progressive voters regularly have to hold their nose and vote for another term of a Welsh Labour government that has run out of ideas and has nothing left to offer but more excuses. Representatives of the Wales Green Party were approached to explore whether we could form an alliance as an alternative to our tired, inert one party state. People want real change, and we were looking to form alliances with parties who share common ground with the Wales Green Party to see if we could offer them a chance to vote for it.”

That reference to shared common ground is the crucial one. There is so much of it between the Greens and PC; far more than the average member of public will realise. It really is madness fighting over essentially the same votes for the most part. The bits that they don’t share are undoubtedly highly important to some of their respective voters, and this puts some people’s noses out of joint when talk of working together surfaces. However, with proper selling of an alliance, these voters would be cutting said noses off to spite their faces in not getting on board as they would not get their especial concerns addressed anywhere else.

In conclusion …….

This news amounts to nothing at the moment. Its timing raises legitimate questions as to what has motivated it. It is, however, and encouraging sign that some parties are seriously grappling with the realities that face them. It has to be the way forward and has to be applauded and encouraged, if not for this year’s elections (it should have been done at least 18 months ago, before everyone had candidates selected everywhere), it should be something revisited and developed for all our sakes.

Given the likely scenario of an assembly with no party close to an overall majority, watch the typical two-faced hypocrisy of Welsh Labour and the Welsh Tories as the scratch around to see what deals they can do to try and cling to what they believe is their god-given right to rule over us. Probably the most appropriate coalition would be between the two of them. A Labour/Tory coalition? You heard it here first!

PS. Most recent polling data – treat with caution after the General Election!

Source: http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/electionsinwales/wp-content/uploads/sites/100/2013/07/December2015.pdf

• Labour falling away
• PC gaining most – but not enough!
• PC+Greens+Lib Dems = more than UKIP (just!) (WTF!!!!)
• Don’t knows increasing and likely to be decisive
• ‘Would not vote’ low – a high turnout would be refreshing!

The following leader appeared in this weeks New Scientist:

POLITICS is often said to be the art of the possible. Complex real-world problems rarely have neat solutions. But British politicians appear to have forgotten this: the impossible is becoming law.

Consider the Psychoactive Substances Bill, which attempts to ban almost everything that alters mental state. It was passed last week by mostly supine MPs after a clueless debate (see “You’re not hallucinating, MPs really did pass crazy bad drug law“).

Last week also saw publication of the draft “snooper’s charter”, which asks for some powers that are nonsensical, because they bear little relation to how digital communications actually work, and others that are draconian. And it saw the release of the “evidence base” behind the drive for a seven-day National Health Service, though this provides scant justification for the proposed reforms, as the medical profession has explained.

Rationalists may hope these laws will prove unworkable. But with the government seemingly also bent on removing checks and balances on its power, from freedom of information requests to human rights laws, we should be concerned that it will instead be free to interpret their vagaries any way it wants, unchallenged.

In a democracy, that may seem unthinkable. But it is beginning to seem worryingly possible.

I have little to add. We seem to all be sleepwalking into some sort of Orwellian nightmare. Orwell, of course, was very familiar with the Spanish Civil War. Will the Tories keep pushing, provoking and alienating people until civil war erupts here?

An important article in the Guardian today:

Wristbands and red doors for refugees: history is not repeating itself, but it is rhyming by Giles Fraser

Giles Fraser

“In the week we remember the Holocaust, it would be a disservice to the millions who died if we didn’t recognise that the treatment of Muslim migrants is an echo of the past.”

This is an excellent article that brings together many of the things I have been thinking and saying for a while. I like the idea of differentiating between history repeating and history rhyming. If we do not wake up soon we will all find ourselves in the midst of an utter nightmare.

Perhaps it is appropriate to remember this famous rhyme from history:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

“First they came …” is a famous statement and provocative poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis‘ rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. Thatcher drove the socialists out of town (and out of the Labour Party). The Tories continue to emasculate the Trade Unions. Cameron, Osborne, IDS etc are now set on kicking the poor and the desperate wave of refugees that their neoliberal meddling in far off lands have created.

And me? Will you speak for me? I know a few that might, but most of the people I know (my neighbours, work acquaintances etc) have stood up for none of the others, so I won’t hold my breath.