London voter turnout and inflatable ballot boxes

This is a piece I wrote recently for the London Review of Books. Voter turnout in the forthcoming London elections is likely to be less than half, the obvious response to this problem is, of course, an inflatable ballot box. Whoever said that politicians were out of touch?

In the event that LRB don't want it... here it is.

Last week is the start of the official campaigns period for the London mayoral election. Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone seem to be trading places on 49%-51% of the vote, which is quite exciting, until you consider that half of the franchise won’t even be voting.

London is notorious for low turnout. Whether it’s because people are too poor or too rich, for one reason or another, in election terms the majority don’t seem to care. This trend is no less apparent when the election is for the devolved position of London mayor, Boris Johnson won the 2008 election with what was considered a ‘high’ turnout, 45% of 5,419,913 eligible voters turned up on polling day. Whichever colour comes out on top on May 3^rd, presiding over London for four years, their share of the vote will be less than half the number of people who just don’t give a shit.

This year, London Elects, the body responsible for the election, are tackling voter apathy head-on. Residents of the capital will be treated to a London-wide tour from a giant, inflatable ballot box. You couldn’t write it, and we wait and see whether children will be able to bounce up and down on it, but as far as politics is concerned, only the comical value stops this initiative being deeply depressing. Apathy is neglected as a political viewpoint, even if it is easily written-off as inherently apolitical. If people are given the opportunity to improve the prospects for their futures, and they decline that opportunity, the chances are it’s because they don’t expect their input to have any effect. Springing to mind is the old saying that no matter who you vote for, the government still gets in. It’s not just a socio-economic state of mind, rich or poor, there is a widespread vision of government as either enemy, oaf, or irrelevant.

Inflatable ballot boxes deal with the issue as if voting were something that people lazily neglect, or absent-mindedly forget. The reality is something much more telling, and in an honest, soul-searching mayoral term, the most pressing item on the agenda would be why most people just don’t care. Whatever the London turnout on May 3^rd, perhaps a useful statute for the future might be that once things stoop to the level of giant, inflatable ballot boxes, it’s time for something more than just an election.

Breaking News - Goldman Sachs executive discovers investment banking isn't ethical

It’s not been the best of weeks for Goldman Sachs. The share price lost recent gains, but remains stable around $1.20, the market capitalisation remains above $60billion, they’re still the world’s most powerful investment bank. But the brand is suffering. With the help of the New York Times, outgoing executive, Greg Smith, broadcast his resignation letter to the world, criticising a “toxic culture” in which Goldman treats its customers with contempt, and prioritises an unsustainable pursuit of profits. From Tories to mortgage-backed bonds, the word “toxic” has obviously become the chosen metaphor for anything ominous.

Most people might be unsurprised to hear the morality of an investment bank called into question, and that’s perhaps part of what makes the fuss surrounding Smith’s letter curious. His is not so much a Damascene conversion as a nostalgia that Goldman once was, and could be, so much more. The resignation letter talks of Smith's “privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet” (still leaving the door open for the existence of hedge funds on other planets), the pride with which he featured in Goldman’s recruitment campaigns at university campuses. It is hardly a tirade against financialisation, or against the undemocratic chaos that markets foist upon society. His is more a plea that it should be done calmly and responsibly, so that investment banks can keep doing it, and have fewer recruitment difficulties. We must assume rival executives across the industry will be happy with the reputational damage done at Goldman. It’s hard to imagine Smith having problems finding new employment, and to be cynical, one could suggest that his personal brand will prosper as the world’s foremost moral banker.

None of this is particularly troubling, finance is hardly renowned as a world of high morality and deep soul-searching. What is more distressing is the kudos Smith seems to have been granted for his honesty, from The Guardian to Rolling Stone, with not a scrap of praise withheld for his leaving the fundamental principles of the industry entirely untouched. For Goldman it’s a PR dilemma, for investment banking it’s a great victory.

Suspended Activity at This is not for Charity.

Greetings all, I come to you with a combination of good news and sad tidings. The sad tidings are that my recent blog inactivity will be continuing until after May 3rd. I will be leaving you to wade through the lies alone, without regular doses of what I like to think of as my unique brand of loving cynicism.

The good news is that this is because I'm busy. There are many reasons for this (one of which is successful progress on getting my book published), but the short answer is that I've become an urban transport geek. In this capacity, I've thrown in my lot with Londoners on Bikes, who are working hard to mobilise and unify London's cyclists into a voting bloc for the London mayoral elections.

The numbers are compelling. Transport for London (TfL) have long-estimated that there are 500,000 bicycle journeys each day in the city. 20,000 votes represents 1% of the electorate, and Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone are trading places on 49% to 51% of the vote. This means, crucially, that cycling votes could decide the election.

The immediate response to this is often that 'there are more important things than cycling', a statement with which I must (grudgingly) agree, however, the Mayor of London does not control these things. The Mayor of London (unfortunately) has no real control over wages, housing, taxation, education, health, pensions or just about any other important issue you could care to name. The Mayor, however, is the chairman of Transport for London, and as such has real power to implement a positive vision for the city's transport policy. When you vote for the mayor of London, you vote for how you want the city to move. In as much as this, you can either vote progressively, for bikes, pedestrians and public transport, or you can vote regressively, for cars. Vote for cars, and you are voting less for how you want the city to move, and more for how you want the city to crawl, cough and become generally more irate.

As far as the candidates line up, Jenny Jones of the Green Party is likely to remain the preferred first choice of Londoners on Bikes. It's Jenny who we think has the greatest vision for a city based on sustainable transport. The election is decided with an alternative voting system, and so, if Jenny doesn't win a majority of the votes your second preference is counted instead. Presently, we're recommending a vote of 1. Jenny and 2. Ken, who, amongst a host of positive ideas on cycle policy and pedestrianising central areas, has said that he will makes Jenny his cycling minister.

The ideal scenario is that Boris will throw his hat into the ring, and start taking bikes, and the idea of a liveable urban space, more seriously. Thus far, unfortunately, we have been faced with little more than a "smoothing the flow" catechism, and the utopian dream of millions of cars moving effortlessly around the city. It's a square peg in a round hole, and the answer is that cycling can't continue to grow unless it is given a greater presence in budgets and planning. Last year we saw 16 cyclists killed on London's roads (up from ten the year before), and the election is about preserving a status quo of urban motorways on which cyclists are encouraged but not supported, or trying to make a positive change.

Visit the website at www.londonersonbikes.org.uk , sign up with your support, see how you can get involved, email people, talk about it in the pub, and generally spread the word.

Going Slow

I wrote a piece for the London Review of Books... it's a short take on the fact that cyclists seem to keep getting killed in London, whilst the authorities seem to keep doing nothing about it. It's as if cyclists are inconveniencing Boris Johnson and Transport for London by constantly winding-up dead and creating a sticky situation for all concerned.

Anyway... condolences to the friends and family of Henry Warwick, London cycle courier killed last week. Confused shrugs for the bureaucrats of Transport for London, who said that more people cycling would make cycling safer... Y'know... safety in numbers like... just as you'd tell a pack of seals with a killer whale in the waters, or a group of buffalo with a lion hanging around them, or any other group of beings faced with a predator that is intent on their demise. Comforting.

Anyway, the blog post is here.

Inflation and religious economics

Happy new year everyone, as an early treat for 2012, I've put forward a little of the political thinking behind our current 5% rate of inflation. It's the most significant thing not being talked about in politics, and basically, it means in simple terms that you're going to have to work harder to afford the same stuff. It also means that your wages, savings and pensions are losing value even as you read this, so hurry up,

Anyway... have a look and see what you think.

The Library - A final post for 2011

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my local library recently. I’ve got few bad words to say about libraries… they’re a public service, and they’re full of books. I believe in the value of both of these things, and I doubt many will be surprised by my saying as much. There are, however, two types of opinion in this world. The first type is an opinion based on principles that sound morally persuasive, largely rational, and in keeping with the rest of our views. The second type is more a conviction than an opinion, you find it in your gut and think little more about its meaning thereafter, you simply believe in it. The second type is infinitely superior, it makes me think of the words of the eighteenth-century philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, “A man lives by believing in something, not by arguing and debating about many things.”

Almost all of my political beliefs come from my gut. Sometimes they could use a bit of moderation, but that’s the only place from which I believe they should rightly originate. I grew-up in a town where half the young people have nothing to do but ruin their lives with drugs, they have no employment prospects, and the formal politics of this country trundles along seemingly oblivious to this inconvenient fact. This experience of growing-up underpins my politics. My position on libraries, on the other hand, I must confess has generally, until my recent visits, come more from out of my head than anywhere else. It’s only since spending regular time in a library that the conviction has made the journey south into my guts.

Each time I go there I see a man with holes in his jumper and a woollen hat sitting on top of his head. A satchel from an adult learning college rests against his chair and beside his workboots. He rolls his jaw forwards, setting eyes on dense diagrams in a book concerning the study of plumbing. Fair enough, I might be giving you a heart string tugging stereotype here, I might even be romanticising the (non) working-poor, but I don’t care, because that stereotype exists, and in him is everything that is noble in a human. You have a man in one of the poorest areas in London, seeking self-improvement so as to earn a livelihood for himself, and if you can’t esteem a man like that then who can you esteem? Rather than assisting him in his endeavour, the council see fit to close the library, limit its opening hours, or put it under the stewardship of unemployed volunteers such as himself, because of course none of us have (increasingly expensive) livings to earn, and it’s not as if anybody is paying any taxes after all.

I could give all kinds of examples for the value of libraries. I could talk about after-school clubs for children who might not have any other safe place to go to. I could give the hypothetical author who fell in love with books in a library at a young age, could give the old man who walks in and collapses from his walking stick into a chair to sit and read a newspaper. I’ll lay off the heart strings though, and stick to my man studying plumbing.

I don’t like Winston Churchill. He’s a racist, his views on Islam are embarrassing, the worst examples of a British ability to take pride in its bigotry. As a military politician he is overrated, and as a civilian politician he’s a blue-blooded aristocrat with contempt for the working man. That said, there is one anecdote-come-quotation of his that I am happy to hold in high regard. In discussing where to make savings to fund the war, Churchill was encouraged to cut the arts. His apocryphal response to this was one of outright refusal, Churchill arguing that “if we cut the arts, then what are we fighting for anyway?”

A society takes its value from its pinnacles, its most sacred entities, not from the median points and bog-standard mediocrities by which it slopes along through one more orbit of the sun. Our modern politics believes that if things are ongoing, if life continues, then all is well, like life expectancy as a measure of quality of life. In the rational, emotionless eye of modern politics, if people are still alive then things are already a success. The institutions on which our society might once have prided itself, because they were more than just the bare minimum, are no longer sustainable. Pinnacles are an excess, and society is healthy so long as you are breathing and Warner Brothers and EMI are taking-care of the pride, ambition and joy.

Let me tell you. A library is a pinnacle. It’s quiet, it’s safe, it’s full of knowledge, and people go there to learn. If any politician believed in economic recovery (and they don’t) rather than short-term self-preservation and lip service (which they do), then they would not even consider jeopardising the future of something so integral to education. Unless we’re envisaging UK sweatshops as a means to economic growth (and, who knows, we might be) productivity is based on education. Everything that damages education will likewise damage economic productivity. Not only that, but social cohesion also depends on education, because education is the only thing that allows people to genuinely perceive that there is more to their life than the number of decimal places that they don’t have in their bank account, the brand of trainers they don’t have on their feet, and the car they don’t have in their driveway. To put that into the context of modern Britain, education will help people perceive that there is more to their lives than the number of decimal places that they used to have in their bank account, the brand of trainers that was on their feet, and the car that they used to have in their driveway but recently had to sell.

Anyway, with all that said and done, I’ll leave you once again, hopefully with the value of libraries consolidated that bit more in your heads. In order to really see what I mean, in order to get that feeling down into your gut where it belongs, I recommend stopping-in for a visit next time you’re on the high street.

On the subject of books, my own has attracted a good amount of publishing interest lately, and I hope to be talking about the follow-up this time next year.

Festive tidings to you all... keep your wits about you.

St Paul's and Slavery

Greetings from a London turning grey for winter. I’ve been away a while, hanging-out with mortality and reflecting on whether there is any point making efforts at writing journalism. In conclusion, the answer is probably no, and though I might give it a whirl again at some point in the future, that won’t make the occupation any less of a waste of time. Journalism is only the profession of forming opinions for others to dispense as their own, and whatever the craft involved, or the value of this service, world-changing it ain’t.

I’ve been down at St Paul’s Cathedral a fair amount recently, chatting to protesters in the occupation and seeing what’s going on. They’re good people doing a good thing, and I suppose that, though less negative than often is so, a few familiar things have stuck-out in my impressions of the coverage of it all. Firstly, I’ve enjoyed the familiar media habit of focussing on the class background of the protesters, in particular the fact that they are largely middle-class and educated. It amuses me that when riff-raff start smashing-up their community it isn’t political because all they’re doing is vandalism and looting, and then when middle-class people start protesting against economic injustice it is somehow less political because they’re middle class. Clearly the only way to be political in modern society is to run along and vote nicely twice a decade, and then get back to work because, fear not, we have professional politicians taking care of the politics. I’ve also enjoyed the irony that it is a serious political statement when somebody is prepared to live in a tent in central London to demonstrate their beliefs, the only problem is that once you’ve started living in a tent in central London to demonstrate your beliefs, nobody will ever take you seriously again. Most enjoyable amongst the negativity is the criticism that the protesters generally seem to be a happy bunch, a definite flaw, for indeed, who would ever listen to a happy person, and indeed, what do happy people know about the world anyway? If they’re not miserable then they’re obviously not aware of what life’s supposed to be about.

What else has been good… property laws?... that was a good one, the property laws and lawyers that float backstage, waiting to remove the protesters from outside the cathedral. In Syria it’s the Assad family, in Bahrain the Sunni royals, and in Britain we have the great and faceless god of property laws to move the people along in orderly fashion. Whatever the method, the net result is no different… shut-up, shove-off and do what you’re told before we baton-charge you. I love the fact that we have laws in this country that will stop people protesting in Parliament Square outside the seat of our democracy, and outside the seat of our economy at the Stock Exchange (to avoid splitting hairs we’ll pretend for a moment that the Stock Exchange is not also the seat of our democracy). We do not, however, have any law that stops every vacant property on an impoverished high street from being filled by a pawnbroker, a payday loan company, and at least three betting agencies.

Which might as well be the crux of this… and I hate to break it to you… but… well… we’ve been screwed. Let me just say that again. We’ve been screwed. We have been screwed for a long time, we’re being screwed right now, and – boy oh boy – we’re going to get screwed so much harder before this is out. Acceptance is the first step, if we can get more people saying that we’ve been screwed, admitting to the truth of things, then perhaps we can get screwed a little less hard, or perhaps maybe we can even unscrew things a little. That’s the problem… we’re all too damn weak. Your average citizen will sooner spend his time defending the very system that betrays him, than swallowing pride and admitting that they have been screwed, and that they have been screwed each day of their life. Come on… let’s try it together now, as one… we’ve been screwed, we’ve been screwed, we’ve been screwed… it gets easier the more you say it, because that’s the thing, we’re all slaves together at the end of the day. You might have all the music you want for just £10 a month courtesy of Spotify, you might have bought a wetsuit and taken-up river swimming, you might have ridden your bicycle through a desert and over a mountain range, but once you get out of the river and off of the bike, make no mistake, you are only a slave.

Every living expense in your daily life is more expensive because it is purchased in direct competition with a financial machine that buys commodities for no purpose beyond making money out of another’s legitimate need. Every pound that you earn for those purchases is going to be worth 95 pence in a year’s time, and only 75 pence in five year’s time (assuming, optimistically, that inflation doesn’t rise) because a gaggle of politicians devalued your money to keep that same financial system in business. People would be wise to pay attention to the eviction of the traveller community at Dale Farm in Essex, because whatever the whys and wherefores of the case, make no mistake, the underlying message is clear. This system owns you, and alternatives are unacceptable. Against that, don’t doubt that it must be so much easier for politicians to do nothing when all the little people are lining-up obediently to say that the system works. Just you wait, just you wait for the day that you start seeing payments to the Chinese government in the ‘deductions’ column of your salary, just you wait for a Russian estate managements firm to buy-up that seaside town where you had your childhood holidays, just you wait for a crack-head to snatch your laptop from outside the café because his care worker was laid-off. Oh it’s going to be fun all right, at last life will be more exciting than Facebook again.

A couple of things to remember as the insanity mounts. The RMT-member train driver who gets however many tens of thousands a year… is not your enemy. The teacher with a generous-sounding pension… is not your enemy. The Somali immigrant is certainly not your enemy, the buy-to-let landlord (who may well be a scoundrel and a scumbag) is not your enemy. Even the bankers, the suit-wearing banker who takes home a few tens of thousands and feels smug about his work address, still he is only small fry and not your enemy. Even the police… even the god damn police are not your enemy (we can only hope that they realise as much too). Your enemy is not even the 1%, it is the 0.1% and the government that was mandated to deliver a healthy and just society, and goes about a day-by-day failure in that task with the same assurance as if they were doing the job well.

What is really needed… let me tell you now… at a whisper so as not to cause alarm. What is really needed… is a war! Yep, that’s right, and none of that class war claptrap either… we need a good, old-fashioned war… spilled innards and missing limbs (!!)… if you don’t believe me just look at the reforms and social welfare policies of the post-Second World War period. Sadly, really, this is so sad… but the truth is that in order for people to realise that this is their society and that they are entitled to a fair piece of it, what really needs to happen is for people’s husbands, fathers and sons to be killed by the tens of thousands in the name of the country. Only then, after the bleeding has stopped, will people finally recognise that they live their lives as part of a nation, and are thus entitled to a part of that nation. I really hope that it doesn’t come to that, but with the government ratcheting up plans to start dropping bombs on Persia in the name of world peace (Persia, incidentally, hasn’t invaded anyone for over 800 years)… well… perhaps it might.

In the meantime, if you’re in London, take a trip to St Paul’s… as I said, they’re good people with a good cause. When you arrive there, reflect on who it is you give forty-hours of your life to each week… those hours are precious. At the camp, be sure to put your prejudices against appearance aside, enjoy listening to people playing music, enjoy being given a meal and asked nothing in return, enjoy it when someone says ‘hello’ without a thought of what they can gain from you, but only because you’re another human being. After all, isn’t that what society was supposed to be about?

Dismal Science and speed limits

After a couple of months away from reading news or writing blogs, the Department for Transport's planned increase to the national speed limit seems amusing enough to warrant some words. Having held but not enforced a 70mph speed limit since 1965, the proposal will see a new limit of 80mph not being enforced from 2013.

Most tragic of all has been the speech of Transport Minister, Phillip Hammond, who remarked that motorways should be 'the arteries of a healthy economy'. Hammond continued to demonstrate fearlessness in the face of metaphors, adding that it was 'time to put Britain back in the fast-lane of global economies.' The extra 10mph will apparently equate to 'hundreds of millions' of pounds for us all to share, and solve all of our problems apart from the serious matter of politicians giving cringeworthy speeches. There are currently no proposals aimed at addressing this second concern.

The vague optimism of this economic forecast reminded me of comments made by Mervyn King in February. Explaining what to do about Britain's 5% rate of inflation, King cited keeping our fingers crossed as a key component of monetary policy. This led me to ponder, once again, just how the discipline of economics maintains such a veneer of science, finger-crossing not normally being held as a reliable means of securing an outcome.

Anyway, to give a cursory look at Hammond's 'hundreds of millions' bonanza. A 2003 report by the Department of Transport put the total cost of traffic accidents at £18billion. £13billion of this is owing to personal injury, and £5billion to damage of property and vehicles. The cost to the economy of a fatality is £1,492,910, whilst serious injuries rack-up £174,520 a pop. Research by the European Road Safety Observatory reckons that for every 1km/h increase in speed, there is typically a 3% increase in accidents. With 10mph equating to 16km/h, we can anticipate significant increases in accidents where the new speed limit is applicable, the economic disadvantages of which will hopefully be offset by the social gains of improved population control. Further to the cost of accidents, consideration should be given to the fact that an engine is approximately 10% more efficient at 70mph than at 80mph, and with the cost of oil only likely to move in one direction, this will make engines 10% more expensive in return for those extra ten miles travelled in an hour. Whatever the maxims about time is money, that much time is unlikely to be worth that much money.

The Department for Transport has also offered justification for the increase with the argument that it will align UK speed limits with the rest of Europe. True though this may be, a 75mph speed limit has obviously done little to stop Ireland developing a national debt 96% of its total economic output, whilst Portugal, also at 75mph, has only managed to achieve 93%. Elsewhere in Europe, at 80mph, the Italians have a debt 119% the size of their economy, and the notorious Greeks, also at 80mph, have racked-up a pile of debt 142% the size of their economy, which is shrinking at 5.5% as you read this.

Further north, the Norwegians, with a budget surplus of 12%, inflation down at 1.3%, and one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, persist with a 62mph speed limit, and any driver caught speeding above 85mph is faced with an unconditional 18-day prison sentence. Of course the consistently strong German economy dispels any hard-and-fast correlations, Germany having no speed limit on its autobahns.

All of which is only a complicated examination of what anybody with an ounce of sense will have realised instinctively. Speed limits have no bearing on national economic performance, and the problems of the UK economy are more significant than 10mph. We await government directives encouraging people to chew their food less and walk quicker, alongside simultaneous measures prohibiting reading on the toilet, an inefficiency that costs the economy hundreds of millions of hours/pounds in lost output every year.

Anyway, until next time, stay sane... your country needs you.

Quick thoughts on Rioting

Well, as everybody else in media or internet circles has given their own particular view on what rioting means to them, it’d be a shame to miss out on the opportunity. Also, I’m about to spend ten days away from the UK, quite long enough for the media to find a new tyrant in a desert, a woman dumping a cat into a wheelie bin, or increase the volume on the economic meltdown story that is, at present, bubbling nicely on the rear hob. In a nutshell then.

Riots and/or looting, are both political statements. Our entire social model is based on the sanctity of private property, when people do not respect private property, and are happy to risk criminal proceedings in not doing so, they have essentially stated that they do not believe in our politics. Society and politicians need to understand that it does not take a genius to feel that something is unfair, nor does it take a genius to perceive that your future isn’t looking too rosy. A youth smashing a window has the same meaning regardless of whether or not he calls himself a Marxist, has a university education, and has read Das Kapital. The window is still smashed, and if you don’t like broken glass all over the street, you need to figure out why the window got smashed. If you are only prepared to listen to ideas from the articulate and educated, you are going to wind-up ignoring an awful lot of people, in fact, most people.

People need to take a more mature view of politics, of social harmony as an act of bribery, a balance in which people have to feel their interests are represented. It is commonly-held that unrest in Arabia has been a product of demographic changes, an increasingly young population who are not represented by an old social order. I’m not sure why it is hard to grasp the concept of similar circumstances in the UK. The form that unrest takes is determined by cultural factors, if youths steal televisions and trainers, then (I know this is obvious) that is a reflection of our entire society. Similarly, if politicians are so unimaginative and cowardly to be unable to look beyond finger-wagging and where are their parents(?), then that too is only a reflection of our society. Some windows might have been broken, some buildings burnt down, but all we are seeing is a very real playing-out of all the traits that anybody with their eyes open would have perceived to have been present in society beforehand anyway. As citizens, as a population as a whole, we are constantly being violated by our government. In bailed-out banks, MPs expenses, rising tuition fees, and privatisation plans that did not appear on an election manifesto, our liberties and integrity are constantly flouted. A very wealthy minority of the population have done very well out of this, 1.5million people also got a buy-to-let mortgage in return for buying into it, 70% of people have got their own roof under which to be shafted, and public pensions have bought-off a few more million. If you fall into any of these brackets, you have a reason to shut-up and stomach the injustices for your decades on earth. If you don’t, then why would you? People can condemn mindless youths and thugs, but the fact is that you still have to live with them. A braver goal would be to help them become more productive citizens, after all, no number of judgments will alter the reality that you’re sharing your streets and society with these people.

As far as policing goes. Britain already spends, as a proportion of GDP, more on domestic policing than any other developed nation, having overtaken the USA sometime during the nineties. If fear compels people to interpret the riots as a case against cuts to the police, that is only one more step in a policy that has no end anyway. Police do not prevent crime, they deal with criminality. The best way to prevent crime is to give people a social and moral code that they value. The Japanese do not stockpile shovels and wheelbarrows to deal with earthquakes, they (endeavour to) build earthquake-proof structures.

Some blindingly obvious observations. The banking system stole a hundred billion from the taxpayer, left us liable for many more of their future losses, and still largely maintain the veneer of a respectable profession. Teenagers steal trainers and are immediately depicted as swines for doing so. MP David Laws embezzled £40,000 from the taxpayer to give to his boyfriend in rent, David Cameron accepted his resignation (which was over the revelation of his sexuality, rather than expenses fraud) as that of ‘a good, honourable man.’ It is deeply patronising (like most of our formal politics) to suggest that anybody, no matter how conventionally stupid, could miss the fact that this is not quite fair. There have been 937 deaths in police custody since 1990, a quarter of them at the hands of the Metropolitan police. That needs to be broken down into more than just a statistic. Almost a thousand people, since 1990, have been taken-in by the guardians of law and justice... and then died, were never again seen alive. When that happens in Uzbekistan or Saudi Arabia we see it as horrifying, a cause for Amnesty International, whilst in Britain it can be accepted as part of normalcy. Each of those corpses had family, friends, and was part of a community of other people who once knew them. Again, you don't have to be a genius or a politics student to figure out that something's not quite going as it should be.

The government (of all political colours), meanwhile, really must be applauded for their largely successful ability to evade almost all criticism. As an institution, the government has authority over education, finances, employment, housing, transportation and just about every other field of our existences. It is mind-numbing to think that the government could be responsible for almost everything that touches our daily life, and yet be responsible for absolutely nothing once society goes belly-up. Our lives have been given to/appropriated by Westminster to control and order, and when things go wrong they can do nothing more than blame the parents and tell the children to get back indoors. If Westminster had any meaning or nobility in it, right now would be a time for deep soul-searching, self-reflection, and guilt. If Westminster is just a charade of political legitimacy, 650 good-jobs and a talking-shop for ambitious people who can string sentences together, then we’ll be hearing more about police, zero-tolerance, and the word ‘tough’.

In the meantime, might I suggest this, and this, as the best way that we, as decent individuals, can deal with the fine mess into which we have been led. If you're sticking around, and are passionate about doing something positive in society, might I recommend doing it yourself, rather than paying somebody else to do it for you. If you care about your community at all, might I suggest walking around it, rather than watching it on a screen in the corner of the living room, it's never quite as bad as they like to make out.

Peace and love to you all, we're going to need it.

The cost of renting and the cost of living

I recently wrote an article for the website, openDemocracy. It's a bit more academically rigorous (well, quite a lot more actually) than much of what I write on my blog, but I'm quite happy with it. The subject is a look at how to make hardship a little less hard, and whether we should increase wages for poor people, or do something to reduce the rents that poor people pay out to landlords... my argument is that reducing rents is by some way the more meaningful of the two approaches, see what you think.

Crime fighting and Revolution via smartphone

The internet and its associated technology continues to take steps towards making the world a better place. Already this year we have witnessed Vodafone single-handedly toppling Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, whilst Twitter, Facebook and live blogging have enabled western comrades to experience freedom fighting (sic) in the Libyan desert from the safety of their desks.

Online heroics reached new heights this week, however, when an intrepid and innovative member of the public, seeing two youths stealing a bicycle outside a busy pub, took a photo of the theft using their smartphone. The photo has since been circulated through Twitter, a perfect example of how modern technology allows us to pool our collective will into an unstoppable, but also convenient, social force.

With the image of the thieves now viewed by some tens of thousand of people, it is plain to see that this approach to crime fighting, using smart phones and Twitter, works much better than old-fashioned, twentieth-century methods, which included an archaic practice known as 'stopping it' or 'doing something' when faced by somebody stealing a bicycle right in front of you.

With great excitement we await the next contribution of smart phones to social justice.

The stolen bicycle remains stolen.

Scoundrels, patriotism, the Union Jack and sliced bread

Things are getting worse. I’ve known this for a long time, but now I’m really starting to worry. There’s no point reading articles or keeping abreast of events in politics, the truth reveals itself in fashions more mundane. It started a year ago. A Lebanese man, working from a premises that doubled as an internet café, had been making me falafel most lunchtimes for about six months. It was good stuff, chopped parsley and raw onion, ripe tomatoes, and at only £2, on Cavendish Square, a minute’s walk from Oxford Circus, lunch in central London didn’t get much better. We always exchanged banter about his business, his face always miserable, dark bags under his eyes, a hooked nose and lips that sneered a smile as he told me the amount of money he paid in rent, and the amount of money he actually made. He was from Beirut, his English fine but far from fluent… the fewer words people command in a language, the more truthful and pointed those words are likely to be. Each time we met, he told me that soon he would return to Lebanon, where life would be better. I remember the afternoon when he summed-up three post-financial crisis (!!!) years of sensational headlines and supposedly sophisticated economic analysis. He turned to me, dark eyes levelled my way, that hooked nose and those thin lips as he drew out his fist, rotated it downwards with a large, plump thumb pointing at the ground, and he said to me.

‘In England… you cannot make any money.’

And a few months later, he was gone. None of that, however, was very much more than boringly predictable in modern Britain. It is only in recent months that I have been made better aware of just how bad things are getting, the rotten seat of the latrine above which we teeter, just waiting to plunge down into twenty-one centuries of shit. It was the advertising that told me, for adverts will explain the state and concerns of the nation better than any politician or journalist ever manages. You might get some outliers that fall wide of the mark, but in the main, marketing spots the direction in which things are headed.

It is with growing alarm, therefore, that I keep seeing advertising and packaging enlisting the services of Union Jack. Weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, were very much ahead of the game in this respect, and for the best part of three years, they have had Union Jacked black cabs going around central London under the title ‘BAE Systems: A big plus for the UK’ (which, undeniably, reads much better than ‘BAE Systems: A big problem for innocent civilians all over the world’). The fashion has recently gone into overdrive, however, with Pimm’s Union Jacking their bottle, Hovis Union Jacking their bread, Vodafone Union Jacking black cabs all of their very own (rather than actually paying its £6billion tax bill to the country), and Cheryl Cole advertising shampoo beside a Union Jack rug whilst talking about ‘British hair’, obviously different to other hair in ways previously unbeknown. The middle classes have not been neglected by the clamour, and for those too refined for the vulgar euphoria of red-white-blue, the Festival of Britain is being celebrated on London’s South Bank. It is no coincidence that the original festival, sixty years ago in 1951, was intended as a ‘tonic for the nation’, still rebuilding after the Second World War. The Hayward Gallery and Festival Hall area has been duly adorned with photos of British inventors, a giant fox made from straw (they omitted the chasing hounds and aristocrats), recordings of seagulls, and photos of British troops in Helmand, Afghanistan. There is, after all, nothing better than tastefully-shot images printed on aluminium to help soften middle class views of an expensive war, especially one that has decimated a poor country for shoddy reasons increasingly forgotten and forgiven.

Be that as it may, the bottom line in all this British bluster is that, in short, we’re fucked. It brings back memories of riding through the south of Romania, where each town has the blue-yellow-red of the national flag fluttering over it, and apart from that an awful lot of poverty, begging gypsies, derelict factories and rutted roads for the entire five hundred mile stretch below. Don’t mistake me, many of the people there are living happy and fulfilled lives, but it is in spite, rather than because, of anything that the nation has ever done for them. When people start encouraging you to get excited about the piece of rock you live on, that’s when you know you’re in trouble.

So where does this leave us? Well, first of all, we’re all going to have to learn to appreciate the finer, non-material things in life. If the flag doesn’t work for you then I recommend reading, but buy your books quickly, before a publishing model premised on whether a book can be marketed, rather than whether it is any good, makes storytelling and good writing extinct in not so very long at all. As a rule of thumb, I suggest only reading authors who are already dead, which serves me well as a literary filter.

On the matter of learning to live harmoniously with one another, we will need a lot more love and understanding. All those born earlier than 1975 need to understand the burden that has fallen on all those born since, it’s hard work to muster goodwill with prospects limited to no career, no pension, and in the interim a life of paying other people’s buy-to-let mortgages for them. As for those of us born since 1975, we need to extend love and compassion to those born prior, they are to be screwed by the very same alliance of business and government that will slowly destroy us all, the only difference is that they were afforded the luxury of being screwed under their own roofs. We must all extend compassion to those born since the millennium, who will plumb new depths of meaning for the word ‘doomed’, and it is surely only a matter of time before the termination of all new pregnancies is made compulsory.

What is to be done? I suggest that all concerned members of society must, with immediate effect, stop socialising, and especially breeding, with anybody associated with either the financial sector or the three major political parties. By such means might we peacefully exterminate their grubby and self-serving DNA from the gene pool, or at the very least limit their opportunities for reproduction. If this fails then we will all have to put our faith in social mobility, which was proven to be alive and well in the marriage of common Catherine Middleton to royal Prince William. The wedding showed that if you want to move up the social ladder then you absolutely can, but first you better persuade someone with more money and standing to let you into their bedroom and fumble with their genitals. If that doesn’t prove fruitful then I advise making yourself comfortable in the rut that you’re in… for you’re going nowhere.

*With thanks to Flaubert. A more scholarly version of some of the issues here discussed will soon (we hope) be completed for OpenDemocracy, my own book (we hope) by the end of the year.