Brian Barder's website

I have been copying my treasured Billie Holiday LPs and 45s (remember LPs and 45s?) into my iPod via iTunes on my computer, as part of my battle against terminal boredom as I pound the treadmill and pedal furiously on the stationary exercise bike at my local gym.  To do this I have been using a miraculous machine, a birthday present from my imaginative offspring, which converts the sweet old records into mp3 files.  At about the same time the Guardian has been issuing with the newspaper booklets of (mostly contemporary) song lyrics in its series "Great lyricists" [sic].  One of these, a collection of lyrics by Bob Dylan, has prompted a pungent attack by everyone's favourite Aussie Sheila, Germaine Greer, who quotes a few lines of a Dylan lyric and comments:

It's not verse, not even doggerel. Nor is it prose, because it doesn't make sense. Its combination of pretentiousness and illiteracy isn't surprising, which would be something; it's just annoying. God knows why the texts put to 20th-century music began to be called lyrics rather than words.

Dr Greer goes on to compare Dylan's words with the best-known poem by William Blake (O rose, thou art sick), not necessarily to Mr Dylan's advantage.   This has earned her a magisterial rebuke, very Guardian, from Michael Horovitz (identified as a jazz troubadour, Poetry Olympics tochbearer and editor-publisher of New Departures, described in Wikipedia as "often considered … to be one of the last living links to the Beat poets and their milieu") under the wonderfully predictable heading: Bob Dylan does not deserve this snobbery and pedantry.

I don't always agree with Dr Greer — who does? — but I'm bound to say that I think she has a point, even though I enjoy some of the Bob Dylan classics.  One of the many glorious songs sung by Lady Day and now securely housed in my iPod is that great standard, These Foolish Things, written by Eric Maschwitz and others.   Here are a sample verse and chorus:

The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses,
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes,
The song that Crosby sings
These foolish things
Remind me of you.

How strange, how sweet to find you still!
These things are dear to me
That seem to bring you so near to me!
The scent of smould´ring leaves, the wail of steamers,
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers,
Oh, how the ghost of you clings –
These foolish things
Remind me of you. 

One of the Guardian Great Lyricists, with a booklet to himself, is Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys.  In his Foreword the poet, playwright and novelist Simon Armitage writes that –

[O]f all those writing lyrics today, Turner is among the most poetic.  His use of internal rhyme exists to be admired and envied.

Here's a sample, chosen more or less at random, of Mr Turner's poetic lyrics; it's from a song called Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured:

You see her with the green dress?
She talked to me at the bar
How come it's already two pound fifty?
We've only gone about a yard
Didn't you see she were gorgeous
She were beyond belief
But this lad at the side drinking a Smirnoff Ice
Came and paid for her Tropical Reef

But I'm sitting going backwards
And I didn't want to leave
I said it's High Green mate
Via Hillsborough please

[Original punctuation]

You don't need to compare that with Blake.  Eric Maschwitz will do.  "Snobbery and pedantry"?  Who, me?  I never said a word! 

I rest my case.

Brian 

Today's Guardian treats us to a précis of an exceptionally emetic[1] piece in Comment is Free (the giant Guardian blog) by Ruth Lea, formerly of the Institute of Directors and currently director and economic adviser at the Arbuthnot Banking Group (which "offers outstanding Private Banking and Wealth Management services") and a governor of the London School of Economics.  Ms Lea explains that the current strike by public sector workers against the government's pay deal, which represents a cut in their standard of living in real terms, is unjustified:  any pay award above the level of inflation just leads to even higher prices, you see, so any such pay increase is bad news for all the rest of us.  Why single out public service workers for pay cuts as part of the government's attempts to contain inflation?  Because there's more job security in the public sector than in the private sector (a woefully out-of-date assertion), and also because above-inflation awards in the public sector will incite private sector workers to demand similar inflationary awards (which presumably wouldn't have occurred to them without those wicked nurses and teachers and postmen setting a bad example):

And – surely the clincher – council staff workers must realise that they will be condemned as irresponsible and unfair if they push for high pay awards when their private sector friends may be losing their jobs.

Ms Lea's article (worth reading in full on CIF, if you have a sufficiently strong digestive system)  prompts at least two questions:  

First, is she really unaware of the intense resentment among public sector workers, many of them among the lowest paid in the land, over the Government's attempt to place the whole burden of reduced living standards at a time of mounting inflation on them, when there is not the slightest effort to spread the burden more fairly by using the tax system to curb monstrously inflated salary increases and astronomical bonuses, often quite unrelated to performance and way above the level of inflation, awarded to one another by her friends in the City and business?  Or is she aware of this (wholly justified) resentment, but can't understand it?  Or does she fail to acknowledge it simply because it would spoil her self-serving argument?  Her failure even to mention it does leave rather a large hole in her treatment of the issue.

Secondly, what on earth does the Guardian think it's doing publishing this reactionary rubbish, not once but twice –  in print, and in Comment is Free?  There are plenty of far right-wing media outlets only too happy to host this kind of stuff in defence of Ms Lea's fellow-bankers and their living standards.  God forbid that these people's inalienable right to an annual hike in the salaries and bonuses that they pay each other should be threatened by a pay award to rubbish collectors and librarians in line with, or even above, the level of inflation, to ensure that at least they don't continue to get a little poorer every year.  

Old-fashioned Old Labour class envy?  No:  just an invitation to recognise the indefensible unfairness of government tax and inflation policy — the policy, so help me, of a Labour government (best read with a Kinnockian Welsh accent[2]). 

[1] emetic:  vomit-inducing

[2] 'Kinnock raged at Hatton and Militant, saying: "You end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council — a Labour Council — hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers." '  http://tinyurl.com/68y6l8 and http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/pebs/lab87.htm  

Brian 

What a useful resource could be provided if any student could put his or her essays on international affairs on a website for all to read!   Now an enterprising group of graduate students from a number of universities have done just that.  In the words of one of its editors: 

A group of postgraduate students from UK universities including Oxford, Leicester and the LSE run an independent website (e-International Relations) aimed at international politics students. As well as essays, news feeds, and political blogs it contains short editorial comment pieces. The recently built site has already had submissions from British, American and Islamic academics, students, journalists, politicians and advocacy groups. Amongst others we've received pieces from Ian Lustick, Charlie Beckett, John Redwood and David Steinberg.

Since that was written, I too have responded to an invitation to contribute an 'editorial comment piece' on one of my favourite topics, familiar to all Ephems readers:  it's currently the 'featured editorial' on the website.   

"e-International Relations", at http://www.e-ir.info/, is well worth a visit, not only as a laudable and interesting initiative, but also for lots of stimulating content (not just my own contribution, either!).  Of course the student essays as well as the gurus' and others' 'editorial comments' offer rich pickings for student essay-writers to plunder, but then so does all Web content, and these days alert tutors have ways of tracking down plagiarism.  Anyway the line between plagiarism and inspiration fired by others' ideas is a blurred one.  (Personally I would find it rather flattering to be plagiarised, although naturally I'm unlikely to know it even if I have been.) 

The other possible objection is that the mere appearance of an essay or a comment piece on a quasi-academic website may lend it a spurious air of authenticity and authority when in real life it may be full of inaccuracies and misrepresentations.   But "e-International Relations" is frank about the status of its contributions, and anyone who takes a student essay (or even a comment piece by an old fogey) as gospel has no business being a student, formal or informal.  Caveat lector!  In some cases hyperlinks to original sources are an aid to verification by the suspicious;  in other cases the main substance is more opinion than fact, and the reader is at liberty to agree or disagree.  Some essays include impressive bibliographies and other footnotes, facilitating verification: and all of them include provision for visitors to append comments, or to comment separately on the associated blogs, both sure-fire ways of keeping writers in the blogosphere honest (as we bloggers all know, sometimes to our cost). 

It's an excellent initiative, expertly executed, and it deserves to flourish.  More publicity for it is needed: fellow-bloggers, please copy!

Brian 

Why on earth — the appropriate phrase, for once — do so many of us opt to live in northern Europe?   Walking along the Sitges sea front at 8 pm past the families and couples (same-sex, opposite-sex) lying in the sun on the endless beach, or playing or lazily swimming in the blue-green sea;  selecting any one of fifty excellent restaurants for supper (or dinner or a snack) and being sure of first-rate food, served up by friendly non-deferential non-snooty waiters; coming out into a brightly-lit Sitges at 1030 pm and walking back to the hotel along the scrupulously clean streets past the groups of beautiful cheerful not-drunk not-violent young people (including many Brits), admiring the audacious bikinis and minuscule shorts (girls, women) and observing with less admiration below-the-knees baggy cargo shorts (boys, men, not so audacious); soaking up the bright but friendly sun — we really begin to think that P.H. (you know who you are) has got it right after all and that we should all be looking for airy spacious properties on the Costa Daurada with sea views, within walking distance of several outstanding fish restaurants.  (But this weekend's Financial Times reports that the numerous Brits who have emigrated to the Spanish seasides are now experiencing serious problems with the planning authorities and plunging house prices, so perhaps now isn't the time….)  

I wore my big tin Obama For President badge (brought under protest by my Anglo-American daughter from New York along with Obama bumper sticker and Obama sweater) at the Santa Maria restaurant on the sea front for a cold cod salad lunch and a couple of gallons of agua con gas and was at once surrounded by delighted Spanish waiters chanting O-Ba-Ma!, O-Ba-Ma!  "Obama para el presidente, si?" (or words to that effect), said the maitre d'.  "Si, si," we agreed.  "Americanos, usted?"  "No, no.  British."  General bewilderment.  Anyway, we agreed that we were all for Obama, with or without a vote to make it come true.  Later our New York daughter and granddaughters, all three dual nationals and one a NY voter, joined us at the table fresh from the beach and began punctiliously writing their postcards.  Luckily they weren't wearing their Hillary badges.  The Guardian warns that Obama is craftily tacking towards the soggy centre.  Hope he knows what he's doing.  If he's as clever as they say he is, presumably he does.

Gatwick to Barcelona was our first experience of Easyjet, and a generally rather good one:  the main lesson was that it's well worth paying the extra five quid or so per person to get a priority boarding code on the boarding pass so that there's a virtual guarantee of an aisle seat and travelling companions seated nearby before the great unwashed swarm on board trying to find seats next to each other and grabbing aisle or window seats before they are all taken — scene eerily reminiscent of internal flights by Aeroflot in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, where pre-flight seat allocation was similarly unknown.  Being crammed into a middle seat, knees to chin, can't be much fun, so an aisle seat is a necessary bonus, and the front row veritable luxury.  Anyway, it was under two hours to Barcelona and we left late and arrived early, reasonably fresh.  Our taxi driver taking us from Barcelona airport  to Sitges was a former Grand Prix star.  Or if not, he should have been.  Exhilarating, most of the way;  just a little worrying when he took both hands off the steering wheel while going round the steep bends of a motorway access road to conduct himself whistling a flowery song called, he swore, "Viva L'Espanya". 

This is positively the last event in the series of celebrations of our golden wedding anniversary back in April, reuniting all three of our adult offspring and both granddaughters, homing in on Sitges from New York, Brighton, London and Ethiopia , the latter (son) making a detour to Barcelona and Sitges en route back to Addis Ababa from meetings in New York.  Only his partner, Ethiopia country director of of a busy social work ngo, was missing, detained in Addis by her duties.  Better luck next year!

And now to see whether Spain's Nadal's hard court victory over Federer is going to be washed out, as predicted, by rain in Wimbledon, which will undoubtedly mean rain across our London home in Wandsworth too.  (In fact, to be absolutely honest, it did rain for about 15 minutes in Sitges this morning, great tropical drops, but the only real effect was to drop the temperature by a welcome couple of degrees for about half an hour.)  [Later: The final sets were being played during our extended dinner, back at the Santa Maria, as the daylight gradually faded and the bright lights began to come on.  At each heart-stopping moment in the match, diners deserted their tables in droves to crowd round a small television screen in the entrance to the next-door restaurant.  As Nadal finally won his decisive championship point, a great cheer went up from the crowd clustered round the set and the waiters and the few still at their tables clapped manically.  What a strange and rare experience for a Brit to watch a Wimbledon men's final on television in a country to which the winner belonged!]

Sitges is renowned, among other things, as the gay capital of Europe, and there's plenty of evidence for that reputation on the streets and beaches and in the shops, splendidly colourful and unselfconscious;  but there are just as many opposite-sex couples of all ages, many with small children, and even the most flamboyant gays barely rate a glance from anyone else.  In this easy-going, relaxed atmosphere — you can't even describe it as 'tolerant' when there's nothing that needs to be 'tolerated' — it's hard to imagine how solemn groups of religious zealots, especially in English-speaking countries in Africa, the US and Europe, can get so worked up about same-sex partnerships, whether of lay people or clergypersons.   

And I should include a final plug for our friendly hotel, the Antemare, with its pair of swimming pools, balconies with all rooms, and notably comfortable beds.   

It will be sad to leave on Tuesday.

Sitges, 6 July 2007 

Older bloggers may remember Owen Barder — yes, we are by no chance at all related — as a distinguished blogger who vanished from the radar screens some time ago after a little local difficulty of no lasting significance.  Now he's back in the blogosphere, based in Addis Ababa but currently posting in profusion from New York.  There's plenty to read about all his usual themes: development, running, development, cycling, Ethiopia, development and much else.  

Owen is the bright new chip off my ever older block and the resident guru of this website, Ephems, and all who sail on it or them:  three years ago he gave the whole thing a magnificent face-lift (admiringly recorded here)  and since then he has gallantly conducted running repairs to keep it alive.  Welcome back!

Brian 

Some more things from the media that have struck me recently:

A letter from Bradford in West Yorkshire in Monday's Guardian complained that at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert in London –

"the choir from Soweto was insultingly relegated to backing-up [sic] predominantly white performers, a continuation of cultural imperialism by other means."  

This seems to be a prime example of reverse racism – who cares about the skin colour of the performers 'backed up' (or 'backed-up') by the Soweto choir?  It also reflects a failure of comprehension of the nature of imperialism – even 'cultural' imperialism, whatever that is.  To equate the mixing of black and white performers at a concert with any kind of imperialism is simply silly.

The same letter asserted, to my mind equally fatuously, that –

"the significance of the man [Mandela] was his life of struggle." 

This completely misses the point about the 'significance'  of Mandela, as well as stretching the meaning of 'struggle' beyond breaking-point.  Surely the reason for the world-wide admiration of this great man is his superhuman magnanimity, his extraordinary lack of bitterness or anti-white vengefulness after his 27-year incarceration by an openly racist white régime, and his amazing success in helping South Africans of all races to overcome their past differences in the new multi-racial society of which he is the founding father.  Substituting "his life of struggle" for that achievement is just a lazy resort to clapped-out Marxist jargon, and does Mandela no favours.

*   *   *   *   *

A recent Guardian article about the resignation of Wendy Alexander from leadership of the Scottish Labour Party in the Scottish parliament attributed her downfall to –

"…Labour's failure to cope with an SNP government and its drive towards self-government [sic].  If it, and she, had demonstrated a more coherent response then she may have survived the donations scandal…." [Emphasis added]

As written this can only mean that the writer was unsure at the time of writing whether Ms Alexander had survived the scandal or not.  You'd think that since her resignation was the subject of the article, he'd have spotted a clue to the answer to that question.  It's extraordinary how many experienced writers trip up over the difference between 'may' and 'might' in past conditional contexts.  Galling for Wendy Alexander, too, to think that "a more coherent response" to the SNP might have saved her.  "Can try harder", as my school reports used to say. 

*   *   *   *   *

In Australia one Ken Henry, the Treasury secretary (its civil service head, or 'permanent secretary' in UK parlance) is being criticised for going away on five weeks' leave, at a time of national economic and financial crisis, to a remote national park in Queensland to help protect the rare northern hairy-nosed wombats, threatened with extinction.  '"These guys are on death row," said Henry.  "There are 10 times as many giant pandas in the world as there are these guys."'  No possible comment can match that.  Or are the Aussies having us on?  I wouldn't put it past them.  In general they have more of a sense of humour than we solemn Brits do.

*   *   *   *   *

The Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP has the challenging title of 'Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform at the Department for Work and Pensions'.  Among his numerous responsibilities the Department's website lists:  Labour market and the economy, Labour market statistics, Welfare Reform, Employment programmes including the future of the New Deal, Lone parents, childcare and partners, Adult Disadvantage, Cities Strategy, Skills, Disadvantaged areas and regional issues, Tax Credits (where DWP has an interest), E-Government (PSX(E)) [what that?], Bereavement Benefit, Departmental IT and data security [a serious matter these days, obviously], and Benefit Simplification.  (There's plenty more, too much to quote in full.)  If you're wondering what the minister does for his day job, the answer is that he is also, rather bewilderingly, the first ever "Labour Party Vice Chair for Faith Groups".  Perhaps he's able to use his party responsibility for Faith Groups to help him perform his governmental responsibility for Adult Disadvantage.

*   *   *   *   *

In the close vote in the House of Commons on the prime minister's inexplicable proposal to extend the maximum time for which terrorist suspects can be locked up without charge from an already monstrous 28 days to an even more grotesque 42, the gloves were off both metaphorically and, apparently, literally.  On his blog the young and highly articulate Tory MP Ed Vaizey reports being informed on BBC Radio 4 by the Labour MP Kitty Ussher that 'Labour MPs were told to tell Tory MPs they would have “blood on their hands” if they voted against.'   There's an echo of this noxious threat in a recent Labour Party pamphlet comparing what the Tory leader, David Cameron, says with what he allegedly does: 

Cameron does one thing:  David Cameron wants to sound tough on crime;  but does another:  his 'hug a hoodie' approach means voting against Labour's tough anti-crime measures. 

Yet the party leadership indignantly denies that New Labour's endless assaults on our ancient (and modern) civil liberties in the name of the 'wars' on terrorism and crime are mainly designed to wrong-foot the Tories:  if they oppose these illiberal and disproportionate measures on grounds of principle, they lay themselves open to the charge of being "soft on terrorism and crime".  The evidence doesn't seem to support the denials.  The government should leave this kind of puerility to the Daily Mail.  Apart from anything else, it's an insult to the many long-standing supporters of the Labour Party (such as me) who regard New Labour's obsession with chipping away at our human rights and freedoms as a sad betrayal of everything that Labour used to stand for, and still should.

*   *   *   *   *

A report in the Guardian on 27 June said that –

Higher fuel costs would not be felt until after 2010 and the main increases would come from 2015 onwards, according to the government's renewable energy consultation paper. "In 2020, as a result of the new incentives, domestic consumer bills are expected to increase 10-13% in electricity and 18-37% for gas bills," it says. 

This strikes me as odd.  Only last week, in mid-June 2008, my monthly payments for both gas and electricity were peremptorily increased by just over 90 per cent.  So I view the prospect of maximum increases of 13 per cent for electricity and 37 per cent for gas in the year 2020, when I shall turn 86, with a fair amount of equanimity.

Brian 

Derek Partridge, CMG, a friend and former diplomatic service colleague, has authorised me to put on my website the text of a letter he has sent to Stephen Timms, the Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform at the Department for Work and Pensions in the British government (right –>).  Derek told me on 23 June 2008 that he "had thought of holding off putting the letter on your website at least until I received a reply from Stephen Timms. I have changed my mind on seeing the report in The Independent this morning that Jacqui Smith has said that gay and lesbian asylum-seekers can be safely deported to Iran so long as they live their lives 'discreetly'.  I am now willing for you to put it on your website with a note saying that I have agreed to your doing so because of my anger at the Home Secretary's statement." 

Derek's experience and qualifications for writing about immigration policy are described in his letter.  You can read the full text of it here. 

If anyone has any comments on Derek Partridge's letter, whether positive or negative, please write them below this post in the space provided and I shall ensure that Derek sees them.  Alternatively by all means send me a private message using the Contact facility of this website (see top of page) and I will pass it on to him.

Brian

BBC Newsnight's blog has invited answers to the question: 

If there was just one thing that Mr [Gordon] Brown could do to help restore his public standing, what would it be? 

Most replies so far have suggested his immediate resignation and elections.  Here's my offering, lightly edited:

NOT resign and NOT call a general election now, which would condemn us to at least five years of Tory misrule and probably 10.  Instead, use the time remaining to him to do at least one of the following things (preferably all of them, but we're only allowed one):

1.  Abandon 42 days detention without charge, admitting that there is no sufficiently widespread agreement to it:  and repeal the Control Orders legislation.

2.  Increase (a) the threshold for income tax enough to take 5 million people out of tax, and (b) marginal income tax rates on all incomes over £100,000 a year, increasing steeply thereafter  to penalise all outlandish salary increases and bonuses above the rate of inflation;  impose a windfall tax on the oil companies and other bodies which have made huge profits from increased world commodity prices without lifting a finger to earn them; promise that public sector pay will keep pace with inflation and that tax policy will ensure that the private sector bears its share of the burden of pay restraint.

3.  Pull our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan by Christmas.

4.  Abandon ID cards and the monster data-base that goes with them.

5.  Reduce the prison population by at least two-thirds by removing all those who ought never to have been sent there and substituting various forms of community service combined with treatment;  change sentencing policy to ensure that no more than a third of those currently jailed are imprisoned in future;  remove the power of magistrates to send offenders to prison; abolish prison sentences shorter than three years;  abolish indeterminate sentences; return privatised prisons to the public sector.

6.  Cancel the renewal of Trident and the order for aircraft carriers.

7.  Announce a 20-year programme for full devolution of all internal affairs to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, with a full parliament and executive for each, the Westminster parliament and government becoming federal institutions responsible mainly for foreign affairs and defence, on the Australian, US and German models.

8.  Declare that British troops will never again be involved in military action overseas unless Britain is attacked or an attack on Britain is imminent, or else with the explicit authority of the UN Security Council.

9.  Abandon the party list system for elections to the European parliament and substitute a Single Transferable Vote system.

10.  Complete reform of the House of Lords by making it a wholly elected chamber with limited powers (as now) elected on a different timetable from the Commons by a form of Proportional Representation, in preparation for its eventual conversion into a federal Senate. 

And a bonus, not-too-serious proposal:  11.  Issue an invitation now to Senator Obama (only) to make a State Visit to Britain within three months of taking up office next January as President.

Of course we also need urgent action on the environment and global warming, on alleviating world poverty and global inequality, on housing and immigration and the treatment of asylum seekers and reform of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy and  discouraging the rebirth of American protectionism and resistance to siren voices demanding cuts in oil and petrol prices (while compensating those least able to afford them) and massive cutbacks on the money being squandered on the London Olympics and stopping private companies and government bodies ripping us off by making us pay through the nose to telephone them on 0845 and 0844 lines about their own failures and defaults, and the retirement from public life of Messrs. Straw and Hoon and Ms Blears, and a few other things that I have temporarily forgotten.  But we can't have everything, I suppose.

I'm not unduly optimistic, though.

Brian

On reining in the private sector to make the hyper-rich, very rich and quite rich take their share of the burden of avoiding an incomes-price spiral, and not making the less well-off employees in public sector take all the strain, I can't see any objection to some steeply graduated income super-tax rates rising from 50 to 95 per cent on all incomes from, say, £100,000 to anything over £5m a year so that any increases through salary increases, bonuses, cashing in of share options, etc., in excess of the rate of inflation would be negated by moving the taxpayer concerned into an even higher tax bracket.  Tack on a windfall tax on the oil companies and any others profiting from higher international commodity prices unrelated to their own performance, and you have the beginnings of a case in equity for appealing to ordinary working people for wage restraint. 

You'll probably say that all this is an Old Labour nightmare and that all our best and most entrepreneurial businessmen and financiers would up sticks and emigrate, presumably to Abu Dhabi, which might get a bit crowded.  I doubt if they will fancy their chances with President Obama, anyway.

Some Euro-commentators and leaders are arguing that the rest of the EU should go ahead and ratify the Lisbon treaty, despite its rejection in the Irish referendum, in the hope that evidence of Ireland's isolation in rejecting ratification might shame the Irish electorate into voting for the treaty in a re-run of the referendum.  This seems to be based on a crucial misperception of the state of public opinion in Europe.

Even if the rest of the EU does ratify the Lisbon treaty, it seems unlikely so to impress the Irish electorate that it would persuade enough of them to change their minds and vote for ratification in a second referendum on the same treaty (and if the treaty itself is changed, all 27 member states will have to start the process all over again, not an attractive prospect). The Irish would doubtless say, probably correctly, that since not a single other EU member state will have held a referendum before ratifying it, there's no evidence that the people of the EU are willing to support the treaty: if other countries had risked holding referendums, it seems highly likely that it would have been rejected in several of them, almost certainly including the UK.

If the mostly desirable elements of the Lisbon treaty are ever going to be implemented — a virtually indispensable condition of the EU playing its full part in tackling huge current global problems such as climate change, terrorism, world poverty and inequality, and the international control of the resort to violence in international affairs — it's vital to try to analyse why the Irish voted No, and why so many other EU citizens would probably have voted No if they had been given the opportunity; and then to consider what, if anything, can be done to alleviate these concerns and remove these objections.

In the case of Ireland, several specifically Irish issues seem to have influenced the referendum, including several that are totally irrelevant to the Lisbon treaty:  fear that a reformed EU would force Ireland to legalise abortion;  disillusionment with several Irish political leaders and unfamiliarity with the new Taoiseach;  failure of the Irish government and other pro-treaty elements to make the case for the treaty convincingly and intelligibly;  the fantastic obscurity of the text of the treaty itself, so that many voters felt they were being asked to vote for something whose implications it was impossible to understand;  anger at the prospect that under the treaty's provisions, Ireland would lose its EU Commissioner; and  (perhaps most potently?) anger and alarm at the economic downturn, itself the product of the steep rise in international commodity prices (especially oil and food), the collapse of the boom in house prices, and the international credit crunch following the US sub-prime mortgage disaster:  the blame for all these woes, however unfairly, being laid at the door of Ireland's own politicians.  If the politicians were urging a vote for ratification, the Irish were damned if they were going meekly to obey the bastards.

There are two striking things about this combination of negative issues.  First, they don't reflect any widespread anti-European sentiment in Ireland, which indeed has prospered mightily as a direct result of its EU membership.  Secondly, most of the sentiments, worries and concerns contributing to the No vote in the referendum are widely shared in many other EU countries;  few are unique to Ireland, and those that are probably have similar counterparts elsewhere in the EU.  The people of some EU countries differ from the Irish in exhibiting a high level of antipathy to the whole European project: the UK is certainly one of these, and some of the new eastern and central European countries (and/or their leaders) are others.  Even those who are generally pro-European are often critical of the lack of transparency of many of the processes of the EU, of the centripetal tendencies of the Commission, of the failure to clean up the Union's finances, of what is rather vaguely referred to as the democratic deficit.  All such tendencies will tend to predispose a goodly number of individual European voters to vote No in a referendum on almost any proposition recommended to them by their political leaders, however intrinsically innocuous.

Much the most serious of the issues setting electorates against their political masters must be the prospect of economic slow-down, perhaps lurching into full-scale recession, in the next several years.  Many (although not all) Europeans have got used to years of continuing boom, with low inflation, high employment, low interest rates, and a steadily rising standard of living.  The illusion has been created that our political, economic and financial systems and those who operate them have finally gained control of the world economy, and that boom no longer infallibly leads to bust.  The quite sudden bursting of that illusory balloon has caused a general antipathy to politicians and a deep scepticism about their ability to protect us all against the miseries of inflation, strikes and general industrial unrest (especially in the public services), a rise in the cost of borrowing, including on credit cards and mortgages, and increased dangers of eviction from one's home as a result of negative equity.  The huge rise in the cost of petrol, gas and electricity, and many basic foods, has come as a terrible shock.  Someone must be to blame.  

One casualty of these developments is certain to be a collapse in support for absolutely essential measures to deal with climate change on a global scale, many of them inevitably entailing cuts in living standards, not only in developing countries struggling to escape from extreme poverty, but also in the rich west.  Neither of the present contenders for the US presidency seems to be brave enough to say publicly that the days of cheap gasoline are over, that high gas (petrol) prices are actually beneficial and to be welcomed because they will encourage more economic use of carbon fuels that damage the atmosphere and contribute to global warming, or that only costly gasoline is going to stimulate the search for alternative, eco-friendly energy sources (although Senator Obama has come creditably close to making these points).  The pressure from ordinary Americans on their political leaders in a presidential election year to do something quickly to get gas prices down and keep them down is so intense as to be almost irresistible.  

Here in Britain popular resentment of the government in the context of the downturn and the return of inflation and, soon, of higher unemployment seems likely to lead to more strikes and disruptions of public services resulting from pay and other disputes.  The government has an unanswerable case for arguing that if pay increases are allowed to keep up with (or, worse, jump ahead of) inflation, when the causes of the inflation are international and beyond any single government's control, everyone will suffer from the resulting inflationary spiral, with the value of each pay rise immediately negated by the consequent inflation of prices.  But the government seems at the moment intent on placing the entire burden of pay policy restraint, meaning inevitable reductions in living standards for millions of individual families and individuals, on the public sector.  There is no sign of willingness to use the tax system to curb excessive bonuses and salary increases in many parts of the private sector, nor to restrain the indiscriminate distribution of enormous profits, especially those made as a result of unprecedentedly high energy prices which benefit an already rich few at the expense of everyone else.  The nurse, teacher, or junior civil servant can hardly be blamed for complaining of the rank injustice of having his or her standard of living reduced by pay awards below the level of inflation — in other words, pay cuts — when all around the wealthy are continuing to award themselves and each other real increases in already astronomical salaries and bonuses; and when even the moderately well off are not apparently being required to make any corresponding sacrifice.  Mere appeals by ministers for pay and salary restraint in the private sector will cut no ice at all.

The free marketeers inevitably moan about the distortions of the market caused by compulsory pay policies imposed on the whole of the economy, with its echoes of the centrally controlled economies of the bad old days before the collapse of European communism.  Ministers are deeply reluctant to seem to be returning to the unpopular policies and attitudes of Old Labour.  But in an increasingly challenging economic situation, here is one manifest injustice that is capable of being remedied in a way that might help to restore confidence in the capacity of our political leaders to control inflation and protect even the most vulnerable members of society against the worst of its malign effects.  People might even become more willing to listen to the politicians' arguments for reforming the procedures and institutions of the European Union to equip it to make its voice heard in the global debates on the issues that threaten the long-term future, not just of this or that ailing industry, but of the human race and the tiny planet on which it lives.

Postscript (23 June 08):  For some reason three comments on this post, all by Peter Harvey with my responses, have disappeared from this particular post when viewed in Internet Explorer: but they are there when it's opened in Firefox.  The website addresses of the post and most of the comments have also apparently been corrupted in IE.  I am working on this but can't immediately see a solution.  Meanwhile apologies to Peter and others.  Try Firefox!  The comments should be available at:
http://www.barder.com/ephems/799#comment-72364
http://www.barder.com/ephems/799#comment-72482
and
http://www.barder.com/ephems/799#comment-72492  

PPS (26 June 08):  Problem with those comments now solved, thanks to Owen's eagle-eyed spotting of the fact that I had stripped out the Word tags from the first of Peter's comments but not from the second:  and it was these that were blocking access to all of them in Internet Explorer (but not in Firefox).  All should now be well in either browser, and any others that anyone might still be using.

Brian 

If we needed a reason to applaud the romantic action of the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, in resigning his parliamentary seat in order to fight a by-election on the sole issue of the government's assault on our civil liberties (culminating in the folly of extending the maximum period for detaining terrorist suspects without charge to 42 days), the outrage, scorn and insults heaped on him by his own Tory parliamentary colleagues and the apparent dismay of his leader, David Cameron, will do fine. They called him (mostly anonymously, of course) mad, bonkers, a traitor, driven insane by ambition, unhinged, undergoing a mid-life crisis, guilty of a catastrophic misjudgement.  Tory horror at Davis's move seems to stem from a belief that it will distract public attention from the mess that Gordon Brown has created by obstinately pursuing his indefensible 42-day detention proposal in the teeth of widespread criticism and scepticism within the parliamentary Labour Party and outright opposition from senior policemen, the director of public prosecutions, the head of MI5, and the former Labour attorney-general, to name but a few who know whereof they speak.  The liberal lobby, libertarian pressure groups such as Liberty, the Conservative Party and the LibDems are similarly opposed.  

Why, then, do the Tories apparently object to what Davis is doing, if — as seems likely — his by-election campaign in his own former constituency will throw the spotlight once again on the government's folly?  Why has Cameron come as close as he dares to disowning Davis and his initiative? And why has the Tory leadership apparently let it be known that Davis, once re-elected, won't be allowed to return to the Conservative front bench but will have to serve out the rest of the parliament as a humble back-bencher? 

The explanation seems to lie in the cosmic absence of enthusiasm on the part of many Conservative MPs, perhaps including some of his most senior colleagues, for Davis's civil liberties agenda.  The instincts of some of them covertly favour the government's authoritarianism; some would be prepared to accept almost any amount of destruction of our ancient freedoms and civil rights in the name of greater protection against terrorism;  others have seen the opinion polls suggesting majority support in the country for 42-day detention without charge, and fear that Davis's eloquent opposition to it is out of kilter with public opinion, which they are afraid will do them no good at the next election.  It's generally believed by the media and by other denizens of the Westminster hothouse that the Tory leadership's decision to vote against the 42-days measure last week masked a deep split among Tory MPs, and that it was only Davis's passionate commitment to the defence of civil liberties that forced the party's formal policy of opposition to 42 days down the throats of the unbelievers.  If so, the worry is that a highly publicised by-election fought exclusively on this issue might make it impossible to continue to conceal the split, thus damaging the Conservative cause electorally.  Some Tories are also complaining that by doing what he has done, David Davis has "let Gordon Brown off the hook".

Much of this seems to me nonsense.  The issue of civil liberties generally and 42-day detention in particular cuts across political parties, as last week's vote showed.  On 11 June, 36 Labour MPs voted against the government despite a three-line whip and weeks of threats, blandishments and other pressures from the Whips. The maverick Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, a former home office minister, broke ranks and voted with the government.  Had it not been for Widdecombe and the nine members of the reactionary Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party, including Ian Paisley, who abandoned their usual stance of opposition to the Labour government on all fronts to vote for 42 days, the government would have lost.  It has been widely alleged, and is even more widely believed, that the government bought off the DUP with promises, perhaps not explicit but apparently broadly hinted at, of various financial and other concessions to DUP demands for Northern Ireland that have nothing to do with national security or 42 days' detention without charge.  The government, naturally, denies this.  We shall see.

The paradox is that the government's nominal victory in the vote last week damaged it far more severely than a defeat would have done.  That victory had every appearance of having been bought, at the taxpayers' expense, by fundamentally corrupt means.  Victory means that instead of dying on Wednesday to almost universal relief, the 42-days proposal now goes to the House of Lords, where it faces further bitter controversy and almost certain defeat, perhaps by a large margin.  Davis's campaign against it at the by-election will add more expensive fuel to the flames.  If the government decides to use the Parliament Act to overrule the Lords, it will prolong the agony for at least another year.  Even if the measure is eventually forced through onto the statute book, it will certainly be challenged in the courts as incompatible with Britain's treaty obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and it might well be struck down on that account, if not by the English courts then by the European Court at Strasburg (nothing to do with the EU, by the way).  All this will take years — and even if the thing survives all these challenges, it's almost inconceivable that it will ever be used in real life:  the government has been forced to 'concede' so many complicated safeguards and cumbersome forms of oversight by parliament as well as the judiciary before it can be activated that the procedure would collapse under its own weight if any government were to be rash enough to try to operate it.  Anyway, the Conservatives have promised to repeal it the moment they become the government, which now seems likely in less than two years' time.

All this misery and shame could have been avoided if the government had allowed the measure to suffer the defeat it deserved last week, consequently sinking ingloriously into instant oblivion (the measure, if not also the government).

Both by his principles and as a Conservative MP in opposition to a recklessly illiberal government, David Davis has plainly done a good and courageous thing.  The Labour dissident MP Bob Marshall-Andrews has already declared his intention of going to Davis's constituency of Haltemprice and Howden to support him in the by-election.  The LibDems, since they agree with Davis's opposition to 42 days and to the government's other attacks on our civil liberties, are not going to put up a candidate against Davis for the by-election, despite having come a fairly close second at the last general election.  The Labour Party is in a quandary:  any official party candidate standing in the by-election would have to defend the government's illiberal record on civil liberties and the depths to which it stooped to get its 42-days detention project through the Commons; the Labour candidate in the constituency is personally opposed to 42 days detention;  Labour's standing in the opinion polls is currently the lowest ever recorded, and even in the better days for Labour of the last general election, in Haltemprice and Howden Labour came a poor third to the Conservative (David Davis) and the LibDem.  Many LibDems at the by-election will presumably vote for Davis, since the issue on which he is fighting it is one on which most LibDems agree with him.  So a Labour loyalist candidate who campaigns on an anti-civil liberties platform against Davis is likely to be slaughtered at the polls, which can only add to the government's miseries and to Gordon Brown's personal humiliation.  Yet if Labour fails to field a candidate at all, the government will be accused, with justice, of a cowardly failure to defend itself on a major issue of policy and principle, for which indeed Bob Marshall-Andrews already condemns it. No wonder Brown has sought to dismiss the Davis ploy as a 'stunt'.  But there's no obvious way out of the dilemma.  Incurring a charge of cowardice will probably seem the least damaging of the options, so there'll probably be no Labour candidate. 

But that doesn't necessarily mean that Davis will lack an adversary in the boxing ring, so that the whole match will fizzle out, an unnoticed fiasco.  If there's no Labour candidate standing, Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of the right-wing Murdoch tabloid The Sun and a fierce advocate of locking up terrorist suspects for as long as the police might deem desirable, seems likely to stand on what will amount to a national security, anti-civil liberties platform, and he will be a noisy attention seeker, guaranteed to fill the pages of The Sun and other media outlets both serious and stupid.  He will be an embarrassment to Labour as the government's only apparent standard-bearer. A few other assorted loonies and weirdos may also seek their five minutes of fame by standing.  Marshall-Andrews may not be the only Labour MP or libertarian from the left to campaign for Davis.  It's difficult to imagine any outcome other than a sweeping victory for David Davis.  Such a victory will not unreasonably be represented as giving the lie to the assertion that the government has majority public support for its oppressive measures, including especially those targeted by Davis:  42 days, ID cards and their supporting national register, obsessive surveillance by CCTV cameras and intrusive powers to intercept private postal, telephone, fax and e-mail communications, thousands of innocent people permanently tagged on the vast national DNA database, people subjected indefinitely to virtual house arrest under Control Orders on mere suspicion of involvement with terrorism without even the right to know what they are suspected of having done or planned to do. 

All my life I have voted Labour, sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes as the least objectionable option (although I did once vote for Ken Livingstone when the Labour Party machine had in effect forced him to run as an independent for mayor of London).  Now I'm glad that I'm not on the electoral roll in David Davis's constituency of Haltemprice and Howden, trying to think of a decent reason not to vote, for the first time in my life, for a Conservative candidate who, on the issues at stake in this by-election, is on the side of the angels, while the policies being pursued by the government of the party I instinctively support are beyond the pale.  The points of Gordon Brown's 'moral compass' have gradually been reversed.

David Davis looks as if he has ingeniously trapped New Labour in a no-win situation.  Perhaps it's just as well that the rest of his party doesn't seem to be able to see it.  But beware!  The savvy Tory blogger Iain Dale has got it in one.  Meanwhile, three cheers for David Davis, and four for Bob Marshall-Andrews.

Brian 

Four years ago, in 2004, the American operatic soprano and uber-celebrity Deborah Voigt was, um, let go from a Covent Garden production of Ariadne auf Naxos, for which she had been contracted, because the costume designer for the production was determined that his Ariadne should wear a little black dress;  and at the time "little" and Ms Voigt were not compatible concepts.  In other words, she was too big for it.  As this was one of the Richard Strauss roles for which Deborah Voigt was and is famous, and one which she has performed amid acclamation throughout the opera houses of the civilised world, this parting of company between the Royal Opera House and the diva caused considerable uproar among those who know about these things (especially, not unnaturally, the Americans).  

But tomorrow Deborah Voigt opens as Ariadne once again — at Covent Garden.  Using some of the money that the Royal Opera House paid her for that breach of contract in 2004, the sturdily built diva reduced her dress size by one means or another from 30, her one-time maximum, to 14.  To mark this triumph over adversity, and very much following up the inspired suggestion of Ms Voigt herself, her PR team in New York, 21C Media Group, produced a gem of a mini-video about the saga, co-starring Deborah Voigt and the Little Black Dress, and put it on YouTube, with the consent of both the Royal Opera House and, of course, Debbie herself, whose idea it had been.  You can watch and hear it here.  The video has caused almost as big a stir as the unhappy events of 2004, but it has raised many more smiles.   The New York Times featured the whole story, including the Little Black Dress and the video, on the front page of its Arts section on 11 June ("Second Date with a Little Black Dress"), illustrated with a still from the video: well worth reading. It is also about to appear on American television and it has already scored over 25,000 hits on YouTube, and counting. 

For those who didn't spot the none-too-serious list of credits tucked away at the side of the YouTube video, and in view of the family connection (yes, we are by chance related, rather closely actually), I reproduce it here:

Sean Michael Gross - Executive Producer
Glenn Petry, Albert Imperato - Co-Producers
Matt Veligdan - Director
Sean Michael Gross - Assistant Director
Matt Veligdan - Cinematographer
Louise Barder, Max Lefer, Glenn Petry, Matt Veligdan - Script Editors
Matt Veligdan - Film Editor
Louise Barder - Casting Director
Albert Imperato - Boom Mic Operator
Matt Veligdan - Sound and Music Editor
Sean Michael Gross - Technical Director
Damian Fowler, Albert Imperato, Deborah Voigt - Production Assistants
Emma Nilsson - Props Director
Matt Veligdan - Sound Effects
Sean Michael Gross — Dress Animator
Alison Ames, Jessica Lustig, Michael Lutz, Philip Wilder - Consultants
Sean Michael Gross — Gofer and PA to Little Black Dress
Glenn Petry - Stunts Coordinator
Little Black Dress courtesy of Louise Barder
Catering by Starbucks
www.deborahvoigt.com
www.21cmediagroup.com

Who says that opera divas on the grand scale don't have a sense of humour?

Look out in due course for the genuine original of that now famous Little Black Dress — well, the one in the video, though not the one from the ROH costumes department — on eBay.   It's only a matter of time.  And if you hurry, you may just be in time to get tickets for Ariadne.  Better make sure to win the lottery first, though.  Meanwhile you can listen to a brief but glorious clip of Ms Voigt singing Ariadne here (scroll down to Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos and click the audio sample).

Brian 

From (London) Sunday Times letters , 25 May 2008: 

WHY is the abortion time limit linked to the time when a premature baby could, with sufficient medical intervention, survive? I fail to see the relevance (Family planning is one area in which we don’t need MPs’ help, Simon Jenkins, Comment, and Don’t mess with abortion, Rachel Johnson, News Review, last week).

If one set of doctors do their utmost to help a much-wanted premature baby to survive, why does this affect the work of another set of doctors doing their utmost to help a woman who does not want the child?

Whether, and until what stage, a woman should be entitled to an abortion is, of course, a matter of opinion. But whether the child could survive should not be a consideration.

Sarah Plummer
Tadcaster, North Yorkshire

Well and pithily said, Ms Plummer!  You join the tiny band of commentators who have spotted the nudist tendency of the emperor in the increasingly flabby debate on abortion. (And a double hurrah if you're the same Sarah Plummer who did the supertitles for Fidelio at Glyndebourne.)   But three lusty cheers if you have been reading Ephems on the same subject, for example here:  all recruits to the cause are more than welcome.

It's surprising (to me, anyway) that some of the liberal contributors to the abortion debate, Polly Toynbee and Zoe Williams among others, have pointed out the fallacy in the viability test but have done so almost in passing, instead of making it the centre-piece of the counter-attack against the priests and other luminaries of the anti-abortion lobby.  If the viability test is allowed to continue to go unchallenged even among the pro-choice reformers, the end result, once medical science succeeds in developing a newly fertilised human egg to full term in a laboratory, will be the reinstitution of the old total ban on abortion at any stage of a pregnancy — which is what most of the anti-abortionist obscurantists really want, but are too shy to say so.  

Brian 

Sheep and goats can readily be told apart by the remedies they propose for the steep rise in petrol and food prices.  Sheep demand government action to bring down petrol prices, for example by suspending or even permanently reducing tax and duty on petrol ('gas' in US parlance):  examples are the London Sunday Times, and Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain.  Goats recognise the positive benefits of higher petrol/gas prices in their environmental effects, encouraging the search for alternative and cleaner sources of energy, more sparing use of private cars and commercial lorries (trucks), an end to under-priced commercial flying with its appalling pollution, and an acknowledgement that the forces of supply and demand, however much distorted by the OPEC cartel and futures trading speculators, but reflecting the rapidly growing demands of economic development in Asia, will win out in the end;  so they advocate government action to help those who are hardest hit by high prices and least able to pay them from their own resources, as urged by the economists, Barack Obama, and Simon Jenkins on the same page as the Sunday Times editorial advocating the opposite –

Record oil prices provide a tax windfall running into billions of pounds. This should be passed back immediately to motorists in cuts in fuel duty. [Sunday Times editorial, 25 May 08]

and

The government has been pressed for years to increase the cost of petrol and other fuels to cut consumption and help to save life on Earth. That is precisely what the market is now doing. Yet rather than applaud, ministers feel they must do the opposite and make petrol cheaper. The AA and others demand that the autumn increase in petrol duty should be postponed and millions of bank holiday motorists are told that Gordon Brown “feels your hurt”. [Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times, 25 May 08]

Senator Obama is one of many who has pointed out that any reduction in petrol/gas duty or tax is likely to be immediately offset by a corresponding increase in prices set by the big oil companies, thus effecting nothing more than a transfer of resources from government (i.e. the public's) revenues to the billions of dollars of profits accruing to the oil companies.  Abolishing stamp duty on house purchases would have the same effect:  stamp duty is already factored in to the price asked by the vendor after calculating what the market is likely to bear, so its abolition will simply enable the vendor to increase the asking price and the likely profit accruing to himself, at the expense of the exchequer. 

Much the same goes for higher food prices.  Those who have been bemoaning the low levels of reward and incentive going to farmers in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia should now be welcoming the more realistic rewards going to food producers world-wide, reflecting the reality of increased demand, especially from China, India and elsewhere in Asia.  The remedy lies not in a doomed attempt to hold prices down by artificial interventions in the market, such as scatter-gun subsidies to consumers both rich and poor, but in the encouragement of an expansion of food production, especially in developing countries, by the application of appropriate technology.  (Vegetarians are also entitled to point out that the high proportion of global grain production going to feed cattle and other livestock for consumption as meat is incredibly wasteful, when that grain could feed incomparably more people than the resulting meat can ever do.  But I'm selfishly too fond of my roast beef and bacon and egg to act accordingly, comforting myself with the self-serving justification that individual eco-gestures are a waste of time in the absence of coordinated collective action on a large scale.)

As petrol and food prices have been going up, they have passed house prices on the way down:  house prices are falling both in the UK and the US.  Those who have been lamenting the manic house price boom of the last decade or so, giving hundreds of thousands of house-owners the illusion that they have become rich without having had to lift a finger in the process (thus encouraging a huge credit bubble), and making life impossible for would-be first-time house buyers, are now emitting piteous cries bewailing the difficulty of getting a mortgage, the rise in evictions of those who can't any longer keep up their mortgage payments, and the viciously anti-social — and short-sighted — behaviour of the sub-prime mortgage lenders in the US and Europe who have been taking absurd risks and creating predictably bad debts, and then concealing the risks by packaging them up and selling them on to idiots too greedy for instant profit to take the trouble to find out the scale of the risk they are taking on.  All these are indeed proper subjects of condemnation, but once again the remedy is not to reduce, suspend or abolish stamp duty or other taxes on house sales, which will merely increase demand for houses (as observed earlier, benefiting those selling houses at the expense of the public purse) without any corresponding increase in their supply, thus driving house prices up again:  the remedy should be to use the tax system to transfer money to those in need of houses and least able to afford them, from the richest beneficiaries of higher energy and food prices and of the sub-prime mortgage racket. 

Simon Jenkins again, a Conservative writing in a hyper-Conservative newspaper:

The worship of central bankers over the past decade has been shown for what it was, a mere shift of blind faith from one group of fallible tunnel-visionaries to another. They have proved no better defenders of the public interest than their forebears during the great crash of 1929. The sickening spectacle of those responsible walking off with millions of pounds of other people’s money in bonuses has rightly put bankers akin to mafia racketeers in public esteem.

The fall in house prices to a more realistic level, and the end of reckless lending on inadequate security to high-risk borrowers who can't afford to service their loans, are both welcome and beneficial.  The object should be to act to help those who are hardest hit by these price movements, both up and down, not to try to work on the prices themselves;  and to fund help for the most vulnerable out of the proceeds of much higher taxes on those, companies and individuals, who have paid themselves millions of other people's pounds and dollars through the exploitation of bad risks and market forces, involving absolutely no wealth creation on the part of billionaire profiteers.  In Britain this would mean an end to New Labour's shameless schmoozing of big business and the mega-rich.  Is Gordon up for it?

Brian 

I discovered only recently that the 'contact' facility of this website and blog, whereby anyone could click 'contact' at the top of any page to send me a message, had not been working for some time, although it seemed to be.  My trusty website guru, who has now rather dismayingly decamped to Ethiopia for, probably, three years, succeeded in fixing the problem before he left, and it should be working again now.

Apologies to anyone who has tried to send me a message via 'contact' during the last goodness-knows-how-many months and is understandably aggrieved at receiving no reply.  If your message is still relevant, please try again now, using 'contact' at the top of the page — or else send me an e-mail addressed to brianbarder [at] compuserve [dot] com, omitting the brackets and spaces.

I should also apologise for the fact that the website's 'Search' facility has also been out of order for a considerable time, for different reasons.  The website's non-resident guru hopes to be able to fix that from Addis Ababa whenever he has a spare moment and an internet connection, which might not be for some time. 

Brian