Post-truth

Post-truth

I've finished wishing all my friends a happy Christmas by post and email and also wishing them the best for the new year. In the latter lies the rub. Most of the messages I have received in return indicate trepidation for the year ahead and I feel a compulsion to play Nostradamus or Old Moore and attempt an Almanack.

What intrigues me most is where a current post-truth society might lead. Leaving aside 1984 and Brave New World (we don't yet have a Ministry of Post-truth) and Alice's Wonderland, what we are left with is a kind of modern Middle Ages, although truth was sought after even then. Ways of seeking it were sometimes bizarre and extreme, via soothsayers and torture, but it was sought after and generally suppressed only when it conflicted with religion. Religion, as then, is once again a powerful force and rising as a force for destruction. The west hasn't experienced religious wars since the Middle Ages but militant Islam has that at it's core and seems bent on engaging in Europe. Fundamentalism and intolerance are rife. We aren't yet burning witches at the stake but treason is back in fashion as an accusation, in the UK at least. The west's crusades in the Middle East have played no small part in creating this situation. Are we really in for another period of the Dark Ages? Because, if so, war is more than just a possibility and conceivably in a manner and on a scale never seen before.

Dark as all this seems I remain an optimist at heart. If we can't yet have a sane 21st century maybe we can have a repeat of the 18^th. Going back three centuries would certainly be preferable to going back seven or more, could even be regarded as progress now. Trump may have appointed previously discredited alchemists as his scientific advisers but reason and enlightenment may yet prevail. That, at any rate, is my fervent wish for my friends in 2017. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said a long time ago that stupidity is more dangerous than evil because evil raises doubts in people's minds and you can reason with that but not with stupidity (or blind prejudice, my addition). Someone also said that the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits; stupidity does not. Let us hope that the spirit of the 18^th century prevails in 2017. I think, and fervently hope, that will be the case. The alternative does not bear contemplation.

The Media And Christmas

The Media: An Internet Opportunity?

Special-interest commercial intrusion on political affairs, and thereby the basis of democracy, is everywhere very apparent. To counter this, I've seen proposals for government control of expenditure on political party promotion and the like, especially as elections near, but nothing that strikes me as remotely practical. That in itself doesn't concern me. What does is how an individual can be enabled to form a reasoned opinion on the basis of good information when virtually all media are subjected to commercial pressure.

When I was young The Times was pointed out to me as a source of uncommented reporting, neutral information in that sense. It would print what was said/written elsewhere verbatim, separating that explicitly from any comment. Nowadays all the press has to be regarded simply as an arm of the commercial and personal (press barons') PR industry. True, exactly what has been said in the UK parliament can be discovered via Hansard but I know of no other verbatim sources, giving both what has been said/written and the context.

All this leads me to wonder whether there exists an opportunity for some community-spirited internet entrepreneur. In another life I would have loved to take this up but the means and capabilities are now well beyond me. However the internet has shown the power of public-spirited people collectively in the form of free and publicly available excellent software which manages to sustain itself economically. Could a site offering verbatim news do the same? If such a site were available it would render an incalculably important service to democracy, all the more so in a post-truth world.

Praise For The Irrational

Somewhat in spite of the forgoing I believe that the irrational can play an important role in people's lives. Like many others no doubt I have an irrational/ unconditional love for my children. I have just learned that, all being well, I should become a grandfather next year and my love for that child as yet unknown will be similarly unconditional and irrational. And so, I believe, it should be. This need for the irrational has been with me all my life. Having spent virtually all of my working life in a field that requires, at the technical level, extreme logical rigour, I felt this need even before having children. The focus of it has been, and still is, the football club I support, Chelsea. The team is doing well at the moment but I have always known with absolute certainty, however the team was doing, that if it lost a match the only possible explanation was that the referee had been paid off or that the Fates had somehow conspired to produce this otherwise inexplicable eventuality.

Christmas

Christmas is coming, which always evokes for me memories of the 1960's cynical song by Tom Lehrer. But it's not really like that. Before I had kids Christmas was always something of an epicurean event for me: food, wine, friends and family. From the time I had kids, Christmas was all about the kids, their excitement, their reactions and enjoyment until they outgrew it. Since then it has been rather low-key, an excuse to spend a bit more than usual on food and wine and, hopefully, a day or two socialising with good friends. So it will be this year. There is little difference between being in France or England other than the that the French don't do Christmas cards, which means acquiring them from England one way or another for those of my friends and family who don't have the internet or to whom I want to send a card anyway. It should be an enjoyable time but, I find, for maximum enjoyment kids are necessary. Christmas has never had religious connotations for me; it's my pagan mid-winter festival.

Despite that I'll be singing carols as usual, at the local retirement home and outside the Bar du Pont, for all those brave enough to listen, with all the musical expertise I gathered on the terraces of Chelsea football club abusing the referee and opposing teams. Happily there are other members of the “choir” who have a greater ability with music (what's the word for that: does musicacy exist? if not, it should). As I've noted in previous years, carol singing is not a tradition in this part of France but one introduced recently by English and ex-Alsatian residents here. And the villagers have taken to it, especially as the Bar du Pont makes and serves mulled wine for the event. And kids galore come to join in.

Question Time

Question Time

Last week I decided to watch the TV programme Question Time. I don't often watch debates on TV because I get unduly annoyed and frustrated when a chairperson or interviewer has the opportunity to pin someone down on a point and totally fails to do so. However I wanted to see the topics coming up now and the ensuing discussions as I haven't watched this weekly political discussion programme for months. And I was rather perturbed by what I saw.

Brexit of course came up as one of the topics and also as a sub-plot to others. The panel had representatives from the Treasury side of both the Labour and Conservative parties, the leader of the Lib Dem party, Tim Farron, a very articulate professor of economics and a benign and somewhat buffoon head of a retail chain. The audience, from its questions and reactions, appeared suitably mixed, hopefully more or less representative, with just a few obvious extreme right-wingers. What perturbed me was what was not said as much as what was said, the cowed tone of the discussions when I have been used to passionate if not always well-reasoned debate on this programme.

When Brexit-related issues came up, the Labour and Conservative politicians almost tripped over themselves to be polite to one another and avoid controversy. The industry representative, who had voted Leave, talked benignly about the importance of freeing people to make decisions in the certainty(?) that creativity would follow, with nothing more specific than that; his business was entirely in the UK, a point made by the economics professor. The only two of the panel who came out of the debate with any credit, in my view, were the professor of economics and Tim Fallon. The former, quoting figures (some the governments own) and drawing definite conclusions, jovially made a strong case that a hard Brexit would be tantamount to national economic suicide, a case that the Conservative representative hardly even bothered to dispute. Although working and living in England, she had a north American accent which may have had something to do with the dispassionate tone of her pronouncements. Tim Farron very clearly said that all had yet to be decided, including whether or not Brexit actually happened. Those were the only two, apart from the audience right-wingers, who made any definite statements.

The discussion was almost a non-event then, except that the extreme right-wingers in the audience made it clear that there as no possibility of compromise on their part, with undertones of a threat of violence if any compromise was attempted. It was this, together with the cowed atmosphere among those who tried reasoned argument, that perturbed me. Whatever happens, those who rely on reason must not be cowed. Or are we to have the battle of Cable Street and its consequences all over again? If the extreme right threatens violence, explicitly or implicitly, if opposed, will the centre and left have the courage to resist and, if necessary, take action against it?

France's Economic Problems

In a nutshell the roots of France's economic problems are far too generous contractual arrangements made with its workforce, arrangements that it can no longer afford. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that over 50% of the workforce is employed directly or indirectly by the government. A result is lack of investment in anything that would imply cutting jobs, however temporarily, and thus a lack of new jobs. Within the roots are very generous pension arrangements; these have been curtailed by recent administrations but only by forcing some employees to work for longer, which simply exacerbates the new job shortage. So what can France do?

It could well be that another 1968 is on the cards. The primaries for the next Presidential election are already underway with Fillon the winner of the centre-right candidacy. The political mood of the country seems to be a swing to the right, which could bring to power an administration that would attempt to make the necessary economic reforms. However, that would inevitably provoke a veritable Olympics of the nation's favourite sport: strikes; and strikes to an extent that could cripple the country. With no General de Gaulle in sight to sort it out, the result may well be another sport at which France excels: political fudging.

Gloomy Monday And Newspapers' Futures

Gloomy Monday

It's said you have to be retired to like Mondays. Well I'm retired but this is certainly not a Monday that I like. It's been raining all day, so no boules and I don't need shopping so I haven't been out. I'm left with my PC, TV, books and my own thoughts and my thoughts have been as gloomy as the weather. Getting my daily “fix” from the AWAD (A Word a Day) site I found the quote for the day was: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” (Voltaire). The absurdity that came immediately to my mind was Brexit. The referendum result was clearly a function of poor control of immigration, for which the EU got the blame. Yet the UK has not been using the controls it has available to it under EU legislation. Who now has to sort out this problem? Theresa May. Who was, since 2010, the Home Office minister responsible for control of immigration? Theresa May. Presumably she wants more controls to be unused.

The other absurdity is the idea of an EU army, which the EU has stated as urgently needed since the election of Trump. Russia is clearly in expansionist mode so something might be needed. I've read comment to the effect that Russia's annexations, actual and potential, relate only to territories with large Russian populations but.….…..…..anyone remember Austria and Anschluss, anyone remember Sudetenland? The Baltic states are deemed to be at risk. Yet which EU countries would be prepared to sacrifice their own defence capability for a joint EU one and which could afford both? And what would the role of an EU army be if one EU state decided to have a go at another? Nationalism is on the rise and, in the words of Francois Mitterand “nationalism means war”.

A gloomy Monday indeed.

The Future Of Newspapers

Yet more gloom, I'm afraid. I've noticed that the Guardian newspaper is asking for donations, stating that it's voice is now needed more than ever. I agree with that and am toying with the idea of donating but wonder what effect a donation of the size I could make would have, even if made by many. Commercial enterprises have essentially to find commercial means of surviving. The problem is advertising revenue which is increasingly being diverted from newspapers to TV, the internet and sponsorships. The Independent has already ceased to publish as a physical newspaper, joining the Huffington Post as a purely electronic but sane form of news. The Telegraph is getting its knickers in a twist trying to reconcile its pro-Brexit stance with its pro-business bias and The Times is Murdoch-owned (as is The Sun) so can't be relied on for anything. How can the gutter press devoted to the post-truth society be couterbalanced?

Some enterprises with a social conscience have indicated that they are withholding advertising from newspapers running racist and fascist/nationalist campaigns. That helps but hardly looks like enough. Popular campaigns aren't enough either. The boycott of The Sun in Liverpool following its Hillshborough lies probably dented its revenues but not enough to make it change its ethos. One measure the government could take, since it is strapped for money, is to impose VAT on newspapers. It would be a reasonable measure as few can claim they offer a service to the public rather than their owners and that would hit the gutter press hardest. It wouldn't help the Guardian though. If “those who can make you believe absurdities” are to be defeated, it seems another way will have to be found.

Brexit

Brexit or Alice In Wonderland (Again)

I'm Alice, by the way. wondering at the madness of it all.

I recently read an article in which Brexit was likened to an onion: you peel away a layer and find another underneath, which you peel away to find…....etc ad nauseam. So, to summarise the most recent developments that seem pertinent to me, they are:

1 The highest legal authority in Scotland is to back the High Court ruling in the UK Supreme Court appeal.

2 A consitutional lawyer in the UK has reported the Leave campaign to the CPS.

3 The EU is to debate an amendment that would allow UK individuals to keep EU citizenship if they wished.

4 Jeremy Corbyn has declared that the Labour Party will not oppose the Brexit result.

Let's take each of these in turn.

The Scottish action might have been anticipated. What it does is to strengthen the case aganst the appeal which appears to be quite strong anyway. Unless the government can get at the Supreme Court in some way, my guess is that the Supreme Court will uphold the High Court ruling but that that may have little consequence anyway. The majority of MPs seems to cling supinely to respect(?) for the referendum result and debate will result at most in a «soft Brexit» (see below).

Reporting of the Leave campaign to the CPS (Criminal Prosecution Service) was a surprise to me, even if I have been campaigning to have the gutter press reported to the PCC. It turns out that deliberately and knowingly misleading people to obtain electoral advantage is a criminal offence, of which the Leave campaign is most evidently guilty. But will the CPS take up the case? My guess is that, unless there are some serious renegades in the CPS, government pressure will ensure that the CPS finds some reason not to take the matter further. They'll cite insufficient evidence or some such.

The EU amendment that could allow UK citizens to retain EU-granted rights is an interesting one, one that could even go as far as the European Court of Justice. My guess is that the EU will probably reject this initially, unless mischievous elements in the EU can see that this would create Mayhem (sic) in the UK and would love to see that, but an appeal to the European Court of Justice, if that happened, might just succeed.

Lastly, Jeremy Corbyn's statement that the Labour Party will not oppose the Brexit result. There's a saying: when in a hole, stop digging, to which Corbyn seems impervious. By implication what he seeks to achieve (secure UK jobs, etc) is a so-called «soft Brexit». This is a quite possible outcome but the one that will please fewest, even if it avoids apparent economic suicide. It won't please Remainers because they will be outside the EU; and it won't please Leavers because it will limit control on EU immigration and legislation. So it is not going to attract many votes. In a stroke, Corbyn with pristine socialist (Marxist?) principles intact, dumps the Labour Party on the political scrapheap. The Lib-Dems being more or less invisible, the Tory Party will be able to do what it wants, restricted only by the judiciary that it can't get at.

There are some great corollaries. If May loses the Supreme Court appeal she can appeal to the European Court of Justice. Would she do that???????? If, it's a very big IF, the CPS does take up the «election fraud» case, decides to prosecute and finds the Leave Campaign guilty, who does what and when? It really is pure Alice In Wonderland.

What does Alice think? She thinks that the only rational outcomes are a hard Brexit, with the UK in a probable economic recession for at least a decade, or rejection of the referendum result. But, as Alice knows, rationality doesn't come into it; we're in Wonderland The most likely result? A soft-ish Brexit, a country forever divided, nobody pleased, numerous scarce resources necessarily applied to matters that shouldn't have needed to be addressed. She asks: why hasn't anyone the guts to admit that this was all an awful mistake?

Brexit And All Saints' day

 

Brexit

The High Court verdict on Brexit could conceivably reverse the referendum result but problems remain (sic). The outrage from the gutter press and Tory Reich can simply be dismissed as the natural result of cheats seeing their spoils possibly being snatched from them. I did wonder, however, why nobody appears to have complained to the PCC at the Daily Mail's inference that judges (in general by implication) drive while using their phones. Isn't that a libel in the absence of evidence and where's the evidence? (of judges in general). I still don't understand why the gutter press in the UK hasn't been hauled before the PCC on numerous Brexit points. The outrage should also make clear to anyone with half a brain that the Tory Reich et al have no faith in parliamentary democracy. So much for their claimed belief in home rule and transparency.

However, that is a minor issue. Two important points arise. The first is whether the government can get at the Supreme Court in some way, since that is where the matter is likely to end up. I've no idea about that but it will be important. The other, assuming the Supreme Court backs the current ruling, is whether enough MPs can accept that the referendum result was only advisory and not a mandate, as has often been implied. True the referendum result can be regarded as a democratic vote but democracy in the UK has never been ruled by plebiscites and cannot be. Parliament has always acted as a filter and should do so on this matter (in my view). If it comes to this, much will depend on the pressure Remainers can put on their MPs, since the gutter press and Tory Reich are sure to do so.

All Saints' Day

I never remember All Saints' Day being noticed in the UK and I don't think that was because I was never religious. However it is a national holiday here and the shops are full of pots of chrysanthemums to be placed on graves. I can't see any harm in people putting flowers on the graves of loved ones but it appears to be more general here, something more like a form of worship of the dead, as in Mexico's Day of the Dead. I was conscious while in the UK that there was an old wives' tale that you shouldn't bring chrysanthemums into the house or someone would die but that was about the sum of it. I wonder about the connection between chrysanthemums and the dead; there must be some historical/mythic/folkloric connection but I don't know it. I guess it's all harmless. (Unlike Brexit.)

Post-Truth Society

Post-Truth Society?

I came across a new expression the other day, new to me that is, and it immediately sprang connections in my mind with a few other themes on which I'm inclined to ruminate. The expression was «the post-truth era», which is apparently the era we are in. What I think it means is an era in which truth, or any semblance of it (we're not talking about absolutes here) is of little consequence. So politicians, for instance, can tell blatant lies in the almost certain knowledge that they will get away with them with impunity. Others of consequence, such as powerful companies, have not infrequently done the same in the past, but not with certain knowledge of impunity and probably having consulted their copious legal and PR teams beforehand. So the post-truth era is new in the UK, and possibly in any modern democracy and I find its implications both intriguing and nefarious.

What does total disregard for the truth, for that is what it is, imply? To me it implies a total contempt for anyone with any intelligence and a belief that the lies being told will be believed by a significant perecentage of those hearing/reading them. For that to be effective we need a very significant number of people who are very gullible or ill-educated or who believe it is in their interest to claim to believe the lies. In the post-truth era, lies are obviously believed to be effective and so the necessary conditions must hold true. And belief in the efficacy of lies implies to me a total contempt for society.

One of the things I love about the small rural village in which I live is the pervading sense of community, of the importance of this small society. It was Margaret Thatcher who said that there was no such thing as society (so, anarchy or what?) and she also who in essence legitimised the importance of wealth in the British mindset. I have no problem with the legitimacy of creating wealth, or even accumulating it, but in the absence of any concept of society wonder what restrictions there might be on the way it should be made (we Brits abolished slavery around 200 years ago). The banker I mentioned in my last posting volunteered that people had asked him why no one had forseen the 2008 crash. His answer was that the banks were making so much money that they didn't want it to stop and didn't care to look ahead. So much for caring about society. The upshot, I think, is a tendency towards a culture that reveres wealth and asks few questions about how it is made.

What has happened in the interim, in the UK and USA certainly and no doubt elsewhere, is that the

wealth gap between the richest and poorest sectors of society has grown enormously. At the same time, and in part to help wealth creation, public sector budgets and hence public sector services, have increasingly been cut. The result has been to further increase the wealth gap and create a large under-class of poor and often ill-educated people who feel disenfranchised. That in turns means a large group of people open to exploitation in the post-truth era and hence the rise of populism and unchallenged blatant lies. In past times these conditions have given rise to political extremes, revolution and fascism/communism. Let's hope it doesn't happen this time around.

Even worse, this situation seems to be reinforcing itself and there appears to be no effective policical will to check or reverse it. That does not paint a pretty pciture for the future.

Phonetic English

Let's accept that language changes continuously and very often not in ways that purists and conservatives like. So it is with spelling and we all make spelling mistakes from time to time but......... My stance on this is that people should know the rules at any one time and so know if they are breaking them and have an intended reason for doing so. I don't expect the popular media to know the rules, let alone follow them or have knowing reasons for not doing so, but I do expect the more responsible media to do so. So it was with some dismay that I read in an ITN news bulletin about police stopping a car because of a suspect «tire» and a report in The Independent of people who «sort» refuge. These points can be dismissed as the moans of a grumpy old man but beware the instructions on anything dangerous such as use of medication or electrical goods. I haven't yet seen «discrete» and «discreet» confused on anything dangerous but have little doubt that that time will come. And I often wonder what some people think inflammable means. Interestingly, if an actionable incident were to occur as a result of a spelling mistake, a learned judge would be called upon to make a ruling and I wonder what arguments he/she would encounter.