Brave New World

Brave New World

After watching England's football team (mercifully but deservedly) beat Tunisia in the last few minutes two nights ago I spent a very enjoyable hour on my balcony, calvados in hand and breathing in the scent of the jasmine all around me (see photo), and got to wondering about the rôle of the middle classes in a society. I'm not sure why that thought occurred, although I am very conscious of a battle that seems to me to be going on for supremacy between the extreme right and the middle ground in Europe (and elsewhere).

I immediately recalled something that a Ghanaian student had said to me at Bristol university in the early 1960s. At the time, the Ghanaian president Nkrumah was busy slaughtering the middle classes in his country in order to cement his power. She said, ruefully: “At least it shows we have a middle class”. Why was that important? Because at the time most of the rest of the post-colonial, recently independent countries were engaged in conflict between extreme right and left-wing contenders for power, promoted by external capitalist/communist influences. They didn't have a middle class.

So what is the significance of a middle class, in Napoleon's scornful terms Britain's “shopkeepers”? According to George Bernard Shaw it was the bastion of morality (of a sort). GBS said that only the middle classes valued morality; the rich didn't need it and the poor couldn't afford it. And the middle classes, the bourgeousie, were widely ridiculed in artistic circles for their presumed philistinism; they rejected art that was extreme in any sense, irrespective of its artistic value, and embraced what was unchallenging. In general, the middle classes got a poor Press, neither one thing nor the other, portrayed as having no aesthetic sensibilities and as having aspirations only to distinguish themselves from the lower classes and aspiring to (slavishly aping ) the upper classes. This was the stereotypical picture of the middle classes in a lot of Europe in the (post-war) 1950s.

Someone significant (shame on me, I can't remember who) once said that all important battles have to be fought continually; they are never truly resolved. That is most certainly true of democracy. And, I think, the role of the middle classes in democracy is now more important than ever. Philistines to art and the possibilities of how life might be lived (keep the aspidistra flying) they may be, though not necessarily, but they are the bastions that keep extremes of political greed and power at bay. They also, almost innocently, assumed the importance and general acceptance of standards: honesty, integrity, moderation (and, OK, often God and the Queen and so on but so what). And no one believes that they always adhered to these “principles” but they did assert the importance of them. I believe that that assertion (in practice or not) had great importance in itself.

What I think is happening in our brave new world is that this “innocence” persists in middle classes but has become increasingly different from reality and blinds them to that reality. You could believe (and did) in what you read in newspapers, heard on the radio or saw on TV. OK, there were slightly different slants/angles but you could generally accept the substance as true. You most certainly can't now. There was a pride in the journalistic profession that journalists checked facts and gave reasoned opinions on them; that is most certainly no longer true. The distinction, once the “credo” of The Times newspaper, between the facts and the opinion, has long gone. There was a belief that institutions such as the BBC was independent and would report accurately and fairly, overlooking (innocently) its dependence on the government for budget. Broadly, you believed what you heard and saw and that, generally, wasn't too far from reality. You believed that your local MP did have the interests of his/her constituency at heart, whatever the conflict of views. The assumed standards prevailed. Only a true innocent or ignoramus would believe that now.

What, in contrast, we have now is “nature red in tooth and claw”. The power struggles are naked; lies repeated ad nauseam can become accepted as fact. But persisting innocence makes the middle classes blind to them and, perhaps, to the power that the middle classes have in a democracy if wielded as a collectivity. I think we need the middle classes and their value of standards more than ever now but we also need the middle classes to lose their innocence and wake up to the new reality.

Society, Community And The Politics Of The Pigs' Troth

Society, Community And The politics Of The Pig's Troth

I had some friends around to eat the other night, among them friend Nick who lives just along the road. We ended up, over coffee and calvados, reminiscing about our childhood. Both of us had what could today be called a deprived childhood, although neither of us wanted to claim that, but it certainly wasn't privileged. It was both happy and innocent but involved actions that today could have called down the wrath of authorities, court cases and who knows what else. So exactly what has changed, and made things worse?

I think there are three basic causes. one is political correctness, another is the politics of the pigs' troth and the third is a lack of any sense of society and community.

In our youngest days (and I speak here without Nick's specific if perhaps general consent) we would try to see a girl's knickers, claiming to be one up if we did so, and girls would collapse giggling if they saw a boy's penis (or nearly). So what? It's what kids of 7-8 do, isn't it? They're curious and want to get one-up on their mates. But a boy bending down to see a girl's knickers or flipping up her skirt, or a girl doing something to see a boy's underpants /penis is technically a sexual assault. Similarly, a kid scrumping apples/pears/cherries even flowers (which we all did; I well remember pinching a rose from someone's garden to give to a girlfriend) is technically theft but would be met with a thick ear if you were caught. There was never any question of making a court case out of such routine occurrences. Of course there were paedophiles then, as there are now, but then you lived in a community who knew who the paedophiles were and kids were warned to stay clear of them. It wasn't watertight prevention but was generally effective.

A clue? I've used the word “technically” twice and that is what the political correctness adherents do. They advocate that what is technically true has to be the truth and want the full force of the law to back them. To what end? To prove that they are right, whatever the social consequences; necessary at the time, perhaps they would claim, in denial of the consequences.

If this is music to the ears of anyone it is to those of unscrupulous lawyers and insurance companies. Lawyers want legal challenges; that is their source of revenue. Insurance companies want risks you might be persuaded to insure against.

Which leads me to the politics of the pig's troth, of which unscrupulous lawyers and insurance companies are only part. When Nick and I were young there were numerous trades, disciplines, potential careers apparently available; but just making money wasn't obviously one of them. You made money if you were successful in your career. Now, making money is a career in itself (means irrelevant) in an analogy to those people who, by general consent, are famous for being famous rather than for anything exceptional that they have done.

Once making money becomes a career (means irrelevant), the idea of achievement in any field becomes irrelevant. It doesn't matter how good you are, at anything, what matters is how much money you make, by fair means or foul. So we have the rip-off society, which ignores all social consequences. Society is dismissed. It is a hymn to Thatcherism, “there is no such thing as society”.

Mitterand once said that “nationalism is war”. The same could be said of a lack of any sense of society or community, as is evidenced in numerous suburbs of large towns around Europe. In the place of community and society, destructive gangs proliferate, feeding off their own. “Alienation” is the word always used there. So, we need to get rid of aliens? Or do we need to build a consciousness of the importance of society and community?

Days Of Boules And Roses

Boules

I went to the regional boules championships last week and, as usual, spent an agreeable few days with the regional championship regulars. My team didn't do that well but we will never know exactly how well. The regional President of the national boules association gave a (too) long speech at the beginning saying nothing of relevance except not to beat him up and to play in a good spirit. It wasn't clear at the time why anyone should want to beat him up but became so very shortly afterwards when it turned out that he had changed the system for deciding teams positions at the end of the championships. Few players, if any, understood the new system and it seemed that the officials didn't either. Only the top ten teams were given their positions and we weren't one of them. So the President's actions served simply to ensure that the players were pissed off and wanted to beat him up, the opposites of what he stated as his objectives. I think that properly qualifies him as what the French commonly know as a “vieux con”. It also made me reflect, not for the first time, that to appreciate Provençal methods of organisation a good understanding of chaos theory is required. Whenever I made public speeches I always wanted feedback; the honourable President clearly doesn't but someone should tell him he needs it.

The trip was nonetheless very enjoyable. Michel, who drove me and his wife and friend Jacques to Gréoux, in the Alpes de Haute Provence where the championships were held, chose a “straight line” route through the Alps' foothills just north of here. It took us through country that I hadn't seen before and where lavender fields stretched from horizon to horizon. I made a mental note to return there sometime in the summer when the lavender is in bloom; it must be a magnificent sight (and smell). The height we were at, well over 1000 ft, suggested that what was growing was what the French call “lavende” rather than “lavendin”. I'm unclear about the distinction (both look the same) but understand that the former keeps its colour longer when dried and has a milder smell. However, “lavende” apparently grows well only in land at over 1000 ft and fetches a much higher price in the markets so I presumed that that was what I was seeing. However, when I buy lavender oil I buy the “lavendin” variety. My nose can't detect the subtle distinction in smell between the two and the “lavendin” oil is both much cheaper and more intense.

Roses, Roses, Roses

They are one of my favourite flowers, a preference that I probably share with very many others. So here are photos of some of those that I have. The first two photos show the two roses I have climbing over the arch at the back of my garden; the yellow and white one is Pilgrim, the pink one Shropshire Lad, both from David Austin. The third photo is of two bush roses in my back garden; the yellow one is Graham Thomas and the copper-coloured one Pat Austin, again both from David Austin. I visited David Austin's garden some 20 years ago and it is an experience that every rose lover should surely experience at least one time in their lives. The other rose garden I remember from England with great affection is the walled garden at Mottisfont, in Hampshire, which is open to the public in June in the evenings, when the perfume of the roses, and the pinks and peonies planted below them, is at its strongest.

To supplement the roses both honeysuckles in the front are in full bloom (and I have roses in the front too, also in bloom, Penny Lane, Dublin Bay and The Fairy). The perfume on my balcony and around the front of the house in the evening is wonderful.

Clochemerle Country And Garden

Clochemerle Country And Occam's Razor

Friends Steve and Jo have just moved house, as readers of this blog will already know. So they have changed address (obviously). A problem is that the village has recently named all previously unnamed roads and given every house a number. These new names and numbers have been notified centrally to the government, as required, but not to any other body that may be involved, such as utility companies. That is the responsibility of the residents themselves. And this is where drop-down menus and the tick box mentality come in. Quite obviously, when you move house you have to have meters read and new addresses for bills notified. But…………..the utility companies have drop-down menus for addresses to be recorded and, since they haven't been informed of the new addresses they can't recognise them. In the case of Steve and Jo, they also have a right to a new identity card. Same problem; they have to register their address but from a drop-down menu that does not recognise their actual address. Problems, problems………….and what is the solution? It's easy; when new addresses are registered they should be made to update all relevant databases of addresses. Why doesn't that happen, automatically? Because someone isn't THINKING. Why not? Who gets paid to THINK about the work they do?

I am about to confront what I suspect may be a similar problem in submitting my request for French nationality. The submission form is quite clear on what proofs are required and I now have all the necessary documentation to hand. So what problem could there be, other than an outright refusal, which the French government has the right to make? Well.…………….Steve and Jo in their application were asked for information that was essentially superfluous; so the same could apply to me. That could, in the worst case, amount to more than a hundred pages and, in again the worst case, need translation from French into English by an officially qualified translator at an official rate of 65 euros per page. The result could be 5000+ euros of expenditure for no useful purpose. Obviously I'm hoping that this situation does not arise but…………..why should it ever be possible?

Occam's razor. Occam's razor proposes that the simplest solution to any problem is most probably the best. Above all, you eliminate what is superfluous. Is there a Civil Service in the world that applies it, at probably an enormous potential cost saving to the Civil Service itself? There are, around the world, numerous professors of administration. Do any of them have a project to produce some kind of algorithm/template that would enable a government to extract the maximum of the information it requires with the minimum of documentation? If not, why not? Oh, and if they did, would any government pay attention?

Political Analysis

I have to confess to being a tribal Labour voter, although I did vote Lib-Dem in despair at the last general election. Over the years, my political stance has become pragmatic rather than tribal (pace my ancestors). I've now come to the uncomfortable conclusion that the political future of the UK must lie with the Conservative Party. This is how I see it.

Power in the UK has always, at least for more or less 100 years, resided in which political party gains the support of most of the middle ground. At the current time, neither of the main political parties owns that and neither seems to be seeking it so the UK is crying out for a party that woos the middle ground. That has happened before, in the 1980s, when the Social Democrat party, subsequently merged with the Liberals, was formed by disenchanted Labour party heavyweights. The party had a short life and any such new party formed would most probably have a similar life. Why? Because such a party is really just waiting for either of the two main contenders, Labour or Conservative, to come to their senses, at which point it gets blown out of the water. So which of the main parties might first come to its senses?

Ed Milibrand changed the decisive vote for the election of the leader of the Labour Party from the elected MPs to the Party members. These are people who will vote for all desirable social measures but not necessarily realistic ones or ones that will find favour with the electorate at large. They are a force for the kind of revolutionary government for social change which had power in 1945. Whether they are desirable or not is a matter of personal opinion but they are definitely not the middle ground. And..………..the Labour Party at the moment is powerless to change that. As currently constituted, it cannot change unless it can change the profile of its party membership, which is not within its own power.

The Conservative party, as I see it at the moment, is a hostage to its extreme right wing. Theresa May, whatever her inclinations, cannot afford to offend the extreme right wing because a revolt by it would bring down the government. She can afford to offend the left wing of the party as long as she manages to avoid too many abstentions/adverse votes by her MPs. So that is what she is trying to do in order to cling to power (whatever the consequences). The consequences may well be that the Party loses the next general election but that is not the issue here; the issue here is whether the Party can change. And it can, whether it chooses to do so or not.

Am I exaggerating the importance of the middle ground? Given the extreme right wing measures of the current government, an extreme left wing spell could well legislate corrective measures that would be welcomed by many (me included). But, in the longer run…….? The Labour government of 1945 succeeded in some amazing achievements and had its share of revolutionaries but it also had its pragmatists. Despite them, it lost the next general election. Is there a Harold Wilson in the current party to save the day? If there is, he is most certainly, on the evidence to date, being sidelined; the dogmatists rule.

My House

The Banksia rose at the back has more or less finished blooming but there are plenty of other pleasing spots of colour waiting for the other rose bushes to come into bloom and supplement them. The photo below of the front of the house doesn't quite do it justice as the blue petunia surfinas in the hanging baskets don't show up because of the shade thrown by the lime trees opposite. I've asked the Mairie to prune the lime trees hard but without success so far; I'll get more insistent next year. The problem for me is that, because of the shade, I need in the front plants that will flower happily in it and there aren't so many of those. That accounts for the number of geraniums, which I don't particularly like. I try to avoid the cliché scarlet variety (in the worst possible taste according to Oscar Wilde) but geraniums there must be at the moment. Anyway, I've had the first tourist photographers of the season taking photos out front so it can't be that bad.

Photos And Sham Solutions

Catching Up On Photos

I haven't been showing many photos lately but I have been taking them so I thought I'd catch up. The first of those below is of friends Steve and Jo receiving their French citizenship in the Prefecture in Valence. The second is of one of my attempts to capture the blue of the sky here, at the boules courts in Buis. It doesn't fully capture the intensity of the blue but shows someof the gradations of shades. The third is of my back garden right now. 

Sham Solutions; The Inherent Conflict In Democracy.

Most countries have problems of one sort or another and Britain has as many or more than the rest. So what are, or may be, the solutions? How do you find them? It sounds simple; rack your brains (and most countries have a fair percentage of very good ones) and look at what solutions other countries have found. It has been baffling to me why the UK hasn't found better solutions to many of its problems, better solutions that friend Steve and I even with our political differences, often find. But I realise that I have been naive; it isn't at all that simple.

From the electorate's point of view the problem is simple to state, even if individual solutions may differ widely. It's much more complex from the politician's point of view. There there is not just the problem itself, there are also the Party line and Whips, convictions and the desire to be re-elected.

Citizens within a country may feel they have a big problem, be concerned about the effectiveness/efficiency of their education systems, their healthcare systems, their (personal) security systems or whatever; a single, perhaps difficult problem but not one difficult to define. But they will need a political solution. Over to the politicians then.

Their big problem, whatever issue the electorate raises with them, is how to get re-elected. So their obvious solution is not necessarily to solve the problem that the electorate has raised but they must appear to have addressed it. Illusion is all, from their perspective. If they can successfully provide the illusion they don't need to address the problem at all. Which is easier?

Democracy, to the slight extent that it has succeeded in the world, has depended on two essentials; education of the electorate and the existence of independent sources of information available to the educated public. Only these can constrain any politician whose major concern is to retain position and power (by no means all politicians). The health of any democracy depends on the respect accorded by politicians, of whatever persuasion, to these two essentials. Subvert them, downgrade education and spread false information and the real victims are not just the electorate, fooled into accepting lies and fantasies and unable to discern them, but the very democracy itself.

Spring And Colours

Spring And Colours

All the evidence says that spring is definitely here now. In the open daffodils, narcissi, muscari, forsythia, japonica and violets are all in bloom and friends Steve and Jo's lawn is carpeted in primroses. My garden is too exposed for primroses to take hold but I have one that has sown itself in the front, nestling in the shade between two pots. In the markets and shops there are local asparagus to be had, expensive for the moment but they will reduce in price by a third over the next two to three weeks.

Spring and Easter always gave me a psychological boost in England and they do even more so here because I know that so many of the things I like here are about to appear. There are already Charentais melons from Morocco, which are good, in the shops and the local ones won't be far behind, followed by apricots, peaches and nectarines. My lilac and roses will start blooming, eating outside will become the norm and there will be warm evenings when I can sit on my balcony with a Calvados to hand.

Spring does, however, seem to be rather late this year, somewhat surprisingly after a mild winter. We have had really cold weather, plus the customary one day of snow, for only a couple of weeks in December, since when temperatures have held up during the day. And most of the flora blooming now would normally have been in bloom a couple of weeks earlier. At the beginning of April the hillsides would normally be blue and yellow, the yellow of coronilla and the blue of irises; but the coronilla is just showing signs of coming into bloom and I haven't yet seen an iris blooming anywhere. Anyway, my back garden and the pots in the front are pretty much ready for lift off so there is much to look forward to.

As for colours, blue is the colour, as every Chelsea fan knows, and I have been trying to capture the blue of the skies here on camera, with little success to date. It's the quality of the light that drew impressionist painters here in the past and that comes from the blue sky. I've been tempted to describe the blues in the sky as deep blue but that is inaccurate as the blue is not necessarily dark. Rather it is an intense blue, light or dark, and it tends to have a slight shade of violet within it. It varies from what I would call a pale Wedgewood blue to an intense violet and the deeper shades are generally apparent when the temperature is at its highest. On some days you can see the gradations increase from early morning as the day heats up. And the intensity of the blue tends to be emphasised by the frequent lack of even a whisp of cloud in the sky. One day, hopefully, I'll capture it in a photo.

Economics and French Nationality

Thinking

I've been reading a book by the American economist J K Galbraith on what he calls «innocent fraud» (The Economics Of……..), some of it as he himself admits not quite so innocent. What he means by this term is a deception achieved because people believe something that «everyone knows» but which is not actually true or, at least, has no substantive evidence behind it. Two examples he picks are the separation between the private and public sectors and the location of bureaucracy.

He argues very persuasively that the public and private sectors are so intertwined that it is almost impossible in most cases to separate them. The general perception is that public expenditure leads to debt (bad) and private expenditure leads to profit (good). But the US defence budget, about the largest single budget in the US, is purely public expenditure and effectively subsidises a great deal of American industry (in a country that cherishes the idea that private enterprises should never be subsidised). This very point, indeed, has been a bone of contention in US-Europe co-operation talks.

In the other example he suggests that bureaucracy is frowned upon by everyone and associated with civil servants and the public sector, as against private enterprise. Yet he demonstrates that the very large, private sector, international companies that now collectively have more power than most governments and effectively rule the world are nothing but bureaucracies and, indeed, act as such.

I love all this, the exposing of all those unquestioned and mistaken assumptions; assumptions which, importantly, enable those able to understand and willing to exploit them to create «innocent frauds».

French Nationality

My friends Steve and Jo have achieved French nationality and invited me to accompany them to their formal acceptance ceremony in Valence. I was quite impressed with the ceremony. The ceremony started with a short film on what it meant to be French, then there as a short speech by the sub-Prefect for the Department in which we live and finally a photo session, each of the new French nationals being photographed with the sub-Prefect. The French generally love speeches, or rather perhaps dignitaries of all sorts love making them, and I had been in dread of interminable speeches by numerous dignitaries. Such was not the case; the whole ceremony took about an hour, followed by drinks and cakes and………...documents.

Steve and Jo received in their welcoming pack the “livret de famille” that every French family has plus new birth and marriage certificates. Not only born again but also married again! As an official had said to Steve when he and Jo first arrived in France and were completing some early formalities “Now you have a file; in France, if you don't have a file you don't exist”. I know that France is much larger geographically than the UK but where on earth do they store all the documentation and how on earth do they ever reference and find it if they ever need to?

One thing that was said in the ceremony particularly caught my attention and pleased me. “You should be proud to be French, just as France is proud to welcome you”. A country that is proud to welcome immigrants must be good news.