The Corner of the Bubble

The UK General Election: Part Two

2010-05-12T23:45:00.028+01:00

In my last post, I outlined my thoughts on the UK election and the various outcomes that we might see arise from it.

The election took place on 6th May, but it's only now, almost a week later that we have a good understanding of what shape the UK government will take for the forseeable future.

In the final days of the campaign, opinion polls suggested a reasonably close three-way split, with the Conservatives in front, followed by New Labour and then the Liberal Democrats, the latter predicted to make big gains.

But, on election night before any of the votes were offically counted, the exit poll correctly revealed the result as being somewhat different. The Conservatives had indeed won the largest number of seats, with Labour in second, but the Liberal Democrat vote had very surprisingly returned a lower number of seats than before. No party had obtained an overall majority.

The unfairness of the "First Past the Post" voting system can be seen in the result, as follows:

Party	Seats Won	Share of Vote
Conservatives	306	36.1%
New Labour	258	29%
Liberal Democrats	57	23%
Others	28	11.9%

As the figure needed for a majority stands at 326, the Conservatives were just too far off for a minority government to be considered a good option. And the arithmetic didn't favour a Labour-Liberal coalition either. A coalition of those, seen as a real possibility in the run-up, would need support from regional (Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish) parties to succeed.

With the Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power, Nick Clegg chose not to follow constitutional convention and allow the sitting prime-minister, Gordon Brown to attempt to form a government. Instead he declared that the Conservatives should try first and entered into talks with them. But again by convention, it was necessary for Brown to remain as PM until a final deal could be struck.

Thus began three days of uncertainty as discussions occured out of sight from the electorate regarding the matter of who would govern them. Commentators and the political classes anxiously watched the financial markets, aiming to ensure that the level of uncertainty that existed would not lead to an attack by speculators on the currency or the nations debt.
Things took a turn on Monday 10th when it was revealed that the Liberals had secretely also been talking to Labour, and announced formal discussions with them. Gordon Brown, seen as an impediment to a deal, announced that he would soon step aside to facilitate it.

And then the Tory press went beserk. David Cameron, whose party did not win a majority even under the slanted voting system had been "robbed of victory", said The Sun, also declaring that Britain was now on "the brink of dictatorship". The Daily Telegraph described the Labour/LibDem talks as an attempt at a "coup" to nullify the election result. Richard Littlejohn of the Mail used similar language and added that it would have been little different had Brown "ordered the tanks to roll down Whitehall and train their guns on the meeting of the Parliamentary Conservative party". Rupert Murdoch's Sky News abandoned its thin veneer of impartiality, as Adam Boulton angrily turned on Alistair Campbell and Kay Burley bullied a dissenter calling for electoral reform.
(See the amusing follow-up here.)

For their part, Labour put forward a team of negotiators consisting of Brown, PR man Alistair Campbell and Lords Adonis and Mandelson, not bothering to consult their parliamentary party, indicating just how seriously they took the concept of democracy.
However, with the reaction of the media, and importantly the financial vultures (the pound dropped by 1p against the dollar inside an hour), other senior New Labour figures soon moved to distance themselves and any chance of a deal, described as a potential "progressive coalition" was scuppered. It remains to be seen if the LibDems had any intention of pursuing this course other than as a means to extract concessions from the Tories - which they successfully did, gaining a promise of a referendum on the voting system.

After this, events took on an air of inevitability. Brown resigned as Prime Minister, was replaced by David Cameron and both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats recieved official consent from their parties to enter into a formal coalition.

The deal arrived at contains some give and take in both directions. A referendum will be held to ask if the voting system should be changed to the Alternative Vote, only a minor improvement on the current FPTP, and a long way from proportional representation (PR), which the LibDems wanted and which the Tories had most to lose from. The nuclear weapons system, Trident, will be retained. The LibDem manision tax will be scrapped, as will the Tory inheritance tax cut.
There will be some changes to the tax system to reflect LibDem ideas, but the harsh Tory immigration plan remain.
Most importantly, the new government will begin immediately to make enormous cuts to public spending, by an amount that was estimated before the election to be six times higher than anything that had been detailed by any party. This will be much larger in scale than any of the Thatcher cuts in the 1980s and it is impossible to foresee their implementation without social unrest on a significant scale.

In aligning themselves with the Tories on this in exchange for modest reforms elsewhere, the Liberal Democrats have blunted any chance that opposition to these cuts will be able to find a political voice. Following the closed-door negotiations, media hysteria and subservience to the money markets, it is difficult to view the post-election process as having been anything but a stitch-up by the main three UK parties, all determined to ensure that their common agenda to cut living standards to appease the financial aristocracy can proceed without a hitch.

The UK General Election

2010-04-24T23:36:00.001+01:00

The UK General Election will take place on Thursday May 6th this year. For the first election in four, there is seen to be a genuinely tight contest and some uncertainty about who will form the next government. New Labour have been in power for 13 years and their time there may be at an end.

Hoping to replace Gordon Brown as prime-minister is David Cameron, the Tory leader. He is a PR man, whose image is in the mould of Tony Blair, from an exceedingly rich background, and is flanked by George Osbourne, his shadow-chancellor, from an even richer background. Leading up to the campaign, it had looked like the Tories would gain enough votes to have a small majority and thus form the government. But there has been something of a resurgence by New Labour, meaning that the Tories will now be lucky if this occurs.

This campaign has also been a first in terms of the live TV debates that have been aired. Heavily stage-managed affairs, these see Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg (leader of the Liberal Democrats) being asked questions and then debating amongst each other. At the time of writing, two of these have occurred. Nick Clegg, mostly an unknown figure to the general public, has been seen as the overall winner, largely due to cynicism about the two largest parties and his being seen to represent a change. His performances have been hailed by the press, and the impression formed of a much more impressive figure than Clegg actually is. In my view, neither his policies or his performance were of a much higher standard than his competitors. Nevertheless his party has recieved a boost, adding to the uncertainty. There is speculation that is the Tories do not win an overall majority, Clegg's Lib Dems may form a coalition of some kind with New Labour, allowing the latter to remain in power.
If neither of these things happen, the result will be a hung-parliament, which could lead to another election.

The major issue in the campaign is the state of the public finances, in particular the deficit and the mounting national debt. The Tories want to make harsh cuts to public spending immediately in order to bring this down, whereas New Labour advocate a more gradual approach and warn against the Tory measures which they say will damage the economic recovery that is tentatively underway.
Lurking behind all of this are the international banks and debt markets, who have the power to increase interest rates on borrowing, effectively a veto on public spending.

It is distressing that all of the three major parties, including the Liberal Democrats, while disagreeing tactically on how public spending will be cut, are silently unanimous in their desire to appease the bankers and to have the general population pay. They all agree that the cuts needed will exceed in magnitude those made by the Thatcher government on the 1980s.
That's a sobering thought and it is quite astounding that there has been no high-profile challenge to it, nor any suggestion that the banks or the wealthy should pay instead.
The public debt that exists is a result of the behaviour of the banking sector - caused both by the drop in tax receipts brought on by the recession and by the bailout of the banks to stop them going bust. A modest deficit was run by the Blair government prior to the crisis, but this accounts for only around a fifth of the debt.

Thus it is not inaccurate to say that having caused all of the problems in the first place, and being propped up by taxpayers, the financial institutions are now blackmailing the same taxpayers into cutting back on their living standards. And the main parties, having assisted in allowing the greed and speculation the entire time meekly accept this, proposing only very limited regulatory reform on the banks, who all the while continue to break their own records for bonuses and golden handshakes.

Notwithstanding the arguments made against them by New Labour, it is my view that it would be a dreadful state of affairs if the Conservatives to win. Their main slogan in the campaign is about the "Big Society". The implication is that the size of the state would be cut - that is funding for schools, hospitals and other services - and for control to fall to "society" instead. Of course, society is this context does not refer to any form of popular control, but to big business.
Contrasted with this, a New Labour - LibDem coalition may well be the least worst option.

Child Abuse in the Irish Catholic Church

2010-03-28T17:01:00.012+01:00

And lo, it did come to pass, that the head of the Irish Catholic Church (Cardinal Brady) was found to have personally covered up cases of child abuse. Behold, said the Lord, this criminal should be thrown into jail.

As one of three church investigators into two children being abused in the 70s, Cardinal Brady interviewed two boys aged 11 and 14. Following meetings where they described their ordeals, he swore them to secrecy. And when the matter was reported to his then superiors, and the culprit simply moved to a succession of other parishes where the abuse continued for years in his full knowledge, he did nothing.
In failing to report the crimes to the civil authorities and taking steps to prevent the victims from doing so, Brady is guilty of the crime of misprision of felony.

Pathetically, rather than have him answer for this, some of his apologists have sough to employ the Nuremberg defense by suggesting that canon law overrides civil law and that he was doing his duty by following the former.
And the Cardinal, while apologising for his actions "with handsight", has refused to do the decent thing by resigning. He says that he'll only do so if required by the Pope.

But meanwhile, Benedict XVI has issued a mealy-mouthed statement of apology for the abuse by preists, while refusing to address the role of his own heirarchy in allowing it all to happen and covering it up. He seems more concerned in his letter to Irish Catholics, about having a whinge about secular conspiracies against the church.

While further study of this is obviously needed, it would appear to me that the number of paedophiles in the church is grossly out of proportion with the rest of society. So unless there's something about that vocation that attracts paedophiles, I would suggest that instead it breeds them, through it's repressive rules on celibacy.

Why has this institution not been sued out of existence by now?

The Oscars

2010-03-06T20:30:00.001Z

I hear that the Oscars are happening again soon. My interest is only in passing, however, and I'm pretty cynical about the enitre thing. It seems that over the last few years, I've enjoyed the films winning awards in Cannes far more than those winning in Hollywood.

That's fortunate, I suppose - all of the Hollywood stuff is extensively marketed, in all the cinemas, thus if there's anything worth seeing there is plenty of opportunity to find out about it and see it. The films from Cannes tend not to get the same exposure, so the awards there are invaluable as a guide as what to look out for.

I thought last year was among the worst years in recent memory for film releases generally, and this is reflected in the Oscar nominations. (Ironically that they've chosen such a weak year to expand the number of Best Picture nominations to ten films.) That said, while I watch a relatively high quantity of films, there's no doubt that I've missed a few so maybe my perception is mistaken.
There were several releases that I found very enjoyable, but they all had serious flaws, and I can't think of a single one that stands out, or that I'll remember as a classic in years to come. Avatar was no doubt a landmark from a technical point of view. It pushes all of the right buttons to create a sense of wonder, and with the audience firmly behind the main characters, the action is rewarding and viscerally satisfying. But the allegory, along with both the good guys and the bad guys is jarringly one-dimensional, it's all been seen before, and thinking about it in the cold light of day, the 'message' is a lot less enlightened than it would at first seem.
Watchmen similarly was an enjoyable experience, impressively translated from the comic-book, with some striking imagery, an interesting story and characters. But it goes on too long to suspend disbelief and it's all very misanthropic.
Crazy Heart sees Jeff Bridges give a great performance, and he'll deserve the Best Actor award that he's sure to get, but the film as a whole is pretty ordinary otherwise, content to forego a plot of any import to focus on him.
Inglorious Basterds is a deeper film than most give it credit for. Like Tarantino's other work, it's not merely an orgy of violence. It's both an examination of America's national mythology - the old west (note Brad Pitt as a cowboy archetype) compared and contrasted with the ethics of National Socialism and an unsettling reminder of the power of propaganda. (Did you find yourself enjoying it as the Basterds fired their machine-guns indiscriminately at those in the French cinema, just as Hitler had enjoyed the same scenes on his screen minutes earlier? Did you notice how the captured German general was much more honorable than the Basterds themselves, before they murdered him?) But it's again far too long, drags in places and Tarantino will need to regain some of the ruthlessness he displayed in his earlier career if he's to match that level of quality.
What else? The Damned United is an entertaining look at the early career of Brian Clough. Moon is intelligent holds the attention, but the reveal was a bit of a let-down in my view. The Invention of Lying was a refreshingly original satire; one scene in particular is very moving. District 9 is an interesting concept that unfortunately degenerates into a shoot-em-up in the last 40 minutes. Endgame and Invictus are both about the end of Apartheit, and it's the former of these that are better - Invictus is a missed opprtunity.
Finally A Serious Man is a humorous and somewhat offbeat look at Jewish-America culture, with twin themes of fate and morality mixed in, notable for the questions it asks, and the fact that it doesn't give easy answers - or indeed any answers at all. By the end, nothing is "all tied up". Life goes on, just like always. I'm leaning towards this as my Best Film.

The Academy though, if rumours are to be believed, sees the whole thing as a two-way fight between Avatar, and a film that I haven't mentioned yet, The Hurt Locker. That's rather unfortunate, because The Hurt Locker isn't a good film at all. It's set in Iraq in 2004, and somehow manages to completely ignore Iraq, it's people and it's recent history, in favour of a generic action plot focusing on a single particularly reckless member of the US military who is addicted to violence. Iraqis feature peripherally as suicide bombers and sinister onlookers.
It has, admittedly drawn criticism from right-wingers in America, for not being sufficiently gung-ho about the war. But it's only nominally an 'anti-war' film. The war as seen as undesireable because it has damaging psychological effects on (from the perspective of the filmmakers) our soldiers and hurts our families. The damage - many orders of magnitude higher - to those living in the places on the recieving end is ignored. And so begins the rewriting of history in the public consciousness. The Iraq War, like the Vietnam War, before it, is an American tragedy. Pretty sickening.

Let's hope 2010 is better. Terrance Malick's Tree of Life, Chris Nolan's Inception and Ridley Scott's Robin Hood stand out as promising at this stage. And a special mention to The A-Team, likely to be my guilty pleasure.

Reading List

2009-12-24T17:43:00.001Z

Hasn't exactly gone according to plan so far, 2 months without a post. I'll put a bit of a reading list up.

Noam Chomsky : American linguist turned political activist. Seems to effortlessly deconstruct current events and place them in their proper historical context.

David McWilliams : Irish economist. I don't necessarily agree with his solutions, but his analysis of the (now fallen) Celtic Tiger economy and it's aftermath is more cogent than any other.

Richard Dawkins : Evolutionary biologist. Unapologetic defender of atheism, science and rationality.

Stephen Baxter : Writes science-fiction novels that are mind-bending in scope, taking into account all the latest physics and cosmology.

Stanislaw Lem : Polish sci-fi author. Only a few works translated into English, some of the most devestating yet starkly beautiful stuff I have ever read.

Can I edit this later? Hope so, because I'll add more, along with specific works by the aformentioned writers.

Here We Go!

2009-10-29T13:20:00.000Z

I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while. I liked writing when I was at school but have fallen out of the habit in the last few years.
Posting on messageboards gives a bit of practice, but it's not the same. This will allow me to do it in a more structured way.

So I'll use this space to share my thoughts about films, politics, and whatever else comes to mind. Enjoy, if I'm not a total bore.