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U2 and Tax

I’ll start with the important one. U2 started well with some old songs, but very quickly became too boring to watch (Watching on iPlayer… Yet another year passes and I still haven’t made it to Glastonbury. Suspect I too old and cynical to make the most of it now).

But whatever their performance – it’s hard to stomach with their despicable actions on tax (going offshore to avoid paying tax in Ireland: info at ArtUncut), especially in the context of their rather sanctimonious stance on ethics!

Morrissey

The Morrissey set was actually surprisingly good – I tried it expecting the worst, but a good selection of old (including Smiths) songs, and new (brand new in some cases!) made it a fun, dramatic and succinct set. A decent backing band (something that’s sometimes let him down in recent years) helped, and ignited a superb rendition of “Meat is Murder”.

Here’s what Morrissey himself told Pitchfork magazine:

“We played Glastonbury last night, and we did well, but the rain was bitingly cold and the audience were soaked and covered in wet mud and it was dark and dismal and every time I opened my mouth I swallowed rain. Under such conditions you can’t really expect much from an audience. I think they were there for U2 anyway– understandably. U2 have an enormous Star Wars set with drumsticks that light up northern Africa, and a sound system that would drown out an earthquake. I can’t compete with that. Not with my post office savings account. All I have to offer the world are songs.”

Morrissey even managed a dig at Cameron (“silly twit”), echoing Marr’s recent tweet:

There are some excellent new songs (eg. “People are the same everywhere”). It’s staggering this man has no record deal! (Pitchfork Article)

The way I see it, Ryan Giggs and others have basically been tricked by the lawyers. Lawyers have charged vast amounts of money (hundreds of thousands) in return for preventing the story being published. It’s a promise they can’t make. (I’m sure it was all worded very carefully that lawyers weren’t claiming to prevent story getting out, just simply lodging a paper at the courts. No one will be getting money refunded!)

I don’t have any sympathy for celebrities who have slept around and suffer consequences. But I do feel sorry for people being ripped off by lawyers.

The problem I have is this: if I am a Twitter user, how do I know what I can’t say? How would I find out? Even if I was conscientious and went to the courts to find out if something was allowed, they can’t tell me!

The way normal injunctions work is for a court to issue an order to a newspaper (or other outlet) ie. a single communication. For a Superinjunction, the courts must contact all the news outlets. OK, there’s a small and finite number of those.

But if we regard Twitter and the like as being The Press, rather than (more realistically) just being equivalent to pub banter, the courts would need to notify every Publisher (=twitter user) what the story was they were not allowed to publicise. In essence, making sure everyone knows!

Worse than that, as pointed out by Ian Hislop on Have I Got News For You this week, what happens if someone is prosecuted? That person would have to go to prison without anyone knowing (or being able to talk about) why…

How is that workable? Kafka, anyone?

I discovered Jacques Brel in my teens (via Bowie, Marc Almond, Goodbye Mr Mackenzie and the like, no doubt). And each time I go back, I find his songs as fresh as ever.

This song is called “Les Toros”

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Like so many of his songs (The Bigots, The Waltz in a Thousand Time, Amsterdam), it starts pleasantly enough but with lyrical twists and rising musical tension builds to a spine-tingling crescendo of passion or anger.

The Bulls (above) describes a nice day out to see bull-fighting, sunny day, people dressing up; but gradually introduces bloody imagery until it ends:

And when finally they fell
Did not the bulls dream of some hell
Where men and worn-out matadors still burn, aaahh.
Or perhaps with their last breaths
Would they not pardon us their deaths
Knowing what we did at
Carthage, Waterloo, Verdun, Stalingrad, Iwo Jima, Hiroshima, Saigon!

Trying to make some sort of sense of the Julian Assange charges.

Interesting dissection of hoe the press works/smears:
http://jezebel.com/5711600/how-aol-news-started-the-sex-by-surprise-lie
and more:
http://jezebel.com/5708456/some-thoughts-on-sex-by-surprise

Like this blogger, I have no thoughts one way or the other about his guilt or innocence…
BUT
Give that the charges were dropped two months ago, and that if true he’d be looking at a $700 fine, it’s HARD not to see this as a *political detention*!! It’s really staggeringly blatant!
[have i got news for you had some interesting comment last night...]

If you want a window into this Assange character, you can actually get to his old blog (2006-2007) using archive.org:
http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/
It’s makes interesting/fun reading; he comes across as occasionally philosophical, tedious poetry, messianic, vain… …and always a bit full of himself. He IS clever and rational (sometimes even funny), but he really KNOWS IT.

“I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by
false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide
evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”

“It has often been said that mathematics is the cheapest university department to run, for all one needs is pencil, a desk and a waste paper basket. This is not so. Philosophy is cheaper still, since in philosophy we do not even need the basket.”

“Illegitimate governance is by definition conspiratorial—the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” …When a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks are an instrument of information warfare.”

NYPD Blue with its constant camera shake was nauseating when it first appeared. It seemed like a gimmick that would not be repeated, something very specific to that programme. Yet, now it’s become the norm for “gritty” real-life dramas. (It’s not even that new – consider the steadicam use in films like “Scum” in the 1970s – also aiming at gritty.)

I guess there are two changes that have brought this about:

• cameras are lighter and don’t need sturdy support
• image clarity has meant that  camera movement doesn’t result in blurry smears

But there’s something else too: a cultural shift. Whereas thirty years ago, it was considered somewhat amateur to have wobbly camerawork, it’s now considered positively, a liberation.

But more than that: it’s now seen as a signifier of authenticity for footage to be handheld. It’s a statement of proof that it hasn’t been faked. Of course this is nonsense: it’s just as easy to add to some fake handheld motion to some filmed animation, 3D model insertion or photoshopped trickery; and 3D model insertion is perfectly capable of following camera movements (see action adventures or even live election night broadcasts)

Watch the video for Hiszekeny by Venetian Snares. Clearly, it’s stop-frame animation but we are asked to accept it’s handheld.

I hate to sound old-fashioned but I miss the stability of fixed cameras.

For a period of around 5 years I had no telly. My ex had left and got that (I kept the washing machine, so no complaints).

I was surprised at how little I missed it!

You know if you see a child growing up each day you don’t see the gradual changes, but if you meet that child at yearly intervals, the changes seem vast (“My, how you’ve grown!”)? Well, this is how it was for me and TV. It seemed a vast shift had happened in the output. It felt like it was no longer aimed at me.

Four main observations from that period late 90s to early 2000s:

• the target age appeared to have dropped significantly and now, rather than adults, television treated us as children – or immature, pranky, witless students
• it had moved from being reasonably intelligent, like a broadsheet newspaper, to totally tabloid, including being in awe of celebrities
• producers were hellbent on making audience interact, usually in quite desperate ways
• swearing seemed to be completely acceptable in any context

Target Age

Sure, there had been plenty of silly immature stuff in the early 90s: The Word, James Whale… But rather than being late night, back-from-the-pub fare, it had now seeped into pretty much all programme making. Presenters made a virtue of being stupid or irresponsible, which becomes a bit weary-making very quickly.

Tabloid TV

Maybe this is the same point as above. But more than the infantile presentation, there seemed to be a new focus on celebrities, on gossip, on the lewd or violent.

Interactive TV

There’s always been a bit of of interactivity. I wrote to “Think Of A Number” for factsheets when I was a kid, sent pictures to “Vision On” and collected bottle tops for “Blue Peter“.

And now, with the web, getting hold of programme information should be a whole lot easier/smoother. It should barely be worth mentioning.

Yet, they feel the need to constantly badger us to vote, call a number, email, text, press the red button, whatever. This is just an annoying distraction from programmes. And feels so desperate, which I guess it is: the measures of engagement is based on these interactions and producers need to beg us to validate them.

Swearing

I’m really not particularly offended personally. And it can be quite funny sometimes, when used in eg. quizzes. What feels wrong is not that they have moved the threshold but that there is no threshold any more, no thought going into whether it’s appropriate. Anything goes; we don’t care.

And there’s more…

This new idea of striping seemed to have come along. Instead of a series which would run every Thursday at 9.30, they’d put the series on over the whole week: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday… get it over with quickly. The chances of me being in regularly on one night of the week was far more likely than me being available every single night of one week.

Had the producers concluded that we no longer can retain a plot over a period of weeks? That we’d forget it if we didn’t the next episode just 24 hours later? Or was this just an aspect of the insanely annoying lack of patience that TV now has?

I keep hearing people on all sides saying what we need is “a strong and stable government. ” By strong we seem to mean unchallengeable: Supreme Power. In a democracy?

Coalition is NOT a failure of politics – it’s a success. We need people talking to each other, checking each other, stopping each other doing stupid things. It’s majority government that fails people by not representing the true breadth of views of the people.

Not that many days ago a few Conservatives and much of the right-wing press appeared to be calling for something like the equivalent of Acerbo Law (look it up). It was essentially a way to strengthen a party who didn’t quite have a majority – so that they do have a majority. Deeply undemocratic. And it resulted in Mussolini’s fascists gaining great power in the 1920s.

I’m finding myself getting extremely angry about the way all this has been conducted. The secrecy. The way politicians seem to have forgotten that they’re public servants. I’m angry with the LibDems for so easily and quickly teaming with the Conservatives. And I’m angry with Labour for being so unflexible and not engaging in discussions.

If we’re going to have coalition government, let’s have proper coalition government - where all the popular parties are represented.

I’d like to hope we’re moving away from majority government and into an era of coalitions. (PR will ensure this.) And if this is the case, then the parties have to grow up and accept that things need to be done differently. A proper democratic coalition would have Lab, Con, Lib around the table, getting proportional amount of seats in cabinet etc. I suspect it will take the British political culture a long time to work this out. But maybe in a decade things will be more civilised and more democratic.

So we have our ConDem government (probably). We can only hope that if Cameron tries to do anything seriously damaging to the country, then LibDems will vote against it. We can only hope that the LibDems have not committed themselves so deeply that there’s no way out. They can bring down this government if they want. Of course, the grim reality is that the LibDems have no money left for another election (unlike Labour and Conservative who can raise money from their rich friends). So they’re stuck there.

Last word to Mark Steel on twitter: “Now I know it’s not entirely your fault, but it’s only fair if all of you who voted LibDem to ‘Keep the Tories out’ lines up for a good slap.”

OK, the results are not all in yet, but it’s roughly what we were led to expect. So now what? The situation no politician was willing to speculate about. Looks like we have LibDems going to Conservatives to do the gentlemanly thing and talk to the people with the biggest share of the vote first. Nick Clegg talking about it as if it’s just about numbers, seems to be ignoring policies. And seriously, would anyone trust LibDems again if they propped up the Tories? is this genuinely what those people thought they were voting for? From the LibDems I know, I’d say emphatically not.

Who should be talking?

But here’s my problem: if it really is about going with the people’s mandate like he says, then Conservatives  and Labour should be forming a pact, not Con-Lib!! (if anything Con and Lab have more in common, I’d say.)

So, we’re told we’re in confusion… as if The Public have failed to vote properly. It’s being presented as a crisis. I hate the stupid rolling news – BBC is showing a live helicopter shot of Clegg’s car “making its way through the London traffic”! And there’s speculation about 1974-type scenario: minority government then another election in months. Surely we’ve moved on from that?

The polticians said they didn’t want “behind closed doors deals” – all parties have said they don’t want to do this (they’ve used it as argument against nhing parliament). Fine: easy, just do the deals publically then!

Coalition not Pact

It makes absolutely no sense for the parties that came first and third getting together. Other countries must be laughing at us! The coalition should be between the strong first and second! The very fact that this is unthinkable to Labour and Conservative exposes someething ver deeply wrong with our political system.

It really is very simple. The people of Britain have placed most of their votes with Labout and Conservative. It is those two parties who should be working together to make a coalition  that truly represents the mandate.

The Lib Dems should hardly get a look in, given their share of the vote. (And this is truly what people actually object to – them having “kingmaker” powers, large representation for small vote share)

What situtuations should the coalition be between first and third parties, excluding the second? It might make sense if Lib and Con were very closely allied in terms of policy and very far from Lab. But that is clearly not the case here. The Labour party has  exempted itself for purely childish reasons!

People seem to think “work with” has to mean “agree with”. Trust shouldn’t come into it, it’s not needed: if you’re paying attention to the issues, you don’t need to trust the leaders, because you are engaging. It is only if you (the public, or the backbench MPs) are being lazy and not engaging that you need Trust.

A Hung Parliament Is Dangerous?

This myth of a “strong stable” government… meaning giving absolute power to one party – so entrenched in our political culture – really needs to be swept away. If we had a fair voting system (some form of PR), we’d never have a single party having majority control.

Is  hung parliament really such a terrible thing. Isn’t it possible it’s actually a positive thing? If we had proportional representation in this country, all parliaments would be hung. Parties would be forced to always work together. Let’s use the word “coalition” – which suggests real engagement – as opposed to “hung” which suggests a failure.

Coalition government is pretty common too. In the whole of Europe only three countries currently have a majority government (France, Greece, Malta)

One argument against coalition government is that it will lead to worsening debt problems and and fiscal imprudence. Here’s the evidence that this is rubbish.

Coalition government is something we should strive for. It’s far more democratic than Supreme Power to whoever got half the seats (usually not much over a third of the votes) because it means the popular parties all get a say.

A Real Opportunity

We now have a real chance to develop our country’s political system into something mature and modern. A chance to finally sweep out the historical anomalies. To have a proper grown up political system. Like other countries.

We shouldn’t be in a situation where we’ve said what we want but we don’t know what we’re going to get.

A couple of positives

I’m encouraged by the anger of people being turned away from voting: not exactly the voter apathy we are told about.

I’m thrilled by the election of Caroline Lucas in Brighton. So refreshing to see her interviewed by Paxman and actually answering the question! It’s
refreshing but also actually exposes/shows up how poor other politicians are.

There are still things bugging me about the Leaders Debate.

• The fact that the audience was not allowed to clap, boo, cheer or react in any way. To be honest the whole thing was set up to be so sterile it was close to pointless. The leaders were so busy trying to remember their lines that they didn’t even listen (and react) to the garbage the others were spouting. Or maybe they weren’t allowed; was that the agreed etiquette? (even the ghastly screensaver background made me think someone had made a decision to simply mesmerise us… it was just some ambient TV)
• Cameron proposed a dole system where, if you were offered a job and turned it down, then you would get benefits cut or removed (the impression he gave was that this problem was so widespread and so damaging that it was destroying society… nonsense, but that’s another issue); Brown, apparently oblivious to what had just been said, pretty much parrotted the same. An no one stopped them to say actually this is already the case! I know this, I was unemployed for a period last year.
• There was a general agreement on the “need to make cuts” but no willingness to discuss with clarity and exactness where those cuts should be. (“We’ll look after the NHS” – doesn’t seem to turn into an assurance that nothing will be cut there. Or “there will be cuts, but we’ll protect anything important” without specifying what is considered protected)
• David Cameron believes the banks should lend small businesses more because it’s “our money” the banks have. Great, but what policies will you put in place to force the banks to do this? And how does this fit with your determination to “cut red tape” and remove regulation. It made no sense, and no one batted an eyelid.
• Commentators discussing as if it’s a debating competition and we’re supposed to award a prize for best technique. Look how confident his facial expression was this time, how his posture has improved, how much more he smiled, how sincere he appeared, or how well he could do passion.

We need to get back to real challenge of what the politicians are saying, and actually expose them when they are saying nothing. There’s been a lot of talk of the power of Twitter in this election, but I see that as fairly marginal (aside from the interesting, and essentially private, viewing experience I had on Thursday following twitter while watching TV) – twitter is brief and silly. It’s not a robust enough form of communication for real challenge.

What we need is the equivalent of scientific peer review: Wikipedia. It gives a structured way to challenge nonsense:

• require citations
• forum discussing individual points and challenges
• no weasel words
• clear rules about relevancy etc. (prevents sales pitches)

no hiding behind pseudo-semantics.

So we’d have none of this nonsense about cuts, without any substance to the statements – because people wouldn’t let them get away with it!

It’s quite simple. I just want politicians to answer the questions that are put to them. And it’s not good enough for them to act like they think the questions aren’t worth answering.

The other big problem with the way politicians are speaking is that they are not laying out a table of exact programmes and decided policies. They want us just to like them and to trust them. They all want to “get into power” and be left to “make decisions” as things present themselves in the future. In reality there is very little of that in real politics. But people (politicians, managers…), being lazy and arrogant, want to be left to make judgements and choices at the last minute, and not have to commit now. How many times have we heard a politician say “well, I’m not going to answer a hypothetical question!” But that’s exactly what they should be doing. Unless they can be clear about exactly how they will make decisions, they’re not telling us anything!

How they make decisions is a significantly harder thing to express of course. It’s a meta-level. It goes deeper into the philosophical background of people’s fundamental beliefs. It would be fascinating to explore these, but realistically it’s even more an area politicians would not like to discuss. They actually pretend it’s undiscussable. They want to keep things vague, because they think this will make them more powerful (and incidentally explains why they are so petrified of a hung parliament) – because if they’ve committed to everything in advance, then they’re not really powerful decision makers, they’re just slaves carrying out orders…

Bah! Humbug.

Politicians should not be content with the superficial, with half-awake photo-opportunities, with making vague promises, and attention-grabbing unsubstantiated claims.

I’m off to watch the real thinkers on TED.

Leaders debate time again. So bland. They all say stuff like “Banks should help small businesses more.” OK, great, but what are you going to legislate to make this happen. It’s that step that’s missing.

I have a picture in my mind of the politicians standing up on stage, holding bats. Members of the audience are chucking balls at them. These guys are well practiced, and hot every single ball back. Wow, we can be impressed by that. But it’s not what they should be doing. The should be catching the balls and investigating them, addressing them. Real engagement, not just Quick-get-rid-of-it approach.

And I can’t help feeling that the people who currently make it to the top in politics are the ones who are best at deflecting, rather than the ones who have clearest thinking processes or best ideas. Sad and disappointing state of affairs. And all the commentators talking about the performances are simply propagating this superficial view of “how well he came across.”

[There were a couple exceptions where real issues/policies came to the fore: Clegg saying Council House schemes should be started again, for example]

An articulate but clearly frustrated woman in Question Time audience tonight derided the panel for never answering questions. People had come to ask questions. And the politicians were insulting us by simply taking those questions as cues for prepared speeched. Or to patronisingly say “I hear what you’re saying.” (when clearly they didn’t listen)

The twitter comments from Chris Addison, Will Self, Charlie Brooker, Mark Steel, Mark Watson during the debates were the most incisive. Maybe comedians and writers feel free to say what they observe. And politicians aren’t. Well, there’s the problem…

Favourite tweets:

• watsoncomedian:  Ah, at last we’re back to talking about ‘relevant things we’ve recently done’. This week’s theme: ‘I recently went to a factory’.
• mrmarksteel: “I visited a manufacturer today…” How does that make you an authority? I bet you don’t tell us who you visited yesterday.
• mrmarksteel: Cameron’s a Tory to help manufacturing apparently. Like his hero Thatcher – manufacturing manufacturing manufacturing – all she ever did.
• mrmarksteel: “9 energy ministers, 2 of which were the same person.” Well that’s 8 then you innumerate twat.
• watsoncomedian: Strange remark from Brown – ‘I’m pleased to say a majority of students are now women’. Did some of them change sides?
• watsoncomedian: Cameron maintains his 100% record of agreeing with the questioner. He has yet to begin a response with ‘well, firstly, that’s bollocks…’
• charltonbrooker: If only someone would just invent a magic fun-job-creating machine, this bit of the debate would be far shorter.

Last word from Janet Street-Porter, on QT: “I’ll tell you why I want a hung parliament. Because I want all these politicians to Grow Up!”