Ostriches not unicorns

The trick is to pick your myth and then follow it unswervingly

It’s often said that if you want to solve a particularly challenging problem, such as alcoholism or drug addiction, the crucial step is to admit that you have a problem at all in the first place.

Surprisingly, I’ve now discovered that this simply isn’t the case. The far more effective way of dealing with such difficulties is to deny them. You decide that they don’t exist and, lo and behold, they go away.

To illustrate the point, here is a statement on anti-Semitism from the Labour majority, the Corbynist faction that now dominates the Party.

Our attitude, from the outset has been, “there simply isn’t a problem. Labour is anti-racist, so we can’t be anti-Semitic. Which means that if there were ever a trace of anti-Semitism anywhere in our ranks, we would ruthlessly drive it out. Which is why there is no anti-Semitism anywhere in the Party.”

All we have to do is look around to see how well our approach is working. Barely anyone talks about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party any more, do they? Why, we were even able to readmit the MP Chris Williamson to full membership of the Party, after a brief suspension, with hardly anyone noticing. That’s why objections to the readmission were so muted.

You may have forgotten about Williamson’s case, since it generated so little discussion, let alone controversy. He’d originally been suspended for suggesting that, though we were doing little enough about anti-Semitism, even that much was excessive. He, like so many others in the current majority faction, had identified measures against anti-Semitism as entirely superfluous.

We have declared ourselves anti-racists, so we must be.

We deny the existence of and anti-Semitism in our ranks, so there can be none.

Some have been so churlish as to point out that we were forced to suspend Williamson again within two days of his readmission. But that’s OK. We’re simply going to ignore that too.

What comrades need to understand is that denial is one of the most powerful weapons available to a political party. See how well it’s working for us on Brexit: we have refused to take any position for or against the EU. Who can doubt that it is this subtle and masterly stance that accounts for our soaring position in the opinion polls and our outstanding performance in the recent European elections?

Some have accused us of chasing unicorns. This is a vile slander. There is no such thing as a unicorn. But there is such a thing as an ostrich. It, we are told, hides its head in the sand on the basis that any danger it can’t see must be non-existent.

A noble beast. A fine response. An excellent role model we intend to keep following.

After all, look how well it’s worked for us so far.

BoJo: do or die, as long as someone else does the dying

… his ancestors had always been amongst the first to get to grips in any conflict. In every siege, every ambush, every stricken dash against fortified emplacements, some de Worde had galloped towards death or glory and sometimes both.

I mentioned only recently how much I liked Terry Pratchett, a novelist whose stature I feel is still not recognised as it deserves. One of his novels I particularly enjoyed re-reading was The Truth. Its central character is William de Worde who, though descended from a long line of aristocrats, is determined to separate himself from his lineage, insisting, for instance, on being called ‘Mr de Worde’. All the more because there are figures in his background who would always brainlessly rush to the front of any desperate charge for death or glory (or, as Pratchett points out, both) in battle.

Charge of the light brigade:
De Worde style death or glory... and mostly death

The trouble with such glorious figures is that as well as dying themselves, they often take a lot of others down with them.

That all came to mind this morning when I read the words of that fine fellow Boris Johnson, soon to be leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (less united than once it was, but still held more or less together by legal bonds that are hard to break). He declared that the said Kingdom would leave the European Union on 31 October, “do or die”.

In other words, Brexit would happen, with or without a deal agreed with the EU.

There are diehard Brexiters who, it seems, firmly believe that Britain can leave the world’s biggest trading bloc without any agreement, and suffer no ill consequences. Few with any trace of economic or political sense share that belief. Leaving such a bloc must inevitably have harmful effects on Britain.

BoJo, as many of us like to call him, whether or not we like him, is not quite as clever as he often suggests he is. His tenure as Foreign Secretary, for instance, was littered with gaffes which a brighter statesman could easily have avoided. Certainly, a more sensible one. Even so, he’s got to be smart enough to know that a no-deal Brexit will do the country untold damage.

But he probably doesn’t care. Because unlike the death or glory de Wordes, BoJo’s “do or die” embodies a strict division of labour. He sees himself handling the doing, while others see to the dying. He, and indeed his friends, will be just fine. He shares the background of entitled privilege of the de Wordes, and that will protect him against the consequences of his recklessness.

“Death or Glory”. His glory. Others’ death.

That’s not pure metaphor. Far fewer will die, of course, than will struggle through, surviving rather than living. But some will die. We’ve seen it already. The Institute for Public Policy Research has calculated that had trends from the first decade of the century continued, something like 130,000 deaths could have been avoided in Britain between 2012 and 2017. The IPPR told the fullfact website that, while all these extra deaths couldn’t simply be attributed to austerity, a combination of that sad endeavour and other poor policy choices are likely to have contributed to these preventable deaths.

That’s what nine years of Tory government have done. And BoJo is promising is something harder still.

Boris ‘Do or Die’ Johnson

He would love the opportunity of doing. But he’ll certainly leave the dying to others.

At least the de Wordes put themselves on the line alongside their followers.

Corbyn, or socialism in words

First, a short cautionary tale for our times.

The top man in an organisation appoints a friend as a senior executive. She proves a most loyal supporter, if far less kind to the other employees, fiercely driving them to accept her rigid discipline, and rewarding them far less than they probably deserve, and certainly need. He awards her a 15% salary increase, putting her on nearly four times the median household salary in Britain, while she limits everyone else to 2.2%.

That’s not just less than a sixth of what she got, it’s less than the rate of inflation (measured by the way retail prices are going), so it’s effectively a pay cut.

It’s the story of Britain over the near-decade of austerity: real wages fell year after year until 2016, since when they have flatlined. Meanwhile, the number of millionaires is rising, and the total fortune they hold keeps going up. Those least able to absorb the pain of austerity are paying the price, while a self-serving elite makes sure it’s well protected from its worst effects.

Real value of wages over the near decade of austerity
from Full Fact

That’s Tory Britain for you.

That’s what Labour exists to combat, and never so energetically than when the Left is in charge. So with Corbyn as leader, we would expect the fight to be waged all the more intensely.

Except that the cautionary tale I started with wasn’t about the Tories. That was the Labour Party. The top man is Jeremy Corbyn. The tough operator he appointed and then rewarded with a 15% increase is his chief of staff, Karie Murphy. Speaking to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, one staff member said of her:

It’s got to the stage where people are afraid to speak up as individuals, because when you do you get sent to Siberia. When an individual has that much power in an organisation, it’s a concern.

Guardian photo of Corbyn with his Chief of Staff, Karie Murphy
Apparently a dangerous woman to challenge

All the worst aspects of a bullying, top-down, private-sector organisation, in fact.

Now when I first posted on this subject, a Corbyn supporter replied to me to point out that decisions on pay weren’t in the leader’s gift. My first response is that this is a standard Corbynist copout: anything good that happens is all down to the revered leader; anything bad is somebody else’s fault.

My second response is that Corbyn is constantly promising a fairer, more equitable, ultimately more socialist distribution of the resources of society. That’s going to take a huge effort from a Labour government (assuming Corbyn can get into government at all, which is by no means a foregone conclusion): convincing parliament to pass the necessary legislation; working with a lot of public and private-sector organisations to ensure not just the letter but the spirit of the measure is applied; convincing many reluctant if not frankly hostile groups to accept the principle on which it’s based.

If Corbyn can’t even get them accepted within his own organisation, the Labour Party, what possible hope is there of his achieving anything in society in general?

But there is another and far more worrying implication of this story.

Does Corbyn really mean what he says? There is a conviction on the far Left, as on the far Right, that anything they say must be correct simply because they say it. Corbyn claims he is a socialist, so what he says, and what he does, is socialism. Consequently he can apply a deeply iniquitous and thoroughly right-wing wages policy, and it’s socialist because it is he who is behind it.

Might that not be exactly what he does if he ever gets into Number 10? Let himself be convinced that a wrong-headed approach to wages must be the Labour way, because he incarnates Labour values? His track record rather suggests that this is just what he’s doing inside the Labour Party, after all.

Or, to put it in simpler terms, if he can’t even implement socialist values within his own party, why should anyone trust him be a socialist for the nation?

Manchester: a near miss

It’s fun to be back in Manchester. It’s one of those cities stretching across northern England – Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds – that fell on hard times after a prosperous past, but are rebuilding themselves a future full of dynamism.

Canal Street, centre of the Manchester gay scene
and one of the liveliest places in England

We nearly moved to Manchester decades ago. At the time, I was working for a company which had an office up there from which it seemed to make sense that I might work. That was particularly so because we could have afforded a significantly more comfortable house in North West than the best we could buy – and were living in – down in the South East.

Danielle was open to the idea, though she felt it was a bit of a wrench. We’d started making friends in Dunstable, where we were living, and it would have been a shame to abandon the life we were building. I still felt we should consider the possibility, if only because Manchester seemed a great deal more interesting than a small and increasingly run down market town which was little more than the intersection of two major and heavily trafficked roads.

It was not to be.

We set off for the drive North Westwards in bright sunlight. I told her about the many exciting possibilities the move would open up to us. In the warmth and under a blue sky that sounded all the more convincing and we travelled in good mood and full of optimism.

However, Danielle wasn’t terribly well. The closer we came to our potential new home, the worse she felt, until a few miles out a hammering headache took agonising hold of her.

And then, with no warning, the thickest clouds I have ever seen covered the sky. They were so dark as to be virtually black. You know, it’s like those pieces of clothing described in catalogue as ‘charcoal’, suggesting some kind of dark grey, when frankly they’re like pitch. Honestly, I had to put my headlights on at midday.

The mood suddenly lost all its buoyancy. Danielle, who’d been smiling and cheerful, began to look increasingly unhappy or even scared, until she could stand it no more.

A pleasure for which some uncomfortable commuting is a price well worth paying.
“I can’t move here,” she said.

I wanted to argue with her but frankly couldn’t. I don’t believe in signs from the gods but, hey, if ever there were such a sign, we were being served one just then. “Don’t move here,” it was saying loud and clear.

It was just as well. A year or so later I changed job and, if I had to move at all, it would have been to Worcestershire rather than to Manchester – a long way south.

On that occasion, my eldest son’s classmates actually raised a petition to stop us going. “Don’t take David away from us,” they demanded, with an impressively high number of signatures. Again, it was clear that I was up against an irresistible force, and I conceded and resigned myself to commuting an hour and a half in each direction for the next two or three years.

Oh, well. I was clearly stuck. But, on the other hand, we kept the friends we’d started making back in Dunstable. Indeed, they remain some of our best friends to this today.

A pleasure for which a difficult commute was a small price to pay.

Shoot the messenger

It’s wonderful to see Donald Trump firing three of the five polling organisations he previously had working for his re-election campaign.

Even more wonderful is the reason why: he was responding to leaked internal polls which showed him behind some potential Democratic opponents and way behind some others.

Bring me the news I want to hear or fear the consequences

That’s naturally immensely gratifying in itself. We’re still a long way out, of course, but the lower Trump’s starting point in his battle for re-election, the less likely he is to close the gap, and the better that is for all of us. That’s all of us including the majority of his own supporters, incidentally: the poor and left-behind who allowed themselves to be deluded into believing that he would do something for them.

It’s also a real pleasure to see Trump responding this way. He doesn’t like the message, so he shoots the messenger. And declares:

We are winning in every single state that we’ve polled. We’re winning in Texas very big. We’re winning in Ohio very big. We’re winning in Florida very big.

The evidence is neither here nor there, what matters is what he believes.

This, as I mentioned last time, is the way Fake News works. You present things the way you want them to be, and then you believe it, because it’s what you want to swallow. Ironically, that doesn’t stop Trump – inevitably – denouncing any news he doesn’t like as fake news. He made that clear in a tweet:

The Fake (Corrupt) News Media said they had a leak into polling done by my campaign which, by the way and despite the phony and never ending Witch Hunt, are the best numbers WE have ever had. They reported Fake numbers that they made up & don’t even exist. WE WILL WIN AGAIN!

The numbers his own pollsters gave him had to be wrong, because they didn’t support his conviction, true because he wishes it so, that HE WILL WIN AGAIN!

Well, he might win again. But for the moment at least, the omens are against him. Those who prefer evidence over belief have to wonder whether his victory is quite as assured as he claims.

Especially as the evidence came from people he had himself employed to reinforce his wishful thinking. He must think it extraordinary that they reached the opposite conclusion. That’s nothing short of treason, a word he’s keen to throw at others while trying to duck the accusation himself. And at the very least, it represents a failure to deliver what was required.

It’s only a wonder he kept two of the organisations on and fired only three of them.

Fake news and 'The Truth'

Terry Pratchett was one of the finest English writers of recent years. That’s not as widely understood as it might be, perhaps because he wrote fantasy novels and too few people realise that they are, in reality, not concerned with his invented ‘Discworld’ but with our own life here on Earth, to which he held up a revealing mirror. Or a searchlight.

Terry Pratchett: excellent writer whose insight we sadly miss

The Guardian recently published an article on the Pratchett biography due to be released next year by Marc Burrows. He discovered that Pratchett, who started his professional career as a journalist, conducted an interview in 1995 with Bill Gates of Microsoft. Pratchett correctly foresaw the arrival of fake news; Gates mistakenly countered that there would be an authority on the net which would classify material and allow readers quickly to establish that certain items were simply untrue. How wrong that was…

Pratchett had said:

Let’s say I call myself the Institute for Something-or-other and I decide to promote a spurious treatise saying the Jews were entirely responsible for the second world war and the Holocaust didn’t happen. And it goes out there on the internet and is available on the same terms as any piece of historical research which has undergone peer review and so on. There’s a kind of parity of esteem of information on the net. It’s all there: there’s no way of finding out whether this stuff has any bottom to it or whether someone has just made it up.

Lisa Forbes, newly-elected MP for Peterborough
Confused about the anti-Semitism of posts she decided to like

It’s ironic that he chose an instance of anti-Semitism to illustrate his point. Today, we see a great deal of anti-Semitic material on the internet, masquerading as anti-Zionism, and plenty of people are empty-headed enough to endorse it unthinkingly. That’s what Lisa Forbes did, before becoming the new Labour MP for Peterborough in its recent by-election. But there’s Islamophobic material out there, and anti-vax material, as well as stuff about conspiracy theories concerning 9/11, the moon landing or pretty much anything else you care to mention, so that the right can fall for it just as readily as the left or the simply naïve.

Pratchett also wrote a novel to explore these problems, aptly entitled The Truth. It focuses on William de Worde who launches the Discworld’s first daily newspaper, the Ankh-Morpork Times. As William comes to grips with his new profession of journalism, he begins to discover some of its more curious aspects.

In the Palace of Ankh Morpork, William attempts to collect information about an offence alleged to have been committed there. But the Commander of the Watch (the Chief of Police), Sam Vimes, refuses to tell him anything useful. However, when William needs something from the kitchens, Vimes is at least good enough to point him in the direction. William decides to poke around there, until he’s challenged.

‘… who are you, askin’ me questions?’

‘Commander Vimes sent me down here,’ said William. He was appalled at the ease with which the truth turned into something that was almost a lie just by being positioned correctly.

He’s absolutely right. Nothing helps a lie gather momentum so much as having it transmitted through a statement that is strictly true. Vimes did indeed send him that way. But Vimes gave him no permission to interview anyone or, indeed, continue his investigation of a crime on which the police were working. And yet, isn’t that exactly the impression William’s words give?

The problem, in William’s view, is summed by an old saying about lies and the truth: ‘…lies could run round the world before the truth could get its boots on.’ But what gives that statement its power is the thought with which he follows it up:

And it was amazing how people wanted to believe them.

Here’s a lovely example of both these notions: that a dash of truth makes fake news more palatable, and that it will be more quickly accepted and spread by people who want it to be true.

In the recent Peterborough by-election I mentioned before, Labour surprised most commentators by holding the seat. Many had expected it to be won by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. For Labour to hold it after the previous MP, also Labour, had been forced out following criminal action, was remarkable. And many remarked on it. One such remark I saw on social media, claimed that it was a great success, especially as Labour not only held the seat but increased its majority.

Clearly, the writer really wanted to believe in a Labour triumph in the seat. And since the candidate had indeed increased the majority, the justification for this belief might seem solid. Until we look at more evidence. A little more truth, in fact.

The Labour majority at the previous election had been 607 votes. At the by-election the majority had climbed to 683. So it’s perfectly true that it had increased. But it had increased from a wafer-thin majority, by a wafer-thin amount, to another wafer-thin majority.

And what triumphalism over the election result doesn’t take into account is that Labour’s share of the vote fell, and by a far from wafer-thin amount: from 48.1% to 30.9%, a drop of 17.2%.

Indeed, taken together, the vote of the right-wing parties – Conservatives and the new Brexit party – took 50.3% of the votes, an absolute majority. Labour only won because the right-wing vote was split.

Labour had something to celebrate in holding a difficult seat. But triumphalism? That was hardly called for.

Unless you’re ready to believe a distortion made possible by, as Pratchett shows, positioning the truth in a particular way. Which you’ll be all the happier to do if you just want to believe the lie in the first place.

Just as Pratchett warned.

Into every life a lot of rain must fall

It seems I’m having bad luck with water at the moment. Apparently it’s a matter of water, water, everywhere, enough to make me think.

First, as you may remember, there was all that rain falling on my head in Yorkshire at the beginning of the week. Because I had a little free time before my meeting next day, I’d carefully chosen myself a hotel out in the country where I could have a restful and yet bracing walk.

Had I done so, I would have left with a suitcase full of soaking clothes. The rain was drenching down.

Fortunately, I was about to head for somewhere far warmer and, or so I hoped, far dryer: the banks of Lake Como in Northern Italy. This had all occurred by happy chance: a colleague from New Zealand had left the UK when her visa ran out and was having to leave the country before her replacement could start. She agreed that a brief handover between the two of them would be useful, but knew she was unlikely to be allowed back into Britain so soon after her visa’s validity ended.

On the other hand, she was happy to meet our new colleague in one of the countries which she was visiting as part of a sort of grand tour before heading back to the antipodes. Italy fitted the bill. At first, our intention was to meet in Milan, but then we discovered that hotel costs had risen to obscene levels in that fine city. But in Como, on the lake to which it gives its name, prices were about a third as much.

A cheaper alternative to go to a place many would give their eye teeth to visit? Well, we didn’t hesitate.

And indeed it’s beautiful, warm and dry. At least, dry overhead. But it seems I’ve hit more problems with rain all the same. The only difference is that, this time, it’s not falling on me but some distance away: in Switzerland. Where it’s mixing in the rivers with snow melt and forcing the lake’s water level up.

So that we couldn’t actually drive to the hotel where we’re staying. The road was awash. It made me feel like a variant on the Mohammed and the mountain saying: if I couldn’t go to the lake, the lake would come to me.

That's my hotel down at the bottom.
The other side of the floodwater

It is now lapping at the walls of the hotel, making me glad that my room’s on the fourth floor. Still, it’s not terribly menacing at the moment, and most people seem to be enjoying the experience far more than they’re getting worried by it. Especially the kids: there’s something particularly appealing to a child, it seems, to be able to ride a bike straight through a long and deep puddle covering a city street.

Kids enjoying the floods

You’re on the road but in the water. On your bike. What’s not to like?

Still, it feels to me that there’s a lesson for me to learn here. It seems I’m fated to be followed around by rain, in some form or another. And like anyone that tries to outrun his fate, I am only in fact running towards it.

Still. If it gives the kids some fun on their bikes, who am I to complain?