In past postings, I have looked at how uneasy Americans can be about counter-factual discussions around the history of the USA: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2007/11/denying-counter-factual-issues-around.html and http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/06/when-counter-factual-becomes.html This seems to stem from an enduring if unstated faith in the so-called 'manifest destiny', i.e. that the USA was always destined to turn out the way that it has and so any discussions of alternatives is a waste of time. Naturally I strongly oppose that viewpoint, not least because it allows a state to argue that whatever policy it adopts must be correct because it was 'destined' to happen. The ridiculousness of that is immediately apparent if you compare the policies of President Barack Obama and his immediate predecessor George W. Bush. Which was truly manifesting the USA's destiny? Clearly that is not happening, unless it is the USA's destiny is to constantly chop and change.
All states exist as a result of a series of accidents combined with deliberate actions, some of which succeeded, some of which failed. As I have noted before, not every alternative, in the long run, would have led to a great change in history as we have known it. Conversely, small differences can lead to vast changes in what happened. Each counter-factual needs to be weighed on its own merits. In addition, we have to recognise that this is no more than an intellectual exercise, we cannot 'prove' the propositions, but saying that, in many branches of science, that is the same. Some dismiss counter-factual analysis as a 'game'. It can be entertaining and is the basis of an extensive sub-genre of fiction dating back many decades. However, counter-factual analysis is also a vital tool in properly weighing up the different elements which went into our history. Thus, as I have argued before, it is something that should not be dismissed: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2007/05/usefulness-of-what-if-history.html
Now, it is probably on the basis of the usefulness of counter-factual analysis, that on 31st March 2011, China announced 'guidelines' effectively banning time-travel movies and television programmes. In a statement from Li Jingsheng head of television drama at China's State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has said that such dramas (and comedies): 'lack positive thoughts and meaning'; 'its content and the exaggerated performance style are questionable'; 'Many stories are totally made-up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty'; 'They casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.' Of course, many of these things could be charges laid against many genres of fiction, for example, romance, Westerns, crime stories and even historical drams. It is the last elements about promoting feudalism and fatalism which really cut to the heart of the issue.
ommentators about Chinese society believe this move has been prompted by recent programmes featuring happy times in China's past (though it is pretty difficult to find any era in Chinese history when a substantial group of Chinese were not suffering). The key example is 'The Palace', as pointed out by Professor Nie Wei, from the School of Movie and Television Drama Studies of Shanghai University. The series features a 21st-century girl travelling back in time to the Qing dynasty (which ruled China 1644-1911). The episodes for the next series are being rewritten.
The movies and series has effectively banned in China on this basis include 'The Terminator' (1984) and presumably its sequels and television series; 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure' (1989) and its sequel; any version of 'A Christmas Carol'; 'Planet of the Apes' (1968) and its sequels, series and remake; 'Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery' (1997) and its sequels; 'Back To The Future' (1985) and its two sequels, 'Black Knight' (2001), 'The X-Files' (1993-2002) though I am not certain that many episodes of this actually featured time travel, 'Doctor Who' (1963-) and 'Star Trek' (1966-9) and presumably all the movies and sequel series.
I can only think of one time travel episode, in the original 'Star Trek' series, 'The City on the Edge of Forever' in the original series which the crew prevent a woman (played by Joan Collins!) being run over in 1930s USA so leading to a subsequent Nazi victory in World War Two including the USA coming under Nazi control. Apparently, however, three other episodes feature time travel, one taking crew members to 1968, one to 1969, one taking them back 3 days and one to two historic time periods on an alien planet. There is also time travel in the movie, 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home' (1986).
The fatalism would be seen in movies like 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) in which a man tries to change his own life by travelling back in time on a number of occasions only to constantly make things worse; in 'Running Against Time' (1990) the repeated attempts by three time travellers to avoid US intervention in the Vietnam War only exacerbate the conflict. However, this then shows up the contradictions in the Chinese guidelines. They oppose both time travel that can make things turn out better and they dislike time travel that worsens the situation. They oppose time travel stories that only impact on the fate of a few individuals and also ones which affect the whole world such as 'The Terminator' and 'Star Trek IV' or 'A Sound of Thunder' (2005) which radically sees humans replaced by a reptillian species as a result of a time traveller to the Cretaceous period treading on a creature. Of course, the Chinese government could insist that all time travel stories adhere to the Novikov self-consistency principle, that, in fact you cannot alter history as it has happened, any attempt to do so will fail, as shown in 'Twelve Monkeys' (1995) and 'The Time Machine' (2002).
One movie not mentioned by the Chinese is 'Fatherland' (1994) perhaps because though the book it was based on was a best seller, the movie had little success, especially in the USA. The movie does not feature time travel, rather it is one of the only actual counter-factual movies in that it envisages a world in which Nazi Germany won the Second World War. Though not stated, it must be assumed that in such a scenario Japan would have been victorious in the Pacific as victory in Europe would have allowed its forces to be supplement by Germany and its allies. Despite the fact that Germany and Japan were always awkward allies (as history of wartime Shanghai show), Germany presumably would have put experienced U-boat packs into the Pacific; experienced German pilots and aircraft into the Pacific and China and provided SS units to exterminate Chinese Communists behind the frontlines. It seems unlikely Japan would have conquered all of China but it would have held the major cities and wealthiest regions, so today, North-East China would still be Manchukuo and Communism would have been eliminated from the Japanese colonies in eastern and central China.
I believe the movies listed owe more to their international renown than the portrayal of events in specific movies that is what has drawn Chinese state attention to them. However, there is also the factor of discussion around time travel and the possibilities it may offer to change a country which is what alarms the Chinese government the most. Despite this, It seems that, in the opposition to time travel, the Chinese are also dismissing a lot of general science fiction. This may be the authorities' intention.
Many of these series and movies have other concepts, discussion of which would be seen as a threat, especially 'Star Trek' which often handled moral judgements in story lines and elements such as discrimination. A fuller part of the SARFT statement suggests this is the case: 'fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and even a lack of positive thinking.'
The timing seems to be in preparation for the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party of China being established (and, of course, the centenary of the 1911 Revolution which established the Chinese Republic which the Communists did not control entirely until 1950) and so '[a]ll levels should actively prepare to launch vivid reproductions of the Chinese revolution, the nation’s construction and its reform and opening up.' Of course, if we travelled back to 1971 for the 50th anniversary, the party members then would be in horror of the capitalist economy now in place in China and would see predictions for 2011 which featured China as one of the leading capitalist states of the world as completely counter-revolutionary and in need of suppression. Thus, even in its own history, the Communist Party of China has gone down 'alternative' paths that would have been considered highly inappropriate to discuss, even within living memory.
You can see the easy step from thinking about time travel to challenging the current regime, whether to argue that the more Maoist era or the Imperial era or the brief periods of democracy were better than the current state. Of course, the kind of question that the Chinese regime fears most is 'what if the democracy movement of Tiananmen Square had not been suppressed in 1989?' and other similar ones about Mao being ousted or the Chinese Civil War having a different outcome, all things that may allow people to think that an alternative path would have been better for the country's people.
China has not been alone in having such concerns. When the National Curriculum for the UK was launched in 1992, the history section of it instructed teachers specifically not to even suggest that any time period or country was better to live in than the UK at the time. The Conservative government was seemingly as insecure as the current Chinese government.
It is interesting that the two greatest Powers in the world at the moment, the USA and China are the ones who are most nervous about any speculation that their histories could have turned out very differently to how they did. In the USA pressure tends to come by brow-beating or dismissal as irrelevant. In China, a totalitarian dictatorship which practices extensive censorship, the approach is much more direct. However, in my view this only adds value to the role of counter-factual analysis. After all, if the Chinese government sees counter-factual speculation as potentially such a threatening tool, one leveraging greater democracy and liberty in the country, to the extent that movies even speculating about it must be censored, then it has some real potency beyond mere entertainment.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Monday, 2 May 2011
Appreciating The Work Of Richard Holmes
These days, with 17% of the population scheduled to live until they are 100, when you hear of a person dying in their 60s you tend to think that they have died 'young', especially if they are celebrities. In the past fortnight, there have been two such deaths, both as a result of cancer. The first was actress Elisabeth Sladen, who was only 63 and looked at least a decade younger. The second was (Professor Brigadier Edward) Richard Holmes who died at the age of 65. Perhaps he is not as well known to the general public as Sladen, but, I imagine to readers of this blog, interested in the kind of things I am interested, he was a well-known and respected name. He was a military historian, who rose from the rank of private to brigadier in the Territorial Army; he became the first Director Reserve Forces and Cadets (1997-2000) in the British Army not drawn from the ranks of regular soldiers, and was 1999-2007 Colonel-Of-The-Regiment of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment. He was an academic as well as a soldier, producing 22 books 1971-2008 and lecturing at the University of Cranfield, 1989-2009. He was awarded the CBE in 1998 and the Danish Order of Dannebrog.
It is through his television programmes, that I imagine he will be best known most widely. This is one reason why I think his work needs to be remembered. In many ways he appeared the archetypal British officer, with a full moustache and and real vigour even when in his 50s and 60s, he was shown on television riding around on horseback and firing rifles more actively than many younger presenters. In some ways, these days, there might be something off-putting about someone so much like an army officer of old. However, there was an element in him that made his delivery and his sheer enthusiasm come to you through the television. His voice was clear but with soft tones which made you feel that he was talking to a small group of fellow enthusiasts. I imagine this comes from him having participated in numerous guided tours of battlefields; he was patron of the Guild of Battlefield Guides. He managed to pitch the level perfectly, informing without coming across as patronising. He was not one of these presenters who made you feel you were ignorant, more that in sharing his knowledge you could come to know what he knew. Conversely, he was not as laid back as Michael Wood, another long serving history presenter who at times seems to be more on an adventure scrambling around places. I imagine that Holmes's delivery was a product of teaching soldiers and ordinary university students who have many other distractions. Commentators also note that whilst he covered big events he was also alert to the fate of the ordinary soldier and how they felt when wrapped up in battles. This always allows the audience to connect more easily with the narrative. That balance of the strategic and the tactical, down from the level of whole armies to the situation of individuals was well done and, I believe another trait that made Holmes so engaging.
It is many years since A.J.P. Taylor could engage people with basically simply lecturing on television. However, though far more active, it was that kind of engaging delivery, personal enthusiasm, an ability to conjure up time and place, plus clear communication of facts that made Holmes's programmes stand out. Newcomers such as Dan Snow, could learn a great deal from watching Holmes's programmes once again. I have travelled around many of the regions and some of the sites featured in 'War Walks' (1997) and can confirm that he gave you such a good appreciation of what happened in landscapes that look very differen 60, 90 or many hundreds of years later. Similarly, with his series on the American War of Independence, 'Redocats and Rebels' (2003) explaining a conflict which is always difficult for a British audience not least due to the complex geography of the fronts and battlefields; the same with 'Wellington: The Iron Duke' (2002) especially covering Wellington's career in India.
I think the greatest example of his skill was when flicking through channels I stumbled across an episode of his series 'The Western Front' (2002). I had seen the whole series before, but in moments found myself engaged in it so much that I watched it right to the end once again. We need people like this in all kinds of factual programmes. They have a talent which is not taught, but evolves in people due to their life experiences and Holmes had had the right combination of experiences to provide the ideal presenter, serious and knowledgeable but so engaging that he pulled you right into his narrative. It is a pity that he was killed by an invidious illness which has robbed us of watching more of his thoroughly engaging documentaries in the coming years.
It is through his television programmes, that I imagine he will be best known most widely. This is one reason why I think his work needs to be remembered. In many ways he appeared the archetypal British officer, with a full moustache and and real vigour even when in his 50s and 60s, he was shown on television riding around on horseback and firing rifles more actively than many younger presenters. In some ways, these days, there might be something off-putting about someone so much like an army officer of old. However, there was an element in him that made his delivery and his sheer enthusiasm come to you through the television. His voice was clear but with soft tones which made you feel that he was talking to a small group of fellow enthusiasts. I imagine this comes from him having participated in numerous guided tours of battlefields; he was patron of the Guild of Battlefield Guides. He managed to pitch the level perfectly, informing without coming across as patronising. He was not one of these presenters who made you feel you were ignorant, more that in sharing his knowledge you could come to know what he knew. Conversely, he was not as laid back as Michael Wood, another long serving history presenter who at times seems to be more on an adventure scrambling around places. I imagine that Holmes's delivery was a product of teaching soldiers and ordinary university students who have many other distractions. Commentators also note that whilst he covered big events he was also alert to the fate of the ordinary soldier and how they felt when wrapped up in battles. This always allows the audience to connect more easily with the narrative. That balance of the strategic and the tactical, down from the level of whole armies to the situation of individuals was well done and, I believe another trait that made Holmes so engaging.
It is many years since A.J.P. Taylor could engage people with basically simply lecturing on television. However, though far more active, it was that kind of engaging delivery, personal enthusiasm, an ability to conjure up time and place, plus clear communication of facts that made Holmes's programmes stand out. Newcomers such as Dan Snow, could learn a great deal from watching Holmes's programmes once again. I have travelled around many of the regions and some of the sites featured in 'War Walks' (1997) and can confirm that he gave you such a good appreciation of what happened in landscapes that look very differen 60, 90 or many hundreds of years later. Similarly, with his series on the American War of Independence, 'Redocats and Rebels' (2003) explaining a conflict which is always difficult for a British audience not least due to the complex geography of the fronts and battlefields; the same with 'Wellington: The Iron Duke' (2002) especially covering Wellington's career in India.
I think the greatest example of his skill was when flicking through channels I stumbled across an episode of his series 'The Western Front' (2002). I had seen the whole series before, but in moments found myself engaged in it so much that I watched it right to the end once again. We need people like this in all kinds of factual programmes. They have a talent which is not taught, but evolves in people due to their life experiences and Holmes had had the right combination of experiences to provide the ideal presenter, serious and knowledgeable but so engaging that he pulled you right into his narrative. It is a pity that he was killed by an invidious illness which has robbed us of watching more of his thoroughly engaging documentaries in the coming years.
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Creating More 'Working Poor' In The UK
I know that my belief, that the current prime minister has an agenda to push the structure of British society back to the pattern it had a century ago, is not widely held. However, even if you do not believe that changes to the education system, taxation and benefits are not designed to cut off opportunities for ordinary people and to protect access by the elites to such opportunities, especially in terms of education, the change in society is happening anyway. I noted back in 2008: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/07/unemployment-as-whip.html and in 2009: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/09/cracking-whip-of-unemployment.html that there was a desire among employers to increase unemployment because they felt that the period of prosperity of the previous ten years had led to pay rising too high and workers not being sufficiently grateful for the jobs they had. This has come about now and you can see it in the reduced salaries being offered. Back in 2001 I worked on projects in an office, I had no staff to supervise and was paid £24,000 per year (now equivalent to €27,800: US$38,100) and on that salary was able to rent a 2-bedroomed flat in walking distance of my work (for £500 per month) and to buy a small second-hand car and go on holiday once per year. I was not in a position to buy a flat. By the time I left that job in 2005, I was earning £31,000 per year. In my last job that finished in 2010, I managed two offices and for that was paid £42,000 per year (€48,700; US$66,700), which allowed me to drive a larger second-hand car and in combination with another person, to pay the mortgage on a three-bedroomed house in southern England. It did not permit me to go on holiday at all.
Now, as I look for work, still, as an office manager, I find that salaries are lower even than what I was being paid simply to be an office worker back in 2001. I will take Southampton as an example. It is a large, rapidly growing town of around 230,000 people, located at the western edge of the South-East region of England. Using the official Department for Work & Pensions website to look for jobs, I found that last month the average salary for an office manager is now £23,000, though with some explicitly office manager posts paying as low as £12-18,000. If you want to earn £24,000 then you need not only to have had office manager experience but also to speak fluent Spanish and Chinese. If you can speak fluent Chinese there are opportunities for you around the world at the moment, not simply managing an office in a dull second-rank town in England. It is worthwhile comparing the salaries with the rents in the local area. Southampton is a cheap town to live in. You can rent studio flats (i.e. without a separate bedroom, you sleep in the living area) for £350 per month (compared to £525 per month as the norm for a studio flat, just 21Km away in Winchester).
Now, if you were starting on £12,000 per year before tax, then over a third of your pre-tax income would be going on simply renting a room. You can pay £280 per month if you are willing to rent a room in a shared house or as a lodger. Even if you get promoted and take the £18,000 then it is still a fifth of your pre-tax income, just on housing. This does not include your food, utilities and travelling costs. So, with such a job you can cover your expenditure, but with no hope of a holiday or buying a car or ever owning a flat on that kind of income. Banks generally lend you around three times your income, meaning even at the top salary for that office manager role you would only be lent £54,000 about enough to buy a one-bedroomed flat or a two-bedroomed static caravan in Southampton.
Perhaps I am being hard, because it is possible to live on such salaries, but I have left out all the other costs of life bar accommodation and in the UK it is easy for a single person to spend around £30-40 per week on food, taking another £1500-2000 out of your earnings each year. In addition, you have to remember this is the salary for the office manager, I have no idea what the staff that manager supervises must be earning. The only people who can take such jobs are those who live at home on nominal rent to their parents. I guess such young people are really the only ones companies are interested in which is why, at 43, I have been unemployed for so long. What is frightening is that David Cameron has sworn to make sure that you will always be better off in work than on benefits. With salaries dropping away so fast, the only way to achieve this will be to reduce benefits to pauper levels.
Another factor is that working hours are lengthening. In my search for an office manager post, I found they all expected you to work 08.30-17.30 rather than the traditional, '9 to 5', i.e. 09.00-17.00. This means a 45-hour week, or 40-42.5 hours if you remove lunch breaks rather than the 35-37.5 hours per week that were becoming the norm even in the 1990s. This means the hourly rate in fact falls by an eighth, over what it would have been. Many jobs now include a caveat about the need for evening and weekend working, effectively a get-out clause to compel you to work, in fact, any hours the employer deems necessary. Of course, we have to accept such conditions because the alternative is unemployment with a low level of benefits.
On one hand, advertising and social pressure encourages us to consume and aspire to better items and owning our own houses. However, with incomes falling this becomes even more of a fantasy than ever. The only item of clothing I have purchased in the last 18 months was a £14 pair of shoes from Asda to wear to interviews and this was only because there was a hole in the sole of my other pair that let in water no matter how much cardboard I put in the bottom. How can I aspire even to buy some new clothes let alone think about a new car or a holiday or a new mobile phone? I have had to leave the house I owned to return to the rental sector because I cannot pay a mortgage and am likely never to be able to do so again; meaning my poverty when I retire is now guaranteed. I am not a person without qualifications. I got a degree when only 6% of the population attended university. I have years of experience and professional training. What hope is there for people with less than that?
I have noted before how that UK society seems to be being pushed to resemble ever more that of the USA. The cutting back of the National Health Service is moving us in the opposite direction to what the Obama administration is seeking to do with health care and more towards the kind of privatised health system that his Republican opponents vigorously insist on. We also seem to be moving very rapidly towards having the 'working poor' forming a significant part of our society. In the USA working poor are defined as being people who have worked at least 27 weeks of the year but whose income falls below the poverty level. In the USA in 2005, 2.8 million families (made up of 12.2 million people) had a household income of 100% less than the poverty level; in addition, 9.6 million families with work, about 29% of them, were earning 200% less than the poverty level, a level at which they are deemed not to be self-sufficient of welfare or charity. To give you an idea of the level, self-sufficiency was deemed to be an annual family income of US$39,942 (currently equivalent to £25,120) for a family of four.
In the EU poverty-in-work is defined as being 60% of the median, not mean, income. In the UK, median income for men in 2010 was £538 and for women £439, thus poverty is earning less than £322 per week if you are a man and less than £263 per week if you are a woman. Being paid £322 is equivalent to £16,700 per year. Thus, the office manager job discussed above, means that your pay is at poverty levels, if you are man, until you rise £4,000 above the basic level. By definition, all the workers you manage will be in poverty and remain in it in that position. In 2010 it was stated that 1.7 million children in poverty in the UK were in families that had work, with 1.1 million in families without work. There were 2.1 million working families in the working poor category and it was anticipated that 8% of the population, around 4.8 million people, were at risk of falling into this category. We are not talking about people on benefits or retired, they are further categories of people in poverty, these are people actually in jobs but earning so little that they are deemed to be poor.
There has been rhetoric around the 'squeezed middle' especially from the Labour Party. However, with a lack of regulation of companies' behaviour and, certainly, no attempt to shift pay levels above the minimum wage, to any higher level, there is no clear idea how they will be able to do anything to alter the situation for ordinary people. I know Labour would shy away from setting salary levels as it would seem too much like wages and incomes policies of the 1970s, which they now find embarrassing. Ironically, those policies were to keep down pay rises, whereas now we need to see pay rising. Raising the threshold at which you pay tax is one approach, one favoured by the Liberal Democrats before they went into government. However, to a great degree this takes pressure off employers who can continue to pay low salaries to everyone (except the top executives, of course). I have outlined an idea of having the highest salary in a company always kept to a certain ratio to the lowest and I believe that, without at least indications of minimum expected salaries right up the structure of companies, then you will never eliminate the tendency in the UK for pay to pushed downwards for most workers whilst it rises inexorably for the already wealthy.
You could argue that leading economies need cheap labour to prosper and this is one reason why China is booming at present, as, for every high-earning fashion company executive in Shanghai there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of very low-paid textile workers. Before the minimum wage was introduced to the UK in 1999, there were complaints from companies and the Conservative Party that it would lead to job losses. However, this never appeared and this is for a number of reasons. One is the large profit margins that so many companies maintain selling or providing services in the UK. Another is that the pay of high executives is so high that even cutting it back by a few percent frees up sufficient funds to pay a lot of low-paid staff. Another reason is that paying decent pay levels benefits the economy. Anyone who lived in a poor area, as I did in 1999 in East London, noticed immediately how small businesses benefited from the minimum wage. Some people saw their weekly pay almost double and they went out and spent it on the basic things that they had previously gone without. There are a lot of low paid people so a change in their income makes a bigger impact than shifting that of the far fewer high-paid people: there are only so many white goods you can fit, even in a mansion, and only so many meals you can eat. I certainly believe that the UK's supermarket chains would not have prospered to the extent that they have done if the minimum wage had not been introduced.
There seems to be a lack of basic knowledge in government about how a capitalist economy works. The UK economy was at its strongest, not in the 1920s and 1930s, times of high unemployment and low wages, but in the 1950s and 1960s with periods of very low unemployment and rising incomes. The UK economy will continue to be weak now, as long as the numbers of working poor remains high and, especially, as it rises. These people will lack the ability to consume the products that keep so much of our extensive service sector running. Of course, the UK does not manufacture much these days and imports large quantities of food, but even selling foreign goods keeps companies like Tesco, one of the cornerstones of the UK economy, thriving and, in turn, employing more people.
Poverty makes people desperate, they are far more likely to become corrupt or steal from their employers. You can see this in countries with capitalism but a great disparity between rich and poor. Try travelling on public transport in India or Tunisia or seeking planning permission in many South American states. The UK has corruption, but generally in the public-facing civil service and most companies, it is very limited. However, if you increase the number of people in work who cannot afford to live even a meagre life, then you are driving them towards corruption. Countries like China deal with it by having a harsh, totalitarian police state. You might think this would be an option for the UK, but interestingly, the Conservatives, to their credit, have begun to reverse the assault on human rights that was seen under the Blair and Brown governments and, ironically, to compel cutbacks in police numbers. Thus, the UK will have an economic pattern that promotes corruption but does not have the police strength to suppress it.
I believe that the current governement's stance is to encourage cheap, malleable labour of the kind employers of the 19th century could draw upon and dispose of at will. I quite anticipate that characteristics of 19th century employment, such as tied accommodation, even live-in servants, will begin to re-appear. I have already noted that dated modes of living such as lodging are on the increase once more. You may contest that Cameron and his gang have any intention of retro-engineering UK society. It does not really matter if you accept it or not. What is more crucial is that, if the numbers of working poor continue to rise, then domestic consumption will be pitiful and the UK will be condemned to a weak economy into the coming decades. Capitalism works on the basis of supply and demand, if you choke off demand as poverty does, then the cycle begins to break down and small numbers of ultra-wealthy people have far less impact than millions of comfortably well-off ones.
Now, as I look for work, still, as an office manager, I find that salaries are lower even than what I was being paid simply to be an office worker back in 2001. I will take Southampton as an example. It is a large, rapidly growing town of around 230,000 people, located at the western edge of the South-East region of England. Using the official Department for Work & Pensions website to look for jobs, I found that last month the average salary for an office manager is now £23,000, though with some explicitly office manager posts paying as low as £12-18,000. If you want to earn £24,000 then you need not only to have had office manager experience but also to speak fluent Spanish and Chinese. If you can speak fluent Chinese there are opportunities for you around the world at the moment, not simply managing an office in a dull second-rank town in England. It is worthwhile comparing the salaries with the rents in the local area. Southampton is a cheap town to live in. You can rent studio flats (i.e. without a separate bedroom, you sleep in the living area) for £350 per month (compared to £525 per month as the norm for a studio flat, just 21Km away in Winchester).
Now, if you were starting on £12,000 per year before tax, then over a third of your pre-tax income would be going on simply renting a room. You can pay £280 per month if you are willing to rent a room in a shared house or as a lodger. Even if you get promoted and take the £18,000 then it is still a fifth of your pre-tax income, just on housing. This does not include your food, utilities and travelling costs. So, with such a job you can cover your expenditure, but with no hope of a holiday or buying a car or ever owning a flat on that kind of income. Banks generally lend you around three times your income, meaning even at the top salary for that office manager role you would only be lent £54,000 about enough to buy a one-bedroomed flat or a two-bedroomed static caravan in Southampton.
Perhaps I am being hard, because it is possible to live on such salaries, but I have left out all the other costs of life bar accommodation and in the UK it is easy for a single person to spend around £30-40 per week on food, taking another £1500-2000 out of your earnings each year. In addition, you have to remember this is the salary for the office manager, I have no idea what the staff that manager supervises must be earning. The only people who can take such jobs are those who live at home on nominal rent to their parents. I guess such young people are really the only ones companies are interested in which is why, at 43, I have been unemployed for so long. What is frightening is that David Cameron has sworn to make sure that you will always be better off in work than on benefits. With salaries dropping away so fast, the only way to achieve this will be to reduce benefits to pauper levels.
Another factor is that working hours are lengthening. In my search for an office manager post, I found they all expected you to work 08.30-17.30 rather than the traditional, '9 to 5', i.e. 09.00-17.00. This means a 45-hour week, or 40-42.5 hours if you remove lunch breaks rather than the 35-37.5 hours per week that were becoming the norm even in the 1990s. This means the hourly rate in fact falls by an eighth, over what it would have been. Many jobs now include a caveat about the need for evening and weekend working, effectively a get-out clause to compel you to work, in fact, any hours the employer deems necessary. Of course, we have to accept such conditions because the alternative is unemployment with a low level of benefits.
On one hand, advertising and social pressure encourages us to consume and aspire to better items and owning our own houses. However, with incomes falling this becomes even more of a fantasy than ever. The only item of clothing I have purchased in the last 18 months was a £14 pair of shoes from Asda to wear to interviews and this was only because there was a hole in the sole of my other pair that let in water no matter how much cardboard I put in the bottom. How can I aspire even to buy some new clothes let alone think about a new car or a holiday or a new mobile phone? I have had to leave the house I owned to return to the rental sector because I cannot pay a mortgage and am likely never to be able to do so again; meaning my poverty when I retire is now guaranteed. I am not a person without qualifications. I got a degree when only 6% of the population attended university. I have years of experience and professional training. What hope is there for people with less than that?
I have noted before how that UK society seems to be being pushed to resemble ever more that of the USA. The cutting back of the National Health Service is moving us in the opposite direction to what the Obama administration is seeking to do with health care and more towards the kind of privatised health system that his Republican opponents vigorously insist on. We also seem to be moving very rapidly towards having the 'working poor' forming a significant part of our society. In the USA working poor are defined as being people who have worked at least 27 weeks of the year but whose income falls below the poverty level. In the USA in 2005, 2.8 million families (made up of 12.2 million people) had a household income of 100% less than the poverty level; in addition, 9.6 million families with work, about 29% of them, were earning 200% less than the poverty level, a level at which they are deemed not to be self-sufficient of welfare or charity. To give you an idea of the level, self-sufficiency was deemed to be an annual family income of US$39,942 (currently equivalent to £25,120) for a family of four.
In the EU poverty-in-work is defined as being 60% of the median, not mean, income. In the UK, median income for men in 2010 was £538 and for women £439, thus poverty is earning less than £322 per week if you are a man and less than £263 per week if you are a woman. Being paid £322 is equivalent to £16,700 per year. Thus, the office manager job discussed above, means that your pay is at poverty levels, if you are man, until you rise £4,000 above the basic level. By definition, all the workers you manage will be in poverty and remain in it in that position. In 2010 it was stated that 1.7 million children in poverty in the UK were in families that had work, with 1.1 million in families without work. There were 2.1 million working families in the working poor category and it was anticipated that 8% of the population, around 4.8 million people, were at risk of falling into this category. We are not talking about people on benefits or retired, they are further categories of people in poverty, these are people actually in jobs but earning so little that they are deemed to be poor.
There has been rhetoric around the 'squeezed middle' especially from the Labour Party. However, with a lack of regulation of companies' behaviour and, certainly, no attempt to shift pay levels above the minimum wage, to any higher level, there is no clear idea how they will be able to do anything to alter the situation for ordinary people. I know Labour would shy away from setting salary levels as it would seem too much like wages and incomes policies of the 1970s, which they now find embarrassing. Ironically, those policies were to keep down pay rises, whereas now we need to see pay rising. Raising the threshold at which you pay tax is one approach, one favoured by the Liberal Democrats before they went into government. However, to a great degree this takes pressure off employers who can continue to pay low salaries to everyone (except the top executives, of course). I have outlined an idea of having the highest salary in a company always kept to a certain ratio to the lowest and I believe that, without at least indications of minimum expected salaries right up the structure of companies, then you will never eliminate the tendency in the UK for pay to pushed downwards for most workers whilst it rises inexorably for the already wealthy.
You could argue that leading economies need cheap labour to prosper and this is one reason why China is booming at present, as, for every high-earning fashion company executive in Shanghai there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of very low-paid textile workers. Before the minimum wage was introduced to the UK in 1999, there were complaints from companies and the Conservative Party that it would lead to job losses. However, this never appeared and this is for a number of reasons. One is the large profit margins that so many companies maintain selling or providing services in the UK. Another is that the pay of high executives is so high that even cutting it back by a few percent frees up sufficient funds to pay a lot of low-paid staff. Another reason is that paying decent pay levels benefits the economy. Anyone who lived in a poor area, as I did in 1999 in East London, noticed immediately how small businesses benefited from the minimum wage. Some people saw their weekly pay almost double and they went out and spent it on the basic things that they had previously gone without. There are a lot of low paid people so a change in their income makes a bigger impact than shifting that of the far fewer high-paid people: there are only so many white goods you can fit, even in a mansion, and only so many meals you can eat. I certainly believe that the UK's supermarket chains would not have prospered to the extent that they have done if the minimum wage had not been introduced.
There seems to be a lack of basic knowledge in government about how a capitalist economy works. The UK economy was at its strongest, not in the 1920s and 1930s, times of high unemployment and low wages, but in the 1950s and 1960s with periods of very low unemployment and rising incomes. The UK economy will continue to be weak now, as long as the numbers of working poor remains high and, especially, as it rises. These people will lack the ability to consume the products that keep so much of our extensive service sector running. Of course, the UK does not manufacture much these days and imports large quantities of food, but even selling foreign goods keeps companies like Tesco, one of the cornerstones of the UK economy, thriving and, in turn, employing more people.
Poverty makes people desperate, they are far more likely to become corrupt or steal from their employers. You can see this in countries with capitalism but a great disparity between rich and poor. Try travelling on public transport in India or Tunisia or seeking planning permission in many South American states. The UK has corruption, but generally in the public-facing civil service and most companies, it is very limited. However, if you increase the number of people in work who cannot afford to live even a meagre life, then you are driving them towards corruption. Countries like China deal with it by having a harsh, totalitarian police state. You might think this would be an option for the UK, but interestingly, the Conservatives, to their credit, have begun to reverse the assault on human rights that was seen under the Blair and Brown governments and, ironically, to compel cutbacks in police numbers. Thus, the UK will have an economic pattern that promotes corruption but does not have the police strength to suppress it.
I believe that the current governement's stance is to encourage cheap, malleable labour of the kind employers of the 19th century could draw upon and dispose of at will. I quite anticipate that characteristics of 19th century employment, such as tied accommodation, even live-in servants, will begin to re-appear. I have already noted that dated modes of living such as lodging are on the increase once more. You may contest that Cameron and his gang have any intention of retro-engineering UK society. It does not really matter if you accept it or not. What is more crucial is that, if the numbers of working poor continue to rise, then domestic consumption will be pitiful and the UK will be condemned to a weak economy into the coming decades. Capitalism works on the basis of supply and demand, if you choke off demand as poverty does, then the cycle begins to break down and small numbers of ultra-wealthy people have far less impact than millions of comfortably well-off ones.
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Property In The UK 11: Squeezing Out A Little Bit More
The house I live in has been on the market since September 2010. Not a good time to be selling a house, but as regular readers know, I have never been lucky with property. If it were not for HM Revenue & Customs admitting to overcharging me £16,000 worth of tax in 2008 and refunding it (with no apology) then, by now the house would have been repossessed. I have been unemployed for 11 months, bar six weeks' of a few days of work (some weeks one day, some two days per week) and despite still having regular interviews I seem no closer to getting back into employment. Consequently, because of the woman who lives in my house running a business I am not entitled to any benefit to pay the mortgage. The mortgage lender, Nationwide Building Society, has repeatedly refused to discuss my inability to pay, saying that if I have enough to pay at least one month's mortgage payments, then it is too early to discuss me defaulting or going on to interest only payments. With unemployment rising and despite 27 interviews now, no sign of work, the only option is to sell the house. Of course, that is easier said than done.
I acknowledge that I am very bad at selecting companies to provide me a service. I always pick the worst company available (though on a number of occasions, recommended to me) for the particular job. Consequently I have been ripped off by letting agents, removal companies, electrical repair companies and now estate agents. Within a five-minute walk of my house there are at least five estate agents, though the best decided to morph instead into a financial advice company, much to my frustration and the company they recommended nearby only lets, not sells properties. Consequently I picked a large company close to my house that was tied into national networks so as to get the coverage. However, the staff turned out to be clueless, making no effort to learn about the neighbourhood (even though you can see their office from my house) or the potential buyers coming round and what they were looking for (buy-to-let, buy-for-family, buy-for-self; elderly, middle aged, young; with/out children; local, from London, etc.) and said nothing bar 'this is the living room'. They had the cheek to say they would no longer do accompanied viewings because I simply took over the sales role. I said that was insulting as I had only taken that role because their staff made no effort to address the viewers or sell the property. Anyway, we got one buyer from them, but it took him three months and he had not even sent round a surveyor. We abandoned both him and the estate agent.
The next company we went for, is tiny, but works incredibly hard and within a week of transferring to them we have another buyer, offering £2000 more than the first. I live in a town with still high demand for property, very close to a good range of shops and good primary schools. Despite paying £240,000 for the house in 2007 it is now worth £230,000; to be expected with the downturn in the market. Offers have come in starting at £205,000, not leaving enough to clear the debts on the house and have enough to put down a deposit on a rented property. We have managed to get offers now up to £217,000 helped by the move from Winter to Spring, but still in line for a heavy loss. Given the location and the benefits of the property, once the economy recovers, the value is likely to rise fast, especially with the revival of buy-to-let mortgages reported this week. Thus, the person is getting a good deal on the property, £13,000 less than the valuation given even now by the estate agents.
These days, it is apparent, that a good deal is not enough for house buyers, they constantly want to squeeze out more from the seller. I have experienced this even back in 2007 selling my flat in London, a time when the housing market was much healthier. Due to being bullied by the landlord's representative, I effectively sold a two-bedroomed flat for the price of a one-bedroomed flat in the area of Newham. It was clean and modern and I had replaced the bathroom and the windows and made other improvements in the six years I had owned it, primarily for my own benefit when living there, but clearly improving it over some of the neighbouring flats. In my hurry, the buyer got a very good bargain. However, this was not enough. Living in rented accommodation I had no desire to move the furniture and white goods from it. This was initially not an issue, but then suddenly the buyer wanted them gone at my expense. Then he wanted the flat to be cleaned, by him even before he owned it, at a cost of £500 (€565; US$805). The flat was not unclean and it took £40 to employ a woman to clean it thoroughly. However, it was clear the buyer was using it as an excuse to squeeze more money for me, even though he was paying about £30,000 (€33,900; US$48,300) less than an equivalent flat in the same area would have cost him. Once the front door lock had been destroyed by the estate agents' carelessness on the day before the contract exchange occurred, I took the opportunity while it was being replaced to ensure that the buyer would receive a welcoming gift of rotten milk, a mouldy fridge and faeces when he arrived. Any waste paper and other rubbish I could find, was distributed over the flat so he could really see what an untidied flat looked like. As you can understand, I was angered, by the attempt to squeeze more and more from me, even when I was selling the place at a bargain price.
A very similar thing occurred with the current house. The second buyer we accepted first sent around three inspectors. The surveyor spent three hours at the property and people came to check the central heating and electricity too. This dragged out over a couple of weeks. The buyer did not take efforts to conceal her contempt for us and I overheard her ridiculing myself and the woman who lives in our house as stupid. Clearly she, like the buyer of my flat, believed that we were so desperate that she could humiliate us and we would have to swallow it. I have no idea why humiliation is now seen to be a necessary part of buying a house. Certainly getting an extra £500 from the buyer now seems to be part of a fashion. In this case she did not demand cleaning, she asked instead that we paid £500 towards the £1000 it would cost to build an additional wall around the kitchen; a wall that we would gain no benefit from. We naturally refused. The estate agent felt the demand was ridiculous, which suggests that it may not be as common behaviour as I have experienced, but he did offer to take £500 off his commission instead. The woman, disgruntled with our refusal to comply with us immediately withdrew her offer, over two months since she had made it, and like the first buyer, during that time, had effectively blocked other potential buyers.
These may be isolated incidents, but to me there does seem to be a trend that, as a buyer you see what you can squeeze out of the sellers. Getting a good price is not enough. There has to be some specific demand imposed on the sellers to make it clear to them that you hold the power. To me this does not seem to be a healthy way to do business. Either you want the property or you do not. Either you can afford to buy the property or you cannot. There is obviously room for discussion over the price and we have engaged with that, all the buyers (we are now on to the third, who rather worryingly has requested a third viewing of the house as I have been writing this) have got a price well below the asking price. When seeing Niall Ferguson talking about the success of Western capitalism and how now it is not thriving so well as it is in China, he noted the fact that honesty in business is one trait highly valued in Chinese commerce. This element seems to have gone from buying and selling in the UK and slows down exchange and discourages commerce. This applies to selling on eBay in the UK as it does to selling houses. Sometime in the previous decade, perhaps prompted by television programmes, buyers have been encouraged to move from simply getting a good deal, to squeezing unnecessary extras. After all, on a £217,000 sale, the commission to the estate agent is usually £4880 and unless the buyer if a first-time buyer the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is £2,170, so what is the fuss over £500? It seems to be a principle that Ferguson missed that is damaging to capitalism in the UK today. It is not enough simply to make a profitable deal, now you have to 'win a victory' too and rub the face of your 'opponent' in the mud by asserting how much more economically powerful you are than them. This is one thing which harms sales and business in the UK and seems to be increasing as the recession widens the gap between people who previously would have been on the same economic level. Selling your house should not require you to kow-tow to someone who explicitly holds you in contempt.
P.P. 28/05/2011
This aspect of the house sale has taken on an additional unpleasant twist. It is clear that I have a sign on my forehead that I cannot see but which instructs everyone else: 'patronise and exploit this man as much as you can'. Last week I was fortunate enough to get work. This means there is no longer a need to sell the house, though we will struggle with paying the mortgage until my first salary arrives at the end of July. However, given that the house is worth tens of thousands of pounds less than when we bought it and we own 1/300th of it more, every month of the mortgage we pay, if we can hold on to it until prices have at least returned to their 2007 level, then we will at least be a little better off.
Once the job had been confirmed, I telephoned the estate agent to tell him we were taking the house off the market. I said I expected an invoice for services rendered in the four months they had been selling our house for us. I assumed he would inform all the relevant parties. Today, however, I received a very snotty letter from the solicitors' office, asking why they had not been informed as well. It was clear they had found out in two days of me telling the estate agent anyway, but that I did not crawl round to them and kiss their feet and apologise for not continuing with the sale, was clearly sufficient to leave them indignant. They were not our choice of solicitors anyway, we only took them as they are the ones the estate agent uses. All our communications, bar one visit, have been through the estate agent. Given their attitude now, I am actually glad I did not call them.
It gets worse. When our second buyer decided that because we were unwilling to pay her £500 and have a wall built to no benefit of us, she would break off the sale, we were left with the solicitor's charge for the work they had done already, a sum of £300 [€318; US$483]. We contacted the buyer to see if she would reimburse us this money. She did not say no, she simply refused to respond to any attempts to contact her. We accepted that with no written contract we could not get the money out of her. Now, however, this time we have broken the sale and now this latest buyer is trying to get his solicitor's fees back out of us. Despite being employed by us, our solicitor seems always to be working on behalf of other people. In the first case she did nothing to help us recoup the money from the buyer who broke off. In this second case, however, she has forwarded a bill from the buyer's solicitor, at a cost of £8 to us, and written to tell us it is 'only fair' that we reimburse the buyer. Why is it 'fair' that we have to pay the fees for everyone? The solicitor seems to have no interest in aiding us, despite being paid by us, at fees £66 higher than those levied by the latest buyer's solicitor.
Part of the problem seems to be that we are too honest and treat people politely. In contrast the two buyers have behaved in a 'chav-plus' manner. They behave as if thuggish, self-centred people from a housing estate, terse and rude in their manners, expecting always to get that bit extra, and yet, they have the money to speculate in property. I could be terse and aggressive in my business dealings, put on the accent and behaviour I learnt in Mile End and it is apparent in not doing so I somehow signal that I am open to being exploited by all and sundry. My advice is: the only way to go into buying or selling a house in the UK in 2011 is to behave as if you are some small-time gangster who has retired from the Ocean Estate in Stepney to Chigwell. In addition, avoid Aldridge Brownlee solicitors.
I acknowledge that I am very bad at selecting companies to provide me a service. I always pick the worst company available (though on a number of occasions, recommended to me) for the particular job. Consequently I have been ripped off by letting agents, removal companies, electrical repair companies and now estate agents. Within a five-minute walk of my house there are at least five estate agents, though the best decided to morph instead into a financial advice company, much to my frustration and the company they recommended nearby only lets, not sells properties. Consequently I picked a large company close to my house that was tied into national networks so as to get the coverage. However, the staff turned out to be clueless, making no effort to learn about the neighbourhood (even though you can see their office from my house) or the potential buyers coming round and what they were looking for (buy-to-let, buy-for-family, buy-for-self; elderly, middle aged, young; with/out children; local, from London, etc.) and said nothing bar 'this is the living room'. They had the cheek to say they would no longer do accompanied viewings because I simply took over the sales role. I said that was insulting as I had only taken that role because their staff made no effort to address the viewers or sell the property. Anyway, we got one buyer from them, but it took him three months and he had not even sent round a surveyor. We abandoned both him and the estate agent.
The next company we went for, is tiny, but works incredibly hard and within a week of transferring to them we have another buyer, offering £2000 more than the first. I live in a town with still high demand for property, very close to a good range of shops and good primary schools. Despite paying £240,000 for the house in 2007 it is now worth £230,000; to be expected with the downturn in the market. Offers have come in starting at £205,000, not leaving enough to clear the debts on the house and have enough to put down a deposit on a rented property. We have managed to get offers now up to £217,000 helped by the move from Winter to Spring, but still in line for a heavy loss. Given the location and the benefits of the property, once the economy recovers, the value is likely to rise fast, especially with the revival of buy-to-let mortgages reported this week. Thus, the person is getting a good deal on the property, £13,000 less than the valuation given even now by the estate agents.
These days, it is apparent, that a good deal is not enough for house buyers, they constantly want to squeeze out more from the seller. I have experienced this even back in 2007 selling my flat in London, a time when the housing market was much healthier. Due to being bullied by the landlord's representative, I effectively sold a two-bedroomed flat for the price of a one-bedroomed flat in the area of Newham. It was clean and modern and I had replaced the bathroom and the windows and made other improvements in the six years I had owned it, primarily for my own benefit when living there, but clearly improving it over some of the neighbouring flats. In my hurry, the buyer got a very good bargain. However, this was not enough. Living in rented accommodation I had no desire to move the furniture and white goods from it. This was initially not an issue, but then suddenly the buyer wanted them gone at my expense. Then he wanted the flat to be cleaned, by him even before he owned it, at a cost of £500 (€565; US$805). The flat was not unclean and it took £40 to employ a woman to clean it thoroughly. However, it was clear the buyer was using it as an excuse to squeeze more money for me, even though he was paying about £30,000 (€33,900; US$48,300) less than an equivalent flat in the same area would have cost him. Once the front door lock had been destroyed by the estate agents' carelessness on the day before the contract exchange occurred, I took the opportunity while it was being replaced to ensure that the buyer would receive a welcoming gift of rotten milk, a mouldy fridge and faeces when he arrived. Any waste paper and other rubbish I could find, was distributed over the flat so he could really see what an untidied flat looked like. As you can understand, I was angered, by the attempt to squeeze more and more from me, even when I was selling the place at a bargain price.
A very similar thing occurred with the current house. The second buyer we accepted first sent around three inspectors. The surveyor spent three hours at the property and people came to check the central heating and electricity too. This dragged out over a couple of weeks. The buyer did not take efforts to conceal her contempt for us and I overheard her ridiculing myself and the woman who lives in our house as stupid. Clearly she, like the buyer of my flat, believed that we were so desperate that she could humiliate us and we would have to swallow it. I have no idea why humiliation is now seen to be a necessary part of buying a house. Certainly getting an extra £500 from the buyer now seems to be part of a fashion. In this case she did not demand cleaning, she asked instead that we paid £500 towards the £1000 it would cost to build an additional wall around the kitchen; a wall that we would gain no benefit from. We naturally refused. The estate agent felt the demand was ridiculous, which suggests that it may not be as common behaviour as I have experienced, but he did offer to take £500 off his commission instead. The woman, disgruntled with our refusal to comply with us immediately withdrew her offer, over two months since she had made it, and like the first buyer, during that time, had effectively blocked other potential buyers.
These may be isolated incidents, but to me there does seem to be a trend that, as a buyer you see what you can squeeze out of the sellers. Getting a good price is not enough. There has to be some specific demand imposed on the sellers to make it clear to them that you hold the power. To me this does not seem to be a healthy way to do business. Either you want the property or you do not. Either you can afford to buy the property or you cannot. There is obviously room for discussion over the price and we have engaged with that, all the buyers (we are now on to the third, who rather worryingly has requested a third viewing of the house as I have been writing this) have got a price well below the asking price. When seeing Niall Ferguson talking about the success of Western capitalism and how now it is not thriving so well as it is in China, he noted the fact that honesty in business is one trait highly valued in Chinese commerce. This element seems to have gone from buying and selling in the UK and slows down exchange and discourages commerce. This applies to selling on eBay in the UK as it does to selling houses. Sometime in the previous decade, perhaps prompted by television programmes, buyers have been encouraged to move from simply getting a good deal, to squeezing unnecessary extras. After all, on a £217,000 sale, the commission to the estate agent is usually £4880 and unless the buyer if a first-time buyer the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is £2,170, so what is the fuss over £500? It seems to be a principle that Ferguson missed that is damaging to capitalism in the UK today. It is not enough simply to make a profitable deal, now you have to 'win a victory' too and rub the face of your 'opponent' in the mud by asserting how much more economically powerful you are than them. This is one thing which harms sales and business in the UK and seems to be increasing as the recession widens the gap between people who previously would have been on the same economic level. Selling your house should not require you to kow-tow to someone who explicitly holds you in contempt.
P.P. 28/05/2011
This aspect of the house sale has taken on an additional unpleasant twist. It is clear that I have a sign on my forehead that I cannot see but which instructs everyone else: 'patronise and exploit this man as much as you can'. Last week I was fortunate enough to get work. This means there is no longer a need to sell the house, though we will struggle with paying the mortgage until my first salary arrives at the end of July. However, given that the house is worth tens of thousands of pounds less than when we bought it and we own 1/300th of it more, every month of the mortgage we pay, if we can hold on to it until prices have at least returned to their 2007 level, then we will at least be a little better off.
Once the job had been confirmed, I telephoned the estate agent to tell him we were taking the house off the market. I said I expected an invoice for services rendered in the four months they had been selling our house for us. I assumed he would inform all the relevant parties. Today, however, I received a very snotty letter from the solicitors' office, asking why they had not been informed as well. It was clear they had found out in two days of me telling the estate agent anyway, but that I did not crawl round to them and kiss their feet and apologise for not continuing with the sale, was clearly sufficient to leave them indignant. They were not our choice of solicitors anyway, we only took them as they are the ones the estate agent uses. All our communications, bar one visit, have been through the estate agent. Given their attitude now, I am actually glad I did not call them.
It gets worse. When our second buyer decided that because we were unwilling to pay her £500 and have a wall built to no benefit of us, she would break off the sale, we were left with the solicitor's charge for the work they had done already, a sum of £300 [€318; US$483]. We contacted the buyer to see if she would reimburse us this money. She did not say no, she simply refused to respond to any attempts to contact her. We accepted that with no written contract we could not get the money out of her. Now, however, this time we have broken the sale and now this latest buyer is trying to get his solicitor's fees back out of us. Despite being employed by us, our solicitor seems always to be working on behalf of other people. In the first case she did nothing to help us recoup the money from the buyer who broke off. In this second case, however, she has forwarded a bill from the buyer's solicitor, at a cost of £8 to us, and written to tell us it is 'only fair' that we reimburse the buyer. Why is it 'fair' that we have to pay the fees for everyone? The solicitor seems to have no interest in aiding us, despite being paid by us, at fees £66 higher than those levied by the latest buyer's solicitor.
Part of the problem seems to be that we are too honest and treat people politely. In contrast the two buyers have behaved in a 'chav-plus' manner. They behave as if thuggish, self-centred people from a housing estate, terse and rude in their manners, expecting always to get that bit extra, and yet, they have the money to speculate in property. I could be terse and aggressive in my business dealings, put on the accent and behaviour I learnt in Mile End and it is apparent in not doing so I somehow signal that I am open to being exploited by all and sundry. My advice is: the only way to go into buying or selling a house in the UK in 2011 is to behave as if you are some small-time gangster who has retired from the Ocean Estate in Stepney to Chigwell. In addition, avoid Aldridge Brownlee solicitors.
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Electoral Reform/Deform?
As many readers know we are rapidly approach local elections (5th May 2011) for about a third of the seats on local councils in Britain. This year for the first time since 1975, the UK also has a referendum. It is on whether we should change from the so-called 'First Past the Post' (FPP) system of elections to the Alternate Vote (AV) approach. This was part of the deal that the Liberal Democrats made with the Conservatives when they went into coalition with them almost a year ago. The Liberal Democrats, as I have shown on a couple of occasions on this blog, have long failed to turn the number of the votes their candidates receive into anything even approaching an equivalent number of members in the House of Commons. They have long been supporters of electoral reform, moving voting to the Westminster Parliament (well, the bit of it which is elected, the House of Commons; the House of Lords, the upper house is totally unelected) towards some form of proportional representation (PR). Proportional representation is seen as being 'fairer' as it more accurately reflects the level of support each party receives. With the FPP system if a candidate receives just one vote fewer then they do not win the seat, even though they may have had tens of thousands of people voting for them.
In the world around 43 countries (of those which are democratic) use FPP, many have had connections to the UK such as the USA, Canada and India and it was adopted in Taiwan when it moved to democracy in the 1990s. Some countries have a partial FPP system, such as France where there are two rounds and only candidates receiving a certain percentage of votes move into the second round. However, the bulk of EU countries use a proportional representation system. This has sometimes elicited xenophobic hostility from the British who see PR systems as foreign and 'unstable'. In particular, Weimar Germany 1918-1933 and Italy since 1945 are held up as examples of countries for which PR has led to political instability and short-lived governments. In a patronising way some have even portrayed PR methods as being too complex for the average British voter given how low turn out is at elections. For example, most UK constitutencies see only 35-40% of the electorate turn out for local elections and 50-70% for general elections. These arguments have lost lots of ground in the UK in recent years. The current coalition which has lasted almost a year has shown that actually coalitions can be strong as (West) Germany has demonstrated since 1949. In addition, for all elections to the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, a form of PR, the single transferrable vote (STV) system has been in use since these bodies were introduced over a decade ago. I know turn out is low for European Parliament elections, but combined this does mean that many people in the UK population have had some, and many of these, regular, interaction with STV. Anyone who has been to university will be familiar with it as I know from personal experience that students' unions have been using STV in their elections for over thirty years.
The AV system (used in many Australian elections where voting is compulsory), as even people who support PR acknowledge is a hybrid. Like STV you rank If someone wins more than 50% of the vote on the first count then they win the seat just as is the case now. In many constituencies, despite what the No campaigners for the referendum campaign are arguing, this is what will happen. If no-one gets 50% or above then the second choice votes of the candidate who came last are counted, i.e. the people who put a '2' rather than a '1' by the candidate and so on. Of course, this quickly eliminates all the minor and obscure parties; supporters of whom are unlikely, despite what the campaigners say, to have rated the larger parties much. Ultimately, it will generally come down to the redistribution between the larger parties. Of course, once any candidate goes over the 50% mark the process stops; this is a difference to STV. It means, in fact that in most cases, the candidate with the highest number of votes in the first round will simply pick up sufficient to go over the 50% mark.
The No campaigners argue that this will mean that someone who received 3rd place in the number of votes on the first count could potentially win. Yes, this is possible if they first three candidates are close together. The reason why they fear this is that historically some Labour supporters would 'tactically' back the Liberal Democrat if they thought they stood a chance of getting in, in that district and some Conservative voters might too. Thus, it is assumed that the Liberal Democrats may receive lots of '2' votes from both Labour and Conservative supporters and so may get in, in more constituencies. Of course, it would not affect the 'heartlands' of any party where the majority is usually clear, but it will impinge on marginal seats which are the ones parties pour most effort into. The one factor that makes AV more palatable to traditionalists is that whilst providing a slightly better reflection of the support for parties, it still returns one representative from each constituency. Strangely, this is now enshrined as an important principle for British politics, despite the fact that the UK had constituencies returning more than one member of parliament up until 1950.
Things have changed through the formation of the coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as this has disgruntled both Labour supporters who previously would have voted Liberal Democrat and, of course, many traditional Liberal Democrats have abandoned the party. In fact, from the Barnsley by-election, it seems the Conservative might benefit from UKIP supporters giving them a '2' vote, if not in a Labour heartland like Barnsley but in other more uncertain locations. All PR encourages people to give support to smaller parties, thus we might see Greens gaining votes from across the political spectrum, from people, who in the past would not want to 'waste' their single vote on a Green candidate. Of course, for Labour and the Conservatives any advance of smaller parties, even the Liberal Democrats, weakens their traditional position. This is why, despite promising electoral reform before the 1997 election, once in power Tony Blair abandoned the ideas and only had the Jenkins Commission and then ignored its advice through all his time in office.
I do not think the vote for AV will succeed. I would prefer that we went to STV as is the case for so many elections already in the UK. By having the referendum on the same day as the local elections David Cameron, a clear opponent of any adjustment of the FPP system, has muddied the waters. Britain is a very apolitical country with few people taking interest in politics these days let alone the electoral system, even though these are factors in them losing their jobs and public services. They actually tend to blame other people like immigrants, than the politicians whose policies have impinged on them, but that always seems to be the way in the UK. Other referenda, such as in Canada have had insufficient turn-out to bring about change in the electoral system. Given how few people vote in local elections, I think the same will happen here. The failure of the referendum will allow David Cameron to dismiss for ever any discussion of changing from the FPP system. This is important for Cameron as he has ready plans which will make it easier for the Conservatives to remain in power indefinitely. By abolishing 50 constituencies and redrawing boundaries, called gerrymandering, something the Conservatives of Westminster Council were very adept at doing in the 1990s, will make it hard for anyone but the Conservatives to win a majority of seats in parliament for the foreseeable future. Just as Tony Blair seemed eager to reduce civil liberties in the UK, Cameron's mission appears to be to reduce democracy, in the broadest sense of the word, through both reducing opportunities for ordinary people and also to make it harder for any other party except the Conservatives to come to power.
My life has seen the steady erosion of liberty and democracy in the UK and it appears to be proceeding now even brisker than ever. It is a pity that AV will not come in, but in many ways the whole set-up is just a blind for the damage that the Conservatives seek to impose on British democracy.
P.P. 21/04/2011
This morning I received the first piece of publicity about the referendum, a leaflet from the No campaign. I was interested by its approach, which suggests the No camp are unnecessarily nervous, because the lines it takes are very much about scare mongering. Of course it starts with 'keep one person, one vote' probably the most equitable issue about sticking to FPP. Interestingly it says 'none of your taxes have been used to print this leaflet', well, the Yes campaign can say that too, but there is a sense that it is suggesting others would use tax money.
Inside the cost is the first issue that is raised is the cost. It is argued that the cost of AV is £250 million broken down into a number of components, first, £91 million for the referendum, despite it being piggy backed on local elections in many towns. Next is £130 million for electronic counting machines, which actually have nothing to do with AV. Northern Ireland uses STV (as does Scotland and Wales) which is more complex than AV and yet they still count by hand as it makes clear on the website of the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland. FPP votes could be counted by electronic machines, but the UK has chosen not to use them. Thus, there is no connection between electronic machines and AV. The final cost is £26 million on explaining the new system to the voters. I have no idea where that figure comes from. Given that every part of the UK uses STV for at least one election, I see no reason for this cost. We did not have training in STV when it was adopted for European elections. As the publicity points out, this £250 million could pay 2,503 doctors, presumably for a year; 6,297 teachers; 8,107 nurses; 35,885 hip replacements or 69,832 school places. So, the party which is most opposed to AV, i.e. the Conservatives, will not then be cutting public spending budgets? Oh, yes, in fact they are and by much more than £250 million. Let us compare that £250 million, even if AV did cost all that to other current expenditure. By 20th March 2011, the UK had spent £55 million on firing 110 cruise missiles at Libya; every sortie by a Tornado costs £30,000 just for fuel and the loss of a single Tornado would cost the UK £50 million to replace. As for the war in Afghanistan, that now costs the UK £4 billion per year (£10.95 million per day). So, to save £250 million we only need to not fight in Afghanistan for 23 days, less than one month. The No campaign says, when many people are facing job losses or pay freezes should the money be spent on a 'politicians' fix'. The argument against this is quite simply with PR it is unlikely we would have had such policies in the 1980s let alone now.
The next argument is against the technical aspects of AV which I outlined in my posting above. The No campaign argues that 'the votes of the least popular candidate decide who wins the election', that is a false portrayal, as in fact that candidate is eliminated, it is the other votes, for other people on those ballot papers which actually decide who wins. Yes, someone who was in 2nd or 3rd place at the first stage may go on to win, but they, at least will have a majority of the support from the constituency.
The No campaign argues that the views of BNP supporters will be counted again and again. It is unlikely, unless all candidates are so far from the 50% line (and in many constituencies there are only 3 candidates anyway) that so many lower preferences will have to be counted. As this referendum has simply come down to a Yes/No, there has been no discussion of different aspects of AV, for example the '2' votes carrying less weight than the '1' votes, the '3' votes less than the '2' and so on. Given that it has been deemed by the government and many campaigners that the electorate, who, as I remind you, already use STV for many elections, cannot possibly understand the system, there is no discussion of the actual form AV might take in the UK.
The section entitled 'AV is Unpopular' is very misleading. It shows a map of the world and coloured in green for countries who 'Don't use AV' and purple for 'use AV'. The countries using it are Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, all according to the pamphlet are unhappy with it. In fact many states of Australia use STV. The misleading thing about the map is that many of the countries shown in green of course would not use AV because they could equally be coloured as 'Don't use democracy'. Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Burma, North Korea and, of course, China where a quarter of the world's population lives, are shown as 'Don't use AV'. Well, of course they do not use AV, because they are (or until recently) dictatorships. It also neglects the fact that, as noted above, that over 70 countries shown as 'Don't use AV' actually use STV, a more proportional form of voting, far removed from the FPP system, including India where around 21% of the world's population lives; Brazil (3.7%) and Russia (2.7%) and 23 members of the EU including Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Poland, use STV. The French system, whilst not precisely identical to AV is very close to it, and more similar to it than FPP. The suggestion is that if you do not use AV the only alternative is FPP, whereas, in fact, most democratic countries have gone for something very different and more proportional.
The final element of the publicity is down right hilarious. It turns history on its head. Having said that the Liberal Democrats, correctly, are the only party which is wholly behind AV (many Labour and some support it Conservatives support it, though ironically not the BNP), then they associate it with the unpopularity of Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats. The publicity says 'AV leads to broken promises', saying that Clegg reneged on his promises not to allow job cuts, a VAT increase, the raising of university tuition fees and the cuts in public spending. However, I ask how did AV lead to this? AV is not in place. We had these broken promises under the FPP system which is how the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition came to power. Interestingly, there is no mention of David Cameron and the Conservatives, the strongest critics of AV and the party with its virulent monetarist approach which has brought about all these cuts. They, of course, kept these policies secret before the election. Clegg is portrayed as only supporting AV as a way to save the Liberal Democrats at the next election, despite the fact that the Liberal Democrats have been pressing for electoral reform since the 1990s and one reason why they fell out with Tony Blair, was, after his huge electoral win in 1997, he was no longer willing to consider electoral reform despite what he had been promising the Liberal Democrats 1994-7, in preparation for a potentially hung parliament in 1997 when he possibly would have formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and so, as David Cameron has had to face now, also allow a referendum on electoral reform. If this was the case, would not the Conservatives be ardent supporters of it too? Even loyal supporters of theirs have begun defecting to UKIP.
The argument is simply that AV would give more seats to Liberal Democrats and so there would be more hung parliaments and more deals involving the Liberal Democrats. This totally ignores the democratic principle, the Liberal Democrats, even now are heavily under-represented for the amount of support they have constantly commanded at elections. In addition, ironically, without the Liberal Democrats then the Conservatives, would, at best from their view, have a minority government now and would not be in a position to implement these 'broken promises' policies which they argue are necessary for the country's welfare. This line of argument is utterly bizarre and turns chronology upside down. It also neglects the fact that the Liberal Democrats actually want STV and have only been compelled by their comparative weakness to accept AV. It seems incredible that the No campaign can twist facts around so extremely and somehow make it appear that Clegg alone is responsible for the harsh policies we are suffering. With AV this situation, in fact would have long been avoided.
David Cameron has cleverly buried the issue and the only electoral 'reform' will be his gerrymandering of constituencies to ensure a Conservative majority at the next election and the foreseeable future. In the meantime we are being patronised by campaigners who think that the British electorate, pretty used to STV, lacks the intelligence to engage with AV and so can be told distortions.
P.P. 23/04/2011
I have now updated last year's posting looking at the impact of PR on the 2010 general election to also consider how the situation would have turned out if AV had been in place: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-if-proportional-representation-had.html
P.P. 07/05/2011
As I had anticipated, AV was defeated in the referendum, though by a wider margin than I had envisaged, 70%:30% on a 41% turnout of electors. It is interesting that in some districts, however, in Glasgow, Cambridge and parts of London the method received a majority 'Yes'. This was exactly the outcome that David Cameron not only hoped for but engineered through the timing of the referendum. In addition, he was aided by a very misleading 'No' campaign, notably supported by the 'Daily Mail'. I was sickened by its headline today 'The Day British People Stood Up For Democracy'. That is downright insulting to people fighting for democracy across North Africa and the Middle East at present. Despite how the newspaper portrayed it, the referendum was not about saving or abolishing democracy, just different ways of running elections in a democracy. However, to the 'Daily Mail' even to suggest a minor challenge to the way things have always been done is an a grave affront. The system that is retained means that votes of around 50-60% of voters are disregarded in any general election. You can argue, that anyway, the UK is little better than a semi-democracy given that, still, the upper house of parliament is entirely unelected.
Of course, the view that our method of choosing and running government is the best in the world is one that is held widely. However, it seems with the coming changes to constituencies even this is going to be eroded further and I suspect that the 'Daily Mail' will make no complaint as Cameron builds a system that allows the Conservatives to remain in power for decades. Cameron as a unionist will bitterly oppose the steps by the SNP, now with a clear majority in the Scottish parliament, to move towards independence for Scotland. However, ironically, if he permitted it, then he would eliminate on average 40 Labour MPs from the Westminster parliament, making his goal of an elective dictatorship that much easier. AV was probably the last chance we had to see off the further erosion of democracy in the UK by ensuring that even with the constituency re-arrangement there would be a greater chance of a wider range of parties being represented in parliament than will now be the case.
In many ways I wish the 'Daily Mail' would just be honest and say that actually it does not support democracy and would prefer a Conservative authoritarian state to be imposed, because then at least we would not have to see such hypocritical headlines. I have long noted the erosion of civil liberties in the UK under the Blair and Brown governments. Whilst this had seemed to slow up in recent months, Jan Culik, lecturer in Czech Studies at University of Glasgow, writing to 'The Guardian' this week noted how the police approach towards potential protestors at the royal wedding last week, was the same as that used by the Czechoslovak Communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the world around 43 countries (of those which are democratic) use FPP, many have had connections to the UK such as the USA, Canada and India and it was adopted in Taiwan when it moved to democracy in the 1990s. Some countries have a partial FPP system, such as France where there are two rounds and only candidates receiving a certain percentage of votes move into the second round. However, the bulk of EU countries use a proportional representation system. This has sometimes elicited xenophobic hostility from the British who see PR systems as foreign and 'unstable'. In particular, Weimar Germany 1918-1933 and Italy since 1945 are held up as examples of countries for which PR has led to political instability and short-lived governments. In a patronising way some have even portrayed PR methods as being too complex for the average British voter given how low turn out is at elections. For example, most UK constitutencies see only 35-40% of the electorate turn out for local elections and 50-70% for general elections. These arguments have lost lots of ground in the UK in recent years. The current coalition which has lasted almost a year has shown that actually coalitions can be strong as (West) Germany has demonstrated since 1949. In addition, for all elections to the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, a form of PR, the single transferrable vote (STV) system has been in use since these bodies were introduced over a decade ago. I know turn out is low for European Parliament elections, but combined this does mean that many people in the UK population have had some, and many of these, regular, interaction with STV. Anyone who has been to university will be familiar with it as I know from personal experience that students' unions have been using STV in their elections for over thirty years.
The AV system (used in many Australian elections where voting is compulsory), as even people who support PR acknowledge is a hybrid. Like STV you rank If someone wins more than 50% of the vote on the first count then they win the seat just as is the case now. In many constituencies, despite what the No campaigners for the referendum campaign are arguing, this is what will happen. If no-one gets 50% or above then the second choice votes of the candidate who came last are counted, i.e. the people who put a '2' rather than a '1' by the candidate and so on. Of course, this quickly eliminates all the minor and obscure parties; supporters of whom are unlikely, despite what the campaigners say, to have rated the larger parties much. Ultimately, it will generally come down to the redistribution between the larger parties. Of course, once any candidate goes over the 50% mark the process stops; this is a difference to STV. It means, in fact that in most cases, the candidate with the highest number of votes in the first round will simply pick up sufficient to go over the 50% mark.
The No campaigners argue that this will mean that someone who received 3rd place in the number of votes on the first count could potentially win. Yes, this is possible if they first three candidates are close together. The reason why they fear this is that historically some Labour supporters would 'tactically' back the Liberal Democrat if they thought they stood a chance of getting in, in that district and some Conservative voters might too. Thus, it is assumed that the Liberal Democrats may receive lots of '2' votes from both Labour and Conservative supporters and so may get in, in more constituencies. Of course, it would not affect the 'heartlands' of any party where the majority is usually clear, but it will impinge on marginal seats which are the ones parties pour most effort into. The one factor that makes AV more palatable to traditionalists is that whilst providing a slightly better reflection of the support for parties, it still returns one representative from each constituency. Strangely, this is now enshrined as an important principle for British politics, despite the fact that the UK had constituencies returning more than one member of parliament up until 1950.
Things have changed through the formation of the coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as this has disgruntled both Labour supporters who previously would have voted Liberal Democrat and, of course, many traditional Liberal Democrats have abandoned the party. In fact, from the Barnsley by-election, it seems the Conservative might benefit from UKIP supporters giving them a '2' vote, if not in a Labour heartland like Barnsley but in other more uncertain locations. All PR encourages people to give support to smaller parties, thus we might see Greens gaining votes from across the political spectrum, from people, who in the past would not want to 'waste' their single vote on a Green candidate. Of course, for Labour and the Conservatives any advance of smaller parties, even the Liberal Democrats, weakens their traditional position. This is why, despite promising electoral reform before the 1997 election, once in power Tony Blair abandoned the ideas and only had the Jenkins Commission and then ignored its advice through all his time in office.
I do not think the vote for AV will succeed. I would prefer that we went to STV as is the case for so many elections already in the UK. By having the referendum on the same day as the local elections David Cameron, a clear opponent of any adjustment of the FPP system, has muddied the waters. Britain is a very apolitical country with few people taking interest in politics these days let alone the electoral system, even though these are factors in them losing their jobs and public services. They actually tend to blame other people like immigrants, than the politicians whose policies have impinged on them, but that always seems to be the way in the UK. Other referenda, such as in Canada have had insufficient turn-out to bring about change in the electoral system. Given how few people vote in local elections, I think the same will happen here. The failure of the referendum will allow David Cameron to dismiss for ever any discussion of changing from the FPP system. This is important for Cameron as he has ready plans which will make it easier for the Conservatives to remain in power indefinitely. By abolishing 50 constituencies and redrawing boundaries, called gerrymandering, something the Conservatives of Westminster Council were very adept at doing in the 1990s, will make it hard for anyone but the Conservatives to win a majority of seats in parliament for the foreseeable future. Just as Tony Blair seemed eager to reduce civil liberties in the UK, Cameron's mission appears to be to reduce democracy, in the broadest sense of the word, through both reducing opportunities for ordinary people and also to make it harder for any other party except the Conservatives to come to power.
My life has seen the steady erosion of liberty and democracy in the UK and it appears to be proceeding now even brisker than ever. It is a pity that AV will not come in, but in many ways the whole set-up is just a blind for the damage that the Conservatives seek to impose on British democracy.
P.P. 21/04/2011
This morning I received the first piece of publicity about the referendum, a leaflet from the No campaign. I was interested by its approach, which suggests the No camp are unnecessarily nervous, because the lines it takes are very much about scare mongering. Of course it starts with 'keep one person, one vote' probably the most equitable issue about sticking to FPP. Interestingly it says 'none of your taxes have been used to print this leaflet', well, the Yes campaign can say that too, but there is a sense that it is suggesting others would use tax money.
Inside the cost is the first issue that is raised is the cost. It is argued that the cost of AV is £250 million broken down into a number of components, first, £91 million for the referendum, despite it being piggy backed on local elections in many towns. Next is £130 million for electronic counting machines, which actually have nothing to do with AV. Northern Ireland uses STV (as does Scotland and Wales) which is more complex than AV and yet they still count by hand as it makes clear on the website of the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland. FPP votes could be counted by electronic machines, but the UK has chosen not to use them. Thus, there is no connection between electronic machines and AV. The final cost is £26 million on explaining the new system to the voters. I have no idea where that figure comes from. Given that every part of the UK uses STV for at least one election, I see no reason for this cost. We did not have training in STV when it was adopted for European elections. As the publicity points out, this £250 million could pay 2,503 doctors, presumably for a year; 6,297 teachers; 8,107 nurses; 35,885 hip replacements or 69,832 school places. So, the party which is most opposed to AV, i.e. the Conservatives, will not then be cutting public spending budgets? Oh, yes, in fact they are and by much more than £250 million. Let us compare that £250 million, even if AV did cost all that to other current expenditure. By 20th March 2011, the UK had spent £55 million on firing 110 cruise missiles at Libya; every sortie by a Tornado costs £30,000 just for fuel and the loss of a single Tornado would cost the UK £50 million to replace. As for the war in Afghanistan, that now costs the UK £4 billion per year (£10.95 million per day). So, to save £250 million we only need to not fight in Afghanistan for 23 days, less than one month. The No campaign says, when many people are facing job losses or pay freezes should the money be spent on a 'politicians' fix'. The argument against this is quite simply with PR it is unlikely we would have had such policies in the 1980s let alone now.
The next argument is against the technical aspects of AV which I outlined in my posting above. The No campaign argues that 'the votes of the least popular candidate decide who wins the election', that is a false portrayal, as in fact that candidate is eliminated, it is the other votes, for other people on those ballot papers which actually decide who wins. Yes, someone who was in 2nd or 3rd place at the first stage may go on to win, but they, at least will have a majority of the support from the constituency.
The No campaign argues that the views of BNP supporters will be counted again and again. It is unlikely, unless all candidates are so far from the 50% line (and in many constituencies there are only 3 candidates anyway) that so many lower preferences will have to be counted. As this referendum has simply come down to a Yes/No, there has been no discussion of different aspects of AV, for example the '2' votes carrying less weight than the '1' votes, the '3' votes less than the '2' and so on. Given that it has been deemed by the government and many campaigners that the electorate, who, as I remind you, already use STV for many elections, cannot possibly understand the system, there is no discussion of the actual form AV might take in the UK.
The section entitled 'AV is Unpopular' is very misleading. It shows a map of the world and coloured in green for countries who 'Don't use AV' and purple for 'use AV'. The countries using it are Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, all according to the pamphlet are unhappy with it. In fact many states of Australia use STV. The misleading thing about the map is that many of the countries shown in green of course would not use AV because they could equally be coloured as 'Don't use democracy'. Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Burma, North Korea and, of course, China where a quarter of the world's population lives, are shown as 'Don't use AV'. Well, of course they do not use AV, because they are (or until recently) dictatorships. It also neglects the fact that, as noted above, that over 70 countries shown as 'Don't use AV' actually use STV, a more proportional form of voting, far removed from the FPP system, including India where around 21% of the world's population lives; Brazil (3.7%) and Russia (2.7%) and 23 members of the EU including Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Poland, use STV. The French system, whilst not precisely identical to AV is very close to it, and more similar to it than FPP. The suggestion is that if you do not use AV the only alternative is FPP, whereas, in fact, most democratic countries have gone for something very different and more proportional.
The final element of the publicity is down right hilarious. It turns history on its head. Having said that the Liberal Democrats, correctly, are the only party which is wholly behind AV (many Labour and some support it Conservatives support it, though ironically not the BNP), then they associate it with the unpopularity of Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats. The publicity says 'AV leads to broken promises', saying that Clegg reneged on his promises not to allow job cuts, a VAT increase, the raising of university tuition fees and the cuts in public spending. However, I ask how did AV lead to this? AV is not in place. We had these broken promises under the FPP system which is how the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition came to power. Interestingly, there is no mention of David Cameron and the Conservatives, the strongest critics of AV and the party with its virulent monetarist approach which has brought about all these cuts. They, of course, kept these policies secret before the election. Clegg is portrayed as only supporting AV as a way to save the Liberal Democrats at the next election, despite the fact that the Liberal Democrats have been pressing for electoral reform since the 1990s and one reason why they fell out with Tony Blair, was, after his huge electoral win in 1997, he was no longer willing to consider electoral reform despite what he had been promising the Liberal Democrats 1994-7, in preparation for a potentially hung parliament in 1997 when he possibly would have formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and so, as David Cameron has had to face now, also allow a referendum on electoral reform. If this was the case, would not the Conservatives be ardent supporters of it too? Even loyal supporters of theirs have begun defecting to UKIP.
The argument is simply that AV would give more seats to Liberal Democrats and so there would be more hung parliaments and more deals involving the Liberal Democrats. This totally ignores the democratic principle, the Liberal Democrats, even now are heavily under-represented for the amount of support they have constantly commanded at elections. In addition, ironically, without the Liberal Democrats then the Conservatives, would, at best from their view, have a minority government now and would not be in a position to implement these 'broken promises' policies which they argue are necessary for the country's welfare. This line of argument is utterly bizarre and turns chronology upside down. It also neglects the fact that the Liberal Democrats actually want STV and have only been compelled by their comparative weakness to accept AV. It seems incredible that the No campaign can twist facts around so extremely and somehow make it appear that Clegg alone is responsible for the harsh policies we are suffering. With AV this situation, in fact would have long been avoided.
David Cameron has cleverly buried the issue and the only electoral 'reform' will be his gerrymandering of constituencies to ensure a Conservative majority at the next election and the foreseeable future. In the meantime we are being patronised by campaigners who think that the British electorate, pretty used to STV, lacks the intelligence to engage with AV and so can be told distortions.
P.P. 23/04/2011
I have now updated last year's posting looking at the impact of PR on the 2010 general election to also consider how the situation would have turned out if AV had been in place: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-if-proportional-representation-had.html
P.P. 07/05/2011
As I had anticipated, AV was defeated in the referendum, though by a wider margin than I had envisaged, 70%:30% on a 41% turnout of electors. It is interesting that in some districts, however, in Glasgow, Cambridge and parts of London the method received a majority 'Yes'. This was exactly the outcome that David Cameron not only hoped for but engineered through the timing of the referendum. In addition, he was aided by a very misleading 'No' campaign, notably supported by the 'Daily Mail'. I was sickened by its headline today 'The Day British People Stood Up For Democracy'. That is downright insulting to people fighting for democracy across North Africa and the Middle East at present. Despite how the newspaper portrayed it, the referendum was not about saving or abolishing democracy, just different ways of running elections in a democracy. However, to the 'Daily Mail' even to suggest a minor challenge to the way things have always been done is an a grave affront. The system that is retained means that votes of around 50-60% of voters are disregarded in any general election. You can argue, that anyway, the UK is little better than a semi-democracy given that, still, the upper house of parliament is entirely unelected.
Of course, the view that our method of choosing and running government is the best in the world is one that is held widely. However, it seems with the coming changes to constituencies even this is going to be eroded further and I suspect that the 'Daily Mail' will make no complaint as Cameron builds a system that allows the Conservatives to remain in power for decades. Cameron as a unionist will bitterly oppose the steps by the SNP, now with a clear majority in the Scottish parliament, to move towards independence for Scotland. However, ironically, if he permitted it, then he would eliminate on average 40 Labour MPs from the Westminster parliament, making his goal of an elective dictatorship that much easier. AV was probably the last chance we had to see off the further erosion of democracy in the UK by ensuring that even with the constituency re-arrangement there would be a greater chance of a wider range of parties being represented in parliament than will now be the case.
In many ways I wish the 'Daily Mail' would just be honest and say that actually it does not support democracy and would prefer a Conservative authoritarian state to be imposed, because then at least we would not have to see such hypocritical headlines. I have long noted the erosion of civil liberties in the UK under the Blair and Brown governments. Whilst this had seemed to slow up in recent months, Jan Culik, lecturer in Czech Studies at University of Glasgow, writing to 'The Guardian' this week noted how the police approach towards potential protestors at the royal wedding last week, was the same as that used by the Czechoslovak Communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s.
Monday, 11 April 2011
The Most Dystopian Pop Song
Last month I was walking around a large branch of Marks & Spencer, the clothing retailer which for many years has also sold housewares and food. The customer profile of the store is predominantly people aged 55-75, so born sometime between 1936-1956, and in their twenties 1956-1985. Thus, I guess that it was unsurprising that the music playing in the store was from the late 1960s which falls pretty much in the period when the bulk of the customers were aware of the popular music scene or those songs were still lingering on radio play lists. Currently it seems to fit with the styles in the store. Much of the women's wear is based on 1970s styles, making the wearers resemble the character of Margot from 'The Good Life' (1975-8) but in homewares a lot of crockery has a more style and especially iconography of the mid-1960s, with lots of emphasis on London, the kind of thing you might expect to see in Mrs. Peel's flat in 'The Avengers' (1961-9; Peel era: 1965-8). Of course, not everyone in there was over 55, but interestingly there is a lot of cross-generational shopping groups, notably mothers shopping with daughters and quite often with grandchild too.
Anyway, I was walking around browsing to the sounds of 'Waterloo Sunset' (1967) by The Kinks and then 'In The Year 2525' (1968; though it did not chart until 1969/70) by Zager and Evans, a real oddity of 1960s pop music which rather jarred with the jolly crockery and summer shades of clothing. However, I guess it is supposed to be background music rather than you actually paying attention to it. It is interesting how the record has endured despite its very bleak message. The record was produced by Denny Zager and Rick Evans from Nebraska along with Dave Trupp and Mark Dalton, collectively known as Zager and Evans. It was written in 1964 and recorded in 1968 but it took over a year to get into the charts, but reach number 1 in the USA and the UK. By 1970 the single had sold over 4 million copies and to date it has sold 10 million. It effectively became a 'one-hit wonder' as the follow-up single, 'Mr. Turnkey' was too bleak for customers to stomach being about about a rapist who nails his own wrists to a prison cell wall.
I accept that 'In The Year 2525' probably fitted in with the futuristic feel of the period, it reached the top of the US charts at the time the manned mission arrived on the Moon. However, it is a bleak pondering of the future of mankind, and, as one might expect from two men who met at the Nebraska Wesleyan University, it actually has religious aspects to it. I doubt that many listeners actually considered the lyrics very deeply and that like 'Spirit In The Sky' (1969) by Norman Greenbaum with its clearly Christian message and 'My Sweet Lord' (1970), the George Harrison version, the only Hare Krishna focused song ever to enter the charts (to my knowledge) the distinctiveness of the music simply carries the listerner along.
'In The Year 2525' is an example of how to draw the listener in. It starts very slowly with the vocalist's voice dominant: 'In the year 2525/ if man is still alive / and if woman can survive / they may find ...' (the year is said as 'twenty-five, twenty-five'), then for the rest of the song until the conclusion, it moves through at a break-neck speed, jumping from century to century pondering all the problems that man is likely to bring down on himself. Given that it was written in 1964, it is pretty much ahead of its time. I have read magazines from 1964 in which the damage to the ozone layer from CFCs in aerosols was warned about but it was 5-10 years before environmental concerns.
It is not unusual for heavy metal and goth bands to record bleak songs, it is far more atypical for a pretty mainstream (though to the fringes of this, I accept) rock band to go with such a song. It has been re-recorded by artists such as gothic Fields of the Nephilim, industrial Laibach, techno new romantics Visage, German electronic Project Pitchfork and kind of indie Ian Brown. I do wonder what those versions sound like. It would be interesting to find out as a different arrangement may not work because it lacked the operatic-style fast-paced drive of the original.
It is probably easiest if I lay out the entire lyrics and then comment on parts in turn.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find...
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing chew
Nobody's gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs not got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say
'Guess it's time for the Judgement day'In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say 'I'm pleased where man has been'
Or tear it down and start again
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing
Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do or say
Is in the pill you took today ... [fade]
The song was written by Evans. Many of the concerns are ones that we can identify as being part of 20th century science fiction. The idea of a pill to give you your opinions is pretty much like 'better a gram than a damn' from 'Brave New World' (1932) by Aldous Huxley which is set in the year 2540. Similarly that novel features children being grown in test tubes such as in the 'long glass tube' mentioned for 6565. Commentators note that such concepts were not commonly discussed among the public at the time. However, the book had sold well internationally and had been dramatised on CBS radio in the USA in 1956. In addition, remember that Evans and Zager were university students in the early 1960s so would have been exposed, like many US teenagers and students to the extensive range of 'pulp' science fiction magazines of the time and science fiction novels and short stories. The belief that, in the future that robots would take over so many chores was one that endured right through the 1960s and 1970s, so the sense of us becoming limp as robots did everything for us was again, a not overly-challenging suggestion.
What is interesting is how already, in Zager and Evans's lifetimes so many of these things have become true. If we think of Prozac and how many people have been prescribed it in the USA a country long obsessed with correcting the mental health of people. Test-tube babies became a reality by the late 1970s and now we are even cloning sheep. These things have been happening decades rather than centuries after the song. Whilst household robots have not appeared, the 'limpness' of the human body is with us, notably in the USA where in 2009 all states had between 19-30% of their populations deemed to be obese, rather than simply overweight. On average this means about something like 75 million Americans are obese. The general comment about man taking out of the Earth and not putting back in, touches on the kind of environmental damage we have been witnessing for centuries, but notably through the late 19th century and the 20th century and is still continuing as flooding, global warming and acid rain show.
The song slows down for what is the final verse before the reprise. It suggests that man will eliminate himself as the 'reigning' species. It leaves it open whether God will clear it away instead. From 7510 onwards God is shown considering whether to have judgement day. It is interesting he ponders this for anothet two centuries, though I guess if you are eternal this is not very long. I tend to envisage this rather than the Second Coming, something more like the Flood. God promised humans that he would not repeat this, but the suggestion in the song is that humankind has so wasted the gift of Earth that it all needs to be cleaned out like a sewer.
I know this is only a pop song and not a philosophical consideration of the future of humankind. However, it fascinates me that a song which rather than portraying fun or love but rather questions consumerism and technology and how this interacts with religion could be chart-topping. It also seems a very ironic song to be playing in a shop which is pandering to consumerism, trying to get people to buy more and more. I know Marks & Spencer tries to avoid exploitative production of its items and waste of the World's resources, but it is part of a consumerist system which actually is rapidly draining out so much. I do wonder, sometimes if we will survive to 2125 let alone the year 2525.
Anyway, I was walking around browsing to the sounds of 'Waterloo Sunset' (1967) by The Kinks and then 'In The Year 2525' (1968; though it did not chart until 1969/70) by Zager and Evans, a real oddity of 1960s pop music which rather jarred with the jolly crockery and summer shades of clothing. However, I guess it is supposed to be background music rather than you actually paying attention to it. It is interesting how the record has endured despite its very bleak message. The record was produced by Denny Zager and Rick Evans from Nebraska along with Dave Trupp and Mark Dalton, collectively known as Zager and Evans. It was written in 1964 and recorded in 1968 but it took over a year to get into the charts, but reach number 1 in the USA and the UK. By 1970 the single had sold over 4 million copies and to date it has sold 10 million. It effectively became a 'one-hit wonder' as the follow-up single, 'Mr. Turnkey' was too bleak for customers to stomach being about about a rapist who nails his own wrists to a prison cell wall.
I accept that 'In The Year 2525' probably fitted in with the futuristic feel of the period, it reached the top of the US charts at the time the manned mission arrived on the Moon. However, it is a bleak pondering of the future of mankind, and, as one might expect from two men who met at the Nebraska Wesleyan University, it actually has religious aspects to it. I doubt that many listeners actually considered the lyrics very deeply and that like 'Spirit In The Sky' (1969) by Norman Greenbaum with its clearly Christian message and 'My Sweet Lord' (1970), the George Harrison version, the only Hare Krishna focused song ever to enter the charts (to my knowledge) the distinctiveness of the music simply carries the listerner along.
'In The Year 2525' is an example of how to draw the listener in. It starts very slowly with the vocalist's voice dominant: 'In the year 2525/ if man is still alive / and if woman can survive / they may find ...' (the year is said as 'twenty-five, twenty-five'), then for the rest of the song until the conclusion, it moves through at a break-neck speed, jumping from century to century pondering all the problems that man is likely to bring down on himself. Given that it was written in 1964, it is pretty much ahead of its time. I have read magazines from 1964 in which the damage to the ozone layer from CFCs in aerosols was warned about but it was 5-10 years before environmental concerns.
It is not unusual for heavy metal and goth bands to record bleak songs, it is far more atypical for a pretty mainstream (though to the fringes of this, I accept) rock band to go with such a song. It has been re-recorded by artists such as gothic Fields of the Nephilim, industrial Laibach, techno new romantics Visage, German electronic Project Pitchfork and kind of indie Ian Brown. I do wonder what those versions sound like. It would be interesting to find out as a different arrangement may not work because it lacked the operatic-style fast-paced drive of the original.
It is probably easiest if I lay out the entire lyrics and then comment on parts in turn.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find...
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing chew
Nobody's gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs not got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say
'Guess it's time for the Judgement day'In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say 'I'm pleased where man has been'
Or tear it down and start again
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing
Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do or say
Is in the pill you took today ... [fade]
The song was written by Evans. Many of the concerns are ones that we can identify as being part of 20th century science fiction. The idea of a pill to give you your opinions is pretty much like 'better a gram than a damn' from 'Brave New World' (1932) by Aldous Huxley which is set in the year 2540. Similarly that novel features children being grown in test tubes such as in the 'long glass tube' mentioned for 6565. Commentators note that such concepts were not commonly discussed among the public at the time. However, the book had sold well internationally and had been dramatised on CBS radio in the USA in 1956. In addition, remember that Evans and Zager were university students in the early 1960s so would have been exposed, like many US teenagers and students to the extensive range of 'pulp' science fiction magazines of the time and science fiction novels and short stories. The belief that, in the future that robots would take over so many chores was one that endured right through the 1960s and 1970s, so the sense of us becoming limp as robots did everything for us was again, a not overly-challenging suggestion.
What is interesting is how already, in Zager and Evans's lifetimes so many of these things have become true. If we think of Prozac and how many people have been prescribed it in the USA a country long obsessed with correcting the mental health of people. Test-tube babies became a reality by the late 1970s and now we are even cloning sheep. These things have been happening decades rather than centuries after the song. Whilst household robots have not appeared, the 'limpness' of the human body is with us, notably in the USA where in 2009 all states had between 19-30% of their populations deemed to be obese, rather than simply overweight. On average this means about something like 75 million Americans are obese. The general comment about man taking out of the Earth and not putting back in, touches on the kind of environmental damage we have been witnessing for centuries, but notably through the late 19th century and the 20th century and is still continuing as flooding, global warming and acid rain show.
The song slows down for what is the final verse before the reprise. It suggests that man will eliminate himself as the 'reigning' species. It leaves it open whether God will clear it away instead. From 7510 onwards God is shown considering whether to have judgement day. It is interesting he ponders this for anothet two centuries, though I guess if you are eternal this is not very long. I tend to envisage this rather than the Second Coming, something more like the Flood. God promised humans that he would not repeat this, but the suggestion in the song is that humankind has so wasted the gift of Earth that it all needs to be cleaned out like a sewer.
I know this is only a pop song and not a philosophical consideration of the future of humankind. However, it fascinates me that a song which rather than portraying fun or love but rather questions consumerism and technology and how this interacts with religion could be chart-topping. It also seems a very ironic song to be playing in a shop which is pandering to consumerism, trying to get people to buy more and more. I know Marks & Spencer tries to avoid exploitative production of its items and waste of the World's resources, but it is part of a consumerist system which actually is rapidly draining out so much. I do wonder, sometimes if we will survive to 2125 let alone the year 2525.
Saturday, 9 April 2011
TV Settlement Re-enactment Programmes: The Next Generation?
Back in 2008, I wrote about television programmes which took ordinary people and had them live for a time as people in a particular time period: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-tv-historical-settlement-re.html Since the 1970s this has been a increasingly popular genre, one that in turn fascinated and horrified me. My key problem with the programmes was that the people who had been selected to participate often could not cope at all and either constantly whined about being separated from their boyfriends or sneaked in anachronistic make-up, or conversely, in a high status role, used their position to lord it over others. There was a constant demand for modern day attitudes and the respect of the 'me first' behaviour so prevalent in today's society which led to the break down of scenarios in which people had to buckle under, and, vitally work incredibly hard, far harder than the vast majority of people (at least in Western society) work today. To some degree it led me to wonder if what was effectively turning into a 'Big Brother' television style of historical programming was going to grind to a halt.
Even while I was writing this, creeping up, hidden away on channels like BBC3 which at the time I could not even receive, was a new approach which I believe has clearly addressed the sort of concerns I raised back in 2008 and has thus allowed fascinating and highly informative re-enactment programmes to be produced. This trend has saved the genre, and, importantly, has provided accessible historical programmes, something we always need. The last of what I see as the old format of re-enactment series, which began with 'Coal House' (2007), 'Coal House at War' (2008) and now 'Snowdonia 1890' in northern rather than southern Wales. I guess given that these are made by Welsh television and people, certainly in the first two series are living where some people who really experienced the events of 1927 and 1944 which featured in the series, there is a bit more gravitas, though not having seen much of the series I can comment for sure.
Of course, some programmes, have gone down the more 'game show' approach, shifting from one popular approach, the 'Big Brother' one to a more directly competitive one. The extreme example is 'Ben Fogle's Escape In Time' which ran initially in July 2010 in which two families were based on the Acton Scott farm, which was featured in the documentary series, 'Victorian Farm' (2009) and have to make the best job of whatever task they are set that day, such as ploughing or mucking out. Their efforts are judged by experts who as in some of the more documentary style series make judgements on how well they have done. As seen in 'The 1940s House' (2001) experts can be capricious and sometimes pretty anachronistic in their judgements. I guess this highlights that it is not only the participants that can find it hard to separate modern day assumptions from the experiences, especially the work, of the past.
A similar though less extremely competitive was 'Turn Back Time - The High Street' (2011). In this series shopkeepers from today took over empty shops in Shepton Mallett and each week ran them as if they were in a certain era going from the late Victorian period to the 1970s in stages. One advantage over many re-enactment programmes was that these people actually knew the trade they were going into. However, the three judging experts (including chef Gregg Wallace and social historian Juliet Gardiner), who unlike the participants and expert visitors, never bothered to dress up in the clothing of the time, made capricious decisions; the dressmaker suddenly had to run a hairdresser's; the couple who were bakers in real life were compelled to switch their baking and retail roles when in the scenario. The profits of each were measured in a competitive way, but that was an unnecessary element for what was otherwise an interesting series. Giving them more time in each era would have helped. The dressmaker took a week to make a dress that was then obsolete by the following week, so constantly found it near impossible to make much income. They were better on things such as the adulteration of food in the 19th century and the issues of wartime rationing and the black market; these things gave drama enough.
I seem to have come at this issue from the wrong end, featuring more of the same in terms of quality, and in some ways, a deterioration in re-enactment programmes towards yet another series of 'reality' game shows, which primarily seem to delight in setting one group of people against another in order to derive the greatest bitterness from them. This, however, neglects, what I see as a much healthier trend developing in re-enactment programmes. Perhaps it can be traced back to 'Living with the Tudors' (2007), not really a re-enactment in itself, but a documentary based on participatory social science research about re-enactors at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk, Europe's oldest and largest re-enactment centre. The programme took four years to make and the directors, Kate Guthrie and Nina Pope, were also participants, learning from the people working at the centre. Importantly, a key flaw of many of the re-enactment programmes I have discussed, i.e. whingeing volunteers trying to impose contemporary assumptions on what they are doing, was avoided.
Though started after 'Living with the Tudors', but broadcast in 2005, was 'Tales from the Green Valley'. This really signalled a new era in re-enactment programmes and introduced us to 'stars' of this genre. This programme involved four experts working on a Welsh farm as if the year was 1620, so the early Stuart period. The work was incredibly hard but though they did not know everything about the era before they started, the five presenters, Chloe Spencer, John Letts, Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Alexander Langlands, were historians and archaeologists with at least a passing knowledge of historical behaviour. In addition, vitally, they were willing to buckle down and work incredibly hard even while eating period food. Each week guest experts to talk about particular farming methods, entertainment, construction, etc., came in, appearing in period costume; sometimes relatives of the presenters would come along to help too. The programme was both incredibly informative but also engaging in a way so many re-enactment series have failed to be. For Goodman, Ginn and Langlands, it was the start of a new career. These three have gone on to appear in very similar series, 'Victorian Farm' (2009) at Acton Scott farm in Shropshire and 'Edwardian Farm' (2010) in at Morwellham Quay in Devon. Not only did they try out genuine farming methods, construction, handicrafts and cooking from the relevant periods, but they also worked, especially in the Edwardian era, on industrial projects. Burning lime or mining ore or cleaning a great house shows the resilience of the presenters. I suppose they have a love for the participation.
If you visit Goodman's and Ginn's websites, you can see they make a living lecturing on social history, but also in projects, reconstructing aspects of a particular period. Goodman also appeared in 'Victorian Pharmacy' (2010) along with historians Nick Barber and Tom Quick. The pharmacy was located at Blists Hill, a re-enactment Victorian town, not far from the Acton Scott farm. This was a less demanding series for the participants, but was fascinating all the same. Again the programme is useful in actually testing out what we know about how things worked at the time, but provides gentle entertainment. I have seen Goodman so often in period costume, that when I saw her in contemporary dress on 'The One Show' in September 2010 she somehow looked wrong. Comically one of the regular presenters Christine Bleakley immediately apologised for Goodman's language (the programme being live) because she referred to the 'shitty jobs' that children from Victorian workhouses went into. That incident was funny given how much credibility Goodman has compared to presenters like Bleakley who seem to thrive on making a fuss about trivia rather than getting to grips with what many of our ancestors really experienced. I imagine there were tensions between the presenters at times on recent re-enactment programmes, but whilst we are not spared seeing the hardships of working hard in bad weather, we do not get people whining to camera about how hard it is and that somehow they deserve privileged treatment.
Re-enactment is big business in the UK as locations such as Blists Hill, Morwellham Quay and Kentwell Hall demonstrate. I suppose to some extent there will always be a simplification for visitors, that goes for any museum. However, I believe in the latest crop of documentary-style re-enactment programmes, that the right balance has been found in how they are presented, something which has been missing for thirty years from such programmes shown on British television, whether made in the UK or USA. I trust now that a template has been set that will allow us to avoid yet more whining participants, who were really only there to get on television, not to be part of a project, and seemingly with no understanding beforehand of just how incredibly hard this kind of work is. The bulk of us do not have the energy and tenacity to do such hard work and should stay well away from it. I accept that more populist versions of re-enactment programmes are a stepping stone for people to engage with social history. 'Turn Back Time - The High Street', probably was just off the right balance, better, more involved 'judges' not making capricious decisions and not expecting miracles in a week would have made it an excellent series. I am glad that we have moved in this country, to a better approach to re-enactment television. It is a fascinating, educating genre with gentle entertainment, and when it is handled well, it provides excellent television, when handled, as it has too often in the past, it is just an encouragement to switch off.
Even while I was writing this, creeping up, hidden away on channels like BBC3 which at the time I could not even receive, was a new approach which I believe has clearly addressed the sort of concerns I raised back in 2008 and has thus allowed fascinating and highly informative re-enactment programmes to be produced. This trend has saved the genre, and, importantly, has provided accessible historical programmes, something we always need. The last of what I see as the old format of re-enactment series, which began with 'Coal House' (2007), 'Coal House at War' (2008) and now 'Snowdonia 1890' in northern rather than southern Wales. I guess given that these are made by Welsh television and people, certainly in the first two series are living where some people who really experienced the events of 1927 and 1944 which featured in the series, there is a bit more gravitas, though not having seen much of the series I can comment for sure.
Of course, some programmes, have gone down the more 'game show' approach, shifting from one popular approach, the 'Big Brother' one to a more directly competitive one. The extreme example is 'Ben Fogle's Escape In Time' which ran initially in July 2010 in which two families were based on the Acton Scott farm, which was featured in the documentary series, 'Victorian Farm' (2009) and have to make the best job of whatever task they are set that day, such as ploughing or mucking out. Their efforts are judged by experts who as in some of the more documentary style series make judgements on how well they have done. As seen in 'The 1940s House' (2001) experts can be capricious and sometimes pretty anachronistic in their judgements. I guess this highlights that it is not only the participants that can find it hard to separate modern day assumptions from the experiences, especially the work, of the past.
A similar though less extremely competitive was 'Turn Back Time - The High Street' (2011). In this series shopkeepers from today took over empty shops in Shepton Mallett and each week ran them as if they were in a certain era going from the late Victorian period to the 1970s in stages. One advantage over many re-enactment programmes was that these people actually knew the trade they were going into. However, the three judging experts (including chef Gregg Wallace and social historian Juliet Gardiner), who unlike the participants and expert visitors, never bothered to dress up in the clothing of the time, made capricious decisions; the dressmaker suddenly had to run a hairdresser's; the couple who were bakers in real life were compelled to switch their baking and retail roles when in the scenario. The profits of each were measured in a competitive way, but that was an unnecessary element for what was otherwise an interesting series. Giving them more time in each era would have helped. The dressmaker took a week to make a dress that was then obsolete by the following week, so constantly found it near impossible to make much income. They were better on things such as the adulteration of food in the 19th century and the issues of wartime rationing and the black market; these things gave drama enough.
I seem to have come at this issue from the wrong end, featuring more of the same in terms of quality, and in some ways, a deterioration in re-enactment programmes towards yet another series of 'reality' game shows, which primarily seem to delight in setting one group of people against another in order to derive the greatest bitterness from them. This, however, neglects, what I see as a much healthier trend developing in re-enactment programmes. Perhaps it can be traced back to 'Living with the Tudors' (2007), not really a re-enactment in itself, but a documentary based on participatory social science research about re-enactors at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk, Europe's oldest and largest re-enactment centre. The programme took four years to make and the directors, Kate Guthrie and Nina Pope, were also participants, learning from the people working at the centre. Importantly, a key flaw of many of the re-enactment programmes I have discussed, i.e. whingeing volunteers trying to impose contemporary assumptions on what they are doing, was avoided.
Though started after 'Living with the Tudors', but broadcast in 2005, was 'Tales from the Green Valley'. This really signalled a new era in re-enactment programmes and introduced us to 'stars' of this genre. This programme involved four experts working on a Welsh farm as if the year was 1620, so the early Stuart period. The work was incredibly hard but though they did not know everything about the era before they started, the five presenters, Chloe Spencer, John Letts, Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Alexander Langlands, were historians and archaeologists with at least a passing knowledge of historical behaviour. In addition, vitally, they were willing to buckle down and work incredibly hard even while eating period food. Each week guest experts to talk about particular farming methods, entertainment, construction, etc., came in, appearing in period costume; sometimes relatives of the presenters would come along to help too. The programme was both incredibly informative but also engaging in a way so many re-enactment series have failed to be. For Goodman, Ginn and Langlands, it was the start of a new career. These three have gone on to appear in very similar series, 'Victorian Farm' (2009) at Acton Scott farm in Shropshire and 'Edwardian Farm' (2010) in at Morwellham Quay in Devon. Not only did they try out genuine farming methods, construction, handicrafts and cooking from the relevant periods, but they also worked, especially in the Edwardian era, on industrial projects. Burning lime or mining ore or cleaning a great house shows the resilience of the presenters. I suppose they have a love for the participation.
If you visit Goodman's and Ginn's websites, you can see they make a living lecturing on social history, but also in projects, reconstructing aspects of a particular period. Goodman also appeared in 'Victorian Pharmacy' (2010) along with historians Nick Barber and Tom Quick. The pharmacy was located at Blists Hill, a re-enactment Victorian town, not far from the Acton Scott farm. This was a less demanding series for the participants, but was fascinating all the same. Again the programme is useful in actually testing out what we know about how things worked at the time, but provides gentle entertainment. I have seen Goodman so often in period costume, that when I saw her in contemporary dress on 'The One Show' in September 2010 she somehow looked wrong. Comically one of the regular presenters Christine Bleakley immediately apologised for Goodman's language (the programme being live) because she referred to the 'shitty jobs' that children from Victorian workhouses went into. That incident was funny given how much credibility Goodman has compared to presenters like Bleakley who seem to thrive on making a fuss about trivia rather than getting to grips with what many of our ancestors really experienced. I imagine there were tensions between the presenters at times on recent re-enactment programmes, but whilst we are not spared seeing the hardships of working hard in bad weather, we do not get people whining to camera about how hard it is and that somehow they deserve privileged treatment.
Re-enactment is big business in the UK as locations such as Blists Hill, Morwellham Quay and Kentwell Hall demonstrate. I suppose to some extent there will always be a simplification for visitors, that goes for any museum. However, I believe in the latest crop of documentary-style re-enactment programmes, that the right balance has been found in how they are presented, something which has been missing for thirty years from such programmes shown on British television, whether made in the UK or USA. I trust now that a template has been set that will allow us to avoid yet more whining participants, who were really only there to get on television, not to be part of a project, and seemingly with no understanding beforehand of just how incredibly hard this kind of work is. The bulk of us do not have the energy and tenacity to do such hard work and should stay well away from it. I accept that more populist versions of re-enactment programmes are a stepping stone for people to engage with social history. 'Turn Back Time - The High Street', probably was just off the right balance, better, more involved 'judges' not making capricious decisions and not expecting miracles in a week would have made it an excellent series. I am glad that we have moved in this country, to a better approach to re-enactment television. It is a fascinating, educating genre with gentle entertainment, and when it is handled well, it provides excellent television, when handled, as it has too often in the past, it is just an encouragement to switch off.
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