Martin Meenagh blog

A good New Year To You I'd like to wish all readers a good new year. The coming months will be tough, because the waves of a global economic crisis are still coming, and because the world is now more dangerous than at any time in the past forty six years. May God be with you, and keep you and your loved ones safe. Here's a beautiful, almost mystical song of patience to see the new year in.

Senate Shenanigans My old supervisor and friend, Dan Howe, was made American Historian Laureate this year, by the New York Historical Society. I am grateful to have been associated with him and his excellent book , which is as much a guide to the present as a brilliant history of America. You should buy it, reader. This history of New York took up a great deal of my life, and not in a burdensome way, when I was writing my doctorate. From the beginning, the Empire State has exceeded superlatives, and combined low methods with high hopes. The Empire city has in some ways insulated me to surprise. What has Al Franken, for instance, got on Senator 'Seven Mule' Barnum ? Who would have won a bravura lying contest between Fernando Wood and Richard Nixon? So the present controversy over Caroline Kennedy's attempt to take Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat is catnip to me. It really ought to chill the lovers of the Western world to know that an institution that makes the Bri...

Viva Bangladesh Hundreds of millions of human beings came closer to fulfilling the promise of their liberation yesterday, as Bangladesh voted in the Awami league. This is a blow to the regional franchise of terror but more importantly a step forward for what is, given its neighbours, a relatively small country under constant threat. Bangladesh in recent years has been throwing up one local solution over another and, in the process, defying those who thought that it would live permanently on handouts, interventions, and charity imperialism. At a time of war, it's nice when some things come together. You would not normally see this blog praising a government elected to 'cull a public sector full of thieves', and to open a poor country to involvement with big corporations. However, Sheikh Hasina has managed to lead her party on an anti-corruption platform, to manoeuvre around the army, to give moderate Muslims a chance to reject Jammat (which they did in great numbers) and h...

Get ready to nationalize the New Universities In the nineteen eighties, Britain chartered more and more universities. These became lucrative. They attracted so many students that lecturing became a business, research became a government tickbox-driven necessity, classes expanded, and students were forced into borrowing to pay for courses which were devalued as more and more people passed at a lower standard. The pretensions of an academic class that didn’t actually think or teach independent thought were favoured with titles but less and less pay and fewer tenures. This in itself has effectively flooded the urban areas of England with people who are not so much over educated--I don't think you can be, frankly--as thwarted, and alienated from communities their talents might have been directed towards. In the meantime, people were discouraged from becoming carpenters, plumbers and electricians. These jobs became associated with programmes that sought to save the flotsam of devastated...

The last pension generation One of the features of the past thirty years or so has been the insistent pressure on people to take out private pensions, usually linked to stock markets. These were sold as the only alternative to a state that wanted to give up on a slow, steady-as-she-goes national fund. Now, the markets have crashed. A great many high earners are leaving the country, and its soon to be massively inflated currency. The government is desperate to acquire pension funds if only to borrow against them as assets and thus to place them in jeopardy. Who would have thought, bad as the condition of pensioners is, that they would one soon day, be considered lucky to be the last generation with even remotely liveable pensions? The coming recession is one that we may never recover from, in the sense that a world run on credit with the consequent inflation of lifestyles might not come around again. Any pickup in global economic fortunes will, unless societies and governments use the t...

The impact of the credit crunch on card users and staff The hollow search for bargains is, however reluctantly, getting under way as I write. This is in part because of the hysterical encouragement of a media that has somehow convinced itself that it has a class responsibility to do so. One of the great things about being at home and seeing my extended family is how much it makes me think of things beneath the surface of events. For instance, my mother has managed to escape her employment with redundancy before it goes bust. She tells me stories of how the non-unionised workforce had holidays pared, were threatened by head office after years of service with nonsense claims that they had refused to hand back training credits they did not know they had, and generally were expected to work longer for less. This contraction of the quality of work is even more true of a cousin of mine who works as a car salesman. He is showing up for a sixty-hour week after all his colleagues have been ‘let...

Martin Kelly on Economics and a 'linktastica' I don't think that I've done a set of multiple links before, but I am wasting time rather than doing some paperwork so I thought that I might have a go. Martin Kelly, the brilliant blogger in the west of Scotland (with whom I do not always agree) has an excellent post here on the cult of economics. If you have some time this Christmas, and fancy some genuine intellectual stimulation, have a read. For those wanting a more acid take on modern life, the ever-great Bob-from Brockley (who is not acidic at all) has posted a link to Squares of Wheat on what that blogger would like to see happen to the creative industries. It involves swearing, so do not go if you are upset by that sort of thing. I should point out that it appeals to my taste for polemic rather than sense, since I like the entrepreneurial spirit and I have been known to buy music or to appreciate an advertisement. If you like polemicists and are prepared to be off...

A Christmas Carol This weekend, whilst people who were or could have been schoolmates of mine are stuck in various parts of an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, slaughtering nutcases, and whilst the government was considering charging the poor a 27% interest on loans (ostensibly to save only the most needy from loan sharks) I was swanning around various London galleries with a companion. The world is always with us, late and soon, but I am glad that I completed my seasonal triptych of the Byzantine exhibition, the Cold War modern , and the exhibition of late Rothko at the Tate. I even got an unexpected bonus, which was a hugely enjoyable side-swerve to Cildo Meireles' conceptual art show. There, I either mucked about a lot or critically engaged with the art in an interactive fashion, depending, I suppose, upon your point of view. There are probably pretentious things that I could say about my weekend, and no doubt once I've ploughed through a few more chapters of Simon Schama...

Einstein and Israel As I get older, I am becoming more of an instinctive nationalist. I think that European states are best organised as national communities which cooperate on legal and pragmatic lines. But I write that as someone who doesn't actually belong to any one nation. In Ireland I am a mish-mash of British and something Northern, and in England I am Irish and British. Do I have an urge to pigeonhole myself? I wouldn't deny the feeling I have when an Irish team does well to anyone, though it is curious to me that I feel that. There is really not very much basis for it, since I was born here and have only ever been in Ireland for a few weeks of my life. Perhaps all I am doing in seeking comfort with nationalism is saying that my own cognitive delusions should be accorded to others when they wish it, even if I know them to be some sort of confection. Truth, after all, is ever complicated. Reading about Albert Einstein yesterday, I found myself wondering at his attitude t...

Drazen Erdemovic's Pointless Choice Some of the moral dilemmas encountered in law are as raw and intense as any contemplated by any philosopher. I thought of this yesterday when I was going through the defence of necessity with a student. I've blogged about this before --the argument, essentially, that a defendant did a thing because they had to. In medical law, this has led to an increasing number of situations in which Doctors can think about killing their patients or allowing them to die. Whilst searching for material, I came across the case of Drazen Erdemovic . Please do not assume that by noting his case I am pretending to any knowledge of the Bosnian war, nor do I wish to enter that historiographical morass. Erdemovic's case is, unfortunately, not unique. It has happened time and again, and is as I write happening in the Congo, and in places across the earth. Ermedovic was 23. He was part of the 10th Sabotage Detachment of the Bosnian Serb Army. He was placed by his ...

Something very strange is happening to the Sun It's Solar cycle 24 again, reader. The number of sunspots and plasma ejections has dropped to a very low level. A massive hole has opened up in Earth's magnetic field and the solar winds are 100km away from us now. The ionosphere seems to be contracting, which would be consistent with global cooling. We are in for a torrid few years, and may be approaching a solar minimum . Not mad fear, nor fear mongering. Science. As they used to say on dragnet, the facts, m'aam, just the facts. I hope this is temporary.

Patrick McGee I do not know the wider details of the case and only became aware of it because of Laban Tall and Martin Kelly's blog. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Criminal beheadings, or near-beheadings, are characteristic of any society in which bladed articles are possessed that go beyond pen-knives or flick-knives. I remember my little sister, when a child, wondering with one of her friends where the next druggie's head would turn up. They had taken to machetes in the late eighties and early nineties in Corby, largely because of cultural pressure and an escalation in arms amongst their gangs. The one I remember is that of a fairly blameless father of one of these people, who was murdered as both retaliation and deterrence in lieu of his practically worthless son. This isn't a gun-based society, but it is deeply wrong to think knives do less harm. In fact--God help me--I find myself almost hoping that...

Sock and Awe Last Christmas--it feels like it is beginning, though my second party after Revels is not till this Friday, at Julie's in Holland Park--I put up links to an insane Brussels-Sprout crushing game which are still around somewhere. This winter, video games allowing people to throw a shoe at George Bush are all the rage. This one, which I found on the fox news site, is from a British comedy platform. It is called sock and awe, and is one of the funnier ones with which you might waste your time. It beats pretending to read something clever into a cocked hat! In this season of post-election reflection, the following illustration of western political leadership seems appropriate. Please do not watch if easily offended.

Abu Ghraib Apparently, we are all meant to forget the Iraq war now, and move on. It's boring. These are some of the autopsy reports of deaths in US custody. They dishonour the name of the United States of America. This is the report by the Senate of the United States tracing the deaths directly to the orders of President George Walker Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. This is Tony Blair discussing his conversion to catholicism in office. This is the catechism of the Church detailing Catholic attitudes to murder and dishonesty . These were the lies that led this country to the charnel house. This is the International Criminal Court . To the extent that I supported the war, I am guilty too. Read.

Labour Unresigned Rather appropriately for my 666th post, the Labour Party is not accepting my resignation of last summer. My one long-suffering reader might remember, through the haze of special sweets at the maximum security hotel , that I flounced out of the Labour Party, which I had been in since the age of 16, some time ago. The decision to do so was quite painful, and I have never really been happy with it, being someone who likes my wider cultural identities to be validated (probably on account of the reins I wore as a child). The attempt to justify the recent war policies, in addition to sponsoring some fairly intolerant anticatholicism, educational and social policies which wouldn't destroy as much if they had been designed to break a hollowed-out society, and an attempt to introduce over six-weeks detention without charge on the part of the Home Secretary were the multiple catalysts. The apparently complete takeover of the party by the worst of the middle classes and its ...

The Byzantine Exhibition The Image is of the Virgin of Vladimir , very well known in the west. For some reason a representation of it hung in my grandfather's house, near a picture of John and Jacqueline Kennedy and an ornamental Shillelagh. I spent a very pleasant couple of hours with two friends at the Byzantine Art exhibition that was staged at the Royal Academy yesterday. Advertised with a picture of a fine metal brazier that was in fact representative but outshone by other exibits, I was fascinated. I urge anyone reading to go and have a look. London is awash in cultural fetishism at the minute. The Cold War Modern exhibition is on at the V & A, and the Rothko exposition is running through its final month. One thing that strikes me about all of them, however, is how little attention is paid to the historical context. Four large posters, mostly showing maps, were the only written introduction to Byzantium yesterday, for instance. It may have been that the tour guide contai...

Global Warming in the past Just because a thing happens before and comes to nothing does not mean that when it happens again that it will similarly be of no consequence. Global warming has happened twice in the past century, for instance, and three times since the end of the little ice age at the middle of the nineteenth century. This latest bout seems to have finished in 1998. Many now think that the world is cooling again, quite fast. However, misplaced panic at warming this time has resulted in panic, self-righteousness, and a truly dangerous waste of money and restriction of development. This is consistent with the narcissistic disorder shared by most of those associated with modern politics or the media in the west. Those who follow the idea of contemporary planetary warming have attached it to a cult of reduced lifestyles and incomes which does not allow for technological development. Some of them are decent, and merely want to move from the selfishness of consumer society. Some...

Four Nearby Deaths Yesterday morning, I read about four deaths. Firstly, the controversy over Jean Charles de Menezes , an illegal immigrant executed under Operation Kratos either by the police or the army in police hats on Stockwell Tube. I read about a person shot by the police in Guildford cathedral grounds . I read about a stab-lynching of a paedophile living in wandsworth, somewhere down the road from here. And I was told about another honour killing of a young woman, nearby, which I do not believe to be anything other than a rumour. I also read about the growing pressure to expand the currency beyond limits; the muppet miliband lying about what the Germans, who have run a responsible decent republic well, actually said as though we were all stupid; and a one point four trillion debt . I noticed practically every note of doom I have sounded on this blog for two years repeated in a sort of hysterical reprise on the internet and television, and I noted how disciplined, hard worki...

A Christopher Lasch quote I awoke the other night and was unable to return to sleep. One glass of milk and a tuna sandwich later, there was I with the London morning cold outside reading through Christopher Lasch's limpid prose from the early 1990s. I usually don't put excerpts up on this blog, but I thought this passage from Communitarianism or Populism might provoke a few minds; I hear overtones of 'compassion', the slogan of social democracy, a slogan that has always been used to justify welfare programmes, the expansion of the state's custodial and tutelary functions, and the bureaucratic rescue of women, children and other victims of mistreatment. The ideology of compassion, however agreeable to our ears, is one of the principal influences, in its own right, on the subversion of civic life, which depends not so much on compassion as on mutual respect. A misplaced compassion degrades both the victims, who are reduced to objects of pity, and their would-be ben...

Global Warming Fabius Maximus has a neat story today that over 650 prominent climate scientists are preparing to challenge the idea of global warming for a Senate Minority report in the United States. I think we are in for climate change, but that the evidence seems to suggest cooling rather than warming, and in so far as I am qualified to have an opinion at all I think dynamic climate change linked to the sun is a far easier case to make than man-made CO2 warming. Have a look.

Baby P : The dust settles on a sad case For all the talk of local government failure--and I am appalled at what happened to Baby P , and agree with the criticism of the quality of social workers and social work culture in this country--there is an interesting point to be made about Ms Shoesmith, who resigned last week as head of Haringey social services. Like many in 'public service' in recent years--not least on the railways--she was not someone who had risen through the ranks. She went to Haringey's employ through Capita , which is an outsourcing company. She was an outstanding educationalist, but had not been associated with social services. This is exactly the sort of thing that happened in the railways when experienced engineers and railway people were passed over by private companies. The consequence was a series of crashes and delays. There are many who think that Capita's involvement with local government is deeply unhealthy. Haringey is very much embedded with...

The latest anti-BBC scheme The BBC is a vast chartered organisation. It is funded by a licence fee which is in effect a sort of daily poll tax amounting to a few pence. It contains a good many bien-pensant liberals and some obnoxious networkers. Sometimes, it can be very biased. However, it also provides a high degree of quality entertainment and is a standing rebuke to market-driven corporations. It provides a vast array of free television and radio. That is why, every time the BBC makes a mistake or lifts the curtain on England's particular hypocrisies, criticisms of it are more intense from those with an interest in promoting commercial television. Channel 4 was established in 1982 with a remit to make innovative and distinctive programmes that appeal to minorities. It sprang forth at a time when there were only three television channels. In recent years, it has become a mixture of bottom-feeding reality television, a vehicle for American television shows, and the provisional wi...

The Resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons There is currently a controversy over Michael Martin. As the Speaker of the Commons, he has not got the confidence of around three dozen anonymous members. A further dozen or so, led by the Hero of This Blog, Commodore Sir Lord Robert Marshall Andrews QC MP of Gray's Inn, have denounced him in public. Michael Martin is a working class Glaswegian of Irish descent, and the first Roman Catholic to hold the post in the modern period. For these reasons more than most others, (though he as neither the elan nor the competence of many of Glasgow's products) Speaker Martin is generally disliked by the middle-class boys and girls of London's political-media class. Ostensibly because of the Damien Green Affair, many now want him to resign. However, it is almost impossible to get a speaker to resign. The job is a constitutional anomaly, a bit like the Solicitor-General of the United States, who sits in the American Cabinet from tim...

Snow's Up The picture is that of a Bohemian artist, of Trento around 1400. I've been reading Roger Crowley's brilliant book about Constantinople in 1453 , (and about Rudolf II , who was also Bohemian) and thinking, for no good reason at all, on how much more sophisticated and, frankly, civilised the Ottomanns and Byzantines were than the west in the fifteenth century. At the time of this picture, the west was a dung-flavoured, plague ridden mess. Still, life goes on.... I spent quite a lovely new year once with a friend of mine skiing in the Trentino. The Trentino itself is an interesting place, and anyone who was ever even remotely taken with the idea of Austria-Hungary should see it, and Budapest, at least once. Well, I say skiing; I went up a mountain and didn't come down in a toboggan, and I went backwards down a baby slope with an instructor my friend found in a bar who thought Glasgow was in Ireland and who had a chicken on his hat. Mostly, I knocked back grappa ...

Casey Jones and Joe Hill A comment on Neil Clark's blog about miscarriages of justice made me think of the odd relationship of Joe Hill and Casey Jones today. Hill was an industrial worker and union activist who was executed for robbery on the basis of very weak corroborating evidence in 1915. He became an icon of American trade union activism and was limned in melodies by Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan, amongst others. Hill was also immortalised in poetry. Yet, in that odd sort of deliberate cognitive ignorance that can sometimes prevail, Hill is today practically forgotten outside of left-wing circles. Casey Jones, on the other hand, is not. There are them parks, museums , and internet resource centres that have all been dedicated to his memory. Even the grateful dead wrote and performed a song to him. Jones was by all accounts a highly competent and ambitious railroad engineer who worked himself through the ranks and who enjoyed real professional success. On one occ...

Britain's Banking Bill I referred yesterday to a Banking Bill that had passed through Parliament. In my post, I noted that powers were to be given to government bodies to 'snatch' dormant bank accounts that had not been used for more than fifteen years and to appropriate them to public purposes; I also suggested that this was an expandable power that established a principle. All of this was true. You wouldn't know it from the press, but blogland and the internet allow a reader to go and look at the act itself , and also to look at informed commentary. Surprisingly, in doing so, I noticed another Banking bill which is more than slightly worrying. Guido Fawkes this morning , for instance, has noted it too. The bill removes an 164-year-old clause that allows the public to know what the Bank of England is up to in monetary terms, and how fast the printing presses are running. That is a sign of what governments around the world, with some notable exceptions, are preparing...

The Ratchet It was possible to foresee what is still not quite here yet. It isn't a recession. It isn't a slowdown, or one of the other euphemisms. It's a previously avoidable but now practically inevitable Depression at the end of our long boom. Journalists , bloggers , and sundry marginalised economists have been warning of trouble for quite a while. I distinctly recall walking down the high Street here a summer ago and wondering how many of the stores were going down. As I have noted a few times before, if I could see it coming, people who were paid a lot to should have as well. People who were actually listened to should have warned others, shouting from the rooftops if necessary, of the sound from over the hill. I say that with no triumphalism. Over half a million Americans lost their jobs today , Southern Europe is in freefall, inter-bank lending is becoming cheaper because of demand falls rather than supply easing , and fairly soon we're going to see states an...