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Fair votes or better votes?

Today the electorate of Britain will vote in a referendum on the voting system. We can choose to adopt the Alternate Vote system in favour of our traditional First Past the Post system. I won’t go into the mindboggling intricacies of AV- partly because I still don’t fully comprehend the labyrinthine outcomes issue (and who really does?). However, it asks the voter to rank candidates in order of preference, as opposed to a simple vote for your desired candidate a la FPTP.

The first thing to say is that the referendum, a result of a compromise agreement in order to broker the Coalition, has galvanised people who would be unlikely to turn out for a local election (it is also local election day). People certainly do want to participate in politics, given the right incentive. Let’s face it, local elections are boring. Hip celebrities like Eddie Izzard have been hired to explain the reasoning behind AV. However, the Yes campaign has done a poor job of explaining itself. What exactly is the benefit of AV? Is it just change for changes’ sake? There are various arguments out there, easy enough to look up on the internet. But I have not been convinced by any of them. It was funny to watch the usually persistent Andrew Neil give up on cross-examining Eddie Izzard because it became obvious that Izzard had no idea what its consequences of AV would actually be. However, the fact that no one has adequately explained the ‘why’ is no problem for some. The vote for AV is being rationalised as a vote against the Coalition, as many of the comments on the Facebook echo chamber bear out. I would have thought that supporting a permanent change to the voting system in order to piss off a temporally limited party was self evidently moronic.

An objection that is seldom raised is that voters should not feel obliged to rank candidates in order of preference. This creates equivalence between ‘most liked’ and ‘least hated’. You could end up ranking a party you disagree with. But if you choose to stick to one party that you wholehearted support, and support no other, then your vote has less value. We should support a political party that best represents our sincere views, and once an MP is elected they have a solemn duty to represent all constituents. If there is a problem in terms of parties not relating to peoples’ political and moral opinions, then that problem cannot be fixed with a new voting system. It is a symptom of a deeper crisis in political philosophy. It is worth bearing in mind that parties like Green and UKIP are fundamentally protest vote parties who are most effective on the fringe of the mainstream, focussing as they do on one issue.

Finally, this raises an important point about Referendum. Should we not consult the people on whether or not to actually have the vote? There should be a mechanism to establish a level of popular interest and/or dissent that justifies the thing in the first place. Unlike this one.

From Tahrir Square to Hyde Park

There have been many attempts to connect the pro-democracy movements elsewhere in the world to todays demonstration in London. The thing to point out is that whilst protests elsewhere have railed against a despotic state, our protests are mounted with the intention of bringing it back. You can go round and round the debating points of profligate state + low cost of borrowing + poor regulation= disaster till you are ready to eat your own hands and the penny still doesn’t drop. It seems to be of no relevance whatsoever to the interest groups involved that the cuts are unavoidable. The reductive argument that ‘it was the bankers wot done it’ gets trotted out time and time again, and for many this seems to perfectly encapsulate the situation, as if the high level of public spending is a myth put about by the evil right. The fact is that we cannot expect anyone who works in the public sector to behave in any other fashion. Their livelihoods depend on it. And of course running a large public sector affects more or less everybody, because the State becomes innately pervasive. So it seems to me that the debate, assuming anyone is interested, should move away from the to-and-fro about the size of the State, to the fundamental question of why collective action embodied in the regulatory State should morally trump all others? This is the really dark meat.

Demos.

For the past few weeks many have been following the progress of the Egyptian political turnaround. Comment has throbbed between support for the people in Tahrir Square and pessimistic warnings about the likely benefactors of a shiny new democratic process. A lot of people who were not particularly bothered about Mubarak prior to these events now feel passionate about Egyptian democracy.

It may be that voters in the States can reasonably lay claim to a truly democratic society in which the franchise applies at a local level as well as at a national level. I do not think that this can be said in Europe. We strongly support the furthering of the democratic process abroad. To us, it equates to social justice and representation. But how can we in the UK be so bold about the gains of the democratic society when ours is in such a questionable condition?

You hear a great deal about the abuse of the vote in the Middle East. ‘One man, one vote, one time’ has become a shorthand for the Islamist electoral takeover. How is that so different to the EU ‘referendum’ votes? And a ‘no’ vote in those is swiftly followed by another referendum until the electorate return the ‘correct’ answer. We have also had the long reign of an unelected PM, Gordon Brown. We now have an arguably unelected government- certainly one that lacks a serious mandate. Not to mention more or less continual constitutional vandalism.

Maybe I am exaggerating a bit to make the case. But it’s worth pointing out that we don’t stand on solid ground when we talk about representation, and holding elections is only one aspect of our democratic system. Behind the voting franchise lies the hidden clockwork, all of the brakes and flows of representative democracy. We have had a thousand years of fragile but steady evolution on this one, and the Robber Barons are still lurking around. So we should slow down a bit on this one. Elections could go either way, or neither way,or not at all. Our current political model is proof that voting and representation are different animals.

NB Daniel Hannan has made a similar point on his blog today. worth looking at.

Blogs are like buses.

This blog is intended to be a repository of my organised and considered thought. Consequently a month has gone by without my posting a thing. Between the festive season and the jetlag I haven’t really gotten my head above water. However it is now time to tidy up, wash the glitter off my face and get back to it.

As I sit by the fire, finishing the Christmas whisky and wondering what the new day might bring, there is a chance for reflection. Firstly, I regret not hearing any carols anywhere; I didn’t go to a carol service, but I like passing them in the street or listening to them from behind the front door (with the lights in the house off). I just didn’t hear any songs this time around. My mother and I sang ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ and the beautiful ‘Coventry Carol’ on the way back from the pub on Christmas Eve. It is for others to judge our performance. I played a few favourites on my mandolin, but I’m not ready for public performance. Maybe next year.

I am glad I was away for the last few months. I don’t do left-wing revolt and I was vexed by the student riots. The idea that you can have a massively expanded student population and pay little for it is ridiculous. People who want university to be cheap, free or grant assisted should campaign for a return to smaller numbers rather than urinating on Churchill or trying to mug Camilla Parker-Bowles in front of her defenceless husband. Meanwhile the alternatives to uni have become far more attractive. You are also less likely to study Applied Marxism on a one year vocational course. The real issue, the removal of the block grant, was obscured. I wonder if the extraordinary facility for studying Old Norse at Leeds will now have to be funded by charitable donations? We don’t have a culture of institutional funding through donation as they do in the States.

Guess there is going to be more unrest this year, and people are gearing up for the uproar over what might be the practical abolition of the NHS as we know it. The continual blurring of the public and private sector always looks to me like having the potential for being the worst of both worlds. And my concern is that old people are going to suffer the most because they are in many cases the least able to fight their corner. But bankrupting the nation by overspending is no answer. The money always has to come from the taxpayer, and it is a matter of how that money is managed. Presumably the consultant class will transfer itself to the new committees, or whatever they are going to be called, and suck up some budget, whilst portioning up the rest. Probably a good time to see if BUPA have got a sale on.

This year, while the cuts bite and the row rages, the failing EU economies will be forced to pay for the overall failure of EU economic policy. Nobody, apart from fusty conservatives, ever gets angry about the EU. Most people seem to view it as an inevitability. However, the same wrongheaded thinking that led to the Credit Crunch has led to massive economic instability in Europe. We, although not part of the Euro, have to pay for it as well. People are prepared to go out on the street to demonstrate in favour of public services. The same people usually support or accept the EU. But if Ireland’s economy is stretched out to snapping point by ‘tough love’ from the central bank combined with an inability to rescue itself by devaluation, how will Ireland pay for hospitals and schools?

There was an amazing story on the BBC website today. A gang of Green Activists have been in court over an attempted attack on a power station at Radcliffe-on-Sea. The big story is that the undercover policeman has turned on his handlers. He is wracked by guilt, and wants to testify in favour of the  activists. What is extraordinary, other than the coppers’ identification with the protesters, is the opinion of the  judge. The offenders were treated as if society considers ecological activism somehow more morally defensible than other reasons for protest, and the individuals were lauded for their responsible attitude towards the threat of CO2. The reduction of fines that the judge authorised made the whole thing laughable. How is it that an unproved hypothesis warrants moral superiority? But I recall similar statements made about the moral authority of Green Activists by a judge, and also with regard to protestors at the EDO complex outside Brighton. A justification for ‘Direct Action’, the motto of thugs.

Wikileaks Can Go and Boil its Own Head for All I Care

Wikileaks is such a red herring. There has been nothing controversial leaked in the last round of revealing. We find that America, as was commented on in the press last year, has no intention of engaging aggressively with Iran at the present time. We also find, unsurprisingly I think, that the USA doesn’t reckon the UK as much as we would like it to. Oh, and Wikileaks has released the work of authors without their permission. Because it doesn’t feel that it needs permission, because, of course, it’s Wikileaks, after all.

The America-bashing conspiracy freaks are lapping it up, though. Despite there being no items of actual interest, Wikileaks is being portrayed as some kind of monument to intellectual freedom that keeps the Man on his toes. I have a suggestion for the wise owls who aren’t getting fooled again; there is a source of information that reports on the mendacious activities of States all over the world, so that we can hold them to account. This information is printed on large sheets of paper, available for a fee from tiny outlets on street corners, which may or may not be fronts for the CIA, al Quaeda or possibly both at once. But don’t tell anyone where you heard this.

No doubt, the accusations that have put Julian Assange in front of a court sound like bullshit. And Wikileaks may or may not reveal things about our governments that are outrageous . But it is not difficult to find out stuff about Bad People if you check out some media. Your conclusions may be influenced by your own political persuasion; well, all fine and dandy. Nonetheless these things are out there, and journalists do extraordinary work . I fear the general attack on so-called bias that I perceive all over the media far more than the clamping down on unaccountable, hard to attribute interweb postings.

It annoys me that Wikileaks sounds a bit like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a magnificent example of a crowd sourced font of knowledge. The Skeptics Society, to name but a few, encourage editing of Wikipedia pages that cover pseudoscience such as homeopathy. Homeopaths are welcome to rebut such edits, if they can. Wikileaks itself does not have the same open skeptical access.

Perhaps Wikileaks is considered to be a standard bearer for freedom. It is a freedom of little value, not really worth having. Liberty is not license.

Tea, anyone?

Time for some American stuff- seeing as how I am over here…

By and large, the attitude clusters that characterise political attitudes in the UK are duplicated in the States. Left leaning people will typically support a powerful State to implement social justice, point up environmental concerns and recognise sexual and racial diversity in our population. Conservatives will tend to advocate the primacy of inherited moral and social values, property rights and the rule of law. My belief is that this adversarial division is being negated by a political class that holds far too much power and does not really care for the principled stand taken on either side. However, there is a third stream currently mobilising in America that disrupts the familiar political dualities. I mean of course the Tea Party, which demonstrates a mixtures of Conservative and Libertarian tendencies.

Libertarians emerge from the same side of the stage as traditional conservatives; however they are far more evident in America than in the UK. The Libertarian Party are the third largest party in America and yet are only a tiny minority party on the other side of the pond.. Their doctrine essentially holds that regulation is a barrier to human freedom, individual morality and a level playing field for private enterprise. Libertarians share a common ancestry with Conservatives, both emerging from the Classical Liberalism of thinkers such as Adam Smith and John Locke.

The Tea Party is a popular movement that, although it fields Republican candidates, shares Libertarian concerns about regulation and constitutional abuse. And the Tea Party is a challenge to the Republican Party as much as Obama and the Democrats. This is because they are not formed from the political classes that  have come to regard political power as their exclusive province, and regard that class as their fundamental enemy. They are anti-Washington. They are also constituted of a great number of people from outside of the metropolitan areas. This could interestingly be compared with the emergence of the Countryside Alliance after the foxhunting ban in the UK. It is fair to say that it took a Democratic government to radicalise them, but I doubt that they are pawns of the Republicans.  It is easy enough to establish their credo; a return to the premise of the Constitution, and the guarantees of individual freedom from a despotic State contained within it. They are a spontaneous reaction to the Corporatism that currently dominates politics, and if it did not exist, neither would the Tea Party. Their political mission within the GOP is to change it.

There has been a lot of criticism of this movement. Tea Partiers have been subject to accusations of a personal nature such as racism. Calling people racist is always questionable as it is hard to refute; you might be ignorant of your own prejudice, after all. Who knowingly admits to being a racist? But there seems to be a perception that many TP’s are motivated by a resentment based on the colour of the President’s skin. It is better if people can give specific examples of such attitudes.  And just as it is a difficult charge to defend yourself from, it is a difficult charge to make stick- sometimes it is no more than a smear. A more concrete criticism is that of Corporate backing. The Tea Party are funded in part by the Koch brothers; billionaires who give money to such things as art galleries and Libertarian causes. Here’s where it gets messy- an anti progressive movement interested in low taxes funded by very rich people. Looks bad.

However, it should be said that all political movements, political parties, NGOs etc receive funding from somewhere. The Koch brothers have a record of trying to get Libertarians into power and also of funding ‘climate change denial’. This is only considered wrong if you support the other side. Being highly skeptical of eco-politics myself, I can perfectly well understand why someone might fund a contrary lobby; heavy regulation, the outcome of eco-politics, negatively affects businesses and individuals both. It is one sided to criticise a political movement for being funded simply because you disagree with it. Of course the Koch brothers want low taxes, just as the TP’s do. It is the common cause that explains the link.

I think we could learn something from the Tea Party, and from the Libertarians. It is an Anglospheric political outlook, and many British people were sympathetic to the cause of the original Tea Party. Right now there are protests everywhere in the UK by people who believe in a strong State, and there are few to stand up to them, or oppose the increasingly desperate European Union. Or take the current mob in Parliament to task for their Corporatist maneuvering. Such a movement would probably arise from the Right, but would have to significantly change or ultimately reject the Tories. Libertarian Localists like MEP Daniel Hannan operate within the contradiction of being an anti-EU Tory.  And it might well find allies on the Left who were anti-European Union, remnants of the older, more nationalist Labour party. It would be interesting at least to find out where all the Classical Liberals went.

In any case, the criticism of the TP’s reveals something interesting. Nothing I have heard people say against the Tea Party really engages with their position (not that they have a particularly well defined stance- they are more notable for what they are against than what they are for) and it is their individual morality, not their arguments, that is found to be lacking. This implies that the American mainstream either does not understand them, or is fearful to tackle them intellectually. I realise that some metropolitan people will find that statement laughable. But the average metropolitan has not had their views challenged in a serious way for some time.

Excellence ain’t cheap, people.

University attendance in the UK has been expanded by multiple tens of thousands year on year since the sixties, and other kinds of institution have been slowly marginalised. Art schools and technical colleges hovered up by the all-powerful university system. It has become the done thing for parents with aspirations for their children to pack them off to uni. People rightly fear that prospective employers, who may not specifically require the skills learnt in , for example, English Lit classes, nonetheless bin the CV’s of applicants who lack a degree. So the outcomes of the Browne Review are of crucial importance to our immediate future. Uptake is huge, the universities have been massively expanded, great wheels are turning.

Obviously, the report’s central logical flaw is the notion of ‘student-driven’ degree funding and uptake. Browne’s rhetoric is all about transforming students into customers, shopping around for a bargain course that will really pay off. Competition amongst institutions will theoretically drive up standards. Perhaps the students should set the syllabus as well, based on a precognitive intuition as to what will make them wealthy in ten years time. More significantly, the review’s recommendation of the removal of the block grant sweeps away the faculty’s ability to determine course content based on what should be studied, rather than what is profitable to study. Presumably higher education will also begin to incorporate more endowment and seek more outside sponsorship. This has been described by some as ‘perfect competition theory’. Certainly there is a perception that this has something to do with ‘free markets’.

Competition theory refers to the idea of market dynamics creating what is known as ‘spontaneous order’, resulting in heavily negotiated compromises that compel people and institutions to offer what is best for all. This is a completely inappropriate application of such a theory. When universities began to charge us, the price was quickly set at maximum threshold for almost all institutions. My degree cost pretty much the same in any redbrick or new university that I could have hoped to have gone to. Not much market dynamic in evidence there- the choice of a degree for most people is based on values attributable to the teaching of the syllabus, rather than the financial costs, which are regarded as a long term burden to the ‘customer’. Perhaps this is going to change.

The whole process, which has ultimately led to this report, is an inelegant stroke of Coporatism. Lord Peter Mandleson’s Labour appointed team commissioned the report from his mate Baron John Browne. No authentic blueblood, BJB is a ‘peoples peer’, one of 55 so far; a person of excellence, recommended by the non-partizan commission to the Upper House in 2001 . The reforms of the house of Lords are grounded on the principle that hereditary peerage is unfair. Of course it is only really unfair to people who stand to gain from appointment to the Lords. Having said that, many accomplished persons stand in that chamber due to some outstanding achievement in a given field, and contribute their intellectual capital. And what might BJB’s capital be?

Well, he was the chief exec of BP, 1995-2007. His father worked for the company, and after Browne completed his Cambridge education he started there as well. He was responsible for the rebranding of BP, as in Beyond Petroleum, promising various vacuous ‘green initiatives’. His major accomplishment was presiding over the cost-cutting scheme that led to one or two minor ‘incidents’ for BP in recent years. He has also been embroiled in a very murky court case that commenced immediately after his resignation from BP. To cut a long story short, the injunction he sought against Jeff Chevalier, whom he had met on the website ‘Suited and Booted’, was thrown out of court. He had ‘kept’ Chevalier for four years, and Chevailer went to the press, with accusations about misuse of BP resources, when the money ran out. Socially connected millionaire Browne has claimed that he sought the injunction because he did not want his sexuality to become public knowledge. He painted Chevailer as an alcoholic, apparently because his butler noticed that the wine stocks were down. However BJB’s court perjury was not considered worth referring to the attorney general, and BP were not interested in chasing up the alleged wrongdoing. After BP he moved to a non executive directorship at a private equity company, and is ‘seeking other positions’. So I can see why he was chosen as the man to sort out higher education. It is the ‘cost cutter’ thing that really gives it away.

The point of all this mudslinging is to show that the decision-making to follow the review is being framed by the WRONG people. And to show that the culture of Corporatism, currently manifest in the Upper House, is absolutely rife in our weakening democracy. The corporate stitch-up cuts across the phantom ideological divide we currently refer to as ‘politics’. There appears to be no sense of stewardship whatsoever, other than the small adjustments made to streamline the repayment schedule. The fact is that the elite hold rhetorically liberal positions whilst enacting corporate solutions. Invoking the so-called ‘free market’ makes a nonsense of the term.

So if universities lose the block grant, how do they make it up? I wonder. Could it be that corporations stand to gain from this? I reckon so. And there is the rub; the political/corporate elite have no interest in the longstanding cultural traditions that inform the syllabus of art and literature departments, unless students pay for it. If they don’t, then tough. The fact that the education system as it stood helped them to advantage is easily forgotten. As I have said, these people are rhetorically liberal, but no longer believe in centrally planned funding. They reject the old, traditional establishment but embrace Big Buisness in the name of ‘realism’. However, once you abandon the basic cultural principles of meritocracy and an inherited corpus of knowledge in the name of fake egalitarianism then anything may replace them, as long as ‘services are efficiently delivered’. These corporate dudes simply do not value education beyond its functional status as a ‘service’, and for its direct relation to the economy. The Browne Review makes that clear. Margaret Thatcher was (perhaps unwittingly) right to describe studying Old Norse as a luxury; it is the luxury of a civilised culture. It is also a central concept of conservative thought to assume that certain social institutions improve everyone’s life by an ‘unseen hand’, invisible to the market as much as to anyone.

Perhaps now is a time for young people to reconsider university altogether; many vocational courses are available from further education institutions, and are probably more useful than media studies etc.

The Bleeding Hearts

Everyone has at one time or another been back to someone’s house after the pub, and suffered the plangent twang of a would-be minstrel singing a song they made up themselves. Such experiences may veer between the hopelessly embarrassing and the heroically life affirming. Perhaps even an unholy mixture of the two. Likewise  ‘open’ mike nights, which attract such strange journeymen, encourage performances that range from the marvellous to the excruciating. The common element is the sense of being exposed. The audience may as well be padding you down at the airport.

Something like seven or eight years ago I met my friend Chris Davies for a drink, and he enthused about a night he was putting on, with his friend Davey,  upstairs at the Albert pub in Brighton called The Bleeding Hearts. It was once a month, admission was free, and the fundamental requirement made of the audience was complete silence. Everybody had to stay quiet during the acts.

My first time there turned out to be a pulverising experience. The slightly otherworldy singer Birdengine played what may have been a debut gig. The sheer awesome terror that the nervy performance brought about is hard to communicate. The simple formula of off-centre songwriters, testing out material in front of a mute respectful crowd worked to ratchet up the static to an unbearable degree. One was compelled not just to listen to but inhabit the performers world via affective sympathy. It was a masochistic device that drew the audience too near to the stage for my own comfort.

Of course the musicians who came across most strikingly were those that enjoyed the breathless atmosphere. The Diamond Family Archive opened up black holes of space in carefully layered, self-sampling music, sketched out with acoustic instruments and electronic paraphernalia. Lawrence  (Diamond Family mainman) told me that during one of his performances an audience member had to discard a half-rolled cigarette as the rusting paper was too loud. The violent quietness gave other musical devices more authority. Close harmony, underused in heavily amplified music, was so effective at close quarters; notes may blend and clash. Groups like Things in Herds and The Robot Heart made use of complex vocal arrangement and fingerpicking to invent the texture of this new folk music. The venue would play its part, as every few months eerie unamplified  events were put on in which windows were opened and street noise became an unwitting collaborator. They had candles and ambience. A wind-up gramophone, cued up in the breaks between the acts, didn’t so much play as broadcast ten inch records from Chris Davies’ private collection. Sets were limited to three odd songs to keep things moving.

The genealogy of the style, if there was one, was to be found in the comeback of ‘folkier’ acoustic music in the nineties, lazily categorised as Alt-Country, and the desire to make intimate, emotive music after the useless energy of grunge burned itself out. I recall the expression ‘Downbeat’. Rock music requires a certain pose, an attitude, a kind of stadium awareness. It is a necessary projection, otherwise you just look terrified. The Bleeding Hearts performers, by contrast, would come across with nonchalance or play as if no one was actually listening. At least, most of the time. Once I saw an earnest young songwriter cave in on herself, announcing ‘I can’t go on… it’s just rubbish.’ The audience, led by Chris, roused her with cheers and honest encouragement, and she was able to continue. And indeed, to me it was rubbish, terrible sixth-form poetry set to music. But then it was a very inclusive night during those glory days. The important thing was to go on.

I played there myself. I had been suffering from stage fright, and I needed to go onstage again- to rock up to the crucible- and confront an audience. I could not have picked a worse night to do it. What I can remember of the set dissolves my being into white-knuckled terror. Being able to hear the audience cough and fidget uneasily, catching a glimpse of my hand playing chords, feeling like it was someone else’s. I thought I was going to die. When I came off, Chris hugged me in a gesture of triumphant commiseration, and I remember thinking that whatever happened playing music couldn’t get any worse. Subsequently I have been far more comfortable playing loud amplified Folk Rock for a heaving, heckling mob (if we’re lucky) and trying to shout in tune whilst jigging up and down. So I feel that The Bleeding Hearts cured me of my performance anxiety.

Since the regular night ended The Bleeding Hearts has happily become a record label- many of the acts were bands with cultish followings but without a serious release. The first thing out there is the mini-LP ‘Dust’ by The Robot Heart. All of the qualities or perhaps symptoms of the live performances by this band are there on the recordings for all to hear. More releases by other acts are forthcoming and will hopefully be just as essential. There is a sampler on the website featuring assorted Bleeders, taped live for your perusal. The thing to do is type ‘Bleeding Hearts Brighton’ into google and go from there.

Show Me The Money

At the moment, every cut announced by the Libservatives is greeted with howls of outrage. The internet is seething with resentment over the serious reduction in planned public spending. The discourse ranges from the usual ‘aren’t they nasty people’ stuff to strange posts displaying graphs showing that we were more indebted during the Napoleonic war than now. And of course, the bankers take endless abuse which creates a strange Weimar Republic vibe. However, all one has to do to take stock of the situation is to look at the increase in public debt we actually face. It is huge, and the figures are decisive. The response for many is simply to protest it. However it ought to be common sense to realise that we cannot spend our way out. And if only there were more rich people to tax.

The economic model is in crisis, and more cheap debt will not do any good, assuming debt remains cheap, which is unlikely. Borrowing money to pay people who do not generate much wealth will probably not work long term. However, redundancies are soul-destroying, and nobody should wish that upon their friends.

The point I would like to make is that nobody can really control the review beyond the executive. I am sure there have been sensible cuts, based on sound advice from expert advisors to government. I am also sure that departments have been deleted and jobs destroyed without care and without a plan for the redundant. One suspects that scores have been settled with a phone call or two. Most people will find it difficult to zero in on the particulars. How is our money spent, and why? Of course the public sector unions are alert to what is happening, and are under attack of course. But they do not represent taxpayers at large- and it is taxpayers who need to get closer to the whole question of expenditure. They should be able to ‘see the money’, like in the films, and have some involvement in where it goes. Being subject to a Massive State has allowed us to drift completely out of touch with such things. Of course, every time an ambulance screeches past you can see some money, but it’s the scale of the thing. We need to comprehend the extent of the State overall.

So I think this adds a great deal of weight to the arguments made by the Direct Democracy lot. Local taxation funding local jobs, providing local services. The closer the job is to the funding, the harder it will be to just strip it away, and the harder it will be to waste money. Easier said than done, of course. But we are working with a model of State that is clearly disfunctional. Before the election, Nick Clegg flatly stated that ‘Big Government doesn’t work’. We know that, and it is time to show that there is a better way. And obviously ‘Big Society’ is a soundbite.

Here is an example of something that we are supposed to be spending the gazillions on long term. It is a product of the unholy marriage of leftist ‘issue based’ politics and the greed of the wealthy (the real danger emanating from Libservatives). We pay enormous subsidies to landowners (I think Cameron’s dad is one of them) so that they can erect massive ugly bird threatening turbines and sell us back the energy. They could not look more totalitarian and service a cause that has so many question marks hanging over it the sun has been blotted out. Massive taxpayer subsidies are going to rich people quite unaccountably through ‘schemes’ whilst people who care for other people worry about their jobs. if you can stand it, have a look at the Energy Saving Trust website, and see what a consultant’s playground it is, and check out the ‘overview of key action areas’ type Statespeak. Now THAT is something to get angry about.