Nice blogs 09/02/10

Instead of being productive and while nursing an unceasing hangover I’ve been reading:

Michael Ezra’s take on the Westminster Skeptics piss-up last night

Mostly agreeing with the Pied Typer on market research

Interested in Dave’s article on Sikh daggers, but also the comments thread on this one

A re-read of Left Outside’s classic post on the the logic and lunacy of Kim Jong-il

Watching for the first time the two Israeli men chanting Hitler was right (in horror)

The first post of a care leaver, who writes in a way that draws you in to his (not all good) experiences in the care system

Good times.

Can blogging change politics?

Whatever one feels about the recent efforts to revitalise the thinking behind civic-led ownership from both the left and right, it does explicate the desire by frontline workers to be more instrumental in the services around them.

From the right this desire has been expressed by Philip Blond, whose think-tank Respublica published a document last year entitled “The Ownership State” which aims at demonstrating greater productivity in the workplace being achieved by increased input by staff in the decisions an organisation makes.

From the left and centre (though not limited to these categories) came mutualism, the notion that the public sector could be regenerated by devolving power to the frontline, local groups, charities and also see organisations employ a greater degree of input by staff.

Both are products of the belief that either the state or the market are becoming too big and curbing the efforts of those people who are really putting in the elbow work.

Over the past few years, the way information is distributed has taken a community based sea-change similar to that promoted by the examples above, with the advent of web 2.0 technologies and social networking, such as twitter, facebook and the blogosphere. Less and less are we limited to professional journalists for the information we receive, but the emergence of a cyber-centric contingent has meant that the communication sector is an empire contributed to by anyone – and potetially everyone – who feels that they have something to say.

This does bring about certain problems, however. Paul Staines once said, in an entry posted on the Guardian’s Comment is Free, that the reason blogs had a growing influence is because they produced “sufficient checks on politicians” and that they held “MPs to account”, presumably without prohibition from editors with strategic motives. However, the blogosphere is not sheltered from the rules of hegemony. Staines himself is someone who is very much in touch with the hierarchy of the Westminster village, and furthermore he is not a non-partisan blogger, therefore what he chooses to blog about will be subject to the same partisanship as an editor of a lobby journalist, therefore one must call to question whether the hegemonic bloggers will really produce the “sufficient checks” that Staines himself said they would. What he said in his article sounds good in theory, but does it really work like that? The answer, sadly, is no.

Blogging and social networking can, and will, change the political landscape. Joining a cause on facebook has had notable successes in pressurising politicians, Obama’s presidency campaign, the gag put on the Guardian by Barclays, the Jan Moir affair, and those other issues participated in by what Nick Cohen has previously called the hob-nob mob, are all testament to the power of the internet. Though, like the ideas of civic-led change to the public services, they are dependent on a continued battle against the so-called dominant forces. Even in the virtual world, earth-rules apply. Subversion of the way in which information is spread must be rule number one of the blogger.

What the fuck happens to them

What happens when you’re PM?

Our existing Prime Minister seems to have aged 100 years while in office, and the one before that 200 years (John Major was always old, sadly Thatcher was born without a face so this is harder to observe). See for yourself:

Happy as Larry, riding a bike in Amsterdam, probably off his tits on legal drugs, and not a grey hair to be seen (even doing his best Zapatero – Spanish PM – impression). Compare this to:

Stern, grey, having probably just clocked on that he and his wife (Betty Boop) paid £3.6 million for a house that cost artist and previous owner Roger Bevan(ite?) £950,000. Oh, and a war.

Now observe Brown back when him and Blair were in discussions about ‘carving up’ the leadership in an Islington restaurant by the name of Granita:

Now look at him:

Grey day. Judging by this Dave Cameron’s chiseled good looks will disappear and he will look more like a pasty, a toff pasty who surrounds himself with Eton-ites.

So what happens in there? Don’t know! Does it happen in the happiest country in the world?

Apparently that is Denmark, so lets do a similar thing with their last two PM’s (not the existing one, as he has only been in office since April last year – too soon):

Handsome, tasty etc, but let us compare with his 2001 image – 8 years after the start of his Prime Ministerial career:

Oh, still really rather delicious.

And the centre-right chap, Anders, who took his place in 2001:

And a 2009 photograph:

Much the same.

I’ve a book idea for Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett: The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Produce Hot Looking Men Way Into Their Old Age, Known Otherwise as Silver Foxes.

Until next christmas, goodbye.

Pedagogy: A new youth engagement or social fascism?

The heading is not simply bombastic. Walter Lorenz – foremost pedagogy academic, and author of Social Work in a Changing Europe – asked:

Is social pedagogy essentially the embodiment of dominant societal interests which regard all educational projects, schools, kindergarten or adult education, as a way of taking its values to all sections of the population and of exercising more effective social control; or is social pedagogy the critical conscience of pedagogy, the thorn in the flesh of official agenda, an emancipatory programme for self-directed learning processes inside and outside the education system geared towards the transformation of society?(p. 93)

As Sunker and Otto in their book Education and Fascism. Political identity and social education in Nazi Germany noticed, social pedagogy was used by the Nazi’s as a way of social manipulation, to address and enforce their dominant ideology on to children.

But what we consider social engineering is not limited to fascist ideologies alone. Pat Petrie et al in their book Working with children in care: European perspectives note that all ‘pedagogies aim at producing a certain type of person, and a certain ideal of society’ (p. 156).

Though, of course, this is not the necessary direction of pedagogy. Paulo Freire in his great 1972 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed made the point of applying critical pedagogy – which is opposed to what he identified as the “banking” approach – an approach predicated on students being considered empty bank accounts that should remain open to deposits made by the teacher. Instead Freire promoted students to challenge the teacher, not perceiving students as blank-slates, but rather as persons with identities, peculiarities, subjectivities, and a thirst for critical dialogue.

In a series of reflections from practitioners printed by ThemPra, the University of Lincoln, and Essex County Council, example excerpts from pedagogues’ diaries show that their way of operating pedagogy is by inviting children (particularly children in care) to voice their opinons, and achieve happiness by being the authors of their own environments.

Like anything pedagogy can be abused by practitioners (the extreme of which is obviously force feeding ones own views to a child), but isn’t harnessing a child’s voice the job of a participation or advocacy worker? The DCSF, along with the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) at the Insitute of Education University of London, are running a social pedagogy pilot in London, Hampshire, Bournemouth, Dudley, Blackburn and Darwen, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Liverpool and Lancashire, as well as private and volunteer providers until 2011, as recommended in the Care Matters White Paper. But what will social pedagogy achieve? Hopefully a progressive education, influenced by best practice across Europe, however it does carry risks – namely achieving nothing at all.

In such spendthrift times, it is difficult to judge whether risks like this are worth taking and paying for, but there is no question that room should be made to promote a child’s happiness and societal awareness, and social pedagogy is one such measure in gaining this. My instinct is that if it has achieved success abroad (notibly Denmark and Germany) then it is worth implementing here, I just hope that the outcome idicators, due to be published in 2011, testify to its worth.

Same Sex Adoption

Same sex partners  – a couple of lesbian birds as well – who adopt young, are little more than Procellariidae’s to me

Martin Amis and Dr. Crippen: A Tenuous Link

Dr (Hawley Harvey) Crippen was an American physician in the UK, living in Camden among other places. He is better known for being the first criminal person to be captured and handed over to the authorities by aid of wireless communication. Crippen had killed his wife – Cora Henrietta Crippen, popular in certian theatrical circles as Belle Elmore, a music hall entertainer – and fled to the atlantic with an accomplice dressed as a boy. Henry George Kendall, once a British sea captain, recognised Crippen as the ‘london cellar murderer’ and contacted the authorities by wireless telegram. The message read:

“Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among saloon passengers. Mustache taken off growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Manner and build undoubtedly a girl.”

It is said, therefore, that if Crippen and his accomplice were not in among the saloon passengers, and instead in third class, he would have got away with it, and made it across the atlantic never to be heard of again. But this was not to be.

It also seems that Dr Crippen lives on, in the form of a blogger named, well, Dr. Crippen. On Tuesday, this Dr. Crippen tore up the doctrine that one should have the right to die both on the Guardian, and a reminder on his blog, at a time when the debate has reared its head again, with Terry Pratchett chipping in, and Martin Amis.

Martin Amis was not joking – yes, Toby Young, he was not joking, and even if he was, there are plenty of newspaper editors that have jumped on this bandwagon regardless – when he said old people should be allowed to die on the corner of the street in booth with a martini and a medal.

Dr. Crippen, against this kind of thinking, and putting a more professional-centric approach to the issue, has noted that:

Someone else will have to assist in the killing. If doctors will not do it, there will have to be a protocol to empower those who provide the service. It will give a whole new, macabre meaning to the phrase “health care professional”

and, on the question of the law, points out that:

A caring mother who kills her severely brain-damaged son is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. A caring mother who kills her daughter who is suffering from “myalgic encephalomyelitis”, a condition that many doctors only recognise as an inappropriately named psychiatric illness, is found not guilty of murder. It is incomprehensible that she was found not guilty. Where is the logic? The law is clear, but juries are not prepared to enforce it. The law must therefore be changed.

Changed to what? I have argued before for an applied version of Plato’s noble lie, saying

The ideal end to a trial where a person has committed the act of suicide assistance would be where they have their sentence suspended on compassionate grounds, but after due legal examination to check as best as possible that nothing dubious has crept through the cracks, which is where I depart from the current perception of this crime, that often compassion is not bestowed upon the offender.

So assisted suicide will still go through the legal mechanisms – but compassion will typically be extended by the law, but the law does not explicitly stipulate this, so a rigid process of scrutiny can still apply. It also stops people from killing their spouses on a whim and perhaps using assisted suicide as an excuse. Would this have been a strategy Dr. Crippen might have used?

The last time Martin Amis was caught in this much controversy he had published in The Times – no longer published – an article called 9/11 and the Cult of Death. And when was Dr. Crippen born? 11 September 1862. The death cult plot thickens.

Anti-smoking viral

The Rankin-produced ant-smoking viral – shown above – may not stop smoking, but I certainly won’t be walking down any alleys when market is on anymore.

5 words of wisdom

The Pope can piss off …

What did the Chilcot Inquiry achieve?

An item on the news reminded me that no opinion on the invasion of Iraq will change as a result of the Chilcot Inquiry. Well, how presumptuous I thought, but then no of course no opinions will be changed – which might be the problem. For those who feel that not having a Saddam Hussein in the world is better can not be convinced otherwise, for those who feel that the war a bloody mistake will only be too happy by Blair’s constant admission “I only did what I thought was right” (as this, like the former reason, is only a feeling, it is safeguarded from conviction and hubris, and thus much criticism, other than the charge, laid out to Blair by many stood outside the QEII conference building, that he was simply an actor).

Anyone who was looking for Blair’s “grilling” for answers will come up to two possible conclusions; either that it was a well-meaning accident or that everything was fine. As the news item explained everyone had made their minds up, so no worries, but the question that came into my mind was – does Blair believe himself?

My mind was not changed, but the inquiry did add another element to the question – if all that Blair had said was true, about the reasons for being urgent, then yes, lawful or not concern is increased, but a lot of the findings were made haphhazardly, and is not Blair himself cryptically admitting this, with his belief (by which I mean the belief in this being the right thing to do, not his spiritual belief – however I wonder how far they are interrelated?)?

Belief doesn’t always stand up to scrutiny, but insofar as it is our existential lot, we often can’t denigrate outright, for the grounds for falsifying this claim is not directly within us, scientifically – our claim to the contrary would be just as unscientific, and to suggest that what one believes is not objectively true would be arrogant. But then this becomes a question of conviction – do we really believe he belives (an odd qualia arrangement).

For my money, Blair is not crazy, and by doing what he felt was right is nothing to pour scorn on indefinitely, a lot of renegades operate this in highly complex moments – especially in war – but I also think there was, and is, enough evidence to show that Iraq had no arsenal of mass destructive weaponary, and so Blair’s belief claim is therefore predicated upon a series of weaknesses. Should we be asking, not the 2003 question, but the 2010 question? Only now that the 2003 question has been proved wrong.

I think the war was wrong, I think the urgency was lies, and I think the constant appeals to belief (in the case of Blair) and the emergence of the 2010 question (see the film Minority Report for more information – one can not operate solely on the do first ask later, particularly in the cases where the urgency is fiction) all testify to a leader who had it wrong. The inquiry, for that reason, did one thing: it let his ideas ties their own rope.

On the Moving Train: Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

Right up until the present day did Howard Zinn engage in heated political debate, choosing not to toe a line, but push boundaries, and integrate untypical language and concepts into a political field which has stayed much the same – with war, and poverty. You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train is of course the title of his autobiography, but no truer words have been spoken. Not only must we recognise that if we switch off from affairs that affect us, this allows the unpalatable of this earth to swoop in, but neutrality itself is a position which can not be an option, we are thrown – as Heidegger said – into the world, and the space with which we occupy as a consequence is our starting pad to change the world, to acknowledge that the train is moving, and operate the same.

On Obama, Zinn identified little other than rhetoric, “I don’t see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies” he exclaimed. But the point is not to stop there. Zinn explains further that “people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president … unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.”

The flirtation with whether Obama marked the era of post-racial society would have stirred uneasy with Zinn. A black president is not the end point at which we sit hands on heads, it is necessary to manoeuvre thereon – democracy has no such an end point, democracy is the motion with which neutrality is not an option. Like Dr. Cornel West hoped of Obama, he will be a “progressive Lincoln” so that West can be the “Frederick Douglass [abolitionist who held talks with Lincoln in 1863 on the treatment of black soldiers] to put pressure on him.” Zinn would have wanted Frederick Douglass’ of us all!

Proof of Zinn’s “redemptive politics of activism“, and his Lenin-esque attitudes towards leadership*, can not be found in any better place than during the interview with Harry Kreisler, where upon the question of his first teaching assignment at Spelman college, Zinn noted that “I learned more from my students than my students learned from me”. His time living in the south, before the black movement geared up to fight for their rights, was an enriching experience for Zinn, one in which he notes “I began to look at history from a black point of view. It looks very different from a black point of view.”

In the words of Eddie Vedder, whose song “Down” was inspired by his friendship to Zinn finishes: “So long“.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

*Leaders are not born, Lenin held; they must be trained