All Politics Is Loco

I cut my writing teeth on fanzines in the 1980s, and the independent small press means a lot to me. It provides fertile ground for creative voices to develop, for the flourishing of an informed democracy. Last decade I contributed articles to Moseley B13 Magazine, a venerable monthly established in 1973, gaining a place on the editorial team for a time. A current member of the editorial team asked me for an analysis of the recent Birmingham City Council elections, with a Moseley focus. That article was delivered on the 18th May, for publication in the June edition which came out this week. But last week the editor contacted me to say the article was being pulled, and would not be published. The editor felt “even when there isn’t bias…people will be outraged about next to nothing”, and even after editing to remove any possible perception of bias, there was concern it was too ‘opinion-based’.

I’m disclosing this publicly because I think there is a public interest in discussing what standards of political impartiality and scope for opinions should obtain in the local small press. All Moseley residents I’ve spoken to are very surprised that the article was rejected on this basis, and in some cases outraged at the apparent suppression of political discourse.

“I go to church with half these people, and they still say ‘in my opinion’ I don’t get it: there’s always opinion that goes against the grain. I wouldn’t say you are but even if you were I’d say it was perfectly acceptable food for thought. To be honest I thought not publishing it goes against the grain. People have a right to express their opinion, and I thought it was an informative article. Debate is part of our culture, one of the reasons I live in Moseley, I don’t know if that’s gone but I think its a fundamental of this place. To scrub it out is uncivilised and ill-educated.”

The article as submitted is reproduced below, slightly expanded to take account of the wider Birmingham context, and the latest news. I open the issue to you: would you have published this? Feel free to comment below.

Continue reading “All Politics Is Loco”

Art of Paris Part Three: Degas at the Opera

This is the third in a series of posts relating my visit to Paris in October 2019.
Part One Part Two

Nearly seven years ago, the exhibition Degas at the Opera, before going on to the USA’s National Gallery of Art, appeared at the Musée d’Orsay; I made it one of my objectives of my first visit to Paris. The day was not exactly full-on flânerie, but a reasonably indirect promener towards my objective, taking in an interesting if perhaps predictable encounter with a Parisian waiter somewhere in the Opéra Garnier and Grands Boulevards to negotiate sustenance (I have always been a fan of French Onion Soup, and had got it into my head it would provide the stamina I needed), as well as the art of the public sphere as related in the first and second parts of this dossier de Paris.

I must have crossed the Seine, for the Musée d’Orsay is on its left bank. It occupies the site of the Palace d’Orsay, which was slowly built during the first half of 19th century on the initiative of Napoleon Bonaparte and assigned to his Council of State, and burned to the ground by the Communards in 1871, a event described by Émile Zola as “rolling like torrents of hell”1.

The palace was replaced by a new duo of a hotel alongside the first electrified urban railway station in the world, built in time for the 1900 Paris Exposition (which brought international attention to Art Nouveau), the Gare d’Orsay. The building, designed in the somewhat dated Beaux-Arts style, which even in its heyday anachronistically produced neoclassical, Renaissance and Baroque influences in modern materials, seems to capture a liminal and transitional moment in the architecture of the city. Designed to complement its elegant and culturally sensitive environs, the station nevertheless reshaped 19th century aesthetics for the modern, connected city.

As the 20th century began to grow into maturity, the station declined, but the site retained its symbolic power. De Gaulle used the hotel ballroom to announce his return to French national politics, triggering the end of the French Fourth Republic. In the dislocations and estrangements of the 1970s, the new Réseau Express Régional needed only an underground station at the site, and the original station was to be demolished. Instead the Ministry of Culture made it a protected monument, and as it transpired a place for a new museum to act as a time-bridge between the art housed in the Louvre and the new modern art showcase the Pompidou Centre.

The Musée d’Orsay opened in 1986 covering the 1848-1914 period in French art, sculpture, decorative arts and architecture.The heritage of the site and building, its place in the history of architectural and city planning, is underlined by the scale model of the Opéra district underneath glass flooring throughout the museum.

Photo by Bill and Jess

Degas began as a historical painter as seen in the 1860 work Young Spartans Exercising, held in the d’Orsay, which I encountered here being examined by a visitor.

Soon Degas transitioned towards his trademark of deploying the traditions of the historical painter on contemporary subjects, this exhibition commemorating 350 years of the Paris Opéra, which it claims as the centre of Degas’ research as a more mature artist.

It seemed well attended:

“Serious in a frivolous place”, the subscribers.

Ludovic Halévy, a playwright, novelist and co-librettist with Henri Meilhac of Offenbach and his own cousin Bizet, introduced Degas to the Opera in the early 1870s. In return, Degas portrayed him “on stage” in a pastel shown at the fourth “Impressionist Exhibition” (1879). Facing Albert Boulanger-Cavé, a longtime censor of public performance arts, Halévy is in his natural element, compact and dark against a light background, being “serious in a frivolous place”.

The Opera as technical laboratory

The Opera was a veritable catalyst and laboratory for Degas’s art as he renewed his approach to media, formats (fans, “tableaux en long”), viewpoints (from above, from below or di sotto in sù ̧ off-centred, askew), and lighting effects.
This was the only world he explored using the gamut of media practised over a lifetime: print (engraving and lithography), photography, pastel, painting (on paper or canvas), sculpture, fans… It was with the Opera that he began to work with monotype and its black-and-white contrasts suitable for expressing the violence of electric lighting, and produced the only sculpture ever exhibited during his lifetime, in wax and composites.

As I left, the exhibition confronted us with a valedictory message

  1. In his 1892 novel La Débâcle. An English edition of the time is available at archive.org ↩︎

I Propose: Triangulation of UK government policy

I have a proposal for the current government. It might at first glance seem to throw caution to the wind, and the current breakdown of relations between the Starmer government and the civil service alleged by the press might throw a spanner in the works, but hear me out.

This government has plenty of policies, some good and some bad. I’m not going to go through them line by line, but as a good policy I would suggest the recent decision to disconnect electricity prices from gas (although I’ve seen the proposed implementation questioned here – worth reading for a deeper dive into the issue). This is one of those bold actions that really ought to have been done as soon as they got into power, not just for our sake but for theirs. It could have made the early decision to take the winter fuel allowance away from all but the very poorest pensioners more palatable, and more like a part of an understandable, integrated agenda framed around getting energy costs down for everyone. Think of the political trouble this would have saved the government.

As a bad policy I would propose ID cards as probably the worst, for reasons too complex to go into here. But this policy should have been fatally damaged by the recent appearance for sale on the well-known Chinese website Alibaba of medical information culled from half a million participants of one of the UK’s landmark scientific programmes, UK Biobank. You don’t get to be this loose with critical citizen’s data and then ask for all the rest of it to look after. There is a version of digitally-empowered citizen sovereignty, on an entirely more advanced technology stack, I might be persuaded to support, but the current policy as I understand it goes nowhere near even approaching that possibility. The government would increase its chances of staying in power with the electorate by dropping the policy, and kicking the issue into the long, long grass for a rethink.

But beyond dropping the dodgy stuff, while implementing and selling their better policies quicker, I think the best thing the government could do at this point is look at all the main parties, including different Labour factions, and steal all their best policies.

That’s right. Comb the current policy agendas of Reform, the Lib Dems, the Greens and the Tories and just steal all the best policy. Petty larceny on a grand scale. Some of that could even work in synergy. The Tory proposal to abolish stamp duty could be funded not as they propose by welfare cuts or whatever but by a radical reform of land and property taxes in general, as suggested by the Greens and some on the Labour left

What got me thinking about this was the best policy announcement I’ve heard from the Liberal Democrats in some time. In keeping with thoughts across parties and party factions, the proposal is to essentially abolish HM Treasury (an ancient institution which seems to be a Norman innovation), breaking it up and separating public spending from tax and growth decisions. Some version of this idea is shared by Michael Gove and some left-of-centre thinkers, based on analysis that the ancient and over-powered Treasury holds Britain back. If we really want investment in internal improvements, it has to go. The Liberal Democrat announcement adds to this, proposing a new department of tax and growth be founded in the great city of Birmingham, in line with cross-party desires to get parts of government out of London. Personally I’d go further and move the House of Commons (but not the Upper House) to Birmingham too, but that’s another story.

Starmer talked, vaguely, of rewiring the British state. If other parties then come up with a solid proposal to actually do it, why not adopt the essentials of the plan, while retaining flexibility over the details?

In a two-party system, the political danger is obvious. You risk looking like you are simply stealing your opponent’s attire, without ideas of your own. The latter part of this though is a reputation Starmer’s already saddled with. In the current emerging multi-party system, stealing the best policies from all four Westminster-focused rival parties wouldn’t give advantage to any one of those rivals, so the electoral calculus for Labour should be neutral. But supercharging Labour’s existing agenda with the most synergistic and best of the rest on offer would make the government look capable of governing in a fractious political kaleidoscope, even of resolving our current chaos into a some kind of dynamic yet inclusive new order. If they can do that and govern with professionalism and compassion they could find themselves the leadership of a coalition government, or even retain a majority, in the next Parliament

I see no other alternative but more chaos. But only time will tell.

Makes me feel this way

Jon Gomm is now on a UK tour.

In this article I take a look at a gig from a tour three years ago.

In Review: Jon Gomm – The Faintest Idea tour

Hare & Hounds, Birmingham, 9 October 2021

Years ago, I was browsing guitar videos and chanced upon Jon Gomm. A friend immediately pointed him out as a particular recommendation, directing me to the viral 2012 hit Passionflower. As a middle-aged Gen Xer with a percussion background, beginning to learn guitar, it made an instant and lasting impression. I found Jon’s awesome percussive style a revelation, an inspiration and a delight.

Passionflower stands today as a great showcase for Jon’s style. He uses the guitar as a drum-kit effectively, the different parts of the guitar having their distinctive percussive sounds.

Passionflower

This aspect of Jon’s style is brilliant, partly because it’s so simple in principle. It aligns with the idea of the guitar as a portable but versatile, and thus democratic instrument. Any traveller with a sense of rhythm and a discriminating ear can use a guitar to make a beat.

Passionflower sings of a flower growing within his sight, cracking up:

“through the pavement/In super, super slow motion/Though your back is gently breaking/You reach for the light

Bloom”

Passionflower lyrics

Sure, Jon does it really really well. But what really astonished me and took it to another level was a different technique Jon uses here. He re-tunes strings mid-song to form melodic phrases. I’d never seen this before, and it struck me as another insight drawn from an ability to see and interact with the world in fresh and inventive ways.

As a musician in today’s world, Jon has forged his own path, using internet independently to promote his work. His anti-corporate, anti-record label, and committed independent spirit as an artist stands out. This is evident in his media appearances, his own online communications, and a willingness to share his technique with those interested.

Jon remarked on the BBC interview above, by luck Jon’s guitar style became fashionable at the time of his viral breakout. But, there’s more to Gomm than being a technically brilliant guitarist with an unconventional style that happens to be on trend. His intriguing choices of subject matter invite reflection and thoughtful emotion. These choices are personal, observational, and philosophical. They sometimes verge on the phantasmagorical. As Jon commented to another reaction to Passionflower:

To me all that matters is the emotion the music conveys. I’d rather listen to someone pound on their instrument and wail, than something played perfectly with no meaning.

YouTube comment, Oct 2020

In 2020, Jon released his fourth album, The Faintest Idea, I got to see the Birmingham night of the accompanying tour, delayed by Covid-19 till 2021.

Jon began with the first single from the album, Cocoon, which explores the parenting dilemma summed up in the chorus:

Got to Cocoon her
Construct
A new womb for her
But will I
Teach her my fears if I try
To protect her?

Cocoon lyrics

Next up was another internet hit of Jon’s, a wonderful instrumental cover of Rufus and Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody, developed, according to Jon, to appease audiences desperate, perhaps to the point of impoliteness, for him to play something they knew.

The epic Everything, a song declared to be about obsessive love, I thought showed off Jon’s range and technical ability to make meaning with sounds. His vocal styling in this one seemed to add a particular extra dimension.

For me the most intriguing and surprising aspect of the gig were songs which while clearly original, quote a well-known pop melody (if I recall correctly something from the Fine Young Cannibals?).

I mentioned how I admire Jon’s choices of subject matter. Jon introduced one song, Universal Biology, as being about his spiritual beliefs, which were ‘fact-based’. Jon talked about how we are all part of the universe, not outside of it, and the only creature we know of that knows we are the universe observing itself.

The strongest subject choice of the album is perhaps The Ghost Inside You. It is Jon’s instrumental response to the devastation of a miscarriage. He blogged here about the experience as “like grieving in reverse”. Here’s my view of that Birmingham night’s 2021 performance of The Ghost Inside You, presented with Jon’s permission:

Jon performed 2 songs for an encore. First Passionflower , then he stepped beyond the microphone and played unplugged. The song was in tribute to a friend of twenty years, sadly passed away two years previously. Despite standing towards the front I, struggled a little bit to hear the song, mainly because of the loud and potentially fractious argument just outside.

Concluding on a song of loss gave me an opportunity to reflect on death. The whole gig really was about communication, and it felt like a very personal and intimate communication of ideas about life, losses, politics, and human consciousness.

Thanks to Jon for his music and his ability to use it to communicate. I found the gig moving and inspiring. With further chances to see him, so you can take this reviewer’s recommendation, just as I followed my friends a few short summers ago.

The Story of 1804 Part One: Winter

Prologue

On January 1st 1804 on the island previously known by its French colonial name of Saint-Domingue, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the birth of a new nation in the Americas: Haiti.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s assault on the revolution in Saint-Domingue having been defeated (Bonaparte himself being otherwise engaged in Europe), French forces abandoned the island in November 1803, ending the long Haitian revolutionary war. Europe’s most profitable colony had become an independent republic ruled by free people of African descent.

Continue reading “The Story of 1804 Part One: Winter”

On Budget

My response to the 2024 budget statement

Budgets, according to least two political podcasts over the last week act as a wonderful energy booster for the party in power, only to lose their power as people digest their contradictions, assumptions, and consequences . Last week’s budget statement by Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt seems though to have caused little excitement and some consternation, both derided as an over-leaked damp squib, and for its subtext of cutting and then slowly abolishing National Insurance hinting at the creeping abolition of state pensions.

One particular contradiction caught my ear. Just before announcing the cut in National Insurance, Hunt pointed to the injustice that employment income is taxed twice – NI plus income tax – while income from other sources is taxed once. The government’s solution to this injustice – to reduce, and eventually abolish altogether, NI – doesn’t address the injustice that dividends and capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than income. Indeed, Hunt decided to reduce capital gains tax on selling second homes from 28% to 24%, entrenching this injustice further. The argument is that this would increase revenue by encouraging such transactions. But for a government that claims it wants to reform housing in renter’s favour – ending no-fault evictions is a policy promise by this government, albeit one they have yet to implement – this reform may well encourage evictions as property owners seek to take advantage. It’s a measure that benefits the property wealthy while potentially making things worse for renters.

There are a couple of measures which tax wealth and capital in this budget. Firstly, the existing temporary windfall tax on oil and gas companies’ profits was extended, despite opposition from Scottish Tories.Secondly, Hunt abolished “non-dom” tax status, potentially raising revenue from overseas income earned by those resident in the UK. As has been widely commented, this measure is really a trap for Labour, who were planning a similar move to fund increases in health and education spends. Hunt instead has used it to fund his NI reductions, which Labour have pledged to keep, meaning they will have to find other ways to fund their commitments.

One obvious measure would be to increase capital gains tax. I hope Labour are planning such a move, and there are good reasons why it would be unwise to announce such a policy before entering government. Those with unrealised capital gains would simply sell before the election, effectively dodging the tax for the year. There’s a good summary of the arguments in favour of increasing capital gains tax, along the lines favoured by Tory tax-cutting hero Chancellor of the Thatcher years, Nigel Lawson, over at Dan Neidle’s Tax Policy Associates.

The reduction in NI doesn’t begin to compensate for what’s called “fiscal drag” – the stealth tax caused by the freezing of income tax thresholds at 2022 levels. Taking inflation and wage rises into account, more and more low-earners become income tax payers, increasing tax revenue by some £41bn according to the Guardian.

Hunt also extended what was supposed to be a temporary cut in fuel duty introduced two years ago by Sunak, meaning fuel duty has not risen with inflation since 2011. Again this is something Labour promise not to undo, although Labour leader Starmer did at least point out in his response that the Government could be doing more to see the reduction is in fact passed on to buyers at the pump. There’s little evidence this cut has benefited anyone. The RAC’s head of policy Simon Williams, quoted in The Mirror argues motorists have not “fully benefited from the cut that was introduced just two years ago due to retailers upping margins”. So we have a policy that might encourage fuel use, increasing illnesses from air pollution, and thus the burden on the NHS, without much appreciable benefit to motorists’ bills.

Overall then, this budget adds up to not very much, and is expected to require, especially taking into account the stated aim to abolish NI in the next Parliament, new cuts to public spending. These will fall on non-ringfenced spending in areas like local government and prisons, two parts of the public realm which are already deep underwater, local government facing effective bankruptcy across the country, and deaths and self-harm amongst prisoners on the rise. A false economy.

What would I do differently?

Continue reading “On Budget”

The Story of 1804 – from Haitian Independence to the Battle of Tsuntua

The year 1804 proved a remarkable year in world history, in the arts, in science and industry, and in the shifting sands of liberty and empire. Between its beginning and end, war and revolution draws new boundaries in the Americas, the Caucuses, Africa, India and Europe, and significant adjustments and consolidations of political power take place all over the globe. This revolutionary age reaches a kind of climax: a good starting point for understanding the 19th century that emerged.

I suggest a perceptible change of circumstances occurs that looks evident in retrospect, but might have seemed momentous to those alert to world affairs at the time. 220 or so years later in a series of posts I’ll look at significant global events throughout the four seasons of 1804. I’ll explore their background and their consequences, and trace connections and parallels between them to make some meaning out of the events of the year.

Part One: Winter

Old Wine in New Skins

Thoughts on re-presentations of vintage Doctor Who

In the run-up to Doctor Who’s sixtieth anniversary last month, two announcements in particular took this fan somewhat by surprise. Firstly, accompanying the release of the bulk of 20th century episodes onto the UK’s publicly-funded streaming service BBC iPlayer, came a brand new spin-off series exclusive to that platform: Tales of The Tardis.

Secondly, the BBC confirmed the rumour that early black and white episodes of the series might be colourised for broadcast. Rumours initially suggested An Unearthly Child, the first story, would get this treatment, but certain rights issues prevented it from making it onto iPlayer at all. Unbowed, Auntie Beeb commissioned a colourised, edited, and enhanced edition (a “cosmic makeover” according to the press release) of the second Doctor Who – and first Dalek – story, the seven-part serial usually known as The Daleks.

To mark the anniversary I’ll share my thoughts on these matters, dipping into the now public archive of vintage Doctor Who, and explore some of the issues around presenting them in new ways. Another surprise was the inclusion in the iPlayer release of animated versions of missing Doctor Who episodes, and I’ll begin by discussing one of these.

Continue reading “Old Wine in New Skins”

Art of Paris Part Two: Cabanes Imaginaires Autour du Monde

This is the second in a series of posts relating my visit to Paris in October 2019.
See Part One

My first day’s Parisian wanderings led me to the Louvre, which I’d not planned on visiting. Before I even realised that’s where I was, my eye was drawn from a distance to this free outdoor photo exhibition, works by the photographer artist Nicolas Henry. At first sight it reminded me of a fairground, being a collection of three colourful, slightly higgledy-piggledy, circular structures.

Closer up, the work revealed itself as a collection of photographs of people in what appeared to be staged environments.

Gallery

The work was made over a number of years, Henry travelled the world to explore diverse communities, and enlisted the help of his subjects to produce these fabulous, very human and charming images. According to the blurb from the book of the project:

these participatory stagings are composed of large-format sets bordering on theater and installation, produced with the help of part of the village or neighborhood.

translated from Cabanes imaginaires autour du monde: Worlds in the making Hardcover – Illustrated, 28 Sept. 2016

According to the theatre director, producer and actress Irina Brook, M. Henry’s photographs illustrate perfectly Shakespeare’s sentence:

Le monde entier est un théâtre, et tous, hommes et femmes, n’en sont que les acteurs

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely Players”
As You Like It Act II Scene VII

The backdrop of the Louvre can be seen advertising its Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition, a sell-out show and one of the largest ever collections of Da Vinci in one place at one time.

You can see more of Nicolas Henry’s work, including selections from this project, on his website.

If you want to see Cabanes Imaginaires Autour du Monde for yourself, it remains on show in Paris until the 30th November 2023.

Tribe

As an undergraduate I became interested in the the word ‘tribe’, as we use it colloquially. Despite thinking of it as word for something other, non-modern, non-industrial and even pre-agricultural forms of social organisation, I was aware the word was thoroughly civilised in its provenance, from the Old French tribu or directly from Latin tribus.

I’ve just come across some etymological notes on the word’s slang usage from those days, which I reproduce below.

From Slang and its Analogues by JS Farmer et al, which is available online.

TRIB subs. (Old Cant) – A prison (B.E. and Gross): see cage [that is tribulation]. He is in trib (B.E.) = ‘he is layd by the Heels, or in a good deal of trouble’.

TRIBE subs (colloq.) – A number of persons: in contempt.
d. 1685 ROSCOMMON, prol to Duke of York at Edinburgh. Folly and vice are easy to describe, the common subjects of our scribbling tribe.
1859 TENNYSON, Geraint. A tribe of women dress’d in many hues