Sorry but the language police are just a load of bullies

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It's a joke isn't it. We smile knowingly because we're in the know. Ho ho, 'grammar fascists' we chuckle, confident in our grasp of the lingo being enough to hold the line against the attacks. We're canny enough to remember not to use the words 'political correctness' when the irritation rises at yet another perfectly normal, regular word that's shoved off the agenda by the language police.

Look folks, I'm good at this stuff. I've got a vocabulary way bigger than the average person. And I know that those different words for different things mean subtly different somethings. But when you see someone saying not to use the word 'stupid' because it's offensive to those with learning disabilities a little whimper of linguistic pain escapes. Why, why oh why oh why do people want to do this stuff? What do they gain by setting themselves up to police the language? And on whose authority do they act?

I get it that we should be considered, respectful and thoughtful in our choice of language. I also understand that communication doesn't happen if everything we say is set around with caveats and qualifications. And - most importantly - I take the view that most of this righteous policing of others' language isn't about that respect and consideration. Rather it's simply bullying. They're not interested in the actual content of people's speech but in catching them out using the wrong words - 'coloured people' instead of 'people of colour', 'migrant' instead of 'refugee', any number of commonly used words that might just have some sort of connection to mental illness.

What happens is that this policing of language, this poking away at words, is used by those who do not want discussion to achieve their end - the closing down of debate. If you look at how this so-called debate happens, you'll see that there is no such thing taking place because critics are either excluded or shouted down for crimes against the latest iteration of linguistic controls. The substance of the discussion is of no consequence, this is replaced by an unremitting focus on attacking the language used by the critic. Followed by complete closing of any debate through the exclusion of that critic from debate because of:

...white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/ indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism,”

And when you cry 'free speech' in response you get some like:

...we do not tolerate the actions of student(s) who posted the “All Lives Matter” posters, and the “Free Speech” posters that stated that “in memoriam of the true victim of the Missouri Protests: Free Speech.”

This is not respectful but rather bullying intended simply to prevent any challenge to a prevailing orthodoxy of speech. The people who do this - whether on Twitter, on university campuses or through hectoring folk from the comfortable platform of a newspaper blog - are the worst of the righteous, smug bullies who use their ability to raise a mob as the basis for punishing the critic. And this is all done while moaning about abuse, blocking half the universe on Twitter (very publicly) and talking very loudly about trolls. Where the definition of troll in their world isn't anything beyond someone who won't bow to their bullying approach to language, to their use of that palette of the banned as a means to judge people.

But it's not enough to just ignore the critic. No, that person has to be crushed, humiliated, exposed as the evil bad person they are for daring to challenge your orthodoxy. Someone says 'perhaps we'd have fewer problems if we'd been less open to migrants' and they are blocked, their words twisted to make them 'vile racists'. And that blocking is celebrated - waved around like a bloody trophy in front of the other righteous: "look at me, I've dealt with an evil troll, look at me".

I don't think we should be rude. If I've genuinely upset someone, I'll be the first to say sorry. But most of what I've seen - the long list in that quotation above or the offence at some students making a pretty straight point about free speech - isn't folk being upset but rather bullies using others' fear of language rules to close down debate, to impose their selective, exclusive orthodoxy on others. I've lost count of the times I've been insulted during forty years of active politics - some of it just banter but a fair bit spiteful, aggressive, in-your-face insult intended to intimidate. Yet that's OK - trust me it's OK or the righteous would have done something about it except that it's mostly the same people - whereas someone making a mildly critical point about immigration, free speech or the portrayal of women in computer games gets metaphorically dragged kicking and screaming to the nearest pillory for all and sundry to abuse them for their sins against the language.

It's not a joke. It's not even political correctness. It's patronising. It's divisive. It's intimidation. And it's used by bullies.

.....

Are we indulging students like grown up toddlers?

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No this isn't for five-year-olds:

The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma.

This was needed because two women were holding a debate about 'campus sexual assault' and one of them was going (or so the creators of that room feared) to question the validity of the term 'rape culture'.  Now I'm sure any discussion of rape and sexual assault is sensitive and I've no doubt that talking about the subject can be traumatic for victims but the reason given by one suggest a child-like attitude:

At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.

It really is time we stopped pretending we can protect people from the fact that some people hold views that we don't agree with and don't like. Imagine if I ran away every time I heard a socialist idiot challenge 'my dearly and closely held beliefs'!

....

A dangling conversation about Mrs Roosevelt and parking outside Cullingworth Primary School

****

For many years I subscribed to that famous Eleanor Roosevelt dictum - you know the one:

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Now leaving aside just what an unpleasant gossipy bitch Mrs Roosevelt was, I've now come to the conclusion that this dictum is a monumental load of tommyrot. And this realisation came from listening to a song I really don't like all that much - Paul Simon's 'The Dangling Conversation'. In the third verse Simon tells us:

Yes we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in The Dangling Conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives.

The couple in the song lived absolutely according to Mrs Roosevelt's dictum yet Paul Simon suggests that the result of this is that what they considered to be grand thoughts about important matters were, in truth, utterly superficial. What matters is more personal, more direct and much much more difficult to discuss - how we feel about others, how people relate and how this affects our lives.

This morning I turned down the opportunity to go on the radio for a discussion about 'Charlie Hebdo', free speech and all that stuff. I did so because some neighbours of the primary school in Cullingworth have complained about parking by parents delivering their children to the school. An utterly mundane matter of no strategic significance but, I decided, far more important than pontificating about grand things on the radio.

At the primary school I've got a fighting chance of doing something to make the situation a little better, to allow my neighbours (and the school's neighbours) to rub along together a little better. And this matters far more to people than whether or not I think it's OK to publish cartoons that might upset someone. Those people are the small minded folk that Mrs Roosevelt viewed with such snooty disdain - they want to tell me about the man who parks his 4x4 on the pavement or the taxi driver who always ignores the double yellow lines. This is because these things matter.

When the grand people on the radio or television - or those apeing them like the couple with the dangling conversation in Paul Simon's song - talk about grand ideas they forget that those grand ideas, when acted on, result in real effects on real people. Indeed that, were the ideas presented to those mums at the school gate or the couple in the council house round the corner, they'd get short shrift - out-of-touch would perhaps be the most polite response.

Because us grand folk have Mrs Roosevelt's disdain for such small-mindedness (too often thinking that those people simply won't understand so why bother), we resort to conducting political debate through dumbed down slogan and pithy soundbites. This is the world of 'not right or left but right or wrong', 'long term economic plans' and 'for the many, not the few' - endlessly repeated advertising mantras that mean little but make a pleasing sound.

We pretend that people like what we're saying by the liberal use of opinion polling as post hoc justification of the slogan or soundbite. Yet this brand marketing is weak, inconsistent and ineffective compared to that from big brand owners - put simply Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Persil are more trusted than any political brand anywhere in the world. And this is because, unlike those brands, political parties treat their customers - the voters - with Mrs Roosevelt's disdain.

None of this is to suggest that we shouldn't discuss grand ideas but we need to try to include more people in those discussions rather than, as is typical, using words and concepts seemingly designed to close the debate off to any but the cognoscenti. Whether it's a debate about 'culture' or a discussion of macroeconomics, we should try at least to use words people understand rather than pretending that language is somehow a barrier to the analysis of the subject in question. In the end - as so often with these things - someone has made the point much better - here's George Orwell:

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

Above all, it seems to me, we need to spend more time talking about (and to, and with) people and their daily lives and not pretending that somehow this is a lower form of talk reserved for people who aren't nearly as clever as we are. For, by the use of that grand language, we fall into Orwell's trap and become fools. Fools no-one else much can understand but fools - snobbish fools - nonetheless.

....

It's really time our debate about health grew up.

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Our national debate about health is a shambles. Indeed, 'disgrace' is probably the best way to describe how politics debates the issue that remains with economic well-being the single most important issue for most people. I am grateful to Jackart for 'Bracken's Law of NHS Debate':

"The longer any discussion about the NHS goes on, the closer the probability a spurious invocation of the US system of healthcare gets to one, and whoever does so has lost the argument"

The minute anyone uses the word 'competition', 'market' or 'reform' those with a vested interest respond with reference to the US system (which somehow manages to be both very expensive and wholly captured by producer interests).

The other, and closely related, aspect of the debate is to invoke the caring nature of nurses, doctors and others who work in the NHS. And to imply that, without the NHS, none of this would be there. You'll have heard people exclaim: "my mother (or child or spouse or sibling) is alive today because of the NHS".

To which my response is to ask whether that person would be dead had they lived in France, Holland or Sweden - none of which have a centralised, bureaucratic, national health system. But you can't win with this argument because the shameless and disgraceful debate kicks in with shouty stuff about "selling off the NHS" or even "you don't care about Our NHS".

We have a huge challenge in our health service that isn't being discussed. Or rather it's not being discussed by the national political leaderships, by the representatives of health care producers or by the media. At the very local level people are prepared to discuss how we deal with an ageing population, how we strike the balance between social and health care, and whether our spending priorities are entirely geared to meeting the real health challenges we face.

Yesterday - as the motion's proposer made very clear - Bradford Council didn't debate a motion about public health. We went straight to the vote. Now, to be honest, the motion was a good example of us not facing up to the truth about health spending - instead of asking what Bradford Council was doing with the £30m or so it gets in public health funding, all the motion's proposers wanted was a line in every report asking "what are the implications for public health". This would join similar lines on "sustainability" and "trade unions".

The thing we should have asked was whether the way we're spending that money right now is the best way to help get better health for Bradford's population. And maybe suggesting to the government that they trust local councils and lift the ringfence on public health money would be a start. However valuable smoking cessation clinics might be (and the answer is actually 'not very effective') would the money - three-quarters of a million - we spend there not be better directed to helping keep the wheels from falling off our social care system and keeping old people out of hospital?

If we want a better health service (and right now ours really isn't good enough) then we need to discuss how to get such a service. Instead we refuse to discuss the choices facing us because we fear 'Bracken's Law' and the shouty ignorance of those most interested in keeping the status quo. It really is time our health debate grew up.

....

Who won Nigel or Russell? The x-factorisation of politics

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Like most of the British population I didn't watch the Nigel Farage and Russell Brand show on last night's BBC Question Time. I have now watched the popular clip of a bloke in the audience asserting that if Brand was so keen on changing things maybe he might consider standing for parliament. And I've also read selections from the avalanche of commentary about this occasion.

However, I remain - politcally at least - depressed about the whole thing. Not because of the opinions that Nigel and Russell express - I like people to have opinions, even wrong ones. My sense of gloom stems from the nature of the programme and the way in which our national (and state-owned) broadcaster presents politics. Question Time is the BBC's flagship political debate show, yet they run it as if it was part of their light entertainment offering. Which is why getting Farage and Brand on the same show was important - not because they offer thoughtful and considered analysis of complex questions but because they have a 'brand' (pun entirely intended).

And the media entirely buy into this x-factorisation of political debate - the reporting of Question Time isn't about what anyone said except where it's couched in terms of who 'won' between the two personalities. In the Metro, that throwaway newspaper we read on the train the report even ends with a vote!

Won what exactly? The argument - surely the point of the show isn't to have a winner but rather to allow politicians (and people who aren't politicians but have something to say - like Brand, I guess) a place to respond to questions from an audience. Indeed there were five panellists not just the two - or should I call them contestants?

Even the questions selected last night played to this artificial contest - starting with the 'petty, adversarial nature of politics' (a deliciously ironic question given the petty and adversarial nature of this edition of Question Time) we then ran through privatising the NHS, immigration and grammar schools. A set of question designed to provide some entertaining exchanges between our two protagonists.

Yesterday was a particularly stark example of how politics is treated as a branch of entertainment but we shouldn't think that it is unusual. Indeed the majority of political discussion that we see is either so brief - a two or three minute interview on the Today programme or Newsnight or else structured so as to guarantee contest and confrontation - even when people are crammed onto a too small sofa. The result is that nearly all of political debate is conducted on the basis of sound bite, posture and slogan, which rather explains why a jack-the-lad comedian like Russell Brand finds it so easy - there isn't much different between his political exposition and his stand-up.

On one level I guess this doesn't really matter - we get the politicians and the political debate we deserve. But we should consider what we are losing. In the dumbed down, lights-flashing, show biz world of today's politics there isn't any place for nuance, for looking at the actual evidence (other than trite 'fact-checking') or for trying to explain complicated systems, situations or proposals. And there is no time given for developing ideas, exploring options or properly examining proposals. I know this stuff happens because I do it every day as a councillor but the politics we're presented with by the media is almost entirely one of personalities, of who's up and who's down, gossip, tittle-tattle and the machine-gunning of listeners with carefully crafted slogans.

Which is why I don't watch BBC Question Time, seldom see Newsnight and can only manage very brief snatches of the Today Programme - all they offer is argument without substance, snarky interviewers and the constant idea that all these interactions must somehow have a winner and a loser. The political parties - and the gossip-mongers of the media - pour over the utterings of every politician looking for the clumsy phrase, the hesitation or the words than might offend some group or other. We're routinely presented with allegations of sexism and racism constructed on the flimsiest of grounds. Why? Because it's another win for the opposition or for one or other newspaper or website.

This game - slogans, soundbites and poses mixed with back-biting and character assassination - makes politics seem like, as Paul Begala observed, show business for the ugly. It doesn't matter much whether the actual policies actually work, that can be glossed over. What matters is who wins and who loses. Not just at the election (at least that's a real contest) but in every engagement and encounter. We pull down the opponent - focus on their silly face, their school or their resemblance to Parker from Thunderbirds - rather than engage with what they are saying.

Whatever the truth, it really is pretty sad that the presentation of politics has reached this point - a sort of x-factor for the political anorak rather than a way of helping the public understand what politicians are actually proposing. Perhaps Russell Brand and Nigel Farage - inconsistent, flash blokes from the edges of London with the gift of the gab and a degree of likeability - really do represent the future of politics. After all they don't offer positive policies, just lists of things they don't want and people they don't like.

....

Stopping men from debating abortion is an act of oppression not liberation...

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So abortion is a contested area. But do people really think they can shut down debate because:

The idea that in a free society absolutely everything should be open to debate has a detrimental effect on marginalised groups. Debating abortion as if its a topic to be mulled over and hypothesised on ignores the fact that this is not an abstract, academic issue.

Nobody, not a single soul, thinks abortion isn't intensely real for women faced with the choice. But to prevent half the population from discussing the subject because they don't have a uterus is an act of oppression not liberation. Yet this is precisely what Niamh McIntyre and her friends did - they shut down a debate because the protagonists, for and against abortion were both men.

The truth was that the debate wasn't about Niamh's uterus - it is utterly selfish of her to believe it was. And, if she didn't want to hear two men debate abortion, she could have read a book, gone to the pub, had a swim, played chess or a myriad of other choices. What she chose - preventing others from speaking - was the act of suppression, the very thing feminists are supposed to contest.

....

The motives of politicians

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It is common for us to question the motivation of those who hold a different view. We are too seldom prepared to accept honest or honourable reasons - whether ideological or practical - for that person to wish to do something we would not do.

And the more passionate our commitment to the cause, the more we are unable to accept that someone simply doesn't agree with us or that this disagreement is principled not cynical or driven by some sort of base motive.

So it is with public service reform. I have read some of the thousands of comments, tweets, facebook posts and carefully crafted infographics that impugn the decisions of government. Rather than, for example, accepting that private sector options in delivering health are used because people believe it will lead to better health outcomes, we get the accusation that ministers do it because of personal gain.

And rather than see that reforming welfare helps make work pay and can improve peoples lives, we're told that those proposing change are uncaring or, worse, are motivated by 'hatred of the poor'. Instead of seeing the point (you're not obliged to agree with it) that the prospect of a life on welfare is something to be discouraged, we're fed stories of how changes are proposed to "punish" the poor or the sick.

There may be the occasional person whose motives are questionable but I don't believe the motives of current ministers are anything but decent and honourable. At least not in policy decisions. Nor for that matter do I think that the motives of ministers in Gordon Brown's government - a tragic train crash of ignominious failure - were anything but decent and honourable. I just think they were wrong.

Too much of our discourse is conducted on the basis of trying to destroy the reputation of decent men and women trying to do what they think is the right thing to do. We poke around at where they went to school, at who they are married to, at their friends and at things they might have done twenty or thirty years ago at university. We make sweeping statements - "Tories don't care", "Labour hates business" - as the basis for our arguments without realising how petty, how shallow and, frankly, how nasty it makes us seem.

You're welcome to point out when I have done this - I'm sure I have - and to suggest on this basis that I am a hypocrite. But in the end, if we are to have a politics that people think worthy of respect, we need to try and deal with policy choices on the assumption that the reasons for doing them are decent and not motivated by venality, greed or base political advantage.

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Questioning the location of Macclesfield: the curse of fact checking

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It was one of those Sunday lunchtime family discussions, the ones that gradually descend into pointless row. And for reasons lost in the mist of time the question of Macclesfield's location arose.

"Macclesfield's in Cheshire."

"No, Macclesfield's in Greater Manchester."

For a minute or two the discussion continues in this vein. I stomp from the room pick up the atlas, find the relevant page and point to the map.

"There you are! Macclesfield is definitely in Cheshire."

A momentary hiatus in the discussion.

"No, the boundaries have changed since that map was published. Macclesfield is now in Greater Manchester."

The discussion continued, now escalated into a row about people who don't believe things even when they're up to the elbow in a spear wound.

Today, in our political discourse we have become obsessed with facts. Or rather with a thing called "fact checking". Rather than engage with reasoned argument we resort to Google and crawl all over the offending comments seeking an error.

At one level this is yah boo - "you've got a date wrong so everything else you say has to be wrong". Or worse still minor grammar errors or a misspelling are fingered - "you can't even write English, why should I believe anything you say."

At another level the correcting of facts is more relevant  - what we might call the 'Location of Macclesfield' question. This might be an understandable confusion between 'income' and 'earnings', a mix-up over two numbers (say illegal immigrants and asylum seekers) or using out-of-date information such as an earlier rate for minimum wage or some or other benefit.

Now it may be the case that one of other of these errors invalidates the argument being made (Macclesfield is in Greater Manchester) but the simple identification of the error isn't enough. You have to demonstrate that, with this error corrected, the argument no longer stands (Macclesfield is in Cheshire). If the argument still stands then the corrected error is just that, a corrected error and not a deal breaker.

"Proving" that someone is wrong by pointing out errors in their facts is great fun if you're the sort of person who doesn't mind getting into a stupid row about the location of Macclesfield ("guilty as charged m'lud") but, as the basis for political discourse it's only a marginal improvement on "I'm right and you're wrong". Sadly, in this data-rich age it is easier to crawl over something looking for what might be errors of fact than it is to engage with the actual argument being made.

Finally, we should remember that facts are selected. We don't use all the facts in this game, just the facts that suit our argument (and, more to the point, the other person's errors that suit our argument). The result is unedifying, often rude and seldom gets us closer to the basis for disagreement. It may well be the case that poverty has risen in the USA. Or indeed it may not be the case that this is so. What I know is that we can engage in a spat about facts without getting any closer to answering the actual question!

And Macclesfield is in Cheshire!

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Immigrants, work and the deer cull

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The most depressing thing I’ve heard in a long while came in a tweet or email read out by a Radio 5 Live presenter – in response to an item on managing deer population someone had commented that we need a “human cull”. And the presenter read this out with want sounded like (but might not have been) approval.

Which humans this respondent wanted to cull wasn’t clear – maybe every tenth person, perhaps just the disabled, the sick or the lame? Rather than think for a brief second about what they were saying, someone had pinged out a comment about killing a load of people because he’d decided there were too many. I guess it was a joke!

But then I listened to a debate – well more an exchange of sound bites – between John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw and Graham Evans, Conservative MP for Weaver Vale. The subject was immigration and the two Northern MPs were in agreement on much of the discussion – there were too many immigrants, they were taking the jobs of British people and something should have been done earlier. Both MPs were adamant that there wasn’t the slightest hint of racism in what they were saying but equally keen to stress the idea that immigrants were taking British jobs, filling up British schools and costing a fortune in British hospitals.

Whatever the case about immigration – too much, too little, the wrong sort, the right sort – to blame our levels of unemployment and problems in our public services on folk who’ve arrived here from the other side of the world so as to work is what we expect from the BNP not the Labour and Conservative parties. Not only is it untrue but it’s wrong and dangerous as well.

The immigration debate has descended into a "who can be most damning of immigrants without actually being racist" contest. Currently the Labour Party is winning.

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I'm not sure social media do 'nuance'...

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How on earth can we include uncertainty, conditionality and nuance in an instant gratification medium built around popping 140 characters into a box on the Internet? Twitter isn’t an equivocal medium, it is a place for the definite, the certain.

Even those who have managed to order the system so as to create doubt and an open-ness to other positions cannot buck the medium. The reader – or most of the readers – arrive perceiving twitter as a place of absolute certainty: “god is dead”, “abortion is wrong”, “Tories are scum”, “Arsenal are shit”. A veritable cacophony of conviction, a place where “I’m not so sure about that can you explain” doesn’t really have a place.

This soup of competing but equally unconditional truths worried some folk. Here’s Peter Beaumont writing in The Guardian:

Because of the measures of success in the new online world, including how many comments are attracted and the number of page views, it has been inevitable, some argue, that the loudest and most partisan voices seem attractive. Which leaves a burning question unanswered. How to quantify what all this means for those engaging in public debate, including bloggers, writers, journalists and commenters.

Part of Patrick Ness's argument was that the often brutal nature of the online world has started to impose a culture of self-censorship as some have sought to avoid inevitable flame wars. Other writers have remarked the opposite to me, describing how, in reviewing his writing, he had gradually used fewer qualification in his arguments.

We see here two competing responses: “I don’t like the game in that sandpit, so I’m not going to play there any more” and “I don’t like the game in that sandpit but everyone I want to play with is there so here goes”. Both are correct but define the person – there is no requirement to ping out tweets all the live long day, to record every last second of your life on Facebook or to scribe angry little pieces on a blog read by seventy people (on a good day). Yet in the discourse about the Internet – or more specifically the social aspect of the Internet – no-one states the obvious: you don’t have to be there.

At the same time, we should be able to distinguish between styles of communication and how places (if we can truly call Twitter and so forth: ‘places’) change the nature of our speech. The way I talk to a bunch of mates down the pub will be very different from the manner in which we talk at work. How often have friends and family rung you at work and been surprised by your ‘posh work voice’? And have you ever been shocked at bad language from someone (like a teacher or local councillor) you’ve only ever heard in a formal context?

Places like twitter are growing up as the users get to understand them. The etiquette, the behaviours and the language evolve. Not from some heavy-handed set of rules but from the manner in which that community polices its own behaviour and defines its own boundaries. Indeed, when heavy-handed rules crash into social media we get the nonsense of the ‘twitter joke trial’ or the lunacy of arresting some kid because he offended a celebrity.

The other part of Peter Beaumont’s worry is equally confused – sectarianism. By this he means, I guess, the tendency of humans to cluster into idea-reinforcing and like-minded groups rather than Orange Order marches or Glaswegian football violence. Beaumont suggests – in referring to the work of US academic, Cass Sunstein:

...while the internet was efficient in bringing together virtual communities of interest, it also encouraged participants "to isolate themselves from competing views... [creating a] breeding ground for polarisation, potentially dangerous for both democracy and social peace".

In other words, virtual communities, unlike physical communities that are under constant pressure to compromise, are at risk of a tendency to organise around confirmatory bias.

It seems to me that this is perfectly normal human behaviour. For sure, the Internet provides more opportunities for that ‘confirmatory bias’ but we have always sought out places and things that confirm our position, that affirm our world view. Perhaps the liberation lies in the fact that a young conservative in Grimethorpe (there may be one) or the budding Marxist in Steppingley can engage with respectively other young Tories and emerging Marxists. The assumption that on-line engagement means a new universalist idea evolving from some primeval internet soup may indeed appeal but surely it is nonsense?

Finally – and this really is important – there are more people on-line who prefer chatting about the X-Factor, football or the simple minutiae of an ordinary life. Perhaps Beaumont’s assumption that on-line activity is all about politics and media is simply his own form of confirmation bias?  While there was plenty of robust debate around Julian Assange on assorted social media channels, I’m prepared to bet that there were more pictures of cute puppies and kittens posted on various social media sites than coruscatingly insightful remarks about wikileaks. And this is how the world should be.

....

Sunday mornings...

I don't know about you but I've never been able to get to grips with this habit of showing political programmes on a Sunday morning. There is a place for interviews with the great and the good, faux little debates and the endless scandal-mongering that passes for political journalism these days but it isn't for Sunday morning.

I gather from extensive investigation (I asked some bloke down the pub who seemed well informed) that this politicisation of the sabbath morn is, like so many other bad things, an import from our former colonies in North America. Which is odd because I though they were a deal more god-fearing than us and troop in their droves (do droves troop or rather meander?) to vast churches built using the same architects who, in England, design warehouses for electrical component distributors.

So now, as I sit with my morning tea (dreaming sweetly of bacon sarnies) before the telly, I am regaled with Andrew Marr interviewing some or other grandee - today it happens to be Nick Clegg. Marr's interviews do rather remind me of the "great microphone of state" and provide rather less insight than Desert Island Discs. It's almost like a staged, scripted event - a few gentle questions, the grandee getting his (it's usually a 'he') point across and Marr being able to extract just the one theatrical squirm from the interviewee.

Sunday mornings are to blame for this softball approach - if the interview was at seven thirty on a Wednesday evening, it would be all businesslike, stern and of infinitely greater value to the viewer (although less useful to the political superstar being grilled). Sunday mornings are for tea and slippers, for having breakfast in the garden, for the slow life. Sunday mornings are when we should savour things - the sun, the grass, our families and all the good things around us.

Sunday mornings aren't for politics.

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Freedom is the radical choice for capitalism's reform - lessons (and hope) from a schools debate

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I had a really enjoyable afternoon today at Beckfoot School in Bingley. I went along as a judge in the "Futures" debate - a debate involving five local schools (and something I'd been a little sniffy about).

Two important things came out of this for me - firstly, my faith in tomorrow was restored by the sight of thirty or so young people debating big and grand issues. It wasn't simply an exercise in student political debate about capitalism (although this was broadly the topic) but was surprisingly well-informed. Yes there were the familiar quotes from Marx, Trotsky and such but we also got references to minarchism, Nozick, Schumpeter and William Morris. And mostly these were in context and relevant.

The second important thing for me was that the final session - "Reformed Capitalism vs the Alternative" - featured a bunch of students eager to make the case for capitalism's reform being about a libertarian response. Arguments were made for free trade, free markets and a government charged with administering the rules of freedom rather than seeking to "know better". I witnessed young people who grasped that wanting free enterprise, free markets and free trade is a genuinely radical choice because, for sure, we have precious little of those things today.

All in all a far more inspiring day than I expected. There is some hope for the future.

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In which the Labour Party put their union paymasters before the Bradford public...

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Yesterday Bradford Council debated the £438,000 (or more) that it spends on funding full-time trade union officials. It was a time of much gaiety as Labour councillor indignation levels ticked ever higher leading to ever more fanciful interpretations of our motives for moving the motion.

We began by explaining how this wasn’t about the “reasonable facility time” that trade union (and other staff) representatives are granted in law but concerned the 15 or so full-time trade union organisers paid for by Bradford’s hard-pressed council tax payers.

Labour wouldn’t have this and chose instead to build a vast army of straw men – the motion was an attack on unions, the Labour Party and democracy in the UK according to Labour council leader, Ian Greenwood (former full time Union official, recipient of a Unison pension on health grounds and dweller in a council flat despite earning well over £50,000).

Indeed proclaimed said council leader, the motion was an attack on the “human rights” of union members by denying them representation (there are some 200 union representatives in the Council – the motion concerned only the 15 full-time officials).

Other Labour councillors rose to their feet expressing their undying love for trade unionism and the absolute rightness of spending your and my taxes on funding its activities, recruitment and organisation. One councillor – Gill Thornton – catalogued why unions were so important. After all they’d funded her seven or eight election campaigns! (Every single Labour councillor declared receiving funding for election campaigns from unions)

I found it exceedingly odd how the City Solicitor deemed that receiving a declared donation to an election campaign or other political activity isn’t a prejudicial interest. I’m pretty sure that the same answer wouldn’t apply to me if the matter concerned say, Cullingworth Conservative Club (I sort of asked but got something of an equivocal answer from the City Solicitor).

In the end, Labour won its vote – backed by Bradford’s rather supine Liberal Democrats and the watermelons in our Green Party. We will carry on spending approaching half-a-million of taxes taken from struggling Bradford residents on preening trade union officials while Labour – locally and nationally – benefits from the largess of those unions.

Until earlier this year when, by chance, we discovered about the full-time union organisers on the rates, it had never crossed my mind – not for a second – that the Council was paying these wages. Our concern isn’t an attack on trade unions but – in tough financial times – recognising that we simply can’t afford the indulgence of paying for union officials using taxpayers cash.

Instead of taking this saving, Labour prefer to shut libraries, close swimming pools and remove support from disabled adults. All so their mates in the unions keep their well paid jobs.

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"Witch, witch, burn her, burn her!"

I gather that Nadine Dorries, Tory MP and doyenne of those who aren't that keen on our supposedly libertine sexual culture, has been at it again. From what I understand, Nadine has commented that, if we encouraged girls to abstain from sex, there would be less 'sexual abuse'. Now I appreciate that such comments seem illogical but that surely doesn't merit the sort of completely over-the-top, lunatic reaction as we actually got:

@Chrisisis Lot of agreement about how repulsive #Dorries is, so lets spread the word about #SlutWalk Manchester

@Hhaylo: If #Dorries was a man, calls for resignation & accusations of misogyny would be widespread. Despicable that as a woman she gets away with it

...and so on - endless tweets and retweets castigating this MP. For what? For having an opinion - one I disagree with - but an opinion nonetheless. The reaction is frankly rather ridiculous - there's a case to be made and an argument to be had about sex education, about the attitude of men towards women and about sexual promiscuity. But these are debates - those who hold the opposite view are not evil people merely people with whom we don't agree.

In this case the reaction demonstrates a real weakness in the arguments supporting 'establishment' views relating to sex education, sexual behaviour and morality. If, when the established assumptions are criticised, the only response is ad hominum attack, over-reaction and the construction of legions of straw men we really do have a problem. Nadine Dorries may well be wrong but I'm also sure she isn't "repulsive", a "misogynist" or even "despicable".

The reaction - the frothing mobb of unpleasantnness - brings to mind the 17th century witch crazes where innocent (and sometimes not so innocent) comments were blown out of all proportion as the crowds yelled:

"Witch, witch! Burn her, burn her!"

So much for a rational society and grown up debate.

A few comments following a Bradford Council meeting....

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This isn't a coherent 'single issue' posting but a series of specific and (I think) significant thoughts following a meeting today of Bradford's full council. Don't expect anything change-making or brilliant - this is after all a Council meeting!

1. We had a visitation from the Bradford Coalition against the Cuts. This took the form of a petition which (according to our standing orders) grants the petitioner five precious minutes addressing the assembled members - so long as those members are minded to receive the petition. I would say that the petition was sound except that it appeared to lose touch with reality after the first couple of sentences. I was especially taken with the "there is no crisis" line - these folk really are barking.

2. There were the usual set of questions to the leader - these are not particularly edifying nor indeed to they address the real issues facing the district. Especially when asked by Green Party members - today, aside from their normal collection of eco-loon questions the Green leader asked: "Can the leader tell us the cost incurred by the Council in responding to Freedom of Information and any other requests from the 'Taxpayers Alliance' during 2010." Clearly it is scandalous that this organisation - evil Tory scum to a man - dare exercise the right to secure information from Bradford Council! Dear Readers will need to know that the answer was £565 - all of it officer time at the agreed Audit Commission rate.

3. And so to our motions - we discussed (really we did) whether we should oppose suggestions that a 'super-diocese' be created by merging Ripon, Wakefield and Bradford dioceses. Understand that the real worry is that the super-diocese might just be called Leeds - which would never do! I wonder what - if anything - this has to do with us Councillors but I do understand the politics (let's be blunt - Leeds is, if not an actual plane of hell, certainly a portal to the dark side).

4. Which brings me - in the manner of these things - to Child Poverty. We discussed this important matter, or at least that was what the motions and amendments said was the topic. In truth it was a confused, rambling and meandering debate - little more than a list of grievances, few, if any, directly connected to the issue of poverty. Everything was covered from nicking egg sandwiches and knickers from Tesco (apparently a sure fire indicator of neglect), through tuition fees - which may or may not be a good thing but certainly have no connection to child poverty - to EMA. The whole purpose (so far as I could tell in amongst the nonsense) was to try and show that the Liberal Democrats in Bradford were still lovely, caring, right-on folk despite what's happened in Westminster. And I guess despite said party supporting a Conservative administration from 2000 to 2010!

I'm pretty sure that we didn't make any decisions of substance - we'll probably write a letter of two to some ministers and will see a couple of member working parties (including one on the Bishop) set up. But not a lot else - that would be to rock the boat! Although the last vote was good as it involved a dozen of us - honest drinkers all - voting against a nannying fussbucket amendment on licensing. Which will, of course, teach us to put down such motions in the first place!

Next time we'll be voting on the budget - which at least is a real decision!

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We want referendums not patronising debates in parliament

I watched the Winslow Boy on TV the other day and was reminded of parliament’s arrogance and tendency to nonsense. I fear that nothing much has changed since those Edwardian days, parliament and government remain concerned primarily with creating the semblance rather than the reality of democratic debate. So it is with these proposals for on-line petitions to get a debate.

I have concluded that the idea of on-line petitions to get debates in parliament or even – bless – a bill proposed is a load of patronising nonsense intended as a sop to those wanting a genuine extension of participatory democracy. Indeed the dire warnings about petitions for withdrawing from the EU (yes please) and capital punishment (no thanks) reinforce just what out masters really think of us. And remember that those besuited, well-connected BBC media types are our masters too – not our friends.

From next year, voters are to be guaranteed that the petition with the strongest public backing on a government website will be drafted as a bill and put before MPs.

The Coalition will also pledge that petitions which reach a fixed level of support will be ensured time for a Commons debate.

Sir George Young, the leader of the Commons, has indicated that he intends to press ahead with the concept, conceived in the Coalition agreement, in the New Year.

The scheme is intended to reconnect voters with parliament amid concerns of waning trust in the political system following scandals such as disclosures over MPs’ expenses.

However, there are fears that the proposals could become a vehicle for campaigners
promoting populist causes célèbre, such as a return of capital punishment or withdrawal from the European Union.

So what? MPs will just ignore any serious proposals and focus – as they do now with private members bills – on the Government’s agenda. That is all that matters. The petition driven debates will be frothy and exciting but will amount to nothing in the end, will make no substantive change to a Government’s agenda and will cover up the failure to introduce a real provision for citizen referendums.

Real citizen initiatives – resulting in a question on a ballot paper for us all to vote on – would challenge the basis of our court-centred government. Rather than policy – such as avoiding a referendum on our membership of the EU – being decided in a choreographed, gentile discussion between ministers, opposition leaders, the media lobby and the top of the civil service, we might get policies that people actually want. And a real debate not the pane et circenses we get from parliament.

If it is right – and it is – to encourage local referendums on levels of council tax, elected mayors and other matters, it must also be right to encourage citizen-led national referendums. Imagine if the government had to put tax increases to a ballot? Or signing treaties? And think of the real debate that referendums on legalising pot or abolishing inheritance tax would bring?

Wouldn’t that be good for democracy?

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Ten reasons why the "Great Election Debate" is a bad idea

All the buzz in the world of political commentary is about the prospect of a grand leaders’ debate during the (overdue) General Election. People are getting carried away at the prospect. And Gordon hasn’t said yes yet – ooooh, it’s so exciting.

I think it’s a bad idea. Not because it will make Gordon look like a boring old grump, because Dave might come across as a lightweight or even because Nick Clegg will struggle to get a squeaky word in edgewise. No there are loads of reasons why it’s wrong and here are ten of them:

1. We live in a parliamentary democracy and it’s a parliament we’re electing not a prime minister

2. Selecting only these three leaders excludes other leaders – Caroline Lucas, Alex Salmond, Nigel Farage and (yes) Nick Griffin. How does that help democracy?

3. The debate (or debates – I can’t see the BBC letting Sky get away with being the only one) will come to dominate the campaign pushing out the wider debate

4. The media’s scoring of the debates will be superficial – based on instant vox pop and focus group

5. Having the focus on leaders drags us further away from a collegiate form of government and closer to an elected presidency

6.The debates will focus back on the Westminster bubble and away from the whole country – the opposite usually happens in General Elections as politicians have to reacquaint themselves with the grassroots

7. We’ll spend more time talking about Gordon’s tie, Dave’s quiff or Nick’s crumpled shirt than we will about schools, hospital or the wars we’re fighting

8. The centralisation of “debate” will act to suppress nascent local debates – real questions about jobs, schools and the local economy

9. The Party spin doctors will use debate point-scoring as the basis for campaigning – we’ll see more of the risible “we love the NHS” type approach from all the parties and less considered campaigning

10. The debates will push aside regular programming – pissing off Corrie, Eastenders and football fans everywhere!