The worst offence Iron Lady is supposed to have committed is that it shows her as having severe dementia. But actually, she is mostly portrayed as being about as wrapped up in her past as the next old woman. There are some sadly impertinent conceits (the idea that Denis resented her standing for party leader; that she is at war with his shade; his parting shot about her self-sufficiency) which seem silly, but they are at least self-evidently dubious or unproven. (I haven’t read Carol Thatcher’s book, and stand ready to be corrected.)

The revelation is in the politics. Since this is a movie from Mrs T’s point of view (as its makers keep saying) it isn’t perhaps surprising that we hear her own arguments for her opinions and actions. They do of course, says this right-winger, stand up very well. What I hadn’t expected is that I could recommend the movie to a young person seeking to get a snapshot of those days, and to grasp why so many in the country supported her at the time. The young may even understand why some older people have come to see her as far more right than they thought her at the time.

Bingo.

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The professors (as the journalists from the Guardian etc before them) come from a special, nice, serious, public-spirited planet which is worlds away from the bad behaviour of most of the Red Tops some of the time (and some, a lot of the time). It was good to spot Leveson spot this, and in terms say so. Fact is, the tabloids are closer to the majority of the people in the country than are the broadsheets. And the right-wing tabloids and right-wing broadsheets hoover up, or represent, a huge number of decent people.

So the fear is that the self-appointed masters of professional, high-minded, bossy-liberal journalism will hope they can shut down the waspish, irreverent, larky – and, yes, intemperate, vulgar, prurient – journalism which confronts it.

So it was also good to hear some of the professors admit (accept, aver,  insist) that journalistic good behaviour did not have to be taught in universities, but flowed from the culture of the places journalists work.

The seven academics rather make the point: one I could’t readily check, but the remaining six didn’t start out with degrees in journalism. Yes, I do see that there perhaps weren’t courses avaialble when they started out – but the point remains.

I am sceptical of the value of educating journalists in journalism, but especially of any drift toward conformism and control.

This insight flows well with my general feeling that now more than ever, our media will be filled with writing from every sort of source and these trends militate against a recent tendency to require journalists to be professionalised (educated, trained etc) on special courses.

I speak with the personal background of having broken into journalism as an outsider and relishing the very “otherness” that conferred on my work. I like journalism as a trade for outsiders. What’s more, I am allergic to the professionalising trends which some gatekeepers (journalism professors, maybe?) might enjoy. I was stung, in particular by my own experience of the closed shop which was once attempted by the freelance wing of the National Union of Journalists. That way lay the dead hand of control.

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It was fascinating to see Max Mosley seem to tell Marr that he supported the idea of DSK as the victim. Well, we’ll see. But I did have a flicker of anxiety as to whose privacy had been invaded here and whose reputation traduced. Pace Leveson, is the unfolding of this saga showing the presss in a good light? For a start, are the methods of the US journalist and his sources kosher? Would Max Mosley really endose them, on reflection?

I have no idea, yet. But what is so absorbing is that we now have the media and cultural habits of the US and France on display in one case. Presumably the DSK story is a nearly perfect comparative study for Leveson.

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On those lines, we ought to beware any nonsense about “Faustian Pacts” in which it is supposesd that celebrities lose their rights if they ever speak to the media; or invasions of privacy are warranted if the reporting is accurate. A celebrity whose kitchen has once been in OK magazine does not thereafter lose the right to leave her curtains open at night. Part of why Mr Mosley is so important is that his case reminds us that his privacy would have been no less sacrosanct had his sex games involved a Nazi theme.

Mr Mosley is right, too, to insist that the principle of prior notifaction is crucial, and foremost. The problems which flow from prior notification are the ones we have to deal with, not flinch from.

It’s worth saying that my normal response is to be sceptical when people take offence at common abuse and other  nonsense. The “sticks and stones” argument is quite a good one. I have been sentimental about the 18th Century habit of bawdy and scurrilous gossip. Happy days, etc. On reflection, I am not sure they were all that happy, but in any case we are in different territory now.

Indeed, it may be that we need a scrupulously honest professional press now and do so exactly because the gossipy, profane and vicious voices of the masses are out there in hyperspace. The media who are in Leveson’s dock are of interest to his Lordship and the rest of us only because they claim to be decent and honest. We are trying to work out ways of making them be what they claim to be.

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One episode (“The Calorie”, 24 October 2011) I’m thinking of was devoted to the idea of calorie-counting. The show lined up various people who argued that there was no solid connection between a food’s energy content and its being a contributor to obesity. So far so good, one may say. It may be that it’s no good just going by the calorie count on food packaging. (Thought that’s one of the means by which I am discriminating between foods, and it seems to work, more or less.) Along the way, contributors complained about ”processed food”. The show’s sign-off was to the effect that we might overcome any confusion by insisting on ”real food”.

But this is nonsense, surely, and we were in effect reminded of some of the silliness of the idea in an episode of the show (“Future Food”, 14 November 2011) which looked at a subset of the foodie movement:  “food futurists” are deliberately messing with our ideas about the stuff. They were toointeresting for the Food Prgramme to ignore, but they were mostly off-message.

Some of my irritation with the the FP caliphate is that they are sure that words like “slow”, peasant, natural, old-fashioned, revivalist, heritage, artisinal, organic, free-range, or co-operative are good. I don’t share that, but I get it.

More particularly and seriously I can’t see that anyone would be wise to construct a diet which avoided processing. Even leaving aside the fact that to do so would eliminate cooking, one has to reckon with getting rid of bread, cheese, pasta and butter. All are processed, and all are variously good or bad for slimmers or gourmands, according to circumstance. Of course, most restaurant food is the ultimate in processing, but somehow escapes censure.

But I can’t see that an all-in-one TV dinner, for instance, or a military rations pack, or a Complan drink, must be assumed to be lesser – or unreal – food merely because they are extremely processed.  Ready-meals can be formulated so as to be healthy, tasty, and indeed artisinal, by turns.

Wherein does “real” food consist? One might go for provenance, animal welfare, conservation values, dietary merit, culinary diligence or talent. I see that ideas of authenticity and naturalness will sometimes come into play, for some people. But we have to remember, for instance, it might well be the case that the “unnatural” pig farming of the UK may have much higher welfare standards than the more “natural” farming of a peasant. And someone might well choose to source their food from intensive horticultural firms rather than free-range or organic beef herds.

The point is that there is no such thing as “real” food.

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The protestors are asking The City to explain itself, and (so far as this dedicated reader of the Financial Times can see) there’s been no reply. Where is The City’s answer to the question: Does The City do a good job?

The Big Question for The City
There are dozens of compelling questions, but we can cut our way through them by stressing that the overwhelming – the prior – question is: does The City produce sustainable finance?

This question is urgent, but also searching. The financial system has no merit – no chance of doing good, or of reform – if it collapses, is too volatile or can say little about the future.

So I agree that the Long Finance initiative is on the money when it asks: “When would we know our financial system is working?” The question has the merit both of ordering and of challenging subsidiary questions.

So the question is not whether The City is good for more obviously exciting things such as:

• equity
• the environment
• resource sustainability
• climate change
• the Third World
• work/life balance
• gender equality
• manufacturing vs services
• philanthropy
• its employees
• fast growth.

People who ask The City about such questions have to prove their relevance to reliability. It’s that way round.

Getting a response from The City
The City is the trade association for the totality of its trades and professions. But is it one brand and one business? For all I know, different sectors of The City have profoundly differing interests. Some may thrive on financial catastrophe, for instance.

Even so, I long to see some body – Gresham College, Long Finance, the City’s Corporation, or anyone – making coherent arguments about what The City does, what its benefits – and yes, its tensions – are, and what it seeks from government. It can’t make those cases without first of all saying what it does well enough to need to be left alone, or encouraged, to do. Come to that, it will need to be clear about where it fails, and where it needs to be regulated.

The City cannot merely say it has been part of Britain’s economic success. Its history now includes its recent history which shows dramatic failure to be good at its job.

I can see that there is an argument for The City’s saying very little, for fear of exposing profound conflicts, uncertainties and even sheer nastiness. Better to muddle through and hope for the best.

I can see that some players may not like to make an issue about the incompetence or wickedness of the Square Mile for fear of its revenge.

If those gloomy thoughts are true, then what follows is wishful thinking.

I am, though, inclined to argue that The City’s Corporation is in some sense a professional body whose business is to align the pro bono with the capitalist.

This is importantly a matter of character: if The City was a person, what sort should it be? I imagine it should be ambitious, greedy, reliable, honest, frank. Such a person would seek the advantage of himself; his firm; his firm’s owners and investors and also – in some limited but limiting sense – society and even the future. Some of these are mutually exclusive or at least in tension, and some are unquantifiable.

But such a person would begin where Long Finance begins. He or she would ask: Am I stressing and exploring the importance of The City delivering returns for the longer term? The answer might be: I am contributing to the future by being short-termist. Or: I am contributing to sustainability by being a shark.

The point is: the question must be asked and answered by each City person and The City as a whole. And the proper replies and proper actions will only come from people of character: those prepared to be awkwardly decent and awkwardly frank.

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The question was: will it be possible for someone to be a full citizen without digital access?

The subsidiary questions revolved around what happens if the answer is No (which I assume people will mostly think).

In particular: Would the state be obliged to provide or mandate access if the market or philanthropy didn’t?

Here’s my attempt at unpicking some of the issues:

(1) How similar are the access problems posed by poverty and disability?

In this context illiteracy is rather similar to blindness: both pose access problems. So it makes sense to note that the disabled are often poor and the poor are often disabled.

(2) Does it help to think of deserving and undeserving poverty and disability?

Society might see illiteracy as a life choice by the idle underclass. But society might equally think that it would pay to use every resource (and perhaps especially digital access) to remedy a socially-damaging concomitant of poverty. A cousin of that thought arises when we think of the obligations of society toward those disabled who volunteer for extreme risk in, say, their sports or by pursuing adventure in the military.

(3) One good analogy is with other services. Is digital access to be considered as the Royal Mail; an energy utility; the BBC; schooling; roads infrastructure? Cautiously, I suppose that it ought not to be like a one-price universal service; we want people to pay for the service if possible; we ought to avoid a universal licence fee; we ought to worry about the deficiencies of a free-at-the-point of use compulsory service; if the state provides infrastructure, that doesn’t mean people have a free right to to use it.

(4) We need to consider the way the culture is being replicated behind paywalls (the Inland Revenue and the latest blockbuster and opera and book and live event are all likewise available in analogue and digital form). This is hugely liberating. What providers can charge for, they can also discount or donate or be paid to distribute.

(5) Early conclusions

Digital access is a good thing and the poorest need it most.
3G dongles and elementary tablets are cheap as chips.
Digital paywalls make it easy to give poor people cheap access.
Digital services can communicate easily with disabled people.
The state has a right to use digital communication only.

The right-wing trick is to square these circles with as little state involvement as possible.

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It is of course right that there should be some sort of vague, heartfelt, right-on and hand-wringing and useless protest about capitalism and that it should be heard. It was inevitable that it should seek to bear witness in “peaceful direct action”, and so on. It was delicious that it settled on property which was in part owned by the Church of England, near The City.

The C of E rightly bent over backward to accommodate their fellow-travellers. In the days which have followed, everything has emerged beautifully. The protest has been able to show itself inchoate, and not widely supported. It strikes a note, of course, and then reminds one that making capitalism even better than it has been is not child’s play.

Now, of course, St Paul’s wants to get back to its real business and there seems to be serious muddle as its managing clergy flip-flops between their vague sympathy for the protestors and a desire to see the back of them. As of this morning, it seems that St Paul’s cannot bear to assert itself legally.

I like this situation. It has brought about the perfect confrontation between two factions of the peace and love brigade. Neither side has to change its thinking about the future of capitalism (such as it is). But both will presumably learn lessons about  the limits of protest and public sympathy for disruption.

So far as I know, little would be lost by letting the protest squat continue for as long as possible. The general public will slightly benefit from sensing that the protestors have little to add to the debate.

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Here’s my brief to myself.

I think the document Of Equal Value: Poverty and Inequality in the United Kingdom makes some important mistakes, and in particular it makes the mistakes common to the leftish poverty campaigning of the socialists and the churches.

Here’s a core statement from it:
“It is entirely uncontroversial that being at the bottom end of a highly unequal society is much worse than being at the bottom end of a more equal society, ie that equality is better for the poor.”

This is claptrap. It rehashes The Spirit Level argument which is wrong in several ways. (And which I reviewed at the Social Affairs Unit site.)

Try this test: Pakistan and Australia are about as unequal as each other. Bangladesh is a little less unequal than the UK. China is a little less unequal than the US. So we are supposed to be indifferent whether we are poor Pakistan or Australia and positively to prefer to be poor in Bangladesh or China than in the UK or the US. Right. Tell that to the poor people who long to emigrate to the unequal Anglosphere West. (See below for a link to the CIA Factbook evidence.)

I agree that most very unequal societies are horrible: many are in Africa. I agree that some equal societies are very nice: but some of them are in Scandinavia. I wouldn’t want to live in either class of society.

Do not be blinded by the happiness of the egalitarian Nordics and Scandinavians. They are fairly cheerful because they are rich, not because they are equal. They do pride themselves on their equality, but they are losing some of it and anyway take far more tranquilisers than the apparently uncheerful Brits. (See below RDN mini-essays which over some of this.)

The document assumes that poverty is bad and that inequality must be bad because it increases poverty. I think there is the additional thought that inequality is bad because it is a sign of the indifference of the rich toward the poor.

Actually, in Western societies poverty is not necessarily all that awful since it is defined (as the document notes) as having less than 60 percent of the median wage. When the median wage rises, lots more poor people may be created, but these “new poor” are no worse off materially than they ever were.

The document makes what is surely the mistake of linking poverty and inequality without spelling out the terms of the link. There is certainly a correlation between inequality and poverty in some Western countries. But that there is a causal link is way less sure and certainly not proved. I mean: the link is not remotely proved. We have no evidence whatever that increasing inequality increases poverty in any real way. Indeed, the poor generally benefit from economic growth, and if inequality is a stimulus to growth, then the poor may well benefit from it.

It is generally assumed by the left (and the document) that a very unequal society ought to be balanced up so the rich get less rich and the poor get more, generally in a straight swap. But it is already the case that the rich pay a hugely disproportionate of the nation’s tax and it is not clear how wise it would be to tax them more, even from the point of view of the poor.

It’s worth noting that in the UK the top 10 per cent earn 15 times as much as the bottom 10 per cent. But after tax and benefits are taken into account, that shrinks to about a five times difference.

It is sometimes argued that there is less social mobility in unequal societies, almost by definition. This seems absurd. The US was once the capital both of inequality and social mobility. This was always much more true of England than the left likes to admit. Nowadays, the US and the UK are famous for becoming less socially mobile.

This may be the case, in the sense that we may have lost the key to educating and motivating the working class and especially the underclass to success. This may have many causes: liberal education has made schools pretty hopeless as launching pads; the cream has already floated out of the lower classes; modern job demands are far greater than they were; benefit dependency has lead to what amounts to a moral erosion; deteriorating parental skills and standards have become endemics; and so on. (There’s a very good account of  these processes – more PC than mine – in the New Statesman, under the title “It’s not all bad news on social mobility.”)

It is important to stress that the modern world has made social mobility demanding: not policy; not the malevolence of the rich and their class interests. Anybody, from anywhere, can acquire the skills and get the luck the modern world needs. Indeed, people from good and bad backgrounds probably share about the same amount, but not type, of advantages.

I am struck by the poverty of policy recommendations made in the document. It’s more about soup kitchens than about motivating the poor to rise above their circumstances. I think this flows from an attitude which is more old-left than spiritual, or religious. It risks casting the poor as victims; as not spiritually the equal of the better-off.

I should perhaps add that the right is not necessarily indifferent to human suffering, but it is committed to the view that the state is not likely to do much good when it tries to do good. So there are tense and interesting issues for the right in all this.

Useful resources:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html
http://www.ifs.org.uk/comms/comm118.pdf
http://www.ifs.org.uk/projects/347
which leads us to:
http://www.ifs.org.uk/budgets/gb2011/11chap12.pdf
http://richarddnorth.com/2010/03/rdn-on-affluence-and-envy-on-bbc-news-channel/

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The funny thing is, thirty years ago black mothers were appalled at what was happening to their children. One day, as I waited for my own young at the school gate, I asked some of them why they didn’t complain about the school’s free and easy approach to education. They said that white liberal school-teachers wouldn’t listen to them and that it was I, a middle class white, who should take up the cause. I replied that as a right-winger I was a red rag to a bull to the liberal teachers. I added that it was only black mothers who could command respect and attention.

Anyway, the upshot was that a great tradition was lost. Those Caribbean mothers were the last generation of English working class people to experience old-style schooling, though they did so as colonial subjects, and whilst in a colonial backwater. The white working class had always been pretty uninterested in improving itself so for them liberal education merely made a bad situation worse.

You may say that the young underclass are exposed to plenty of other bad influences other than a non-education. They suffer by being at the sharp end of the war on drugs, rap music, video games, a recession, shows like The Wire, and maybe the classic immigrant disaffection with the parent culture, and you can perhaps think of others. Still, they are chronically ill-equipped to fight back, and that was a two-generation educational failure. Let’s hope there won’t be a third.

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