The original story:
“Turkey mourns dead Gaza activists”
BBC Online
4 June 2010

Summary of the story:
The BBC reports on  Turkish mourners at the funerals of the “nine activists killed in Israel’s raid on a Gaza aid flotilla”. It then went on to major on the reaction of the Turkish government and the activists. It mentioned that the Israeli’s believed the ships were aiming to break the contoversial Israeli blockade of Gaza.

livingissues comment:
The following comments are intended to be valid whatever the reader thinks about the state of play between the Israeli government and the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip. Equally, they don’t depend on one’s point of view as to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. 

Israel offered to let the ships fulfill their aid mission by unloading most of their material at a port of the government’s choosing. So had the delivery of aid been the flotilla’s primary ambition, it could have been achieved without difficulty. So it is unlikely that this was primarily an “aid” mission.

It seems silly of the Israeli’s to pretend that the ships had a terrorist ambition as some spokesmen claimed. It isn’t even clear how the ships could seriously be thought to be attempting to break the blockade (as though forcibly), as seemed to be the Israeli’s main claim. It’s true of course that the activists wanted to break the blockade in a political sense (in the long term, for instance).

The flotilla might have been allowed through and in that sense might have “broken” the blockade. But isn’t it more likely that the flotilla intended or expected to be stopped and that there would be a lot of filmable outrage as the blockade was enforced and the aid didn’t get through to Gaza? One may say that that the Israeli’s over-reacted to resistance from some of the activists. But that’s what often happens when an armed force under-estimates the opposition and then has to retrieve the situation.  

What seems to be going on here is, in one way, quite commonplace in the world of protest: some naive, strong-headed activists get duped by people with much more sinister motives. Much protest is intended to provoke state violence, just as much terrorist activity is.  

 Also, of course, the level of violence contemplated by the hard-nuts on the Mavi Maramar was quite different to most protests. But this case is complicated by the involvement of the Turkish authorities. This seems almost to have been a government stunt by proxy.

The original stories:
“No Surrender”
The corporation will become smaller, but no less potent
The Economist
6 March 2010

“The BBC’s retreat may yet turn into a rout”
Losing a few digital stations and web pages will not be enough to keep the licence fee off the political agenda
David Elstein
The Times
4 March 2010

Summary of the stories:
The Economist made the usual noises about the BBC being a remarkable broadcaster and admired by Britons who broadly accept the licence fee they have to pay a little nonsensically since it’s supposed to be premised on buying the right to watch TV, though many watch relatively little of the corporation’s output. The magazine pointed out that the BBC is a bigger success with older people and the middle classes than with the young and less well-off. In response, the BBC has over the years expanded into hep digital radio and TV stations, and into the web. It noted that the BBC’s new strategy seems to be to head-off criticism that it crowds into markets where it threatens burgeoning commercial competitors. Its says  future it will concentrate on its core, home-made, high quality material. 

David Elstein’s piece covered much the same ground as The Economist but with the significant difference that Mr Elstein thinks that the BBC’s strategy may “backfire”:

“Paradoxically, a more efficient BBC spending more on content may strike its competitors as even more of a threat than its current incarnation.”

livingissues comment:
For a free market and socially libertarian magazine, The Economist is surprisingly friendly toward the state’s involvement in the funding and behaviour of the BBC. David Elstein has a record of being much more sceptical (not least in a ground-breaking review he chaired for the Conservative Party). He was writing for The Times which is regarded as being anti-BBC not least because it is owned by Ruper Murdoch, whose Sky is one of the BBC’s most important competitors.

It’s useful to remember that the BBC needs both to be high quality and even elite in its material whilst also offering a wide range of mass market material. It needs to appeal to everyone or its political support will disappear. In current circusmtances, as Mr Edelstein catches better than the Economist, it can’t please anyone very easily. When competes better in the elite market, it makes it even harder for commercial stations to offer work in this non-commercial arena, and when it sticks to its populist guns, it is robbing the commercial sector of viewers which are all the more badly needed in a recession (which has seen advertising revenues fall).

In short, in bad times, the BBC looks even more like a spoiled and protected monolith than it does in good times. Of course, the BBC retains a large amount of political support, partly because the public  likes and more or less trusts it, and partly because it’s quite cheap, and partly because voters hang on nanny for fear of something worse. 

All the same, the funding system is unfair (it penalises the poor). Besides, bit by bit, a more radical argument gains traction: the state should stop controlling the broadcasters (there are more legal controls on broadcasting than any other media) as though they had a unique power to corrupt or defile us. This is especially true the more satellite and cable platforms give viewers access to a huge range of material from around the world. The more time one spends not “consuming” BBC shows, the less one is inclined to continue to pay for them.

[The editor of this site in 2007 wrote "Scrap the BBC!": Ten years to set broadcasters free]

The original story:
“Lord Rogers’ attack on the Prince of Wales is outlandish”
Telegraph View
Daily Telegraph
17 June 2009

Summary of the story:

A crisp Teleraph leader opines that Lord Rogers is wrong to criticise Prince Charles’s intervention which led to the Qatari power elite pulling out of a London architectural scheme they were funding.

livingissues comment:

It is possible that the majority of people don’t like the Rogers scheme which Charles has scuppered. But it got through the democratically-mandated planning system ordained by the the British people speaking through Parliament. If people don’t like the scheme, they need to use the existing system. If they don’t like the system they need to fight to change it.

Of course, Charles can’t argue for those sorts of changes except discreetly. Not that being argumentative is his game. As Lord Rogers says, and it’s a secondary issue: Charles never debates the issues he chunders on about. Maybe his opining from on high is the luxury we have to allow him granted that he has watch his words (at least a bit).

But we really should not permit to Charles to stitch things up behind our backs: that is a serious abuse of his being heir to a constitutional monarchy.

More to the point, it’s amazing to think that the Daily Telegraph doesn’t see any of that and would rather celebrate the outcome of Charles’s intervention because architecturally it suits them. Oh, and theirs is the populist view – which again is hardly the point of a being an intelligent right-winger.

The original story:
“Crisis? What crisis? The market confounds the left”
Philip Stephens
Financial Times
12 June 2009

and others…

Summary of the stories
Philip Stephens – a commentator symapthetic to New Labour – notes that a largely free market view of capitalism and globalisation seems to have survived the latest ruction. He notes that in the recent EU elections, the left – including the social democrats (the UK’s LibDems, for instance) and incumbents of the left – did badly, whilst the right (including some “far-right”) – including incumbents of the right – did well.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the same newspaper, Peter Clarke notes that the LibDems might surf to success on Labour’s discomfiture and resurface to mimic the success of their Liberal forebears. Richard Reeves made much the same point.

livingissues comment:
It is indeed fascinating that the left at the moment is suffering even though capitalism and ancient institutions have proved rather fallible. The City and Westminster have survived their recent crises much better than is widely supposed and in all sorts of ways, it may be business surprisingly as normal.

I think this is because people do deep down recognise that things have worked pretty well and probably will again.

There is a pretty good chance that MPs and Parliament will emerge stronger than ever. Good. It is likely that Anglo-Saxon capitalism will stay different from more state-controlled capitalism. Good.

It is indeed quite possible that the problem of politics being a battle between dead classes and ideas will be solved. Good. That may happen because centrists parties hoover up the right of the left and left of the right. Good. It may even be that party structures will matter less. Good.

The British on the whole like private life and not public. Their ideal is not to have to bother with the public realm because it is doing well in the hands of professionals paid to run it. They make a partial exception for politics because it is sufficiently like sport to offer amusement at least as a spectacle. Similarly, they follow business news when their wallet is on the line, or the events are exciting.

It is very fashionable just now to say that politics is about to become less “top down” and more “bottom up”. On this account, the elite won’t be able administer everything centrally because we the people will spring up in myriad forms to manage things more locally, and for ourselves. This is supposed in part to be a function of two-way digital media. These may be good developments, but I see no evidence whatever of a widespread urge to take up the tedious and irksome business of running things like schools, hospitals, prisons, and welfare services. If you do… do write in.

The original story:
“Making Allowances”
Leader Comment
The Times
9 May 2009

Summary of the story:
The Times‘s leader writer ran the gamut of argument on the problem of finding the right people to go into politics, especially how to reward them properly.

livingissues comment:
The nation has been indulging in an orgy of dislike of Members of Parliament and their allowances. Interestingly, The Telegraph is not universally admired for its expose. It was seen in some quarters as a witch hunt which risked taking our eye of the real issues. As The Times remarks, the upshot is probably that the MPs’ “take” is quite small and not very corrupting.

MPs will have to rethink how they pay themselves.

Actually, though, the public has more rethinking to do than the politicians. We have been so busy wanting everybody in authority to be responsive to the point of submissiveness that we haven’t noticed that we want to be informed and led by an elite.

We won’t be led by serious and worthwhile people until we signal that we admire public service. (Nick Stacey told A N Wilson (FT, 9/10 May 2009) how badly we were lacking this sense.) Of course, public servants have to be well-rewarded. But they’ll need respect too.

The failing is partly in the leadership cadres. For all the humbug and arrogance that has always littered the elite – the professional classes – there was also a more widespread understanding of the idea of vocation. Helena Kennedy made something like that point on BBC2′s Newsnight (11 May 2009).

We need to build a new sense of professionalism and the vocational pleasures it can bring.

So it’s a reciprocal matter. The led need to understand their obligation to their leaders and the leaders need to have quite a strong sense of their duty.

This sort of ethos was once quite openly discussed and taught. It wasn’t the preserve of the public school, though public schools certainly took it very seriousy and still do (as the headmistress of Roedean reminded the FT (9 May 2009). Actually, it ran right through society as a value and was taught at every point. It was, for instance, accepted that adults had a leadership role, and it didn’t really matter how poor or uneducated they were.

The original story:
UN backtracks on claim that deadly IDF strike hit Gaza school
Amos Harel
Haaretz
3 February, 2009

Summary of the story:

Haaretz’s reporter began his story:

The United Nations has reversed its stance on one of the most contentious and bloody incidents of the recent Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza, saying that an IDF mortar strike that killed 43 people on January 6 did not hit one of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency schools after all.

livingissues comment:
[This is slightly amended from earlier versions of this blog - apologies, RDN 14.45hrs, 4 February 2009.]

Haaretz’s story mostly checks out at a site referred to by the UN as an official source, ReliefWeb. See their story here. The story is buried by the UN low down in a document, without headline or signposting. So it looks like multiple apologies are in order.

The British media pushed out powerful elements of the original untruths with a great deal of emphasis, and presumably they believed that such allegations if true would do real hard to Israel’s reputation. Using that logic the British media ought to put the record straight – and with a great deal of emphasis.

Of course, the 43 dead remain dead and their families’ grief won’t be diminished by this “news”. Nor, perhaps, their sense of grievance.

It is worth noting that early reports of the incident on 6 January 2009 were often headlined in terms of an attack on a school (for instance, the Independent‘s). But the stories themselves (including the Independent‘s) often then noted that the shells fell outside the school. It was then often left ambiguous as to whether the fatalities and casualties from those shells were inside or outside the school.

Some accounts did report at least one UN official saying that the shells were outside the school and that there were no fatalities (but some casualties) inside it as a result. Indeed, the UNRWA seems to have got itself into a muddle and reversed its account quite early on. So the latest UN account confirms what some said, and corrects others. Namely, that the shells definitely landed outside the school, killing no-one.

One is now looking forward to evidence on the two other main allegations against the Israeli military and its New Year operations in Gaza: that they used phosphorus and “herded” a group of civilians into a building and then shelled it and them.

The original story:
“Legal move to crack down on climate protesters”
Afua Hirsch and John Vidal
The Guardian
18 December 2008

Summary of the stories:
The Guardian has got wind of moves by the UK government’s Attorney General to challenge the legal loophole” (“lawful excuse”) whereby people charged with criminal damage can assert that their admitted acts were damaging but not criminal because they were designed to avoid a greater damage. Thus, you can kick down the door of a neighbour’s house if it is on fire. Likewise, lawyers are arguing with great success, that protesters are invading military airfields, trashing trials of genetically modified crops and damaging power station chimneys so as to head off the greater damage of war or environmental damage. Judges and juries have mostly accepted the argument.

livingissues comment:
There is great merit in protest but there need to be limits especially when the protest is against activity which has been thoroughly debated and democratically agreed. There is no obvious parity between the modern use of the “lawful excuse” argument and the circumstances which originally spawned it.

The difficulty looks like being this: there is a superficial attractiveness in the “lawful excuse” argument and confronting it will perhaps require a deliberate change in the law. The A-G may lose his appeal to a higher court. That would only leave a Parliamentary decision – an overt display of will by the government which might be unpopular.

The original stories:
Top rate tax may not raise a penny
Hamish McRae
The Independent
26 November 2008

How ‘Reaganomics’ tax cuts can raise revenue
 Janet Daley
The Daily Telegraph
25 November 2008

Summary of the stories:
Two writers respond to the Labour Government’s reversal of its 10-year policy of not treating the very rich differently from ordinarily well-off middle class taxpayers. Hamish McRae reminds us that there seems to be a “tipping point” with tax. Push the overal tax of an individual over about 60 per cent and the operation is counter-productive. The very rich (the top one percent) already pay a quarter of the nation’s tax take. But they are flexible types: “over-tax” them, and they have all kinds of ways of fighting back. 

Janet Daley reminds us of the other part of the equation. It’s called the “Laffer Curve“. The rich don’t like being over-taxed and part of their defensive reaction may lead to a decline in national income, sometimes beginning with their own (as they decide to retire sooner than stump up, say). That’s bad in itself and leads to lower tax revenues. (JD notes that some circumstances can change these assumptions.)

livingissues comment:
There may be all kinds of merits in left-of-centre political policy. But the left are not always right when they say that society can be made to be more “fair”. Sure, it may well be possible to take money from the well-off and direct it to the poor and everybody benefit one way or another. But it turns out that in relatively free societies, you can only take so much tax from the well-off. After a certain point, it’s counterproductive.

But one had better not be simplistic. Some high-taxation economies do pretty well and some low-taxation economies are very nasty. Economies differ in their responses to changing tax rates. 

The original story:
Goodbye to New Labour
Philip Stephens
The Financial Times
25 November 2008

Darling’s step into the unknown
Anatole Kaletsky
The Times
25 November 2008

Summary of the stories:
Philip Stephens argues that Chancellor Darling’s budget – a fiscal stimulus – is more or less the right thing to do in the present recession. But it may not work and poses big problems. The alternative, says Mr Stephens, is too much pain to contemplate. So, he says, the Tories are “half right” in their claims, and Labour is “half right” in theirs.

Anatole Kaletsky argues that we can’t know whether Mr Darling has done the right thing until we know what the economy does next and that a little economic growth (however we get it) will make a big difference to paying back the borrowing required for the fiscal stimulus. And he concedes that the Tories’ alternative analysis may be right as well.

livingissues comment:

Mssrs Stephens and Kaletsky are both very respected. Mr Stephens is one tad more supportive of Mr Darling than Mr Kaletsky. Neither is exactly fulsome in their praise of either Labour or the Tories.

As Mr Kalestky notes, Mr Darling didn’t have the luxury of admitting that he didn’t know what to do for the best. None of us do (know what to do for the best). The Chancellor had to make one gamble or another. To do them credit – it might be added – the Tories have also gambled: they insist he’s wrong.

Many commentators have noted that we are in new territory. Labour and Conservative policy-makers are headed for their ancient heartlands. Labour borrows (and taxes the rich) to be help people. The Tories says it isn’t kind to borrow (and clobbering the rich doesn’t help the poor).

Labour have put in place a tax-and-spend fiscal stimulus, and for various reasons nearly everyone thinks they may be right to do so. Of course, it is almost equally possible that they may not. The measures may be too weak (that’s very possible). They’ll certainly be very expensive. Their expense may be of two different sorts. The economy will need a double-strength recovery to pay for the recovery plan. But the expense may make money-markets suspect Britain’s financial strength and that perception may impose costs of its own. On the other hand, if the measures help the economy recover, the debts will eaily be repaid.

This is importantly a political matter. If the economy does well, Labour will claim their measures did the trick (which may or may not be true, but hard to prove either way). If the economy does badly, the Tories will claim that Labour’s measures didn’t work (ditto).

A few commentators are prepared to argue that forcing, helping or exhorting banks to lend more money (theirs and the taxpayers’) is the only serious option and that other forms of help (the fiscal stimulus) are illusory.

This is very nearly the Tory position. The Tories have not quite got the nerve to say that we should not waste energy on avoiding present pain. Instead they suggest they have sort-of-stimulus measures sort of in mind though they mostly think ( and this they say more forcefully) that it is measures to help bank lending which matter far more.

It is very hard to know which of these positions is right. But it seems fair to look more closely at what commentators are saying. Even supporters of the Darling plan seem to believe that it is not likely to make much positive economic difference. It is worth asking why Tory-minded people do not more thoroughly promote the idea that the recession holds the seeds of its own remedy in a weak Pound helping an export-led recovery; low prices for consumers leading to more spending; and low interest rates leading to better prospects for house-purchasers and businesses.

Perhaps neither commentators nor politicians can bear the thought of saying out loud that (beyond a welfare safety net) helping people doesn’t help them and pain is good for economies. If this is true then it isn’t analysis or even compassion but cowardice which is lurking in much of what people are saying and refusing to say.

The original story:

Suzy Jagger
The Times
5 November 2008

Summary of the story:
All day we have had reports that black people in the US have been chanting, “Free at last!”. It is worth pointing out that slavery was abolished in the US in the 1860s and that blacks have had the vote since 1870, though it took nearly a hundred years for it to become an easy right to exercise everywhere in the country. (See the timeline in the Times story.) We cite in particular this Times story in which a 93 year-old black woman declares that until Obama came along she saw no reason to vote. This seems to have been the case with many blacks, whose voting record is even worse than that of whites in recent times.     

livingissues comment: 
The notion that blacks have a unique reason to vote for Obama ought to be depressing. After all, Martin Luther King precisely argued that it was necessary for us to judge people by their minds not the colour of their skin.

The situation is doubly depressing if we consider that generations of black non-voters seem to have concluded that there was no politician who was worth supporting. And yet Barack Obama is not self-evidently going to be a better President than any other, and certainly he holds out no greater promise than (say) Al Gore or Bill Clinton or any of the other Democrats who had been on offer before Obama. 

To vote is to engage in democracy. Not to vote is either to say that one is indifferent to the outcome of the election (there perhaps being equal chances of good or bad from any of the possible outcomes), or that the election simply isn’t about anything which concerns one. It is surely incredible that these propositions were true for all the elections that 93 year-old had witnessed and stood aside from.