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The Worst Form of Government?

Eric Priezkalns
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The Worst Form of Government?

Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Sir Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons, 11th November 1947

I think there is something paradoxical in the idea that people should elect their leaders. An election is a kind of collective decision. The decision will select some person or people who will govern. By government, we mean making decisions. The voter is hence trying to decide who will make the best decisions. If that is the case, should we expect the decisions made by a democratic government to be any better than we would make ourselves, if we magically awoke to find ourselves in government? Or those made by our neighbours? Or made by those pig-ignorant people who voted the opposite way to ourselves at the last election? Or made by those pig-ignorant people who did not bother to vote? What if I happen to be pig-ignorant, but I just do not realize it?

Think of it this way. The very best decisions are going to be unpopular or hard to understand. You may want to read that last sentence again. I am not saying that unpopular decisions are likely to be the best decisions. There is a difference, though perhaps the average politician and the average voter might not see the difference. For any decision, there will be a number of alternatives. In fact, there will be a very great number of alternatives, if we include silly ones. Some alternatives will be popular, others unpopular. Some will be easy to understand, others hard to understand. Many will be silly, but usually politicians do not propose the silly options. Usually. Cicciolina, the porn star who was elected to the Italian Parliament for five years in the 1980’s, offered to have sex with Osama Bin Laden if he would stop being a terrorist. Pretty silly. She also offered to have sex with Saddam Hussein if he would just co-operate with the UN. Pretty silly too, though an offer like that has a better chance coming from her than it would if it came from Hans Blix. To be fair, at least Cicciolina’s proposals were pretty easy to understand. The logic seems to be that sex is nice, Saddam may be a bit sexually frustrated, and maybe if he got laid he would relax a little. Compare Cicciolina’s thought process to this example of esoteric reasoning:

The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light – through the prism of our experience on 9/11.

Donald Rumsfeld, Report to US Senate Armed Services Committee, July 2003

Compared to Rumsfeld’s logic, parachuting porn stars into Baghdad is a masterpiece of clear thinking. To any political question there will be innumerable silly answers, a number of answers that are not silly, but only one which is best. If the best conclusion to any decision is easy to understand and popular, that is fine by me. However, we do not pick politicians to address only the problems where solutions are easy to understand and popular. We would not need governments if that was all there was to it. No, we need people to impose decisions when others find those decisions hard to make. As Shelley poetically put it:

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

The best decisions are going to be unpopular or hard to understand. Not only are they right, but they are difficult to make. Only with the benefit of hindsight, and a bit of luck, will we be able to identify which truly were the best decisions. But if we only understand with hindsight, how are we, as people, supposed to pick our leaders?

Of course, it is not enough that we agree on how to do things. We also need to reach some kind of agreement on what we want to achieve. Cicciolina, Blix and Rumsfled, for example, were all in agreement that verifying the extent of Iraq’s arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction would be a good idea. They only differed on how to do it. Blix thought he should just look for them. Cicciolina thought she should shag a horny dictator, then ask the dictator to let Blix have a good look for them. Rumsfeld thought the US military should carpet bomb Iraq’s military, incur a little collateral damage (also known as killing innocent bystanders), remove the dictator, take control of the country, then ask somebody other than Blix to look for them. Rumsfeld got his way in the end. The conclusion was that Iraq had some strong bleach in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and the capability to project it as far as ten yards if deployed using imported super soaker technology. Intelligence is still divided on whether it would have been possible to ready the super soaker for use within 45 minutes and whether Syria was involved in the transportation of super soakers into Iraq. With hindsight, then, starting a war may have seemed disproportionate to the goal of checking for WMD. Luckily, with hindsight, it turned out that nobody running the war was wanting to check for WMD anyhow. It turned out their real goal was regime change. Phew, good job they kept their real intention secret, or you would have to conclude they made a terrible mistake. When everyone else wanted to leave Saddam Hussein be, but double-check if he had the ability to kill every man, woman and child on the planet, it turns out that the war leaders wanted rid of him, and were not that concerned about WMD after all. It turns out they wanted to replace Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship with a democratically-elected government, because he was a bad man and because democracy is a good thing. Pretty straightforward, huh? No doubt the US taxpayer considers US$500bn and some Iraqi lives, and some American lives, a small price to pay to see democratic elections in Baghdad.

Ah yes, Tony Blair… he loves democracy. Though modest compared to the US contribution, he loved democracy so much that he decided the British taxpayer should pay something more than UK£5bn to confirm that Saddam Hussein had the capability to scare crows using fireworks that make a loud bang…. I mean, to manage a transition to peace and prosperity for the Iraqi people… I mean, well, to achieve whatever it is the Brits are supposed to be achieving in Iraq these days. What a shame there was not a little bit more money to protect the lives of British troops with things like body armour. However, I digress. Here is a short list of other places that the Brits governed during the 20th century:

  • Pakistan
  • Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia
  • Burma, otherwise known as Myanmar

Noticed any of these in the news recently? Yes, they all seem to have a spot of bother when it comes to running democratic elections, amongst other things. Now, of course these things are complicated and I am not going to suggest that the Brits did a much worse job of running those parts of the world than any other people would have. But the history of these countries does suggest that well-intentioned attempts by powers like the UK to foster democracy in other nations is by no means certain to succeed.

Churchill had good reason to be philosophical about democracy. As a politician he had a torrid career. At the age of 35, he had reached a position where he was Home Secretary, in his 50’s he was an isolated figure and out of power, at 66 he was the great war leader for WWII, 5 years later he was out of power after losing the post-war national election, and another 6 years later he was back as PM and leader of the country. During all that time he was quoted and misquoted many times. Sometimes he said things that deserved condemnation, other times he was falsely accused. He did not preach a universal gospel of democracy. He praised the Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini, and said of India’s independence leader, Gandhi:

It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle-Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace… to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.

Nor was Churchill averse to putting his own political interests first and foremost. He changed political parties twice, swapping from Conservatives to Liberals and back to Conservatives. Of the second swap, he said:

Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat

With a career like that, one can imagine what he might think about having been voted the Greatest Briton in a very large poll a few years ago.

If Churchill was a great leader, it is because he was willing to risk being unpopular, and to make decisions that people did not like. One of his finest speeches, and one which is often quoted, is ill-appreciated today, as people forget the historical context. Here is the best-known excerpt from Churchill’s speech of June 4, 1940, to the House of Commons:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Stirring stuff. Now remember the context. Churchill spoke at a time when defeat looked almost certain. The speech was made shortly after the collapse of the Belgian army, with the defeat of France appearing highly likely, and an under-strength British army lucky to have made a desperate retreat across the Channel and forced to leave much of their equipment behind. The German war machine was strong and capable. Many Brits had advocated, and would continue to advocate, seeking a deal with Hitler’s Germany. In the midst of that, Churchill states his decision clearly: to fight, to the end, to never surrender, even if Britain was invaded. It is the decision of a leader: a clear signal to all not to waste time and energy wondering about what-ifs and alternatives. A signal to buckle down and concentrate all energies on winning the war.

Herein lies the paradox of democracy. There is a natural scepticism to politicians, that they are obsessed with soundbites and opinion polls. Put that another way, and the criticism is that they are not so much leaders, as people who wait to see where the crowd is going and then rush to quickly place themselves at the front. However, what do we expect? Politicians who march in their own direction, and so risk not having popular support, seem to be equally chided by the electorate, or at least by the media who stand as the electorate’s proxy. A constant obsession with supposed gaffs has created politicians who are careful not to say anything. A constant obsession with supposed controversy has created politicians unable to take a stand. What we have instead is the obsession with the unknown politician, or better still, the so-called non-politician or outsider. Take somebody who has no track record, but who looks good and speaks well, and carefully present them as a moderate that anyone can sympathize with. All they need to do is to make less mistakes, and keep saying things that are both popular and easy to understand. Whether it is David Cameron, leader of the British Conservative Party, or Barack Obama of the US Democrats, there is a clear advantage in not having a track record. As Obama will have noted of late, that advantage will dissipate if people start raking through your history looking for the muck. Nevertheless, there seems to be an inherent gullibility when voters look for outsiders who they believe have share the same moral compass as the ordinary person (whoever that is) by sitting outside the norms of political expediency. When they do so, they seem to ignore that most of these outsiders are merely individuals who have never taken much of a stance on anything.

Despite my own cynicism, voters in democracies prove my cynicism wrong as often as they prove it right. I have no idea if Boris Johnson will be a good mayor of London, but I am glad he got elected. He defeated the incumbent, Ken Livingstone, by succeeding where others had failed – by getting a large number of the electorate to take notice and take the trouble to vote. The major criticisms during his campaign were that he is a buffoon, is prone to gaffs, comes from a posh background and has no administration experience of any note. I have never heard a more pathetic series of reasons not to elect someone. If by a buffoon who is prone to gaffs, people mean Boris Johnson has a big personality, and he says a lot of things, some frivolous, some ill-judged and some things that people will dislike, then I consider that to be an advantage. Better that than someone who says nothing and spends their time crafting soundbites to suit opinion polls. His opponent, Ken Livingstone, was just as prone to outrageous outbursts, which included likening the job of a Jewish reporter for a right-wing newspaper to a guard at a Nazi extermination camp. If Johnson is playing to the gallery, at least he is trying to be witty as well as populist. Johnson is posh? Yup, like so many other British politicians. His schoolmaster at Eton was house master of Tony Blair at Fettes. It is inverse snobbery to complain that somebody with an extremely privileged education must be less well qualified to make decisions as a consequence. He has no experience? What of it… Before being a politician, Gordon Brown was an academic and journalist. Ken Livingstone was a cancer research technician. Most of them are lawyers; I struggle to imagine a profession less inclined to ground someone in what we might call the real world. If politicians needed to prove themselves before getting elected to power, then most politicians should never have been elected. A much-quoted buffoon and wit, with a privileged education who made money from journalism before entering politics? I could be writing about Winston Churchill….

In the end, democracies do not work well when voters do not vote well. If voters pick scoundrels and fools, they find their government robs them and ruins them. Voters that stay at home and do nothing have no right to complain if someone else picks a scoundrel or fool. If only scoundrels or fools stand as candidates, voters should remind themselves that any one of them could have stood for election. And if scoundrels and fools do sometimes get elected, then voters need to be sure they at least pick people that they will be able to remove at the next election. That is why democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others. However bad the decision of the voters, they get the chance to change their minds. Or not, as shown in the case of Bush and Blair. Voters have no right to be disenchanted about politics in a democracy. They might as well be disenchanted with themselves. There is no need to complain when their preferred candidate loses – that is tantamount to saying other people should not be allowed to vote. And moaning about how bad the winner will be, is, or was, is senseless. There will be another election soon enough. For democracy to work, all people need to do is participate. The more they do, the better it works. Participation is the bedrock of democracy, and in democracies we get the governments we deserve.

Uncharitable Celebrity

Eric Priezkalns
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Uncharitable Celebrity

Celebrity. It is part of the solution to all problems. That and raising awareness. Child starving in Africa? Then better send for Roger Federer, Whoopi Goldberg or the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra… they are all UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors after all. Want to stop the use of land mines? Send for Princess Diana… except you cannot now, because she is dead. A shame, because plenty of countries still make land mines, including such trivial and unimportant countries as the U.S.A., China and Russia. Apparently she built up a fat dossier on the topic of land mines, and according to her complementary therapist this may have been the reason Di had to die. Yup, making enemies with the British arms industry must be the explanation. That and getting into the back of a car driven at high speed by a drunk. And not putting her seat belt on, as stated in the verdict of the official enquiry. Bullying at your local school? Send for Big Brother halfwit Jade Goody… or maybe not, but she used to be listed amongst the celebrity supporters of the charity Act Against Bullying. Obviously not every charity can call on the same quality of celeb as UNICEF can. Dangerous driving? Send for Eddie Irvine, Dick and Dom or one of the girls in Atomic Kitten. They are supporters of the road safety charity, Brake. Obviously all these celeb campaigners never mix in the same circles, otherwise Eddie Irvine probably should have mentioned the importance of seat belts to Princess Di.

Some people are just greedy for love and attention. It is a fact. Not all are celebrities. Not every celebrity is greedy for love and attention. But it is reasonable to suppose that celebrities may be greedier for love and attention than the rest of us. If the most useful thing you have done in your life is to look good in a dress, then it follows you may want to bump up your usefulness ranking, and hence the amount of love and appreciation you get, by looking good in a dress whilst attending a charity event. All the better if you have time on your hands and no need to do a proper job. Princess Diana, for example, left behind a fortune worth UK£21.5m. In her will, not a penny was given to land mine charities or any other charity. Almost all went to her children, doubtless to protect them from the economic hardships usually associated with being a member of the royal family. She did remember to put her butler in her will, giving UK£50,000 to Paul Burrell. I guess she did not anticipate he was going to make a lucrative career out of exploiting her memory. But there was not a penny to help any of the poor sods who risk life and limb by digging up land mines. Put this into context. Taxpayers paid UK£12.5m for enquiries into how Princess Diana died. UK£12.5m to find out somebody died in a car crash because they did not wear a seatbelt and the car was driven by a drunk. Now put that into context. If you want human life to be dissolved down to some grim numbers, take a look at this report into the cost-benefits of land mine clearance. It states that the annual spend on land mine clearance worldwide peaked in 2004 at US$400m. At the present rate that mines are cleared, the combined value of Princess Diana’s estate and cost of enquiries into her death would have paid for 3 years of mine clearing efforts in Cambodia, which are 98% funded by donors. The report also estimates the value of a human life – in the third world – is US$400,000. It uses a method based on how people value their own lives in developed countries, and hence is more generous than a measure based purely on GDP or income. A purely economic measure may put a life’s worth at US$2,000. According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, there are 2 new casualties from land mines every hour. 40 a day, 1500 a month… and that it is just the reported figure. The actual rate is probably higher still.

I just do not get it when it comes to celebs and charities. Celebs sell magazines, television shows and the rest. Magazines, television and the rest get paid for by advertising and however much the consumer is forced to stump up in subscriptions. If we look at just the UK satellite television provider Sky, in the last financial year they made a UK£499m post-tax profit on the back of UK£4.5bn of revenue. Their profits, alone, are double what the world is spending on clearing landmines. At 31st March 2008, Sky had 8.9m customers, each generating UK£424 of revenue on average. If those subscribers gave just 5% of what they currently spend to be entertained by movie stars, sports stars and the miscellaneous dross of modern celebrity, the annual worldwide spend on land mine clearance would double. Put it another way. The BBC reportedly pays Gary Lineker around UK£500,000 a year to front its football highlights programme, Match of the Day. That means a few hundred hours of an ex-footballer talking about football is worth more than a couple of human lives. David Beckham, another person whose main contribution to life is to kick a ball accurately, is the richest UK sportsman. The greater part of Beckham’s wealth is due to promotional deals with Adidas, Pepsico and a host of other names. Beckham’s picture is used to sell perfume in Tokyo and underwear in New York. The latter deal, with Armani, will secure Beckham a reported US$20m over three years. This advertising power is the same reason why Beckham is also a UNICEF ambassador. That seems to me to be setting the wrong example. Beckham, Goody, Princess Di, even Dick and Dom… they all reflect an obsession with concentrating power, wealth and esteem in the hands of a elite. Want to be successful? Be like Beckham, or Princess Di, irrespective of what the real worth of their accomplishments are. Want to be a failure, at least by the same measures that make the celebs a success? Then spend your life digging up land mines. Nobody will know your name and you will be paid bugger all. If you are good at kicking a ball, or wearing a dress, and use that skill to draw attention to suffering, you can expect excessive wealth, love and praise. That sounds like a much better deal than spending a life doing something about actually alleviating suffering. There is something wrong with a world which distributes its wealth so poorly that there is not enough money to dig up mines but plenty of money available for photos of footballers wearing their undies. If you want to change the world, celebs are not part of the solution. A world which revolves around celebrity is part of the problem.

Namesake Donations

Eric Priezkalns
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Namesake Donations

Namesakes are problematic. If you have the same name as another person, you somehow get linked to them in people’s minds, even though you probably have nothing in common. My name is Eric and that causes untold hilarity for people who associate the name with the Viking explorer Erik the Red and various other Viking Erik’s and Eric’s, historical and fictional. Needless to say, this usually leaves me at a loss, as I do not have much to say about Vikings, never having been one. I imagine the problem of namesake association is much worse for people with the same name as prominent politicians. Politics is a topic where most intelligent people are expected to have an opinion and be able to talk about it (although others might insist on not discussing politics for the sake of preserving friendships.) Thankfully for me, there are not many Eric’s in politics, and most of those have been pretty minor. I feel for Americans called Clinton, McCain or even Obama, especially if they disagree with their namesake’s views.

How many people are so opposed to their political namesakes that they make donations to their opponents? Thanks to the US Federal Election Commission I was able to find out the totals (at 31st March) for donations made by people called Clinton, McCain or Obama to the three remaining US Presidential hopefuls. Here are the results:

to Hilary Clinton to John McCain to Barack Obama
Donations by people called Clinton $2,500 $2,000 $6,800
Donations by people called McCain $0 $32,981 $3,800
Donations by people called Obama $0 $0 $2,699

What can we tell from all this? Not much, of course! Of all the groups, the people called Clinton are the closest match to the American populous. Their donations ranked Obama first, Clinton second and McCain third. This is in line with the overall fund-raising. In total, Obama who has raised a remarkable $233,823,614 from individual donors. That is not much less than the combined total raised by Clinton, $171,647,510, and McCain, $70,945,412, from individual donations. The McCains, in contrast, obviously tend to stick with their namesake. They contributed a handsome $32,981 to John McCain. Maybe he has a lot of family. I do not imagine Obama is a very common name, but Obama’s still found $2,699 for their namesake, but not a penny for his rivals. Pity poor Hilary, who did not get a cent from a single McCain or Obama! However, she has compensated by putting $5m of her own money into the election kitty.

Of course, all of these figures are tiny compared to the staggering $42,363,736 that Mitt Romney paid into his own unsuccessful campaign. Nobody can say Romney did not put his money where his mouth is. He was not the only Romney to back his campaign either. People with the surname Romney contributed $82,725 to Mitt Romney’s failed bid. At the other end of the scale, Democrat Mike Gravel, the former US Senator from Alaska, also picked up a very large share – 10% – of his own campaign’s finance. He put his hand in his pocket for $47,616, not bad when your supporters only raised a mere $447,379. The total from Gravel’s supporters equates to 0.2% of what Obama’s followers have given so far. Gravel’s campaign also managed to spend more than it raised, which makes me think that Gravel will also be left to cover the $2,733 overdraft. Gravel was not bottom of the fundraising race, though. That distinction went to Jim Gilmore, the former Virginia governor who raised $349,736 from individuals before dropping out of the Republican nomination battle. At least he had $16,455 left in the bank when he gave up, which could be used to pay for a nice meal for every one of the 220 people who donated to his campaign. That might help console Buddy Gilmore of Colorado Springs who coughed up $2,300 in the hope of seeing Jim in the White House.

You should be able to rely on family for backing. Obama’s wife, Michelle, gave $399 to her husband’s campaign. However, a certain Bill Clinton, who lists his occupation as Former President of the USA, last made a campaign donation back in 2001, and that was not to support Hilary!

Taboo or not Taboo, What’s in a Word?

Eric Priezkalns
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Taboo or not Taboo, What’s in a Word?

Words. Sounds. Language. How and why do some words become taboo, and why should mere words ever be taboo?

There is something wrong with me, at least according to some people. I have an odd affliction that threatens to make me a pariah in polite company. I am not offended by bad language, not even a little. Bad language does not hurt my ears or cause my heart to flutter. Insult me and I will be upset, but I am indifferent as to whether the words of abuse are profanities, swearwords, blasphemies, or not. I am no fan of abusive behaviour, but it is equally possible to abuse people without using bad language, and to use bad language without abusing anybody. As a consequence, the use of profanity does not, of itself, greatly concern me, no matter what context it is used in. In turn, I do not feel greatly compelled to censor myself from using profanity. Of course, I do censor, but only because life would be even more tedious if I was subjected to the protestations of the easily offended. Unfortunately for me, I know plenty of intelligent people who seem to get unreasonably unhappy, angry or upset when a taboo word is used their presence. What is this power these swearwords have, like the magic spells of a sorcerer, to shock and bemuse?

I have been reading Don Quixote for what seems like an age. The storytelling is robust, with lots of falling off of horses and bashing of people around the head and ribs. However, I was surprised when I read the following lines in Part II, Chapter XIII of my English translation, which begin with Sancho Panza talking about his daughter:

‘She’s fifteen, give or take a couple of years,’ Sancho replied, ‘but she’s as tall as a lance, and as fresh as an April morning, and as strong as a market porter.’
‘With those assets,’ replied the Squire of the Forest, ‘she could be not just a countess but a very nymph of the greenwood. Oh the little whore, what muscles the little bastard must have on her!’

Part II of Don Quixote was published in 1615. The use of the words “whore” and “bastard” do not trouble me in general, and I am sure people were saying plenty worse back then. However, even I was a little taken aback. These lines are introduced without any forewarning, in the midst of an amiable conversation between the two characters. In the story, Sancho reacts by being peeved at the way his daughter is described by the Squire of the Forest. The Squire nevertheless wins Sancho over:

‘How little you know,’ replied the Squire of the Forest, ‘about the language of compliments… when one of the horsemen of the bullring deals the bull a good lance-thrust, or when anyone does something with great skill, people say: “He’s a clever bastard, look how well the bugger did that!” and what might seem like insults are, in this setting, high praise? And you should disown, my dear sir, any sons and daughters who don’t do deeds that earn praise like that for their parents.’

By the argument of the Squire of the Forest, foul language can be used to convey esteem and awe. This argument, fictional or not, is about four hundred years old. To my mind it still has a ring of truth to it. Whereas implying Sancho’s daughter was an illegitimate child who turned to prostitution may not seem like the wisest way to express praise, it does seem correct to argue that swearwords are reserved for the expression of intense emotions, and these emotions may be positive as well as negative. You do hear people use swearwords to express favour as well as well as disdain. If swearing is sometimes a positive form of communication, the objection to swearwords cannot be based on their being solely deprecating. We must look for the objections elsewhere.

In my experience, most people complain about swearing because of the supposed meaning of the words. That is a striking argument, because, in practice, the meanings of swearwords are often irrelevant to their use. The meaning and purpose of words is very frequently determined by context. For example, if I hammer my thumb instead of the intended nail, the words I am likely to utter are probably not meant to be a succinct observation about my disappointingly poor aim. They are rather a signal I hurt myself, that I am in pain, and somewhat unhappy. The actual meanings of the words I cry could hardly matter less. However, that is perhaps part of the problem. The source of discomfort for some people is that my outburst must borrow from the profane in order to express my own emotions at that moment. Yet, at that moment, borrowing from the profane is exactly the right thing to do if my communication is to succeed. The profane allows me to succinctly convey the right level of gravity. At that point, there is no aspiration to intellectual conversation; the very reason for the utterance is primitive.

The funny thing about swearwords is that there will tend to be perfectly acceptable synonyms which we may use in polite society. Masturbation. Faeces. Testicles. Vagina. They are not swear words. They mean the same thing as some very common swearwords. Meaning alone, therefore, is not the reason why swearwords are considered bad or impolite. If you look at the words I have just listed, and consider their profane substitutes, the most obvious difference is that the swearwords at easier to pronounce with gusto and relish. They sound vulgar. Is it my imagination, or do swear words have a tendency to different vowels? They seem to contain a lot more o’s and u’s, instead of a’s and e’s. Is it just that words with deep sounds are considered more coarse than synonyms that have to be pronounced in higher pitch? The phrase “four letter word” also gives us a clue to the nature of swearwords. They tend to be short, and to the point. They often consist of just one syllable, and rarely more than two. They can be said quickly, brusquely. The same meanings, but expressed slowly, are permitted in polite language. Why is that? There is an old joke that goes something like the following:

A farmer’s wife is sat at the kitchen table, sharing a cup of tea with her neighbour, who has come round for a chat. The farmer walks in, smelling awful, and announces he has just finished tilling the fields with manure and wants to go upstairs and have a bath. When he leaves the room, the neighbour says ‘can’t you get him to say fertilizer instead? Manure sounds so coarse’. The farmer’s wife responds: ‘I wish! It took me ten years to get him to use the word manure!

Sounds, divorced of meaning, are perfectly harmless. The sound of a swearword cannot be the cause of pain in some listeners. Even the most sensitive people are going to struggle to object to swearwords if they are said in a language they do not happen to understand. I could ride up and down the Tokyo subway all day long, but I would have no way of ever being offended by the choice of words of my fellow commuters, because I do not understand Japanese. Whatever they may say, I only hear unintelligible sounds. Those sounds have no good or bad meaning without the knowledge of the language. Sounds have something to do with why people dislike swearing, but for people to be offended they must also learn that the words are taboo. For the same reason, I have no right to be offended if foreigners are sometimes unaware of the niceties of the English language. I can remember verbatim the words of the following. Beijing is a city where you usually pay to use the public restrooms. These words were found on a neatly printed sign inside the free public toilet of a Beijing park:

This toilet is free of cleaning,
So please hold off from pissing and shitting.

None of us are born knowing which words are good and which are bad. That is why dramatists can invent new swearwords without anyone complaining. The words they invent sound coarse and may be similar to swear words. We could even work out what the analogous swearwords, and hence meanings, would be in the real world. Dramatists do this out of the necessity to satisfy the censor. It is strange that such obvious workarounds are an acceptable way to depict aspects of behaviour we are meant to recognize from real life. Truly realistic depictions are not considered seemly, but recognizable contrivances are tolerated. They are seemingly tolerated because, despite the clear associations, these invented words fall outside of any currently established prescriptions. To illustrate, here are a few examples drawn from television from around the world:

  • “Scrot” – a derogatory term of reference from the classic British prison comedy Porridge
  • “Rack off” – forceful instruction to leave from Australian soap Neighbours
  • “Frack” and “Frak” – respectively from the original and new versions of the US science fiction show Battlestar Galactica

The funny thing is, these bowdlerized versions of real swearwords work in drama because we already know the meaning. We may not know what a “scrot” is (although the word is highly suggestive) or how to “rack”, but we do not need to know the true ‘meaning’ of these words. The meaning in use is determined by the dramatic context. “Scrot” will refer to some person, and not in a particularly complimentary way, but not in an especially deprecating way either. “Rack off” means “go away” except conveys more emotion. The ability to infer meaning from context makes it all the more peculiar that make-believe swearwords are acceptable to an audience, when actual swearwords would not. However, we cannot follow this rationale too far. The similarity between the make-believe word “frack” in Battlestar Galactica and the real word “fuck” caused the makers to substitute the alternative nonsense word “felgercarb” in episodes shown in earlier timeslots!

The people most likely to be chastised for swearing are the people least likely to understand the true meanings of swearwords: children. Perhaps that is the reason why a rational analysis of the profane is impossible. The essence of swearing is that it is taboo, and hence not allowed to be subjected to rational analysis. Children are trained to believe certain words are prohibited. As adults, they may continue to conform to their training. In time, they will condition their own children’s behaviour. However, the reasons for why a word becomes taboo may be forgotten over time. When communities separate and their language traditions evolve separately, what is considered a swear word for one community may be considered inoffensive or mild in the other. In the US “fanny” is relatively harmless, being synonymous with buttocks, but in the UK it is impolite and means vagina. Similarly, nobody in America would have objected to the movie title “Free Willy” or to Will Smith’s album called “Big Willie Stylee”, though any British schoolchild would have had a naughty chuckle about the inadvertent use of the slang word for penis. The strength of prescription over words depends on the strength of reinforcement in subsequent generations. If those generations take an alternate view, then the rules about what words are forbidden will also change. Take a look at this very readable history of British swearwords and you get the sense of how meanings and attitudes change over time. Also take a look at this sketch from Armstrong and Miller, which highlights in a humorous way just how language, including swearing, must change with the times:

Dictionaries contain words based on how people use them, not on how they should they use them. People often think it is the other way round, but dictionaries ultimately base their definitions on observation of how language is really used. That is why there is a recognized vernacular for textspeak, reflecting how mobile phone use is changing our language. Dictionaries may seek to highlight that a word is rude or vulgar, but that should not deny people a legitimate right to use a word that is rude or vulgar. It is only proper all words be acknowledged as having their respective meanings, even if some would prefer those words were never used. I could keep on writing, but the attitude of society is better expressed by observing how people really behave than by what I or anyone else writes. Take a look at this clip from the television word game Countdown. In the show, it is part of the art of host Richard Whiteley to effortless fill for a few seconds whenever words need to be looked up in the dictionary. Notice how he retains just the right level of gravity to keep the show amiably moving along, without encouraging or discouraging the mirth of the audience. Not bad going for a host who must be very aware the show will be broadcast in the late afternoon, when children have returned home from school.

At present, the current obsession of society is to protect children, a somewhat strange idea given that children will inevitably grow up and have to learn what taboo words mean anyway. Many taboo words represent bodily actions and parts of the anatomy that even children must be familiar with anyhow. The failure to teach a child, at the appropriate juncture in their development, about the underpinnings of taboos may ultimately be a hindrance to their development. As adults they will encounter taboo words, and ignorance may deepen their embarrassment or limit their options for how to respond.

Profanity is a matter of fashion as well as meaning and sounds. Blasphemy used to be considered a very serious sin, and people would invent mixed oaths to avoid taking the Lord’s name in vain. Examples of mixed oaths include golly or dickens or Jiminy Cricket. On the Watergate tapes, the most common phrase to be replaced by the infamous “expletive deleted” was “God damn”. To modern ears that curse sounds pretty tame, but blaspheming would have done nothing to boost Nixon’s popularity with his god-fearing core voters. In general, blasphemy is taken far less seriously today. At the same time, the Bible can be interpreted to have its share of rude words. The King James version has this at Kings 2, Chapter 18:

hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?

In contrast to blasphemy, words that have a strong sexual or especially a racial context seem to have far stronger prohibitions than ever before. This has also resulted in some particularly strange conflicts about how and when it is acceptable and unacceptable to use certain words with connotations of race and sexual orientation. The term “queer”, which at base just means to be different to the norm, became an increasingly derogatory way of referring to homosexuals. It came to be considered a form of abuse that was increasingly frowned upon in polite society. Eventually, though, the word has been taken back and inverted by the gay community. The word “queer” is now used as a signature of gay empowerment. A similar thing has happened to the word “nigger”, derived from the word “negro”. The debate about when this word can be used is particularly thorny, with some inconsistent standards applied in different communities. A good example of the debate was prompted by Spike Lee’s uproar about the use of the word “nigger” by fellow movie director Quentin Tarantino. In turn, black actor Samuel Jackson intervened to defend white director Tarantino’s use of the word and to criticize Lee for trying to reserve it solely for use by black artists. Trying to differentiate usage between the different spellings of “nigger” and “nigga”, or setting different standards for when a black person uses the word as opposed to a white person, has only added to the confusion over what society considers taboo. In the ultimate inversion, the positive use of the word “nigger” by a segment of the black community was turned on its head yet again in a controversial (but very funny) comedy routine by American comedian Chris Rock. Rock, a black comedian, translated the badge of pride associated with the word “nigger” and linked it to stereotypes of behaviour he wanted to disassociate from the wider black community. Take a look:

There is no doubt that some swear to shock and to get attention. This brief history of British public swearing, however, contains equally as many counter-examples as examples of the theory that people do it to draw attention to themselves. Comics like Viz, which has a ‘Profanisaurus’ and television shows like South Park very obviously aim to amuse by flirting with the forbidden, and swearing is a big part of that. However, I have no time for the argument that using swearwords will somehow lead to diminishing powers of expression over time. I am not offended by swearwords and I use them sometimes, but I cannot see how that would prevent me from learning or using other words. Words are words. You learn how to use them by using them. One word cannot sap power from another. If I use the word “rhinoceros” that does not cause me to forget the word “rhubarb”. A fair few people have responded to my requests for tolerance towards bad language with a counter-argument about the loss of expressive ability. Each time I have wondered whether my interlocutor really believes they have a superior vocabulary as a consequence of abstaining from swearing. If so, they certainly failed to demonstrate any superior ability to articulate their argument whilst they were making it. I imagine the belief that profanity leads to diminished linguistic skill is really a closeted way of propounding outmoded snobbish values about class and social rank. I am sure there are some snobs who hate foul language, but there are plenty of very well-educated and cultured people who not only tolerate it but embrace it too.

As intimated, I have lenient attitude to swearing, because I usually struggle to see what harm is really being done. It is not that I am endlessly liberal in my opinions. There is certainly a segment of the entertainment industry that feeds upon the base in an unhealthy way. I worry that movie after movie depicts teenagers being remorselessly hacked to death. I do not worry about hearing an endless stream of cuss words in a movie, not that anyone would dare to make a movie with an endless stream of cuss words, because even teenage slasher films avoid bad language. However, my point of view is not shared by all. In practice, casual profanity tends to attract far more opprobrium than the fictionalized and fantastic cruelty which has entered the mainstream of entertainment. Of greater concern is the tendency for the prohibition of one word to lead to the prohibition of another. Consider the use of the word “fuck” in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The acceptability of its use was keenly debated in the obscenity trail that followed publication. Consider also its use in the poem This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin, which begins:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.

Replacing the word “fuck” with gentle euphemisms simply will not do. These works, and others, would be nothing without the right to use the word “fuck”. The word “fuck” has a meaning and an intensity borne of its actual use by real people; insisting it should never be used is to insist on a fantasy be presented instead of life as we know it to be. The comedian Lenny Bruce summed it up when he said: “Life is a four-letter word.” None of this means that every creative work which uses the word “fuck” will automatically have merit, but nor does it mean they automatically lack merit either. Living in an edited fiction would be the real diminution of our language, as surely as if the words were erased and our language were replaced with some kind of Orwellian Newspeak. Shocking and vulgar things happen in life; it cannot be all high-minded ideals and cool reflection stated in full sentences with words of four syllables or more. Sometimes our modes of expression need to be intense, emotional and immediate, like when I hit my thumb with a hammer, or when somebody suffers from irrational hatred, or somebody else is taken over by sexual desire. Constraining our language will not modify our souls. We need words that reflect those more primitive aspects of our being as well. To tackle the problems of life, we sometimes have to face them head-on, and that includes the problems with the language we use in life. Bruce pointed out the cachet of profanity depends upon prohibition. This is what Bruce, a Jew, had to say about the use of racially offensive words:

Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? “Are there any niggers here tonight?” I know there’s one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let’s see, there’s two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kyke. And there’s another kyke”” that’s two kykes and three niggers. And there’s a spic. R ight? Hmm? There’s another spic. Ooh, there’s a wop; there’s a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there’s three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there’s one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kykes here, do I hear five kykes? I got five kykes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kykes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, “I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet,” and if he’d just say “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” to every nigger he saw, “boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie,” “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” ’til nigger didn’t mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.

If we follow Bruce’s logic to its ultimate conclusion, then prohibition only gives words a power over us. Yes, some people will succumb to prohibition. However, others will profit from breaking the rules, and the stricter the rules, the greater the profit. No matter how well enforced, there will always be reason to break those rules. The enforcement would have to be pretty severe to put people off. In 1965, When critic Kenneth Tynan became the first person to use the word “fuck” on British television, one Member of Parliament called for him to be executed! Now, the worst that can happen is a broadcaster will be censured and made to say sorry. Take the recent example where the BBC broadcast the Live Earth concerts. As the event was billed “Live Earth” the corporation understandably broadcast the event live. Yet British regulator Ofcom took umbrage at the fact this allowed some of the participant’s swearing to also be broadcast live, well before the watershed hours for children. Ofcom made the BBC transmit its findings, and hence its rebuke. How ironic that the broadcaster gets blamed for airing the unedited content of a live show, because the regulator feels the content would have appealed to children. What then of any children in the live audience? Or of the participants responsible for swearing at this charity event? All that censorship serves to do is to keep some people ignorant of what others learn about life, and it is not clear to me that the ignorant are better off.

Mark Twain admired the use of obscene language, a skill which he learned from the steamboatmen of the Mississippi river. In time, he became a proficient expert in the art of cursing. His devotion to the art was so great, he once said:

If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there.

We should not be surprised that intelligent people can take joy from the earthiest forms of self-expression. They are just as valid as any other way to communicate, and may have the virtue of attaining their ends far more directly than the finest-worded plea or most logical of arguments. Twain took great joy from seeing real life at first hand. William Shakespeare also understood the natures, lives and desires of people all around him, and in his audience. He knew very well how to accommodate the baser instincts amidst his iambic pentameter. His artistry is so lost to most modern audiences, that when you see his plays performed today, you will typically see his graphic puns needing to be visually reinforced by the gestures of the actors. I lose track of how many times I have seen the upward pointing of a sword, or the raising of a wine bottle or similar object, in order to highlight a Shakespearean sexual play on words. In Romeo and Juliet, The Bard makes the philosophical observation:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

A word is just a word. Words name the things we find around us. It is a fluke of linguistic evolution that the word “rose” is associated with a certain kind of flower and not with some basic bodily function. Perhaps, over time, its meaning will change and the association will change. Can the word, once good, become bad? I do not see how. Even if we dislike its associations, a word is just a word and we could substitute any other label at any time without having changed anything of substance. Shakespeare’s philosophical depth and artistry with words was matched by his understanding of the darker recesses of the human soul, including the taboo. Note this passage in Hamlet:

Hamlet: Lady shall I lie in your lap? [He lies at Ophelia’s feet]
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?

The same genius that ruminated on the meaning of the word “rose” also gave us a ribald pun on the word “country”. There is truth in humour and wordplay, and I would much rather live in a world where we are all at liberty to use and exchange words as we please, irrespective of taboos. For taboos to have power, we must respect them. For words to have power, we must use them. That is why I will always use any and every word I want, to express my meaning, and leave it somebody else to worry about taboos.

What is Your Status?

Eric Priezkalns
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What is Your Status?

Why did so many people get worked up when there was a mandatory “is” included in Facebook status updates? It is a strange thing to get upset about. One hundred thousand people joined the group to get rid of the “is”. After all, when you read the status of people on Facebook it is usually something like “…is very happy to have cooked a really good spagbol” or “…is inconsolable following the defeat of Arsenal in the Cup” or “…is documenting the minutiae of my life in excruciating detail so data historians in the future can wonder at what an idle feckless spoiled bunch we all are.” Before the internet there was no easy way for people to share such detail on a regular basis, so the burden of complying with the Facebook “is” seems like small beans. It is not as if anyone is sharing any genuine information of value (or are they?) If I know you support Arsenal football club, then chances are I can infer your state of mind about their last performance without needing a reference source to look it up. Similarly, I am very happy for most people to be doing what they are doing, but I do not need to know about it. What possible advantage do they get from running a news ticker-tape of the events in their life? You can imagine the string of status updates from the moment that somebody opens their eyes in the morning:

“… is in bed but awake”
“… is having a scratch and contemplating getting out of bed”
“… is just getting out of bed”
“… is thinking it is cold and time to turn the heating up”
“… is walking to the bathroom”
“… is wondering where the slippers are because the floor is cold”
“… is getting into the shower”
“… is freezing! quick turn the hot water up!”
“… is too hot! turn it down again!”
“… is scrubbing in the shower”
“… is getting shampoo in the eye”
“… is rinsing shampoo out of the eye”

Geez. Enough already. The thing that beguiles is not that people want to share – that is perfectly understandable – but that presumably there is the belief, and maybe even the actual fact, that others want to find out this information. That would imply some people should sometimes write “… is reading other people’s Facebook status updates” as their status update. [Good idea – I think I will do that myself now.] In this context, where people share the utter triviality of everything that they happen to do, or that happens to them, or of how they feel from one day to the next, you would think that the “is” is a benefit. Why so, you ask? Well, the “is” adds creative tension. Like Shakespeare writing in iambic pentameter, or haikus having a specific structure and number of syllables on each line, or Spielberg filming “Schindler’s List” in black and white, or musicians that record straight to tape without subsequent mixing, or artists creating a work for a specific space… you get the idea. Without the “is” then the variety of mind-numbing options for how to describe your status is endless. Imagine that… endless triviality. And people get worked up about their freedom to enjoy it unfettered. I dread the day when everyone knows what pants you put on in the morning thanks to Facebook PantsNotificationTM.

A few months ago some friends of mine announced, via Facebook’s status update, their own engagement. That was a good way to rebuff my theory about the triviality of Facebook status updates. I do not know if it was the intention that this should become the preferred mode of letting people know, but it was the way I found out. Unless you have a considered communications strategy for such things, where the Facebook status update is the very last vehicle you use to share the news, then it is inevitable that some people will read it first on Facebook before you get the chance to write or speak to them. Then again, others will never find out any news through Facebook. They logout of Facebook and go and do something less boring instead. But Facebook status updates for serious things can still beg the question of whether these are the last days of society announcements in the pages of newspapers. There may come a time where all “news” about ourselves is routinely announced via the internet. That has some implications that most Facebook fans have failed to anticipate. Most people who use Facebook are young. The news people have to share may be a little less light and chirpy as they get older. If you announce births and marraiges via Facebook, should you also announce divorces and deaths the same way?

My Member of Parliament, Grant Shapps, the Conversative MP for Welwyn Hatfield, regularly twitters. At first I thought this was the most ridiculous thing ever. Then again, he made his money running an internet marketing business, so it is not that surprising that he levers any and every internet tool to promote himself. I was unsettled by the thought that my MP was using a tool so readily associated with banal updates of people as they walk from the bedroom to the bathroom for their morning shower, wishing they had put their slippers on. A friend put it into context: people might actually want to know what an MP is doing. Making speeches, running campaigns, attending publicity events, meeting constituents… it can make sense for a public person to broadcast what he is up to. At first, I agreed. Twitter makes as much sense for Grant Shapps, shadow minister for housing in the UK, as much as it does for Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama as they fight their duel for the Democratic nomination for the US Presidential Election. But that does not mean it makes sense. Unless you are a journalist, looking for a cheap alternative to doing proper research, Twitter is just so much boring dross. In a way, the content is even worse with high-profile public people, because at least the ordinary folks tell you some of the truth of their lives without too much sophistication in the writing and editing. Sure, we do not find out the completely unedited truth of anyone’s life – when they masturbate, go to the toilet, pick their nose and all the things they are ashamed of – but there is still a kind of honesty in the banal. When an aide of Barack Obama updates twitter, writing in the guise of his boss, what he writes about getting America “back to work”, changing the nation and all that guff, it is just another outlet for propaganda. Twittering politicians is a continuation of the same theme that saw Punch magazine print cartoons mocking Disraeli for naming Victoria “Empress of India” (see this one from the Victorian Web) or Leni Riefenstahl making films that glorified Hitler.

Politicized Twitter shares no spontaneous truth, despite the continuous nature of its updates. Twitter, like use of the internet in general, is just another front in the publicity war cum popularity contest that underpins our modern governments of the people by the people.

The strange thing about the internet is not that it works particularly well for distributing information. There have always been ways to distribute information, and misinformation, from word of mouth, copying books by hand through to the printing press, radio and television. The easier it is to spread information, the easier it is to spread misinformation too. The strange thing is that so many people occupy themselves with forwarding content from one person to another. If your own life is too trivial to say anything about, then just find some fluff that somebody else has created and share that instead. Hoaxers must have laughed themselves silly at the thought that people would waste their time forwarding their dire warnings about make-believe viruses. Yet well-intentioned people would feel obliged to do it. The real bane of Facebook is the “forward to friends” element of every halfwit application. Yet lots of people feel the need to share. Why? There are lots of sites which take all the best of the trivia on the internet and put them in one place. But lots of people want to forward. They push to you, to save you the trouble of finding it for yourself. Forwarding is the ultimate in trivial publishing. Take a humorous picture of an elephant sticking its trunk up its own butt, and send it to everyone you know. They are bound to value the instant improvement to their quality of life…

On the home page of Twitter there is a quote from Wired: “incredibly useful”. Hmm. Not just useful, but incredibly useful. Yeah, right. For who and what for? Useful for people who need a way to fill the hours between the morning shower and going to bed, and find sitting next to a fishing pole a little too racy. Useful for people too lazy to do their own research. And this is the nub. People do not do their own research. If people checked out those hoax virus warnings before they circulated them, they would find out they were nonsense. If journalists checked the facts then the news might be more than just a series of staged announcements from people in power. If people actively looked for pictures of elephants with trunks up their butt then nobody would clog email servers by sending them on to their friends. Even though the internet is an extremely powerful tool for the researcher, most people use it to disseminate rubbish. Much of what is communicated is pointless. Much of the rest relies upon an absolute and uncritical trust that it does not deserve. We need more than status updates for everybody on the internet, we need editors too – people or machines who can pick out the important messages from the rest. The challenge is that the values of these editors must and should mirror the needs as well as the wishes of society as a whole, whilst remaining truthful and avoiding elitism. For the first time, the human race has the potential to publish and distribute more information than it can read and absorb. Like cholesterol in our blood, the trivial and unreliable may clog our systems, making us unhealthy. Update your Facebook status today: logout and go and do something worth telling people about.

Selling Bits of Music

Eric Priezkalns
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Selling Bits of Music

The music industry really is turning completely bonkers. First, Radiohead sell an entire album for whatever people fancy paying, from UK£0.00 to UK£99.99 (US$200). Then it turned out that fifteen people actually paid UK£99.99 to download the aforementioned In Rainbows (though it is safe to assume that a lot more paid zilch). Now Radiohead are separately selling bits of one song, with each bit selling for a decidedly fixed price. And the song, called Nude, is one they already sold on the very same In Rainbows. The proper parlance is “stems” rather than bits, though given you buy them as downloads from iTunes, then maybe bits is right after all. The band even calls them “bits” on the website. There are five bits on sale: bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums. The idea is that fans, or more probably wannabe Mark Ronsons, can remix the track, upload their version to Radiohead’s dedicated site, and people can vote for which they like most. This being internet voting, people can also cut and paste a widget to their own website, Facebook or MySpace page that will let their friends merrily click away and add to their votes.

Writing the first half of this blog was easy enough. The first half is just the facts. Here comes the tricky second half: the commentary. What are we supposed to make of this? Is it the democratization of music, or super-slick commercial exploitation? Radiohead held out for a long time before allowing their music to be sold on Apple’s iTunes, but now they are selling one song for the price of five. Each stem costs the same as a typical single, meaning that Radiohead can expect to make five times what they usually make from selling a single. I say five times, but that could be six times because the individual stems may be bought as a bundle with the integrated song, making six tracks in total. Given the price per track remains the standard US$0.99 (UK£0.49) on one side of the Atlantic, and is UK£0.79 (US$1.60) on the other, it is hardly like they are striking a blow for fair treatment of customers either. The promotion also insists that lots of different software can be used to remix the tracks, but the customer is very deliberately pushed towards using Apple’s GarageBand software. With a deal like that, you could almost imagine that Radiohead have become Apple’s house band. Of course, the widget on people’s webpages, the publicity in the traditional media resulting from the novelty of the offer, and the publicity that stems from friends recommending their own remixes to other friends, will all help to boost sales of the single… But this is still a song that people could have got for free if they downloaded the album and decided to pay nothing. For that reason, maybe it is too harsh to judge this as utterly cynical by Radiohead. However, this is certainly not an act of charity or intended to bring music to the masses. That much is made very clear by this message, which was certainly not in the fine print:

(If you wish to commercially exploit [the stems] you’d need permission from us. You don’t have any legal ownership of this music simply by cutting it up or whatever.)

Hmmm. Radiohead also say they “will listen to the best remixes” which must be an impossible promise to keep unless they intend to listen to all of them or they know which are best before listening to them. Maybe the impossibility of that promise sums up what is going on here. There appears to be some thought processes behind this innovation, but nobody can be sure what they are or if they ever reached a conclusion. If you thought Radiohead had an agenda for the future of music, you may be sorely disappointed. There are some piecemeal ideas, but like the song, they could benefit from being rearranged.

Introducing an Iterative Biography of Thought

Eric Priezkalns
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Introducing an Iterative Biography of Thought

It occurs to me that some of you may not know who I am. Reading what I write is a good a way to find out what is in my mind. However, some may not consider that satisfactory as an introduction. I doubt the Queen is introduced by reference to her musings that day. More probably she is introduced as “Her Majesty The Queen” or something similar, even though that happens to be a very silly label to apply to any person. So please let me introduce myself. My name is Eric Priezkalns and I am dying. People say my name is interesting, or at least different. It prompts a recurring conversation. The abridged version goes:

“My father was Latvian. He came to the UK after fighting Russians in World War II. He died before Latvia regained its independence, so never returned. I went there after he passed away, to trace my roots. Priezkalns means pine hill or mountain. Latvia is a flat country; they think hills and mountains are the same.”

Though repetition has made this introduction dull for me, it is worth repeating here, because it was produced through iteration. That iteration has made it very slick. It conveys pretty much all the information people want to know, including some irrelevant stuff at the end. Of course, the irrelevant stuff is not irrelevant at all, because it ensures the spiel ends up on a lighter note than it would if it ended immediately after the mention of the heaviness of WWII or my father’s death, whilst precluding people jumping to conclusions about me actually being a Latvian, which I am not. People ask about my name out of casual politeness and curiosity. To satisfy their emotional needs they need the content to finish on a light note, so I try to oblige.

For similar reasons, I would not usually mention death when introducing myself. That was added here for shock value, just to get your full attention. It is true, though hardly unusual. We are all dying. If you say you are dying, people assume it will happen soon. Whilst I might die soon, I am not expecting to. It would ruin my plans for the future. People are negative about death. It makes me positive, which is also why I mention it. It gives me a sense of urgency, to achieve things whilst alive.

Is my name, and a fortune cookie attitude to life, adequate introduction? Hardly. But there are too many people in the world to read everyone’s biography. Even in a biography there is some editing of the irrelevant events that happen to people. Biographies give a window into a human psyche, not necessarily a tour around it. The reader wants to glimpse the important parts, which begs the question of what is relevant. This is my best guess of what is important about me, which may sound very pompous. Then again, given what facts made the cut, and those that did not make the cut, then probably not.

The reason why we die is linked to the reason why we live. Our code, found in every cell, degrades over time. It mutates when copied. Without mutation, people might live forever. Mutation, though, is a good thing. Without mutation, people would never have evolved. “Natural selection” is a dreadful misnomer. Nature does not select anything; it has no purpose. Nature just rolls the dice. Sometimes mutation improves the chances of survival. Sometimes it is fatal. Mostly it is irrelevant. Rolling the dice requires iteration, not intelligence. Yet evolution created intelligence. People use their intellect to make decisions, but not always. (Cynics might say people hardly ever use their intellect to make decisions.) If every decision was purely rational, I would always be able to anticipate what information to present or manufacture about myself in order to get the respect, love, admiration or whatever it is I want to get from writing this blog. I certainly would not introduce myself like this. Luckily, as far as this blog post is concerned, all thought processes involve an emotional element too. Which is why this silly introduction will do just fine, and is really very sensible.

For good decisions, or at least rational decisions, goals should be clear. The terrible truth of my life is that it revolves around a failure. I have failed to determine the purpose of my life. That may sound comical, but I am serious. I urgently rush around to make use of my limited time, and yet have no rational basis for deciding what to do with life. This vexes me. If I knew the purpose of life, I might calculate how to fulfill it. Instead, I rely on emotional input to make decisions and treat life like a work in progress, with no clear view of its aim.

I could blame Plato for my predicament. In my mid-teens, my English teacher lent me his dialogues. He broached questions that intrigued me. I thought his approach of rational enquiry and debate might deliver answers. For Plato, “good” was the Form that made other Forms into Forms. That may have satisfied Plato, but is useless as a practical guide. I kept looking for answers. Aristotle’s insistence on the middle ground was little better. Kant’s categorical imperative is a decent rule of thumb, but what makes it imperative? It echoes Jesus, but Nietzsche made strong counter-arguments to Christian morality. Utilitarians cannot foresee the consequences of their actions. Pragmatists act first and think later. Confucius had too many rules, Lao Tzu too few explanations. By the time I graduated I agreed with Wittgenstein that most philosophy is literally nonsense. Asking the purpose of life leads to more questions, not answers. So I behaved like Wittgenstein, and gave up philosophy to do something useful, and trusted my instincts to tell me what that would be. Wittgenstein designed a house and was a schoolteacher. I used computers and became a business consultant. However, the question of purpose keeps nagging at me. The absence of purpose leaves an unbridgeable gap in rational decision-making. I have failed on two scores: I did not find a purpose to life and I cannot ignore the challenge that poses. That double failure defines me. Sometimes philosophy offers solace. Russell said that:

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

My doubts and questions may suggest wisdom, but how can I be sure?

Perhaps the mistake was made at the beginning. Plato was sure the rational mind would find the truth, but he despised the Athenian democracy that killed Socrates, his mentor. Socrates’ love of knowledge made him enemies. Human rationality and emotion are both the product of evolution. Decisions result from their interaction, both within a person, and between people. Those decisions may reprogram the code of our lives: our physical and mental wellbeing, education and opportunities, environment, society, and soon, our genes. Our technological sophistication grows, but our decision-making prowess does not keep pace. The way we make decisions today would be familiar to the ancient Greeks. Meanwhile, our power now extends to the annihilation of the world, or the ending of poverty, depending on the decisions we make. Insisting on rational decisions is no solution, as every logical argument starts with an unproven premise, which is taken on faith. Perhaps we need technology not just to change the world, but to help us understand what we intend to achieve by changing it.

I would like to learn the purpose of existence, though I doubt I ever will. I would not expect you, dear reader, nor anyone else to furnish the answer. Feel free to drop me a line if you think you have the answer (but I reserve the right not to agree with your conclusions). One useful technique might be to learn how to use technology to inform and mediate decision making, and to use that in turn to learn of human goals, reasoning and emotions. Communications is a conduit, and I would like to tap it. Nature gets results because it is very patient. I do not have as long, so instead of performing many iterations of decision-making myself, perhaps I can speed the process by observing the decision-making processes of my fellow man. Unfortunately, blogs are one-way, and reading about other people’s thoughts is slow and sometimes misleading if they do not write honestly about their thoughts.

Economists, philosophers, psychologists and other clever people have plenty to say on how people make decisions. Unfortunately, none of them are entirely right, or they lack the data to make definitive conclusions. Nobody knows who will be the next incumbent of the White House or the last person to leave the Big Brother house. Finding ways to collect data on decisions, both rational and irrational, major and minor, might help. Most data gathering focuses on the decision itself. Knowing a decision is utterly superficial. Knowing the outcome of a vote gives no more insight than knowing somebody’s name. It is the history behind a decision that is interesting. One way to record those histories would be to utilize the ubiquity of modern communications technology, by weaving it into mechanisms for reaching and recording decisions, both by individuals and collective groups. (Do not ask for details on how someone would do this in practice – the blog is called “halfthoughts” for a reason.) That data would provide a window, or more modestly, a peephole into the human psyche. Would that be interesting and different? I think so. One problem is that there may not be a human intelligence great enough to understand the data, even when summarized. But whatever intelligence could understand the data would get one heck of an introduction: a biography of human thought, if you like…]]

The Polish Plumber Exchange Program

Eric Priezkalns
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1
The Polish Plumber Exchange Program

In Britain, last week’s newspapers were full of stories about the number of people on incapacity benefit and other welfare payments. The subtext was that many people on benefits are actually able to do some kind of work, but have joined a welfare culture where it is easier and preferable to rely on state handouts instead of earning a living. At the same time, many people complain about the influx of immigrant workers, and how they put a strain on infrastructure, the availability of housing, hospital waiting lists and the like. In recent years there has been a surge from Eastern European countries thanks to the EU’s approach of enabling mobility of workers. As a result, the UK government is taking action to limit immigration of low-skill workers from outside the EU. However, the reason why the government allows immigration is straightforward and understandable: immigrants do jobs that either British people refuse to do, or do them for a lot less pay. That helps the economy overall, by ensuring there are willing workers and by keeping the tax money rolling into the government’s coffers. In the end, there is no tax to be made from British people who are slow to return to work and only willing to do so for overpaid jobs. More tax is made for the national economy if businesses can get the workers they need when they need them, then utilize their efforts in order to make a profit.

It seems a bit harsh to always blame the newcomer for the burden placed on public services. Okay, schools are under pressure to accommodate children who speak English as a second language, but British benefits claimants probably use as much space on the roads, as much time at the local doctor’s surgery and as much legal aid money at the courts as immigrants do. At least the Polish workers work, which in turn generates tax to help pay for pensions, wars and all the rest of government expenditure. Benefits claimants take, but do not give. They are a net drain on the rest of society. Some claimants are deserving, others are not. Stories about crackdowns on fraudulent claimants may help put some people off, but when I read about marathon runners who claim for years to be unfit for work because they cannot walk, I always conclude that if these are the fraudsters that get discovered, there must be lots of less conspicuous fraudsters who are never found out.

This leaves us in a pickle. We have too many people, wanting too many state services. Some work, others do not. You cannot just cut off benefits payments because some people deserve them, even if you know the undeserving will always find a way to play the system. How can we reduce the burden on the state overall, but still keep everyone happy? First, we should consider some facts, side-by-side, about the UK and Poland (source: the CIA World Factbook)

UK Poland
Population 60,776,238 38,518,241
Land Area 241,590 sq km 304,465 sq km
Population per sq km 252 127
GDP per capita US$35,300 US$16,200

I would have liked to present recent figures on the cost of living in each country, but the best survey, from Mercer, is based on cities rather than countries, and the most recent survey which is fully available dates back to 2006. This gives the index cost of living in Warsaw, Poland’s capital, at 80.4, compared to 110.6 for London. Warsaw is the only city listed in the survey. Interestingly, Glasgow and Birmingham are listed as being slightly cheaper than Warsaw, but I think it is fair to surmise that capital cities are typically more expensive than the other cities, suggesting that the cost of living in Poland is less than 80% of that in the UK.

Is there a solution? Well, we could send our benefits claimants to Poland. Think of it as an exchange program. For every plumber we receive, they have to receive somebody who has been a long-term recipient of benefits. British patients increasingly travel overseas for operations, so this is just an extension of the idea of procuring social and public goods from overseas. Any deal to move benefits claimants to countries like Poland should be a win-win. We take the pressure off our overburdened infrastructure. We might even find that we need fewer immigrant workers in the country to build and repair our houses, roads and the like. In Poland, they get the economic benefit of servicing the needs of our benefits claimants. Their shops, food outlets and the like will make more revenue, and generate tax for the Polish government. Our businesses would lose that income, but taxes could be cut to compensate. Taxes could be cut because benefits could be cut. This is because the cost of living is lower in Poland than the UK, so monetary value of benefits could be reduced without reducing the spending power or the quality of life enjoyed by complainants. According to the relevant treasury statistics the UK spends around UK£4bn on unemployment benefits alone. A 20% reduction in that bill would be worth UK£800m.

Some of you may have noticed an objection to this plan. We are talking about the forced migration of British citizens. These people will be uprooted from the places they know and love and forced to live in a strange foreign country. Hmmm. How much of a hardship is that? I want what is best for my nation, which is not the same as what is best for a minority who make no contribution to the nation. Living in the place you want to live is a privilege, not a right. Polish plumbers do not move to the UK because they love Britain’s culture or way of life. They do so in order to work and generate income. Lots of Britons have also learned in the last few decades that they need to make sacrifices in order to generate an income. One of those sacrifices is being mobile enough to go where the work goes. Why should it be different for benefits claimants? Why should they have superior rights to live where they like, irrespective of the economic realities? We should keep Britain an economic powerhouse by making it a decent home for people who want to work, not a holiday home for people who cannot or will not work. Complaining about foreign beneficiaries of our welfare state is understandable, but why should we be more tolerant of British citizens that take advantage of it? If the best outcome for Britain means turning Polish plumbers into Brits by teaching their children English, and forcing British benefits claimants to take foreign holidays until they are able and willing to join the working world, that seems like a fair exchange to me. And it might just encourage a few more marathon runners to find their route back to work.

One Voter, One Vote… Black or White

Eric Priezkalns
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One Voter, One Vote… Black or White

I have been struggling for a while with collecting all the data necessary for this blog, so this is me giving up and admitting I do not have it all. But what I do have is pretty darn persuasive, so here goes…

Anybody who has been following the primaries in the US must have noticed that Barack Obama has established a lead over Hilary Clinton in the race to be the Democrat Presidential candidate. Seeming concerns about the electability of a black man, or a woman, have been pushed to one side as many polls have concluded that race and gender is not that important to most electors. However, you should always be wary of polls. People have a nasty habit of making pollsters draw the wrong conclusions, especially when they are asked questions where there is an obvious “right” answer. Asking someone if race influences the way they vote is a pretty much asking them if they are a racist. That means that some people know to respond that race does not matter, even if it does to them. Before we go too far, let me state that I have no opinion on whether racism will influence the outcome of the elections in the US. What I am more interested in is that black voters may have obtained a disproportionate influence over the Democrat’s selection process, and that may lead to shockwaves on many fronts – racial, political and cultural – if their preferred choice, Obama, wins the candidacy but turns out to be a lot less popular with the wider electorate than is currently supposed.

After doing lots of research, I eventually stumbled across someone who had preempted my arguments. Earl Ofari Hutchinson nailed the main elements of the argument in this blog for The Huffington Post. In short, black voters have backed the Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of about 9 to 1 in every Presidential election in the last few decades. That level of support may have helped Bill Clinton win his campaigns, but was not enough to elect Al Gore or John Kerry. Black voters are hence not a key swing demographic if the Democrats are going to take back the White House. They cannot swing much more behind the Democrats than they already do. For the Democrats to win, they need more white and Hispanic votes; some estimates suggest George W. Bush carried almost 40% of the Hispanic vote against Kerry, and typically about a third of Hispanics have backed the Republican Presidential candidate. Those are the voters that the Democrats need to aim for.

Whilst the commentators have worked hard to present both Clinton and Obama as having their natural followings, with Clinton doing best with women, Hispanics and the over 60’s, there is no doubt about which subset of the populous is the most unified in support of one candidate. Blacks who have voted in the primaries have cast over 80% of their votes for Obama. If you take black votes out of the equation, Clinton is the clear leader in the contest. The solid and unwavering support for Obama from African-Americans has effectively reversed the position of the two main candidates, turning the underdog into the clear leader. That is interesting, but not the main point I want to make here. The really interesting question is whether the influence of the black vote is higher in the Democrat selection process than it would be in a national election.

Obama recently informed his backers that his goal in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary, set to be won by Clinton, is to keep the losing margin to less than 10%. Some of the polls put Clinton ahead in Pennsylvania by nearly 20%, though others are around the 10% mark. African Americans are forecast to vote for Obama by the same kind of 80 point margin in Pennsylvania as he has enjoyed elsewhere, and they are expected to account for 18% of the likely Democrat voters in that primary. Here comes the key point, though: blacks only account for 11.4% of people in Pennsylvania. Not only are blacks heavily backing Obama, they are also turning out for the Democratic primaries in disproportionate numbers. Compared to a national election, they are heavily overweight in the samples being used to decide the Democrat contender. A little maths should explain the importance this has to the results. If Clinton was to win the Pennsylvania primary on a 55:45 split of the vote, that would she would close the delegate gap by about 18. If the black vote is consistent with the poll projections, Clinton needs to win the non-black vote in the state by a margin of 65 to 35 in order to win by 10 points overall. However, if the black share of the vote was only 11.4%, i.e. in line with the actual racial split in the state overall, then all things being equal, Clinton would do much better. If Clinton won Pennsylvania non-blacks in the ratio of 65:35 and Obama won Pennsylvania blacks in the ratio of 90:10, then the total result would be a win for Clinton with 58.7% instead of just 55%. In other words, the over-representation of blacks in the primary relative to the state’s population would be worth nearly 4% to Obama, which is equivalent to about a 7-delegate swing. If we re-run the equations on the assumption of a 60:40 overall win for Clinton with the state as is, and with the black vote as predicted, then that would require Clinton to win the non-black electorate by 71 to 29, which in turn would make the over-representation of black voters worth over 5% to Obama.

Have black voters been over-represented in other Democratic primaries? That is where I have so far struggled to get comprehensive data. News stories from individual states do suggest that is what has happened. In South Carolina, for example, which was key to generating positive momentum for Obama, a reported 55% of voters were black. Clinton did better with black voters in this state, picking up 19% of black votes compared to Obama’s 78%, and the remaining 2% going to Edwards who was still in the race back then. However, 55% of the primary’s electorate is severely at odds with the actual racial composition of South Carolina. According to the most recent census data, over two-thirds of South Carolina is white. That means in South Carolina there was a similar numeric over-representation of blacks to that which is being predicted will occur in Pennsylvania, with blacks accounting for almost double the share of Democratic primary votes than would be proportionate for their numbers in the state.

I admit I have not done all the numbers for all the states, but I think it is reasonable from what I have seen to assume the skew calculated for Pennsylvania, which was worth 4 points in the context of a 55-45 win for Clinton, is roughly consistent nationwide. At the time of writing, CNN says that Obama has 1411 pledged delegates to Clinton’s 1242. If the results are rebased to eliminate the 4% skew due to black over-representation, as would inevitably be the case in a national election where blacks voters could not be over-represented to anything like the same degree, then we see Clinton gain, and Obama lose, 106 delegates. That would place Clinton as the delegate leader, with a 1348-1305 lead in pledged delegates, and a 1585-1512 lead overall. Rebasing the poll results by this level of skew would also be enough to convert Obama’s impending victory into a clear win for Clinton.

There is nothing to stop any part of the population being over-represented in the primaries. In practice, if Obama gets the delegate numbers he will have won the candidacy fair and square, even if he needed the high turnout of black voters to put himself over the top. However, it is relevant to question whether this process really guarantees selection of the strongest candidate to contest the national election. In the national election, each voter gets one vote, whether black or white. Blacks may feel very strongly about Obama, and hence be more motivated to vote in the primaries, but one strongly felt black vote counts no more highly than the vote of a white person who shows no interest in the Presidential election prior to the big day. The current head-to-head polls suggest both Clinton v. McCain and Obama v. McCain would be incredibly close. Like I said above, treat polls with caution. Democrats do not need to look that far back in history for a valuable lesson about how Americans actually vote. Nixon, a loser against J.F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, identified the “silent majority” of voters as more crucial to determining electoral outcomes than any minority, no matter how active they are. In the face of an ever-present counterculture and enormous resentment over Vietnam, Nixon won by a landslide in 1972. The silent majority Nixon identified was composed of the older generation, blue collar workers and many ordinary white citizens in the Midwest and South. That sounds a lot like the people who have been voting for Clinton, not voting for Obama, and who McCain will target as the constituency he needs to retain from Bush’s 2004 victory in order to secure another Republican win. If the silent majority ultimately decides the 2008 Presidential election with a victory for McCain over Obama, the fallout for race politics in the US could be very severe.

Putting the Error in Terror

Eric Priezkalns
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Putting the Error in Terror

Who you gonna call? Terrorbusters!
Recently I have been accosted by a glut of radio adverts encouraging me to call the “anti-terror hotline” if I see anything suspicious. Anything suspicious? According to the ad, suspicious activity includes people taking photos and loitering in public places. In other words, the kind of thing you see every day. Of course, the point is that I should have the common sense to tell the difference between a probable family photo and possible military reconnaissance, which rather begs the question of how the person down the far end of the line can help me tell them apart. No mention is made of skin colours or any other characteristics of suspicious people. The listener is left to decide for themselves whether an elderly blonde Scandinavian woman should be treated with the same degree of suspicion as a young adult asian.

Now, I do not know about you, but I am pretty sure I have never seen anything suspicious that might fit into the “potential terrorism” category. I am not saying that nobody else has; obviously some people must sometimes see suspicious activity because terrorism does happen. However, I am bamboozled by the idea that setting up a hotline might lead to more useful info on terrorism, as opposed to an awful lot of crank calls. For a start, what did people seeing suspicious activity do before there was a hotline? Did they just shrug shoulders and decide not to report it to anyone? “Ah, darn it, it looks like that guy is building some kind of bomb in his cellar. I just wish there was some specialist phone line so I could tell someone about it and stop him before it is too late.” So who is the hotline aimed at? Presumably it is aimed at people who struggle to distinguish a genuine cause for concern from paranoid fantasy. Which leads to my next point. Who would set up a phone line, available all day and all night, just to have to separate out a few useful leads from a deluge of demented ravings? It turns out it is London’s Metropolitan Police, the same people who shot Jean Charles de Menezes in the head because they could not tell the difference between an unfortunate Brazilian student riding the underground and a terrorist suspect that looked vaguely like him. So vague was the similarity, that even after the Met touched up the picture I still see more in common between James McAvoy and Keira Knightley than between these two men.

Reading the Met Police’s webpage about the hotline, I note that it reinforces the message on the radio ad, by insisting that the hotline is staffed by “specialists”. What kind of specialist sits behind a desk waiting for a phone to ring? Presumably not junior James Bond’s and Jack Bauer’s just straining at the leash to go out and do some real field work. Nope, it must be the kind of specialist you find in every other call centre on the face of the planet. This kind of specialism = 2 weeks on an induction course + the ability to read scripts from a screen. At least I hope so. If the call centre staff are very good at distinguishing real terrorism from a lot of hooey then perhaps they should be the ones running around with the guns instead of the guys that shot de Menezes. Or perhaps it is the other way around. This might be a comfortable “desk job” for everyone who screwed up and contributed to the shooting of an innocent man.

I do hope that the call centre staff have some decent scripts to read from, because some of the signs of suspicious behaviour described by the website are pretty laughable. Here are a few examples:

Credit card – Terrorists need funding. Cheque and credit card fraud are ways terrorists generate cash. Have you seen any suspicious transactions?

Presumably this question is aimed at people who normally have no objection to credit card fraud, but think fraudsters should draw the line at funding terrorism…

Camera – Terrorists need information. Observation and surveillance help terrorists plan attacks. Have you seen anyone taking pictures of security arrangements?

Tourists had better stop taking photos of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Or at any tourist spot that might also serve as terrorist target.

Computer – Terrorists use computers. Do you know someone who visits terrorist-related websites?

Visiting a website is hardly rock-solid evidence that somebody is a terrorist. And does the Met’s anti-terror website count as a terrorist-related site? This encourages people to draw no distinction between someone who sympathizes with terrorism and somebody who actively supports terrorism. We may not like somebody’s sympathies, but that does not make them criminals.

Suitcase – Terrorists need to travel. Meetings training and planning can take place anywhere. Do you know someone who travels but is vague about where they are going?

Imagine Valentine’s Day in future years – any plans to surprise your other half with a romantic break abroad might lead to a conversation with the Met! This suggestion is a mandate to be nosey, and any smart terrorist can easily avoid being “vague” by simply telling bare-faced lies about where they are going!

Police suspect: "The Minder"
Padlock – Terrorists need storage. Lock-ups, garages and sheds can all be used by terrorists to store equipment. Are you suspicious of anyone renting a commercial property?

Police took a gentleman by the name of Arthur Daley into custody yesterday, and are still looking for his accomplice, known only as the “Minder”. They are also keen to locate the whereabouts of a Derek “Del Boy” Trotter, normally resident in Peckham…

If the idea of an anti-terror phoneline had me doing a mental cartwheel, I was launched into full somersaults when I saw that there is an on-line webform to share your terrorist suspicions. Thankfully, the police have thought this one through with the help of their lawyers. In order to send a message, you have to tick the box saying you agree with the following statement:

I confirm that this form is not being used to report something that needs urgent police attention.

Come again? So suppose somebody submits the form anonymously, sends information that is urgent, and ticks the box? Presumably the Met are in the clear because, legally, they are not to blame if the email sits in an inbox for 72 hours before somebody reads it. And exactly what kind of terrorist activity needs to be reported, but does not require urgent attention? The only kind of report of terrorist activity that does not need to be acted on urgently is the report of unsubstantiated gossip, tittle-tattle and scaremongering.

The problem here is that, without any sense of irony, the Met Police would like to rely on everyone to use their common sense, but then assumes nobody has any. Of course, the real common sense would be to deploy all available resources on fighting terrorism, and not to waste them advertising the fact that you are fighting terrorism. But given the Met supremo’s penchant for spin over substance, as revealed by the de Menezes fiasco, it is no surprise there is a preference for gaudy publicity over quiet, but conscientious, policework.

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