Miscellaneous links

1. The magic routine that won the World Championships of Magic is impressive.

2. Bribery to improve democracy? The proposal is more modest than the headline. I still don't like it, but I'm not quite sure why.

3. "Storing it was a problem. I made a bedside table out of it, put it under my desk, in my wardrobe and in the garage. Christmas 2014 was the cheapest ever; everyone got toilet roll. At work, I wrapped up an 18-roll pack for our white-elephant game – a bit like secret Santa – and everyone fought over it. I gave them out for family birthdays because they were coming so thick and fast, but they sent a mix of qualities and I always kept the more expensive mega rolls, which were softer and more luxurious, for myself. When I moved across state, I had to rent a trailer to take the toilet rolls with me." What it's like to win a lifetime's supply of something.

4. Nice article by Alex Massie. What sort of country do we want? (Not about Brexit.)

5. This is well-said about the ridiculously millenarian tone of coverage of Trump. In line with my own thoughts, but with an interesting take on the mis-uses of history. Brexit really is a big deal. Big in the sense that joining the Common Market was a big deal. But Trump is just one guy, and one, moreover, who is not particularly good at anything other than self-promotion.

6. Lovely video of a baby moving around inside the womb. Scientific advances would seem likely to lead to pro-life policies. But then again, ask scientists who work on climate change or on biological sex differences in humans how much impact they are having on policy.

How to measure progress

This is one way to do see how far we have come:

This is the same page from two editions of Ladybird's Peter and Jane Book 1b. (The top one is the original 1964 edition and the bottom one is from an edition that I can't identify but appears to be about 10 years later.) At this crucial juncture in the narrative, Peter and Jane's parents are preparing for Christmas.  

We can look at the pictures for clues as to scientific progress (note that both parents have taken advantage of recent advances in hair dye) but I am sure you are most struck, as I am, by how male emancipation progressed through these years. 

In the decade or so that saw the UK affected by major developments, as The Beatles came and went, Concorde took her first flight and abortion and homosexuality were legalised, Peter and Jane's household has also seen a revolution: the father has been permitted to remove his coat and tie while sitting at home. Small steps, one might say, but the liberation of men from restrictive, oppressive and antiquated clothing has been a a major symbol of progress towards equality. Although we can't see them, it is a fair bet that the stiff black leather shoes worn in the first picture have been replaced by a more comfortable brown pair, perhaps in suede.

You will see that the father in the lower picture has been entrusted, like a small child, with a 'big and important job', namely holding the ribbon. It is apparent that he is delighted to be of service, but equally apparent (not least from his manifest reluctance to hold the ribbon by anything more than the faintest pinch), that he has no idea what he is doing and he is deeply afraid that he will be called upon to do a more tricky job such as cutting something or (horror of horrors) tying a bow. Such was the infantilised plight of men in the bad old days. The widespread adoption of sellotape in the home has subsequently revolutionised men's lives and I suspect that a 1990s reprint would show the father being entrusted with the entire wrapping process while the mother's supervisory skills were employed elsewhere.

The main development affecting women's lives over these years was the invention of the cardigan. 

That Christian who was turned down for asylum

You might have seen the story, reported in various places, about the Iranian Christian convert who said that they had turned from Islam to Christianity because Christianity is a religion of peace, only to be met by a letter from the Home Office quoting violent bits of the Bible (e.g., Jesus saying "I come not bring peace but a sword" and parts of Revelation) and saying that that shows the supposed convert to be insincere.

My sympathies are with the Home Office. Why shouldn't immigration officials take an interest in the content of people's religious beliefs? If someone had said that they became a Christian because they valued the chance to form a closer relationship with their local Druid and that their devotion to the faith could be seen by the fact they never missed the chance to sacrifice a hare to Baal come Equinox-tide then we would hope (wouldn't we?) that the immigration official would see that that person is not a genuine Christian. But making that kind of call entails having some grasp of what Christianity is all about. Christianity is a big topic and over-worked civil servants are going to make mistakes from time to time as they try to grasp its nuances, but I don't see why they shouldn't try.

Nor can I see why any such inquiry is necessarily offensive. No doubt genuine and sincere believers will be aggrieved at having their faith questioned but, equally, genuinely devoted loving spouses will be aggrieved at having their marriages questioned. Checks have to be made. The dark mountain of fraud casts its sad shadow across the valley of the honest.

And was this case a mistake? What we are told is that the applicant converted from Islam to Christianity on discovering that Christianity is peaceful while Islam contains violence. That's not the most convincing story, is it? We're not talking about becoming a Jain. Islam is pretty similar to Christianity and Judaism in many ways, including having been around for a long time (with all the historical baggage that brings), having peaceful adherents and having not so peaceful adherents, having been involved in wars as well as in ending them, using vivid metaphorical violence to describe the struggles of the soul, and by and large not being inherently pacifist in worldly affairs. It makes about as much sense to describe Christianity or Islam as a "religion of peace" as it does to describe the UK or Turkey as a "country of peace": sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. There are much bigger doctrinal differences between Islam and Christianity than on the question of peace.

Christians do Christianity no favours by trying to claim for it a position beyond reproach, or suggesting that it is a private matter that cannot be questioned without causing offence. When Jesus called Pharisees hypocrites, his followers didn't tell him off for causing needless offence to deeply religious men. His followers today should be exposed to the same scrutiny.

Some links you might want to read

1. A great article about De Gaulle .

2. An interesting article about calories - with a nice little note about the author at the end too.

3. Who Wrote It: Beto O’Rourke or Karl Ove Knausgaard? A quiz!

4. The latest in crazy American students: is Chelsea Clinton to blame for the Christchurch atrocity? (Spoiler alert: no.)

"Clinton, who is pregnant with her third child, was attending the vigil at New York University on Friday when senior Leen Dweik began castigating her in an astonishing moment caught on video.

'This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world [...] And I want you to know that and I want you to feel that deeply - 49 people died because of the rhetoric you put out there,' Dweik continues, jabbing her index finger toward Clinton as other students snap their fingers in apparent approval of her words.

'I'm so sorry you feel that way,' Clinton responds, only to provoke more ire from the crowd.

'What does "I'm sorry you feel that way" mean? What does that mean?' an unseen male is heard shouting from the crowd."

I'm going to go out on a limb here: a pregnant woman attending a memorial service for victims of a mass-murder should not expect to be accused of complicity in that murder simply because she recently spoke out against anti-Semitism. Controversial, I know.

(This, by contrast, is an interesting and much better informed angle on the crazy Christchurch guy.)

5. Why the Centrist Party needs Jeremy Clarkson (and other thoughts). "Guess how he voted in the referendum? What he thinks about leaving? He’s a Remainer: a treacherous, bleating, Britain-hating public schoolboy millionaire liberal Remainer, who thinks Brexit is a “clusterfuck”. He’s basically David Cameron, but less fat and with slightly better jeans."

6. Why the Independent Group is doomed and other interesting points, e.g. "This unequal distribution of Remain and Leave voters tells us why the referendum was such an upset and shock to some. It tells us why Remainers were shocked, but Leavers less so. This pattern of asymmetric distribution explains why you get Remain voters who say that they don’t have any Leave friends, but you get far fewer Leave voters who say the same thing of Remainers."

7. An anonymous civil servant writes: "When it was announced [Gina Miller] had won her case, I witnessed large teams within the Foreign Office break out into cheers and applause. Seriously. // A quick scroll though the social media accounts of my colleagues and you will find images of them proudly waving ‘Remain’ placards, campaigning for a ‘People’s Vote’, boasting ‘Jez we can’ and of course the usual apocalyptic messages of doom since the Brexit vote. The double-standards are astonishing. If I so much as followed the activities of Nigel Farage, I have no doubt that I would be called in for questioning. I re-call one conversation with a senior member of staff at the Foreign Office who told me she was ashamed when Boris Johnson was appointed Foreign Secretary as he is so “typically British”. [...] On June 24 2016 the mood within the civil service was like someone had died.[...] I have in fact come across senior staff working on our post-Brexit relationships who openly talk down the prospect of a UK-US FTA and encourage anti-Trump hysteria. Many of them even joined the protests against the President’s visit last year. During his visit it was common to hear jokes about Trump’s assassination from the very people meant to be working with our closest ally. The only thing worse than being pro-Brexit in the Civil Service is being pro-Trump. //  This attitude isn’t confined to their own circles, these views are even being expressed in the presence of foreign ambassadors. In one case during a meeting with a High Commissioner of a close ally, one Civil Servant branded the High Commissioner a “Tory Wanker” in the presence of several foreign diplomats." What are we to think of this (assuming it is broadly true)? Did a British civil servant refer to a foreign diplomat as a "Tory Wanker"? (Is it a High Commissioner "of" or "to" a close ally?) Or do we still employ Tory Wankers as High Commissioners? Whatever the truth, I doubt there's much to surprise George Orwell in all this.

Be proud, not embarrassed

I'm talking about the Brexit debates in Parliament, of course. 

What we are seeing is our elected representatives arguing, debating and voting, largely as their consciences tell them, about difficult questions to do with our country's relationship with its neighbours. We are seeing citizen legislators, concerned with the will of the people and the good of the country, deliberating in public. 

Let's not beat about the bush here. That is what we fought the war for. It is what any number of wars of independence or liberation, any number of civil wars, have been fought for - and rightly fought. Revel in it. Delight in the sweet taste of public discord. Rejoice in the mess. This is democracy.

I'm entirely serious. Sure, everything was a bit more dignified when the well-educated and well-brought up likes of Henry VIII and Kaiser Wilhelm just decided how things were to be. But there's a reason we don't do things that way any more. There's a reason that "at least Mussolini made the trains run on time" is not a good argument. 

Or maybe you just think they're a bunch of pygmies making a mess of something that [insert name of past leader] could have sorted out? Maybe they are. They're just people, like you and me. They make mistakes, like you and me. Just like Barnier and Juncker and everyone else. And they're trying to do something pretty tricky, so you can expect quite a few mistakes to be made. But they are doing it in public and they are answerable to the people for doing it. When the members of the Central Politburo of the Communist Party of China make mistakes (and they do), then what happens?

We have, in reality, what Benjamin Franklin called a Republic, if you can keep it. This is what keeping it looks like.

Don't just take it from me, take it from Simon Schama, Tom Holland ...

... Bruno Maçães ...








































Because what is the alternative?

This is the alternative:

 As the song (nearly)  has it, don't commit a performative contradiction, be happy.

Links you might want to read

1. "WWF has provided paramilitary forces with salaries, training, and supplies — including knives, night vision binoculars, riot gear, and batons — and funded raids on villages. In one African country, it embroiled itself in a botched arms deal to buy assault rifles from a brutal army that has paraded the streets with the severed heads of alleged “criminals.”" Yes, that's WWF the panda charity people. (But it's probably better for them to have the assault rifles than that army. Probably.)

2. Another sad one. "I had a conversation last week with a Jewish woman from a family of Holocaust survivors, and people murdered by the Nazis. She has been a Labour party member for nearly 40 years. “It feels like being in an abusive relationship,” she said. A year ago she made an official complaint to the party about what she has experienced, but aside from an acknowledgment, she has heard nothing. During debates in her constituency general committee about issues of antisemitism, she has been jeered – by as many as 30 people – for trying to point out the gravity of the issue. At one party event about hate speech, she was prevented from speaking. Some of her supposed comrades have said that claims of antisemitism have been invented to undermine Jeremy Corbyn; she knows of at least one suggestion that such accusations are the work of Israel." John Harris in the Guardian.

3. And another sad one. "Brigette’s mother is a sex worker. And Brigette knows that somewhere, far away, in a barely imaginable but often-thought-of place called England, she has a father. She knows only his given name: Matthew." Also from the Guardian, a piece about the children of Filipino sex workers.

4. Although it mentions the Aberfan disaster, this, about a psychiatrist who believed people might be able to tell the future, is much more interesting than sad.

5. Long but interesting piece on what social media is all about, why some platforms succeed and others fail, and that sort of thing.

6. "I observed a young student teacher deliver an RE class to 11-year-olds in a Catholic primary school in an isolated rural area in the west of Ireland. [...] The children stared uncomprehendingly. The Rosary meant little. Mysteries less. The Transfiguration nothing. She showed an image of Jesus dressed in a long white robe radiating light. She slowly pronounced and wrote the word “Transfiguration” on the board. A child raised a hand. “I know what that means. It’s when Jesus was trans and he changed his figure from a man to a woman.”" Actually, that's probably all you need to read of this.

7. Hormone replacement therapy for tech titans.

Citizens of Europe - time is of the essence!

I read this, apparently a direct address by Emmanuel Macron to the Citizens of Europe. Of course, it is a parody. But who really wrote it?

It gets off to a good start: "Never since the second world war has Europe been so essential." I suppose Europe was pretty essential during the Second World War, as otherwise it would have been a much smaller Japanese-American conflict with no Nazis in it, and it would have featured in far fewer subsequent films and internet discussions. However, I feel that that sentence should have started, "With the exception of Euro 96," for full banter-points.

"How would we resist the crises of financial capitalism without the euro, which is a force for the entire EU?", the author asks. Is the author Greek, perhaps? I'm ruling out German.

"Nationalists are misguided when they claim to defend our identity by withdrawing from the EU, because it is European civilisation that unites, frees and protects us." Whoever wrote it certainly knew their Gandhi.

Then we get to this: "I propose the creation of a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies to provide each EU member state with European experts to protect their election process against cyber-attacks and manipulation. ... We should have European rules banishing incitement to hatred and violence from the internet ...". A European Agency for the Protection of Democracies - that's the spirit! This "Macron" character is a less snappy version of Titania McGrath, with nods to Orwell. That suggests a British hand in the writing.

"Europe in its entirety is a vanguard: it has always defined the standards of progress. In this, it needs to drive forward a project of convergence rather than competition: Europe, where social security was created, needs to introduce a social shield for all workers, guaranteeing the same pay for the same work, and an EU minimum wage, appropriate to each country, negotiated collectively every year." That sounds like the sort of laboured (geddit?) joke that might be delivered by someone impersonating a "European" in the lighthearted final presentation of an American economics conference, i.e. not laugh-out-loud funny but it gets some points for trying. The "negotiated collectively", however, is a distinctly European grace note. The bit about Europe defining the standards of progress is hard to place: if I knew what it meant, I'd be better able to guess who wrote it.

"European humanism demands action. ... So by the end of the year, let’s set up, with representatives of the EU institutions and the member states, a Conference for Europe in order to propose all the changes our political project needs, which is open even to amending the EU treaties.  This conference will need to engage with citizens’ panels, and hear from academics, business and worker representatives, as well as religious and spiritual leaders." A conference with trade unions and bishops! That could even propose (drum roll please) ... amending the treaties! This truly will be a conference that goes all the way up to 11! I suspect an American forger would not think of putting academics first in the list of people who will address the Conference for Europe, so I'm tending to think it's a Brit who is behind it.

On balance, my considered conclusion is that it is a forgery written by a British pro-Leave undergraduate (not a professional) who is currently celebrating having hoaxed the Guardian into publishing it.

Bonus questions

Question (1): how many of the following quotations are in the original text by "Macron"?

(A) "The boundary is freedom in security."

(B) "Freedom is security with a fair and just boundary."

(C) "Security is freedom within boundaries."

(D) "Freedom means the eradication of the boundary."

(E) "European civilisation cannot abide delay. I therefore propose that a Commission on European Civilisation be set up immediately."

(F) "Our borders also need to guarantee fair competition."

(G) "It is imperative that the conference hear from citizens of all genders and none."

(H) "A new era demands a new Napoleon. Accordingly, I, Macron, shall gladly ride the Marengo of History to lead our peoples towards an enlightened future immune from any Waterloo!"

Question (2): does "Macron" suggest setting up (a) a European food safety force to improve food controls, (b) a European Climate Bank to finance the ecological transition or (c) a European Innovation Council with a budget on a par with the United States?

What Cummings Knew

Political science will spend the next few years working out what Dominic Cummings already knew in 2016.

Here, for example, is Rob Ford, a pretty good political scientist, talking about immigration since the Brexit vote. In a nutshell, the data show that overall immigration levels have not changed much, although the composition of net immigration has changed (more from outside the EU and less from inside), but nonetheless popular concern about immigration has massively reduced.

How do we account for that combination of facts? Quite obviously by reference to the answer Cummings and Vote Leave gave back in 2016: British people aren't racist and don't necessarily object to immigration or immigrants, but they do want the British government to control it.

Ford himself spots this: "I've long thought the issue with Free Movement is not mainly the numbers who come, but premise of the policy as a very broad right for people to come to Britain. Many people just don't accept the legitimacy of such a right, and I don't think a case was ever made for it." Well, quite. And even if you do accept the legitimacy of such a right, it shouldn't be too hard to see the point of view of someone who doesn't: the reason I would object to the Government having the right to send inspectors to watch me in the shower without my consent is not out of concern for the number of inspectors who would come.

Ford also says this: "some have lately been making the argument that the ethnic mix of migrants matters to voters - that they find migrants who are more different to "us" more problematic/threatening. Yet migration has shifted from EU to non-EU but concern has fallen".

This is presented as a paradox, but it's not. Why would you think that non-EU migrants are more different from "us" than EU ones? Is it, to paraphrase Ali G, because they have different skin colours from EU ones? Why would you think that that is an important consideration? What is going on in your head that makes that pop up as an explanation? (Not Ford's head, I hasten to say: it's not his argument and he's only quoting others.)

In any event, don't British people also have a range of different skin colours? (Perhaps a wider range than that found in the most popular sources of EU migrants.) Aren't the new migrants more like "us" than the EU ones? Again, why do you think they are not?

Here's another angle on this issue. The impact of immigration is often most directly felt by people who were themselves recently immigrants: new immigrants are, by and large, coming to live in the the same places that the earlier ones live and do the same jobs that the earlier ones came to do. That's precisely what is being illustrated by that the famous story of the Huguenot chapel that became a synagogue and is now Brick Lane mosque or stories of New York taxi drivers who don't speak English.

One of the arguments that had some appeal during the referendum campaign was that leaving the EU would allow the UK to end the discrimination against non-EU immigrants. If you are being crude about it, this argument was, in part, an appeal to the recently naturalised to vote Brexit so that future immigration would consist of more people like "us", from the Commonwealth, and fewer Eastern Europeans.

More fundamentally, let's link together a couple of my recent posts, on English language popular culture and on the culture of diversity. For a generation, Britons have been taught that they ought to value people regardless of the colour of their skin or their adherence to a non-Christian religion, and that they can rightly take pride in living in a country in which that is (to the extent it is) the dominant and shared ideology. That is our country, we have been told: it is a tolerant, multi-ethnic community as seen in Harry Potter, James Bond, Bend it Like Beckham, etc. And if that isn't our country then shame on us.

All of this is quite right too, but it has had the consequence that we have been trained to see nothing immediately in common between us and those in other EU states who "share our European heritage" (a phrase which, it strikes me as a write it, sounds like a racist dog-whistle, even though it is, presumably, at the heart of the EU's emotional appeal), and we have also been trained to look beyond any superficial differences there might be between "us" and people from any other part of the world. I repeat: that is as it should be. But it doesn't tend to make us think of EU-immigrants as particularly 'like us'.