Albums of the Year

December 19th, 2011

It’s the time of year where I habitually start making a list of my favourite albums of the year. Closely followed by other random lists, because everything is better when it is in a list.

I started thinking about this list a few months ago and had come to the conclusion that I probably wouldn’t be able to get together a list of 10 albums that I would really recommend to other people. I’m not quite sure why I’d come to that conclusion as looking back this year has been yet another really good one for music.

I think I end up saying this every year but I think we are living through a bit of a golden age for music. Social networks allow us much greater opportunities to have things recommended to us and bands can get much more direct access to an audience. I know this year places like Bandcamp have had a big impact on the way I buy music. Actually this is the year where I reckon about 80% of my music has been purchased electronically so that says something. Mainly that I don’t have to increase shelves at the same rate.

One thing that has popped out at me is that I’ve been listening to much more folk music. This might be an unavoidable consequence of aging or it might be an improvement in folk music. I have a feeling it is likely to the former.

So here we go. My top 10 albums of the year. [edit] I should have mentioned that they are in some sort of order and count down from 10 to 1. I could have just edited this and added numbers but….[/edit]

John Grant – Queen of Denmark
The best way to find out about an album is someone texting you out of the blue and telling you about it. Though this only works if the album is good. If it isn’t we just all agree to not talk about it. This one is very good. The best way to sum it up is it sounds a bit like Midlake. I really like Midlake because they sound a bit like Fleetwood Mac. Weirdly I don’t really like Fleetwood Mac, I have no idea how this works.

Dissolved – Snowy Psychoplasmics
Through a deal I don’t want to talk about I’ve had access to all of the Daddy Tank Records releases over the last year or so. When I was given this I was explicitly told I wouldn’t like it. I haven’t added this to my list just to be awkward though I have a feeling that not many people would be surprised if I did. I’ve added this because I stopped listening to electronic music years ago and this changed my mind.

tUne-yArDs – Who Kills
What I still don’t quite understand how someone could sit down and think that any element of this album would work. In my mind “world music” has a really bad reputation. When people say world music it conjours up images of earnest yet insincere harmonies and irritating drumming. This album has nothing to do with world music but I always have niggling feeling that it could veer in that directions at any moment, it doesn’t. This the most inventive thing I have heard in many many years.

Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
I do make a habit of going through the Pitchfork reviews as more often than not they make me buy something that I’m really grateful for. This is an excellent example. I know nothing about them other than the fact that they’re not scared to throw in a guitar solo every now and then.

The King Blues – Punk & Poetry
Do you remember when the country was on fire and everyone wanted to listen to anarcho punk poetry with a hint of ukulele? Well I do. That sounds like the most atrocious combination of music that has ever been conceived but it isn’t. As far as I’m concerned no other band summed up the sentiment of the summer like The King Blues did. They are also really really angry, this is best demonstrated in their song We Are Fucking Angry.

St Vincent – Strange Mercy
Another Pitchfork recommendation. I initially bought it gave it a listen and thought I wouldn’t bother again. Then on a train journey I noticed it and decided to give it another go. This album is great. This would be what Goldfrapp were like if they were good. I don’t have anything in particular against Goldfrapp but their peculiar brand of bland means nobody has much more than a passing interest in them.

Many of the songs on this album sound very much of the Goldfrapp mould but then go offf in a crazy direction, I love them just for that.

Iron and Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean
I’ve been reliably told that Iron and Wine are proper folk music. They don’t sound like it to me. They sound about as far from folk music as it is safe to be. This is a great album and I have no idea who to compare it to.

Battles – Gloss Drop
I love Battles. I loved Battles before I even knew who they were. They did the music to one of the levels on Little Big Planet and I’d always wondered who they were. It was @shymmetry mentioning them in Twitter that made me speculatively buy their fist album and discover it was a band I had been looking for. This new album isn’t that much of a departure from the first but  is a departure from everything else you’ve ever heard before. Unless you listened to King Crimson in the 80s. They do sound quite a bit like King Crimson but that’s not a bad thing is it?

This is also the band I most regret not getting to see this year.

Eddie Vedder – Ukulele Songs
I’ve been properly playing the ukulele now for nearly two years with Moselele. It’s strange that something that started off as an attempt to do ironic covers on an unusual(ish) instrument has now become and interest. Having said that it is the ukulele that made me aware of this album but it’s the quality of the songs that have made me listen to it as much as I have. I don’t really know Pearl Jam and wouldn’t say I’m great fan of them but this does give some insight into how some of their songs are written. Strangely I’m too lazy to bother to find out whether the songs on here are actual Pearl Jam songs or are just for the this album. At a guess, I reckon it’s a mixture.

This album does sound folky, well it would, it’s a man strumming a long on a tiny guitar.

White Denim – D
White Denim seem to have been round for a while and unusually I bought this based on hearing them on 6 Music. I haven’t really listened to 6 Music a lot recently so tend to get less stuff recommended to me through them. White Denim have definitely got a modern Lynyrd Skynyrd about them, yes I do realise that will put pretty well everyone off listening to them.

They differ from Lynyrd Skynyrd in that:-

1) They’re not dead
2) They are very musically diverse
3) They sound nothing like Lynyrd Skynyrd

So there you go. Not a hell of a lot between any of them.

If you want a taste from most of them then here is YouTube playlist with one song from all except Dissolved.

 

Posted in Music | Comments (2)

Pension Fun

November 28th, 2011

As we move towards industrial action, on the 30th November I have a feeling that there will be a sudden increase in rather distorted media coverage.One of the key things that irritates me is some of the language that is used around the principle reason for the dispute. The dispute is fundamentally about pensions and the desire of the Government to see people in the public sector work longer, pay more and receive less.

Interestingly the reasons cited for this need to change is the fact that changing demographics mean that pensions are/will shortly be unaffordable. This is odd as the received wisdom on pension reform comes from John Hutton’s pension report. His report is fairly clear that the burden of pensions is falling rather than increasing.

There is a certain logic to this. We are at the point where the post war generation are picking up their pensions, this will be followed by generations where birth rates were on the decline. This is coupled with a massive reduction in public sector employment. Taking the NHS as an example there has been a 50,000 reduction in staff over two years meaning nearly 5% of the work force has gone off the books. Add to that local authorities and the police you see a substantial reduction in the burden.

What is hidden in the Government story of pensions is the principle that it is unfair that public sector employees get pension terms that are not comparable with private sector employees. Note that it is apparently fair to change the terms and conditions of a previously agreed contract but not fair to have favourable terms to group of people you have no control over.

This is where the language begins to annoy me. You often hear terms such as “gold plated pension” and “generous pension schemes”. These terms imply that a pension is somehow a gift that is granted through the largess of the state.

This isn’t true. A pension is nothing more than an element of your pay. Some pay you receive up front as taxable income, whilst some pay comes in the form of employers pension contributions that is deferred until retirement.

We need to get away from the thinking that pensions are some sort of magic gift from the tax payer.

The fairness argument is essentially saying that public sector workers need to have their wages reduced. It doesn’t matter if you mean just the taxable element or the pension contribution, both are essentially wages.

The extrapolation of this is that nurses, teachers, social workers and care assistants are paid too much. If you are arguing for public sector contribution to pensions to be reduced this is what you are advocating. That is an entirely reasonable position to take if you believe it, but do not couch it in terms of pension reform.

This is basically the politics of envy.

We should also remember that reducing pensions has a consequence.

Pension funds are a massive source of investment for the private sector. Leaving aside the point that many funds were unduly affected by the lack of banking regulation, we need what they have left to invest in growth. Reducing the capacity for funds to do this seems naive at best.

We also have the issues we are storing up for the future. Giving pensioners enough money to live on reduces the chance that they will become a burden to health and social care in their old age. This is why improving private sector pensions is a much more pressing concern than reducing public sector pensions.

If we support people in the private sector to have investment in their future, then when it comes to means tested social care benefits more people will be supporting themselves. This is basic maths.

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OnLive OnLine

October 8th, 2011

Back in March 2009 I wrote about cloud gaming. Reading it back to myself two things spring out:-

1) I’ve had a blog since 2008, I did not know that.

2) I appear to have written something with seemingly no opinion in it, it’s a loose collection of vague facts.

Anyway, OnLive launched in the UK a few weeks ago. I felt obliged to sign up and buy one of the micro consoles that connect it to the TV (£69). I felt obliged because I’d written the previous thing a few years ago, or at least that was the tenuous explanation I gave myself for buying another much needed gadget.

You don’t need to buy the console to sign up. You can get OnLive to run on any PC and Mac as long as you have a sufficiently fast internet connection. I think this is a crucial point. If you sign up for free you can play demos of any game they have on OnLive, also for free. Also if you sign up before the 9th October (in the UK) you can get one game for £1. This includes any of the big releases they currently have. I got Dirt 3 for £1 which is a bargain.

Overall I’d say my experience of using OnLive has been very very positive. Much better than I thought it was going to be. It is important to say that all of the games I’ve played, at least graphically, have not been as good as the console/PC equivalent. The quality of the graphics is determined by connection speed and with 20mbps (I never get that speed) all of the graphics have a slightly washed out feel. Overall I reckon they’re about 95% of the way there.

Other than that gameplay has been flawless. After a couple of hours playing Space Marine I had forgotten that  the game was being generated remotely.

Mentioning Space Marine reminds me of another nice touch, after ordering the micro console it did take some time to turn up, this didn’t surprise me, after all I’d ordered it on the launch day and sometimes  things are delayed. Never the less  I had an email from OnLive saying I could have any game for free, a great bit of customer service.

Though this did highlight one of the biggest problems with OnLive, the choice of games isn’t great. There are some great games from the last  year or so, but mainly ones I’ve played on the PS3, when it came to choosing an extra game I found it hard, so went for Space Marine which isn’t something I ever intended to play. As it goes it isn’t a bad game.

Although the range of games isn’t great they do offer a monthly subscription of £6.99  a month which gives you access to package of over 100 games. Mainly old ones, but quite a few I had intended to play years ago and never got round to buying, it seems a good deal.

Other nice touches are, whilst playing anyone logged into OnLive can sit and watch you play, any interesting thing that happens in game can be instantly loaded as a video on to your profile and the controller. The controller that comes with the micro console is fantastic, by far the  most comfortable controller I’ve ever come across.

The thing with OnLive is that I’m still not sure what it’s market  is. For people with a Mac or older PC it is a great way to play more recent games but, at present, the quality does not compete with a high end PC or console.  Having said that the micro console only costs £69 and theoretically will never need to be upgraded.

I can’t see it replacing my PS3 soon but I will use it to play games, especially demos.

The technology is very impressive and with a greater prevalence of proper broadband I can see this as being the way we will see games in ten or twenty years  time. I see that there are plans to integrate the console into TVs and provide an app to play games on tablets and phones, this is the surely the future, but not quite yet.

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Home of Metal

September 12th, 2011

I thought it might be an idea to write something on here that wasn’t based on my simplistic 6th Form analysis of recent political events.So instead I’m going to write about Heavy Metal, which is much more sensible.

Yesterday I went to visit the Home of Metal exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I’m not a great museum visitor, they tend to bore me, but an exhibition devoted to Heavy Metal seemed like something I should do. Though it has been on since July and I only got round to it a week before it finished.

I think I should start this with stating that it is a great exhibition, it’s well made and does a good job of holding your hand through a very different bit of Birmingham’s history. I also recognise that Capsule, who put it together, have done a vast amount for music in Birmingham over the last decade, they’ve let me see Lightning Bolt and Shellac for a start.

With that caveat I have to say I left the Home of Metal feeling at a bit of a loss.

One thing I’ve learnt in the 20 years I’ve been living in Birmingham is that it has always been seeking an identity to distinguish itself from other cities. It’s constantly fighting to define itself as the second city of the UK, when I say fighting I’m not really sure that Manchester is aware that there is a fight going on nor is actually that bothered about how UK cities are prioritised.

Birmingham is jealous that other UK cities appear to have a more defined musical heritage. I don’t think other cities have a greater heritage of music but they do seem to be able to bundle things together. Liverpool had Mersey Beat and Manchester had the MADchester thing of the early 90s. Birmingham hasn’t had anything equivalent. Birmingham has had international fame with ELO, Duran Duran and of course Black Sabbath but there hasn’t been a unifying marketing ploy behind them.

These themes, or close groups of bands, are nothing more than a device by record companies to promote bands that otherwise wouldn’t get anywhere. As such I don’t think Birmingham has really missed out.

This lack of a Birmingham “sound” now seems to have been addressed by the attempt to claim the genre of Heavy Metal as being a product of Birmingham (and the Black Country to an extent).

Heavy Metal is a really difficult type of music to define. It is incredibly subjective to distinguish where hard rock stops and heavy metal begins. Essentially it is a semantic difference but one that still seems to be a pre-occupation for some people. It is also a semantic difference that seems to be at the heart of Birmingham’s claim on musical history.

Whilst growing up in Eastbourne (the home of The Mobiles and Top Loader) I listened to a lot of Heavy Metal, I’m not proud of it but it is a fact. In the 80s we were probably past the first blossom of Metal as a genre and just at the beginning of what I’ve been repeatedly been told was a new wave of British Metal (the NWOBHM).

I missed the early 70s on account of not being born so am on delicate grounds to refute Birmingham’s claims to have invented a musical genre. Whilst I was aware that Black Sabbath existed I couldn’t have told you they came from Birmingham and I would have struggled to explain to you why they were more important historically than Thin Lizzy, Rainbow or any number of other bands.

Before I started writing this I did spend a bit of time looking at Wikipedia, it was useful to try and get a sense of what happened before I was born. I have many albums from before I was born but little knowledge of when they came out and no real understanding of their impact or relative sales. I was struck that Black Sabbath do indeed seem to be considered as some sort of originator of this type of music.

This confuses me quite a lot. I am at a complete loss to figure out what is that different about Black Sabbath (the album) and Deep Purple’s In Rock, or King Crimson’s In The Court of the Crimson King? All dabbled with occult(ish) references, all relied on riff based songs and all came out at roughly the same time (King Crimson the year before and Deep Purple a few months later). Certainly sales don’t seem to distinguish Black Sabbath from the others. This is before you consider Born to be Wild which came out two years before Black Sabbath and mentions Heavy Metal in the lyrics of the title song.

Obviously one band doesn’t mean the birth of a movement (I know Heavy Metal cannot be defined as a movement). The Home of Metal appear to emphasise this by devoting a fair amount of space to Judas Priest who are from Walsall (a bit). I don’t know what to make of Judas Priest. As I grew up I had always assumed they were a joke band, apparently they’re not a joke band. They didn’t seem to innovate anymore than any other band around and when their first album came out in 1974 they were considerably behind bands such as Kiss and Aerosmith in terms of world wide profile.

Which leads on to the main point that is only hinted at in the Home of Metal. Of the time when Black Sabbath came to prominence the biggest band in the world, after The Beatles, were Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin II predated Black Sabbath and much of it seems to be a template for Metal/Hard Rock through the last four decades. The problem with Led Zeppelin is that their Birmingham/Black Country roots are shakey. Yes Robert Plant grew up in West Bromwich and John Bonham was born in Redditch but the other two were born and bred southerners. Can Sidcup claim to be the home of rock because John Paul Jones was born there and Keith Richards went to college there? No, that would be tenuous.

The second part of Home of Metal relates to Birmingham’s role in the 90s with Napalm Death. I’ve always had a soft spot for Napalm Death but it is really hard to say they set the world on fire. They defined a new type of metal (Grindcore) but were relatively unknown outside of Birmingham, except to a core group of fans (and are massive in Mexico). Were they more influential than Anthrax, Metallica or Slayer? It would be difficult to claim they were.

The reality of the early 90s was that Heavy Metal was largely defined in LA through cocaine fuelled hair bands like Guns N’ Roses and Motely Crue. It wasn’t pretty but was strangely popular. It also, almost managed to kill the concept of Metal for a generation.

My point, and it has taken me a while to get to it, is that Birmingham did play an important role in the creation of Heavy Metal, but so did Hertford (Deep Purple), Sheffield (Def Leppard), London (UFO, Iron Maiden, Uriah Heep, Motorhead, and even Barnsley (Saxon).

It is no more the Home of Metal than any of these cities.

Birmingham does have a really disparate history of bands and it would be better off celebrating the difference in these rather than attempting to a create an artificial construct after the fact.

I know this comes across as quite sniffy about something that was created through a lot of hard work and with only the best of intentions. On the plus side it did provoke me to think about this in considerably more depth than is probably sensible, so on that level it worked very well.

Posted in Birmingham, Music | Comments (3)

Pick Up The Pieces

August 12th, 2011

I decided to write about rioting.

This has been an odd thing to get round to writing. I’ve been thinking about it for days but everytime I’ve gone to start typing I’ve read something that eloquently sums up my views far better than I can myself.

A case in point being Russell Brand’s excellent thing in the Guardian.

First off I don’t think I have any particular insight into why our society apparently began to unravel this week. I don’t have any solutions and can’t pretend to really have any understanding of the people involved. My life is fairly comfortable and is as removed in social terms, if not geography, as it is possible to be.

I think the thing that really prompted me to and get my thoughts together on this was the reaction of Michael Gove on the radio, on Wednesday morning. I can’t remember the exact words as I was having a shower at the time but in short he said we shouldn’t seek to understand recent events as they were purely a manifestation of good vs evil. I added the word manifestation as this is what he really meant, he said something else that didn’t work as well.

I thought about that for quite a while.

It’s obviously idiocy of the highest order but there was something that resonated with me. As with much of the coalition Government narrative, it is a complex event boiled down to a simple explanation. The reductionism of this is so effective that the words essentially have no meaning. This is dismissing events as though it was little more than a Batman comic.

It operates on the same simplistic level that appears to have convinced the mainstream media that macro economic policy works in the same way as a credit card.

This has been coupled with the constant refrain from the Government, that to seek answers is to justify criminality. This is the attitude of someone trying to hide something. The rules of cause and effect don’t have a moral component. I believe that boiling water turns it into steam, this doesn’t mean I’m justifying it .

What I think I can safely say is that many thousands of people did not spontaneously, and suddenly, all reach the same conclusion, that wanton criminality was the way forward. This inclination had to be latent and needed to be triggered.

The causes of all of this are likely to be complex, though not ignoring that personal choice is probably the overarching factor. I don’t think we can ignore the role of politics within this, and I don’t mean this is something caused by the Conservatives alone. All parties have a similar responsibility for the change in moral norms that has clearly happened over generations.

We are living in an age where it is most likely that young people will not achieve levels of prosperity that their parents have. This isn’t an issue of poverty be it absolute or relative, it is an issue of hope and aspiration. I don’t mean that civil disturbance is influenced by settling for a smaller telly than your Mum and Dad. I mean that we are living through a time where the entire tempo of our lives is a regression on what has gone before. It is only moral boundaries that stop us seizing at quick and easy routes to comfortable living. Be that a moral objection to auditioning for X Factor or an implicit understanding that we shouldn’t rob banks.

This makes it all the more important that we ensure that everyone has got something invested in our society, something that they don’t want to lose. Without that we have no real form of censure.

The world wide recession has clearly impacted every strata of our society but this has been coupled with an ideological experiment to remove the state from our lives. This isn’t as simplistic as the reduction of budgets, it is also the message that is given to us by the Government that we must take responsibility for our lives back from the state.

This message is couched in the economically bankrupt imperative of deficit reduction but the reality is an ideological reduction of the state.

I imagine that this message was intended to develop the flawed concept of the Big Society as we all embraced our personal responsibility. The reality is that we see that many young people have recognised that it is their responsibility to generate their own wealth and simply decided to take it.

If you consider this article in the Telegraph you can see why such a reaction has come about. Any young person shaping their values in our society can see from the example of our political, media and financial classes that illegality is a technical barrier. If this notion isn’t redressed through family then I’m not exactly sure where people get their lead from.

Of course that doesn’t justify the decisions that young people have taken.

It does leave us with a problem, how do we stop this happening again? We can maintain a massive police presence for a few more days but then we run out of money. At some point we will need to reduce this and I’m not convinced that we have managed to change the minds of many of the people that decided that Sunday was a good time to set everything on fire.

Yeah, I don’t have an answer to that.

We need long term solutions and a fair bit of that will only come through setting examples. That will mean getting rid of politicians that we know are corrupt. Regulating the media and regulating the financial sector. Anything less will only fuel an erroneous perception of injustice.

It is fine for the Government to experiment with removing the state from our lives, in the hope that the private sector will fill the void. As with any experiment we need to be prepared for what happens if we get results we don’t expect. In this case criminality has filled the gap left by a shrinking state and lethargic private sector.

We have seen some efforts to fill this gap by society itself. We’ve seen vigilante mobs on the streets and we’ve seen spontaneous civic cleaning. Whilst I understand that, in some forms both of these are needed to make us feel good about ourselves they divert attention away from what really helps us out in the short term. The last few days have seen Council workers out first thing in the morning doing the real cleaning before any fo us get up. Throughout the night we have seen the Justice Service, that has been decimated by the Government trying to send an immediate message out to communities.

We need to recognise that we can experiment all we like but when it goes wrong we need at least a semblance of a safety net, in the form of the state, to pick up the pieces.

Posted in Media, Politics | Comments (4)

Serviced Birmingham

June 4th, 2011

Birmingham has  many things to be proud of but its ability to manage the most basic publicity is not one of them. It absolutely confounds me that when creating the plan to outsource IT jobs to India, someone didn’t think about the publicity implications. From a PR point of view it ticks just about every hysterical box that you can imagine.

Since this managed to get itself  plastered all over the papers, I’ve been trying to figure out how a  Council could be so publicly inept. Birmingham’s problems with managing the current financial climate are well documented  but is the publicity garnered from the savings on 100 jobs really worth it? I do believe that savings should be made if we guarantee that money gets redirected towards the most vulnerable people. If sending some services off to India means we can spend more on people with disabilities then I think I’d grudgingly say, that’s something we should consider.

Unfortunately the economic reality in Birmingham is not that simplistic.

In 2006 Birmingham decided to take all of the IT infrastructure out of Council control and create a new organisation called Service Birmingham in partnership with Capita. The theory being that partnership with the  private sector would bring “efficiency” to the public sector. A contract was created and Service Birmingham is paid annually to provide IT services. The profits that are generated from the operation of this contract are split between Capita and Birmingham City Council (I don’t know what the split is).

As with any private sector company the principle driver is to generate profits for shareholders. The only way to generate profits is to drive down costs whilst maintaining the same income; outsourcing drives down costs.

So this raises an interesting question, if Service Birmingham are lowering their costs by outsourcing jobs to India then are they equally reducing their claim on the contract with Birmingham City Council? I have no idea what the answer to that question is  but I’d be very surprised that if, as a result of this process, there is any change in the terms and conditions of the contract we have with Service Birmingham.

This also raises the issue of the relationship of this quasi private entity and their political masters. The majority of the press coverage of this has labelled it as a Tory Council sending jobs to India. It would be quite a naive political organisation that wouldn’t consider the minuscule benefits of outsourcing 100 jobs to India against the nationwide bad publicity. If  you consider that the budget of Birmingham City Council is around £1 billion is it worth it? No, especially if you consider the paper thin majority the ruling coalition is sitting on.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it was a decision taken completely out of the political process and with little consideration of the people apparently in charge of the City. The only people likely to benefit from this are Capita shareholders and, apart  from the people who have lost their jobs, the people most  likely to suffer are Tory Councillors.

This really is a cautionary tale, beware the beast you create.

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The Hemming-Way

May 26th, 2011

The Right Honorable John Hemming is nothing if not selfless. The less charitable might have seen his decision to expose Ryan Giggs to the harsh glare of publicity as a desperate attempt at self promotion. The story in the Birmingham Post indicates that  his motives were entirely altruistic.  His actions might have prevented more than 75,000 people being sent to prison. I do wonder what would happen to our prison system if it were entirely made up of people that had outed Ryan Giggs on Twitter. I don’t think overall prison literacy levels would go up, but there would be many more pictures of cats.

John is no stranger to publicity, the story about the kitten goes without saying, his disastrous interventions in the family court are well documented and his partial success in visiting space might make you think of him as a comedy politician. Now we can see that his jokey persona actually hides  a deep concern for the welfare of Giles Coren.

I’m a bit agnostic about the recent media feeding frenzy around injunctions. Obviously not so agnostic that I just ignored it all, no, I’ve made it all the way upstairs to write this. I think that if Ryan Giggs asked for an injunction and a court decided that, according to the law, he is entitled to one then fair enough. If we have a legal function, that is sanctioned by Parliament, then we shouldn’t just ignore it. The issue around the Trafigura case seemed a little different as a company dumping toxic waste is of a whole different scale to Giggs playing away from home (I do mean having an affair there rather than the conventional application). I realise that the principle is pretty well exactly the same but there is an underlying level of hypocrisy in most things I write.

I am puzzled by one contradiction in the Post story; John Hemming told the Post that he made his Parliamentary revelation in order to protect the innocent. He added that he doesn’t think other people should make such public pronouncements but should leave it to MPs. This either implies that he can do this due to Parliamentary privilege or that he has another more secret MP power. The rush of mainstream news sources to report Giggs’ name, after Hemming said it in Parliament, indicates that most people  seem to believe that it was still subject to an injunction.

John goes on to say that he wasn’t actually covered by Parliamentary privilege as the terms of the injunction had been so damaged by widespread usage that he couldn’t have been prosecuted. I’m not sure you can have it both ways, you’ve either made a constitutionally shakey swipe at the establishment or a very successful bit of grandstanding.

As said before, John’s grasp of legal matters isn’t great, if I can quote  Mr Justice Wall :-

‘My judgment is that his self-imposed role as a critic of the family justice system is gravely damaged…. Speaking for myself I will not be persuaded to take seriously any criticism made by him in the future unless it is corroborated by reliable, independent evidence.’

The important thing about this is that the courts are performing the will of Parliament through the law that has been handed down to them. If people are concerned about injunctions being used unfairly, or even to repress free speech, then we need MPs to pass laws to stop this happening. An MP simply flouting the law is basically a waste of time that could be used more productively to change the law.

There have been deep constitutional implications of John’s actions. You can still get an injunction to protect your privacy, if you can persuade a court it meets the basic legal rules as exist in our constitution. The difference now is that it is only enforceable if John Hemming MP agrees with it. Charitably John has reduced the economic burden of this change in the law as he doesn’t need to know any detail of the case, no,  he will base his decision to expose you in public based on………  nobody knows what the criteria are.

Exciting isn’t it?

 

 

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Let’s see who salutes

May 15th, 2011

I, like most people, gave a little patriotic cheer when Eric Pickles announced that the pointlessly bureaucratic rules on flag flying are going to be relaxed. Pickles has always been a man that is willing to confront the issues  that others shy away from.

I think the benefits of doing this are manifestly obvious. We all accept that flying flags is a fantastic catalyst for community cohesion; there’s something about flags flapping away that brings a community together. As he rightly points out “misplaced political correctness” can prevent the unification that comes from flying national and local flags.

Though we all know this is true I’m pleased that Pickles  must have at last found an objective evidence base to prove this is true. After all, it is unlikely that a Government that has  put such store in the lack public funds would waste valuable time and effort  on something like this without clear  evidence.

I think I’d always known that there must be some Kafkaesque bureaucracy surrounding the flying of flags, though as I don’t have  a flag  pole it isn’t something that I’ve ever been confronted with. Fortunately the press release from Communities and Local Government highlight the ridiculous hoops these jobsworths make us jump through.

Apparently you do not need permission to fly the flag of:-

There are a number of flags that can be flown with deemed consent, these are:-

When you look at both the lists above  you do begin to wonder which  community it is that is being disadvantaged by the current rules. Clearly communities can quite happily already fly national and local flags without seeking permission so what is this all about?

The only people I can think of that currently need to ask permission to fly flags are pirates. Pirates are frequently maligned in the press and it is good to see Pickles doing his best  to redress this. Worth every penny.

Posted in Politics | Comments (5)

Love it or Hate it

February 11th, 2011
Do you know what Health Inequalities are? Do you care?

If you’ve answered no to both of those questions then I think I can safely say that you don’t work in a health related sector and you don’t have a long term health condition. Ok, that’s a generalisation but it’s probably a reasonable one.

The problem with health, and health related matters, is that, generally, people don’t give a toss unless they’re paid to, or they have no choice. People care about the NHS but they care about it is a structure rather than the concepts that underlie it. Most of the activism around health, by the healthy population, purely relates to the opening and closure of hospitals. That’s fair enough, the visible structures are by their very nature visible.

Of the two categories I am firmly in the former. My knee has started hurting a bit recently but overall I care about conceptual health because I’m paid to.

The lack of a wider understanding of the impact of health is a shame. The health of a nation is relatively easy to measure and is a very good proxy for the wider conditions people live in. We can understand a lot about a population from how long they live.

Unfortunately it isn’t a subject that instantly grabs people. There aren’t many laughs in health inequalities. A constant diet of dead babies, fags and chips has a habit of putting people off.

Earlier this week the NHS in Birmingham (and Solihull) organised a  consultation event relating to the recent Government White Paper on Public Health, I gave my somewhat flippant views on that a few weeks ago. I won’t bother again.

Part of this event involved a talk by Sir Michael Marmot. Yes, I know, Sir Michael Marmot.

I know who he is because I’m paid to know. All you need to know is that within the context of Public Health he is somewhat like 50 Cent. Never has a worse analogy been committed.

My problem with Michael Marmot is his name. I seem to fluctuate between thinking his surname is either marmoset or Marmite. It’s neither.

A few years ago he produced a report on Health Inequalities called the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post 2010. Also known as the Marmot Review.

I instinctively think this should be a systematic test of whether marmosets like Marmite or not. I reckon they probably don’t.

There is a rich heritage of writing reports on social inequity, health inequalities and the determinants of health. Sir Douglas Black did it in 1980 with the ominously titled Black Report. The Government didn’t like it and it got swept away.

Our current Government seem to be going with the Marmot Review, which is no bad thing.

Through the wonders of the Internet Sir Michael Marmot’s talk got captured for the world to see. This is where I finally get round to the point.

You should watch this video. I know I’m asking you to watch a half hour video of a man in a suit talking about death. The difference is that this is fairly entertaining, it will certainly give you an insight into how health impacts on the wider population. There is at least one laugh in there and he does get very angry (though only for a second).

Putting Local Communities at the Heart of Public Health – Professor Sir Michael Marmot from Solihull NHS Care Trust on Vimeo.

It’s also handy to see the slides from the presentation as they, well they tell you what he was talking about.

One of the things I can’t quite work out is why I instinctively fixate on marmosets. After all, the marmot is an animal in its own right. I think they also wouldn’t like Marmite.

Posted in Misc, Politics | Comments (1)

To Clap or not to Clap

February 6th, 2011
I started writing this for Eye on Moseley but after planning it in my mind (yes, there is some planning, it isn’t just a stream of consciousness) I realised it isn’t really relevant to Moseley as such.

Mostly this week I’ve been surprised by the indignation directed towards Cllr Salma Yaqoob after the most recent meeting of the City Council. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of point going into the detail of what happened as it’s quite clear in the press but a quick summary is that a winner of the George Cross attended the meeting and Cllr Yaqoob and Cllr Ishtiaq decided not to give the man a standing ovation.

This decision has resulted in Cllr Yaqoob being branded a supporter of terrorism and, according to press reports Cllr Ishtiaq being cuffed round the head by another Councillor.

Both Councillors represent the Respect party which was born from the Stop the War Coalition. As such you might not be surprised to hear that they didn’t burst into spontaneous applause.  Since this happened I’ve been trying to figure out what I would have done in the same situation. I’m deeply sceptical of the colonialist military adventures that Tony Blair sent us on but I like to think I can separate the individual from the policy.

I’m also quite aware, from the War Logs made available through Wikileaks, that heinous acts have been perpetrated in our names in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Though it would appear that the George Cross is only given for more altruistic bravery. I only found that out when I just looked it up.

In the case of Birmingham it was a man called Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher who carried out an act of supreme bravery in throwing himself onto a hand grenade and consequently saving the lives of those round him. Based on what I’ve read it sounds like he is a man that deserves both a standing ovation and a medal. The thing with this is that I can say this because I’ve got the benefit of hindsight and Google. I’ve had the time to put this into context and make my decision.

Both Councillors involved were given no prior notification of his arrival and, I assume, no in depth outline of either his career or the specifics that lead to his act of outstanding bravery.

It is reasonable that both Councillors would be extremely circumspect in what they publically support. The reality of life in Birmingham is that we have communities in Birmingham that are absolutely entwined in the war in Pakistan/Afghanistan. People who live here have relatives that have been victims of both sides of the conflict. As such, their elected representatives need to be excessively cautious in what they say and do, however well intentioned it might be.

The wider issue in this is how we have come to the point where a mob can dictate our reaction in any given situation. A persons decision to not clap is surely one of the freedoms that we purport to be protecting in our attempt to impose a model of western democracy on Afghanistan.

To add a little more context to this story we should realise that the chief cheerleader in this debacle is Cllr Martin Mullaney.  As Cabinet Member for Leisure and Culture you might expect a degree of responsibility in comments launched into the public arena. The following quote dispels that myth.

“I can only assume that if one of the failed 21/7 London suicide bombers had been in the council chamber, Cllr Yaqoob would have been demanding the council applaud the failed suicide bomber for their past heroic actions.”

Yes, that’s the level of debate we are dealing with.

Mullaney has a long history of sniping at Cllr Yaqoob. One of the most notable incidents being when he accused her of negligently endangering life by organising a public march in protest at the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Ironically some months later he organised a public event to switch on our Christmas lights and due to negligence in planning people did end up in hospital.

There is a history there.

Whilst you might laugh at his infantile logic please give some consideration to those of us represented by him. Whilst he can find the time to go on the radio flirting with libel and outlandish accusations he doesn’t seem to be able to find the time to reply to my concern about the  imminent closure of the Citizens Advice Bureaux in Birmingham.

The crux of this issue seems to be that we have a reached a point where reasoned dissent from a set point of view is not tolerated. Not clapping an individual is seen as a snub to him and consequently a lack of support to all that we have put in harms way.

The reality is that if Birmingham City Council really wants to dabble in national policy around the safety of serving personnel they could start with the travesty of how cuts will result in many lives being lost. In this week the coalition announced it could be cutting its order for Chinook helicopters. You remember the exact same helicopters that Gordon Brown forgot to buy us and as a result was pilloried by the Conservatives? A decision has been taken to cancel an order for helicopters in order to maintain our fleet of Tornado jets. Tornado jets that have had no practical military value since their vulnerability was exposed in the first Gulf War twenty years ago.

These helicopters keep people alive through keeping troops off roads and getting medical support to where it is needed. Unfortunately they’ve now been sacrificed, like the troops they would carry, to Dave’s great economic experiment. Though it does add credence to the claim we’re all in it together. We are all quite literally not in helicopters even though some of us need to be.

Closer to home the Council could give consideration to how budget cuts are withdrawing access to mental health and substance misuse services. Both of these are used disproportionately by returning military personnel. As a direct result of the things that we make them do on our behalf.

I hope we can do everything to avoid the situation that developed in the US where people returning from Vietnam were blamed for the failure of the state. Equally I hope we can get to a point where those who purport to represent us can take the welfare of those that fight wars for us more seriously than just whether or not someone clapped or not.

Posted in Birmingham, Politics | Comments (3)

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