Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Fond as I am of the word 'perhaps', I do wonder why Eliot had to include it here. Where was il miglior fabro? (I also wonder what Eliot, the jewel thief as Pound called him, actually knew about mud and axle trees, or even garlic and sapphires, come to that.)
But enough of that. What I wanted to remark was that we are living, now, in a historic moment. An historic moment? A truly historic moment? Perhaps even, for some, the last truly historic moment.
For we have arrived at the point perhaps where we began, where is is now formally recognised by the discerning that the word 'historic' can apply to anything in the past that we can only investigate, report and ponder upon. All time is unredeemable. Tous les matins du monde sont sans retour. To what purpose?
And so, at last, everything in the past qualifies for history, subject only to the interest of the news media, permission to disturb the dust on the bowl of rose-leaves. Mainly it involves police reports of socially egregious and criminal behaviour that formerly was tolerated.
It leaves us only to reflect whether the gratingly new usage is actually not less contentious than the old, although less useful - what is wrong with 'past'?
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Monday, 26 August 2013
Monday, 22 April 2013
Robust
It would appear that it takes three years for a basic spread sheet error to be discovered that undermines the fundamental conclusion of an economics paper that has been highly influential in shaping the austerity policies of western governments.
The interval is necessary to enable belief in the argument to solidify to the point where it is independent of evidence so that, in the words of our Chancellor, it "remains robust".
The interval is necessary to enable belief in the argument to solidify to the point where it is independent of evidence so that, in the words of our Chancellor, it "remains robust".
Thursday, 21 February 2013
Done and seen to be done
Yesterday was a bad day for criminal justice procedures, and not just in South Africa. Here in this country a prominent trial of the ex-wife of an ex-cabinet minister who has already been convicted of perverting the course of justice by getting his then wife to accept responsibility for a speeding fine he had in fact incurred himself has had to be abandonned and a retrial ordered.
After many hours of fruitless deliberation the jury sent the judge a list of ten questions which the learned judge found extraordinary and unprecedented, and revealing "absolutely fundamental deficits in understanding" of their role in the legal process.
The jury has been dismissed under a cloud, seemingly labelled as both irresponsible and stupid.
Not everyone thinks all of the questions were stupid, although perhaps those that were not should have been asked earlier, but there seems little sympathy with the request that the judge define 'beyond reasonable doubt', which, as we all know, is the corner-stone of our criminal justice system. No-one should be convicted unless it has been proved that they are guilty 'beyond reasonable doubt'.
It is reported that the judge responded that the words were in normal usage, which is perhaps all he could say, but he, unwisely in my opinion, although I belive he was merely complying with the current standard of legal procedure, went on to say it simply meant they had to be 'sure' of their conclusion. What is 'sure' in the mind of the average person?
To me the concept of 'beyond reasonable doubt' seems something of a fraud, or at least a fudge. It is patently clear that many people are convicted, and their convictions upheld by learned judges (not jurors at that stage) at appeal, when many 'reasonable' people doubt their guilt. I think it is even right to say that judges themselves may disagree.
Indeed, to have a system, as we do, and as was intended to operate in this case, when a jury verdict of guilty can be accepted with a minority of dissenting jury members, seems to me to be fundamentally incompatible with the idea that conviction depends on proving guilt 'beyond reasonable doubt' - or else alarmingly incompatible with the conventional value ascribed to jurors.
Yet our legal process is a philosophical and historical patchwork rather than something bound to clear and over-riding principle. In part juries might seem to have a residual god-like role: they are not required to have legal knowledge and until recently profesional lawyers were formally excluded; they are not required to give reasons for, or to justify, their decisions, although of course their decisions are open to later legal challenge, now on both sides, and it is even possible now for someone, in certain circumstances, to be tried twice for the same offence; their deliberations must still remain secret. In earlier centuries juries were in fact painfully aware that they were usurping God's role of judgement. Vengence is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. They feared they might themselves attract God's vengence for judging their fellows, especially if they convicted their fellow men. Many still believed literally in an impending, and far more serious, day of judgement. Trial by jury replaced earlier, more 'primitive', forms of trial - trial by ordeal for example - which were at the time seen as mechanisms by which the judgement of God, rather than that of man, was revealed. The reluctance of juries to exercise judgement and to convict their fellows, their peers, was the reason for the later introduction of the injunction that they should convict if persuaded of the defendant's guilt 'beyond reasonable doubt'. It was intended to make conviction easier, not to constrain it and was a further step away from the religious notion of justice. The popular value now placed in the nostrum is in conflict both with historical development and with current jurisprudal thinking, but that is not to say that it has any logical or linguistic clarity.
After many hours of fruitless deliberation the jury sent the judge a list of ten questions which the learned judge found extraordinary and unprecedented, and revealing "absolutely fundamental deficits in understanding" of their role in the legal process.
The jury has been dismissed under a cloud, seemingly labelled as both irresponsible and stupid.
Not everyone thinks all of the questions were stupid, although perhaps those that were not should have been asked earlier, but there seems little sympathy with the request that the judge define 'beyond reasonable doubt', which, as we all know, is the corner-stone of our criminal justice system. No-one should be convicted unless it has been proved that they are guilty 'beyond reasonable doubt'.
It is reported that the judge responded that the words were in normal usage, which is perhaps all he could say, but he, unwisely in my opinion, although I belive he was merely complying with the current standard of legal procedure, went on to say it simply meant they had to be 'sure' of their conclusion. What is 'sure' in the mind of the average person?
To me the concept of 'beyond reasonable doubt' seems something of a fraud, or at least a fudge. It is patently clear that many people are convicted, and their convictions upheld by learned judges (not jurors at that stage) at appeal, when many 'reasonable' people doubt their guilt. I think it is even right to say that judges themselves may disagree.
Indeed, to have a system, as we do, and as was intended to operate in this case, when a jury verdict of guilty can be accepted with a minority of dissenting jury members, seems to me to be fundamentally incompatible with the idea that conviction depends on proving guilt 'beyond reasonable doubt' - or else alarmingly incompatible with the conventional value ascribed to jurors.
Yet our legal process is a philosophical and historical patchwork rather than something bound to clear and over-riding principle. In part juries might seem to have a residual god-like role: they are not required to have legal knowledge and until recently profesional lawyers were formally excluded; they are not required to give reasons for, or to justify, their decisions, although of course their decisions are open to later legal challenge, now on both sides, and it is even possible now for someone, in certain circumstances, to be tried twice for the same offence; their deliberations must still remain secret. In earlier centuries juries were in fact painfully aware that they were usurping God's role of judgement. Vengence is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. They feared they might themselves attract God's vengence for judging their fellows, especially if they convicted their fellow men. Many still believed literally in an impending, and far more serious, day of judgement. Trial by jury replaced earlier, more 'primitive', forms of trial - trial by ordeal for example - which were at the time seen as mechanisms by which the judgement of God, rather than that of man, was revealed. The reluctance of juries to exercise judgement and to convict their fellows, their peers, was the reason for the later introduction of the injunction that they should convict if persuaded of the defendant's guilt 'beyond reasonable doubt'. It was intended to make conviction easier, not to constrain it and was a further step away from the religious notion of justice. The popular value now placed in the nostrum is in conflict both with historical development and with current jurisprudal thinking, but that is not to say that it has any logical or linguistic clarity.
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Soak the rich
Our deputy prime minister and leader of the fast fading Liberal Democrat party, anxious to differentiate himself from his coalition government partner the Conservative party, proposes that universal benefits for old people should be means tested.
It is impossible, he says, to justify giving free bus passes to multimillionaires. I am sure the common man will cheer when all the multimillionaires are turned of the Number 39 and that the Treasury coffers and bus company receipts will boom prodigiously.
With political debate of this quality from our leaders we need not fear. No doubt Mr Clegg would say he is just using a colourful expression to catch the voters' attention, but the effect is to embed a proposal in the political agenda, from which it then becomes difficult to remove it, without consideration of its actual practicality or specific effects, a tactic increasingly favoured by government politicians when proposing ideas with little public endorsement that require them to take what they are fond of describing, in a self-congratulatory way, as 'difficult decisions', by which they mean decisions likely to be unpopular, although usually with people who would not have voted for them anyway.
It is impossible, he says, to justify giving free bus passes to multimillionaires. I am sure the common man will cheer when all the multimillionaires are turned of the Number 39 and that the Treasury coffers and bus company receipts will boom prodigiously.
With political debate of this quality from our leaders we need not fear. No doubt Mr Clegg would say he is just using a colourful expression to catch the voters' attention, but the effect is to embed a proposal in the political agenda, from which it then becomes difficult to remove it, without consideration of its actual practicality or specific effects, a tactic increasingly favoured by government politicians when proposing ideas with little public endorsement that require them to take what they are fond of describing, in a self-congratulatory way, as 'difficult decisions', by which they mean decisions likely to be unpopular, although usually with people who would not have voted for them anyway.
Monday, 13 August 2012
A Gold for language
Samuel Johnson said of Dryden, after Augustus's comments on Rome, that he found our language brick and left it marble. Where has 'Locog' left it?
We can perhaps pass by the use of 'ceremony', 'the performance of some solemn act according to strict form',
but who was it who not only coined that horror and misnomer, 'team GB', but obliged everyone from the BBC outwards to use it slavishly?
Whenever I hear 'team GB' now triumphantly cited by a politician, David Cameron or Boris Johnson (no relation, thank God), I cannot avoid thinking it contains a clear implicit meaning that some people are in the team and others are not. And we are not talking now of sporting teams. It's the modern updating of Mrs Thatcher's declension of the world according to whether one is 'one of us'.
The takeover of individual effort and triumph by officialdom and state is pretty blatant - nothing new there.
And perhaps we should be thankful that it goes no further than a driving ambition to compell all school children to undertake two hours of competitive sports a day, to make them into what Eton made Boris Johnson is today, rather than just provide public sporting facilities for the nation at large.
Now that the Olympics are triumphantly over, Dan Hodges, who describes himself as 'a tribal neo-Blairite', supporter of John Reid and David Blunkett, voter for Boris Johnson, has some team reflections. He writes, in his Daily Telegraph blog, with, apparently only half his tongue in his cheek (it doesn't look as if that's where he usually keeps it):
And so they return. Slipping home under cover of darkness, casting furtive glances over their shoulders lest they be spotted by the final nocturnal Olympic revellers, they are back amongst us. The London 2012 naysayers.
But now, as silence falls across the Stratford Stadium, whither the Harpy’s cries? Are they too ashamed? Too scared? Or do they think we have all forgotten?
Never. The last two weeks have brought the nation, indeed the world, together. And now is neither the time nor the place for the extended Olympic family to be roaming around, meeting [sic] out summary justice to the 2012 Quislings.
Or 'Never, never, never', as one of his perhaps other multi-political-cultural heroes might have put it.
Will we be dealing with these naysayers by putting an London Olympics Triumph Denial Act on the statute book? No doubt his erstwhile great leader would support it.
Does he know what a harpy is - 'a rapacious, plundering or grasping person' - sounds moree like the infamous International Olympic Committee to me. And 'whither' their cries, or 'whence' - or even, if he wished, 'wherefor'? Perhaps they have become directed missiles.
He doesn't know the difference between 'meet' and 'mete', but does he know what a Quisling is, or was? Boris seems the better candidate for the description, especially given the slighly embarrassing Nazi associations of the early revived Games. I hasten to add that I don't mean to imply that Boris is a Nazi.
Yet the whole Olympic presentation (the 'ceremonial' bit) seems to have been infused with strange misreferencing of our past. (Maybe that's a required quality for the 'modern' Olympics, Clio and Euterpe both, perhaps the whole band.)
So we could have an opening pageant of our national history that struck many popular chords, including the National Health Service, but, apart from that, gave no kind of acknowledgement of our imperial past that must have been formative in the inheritance of many competitors there.
But for Dan Hodges,
... they are in the minority. And in keeping with the spirit of London 2012, over time, we will come to forgive them. Forgive, yes. But we will never forget.
Well, some forgetting is easier than others.
My Spectre around me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way;
My Emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.
‘A fathomless and boundless deep,
There we wander, there we weep;
On the hungry craving wind
My Spectre follows thee behind.
‘He scents thy footsteps in the snow
Wheresoever thou dost go,
Thro’ the wintry hail and rain.
When wilt thou return again?
’Dost thou not in pride and scorn
Fill with tempests all my morn,
And with jealousies and fears
Fill my pleasant nights with tears?
‘Seven of my sweet loves thy knife
Has bereavèd of their life.
Their marble tombs I built with tears,
And with cold and shuddering fears.
‘Seven more loves weep night and day
Round the tombs where my loves lay,
And seven more loves attend each night
Around my couch with torches bright.
‘And seven more loves in my bed
Crown with wine my mournful head,
Pitying and forgiving all
Thy transgressions great and small.
‘When wilt thou return and view
My loves, and them to life renew?
When wilt thou return and live?
When wilt thou pity as I forgive?’
‘O’er my sins thou sit and moan:
Hast thou no sins of thy own?
O’er my sins thou sit and weep,
And lull thy own sins fast asleep.
‘What transgressions I commit
Are for thy transgressions fit.
They thy harlots, thou their slave;
And my bed becomes their grave.
‘Never, never, I return:
Still for victory I burn.
Living, thee alone I’ll have;
And when dead I’ll be thy grave.
‘Thro’ the Heaven and Earth and Hell
Thou shalt never, quell:
I will fly and thou pursue:
Night and morn the flight renew.’
‘Poor, pale, pitiable form
That I follow in a storm;
Iron tears and groans of lead
Bind around my aching head.
‘Till I turn from Female love
And root up the Infernal Grove,
I shall never worthy be
To step into Eternity.
‘And, to end thy cruel mocks,
Annihilate thee on the rocks,
And another form create
To be subservient to my fate.
‘Let us agree to give up love,
And root up the Infernal Grove;
Then shall we return and see
The worlds of happy Eternity.
‘And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
As our dear Redeemer said:
“This the Wine, and this the Bread.”’
We can perhaps pass by the use of 'ceremony', 'the performance of some solemn act according to strict form',
 |
| Ceremony |
Whenever I hear 'team GB' now triumphantly cited by a politician, David Cameron or Boris Johnson (no relation, thank God), I cannot avoid thinking it contains a clear implicit meaning that some people are in the team and others are not. And we are not talking now of sporting teams. It's the modern updating of Mrs Thatcher's declension of the world according to whether one is 'one of us'.
The takeover of individual effort and triumph by officialdom and state is pretty blatant - nothing new there.
 |
| Fritz Schilgen 1936 |
 |
| Our future Prime Minister? |
Now that the Olympics are triumphantly over, Dan Hodges, who describes himself as 'a tribal neo-Blairite', supporter of John Reid and David Blunkett, voter for Boris Johnson, has some team reflections. He writes, in his Daily Telegraph blog, with, apparently only half his tongue in his cheek (it doesn't look as if that's where he usually keeps it):
And so they return. Slipping home under cover of darkness, casting furtive glances over their shoulders lest they be spotted by the final nocturnal Olympic revellers, they are back amongst us. The London 2012 naysayers.
But now, as silence falls across the Stratford Stadium, whither the Harpy’s cries? Are they too ashamed? Too scared? Or do they think we have all forgotten?
Never. The last two weeks have brought the nation, indeed the world, together. And now is neither the time nor the place for the extended Olympic family to be roaming around, meeting [sic] out summary justice to the 2012 Quislings.
Or 'Never, never, never', as one of his perhaps other multi-political-cultural heroes might have put it.
Will we be dealing with these naysayers by putting an London Olympics Triumph Denial Act on the statute book? No doubt his erstwhile great leader would support it.
Does he know what a harpy is - 'a rapacious, plundering or grasping person' - sounds moree like the infamous International Olympic Committee to me. And 'whither' their cries, or 'whence' - or even, if he wished, 'wherefor'? Perhaps they have become directed missiles.
He doesn't know the difference between 'meet' and 'mete', but does he know what a Quisling is, or was? Boris seems the better candidate for the description, especially given the slighly embarrassing Nazi associations of the early revived Games. I hasten to add that I don't mean to imply that Boris is a Nazi.
Yet the whole Olympic presentation (the 'ceremonial' bit) seems to have been infused with strange misreferencing of our past. (Maybe that's a required quality for the 'modern' Olympics, Clio and Euterpe both, perhaps the whole band.)
So we could have an opening pageant of our national history that struck many popular chords, including the National Health Service, but, apart from that, gave no kind of acknowledgement of our imperial past that must have been formative in the inheritance of many competitors there.
But for Dan Hodges,
... they are in the minority. And in keeping with the spirit of London 2012, over time, we will come to forgive them. Forgive, yes. But we will never forget.
Well, some forgetting is easier than others.
My Spectre around me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way;
My Emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.
‘A fathomless and boundless deep,
There we wander, there we weep;
On the hungry craving wind
My Spectre follows thee behind.
‘He scents thy footsteps in the snow
Wheresoever thou dost go,
Thro’ the wintry hail and rain.
When wilt thou return again?
’Dost thou not in pride and scorn
Fill with tempests all my morn,
And with jealousies and fears
Fill my pleasant nights with tears?
‘Seven of my sweet loves thy knife
Has bereavèd of their life.
Their marble tombs I built with tears,
And with cold and shuddering fears.
‘Seven more loves weep night and day
Round the tombs where my loves lay,
And seven more loves attend each night
Around my couch with torches bright.
‘And seven more loves in my bed
Crown with wine my mournful head,
Pitying and forgiving all
Thy transgressions great and small.
‘When wilt thou return and view
My loves, and them to life renew?
When wilt thou return and live?
When wilt thou pity as I forgive?’
‘O’er my sins thou sit and moan:
Hast thou no sins of thy own?
O’er my sins thou sit and weep,
And lull thy own sins fast asleep.
‘What transgressions I commit
Are for thy transgressions fit.
They thy harlots, thou their slave;
And my bed becomes their grave.
‘Never, never, I return:
Still for victory I burn.
Living, thee alone I’ll have;
And when dead I’ll be thy grave.
‘Thro’ the Heaven and Earth and Hell
Thou shalt never, quell:
I will fly and thou pursue:
Night and morn the flight renew.’
‘Poor, pale, pitiable form
That I follow in a storm;
Iron tears and groans of lead
Bind around my aching head.
‘Till I turn from Female love
And root up the Infernal Grove,
I shall never worthy be
To step into Eternity.
‘And, to end thy cruel mocks,
Annihilate thee on the rocks,
And another form create
To be subservient to my fate.
‘Let us agree to give up love,
And root up the Infernal Grove;
Then shall we return and see
The worlds of happy Eternity.
‘And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
As our dear Redeemer said:
“This the Wine, and this the Bread.”’
Friday, 8 June 2012
The phraseology of the mind
I wonder if any of my small band of readers found this posting provocative and whether it set them thinking, in the way that I have often done on this blog, about the relationship between language and thought. It would seem there can be language without thought, not just in the sense in which one asserts it as an insult, but in the way in which one finds speech can utter completely unbidden and unreflected.
But phraseology as the ornament of the mind: it struck me with that sense of shock that runs through one's being on finding something, in art or discussion, that seems to apply intimately to oneself - or possibly so, requiring a defence.
It reverberated in two areas. Like most people, I like to think I am capable of thought, and, perhaps neurotically, I wonder whether thought is subverted by expression. Cut out anything you think particularly fine, as Dr Johnson advised.
I also like to think I am capable, on occasion, of designing furniture and worry about the place in it of ornament, so demonised by modernist thought and practice from a century ago and persisting into the present day, especially among the higher ranks of respected architects. Ornament perhaps became demoted from the role ascribed to it by Ruskin (and even Morris) as the creator became more determinedly autonomous, often in defiance of the economic logic of the day.
But if phraseology and ornament are condemned as mere efflorescence on the act of creation, to what extent can expression and thought be separate, if at all? In art it is an orthodoxy (at least when critics are confronted with the question, rather than indulging in talk about a work of art) that the art object is the meaning and that an abstracted 'meaning' is always a lesser thing. Why else bother to create the work of art? Even if the commentator is sometimes the creator - never trust the teller; trust the tale, as Lawrence put it. But mere talk is not art - or is it?
But phraseology as the ornament of the mind: it struck me with that sense of shock that runs through one's being on finding something, in art or discussion, that seems to apply intimately to oneself - or possibly so, requiring a defence.
It reverberated in two areas. Like most people, I like to think I am capable of thought, and, perhaps neurotically, I wonder whether thought is subverted by expression. Cut out anything you think particularly fine, as Dr Johnson advised.
I also like to think I am capable, on occasion, of designing furniture and worry about the place in it of ornament, so demonised by modernist thought and practice from a century ago and persisting into the present day, especially among the higher ranks of respected architects. Ornament perhaps became demoted from the role ascribed to it by Ruskin (and even Morris) as the creator became more determinedly autonomous, often in defiance of the economic logic of the day.
But if phraseology and ornament are condemned as mere efflorescence on the act of creation, to what extent can expression and thought be separate, if at all? In art it is an orthodoxy (at least when critics are confronted with the question, rather than indulging in talk about a work of art) that the art object is the meaning and that an abstracted 'meaning' is always a lesser thing. Why else bother to create the work of art? Even if the commentator is sometimes the creator - never trust the teller; trust the tale, as Lawrence put it. But mere talk is not art - or is it?
Friday, 16 March 2012
Intellect in government
The chancellor has, sources say, been intellectually persuaded of the case for a cut in the top rate, a move that will endear him to the Tory right.
A government source said: "The budget has to strike a balance. It has to show we are all in this together, but it also has to show that as a country we are open for business."
A government source said: "The budget has to strike a balance. It has to show we are all in this together, but it also has to show that as a country we are open for business."
Friday, 17 February 2012
Deft phrases
Lehman's was not thought to be 'too big to fail'. It was, after all, not particularly big. Our undoing lay in its interconnectedness. Now Greece is clearly seen as something of a minnow, but the world's leaders have learnt about 'contagion' and have been busily erecting 'firewalls'. Is our phraseology still smarter than our thought?
The impression made by Greek fire on the west European Crusaders was such that the name was applied to any sort of incendiary weapon, including those used by Arabs, the Chinese, and the Mongols. These, however, were different mixtures and not the Byzantine formula, which was a closely guarded state secret whose composition has now been lost. As a result, to this day its ingredients remain a matter of much speculation and debate, with proposals including naphtha, quicklime, sulphur, and niter. Byzantine use of incendiary mixtures was also distinguished by their employment of pressurized siphons to project the liquid onto the enemy.
 |
| Firewall needed |
Thursday, 16 February 2012
The language of Luxembourg
"Further technical work between Greece and the troika has led to the identification of the required additional consolidation measures of €325m and the establishment of a detailed list of prior actions together with a timeline."
Jean-Claude Juncker
No translation available.
Central banks across Europe have a collective nightmare. It is of the day Greece defaults on its debts, and the Aegean Sea is awash with small boats in which fleeing Greeks huddle with suitcases full of euros. Guards patrol the border in an attempt to prevent the flight of capital. Things get ugly and there are shootings, captured on film. Despite the best efforts of policymakers in Athens, Brussels and Frankfurt, it proves impossible to contain the panic, which spreads to Portugal and Ireland, the other two countries going through tough austerity programmes in return for bailouts from the EU and the IMF.
It is to forestall a Greek domino effect that the European Central Bank has flooded Europe's banks with cheap money over the past two months, easing funding concerns and bringing down interest rates on Spanish and Italian bonds.
"It's quite obvious studying their statements and their leaks," said a government source, referring to officials in Berlin, "that they are pushing for default. They want to get rid of Greece and then Portugal and create a smaller eurozone that will be closer to their interests. They start with leaks and then put them on the table as proposals."
"We're not going to play the proud Greek and do anything that would jeopardise our situation, but this latest leak that the program might be delayed until after elections made him [Venizelos] really angry," said the insider. "They say these things and then the markets react violently and then we've got another crisis. Every time we try to heal a little wound another one comes along."
Jean-Claude Juncker
No translation available.
 |
| Amost unbuttoned: Jean-Claude and friend. Did he talk in phrases like that with Mr Putin? |
It is to forestall a Greek domino effect that the European Central Bank has flooded Europe's banks with cheap money over the past two months, easing funding concerns and bringing down interest rates on Spanish and Italian bonds.
 |
| A woman threatens to jump after her employer, the Labour Housing Organisation in Athens, was labelled for closure. Photograph: Alkis Konstantinidis/EPA |
"We're not going to play the proud Greek and do anything that would jeopardise our situation, but this latest leak that the program might be delayed until after elections made him [Venizelos] really angry," said the insider. "They say these things and then the markets react violently and then we've got another crisis. Every time we try to heal a little wound another one comes along."
Friday, 6 January 2012
The categorical truth
In celebration of Professor Stephen Hawkin's seventieth birthday, The BBC has organised a programme in which a wide range of 'ordinary' people put their questions to him. One example given in this morning's announcement of the programme asked what happened before the big bang.
Stephen Hawkin's reply was to the effect that nothing happened, or rather that the question was a category error. Using an analogy to explain (surely a technique close to a category error itself), he said it was like asking what was south of the South Pole.
I don't think it will entirely satisfy (though perhaps there was more in the full answer) most 'ordinary' people - or at least will not prevent the question recurring. Were we to stand at the South Pole we would have a sense of something further 'south', although strictly speaking we had reached the ultimate. Yet above our heads, still in the direction we falsely though understandably label 'south', we perceive, not more land, but other matter in sky and space beyond. I think Profesor Hawkin's questioner was probably asking the nature of that otherness 'before' 'time'. I suppose the answer is that we cannot know, or perhaps, signalled by the increasing need to put 'ordinary' words here into inverted commas, we can know only in abstruse mathematical notation. 'Ordinary' people may find a requirement to accept that time has a beginning as problematic as the requirement to accept that space has no end, and wonder whether any image they can summon up of the boundary of time would be less fanciful than the image of the finite universe as a saucer balanced on the back of an elephant.
Stephen Hawkin's reply was to the effect that nothing happened, or rather that the question was a category error. Using an analogy to explain (surely a technique close to a category error itself), he said it was like asking what was south of the South Pole.
I don't think it will entirely satisfy (though perhaps there was more in the full answer) most 'ordinary' people - or at least will not prevent the question recurring. Were we to stand at the South Pole we would have a sense of something further 'south', although strictly speaking we had reached the ultimate. Yet above our heads, still in the direction we falsely though understandably label 'south', we perceive, not more land, but other matter in sky and space beyond. I think Profesor Hawkin's questioner was probably asking the nature of that otherness 'before' 'time'. I suppose the answer is that we cannot know, or perhaps, signalled by the increasing need to put 'ordinary' words here into inverted commas, we can know only in abstruse mathematical notation. 'Ordinary' people may find a requirement to accept that time has a beginning as problematic as the requirement to accept that space has no end, and wonder whether any image they can summon up of the boundary of time would be less fanciful than the image of the finite universe as a saucer balanced on the back of an elephant.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Windfall fines - confidential briefing
Not for Publication (NfP)
The Department will be announcing at the next suitable opportunity (Breakfast-time Christmas Eve - BCE) that the Windfall Licencing Fines and Penalties Bill (WLFPB) will be withdrawn from the current legislative programme due to unforeseen pressure on the legislative schedule and the Ministerial Mind (MM).
We shall not, however, be abandonning this vital piece of Public Service Reform (PSR) and it will be reintroduced at the earliest opportunity. The Consultative Process (CP) has now been concluded and positive representations will be incorporated into the Bill. The Tendering Process (TP) for the Enforcement and Oversight Contract (EOC) is well under way and the Windfall Agency (WA) has already been set up as an arms length body under Ministerial Directive (MD).
The legislation will not apply to Scotland (NOB), but fruit is not thought to form part of the Scottish National Provender (SNP), and as there are many times more sheep than Scotsmen they would probably have got round it anyway (GRIA).
The Department will be announcing at the next suitable opportunity (Breakfast-time Christmas Eve - BCE) that the Windfall Licencing Fines and Penalties Bill (WLFPB) will be withdrawn from the current legislative programme due to unforeseen pressure on the legislative schedule and the Ministerial Mind (MM).
We shall not, however, be abandonning this vital piece of Public Service Reform (PSR) and it will be reintroduced at the earliest opportunity. The Consultative Process (CP) has now been concluded and positive representations will be incorporated into the Bill. The Tendering Process (TP) for the Enforcement and Oversight Contract (EOC) is well under way and the Windfall Agency (WA) has already been set up as an arms length body under Ministerial Directive (MD).
The legislation will not apply to Scotland (NOB), but fruit is not thought to form part of the Scottish National Provender (SNP), and as there are many times more sheep than Scotsmen they would probably have got round it anyway (GRIA).
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Pease Pottage
Last December our coalition government, in the form of deputy prime minister Nick Clegg promised that child detention would be ended this May. The “shameful practice that last year alone saw more than 1000 children – 1000 innocent children – imprisoned” would end. There would be not only a “big culture shift” (How did he imagine one shifts culture – or was his imagination, rather than his articulation, actually engaged at all?), there would be a “totally new process” for dealing with families in the immigration process. It is with immigrant families or children entering the UK or about to be forcibly removed after the failure of their appeals against refusal of their applications to stay that child detention mostly arises.
What we have is less a change of process than – if one were to be uncharitable – an interior design exercise. The grim and prison-like Yarl’s Wood has been replaced by the country retreat of Cedars. Families will be detained for much shorter periods. However, the numbers of children detained have not much reduced since May.
Cedars looks very different from Yarl’s Wood, inside and out, but inside it is staffed by G4S and outside there are security fences. It is inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons.
Controversially Barnardo’s, the children’s’ charity, has contracted to work with G4S and the government advising on both the fitting out and the running of Cedars. The chief executive of Barnardo’s describes Cedars as looking like an upmarket holiday resort, perhaps a bit like Center Parcs. One can see what she means, but the irony of the UK state’s willingness to extend this level of comfort and ease to would-be immigrants, many of whom will have no doubt been motivated to make their risky attempts to settle here at least partly by economic poverty, for something like an away-break, but not a life-time, will not be lost.
One regrets also that in our times our government no longer has within its own ranks the ability to envisage and implement a civilised and unintimidating environment for these people but must contract with a charity to achieve it. Likewise, it now almost passes unremarked that it must contract with a commercial organisation (much criticised for competence and humanity, but profitable none the less) to run its detention centre in all but name. The government has outsourced not only its executive functions but also its imagination. How far have we come from Victorian values and practices when the government no longer regards detention of the individual as the proper preserve of the democratic state? At least the décor has improved.
What we have is less a change of process than – if one were to be uncharitable – an interior design exercise. The grim and prison-like Yarl’s Wood has been replaced by the country retreat of Cedars. Families will be detained for much shorter periods. However, the numbers of children detained have not much reduced since May.
Cedars looks very different from Yarl’s Wood, inside and out, but inside it is staffed by G4S and outside there are security fences. It is inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons.
Controversially Barnardo’s, the children’s’ charity, has contracted to work with G4S and the government advising on both the fitting out and the running of Cedars. The chief executive of Barnardo’s describes Cedars as looking like an upmarket holiday resort, perhaps a bit like Center Parcs. One can see what she means, but the irony of the UK state’s willingness to extend this level of comfort and ease to would-be immigrants, many of whom will have no doubt been motivated to make their risky attempts to settle here at least partly by economic poverty, for something like an away-break, but not a life-time, will not be lost.
One regrets also that in our times our government no longer has within its own ranks the ability to envisage and implement a civilised and unintimidating environment for these people but must contract with a charity to achieve it. Likewise, it now almost passes unremarked that it must contract with a commercial organisation (much criticised for competence and humanity, but profitable none the less) to run its detention centre in all but name. The government has outsourced not only its executive functions but also its imagination. How far have we come from Victorian values and practices when the government no longer regards detention of the individual as the proper preserve of the democratic state? At least the décor has improved.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
Atomisation 2: concision and elaboration
Thank you for this draft of hemlock. before I drain it to the dregs, could I just remark that there seem to me to be essentially two forms of discourse or desription.
The most fervently recommended today is, supposedly, concision, consisting in the isolation and abstraction of 'key points'.
A whole apparatus of techniques exists to support this approach: the bullet point, the executive summary, the abstract - as though the essence of an argument, of a conception, is something that could be abstracted from its context - the overhead projector, those boxes on the printed page. This is brevity, the less that is more, the distillation. It runs from executive jargon all the way to the new-age spiritualist aphorism. Modish, cliché-ed coinages are its handmaid.
Lurking in the despised shadows is another mode, that of elaboration, where the essence of a thing is approached, about and about, through the ebb and flow, relationship and counter-relationship, where the qualification may assume greater importance than the proposal. Here is no brevity, no magic bullet, only the flow and flux of a mutating thing.
Pity, like a naked new born babe, striding the blast...
The most fervently recommended today is, supposedly, concision, consisting in the isolation and abstraction of 'key points'.
A whole apparatus of techniques exists to support this approach: the bullet point, the executive summary, the abstract - as though the essence of an argument, of a conception, is something that could be abstracted from its context - the overhead projector, those boxes on the printed page. This is brevity, the less that is more, the distillation. It runs from executive jargon all the way to the new-age spiritualist aphorism. Modish, cliché-ed coinages are its handmaid.
Lurking in the despised shadows is another mode, that of elaboration, where the essence of a thing is approached, about and about, through the ebb and flow, relationship and counter-relationship, where the qualification may assume greater importance than the proposal. Here is no brevity, no magic bullet, only the flow and flux of a mutating thing.
Pity, like a naked new born babe, striding the blast...
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Trickle on down
Mr Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, speaking to the House of Commons Select Committee on Transport about the much criticised proposed high speed rail link from London to the north, HS2, has said: "Uncomfortable fact number one is that the railway is already relatively a rich man's toy - the whole railway." Trains are used by "the better-off". "If you are a factory worker from Manchester you might never get on HS2 but you will certainly be benefiting from it, if the sales director of your company is routinely hopping on it to meet customers, to jet round the world from Heathrow in a way that brings in orders to keep you employed."
This is a rich vein, of which we shall see much more.
This is a rich vein, of which we shall see much more.
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Atomisation 1
When we nowadays talk, as we so frequently do, about 'communication', we often are referring to techniques to facilitate primarily verbal communication between physically distant individuals: the (nearly obsolete) letter, the telephone, the email, 'social media' - even blogging, though now we are getting more into the territory of publication rather than inter-personal communication.
It must have been very different in the days of settled societies, when personal mobility was heavily circumscribed. People of course talked to each other, but personal social interaction was not necessarily verbal. It consisted to a considerable extent in simple physical presence in the course of quotidian lives, in the interchange of goods and services. That was not necessarily stimulating, but the unexamined assumption that stimulation is always beneficial is a product of our own times.
It is significant that we do now talk about communication so much - its success or failure, its techniques; despite its unprecedented quantity in our time, it is always thought there is not enough of it, that the solution to all problems lies in 'more' or 'more effective' communicaton. There is far less consideration of what we might be communicating or of whether it is desirable that we should seek to develop new realms within ourselves for communication. With it of course goes the whole modern fixation with the virtues of 'self-expression'. In modern times the unexpressed life is the life not worth living.
It must have been very different in the days of settled societies, when personal mobility was heavily circumscribed. People of course talked to each other, but personal social interaction was not necessarily verbal. It consisted to a considerable extent in simple physical presence in the course of quotidian lives, in the interchange of goods and services. That was not necessarily stimulating, but the unexamined assumption that stimulation is always beneficial is a product of our own times.
It is significant that we do now talk about communication so much - its success or failure, its techniques; despite its unprecedented quantity in our time, it is always thought there is not enough of it, that the solution to all problems lies in 'more' or 'more effective' communicaton. There is far less consideration of what we might be communicating or of whether it is desirable that we should seek to develop new realms within ourselves for communication. With it of course goes the whole modern fixation with the virtues of 'self-expression'. In modern times the unexpressed life is the life not worth living.
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Street games
It seems we can no longer play that game of our innocent childhood, ‘kicking the can down the road’. The game now is 'lengthening the fuse on the bomb', a new kind of 'chicken'.
A commentary on the agreement among political factions in the USA for raising the debt ceiling, carried by the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, attacked the "madcap farce of brinksmanship" and warned that the deal "failed to defuse Washington's debt bomb for good, only delaying an immediate detonation by making the fuse an inch longer".
No doubt the Financial Health and Safety Agency will be on to this dangerous practice soon. Meanwhile the Chinese are trying to take their own precautions.
‘China is the world's second largest economy and the largest holder of US debt. It has more than $1tr of treasuries in its foreign exchange holdings, valued at around $3tr.’
Zhou Xiaochuan, ‘Chinese economist, banker, reformist, bureaucrat and governor of the People's Bank of China since December 2002’, added ‘that China would continue seeking to diversify its reserves. The challenge it faces is finding suitable alternatives.’
To the uninitiated that sounds remarkably close to saying that the Chinese have woken up to find that their wealth is in fact worthless and they can see nothing else of value to buy instead.
Xinhua 'added that "runaway debt addiction...[could] jeopardise the well-being of hundreds of millions of families within and beyond the US borders".'
'Some Chinese economists warned spending cuts could affect China's growth by slowing the US recovery. "US consumption will be definitely hurt a lot by the austerity deal and we can no longer count on the once-biggest foreign market in the future," said Ding Yifan, a researcher at the Development Research Centre under the State Council.'
You can tell it is serious because Barclays head honcho, Mr ‘Spare a Bob’ Diamond has wheeled himself out of the counting house to warn us all that if this country were to get up to such shenanigans it would be curtains for us, and maybe even him, though his curtains are more heavily braided and bomb-proof than most of us can afford. So keep up the good work, Mr Osborne (scion of those well-known curtain-traders to the gentry, Osborne and Little).
Saturday, 23 July 2011
A word on lexicography
It would be a simple task to fill the Jekyll and Hyde Dictionary if the purpose were simply to point to words or phrases that had acquired annoyingly modish and vacuous usages, but that has never been the intention. The Dictionary attempts to identify words that in modern usage have simultaneously opposite or apparently conflicting meanings or connotations, neither of which we would wish to do without, but where we commonly have only one, or the other, in mind at any given time.
In that way it tries to illustrate a little the fascinating inter-relationship between thought and language, the ways in which each constricts or extends the other, and the ways in which we may enrich our thought by keeping alert to all the suggestions of the language we employ.
So the Dictionary is not intended as part of a campaign against annoying modern usages such as ‘going forward’ – and yet there is some area of overlap, and I wonder if it is entirely wise to tilt against some of the more serious examples of linguistic damage.
In a contribution I recently made to a furniture designer-makers’ forum I rather mocked the use of the word ‘iconic’ to describe a certain sort of design as the desired content of a future exhibition. The word has now sunk to the vocabulary of estate agents. It prompted me afterwards to search the Jekyll and Hyde papers and I found I was able to add another entry to my selection on this blog. It may or may not be connected to my mockery (but people are sensitive about these things) that the next post on that forum spoke of ‘major’ not ‘iconic’ pieces of furniture.
I suspect, however, that the contributor still has the same set of ideas in his head: he has merely sanitised his language. Words that embody concepts are used as shorthand, with a web of unarticulated ideas and thought assumptions behind them, mutually shared between author and reader or listener. ‘Iconic’ made a certain web clear, a web that exists, however much we may regret it, as a cultural phenomenon. To mock the word that identifiably expresses such debased thinking and to drive the ideas elsewhere, under cover of a less obviously perverted term such as ‘major’, may make the cultural assimilation of the web more likely.
Modish usages such as ‘iconic’ come with a pre-digested web of allusion; they are ponderous with stale meaning that has not life enough to interact with other words and phrases in the same discourse. That is what makes such terms so wearisome and annoying. Typically one follows another in a leaden accumulation. Such clotted thinking is addictive. At the opposite extreme lies Shakespearean language where startling coinages of words and usage interact with each other like quicksilver, each gaining its meaning from the context of the total expression. Meaning and thought is created by the new expression of language rather than words being press-ganged into the presentation of static and impoverished concepts.
pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air…
 |
| Caught in a web of words: James Murray, Oxford lexicographer |
In that way it tries to illustrate a little the fascinating inter-relationship between thought and language, the ways in which each constricts or extends the other, and the ways in which we may enrich our thought by keeping alert to all the suggestions of the language we employ.
So the Dictionary is not intended as part of a campaign against annoying modern usages such as ‘going forward’ – and yet there is some area of overlap, and I wonder if it is entirely wise to tilt against some of the more serious examples of linguistic damage.
In a contribution I recently made to a furniture designer-makers’ forum I rather mocked the use of the word ‘iconic’ to describe a certain sort of design as the desired content of a future exhibition. The word has now sunk to the vocabulary of estate agents. It prompted me afterwards to search the Jekyll and Hyde papers and I found I was able to add another entry to my selection on this blog. It may or may not be connected to my mockery (but people are sensitive about these things) that the next post on that forum spoke of ‘major’ not ‘iconic’ pieces of furniture.
I suspect, however, that the contributor still has the same set of ideas in his head: he has merely sanitised his language. Words that embody concepts are used as shorthand, with a web of unarticulated ideas and thought assumptions behind them, mutually shared between author and reader or listener. ‘Iconic’ made a certain web clear, a web that exists, however much we may regret it, as a cultural phenomenon. To mock the word that identifiably expresses such debased thinking and to drive the ideas elsewhere, under cover of a less obviously perverted term such as ‘major’, may make the cultural assimilation of the web more likely.
Modish usages such as ‘iconic’ come with a pre-digested web of allusion; they are ponderous with stale meaning that has not life enough to interact with other words and phrases in the same discourse. That is what makes such terms so wearisome and annoying. Typically one follows another in a leaden accumulation. Such clotted thinking is addictive. At the opposite extreme lies Shakespearean language where startling coinages of words and usage interact with each other like quicksilver, each gaining its meaning from the context of the total expression. Meaning and thought is created by the new expression of language rather than words being press-ganged into the presentation of static and impoverished concepts.
pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air…
Saturday, 2 July 2011
Witch-hunts
A storm has just broken over the head of Johann Hari, radical commenting journalist who writes regularly for The Independent.
It seems Hari is in the habit of spatchcocking into his interviews with cultural or political thinkers unacknowledged quotations from their published work, as though those were parts of their utterances during the interview. A great cry of ‘plagiarism’ has gone up.
If anyone ever got to interview me, I would certainly indulge myself in a few regurgitations of my finest coinages from earlier efforts, but, leaving that aside, Hari is certainly guilty of bad practice and possibly of misrepresenting the current views of his interviewees – although it is probably no different from the way in which their work will be assessed (if it is assessed at all) after their deaths, unless they take care to publish regular updates of all their opinions.
Yet to accuse Hari of plagiarism – ‘the taking and using as one’s own of the thoughts, writings or inventions of another’ – is utterly ignorant and absurd. It reminds me somewhat of the recent ostracism of the western, heterosexual man who invented and surreptitiously promoted the gay girl in Damascus blog. He too was guilty of bad practice and perhaps of something much worse, endangering individuals whose cause he apparently sought to promote, but still the reaction all seems a part of the obsessive focussing on the individual rather than engaging with the reality of their creations. It is as though we were afraid of moving beyond the level of an officially scrupulous and prurient mundanity.
At this rate Tolstoy and all his works are certainly in the dustbin, along with most of the writers who are referenced on this blog: Ruskin is certainly included and so, probably, are virtually all the significant writers and artists of our culture. We cannot go to a Wagner opera or read the Cantos of Ezra Pound. If we ever get round to it in the world of design nothing will be safe: we won't be able to sit in a Le Corbusier chair ever again and we shall certainly have to throw over our universal deference to the stern views on decoration of that old reprobate Adolf Loos.
Hari is of course not in that rank, but it’s all part of the same tendency – as if everyone were running for election as president of the United States or wherever.
Friday, 1 July 2011
Semantics
The government is not in favour of semantics, the science of signification or exact meaning: 'The prime minister's official spokesman dismissed the row. "People are getting caught up in a semantic debate," he said.'
The 'row' is about the goverment's proposals to change pension arrangements for public service workers so that they contribute more and receive less. Workers, including teachers, were yesterday on strike over this issue.
David Cameron claimed earlier this week that the system could "go broke" if it were not reformed. Yet a recent report by Lord Hutton, the former Labour work and pensions secretary who wrote the blueprint for the government's reforms, said that the cost of public sector pensions, as a proportion of GDP, was set to fall after peaking last year at 1.9% to 1.4% by 2059/60.
Faced with this piece of information, the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, who is leading the negotiations with the public sector unions, was asked to justify earlier statements that pensions were becoming unaffordable. Maude would only say that the Hutton report, on which the pension plans are based, had "very clearly" said that the status quo was not tenable. "You cannot continue to have more and more people in retirement being supported by fewer and fewer people in work," he said.
Hutton's report would clearly seem to indicate that you can, but if Maude thinks otherwise he can alter the objectionable statistic only by denying some people pensions altogether, perhaps by a statutory selective cull at retirement age. A merely semantic ripost perhaps, but what is one left when politicians refuse to engage with logic?
Acknowledgement: The Jekyll and Hyde Dictionary has been of great assistance in the preparation of this post.
The 'row' is about the goverment's proposals to change pension arrangements for public service workers so that they contribute more and receive less. Workers, including teachers, were yesterday on strike over this issue.
David Cameron claimed earlier this week that the system could "go broke" if it were not reformed. Yet a recent report by Lord Hutton, the former Labour work and pensions secretary who wrote the blueprint for the government's reforms, said that the cost of public sector pensions, as a proportion of GDP, was set to fall after peaking last year at 1.9% to 1.4% by 2059/60.
Faced with this piece of information, the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, who is leading the negotiations with the public sector unions, was asked to justify earlier statements that pensions were becoming unaffordable. Maude would only say that the Hutton report, on which the pension plans are based, had "very clearly" said that the status quo was not tenable. "You cannot continue to have more and more people in retirement being supported by fewer and fewer people in work," he said.
Hutton's report would clearly seem to indicate that you can, but if Maude thinks otherwise he can alter the objectionable statistic only by denying some people pensions altogether, perhaps by a statutory selective cull at retirement age. A merely semantic ripost perhaps, but what is one left when politicians refuse to engage with logic?
Acknowledgement: The Jekyll and Hyde Dictionary has been of great assistance in the preparation of this post.
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Infrastructure or Hades: a land fit for heroes
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| No Shangri-La in Greece |
Lahham said more than half of the assets up for sale comprises land for commercial or residential development, which is unattractive because of the difficulty of securing financing to build in Greece. His firm was attracted by the potential of Greek tourism but legislation made it difficult for foreign companies to develop the country's islands and beaches. "Greece is a fantastic tourism destination with very undeveloped infrastructure. There isn't a Four Seasons or a Shangri-La or a Peninsula or any of the major hotel chains in Greece," he said. "It's strange, they would love to be there and we would love to build it for them, but somehow regulations don't allow you to do so."
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