The Golden Strawberry

Well, that took a while! It’s been a hectic, as well as a slothful, few weeks. There’s lots of stuff to get out my system now.

I’ve been busy these past few days helping to organise a Convention for Modern Liberty event in Birmingham. And, finally, we have something on!

http://www.modernliberty.net/satellite-conventions/birmingham

Speakers are yet to be confirmed, but it’s just fantastic that something has been organised. We’ll be confirming more stuff in the next few days.

I’ll post more here about liberty and all that jazz over the next few days.

Cory

There has been much talk in the media about how George Bush will be judged by “history”. Andrew Roberts, for instance, has a piece in the Telegraph about how history will show that George Bush was right, and a piece in Commentary Magazine says something similar. The latter piece is worth reading if you fancy a giggle.

This seems to get our priorities wrong. We don’t know what the judgement of “History” will be, What is important, if anything, is how we see Bush’s Presidency now.

The assumption seems to be that “History” is an impartial, unbending, unequivocal final judgement. It has quasi-religious undertones. If you substitute “History” and put the word “God” in its place, the statement sounds ridiculous. In this context, history has become a secular “day of judgement”. This isn’t correct at all. “History” in this case just means a body of work by academic historians. Even in Birmingham’s history department, where I am studying at the moment, there is a whole range of nationalities, classes, political views. historica approaches and methods. Extend that to history departments all over the world and you have lots of different historians from a myriad of different backgrounds. The only thing they have in common is that they study the past; the views and approaches they bring to that vary from historian to historian.

In the future, as now, those historians who defend Bush, and those who attack his record, will do so on the basis of their ideological views and assumptions. Neo-con, Republican, “right-wing” historians (such as Roberts) will defend Bush’s record. Tim Montgomerie at Conservative Home has been putting together reasons to defend Bush’s presidency. True, it is a bit like saying that ‘the Titanic might have sunk, but my, weren’t the curtains excellent?’. But any historian concentrating on, say, US aid to Africa, or development history in general, may be more sympathetic to Bush than historians concentrating on Bush’s military and domestic record.

By the same token, leftist historians are likely to see Bush as a disaster.  It all depends what priorities historians have. Even King John, commonly thought to have been one of England’s worst kings, received some sympathy with historians in the early twentieth century. John left many government records, and historians, who like having lots of records, praised his efficient royal goverment. The fact he seems to have murdered his nephew and was a military disaster was neither here nor there.

Even so, we cannot look to the future, where historians, with the benefit of hindsight, will “pronounce” and give their unwavering verdict. These will change over time - the repuation of most English monarchs has altered, and keeps altering, throughout history. We cannot and should not try and second-guess them. For now, all that matters is that Bush has helped leave the world in a giant train wreck, and now it falls to others to get us out of this mess.

Cory

In November I interviewed Norman Finkelstein, the infamous academic and writer. This is the interview I sent to Redbrick. It got slightly tweaked there, but here it is in full, unedited glory:

Norman Finkelstein was at the University of Birmingham giving a talk called “Israel and Palestine: Roots of Conflict, Prospects for Peace”, arranged by the University’s “Friends of Palestine” society. He is one of the most controversial academic writers on Middle Eastern politics. Finkelstein’s most famous works, and one of his most controversial, is The Holocaust Industry. Published in 2000, its central thesis is that Israel exploits the memory of the Holocaust to cover up its own human rights crimes. He no longer holds an academic position of his own. For six years he taught at DePaul University before being denied tenure there in 2007. Although never out the news, what we discussed in the interview seems more relevant than ever, after hostilities broke out once more in the Gaza strip.

 

How does Finkelstein think we can create “roots for peace”? “The UN General Council proposed a two-state settlement based on the June 1967 borders. All world votes and the same group abstain: Israel, America, Marshall Islands and Australia.  There is no debate on how to solve it – it’s the least controversial international dispute.”

 

Why does this not happen? “For the same reason the British didn’t leave India until after World War Two. For the same reason France didn’t leave Algeria. Power doesn’t concede without a demand. The Israelis have to be forced out.” Can it be done peacefully? “No.”

 

This seems a little extreme. Both Israelis and Palestinians are limited in their ability to compromise by their extremist elements. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a member of a far-right Orthodox Jewish group in 1995 for merely proposing that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank. Similarly, Hamas, who won the Palestinian Authority elections in 2006, do not even recognise Israel has a right to exist.

 

We talk about Barack Obama’s victory in the US Elections, which at the time of the interview was only four days old. Finkelstein sees the election as a significant moment. “It is a genuine credit to the American people. The early part of my life [Finkelstein was born in 1953] was not much past the era of black lynchings. Now they have elected an African-American as President. You would be blind to deny something fundamental has changed for the better. I am hardly a flag-waving patriot, but you have to look in honour and respect of what happened.”

 

Finkelstein, however, continues by saying: “Obama is a typical centre-right Democrat. I have no expectations. His Presidency will be similar to the Clinton era but without the economic prosperity, in a general and literal sense.” He gives the example of appointing Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, a former member of the Clinton administration. Finkelstein then goes one step further. “Barack Obama is a typical wretched opportunist conman”. He must have noticed my eyebrows raise at this comment, because he continues: “He is! I don’t see why we should be politically correct about these things.”

 

Finkelstein does not think Obama’s election will see a great change in America’s Middle-East policy. “It will probably get worse, because he has to prove to the world he is not a Muslim”. So what does he think of the comments of “Joe the Plumber”, who said that Obama’s election would lead to the death of Israel? “In America the political system is detached from reality. Some of the labels they were giving Obama – calling him a socialist and a communist – I wish they were true!”

 

On Finkelstein’s personal website is a link to a piece entitled “In Defence of Hezbollah”. In 2006 he met one of their top officials in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s military wing is considered a terrorist organisation by the British government. Why does Finkelstein think they should be defended? “Because of the same reason the Communist parties helped end the occupation of Axis forces during World War Two. Whatever you might say about Nasrallah, is he really more brutal than Stalin?” That would admittedly take some doing, but Nasrallah did say that it’s alright for all the world’s Jews to live in Israel, “because it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide”, which doesn’t sound like the talk of a reasonable man. In any case, is comparing ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine to the occupation of Europe by the Nazis a little unfair? “You can use any you like. It is still an occupation. The resistance in Afghanistan versus the Soviets were the same who would turn into Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Nobody minded when gave we them weapons to fight the Red Army.” I am not convinced that comparing Israel to Al-Qaeda is an altogether more flattering comparison.

 

Norman Finkelstein paints a picture of a world where the only wrongdoers are the United States and Israel. The reality is not that one-sided. The rockets that Hamas are firing into Israel do constitute war crimes. Israel is surrounded by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and countries like Iran, who wish it wiped off the map. Hamas is a vile group of Islamists who are suppressing dissent in Gaza and lead an increasingly authoritarian rule. But the international community’s shunning of Hamas since their election win in 2006 has only made the situation worse. To use a cricketing analogy, you can only bowl to whoever the opposition send in to bat. The only way to make peace is to somehow negotiate with Hamas.

 

At the time of writing, a ceasefire has been declared in Gaza. Over 1000 Palestinians have been killed, including 350 children. Israel and its supporters maintain that the firing of rockets into Gaza is justified, after Hamas fired rockets into Israel, and that most of those killed are Hamas operatives. But you cannot fire rockets into an area the size of the Isle of Wight with a population of 1.5 million and then be surprised that the your killing of innocent civilians is condemned worldwide. Peace in the Middle East is increasingly elusive, and I am sure that many will think I am a fruitcake for even thinking you can negotiate with Hamas. One thing is for certain: rockets are not the answer.

 
Cory

I don’t normally watch Question Time, but I caught the last few minutes before This Week today. In it a member of the audience said that the Tories would cut public spending, and how was this going to make him (an employee of the Ministry of Justice) do his job properly, what with all the full prisons and that.

In reply, Liam Fox, the Tory representative on the panel, said that the Tories “would not cut public spending. We would just let public spending rise slower than the growth of the economy.”

What is that, if not a cut in public spending, in real terms?

Cory

I know, another post about Labour list. Please humour me, but this is truly wonderful. It’s the same cotent, but no moderated comments and a much better design. There is hope after all for Labour blogging!

Cory

Update: This may be even more hilarious.

I’m too preoccupied with essays at the moment to do any lengthy blogging, I’m afraid. But here are a couple of things you should read. One is essential, the other is so you can have a giggle.

First up, read Lasantha Wickrematunga’s piece on CiF now. Don’t do anything else. Just read it. All. NOW.

It was good, wasn’t it? A great reminder that a) Britain is NOT, yet, in any way shape or form a police state; and b) That it’s worth fighting to keep it that way.

Of course, it’s also more than that. It’s the spookily prophetic voice from beyond the grave of a principled and courageous man. Hopefully the newspaper he helped found will live on.

Secondly, somebody writing on the Daily Telegraph advocates a return to the Gold Standard. Nope, seriously. It’s so funny it’s tragic….

Cory

You remember Labour List, of which I blogged yesterday? I logged on today just to see how it was going, and the front story on what calls itself “Labour’s biggest independent grassroots e-network” is an uncritical cut-and-paste job of an article written by…………..Gordon Brown.

Yup. That’s right.

Maybe I missed something, and Brown resigned as Labour leader and has returned to the grass roots. Independence my big toe. Draper seems to mean well, but seems to be well-meaning but crap, another New Labour tradition exhibited by figures such as Harriet Harman.

Still no posts from Piers Morgan though. Maybe there is a God, after all.

Cory

In the UK, the Conservative Party is winning the battle of the blogs, at least in terms of readership. On Wikio’s list Iain Dale, Guido Faukes and Conservative Home are the top three ranked sites. Liberal Conspiracy was formed in 2007 and has been a success, as a forum for those on the Left to discuss issues, find new blogs and organise campaigns. It’s currently at number four on wikio’s list, which is deservedly high, and I always visit it everyday.

LibCon is not, however, a pro-New Labour blog. True, it has Labour members who blog for it, but also Liberal Democrats, Greens, and those of no fixed party. It is an invaluable meeting point for all of ‘us’ on the Left. There is therefore a vacuum of pro-Labour blogs. According to wikio Labour Home is the highest-ranked pro-Labour blog, which is a jumbled, unattractive-looking mess. I can’t imagine it gets a great deal of readership outside the party faithful, nor is that influential on the party leadership in the same way Conservative Home can be.

In this spirit, bag-carrier-turned-therapist Derek Draper has launched Labour List, of which he is the editor, which hopes to be the space for Labour members to turn to. The project seems to have been in the offing for a while now, judging from Sunny Handal’s post here and Derek’s article for the Mail on Sunday, where he writes that Douglas Alexander offered him some work in the run up to the election that never was in autumn 2007.

I can’t say I’m overly impressed at first glance. The picture I got when I clicked on the site at first was one of Gordon Brown with Alan Milburn, with Brown smiling like a man who’s just remembered he has left the gas on. The layout looks OK at the top, but at the bottom articles seem to jumble into a heap, withnoformattingandnoparagraphssoit’sjustoneblockoftextandit’sbloodyhardtoread. (sic). An analysis of the site here suggests that it’s not based on a blogging format like wordpress, where people can just log on and post articles, so everything may have to go through Draper. Not a bad thing in itself, but the beauty about blogging is the speed you can go from idea to finished article.

As Iain Dale points out, ‘Draper has three problems - funding, independence and contributors’. The website needs labourites who will be allowed to be critical of the party if they want to be, and write attractively, informatively and engagingly. Look down the left hand side of Labour List and see who’s contributing: Peter Mandelson (hmmm…) Charlie Whelan (aaahhh…) Alan Milburn (oh!) and then you see the name of one certain Piers Morgan, and you throw your computer against the wall, and start weeping at the thought that civilisation has come to this.

Labour is not going to win the blog wars with Piers Morgan.

If you have summoned up the will to carry on, you’ll find Tristam Hunt and Ken Livingstone, the latter of whom Draper has mentioned as proof the blog will be independent of the Labour leadership. In his reply to Iain’s three problems here, Draper writes on the subject of independence ‘time will tell’. Which isn’t the equivocal drum-beating of independence I was hoping for. Draper is the editor, surely if he wants it to be independent it can and will be independent. Time is not and should not be an issue. On a happier note, he mentions that anyone who wants to write for the site can just e-mail him. If you fancy it, give it a spin.

On the subject of newer writers, he mentions one Sarah Mulholland, who comes in for a bit of a savaging from the Devil’s Kitchen. He can be a bit hit and miss, but he is worth reading on Labour List. On his advice, I read her article, which you can find here. Despite asking nine questions, by my count, about top-up fees, she does not actually answer one of them. I want to be charitable, and say that it’s nice a student politician can say some positive things about top-up fees in an even-handed fashion. But on a website like Labour List, I want a point of view. Something to engage with, to challenge or defend.  The article gives nothing of the sort, it’s like trying to have an argument in an empty room.

It’s early days, and I’m sure both Sarah Mulholland and Labour List will improve with time. I want a reason or two to renew my Labour membership. The official launch is on February 12th 2009, so we should reserve proper judgement until then at least.

Cory

I blogged earlier about having to choose between Neil Clark and Melanie Phillips. Thankfully there is a choice - Created In Birmingham. It looks like a very interesting site about culture from my adopted city. But more importantly - it isn’t a blog run by a raving lunatic. So vote for them now. Please.

Cory

It’s nearly midnight, and I ought to be concentrating on essays (or sleeping to give me energy to concentrate on essays tomorrow). But I feel restless, and there are a few things I need to get out of my system. This is a rather personal post. I don’t usually blog about myself, usually just my opinions, because I am sure that a blog about me would be very boring for my reader(s). This is about a wider topic, but it has a very direct relevance to me. So let’s blog.

I have very few friends who blog. Adam, who originally started this blog with me in 2006 (time has flown!) no longer blogs, but is at the Sunday Times, doing well for himself. As far as I know he has not written anything on the internet for about a year now, but if you haven’t read his interview with an Iraqi in exile do so. I had the privilege to edit the article for Redbrick, and in my three-and-a-bit years of involvement with them, I think that’s the best article I’ve seen. Apart from the ones I write, obviously. Luke, who blogged here for a bit, now blogs on the cowfield regularly. Emmi and Danielle are about the only two other friends who regularly blog.

That is, apart from Mike. I ought to have given his blog more shout outs than I do; my excuses are that he writes about stuff I don’t know much about, and I haven’t blogged a lot recently. However, he has blogged about something close to my heart this time, and it gives me the chance to talk of a hot topic in my house at the moment: Just what the hell are we going to do after university?

Mike is trying to find work as a freelance writer, and is making fantastic progress considering he started from scratch in about September. You can see more details of what he’s done from his blog. During this, he was also trying to find work of the steadier, administrative variety, and being shafted by the welfare system. I will leave the welfare system for another day, but let’s now turn to his views on graduate internships. Mike was interviewed by a chap from the Sunday Times about the policy announcement that unemployed graduates may be given paid internships of three months. This is what he had to say in the article:

Mike Leader, who graduated in English from Birmingham University last summer, is still unemployed despite heading to London in search of a job.

“I applied for a few jobs in August and September but I didn’t hear back from any of those,” said Leader. “Then I decided to go to the Jobcentre and apply for work there. I don’t think I’ve heard back from any job I’ve applied for there.”

He has even struggled to claim benefits amid the bureaucratic maze of Gordon Brown’s welfare system. “I’m living with someone who has managed to get a part-time job in a coffee shop so I was turned down,” he explained.

Despite his degree, Leader remains unemployed. And, yes, his girlfriend, the coffee-shop worker, is also overqualified for her job: she is a graduate, too.

In his blog about the article Mike writes that he is unhappy at being used as an anti-New Labour mouthpiece. Which is definately fair comment - it isn’t “Gordon Brown’s welfare system”. It’s an institution - how can institutions be personalised? - but I’d rather look at what graduates are going to do.

I came back to the house in Birmingham this weekend, because term begins on Monday, and met my four housemates for the first time in a month. We are all final years in one way or another; there are two fourth-year students and three third-year students, and we are all graduating in 2009. A question we all asked each other was, “What do you want to do after uni?” and none of us knew the answer.

It would, of course, be different if any of us were doing more career-based degrees. We are all arts students, and took history in one form or another. One housemate is doing History and Geography, another History and Russian, two Medieval English and History, and I am doing a Masters in Medieval History. With degrees such as law, or medicine, there is a nice, simple, straightforward career path to employment, money and happiness.

Or perhaps not. 4000 junior doctors did not find a job last year, which must be a real blow after a five year degree. In The Gods That Failed, an entertaining, prophetic and increasingly relevant look at why everything has gone kaput in the last twelve months, one of the best chapters was about the current attack on the middle-class professions. Authors Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson detail how, private firms are intruding on traditional middle-class occupations: the bank manager (long dead in the Captain Mainwaring form), the solicitor, the GP and the sub-postmaster. Laws have been passed allowing private firms such as Tesco to offer legal services to customers, undercutting solicitors. Private companies are now also allowed to run GP services, whilst the closing of thousands of post offices threatens the existence of the sub-postmaster and postmistress, once ‘part of the very backbone of middle-class respectability’. It is another example of Britain’s current preoccupation with cutting costs and introducing private firms into running anything, rather than having friendly, labour-intensive, face-to-face, personalised service.

Therefore even those with a career-orientated degree are having employment problems. What are arts students going to do? Every arts student must have had a similar conversation to one I had with someone mum and I played bridge against last week:

Them: “So what are you doing at university?”
Me: “I’m doing a Master’s. In Medieval History.”
Them: “Oh right. (pause). So what can you do with that?”

To which the correct answer is, “Anything, you silly bint.” An arts degree is very flexible. But you still have the problem of wondering what to do with it. Obviously, for employers the skills one learns reading an arts subject are what makes arts students employable. Which is why it’s a bit worrying when the government talks of addressing the problem of long-term unemployed - which will include graduates like Mike and another potential 400 000 graduates entering the job market this summer - by more training. This means that either graduates aren’t learning enough skills in their degrees, or they are not learning the right skills. Neither prospect is a particularly happy one. The prospect of three-month internships with companies such as Barclays or Microscoft - who according to the article have signed up to the scheme - would be a happy one, but Mike hits the nail on the head here:

Contemplating his unemployment prospects, Leader also welcomed the idea of internships, but he, too, pointed out one simple drawback. “The bar will be raised for everyone,” he said. “When you go for a job, you’ll be up against people who have had three months’ internship.”

Put simply, there are too many graduates for not enough jobs. Labour’s target for 50% of youngster’s to attend university is illogical and artificially high. Now companies are scaling back on graduate schemes. A friend who was in my class last year secured a graduate scheme placement, but the company he was due to work for closed its scheme down, so he lost his job before he’d even started. As compensation he was paid £400; which hardly makes up for the loss of employment. I hear stories of ‘friends of friends’, who intern with a company, to be told that although they are very good workers, they are no longer taking any new staff on at present, and no position can be found for them. Other companies a friends’ fathers work for are putting a freeze on recruitment, and if any staff leave the remaining staff will just have to work more. Which is a ridiculous situation. There’s plenty of stuff to do, but no money for staff. This is just anecdotal evidence, but there is a whole trough of anecdotal evidence alongside official figures of rising unemployment coupled with falling demand for jobs.

Yet it’s not as if there is nothing to do. There are plenty of shabby-looking buildings, towns, roads, railways etc etc that need regenerating. It’s hard to argue with Nick Clegg’s proposal to create a huge green energy revolution which would create jobs whilst at the same time reducing fuel bills. While they’re at it, they can improve the green credentials of the Houses of Parliament itself, which apparently have a bigger carbon footprint than Kenya. Surely the tragic business of Baby P and the chronically overworked social workers show that we need more social workers? (although I admit that selling this line might be difficult) Services that care for the elderly, such as the Admiral Nurses, and the mental health charity Mind are always needing more money and more staff.

Except there is no money to pay for any of this, beause the world economy has gone down the sink. Which is what happens when you borrow in order to spend, and keep doing that until nobody will give you any more money.

So, the big question I know you’re asking is: what are you going to do, Cory? Well, thanks for asking. I have applied for a graduate journalism scheme with Reuters, and if I got that, it would be absolutely amazing. It’s probably my dream job at the moment, I just want to write, and there’s no better place to start. Possibly do a PhD, but what with the Olympics and everything the Department of Culture, Media and Sport haven’t got much money left to fund history doctorates. I want to pursue a career in journalism as far as I can go, then I will start looking for other things. Hopefully I won’t end up an unemployed student by the summer. The prospects for us, the first students to graduate in a recession for over a decade, are getting bleaker by the month.

Cory