The Problem With Military Academies

Odds are you know, by now, that Labour has announced its big policy to counter the coalition’s free schools project. It’s received plenty of attention, much of it negative, so much so that ResPublica founder Phillip Blond has had to defend the research in the Guardian this afternoon.

The policy is dangerous and misguided.

The ResPublica report (found here) isn’t that long, and I read it this afternoon. I’ll try to break it down as much as possible.

The foreword contains the following quote:

This proposal seeks to address the failure of this great nation’s Social Contract between those who have and those who have not, it seeks to make small gains against the overwhelming tide of indifference and it seeks to reinforces [sic] that which works… This proposal is about continued public service, an approach not alien to the Armed Forces and attends to a clear and present social danger which if left will challenge the very fabric of civil society.

The purpose of the report is clear. These military academies are for poor kids – the introduction suggests:

The schools should be set up in each of the ten RFCA regions in England and Wales and located in those regions in areas with the greatest concentration of young people who are NEET (not in employment, education or training) or at risk of becoming NEET.

The justification for this focus is the riots that occurred in England in 2011. Again, quoting from the introduction:

Our proposal for a new model of schooling offers one policy solution to the social ills that became manifest at the time of the riots. Looking at the educational background of the young people who took part in the riots, two-thirds were classed as having some form of special educational need (compared to 21% for the national average); more than a third had been excluded from school during 2009-10.

Those people who took part in the riots, in other words, were not served well under the current education system. I recently went through that same system, and it is one that rewards rote-learning, discourages creative thinking and is, for the most part, dictatorial rather than interactive. One of my secondary school teachers asked our class (rhetorically, of course), “Look, do you want to learn about the subject, or do you want to pass the exam?” as though it was a simple binary choice. Introducing more discipline and longer school days with “obligatory extra-curricular hours [for] sporting and community activities” will not help kids already struggling.  I don’t agree with everything in this RSA lecture from Sir Ken Robinson, but it raises very interesting points. The ResPublica green paper does home in on a very real problem, namely that “tens of thousands of our young people are becoming hopelessly trapped by the lack of opportunity” – the problem for the educational establishment is that teenagers know this. Sir Ken notes,

When we [his generation] went to school, we were kept there with a story, which was that if you worked hard and did well… you would have a job.”

This is no longer the case. With youth unemployment in the UK above 20% this March (and worse in other parts of Europe, particularly the PIIGS countries), young people have realised that their future is bleak whether they try hard in school or not. One word crops up throughout the report – “aspiration.” It makes 8 appearances in the short 15 page document, but seems to restrict the aspirations of working class kids to joining the army, or at least subscribing to some vaguely defined “military ethos.”

The pivotal logical basis of the report is found across pages 7 and 8.

We believe that the riots were an expression of an economic, educational and cultural failure: the failure of an excessively unequal society, riddled with asset poverty and debt serfdom, welfare dependency and growing youth unemployment… In many ways, the riots were a ‘pay-off’ of a rentier state that has concentrated wealth and stripped millions of ordinary Britons of their capital, denying them a path to assets, ownership and trade. The share of liquid wealth for the bottom 50% of the population had fallen to 1% in 2003, eroding the path to prosperity for those at the bottom. Not surprisingly given these shocking figures, an O.E.C.D. survey in 2010 found that Britain has the highest correlation between parental income and outcomes for children, and therefore the lowest rate of social mobility in the developed world.

Anyone who’s ever played Monopoly can tell you that this is what happens when you allow rentiers to accumulate wealth unchecked. The problem, then, is Capitalism. Or, to use another term, it’s greed. Challenging this will see a change – not producing teenagers with “high levels of respect for authority” or “heightened aspirations”, whatever those may be.

General Lord Dannatt, former head of the army, asked recently, “given that the military has the unique opportunity to educate its own into the importance of a proper moral understanding – then perhaps the military community may have a wider contribution that it can make to the Nation?” – What proper moral understanding is this? What particular morals dictate the conduct of soldiers? None are suggested in the paper. The word “ethos” also appears 8 times in the report, but no concrete claims are made about this mythical ethos of the armed forces which can somehow benefit wider society.

What do the reforms boil down to? Well, basically, they say what teenagers need is discipline (not choice or actual meaningful prospects), a “military ethos” (which could mean quite literally anything you want it to) and that joining the armed forces is something poor kids should “aspire” to – they should look forward to being sent to die grisly deaths in the desert for rich people back home to make fistfuls of dollars.

This isn’t a vision for the future, it’s a fascist nightmare, and a policy Labour should never have touched with a bargepole.

Jon’s Citizenship Test

It turns out Theresa May is looking to change the test immigrants have to take to become British citizens.

Now, leaving aside the problematic aspect of defining a nation (or indeed any concept at once as fluid and difficult to define as a nation, let alone a millenia-old inhabited island that has in the last 100 years gone from proclaiming its ownership of a third of the world’s land mass to Scotland demanding a divorce) in a 45-minute test, I thought I’d help her out with some ideas for questions.

1. Name a British tradition that other nations have adopted and that has stood the test of time.

Example of an acceptable answer: ‘The concentration camp’ – while similar camps were used beforehand, notably in our proud American friends’ subjugation of the Native American people, the concentration camp was first used systematically during the Second Boer War, along with other interesting initiatives like poisoning water sources, to teach those bloody Boers a lesson in good, old-fashioned British freedom. During the war, over 26,000 women and children died in these camps!

2. What is the first verse of the national anthem?

Acceptable answer: ‘Why can’t we just have bloody Jerusalem?’ – in a recent survey, 94% of respondents gave this answer. 92% followed this with, “It’s political correctness gone mad!” before skulking off.

3. Quote any line from Hamlet’s famous speech.

Acceptable answer: ‘A cigar! A cigar! My kingdom for a cigar!’

4. Where does the Queen live?

Acceptable answer: ‘On the back of a £20 note, or on a fifty pence piece or whatever. Fuck her, she’s fucking German.’ Again, this was the overwhelming response from a recent survey.

5. (Multiple choice) When someone barges in front of you in a queue, the correct response is:

a) “Excuse me, this is a queue. Please take position at the back, as you have arrived later than other memebers of the queue.”

b) Tut, moan and roll your eyes, and sigh constantly, all the while shaking your head for the benefit of those behind you.

c) Demand to speak to an authority figure, threaten to call the police and generally lose your fucking shit.

Which answer did you choose? If you chose b), well done. You can stay. If you chose a), what are you, French? How rude. If you chose c), the country you’re looking for is called the United States. It can be reached via Heathrow Airport.

Gaspar Tamas on the Failure of Liberal Democracy

Hungarian philosopher Gaspar Tamas gave a talk at the Munk Institute last September entitled, ‘The Failure of Liberal Democracy’. Thankfully, this was one of the rare occasions when the content of the talk lived up to its attention-grabbing title. In the context of the Welfare Reform Bill, the Spartacus Report and widespread austerity, as well as new anti-immigration rhetoric straight from Ministers’ own mouths, what he has to say struck me as extremely relevant.

Keynesianism has been killed dead by international bond markets, and raising overall taxation is way off the coalition’s radar, so, at least in the short-term, we are faced with a public purse that is shrinking, and will continue to shrink. This is the ideological context of the Welfare Reform Bill, and plenty of other legislation.

At the 25-minute mark on the linked video, he says this:

Governments have to decide (and [this] is the great moral problem of the age) a very simple and very basic thing – who do contemporary governments take responsibility for? In other words, who will live and who will die? Social existence is on its way out. Governments will decide who to help (and in contemporary terms, the number of these people has to be small, because governments don’t have enough resources in this crisis… they don’t have the will either). Therefore people in power have to decide, ‘Shall we continue, in this difficult position, when people who are working and their real wages are sinking, and when all the institutions we need, from hospitals to schools, are in a difficult situation; Do we finance immigrants? Do we finance the unemployable? Do we finance all the unpopular minorities? The ill? The lame? The old?

If you are reading this and are horrified, good. The problem is, these questions ARE being asked, at the highest levels of government, across the Western world. The great god Austerity demands a sacrifice, and who ends up on the altar is the question, not whether anyone does.

At a time when we are seeing disabled people stripped of their benefits and benefits caps being put in place, supposedly to alter the “lifestyle choices” people make, these decisions are being made by the coalition. It is clear that they don’t believe that in a time of restricted resources, one is morally obliged to provide for the sick and dying. Tamas understands that the welfare state as we know it is not a byproduct of capitalism but a deliberate construction of society in the face of capitalism, and one that it is crumbling fast.

“In a usual [or orthodox] capitalist society, there are two genuine and legitimate sources of income – Labour and Capital. All the rest has always been… threatened, but it didn’t have the importance it has today, when the majority is relegated to… one kind of assistance or another. [This] splits society in a… biopolitical way, [between] the people who are still working or still have capital… people who can help themselves in one way or one another (and even that involves skills and getting money out of the state), [and those who cannot help themselves in this sense].

This is already the case in the UK. Top-up benefits and payments such as child benefit are what keeps low-paid workers above the poverty line. State assistance, in other words, even for working people. And the number of state-subsidised working people is growing. To make work pay, and with inflation on the rise, increasing numbers of working people are relying on the state to help with their living costs, and with jobs moving abroad and advances in technology, the situation is unlikely to improve in the future.

In this environment of scarce resources (in which the resources are both jobs and state support in the absence of a job, or in the case of low pay), is it any surprise to find hatred towards those seen as not contributing or pulling their weight? It is the ugly side of the “hard-working taxpayer” rhetoric, when those seen as a drain on the system are vilified and attacked. A study for Scope by ComRes in May 2011 found that “more than half (56%) of disabled people say they have experienced hostility, aggression or violence from a stranger because of their condition or impairment” and that “more than a third (37%) said people’s attitudes towards them have got worse over the past year” (ie the first year of coalition government).

There is also a fundamental public misunderstanding of benefits such as DLA, which are assessed independently of whether the claimant is working or not. DLA is supposed to help people cope with the increased costs of getting around so that they lead active and fulfilling lives, and many “hard-working taxpayers” also claim DLA.

Add to this the damning select committee report which called Atos Healthcare’s Work Capability Assessment used to assess Employment and Support Allowance “flawed” with a “high proportion of inaccurate assessments”, and notes that “people are suspicious that the Government’s only objective is to save money.”

From the Welfare Reform Bill itself, I give you this passage regarding ESA:

“Many of us feel that a time limit on ESA needs to be justified on the basis that most people can expect to be back in work before it expires. The Minister has suggested that he would favour the shortest period he can get away with.”

This, we now know, has been set at 12 months. If you haven’t found a job by then, tough. Apparently, you only deserved that support on the understanding that it would help you find a job, and if you fail to do so, that’s it for you. This is the age we live in, when you don’t automatically qualify for government support because you’re a person who needs that help.

Tamas’ closing statements are chilling, and a reminder that this new norm which is developing in the corridors of power and in society at large is one which threatens fundamental liberal ideas of equality and basic human rights.

We are in a situation of passive revolution… Capitalism itself is operating the breakup that shows to us all that the old foundations are broken… Society is being broken up racially; according to health; according to age (and these are very fundamental, basic determinations in people’s lives). If people who are not producing are considered to be second rate citizens for whatever reason, well then we are in a very bad way, and there’s no reason to believe [in the morality of the state/society], and so whoever would like to go against this must address, with the greatest intellectual determination, the question whether he or she still believes in the fundamental equality and the common substance of humankind.”

Male Sexuality and Agency

Ally Fogg has a thoughtful and thought-provoking article on CiF today, which asks the question, “Why are we afraid of male sexuality?” To me, the main part of the answer is one of agency, ie one’s personal control over one’s actions and oneself.

He mentions the Bailey Review, which I’ve analysed here before (including reference to its anti-feminist, socially conservative standpoint), and so I won’t go over again. Safe to say, the Bailey Review simply spouts the usual moral panic and funnels the fears of parents terrified of their children’s (and especially their daughters’) sexuality.

He asks whether exposure to porn from a young age is causing problems with body-image and self esteem, and points to trends that support the notion that all is not well with the social mass that is teenage boys. Then, from my perspective, he hits on the crux of the matter:

At the other end of the age range, sexually active older women are now widely eroticised (albeit often with a rather misogynistic undertone) as “cougars” or (forgive me) “Milfs” while their male equivalents are disparaged as dirty old men.

Why is this? For me, it is because as a society we still struggle to give women sexual agency. Think about the ubiquitous term, ‘MILF’. Mother I’d Like to Fuck. I’d like to fuck. I. Fuck. It’s passive, whereas the lecherous randy old goats are active. In this sense, the fairly recent adoption of the ‘cougar’ term represents a step forward in acknowledging female agency.

This is also why paternalistic misogyny (by which I mean restricting women’s avenues of choice ‘for their own good’) is so dangerous, and why the Slutwalk movement is crucial to fighting all forms of misogyny. Women have sexual agency, can choose what to wear and who to fuck, and there’s fuck all else to be said, really.

When it comes to the point of the male “creep”, this utimately comes down to threat and power-relationships, and is a subtly different (but associated) point. He talks about men being seen as “pervs, fetishists and weirdos” for liking women who don’t conform to mainstream beauty ideals, but again I think this comes down to agency. It is implicitly supposed that men will act on this preference, while women are saved the labels because they’re not supposed to pursue sexual encounters.

I sound like I’m picking holes in the argument here, but I’m not. I agree with the central thrust of the article, even if I think the focus should be on something slightly different. It’s hard to disagree with much in the final two paragraphs.

All of these prejudices are rehearsed and reiterated by men and women alike, they reside in the intangible web of social norms, conventions and culture, but they can and must be challenged and changed. If we can begin to openly and joyously celebrate the positives to male sexuality, it might become easier for men to be happy and confident sexual partners, and in turn become better lovers, and sometimes better people.

Male sexuality is no less diverse, complex and wonderful than women’s or, for that matter, no more base, coarse and animalistic. Sure, most men might be slightly more likely to let our gaze linger on eye-catching curves, and slightly less likely to giggle about our lovers’ proclivities with our friends, but in the grand picture women and men are surprisingly similar, in this respect as in so many others. Women have been entirely justified in asking that we blokes respect their rights, autonomy and wishes, that we respect them as sexual beings. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for a little of the same in return.

The sooner we get to the point where female and male sexuality are afforded the same respect, the better. That’ll be fun.

(A big thank-you to mortari for linking the article in the first place, and to georgialewis76 for her help finding a link)

My Response to the Bailey Review

The Bailey Review, ‘Letting Children be Children – Report of an Independent Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood‘ was published today. The link there is to the downloadable review and its appendices, in PDF format. First, I must acknowledge my debt to Dr. Petra, whose post neatly summarises many of my concerns and highlights issues with the report.

The foreword (by Reg Bailey) says, “We live in a society that is changing at what is, for many, a bewildering rate.” The review is supposed to explore whether this change is damaging children’s childhood and altering detrimentally the experience of growing up. Judging whether the societal changes that so bewilder adults are similarly confusing for children is extremely difficult, and I recognise that the review has a very tough brief in this respect.

My primary fear before reading the report was that it would merely peddle moral panic, instead of analysing the data properly. There appears to be an element of moral panic in the data, with concerns of parents about, for example, the watershed in large font, while the stats show that only 9% of parents want the time of the watershed moved (pp. 28-9).

Page 42 of the report specifically mentions “bras (padded or not)” as a symptom of this increased sexualisation, along with a list of female clothing such as high heels, short skirts and bikinis, rolling this into the misguided concept that these types of clothing will somehow encourage paedophilia. This links further into victim-blaming in cases of rape and sexual assault. One questions whether this is about protecting young girls, or about perpetuating the fear of female sexuality and ownership thereof. After all, the report doesn’t mention the growing sexualisation of teenage boys in celebrity culture. Is imposing ‘moral standards’ on young girls actually in the interest of promoting the virgin/whore dichotomy of female sexuality, where a woman is either completely chaste or a ‘slut’. Seeing sexually unavailable young girls in ‘sexual’ clothing interferes with the narrative that women are either prudish and covered up or gagging for it, baring their flesh. Furthermore, the existence of bras for children is nothing new, as this advertisement from 1959 shows.

Page 43 of the report:

The parents who contributed to the Review clearly wanted their own children to have the space and time to grow and develop mentally, physically and emotionally as individuals, learning how to navigate the world at their own pace and in their own unique way. We found a commonly-held view among respondents that sexualisation accelerates that process in a way that parents do not like, and that some parents worry could be harmful.

How on earth can children be expected to “grow and develop as individuals”, when they interact with other children daily and form their expectations of what is acceptable and expected of them via this medium. From a young age, the influence of one’s peers is as important or more important than the influence of parents. That parents feel uncomfortable about this isn’t surprising, but I argue this is a fear we should not pander to if the price is isolating and imposing morality on children from afar. The emergence of teenagers in the 60s and 70s was protrayed as tearing apart the fabric of society, while now we all accept teenagers’ role as prominent consumers and ‘early-adopters’ of societal change.

Throughout the report, I got the sense that concerns were being overplayed, with consistent use of large font to display parents’ concerns, with related stats showing these were minority views given less prominence. Given that the report was written the chairman of Christian group Mothers’ Union, this doesn’t surprise me at all. The almost total focus on young girls as victims of sexualisation is another major flaw of the report. It reads as yet another brick in the wall of this Conservative-led government’s determination to shield young women from their own sexuality ‘for their own good’ – a charge led by Nadine Dorries and her bonkers cohort from the Conservative Christian Fellowship.

What the Hell is Europe?

This tweet, and this short blog response, have got me thinking about Europe, and what we mean when we talk about Europe. For me, when you say the word, I instinctively think of the EU. Some people, not so much. But how you define Europe affects the way you think, and so I’m just going to float some ideas which hopefully will get you thinking.

Europe as a continent/geographical area

This one is on shaky ground from the start, as the Eurasian land mass doesn’t have a particularly neat line between Europe and Asia. To the south-east, does Europe ‘stop’ at the Bosphorus? Are Turkey and Cyprus part of Europe? Slightly further afield, how do you deal with Russia, which spans a huge swathe of territory. What about Armenia? Azerbaijan? Looking north-west, is Iceland really part of Europe? There are no clear cut answers here.

Europe as a political-economic entity

Here, the EU is part of the equation – Europe is basically a group of capitalist democracies of various persuasions, and that’s about it. But past that, any further clarification is problematic. Are the Eurozone countries ‘more’ European than those outside? What about Switzerland and Norway, who remain outside the EU despite fitting the general ‘conditions’ outlined above? Even between similar countries, political and economic differences can be vast (eg France and the UK; Italy and Spain). Is Russia a ‘true’ democracy? Can any democracy claim it is a ‘true’ incarnation of that ideal?

Europe as values

Perhaps Europe is defined by values – a kind of ‘compassionate capitalism’ (though that term makes my Marxist blood boil), less brash and confrontational than that seen across the Atlantic in the US. But once more, there are problems. Using this definition, why restrict ‘Europeanness’ to a geographic area? Plenty of South American countries fit the mould. Why not allow them EU membership? (And yes, I am aware certain non-EU countries have observer status in various areas)

Europe as no-man’s-land

Across history, Europe has been a battlefield, both literally and politically. Throughout the Cold War, Europe was a political battlefield between communism and capitalism, even if the armed struggles were generally conducted elsewhere on the globe, where life was cheaper and infrastructure less important. Europe, where cultures clash and mix, where geopolitical conflicts are decided. But this has faults, too. The Cold War was global, even if the decisive final stroke fell in Eastern Europe, and advances in technology and communication have made the world smaller, reducing Europe’s strategic importance.

What do you think? Do you think of Europe in any of the ways mentioned above? Is Europe impossible to define without clarifying the scope of the question? Do you think of Europe in a completely different sense?

At the end of all this, I’m certainly no closer to answering the question in the title. What the hell is Europe?

Why Rich Santos Prefers Inexperienced Women

I was alerted to this piece of tripe by this tweet earlier, having already had my Despair Quota for the day filled by the news that Leona Lewis had been voted greatest female Londoner of the last century.

"The sexiest sex to sex ater sex!"

And so now I’m pissed off. Because a significant percentage of women take what they read in rags like Marie Claire (or whatever other 90 page excuse-to-advertise-shampoo they read) quite seriously. So that means women will read Mr. Santos’ article and think, “Ah, right – in my quest for a mate, I must cover up any sign of being a powerful, confident individual and instead act as though I’ve lived under a rock all my life and the man I pursue is my gateway to a fulfilling life. After all, that’s what he wants.”

These magazines have an extraordinary degree of control over some women’s attitudes to the opposite sex and themselves.

 

Time to break down why the bastard is a bastard…

.

.

• “Making someone bad is fulfilling and fun.”

A very basic control issue – he needs to feel as though he’s altering the person he’s with, because that is symbolic of his power over her. She’s becoming what he wants her to be, not what she was before, and this is an assertion of phallic power – the power to affect behaviour and attitudes.

• “We also assume that a bad girl is not looking for anything too serious.”

We do? This is shocking stereotyping and completely off again. “Bad girls”, by which he seems to mean, “any woman not afraid to show a shred of personality” are attractive because “we” know they’re not just looking to invest their self-worth in something other than themselves. This childish fear of a partner showing their true self is a sign of insecurity in the highest degree – once again Rich doesn’t want to consider the threat of the Other’s desires, which is part and parcel of growing into a half-functional adult. It’s a false conclusion drawn from the faulty reasoning that:

a) The Other loves/wants/desires things other than Me, hence

b) The Other does not love/want/desire Me.

• “This is my biggest issue. I don’t do well with intimidating women.”

Or assertive women. Or women who don’t bow to your every whim. Apparently, “most guys… don’t want to be in bed with a girl who knows more than they do.” What the fuck? That kind of insecurity in the bedroom is symptomatic of something much deeper. This is the kind of guy who actually likes the missionary position, because he thinks it means he’s doing all the work and so is solely responsible for the results. He’s probably the kind of guy who doesn’t like going down on girls because “there’s no point” or “it’s yucky”.

• “I’m not sure if anyone likes promiscuity.”

I’m pretty sure a lot of people like promiscuity. It would go a long way to explaining why a lot of people are promiscuous, wouldn’t it? It’s also about time we ditched the tired cliché that all men are dirty dogs and women have to try to tame them. Somehow a promiscuous man is just acting on desires, while a promiscuous woman is doing something against her nature.

• “Guys Have Control Issues”

No mate, you have control issues. This isn’t something carried on the Y chromosome. It’s something taught to young males by arseholes like you, who try to portray women as something to be kept in hand and moulded to a vision of what you want (that is, devoid of personality and individualism, a mere extension of self). This brings us full-circle to the assertion of Phallus via control over a woman.

Not all men are like the (most likely paid) author of that diabolical article. Not all men are insecure in the way he is. Not all men balk at the thought of being with a woman who is more intelligent or more confident than he is. Don’t cover up parts of yourself to make guys like Rich Santos like you. Because they’re arseholes.

But not just because they’re arseholes.

Because killing off part of yourself for another is a tragedy.

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

What follows is a comprehensive list of the reasons The Smiths’ There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is the finest love song ever penned. For the purposes of reading this post, it’s probably best you listen to it, especially if you’ve lived under a rock since 1980 and have never heard the song.

1. It’s not about the other person. Perhaps that’s because Morrissey is too self-centred to bother writing about anyone else, but even if that is the case, it doesn’t matter. When you think about being in love, it’s never about the other person. It’s about how they make you feel. “Falling in love” only takes a second, but “being in love” is about making yourself loved by them. Relationships are just long, protracted attempts by both parties to make themselves more valuable to the other than their partner is to them, so the partner feels obliged to try even harder. Emotional blackmail and guilt are the very deepest foundations of true love.

2. The opening line is, “Take me out tonight, where there’s music and there’s people and they live in the light.” Morrissey understands that loving someone is a way to make the rest of the world more palatable. I’m fairly certain I was born a total misanthrope but I’m not arrogant enough to believe I’m unique in this respect. Love is right up there with Religion in the “lies we tell ourselves to make life taste better” stakes. Love is redemption, sex is communion, your partner the Messiah.

3. The “light that never goes out” echoes similar themes. Love is eternal and unchanging, and this is supposed to be comforting. At the same time, the chorus references mortality – “to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die”. No-one wants to die alone, because that’s the single thing more depressing than living alone. Love is the antidote to loneliness. And it makes death easier to face, so much so that getting flattened by a ten-ton truck can be “heavenly”.

4. The song’s protagonist reminds us he has no home, which signifies that he has given himself over completely to his partner. This is also what being in love is about. It’s about being reliant on someone else to an extent we would usually find disconcerting. It’s about being homeless, naked, at the mercy of another. This is beautiful precisely because it’s so fucking scary, but that doesn’t lessen the inherent terror of abandoning self-reliance.

5. “In the darkened underpass, I thought ‘Oh God, my chance has come at last!’ but then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn’t ask.” This fear is the fear of The Real. The “thrill of the chase” is often the most exciting part of a relationship because so much is unknown, so much is fantasy. Nothing can live up to these fantasies we construct, which is why the first time two people have sex is usually more of a relief than anything euphoric or life-affirming. Then again, maybe that’s just me. It would explain why millions go for the “guy meets girl, guy pursues girl, guy finally fucks girl after many tribulations” film genre while I can’t get my head around it. When I lost my virginity to the only person I’ve ever loved (at least in the Hollywood/Disneyfied, Happily-Ever-After sense) it didn’t change my life. It was just, “Oh right, there you go. Another box ticked.” Maybe that’s just a sign I should stop treating my life like an enormous fucking Amazon wishlist.

There you have it. A few reasons There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is the best love song ever. I’m not even sure I believe it myself, but it is a wonderful little framing point. Hopefully this whole mini-essay wasn’t too downright drab and depressing in tone. As always, your opinions are welcome. I’m more than happy to ignore your point entirely engage in some constructive (or even destructive) debate.

Joining Labour: A Brief Retrospective

I’m Jon Lintern, and I joined Labour on October 22nd, 2010. This is a brief retrospective of my first 3 months as a Labour Party member (and I must say it’s flown by).

Firstly, why did I join?

Well, largely for the reasons outlined in my earlier musings – I felt Ed Miliband was worth a shot, and wanted to be part of his fight against the ConDem coalition that is ruining millions of lives. I am a former Lib Dem, I am under 25 – I am one of the ‘New Generation’ you’ve heard him speak of. They’re not a soundbyte or a hollow concept – they’re real people joining Labour to fight against Clegg and Cameron’s wrecking-ball politics.

So am I still, at heart, a revolutionary socialist?

The answer’s still yes. It’s a case of priorities – I feel I can be more useful over the next four and a half years as part of the Labour Party, and this has to be my priority at a time when I see other young people and family members having their future jeopardised by economic fundamentalism.

Does this mean I like Blairites now?

No! But I’m more than willing to co-operate with them because they’re still 10 times better than Tories. Alan Johnson’s appointment as Shadow Chancellor still makes me feel ill whenever I think about it, and about Ed Balls’ wonderful economic narrative going to waste. Johnson won’t be there past Summer 2011, take my word for it.

Is the Labour Left relevant?

I think this depends largely on your definition of relevant – I have to believe that Labour can ‘come home’ to the left, even if it’s kicking and screaming. I’m not happy for people to vote for Labour in the absence of anything better, I want people to be inspired by our policies, motivated by our local and national leaders and become positively involved in politics.

What part can I play?

Right now, I’m a bit busy finishing off a degree, so I haven’t been able to make it up to Oldham East & Saddleworth to bang on doors and scare people into voting Labour. I doubt I’ll be able to do too much gallavanting of this kind for a few months. Once I’ve graduated though? Hello income, (hopefully) and hello doing a bit of gallavanting to help make those Tories sweat. We’ve got time on our side – there’s probably not going to be a snap election. The plan going forward has to be:

1. Win the battle for the economic narrative

2. Harness anger against the cuts and direct it towards the Conservative Party above all else – they are the ones driving these dangerous policies

3. Make Labour appeal to its left-wing base and a public sector that the coalition’s declared war on

4. Win the local battles (with either Conservatives or Lib Dems) by getting out on the street, knocking on doors and letting people know what we stand FOR, not just what we stand against

That’s my quick Labour retro-trip over, with a few of those forward-looking points to be expanded on in the coming months/years.

Postmodernism and Beyond Continued – Should We Ask For Directions?

The time has come to follow up Thursday’s foray into post-postmodernism, this time with actual reference to Lady Gaga’s central place within my own thought on the matter. She is central to it because she is the biggest figure in global mainstream culture at the moment, and not just in music. Her impact reaches far beyond the charts, out into the mass consumer culture that epitomises the age.

Young women now go on themed “Lady Gaga” fancy dress nights, her style is that iconic, and tabloid gossip pages can’t get enough snaps of her stumbling around parties in outlandish garb. But despite all this, I still can’t decide if she represents the industry’s control of ordinary people (ie she is an iconic puppet), or whether she has become too big for the industry to control (ie she is a ‘fame monster’ that has broken loose).

If she is the former, then she represents the pinnacle of postmodernism, in a line of descent that reaches back through Madonna to Marilyn Monroe, but with a twist. Monroe will inevitably be seen as a victim of fame, whether or not this is true. Madonna, for her part, has always been in bed with the labels, etc. even when she was being ‘edgy’ or ‘controversial’.

I’m reminded at this point of Michael Ignatieff’s quote on Madonna:

“I don’t mind that I see her face on every magazine cover; I certainly don’t mind that she is obscene; I don’t even mind that she can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t act and is nonetheless the most famous person on the planet. What I can’t stand about Madonna is that she thinks she’s an artist.”

Now, has Madonna’s career proven Ignatieff wrong? Some would say so, I’m sure. For myself, I don’t know, and I don’t care – the important distinction I would like to make is that I don’t believe Gaga herself has any such delusions about being an ‘artist’ in the classic sense. She is undoubtedly very creative, and her personality is frighteningly powerful, but even she acknowledges that the music she makes is not pushing boundaries or forging a new paradigm within pop. Indeed, good pop is not supposed to do any of these things. It is supposed to sound good on the radio. She’s called it “soulless electronic pop” herself. Gaga echoes Madonna with her use of imagery and the way she courts controversial topics, but has to some extent desexualised affairs – Madonna had to maintain her sex appeal, but Gaga’s main selling points are her personality, style and shock factor.

I’ve read this post this morning and it seems to echo some of the things I’ve been looking at – its discussion of Altermodernism in particular – and while I haven’t reached exactly the same conclusions as the author of that blog, it makes plenty of sense. I don’t even agree that Gaga can claim to represent an ‘Altermodern messiah’, but I do agree that she has taken mainstream norms, which want their popstars “sexy” (cf. Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, etc) and smashed them apart. Madonna was an edgy popstar, while Gaga exists outside pop’s bosom, but nevertheless feeds on the industry.

Even if Gaga herself represents the death of postmodernism, society’s reaction to her has not caught up. She is not a reaction against standardisation or commercialisation, because people’s reaction to her has been to copy her style, and to shove fistfuls of money into the pockets of record labels. She cannot kill the industry from the inside, because her actions keep it in business. I would definitely not go so far as to compare her lyrics to Hemingway. She has subverted the media machine, and used it to her advantage, but she has not revolutionised anything.

But the reaction does fit in with Kirby’s pseudo-modernism. The interaction becomes participatory – girls going out “dressed as Gaga” sums it up, really. They feel the need to be part of the phenomenon, as it’s not enough simply to keep tabs on what Gaga herself is wearing. This cultural trend certainly seems distinct from post-modernism, and Gaga may represent a bridge between the two. On the one hand, she uses the same old tactics to gain publicity, but the reaction from fans is subtly different. She has managed to carve out an individual niche within pop, which is almost unprecedented, and that deserves credit if nothing else does.

So where does that leave me on this meander of mine? Back where I started, I suppose. It’s very difficult to draw long-term conclusions from what are currently short-term phenomena, but these posts may provide a platform for me to expand this sort of thinking in the future.