Lies, damned lies and Paul Uppal

The invisible MP has resurfaced with a piece on his website proclaiming that the Autumn Statement is 'good for the West Midlands'. Usually when he puts this kind of thing up, I find that it's a version of a standard statement circulated to all government MPs. 

Unless the Conservative Party has developed telepathy, this is indeed the case. Look, a Lincoln MP says the same thing. As does Mundell from the Scottish Borders. And Graeme Leach. And another 88 MPs. 

Statement 1:

The economic recovery is taking longer because the damage is worse than we feared. But the economy is healing. 

The economy is not healing. There are no more jobs. There is no recovery. Quantitative easing has had no discernible effect other than to reinflate the banks' balance sheets. The government has had 2 and a half years in office: it is now causing 'the damage'. 

The last thing we could do is put all this progress at risk and attempt to borrow less by borrowing more. We cannot turn back.

The grammar of this is almost beyond me, and perhaps Derrida. Obviously the government 'could' make this attempt. Perhaps whichever drone wrote it means 'should'. And we are borrowing more. It doesn't look like it at first glance because Osborne pulled three tricks. Firstly, he shifted the Post Office pension fund onto the books, which is pretty dodgy: pension funds aren't just pots of cash. They have to be paid out. Then he counted the £4.5bn sale of 4G frequencies… even though the sale hasn't actually happened. Finally, he transferred the QE debt interest from the Bank of England to the Treasury's bank account. This is just a delaying tactic, and one which a Financial Times journalist described as proof that this government no longer has any serious economic policy. 

But wait! There's a bit about the West Midlands!

Paul Uppal commented:
"This is fantastic news for Wolverhampton South West.
"The West Midlands will see two million people get an income tax cut. The 3.5 million people who drive will welcome the cancellation of a rise in fuel duty that the Labour Government had planned for. Businesses will welcome the drop in corporation tax and the small business rate relief. And the raft of capital infrastructure projects will unlock growth and equip Britain to compete in the global race.
"Times are tough. But the economy is healing – and the measures announced today will bring welcome support to families and businesses in Wolverhampton South West."

He must have written that bit, surely?

But alas no. His interns have inserted the words "Wolverhampton South West" into the prepared text also used by Christopher Pincher in Tamworth and by Claire Perry MP, Chris Kelly MP of Dudley, and Clifton Brown. Given that Perry and Brown are from the South-West, it seems the Tories have issued the same statement to all their MPs, despite them representing very different places. So actually, they think the budget is going to be a roaring success from the grouse moors of Dumfries to the metal-bashing inner-cities of the Black Country.

Alternatively, you might view this as cynical propaganda masquerading as spontaneous thought ('Paul Uppal commented'.

As to the detail: millions of people will get a tax cut. More to the point, Paul Uppal, as a millionaire property speculator will get two tax cuts. One because the top rate of tax has been abolished, and the other because tax relief on unoccupied property is being offered. Paul's business is property speculation. He doesn't want market forces to dictate lower rents: he wants taxpayers to subsidise him leaving properties empty until the climate improves. And he's got what he wants.

Business will welcome the cut in corporation tax… those who pay it. They'll still get massive subsidies from us though - because most benefit claimants are workers not paid enough. We fill the gap with housing benefit and income support, boosting the profit margins of Paul's friends. The rest of course is just meaningless cant.

As usual.  

Meanwhile, Uppal is in favour of regional and performance-related pay for teachers and nurses (despite the obvious problem: children and viruses are variables you can't account for). However in his case, I'm all for it. This is a poor area and it's getting poorer while under his charge. His salary should therefore go down. Or we could link his salary to his vote. Uppal got 40% of a 68% turnout. By my calculations, 28% of the electorate voted for him. So he gets £28,000 per year. If he persuades more people to vote for him next year, he gets a pay rise as a reward for supporting a fine job by the government. If someone else does better, s/he gets it. Simples!

Students: the pain will end…

I've marked a lot of essays recently. The process has left both me and my students somewhat bruised, but we'll get through it stronger! Well, I will anyway.

So here's a song that's been stuck in my head for days, dedicated to those on the receiving end of my red pen. It's Sparklehorse's 'Someday, I Will Treat You Good':

An open letter to my local council

Sylvanian Families Against the Cuts. No idea who did it, but s/he is a genius.

Dear Council,
thanks for your expensively produced survey about what you're rather offensively terming 'The Cuts Challenge 2013-2014', as though it's a little bit like The Apprentice or Masterchef. While it's very lovely that you're asking someone with a PhD in Welsh Literature to help direct your economic policies, I'm not sure it's going to work, and I've a few problems with what you're up to.

Let's have a closer look, shall we?

The Government is abolishing the national Council Tax Benefit Scheme from April of next year.  To replace it, each council has to design its own local scheme.
This is made more difficult by the fact that, at the moment, the government meets the whole cost of council tax support.  In future, it will pay under 90% of the bill, based on what it contributed in 2011-2012 – a 12% cut.

OK. I can't quite tell whether you're subtly indicating that this isn't your fault but you're too scared to openly criticise the government because you think some voters hate the idea that anyone gets benefits at all. Personally, I think it's sickening. The government's plan is to make councils institute the most savage cuts, thereby hoping that voters will punish whichever party runs the local authority. As that's mostly Labour, it's a particularly dishonest and sneaky tactic. The idea is that rich Tory councils which don't have to do much because all the poor people have or will be deported, won't have to make cuts because they don't do much anyway. Meanwhile communities hardest hit by the government's economic mismanagement and vicious ideology will be hit again - and most people won't take the time to work out who is really at fault.

The council has been left with a difficult decision to make. It must either reduce the amount paid in council tax benefit fairly to recover this shortfall, or cut funding to essential council services.

Hmmm. The passive 'has been left' is reasonable enough. It's been dumped with making cuts of £3.2m. Not sure about the rest though. 'Essential' is a subjective term, as is 'fairly'. Let's see what 'fairly' means, shall we?

The council is proposing a scheme which passes on some of the cut in government funding.  As people of pensionable age are protected from reductions in benefits, all those affected will be of working age.

This must be some new definition of 'fairly', one with which I was unfamiliar. It seems that being old is somehow superior to being younger, however rich the older person and however poor the younger person. We all know why pensioners are protected. Politicians will come out with all sorts of guff about contributing to the public purse over their working lives yada yada yada but that doesn't apply to council tax. Pensioners are protected because a) they vote more than everyone else and b) they vote Conservative more than everyone else. So it's essential that even the richest pensioners in the West of the city are protected by national laws from sharing the pain. So the poor people of working age will be hit harder, and they'll hate the council and either vote Tory or not vote at all. Quite frankly, from the government's perspective, either result is good for them.

What next?

The council believes that it has come up with the fairest scheme possible under the circumstances.  Before going ahead, however, we want to consult with local people to explain how it will work and – most importantly – to get their views.

Ah, I love the smell of cowardice and/or tokenism in the morning. This isn't a delegational democracy, it's a representational one. We elect people we hope know what they're doing. We don't expect them to beg us to help them out with ideas because most of us are untrained and beaten down with work and life. When they start holding consultations, we should assume that either it's an attempt to share the blame for whatever they've already decided to do, or a sham. Or a bit of both. After all, 'get their views' is a long way from 'acting on'. Cuts are going to be imposed. Organised groups will lobby to protect their privileges or services. Unorganised ones - however worthy - are going to be hit hard.

Anyway, what's with the rush to consultation?

We understand that you may be surprised that the council is launching another consultation on council tax and perhaps a little concerned that the consultation period is shorter than usual.
The reason for this is that the council’s financial position has been changing continuously in the past few months as new pressures have emerged.  There is a serious concern that we may not be able to meet our legal obligation to set a balanced budget for 2013-2014 unless decisive action is taken.

Aha. Here it is. In short, we're screwed. Broke. I've a lot of sympathy for the council here: despite the usual incompetence and waste found in local democracy, the fact is that this is a poor area made poorer by the central government's viciousness. One solution, of course, is to refuse to set a legal budget. The Liverpool Labour council did this in the 1980s as a symbolic gesture. Lots of Labour councils did it in the 1930s in protest against Means Tests and all sorts of appalling attacks on the poor. Would it work? Not in any practical way: the government would impose a punitive budget. But symbolically, it would be an act of defiance rare in a democracy which has largely abandoned principle and ideology to the Tories. While the government applies the Chicago/Pinochet playbook pretty much just because it can, our local representatives have allowed themselves to become technocrats, passing on the pain with little more than a grimace of disaffection. Politics has become too reified: current parties have moved away from the battlefield of ideas, while councils have become part of the state's machinery rather than representatives of the local population. The government talks about decentralisation, but everything it does, from council tax to education, is about central control. Local government becomes hollowed out and bereft of ideas.

What's actually being done?

The council proposes to restrict the maximum amount of Council Tax Benefit that a person can claim to 91.5% of what they are liable to pay. 

This proposal will affect everyone of working age, employed and unemployed alike.
People on disability benefits as well as those with children will also see a reduction in their council tax benefit.  This means that they will have to pay more council tax than they currently do or in some cases pay council tax for the first time.  

So however poor you are, there's a bill coming, regardless of whether you can pay it or not. I don't see any more jobs coming round the corner. State benefits are being reduced in real terms thanks to yesterday's Autumn Statement. So if you're in a low-paying job, you're going to get poorer. Unsurprisingly, yesterday's cut in corporation tax means that the company which uses the benefits system to subsidise your low wage is going to make more money.

This council tax benefit cut isn't fair in any sense I understand: a section of society already impoverished is going to be hit again, with no clear sign of how they're meant to make up this shortfall. This is why I'd abolish benefits for the working poor tomorrow in one move: make the minimum wage a living wage. Companies have got used to massive executive pay packets and enormous profit margins by avoiding their taxes and squeezing those at the bottom. If they had to pay their workers properly, we could let them have low taxes because we wouldn't need to pay benefits for workers. Simples!

What would I do if I were the council? I'd add some bands to the Council Tax rating. There are only eight, with the top one covering properties valued at over £320,000 in 1991. Property prices have risen massively over the past 20 years, so there's plenty of room at the top for more bands, or a general revaluation.

For instance, the handy House Prices Index calculator over at the Nationwide calculates that a house worth £320,000 in 1991 would now be worth £832,000: a 160% increase in value without taking inflation into account. That's a hell of a boost, and all without the homeowner making any further contributions to local government.

But this is the one thing governments and councils are agreed on: upwards revaluations lose votes. Rich people vote. So there's absolutely no way that rich people will be asked to pay more even though there's a strong case to be made that they've had a very easy ride since the Council Tax was instituted. Sadly, I don't think councils can individually change the banding system.

So if councils can't just tax the rich more based on their property values, what should they do? I'd start looking at clever local taxes. A congestion charge would do nicely. Nobody can avoid the ring roads round here. Slap a whacking great charge on large, heavy and powerful vehicles so that all the 4x4s and bourge-mobiles cough up or start taking the bus like the rest of us. Invent a golf club charge. Tax antisocial activities: gum-chewing, off-premises alcohol sales and cigarette outlet sales. Perhaps a sales tax. Pollution and higher waste disposal charges so that consumption, particularly of socially-damaging goods, attracts a charge. If people stop doing these things, the local infrastructure won't need so much cash anyway. I'd also cut back on business relief rates so people like my local MP, who made millions from property speculation, doesn't get a subsidy from us if he'd rather leave property empty than lower his rents. Sadly, the Chancellor extended this tax relief yesterday.

There are plenty of things our council can do. Sadly, it lacks the spine and the imagination to do any of them. Instead, the poor will be hit again and the rich voters will continue to be cosseted.

Mr Burns' guide to economics

Having just sat through an Autumn Statement in which the poor and unemployed have been hit viciously while corporations' taxes have been cut, this Simpsons clip - while focussing on American politics - handily dramatises our Chancellor's dumb, partisan and selfish approach to the national economy.

Just one Sonnetto, give it to me…

Afternoon all. And what time do I call this?

In my defence, I've been teaching for several hours without a break. The first session was with the English literature second-years, on the Renaissance module. Which makes me the Renaissance Man. Ahem. It was a session on sonnets today: a strict form subgenre requiring technical mastery while also avoiding cliché and predictability. There are a lot of bad sonnets around.

What I did to avoid the dreaded silence and passivity which often manifests itself when teaching poetry and in particular closed form poetry was to introduce scissors to the occasion. I gave them sonnets by Wyatt, Drayton, Spenser and Wendy Cope, but with all the lines in random order. The students had to draw on their knowledge of metre, rhyme scheme, quatrains, octaves, sestets and 'voltas' (the surprising 'turn'), sonnet history and culture to work out the correct order. So they had to develop technical and cultural skills to get it right. They did really well, some perfectly.

After that, it was into my Ethics class, mostly concentrating on the origins, meaning and application of privacy. Rather economically, I thought, I discussed the Renaissance development of the individual just as I had in the sonnets class! Individuality is a culturally and historically-located concept, owing a lot to the Reformation's insistence on private contemplation and moral self-interrogation. Add capitalism's self-defeating but lucrative need for you to express this new 'you' by constantly changing your outward appearance (new codpiece then, new iPhone now) and voilà: the self-fashioned individual. And individuals need physical and mental space. Which corporations and governments need for economic reasons but resent for political purposes. So we went from John Locke to Facebook's privacy settings in a single bound. Hugely enjoyable, though I was rather shocked by many students' cheerful willingness to abandon privacy for the sake of convenience. Facebook's business model (sell your data to other corporations) seems perfectly reasonable, apparently.

The point was that just as in the Renaissance, we self-fashion, only we do so in multiple forums now. We have to perform in person, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Blogger and everywhere else. Paradoxically, we perform both to conform and to distinguish ourselves. My Twitter feed tries to be trenchant and witty, to attract followers. But I can't be too creative or transgressive, because I'll be socially excluded. Learning where the boundaries are is what Foucault called disciplinarily – and its bound up with notions of the self and of power. Being visible online is an exercise in agency, but it's also a form of submitting to authority and surveillance both by the state and corporations, but also to the population which has internalised hegemonic values. We are each other's, and our own, policemen.

All in all, a glorious, though exhausting day. And being in the classroom meant I was temporarily shielded from the vicious, ideologically-driven government financial statement.

Book news, December 2012

For the third week in a row, I have read more books than I've bought. This means that by 2068, I'll have caught up. It's like going cold turkey. No longer do I bound up to the post room expectantly. No longer do I have to avoid the porters and secretaries who've hauled my purchases around the campus with barely a furious mutter about the weight and volume of my book-buying. I'm even – just – managing to suppress the urge to buy everything I see reviewed in the newspapers and LRB.

What have I read this week?

Philip Larkin's juvenilia and collected prose. Very weak.
Colin Harvey's Winter Song: an effective SF retelling of the Icelandic Njal's Saga.
Colson Whitehead's effective and downbeat zombie-apocalypse thriller/cultural satire Zone One.
Nancy Mitford et al, Noblesse Oblige.
And another couple of novels whose names I forget right now. I seem to remember them being quite good but they obviously haven't lingered much. Now I'm on to Hassler-Forest's Capitalist Super-Heroes: Caped Crusaders in the Neoliberal Age. The guy talks a good fight but he's a little sweeping in theoretical terms and limiting his field to films rather than the myriad manifestations of the caped hero is a weird choice. But it's early days.

Here's an amusing education-related passage from Evelyn Waugh's 'Open Letter' in Noblesse Oblige: click to enlarge.

People or puppies?

We all got an email last week from some do-gooder on the staff. She'd like us to donate to keep the nice little doggie-woggies warm this Christmas.

Now, I like puppies as much as the next man. Providing the next man prefers his canines casseroled. They bite your children and shit on your duvet. But I understand that some people find this kind of behaviour endearing. However, I'm far from convinced that the best thing the well-paid employees of a university could do to alleviate suffering this winter is to pamper some pooches.

I'm not sure if my kind colleague is aware that we're in the middle of an appalling recession. That the unemployment rate is currently over 8%. That the city has a food bank (one local MP Emma Reynolds has visited, but not Paul Uppal MP, who is the local representative of the political and economic forces responsible for its existence).

People are hungry and homeless in this town. Pets are cute, but they're not essential and they're not the prime victims of the recession or the government. The usual argument is that animals are speechless victims of human cruelty. Very true. But they're still not as important as vulnerable humans. Until everybody has a home and a decent meal inside them, or you want to help humans in other ways, I suggest you direct your cash to a food bank (I haven't located a non-religious one yet) or to any of these charities in the absence of any political parties prepared to fundamentally restructure the economy for the benefit of all.

Shelter
Women's Aid
Crisis
National Literacy Trust
Liter of Light
North Staffordshire Special Adventure Playground

My siblings are all richer than me, so they'll be getting donations to these charities as Christmas presents… whether they like it or not.

Grt. Anthr bldy txt.

So, happy birthday to the mobile telephone text message: first sent on December 3rd 1992 by Neil Papworth to Richard Jarvis, and it read 'Merry Christmas'. Not the most auspicious start ('It was a dark and stormy night'? 'It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen'?) but an important one. Vodafone, Papworth's employee, thought that text messaging would be a useful diagnostic tool for its engineers, not a consumer tool at all.

I read yesterday that the 3.8m inhabitants of Ireland sent 8 billion text messages in the January-March period this year. I'm stunned they haven't all lost their fingers.

Why is the text message so popular? Why not just make a phone call? I think it's a control issue. If you phone somebody, you cede control. They might not stick to the point. They might talk over you. They might disagree with you. They might object to the purpose of your call. A text is a short monologue. You can't be interrupted or contradicted. You'll be late and there's nothing the recipient can do about it. You can receive a text and ignore it for a while. You have the power.

And yet the humble text message is a marker of our existential and logocentric dread. We were talking about this in my lecture on mobile and social media yesterday. We send texts as part of our attempts to organise the world around us: yet the non-reception of texts is – in Kevin Barry's words – a little ego-death, inflicted several times a day. You have no (0) messages. Nobody acknowledges your existence. You are functionally dead. The logocentrism bit relates to the way we add all these little symbols. :), :3 or whatever betray a fundamental awareness that language is always escaping from us. Our typed words can't convey what we want them to bear, and can convey things we don't want them to carry - meanings are outside our control, fought over by us, by the words that pre-exist us, and by the reader. Context and tone are difficult to communicate, so we add emoticons, or lots of !!! or 'ha ha' and any other devices designed to restrict meaning by closing down the recipient's interpretive range. It's a struggle for power.

Power's at the heart of mobile communication generally. I had a little rant about this to the students yesterday. The infiltration of mobile phones and Walkmen, iPods and the like into shared space has led to the privatisation of public space. On the train, we used to talk to each other, or read, or look out of the window. There was a sense that we were fellow passengers with a responsibility to each other to make the journey as pleasant as possible. It was public space. With the rise of personal communication and entertainment devices, we've carved up this shared space into overlapping private spaces. I can block you out with my headphones. But my headphones leak into the space. I've appropriated the public space by treating it as my own. So has everyone else. I've chosen a private virtual space in which I commune with my chosen social network rather than make any kind of connection with the unchosen social network of people sharing physical space. No doubt my fellow passengers are psychopaths anyway, hence my retreat into my own head. By doing so, I demonstrate my superior willpower: I choose not to regard my surrounding and the people in it as being of any consequence.

That's not the only way in which power is manifested in mobile technology. Take this ad for the Palm Pre, an early smartphone:



Isn't technology great? You're free to be out in the lovely countryside without every being out of touch. But look more closely. What's she doing? Working: work is no longer somewhere you go and something you do for a set period. Instead, 'life' flows together – you're meant to be 'at work' wherever and whenever you are. Emails appear at midnight: deal with it. Meeting are scheduled at the last moment – tough. Family and friends and work are all categories to be mashed together and then 'organised': you're working hard. But the payoff is visually obvious here: the young lady is at the centre of the world, distinguished from the others by her (fraudulent) autonomy and different clothing. The world, quite literally, revolves around her: friends, family and even work: they don't have autonomy or freedom. You're being sold freedom when the actual product is… you: available 24 hours a day.

Tales from Hogwarts

Hi everyone. Stupidly busy week coming up, just as I need to get some research done ha ha ha.

But in the meantime, here are some pictures (click to enlarge) from Chetham's Library in Manchester, where I went to a magnificent conference on Politics and Print. The rest are here.

The chained books are a few feet from the desk formerly occupied by Marx and Engels. Inspiration?

This drawing is by Elizabethan magician and statesman John Dee as a visual reminder of a breast-enlarging poultice. According to the recipe in Latin, the secret is to apply a cinnamon paste. 

The clock and entrance of Manchester Cathedral in the dark and freezing fog. 

As to the conference itself, it was glorious. We were in John Dee's old bedroom round a big old table, gathered to discuss printing and politics. We heard about Jacobite propaganda in the 1707-1745 period (and I learned that Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to confiscate the shoes of all Dundee's inhabitants in 1745). The career of radical publisher Henry Miller (temperance and free trade) was explained, before we had a piece on one wannabe media baron, Gwynne of the Morning Post, who tried to control the Tory Party's policy on Irish independence and unity (he was against them). 

Cordula Greinert came over from Germany to highlight 'camouflage pamphlets' from the Nazi period: anti-fascist propaganda disguised as popular mechanics guide, Nazi newspapers and the like - any way they could get anti-fascist stuff into Germans' hands. Some material was also sent to high-ranking officers by post in the hope they could be persuaded to turn. Unfortunately, most thought this was a loyalty test and reported receiving it rather than face a bullet for treason. We also had fascinating piece on publishing by and for exiled Greek communists during the dictatorship there. Finally, the last session covered conservative attempts to combat the cultural dominance of leftwing politics in the 1930s, an analysis of the History Workshop Journal's failed attempt to democratise and deprofessionalise history, and an amazing introduction to the world of radical printshops from 1968-1990s. 

It was one of those days which completely recharged the mental batteries.

And now for something completely different

After all the lectures, seminars, marking and other activities of this week, I'm off for a day's intellectual stimulation: a conference on Politics and the Power of Print in Manchester. I'm really looking forward to it. Not sure if I'll have web access, but I'll live blog it if possible.

It's at Chetham's Library, the oldest public library in the UK, and one of the most beautiful.

Chetham's Library from gareth taylor on Vimeo.

Leveson: Vole's Initial Reckon

OK, here's the Leveson points reduced from 2000 pages and four volumes to a few words:

It's 'essential' that an independent press regulation should be set up by law. They've failed to regulate themselves and lives have been wrecked because they're often self-serving and amoral.

The Metropolitan Police have behaved very badly indeed.  

And here's the political response.

David Cameron: Nice idea, but it's too complicated, it wouldn't work and any laws relating to the press are wrong on principle. And Jeremy Hunt is as honest as the day is long. I've never heard of, let alone met, Rebekah Brooks or Rupert Murdoch. 

Ed Miliband: passing a law setting up independent press regulation isn't state regulation. The press have failed, let's implement a Leveson law. 

Watching the parliamentary debate about the Leveson Report is a disgusting experience. Tory after Tory has stood up to agree with Cameron that politicians have always guaranteed a free press, which is just plain wrong - as I explain here. They queue up to praise Jeremy Hunt and they bay like seals in heat as they make petty partisan points.

The basic strategy is to sound pompously in favour of the free press while making sure that they don't do anything about it. Most sinister is the assumption that the 'freedom of the press' is the same thing as 'the freedom of the press and its owners to behave exactly as it wishes'. Meanwhile the cosy little parliamentary coterie bay like walruses in heat whenever their friends reinforce their deluded and detached world-view.

Cameron's opted for a high-wire act: all the soundbites which will make the evening news will make it sound like he's going to do something urgently from the highest principles. He keeps saying things like But the small print, carefully expressed in language tailored only for nerds and obsessives, reveals that is plan is completely the opposite: he intends to do absolutely nothing.

I'm really sad. I don't think the Leveson Report is particularly radical, but within one hour of publication it's become a weapon in the usual political sniping - and it's clearly destined for the long grass. The result? The papers will go back to business as usual and we'll all be back here again in 15 years.

O Frabjous Day

I hereby ordain that from henceforth, 29th November be known as Leveson Day. For on this day, Lord Justice Leveson – or as the Daily Mail has it 'Orthodox Jewish Leveson' because his religion is really relevant – did cause much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the office of cant-purveyors such as Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre and of course David Cameron.

Obviously I have no idea what Leveson's conclusions will be. But I did watch pretty much every minute of the Inquiry and noted his frustration and exasperation whenever a newspaper editor, hack or politician attempted to cloak their disgusting seediness in lofty principle. So I'm pretty certain that Leveson won't be recommending the status quo or anything close to it. And then it will be up to Cameron et al to explain why they might not go for it.

The latest tack is to claim that any legal basis for press regulation is an attack on a tradition of press freedom stretching back to 1695, when the authorities (literally) forgot to renew the press licensing laws.

This is of course what's known in the trade as 'purest bollocks'. Yes, the licensing laws were dropped, but governments found plenty of other ways to block 'subversive' newspapers, as any history of the radical press will tell you (my favourite newspapers were the original and 1968-1972 Black Dwarf).

In particular, massive taxation was the favourite weapon, ensuring that only political parties and very rich organisations could afford to publish one: the 1817-1824 Black Dwarf cost 4-6p, most of a day's wages for a labourer. And then there's the case of the Daily Worker, the Communist Party's newspaper which was banned for most of 1941-42 because opposed WW2 until Stalin out with Hitler (but don't get me started on the CP's craven, cynical and disgusting Stalinism).

Only the Daily Worker was banned, but Churchill tried to do it to the Daily Mirror too. He objected to this cartoon:

The Price of Petrol Has Been Increased By One Penny - Zec

It calls for people to conserve their petrol for the sake of the war effort, but Churchill interpreted it as an attack on the profiteering oil companies (Tory PMs more devoted to Big Oil than the people aren't a new thing) - and perhaps he was right. Certainly the Tories were determined to ensure that the collective war effort didn't undermine Capital and Empire, which is why Churchill was thrown out on his ear in 1945. Press freedom has never encompassed the full range of ideological opinion.

After that, attacks on press freedom moved into the economic and legal spheres. The Oz trial and ensuing prison sentences were a savage attack on the underground press, occasioned by cartoons of Rupert the Bear with a rather engorged procreative organ. The libel laws, especially libel tourism, are a global disgrace: if one reader in the UK has read an article from any newspaper in the world, the British courts will act for the rich and mobile oligarchs and tyrants who want free speech stifled. And then there's the corporate assault on freedom. While my appalling MP Paul Uppal defends something he calls 'corporate freedom of speech', Britain's decision to treat the press as a deregulated free market means that the Murdochs and Maxwells of this world can corner huge swathes of the market and cross-subsidise their loss-making rags with Sky profits. Result: Murdoch ideology everywhere you look, while even puny alternative voices like the Guardian are on the verge of closure.

There's also the D-Notice system: a cosy little arrangement whereby newspaper editors get called in - or receive a briefing - telling them what stories shouldn't be printed for reasons of 'national security', however that's defined.

So when you hear politicians and press barons pontificating about the noble ideals of a free press, remember that it's always been a fiction, and what they really want is the freedom to trample over the rights of the little people, to bring you exclusive pictures of celebrity mammary glands and the harlot's right to dictate public policy to venal, frightened politicians who lack the energy and originality to reach out to us in new ways.

To listen to these people go on, you'd think that Leveson's proposing a little man sitting in Whitehall deciding which articles can and can't be published (like stage plays until 1968!). I don't think this is what anyone's proposing. But we do have a problem. Newspapers are essential to the proper functioning of a democracy. We need rude, raucous, nosy publications which don't let those in power do whatever they want without scrutiny. This is why we need bloggers too, by the way. But newspapers need money. So they fill their pages with vicious reactionary politics and naked women and Richard Littlejohn because they know that the public will buy it - which means that if you want to know who bears the guilt of the Daily Mail, it's you and me. Journalism is expensive. Tits and opinions are cheap. So papers inevitably take shortcuts, safe in the knowledge that most of us would rather read speculation about Jennifer Aniston's haircare routine that what's going on in the Department for Paperclips or over at MegaCorp. Newspapers are incredibly powerful. If they go wrong, the country goes wrong. They have the power to wreck the lives of individuals and whole swathes of people. Imagine being a Gypsy, Roma or traveller in the Mail-reading counties. Then ask yourself why Jimmy Savile's phone was never hacked, or why the Sun didn't pick up on the Trafigura story. Most newspapers don't have morals. They have balance sheets and political ambitions and they're happy to ride roughshod over the rights of any one of us in pursuit of these aims, whether that means hacking the phones of dead girls or accusing odd-looking men of murder.

And that's why we need to treat newspapers as something more than cans of beans in the shop.

Whatever Leveson proposes today, it's going to be better than the existing system.

The preventive principle

You may have heard that the government has decided to legislate for a minimum price of 45p per alcohol units. A bit less than Scotland's 50p per unit, but still a move to make sure that alcoholics quaff more refined substances than heretofore.

I listened to a government minister explain the decision (which I largely support) on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. He said this:

It's a fact that when you put up the price of something, demand drops. 

He's absolutely right.

As a random example picked entirely off the top of my head, let's consider university tuition fees. They were £3500, which I thought was pretty bad. Then the Conservative/ Lib Dem coalition put them up to £9000. Demand for university places slumped, particularly amongst mature students who might like to retrain in the midst of a Depression.

So the minister's trite bit of pop-philosophy reveals a cunning plan. Like New Labour before them, they actually don't want a highly-educated population. They want a low-wage service economy which enriches shareholders like them who don't need decent services. The imposition of high tuition fees wasn't a matter of scarcity: the loans will be borne by the taxpayer for decades and cost us more than the cheaper system.

Instead, it's demand management. The Tories and their Lib Dem lapdogs want to price people out of the market. 'When you put up the price of something, demand drops'. And lo! It came to pass.

From the video vaults

One of my Twitter friends asks why children's news requires a musical background. Here's why: it's because children and adults are assumed by TV producers to be stupid bags of meat with the attention span of a distracted gnat.

Back in the 80s and 90s, news was very serious. You could tell this from the Bongs and Trevor McDonald's moustache (which is why Chris Morris did this). This was very off-putting for young people, it was thought. A lighter touch was needed.

Enter L!ve TV, the short-lived Sun spin-off. Its news (followed by the weather in Norwegian, the zany scamps, and Topless Darts) featured News Bunny. News Bunny's job was to stand behind the poker-faced newsreader and interpret each story. Genocide in Africa? Sad face, slumped forepaws. News International share price up? Happy Bunny.





It's all very different now. No more News Bunny. Just Celebrity News. News with thumping musical beats. News with no news. How naive those 90s people were.

(News Bunny was Ashley Hames. Meet him here. He's a bit of a dick).

Happy happy happy

Morning everybody.

I've had complaints.

Specifically, I've had complaints that Vole Towers has become a dark, miserable place in which weeping and lamentation has replaced the usual upbeat sunny disposition which is my natural state.

It's tempting to direct you to take it up with the management, but as I don't believe in God, I'll merely point out that I'm a product of my environment. The cure for happiness is, I believe, a daily newspaper. In many ways, I'm very happy. Great friends, brilliant teaching duties (though far too much of it at the moment) and all sorts of things are going well and so on. I've even read 6 novels in the past few days while only receiving one book (a critical guide to Volpone). It's just outside my little box that the misery is relentless.

But for today, I'm going to bow to popular demand and make lemonade from lemons (one of my least favourite phrases ever).

What's made me happy today? Well, I received a new CD of Luke Bedford's music, Two-Headed Nightingale and other pieces, beautifully played by the Scottish Ensemble Modern and others. I can't put any up here because Youtube is woefully lacking in modern classical composers' works, but some of his older stuff is playable here. He's a bit like Arvo Pärt without the smug ineffability which comes from being pompously religious. There's a bit more zip and drive to Bedford's work, and beautiful parts for viola, that loveliest of instruments. Even my post-punk office colleague asked what it was approvingly.

Also, I woke up this morning with Inspiral Carpets songs playing in my cranial juke-box. Long dismissed as second-rank Mancunians, I think they're rather wonderful, especially as a singles band. The singer had a sharp, distinctive voice, the organ driven songs are insanely catchy and the lyrics bear more weight than, say, the Happy Mondays. How many upbeat pop hits feature the words 'I took food from the hand of a starving child'? as 'Two Worlds Collide' does?



Then there's 'Commercial Rain', an out-and-out floor-filler whose video really reminds me of those heady days in the mid-90s when getting bashed and sweaty at the front of a gig was my idea of heaven:


Inspiral Carpets - Commercial Rain (US Video) by InspiralCarpets-Official

Or the Mark E Smith-sung 'Saturn 5' and 'I Want You':





Much underrated, I felt. When they split up, their keyboard player Clint Boon headed out on his own as The Clint Boon Experience, and gathered about him a Boon Army. I bought the albums. Fun organ-driven pop. I can't resist spin-off and splinter group music. They're often glorious and sad at the same time. Some bands are more than the sum of their parts. Some members transcend what they did as a group, to the world's total indifference: just look at Scott Walker's career. The man is a stone-cold genius, but the world doesn't want to hear the musical experimentation of a man with an apocalyptic world-view and a devotion to Kurt Weill and Brecht. Clint Boon doesn't care. I saw him a couple of times. He'd turn up dressed in head to toe white denim, play a set, then a DJ set which was frequently very, very dependent on music he'd made on his own or in the Inspiral Carpets. Not a shy or retiring character, but one who communicated an infectious joy.

So there we are. Me being happy.

Now feck off or I'll set the dogs on you.

Welcome to the Daily Hate

Good morning everybody. Or it will be until you finish reading this. 

I don't normally draw your attention to the Daily Mail mostly because we all know what it's like: racist, bigoted, impervious to evidence yada yada yada. But sometimes it's good to be reminded what 4 million people think is a reasonable newspaper. I read these pieces so you don't have to. 

Two articles came to my attention this week. One was on the Leveson Report, which is released on Thursday. The Mail doesn't like it because the Mail and the Mail on Sunday were the biggest customers of Steve Whittamore, the go-to guy for illegal activities, and because the Mail's stock in trade is pictures of pubescent girls in bikinis with paedophilic straplines like 'all grown up'. 

This particular report was notable for its retro qualities. Yes, it's back to the Mail's 1930s heyday:

Mr Boles, who came under fire in the press earlier this year after he claimed expenses for lessons to learn his male partner’s native Hebrew. 

Brian Leveson PC [Privy Council] QC is a Liverpool-born, Oxford-educated Orthodox Jewish lawyer and judge

Poor Nick Boles. Yes, he's corrupt Tory scum, but the Mail's editor must have orgasmed at the chance to combine homophobia and anti-semitism. And of course Mr Leveson's religious identity is completely relevant to his report. 'Not one of us, don't you know'.

The second piece was today's effort by Roger Lewis, 'Tyranny of the Welsh Taliban… the Nutty Welsh Language Society'. Agreed, Wales is a hilly country and one that's been frequently invaded by the English, but most of us would think that there the similarity ends. Unlike Afghanistan under the Taliban, the Welsh women I know are rarely genitally mutilated and often enjoy a foaming pint of Brains (they're not zombies, overseas readers: it's a local beer). British helicopters are rarely shot down over the Brecon Beacons and Heddlu Cymraeg (the Welsh Police) tend not to shoot their English colleagues in 'blue-on-blue' attacks. 

No, Mr Lewis is upset that some Welsh people still speak Welsh, and that they finally have a limited legal right to access some services in Welsh. 

He's not big on consistency or logic, is Mr Lewis:

In South Wales, where I am from, there was never any tradition of Welsh speaking. And at the turn of the last century, though my great-grandparents spoke Welsh to each other.

So nobody spoke Welsh there ever. Except for his great-grandparents. 

English was seen as the language of the future, Welsh as the sign of regional backwardness. In some respects, I rather fancy knowing more Welsh. It would appeal to my hankering after lost things, like steam trains or gas chandeliers.

Ah yes. The Matthew Arnold Manoeuvre. He said this in 1867 in 'On the Study of Celtic Literature'. It should be a nice hobby, he said, but for the Welsh to get on in the world, they needed to speak English, like the rest of the world was being made to. At the point of a bayonet. It's a utilitarian position, and one enunciated usually by a dominant hegemony and its converts. It existed on the left too: socialists in Wales saw the language as dividing them from the global proletariat. Notions of cultural value and autonomy were not then - and in the Mail now - considered worthy of attention. 

Back to Mr Lewis:

Welsh has become a political and divisive weapon in the principality

He doesn't find time to mention the 400 years in which Welsh was banned in education, public service and the law. If any language was a 'political weapon', it was of course English. 

Now, we learn that at one school in  Ceredigion - which used to be quite happily  Cardiganshire when I was a lad - the children are not allowed to use  the toilet unless they ask the teacher in Welsh.

Obviously there's no link or evidence offered here, but my guess is that it's either a Welsh-language school, or a Welsh-language class. But at least these evil Welsh fascists aren't using the 'Welsh Not': the board hung round the neck of anyone caught using Welsh. The last one to wear it by the end of the day got an entirely utilitarian beating.

Some children are, it seems, too frightened to speak English, even at home. This sort of thing would have done the Warsaw Pact proud. It is despicable.

At least he's dropped the Afghanistan reference. Evidence? None. Warsaw Pact? Eh? Polish seems to be thriving. So are Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. In fact the Soviet Union seems to have more regard for its minority languages than the UK.

But what can be done about a place that now states, on job applications, 'Welsh speaker preferred'? Unless you are willing to go to classes and learn Welsh, what such xenophobia means in practice is that third-rate local people get the posts - as doctors, teachers, psychologists, architects, and so forth.

That's right. Anyone who speaks another language is third class in Mail world. Especially if it's Welsh. Because obviously speaking two languages (all Welsh-speakers can speak English as a second language) is a sign of mental imbecility. Even if you've managed to qualify as a doctor… in your second language because there are currently no Welsh-language medical degrees available: you're a loser. And obviously the same applies to all the other professions: being taught in Welsh makes them intrinsically inferior. 

But Roger's got academia on his side!

I asked a former colleague of mine at Oxford, whose speciality was changing speech habits in the United Kingdom from 1800 to 1914. He explained that an analysis of the late 19th-century census data revealed that Welsh-speaking was in steep decline and that, left to its own devices, the language would have 'died of inanition because Welsh people themselves were casting it off as a mark of backwardness'.  

Actually, he doesn't. Lewis doesn't exactly claim his friend is an Oxford University academic. He was 'at Oxford' with Roger and his 'speciality' may well have been an undergraduate one. He's wrong, anyway. Current scholarship says that industrialism saved the Welsh language. With plenty of jobs in the mines and steelworks, Welsh people could stay in Wales rather than emigrate to Anglophone places. The proportion of Welsh-speakers dropped until recent decades, but the number of Welsh-speakers has risen consistently since the mid-19th century. 

Welsh isn't dying of 'inanition'. It's struggled in the face of official censure, but in the streets it's thriving, especially in the North. A language survives when it's used to work and play: my last visit to Bangor certainly demonstrated that it's in – literally – rude health. Hordes of lads and ladettes were drinking, fighting and shagging in slangy Welsh. If you can do that, you've nothing to worry about. Where Welsh is struggling is those areas in which English second-home owners drive up property prices and drive out working-class Welsh-speakers. 'Twas always thus. 

But never mind that. We get to the heart of the matter: Roger Lewis's self-hating racism.

This is what those teachers in  Ceredigion - and those who support them - can't accept: what my friend at Oxford called 'the evident cultural superiority of English', i.e. that  English has, for example, a richer  literature, going right across  the world, from Irish writers such  as Shaw or Wilde to everyone  in America.

Firstly, English doesn't have a 'richer literature'. It has a bigger literature - as you'd expect from a larger English and English-speaking diaspora, one which colonised empty places and displaced or subjugated the populations of un-empty ones. Why did Wilde and Shaw speak English? Because the Irish language was banned and burned too. But Roger is desperate not to mention the link between culture and military or economic power. No, it's all about essential qualities. I wonder who else he thinks is 'inferior'? The French? Jews? Black people?

He makes the astonishing assertion. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as of yet there isn't a Welsh Shakespeare.

This of course misunderstands Shakespeare as much as it displays his ignorance of Welsh culture. Shakespeare was largely unperformed for 200 years after his death, and the Victorians liked to tack happy endings onto the tragedies. Furthermore, while there are world-class Welsh authors, the literary culture was different: many of the greatest texts are accumulations of the work of anonymous writers because authorship is a function of a capitalist and individualist culture which didn't reach Wales until later. Drama wasn't a feature of Welsh literature until recently for religious reasons, and because Welsh economic and social development didn't provide space for the form. Poetry was the thing, and what magnificent poetry there was. 

I'd point him in the direction of the Mabinogion, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Kate Roberts, Williams Pantycelyn, Ann Griffiths, Ceiriog, Wiliam Owen Roberts (amazing, postmodern) amongst a host of others. 

So how did Welsh survive, according to Roger?

the Liberal Government in 1907 created a  Welsh Department of the Board of Education, which 'captured state resources' i.e. taxpayers' loot, and allowed Welsh to be taught in the schools and artificially revived.

Right. Because Welsh-speakers aren't taxpayers, are they (and never mind that Welsh? And what damage they did!

Tenby was always Tenby, for example, until a few years ago when it suddenly became  Dynbych-y-Pysgod - a bit of nonsense about 'bay of the little fishes'.

OK… so you'd rather have a misheard translation of a name with a specific meaning than the actual name? Let's all call London 'Londres', shall we Roger?

Most depressingly, Roger seems to place no value on any kind of cultural diversity. Let's get rid of Welsh, he says. Flemish next? Then Dutch? Perhaps we might then dispose of German and the Scandinavian languages. Who needs them? We can then get rid of Spanish and Russian, and before long, we're left with the Queen's English, proud medium of the Daily Mail and all who sail in her. 

Friday. Time to kick back

I don't know about you, but it's been a difficult and dispiriting week and I need something frivolous to end the week. Actually, I do know about you: if you're reading my blog then you're in sore need of relaxation.

Here's Mr B's banjolele-led compressed history of hip-hop. The good Mr B is – alongside Professor Elemental – the musical section of the Chap movement. Chaps tend to be urban sophisticates who have ironically (I hope) reclaimed tweed, waxed moustaches and all the accoutrements of the flaneur. It's so postmodern and self-regarding that I'm incapable of working out whether they're reactionaries or progressives, but I do know that the juxtaposition of Oxford Bags and Run DMC makes me smile. 

Here's Professor Elemental's 'diss' of Mr B: 'Fighting Trousers'. 

And as we're in an arch mood, let's finish with the Puppini Sisters murdering the Smiths. I was informed recently that there's a surprisingly large female barber-shop competition scene - it's crying out for a fly-on-the-wall documentary. 

Newsnight: the Reply

Afternoon everybody.

The big news of the day is that after a series of obstructions, I've had a response from Newsnight about my complaint that they invited Peter Lilley MP on to the show to discuss climate change (which he thinks is a monstrous lie) without mentioning that he's a director and shareholder of an oil exploration company.



I asked a series of questions:
1. Did Newsnight know about Mr Lilley's position?
2. Did it ask Mr Lilley or did Mr Lilley bring it to the producers' attention?
3. Does it have a policy of asking about and highlighting potential conflicts of interest?

The answer is predictably high-handed and evasive. Newsnight appears to have learned nothing. Here it is in full:

We forwarded your complaint to the programme team who respond that:
Peter Lilley was invited onto Newsnight as an economist, politician and supporter of the Global Warming Foundation. He joined a discussion that acknowledged that global temperatures are changing but asked whether there should be human intervention to attempt to reverse them? The previous day Mr Lilley had published an analysis of the economics of tackling climate change which we felt made him well placed to appear live on the programme.
It is a matter of public record that Mr Lilley is Vice Chairman and Senior Independent Non-Executive Director of Tethys Petroleum - it appears in Parliament’s register of members interests. Many MPs have interests outside Parliament and generally, as in this case, that does not affect their participation in media interviews. Peter Lilley has long held strong opinions on climate change which is why we wanted him involved in our discussion on the Newsnight.
I hope this is helpful and would also like to assure you that we’veregistered your comments on our audience log for the benefit of senior management within the BBC. The audience logs are important documents that can help shape future decisions and they ensure that your points, and all other comments we receive, are made available to BBC staff across the Corporation.

1. Peter Lilley is not an economist. He has a degree in economics and physics, and worked as an energy analyst for a stockbroker. His report is somewhat hampered by his lack of credentials in the field  of climate science.
2. His report was not discussed, explored or challenged.
3. It's true that Mr Lilley's Tethys Oil position is on the register of members' interests - but are Newsnight viewers meant to consult it every time someone appears on the screen? It takes five pages to get through to the correct information. I think this is a fundamental evasion of the programme's responsibility to fully inform viewers. For the record, Lilley's hourly rate as a board member is £375.
4. My general questions about Newsnight policy have been completely ignored. They're treating me - and all viewers - as outsiders with no right to information or opinion.

I'm actually pretty angry about this. The news media is the only way to hold power to account, and if it has no checks and balances, power wins. In this instance, Newsnight failed to fully disclose a fundamentally relevant fact which would have influenced viewers' assessment of a guest's credibility. To airily claim that we can look it up in a parliamentary register is to assume that viewers have the time, skills and inclination to chase details – or it's an arrogant brush-off from an Establishment that has lost sight of the audience's needs. Not every viewer knows the Register exists. A casual viewer, I think, would have been under the impression that Lilley was a disinterested expert in the field rather than a man who is financially and ideologically committed to one side of a debate. This is why I think Newsnight behaved dishonestly.

The refusal to disclose Newsnight policy on guests' interests is similarly arrogant. It's announcing that some things are none of my business. Yet Newsnight  is in deep trouble precisely because a closed group of editors has resisted scrutiny and become detached from basic common sense. I don't think it's too much to ask for a news programme to ensure that guests' interests are made known. Ignoring my question indicates an institutional failure to address key questions about its practices.

But this is the end of the line. There's nowhere else for this to be taken up: I can't even reply to this email, as it comes from a no-reply address. Newsnight wins - and journalistic integrity loses.

I for one welcome our new BBC overlords.

So, Lord Patten and the BBC management have searched the world for the right person to lead the BBC into a new post-Savile, post-paternal age. They've picked Tony Hall, poaching the former Newsnight journalist and editor (oh dear) from the leadership of the Royal Opera House. I've just sent this letter to the Guardian:

Sir, Lord Patten and the BBC are to be congratulated on their brave choice of Director-General. It's about time that male, white, privately-educated Oxford PPE graduates with seats in the House of Lords got a chance to show the rest of the world what they can do, freed from the institutional discrimination which has kept them down over the generations. 

Baron Hall may well be a fine Director-General. He may well be more than the sum of his massively privileged parts, and cope just as well overseeing My Big Breasts and Me as La Traviata (and no doubt he'll be singing 'Your Tiny Budget Is Frozen' within a week) But I can't help thinking that the recruitment procedure consisted of two stages.

Act the First. The scene is the Athenaeum Club, or it might be the Groucho, or a post opera drinks reception.
'I say, Lord Patten. Who's that chap in the Keble tie?'
'I rather think it's Baron Hall of Birkenhead. I wonder if he'd like to be the next DG. He'll keep the riff-raff out'.
'Steady on, Chris old chap. We need to make damn sure we've got the right chap'. 

Act the Second. The scene is Lord Patten's office at the BBC. Gathered round an iPad are Lord Patten, some lawyers and a balding man in combat trousers and a Half Man Half Biscuit t-shirt. He is he IT specialist, and he's here to work the iPad for his Lordship.
'So you're sure then?'
'Absolutely, Lord Patten. There isn't a single picture of Tony Hall posing with Jimmy Savile anywhere on Google Images'.
'Then he's our man! Trebles all round!'

Another day, another Uppal idiocy

Smarmy Paul, back from shilling for the Israeli government, got a question at PMQs this week. Let's have a look, shall we?

May I highlight for my right hon. Friend a free school that will be opening in one of the most deprived wards in Wolverhampton next year? It will provide a real ladder for social mobility for young people. It is a great, tangible advert for what this Government are doing in education, and he is more than welcome to visit.

Oh dear. The usual tissue of untruths. It's true that a 'school' is opening in the city. The rest is spin, starting with the adjective 'free'. It's not free. It's paid for by us, the citizens of the UK. 'Free' in fact means 'outside the planning and supervision of the wider community'.

The School is Anand Primary. It has a revolting and rather evasive video which may induce vomiting:



Its mission:

working tirelessly to deliver a new Sikh ethos

Which rather implies that there's a coherent, discrete Sikh identity, of course. And that Sikhism, alone of all religious doctrines, is entirely beneficent. But let's not get into those deep waters.

What else? Well:

Our school will be a safe, happy and eco-friendly place dedicated to giving your children the best start in life. The highest standards of teaching will be complemented by a wide range of extra-curricular activities to enable all the children to fulfil their academic, creative and sporting potential.

A wise man once said that if a statement's reverse can't be plausibly delivered, then it's meaningless. I'll give it a go.

Our school will be an unsafe, unhappy and wasteful place dedicated to giving your children the worse start in life. The lowest standards of teaching will be complemented by no extra-curricular activities to enable a few of the children to fulfil their academic, creative and sporting potential. 

See? Nonsense. And I'd be very surprised if a school of 60 pupils with no actual premises is equipped to deliver all this anyway. To say nothing of the nasty little secret at the heart of Free and Academy schools: they're exempt from laws requiring qualified teachers, minimum nutrition standards, democratic governance, Freedom of Information compliance and a host of other rules which have transformed state schools in recent years.

Then we reach the Sikh values:

• Kirat Karau – which means that we should all earn our living through honest means and hard work. We should all take responsibility for ourselves and should never compromise our integrity.
• Vandd Shakau – which means that we should share the fruits of our toil with all. We should respect everyone and work in the self-less service of all.
• Naam Jappau – which means to keep God in mind at all times. To not waste a second of the time we have on this planet but to use it to become the best that we can be.

Wow. What a radical and distinctive moral vision. Don't cheat, work hard, be responsible for your actions and be community minded. All very nice, but I'm not sure we need an entirely separate school to promote these values: I very much suspect and hope that all the other schools in the locality hold the same ideals. Except Business schools of course. Those people are scum.

Naam Jappau is, I suspect, the real point of this establishment. Despite the video's claim that the school will be open to all, its purpose - like that of all religious schools - is to provide segregated education without interference. Plenty of dishonest non-religious parents send their children to Catholic schools, for example, but I suspect that it won't happen in this case. The proof is in the eating, of course but religious schools tend to become ghettos, which are not well-known for achieving social mobility.

'Oh, but you're just a big racist', I hear you objecting. 'Catholics and Protestants and Jews all have separate schools'.

Don't worry, dear readers. I hate those schools too. And I know whereof I speak. I only attended Catholic schools. I've been physically assaulted by the Sisters of Mercy, the Christian Brothers and the Benedictines. I'm also familiar with the Northern Irish education system, whose segregation has perpetuated state-sponsored sectarian hatred for generations. Schools controlled by a particular religious ethos promote separation, isolation and superiority. They encourage students to see themselves as Chosen People with a secret code to Paradise rather than as free and equal citizens rather than privileged members of an Elect. They also retard intellectual development: at one of my secondary schools I became convinced my name had been changed to 'Shut Up', as that's the reply I got to every question on religious matters. Inquiry is never given free rein in a school which assumes as a matter of policy that there's a deity (or deities). The rights and needs of subjugated groups are never accepted - what links most religions is misogyny and often homophobia.

My Catholic education was psychologically and culturally damaging. It was also, with the honourable exception of one school, educationally substandard. Inquiry was limited, certain subjects were verboten (I lived in a state of perpetual ignorance with regard to sexuality, gender relations and basic biology for many years afterwards) and challenging ideas went unmentioned. It was no battleground of ideas. There were no questions, only pre-packed answers.

This city doesn't need religious schools. The ethnic groups which want them aren't persecuted and fading away - the Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims are strong, proud and enduring traditions here. They're free to educate their children religiously at home and in their places of worship. What we don't need is an educational system which systematically promotes segregation (and let's not forget that Sikhism is one of the few non-proselytising religions: it's an ethnic category as much as it is a religious denomination). Children should learn about each other's cultures in school without a teacher telling them that one lot is right/Chosen/going to heaven and the rest are misbegotten heretics. Schools shouldn't, to be blunt, exist to reinforce division, untestable claims and the status quo. How many free thinkers will we get from schools whose ultimate answer to every question is 'Because God says so'?

But returning to Paul Uppal. What's this bit?

It will provide a real ladder for social mobility for young people.

Seriously? How? What's the metric? How will removing some children from existing primary schools and sending them to a new school based on religious and ethnic identity promote social mobility? As far as I can see, it will retard it. Social mobility is about working-class people moving into the professions and income brackets (though those who like the idea rarely mention the possibility of downward social mobility). It's a class and economic issue, not an ethnic or religious one. At this point, Mr Uppal is just spouting arrant, embarrassing nonsense. They're just words, signifiers with no signified.

Social mobility means closing the fee-paying schools, abolishing Academies and Free Schools and taxing the rich and the likes of Apple and Google to make sure that the resources of Eton are available to all children everywhere. There's no secret to how fee-paying schools get good results. They weed out any child they don't like. They have tiny classes and resources coming out of their ears. In the state sector you don't get £30,000 spent on you per year until you go to prison, where there are fewer ski trips and lacrosse lessons.

This city doesn't need more money diverted to vanity schools. This city has a food bank. I'd humbly suggest that an economic structure which ensures people don't depend on charity to stave off hunger would be a greater contribution to 'social mobility' than any amount of niche educational establishments.

I despair, I really do. My only explanation other than wilful stupidity is that Mr Uppal is a racist cynic. He's decided that the Sikh community will deliver him a bloc of votes if he promotes this scheme – and that's all he needs. Personally, there's a lot to admire in Sikhism, and I've got nothing against Sikhs, just as I have nothing against most religious bodies, other than their baffling need to install some form of deity in the scientific gaps.

Paul has just returned from a country which explicitly identifies itself as a Jewish state. Its Muslim population is legally discriminated against in every area of life. Both sides see the other not as humans, or fellow citizens, but as enemies. Despite the similarities between Judaism and Islam, religious difference has become religious hatred because the communities never meet - just like Northern Ireland, only hotter. Is this what's inspired Paul's mission to Balkanize this small and relatively peaceful city?

Will the other politicians in the city oppose this and other 'free' schools and 'academies'? Not a chance. None of them see any electoral advantage in challenging the discourse of 'choice' (as though it's a magic solution for all ills) or 'identity politics' - and votes trump principles. Personally, I think secular schools run by a democratically-elected council which has the resources and the strategic oversight to plan for the city's needs is a proud and radical idea. But everybody else would rather retreat to the tactical jockeying and appeasement we call democracy.

And people call me cynical.