Should we save Auschwitz?

Auschwitz has been saved. The German government has announced that it will contribute $80 million towards a long-term conservation programme. The Fund, set up in 2009, aims to raise $120m to preserve the site in southern Poland. The US has agreed to contribute $15m and Austria $6m, with other countries, including the Netherlands, Switzerland and the Czech Republic agreeing smaller amounts. The museum commented that, "for the first time in its history, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial has a real chance of creating an ongoing, long-term conservation programme that will make it possible to safeguard the remains of the camp for future generations".

Auschwitz-Birkenau is probably the most well-known site of the Holocaust. Between 1942 until autumn 1944, 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as part of the Nazi's 'Final Solution'. 90% of those killed were Jews, delivered from across Nazi-occupied Europe to the gas chambers. Tens of thousands of Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners were also transported to the camp. On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops, a day commemorated around the world as International Holocaust Day. In 1947, Poland founded a museum on the site of Auschwitz and roughly 30 million people have subsequently passed through the iron gates which are adorned with the infamous message, 'Arbeit macht frei' ('work makes you free'). However, age and visitors have taken there toll and many of the barracks, gas chambers and other buildings are in need of urgent repair. 


German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said "Germany acknowledges its historic responsibility to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to pass it on to future generations." In this country the history is well-known. I was raised at a time when the Holocaust was still producing very obvious consequences. The Arab-Israeli wars, the discovery of war-criminals and Simon Wiesenthal made the Holocaust part of the news cycle of my early-life. Today, teaching the Holocaust is a compulsory subject at Key Stage 3 (age 11-14). Last year 75,000 people from the UK visited the site, many from schools. A Labour government programme has ensured that two pupils from every 6th Form in the country get funding to visit the site.

Tourists at Auschwitz

Why is Holocaust education compulsory? There are various reasons that people regard the Holocaust as so important. Firstly, it illustrates the extremes of human nature. The Holocaust demonstrates how 'evil' the human race can be, but also, shows the resilience of victims and the bravery of those who helped. A second reason is, as Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor said, "It happened so it can happen again." The third reason is to not allow Holocaust deniers to erase the crime from history.

In one of the more insightful moments of Alan Bennett's dreadful 'The History Boys', Hector, the Falstaff of teaching, questions the wisdom of Holocaust field trips, "where would they eat their sandwiches?" It sounds trivial and critics have inferred that, overwhelmed by the enormity of the Holocaust it suggests he chooses to ignore it. I don't think that is the case. I think Bennett recognises the enormity of the event and is suggesting it can not be taught in a traditional manner. He asks, "How can the boys scribble down an answer, however well put, that doesn't demean the suffering involved?"

I think reducing The Holocaust to a question in an exam is demeaning. It trivialises the events. The emergence of 'grief' tourism on the scale of Auschwitz provokes similar difficulties. I can't help but be disturbed by the idea of millions of people visiting the site. Demand has become so great that the Museum authorities have had to limit admission at peak times. A quick look on the internet indicates the level of tourist infrastructure that has developed because of this interest. Can that be right? On a basic level, ask yourself what is the appropriate way to proceed through such a site? Where do you eat your sandwiches?

In a recent BBC online debate, world-renowned authority on Auschwitz, Robert Jan Van Pelt argued that, once the last survivor has died, the camp should be sealed and the buildings be allowed to decay and the grass grow over them. He explained that many Auschwitz survivors believe that 'a visit to the camp can teach little to those who were not imprisoned there.' He believes this view is 'best summarised in the text of Alain Resnais' celebrated movie Night and Fog (1955), written by the camp survivor Jean Cayrol. As the camera pans across the empty barracks, the narrator warns the viewer that these remains do not reveal the wartime reality of "endless, uninterrupted fear". The barracks offer no more than "the shell, the shadow".'

Tourists at Auschwitz

But doesn't allowing Auschwitz to disappear play into the hands of those who deny the Holocaust? It is a strong argument. In the same debate, Prof Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, former inmate and Chairman of the Auschwitz Council argues that, "it lies in the nature of man that when no tangible traces remain, events of the past fall into oblivion." He continues, Auschwitz "has grown to be a global symbol and a warning against all forms of contempt for mankind and of genocide."

One of my practical concerns would be how do you preserve the camp? It seems that the nature of the project will be to replace rather than preserve. In researching this piece I found this comment on a forum discussing the US decision to contribute to the fund,


"In the army we got to take a tour of Dachau, The one thing that sticks out in my mind was how new everything looked. I mean it looked more like freshly built than restored. The camp itself looked like it had been built yesterday. So it would be hard to tell if it really was old. I always remember asking myself that question when I left. Why did all that stuff look new?"

The site had a lot of denial mixed in with the debate. This man, however, was clearly troubled and in the context of the site it was particularly worrying that the work at Dachau had provoked such doubts. Are the wider and more important aims of Holocaust education served by people questioning the integrity of Auschwitz and the other camps? Prof Bartoszewski argues that, "If we allow Auschwitz-Birkenau to disappear from the face of the Earth, we might just be opening a way for a similar evil to return." I suppose my main point is that 'similar evil' has returned many times since the Holocaust despite the existence of the site.

The camp was the implement of death. Like a gun or a knife. It did not cause the deaths. The deaths were the logical conclusion of a process of dehumanisation. This process was described by Hannah Arendt, the German Jewish philosopher, in her work 'The Human Condition.' She argued that the modern world alienated people from one another because life had become a private experience driven by individual consumption. Viktor Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor, sums up the argument neatly, "I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers." So what is the lesson?

Tourists at Auschwitz

In 1966, Theodor W. Adorno, one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II, proposed his theory of  "Education after Auschwitz without Auschwitz.' Central to his theory is that the curriculum should not contain 'any detailed descriptions of the most heinous atrocities'. His research demonstrated that excessive attention to extreme cruelty made small-scale cruelty seem not that bad. He also promoted the idea that children be taught that everyone plays the role of bystander, victim and  perpetrator at some point in their lives. This would teach them the mechanisms that lead to different types of behaviour. Finally, by not focusing attention on the Holocaust the curriculum allows children to develop sympathy for all victims not specifically Holocaust victims. 

Adorno recognised that the lesson of the Holocaust was that humans need to feel empathy - so they can identify with other people in other situations and they also need to be confident autonomous beings - achieved by promoting the ability to: reflect, contemplate, make one’s own decisions and not automatically go along with the crowd (non-conformity).  

I think that it is a mistake to focus on Auschwitz. Ultimately, the Auschwitz debate has already been won and I suspect won by groups with more personal interest in the preservation of the camp than I can hope to understand. However, I do not believe that maintaining Auschwitz beyond the death of the last survivor serves any purpose. The true lesson of the Holocaust, as subsequent genocides have shown, is that we must fight the promotion and acceptance of dehumanising philosophies. In this fight,  ideas, not symbols, are our greatest enemy and our greatest ally. 

Eric Pickles - The Fat Controller

The Fat Controller

Council cuts are nothing new but Eric Pickles' announcement that councils in England will face cuts of 9.9% next year is a particularly stark Christmas message. The cuts are part of a four year plan to reduce Central Government funing to Local Government by 28%. At the same time the Government is publishing a Localism Bill, designed to, 'devolve greater powers to councils and neighbourhoods and give local communities control over housing and planning decisions.'

According to the GMB Union 79 councils have issued warnings about job cuts and it is estimated that 74,000 jobs wil be lost in the New Year. So, not a merry christmas for many. GMB national officer Brian Strutton has commented that: "Local government seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of spending cuts and the whole range of council services will be dramatically slashed. From what we've seen, support for the needy and vulnerable will be particularly hard hit including carers for the elderly and children's social workers. So will street cleaning and refuse collection."

The Bradford Protests

Pickles has some 'previous' in this line. In the late 1980s, after a time as Chairman of the Young Conservatives, Pickles emerged as the 'beast of Bradford' a right wing leader of Bradford City Council who slashed the council's budget by £50 million, reducing the workforce, over five years, by a third. In comparison with the Bradford firebrand, Pickles, who had previously been a communist and was regarded as a 'wet' Tory during his early career, appears to have returned to those left-wing roots by only making 9.9% cuts.

To show that he is a well-rounded figure and not completely averse to public spending: during the expenses scandal Pickles admitted he claimed an allowance for a second home because he had a four hour journey to work although he lived only 37 miles away from Westminster. For average size commuters the trip only took 90 minutes. Despite his tough image Pickles has a sensitive side. In 2006 a fish and chip shop in his constituency launched the 'Eric Pickled Egg'. The item was removed when Pickles complained that egg represented a personal slight and said the episode was 'in bad taste' because he, in fact, disliked vinegar.

Pickles might be taking away with one hand but he is giving us the Localism Bill in the other. The Department for Communities claims,

"Decentralising government is at the heart of everything we do - transferring power from central government to local authorities and the individuals they represent. We want to achieve a position where strong, empowered local government is able to act in the best interests of its residents with the necessary support, not interference, from central government institutions. We are going to make it clear who is responsible for doing a job and give communities the powers to ensure it is done. We will strengthen democratic accountability and hold elected officials to account, for example through referendums and greater transparency." 

Power to the people! In principle it is difficult to disagree with the aims of the Bill. One of the Bill's more innovative clauses confers a “protected status” on important 'community assets' such as pubs, libraries or even shops. If one of these properties goes on the market, local people are given extra time to buy and keep the service going. In rural locations, particularly, this could be a valuable power. There will also be a new right to let community or voluntary groups run local services like meals on wheels which would be paid for by the council.

However, some of the proposals are rather concerning. One of my early posts noted that the housing benefit reforms would, "lead to homelessness and since there is a statutory duty to house homeless people, the cost will ultimately fall back upon the government anyway, or will that duty be removed?" (http://canthingsonlygetbetter.blogspot.com/2010/10/housing-no-comment.html). The Localism Bill proposes to end the statutory duty for councils to house homeless people permanently in affordable accommodation. Instead they will be able to discharge their responsibilities by finding them private rented accommodation for at least 12 months.

Another less publicised aspect of the Bill is the proposal to reform the Housing Revenue Account. For those who don't know, it is sets the level of central government subsidy for council housing. The social housing budget has already been cut by 50%. If you throw in the new powers for people to approve or veto "excessive" council tax rises (how many will vote for the necessary increases to maintain services?) then we are looking at a very grim picture for social housing and those who rely on it to keep their heads above water.

Ultimately, given the size of the cuts, I think we will see councils taking some very tough decisions.  Rather than deciding which services to enhance according to local priorities, we will see people deciding which front line services will have to be cut or lost. As the BBC's Nick Robinson said in his blog recently, "Governments with money centralise and claim the credit. Governments without cash decentralise and spread the blame." He pointed out that this cynical view was not his own but came from a top Tory 'policy wonk'. Make deep cuts and then sit back and let the local councillors take the flak.

Eric Pickles - 'the Beast of Bradford' 

In 2010 local councils were responsible for spending £177 billion, a huge slice of government expenditure, yet most of us don't know the name of our local councillor. You may not be a direct beneficiary of all these services, but we all benefit from the opportunity they provide for members of our community.

Time to get involved before Eric gets rid of it all. If we don't, at least we'll know who ate all the pie. 

Julian Assange and Wikileaks

There is a news story around at the moment that may have escaped your attention – it involves the publication of a few private cables sent by diplomats of the US of A

Julian Assange

This blog does not intend to go into the rights and wrongs of leaking confidential and potentially damaging state documents, although I am in favour of it, but rather the draconian and frankly scary response of America.

There are the usual hang ‘em high brigade that you get in any ‘national crisis’ – Congressman Mike Rogers being a prime example. Congressman Rogers says that execution would be an appropriate punishment for the soldier widely thought to helped leak classified military documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. 

 "I argue the death penalty clearly should be considered here," explained Rogers. "He clearly aided the enemy to what may result in the death of U.S. soldiers or those cooperating. If that is not a capital offense, I don't know what is."

Ex Vice-Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin called for him to be hunted as an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands”, whilst Representative Peter T. King called the leaks “terrorism”.

More sinister is the attempts by the American government to ‘persuade’ various companies that having anything to do with Wikileaks may be harmful for their business.  It is thought that it was US political pressure that provoked Amazon to stop hosting Wikileaks, EveryDNS to break Wikileaks.org’s domain name, eBay/Paypal to stop facilitating financial transactions, Swiss Post to freeze a Wikileaks bank account (in perhaps the first instance in recorded history of a Swiss bank taking residency requirements seriously), and Mastercard and Visa to cease relations. 

The US Government may not have the powers to directly stop the confidential information reaching the public domain but they are doing everything within their power to disrupt and block Wikileaks. Meanwhile, the US Government is content to allow Visa and Mastercard to allow links on the Klu Klux Klan website enabling donations to be made.

Then we get to the very tricky detail of the international arrest warrant for the alleged rape of two Swedish women by the high profile head of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.  I would never support a man accused of such a terrible crime without knowing the facts more thoroughly and I can not comment on his guilt or innocence as I do not know enough about the incident. 

What is striking, of course, is the timing of the warrant.  Mr Assange has stated that he tried to speak to the police in Sweden when the accusation first surfaced but that they thought the evidence was not sufficient to proceed.  He then left Sweden with the knowledge of the police and came to England.  He was not in hiding and British police knew how to contact him. 

Assange's British lawyer says Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny is flouting international law and staging a "show trial" by keeping him in the dark, calling it "impossible for us to prepare a case if you don't know what the allegations or evidence are." It wasn’t until the leaked cables starting being published that an international arrest warrant was served. This could be a mere coincidence, I will let you draw your own conclusions from that.  What I do hope is the justice is done for the proper reasons rather than any political ones.

Luckily there are many people out there in the cyberworld who believe in the freedom of the internet. From the twitter campaigns aimed at spreading support for Wikileaks, encouraging donations and urging action against the aforementioned companies as well as posting links to the documents themselves, to the sites posting links to Wikileaks to countries who are willing to let them on their servers (Bolivia).  There are also many who are happy to take the law into their own hands and fight fire with fire – apparently Mastercard and Visa sites have been the subject of intense cyber attacks since they announced their decisions.

Beauty and the geek

To me, Wikileaks shows that powerful governments will do anything to keep the truth from the unwashed masses, but, in the digital age, they are fighting a losing battle – and I do believe this battle is part of a bigger war against the ever increasing power of big governments and, sometimes bigger, corporations. Thank goodness for the computer kids who never had girlfriends.

Viva la geek revolucion!

READING THIS COULD BE DANGEROUS

Today Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who is facing extradition for sexually assualting two women in Sweden, is due to appear in court in London in a fresh attempt to secure bail. Please welcome guest blogger, Kitey, as he gives us a personal view of the scandal.

There is a news story around at the moment that may have escaped your attention – it involves the publication of a few private cables sent by diplomats of the US of A

Julian Assange

This blog does not intend to go into the rights and wrongs of leaking confidential and potentially damaging state documents, although I am in favour of it, but rather the draconian and frankly scary response of America.

There are the usual hang ‘em high brigade that you get in any ‘national crisis’ – Congressman Mike Rogers being a prime example. Congressman Rogers says that execution would be an appropriate punishment for the soldier widely thought to helped leak classified military documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. 

 "I argue the death penalty clearly should be considered here," explained Rogers. "He clearly aided the enemy to what may result in the death of U.S. soldiers or those cooperating. If that is not a capital offense, I don't know what is."

Ex Vice-Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin called for him to be hunted as an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands”, whilst Representative Peter T. King called the leaks “terrorism”.

More sinister is the attempts by the American government to ‘persuade’ various companies that having anything to do with Wikileaks may be harmful for their business.  It is thought that it was US political pressure that provoked Amazon to stop hosting Wikileaks, EveryDNS to break Wikileaks.org’s domain name, eBay/Paypal to stop facilitating financial transactions, Swiss Post to freeze a Wikileaks bank account (in perhaps the first instance in recorded history of a Swiss bank taking residency requirements seriously), and Mastercard and Visa to cease relations. 

The US Government may not have the powers to directly stop the confidential information reaching the public domain but they are doing everything within their power to disrupt and block Wikileaks. Meanwhile, the US Government is content to allow Visa and Mastercard to allow links on the Klu Klux Klan website enabling donations to be made.

Then we get to the very tricky detail of the international arrest warrant for the alleged rape of two Swedish women by the high profile head of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.  I would never support a man accused of such a terrible crime without knowing the facts more thoroughly and I can not comment on his guilt or innocence as I do not know enough about the incident. 

What is striking, of course, is the timing of the warrant.  Mr Assange has stated that he tried to speak to the police in Sweden when the accusation first surfaced but that they thought the evidence was not sufficient to proceed.  He then left Sweden with the knowledge of the police and came to England.  He was not in hiding and British police knew how to contact him. 

Assange's British lawyer says Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny is flouting international law and staging a "show trial" by keeping him in the dark, calling it "impossible for us to prepare a case if you don't know what the allegations or evidence are." It wasn’t until the leaked cables starting being published that an international arrest warrant was served. This could be a mere coincidence, I will let you draw your own conclusions from that.  What I do hope is the justice is done for the proper reasons rather than any political ones.

Luckily there are many people out there in the cyberworld who believe in the freedom of the internet. From the twitter campaigns aimed at spreading support for Wikileaks, encouraging donations and urging action against the aforementioned companies as well as posting links to the documents themselves, to the sites posting links to Wikileaks to countries who are willing to let them on their servers (Bolivia).  There are also many who are happy to take the law into their own hands and fight fire with fire – apparently Mastercard and Visa sites have been the subject of intense cyber attacks since they announced their decisions.

Beauty and the geek

To me, Wikileaks shows that powerful governments will do anything to keep the truth from the unwashed masses, but, in the digital age, they are fighting a losing battle – and I do believe this battle is part of a bigger war against the ever increasing power of big governments and, sometimes bigger, corporations. Thank goodness for the computer kids who never had girlfriends.

Viva la geek revolucion!

Mad Men - the best TV ever?

An impressive figure stands in the corner of an artfully decorated, early 1960s office. We only see his back, a featureless silhouette interrupted by just a hint of a humanising white shirt collar. He surveys the room. Pondering. Is it his office? Will he stay? Almost immediately the commanding figure is reduced as the camera pulls back. We are the second person in the room, a silent witness, observing the man, now smaller, exposed and more vulnerable in the middle of the office.

Opposite us a Scandinavian desk archly provides a note of solidity in an otherwise intangible room. Vague decor merges, through windows barred by blinds, with the monotonous grey sky to envelope a glimpse of pastel skyscrapers. What sort of cell is this? How can it hold him? Nothing but the desk and the man has substance.  

The self-assurance has gone. He's uneasy and we're uneasy for him. The music is a pulse. A potential threat like a discordant heart-monitor. Pressure. This is a man's world. No room for weakness or sentiment. Image is everything. The only personal touches in the room are the barely perceptible outlines of hard liquor bottles stacked on the table - like the ghosts of the men who have vacated the shadowy chairs. The bottles are an elegant testimony by the prosecution. Only the spinning fan shows signs of life.

Yet the cocktail chic has a seductive quality - the aspirational magazine style draws the man further into the room. He steps forward and places his briefcase on the floor. His silhouette is like an exclamation mark on a blank page. An assertion of individuality that breaks the tension. Sudden and catastrophic. Everything in the office is shattered and sucked into a sterile abyss while the man stands transfixed and helpless. The screen dissolves briefly into black only to reveal that the darkness is the man and he is falling.   

 

A man falling from a Manhattan skyscraper. 50 years of American history. A logical conclusion. His descent is witnessed by a wet dream of giant advertising hoardings promising every pleasure - but for him the price has been too high. He is not the only casualty. Fatherless children accuse the man with their smiles as he falls past the scarlet lips and fishnetted thigh that for once are untouchable and unmolested. The only thing he wants no one can sell. 

Dissolve to black again as we anticipate the impact, but no, there is one more twist. The camera pans out to reveal the man sitting nonchalantly in a chair, a cigarette in one hand and no doubt a whiskey in the other. Composed? Yes, but he stares into a grey void. What can he see? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcRr-Fb5xQo

Conservatives and the economics of happiness

Lord Young's remark that most Britons 'had never had it so good' received a great deal of criticism last week and saw him resign from his role as a government advisor. Given the current economic circumstances and the depth of the Coalition's cuts even David Cameron called the comment 'insensitive and inaccurate'. Insensitive, yes, but inaccurate? 

Rolling news has a habit of picking up on these gaffes, cranking up the hyperbole and making more of them than is really necessary. "Tory makes insensitive remark about the the poor shocker!" "Cameron makes a dig at a man for being short!" It is not really news, is it? The problem with this sort of reporting is that it may fill airtime but it also generates a slightly fraught atmosphere. It betrays a tendency to play to the mob. 

The trouble with Young's remark is that from a historical perspective it may be true. Like a Don in Tom Sharpe's 'Porterhouse College' - historians (sorry real historians who read this) tend to find that 'current economic circumstances only last ten years or so'. From this perspective, even making allowances for the mirage of wealth during the highly inflated house-price boom - most of us really have never had it so good. Now calm down and let me explain. During my lifetime we have seen our country transformed. The grey, conservative world of my childhood has disappeared. Never again will tinned mushrooms be regarded as a rather sophisticated addition to a meal or orange juice be seen an acceptable starter in a restaurant. 

Our society has been transformed. A huge proportion of lives have been changed for the better. Sexual equality, racial equality, gay rights, a huge increase in the standard of living for the vast majority and, of course, the advent of 52 inch plasma TVs. As this blog testifies, I think there are still huge problems but the advent of the minimum wage, statutory housing responsibilities, free pre-school education demonstrates how successive governments have attempted to address the barriers to social inclusion to varying degrees. Yes, it's a work in progress but please don't get caught up in a sentimental vision of Britain. Have you read any of David Peace's novels?

Please don't take away my TV

Yet the sting in the tale is that despite all the improvements we are more unhappy than ever. In the highly respected Legatum Prosperity Index, which annually measures well-being across a range of eight indicators from economic to social cohesion, the UK came 13th but 20th in terms of life satisfaction. Compared to most 'developed' countries: we are more scared of crime, work longer hours, have an older retirement age and despite a very high level of political stability, a very low regard for our politicians. One of the saddest statistics was that only 35% of the population believed they could trust other people. In the top country, Norway, 74.2% felt they could trust others and even the USA beat us.

Since 1990 Richard Layard, now Baron Layard, has been promoting an alternative view of economics in his role as Programme Director at the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE. Layard's work has become known as 'Happiness economics'. Briefly, he argues that relative rather than absolute income is the best indicator of happiness. People compare themselves to their peers and judge their 'happiness' accordingly. Increased purchasing power may make us unhappier if our position compared to others is worse. This effect may nullify any positive effects of economic growth and simply drive people to work harder in order to bridge the relative wealth gap. He calls this the rat race effect.

Richard layard

This research, however may seem like a debate that can only relate to the few very rich developed countries. It is no accident that the happiest countries are some of the wealthiest. At he very least it would be simplistic not to recognise that there is a minimum level of income that allows people to stop subsisting and instead start living. However, even leading free-market organisations have begun to advocate 'sharing the wealth'.

Layard's conclusions are supported by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Their 2010 report demonstrates the happiest countries also have the least inequality in income between rich and poor. Meanwhile the significantly less satisfied Brits and Yanks have a much great divergence in wealth. The OECD also concludes that in order to maximise worldwide economic growth, policy-makers should address levels of income inequality. Economic growth is not enough. It is a win-win situation because they note, as an aside, that there may also be a 'poverty reduction dividend' attached to these measures.

David Cameron's announcement that the Coalition will spend £2 million in an attempt to measure our  happiness has been met with derision. The rolling news juggernaut has got to work already and the mob are at the gates. Let's hope he has the political courage to see this through. I think he may be onto something. Despite the 'historical' trend of growing wealth we are less happy. Making 'happiness' rather than purely economic growth the goal would could have a profound effect on the assumptions of our policy-makers. It's an exciting thought.

Pure economic interests might drive a foreign policy that lands us in Iraq, but would a policy based on broader outcomes like social cohesion do the same? We are constantly warned that our top bankers will flee to other countries if the government dares to regulate their activities. Well, according to the OECD, it is in virtually everybody's self-interest to let them go.

To think that Ken Dodd was right all along...

"To me this old world is a wonderful place

And I'm just about the luckiest human in the whole human race

I've got no silver and I've got no gold

Just a whole lot of happiness in my soul"

Something Quite Interesting about Stephen Fry

England is infected. The World Health Organisation are not working on a vaccine.  Doctors have not been alerted. Yet the infection has spread to a large proportion of the population. Why no action? Ironically, because the host feels no obvious, short-term symptoms and seldom seek treatment. Instead, this disabling condition is passed on from generation to generation, leaving the infected with a overwhelming sense of well-being, contentment and, in the worst cases, smugness.  It's a mutated strain of nostalgia and charm. I have called it Stephen Fry's Palsy.

No one embodies the two qualities better than 'national treasure' Stephen Fry. If nostalgia is the English disease, then charm is its hot toddy. Like Stephen, they are a form of collective Prozac to the more challenging truths of English culture. In a blog written before the general election Fry argued that in

'ideological wars...the first casualties are consideration, mutual respect, sense, proportion', he went on to exhort his readers to, 'vote with your heart, vote with your head, vote with your gut – no one’s else. I just hope you have courage, style and charm enough not to hate me for what I am about to say, for I assure you I will not hate you if you say the exact opposite.'

Charming isn't it? But, for me, it is the sort of charm that smacks of entitlement. The sort of charm that can only come from the confidence that you can't really lose. He doesn't say who he votes for, but his innate conservatism, with a small 'c', is evident in the fact that he regarded the last election as an ideological war. Did I miss a titanic clash of ideas between Brown, Clegg and Cameron?

Gilbert and Sullivan

Like Stephen Fry, despite their tweedy, deeply unglamorous image, nostalgia and charm have managed to ingratiate themselves into the English psyche creating an unconscious and unquestioning faith in our national mythology. They sound like a Gilbert and Sullivan refrain: they remind us that we are English, our ways have stood the test of time, we don't change anything. "He IS an Englishman!"

Fry sits comfortably in this world. He may be an IT geek and compulsive Twitterer, but his heart remains firmly planted in an England where the social order is assured, 'I am a sentimentalist, and sentimentalists will hunt for any excuse to maintain the harmless fripperies of the status quo.' Tally ho! Time and again he supports the symbols of privilege and why shouldn't he? He explains that he was raised in an environment where every child he knew went away to school. Public school, Cambridge and the BBC, it's hardly surprising that he dismisses the social inequalities inherent in our society as 'insignificant blemishes.'

As an intellectual I would hope he could bring more insight to the debate than an acceptance based on 'expectation' and 'custom'. Is this G K Chesterton's 'democracy of the dead'. The trouble with tradition is that it has a habit of not changing. Is that Fry S J's idea of progress? Wring out the charming eloquence and we are left with something utterly nostalgic and reactionary. QI is a metaphor for Fry's world view, we aren't expected to dig too deep and the result is completely irrelevant. The winner is always Stephen Fry.

Oscar Wilde

He protests that his conservatism is tempered by 'criminal tendencies, my homosexuality, my Jewishness and the loathing of the bourgeoisie, the conventional and the respectable that these seem to have inculcated in me.' Fry believes he is a rebel. I'm not convinced his great hero, Oscar Wilde, would have agreed. Wilde believed 'progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority.' Taking drugs and being gay do not make you a rebel, not in England in the last 30 years. Despite his brief brush with the law, Fry has simply towed the line. He might very well be on the eccentric fringe but he is very much part of the Establishment,

The depths of his rebellion are reflected in his podcast on Beauty of the Soul - he argues that aesthetics could play a valuable part in enhancing our lives.  He makes a forceful argument and, as you would expect, the piece is witty, engaging and beautifully argued, but ultimately, it is an elitist dead-end. No wonder he loathes the bourgeoisie with their drab wallpaper. My favourite story about Wilde appears in Richard Ellmann's brilliant biography and describes how Wilde not only fought off four undergraduates sent by the JCR to wreck his rooms, but he then invited 'spectators to sample one of his would-be persecutor's wine and spirits.' Can you imagine Fry having the courage to 'assert his individualism' in this way?

Charm and nostalgia are the enemies of progress. It would be so easy for England's story of imperial achievement, industrial innovation and the salvation of Europe to sound like the ramblings of a particularly egotistical candidate in The Apprentice - or, god forbid, like an Italian. The genius of our national mythology is the roll-call of understated heroes. They create the impression it was all an exercise in benevolent self-sacrifice and democratic progress. Don't be mistaken for a moment. Every small concession to the rights of the general population and even more so in the colonies was the result of a hard fought struggle. In the last 30 years Fry's Palsy has taken hold. We have basked in the cozy and reassuring glow of our 'constitutional' superiority whilst many of the political concessions, that our ancestors fought so hard for, have disappeared.

Far from being a 'democracy of the dead' it is a democracy for the privileged few and Stephen Fry is one of their weapons.

The English disease.

England is infected. The World Health Organisation are not working on a vaccine.  Doctors have not been alerted. Yet the infection has spread to a large proportion of the population. Why no action? Ironically, because the host feels no obvious, short-term symptoms and seldom seek treatment. Instead, this disabling condition is passed on from generation to generation, leaving the infected with a overwhelming sense of well-being, contentment and, in the worst cases, smugness.  It's a mutated strain of nostalgia and charm. I have called it Stephen Fry's Palsy.

No one embodies the two qualities better than 'national treasure' Stephen Fry. If nostalgia is the English disease, then charm is its hot toddy. Like Stephen, they are a form of collective Prozac to the more challenging truths of English culture. In a blog written before the general election Fry argued that in

'ideological wars...the first casualties are consideration, mutual respect, sense, proportion', he went on to exhort his readers to, 'vote with your heart, vote with your head, vote with your gut – no one’s else. I just hope you have courage, style and charm enough not to hate me for what I am about to say, for I assure you I will not hate you if you say the exact opposite.'

Charming isn't it? But, for me, it is the sort of charm that smacks of entitlement. The sort of charm that can only come from the confidence that you can't really lose. He doesn't say who he votes for, but his innate conservatism, with a small 'c', is evident in the fact that he regarded the last election as an ideological war. Did I miss a titanic clash of ideas between Brown, Clegg and Cameron?

Gilbert and Sullivan

Like Stephen Fry, despite their tweedy, deeply unglamorous image, nostalgia and charm have managed to ingratiate themselves into the English psyche creating an unconscious and unquestioning faith in our national mythology. They sound like a Gilbert and Sullivan refrain: they remind us that we are English, our ways have stood the test of time, we don't change anything. "He IS an Englishman!"

Fry sits comfortably in this world. He may be an IT geek and compulsive Twitterer, but his heart remains firmly planted in an England where the social order is assured, 'I am a sentimentalist, and sentimentalists will hunt for any excuse to maintain the harmless fripperies of the status quo.' Tally ho! Time and again he supports the symbols of privilege and why shouldn't he? He explains that he was raised in an environment where every child he knew went away to school. Public school, Cambridge and the BBC, it's hardly surprising that he dismisses the social inequalities inherent in our society as 'insignificant blemishes.'

As an intellectual I would hope he could bring more insight to the debate than an acceptance based on 'expectation' and 'custom'. Is this G K Chesterton's 'democracy of the dead'. The trouble with tradition is that it has a habit of not changing. Is that Fry S J's idea of progress? Wring out the charming eloquence and we are left with something utterly nostalgic and reactionary. QI is a metaphor for Fry's world view, we aren't expected to dig too deep and the result is completely irrelevant. The winner is always Stephen Fry.

Oscar Wilde

He protests that his conservatism is tempered by 'criminal tendencies, my homosexuality, my Jewishness and the loathing of the bourgeoisie, the conventional and the respectable that these seem to have inculcated in me.' Fry believes he is a rebel. I'm not convinced his great hero, Oscar Wilde, would have agreed. Wilde believed 'progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority.' Taking drugs and being gay do not make you a rebel, not in England in the last 30 years. Despite his brief brush with the law, Fry has simply towed the line. He might very well be on the eccentric fringe but he is very much part of the Establishment,

The depths of his rebellion are reflected in his podcast on Beauty of the Soul - he argues that aesthetics could play a valuable part in enhancing our lives.  He makes a forceful argument and, as you would expect, the piece is witty, engaging and beautifully argued, but ultimately, it is an elitist dead-end. No wonder he loathes the bourgeoisie with their drab wallpaper. My favourite story about Wilde appears in Richard Ellmann's brilliant biography and describes how Wilde not only fought off four undergraduates sent by the JCR to wreck his rooms, but he then invited 'spectators to sample one of his would-be persecutor's wine and spirits.' Can you imagine Fry having the courage to 'assert his individualism' in this way?

Charm and nostalgia are the enemies of progress. It would be so easy for England's story of imperial achievement, industrial innovation and the salvation of Europe to sound like the ramblings of a particularly egotistical candidate in The Apprentice - or, god forbid, like an Italian. The genius of our national mythology is the roll-call of understated heroes. They create the impression it was all an exercise in benevolent self-sacrifice and democratic progress. Don't be mistaken for a moment. Every small concession to the rights of the general population and even more so in the colonies was the result of a hard fought struggle. In the last 30 years Fry's Palsy has taken hold. We have basked in the cozy and reassuring glow of our 'constitutional' superiority whilst many of the political concessions, that our ancestors fought so hard for, have disappeared.

Far from being a 'democracy of the dead' it is a democracy for the privileged few and Stephen Fry is one of their weapons.