Social Sciences: Changes in Society Latest Topics Sciences: Changes in Society Latest Topicsen9/11 and Magical Thinking and Magical Thinking

I suggest this descent started in the early nineties. It lurks in dogmas like Hegelianism (counterposed to Marxist Dialiectics) and Intelligent Design, for example, but had been kept at bay by a relatively rational curriculum.

9/11 can be taken as one pivotal moment when one society had an opportunity to grow. Instead, psychologically first and then societally it imploded. Many of the problems the world is facing today are as a result of this.

The following article, in part, explains : [while internaional in scope it has a us-centric slant, but on the whole corrected by various comments]

The Decade of Magical Thinking

By Steve Almond

September 9th, 2011

A Rumpus Lamentation on What We Lost













If one of my relatives had died that day …




The first line of the Iliad:







The tragedy of 9/11, then, wasn’t that 2,977 people died. It was that 2,977 Americans died...."




22046Mon, 29 Jun 2015 00:27:29 +0000
jineoloji - kurdish word for women, jineoloji - womens studies
- The Kurdish Womens Liberation Movement is teaching a new way.
To get a better understanding of the movement, here are a series of articles drawn from Harvest, a site that gathers news from the Kurdish liberation struggles as the Kurds are leading the fight against ISIS today.
Making a women's revolution
We have some news concerning women’s struggles in Turkey and North Kurdistan today.
First, a teacher in Ankara has been sentenced to five months in prison for cutting a 12-year-old schoolgirl’s throat with a box cutter. Onur Özbek, a 35-year-old science class teacher at the Ülkü Ahmet Durusoy Secondary School in Ankara, received the five-month sentence for “deliberately injuring a person” and the school’s principal received the same sentence for not reporting a crime committed by a public servant, the Habertürk daily has reported.
Onur Özbek said in his defense that he accidentally scarred the schoolgirl’s throat with his nails, not the box cutter, which he admitted to have on him after he had confiscated one during a frisk of students. His lawyer maintained his client’s innocence by stressing that he was appointed as the deputy principal of another school in Ankara after the incident.
According to the newspaper report, Özbek had previously received a suspended sentence for injuring a student at another school. His latest conviction has not been suspended so he will be sent to prison if the ruling is approved by a higher court following an appeal.
“The Facebook page of the teacher shows that he is a fan of (Valley of the Wolves),” the report added, referring to a popular Turkish mafia drama. The show’s protagonist says that he slits throats, but never “slits the drill,” a Turkish expression that means “to put on airs.”
Then we have the news that women flooded the streets of Izmir with multilingual slogans and traditional erbane music as the World March of Women arrived in Izmir, the seventh stop in the international action.
Women arrived at the bank Eski Sümerbank yesterday evening for a welcome with the famous Kurdish slogan of the women's movement "jin, jiyan, azadî" (woman, life, freedom) written in five different languages. After dancing and erbane music, the women marched to Gündoğdu Square. Slogans in Kurdish and Turkish riffed on recent developments, including the scandal over the official Turkish language institute's definition of the word "available" as "easy to flirt with (women)." We have mentioned this previously on this blog.
"We're not available, we're feminists, we're in rebellion!" chanted the women as they took the streets of the Aegean city. The women had come from the border town of Nusaybin, across the border from Rojava, and will next head to Greece. "Our voices, our hearts, our peace, our sisterhood, our love, our freedom is one," said Sevim Fontaine, speaking on behalf of the World March of Women to the women of Izmir. "Women's strength comes from unity and this strength will tear down the walls built over us by patriarchy and capital."
Women danced local zeybek, horon and roman folk dances and an all-woman musical group performed. The March will tour the Selçuk and Şirince regions of Izmir in solidarity with local women's struggles.
We also have the very sad news that the bodies of two women shot to death were found on the Adana-Mersin highway today. The dead bodies of the two women were noticed by a truck driver who was on the way from Mersin to Hatay, near the Karahisalı toll bar on the Adana-Mersin highway, early in the morning. Police units conducted an initial investigation and said that one of the women had been shot in the head and the other in the chest and leg.
Finally, we have three reports on how women view the situation in North Kurdistan and Turkey now.
Argentine Popular Dignity Movement (Movimiento Popular La Dignidad, MPLD) activist Magdalena Roggi told the JIMHA news service that the fight of the Kurdish people, and especially of women, has much to teach movements in the rest of the world. She came to Kurdistan to attend the World March of Women, the Middle East Youth Conference that took place in Amed over the weekend and the historic Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakır with the goal of bringing home lessons for the struggle with capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy in Argentina. Her month-long stay will build connections of solidarity between Kurdistan and Latin America. "The Kurdish youth are very organized and have a clear goal: the freedom of the Kurdish people and to be able to build their society the way they want," she said.
The women's movement in Argentina struggles against femicide and male violence as well as the ban on abortion that disproportionately kills poor women forced to obtain abortions in unhealthy conditions, causing 30% of maternal deaths a year. Women's high level of organization is reflected in the annual National Women's Encounter, which draws 40,000 women to a different site every year.
Magdalena was impressed by the fundamental role of women for the Kurdish movement, which she says is rare among socialist movements. She spoke at the Middle East Youth Conference and said that seeing Kurdish youth fighting in the streets was moving. "In Argentina, we don't have a fight like this, of course," Magdalena said. "But the responsibility of the youth in Argentina is to wake up and start to fight—not just for public education, social services or for healthcare but also for a new society." She also said that the MPLD is focused on developing those conversations.
Egyptian activist Salma Said spoke to JINHA about the importance of events in Rojava as an example of how people of the Middle East can form alternative models for life. She came to the first Middle East Youth Conference with the goal of learning how to produce alternative ways of life in the Middle East from the Kurdish struggle. In a time when Egypt is dealing with the repression of its revolutionary hopes, she plans to make a short film documenting the Rojava revolution to screen in Egypt.
Salma is part of the campaign against military trials for civilians in Egypt and a founding member of the Mosireen media collective. Her relationship to Northern Kurdistan started in 2003, when she attended a conference of women of the Middle East. Salma later took part in the Gezi movement and followed the Kurdish movement closely throughout the 2011 revolutionary process in Egypt. Since the counter- revolutionary wave of 2014, she says, the movement has been in a period of recovery, focusing its energy on supporting those in jail and families of martyrs.
"This couple of years is a time for us to study different forms of struggle around the world. People want to know what's going on here in detail," Salma said.
Salma plans to make a short film about the alternative system of life being built in Rojava because media representations of events in Rojava are sparse and dominated by Daesh/ISIS propaganda. Salma said that she has been particularly repulsed by the media's objectifying representation of Kurdish women fighters. "They're photos of beautiful women with guns without any real understanding how they organize, how they participate in the fight," she explained. Salma wants to take a less objectifying approach that seriously investigates Kurdish women's organizing and the transformation of everyday life through resistance.
She says that from the beginning Egyptians wanted to create an alternative model that went beyond the Iranian and Turkish models that were presented as the only options for societies in the Middle East. Rojava has a particular appeal because self-organizing in the interstices of the state has always been part of Egyptians' daily praxis. "The Egyptian state does not exist as a state that gives services to the people. It's just a police state that exists to oppress people. So Egyptians have been organizing in different ways because the state is absent. I'm trying to look at this closely and see how we can self-organize to create different models in our own lives," Salma said.
Mosireen, the media collective that Salma helped found, is one example of the effort to create alternative social forms. The collective is based on non-hierarchical, consensus and participatory decision-making. It aims to open knowledge sources to the people, distributing all products under Creative Commons licenses.
The brutal repression of the Egyptian revolution has taught Egyptians that the unity brought out in crisis can fall apart under the pressure of world events, said Salma. Armed with this perspective, she and other Egyptians will be closely following the Rojava revolution.
Assyrian women's fearless battle against Daesh/ISIS attacks on Assyrian and Syriac villages in Til Temir has become legendary for the Assyrian women of Rojava, said Sîham Qirû, an Assyrian woman and an official in the Economic and Trade Ministry of Rojava's Cizîrê Canton. Sîham said that she came to the World March of Women to give the women of the world the good news that women in Rojava have accomplished a revolution and created a self-defense system.
Daesh/ISIS began their attacks aimed at the Assyrian and Syriac people starting with the February 22 assault on the Rojava city of Hesekê. In the ongoing attacks on Til Temir and Til Hemis, which resembled Daesh attacks on the Êzîdîs to the extent that they aimed to kidnap women and children, Kurdish and Assyrian forces worked together to defend the villages. Rojava’s People’s/women’s Defense Forces (YPG/J), the Syriac Military Council, the Xabûr Defense Units and Rojava Asayiş Forces have all taken part in the defense of the Rojava revolution, one in which all ethnic groups in Rojava take part.
Sîham spoke to JINHA in Nusaybin during the World March of Women and explained that Assyrian women in Rojava have fearlessly defended themselves and their communities against Daesh's masculinist and culturally genocidal violence. And just as Arîn Mîrxan has become the symbol of the Kobanê resistance, so has Widad Yûnan, an Assyrian woman, become symbolic for her defense of the house in which she lived alone. Widad killed five ISIS gang members who were attempting to take her house. "No one knows what happened to Widad Yûnan after that day," said Sîham. "All we know is that she has become symbolic for Assyrians." She also said that after this, Kurds, Arabs and Assyrians would form a united front. "The struggle of women in Rojava against Daesh gangs has demonstrated women's willpower and women's revolution," she said. "I think these Daesh gangs, who are a danger to all humanity, will receive their answer: all peoples' self-defense."

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21755Tue, 17 Mar 2015 21:52:35 +0000
Changes in Society: Class article about Class in yesterday's Guardian:,,1756253,00.html

As the high tide of New Labour recedes, the rock of class is again revealed as a determining feature of Britain's political landscape. From Marx to Major, politics was defined by the desire to create a classless society. It was a challenge taken up by Tony Blair, who wanted "to take class out of British politics". Your class, though, is still your fate - only we've lost the language and culture to deal with it. New Labour cannot talk about the working class, and so denies the possibility of renewal. Why and how should the left respond?

The left saw class as both problem and solution: the root cause of social inequality and, through a growing labour movement, the engine of a classless society. But this historical inevitability was undone by postwar affluence and a burgeoning "middle class". The forward march of labour was halted.

New Labour's ideological escape hatch from old class politics was the emphasis on the nation's labour force in a global economy. Echoing the language of Marx, Tony Blair said "people are born with talent and everywhere it is in chains". It was the job of the state to liberate them so they could fully participate in the new economy. New Labour referred not just to a new party but to individualised labourers, no longer to a class of labour.

But the escape hatch was a trap door. While New Labour found itself politically free from old labour, it was economically tied to a new master class. Once Blairism inverted the role of social democracy, by forcing people to fit the market, it accepted a politics driven by the demands of a global elite seen as crucial to international competitiveness.

This is the transnational class of consultants and bankers who, it is feared, work only where they are paid most and taxed least. They are the new untouchables. Because of them, we cannot not talk about spiralling executive pay, rewards for failure, or wealth beyond imagination that allows some to spray champagne around West End bars for the conspicuous fun of it.

While this silence in class is maintained, social mobility declines and the gap between rich and poor remains at the levels bequeathed by Thatcherism, as the Fabian Society has recently reported. Instead of "living on thin air" the reality is an emerging hourglass economy with a Victorian jobs market of gangmasters and domestic servants. Infant mortality rates are double for the lowest social group; the poorest men die seven years before the richest; and 69% of the land is still owned by just 0.6% of the population.

Denying that class matters creates a vacuum in which the far right festers. New Labour has said goodbye to the white working class, whose votes they have taken for granted, because of its focus on the swingers of middle England. Margaret Hodge may bemoan the rise of the BNP in her backyard but it is the government's refusal to address issues of affordable housing, flexible labour markets and the effect on them of immigration that leaves the way open for the racist right.

Within these growing divisions, consumerism is both the new social glue and the basis for even greater polarisation. We are all consumers now, buying if not identical designer wear then at least cheap high-street copies. But the new excluded are the failed consumers who cannot afford to be part of "normal" shopping society. In many ways they are worse off than the poor of the past. They suffer alone with nowhere to hide from their exclusion and no one to blame but themselves. They don't want to fight the rich, just be like them.

No wonder Francis Maude, the Tory chair, was recently moved to say that "one of the great achievements of New Labour is to have taken class out of politics". It is this "achievement" that has made Britain safe for the new global elite. But New Labour promised a meritocracy of fluid social movement. This demanded policies to end private education, to tax land, inheritance, wealth and higher incomes, and end the monarchy and the Lords. Of course none of this is countenanced.

The more social democratic elements of New Labour in the Treasury have thankfully been papering over the cracks of class divisions through redistribution by stealth. But they can't go on running to keep inequality still, without discussing class. Class cannot be removed from politics if it is still part and parcel of people's lives.

So tensions abound. Stephen Byers, the Blairite outrider, says in one breath "we are now witnessing a silent and secret revolution where, to a greater extent than ever before, those born into disadvantage and poverty will be condemned to it for the rest of their lives" - and in the next, denies the ability to act, by declaring Britain has reached the ceiling of its tax burden.

The task of the left is to reduce differences in class and inequality. New Labour sees only a nation of shoppers, dragooned on to the treadmill of consumption and more work. A cold society of economic self-rationalising individuals able only to change themselves through what they purchase. Class to them is something you can buy.

The alternative is to recognise class as part of the answer to how we change our world together. Social trends may be heralding a return to the solidarity of class politics. The emerging hourglass economy creates not just a swelling lump of poorly-paid service workers, but also a shrinking and insecure middle class, the effective organisation of which demands the rebirth of a trade unionism that knows when the interests of capital and labour do and do not mix.



6606Thu, 20 Apr 2006 11:26:04 +0000
Ecosocialism Change, Ecosocialism and the Green New Deal

Newly released figures confirm unemployment is going through the roof, austerity measures are causing global unrest, huge strike action has occurred recently in Chile amongst others and the biggest strike in the UK since 1926 seems increasingly likely in November with plans for sustained industrial action into the new year.

Synchronously we are becoming desensitized to news of whichever freak weather condition, flood, forest fire or natural disaster has just occurred in whichever country. In the Pacific Ocean, small islands are disappearing under rising seas, oceans are acidifying and greenhouse gases are being pumped into the atmosphere apace.

The miserably inadequate Cap-and-trade system, a new market that commodifies the atmosphere was apparently designed to deal with harmful emissions and avert catastrophic climate change, but designed by whom? by the wall-street money men that caused the economic collapse and the mass transfer of wealth from the public purse to the parasitic elite.

These parallel trends (environmental and social) show no sign of attenuation. So is there a strategy that seeks convergence? Yes, its called ecosocialism, but generally ecosocialists are better at pushing the desired outcome of the movement than they are the transition. A world in which the state eventually withers, free association of producers, use value replaces exchange value, ecological rationale, restoration of the commons and so on.

But outside of this appetising prospect, what can we embrace here and now? How do we move forward? There are no hard and fast rules and the seeds of ecosocialism are finding increasingly fertile conditions with various social movements and political groupings.

When we begin to talk of the fightback against austerity involving coordinated industrial action on the kind of scale proposed in the UK that may involve 6 million workers or more including various unions, many waking from relative slumber; notably the doctors union (the british medical association) that has balloted members for industrial action receiving overwhelming support of 87%.

When we acknowledge that neoliberal austerity is pushing unemployment in the UK to over 2.5 million, out of a total population of c.60million with similar trends in many 'advanced' countries.

When we recognise that this increase is in large part due to youth unemployment and that the outlook for young people is increasingly bleak; debt, housing, job insecurity and climate change all handed down from the profligate generation and many of those that have secured higher level education have found that their striving has exacerbated their financial woes with student debts of up to 30k and few jobs available. The myth of meritocracy laid bare.

When we consider It is not just the youth but it is across the board, many older workers facing the prospect of long term or permanent unemployment.

When we consider the extra-economic affects: the surprisingly uniform clinical presentation of unemployed people so prevalent that medical professionals have adopted the term "unemployment depression" *

When we consider all of these factors it seems appropriate to draw on lessons from history and talk 'New Deal' as was the response to the great depression caused by the Wall-street crash in 1929. But there is of course a difference; the 21st century New Deal would have to seek convergence, addressing both the social and ecological crisis.

At the dawn of the current economic meltdown in 2008 England & Wales Green Party Leader; Caroline Lucas used the great depression of the 1930's and subsequent new deal to juxtapose the idea of a Green New Deal:

"first, strictly regulate the cause of the problem - the greedy and feckless finance sector; second, get people back to work" and "Finally, fund this in part by an increase in taxes on big business and the rich - a measure which also has the positive effect of dramatically decreasing inequality"


"A "carbon army", recruited from those in the region who are at present unemployed or wanting to improve their existing skills, could be trained for the low to high skilled jobs required. To reduce carbon dramatically will require skills ranging from energy analysis, design and production of hi-tech renewable alternatives, large-scale engineering projects such as combined heat and power and offshore wind, through to work in making every building "energy tight", fitting more efficient energy systems in homes, offices and factories"

My feeling is that ecosocialists must embed the fight for a green new deal as a core strategy. No it's not the whole picture, and in isolation it will not achieve the ecosocialist vision but it is an important part of the transition and it is something we can fight for here and now. And lets face it some of us (me in particular) can talk all day about 1. How capitalism is no way to run a planet. 2. What an ecosocialist world would be like and 3. Manifestations of 21st century socialism in Latin America; However when it comes to concrete strategies for transition something is often lacking.

Unions and political parties are pressing ahead with green new deal initiatives but they need support. Many of us feel a more natural affinity for grassroots movements. I know i'm not the only one. The truth of the matter is that the transition to ecosocialism will be multi-focal in kind, and that's fine, the question is when will it become systemic. Caveats aside, this will be sooner if we engage with unions and political parties green or socialist (ideally green-socialist!)

Major alarm bells do of course ring when we consider the fact that despite massive and hard fought gains for the new deal of the 1930's, with several million jobs created, in essence the project provided a crutch for capitalism i.e. it is not how we overthrow capitalism; it is a near-term strategy made more significant by the the decreasing time available to make meaningful changes. As David Schwartzman writes:

"What the Green New Deal can accomplish is very significant, indeed critical to confronting the challenge of preventing catastrophic climate change. Humanity cannot afford to wait for socialism to replace capitalism to begin implementing this prevention program"

Also we must heed the notion of the Jevon's paradox, that readers of John Bellamy Foster will be well acquainted with. In brief William Jevons was an English economist, essentially a capitalist who argued in his 1965 book 'The Coal Question" that:


Bellamy Foster gives examples of more efficient refrigerators not leading to fewer being made but rather more and with increased demand and with each unit increasing in size. In addition similar with the automobile industry; more energy efficient automobiles led to an increase in demand for driving so more fuel was burnt and more cars were made.

Various green sector jobs in this regard could play in to the hands of that mother of contradictions, green capitalism. In addition sectors that by design would be virtually redundant in the ecosocialist world such as advertising may find benefit under a green new deal.

So the success depends on the trajectory it takes; jobs created for what purpose and what and how much is produced. There would be need for constant re-evaluation to divert the prospect of overproduction and waste. The Renewable energy sector is key but the most powerful application of the green new deal bar-none would not just be to create entirely new jobs but to re-appropriate jobs from the military, to retool military personnel. It's easy to forget when we consider the human cost of war that the military whether engaged in occupations, terror campaigns or on training missions is the single biggest emitter of CO2. I guess dealing with the cessation of the military could be considered as green new deal plus, with the prospect not just of peace but of enormous funds and intellect that could be diverted toward the fight against climate instability

Another potential benefit is that during the struggle for the green new deal, a significant grouping of the population i.e the unemployed (although not exclusively the unemployed) could be engaged in green political action for the first time, or rather they will if we push it hard enough. In addition once successful there will be vast quantities of workers directly engaged in the green movement, increasing education and awareness. This is vital if we are to transition to ecosocialism, in turn it is also vital that ecosocialism, semantics aside, becomes mainstream.

Of course not everybody agrees with the idea of a green new deal and as already stated it's constraints need to be appreciated, but it is undoubtedly a debate that ecosocialists should engage in.

A green new deal, here in the UK headed by the 1million green jobs campaign has been embraced by the green party at the recent conference. For all of those that like to mock clicktivism' please reconsider and to all of those that don't; please add your name to the petition site here it will help. I gather you don't have to be a UK citizen. A U.S initiative the blue-green alliance can be found by clicking here.

And now over to the always passionate and articulate Jonathan Neale to explain more:

Climate Change, Bolivia, Copenhagen Trade Unions, Military spending, Emissions and Participatory Democracy.:

* Recent studies have shown that a high percentage of individuals develop depression within six months of becoming unemployed. Unemployment depression is a serious problem that throws you into a cycle of defeat because its debilitating symptoms can make it even harder for you to find another job. It's like a vicious cycle. Unemployment depression in its early stages is typically characterized by physical symptoms such as headache, stomach ache, and sexual dysfunction. Other symptoms that may eventually arise include irritability, fatigue, sluggishness, and loss of interest in things you used to enjoy. People who have been unemployed for more than three months are particularly susceptible to unemployment depression


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18203Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:21:38 +0000
New Labour and Egalitarianism Giddens is a Labour peer; his new book, Over to You, Mr Brown: How Labour Can Win Again, will be published by Polity Press on March 28. It has been suggested that Giddens is the brains behind Blair's Third Way:,,2034040,00.html

Anthony Giddens

Thursday March 15, 2007

The Guardian

Everyone I talk to in the Labour party seems pessimistic about the future. The Tories are well ahead in the polls. David Cameron's popularity ratings overshadow those of the man who will almost certainly be the next Labour leader, Gordon Brown. "You were the future once," Cameron said in pointed rejoinder to Tony Blair a few months ago, but the remark could just as well apply to Brown, who after all is older than Blair.

The interregnum between Blair and Brown is causing all sorts of troubles. Blair's authority, inside and outside the party, has declined. Cameron has walked almost unopposed into the gap that has been left. The cash for peerages affair is dragging on. Iraq is a bigger mess than even the critics of the war feared at the outset. Many voters might just feel it's time to let the Conservatives have a go, especially since they have moved so far over towards Labour's position anyway.

And yet ... we could have a completely different take on the situation. Look what happened in Australia. The prime minister, John Howard, is ageing, and he does not exactly exude charisma. His time in office was beset with troubles. In the last election, he was faced by an exuberant young challenger, Mark Latham (of the Australian Labor party), who initially made all the running. Yet Howard came out ahead come election time. Voters went for experience over youth, and if Brown becomes Labour leader and prime minister, the same could happen here.

What should Brown do to maximise the chances of Labour achieving a fourth term? New ideas are essential if Labour is effectively to counter the Conservative challenge and, even more important, rekindle enthusiasm among the electorate. Labour has to reinvent itself almost as thoroughly as happened in 1997.

I propose Labour should develop a Contract With the Future. What I mean by the phrase is that Labour should offer a contract to citizens to initiate a future for the country, and as far as possible the wider world, that is socially just, as well as economically and ecologically sustainable - where we do not, in effect, exploit our children.

It must involve a number of key points. Labour should more openly rejoin the social democratic tradition. It has thus far kept its egalitarianism mostly under wraps. Why? There is no need to be coy about the need to reduce inequality. Britain is too unequal a society to compete effectively in the world marketplace. I advocate a "new egalitarianism", that is the very condition of longer-term economic growth. Policy innovation, not tax rises, should drive this programme.

Major changes will have to be made in the structure of taxation to thread a concern with green issues through the whole of government fiscal policy. Brown must become green - and of course he has just delivered a major speech on the subject. There should be no increase in overall taxation levels. The "no" to tax rises will have to be a big no, since the Tories will paint Brown as a tax-and-spend traditionalist.

Blairite policies in health and education should be radicalised and generalised rather than rolled back. The welfare state has been largely a middle-class monopoly. We must empower poorer groups by giving them real voice and choice. Decentralisation and devolution - not themes Brown has been conspicuously associated with - should be the order of the day. Cities and regions need effective leadership in a world where global changes often impact upon them directly, rather than at the national level.

We are living through a period of the end of the welfare state, and further welfare reform is imperative. I do not mean this in the rightwing sense that welfare systems are a brake on growth. The opposite is true. The welfare state has to become a social investment state, much more than only a safety net. For instance, investment in skills is vital for tackling poverty and for economic competitiveness. We need a more preventative and activist welfare system.

Labour should put an arm-lock on the new and very extensive "wellbeing" agenda. Mental illness seems on the rise; it is responsible for more work days lost than unemployment. Most chronic illnesses today are lifestyle related. Coping with them demands lifestyle change - the adoption of healthier everyday habits. Lifestyle change is also the key to dealing with global warming.

Brown should adopt a more positive attitude towards the EU. Many of the most significant problems we face as a society today can only be dealt with in the context of the EU - climate change, energy security, transnational crime, migration, the Middle East, and other issues. A new generation of European leaders is emerging, and Brown should seize the chance to be one of them.

Foreign policy, above all the tragedy in Iraq, has done more than anything else to undermine Labour's credibility. Brown must oversee the process of pulling the troops out of the country, a process that has already started. He has to put a distance between Britain and the current US administration without sacrificing Atlanticism altogether. Even more important, he has to think through the implications of living in a world where the influence of, and respect for, American power has shrunk.

I don't mean to underestimate the problems a Brown-led government will confront. One can see several areas of tension and difficulty. Although there will probably be some sort of leadership contest, Brown will come in as an unelected prime minister. Over 70% of voters think he should speedily call a general election. There is virtually no chance he will do so, but such a situation could drain his legitimacy. There could be problems maintaining order within the party. Brown will have to face down the old left and deal with potentially fractious trade unions, just as Blair did. If he concedes too much to the traditionalists, he could perhaps keep the party happy, but his tenure as prime minister will be short.

We don't know how capable a leader Brown will be in dealing with such issues, but he might turn out a very good one. The Tories have made a serious mistake in deciding to depend upon spin rather than concrete policy-making in their appeal to the public. In his first year as prime minister, Brown should develop and put into practice a policy-rich agenda, in effect squeezing the Conservatives out once they formulate their own policies - if indeed they are able to do so. The next election might well be a close-run thing, but Labour can win again, have no doubt of it.

9594Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:28:58 +0000
Changes in Society: Childhood Obesity Food Standards Agency in the UK published a report yesterday on the food children take to school. They discovered that nearly half of school lunch boxes do not contain fruit or fresh vegetables. Nearly one in five contain no sandwiches or alternative main ingredient but are packed with crisps, chocolate, biscuits and sugary drinks instead. More than two-thirds of children had a packet of crisps in their lunchbox every day. More than three-quarters contained sugary drinks.

Only 11% of sandwiches were made with wholemeal bread. A growing number of packed lunches contained highly processed dairy foods. Although marketed as healthy, these products are high in salt, fat or sugar, and additives.

Despite an extensive publicity campaign concerning the right diet for children, this appears to be having little impact on parents. For example, the average fat content of lunch boxes has risen by three grams since last year and salt and sugar levels remain well above recommended levels.

Other research by the Food Standards Agency reveal that nearly half of our teenagers are short of vital nutrients such as iron.

A joint report published recently by the Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Paediatrics and the Faculty of Public Health, urged the government to put together a coherent strategy to fight the obesity epidemic in Britain. The incidence of obesity in children is growing at an alarming rate. It more than trebled in 6 to 15 year olds from 5% to 16% between 1990 and 2001.

Schools have played an important role in this development of obesity. Probably the most important factor in this was the privatisation of the school meals service. In an attempt to maximize profits these companies have encouraged students to buy unhealthy foods in schools. This has been backed up schools providing vending machines in schools selling high-fat and high-sugar snacks. When challenged on this head teachers say they need this income to buy essential things for the school. It would seem everything has its price in 21st century Britain.

I know some people believe that there is little we can do to reverse the trend in obesity. As educators, we have a responsibility to do what we can to tackle this terrible problem. We need to remind ourselves that schools can make a difference. Look for example how Finland have been able to reverse this trend in obesity in its young people. However, it does mean that the people of Finland have had to endure restrictions on their freedom. As a recent BBC report pointed out: “In this country (Britain), the accusation of presiding over a 'nanny state' is the worst form of insult that can be thrown at a politician. But in Finland politicians seem to smart less at such allegations.”

In the 1970's Finland had the highest rate of deaths from heart problems in the world, largely due to a flourishing dairy sector which played a big part in the Finnish diet.

But as a result of an assertive public education campaign - to promote exercise and healthy diet - it has escaped the escalating obesity rates now emerging in Britain.

In the 80's Finland's obesity rate was twice as high as ours - but in the years that followed, as Britain's obesity rate soared, our Nordic neighbours more or less contained the problem, experiencing only modest rises. For instance, 19% of women in Finland are now classed as clinically obese. In the UK the figure is closer to 26% and our children are getting fatter too.

So how have they done it?

Largely through assertive government campaigns and co-operation from the domestic food industry. In this country, the accusation of presiding over a 'nanny state' is the worst form of insult that can be thrown at a politician. But in Finland politicians seem to smart less at such allegations.

In Finland school kids are weighed annually and the results recorded in their end of year reports. If there's a problem the doctor is called in. Each child receives a free school lunch which must comprise one third of their calorie intake, and exercise plays a prominent part in the school day.

A recent a report written by the country’s top cancer specialists, claimed that cancer cases will treble over the next 20 years. It warns that a cancer underclass is developing (overweight poor people who smoke). The report predicts that by 2025 the NHS will have to treat 3 million people suffering from cancer. It warns that the cost of this treatment will bankrupt the NHS. They claim that unless the government acts on this issue they will be forced to introduce a semi-privatised NHS. In other words, the treatment people receive will depend on their ability to pay.

This report illustrates the dilemma facing the government. An unwillingness to introduce legislation now will result is some unpleasant decisions being made in the future. The problem we face is that governments tend to leave unpleasant decisions until as late as possible. After all, they will say to themselves, why should we make decisions that make us unpopular when future politicians will gain the benefits for these actions. It is very similar to reasons why governments are reluctant to take unpopular decisions to protect the environment. It is in fact one of the disadvantages of democratic government. All we can do is urge our governments to make decisions that are good for future generations. As intelligent individuals we have a responsibility to do that.

1563Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:18:38 +0000
Changes in Society: Sex quarters of people think it is fine to sleep with someone on a first date, according to a new survey. Here is some comments made in the Guardian today:,3604,1687891,00.html

James Brown

former editor of Loaded magazine

I think sex on a first date is fine as long as you get a receipt.

Julie Burchill


Personally - and this is all theory and memories as I am extremely happily married - I would never date someone until I had had sex with them. You might be wasting time hanging around with someone who's rubbish in bed.

Michael Winner

film director

Sex on the first date is not only acceptable, it is totally desirable. I always say to girls, "I'm at my best now. If you wait, my true character might start showing and ruin everything." It starts things off with a bang, as if someone is giving you a present without waiting. Sex on a first date is either a sign that they trust you, or that they don't give a damn. Many of my best and longest relationships have been with people who performed on the first day, so I tend to believe it's the former.

Colin Murray

Radio 1 DJ

As a teenager, I wouldn't have said no, but as a 28-year-old, if I meet someone I like, I prefer not to have sex for a while - and certainly not on the first date. I think there is a lot to be said for waiting a while. Apart from anything, the sex will be better.

Dylan Jones

executive editor of GQ

If this is really a date, and not just a lucky glance in a bar, then I don't think either party wants or expects sex. The male assumption - sexist, I know, but true - is that if a woman will have sex with you on a first date then she'll have sex with anyone on a first date. It's like the old Groucho Marx saying: I wouldn't want to belong a club that would have me as a member. However, every woman knows that no man is ever going to turn down sex on a first date, even if he says otherwise. Of course, there are those girls who say, "Well I'll stay ... But I don't want to do anything." And we all know where that leads ...

5886Tue, 17 Jan 2006 22:01:31 +0000
Changes in Society: Smoking in Public Places report on passive smoking is currently being withheld by the government. According to the doctors who wrote the report, it clearly states that the evidence suggests a clear link between passive smoking and cancer. It also recommends a ban on smoking in public places like pubs and restaurants. It seems strange that this should happen at a time when the government is discussing the possible legislation on this matter. However, the report was leaked to the Guardian and the government was forced to acknowledge this evidence.

Earlier this his week, John Reid, the health secretary, launched the government’s blue-print for disease prevention. This includes measures to deal with smoking.

The government has proposed that smoking in the workplace and in enclosed public-places such as restaurants and some bars will be banned. However, the government has succumbed to the pressures of the tobacco industry and is doing this over a very long period of time.

Government departments and the NHS will be smoke-free by the end of 2007, cigarettes will have been banned from all enclosed public places and workplaces other than licensed premises. By 2008 the ban will hit pubs that serve hot food.

These measures clearly restrict the freedom of smokers. However, it increases the freedom of those who wish to be in a smoke-free environment.

Is the government right to introduce these measures? Should it have gone further? What is happening in your country? Do you agree with your government?

2281Thu, 18 Nov 2004 08:09:42 +0000
Changes in Society: The Nanny State of these threads concern the role the state should play in the lives of its citizens. Critics use the term the “nanny state” to describe this activity.

Last week Margaret Hodge, the children’s minister, made a speech where she made a defence of state intervention. This involved an attack on the opponents of the “nanny state”. It is about time the government did this.

As Hodge says:

For me it’s not a question of whether we should intrude in family life, but how and when… Good nannies don’t just tell you what you can’t do… or must do. They are about ensuring that you can make real and informed choices for yourself…

The right still promotes the absolute privacy of the family. What happens behind closed doors in the intimacy of the family is to them a matter of private concern. But for the left, we want to promote opportunity for all and we want to enable every child to develop their full potential… The state can be a powerful force for good in families and communities and we should celebrate, not denigrate, its role.

If we seek equal opportunity for all, we must logically act to support parenting in the home. Some may call that the nanny state, but I call it a force for good…

Yesterday’s nanny state has become today’s accepted social mores. We all now raise an eyebrow if somebody is drinking when they intend to drive.

Theresa May, the shadow minister for families disagrees.

Mrs Hodge has admitted what many have been saying for years, that the government is intent on interfering and controlling every aspect of our lives. Whether it is telling you what to eat, whether to smoke or drink, if you should place a bet or how to look after your own children, there is a government minister ready to voice their opinion.

2422Mon, 29 Nov 2004 12:39:12 +0000
Changes in Society: Pensions is a scandal. It is all around us, silent and undiscussed, in every city and every village. It is a scandal in the shadows: the plight of older, poorer women who have been cut out of decent pensions, after lives of caring and hard work. It is a scandal hidden by boring-sounding language, by sufferers who are too proud to campaign, and by powerlessness.

It is the scandal of the woman living alone, picking out the cut-price fruit in the hour before the supermarket closes. It is the scandal of women in old age and pain waiting in the heat for crowded buses. It is women left and women forgotten, who have wiped and fed, cleaned and tended, but who in all that time never built up the pensions they would have had from sitting in an office or driving a van. It is, finally, the woman in the care home, her life reduced to a cabinet of photos and a narrow bed.

I can't avoid statistics. Here's one that ought to be known by everyone interested in public decency: over 92% of men retire with the full basic state pension in their own right. The figure for women? Just 16%.

This is not a scandal that has been caused by malice or brutal economic necessity but by the failure of politics to keep up with change: changing lives and changing lifestyles. The first thing to remember is how much longer we are living: a quarter of women now alive will live to at least 93. Two-thirds of all pensioners are women; or to look at the same thing from the other side, half of all women over 65 are single, most of them widowed. Just imagine the impact on all that of a pension system designed for men.

For the present pension system is indeed based on some very old assumptions. Once, an overwhelmingly male, full-time and married workforce could be relied on, more or less, to look after their spouses in retirement. Divorce was uncommon and the carers, overwhelmingly female, could expect to be cared for themselves, at least financially, towards the end of their lives. This was the world of the postwar welfare state. It produced the couple's basic state pension, in which the share of the dependant wife was an extra 60%.

This world has gone. Women have now entered the labour market and are vigorously encouraged by politicians to do so. Yet they have rarely been callous enough to shrug off all their traditional caring roles, for children and elderly relatives, and so they tend to work shorter hours than men, and often for a mix of different employers, with catastrophic effects on their own pension entitlement. In fact, nearly half of all working women earn less than the level at which they would qualify for national insurance. As Baroness Hollis, the former work and pensions minister, put it in a key Lords speech last month, a woman in this position "is doing what we as a society want her to do, putting her family first in a manner that is decent. Then we punish her for that, for doing what we and she believe is right".

Nor can such a woman expect, even if she wishes it, to be supported by a husband in old age. Half of marriages now end in divorce, and anyway the marriage rate is falling fast. According to Hollis, over the next 15 years, "nearly 40% of all women between 55 and 64 will not be married and therefore not protected by a husband's pension, as in the past". Single annuities die with the husbands; the widow will have no occupational pension and, if she has been divorced, no rights to a man's basic state pension. Hollis describes the duties of caring for children and the elderly and the breakdown of marriage as a triple hit for women's pension rights.

There are plenty of women who know what this means, in daily scrimping and fear of the future - just a lower, thinner quality of life in the middle of buzzing, complacent consumer affluence. Far from feminism having won its key battles, the gap between men and women grows as we age, steadily yet dramatically.

And this is the moment to act. Government ministers, in particular Gordon Brown and David Blunkett, are awaiting the final report on pensions from Adair Turner. In domestic policy, it has the potential to be the single most important moment in the life of the new government. On Tuesday there was a pensions summit at which it seemed to some observers that Mr Blunkett was veering towards retaining pension credits, rather than creating a new universal citizen's pension.,...1512336,00.html

4173Thu, 23 Jun 2005 13:18:36 +0000
Changes in Society: Parents an article in today's Guardian, Paul Martin argues that there are four types of parents:


Authoritative parents love their children unconditionally and accept them for who they are. They keep a close eye on their children, provide them with plenty of support, set firm boundaries, and grant considerable freedom within those boundaries. Authoritative parents monitor their children and intervene when necessary, but let them get on with things when there is no need to interfere. They mean what they say, and do not shy away from conflict when enforcing the boundaries they have set. Authoritative parents are loving but not over-indulgent, involved but not overly controlling, clear about limits but not excessively risk-averse, and permissive within those limits but not neglectful. Most people would like to be an authoritative parent, whether or not they actually are.


Authoritarian parents, in contrast, have a colder parenting style which is more demanding but less responsive to their children's real needs. Authoritarian parents are highly controlling, but not very warm or loving. They intervene frequently, issuing commands, criticisms and occasional praise, but do this in an inconsistent way. They expect their children to obey their instructions without explanation, and may use emotional tactics to get their way, such as making their children feel guilty, ashamed or unloved. Authoritarian parents often interfere when there is no real need to, and issue threats without always carrying them through. At the extreme, some highly authoritarian parents resort to physical or emotional abuse in their attempts to control their children, which obviously can cause lasting psychological damage. Children who are beaten or denied any affection are at significantly greater risk of becoming abusive parents themselves.


Indulgent parents are responsive but undemanding and permissive. They are warm and loving but lax, setting few clear boundaries. They often respond to their children's wishes, even when these are unreasonable or inappropriate. Punishments are seldom threatened, let alone carried through, and the children often appear to have the upper hand in the relationship. Indulgent parents try to be kind, but shy away from conflict or difficulty.

A fine example of indulgent parenting can be found in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in the form of Mr and Mrs Salt. Their daughter Veruca is an obnoxious little girl who has been spoiled rotten by her rich parents. She gains entry to Willy Wonka's fabulous factory by winning one of the coveted golden tickets - but only thanks to her doting father, who has bought half a million Wonka chocolate bars.


Uninvolved parents are unresponsive, undemanding, permissive and set few clear boundaries, largely because they don't really care very much. Unlike authoritative parents, they are neither warm nor firm and they do not monitor their children. Instead, they are laid-back and unresponsive to an extent that can sometimes seem reckless. In extreme cases, uninvolved parenting may stray into outright neglect.

Dahl again provides a helpful example - this time in the shape of Mr and Mrs Wormwood in Matilda. The gormless Wormwoods are so wrapped up in their own empty suburban lives that they fail to notice that their daughter Matilda is an extraordinarily brilliant little girl. To them, she is little more than an annoying scab.,,1423047,00.html

3321Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:23:38 +0000
Changes in Society: Women and Alcohol of the recent developments in the UK has been an increase in binge drinking by young women. The average woman aged 18-24 consumes 22 glasses of wine a week. Last year British women consumed an average of 357 pints of alcohol per year. This is a 27% increase in the last five years and is now double that of women in Italy, Sweden and Spain.

According to a World Health Organization report, British women are eating and drinking themselves into an early grave. They top the global league for alcohol, drugs and junk food.

The most worrying thing about this concerns their behaviour when drunk. As one feminist recently wrote:

“They are on display every weekend in more or less every high street in Britain: tits out, thighs out, arse out, tongue out, deciding whether to snog a stranger or puke up first. They are repulsive, and welded to the opinion that behaviour like this is both “fun” and okay. It isn’t.

In Britain… you have to drink until you knock things over, and then have a couple more so that you drool on yourself, and then maybe chuck down a few nightcaps so you find yourself horizontal."

I have never seen this kind of behaviour in any other country. It is having a disastrous impact on young women’s health. Doctors report that they are seeing more and more women in their twenties suffering from cirrhosis of the liver. Female deaths from liver disease caused by alcohol abuse has tripled in recent years.

Another consequence of this behaviour is foetal alcohol syndrome (where babies are born terribly deformed and damaged because of their mothers’ consumption of alcohol). The UK highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world. A recent survey showed the majority of these women got pregnant during heavy drinking sessions.

1842Wed, 06 Oct 2004 13:38:58 +0000
Changes in Society: Pre-emptive War seems to me that one of the biggest changes in the last few years is Bush's policy of "pre-emtive war". On the surface, one could regard this as a necessary evil or, alternatively, REALLY bad policy. However, it seems to me it comes from a long-standing "ideal" that the US will foster "freedom" whereever and whenever it can. JFK's "pay any price, bear any burden" speech comes to mind.

So, is it the responsibility of someone (the US, the UN) to intervene in countries suffering under a totalitarian regime? If not, what is the role of the UN in the world today?

1591Sun, 05 Sep 2004 12:44:23 +0000











1525Wed, 01 Sep 2004 09:55:03 +0000
Acceptance of torture in a democracy of this information comes from Democracy Now! which is a TV and radio news program in the United States. Curiously I have been accused of anti-Americanism for quoting it!

1) The British courts accept confessions under torture so long as it is outside contractors who do the actual torturing.

2) The FBI has tried to disassociate its agents from the torture methods of the CIA so that their agents are not compromised.

3) There are two aircraft used to take suspects to places like Uzbekistan where torture is Ok so the torture of suspects can be further outsourced.

What matters is the public response. I raised this issue on the TES website and got a resounding yawn. There is an acceptance that the government will outsource torture. This is no longer seen as something evil done by "the outsider" but as a legitimate response to the real or imagined terrorist threat.

How long would you have to torture Blunkett - or David Aaronovitch - before they confessed to terrorism? After all the justification for the witch hunts was the number of witches they found...

2291Thu, 18 Nov 2004 19:17:42 +0000
Changes in Society: Rules for Good Behaviour a Christian I believe the ten commandments should be considered as a good measuring set of disciplines that would, if taught and followed, control the nature within each of us that would otherwise lead to chaos and depravity if not guided to do good for society and if not punished for doing evil to others. The finest system of tenets I have had the good fortune to witness over a twelve month period in 1965/1966 in An Phu District, outh Vietnam when I served as an independent operations commander of a Special Forces unit privileged to live, work and fight alongside and among 64,000 members of the Buddhist Hoa Hao Sect. They were, without reservation, the finest people I have known. Perhaps it was the simplicity of their life structured around a system of religious tenets that made them a good people. 64,000 people and not one automobile, perhaps a dozen or less bicycles, and 64,000 warm hearts.

I will copy this to the Central Committee of the American Hoa Hao peoples and ask that they join your forum and present information on what is their way of life here in the United States.

1585Sat, 04 Sep 2004 13:25:48 +0000
Changes in Society: Anti-Americanism the last few months I have been accused several times of being anti-American. Nothing could be further from the truth. My views of the world have been shaped more by America than any other country. Most of my political heroes are American. For example, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Jones, Ida Wells-Barnett, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, John Dewey, Florence Kelley, Eugene Debs, Robert La Follette, Robert Moses, John P. Altgeld, Albert and Lucy Parsons, Mary White Ovington, Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Fred Shuttlesworth, Lincoln Steffens, Norman Thomas, Oswald Garrison Villard, Robert F. Wagner, Ralph Yarborough, etc.

As you have probably worked out, all the people above were campaigners for equal civil rights. Although the USA does not have a good record for providing equal civil rights, the country has produced a vast number of people willing to fight for these rights for others.

The accusation of being anti-American is often linked to people’s criticisms of George Bush’s foreign policy. This view of anti-Americanism has been encouraged by both Bush and Blair. This is typical of their crude political analysis of world events.

A joint survey carried out by newspapers in the UK, Canada, France, Spain, Russia, Japan, Australia, Mexico, Israel and South Korea has discovered that anti-Americanism is not a major problem.

One question was: “Overall, do you have a favourable or unfavourable opinion of the Americans.” This is the percentage that said they had a favourable opinion: Russia (86), Israel (81), Japan (74), Canada (73), France (72), Australia (72), South Korea (65), UK (62), Mexico (51) and Spain (47).

When asked the question: “Overall, do you have a favourable opinion of George W. Bush they got the following percentages: Israel (70), Russia (44), Australia (32), Canada (29), UK (26), Japan (26), South Korea (23), Mexico (23), France (21) and Spain (13).

What has been going on is shown in the next question. Was the US right or wrong in invading Iraq? The following percentage said yes: Israel (68), Russia (39), Canada (24), France (18), Japan (16), Spain (13), South Korea (11), Mexico (10).

This survey clearly shows what has been going on over the last three years. Luckily for the world, people do not crudely associate American foreign policy with the American people. They clearly dislike the policies of George Bush (in particular his decision to invade Iraq).

Of course Bush enjoys strong support in Israel. Ironically, he also appears to be liked in Russia - America's old enemy. However, Russia, unlike the rest of these countries polled, does not have a free media and opinion is very much under the control of the state.

In the UK a large percentage of the population are concerned by the growing influence Bush is having over our foreign policy. It now seems that Bush has persuaded Blair to agree to transfer British troops to areas where heavy casualties are being inflicted. This is obviously a response to Kerry’s charge that the US is suffering 90% of all casualties in Iraq. The main purpose of this move is to reduce this percentage. In other words, Blair is willing to sacrifice the lives of UK soldiers in order to help Bush’s election prospects. Another factor in this is to help Bush delay imposing the draft until after the election.

The other issue that has made world citizens angry with the American government is its policy on the environment. Actions taken by European countries are doomed to failure while America continues its policy of unrestricted pollution of the world’s environment.

1955Tue, 19 Oct 2004 10:47:22 +0000
Changes in Society: Cultural Imperialism I was a teenager I only bought records by Americans. British music seemed to be just a pale imitation of what was going on in America. I liked the way the Americans were really rethinking their past. True, most of this only really involved developing and adapting previous music styles, however, it came over to me as being fresh and exciting.

My distain for British music was only ended with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Initially, they started off like all UK artists by copying American music. My favourite tracks on the first Beatles LP were covers of tracks previous recorded by people like Arthur Alexander and Barrett Strong. However, in time, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones began producing music that managed to do something completely new. One felt by the late 1960s that the UK had developed its own culture and was not a victim of cultural imperialism.

I also enjoyed going to see American movies. However, by the early 1960s there was also a revival in British cinema. Directors such as Karl Reisz (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning), John Schlesinger (A Kind of Loving, Billy xxxx), Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life, If) and Ken Loach (Kes) began making films that owed little to Hollywood. All of them were about life in Britain during this period. They were also based on British novels, another area experiencing a cultural revival.

Reisz, Schlesinger and Anderson were soon off to Hollywood to make their fortunes. Loach remained behind in an attempt to build a school of filmmaking that was willing to tackle important social and political issues. This was a failure and Loach was unable to hold onto the audience that had been created by films like Kes. He of course retained a loyal following (especially in Europe) but he ceased to have an impact on mainstream culture.

By the 1970s the film industry ceased to exist in Britain, except for Carry On and James Bond films, that is. At the time this did not seem to matter too much. The Hollywood system still allowed people like Arthur Penn, Robert Altman, Stanley Kubrick, Alan Pakula and Bob Rafelson to make films. However, over the years, except for Altman, they made enough compromises with the system, to make their work indistinguishable from the rest of the films being churned out of Hollywood.

In recent years the UK government has put money into the British film industry in an attempt to breathe new life into it. However, this attempt has largely failed. In the UK today people are fed a continuous stream of Hollywood pap. As a result of the control American corporations have over the distribution network, it is extremely difficult for most people, to see films that are not backed by the Hollywood machine. Even if good British films were made, they never receive the publicity budgets enjoyed by Hollywood productions. When good UK films are made they are usually lost to the world until they turn-up late at night on BBC 4 or C4.

Does it matter that most people mainly see movies made in America? Yes, it does, because the American system overwhelmingly produces a certain type of film. It is a cinema aimed at American young men (research suggests it is mainly young men, and not young women, that decide on what films they see). It would seem these young men are not too interested in dialogue. Scripts are usually written by the director (gone are the days when Hollywood employed America’s best writers). The director’s main concern is to make film scenes that will generate the “wow factor”. That of course includes plenty of violence and car chases that end up in a screen full of fire.

The viewers are not encouraged to think about the story. I heard a director being interviewed on the radio recently. The interviewer pointed out to the director that the storyline of his latest film did not make too much sense. That the story was not a reflection of true life. The director was shocked by this response. He knew his story was illogical but to him filmmaking was not about logic. It was about fantasy and spectacle.

Although Hollywood rarely makes films that cover social and political issues, they do have an impact on the viewer’s political consciousness. Most films are about “good and bad guys”. The “good guys” are invariably reactionary. The “bad guys” usually have foreign accents (that includes English accents). All the characters in the film, are angry, aggressive and violent. This is true of both the good and bad guys. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the morality of the two sets of characters. All we know is the good guys are going to win and the bad guys are going to end up dead (even prison is not good enough for these people).

Anger is a prominent feature of Hollywood movies made for young men. At the beginning, the anger of the lead character is usually hostile to all those around him. This includes the woman who he will end up sleeping with. The logic of this seems to be that if they like each other from the start, they will go to bed soon after they meet. This cannot do, because it might create an ant-climax too early in the movie, therefore the audience have to wait until this big scene takes place . When it happens the scene is just a collection of clichés (mainly because this clichés prevent it being “adult-rated” that apparently makes it impossible to sell in the US through mainstream cinema).

This anger is always explained in terms of psychology (usually a bad relationship with parents, partners, etc.). The film rarely explores the possible political or social reasons for this anger.

Last week I saw the Swedish film, Show Me Love. Lukas Moodysson’s film deals with an issue that has been covered in numerous Hollywod movies. A school girl’s first love affair. It was not a great film but was miles away from how the subject would have been treated by Hollywood. Scenes lasted for more than ten seconds. The camera kept still when the characters were talking. There was no violence (except a half-hearted attempt at suicide). The whole thing was totally believable. I recognised those characters as being just like the students I taught. This is never the case with Hollywood films aimed at the teenage market.

Sweden appears to have retained their film industry. I also like the films I see from France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. I am aware that if they arrive in the UK they are probably the best that have been produced. However, they are a great deal better than the films being made in the UK (in fact serious filmmakers tend to concentrate on making films for television). When I see their films, I believe I am watching real people. They produce dialogue that is meant to be listened to and deal with problems that face all of us. In fact, they are just like the films that we used to make in the UK in the 1960s.

1973Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:37:42 +0000
Changes in Society: Gambling It's incomprehensible. It makes no sense. Goodness knows, this government is running low enough on political capital, so why waste another precious drop on bringing scores of Caesar's Palaces in from America? That's what the gambling bill, published yesterday, will do.

How strange if the major cultural impact of the Blair era becomes the transformation of Britain into the offshore Las Vegas of Europe. No other EU countries are letting them in.

Casinos promote a glitzy image of blackjack and roulette tables served by sequined croupiers, but that is just window dressing to disguise the sordid business that really makes the money: the thousands of high value gambling machines, offering £1m or unlimited jackpots through mesmerising, dead-eye addictive 12-pulls-a-minute slots. People sit transfixed, stuffing in coins - not much fun but very compulsive. Much of the lobbying over this bill has been from the US companies, asking to be allowed as many serried ranks of these machines as they can cram in. The bill allows a ratio of 25 machines to each table; now they are arguing over how small a "table" can be.

Warning bells were rung long ago: the government could have stepped back, but as usual it went full steam ahead in explaining-a-bit-harder mode. The Guardian was shaking its old non-conformist fist at Tessa Jowell months ago, to very little effect. Now the Daily Mail has mounted one of its day-after-day cannonades, with the Sun and most of the rest in cavalry charge behind, we can only say lamely that we told you so. If only Labour would pick fights with these bullying behemoths more often ... but is this really the issue on which to face them down? This is not a core Labour value.

The Tories say they are "against a proliferation of super casinos"; the Lib Dems oppose them. There cannot be very many Labour back-benchers who do not instinctively shudder at a Labour government deliberately turning Britain into the American-owned gambling capital of Europe. So if I were a gambler, I'd put a pony and a monkey or two with William Hill on this getting a very rough ride in parliament. Jowell's people reckon Labour MPs aren't that bothered one way or the other: it's time they were.

The mystery is why Labour ever got into this. It seems to be a case of politicians getting so caught up in the fascinating details of an arcane industry that they lose sight of the political wood for the trees. And it looked so tempting. It means a lot of money for local authorities either in cash or in "planning gain", where the developer has to build socially useful things in exchange for a licence to print billions. Councils are very short of money and putting up council tax is not an option. The warm reception the bids from US companies have received in almost every city shows how temptation from super-professional persuaders is hard to resist. Tessa Jowell's people claim backbenchers are eager for these tourism-attracting cash generators on their patch. Do they know that American research shows that 6% of people who live near these magnet casinos become addicts?

This is a cash cow for the Treasury, which is losing gambling tax to foreign internet sites. The government calls the new casinos "regeneration" projects, and urges their siting in derelict outskirts of cities. US companies have approached places like Burnley, Hull, Corby and Salford - alongside bids for eight in London, five in Glasgow and other more salubrious spots. But the evidence from abroad is that these super casinos are not regenerators or job creators. They are not like great new arts venues that can draw new life towards them: Atlantic City shows how casinos create economic deserts. With their gigantic acreages of free restaurants and floor shows, they suck all the business out of a wide surrounding area.

US companies are reputed to have spent some £100m in their opening bids, assured by the government that this bill will pass. But as it comes under scrutiny, the government may find itself blushing at some of the language they use. "Gambling is now a diverse, vibrant and innovative industry and a popular leisure activity." "We will be the least restricted, most free-market based regime in Europe." The standard letter from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to the public says the bill will "provide new choices for gambling consumers" and "make the gambling market more competitive". It will also, I'm afraid, "modernise" gambling.

Antique gambling laws need reform; internet gambling is worth trying to regulate (though it's almost certainly impossible); the spread of video roulette slot machines in the high street needs controls. All these sensible parts of the bill will no doubt pass through ... but why the big casinos?

Government voices claim there will only be 20 to 40 super casinos, but the market will be left to regulate numbers. Since we already have small casinos, they say, what's the fuss? Of course, they say, "some people have religious or ethical socialist objections", but that's quaint, old fashioned stuff.

As for the projections that the number of serious gambling addicts will rise from 350,000 to 700,000, that's all questionable social science. The figures may or may not be right, but they are certainly an underestimate. Most families wracked by someone with a gambling addiction never get near officialdom. They bring their children up in the most abject poverty of all, unknown, unseen - and not counted, as their declared income (before gambling) may be high.

Gambling has shot up five-fold in the last three years, since Gordon Brown took the tax off winnings. Women now account for 64% of internet betting, the greatest growth. Gambling turnover has risen from £7.6bn to £39.4bn, and now Britons spend more than any other Europeans. This is not a flutter, but serious money a lot of people can't afford.

This government has been bold in trying to find ways to deal with social problems. Indeed the gambling bill brings in a new Gambling Commission, obligations on licence holders to watch out for addicts and powers to restrict the value of gaming machines in betting shops. But introducing the American casinos the rest of Europe has held at bay is like tackling obesity by inviting in Howard Johnson's ice cream emporiums. These casinos will make money because they will get more people to gamble a lot more money. The government has the power to restrict gambling outlets, so why let go now?

This bill heralds a whole new gambling culture in Britain. Don't be deceived by the idea this is just a small extension; this is a culture-shift of great proportions. If it is indeed a great draw for tourism, is that the country we want to be? Are we really that desperate?,...1331328,00.html

1982Wed, 20 Oct 2004 18:13:34 +0000
Changes in Society: Teenage Mental Health recent survey shows that the mental health of teenagers has sharply declined in the last 25 years and the chances that 15-year-olds will have behavioural problems such as lying, stealing and being disobedient have more than doubled. (Time Trends in Adolescent Mental Health). The study looked at three generations of 15-year-olds, in 1974, 1986 and 1999 (over 18,000 case-studies).

The rate of emotional problems such as anxiety and depression has increased by 70% among adolescents. The study also discovered that there was a higher rate of adolescent mental health problems in single-parent families. However, this appears not to be the main reason for this decline in mental health. For example, over 50% of children now experience the breakdown of their parents’ relationship before they are 16. Children in intact two-parent families may be anxious about the possibility of divorce.

The World Health Organization recently reported that Britain has more of a problem with this than other industrialised countries. John Coleman, director of the Trust for the Study of Adolescence claims that: “The route people take to adulthood has become much more difficult with the pressure on for qualifications.” Is it the UK’s exam system that is the main problem?

1843Wed, 06 Oct 2004 16:01:24 +0000