Conservative New Essex Man Exposes Civil Society Breakdown

Sexter - New Essex Man Brooks Newmark

"Essex man" as a political figure is an example of a type of median voter and was used to help explain the electoral successes of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, according to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_man

I wonder what Mr Thatcher would have made of Brooks Newmark, former Minister for Civil Society? My own view is that had the Iron Lady been the leader of the Conservative Party today - an unlikely prospect, I know - the married minister would not have been sexting pictures of his honorable member to lady friends, real and imagined.

Mr Newmark has pleaded psychological problems since he was revealed sexting his "Big Society" in a Sunday Mirror sting last month. A subsequent Sun article revealed a separate affair with a real woman but conducted in a similar manner. The full story is told in The Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2790302/wife-moves-family-home-tory-mp-shamed-texting-explicit-pictures-vows-fight-demons-residential-psychiatric-facility.html

Perhaps not surprisingly the views of real "Essex Man" have been somewhat less than sympathetic, as reflected in the comments on this article in a local newspaper -  http://www.braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk/news/north_essex_news/11530189.Brooks_Newmark_makes_frank_admission_to__battling_demons__as_a_result_of_stress_and_is_seeking_help/?ref=mc

One of the politer respondents suggests: "So how does he expect to represent his constituents to the best of his ability if he is having residential psychiatric care. Go now & let's have a by election."

This seems to me to be the more sensible solution for Mr Newmark and his family, together with his constituents. Alas, we do not live in an era of political common sense of the kind that Mrs Thatcher would have undoubtedly displayed faced with a disgraced minister, albeit likely to be of a rather different kind: but then the Iron Lady was not faced with UKIP.

Indeed, had Mrs Thatcher been in office now - and unlikely prospect I'll again acknowledge  -  it is almost certainly the case that UKIP would not exist at all or in a much diminished form.

I will also venture that if the country was in the grip of an Iron Lady, albeit one reconstructed for the present age, we would not be in the midst of a civil society breakdown which is all too apparent to ordinary people; even if posh ones living in the wealthier parts of London and their hinterlands (second homes in the country etc) are blissfully unaware of this, possibly because they are too busy taking pictures of their genitals for posterity.

MARGARET THATCHER, JEREMY KYLE AND AN UNCEREMONIAL FUNERAL

Whilst Baroness Thatcher's stately ceremonial funeral took centre stage in London, less dignified dramas were unfolding elsewhere. ITV's morning schedule was unmoved by greatness passing and the Jeremy Kyle show went ahead as usual; whilst in South Yorkshire a mock funeral for the folk villainess "Maggie Thatcher" provided the centrepiece of popular protest against the former prime minister (see above). Although some may feel that the spectacle in South Yorkshire lacked the standards of political correctness expected in this day and age, for others it may have been the simultaneous broadcast of the Jeremy Kyle show which was more disrespectful. In fact, the three events of last Wednesday shared some common threads which are worth considering.

Let us begin with the only regular feature of the three: Jeremy Kyle. As the son of a onetime private secretary to the Queen Mother, Kyle has some connection to Royal ceremonial himself, and as a social science graduate to some intellectual understanding of the forces at work in wider society. When prime minister, Mrs Thatcher famously declared that: "There is no such thing as society"; although there was some attempt at her funeral to re-interpret this earlier pronouncement. For her, it was the family which held the key to a fulfilling life, and other social relationships, including those of the workplace and politics, flowed from this. The idea of a more collective set of affiliations, indeed of the "Solidarity" which would help to liberate Eastern Europe from Communism around the same time, were paradoxically anathema to a prime minister who supported democratic freedom but mistrusted trade unionism above all else. One consequence of the erosion of social solidarity which arguably began during the Thatcher governments, has been the creation of what is now starting to be called the "Precariat", a growing group of people whose lives are punctuated by both precarious employment and domestic relationships. This group typically provides the narratives played out before Jeremy Kyle. Although it can also be argued that the dysfunctional social discourse to which he give voices  now extends far beyond the Precariat, and even manifests itself  amongst the Elite.

Within this modern socially dysfunctional context, it is therefore possible that the spirit of Baroness Thatcher might have been relieved to see - perhaps even rejoiced at -  the outbreak of more traditional social protest to coincide with her funeral. For the popular uprising which took place in the one-time mining community of Goldthorpe in the North of England seemed to summon up an earlier period and place - but somehow still more real than reality television - before communities needed a government department to carry their name and propagandise on their behalf. And so it was that on a day when state ceremony held sway in London, the frontier of the state was rolled back in South Yorkshire with an unceremonial funeral.

THE DARKER SIDE OF THE NORDIC PSYCHE

News that the perpetrator of yesterday's atrocities in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, is a native Scandinavian unfortunately comes as no great surprise to anyone who has followed the career of the late Stieg Larsson, regarded as a world authority on far-right and neo-Nazi groups.

Breivik, who has identified himself as a "Christian fundamentalist" seems to have fascist sympathies, although it is unclear whether he acted alone or with the support of others. What is clear is Breivik's extreme hate of those in government and politics embodying the Norwegian centre-left, whom people outside this region of Northern Europe associate with Scandinavian progressive liberalism.

Here is yet another "clash of civilisations", but not this time between foreign religious fanaticism and western secularism. Sadly, political assassinations, of which yesterday's mass killing is an extreme example, have been a feature of recent Scandinavian history and reflect the darker side of the Nordic psyche.

However, this particular crime also undoubtedly has a Messianic dimension, Breivik has described himself as a Freemason as well Christian fundamentalist. His actions are those of the archetypal avenger, singling out a particular group for extermination in a manner which for many will recall the actions of Hitler's Nazi regime. Let's all hope that Anders Behring Breivik has no followers.

On The Edge Of A Nuclear Catastrophe

Today's announcement that Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster is to be upgraded to category 7, the same as Chernobyl, comes almost exactly 25 years after the catastrophic explosion at the Ukrainian power station which led to abandonment of the nearby city of Pripyat (shown here).

This abandoned urban area has always reminded me of Andrei Tarkovsky's evocative film "Stalker", in which a journey in to "The Zone", a place cordoned off by the authorities which appears to have undergone some kind of industrial disaster, and more particularly of "The Room" that can grant the seeker's innermost wishes: perhaps a metaphor for the endless power promised by nuclear energy.

Guided tours of the zone around Chernobyl are, of course, now available, although I suspect that a visit to the room which housed its nuclear reactor remains off bounds to the twenty first century seeker after apocalyptic experience.

Radovan Karadzic and Dragan Dabic

I wonder what Dr Jung would have made of Radavan Karadzic and Dragan Dabic ?

Karadzic is the former Bosnian-Serb leader - also psychiatrist and poet - who is currently on trial in the Hague for war crimes committed in his own country during the 1990s, notably the massacre of 8 000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys outside Srebrenica.

Dragan Dabic was Karadzic's alter ego : an apparent mystic and practitioner of alternative medicine who lived - as a neighbour of international security personnel - in Belgrade until he was recognised and captured whilst travelling on a bus.

A TRUTH NOT UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED

Hollywood writer Seth Grahame-Smith has recently created a spoof zombie novel from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", which is to be turned in to a film.

It is with this cultural development in mind, that I now want to reflect on the current wrangle between Government ministers and the Conservative Party on the subject of homophobia, and, on the day of London's "Gay Pride", who is the least prejudiced.

However, it is not on gay issues that I want to focus here, but on political and wider societal prejudice towards single people (of whom novelist Ms Austen remained one) and the fact that not everyone is in want of either wife/husband or civil partner, for that matter.

The fact is that New Labour, being a deeply socially conservative party - and possibly more so than "David Cameron's Conservatives" - is deeply intolerant of single people (whether straight, gay, bisexual or undecided) - and this has set the tone for wider society.

Thus a few years ago, I was set upon by a married suburban couple who had "singled" me out as someone weaker than their combined might. Unfortunately for them, I'd spent most of my adult life in a tough inner urban neighbourhood and soon put pate to the pair.

Prior to this, the man had called me a "Lesbian" in a homophobic manner, although I could have assured him that I found his wife equally unattractive. Had I actually been gay, this attack might well have been deemed a criminal offense.

What I want, however, is a society in which the "pride and prejudice" of a couple of zombies like this - many of whom, albeit in more refined guise, occupy positions of power and authority - is made ridiculous, just like the gnashings of their B-Movie kin.

NOT A VERY BRITISH COUP* !

Chavez** Jails Top Generals

It's a tough job being a high-ranking military official in Venezuela -- one minute you're running the show, the next minute you're being dragged into a prison cell with a gun to your temple. That was the case for Raul Isaias Baduel, the former army chief of the country who was ordered detained by President Hugo Chavez last month. Baduel is only the latest officer to be arrested on suspicion of planning a coup as the increasingly paranoid Chavez has thrown admirals and generals into prison as well. For Baduel, the move was a major reversal of fortune. In 2002, he led a paratrooper operation that successfully repelled a coup attempt against Chavez. But after retiring, Baduel became a critic of the Venezuelan president in 2007, taking Chavez to task over his efforts to expand his power and authority of the state. "Chavez does not have the support he thinks he has in the armed forces," Baduel, 53, told The New York Times.

Source The Daily Beast/New York Times

* A very good Brit drama of the later 1980s which, in looking forward to a radical Labour Government also looked back to the 1970s

** A politician of whom former London Mayor Ken "Trotsky" Livingstone is something of admirer. Perhaps Mr Livingstone needs a more domestic focus again.

NEVER HAD IT SO BAD OR GOOD

The death of Sid Vicious in early February 1979 was remembered in both The Observer and on Radio 4 this week. In the newspaper's "Music Monthly", the Sex Pistol member is described by John Savage as "punk's ultimate nihilistic icon", and by a friend from contemporary girl band, called "The Slits", as someone who wet the bed at night with almost "pure Newcastle Brown" urine. Before his own untimely death from a heroine overdose, Sid Vicious (real name John Beverley) had accidentally stabbed and killed his girl friend, Nancy Spungeon.

In a previous edition of The Observer (Main Section), the columnist Peter Oborne described the second half of the 1970s as an "interregnum" between a 30 year period of post-war consensus politics from 1945 to the mid-1970s, and the arrival of Thatcherism and then New Labour. This "interregnum" was, I recall, an extremely difficult time for many people whose economic situation and prospects were at best uncertain, and, at worst, in terminal decline. The rise of Punk Rock co-incided with this period, and struck a cord with many young people, including me.

I was largely rescued from a bad bout of depression and an equally strong sense of personal fatality, by a better than expected set of "O Levels" (the exams which preceded GCSEs) in 1978. Thus my own "Winter of Discontent" had become something of a glorious Autumn by 1979 when I "won" a place to read English Language and Literature at Oxford. Nevertheless, it took me some time - perhaps another generation even - to overcome the sense of guilt which came with this achievement.

Yet the personal legacy of Punk Rock and my Oxford eduction has been, in reality, closely allied. I remain to this day skeptical of both the "power structures" that operate withing society and the intellectual constructs which go with these. Thus I have never been able to buy into the New Labour Project, for instance, as something itself born of a too comfortable alliance between "Children of the 6os" like Tony Blair, 1980s student politics and the dreaded brood of Think Tanks to which these have given rise. Roll on the next Interregnum.

Georgia and Solzhenitsyn on My Mind

This blog began with a reflection on Alexandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago". With Solzhenitsyn's death last week, it is again time to remember his legacy.

In his latter years, Solzhenitsyn was felt by some to have become a pawn of the Putin regime. He returned to his Russian "homeland" in the 1990s, having been, by all accounts deeply uncomfortable with Western "materialism" and "moral ambivalence", albeit that Solzhenitsyn's exile to the United States had been brought about by his far deeper antipathy for totalitarian communism. Although it had not started out this way, Alexandr Isaevich had been a supporter of the Revolution, and it was only after World War II that he fell out with the Soviet State, as his understanding of its powerful means of oppression - in Solzhenitsyn's case, The Gulag and internal exile - deepened like an infernal chasm.

It was also last week, that conflict broke out between the former Soviet State of Georgia and the Russian Federation. This is primarily a dispute about territory and "homeland", although the discordant political personalities, and aspirations, of the Russian and Georgian Governments are important. Western material interests too come into play, as Europe is deeply dependent on Russian reserves of oil and gas, and there is some moral ambivalence about the conflict as a consequence. Although some optimism should be attached to the intervention of the European Union, of which, along with NATO, Georgia's present government would one day like it to be part, we should all be ever wary of the potential for Russian oppression.

Gordon : Get Rid of Those Two !

I'm referring to the Teflon-coated Balls-Cooper duo, the "Children's Secretary", Ed Balls, and his wife, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Yvette Cooper. It's high time both of them spent more time with their family. They've done enough damage to this country.

Am I the only woman who'd like to spank Ed Ball's no doubt well-fed buttocks ? Perhaps spin doctor turned psychotherapist Derek Draper, now returned to the Labour Party bosom, could counsel me, as an NHS referral, of course.

The Suicide Files@Dark Lyrics

I've discovered the following verses on the web under "The Suicide Files" and "Dark Lyrics". Not sure of their origin (directions welcome), but they they perhaps express sentiments meaningful to an increasing number of young people out there. Maybe some food for thought for politicians returning to earth following exclusion from high office....

The Edge Of Town
The Cul-de-sac jungle is a cruel place.
It's a living rotting failure from a different age.
And if you're looking for the place that dreams go to die,
it's not in the city it's around the outside.
You can mortgage your future for subleached purity
and accept the sterility in exchange for security,
but no matter how many times you run from your fears
the same problems always re-appear.
Day after day it's all just decay,
and the promised land just gets further away.
On these dead lawns lie your father's dreams.
White flight. White blight. White screams.
On these dead lawns lie your mother's dreams

Rum, Romanism and Tammany
Idealism is fucking dead.
Laughed off the stage at countless conventions.
Laissez faire is en vogue again.
It's silver tongue has been heaven sent.
One man, one vote, throw it away.
One land, one hope, throw it away.
When every candidate looks the same, born of noble blood.
So don't fucking talk to me about our tradition of democracy.
Who the fuck am I supposed to believe in?

On the Edge of Town

Leader Thursday April 22, 2004 The Guardian

Appropriately, this week's announcement of the UK's first research centre of suburban studies coincides with a new government report on creating more sustainable cities. The new centre is welcome, as is its director's robust rejection of the suggestion that his discipline risks being branded with the "education-lite" label applied to media studies. Residential districts that now accommodate over half the country's population are ripe for study by town planners, sociologists and architects - as they have long been in America. The Kingston centre's remit is wider still. It also intends to look at the suburb in film, fiction and history. The roots of British prejudice against suburbia - a love that dare not speak its name, says the centre - will repay exploration.

But as John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, declared in the report examining the success of eight core English cities, a quiet urban revolution has also been taking place. The drift away from cities has been reversed. Proportionately, the drift began in the 1930s, followed by an actual drop in numbers in the 1960s. But new populations are being attracted back. Old industrial urban economies have gone, but new ones have sprung up. In Mr Prescott's words: "Our cities are back and the reasons are simple. They remain the centres for wealth creation, trade and exchange." It is not quite that simple because as the Kingston centre will note, the suburbs are no longer just dormitories, but generators of jobs too.

The government is right to celebrate the revival of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool. But big challenges remain, that ministers should not be allowed to duck. Beyond the big eight - the other four cities are Bristol, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield - there are a score of smaller industrial towns in the North where the prospects are far from bright. The government has still not got the north v south balance right, partly because it still does not have a coherent regional policy. The divide is getting wider. Then there is the growth of "doughnut cities" - flourishing city centres with a collar of decay them. Urban renaissance is far from won.

What Goes Around Comes Around

"As an animal welfare issue, fox hunting comes in at about number 155. It probably ranks below the last of the great working class bloodsports, coarse fishing. It’s insignificant beside intensive pig farming, chicken keeping or even the rearing of pheasants for driven shoots. But as a class issue, it ranks behind private schooling at number two. This isn’t about animal welfare. It’s about human welfare. By taking on the hunt, our MPs are taking on those who ran the country for 800 years, and still run the countryside today. This class war began with the Norman conquest. It still needs to be fought."

From "Class War on The Hoof" by George Monbiot (monbiot.com blog 14.9.2004)

Friendly green anarchist (I hope he doesn't mind me calling him this) George Monbiot is one of the most original and cogent environmental and social commentators around. I certainly agree with his view on the animal welfare dimension of fox-hunting. However, I think it is a mistake to invoke the "class war" in this and most other contexts, including the system of "public education" in Britain today. The "class war" certainly exists, but only as a lower substrata of most peoples psyches (or as part the collective unconscious if you prefer). The fact is that there are all sorts of tribal, religious, family, inter-personal and other power struggles going on at the same time at various levels of people's (un)consciousness. In some respects, the British (or English and perhaps Scottish) "class wars" as manifested in the public school system, and certain country and sporting pursuits, are amongst the more benign aspects of the ever-evolving (some might say eternal) power struggle between different social groups. However, for me the key dynamic is the economy and economic power, rather than the symbolism of fox hunting.

Nevertheless, the rather bourgeois proponents of New Labour have aligned themselves with the
class war community on this and certain other issues for the simple reason that their core political motivation is divide and rule, and we certainly have a most divisive government and divided society just now.

Worthiness Fatigue or Aversion to Excess Worthiness

I woke this morning with a feeling of "worthiness fatigue" (really more of an aversion to the worthiness excesses other people). There's alot of worthiness about just now, let's face it !

My feelings of worthiness fatigue are partly prompted by an item on yesterday's MSM News about "green fatigue". As a lifelong environmentalist, with occasional lapses, this type of fatigue isn't something from which I suffer. Quite the opposite in fact. Journeying by foot or bike generally energises me, as does not overheating my home or workplace (I often combine the two, which also saves on space/travel). Similarly, not buying loads of unnecessary stuff saves on rubbish...and, yes, I also re-use/cycle wherever possible. Doing a recent MSM survey of my household carbon emissions, I calculated these at 25% of the UK average (mainly due to my not using a car, or travelling by air in the past 6 years). However, none of this makes me feel particularly worthy, nor do I proselytise about my "greeness" to other people.

So it really annoys me, as happens all the time, when "worthies" from government sponsored agencies - which by and large I consider to be a waste of public money ! - suggest I take a greater interest in the domestic problems of other people. My own view is that the exponential growth in publicly funded "helping professions" since the middle part of the last century, and particulary under New Labour, has greatly contributed to the kind of social problems which are now recounted everyday in the media, by as the saying goes "feeding the fire". The kind of worthiness which comes with these "professional helpers" is something I particularly detest. This is not to say that I don't think real social problems exist. They do, but their causes - often economic - usually receive inadequate attention, particularly from the present government.

Therefore, excess worthiness, of the kind embodied by people like Tony Blair and Gordon, and of which politicians from other parties also have more than their fair share, should be taxed at the higher rate as far as I'm concerned, and the sooner the better !

"Living In Truth" by Vaclav Havel

The English writer Tom Stoppard recently described former President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, as one of the greatest political philosophers of our time. Stoppard's comments reminded me of the strong impression that Havel's collection of essays, "Living in Truth", had made on my thinking when I read this work during a visit to Berlin in December 1989. For me, Central or Middle Europe has a particularly rich intellectual tradition of which Vaclav Havel is a contemporary manifestation. Unfortunately, I can think of no one in present day British politics who brings his depth of reflection to political thinking - although if there is someone out there, do let me know ! - and for this reason, I have chosen to use below an extensive quotation from one of the essays in Havel's "Living in Truth" :

"I am convinced that what is called 'dissent' in the Soviet bloc is a specific modern experience, the experience of life at the very ramparts of dehumanized power. As such, that 'dissent' has the opportunity and even the duty to reflect on this experience, to testify to it and to pass it on to those fortunate enough not to have to undergo it. Thus we too have a certain opportunity to help in some ways those who help us, to help them in our deeply shared interest, in the interest of mankind.

One such fundamental experience, that which I called 'anti-political politics', is possible and can be effective, even though by its very nature it cannot calculate its effect beforehand. That effect, to be sure, is of a wholly different nature from what the West considers political success. It is hidden, indirect, long term and hard to measure; often it exists only in the invisible realm of social consciousness, conscience and subconsciousness and it can be almost impossible to determine what value it assumed therein and to what extent, if any, it contributes to shaping social development. It is, however, becoming evident—and I think that is an experience of an essential and universal importance—that a single, seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of truth and to stand behind it with all his person and all his life, ready to pay a high price, has, surprisingly, greater power, though formally disfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters. It is becoming evident that even in today's world, and especially on this exposed rampart where the wind blows most sharply, it is possible to oppose personal experience and the natural world to the 'innocent' power and to unmask its guilt, as the author of The Gulag Archipelago has done. It is becoming evident that truth and morality can provide a new starting point for politics and can, even today, have an undeniable political power. The warning voice of a single brave scientist, besieged somewhere in the provinces and terrorized by a goaded community, can be heard over continents and addresses the conscience of the mighty of this world more clearly than entire brigades of hired propagandists can, though speaking to themselves. It is becoming evident that wholly personal categories like good and evil still have their unambiguous content and, under certain circumstances, are capable of shaking the seemingly unshakeable power with all its army of soldiers, policemen and bureaucrats. It is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals and that one simple electrician with his heart in the right place, honouring something that transcends him and free of fear, can influence the history of his nation.

Yes, 'anti-political politics' is possible. Politics 'from below'. Politics of man, not of the apparatus. Politics growing from the heart, not from a thesis. It is not an accident that this hopeful experience has to be lived just here, on this grim battlement. Under the 'rule of everydayness' we have to descend to the very bottom of a well before we can see the stars.

When Jan Patocka wrote about Charter 77, he used the term 'solidarity of the shaken'. He was thinking of those who dared resist impersonal power and to confront it with the only thing at their disposal, their own humanity. Does not the perspective of a better future depend on something like an international community of the shaken which, ignoring state boundaries, political systems, and power blocs, standing outside the high game of traditional politics, aspiring to no titles and appointments, will seek to make a real political force out of a phenomenon so ridiculed by the technicians of power—the phenomenon of human conscience? "

From the essay "Politics and Conscience" (1984)