IMF As Grim Reaper of Austerity?As I wrote last June:When the International Monetary Fund or World Bank offer to lend money to a struggling third-world country (or “emerging market”), they demand “austerity measures”.As Wikipedia describes it:In econom…
Posts Tagged ‘Margaret Thatcher’
America Is Losing Its Imperial Status, And Global Institutions Such As The IMF, G20 And BIS Are Filling The Void
April 26th, 2010 |
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Bernanke: We Must Raise Taxes and Cut Services • Sane People: No, We Need to Stop Endless Bail Outs, Imperial Adventures and Fraudulent Schemes
April 8th, 2010 |
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This week, both Bernanke and Volcker called for tax increases. Bernanke has also raised the possibility of reductions in entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security.As I pointed out last June:When the International Monetary Fund or World Bank off…
UK’s Afghan death toll matches Falklands loss at 255
February 9th, 2010 |
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The death of two British soldiers, reported yesterday, means that as many British troops have been killed in Afghanistan as during the war to recapture the Falklands Islands from Argentina 28 years ago. The 1982 conflict turned around the fortunes of then prime minister Margaret Thatcher,
What Should We Make of Obama’s “Spending Freeze”
January 26th, 2010 |
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The big news today is Obama’s proposed “spending freeze”.Fiscal liberals say this cuts spending at the exact time that we most need to increase it. See this and this.Fiscal conservatives say this doesn’t go nearly far enough. See this, this and this….
Schumpeter: Womenomics
December 30th, 2009 |
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Feminist management theorists are flirting with some dangerous arguments
THE late Paul Samuelson once quipped that “women are just men with less money”. As a father of six, he might have added something about women’s role in the reproduction of the species. But his aphorism is about as good a one-sentence summary of classical feminism as you can get.
The first generations of successful women insisted on being judged by the same standards as men. They had nothing but contempt for the notion of special treatment for “the sisters”, and instead insisted on getting ahead by dint of working harder and thinking smarter. Margaret Thatcher made no secret of her contempt for the wimpish men around her. (There is a joke about her going out to dinner with her cabinet. “Steak or fish?” asks the waiter. “Steak, of course,” she replies. “And for the vegetables?” “They’ll have steak as well.”) During America’s most recent presidential election Hillary Clinton taunted Barack Obama with an advertisement that implied that he, unlike she, was not up to the challenge of answering the red phone at 3am. …
Cat’s demise starts false rumors of Margaret Thatcher’s death
November 14th, 2009 |
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The death of a cat in Canada sparked embarrassing calls to London about former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. During a dinner in Toronto for 1,700 luminaries, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, mobile phones throughout the room began to buzz with the news: “Lady
The beginning of the end
November 12th, 2009 |
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Looking back at the era of a cold warrior
“MR GORBACHEV, tear down this wall”. Ronald Reagan’s stirring speech at the Berlin Wall on June 12th 1987 was not the death blow to communism, but it did highlight the West’s renewed confidence in demanding what had previously been impossible. Though the president’s advisers egged him on, American diplomats were horrified at what they felt was provocative behaviour: they saw their job as managing relations with communism, not trying to overturn it.
Those glory days were the subject of a day-long conference at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley California on November 6th. A motley collection of heroes from east and west (with your columnist tagging along as a moderator) gathered to discuss the great communicator’s role in the collapse of communism and what his approach could still offer today. Nancy Reagan, frail but immaculate, presided. Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev sent messages of congratulation. Freedom fighters such as Mart Laar from Estonia, Leszek Balcerowicz from Poland and Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic recalled how Reagan’s approach had inspired them and demoralised their captors. …
Silence is golden
August 18th, 2009 |
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Bosses should keep their mouths shut, alas
“A-HOLE FOODS” reads the image adorning one of the more supportive articles to appear in the past week about John Mackey, the boss of Whole Foods Market, an organic retailer. In an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal on August 11th, Mr Mackey set out some right-wing ideas for reforming health care strikingly at odds with those currently being pushed by the Obama administration. This provoked uproar in the online community that now rules the world—with an army of bloggers demanding a consumer boycott of the company, around 13,000 joining a “Boycott Whole Foods” group on Facebook and Twitter circulating countless pledges never again to darken the doors of its stores.
The company soon issued an apologetic clarification, noting that Mr Mackey had expressed his own views, not those of the company. He went even further on his personal blog on the firm’s website, pointing out that the title of the article in the Journal, “The Whole Foods Alternative to Obama Care”, had been added by an editor, and setting out the original, unedited version. This still contained enough dynamite to have ensured controversy by challenging the views of many Whole Foods customers—including opening with this observation by Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” …
Public services ‘face decade of pain’
July 24th, 2009 |
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Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts 16% cuts across Whitehall
Britain will face spending cuts of more than 16% to key public services, such as law and order and higher education, if Labour and the Tories deliver on their goals to protect schools, hospitals and defence, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned.
As the two main parties gear up for a bitter general election battle that will be dominated by this issue, the IFS says Britain is facing a decade of pain that will see the tightest constraint in public service spending since 1977.
Concern has grown already this week about immediate shortfalls in the culture and education budgets, but the Guardian is publishing research by the IFS at the start of a two-day series on the future of public spending which reveals that spending on a majority of public services will have to be cut by up to 16.3% over the next three-year spending period – 2011-14 – if the next government is to deliver real-term rises for health, schools, defence and overseas aid.
Labour and the Tories have both said they would like to protect these four areas. They have also agreed, at a minimum, to cut Britain’s record fiscal deficit from 11.9% of GDP next year to 1.3% by 2018.
Carl Emmerson, the IFS’s deputy director, said: “It could be eight years of pain … Unfortunately that is the kind of choices we are looking at. It will be very difficult for public services. Under the Labour spending plans at the moment it is the tightest three-year period since 1977 when the IMF were involved in setting spending plans in the UK.”
Gordon Brown and David Cameron are warned by Four former chancellors – Denis Healey, Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont – say Britain is facing the most far-reaching public spending cuts since the 1970s. Speaking to the Guardian, Lord Lawson, who is advising the Tories, indicates that Cameron will follow the example of Margaret Thatcher, who held an emergency budget within 40 days of her election victory in 1979 to stabilise sterling.
Lord Healey, Labour chancellor from 1974-79, says: “It is always painful to many people depending on what area you cut. It will be very painful for those who get the money at the moment.”
Sir Michael Bichard, former permanent secretary at the education department, who is advising both the Treasury and the Tories, tells the Guardian that the political debate on public spending is still “pretty undeveloped”. He also calls for a “jolt to the machine” to shake up Whitehall.
“We all are currently guilty of engaging in a debate about tactical issues when there are some huge strategic issues,” he said. “I think the debate about public spending is pretty undeveloped. But you’ve also got an election in less than a year and there aren’t many politicians who want to be seen with an axe in their hand in the year before an election.”
He and other recently retired mandarins have urged the two main party leaders to consider a complete overhaul of Whitehall to avoid costly duplication in the distribution of public spending.
Public spending has already become the key election battleground. The row erupted when Gordon Brown claimed the Tories would threaten vital public services after Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said public spending would have to be cut by 10% if NHS spending were to rise in line with inflation, as the Tories have promised, and social security and debt interest payments were maintained.
The government softened its position last week, with Lord Mandelson saying that Britain faces years of spending restraint, after it became clear that Lansley made his comments on the basis of government and IFS figures. The IFS is to go a step further and explain how the 10% cuts will be increased to 16.3% if similar spending safeguards are offered to schools, defence and overseas aid.
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Where there’s smoke
July 21st, 2009 |
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A woman kissing a dog, a deserted car plant, a blow-out in a basement – this show is not quite what it seems
I am about to enter Laure Prouvost’s film installation, at East International in Norwich, when a powerful spotlight blasts me full in the face. I blunder, blinded, into the dark. There is a sudden, recorded crash. The light and noise have been triggered by my presence. I can’t see a thing and almost sit on someone’s head by mistake. Sorry, sorry, sorry. The film begins, with a warning that questions will be asked at the end. An American is talking, too fast, and his words are mis-transcribed in the subtitles, which flash by even faster. The guy is talking about Walter Benjamin and the language of cinema, but I am reading about someone’s husband who likes hard rock, or is that hard cock – and did he just say something about enemas? A sign flashes up: CAN YOU BE QUIET PLEASE. Everyone else seems to have left, so that must mean me. The film is over before I’ve found my notebook. Outside, the light blasts on again and the next hapless visitor stumbles into the blackness, to the same crash.
Prouvost is one of the two prize winners of this show, a biennial exhibition that forms part of the city-wide Contemporary Art Norwich. The other is British artist Stuart Whipps, whose photographs of the closed down Longbridge car plant in Birmingham show abandoned canteens with sad, drooping bunting, assembly lines with rusting car bodies and endless gantries, the whole mothballed plant left to decay. Whipps’s photographs are supplemented by archival material and analysis of Margaret Thatcher’s speeches, early indicators of the grim state of current British industry.
East has been running since 1991, and has had financial crises of its own. But under the directorship of Lynda Morris, this biennial has always attempted to make Norwich aware of its historical, political and artistic links to Europe and beyond. It is always interesting. Chosen from an open submission, this year’s exhibition has been selected by the veteran British conceptual artists Art&Language, and by Raster Gallery, from Warsaw.
In a shadowy room, an elliptical conversation takes place between the surrealist Meret Oppenheim, the photographer and Picasso muse Dora Maar, and the singer Josephine Baker. Picasso’s Weeping Woman – a portrait of Maar – hangs on the wall; other bits of modernist and surrealist art litter the room. Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup must be there somewhere. The conversation is stilted and unbelievably pretentious, even by pre-war Paris standards. “Do we only perceive what is past?” one character asks. “You can trace everything back to memories,” says another, in clipped 1930s English. Sometimes they break into French, or swap one another’s lines. This film, Lunch in Fur by Ursula Mayer, is peculiar and arresting; watching it, I am uncertain if this is old footage or new, if the lines are quotes from a movie or a novel, if the whole thing is a joke or utterly serious. These sorts of doubts continue throughout the exhibition.
By the time I watch British artist David Jacques’s very instructive film about the north-west of England, anarcho-syndicalism and time travel, things have slipped a few gears. I’m even less sure of what I’m being told. Jacques’s film is a spoof documentary that describes numerous encounters across time and space, all occurring in Manchester, Liverpool and north Wales between 1910 and 1918, at a series of annual conferences begun in honour of the Catalan educationalist and anarchist Francisco Ferrer y Guà rdia. Ferrer was real; the rest is a fiction.
There is very little sculpture or painting here. A sooty, solid cloud of resin marks the spot of a spontaneous combustion in one of the basements of the art school, where Polish artist Olaf Brzeski also shows a grainy, black-and-white film of soldiers in the snow. The men are visited by a spooky bogeyman carrying a dead rabbit. The film looks old, again as if this were archive footage. Something terrible stirs in the woods, but we don’t know what.
In Andrew Cranston’s painted jokes about lonely painters going mad or suicidal in their grim, freezing studios, there are lots of knowing art gags about Courbet and the socially excluded painter, whose only company is a bucket of paint-hardened brushes and a giant, mouldering canvas. It reminds me why I gave up painting.
Polish artist Agnieszka Kurant’s work in Norwich is almost invisible. Her piece, Future Anterior, is just a couple of bleached newspaper pages presented under glass on an outside wall. Passers-by might easily miss the bad news: the Amazon rainforest has shrunk to almost nothing, Central America braces itself for an attack of ravaging moths, Los Angeles has been hit by an earthquake. On a positive note, scientists announce that the dark matter anti-gravity question has now been nailed. I stand outside in the Norwich drizzle, gasping.
These are headlines on the New York Times, dated 29 September 2020. Even the words are on the verge of disappearance. But there is more to Future Anterior than make-believe journalism: to make the work, Kurant asked a clairvoyant to provide forecasts of the future, an alarming number of which have come true. She then approached a number of New York Times journalists to write the stories up, and had the pages printed using a heat-sensitive ink that only appears at a certain range of temperatures. “The print is as fragile as information distorted by rumour,” she has explained, as if art and the world weren’t already complicated enough.
In the end, all of these scenarios are entirely plausible, and all the best art here is grounded in reality. Grace Schwindt’s films are largely based on her family’s recollections of Berlin during the second world war. The accounts are touching, miserable and horrifying.
There is an undeniable seriousness and sensitivity to Schwindt’s work. Licking Dogs, meanwhile, is a film of the British artist Angela Bartram snogging four dogs. “No dog was harmed in the making of Licking Dogs,” Bartram’s website informs us, “and none were forced to take part.” The German shepherd is very keen, and the St Bernard slobbers away dutifully in some very wet face-on-face contact. Another mutt just won’t play; the dog looks at Bartram and Bartram looks at the dog. This is the best moment in the whole farrago. None of this ever looked like it was going to go anywhere, except into the realms of the over-intellectual. There is a difference between the real and the really annoying.
East International is at the Norwich University College of the Arts until 22 August.
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TV legend
July 18th, 2009 |
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He became known as America’s most trusted voice – the man who brought so many big news stories into millions of homes across the United States.
His no-holds-barred reports on the Vietnam war were said to have been instrumental in persuading President Lyndon Johnson not to seek re-election.
Walter Leland Cronkite was born in St Joseph, Missouri on 4 November 1916, the son of a dentist.
His family moved to Houston when he was 10 where he attended a local high school before going on to the University of Texas where he worked on a student newspaper, The Daily Texan.
He failed to complete his studies, dropping out in 1935 to start a series of reporting jobs with local newspapers before beginning his broadcasting career at the radio station WKY in Oklahoma City.
In 1937, he joined the agency, United Press, and, with the outbreak of World War II, found himself reporting from battle zones across the world.
Accredited to the US forces, he flew on the first Flying Fortress bombing raids on Germany, covered the D-Day landings, and parachuted into the Netherlands with the invasion forces.
When the war ended, Cronkite stayed in Europe, reported on the Nuremberg trials, and served as UP bureau chief in Moscow where he covered the start of the Cold War and the increasing tensions between East and West.
Unflappable
After returning to the US in 1948, he worked as a radio reporter in Washington before being recruited by the distinguished journalist Edward R Murrow, who was setting up the first TV news operation for the broadcaster CBS.
In 1952, Cronkite fronted the first television coverage of both the Republican and Democratic party conventions, with the term "TV anchor" being used to describe his role.
He went on to cover the party conventions and presidential elections until 1964 when CBS decided to replace him with two other anchors.
The move backfired badly and Cronkite soon returned to the chair as the face of major political events in America.
In 1962, Cronkite took over as the host of the CBS Evening News – a job that made him the best known face on American television.
He quickly became a celebrity with his easy, unflappable style of presenting carefully-written, objective news reports.
In September 1963, he had an exclusive interview with President John F Kennedy, and two months later broke the news of his assassination – an occasion on which Cronkite came close to breaking down on air.
Influenced the president
Over the following two decades his authority stamped itself on every major news story around the world – presidential elections, the moon landings and the Vietnam war.
When he broadcast his belief that America could not win that war, President Johnson was heard to say: "If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle-America." He decided then not to seek re-election.
Cronkite’s experience as a war correspondent helped CBS news gain a reputation for accurate and impartial journalism and, by the end of the 1960s ,Cronkite’s evening programme finally gained more viewers that rival NBC’s offering.
"Our job is only to hold up the mirror – to tell and show the public what has happened."
His coverage of the Apollo 11 landing in 1969 made CBS the favourite among Americans watching the drama unfold on the surface of the moon.
He also trained himself to speak at a slower rate than was traditional among American news journalists so that no-one would be in any doubt about what was actually being reported.
In 1981, he retired from the evening news programme handing over his chair to Dan Rather, but it was not the end of his broadcasting career.
Cronkite continued to produce special reports for the network and, in 1983, worked for ITV on the coverage of the general election, including an interview with a victorious Margaret Thatcher.
He was also vocal in demanding free airtime on American TV for political parties, pointing out that the US was one of just seven countries in the world which did not offer this facility – to the detriment of minority candidates.
But he badly missed his prime time news slot. "I want to say that probably 24 hours after I told CBS that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday, I was already regretting it. And I regretted it every day since."
Walter Cronkite was consistently voted "the most trusted man in America" in opinion polls. Every broadcast ended with his words: "That’s the way it is." </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Labour orders green energy revolution
July 16th, 2009 |
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Miliband takes control of power grid and lays out plan for low-carbon UK
The government seized control of key levers in the energy sector today in an attempt to kickstart a stalling “green energy” revolution and head off the threats of global warming and a rundown in North Sea oil.
Ministers plan to take over the allocation of electricity grid connections in order to favour renewable schemes, force the industry regulator, Ofgem, to tackle carbon pollution and pass laws to compel power companies to help poorer families meet rising energy bills.
The moves came as Ed Miliband, energy and climate change secretary, set out an ambitious road map for the UK to meet its legally binding target of a 34% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Measures range across homes, cars, business and farming, but clean electricity generation will deliver half the reduction.
Miliband said Britain would meet 40% of its electricity needs from wind, tidal and nuclear by the end of the next decade. The government’s overall plans believe 1.2m new green jobs will be created.
“Our plan will strengthen our energy security, it seeks to be fair to the most vulnerable, it seizes industrial opportunity and it rises to the moral challenge of climate change,” he said.
The government said £100bn had to be spent on energy projects and accepted that customers’ bills would have to rise to pay for much of it.
But Miliband said domestic energy saving initiatives should mean there would be no related hikes in utility bills until 2015 and by 2020 should mean on average 6% – £75 – a year on domestic bills. The decision to significantly strengthen government control of the planning and infrastructure of the energy markets in a bid to increase renewable power sixfold turns back some of the market-driven approach developed by Margaret Thatcher.
Lord Mandelson, business secretary, said: “We must combine the dynamism of the private sector with a strategic role for government to deliver the benefits of innovation, growth and job creation in the UK.”
The developments have delighted a clean energy sector frustrated by long delays to win access to the national electricity grid. “The renewables industry has had a tough time in the UK for many years and it has missed out on technologies where it should have led the world. What we heard … today shows a level of understanding and political leadership that suggests that may be about to change,” said Gaynor Hartnell, director of policy at the Renewable Energy Association.
Friends of the Earth also welcomed the moves. “Today’s announcements are a significant step towards the creation of a safe, clean and low-carbon future,” said Andy Atkins, executive director.
But some of the large power companies which want to build nuclear and coal plants as well as wind farms still felt the government was not doing enough. “The government has to give companies such as E.ON a market that also gives them confidence to build Britain’s low carbon future,” said Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON UK, which is pushing to build a coal-fired plant at Kingsnorth but is also engaged in the world’s biggest wind farm, the London Array off the coast of Kent.
Ofgem denied it had been found wanting by the government. “We don’t see this as a kick in the teeth. We have been working under our existing powers to make changes to the grid access regime without much success. So [we] welcome the government stepping in,” said an Ofgem spokesman, who also said it was happy to take on a greener role.
Miliband said he was exercising reserve powers provided under the 2008 Energy Act for the government to intervene. He expects wind and other renewables to provide “over 30%” of the renewable power for electricity by 2020 but denied this was rowing back on a previous commitment to obtain 32%.
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Way with words
July 14th, 2009 |
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By Denise Winterman
BBC News Magazine
A brilliant speech can go down in history. But most of us write words the world will never listen to. Can speech-writing teach us skills for dealing with everyday life
Pants. Just one of the reasons the US Embassy in Britain is currently advertising for a speech-writer. It says knowledge of the nuances between the Queen’s English and American English is vital, for obvious reasons.
However speech-writing is about much more than trying to avoid red faces. As far back as the ancient Greeks, the power of carefully crafted words has been fully understood and expertly exploited.
OBAMA’S TECHNIQUES- Three-part lists
- Imagery
- Anecdotes
- Alliteration
<a href=”Obama’s victory speech
But rather than being all about creative flair a good speech-writer uses a number of techniques to get a point across. And these verbal tools are not only useful at the lectern, anyone can use them in everyday situations, from handling a boisterous child to reasoning with a traffic warden.
This is because speech-writing is the language of persuasion. And the average day largely consists of trying to persuade people, says Dr Max Atkinson, a communications consultant and author of Speech-Making and Presentation Made Easy.
"The way words are put together makes all the difference," he says. "It’s often thought that great speakers are blessed with a gift, but they all use the same techniques. What makes people stand out is how often they use them.
"These techniques are the building blocks of effective speech-writing and can be used in other areas of life. Some people use them without even knowing. They are usually the best speakers and the most persuasive people, but anyone can learn them."
Mantra
Study great speeches and you will soon see a formula, agrees Adrian Furnham, professor of psychology at University College London. While some are more complex, others are relatively simple.
What makes the techniques adaptable to everyday life is the fact that language is governed by rules – rules we all learn from the time we begin to peak.
"Even the smallest child is learning the rules of language, and language acquisition and so these techniques can be applied to them," says Dr Atkinson.
"Research has shown that you can get a different reaction from a child depending on how you speak to them. Like everyone else, they respond to the way something is said."
In a nutshell, a great speech is communication at its most effective, and we all want to communicate effectively in whatever situation we find ourselves in, says professional speech-writer Lawrence Bernstein.
"The rules and techniques of good communication work on all levels – if you’re on a stage speaking to thousands of people, asking your boss for a pay rise, trying to buy a new house, or teaching a class of 10 year olds."
So what are the best techniques
CONTRASTS
A tactic used by John F Kennedy and by Margaret Thatcher.
People are still quoting JFK’s line: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." And Baroness Thatcher was at her most formidable when she famously told the 1980 Tory party conference: "You turn if you want to, this lady’s not for turning."
"Using contrasts is a real winner," says Dr Atkinson. "Research shows 33% of the applause a good speech gets is when a contrast is used.
"This is because you are often using a negative and then a positive and that has impact. It makes your point bigger and better."
It’s a technique that translates into everyday life, especially with children. While explaining they can’t have one thing, it’s good to point out what they can have instead. "No, you can’t have a skateboard of your own, but you can have a go on your brother’s."
THREE-PART LISTS
Three really is the magic number. "Education, education, education" – Tony Blair’s 1997 election-winning mantra. Or it can be a list as simple as "here, there and everywhere".
It’s a technique used by US President Barack Obama – he used 29 three-part lists in roughly 10 minutes during his victory speech on election night, says Dr Atkinson.
The theory behind the technique is that three is the first and earliest point at which a possible list of similar words can become unequivocal. No other word needs to be added to make it a list.
"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen"
Power of three in the Lord’s Prayer
"It’s about completeness. A third word can give confirmation and completes a point," says Dr Atkinson. "It applies in all walks of life. Church services and prayer books are full of three-part lists. Research has shown that people know a prayer is finished when it ends with them praying for three things. They know to say ‘Amen’ and don’t have to be prompted."
Also, it is economical – a third word is the earliest point at which a possible connection, implied by the first two, is confirmed. If you carry on listing items, say speech-writing experts, you risk being criticised for "going on and on". It can be the same in life in general.
IMAGERY AND ANECDOTES
Be it "opening doors" or "breaking down barriers", paint a carefully constructed picture with your words.
"It’s about taking people on a journey and making it memorable," says Prof Furnham. "Imagery and anecdotes are some of the best ways to do this and they can personalise things."
Again, it’s President Obama who experts say is a master of this technique.
"He knows how to use imagery both to increase impact and to make his points. He paints an image but also evokes associations with great communicators of the past like Lincoln and King," says Dr Atkinson.
This technique works whether addressing a nation, or guests at a wedding, say experts.
BREAK THE RULES
A good speech-writer knows the rules to follow, and also how to break these to maximum effect. There is always room for the unexpected in a great speech, and in life, says Phil Collins, former speech-writer for Tony Blair.
If done well it can grab people’s attention – and he should know. Mr Collins penned Mr Blair’s joke about there being no danger of his wife "running off with the bloke next door".
It was one of the former prime minister’s most unexpected and memorable lines, delivered in his last speech to a Labour conference in 2006. It was deftly done and showed a real understanding of Blair and Gordon Brown’s prickly relationship.
"No one was expecting it, which is what made it so good and so memorable," he says. "Pitched right and delivered well, something unexpected will make people sit up and listen."
Add your comments on this story, using the form below.
Perfect contrast from President Kennedy for this week that we celebrate 40 years since humans launched to the moon: "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
John F, Congleton, UK
<p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Smack on the funny bone
Politicians under fire from satirists should never rub their bruises. The smart move is to laugh along
David Cameron has made clear that he will look around the world for new political ideas and must be tempted by an initiative being trialled in Pakistan. If President Zardari’s attempt to ban the dissemination of jokes about him – through a new cyber crimes act, targeting blog comedy, text jests and email facetiousness – were to be introduced in the UK, Channel 4 could be prevented from screening a film, revealed this week, that will recreate the events leading up to a notorious photo of Bullingdon Club members including Cameron and Boris Johnson.
This film continues a recent British tradition of attacking politicians early in their careers. Once, a leader would have had to form at least one administration before meriting a feature-length TV demolition. But Blair and Brown were picked off as aspirants and even Michael Howard, although he never became prime minister, was subjected to a peak-time comedy about a draconian home secretary aiming higher.
Although being spread through new technology, the kind of jokes that Zardari objects to have an older history: one of them – that the great leader has asked for his face to go on a stamp but citizens aren’t sure which side to spit on – was applied, for example, to Richard Nixon. Curiously, the British figure most vulnerable to the gag – Elizabeth II – has avoided it, even among republicans.
That particular line of attack has a limited shelf-life – not because of a rise in political competence but the spread of self-adhesive stamps – but the leader of Pakistan is surely doomed in his attempt to introduce a gagging order on gags and, anyway, he has perhaps over-estimated their power.
Objectively, it is difficult to argue that political satire has had much direct effect on history. Richard Nixon, though seared by comedians throughout his career, was brought down by journalism rather than jokes. And three of the most violently caricatured politicians of modern times – Thatcher, Blair, George Bush – also served the longest terms.
All political satirists must eventually reflect on this strike rate: Ian Hislop has argued persuasively that political humour is not useless simply because it fails to achieve immediate regime-change: he believes that there is a moral imperative at least to have tried. And there is also, clearly, a greatly cheering and cathartic effect for those members of the population who didn’t vote for the leader in question. A recent book anthologising jokes told in eastern Europe during the cold war touchingly showed the way in which humour can be a democratic immune system, keeping the dissident spirit alive.
Also – as the president of Pakistan’s leaden intervention has proved – there is considerable comfort in knowing that the jokes have hit home. The satirists of Nixon could do nothing about his fat mandates but they could be cheered by his visibly thin skin.
One reason that Margaret Thatcher was a more effective premier than John Major was that she showed no sign of knowing the jokes about her – and would deliver speech-written gags that she didn’t understand – whereas he liked to challenge journalists and cartoonists on whether their slights were fair. Like batsmen hit by bouncers, politicians should never rub their bruises.
The most revealing aspect of Zardari’s crackdown is that it targets the newer media. This reflects a feeling among politicians that, for the present generation of leaders, the tactics of character assassination have escalated. In fact, the gags are simply more visible: what was once spoken on street corners now leaves a cyber-trail, which Zardari has foolishly chased. But new technologies will usually defeat censorship.
In this sense, at a very small level, there is a link between Channel 4′s Cameron film and Zardari’s ban. The Conservative leader has imposed his own limits on wit by securing the withdrawal of the Bullingdon picture from public use. Opponents have got round this by recreating the photo in various ways – the TV comedy is another example.
What’s really funny about what happened in Pakistan, though, is that politicians in other countries are going to have to be tremendously good-humoured about any attacks on them because of the risk that they will be compared to Zardari.
By taking offence at jests, President Zardari has made himself a laughing stock. A man who tried to weaken political humour has demonstrated its strength. As the touchy John Major said, in a different context, if it’s hurting, it’s working. Skilled politicians know that the smart move is to join in the jokes, no matter how much they sting. Team Cameron, if it is sensible, will already be working on some wry, self-deprecating quip for their reluctant film star on the night of the Bullingdon transmission.