‘The Mutineer’s hiatus’

It’s the end to our journey, reader. Well, not quite ‘the end’; that’s a bit too final. The Mutineer is taking a hiatus, mainly because – as it turns out – it’s bloody difficult to make a living blogging about the total, utter hypocrisy of almost all aspects of modern life. Capitalism dictates, hence I must freelance now. That said, my grinding poverty has only been one factor in my decision to take a break. The other has been the general election campaign.

General elections are meant to be painful. I get it. As the candidates make incessant efforts to convince you that their generally terrible ideas are actually quite good ideas, you are meant to grin and very much bear it. Unfortunately, this time around it has all been truly unbearable. I mean, come on.

Ed Miliband has just had his vaguest of pledges carved into a giant, Biblical election stone; predictably enough, nobody in Labour’s PR department was sensible enough to raise the objection that if a pre-election stunt has the potential to make you look like some sort of mad, Old Testament heretic, it might be best avoided. David Cameron – criticised for his total dearth of conviction – has started shouting, flailing and going all red during his speeches, entirely oblivious to the fact that his essential message is still one of tired, miserable, penurious, fiscal onanism. Nick Clegg continues to think that he can appeal to the electorate with sensible, centrist promises, despite having lied, fibbed and fabricated shamelessly through five years of coalition with the Tories. Natalie Bennett has trouble speaking actual words. All the while, Nigel Farage sloshes pint after pint of Spitfire over himself – occasionally he pauses to rail against the unsmiling, PC nature of modern British politics, but only after he’s finished submitting reams of humourless, scaremongering tripe to be smeared on the front page of the Daily Express.

In reaction to all such campaigning, I’ve simply shut the debate-related noise out indefinitely. The rhetoric falls, my ears are deaf. As far as I’m concerned, the only way to draw any sensible conclusions on how to vote is to look at the last five years of Conservative-led government, and contemplate another five years of the same. NHS Privatisation. A&E crises. Vested business interests. Corporate tax dodging. TTIP. Vast cuts to welfare. Zero hour contracts. Workfare. ATOS (and equivalent). The Bedroom Tax. Jeremy Hunt. Iain Duncan Smith. Michael Gove’s face.

Depressing as it is, British politics for me and many, many others means whatever isn’t the appalling, detestable Conservatives. The only option is Ed Miliband’s Labour, so there we are. Choice made. Campaign meaningless. Debate futile.

Predicting a potential future under Labour is a difficult one; I am well aware that a victorious (or part-victorious) Miliband would come with no real guarantees of fairness or recovery in this country. The decision on how to vote is nevertheless a simple one, for predicting the future under Cameron’s Conservatives is comparatively easy.

I don’t have to read the crystal ball. I can read the book.

Goodbye.

‘The immutable game’

Upwards of five billion pounds. £5,140,000,000. £5.14bn. Whichever way you express it, so large a sum of money seems entirely unreal. That is, however, the exact amount pledged to one of Britain’s most popular institutions last week. Was the NHS the deserving recipient? Of course it wasn’t; there isn’t a private-sector consortium on the planet that would bid so much on a mere NHS contract – especially not for all that messy frontline care. What about the National Trust? Never; the National Trust could probably consent to the irremediable fracking of Glastonbury Tor without raising half as much. Rather, the beloved institution and merited benefactor of that cool £5.14bn was none other than football’s self-professed finest – the Barclays Premier League.

The context of the cash has been well-publicised. Stumped up by Sky and BT in exchange for exclusive television rights, £5.14bn represents an astounding rise in broadcasting income for the top flight – an increase of around 70% – while from the 2016-17 season onward even the club finishing bottom of the league will receive just under £100,000,000 from television rights alone. It’s little wonder that questions are being asked about where all this new revenue should go. Should some of it be used to decrease the crushing financial burden on fans? After all, almost every Premier League club increased the price of their season tickets last year – the most expensive (at Arsenal) is now over £2000. The Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Scudamore, wouldn’t be drawn on the issue; addressing the media after the announcement of the leviathan financial package, he set out his diffident stance on ticket pricing with the statement ‘I can’t guarantee what each individual club will be doing’.

Well then, should some of the £5.14bn perhaps find its way to the Premier League’s non-footballing staff? Of the twenty clubs in the top flight, only one – Chelsea – is currently accredited as paying all its staff a living wage. On this matter, Scudamore was slightly more assertive. Asked directly whether clubs should pay their low-salary staff more in light of their vast new income, Scudamore very kindly reminded everyone that ‘at the end of the day there’s a thing called the living wage but there’s also a minimum wage’ before going on to say that raising the minimum wage was ‘entirely for the politicians to do… not for us to do’. Subsequently asked whether he felt uncomfortable about unfathomably wealthy football clubs paying staff less than a living wage, he replied ‘no, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable’. So, should the Premier League make a single admirable alteration in the aftermath of rocketing revenues? The answer from the top was resoundingly negative.

I imagine that Scudamore feels rather more uncomfortable after several days of scathing media coverage for his remarks, the (un)fair pay comments especially; terms like ‘shameful’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘disgraceful’ have been laid on generously by journalists, living-wage campaigners, Labour MPs et cetera, and appropriately so. It’s a self-evident truth that, as far as £5.14bn goes, upping the pay of low-salary staff by a few pounds an hour would make barely the most miniscule of inroads; tired corporate arguments about pay rises meaning job losses simply cannot be applied to businesses with such riches. It’s equally self-evident that upping wages is categorically not ‘entirely for the politicians to do’; thousands of businesses nationwide pay living wage already, and they do so of their own accord. Really, then, the reason that nineteen Premier League clubs refuse to improve livelihoods at a negligible cost to themselves is an arbitrary one. Scudamore’s feeble excuses aside, it’s a matter of disinclination.

Needless to say, this won’t put people off watching the Premier League. Fans aren’t going to forsake football; viewing figures will be unaffected by the bad press, more cash will be vomited up by the broadcasters and even more lucrative deals will be negotiated by the chief executives – so why should Premier League clubs care about fair pay for the average employee? What’s their incentive?

Fortuituously enough, Scudamore followed his feeble excuses with something of an answer to these questions. Trying to put a favourable spin on things, he stated that the Premier League ‘attracts a whole lot of positive feelings… if you go and do any international survey, things like the Premier League, the BBC, the Queen… they are things that people feel are good about the UK… and we’re proud that our clubs and the league is looked at in that way’. As the Premier League’s chief executive, he’s clearly concerned with the brand’s reputation – so too are the clubs he represents. It’s reputation on which the Premier League’s sporting clout is based, not just cash. Hence it’s reputation, both national and international, that’s the key to a top-flight living wage.

UK-based supporters’ trusts should continue to publicly solicit their clubs and the Premier League for ethical salaries; in fact, football fan or not, anyone can do so by signing and freely sharing the relevant petitions (see below). Considering how plainly important the league’s global image is to Scudamore and his associates, the co-operative involvement of overseas fan groups would also help; widespread and well-represented on social media, these organisations’ conspicuous backing of the living-wage campaign would represent a firm challenge to Scudamore’s rosy notions of perceptions abroad.

In addition, journalists, bloggers and individual fans ought to keep on asking difficult, discomforting questions of the attitudes of those in charge, and doing so as overtly as possible. What does the Barclays hierarchy think of Scudamore’s comments, bearing in mind that the Premier League’s main sponsor is an accredited living-wage employer? Should Premier League bosses be embarrassed that FC United of Manchester, a semi-professional club which competes six divisions below the Premier League and has a 4,000-capacity ground, is another accredited business? Is the Premier League’s community work being undermined, seeing as the overwhelming majority of its clubs neglect to pay their workforce enough for a decent standard of living? And, come to think of it, are Premier League players and managers happy with how little their colleagues are paid? Now there’s a query to cut through the tedium of a midweek press conference.

There are many popular institutions that would use £5.14bn to change employees’ lives for the better, not least by paying a living wage; as it stands, those heading the Premier League have no intention of doing any such thing. Revenues might increase regardless, demand might increase regardless, but the league’s image must not be left untouched; for all those ashamed of football’s multi-billions and the minimum wage, it’s time to speak up.

38 Degrees’ petition: http://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/24

‘Pay all of your staff a Living Wage’ petition: https://www.change.org/p/premier-league-pay-all-of-your-staff-a-living-wage?recruiter=74846529

‘A half-mast decision’

Remember the date, for yesterday was the proud day that Britain paid homage to a theocrat, despot and human rights sluggard – King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. In an official sign of national mourning over his death – that is, unsolicited mourning on the nation’s behalf – the Union Jack was flown at half mast over Buckingham Palace, Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament; having reflected on who the flag was flown for, I think it’s fair to say that it has been lowered both physically and metaphorically.

It feels almost redundant to state that King Abdullah presided over a decade of brutal capital punishment, countrywide disenfranchisement, social illiberalism and utter misogyny in Saudi Arabia; with this week seeing innocent blogger Raif Badawi spared a second round of lashes ‘on health grounds’ days before David Cameron and Tony Blair lined up to laud his persecutor-in-chief, all this tribute is enough to drive one to political nihilism. With our current prime minister praising King Abdullah for his ‘commitment to peace’ and our old one calling him ‘a patient and skilful moderniser’, the irony would be comic were it not so replete with despair; let me simply affirm that King Abdullah’s vision of peace clearly included the public lashings of even his most moderate critics, while the patience he dedicated to modernisation was so boundless that he leaves his nation with a medieval justice system.

Similarly, it feels almost redundant to state that the British arms industry makes billions of pounds a year exporting lethal equipment to Saudi Arabia’s regime – upholding some shared ‘commitment to peace’, most likely. This has been the case for decades. Furthermore, the UK-based organisation ‘Campaign Against Arms Trade’ stresses that ‘the UK government has always been, and remains, very heavily involved… as the main deals are operated through government-to-government contracts’. I imagine this long-term economic relationship was a rather significant factor in the governmental decision to commemorate Kind Abdullah on the nation’s behalf. Accordingly, one might want to query where this government ranks human rights relative to its financial interests.

Such a query is especially significant at a time when the government is actively seeking more control of the former under the guise of a ‘British Bill of Rights’. If there’s anything beyond complete despondency to be taken away from the ceremonious celebration of King Abdullah, it’s that those responsible for it have questionable priorities concerning civil, social and political liberties – perhaps it’s best that those liberties remain out of their hands.

‘Backing the north’

In his recent interview with Tim Shipman, political editor of The Sunday Times, the ever-unctuous George Osborne made the claim that ‘the Conservative party is the party backing the north’. As Osborne’s slick political pretences go, I find this one particularly hard to grasp. It is telling that the north (defined here as the north west, north east and Yorkshire and The Humber) is markedly not backing the Conservatives; only 31% of northern votes went to Osborne’s party at the 2010 general election (as opposed to 38% for Labour), while polls suggest that the Conservatives’ share of those votes will decline in 2015 – conforming to normal voting patterns or not, northerners clearly don’t feel backed. The Chancellor predicated his claim on the economic strength he sees his policies bringing to the north – or the ‘northern powerhouse’, as he likes to call it – yet this strength relies on future, post-election pledges of investment. Seeing as such pledges tend to be somewhat slippery by nature, the condition of the north in the present (and near-present) is perhaps a more reliable gauge of Conservative ‘backing’, and what this actually means.

In the ONS’ November 2014 report on the north’s social and economic features, it is stated that ‘economic and social data show the north to be underperforming’; the latest data suggests that, compared with the rest of England, the north fares poorly on quite a few social and economic indicators – namely economic output, jobs, household income, labour productivity, life expectancy and reported happiness. Again, that’s quite a few indicators. The north’s current ‘underperformance’ is not necessarily a direct result of this government – it obviously has a wide variety of contributory factors – but it does show that the Conservatives have failed to establish anything like a ‘northern powerhouse’ during their term of office. Their ‘backing’, up until now, has not exactly transformed the north’s general prospects; rather, it has made very little positive impact on them.

Something which is presently improving in the north is the rate of unemployment; this has fallen significantly from its peak just over two years ago, and is still falling. However, this does not mean that those in employment are receiving a reasonable wage. Specifically addressing the north’s household income per head, the ONS’ report affirms that it is ‘below the English average almost everywhere in the north’. This is another general trend, of course. More striking, then, is the explicit trend for northerners to receive less than a living wage. According to KPMG’s 2014 research, 22% of jobs in the United Kingdom pay less than the £7.85 an hour required to meet the living wage standard. In the north of England, that figure rises to just under 25%. As such, if people living in the north don’t feel backed by the Conservatives, that’s perhaps because almost a quarter of those in work are struggling to earn enough money to meet a basic quality of life. Likewise, if Osborne and his party were serious about backing the north, they would be backing the living wage as official policy – they are not.

The substandard earnings of so many in the north lead me to my last indicator of what Conservative ‘backing’ actually means. The Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest foodbank charity, estimate that 913,138 people required three days’ emergency food in the last financial year. Of that total, 235,193 – over 25% – were referred to northern foodbanks. Many of these people would have been trying to cope with benefit issues, or with continued unemployment. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the second most common cause of referral to the Trussell Trust over this period was ‘low income’. It seems no coincidence that ‘low income’ is what so many northern jobs provide.

Considering all this, it appears that the Chancellor defines ‘backing’ rather differently to the rest of us; if the Conservative party is ‘backing’ the north at present, then Conservative ‘backing’ must entail regional underperformance, widespread underpayment and hundreds of thousands braced for day-to-day difficulties. The north is evidently not going to become a ‘powerhouse’ under these conditions, post-election investment or not; until the north’s condition is actively backed to improve, unctuous Osborne will struggle to make any such idea stick.

Sources:

ONS’ report on the economic and social features of the north, 2014: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_383620.pdf

KPMG’s living wage research for 2014: http://www.kpmg.com/UK/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/PDF/Latest%20News/living-wage-research-october-2014.pdf

The Trussell Trust’s foodbank statistics: http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats

‘Nous sommes Charlie’

Nous sommes Charlie. As with any emotive slogan, it’s easy to say ‘we are Charlie’ without fully understanding the meaning behind the words. Charlie Hebdo is a controversial and contentious magazine; its writers and cartoonists would admit (proudly) that it is both bête and méchant, that it is mean, mischievous and unafraid of causing offence. There are many – myself included – who might disparage much of its content on any normal day. There are many – myself included – who might criticise its perspective. Are we Charlie, really? Nous sommes Charlie?

The answer, for me, is yes. This ‘yes’ is unequivocal and unreserved. ‘We are Charlie’ has nothing to do with the extent to which we like Charlie Hebdo’s content. It has everything to do with articulating our solidarity with those murdered for writing and drawing – those tried and summarily executed on the dual charges of expressing themselves, and being deemed offensive. Whatever one’s political stance, whatever one’s religious alignment, offence does not qualify or mitigate murder. In other words, there is no reasonable way to say ‘we are Charlie, but…’

This has not stopped some from attempting such qualification. I have no intention of reeling off a list of mealy-mouthed social commentators here, yet it should be said that there are a significant number who have tried to state both ‘solidarity’ with those killed and suggest various extenuating circumstances – perceptions of racism, bigotry, blasphemy et cetera. My reply to these various commentators is simple. It is their right, within the broad parameters of the law, to express whatever crass criticisms they wish. It is that same right, owing to the absurd actions of the extreme, which has been taken from the murdered staff of Charlie Hebdo – indefinitely.

Nous sommes Charlie.

‘Something for everyone’

The first salvoes of the impending general election have been fired. That’s the clichéd metaphor being used by almost all the major media outlets, anyway. While Ed Miliband officially launched Labour’s election campaign with Monday’s Salford address – saying many of the right things about corporate excesses, public services and foodbanks, without sounding truly convinced – George Osborne was busy loading up a salvo of claims about Labour’s ‘unfunded spending promises’ and the nation’s choice between economic competence or chaos. Conservative party sources have since admitted that the Chancellor’s claims were based on ‘reasonable assumptions’ and, seeing as Osborne seems to think low pay, weak tax receipts and missed deficit targets represent competence, one might well question how ‘reasonable’ he really is. Still, ‘reasonable assumptions’ or not, his campaign opener was at least ordinary fare; the same cannot be said for Miliband’s.

On last writing about the Labour leader, I suggested that his failure to impress his identity upon the media – and hence the public – was a massive obstacle to his future success. The Salford address was demonstrative of his continued failure to impress in this sense. If Miliband didn’t sound convinced by his speech, that is perhaps because whoever wrote it for him decided on so unnatural a style; rhetorical to the point of absurdity, repetitive and monotonous, it conveyed nothing of authenticity – a fault for which Miliband’s speaking has long been disparaged. It is quite clear that Labour’s PR strategists and speechwriters have refused to learn from their critics. As a result, the speeches they produce are actively contributing to the impression being cultivated by the right-wing press that Miliband is somehow not quite normal – or at least not normal enough to be the country’s next Prime Minister.

The worst aspect of Labour’s contrived rhetoric has surely been their adoption of the Conservative-coined catchphrase ‘working people’. This phrase appeared no fewer than eleven times in the Salford address, a quite ridiculous recurrence seeing as the whole thing lasted barely twenty minutes – indeed, Miliband’s audience were told that ‘working people’ should be properly rewarded, that ‘working people’ would be valued under Labour and that Britain should put ‘working people first’, all before the speech had even begun in earnest. Though rewarding the employed is absolutely right, saying ‘working people’ roughly once every two minutes is not; it is neither natural nor authentic, while it is definitely not normal. Consequentially, it is unlikely to impress the voters it is aimed at; the incessant verbal tick that is ‘working people’ exemplifies just how poorly-written (or poorly-instructed) Miliband’s speeches are.

In addition, ‘working people’ is an inadequate expression in and of itself. It is inadequate because it is intrinsically condescending; ostensibly meant to be socially inclusive, in reality it feels like an embarrassed euphemism for any one social class. Moreover, it blatantly fails to include those out of work, all of whom ought to be represented by their future government. When a Labour leader is obsessively referencing ‘working people’ in an address on the future while simultaneously neglecting to mention pensioners, students, those unfit to work and those currently unemployed – all of whom have been hit hard by Conservative government, all of whom can contribute, many of whom will vote at the next election – something is badly wrong; not only are Miliband’s speeches poorly-written, they are also ill-considered in their limited scope.

To be successful, Labour must envisage a recovery for everyone; everyone in employment, certainly, but also everyone who isn’t. Monotony, overblown rhetoric and reductive catchphrases like ‘working people’ are unhelpful to a party leader who is in desperate need of a natural, credible voice to further his policies and popularity; the longer Miliband and his strategists ignore such criticism, the fewer their votes come election day.

‘A message to you, Gendry’

It’s the week after Christmas, /
And all through the house, /
Stomachs are churning, /
With much Famous Grouse.

You lie back in your worn chair with resignation. You wipe three-day-old gravy from your chin with self-loathing and disgust. Your distended waistline taunts you, silently. Looking across the merry wasteland of crumpled wrapping paper, discarded ribbon and unconsumed trifle which stretches out before your eyes, you spot – on the far horizon – multiple bottles of esoteric booze, all supplied by your most salacious friends and relatives, all haunted by vague memories of knowing, enabling winks. Your stomach churns with the thought of drinking these liquids, but you order your decrepit grandmother to bring a few bottles over regardless. In the intense hopelessness you feel as you sip at your Famous Grouse (or ‘Apple Sourz’ [sic], or Pusser’s navy rum), you recognise the time of year that has settled stodgily upon you. It is, indubitably, the week after Christmas.

Fortunately, in amongst all the post-festive desolation, the material results of your hazy Christmas Day provide you with some small comfort. One of those results is a glossy new MacBook (though its keyboard is already swathed in pastry crumbs and pudding matter); having just barked another order at your grandmother, the MacBook now nestles warmly into your lap, while its screen displays the latest post written by – myself! Some might say it’s rather manipulative of me to have timed my writer’s comeback to coincide with a week when, by tradition, everyone is physically bloated, emotionally deflated and consciously idle, but I say – nonsense! – I’m only trying to lift you out of your malaise with the protracted jollity of my writing. It is with this aim in mind that I compel you to loosen your burgeoning belt a couple of notches, take another sip of Famous Grouse (or ‘Sourz’, or Pusser’s) and read further into my holiday musings.

With the passing of each Christmas, I become increasingly fascinated with one particularly peculiar seasonal convention. All the conventions of the season are peculiar, really; at heart, Christmas is a festival which celebrates the activities of a fat, nocturnal pogonophile who invades the nation’s households, gets horribly drunk (on sherry, hence the legacy of esoteric booze) and then leaves eerily personal presents near to sleeping children – with society’s blessing. Even so, as far as I’m concerned, no amount of drunk old men bearing gifts could outdo the peculiarity of the convention which enthrals my attention year after year; for compulsive, mesmeric oddness, nothing quite beats the Queen’s annual Christmas broadcast.

The Queen’s Christmas broadcast is fundamentally weird. Initially, it seems to set the Queen up as some sort of alternative Father Christmas; she too is propelled uninvited into the nation’s households bearing an eerily personal present – the story of the last year of our lives. However, it soon becomes apparent that the Queen isn’t going to hand out any actual presents. The story of a year in our lives is all she’s offering and, to be honest, her hypnotically strained delivery of this story suggests she’s not even that comfortable with giving it away. Father Christmas brings an actual MacBook as restitution for his bizarre behaviour, so I can basically understand why society makes allowances for him; the reasoning behind society’s tolerance for the Queen’s unsettling storytelling is far more opaque.

Nevertheless, society is tolerant; this Christmas Day alone, 7.82 million Britons failed to change the channel upon finding the Queen sat in their homes. As a result, 7.82 million Britons beheld a Christmas broadcast which was pretty weird even by the standards of its own fundamental weirdness. I put this down to the wild veering between matters of sober gravity and matters of cheerful acclaim which dominated the Queen’s speech. Broadly addressing the topic of reconciliation, her speech was relatively predictable until it suddenly swerved from the poignancy of the First World War’s Christmas truce (sponsored by Sainsbury’s) to the mundanity of the statement ‘over 70 countries took part in the Commonwealth Games’ within three sentences; a bit like someone delivering news of a familial bereavement before immediately acclaiming the variety of the Dulux colour chart, this was tonally and emotionally disorientating. Still, this disorientation was nothing compared to that produced by the sentence-long summary of the Queen’s summer trip to Belfast; juxtaposing a sportive reminiscence of ‘my tour of the set of Game of Thrones’ with a sombre rumination on ‘my visit to the Crumlin Road Gaol’, this almost sent me into a state of trancelike perplexity. Has Ma’am ever hung about with the cast of Boardwalk Empire before dropping in on former inmates of Long Kesh? Or spent a morning privately previewing the latest series of Lena Dunham’s Girls before trotting around HMP Armagh? These are the sort of abstruse questions that the Christmas broadcast left me asking.

The Queen’s speech veered dissonantly onward via the Scottish referendum (acclaim) and warzones (gravity), the Ebola crisis (gravity) and ‘the life of Jesus Christ, the prince of peace’ (acclaim), before finally coming to an abrupt end. As quickly as the Queen entered the nation’s homes, she abandoned them, leaving only her muddling annual saga behind her; I assume that, despite being briefly paralytic with confusion, 7.82 million viewers then got on with their festivities.

In the present, with the holidays behind us, it is perhaps possible to reflect on just how high the standard of strangeness for the Christmas broadcast now is. Nobody can predict what jolly activities and terrible events the Queen will be alternatively narrating to the nation in 2015, but all can live in hope of a playful True Detective reference thrown in amongst her grave reflections on MI5’s historical complicity in waterboarding. If that doesn’t normalise a week of post-festive desolation, nothing will.

‘Snide and seek’

On last writing, I claimed that I would not be blogging for three weeks owing to my undertaking a jaunty adventure; that was eight days ago and, quite evidently, my claim has proven to be false. If you feel misled, duped or indeed cruelly and wickedly deceived, I apologise as profusely as I am able; as it has transpired, I have been powerless to avoid the latest from social media – even having journeyed a profound and measureless distance (to Scotland) – and one trending item has now summoned me from the furthest fringes of the (reasonably well-catered, Scottish) wild.

This item has to do with comedian and activist (or, depending on prejudice of perspective, insolent cockney) Russell Brand, and his referring to Channel 4 News reporter Paraic O’Brien as ‘a snide’ in response to a question on how much his house was worth. Brand’s comment has led to innumerable online opinion pieces upbraiding him for his irritability, general demeanour and indeed his having the damned temerity to engage with a political issue (more on this in a moment) while speaking with so common an accent. Intrepid soul that I am, I shall derive great pleasure from setting out to challenge this intractable mass of opinion, for it seems to me not a little unfair.

Though using the word ‘snide’ might have been a bit indecorous – not to mention, as an Only Fools and Horses-esque insult, expedient to enthusiasts of Russellian caricature – I can understand how Brand came to be so bitterly frustrated by O’Brien’s line of questioning. In the broadest possible sense, the topic being discussed was increasing rates of rent in London, with Brand speaking out against a particular case of rent increase. Now, few economists would disagree that one of the market pressures driving collective rent increases is mass investment in city property – that is, the mass investment of private capital in more and more of London’s homes. This market pressure is obviously what O’Brien was getting at by asking Brand how much his property was worth; the suggestion, as he then made more explicit, was that Brand’s stance on rent increase might represent something of an irony (or ‘tension between private circumstances and publicly-held views’, as O’Brien has since tweeted), considering his part in the problem.

Fortunately for Brand and his integrity, his part in the problem is, in reality, absolutely negligible. His ‘private circumstances’ – by his own admission blessed – do not qualify him as a mass investor in city property. He is not a real-estate oligarch, he is not a huge multi-national corporation; he is an individual who, as far as I am aware, rents an individual property in London – the price of which is quite immaterial. The problematic market pressure is mass investment; the investment of billions in multiple homes (or entire estates) by hyper-rich private interests. During his interview with Brand, O’Brien shrewdly expanded the definition of ‘hyper-rich’ to include his interviewee when, in truth, that interviewee would probably have to film ten million sequels to Forgetting Sarah Marshall to accrue the sort of investor capital relevant to this debate.

This is not to call O’Brien ‘a snide’ myself; he’s a journalist, it’s his aim to seek out a story, and in that aim he’s been very much successful. However, it is to call his presentation of the rent issue deliberately misconstrued – hence my understanding Brand’s frustration.

Moreover, the particular political issue with which Brand has been engaging pales the controversy around his interview into utter insignificance – this issue should not be distracted from. American investment firm Westbrook Partners – certainly a relevant source of investor capital – has recently bought Hoxton’s New Era estate and proposed an arbitrary rent increase; it has been reported that around 93 families unable to pay could face eviction in 2015. In comparison, any ethical tension one might perceive between Russell Brand’s personal circumstances and publicly-held views seems, irrespectively, rather insignificant; as such, it might be worth refocusing opinion on the cost that indiscriminate rent increases have on people’s lives, and away from the cost of an activist’s flat.

On the New Era estate/rent increases:

‘New Era estate: residents stage protest at US investment firm’s office’ by Robert Booth: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/01/new-era-estate-resident-protest-us-investment-firm-office

‘Petition: keep rents at a rate affordable to existing tenants on the New Era Estate’ by Lindsey Garrett and Barry Watt: https://www.change.org/p/new-era-should-not-become-the-end-of-an-era

‘We need rent controls to solve London’s housing crisis’ by David Lammy: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/02/we-need-rent-controls-solve-londons-housing-crisis

‘Beds in sheds show who the real victims of the housing crisis are’ by Dawn Foster: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/01/beds-in-sheds-real-victims-housing-crisis-rent

‘Casualties of war’

Last year, speaking to a Christian radio station with Jeremy Hunt having just revealed his (widely criticised) nurses’ training reforms, the Secretary of Christian Nurses and Midwives suggested that the problems besetting the nursing profession and the NHS were down to ‘an erosion of Christian ethic and value’ within the health service. Well-intentioned as it may have been, many have since disagreed with this sweeping prognosis – indeed, many (including myself) have quite categorically linked these problems to the Conservatives’ systematic ‘efficiency savings’, staffing cuts, pay freezes and demoralisation tactics. One person who surely wouldn’t disagree is the Health Secretary himself; having stressed his ethical stance ‘as a Christian’ before, the benefits to the NHS of an increased emphasis on values such as love, compassion, and harmony – beyond that its staff already make – should be very apparent to him.

In contrast, one might expect him to find an emphasis on the rather un-Christian value of international arms proliferation less appealing; that is, however, exactly the emphasis of the corporation which is now meant to be considering a bid for a £1bn NHS contract. Lockheed Martin, the corporation in question, makes billions of dollars every year selling military hardware such as cluster bombs, Trident missiles and fighter jets to governments across the globe; their clients have, in the past, included the repressive regimes of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Hence, under Jeremy Hunt’s general direction, a public service which has so long been dedicated to caring for the incapacitated is now saleable to a firm that has made its name propagating lethal equipment to the Middle East and beyond.

This is bitterly ironic, and it renders Hunt’s own Christian ethic entirely transparent; the rush to sell off as many NHS contracts as possible before the next general election has nothing to do with any principle bar the principle of profit. What it should make more broadly transparent to those who haven’t yet recognised the source of the NHS’ struggles is that, contrary to David Cameron’s election pledges, his ministers’ repeated protestations and Hunt’s recent assertion that ‘no agenda’ for privatisation exists, the NHS is under immediate threat from aggressive private interests. This situation could never have developed without the government’s consent; appropriately enough, Lockheed Martin’s potential contract should serve as firm evidence that the government is at war with its health service.

P.S. That’s your lot for a while; the Mutineer is off on a three-week jaunt, during which blog posts shall cease. However, I’ll maintain my Twitter presence when possible – NHS aggressors, beware.

‘One is not appalled’

Emily Thornberry, what have you done?! Having been accused of ‘outrageous snobbery’ by a Conservative think tank, anti-Englishness by Nigel Farage and ‘completely appalling’ conduct by David Cameron, she might as well have spent her last few days as Shadow Attorney General organising the public crucifixion of Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds. In actuality, her transgression has been to tweet a picture of someone’s house. Oh, and to caption the picture – caption it with the inflammatory words ‘image from Rochester’.

I apologise if that seems a rather coy summation of her actions; I am aware, of course, that her tweet has been construed as an implicit sneer at the working class from a middle-class, metropolitan elitist. Aware as I am, I still have a few major contentions with the nature of the Thornberry debate. First of all, I contend the use of words such as ‘appalling’ and ‘outrageous’ to describe her offence. While her tweet may well have been implicitly superior, graceless and unnecessary, it is important that some sense of perspective is maintained; considering the brevity (and non-specificity) of the tweet, she has been almost entirely condemned on assumptions of her intention – assumptions ranging from the reasonable to the fantastical. The politicised hyperbole generated by her opponents has, unsurprisingly, been predicated on the most fantastical assumptions of class contempt; hence she has become ‘completely appalling’ as opposed to – more reasonably – disconcertingly thoughtless. The entire debate has been exaggerated in accordance with the language of Labour’s adversaries.

To hone the sense of perspective further, it is important to remember that Thornberry’s most critical opponents have far from immaculate records regarding this sort of controversy. UKIP’s social media howlers are too numerous to list, while the names Roger Helmer, David Coburn and Godfrey Bloom (now resigned) should jolt memories of the party’s less graceful – and less well-intended – public conduct. Likewise, the Conservatives who’ve been lambasting Thornberry’s snobbery should be reminded of their party’s ill-advised ‘beer and bingo’ budget tweet from earlier this year; some might argue that defining ‘hardworking people’ (i.e. the working class) by their enjoyment of booze and gambling is a relatively strong indicator of class contempt and, indeed, pretty outrageous. It is with this collective context in mind that the hyperbolic language of the right has been generated. The more that UKIP and the Conservatives condemn Thornberry, the more they seek to deflect collective attention from their own appalling attitudes.

However, the disingenuous condemnation of the posturing right has not been the worst thing about the Thornberry debate. The worst thing has been the general acceptance of the right’s working-class narrative. Dan Ware, the owner of the house photographed, is one working-class individual amongst many, and yet the Conservatives and UKIP have now made him the archetype of ‘working people’. The convenience of this is that, by his own admission, Dan Ware has never voted Labour – he is a working-class man with largely right-wing views. Though that’s fair enough, and though he’s certainly not alone in his political stance, he is absolutely not representative of all England’s working class – not politically, not geographically, not footballistically (judging by the claret and blue on his flag of St. George) et cetera. The idea that Dan Ware represents ‘working people’ might be expedient to the right, and yet to imagine that he (or any other single individual) is proxy to an entire stratum of society is to distort that stratum’s identity in the extreme.

If the right’s criticisms of Thornberry’s ‘appalling’ prejudice has been a bit rich, it is this distortion which has been truly brazen; by suggesting that Dan Ware is ‘working people’, the Conservatives and UKIP have hijacked working-class identity and used it to their own political ends. Emily Thornberry might well be an elitist and a snob, but this does not mean that it should be left to the parties of the hyper-privileged to define what it is to be working class; again, it’s important to maintain some perspective.