One less good man in Romania

Romania lost this week someone it can ill-afford to lose – Ion Olteanu – whom I first met 15 (?) years ago in a small office in the prestigious Office of Government just round the corner at Piata Victoreii. He had been made a State Secretary - with a background not in politics or civil service but in philosophy and the voluntary sector. Indeed he was one of the founding fathers of the real aspects of that sector here – with a strong commitment to help younger people get involved in politics. Establishing youth parliaments in various parts of the country was very much his life – with all the European networking and fund-raising that involved. And his job in the Government Office was to help the government sector understand how to dialogue with and use properly the skills and energy of the voluntary sector. After a few years, he returned to full-time work with youth – with all the minimal finance that gave. To visit the family house was always amazing – with the rooms bulging with files, visitors and – open friendship.
A heavy smoker, he was diagnosed two years ago with lung cancer – but continued to the end to work. And we never heard any complaint.
We never appreciate our friends sufficiently – until they are gone. May God forgive us – and give Ion the mix of serenity and philosophical exchange which he would want and which he deserves!

The Russians are coming

I have warned that the combination of Bucharest and the small flat is not conducive to thought and blogging. My first day back was spent cooking, arguing and browsing the bookshops – and a small art gallery. This morning I was diverted from the auction which was at 11.00 to one of the films in the special Russian film festival (under the title Vin Rusii) being held here. Days of Eclipse (made in 1988 by Alexandr Sokorov) is one of the most stunning films I have ever seen. Shot essentially in sepia (with occasional colour) and with an amazing soundtrack of asian and western music (fusing in the last few minutes of its 2 hour duration, it is based in the a village in rural Tajikistan – showing (in the words of the Strictly Film School website on which I now draw) “an unassimilated culture foundering in the vacuum of an imposed, meaningless, ritualized order”.

The reluctant witness to this soul-sapping, Dante-esque existential limbo is the young, idealistic physician Malyanov (Aleksei Ananishnov) who, at the instigation of the government in its push to modernize the rural Asiatic territories, relocated from Gorky in order to set up a clinic in the village. Ethnically and linguistically unassimilated into the local culture (and whose advice and medical practice are largely ignored by the impoverished villagers), his limited interaction with the outside world is relegated to the company of other kindred exiles: his suicidal neighbor, an underemployed engineer demoralized by the futility of his unrealized plans and who has been occupying his time by writing journals that no one else reads (a ritual that is paralleled in Malyanov's own perpetual typing of unsubmitted reports to pass the time); his estranged sister who questions his determination in continuing his practice in the village despite the profound isolation and disappointment of his empty, mind-numbing station; a cherubic, lost boy (who may have been abandoned or ran away from home out of hunger or abuse) who insinuates himself into Malyanov's care; his aimless and increasingly paranoid friend who continues to bear the residual psychological scars of generational trauma after his parents were driven from Russia during the Stalinist purges.

Sokorov is apparently one of the heirs of Tarkovsky – one of whose films I hope to see tomorrow. And such Directors knock not only all American but most European Directors into a cocked hat (admittedly I remain so impressed by Tree of the Wooden Clogs that I have managed to get a copy now for Sirnea). The film was not only monochrome but very poor quality; the actors for the most part unknown; and the scenes of poverty (and imbecility) quite distressing – and yet the totality was riveting.

A good discussion about some books on the Chinese future

competing elites, confucianism and group-grid theory

Yesterday’s post made the point that the UK budget cuts of 81 billion pounds over the next 4 years are as much ideological as financial in intent. Colin Talbot’s Whitehall Watch makes two important points – first that welfare, defence and the criminal justive system have taken the brunt of the cuts rather than education or health .
And, second, the extent too which government leaders have reneged on what they promised during the April election campaign eg on student fees.

How far we need to cut is the really big issue that has been obscured by the ‘how fast’ cyclical debate and to which we still don’t have a full answer. Nick Clegg and other have been emphasising the four-year Spending Plan (up to 2014-15) only takes public spending down to 41% of GDP, the same of New Labour’s proportion in 2006. True, but that’s already 2% points below the 50-year average (43%) and more to the point the Government plans are still headed downwards after 2014-15. They are planning to cut still further in 2015-16, even after they have balanced the books, stripping out another £15bn or so of public spending and taking us down to under 40% of GDP. How much further do they want to go is the real question? Are we heading for a qualitative “rolling back of the frontiers of the state”? So far we don’t have a clear answer, but the indications suggest we are.
If so this does represent a massive change in policy for the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat allies. It was only three years ago that the Tories were happily signed up to matching Labour’s spending plans (then at about 41% of GDP) and the Lib Dems wanted to spend even more! No talk then about public spending “crowding out” the private sector or the state being too big. Shrinking the size of the state is a perfectly legitimate policy aim – but it is not one anyone voted for at the last Election because none of the three main parties put it forward.

The British public has never had a high opinion of its political masters – and respect sunk to a new low after the revelations of MP expense claims. Now, however, a critical link has been blown away from the chain of argument for representative democracy. When you promise several things in manifestos and campaign statements and then do the opposite only a few months later (with no changes in conditions to be able to use as justification) then you have destroyed the basis for political legitimacy. Now we have at last, in the full light of day, the Schumpeterian system of democracy – one of „competing elites”. The role of the unwashed public is simply to choose (on whatever basis – looks or trust) who will govern us – not in any way to influence what they will subsequently do. The one problem in such a political system that the elites then have no real legitimacy – ie no reason to expect us to obey them – as the French (and indeed Chinese) have long recognised with their traditions of popular mobilisation and government retreats.
Seen in this light, differences between Chinese and most western systems relate less to the operation of the formal political system than to the issue of freedom of citizen and media expression. Most European governments are coalitions of parties (in which policies are hammered out in secrecy after elections). And the monopoly Chinese communist party has 75 million members after all. Political parties are simply the mechanism for selecting leaders who then negotiate policies (within adminstrative, financial and political constraints which are fairly similar everywhere). I have to confess some growing sympathy for the Confucian idea of leadership selection discussed by Daniel A Bell – whereby they are formally groomed according to clear criteria. At the moment, political leadership is subject to the „accidental”or „fatalist” principle (to use the language of grid-group theory; for example, noone designed George W Bush – he just emerged from a tortuous process and series of accidental events! Confucianism uses a more deliberative and hierarchical process to try to select leaders who are judges to have the qualities reckoned to be needed for leadership. As someone with strong anarchistic leanings, I should be drawn more to the fatalist school – but I simply don’t like the results!
The real difference between systems seems in fact to be how openly critical the public and the media are allowed to be – and this has got 2 dimensions. First the amount of actual choice on offer in the media (very limited in the USA where all media channels are basically owned by 4 companies); and, second, the consequences of adopting dissent positions (very harsh in China).

Coalition Government's 100 billion cut

From the priest’s chants, it appears that it is yet another feast day? So I limit the external work to reducing the large pile of branches outside the house to sackloads of sticks which I store in the backroom – and to carrying the very light stuff to the track at the bottom of the garden for burning. No power saw today! I don’t want to scandalise the neighbours!
I’m glad that Craig Murray is back blogging again – after some major house rehabilitation apparently. He has a brief remark on the UK Coalition budget which has just announced 100 billion of public spending cuts over the next 4 years.

The Comprehansive Spending Review announced today is designed to bring public spending back to the same level in real terms that it was in 2006/2007. It is not radical. It is not nearly radical enough. The state sector is much.much too large in this country. We could have a much smaller public sector which at the same time was much more effective at wealth redistribution. 500,000 public sector job cuts hardly scratches the surface of needed reductions in our ludicrous bureaucracies. The Private Finance Initiative, Internal Market mechanisms, fee and academy schools - and their hordes of accountants and administrators should all go and be replaced bysimple direct provision of necessary services. Local income tax should fun over half of public spending, decided upon and provided close to the point of delivery. And the UK should be broken up anyway.

Murray does know what he’s talking about – having been an HM Ambassador and also Vice-Chancellor of a University.

There is some confusion about how much of the financial debt of the british Government comes from the banking bailout; how much from the significant increased public spending of the previous 5 or so years which Brown chose and thought would be covered by economic growth which was torpedoed by the global meltdown; and how much from the welfare consequences of the economic decline of the past 2 years. But a recent blog did an excellent job of exposing some myths being perpetrated by the government. And the BBC economics correspondent - Stephanie Flanders - whose blog I have only today discovered - cast the appropriate light on the confusion. And it is consistent with Craig Murray's argument.
What, however, seems clear is that the coalition is using the consensus about the crisis to push through an ideological agenda. The maverick John Grey has a good post on this. And both the increase in the budget of the International Development Department and the sacle of the cutback of the BBC budget are proof of that.
Prospect magazing gives an interesting insight into how of the influentials see the problem and its solution - as well as an overdue comment about the money which tighening up tax avoidance could realise.

I thought something interesting was going to happen when 37 Conservative MPs indicated they would vote last week against the latest, utterly unacceptable demand from the EU for an increased budget. But it was not to be. What sort of planet is the European Commisison living on to expect increased budget when all members are reducing their budgets – and what sort of pusillanimous creatures are the various EU national governments made of to accept increased payments to a system which pays its officials such salaries, pensions and severance payments???? Actually it's worse than that - the EU for leading member state politicians and officials is like heaven - a better place to go after their life in national systems finished. So they have an interest in the totally immoral level of payments - open and hidden.
I’ve been wanting for some time to write about this. Open Europe does a good job of exposing the various nonsenses. See also BBC Gavin Hewett's comment.

party control and discipline

I paced myself better yesterday – with an hour’s sawing session in the morning and another in the afternoon. But another couple of sessions are needed before all the wood is neatly stored away. And I’m pleased to say that my new window is now complete – the old wooden flaps protecting the frames were duly hammered into place after the foam was trimmed.
There is absolutely no planning system here in Romania – so I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a small hotel beginning to emerge at the top of the hill opposite the house. It would be impossible anywhere else in the EU to get permission for such a development. Like 2 other houses on the same stretch which mushroomed last year, it will have superb vistas of the valleys which contain Moiecu and Bran but will impose demands on water which the system is incapable of coping with and will also probably interfere with pedestrian rights. I’m tempted to take civic action – after all I do pay the local taxes! One of the reasons for not lopping branches off the tree I was advised to trim is because its leaves mask that hill from my study window!
And a nice little story In Transition Online about one Romanian MP’s attempt to control journalists!

An article in the current issue of London Review of Books summarises how the communist party in China works

Nominations to key posts – in Party and state organs, but also in large companies – are made first by a Party body, the Central Organisation Department, whose headquarters in Beijing have no listed phone number and no sign outside. Their decisions, once made, are passed to legal organs – state assemblies, managerial boards – which then go through the ritual of confirming them by vote. The same double procedure – first the Party, then the state – obtains at every level, including fundamental economic policy, which is first debated by the Party, and its decisions then implemented by government bodies.

So what’s new? For my sins, I was, for 16 years, Secretary of the Labour Group on Strathclyde Regional Council in Scotland. Each Monday morning all the Council Chairmen would meet to consider an agenda which had been drawn up by myself and the Council Head. These consisted of key items which were coming up for discussion in the various Committees of the Council in the forthcoming week. Our recommendations would then be put in the afternoon to a meeting of all 70-odd of the Labour Councillors on the Council. These were generally accepted and this then became the line which would be taken at those Committees. And that, of course, is how the House of Commons operates. Such whipping has had a bad press – but, at a local level, certainly it was one way to avoid corruption. And, once we accept the case for parties, it is difficult to argue against the need for party discipline – which is supposed to ensure that you get what you vote for. So I think we have to be very clear about what we find so objectionable about the operations of the Chinese Communist Party. Every political system has a small group which gives strategic guidance; that is not the issue. What is at issue are such things as the secrecy (uncontestability) with which the process is conducted; and the incorporation of the judiciary, police and army into party control as the article indicates.

The gap between Party and state is most obvious in the anti-corruption struggle: when there is suspicion that some high functionary is involved in corruption, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, a Party organ, investigates the charges unrestricted by legal niceties: suspects are liable to be kidnapped, subjected to harsh interrogation and held for as long as six months. The verdict eventually reached will depend not only on the facts but also on complex behind the scenes negotiations between different Party cliques, and if the functionary is found guilty, only then is he handed over to the state legal bodies. But by this stage everything is already decided and the trial is a formality – only the sentence is (sometimes) negotiable

An excerpt here from the book produced in June about The Party (by the Financial Times journalist in Beijing) puts the system in a useful comparative context.

Like communism in its heyday elsewhere, the Party in China has eradicated or emasculated political rivals; eliminated the autonomy of the courts and press; restricted religion and civil society; denigrated rival versions of nationhood; centralized political power; established extensive networks of security police; and dispatched dissidents to labor camps.

The original text of the Charter 08 document for which the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner was put in jail can be found here and also a useful summary of the latest developments. Foreign Affairs has a useful overview of the general Chinese situation -

Increased misappropriation of land, rising income inequality, and corruption are among the most contentious issues for Chinese society. China’s State Development Research Center estimates that from 1996 to 2006, officials and their business cronies illegally seized more than 4,000 square miles of land per year. In that time, 80 million peasants lost their homes. Yu Jianrong, a senior government researcher, has said that land issues represent one of the most serious political crises the CCP faces.
From 1996 to 2006, Chinese officials and their business cronies illegally seized more than 4,000 square miles of land per year. In that time, 80 million peasants lost their home.
China’s wealth gaps have also grown; according to Chinese media, the country’s GINI coefficient, a measure of income inequality, has risen to about 0.47. This level rivals those seen in Latin America, one of the most unequal regions in the world. The reality may be even worse than the data suggest. Wang Xiaolu, the deputy director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation, estimates that every year about $1.3 trillion in income -- equivalent to 30 percent of China’s GDP -- goes unreported. More than 60 percent of the hidden income belongs to the wealthiest ten percent of China’s population, mostly CCP members and their families. The use of political power to secure inordinate wealth is a source of considerable resentment, and the wealthy are keenly aware of it. They now employ more than two million bodyguards, and the private security industry has grown into a $1.2 billion enterprise since it was established in 2002.
Since 1999, when China’s senior leadership amended the constitution to protect private property and allow capitalists to join the CCP, the CCP has embarked on a program of internal political reform. It has strengthened collective decision-making, established principles for balancing factional interests, developed rules for succession to leadership posts within the party, and improved the system for internal promotions so that performance is considered in addition to political factors. Although the CCP suppresses external critics, it now permits its own members to debate its political future openly, especially within the Central Party School, which trains China’s future leaders.
In pursuing intraparty reform, CCP officials have become more sensitive to the need to win support from within the party and from society to remain in power. Competition for wider support has encouraged some officials to endorse local experiments in political reform, but reforms that increase competition and openness also carry risks.
But although ongoing experiments with village elections have somewhat improved oversight and accountability at the grass-roots level, the CCP has refused to scale the experiments up to the township or county level. Experimentation with increasing public participation in township-level politics, such as budget decisions, has likewise been limited.

My better half phoned me today to ask about two 18th century French novels by Diderot I had never heard of. – Jacques the fatalist and Rameau’s Nephew. Both looked fascinating when I looked at them on googlebooks – so they have duly been ordered from Amazon. She also asked about a Montaigne essay on „salutory failures” which I can’t actually find in his Complete Works but the query has encouraged me to keep this vast book nearer to hand and also to complete the charming book on his work by Sara Bakewell which I bought at the beginning of the year

problems pasting word text into blog

Today, suddently, I wasn't able to paste my copied word text into the blog. A quick consultation on google gave me the answer -

This is very simple, try this. In Blogger you have two tabs on the screen "Edit Html" and "Compose". Paste into the "Edit Html", NOT the "Compose". That will fix the error

It worked - and is useful to know - but why did it suddeenly happen?

What was the question, again?

My bones are aching as I write this – after a day of sawing, gathering and storing the branches of the two remaining limbs of the corner tree which, with another, stands guard over the front of the house. A power saw (Druzhba „friend”in Romanian) is quite tiring to use for this sort of work – as you are using all sorts of angles and levels to get at the branches of the trunk as they lie in the grass. No need for dumb-bells and Ten Minute Body Exercises with this sort of work! Fortunately the brick soba in the bedroom is at almost sauna heat - after only a basket-full of logs during the day – and will retain the warmth in the room for 36 hours with no further logs needed. And the wood from the 2 trunks will probably be all I need over the winter months for the occasional visits. Talk about self-sufficiency!
I am being advised to cut the limbs of the remaining tree – but I quite like the leaves at the attic window and at our verandah! So I will probably keep that until next year (Insallah!). A young neighbour shinned up the ladder to put the foam in the window frame – and also brought down the 2 limbs for me. He is one of several quasi-slaves many of these villages have – someone with no real home but kept in a house for a measly wage. Both are pleasant individuals in their 30s with little education who do all the dirty work – and have absolutely no prospects. It is the guy’s aunt who employs him and he has some rights to what is his parent’s house if only he would pursue them. Tomorrow he will return to finish the window frames – and I am being advised to pay him no more than 10 euros. I could use him to lengthen two of our chimneys – but it isn’t easy to persuade his „owner” to release him – he could get ideas above his station!

Revenons aux moutons – namely the questions which should be the focus of any inquiry about social improvements . On further reflection, I think the questions need considerable adjustment. All the change literature - some of which is summarised at pages 47-50 of the annotated bibliography for change agents on my website - tells us that people have first to be convinced that something is wrong; only then are they ready to consider a particular programme – which has, ideally, to be developed with their positive engagement. My recent posts have taken an egocentric view (looking at the issue from someone who has been convinced from an early age that the system is rotten – a common fault of impatient and over-confident reformers). Succesful change-agents start not from their own perspectives but from that of the larger population who need to go through the following stages -
• Judging the situation unacceptable
• Wanting to make sense of it
• Distrusting the conventional wisdom
• Learning to trust some perceptions and advice
• Getting involved
• Refining their understanding, trust and judgement about appropriate next steps

So it looks as if a Tolstoyan triple whammy of questions is out! I note that Robert Quinn’s very interesting Change the World is not in that list – so I will need to update it.
While I am thinking about the most appropriate questions for this inquiry let me indicate the direction in which the previous questions took me
• I feel that an important question is phrased along the lines of - what programme elements (drawing partly on the famous diagram on my website) might actually help release and sustain people power in a way which will force the corruption of modern elites to make significant and lasting concessions? France has a long tradition of taking to the streets (witness the last few days) – and winning concessions. But patently this is too negative, piecemeal and exclusive (to French citizens). A more global alternative has been the subject of so many endeavours – for example Envisioning Real Utopias which seems to be a very rigorous exploration which includes a look at the Mondragon cooperatives. The book can actually be downloaded from the link I give.
• The second question – where do we find examples that can persuade a wide audience that there is an alternative – actually is part of the first question! It would therefore seem to need rephrasing along the following lines - What processes offer the best prospects for engaging a sigificant number of citizens in a new vision? The Social Forum (Porto Alegre) had a huge impact in its day but seems to have run out of steam - precisely when its vision was most needed! I have just started to read Paul Kingsnorth’s very well written, sympathetic 2004 treatment of the various parts of the anti-global movement
• Only the Greens (and particularly the Germans) have properly recognised and tried to deal with the problem of the corruption of leadership (the iron law of oligarchy) by circulating leadership positions (as do the Swiss). However, I understand that the German Greens have now scrapped this practice.

A Fine Mess

Let me clarify - the pessimism I feel about the performance capacity of governments relates to my experience and understanding of (a) the UK system since 1968 (when I started my councillor role which was to extend for 22 years) and (b) the so-called transition countries of Europe, Caucusus and Central Asia in which I have worked and lived for the past 20 years.
I have a more open mind about the situation of the Scandinavian countries (in one of which I have briefly worked and lived); of Federal Germany and of the consenual Netherlands (although consensual Belgium and Austria have been disasters). But the UK system has become ever more centralised and adversarial in my lifetime - and these two characteristics seem to me to affect the chances of policy success in the country –
• Policies are imposed – rather than negotiated or thought through
• They are often very poorly designed (eg the poll-tax; rail privatisation; the whole Stalinist target system – with all the counterproductivities that involves)
• Ministers have a high turnover rate (Ministers of Finance excepted)
• Implementation is very poor (see agency theory)
• Morale of public servants is low (political hostility; targets; frequency and number of new initiatives; crude management)
• Changes in government lead to cancellation of programmes

Governance arrangements as a whole do not excite much interest in Britain – but issues relating to the operation of the political system (and of what is felt to be the disenfranchisement of the citizen) do. Concerns about the British political system were so great that a highly ironic report on the operation of the British system was published by Stuart Weir and Democratic Audit to coincide with the launch of the campaign. A very good blog put the campaign (and its prospects) in a useful wider context. If you go back to the diagram at the end of key paper 5 on my website, the electoral system (box 4 top left) is actually only one of 10 sub-systems which have a bearing on the operations of public policies. But (as the 2nd of my blog masthead quotes indicates) it is probably of supreme importance. Which is why the political system so rarely gets reformed (apart from local government!)
I vividly remember a book in the late 1970s (Google does not go that far back!) which looked at various policy initiatives to try to identify the preconditions for successful social policy-making (feasibility and support were 2 of them) and which could produce only a couple of succesful policy examples - one of which was the Open University (I would add the Scottish Children’s Hearing approach to juvenile justice which was introduced in 1968 and which appears still to be going strong .
I would dare to posit that there was probably a Golden Age of government capacity in the UK – not only further back in time (when the political elite were not assailed by the media, lobbies and think tanks) but also further down in space. David Marquand’s recent magisterial neglected arguments of Leopald Kohr. I appreciate the arguments of Gerry Hassan and Tom Gallagher about the potentially incestuous nature of political systems in a small country (Hassan talks about the bunker mentality) and Belgium, Iceland and Ireland have hardly surrounded themselves recently with glory – but the issue of decentralisation of power must be one of the options countries look at in our present global crisis.

China is in the news again – with its attitude to the award of the Nobel peace prize to Liu Xiaobo. There are (and have been) so many courageous individuals in that country – and now even some older members of the elite are calling for an end to the restrictions of freedom of expression…. I liked the jokes which are now apparently circulating about the situation.
But apparently even the Prime Minister is censored!
As I’ve been writing this, Romanian radio has been playing some Stockhausen which has similarities to Kyrgyz nasal music!!