Everything for sale?

Last September, I wrote with some indignation about a Romanian journal labelling an article I wrote for them "left-wing”. Despite my work as a Labour Party Councillor in the 1970s and 1980s (the last 5 years on a full-time basis), I was always opposed to its statist bias. Put this down to the influence of Karl Popper, Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire. As a result, my main contribution to politics in the West of Scotland was to drive an agenda of support for community structures and inititatives. When the Labour party had its left-right split after its 1979 defeat, I was left feeling homeless – with neither option attracting me. And my suspicion of some attitudes in state professionalism and ambivalence about public sector trade unionism led me to view with some sympathy some of the Thatcher policies on contracting-out and privatisation of public services.

I feel, therefore, I can be fairly objective in assessing the results of the privatisation which has swept the globe in the past 30 years. With the exception of gas and electricity, I think the results have been disastrous. This post is written for open-minded readers who want some guidance on useful material on the issue - particularly from the British experience (which has, after all, been at it for 30 years now).
For how privatisation of water, social care etc have panned out I mentioned recently the Public Services International Research Unit of the University of Greenwich which has been giving great briefings on the consequences of privatisation globally for more than a decade.

Privatising the UK railways is perhaps the greatest disaster story – with subsidies to the private rail and track companies being almost three times (at constant prices) the subsidies which british Rail received – and the level of consumer comfort, convenience and satisfaction at an all-time low. Christan Wolmar is the great historian of UK rail privatisation

The English academic, Julian le Grand, was one Tony Blair’s advisers and promoter of the idea of releasing market forces into British social services such as health and education.
Perhaps the text which best captures the hopes and fears is The House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration 2005 report - Choice, Voice and Public Services and, particularly the 190 pages of evidence it received from both sides of the ideological fence.

The most prolific writer on (and critic of) the privatisation of the british health system is Allyson Pollock – whose most recent book on the subject is NHS Inc. She also blogs occasionally about the issues. The UK government is now attempting (for England only) the most dramatic set of changes ever seen - wcich would effectively dismantle the public Health Service - here is the view of an independent peer (and medic) who was once a Minister of Health.

The role which market mechanisms do now play in education (and might further in the future) can be followed in the second volume of the House of Commons publication mentioned above. An acadenmic treatment is Education Management Organisations and the Privatisation of Public Education: A Cross-National Comparison of the USA and Britain and an angrier statement from a practitioner in Education for sale.
One of the most formidable books I have on my Sirnea bookshelves is Robert Kuttner’s Everything for Sale – the virtues and limits of markets (1996) which received the following accolade from the late economist Robert Heilbroner "I have never seen the market system better described, more intelligently appreciated, or more trenchantly criticized than in EVERYTHING FOR SALE." A New York Times review gave a useful summary of the book -

Mr. Kuttner's target is the total faith in the market-pricing system held by economists of the Chicago school (and by members of two allied scholarly movements in the fields of political science and law -- public choice and law and economics): their idea that whatever is must be optimal if it is the result of the operation of a market. More broadly, Mr. Kuttner wants to dismantle the view that markets essentially work and government interventions essentially don't. By relentlessly piling on example after detailed example of market failure and government success, he gradually makes the idea that all efforts to modulate the market are doomed seem like a blind prejudice that has been holding the nation inexplicably in its grip. If you're ever challenged to name ''just one thing'' the United States Government has ever done right, you'll be fully prepared to answer after reading ''Everything for Sale.'' There are all sorts of necessary social and economic goods, Mr. Kuttner says, that markets can't be relied upon to provide. Free markets underinvest in pure research, so government needs to finance it, or to structure the economy so that private companies can afford to conduct it. Government made us prosperous by creating the higher education system, railroads, canals, commercial aviation and the Internet. Moreover, markets generate problems -- pollution, dangerous products, economic disasters like bank failures -- so they need to be regulated. Regulation does not retard growth: ''The zenith of the era of regulation -- the postwar boom -- was the most successful period of American capitalism.'' Finally, markets fail to provide all citizens with such essentials as health care, physical safety and basic economic security, so these have to come from government.
Demonstrating an impressive mastery of a vast range of material, Mr. Kuttner lays out the case for the market's insufficiency in field after field: employment, medicine, banking, securities, telecommunications, electric power. This material isn't exactly riveting, but it is presented clearly and convincingly enough to qualify as self-improving reading matter. Then he shows, over and over, how his primary villains, academic free-market ideologues, have pushed society in the direction of abandoning carefully constructed solutions to market failures -- solutions that were working quite well.
Mr. Kuttner is an unapologetic social democrat, a believer in America's moving in the direction of a Western European or Scandinavian-style mixed economy, with a bigger Government, higher taxes and stronger unions. One of the strengths of ''Everything for Sale'' is Mr. Kuttner's complete lack of the usual tendency in journalists and policy intellectuals to keep the discussion within the frame of the political possibilities of the moment. He wants to change the debate entirely. He insistently attributes our economic problems to political, not market, failure. For example, American blue-collar workers are underpaid, he says, because it isn't skills they lack but political power. Conversely, the solution to most of the market's deficiencies is not fine-tuning but ''a redistribution of economic and political power.'' As Mr. Kuttner explains (in italics), ''There is no escape from politics

Kuttner’s book deal, however, with the economic arguments. It does not really go into the politics. For that you have to read Colin Leys’s Market-Driven Politics (2001). It was Leys who helped me understand exactly what is meant by the dreadful word "commodification” and his book shows how it started to be applied in the UK in the 1980s to such fields as health and broadcasting. Leys is actually a development economist and most of his material on the internet is therefore on that topic – although an interesting preface to a new book of his called Total Capitalism is available here

The photograph is of Loch Lomond in Central Scotland - a National Park for public benefit and therefore free from development and market forces.

Consultancy....again

Eighteen months ago I highlighted a story about the English health service spending 300 million in the previous year on consultancy companies – equivalent to the pay of 10,000 nurses. This was just the tip of the iceberg – with spending on consultants having got out of control under New Labour. A 2006 book on the subject suggested that spending had gone up 10 times under them. Four reasons for this –
• New Labour’s initial suspicion of the senior civil servants who had served a radical right Conservative Government for 18 years
• a naivety about the implementation of complex IT projects (and lack of coordination on them)
• The curious combination New Labour had of managerialism and social engineering
• the jobs and connections many of the new Ministers had had with big consultancies when in opposition.

A story in today’s Guardian indicates that in New Labour’s final years, the spending increased by a factor 50 to one in one department. The Ministry of Defence apparently spent only 6 million pounds a few years ago on consultants but its bill came in at 297 million in 2010. Curiously, The Guardian tries to put the blame on the Coalition Government but, on my arithmetic, 2009.2010 was still on the New Labour watch. What will be interesting will be to see the figures for 2011 – when the present government started its programme of reducing defence manpower by 60,000.
The paper did report a few days back that government departments have spent 30 million pounds hiring temporary staff to cope with the shortage of staff they are experiencing after the redundancies of the past year.

Exactly a year ago I drew attention to the publications of the National Audit Office (NAO) on the subject. The NAO is supposed to be the nation’s financial watchdog but started to look at the issue of consultant use only in 2005. Since then it has issued various reports exposing the bad practice and issuing both recommendations, guidelines and the inevitable “toolkits”. Their last report (issued in October 2010 for the new government) gives a useful overview of issues - and one of the annexes to the significant 2007 report is a helpful set of guidelines on increasing the commitment of clients and consultants during the projects.
It’s sloppy journalism on the Guardian’s part not to give this sort of background – and follow it up eg by asking whether the NAO has been asking what use departments have been making of their guidelines.
For those interested in the consultancy business, a more analytical study of the different types of consultancy has been done by a Canadian think-tank.

On the subject of slack journalism, it is a blog in Paris which tells us here in Bucharest that several Romanians have been on a hunger strike in an attempt to get some transparency on the crimes committed during the communist era. Doru Maries is near death - having been on hunger strike for 90 days. The local media have apparently given no coverage to this.

Presidents...and presidents

Yesterday I watched Sarkozy’s opening speech of the French Presidential campaign which he delivered to 10,000 faithful at Marseilles. A stirring event – like 2 previous he delivered recently before he actually declared his official candidacy. So far I haven’t seen Hollande on TV5. Both candidates are up against a strong National Front challenge – so hardly surprising that Sarkozy’s speech was virulently nationalist -

Aimer la France, c'est refuser d'accepter les 35 heures (the working week which Sarkozy has tried to break) c'est refuser de promettre la retraite à 60 ans (...) c'est refuser d'augmenter les dépenses et d'augmenter les impôts en pleine crise de la dette (...) c'est refuser d'aborder l'immigration par la seule posture idéologique", a-t-il lancé.  « Quand on aime la France, on n'est pas du côté de ceux qui, pour défendre leurs intérêts, bloquent le pays et prennent les Français en otage (...) on a l'obsession de ne pas l'affaiblir (...) on dit la vérité aux Français sur ce que l'on veut faire, sinon on jette le discrédit sur la parole publique", a poursuivi le chef de l'Etat sous les applaudissements. (Liberation)

"Je me souviens qu'au début, j'ai fait de la politique parce que je voulais agir, je voulais résoudre des problèmes, je voulais aider les gens à surmonter leurs difficultés, a poursuivi le candidat de l'UMP. Mais en me tournant sur toutes ces années, j'ai compris que le combat essentiel, c'est celui que l'on mène pour le pays qui nous a vu naître. Il n' y a pas un seul combat qui soit supérieur à celui qui mène pour son pays." (Le Monde)

For a detailed assessment of the policy platforms, we have to go to a blog which actually gives us a useful insight into the socialist candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon who is also running and attracting about 8% in the polls at the moment and whose manifesto is apparently a best-seller

The German Presidency is, as they say, "honorific” – and, with both of the last 2 incumbents having to resign, there are those who suggest the post is unecessary. This is to disregard the moral authority which incumbents such as Richard von Weizsacker and Johannes Rau brought to the country. Weizsacker was a Christian Democract and President 1984-1994 and West Berlin Mayor 1981-84. Rau was a Social Democrat; President 1999-2004 and Head of the huge RheinWestphalen Land (Region) from 1978-98.
I was spellbound listening to the speeches of the former as he made his famous gentle and highly civilised commentaries. A Foreign Affairs review expressed it well -

More than any of his predecessors in the presidential office, he has used that supraparty position to address fundamental issues, such as the ever-present unease about the German past, and he does so with clarity and admirable forthrightness. He has what few statesmen nowadays have: moral authority, and in his book-with its intelligent interlocutors-he turns from the past to the present and the future. His greatest worry concerns the vitality of liberal democracy in the enlarged Federal Republic, particularly in light of the power of German political parties in politics and public life generally-their power and the paucity of their imagination, the failure of their leadership. He is remarkably candid in his criticism of parties that only seek electoral gain and calls for a more active citizenry and regrets the immobility of Germany's political life, "the Utopia of the status quo." German commentators have seized on formulations that clearly hit the inadequacies of the present government, but these are incidental and inevitable. Weizsäcker's criticisms go far deeper. It took courage and, I suppose, the deepest concern to disturb the political complacency of his country and to do so with thoughts that in the German context and in some parts recall conservative criticisms of the Weimar period. But Weizsäcker's aim to strengthen, to vitalize liberal democracy is beyond question.

Johannes Rau was a son of a Lutheran priest and this showed in his approach. You can see a speech here which he delivered to the Israeli Knesset, the first German to address it.

I was lucky enough to meet both of these men informally and can therefore vouch personally for the humility they brought to their role. Weizsacker was holidying in Scotland and popped in quietly to pay his respects to the leader of the Regional Council. As the (elected) Secretary to the majority party, I had private access to the Leader’s office and stumbled in on their meeting. Rau I also stumbled across when in a Duisberg hotel on Council business. He was not then the President – but I recognised him when he came in with his wife and a couple of assistants, introduced myself ( as a fellow social democrat); gave him a gift book on my Region which I happened to be carrying and was rewarded with a chat.

I am glad to see that, with the nomination of Glauk, Germany seems now to be returning to its tradition of Presidents with moral authority. The German political system seems to me one of the best - with the leaders of strong Laender in the 2nd chamber acting as a responsible challenge to the Executive. Typical that, despite all the so-called discussion which has been going on for several decades about the reform of the British second chamber, this option has never been presented forcibly..... 

Some readings on the crisis

It may not have been evident from recent posts that one of my central concerns is the identification of an agenda for social change which is capable – by its appeal, relevance and clarity – of uniting a significant block of change agents in Europe at least. Two of my common moans are the insular nature of so much of the writing about this which one finds in the English language; and the failure of so many of the writers to build bridges to others writing on relevant subjects.
These faults were very evident in a Noreena Hertz pamphlet entitled Coop Capitalism just published by Cooperatives UK. Hertz is, apparently, one of these young celebrity Economists who have been taken up by the mass media and one of whose faults is to present ideas as if they were new. I’m not sure, for example, if her use of the term "gucci capialism” adds to our understanding of the crisis we face – and her references to examples of cooperatives are highly selective and superficial (Mondragon gets no mention). She allows this blurb about her to appear in the pamphlet -

many have described Professor Hertz as a visionary and she is one of the most influential economists on the international stage. Her work is considered to provide a much needed blueprint for rethinking economics and corporate strategy. For more than two decades Noreena Hertz’s economic predictions have been accurate and ahead of the curve. In her number one best-selling book “The Silent Takeover”, Hertz predicted that unregulated markets and massive financial institutions would have serious global consequences whilst her 2005 best-seller, “IOU: The Debt Threat”, predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Her books have been translated into 17 languages

Here is an example of how the media treat her – but here a more serious treatment of her ideas . I realise, of course, that such a comment could be taken as an example of how the left tear one another part – but change agents need to show more modesty and generosity in their referencing of relevant work.

Labour Left has published a 300 page Red Book which can be downloaded here. Labour Left’s ambition is 

to generate ethically socialist policies for inclusion in the next Labour General Election manifesto. We aim to intellectually reclaim what it means to be left and we wish to help Ed Miliband steer a course away from Neo-Liberalism. It is clear from the surge in new members, especially younger ones since the General Election in 2010, that there is an appetite for socialist policies that tame the excesses of capitalism and re-balance the UK economy in a way that is fairer to the have-nots

Unfortunately, like all collections, the book’s contributions are ad-hoc (if worthy) presentations of various ideas relating to health, education and environmental issues – with no wider analysis of policy contexts nor argument as to whether the particular ideas would be supported let alone successful.

At the other end of the analytical and geographical spectrum is a major publication from the European Trade Unions Institute which, in 300 pages, looks at the changes in the infrastructure of each of the main European economies in the last 20 years. It takes as its starting point Colin Crouch’s insight about the strange non-death of neo-liberalism and is entitled A Triumph of Failed Ideas – european models of capitalism
It made me realise how seldom I have referenced the valiant efforts of various European Trade Unions and their research bodies in their tracking developments of the past decade eg the fantastic public services international research unit of the University of Greenwich which has been giving great briefings on the consequences of privatisation for more than a decade; NHS policy briefings ; European Services Strategy Unit.
But I have just come across what, for me, is the best source of radical thinking and activities in Europe – the Transform network which issues a biannual journal.

Geopolitics of Coffee and tea

One of my favourite blogs is the It’s About time one – which sends me on a daily basis marvellous pictures of old paintings generally on a theme such as the ruffles which adorn the necks of aristocratic figures or the preparation of foods in medieval times – eg here and here
Some amazingly modern faces and styles are in evidence
I hadn’t realised that the famous Vienna coffee shops came from a some coffee beans being found in the fields outside Vienna in the aftermath of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in the 17th Century. Curious that the main thing which impacted me on my first visit to Istanbul some 25 years ago was their teas! In powder form and carried on trays around the bazzars and served as you looked at carpets.
My 3 years of ceremonially receiving and serving teas in small, beautiful bowls and teapots in Uzbekistan 1999-2002 almost killed the coffee habit in me. The coffees of Sofia dragged me back to the dangerous weed – but, at least, Sofia hedges its bets by having so many small shops which seel both coffee beans and Chinese teas!
I wanted to get an explanation for this apparent decline in Turkish tea-drinking but Google seemed strangely hooked on either the Tea Party or the Greg Mortensen saga (Three Cups of Tea). Wikipedia tells me that

tea became the widely consumed beverage of choice in Turkey only in the 20th century. It was initially encouraged as an alternative to coffee,which had become expensive and at times unavailable in the aftermath of the First World War. Upon the loss of southeastern territories after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, coffee became an expensive import. At the urging of the founder of the republic, Atatürk, Turks turned more to tea as it was easily sustainable by domestic sources

A Greek site tells me that tea there was expensive and, on independence from the Ottomans, was considered an upper-class habit. Another site told me of the Ottoman (red) tea spoken about by travellers and still apparently available in places such as Bursa - with 10 different natural ingredients - ginger, havlıcan (a plant in the ginger family), hibiscus, linden, cloves, lemon, orange, cinnamon, apple and thyme.

And I found this superb tea and carpets site which reminded me of the carpet-buying days in central asia and Turkey which preceded my current passion for painting.

Finally some lovely miniatures from the website with which I started

Technocrats, securitats ...and cronycrats

An article in Scottish Review by someone apparently also living in Romania asks whether we now have 'Eurocracy' replacing democracy – pointing not only to the parachuting of bankers into the Greek and Italian Prime Minister jobs (in the greek case, the same guy who had overseen the falsification of accounts when the country entered the euro) but also to recent events in Romania. Romania has just completed a 2 year (apparently successful - at least in IMF terms!) spell of control by the IMF and, the article writes, –

two days after the IMF representative left Bucharest, the government of the deeply unpopular prime minister, Mr Emile Boc, resigned en masse and was swiftly replaced by a completely new government of what appear to be young technocrats. In Romania, the prime minister is appointed by the elected president. Finally, two days later, the governor of the Romanian Central Bank, the only man with any clue about fiscal and economic policy in the entire country, announced that responsibility for the nation's fiscal policy should no longer rest with the IMF but should be transferred to those nice German regulators at the EU, through the new fiscal treaty. Romania's president was one of the first non-Eurozone government heads to sign the treaty. Romania is confirmed as the next country, after Greece and Italy, to be governed by Merkozy's EU fiscal and political regime.

I have much sympathy with the author’s general point about the reduction of democracy but he is not quite right to argue that the new Romanian government is an example of the new "technocracy”. It is certainly true that the new Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, is not an elected politician. He was, previously, head of Romania's foreign intelligence – which makes him a "securitat" rather than "technocrat"! His full list of new ministers was approved yesterday in the Parliament. M.R. Ungureanu's government team is formed of all-new members from the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL), while coalition partners, the Hungarian Democrats (UDMR), and the UNPR retain their ministers who have served in Emil Boc's government. Two independents also keep their portfolios. Half, therefore, of the new government is unchanged – and only about 6 (on my count) are not politicians half of them incumbents. The full list of the new government is:

• Deputy PM - Marko Bela (UDMR, incumbent)
• Home Affairs and Administration Ministry - Gabriel Berca (PDL)
• Finance Ministry - Bogdan Dragoi (PDL)
• Economy Ministry - Lucian Bode (PDL)
• Foreign Affairs Ministry - Cristian Diaconescu (UNPR, incumbent)
• Transport Ministry -Alexandru Nazare (PDL)
• Environment Ministry - Laszlo Borbely (UDMR, incumbent)
• Tourism Ministry - Cristian Petrescu (PDL)
• Defense Ministry - Gabriel Oprea (UNPR, incumbent)
• Culture Ministry - Kelemen Hunor (UDMR, incumbent)
• Justice Ministry - Catalin Predoiu (independent, incumbent)
• Communications Ministry - Serban Mustea (PDL)
• Labor Ministry - Claudia Boghicevici (PDL)
• Education Ministry - Catalin Baba (PDL)
• Health Ministry - Ladislau Ritli (UDMR, incumbent)
• Agriculture Ministry - Stelian Fuia (PDL)
• European Affairs Ministry - Leonard Orban (independent, incumbent)

As many of the new members of the government are young - some of them in their early 30s - Mihai Razvan Ungureanu pointed out on Wednesday it was a young government formed of

new faces, exceptional professionals, people who I've worked with in various structures of the government. It is a government worthy of trust and ready to show not only a change in political generations but also a change of principle in activity

Frankly I don’t hold my breath. I have already commented that the younger generation of ambitious people here is no better than its elders. They owe their position to those elders (whether parents or protectors) and their education abroad has made them even more arrogant than their elders. It is, for me, significant, that the new Minister of Finance is the very young man I fingered in September 2010 for cronyism and disregard for such legalities as the need to make an open and honest declaration of financial interests. He was then State Secretary at the Ministry and is therefore apparently one of the non-elected technocrats – except that I doubt whether his route to that high-level civil service position permits that term to be used of him and his like. This is what my September 2010 blog said about him -

People like Dragoi enjoy such patronage (with no experience - he became a State Secretary at the age of 26 after an extended education!) and protection and seem so contemptuous of these forms that he doesn't even bother to update his form which understates his income by a factor of 40! 250 euros he says when it is actually 9,600!
His out-of-date form does, however, declare some of the additional revenues he earned as a committee member of various state funds.
I alighted on his declaration form by accident – just choosing his file at random from the list of officials’ forms. These assets, earnings and concealments reveal systemic immorality which, in Romania’s case, seems to be shaped and sustained by the role of its political parties which grabbed significant amounts of property in 1990 and which now determine the career path of young characters like Dragoi (nationally and internationally) and take in return a significant part of his earnings. For more on this issue see Tom Gallagher's 2010 article.

When people talk about pinning their hopes on the younger generation, I will always think of this face. It is when such behaviour is revealed that I feel some shame for having spent time working trying to reform such systems.

Perhaps, therefore, the term we should be using for Romania and similar countries with similar systems is not "technocracy" (which implies ability) but "cronycracy". By the way, an earlier article in Scottish Review by the same author was the best piece Ive read about the reasons for the protests here which led to the change in government.

The caricature is Daumier - one of history's best! This one is called Marionettes.

Some positive Greek responses

For some time now, I’ve been wanting to visit Thessalonika which is just down the road. A week or so ago, I watched a documentary about the city’s new mayor – a 69 year-old vintner who got involved in citizen politics some 7 years back through disgust with the way the city was being run. It was clear he (Boutaris) was a popular figure as he walked through its streets with the journalist. Der Spiegel has a short article about how he is going about the reform of the city’s administration – eg hiring an auditor in his first week in office and reducing the number of Directorates from 31 to 20. Already the city's budget has decreased by 30%

Thessaloniki was always seen as a stronghold of the conservatives and nationalists. The conservative New Democracy party controlled city hall for 24 years, holding the city hostage with its cronies. During the election campaign, the local archbishop refused to allow Boutaris to kiss the cross during mass, even imposing an excommunication of sorts on the candidate: "As long as I am in office, you will not see the inside of city hall." A television crew recorded the incident, and when the footage was aired even conservative citizens were outraged over the archbishop's audacity. "People wanted change. They realized that things couldn't go on that way," says Pengas. Under Boutaris's predecessor, €51.4 million ($68.4 million) had suddenly and inexplicably disappeared from the city budget. No one knew what had happened to the money. A former prefect is now under investigation in the case.

One of the mayor’s young aides reckons that the city (with 7,000 officials) has double the number it needs – thanks to cronyism. So clearly some of the shine will come off the mayor’s image as he begins to tackle that problem. Already his attempts (with French help) to introduce performance evaluation of staff has hit resisitance.
All of this confirms the appalling picture which emerged in the recent OECD report on Greek administration - which, again, seems to have been covered only by Der Spiegel. But the Archbishop's behaviour reminds me of Michael Lewis' article on the Greek crisis which appeared in October 2010 (in the American Vanity Fair of all places) which fingered the Orthodox Church as the richest and most corrupt body in Greece!

Most of the articles which are appearing about the impact of government measures are focussing on the impoverisation of its people and settlements. The New York Times Magazine ran a long piece recently.
But Le Monde of the 10th February ran an article called "Vivre la Decroissance" by two journalists Olivier Razemon and Alain Sailles to Athens telling the story of people who had set up a “bank of time” (trapeza chronou)..It works like this; people work as certain amount of hours and in exchange they get some services. Some people have set up a clothes exchange…Others are working solar systems in order to get free electricity…Some cultivate tomatoes, spinach, thyme, laurel, in a word all sorts of fruits and vegetables…which can be exchange for hours in the bank of time. The two journalists asked the question: “a big debate has ben launched; must we exchange products for services? If yes, how do you define the value of this product”. People in Britain have tried similar ‘alternative systems” like ‘letts’. It did not get very far…

An interesting Greek blog I've just come across gives a lot of detail going back some years about the situation there.
One of the journalists has recently published a book on a theme close to my heart – how concrete is destroying our countryside -

Année après année, la campagne française disparaît sous la ville. Malgré les proclamations indignées et les législations vertueuses, la terre fertile se raréfie, les espaces naturels se morcellent, la ville s’éparpille et se cloisonne, l’automobile s’impose comme unique lien social. Le phénomène, connu sous le nom d’étalement urbain, ne résulte pas seulement, comme on le croit souvent, de la crise du logement et du désir d’accession à la propriété individuelle. Centres commerciaux, entrepôts, parkings, la ville étalée se nourrit, en France comme ailleurs, d’une économie opulente et d’une société qui valorise le bonheur individuel, à court terme de préférence. Autrement dit, nous sommes tous responsables.
Les égoïsmes locaux, les tentations des élus et les tics des aménageurs se heurtent ça et là à des réflexes de survie. On pourrait densifier et vitaliser la ville existante. On pourrait prendre les décisions au bon niveau et en réfléchissant à l’avenir. On pourrait résister au tout-parking. On pourrait améliorer la qualité de vie sans gaspiller le territoire.
Les auteurs brossent un portrait vivant et sans concession de la bataille inégale qui se livre entre la soif de bitume et les rares garde-fous susceptibles de contrer le phénomène. Tout est perdu ? Voire. Et si les crises qui se profilent fournissaient un sursaut brutal mais inespéré ?

collapse of empires

I am now literally marooned here in the Bucharest snow – such heavy snowfalls as have blocked the car exit although I have tried to clear the snow each day. As tends to happen in such situations, I have been losing myself in the past – first with Joseph Roth’s classic The Radeztky March written in 1930 and then with Robert Service’s Trotsky; a Life.

Roth’s book is the first of a trilogy and relates the stories of three generations of the Trotta family, professional Austro-Hungarian soldiers and career bureaucrats of Slovenian origin — from imperial zenith to First World War nadir. For saving him in battle, the Emperor awards Lt. Trotta the Order of Maria Theresa and ennobles him. Elevation to the nobility ultimately leads to the Trotta family’s ruination, paralleling the imperial collapse of Austria–Hungary (1867–1918).
Although he does not assume the airs of a social superior, everyone from the new baron’s old life perceives him as a changed person, as a nobleman. The perceptions and expectations of society eventually compel his reluctant integration in the aristocracy, a class with whom he is temperamentally uncomfortable. The disillusioned Baron Trotta opposes his son’s aspirations to a military career, insisting he prepare to become a government official, the second most respected career in the Austrian Empire; by custom, the German son was expected to obey. The son eventually becomes a district administrator in a Moravian town. As a father, the second Baron Trotta (still ignorant of why his war-hero father thwarted his military ambitions) sends his own son to become a cavalry officer; grandfather’s legend determines grandson’s life. The cavalry officer’s career of the third Baron Trotta comprises postings throughout the empire of Austria-Hungary and a dissipated life of wine, women, song, gambling, and dueling, off-duty pursuits characteristic of the military officer class in peace-time. In the progress of his career, Baron Trotta’s infantry unit suppresses a local uprising against the imperial government; awareness of the aftermath of his professional brutality begins his disillusionment with empire. I found this quotation from the last few pages of the book which covers the retreat from the borderland with Russia -

Most of these orders were to do with the evacuation of villages and town and the treatment of pro-Russian Ukrainians, clerics, and spies. Hasty court-martials in villages passed hasty sentences. Secret informers delivered unverifiable reports on peasants, Orthodox priests, teachers, photographers, officials. There was no time. The army had to retreat swiftly but also punish the traitors swiftly. And while ambulances, baggage columns, field artillery, dragoons, riflemen, and footsoldiers formed abrupt and helpless clusters on the sodden roads, while couriers galloped to and fro, while inhabitants of small towns fled westward in endless throngs, surrounded by white terror, laden with red-and-white featherbeds, grey sacks, brown furniture, and blue kerosene lamps, the shots of hasty executioners carrying out hasty sentences rang from the church squares of hamlets and villages, and the sombre rolls of drums accompanied the monotonous decisions of judges, and the wives of victims lay shrieking for mercy before the mud-caked boots of officers, and red and silver flames burst from huts and barns, stables and haystacks. The Austrian army’s war had begun with court-martials. For days on end genuine and supposed traitors hung from the trees on church squares to terrify the living.

Robert Service's Trotsky (2009) deals with the aftermath of the collapse of both the Austro Hungarian and Russian empires. It's a reasonable read - although the flurry of the revolutionary action did leave me a bit bewildered at time and I felt more space was needed (it's almost 600 pages). The picture painted of the man is not an attractive one - arrogance is the main feature stressed. The book has in fact attracted a fair amount of criticism -  both for factual errors and those of bias - on a professional historian site which one might normally expect to be positive; and also by more political critics here and here.