The amorality of Professions

I see that rule of law has not improved in Azerbaijan since I worked and lived in Baku between 2003-05. Those attending the Eurovision Song contest being held there in a couple of months should be told about the evictions which have taken place to house the stupid event. I went to work there (for 2 years) immediately after I had spent 3 years in Uzbekistan, For me, the repressive nature of the regimes which ruled the 2 countries was so similar - but the oil and geography ensured that Azerbaijan remained a Western favourite while Uzbekistan was increasingly demonised. These evictions are just a very public example of the way the authorities in that country trample all over its citizens' basic rights.

A good vignette about professionals

Sometimes you find real gems in discussions threads. Here's a great comment on the legal system from someone whose name I didn't note in a now-forgotten discussion thread. It could be used of any professional system -

Judges, lawyers, barristers and other professional morality men work consciously and unconsciously to create unnecessary needs and ensure that there is no other means of meeting them than through their profession. This they do in five ways.

• Firstly, they make truth, justice and authority inseparable from an abstract and extremely complicated code that only they are trained to understand. In this they are no different from scientists, doctors or politicians; or from the priests they took over from, who, before printing and wide-literacy, had sole access to the word of God.
• Secondly, and connected with their abstraction of truth, they create and use a nomenclature, or jargon, to describe both their own activity as well as normal life. Laws are couched in such obscure language that only those who have spent years learning the code are able to interpret and discuss them.
• Thirdly, going to court involves a series of ceremonial, formalised rituals, invested with all the mystique of a religion, that bewilder, terrify or pacify outsiders into further dependence and unnecessary “respect”.
• Fourthly, there is little and usually no provision for the independent litigant to represent herself. She is given little or no help or encouragement to defend her case. She is unprofessional, and so is treated, by judges and lawyers alike, as incompetent, untrustworthy and irresponsible. Witnesses are treated in a similar way: only professionals can give opinions; everyone else must stick to facts.
• Finally, “nobody is above the law.” This demonstrable lie ensures that justice cannot be done outside of court. This does not just include legal disputes, crime and so forth, but also marriage, divorce, buying a house and making a will, all of which are invalid without a trip to the lawyer.

I am reminded, as I read this, of the historical critique - The Third Revolution; professional elites in the modern world by Harold Perkins which I have referred to several times on this blog. And who better than Daumier to offer a graphic comment on the legal profession! Here is a wonderful video on the Daumier caricatures.
Bulgarian caricaturists such as Ilya Beshkov are worthy successors to Daumier - here is one I bought recently.

A year ago -

I had a good post about social change in which I referred to Robert Quinn’s book Change the world; how ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary results as an excellent antidote for those who are still fixated on the expert model of change – those who imagine it can be achieved by “telling”, “forcing” or by participation. Quinn exposes the last for what it normally is (despite the best intentions of those in power) – a form of manipulation – and effectively encourages us, through examples, to have more faith in people. As the blurb says –

the idea that inner change makes outer change possible has always been part of spiritual and psychological teachings. But not an idea that’s generally addressed in leadership and management training.

 Quinn's book looks at how leaders such as Christ, Gandhi and Luther King have mobilised people for major change – and suggests that, by using 8 principles, “change agents” are capable of helping ordinary people to achieve transformative change. These principles are -
• Envisage the productive community (ie imagine a better system)
• Look within
• Embrace the hypocritical self
• Transcend fear
• Embody a vision of the common good
• Disturb the system
• Surrender to the emergent system
• Entice through moral power

Sliven's excellent galleries

Sliven, with 100,000 inhabitants, is half the size of neighbouring Stara Zagora; also has a dramatic location with mountains rising sheer from behind; but has a more run-down appearance. I associate the town with two things – the painter Dobre Dobrev (198-1973) and excellent white wine (Vini Sliven which has become very difficult to find now in Sofia; Windy Hills I have not yet tasted)!

And the town has done Dobrev proud – with some 50 of his paintings on permanent display in a superb National Revival house. Here I found the painting which had so attracted me in the special exhibition mounted 2 years ago by the Sofia City Gallery - with the fingers of the man at the cafe so clearly drawn!
I was taken to the Gallery by Evelin who had been kind enough to show me round the Sirak Stitnik Gallery which is the town’s main gallery – with a collection just as good as that I saw the previous day in the neighbouring town.
Not only the country’s greats such as Tanev, Abadjiev and Boris Denev but a special exhibition of the graphics of a new painter for me - Kozuharev, Nikola (1892-1971).

He's famous apparently for his mythological and historical paintings but was also a war artist - covering the Balkan War and First World Wars - and some of these sketches were on display.
This painting is of the capture of Bulgaria's greatest freedom-fighter - Vassil Levski.
Unfortunately, there was no heating in the place - like the Russe and Targovishte galleries

A good display in Stara Zagora

Stara Zagora was reached in exactly 3 hours – along an excellent motorway which, however, peters out at that point. It has a superb location with the Balkan mountains as a majestic backcloth. It was completely destroyed by the Turks in 1877  for welcoming the Russian army of General Gurko and was subsequently rebuilt on a strict grid-plan with leafy Boulevards.

I therefore had no problems finding the Art gallery which is a most impressive one – well maintained and offering, for 1 euro, 3 separate exhibitions.

The permament one displays some of the works of the many painters who have been born and worked there – eg  Anton Mitov, Mario Zhekov and Atanas Mihov (1879-1974) who, with Zhekov and Dobre Dobrev, is now becoming one of my real favourites. Paintings by Nikola Tanev, Ivan Penkov (below) and Moutafov were also on display.

The Gallery also offered a collection of women’s portraits and, finally, a display of woodcuts and graphics in a temperature controlled room.

A superb book The Artists of Stara Zagora was also available - produced by the Gallery Director Marin Dobrev who was kind enough to sign it for me. And I was allowed to snap many of the paintings – without flash, of course. The exhibits were so enthralling I spent almost two hours in total there – with a return visit after the lunchbreak.

Many new names – eg Vasil Marinov and a great portraitist Elizabeth Konsulova-Vazova (1881-1965)

Writing

I'm off to Sliven in a few minutes - visiting, Insallah, the Stara Zagora Art Gallery on the way - Mario Zhekov's hometown. Sliven was Dobre Dobrev's home - so hopefully the gallery there has paintings of his on display. And the area also boasts great white wine. A mixed pinot gris (Dionis) won a silver medal in Paris last year. The mayor was a famour footballer - but I notice he was removed from office a couple of years back!
So no real post today - just a great quote I found of Vaclav Havel about writing -

The beauty of language is that it can never capture precisely what it wants. Language is disconnected, hard, digital as it were, and for that reason, it can never completely capture something as connected as reality, experience, or our souls. This opens the door to the magnificent battle for self-expression that has accompanied man down through history. It is a battle without end, and thanks to it, everything that is human is continually being elucidated, each time somewhat differently. Moreover, it is in this battle that man in fact becomes himself. As an individual and as a species. He simply tries to capture the world and himself more and more exactly through words, images, or actions, and the more he succeeds, the more aware he is that he can never completely capture himself, nor any part of the world. But that drives him to keep trying, again and again, and thus he continues to define himself more and more exactly. It's a Sisyphean fate. But it can't be helped: man will carry the complete truth about himself to the grave.

picking up Voltaire's Coconuts

A second-hand English bookshop here in Sofia which boasts 10,000 titles – this is the Elephant Bookstore - now relocated in the centre.
The collection is in a tiny space – with the books piled to a high ceiling. I emerged with 5 or 8, depending on how you count them since one was a bumper collection of four West of Scotland novels written variously between the 1930s to 1980s entitled Growing up in the West and containing no less than 4 different books - Edwin Muir (Poor Tom) by one of Scotland’s most respected writers of the 20th century and three less well-known writers - JF Hendry (Fernie Brae), Gordon M Williams (From Scenes like these) and Tom Gallacher (The Apprentice). Although the last was published in 1983 and is based on life and shipyard work in the 1950s in my home town (Greenock), I was not aware of the book or the writer. Many people say there was a renaissance of Scottish writing in the 1980s – but I would suggest that this is to underestimate what was being produced fairly consistently in the 20th century in this small country of 5 million people. I’ll say something more shortly about this.
Another book was also an unknown Voltaire’s Coconuts – or anglomania in Europe by Ian Buruma an under-rated writer who was born a Dutchman, writes now in English and has lived in Japan, UK and America. The book brings many European historical figures to life eg Voltaire, Goethe, Garabaldi, Mazzini, Marx - all from the perspective of their attitude to the structure of English life and government. It starts with Voltaire's famous query - "Why can't the laws that guarantee British liberties be adapted elsewhere?"
Having been imprisoned in the Bastille for publishing a satirical poem on religious persecution in France, Voltaire travelled to England to find his model of tolerance and liberty. As a universalist and a rationalist, the French philosopher assumed that these virtues could be transplanted elsewhere, and most especially to the France of the ancien Regime. Anticipating objections on the lines of "you might as well ask why coconuts, which bear fruit in India, do not ripen in Rome” he stated that it took time for those (legal) coconuts to ripen in England too. There is no reason, he said, why they shouldn't do well everywhere, even in Bosnia and Serbia. So let's start planting them now."
What Voltaire essentially admired in England was the theory of equality before the law and the separation of legislative and executive powers. England in the 18th and 19th centuries was seen by prominent French and German figures in many regards in the way we now view the United States of America – full of dynamism, workshop of money but with rather uncouth, disrespectful citizens and media.

A 1998 edition of JK Galbraith’s 1958 The Affluent Society was the next book – this one with a foreward in which the author assessed what time had done to his analysis. One of the reviews I unearthed was by writer and left-wing Labour MP John Strachey in the long-defunct Encounter magazine. Here is a highly viewable video of Galbraith reminiscing,
Books by Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March) and Louis de Bernieres (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) rounded off my purchases – all for the total price of 17 euros! Such is the joy of serendipity in foreign bookshops – and this one in particular!
The cafe also has a great atmosphere and buzz – being Sunday, parents and kids were present, with lost of activities for the latter. My one complaint is that a lot of the books were disfigured - apparently deliberately - with the back page of the cover having been torn off. This is pure sacrilege - I have never come across this apparent policy........

I have, on this blog, already posted links to surveys of the literature from small countries in central europe particularly Hungary which I offered in a discussion about the subject on another blog
The Irish are well-known as good story- tellers and writers– whether it is George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, WB Yeats, Louis McNeice or, more recently, William Trevor, John Banville, John McGahern or Sebastian Barry. As a Scot, I have an obvious bias in suggesting that the quality and quantity of the Scottish literary output of the past 80 years is on a par with the European best (Latin American and China are something else!!). For an introduction see this assessment and this listing of the best 100 Scottish books

Liberation and Loss in Bulgaria

I knew something was special when I saw the Bulgarian flag stuck out of a neighbour’s window yesterday morning; small national flags for sale in pedestrianised Vitosha Bvd; and a small crowd watching the changing of the guard at the Presidency. Young people told us it was Liberty Day – from which I thought it was Independence Day – but that in fact is September 22 and marks the declaration of Bulgaria as a sovereign nation. March 3 is in fact a more bitter-sweet date for the Bulgarians since it marks the day in 1878 when Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed the San Stefano Treaty which gave the country autonomous status within the Ottoman Empire after 500 years of Ottoman domination. It was also awarded a large landmass (indeed access to the Aegean Sea) but lost a significant part of this new territory later the same year at the Berlin Congress (the Macedonian and Greek parts in the left and bottom of the map). According to Wikipedia

The Treaty was in fact a preliminary one but, almost immediately, became the central point of Bulgarian foreign policy, lasting until 1944 and led to the disastrous Second Balkan War and Bulgaria's even more disastrous participation in World War I. The enlarged Bulgaria envisioned by the treaty alarmed neighboring states as well as France and Great Britain. As a result, it was never implemented, being superseded by the Treaty of Berlin following the Congress of the same name.

On the square round the corner from the President’s Palace, we found about 30 buses parked – with signs from Bulgaria’s main towns. A Russian and Yiddish German speaking Bulgarian photographer with whom I tried to elicit more info in Russian could cast no light on where the bus passengers were - or for what purpose. As we approached the imposing Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, we could hear martial music. I thought this was part of the national celebrations but it quickly turned out to be part of the neo-fascist Ataka party’s takeover of the celebrations. I’m not religious myself but I found highly offensive the scaffolding they had constructed over the entrance to the Cathedral and the the military music which pored from it. Presumably the church authorities were in on this? The banner which topped the scaffolding demanded freedom from foreign control.
As I turned away in disgust (from the agression and context rather than message), I was hit with even more loud and aggressive rock music being played by louts on an open-lorry which led an Ataka demonstration of about 4,000 just as it was turning into the square. Acording to the news report

the march had started from the National Palace of Culture all the way through downtown Sofia to the "Nevsky" square, with several stops, such as the buildings of the Finance and Economy Ministries. There, Ataka leader, Volen Siderov, demanded the resignation of their respective ministers for betraying national interests and working for colonizers and for the impoverishment of Bulgarians. Siderov delivered a 50-minute-long speech, asking for decent jobs for all Bulgarians, European wages (current rates are about 15% of the EU average), eliminating monopolies and transferring all business back to Bulgarian hands. He accused European leaders of trying to cut Bulgaria to pieces, as all Great Forces have done, not caring about Bulgarian people and their well-being, and labeled the EU the "new Soviet Union." The nationalist leader further slammed Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, and his cabinet of not doing anything to improve the situation for fellow countrymen and women. At the end of the speech, Siderov, appealed to all, who are banging him and want his post, to have the courage to look him in the eye and tell him what they want and let people be the judge. "Any action against Ataka only serves Turkish and Gipsy interests, and all enemies of Bulgaria," he said.

A lot of old people from all over over Bulgaria had come to take part in the march and register their disgust with how the world has treated them in the past 20 years. In that sense, it was not quite what you expect to see in a demonstration by an aggressive neo-fascist group.
It was a very subdued and sad group of people who shuffled past us.
After the march had passed, we tried to engage an elderly man in conversation, but he insisted very proudly that he spoke only Bulgarian.

Bulgarian labour costs per hour were 3 euros in 2010 compared with an EU average of 25 euros – but the 20% plus rate which has been registered in the past years has caused a warning to be issued recently by the EC

The Bulgarian Finance Ministry doesn’t see it that way. It notes that lately the country’s current account deficit has declined – from 23.1 percent of GDP in 2008 to 8.9 percent for 2009 to just 1.3 percent for 2010, tracking closely with the advance of the financial crisis. What’s more, the ministry says, the current account for 2011 will show a surplus, amounting to 1.8 percent of GDP. While the Finance Ministry argued about numbers, some Bulgarian commentators went straight to outrage. “Some … in Brussels forget that besides the relative numbers, there are also absolute ones,” wrote Svetoslav Terziev in the Sega (Now) newspaper. “The average monthly salary in Bulgaria is 350 euros and Oli Rehn’s is 22,122.”

Very fair point! Cost of living is cheaper here but  not one eighth cheaper - which it would need to be for those on lower incomes to survive. More like 60% of costs in any other European capital than the 12% required by labout costs!
I'm happy to accept the going rate for consultants here - which is half what I would get for work in Central Asia and at least a quarter of what I might normally expect in the UK ( although I suspect the public sector redundancies there have driven the rate). My fee, however, is still ten times that of the average daily wage here!!
Ataka (and Bulgarian commentators) are quite right to target the EC bureaucrats whose behaviour, typically, is calculated to destroy the whole European edifice.

Vagabond in Bulgaria

The snow had melted sufficiently by the weekend to allow me to drive down to the flat in Sofia – the snow was still lying in the Romanian fields but no longer in the Bulgarian ones. Midweek, however, the snow struck again! Earlier in the month, when snow melted in the south, the walls of a dam in the south of the country had crumbled and an entire village was inundated – with 10 deaths. The history and management of the dam give a good insight into governance issues in this part of the world. Noone apparently understands what its purpose was and its ownership was split between three bodies – with obvious (and tragic) results. The story appears in the current issue of Bulgaria’s monthly English magazine Vagabond which is always a good read.

The current issue gave me useful data on the property market -

Property prices in Bulgaria will continue to fall, experts say, but it is difficult to predict whether the downward trend will be gradual or whether the property market will crash like it did in 2009. In Sofia, the average price of residential property is 40 percent lower than in 2008, as buyers now typically pay 700-750 euros per square metre. The majority of properties are bought by first-time buyers, usually young families, who take out mortgages to buy small flats. Russians continue to be the chief purchasers of holiday properties.

Another article also threw some light on another issue which has been vexing me very recently – relating to interactions between foreigners like me and Bulgarians. An Italian friend of mine spent almost a decade here, building up a great network of contacts – which, ultimately, did nothing to further his prospects. He left the country with some bitter comments about outsiders never being accepted here. At the time I simply could not agree since I have quite a few people here I count as real friends. However, I have noticed recently the different assumptions about hospitality. I am very open – but find it difficult to get many friends to visit me in my flat. And it is rare to receive an invitation. An article by a Professor of multi-cultural communication confirms the point that inviting foreigners to one’s home is a very big deal here – and makes the point in relation to facial expressions that “if you smile at people they will think you are either laughing at them or that there is something wrong with you”!! Little wonder that I was viewed as a madman initially by some of my local staff when I headed a project here in 2007/08!

The current issue also contains an article about the great network of small rural guesthouses here in Bulgaria where you can eat local produce; get friendly family hospitality and access to great leisure pursuits (including horse-riding). A great Guide from the Bulgarian Alternative Tourism Association can be downloaded here
And, if you are into serious mountain climbing, then this looks a great oroganisation to contact for advisers and guides
While I’m on the subject, here’s also an outsider’s view of the top 15 places to visit in Bulgaria. And also a nice piece (in English if you scroll down) about Balcic in the far North-East corner which used to belong to Romania.
I’ve been renewing my contact with some of the small galleries here in Sofia and saw a nice-looking and well-sized Zhekov for 1,500 euros – the same price a picture of his went for in the December Victoria Auction. The painting at the top of this post is a Zhekov - which hopefully explains why he is one of the top Bulgarian painters for me. 

In a small antique shop very nearby which seems now to be stocking painters from the genre and period I like, a superb (anonymous) painting of Rila Monastery from the mid 20th century was to be had for 150 euros.

And the painting above is Vladimir Kavaldjiev from the 1960s was on sale at a 2010 auction for 750 euros but can now be had for 600.

Lessons from Scotland

My home country, Scotland, is in the news these days. It has had a Nationalist government for more than 4 years – and its citizens will in a couple of years be asked to vote on independence from the UK. Somewhat perversely, perhaps, I rarely blog on matters relating to Scotland - which is most remiss since it has been experiencing some interesting developments in the past 2 decades. The debate within Scotland aabout independence has been going on for decades - but a new constitutional debate has started recently in England. Outsiders (of whom there are many amongst my readership) cannot understand the present debate without knowing something about the past - recent and not so recent. This post must, therefore say something about how we got to the present point.

I left Scotland in the early 90s just as a remarkable development was taking place there – Scottish civil society and its establishment (political, municipal, legal, religious) coming together from disgust with the results of consecutive UK elections of the 1980s which had left the ruling Conservative government with not a single one of the 70 odd Scottish members of parliament being Conservative. The Conservative government (which lasted from 1979-1997) - let alone its neo-liberal agenda - was simply felt to have no legitimacy in Scotland. Bear in mind that the 1703 Union of Scotland and England had left Scotland with its separate legal and religious systems and an educational system which also went its own way, helping to forge a strong sense of Scottishness in schools - whose composition was more mixed and democratic than in England.

In 1988 a cross-section of prominent members of Scottish society came together to form the Scottish Constitutional Convention - and started a process which lasted a decade. The Convention produced not just the blueprint for the 1999 Scottish Parliament (which had last met in 1707) but, perhaps more importantly, the social and political momentum to ensure its achievement – and the creation of a more consensual way of governing. The details can be found on the archives of the Convention of whcih this is an excerpt -

In July 1988, a constitutional steering committee, composed of prominent Scots and set up by the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly, recommended the formation of a broadly-drawn Scottish Constitutional Convention to make plans for the future governance of Scotland. All political parties were invited to take part. The Conservative Party declined to participate from the outset. The Scottish National Party, although involved in the initial preparatory work, was ultimately unable to accept the principles of consensus underlying the Convention's aims, and therefore did not join its deliberations. It is important to record that many individuals from both these parties have supported our work publicly or privately.
Nonetheless, the Convention is beyond question the most broadly representative body in Scotland. It has enjoyed the support of the Scottish Labour Party the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and a number of smaller parties. In all, the Convention has included 80 per cent of Scotland's MPs and MEPs; representatives of the great majority of local authorities; and many important elements in Scottish civic society, including the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the churches, ethnic minority groups, women's movements, and sections of the business and industrial community. Current membership is listed as Appendix II.
The Convention held its inaugural meeting on 30 March 1989 in the Church of Scotland's General Assembly Hall in Edinburgh. It adopted a declaration, which was signed by all its members. This was a Claim of Right

Those wanting more on the fascinating detail of the process should read here. It is a real case-study in consensual change - demonstrating that those who want to achieve significant change have to have patience and humility. Lasting change is never aachieved by slogans and the demonising which passes for most political activity these days.

I had been one of the leaders of Strathclyde Region from the mid 1970s which included half of Scotland’s population - the Scottish Nationalist party began to win seats and put the Labour Government of the day under such pressure that a Bill to enact a Scottish Parliament was enacted. I took part in a referendum in Scotland in 1979 which asked the Scottish electorate whether they wished the Bill creating a Scottish parliament to be implemented. A total of 1,230,937 (51.6%) voted at the referendum in favour of an Assembly, a narrow majority of about 77,400 over those voting against. However, this total represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate as a whole - compared with the 40% reuired by the Act. The Labour government accepted that the Act's requirements had not been met, and that devolution would therefore not be introduced for Scotland. This led to the withdrawal of nationalist support from the Government, its loss of a vote of Confidence and a General Election which the Conservatives won.

The emasculation in the late 1980s of local government by Thatcher forced me to look elswhere for a career. An invitation from Ilona Kickbusch, the Director of WHO’s European Public Health’s division came at the right time - to help her construct a network for health promotion in the countries of recently liberated central and eastern europe. The senior position I held in a Region had given me access to various European networks throughout the 1980s.
I have therefore had to follow its political developments from afar, in particular –
• the abolition by the London-based Conservative Government of the Regional system of local government in the mid 1990s;
• the election in 1999 (thanks to the New Labour government) of a Scottish Parliament and Exective which was, thanks to a new system of proportional representation, a coalition of the Labour and Liberal parties;
• the increasingly independent path taken by the Exective in matters of social policy eg ensuring free care of the elderly (unlike England)
• the appointment in 2007 of a minority Nationalist government – with a pledge to organise at an appropiate time a referendum on independence
*a stunning Nationalist over-all majority in the 2011 elections
• its style and content of government – which is more social democratic than that of New Labour eg resisting university fees

postscript
As I drafted this post, I began to feel a bit guilty about going into history. I feel a lot better now that I have just read today's article from one of the key figures in the Scottish Convention - appealing for Scots to cast their minds back to that period - when Scots voted in the referendum of 1997 they knew they were voting not just for a transfer of powers or for a mini-Westminster, but for a parliament that had been designed, conceived and carefully planned over six long years of vigorous and often heated debate. I should know, I bear the scars. It was to be a parliament, we said, 'radically different from the rituals of Westminster; more participative, more creative, less needlessly confrontational – a culture of openness'.

That vision has to some extent been fulfilled, but it is time to move on. The point is – and this is what Prime Minister Cameron does not seem to get – that Scotland's parliament was not a gift of Westminster. Home rule was home-made. It must stay that way.