Travelling Light

Although some of my earliest political acts (after demonstrations against UK repressions in Central Africa in 1959 and the nuclear submarine base on the Clyde in the early 1960s) were about boosting consumer choice (under the influence of Janey Buchan) I’ve never actually bought into the “consumer ideology” with which my generation was, I think, the first to be gripped…..

My parents, married in the immediate pre-war period, enjoyed existential (but not material) luxury. Money was scarce – my father existed on a Scottish Presbyterian Minister’s “stipend” (of less than 1000 pounds a year) although we did live rent-free in a “Manse” owned by the Church of Scotland….

Any spare cash soon disappeared into the hands of various folk who would come begging to the house……my father was a well-known “soft-touch”….

He never owned a car – being a familiar (or “well-ken’t”) figure striding (and pausing to chat on or pick up paper from) the streets of the shipbuilding town in which he spent 60 years of his life.

He would earn some spare cash from tutoring – although it was never clear whether this was from necessity or love of learning…….

I grew up in the 1950s – aware of television which was, however, a real luxury. I have a memory of watching (on a neighbour’s set) the 1952 Coronation for a few boring minutes before being let loose on an empty street and, a few years later (on Saturday afternoons) my friend Les Mitchell’s set in neighbouring Newton St first the football results and, in 1963 the first episodes of Doctor Who!

Bliss it was……..

It was 1966 or so when I acquired my first flat – with 2,000 pounds from my mum’s hard-pressed savings – and Habitat furniture…..In 1968 I outmatched my father’s income almost at first go when I became a Lecturer at a Paisley College. The very same year I was elected to Greenock’s town council and soon became a Chairman of a major committee.

In celebration I bought a second-hand Volvo saloon from a lover’s father’s garage…….. shades of John Updike. And, thereafter, a series of such cars. I acquired my first new car at the age of 47….And my first fitted kitchen a few years earlier…… 

When, after leaving Scotland, I transferred the flat (and remaining mortgage payments of some 20k) to my wife, I had neither savings nor debt……………………verily I was a happy man!

I have, since then, accumulated some possessions – one house (for 6000 euros) and helped my partner acquire a flat in central Bucharest…..But for 25 years I have rented most of the places I have stayed in – about 20 addresses during the period…..which is more than 100k in rent – but probably balanced by the absence of any legal requirement to pay tax…….The nomadic life has meant minimal possessions…..verily I am a happy man…….

although the groaning suitcases from Central Asia brought carpets, ceramics and small stuff…….and, since then, the books and paintings have been accumulating…….in four separate locations………..and in 1997 I acquired another new car (albeit a modest Daewoo Cielo) which purred happily all over North, South and Central Europe for 16 years…….. verily I began to sin…………………..

In summer 2013, I blew it……I not only bought a Kia Estate – it was a long-considered choice…..during which time I pondered other brands such as Skoda……. Verily I  sinned!

  

This is all by way of prelude to the tale of my first real consumer search a few weeks ago – for a sound system for my laptop with which to listen to classical music……

A tale which I will tell tomorrow.........(Insallah.......)

Greek tragedy

At last a Minister of Finance with some integrity…..Yanis Varoufakis – to whose important “Global Minotaur” book I devoted a blogpost almost three years ago - has emerged from the chaos that is Greece as the Finance Minister of the new Syriza government. He is either a very foolish or a very courageous man!

His has been one of the clear and strong voices of economic sanity for the past few years, using his blog to great effect – giving us not only analysis but challenging recommendations. In a post earlier this month, he explains why he decided to run in these elections. He’s fully aware of the ease with which honest people get corrupted (in different ways) by office and assures us that will keep a letter of resignation in his inside pocket for use whenever he “loses the commitment to speak truth to power”. The problem, of course, is that he has just become that power!! So his dialogue will have to be with his conscience!

Paul Mason – from whom sadly we do not hear much now that he has moved from radio to television – had a recent interview with him in which Varifakous promised to “destroy the Greek oligarchy system". In 2010, Varifakous wrote (with fellow political economics Professors Stuart Holland and James Galbraith – son of the famous JG) a 12 page modest proposal for resolving the European crisis…..

Klaus Kastner is a retired Austrian banker who has a very sharply-written blog called Observing Greece and gives us not only an interesting and measured response to the Syriza victory but access to the programme on which Syriza ran

We are all very rude about the Greeks – and their role in European events in the last 100 years gives us every reason to be. Their invasion of Turkey in 1919 caused massacres and massive migration treks and regional instability. Of course, Britain’s elite has always had strong Hellenic prejudices and has consistently been on the sidelines cheering the bloodletters and oligarchs on……..A long article in November last year gives the detail on Winston Churchill’s role in the horrific Greek  Civil War post 1944. My gym teacher at school was a Greek communist who was one of many forced to leave the country because of the violence. His nickname was “Wee Pat” and I still remember his stentorian voice as he would bellow to those wanting to be excused the stronger exercises “keep your vest on boy!”!!!

Those wanting to keep in touch with Greek events might usefully use the Macropolis website which started in 2013 specifically to help outsiders try to make sense of the Greek tragedy…..

Strolling

This is the fourth flat I’ve had in almost 8 years in Sofia – and it’s interesting what different perspectives (and indeed feelings) about the city one gets from the different micro-neighbourhoods. John Berger’s phrase “ways of seeing” comes to mind. Two were in spitting distance of one another – near the football stadium (Nikolai Pavlovitch and Khan Krum streets) – each going back to the 1920s…. Patriarch Eftemi Boulevard and Graf Ignatiev street were the backbone of the area. The very names resonate with history…..Krum referring to the first Bulgarian Empire; Ignatiev to the Russian military assistance in removing the Ottoman yoke from the Bulgarians; Pavlovitch the most influential of Bulgaria’s early painters.

The third flat was more modern, Lajos Kossuth St, just off Hristov Botev Boulevard – next to a lovely old Bulgarian revival building which actually houses the Catholic Prelate!  The street names celebrate the power of ideas about independence in the 19^th century….

Now I’m in a charming period flat in the old area between Vasil Levski, Dondukov and Princess Maria Luise Boulevards – on the edge of the Jewish neighbourhood which was focused on the fascinating women’s market, subject of an excellent brief here. Prince Dondukov played (as Russian Governor) a key role in the drafting of the Bulgarian constitution which was famed in its time as one of the world’s most liberal. “Stefan Stambolov and the emergence of the Bulgarian nation” (1993) is a rare book in the English language about those times…..

The neighbourhood has rapidly become my favourite…it’s a mere 10 minute stroll up Danube St (where my flat criss-crosses with Tsar Simeon St) to the magnificent Alexander Nevski Cathedral behind whose dome Mount Vitosha dominates the skyline. And then down past the colourful Russian church and the back of what was the Palace and is now the National Gallery – with its small park area and statues. The through the little park with the jazz buskers, the National Theatre and Sofia City Gallery via Vitosha walking street, Levski Boulevard to the Rodina Hotel where I swim and keep fit.

It was four years ago (!) that I wrote of the joys of strolling around Sofia which you can experience vicariously in “A Walk in the Street of Sofia Guidebook “ (Kras Plus 2002) - a marvellous bilingual history of the 6 parts of central Sofia for those who want to appreciate the city’s singularity by foot. Sadly I’ve not so far been able to find another copy in the bookshops….here instead are a few photos I took of the area just 500 metres or so around my flat last weekend and installed in a newly opened flickr account

Sofia Enigma and Stigma (Enthusiast 2011) by “dandy” Ljubomir Milchev is a lovely little ode to the city which contains evocative black and white photos of old, crumbling buildings in my neighbourhood. Imagine my delight in discovering, in a nearby magic bookshop on Rakovski St, “Time and Beauty; art nouveau in the Bulgarian cities” ed Vittore Collina (2014) – a booklet produced with great care and thought – a real labour of love.

And it was just a couple of minutes from the Cathedral that I found on Saturday the most amazing gallery which has been lying waiting for me for 7 years – the Atelier of Bulgaria’s Grand Old Man of Art, Svetlin Roussev… but that needs an entry on its own 

Lives worth Living

I’ve been feeling a bit guilty this morning – if that is the right word to describe my feelings on reading of the death from cancer of two figures I knew nothing about but who seemed to epitomise everything we mean by the phrase “a life worth living”.

From curiosity I had punched into an ad for a book released today called “Late Fragments” which turned out to be the touching memoir of a young activist, Kate Gross, who died on Christmas Day in her early 30s and who wrote the book as a celebration of life for her family

I’d no sooner read that than I hit, completely by accident, a tribute to another (rather older) cancer victim – one Mike Marqusee – a journalist and leftist campaigner a typical example of whose writing can be read in this article on Red Pepper.

This is a good review of one of his (short) books about pharmaceutical companies – which raises the question of what accounts for the huge increase in the number of deaths from cancer which “developed” countries have experienced in recent years.

Apart from the obvious explanation of tobacco, other factors relate to the rise in awareness and reporting - eg
- the increased emphasis on physical exercise and preventive health care
- the greater publicity which cancer has received
- the increased frequency of medical tests for the condition

But I am surely not alone in thinking that artificial food additives also have a lot to do with it.

At this stage, of course, I should declare an interest. It was at this time two years ago that I sought a biopsy - which revealed a medium-serious level of prostate cancer and had resort, in the summer, to a 2 month course of radiation treatment (in Germany).

That seemed to do the trick – although I do need to take a daily hormone pill. And, having read up on the subject, do also try to have daily exercise and (following the advice of a Professor Plant) good vitamin input  

Our lives are all too short – Gross and Maqusee both lived rich lives which have been cut tragically short. Each, in their different way, shows what we can - and should - do with our life. 

RIP

postscript
By one of these coincidences, I was this afternoon interviewed by a roving TV mike on Sofia's streets and asked how important physical exercise was to me (this after I had explained I did not speak Bulgarian). To the interviewer (and cameraman) 's obvious delight, I then extolled the virtues of the Rodina Hotel; of Bulgarian vegetables; and of daily walking and fitness routines.......... En passant I mentioned my own brush with cancer........

Beshkov's country salutes Voltaire's and Daumier's in sadness for the slain journalists of Charlie H

Today’s somber post is my tribute to the French journalists slaughtered so savagely in Paris this week.

As they would surely have wished, it is written in celebration of the courage of all those who have sought over the ages and in all countries to use their artistic skills to mock the pretensions of the dogmatists and the powerful.  But it is also written in support of the humanistic principles exemplified by writers such as Voltaire…..

Only last month I wrote a post Desperately Seeking….Satire about how much we need satire in these times and, more than two years ago, had celebrated it in a detailed post as “the greatest art form”. You will find the posts useful since they try to record the artists and writers who have risked their livelihoods and lives for centuries in the pursuit of principle.   

Simon Jenkins spoke for many people with his piece in Wednesday’s Guardian which is reproduced (with cartoons) in this excellent blog I came across recently

In one of these serendipitous moments of which my life increasingly seems to consist, I came across, earlier this week in Sofia’s open-air book market, a copy of a lovely small book about the friendship in the 1930s between Bulgaria’s most famous satirist and cartoonist, Ilyia Beshkov and an émigré journalist from Hitler’s Germany.

It is a powerful evocation (largely from the memory of Beshkov’s widow) of that period of his life when the vendetta against his cartoons had reduced him to poverty – but how the support of friends sustained him. You can actually read the full text of the book here – although sadly not the cartoons.

I was in the middle of drafting this post when friends here in Sofia contacted me about the tribute which will take place at 18.00 this evening at the French Embassy in Sofia.

I am delighted to be in a position not only to attend but also to have the opportunity of displaying the poster-size reproductions I just happened to bring down from Bucharest of 5 Daumier cartoons – which I propose to inscribe (in French of course) with suitable text, mentioning Charlie Hebdo, Daumier and Beshkov…..

Will this too pass?

I’ve been busy these past few weeks editing 3 E-books all of which will hit the world in the next few weeks. I start with Ways of Seeing …..the Global Crisis which – as has become the template for my E-books – has emerged from an editing and restructuring of those blogposts of the past couple of years which have touched on this (very general!) issue. What follows is taken from the book’s “Inconclusion”

The table with which the small book starts identifies the various “debates” which gripped English-speaking countries at least, decade by decade, from the 1930s…through to the present.It’s impressionistic – so doesn’t try to bring google analytics to aid – and people may quibble with some of the references. But many who look at it will perhaps feel a shiver down their spine as they recognise how transitory many of our discussions have been. The issues don’t necessarily go away – some are simply repackaged

It may cover an 80 year period but all the themes still echo in my mind since it was 1960 when I embarked on my political economy education at Glasgow University - and the key books of the 40s were still influential. Indeed the writings which had the biggest impact on me were Europeans from the start of the century – such as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Robert Michels and Karl Popper. Outside the university, it was the writings of RHTawney and Tony Crosland which shaped me – and had me joining the Labour Party in 1959; becoming first an activist; then a councillor; and someone who quickly developed a rather contradictory mix of corporate management and community power principles. 

I didn’t know it at the time but I was at the start of an ideological upheaval of tectonic proportions as the Keynesian certainties began to crumble in the face of the Hayekian onslaught. For some reason, however, I chose to focus on regional development although the ideas of the strangely named “public choice” theorists did get to me in the early 1970s - through the pamphlets of the Institute of Economic Affairs

But it was the social engineering approach of the managerialists which eventually won the battle for my soul. I vividly remember sitting in front of the radio enthralled as Donald Schon delivered the Reith lectures in autumn 1970 under the title “Beyond the Stable State”.  During it he coined the phrase “dynamic conservatism” - a phenomenon which I was to study for several decades in different countries. The following year it appeared in book form - and can now be accessed on the archive website here

I read the literature on organiisational change avidly – and tried to apply it wherever I went…John Stewart of the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Local Government Studies was a particular inspiration…. Policy Analysis – then in its early days - was an obvious attraction and I enrolled on the UK’s first (postgraduate) course on the subject at the University of Strathclyde, run by Lewis Gunn which disappointed for its over-rationalistic approach – although it was there that I first came across the notion of “framing theory”. I confess, however, that when I actually had in 2002 to draft a primer on policy analysis for some civil servants in Slovakia, it was the rationalistic approach I adopted rather than that contained in the Policy Paradox book by Deborah Stone which I only encountered later. 

What, however, the “This too will pass” table doesn’t record is the amazing change that occurred in the late 1980s in HOW we talked about these various “issues”…in short the “discursive” or “narrative turn” which post-modernist thought has given us (see Annex 2 for a short explanation of this).

Although I’ve grown to appreciate the rich plurality of interpretations the postmodernists can present on any issue, I’m not quite ready to join their carefree, fatalistic band…”Whatever……” does not strike me as the most helpful response to give to those anguished by the cutthroat actions of those in privileged positions…. The point I have reached is

It seems impossible to get a social or moral consensus in our societies for the sort of rebalancing which Henry Mintzberg has brilliantly argued for

·         the voices are too diverse these days – as explained by Mike Hulme

·         people have grown tired and cynical
·         those in work have little time or energy to help them identify and act on an appropriate programme of change
·         those out of work are too depressed
·         although the retired generally have the time, resources and experience to be doing more than they are
·         but they have lost trust in the capability or good intentions of governments
·         let alone the promises of politicians
·         and are confronted with too many disparate voices in the reform movement
 ·         Most of the “apocalyptists” (such as William Greer and Dmitry Orlov) who have confronted the collapse of industrial civilisation counsel a Candide-like “garden cultivation”
 ·         And yet I still persevere in my naïve belief that governments are capable of doing more……

 Am I wrong? 

It’s perhaps appropriate that, at this point I reach for TS Eliot - …….

And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate - but there is no competition -

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again; and now under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
 (The Four Quartets)

Need for some solidarity

I had a dream during the night – that I was at a Conference which was discussing some sort of national reform but that the only opportunity offered for contributions “from the floor” were badly structured “group discussions” none of which gathered any momentum. And, in any event, I didn’t seem to have prepared any sort of input with which I might have been able to wow the audience in a 3 minute diatribe…

It was 05.00 – so I made myself a coffee and thought about “national conversations”…..Scotland, of course, has just had one – lasting 2 years….thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) meetings to explore its future….it’s a bit early to draw any lessons from the experience of the independence referendum (known as “indyref) – although one at least has tried

What of the future? First, Scotland has to be understood as more than a series of competing tribes: Yes and No, pro-independence and anti-independence, nationalist and unionist, SNP and Labour. The undercurrent of this is an attempt by partisans on each of these sides and camps to reduce every opinion down to two perspectives and a politics of two tribes. Everything revolves around the question: whose side are you on? And who do you most trust to look after Scotland? Other questions about democracy, the environment, sustainable economic growth, and how we run public services are lost in this divide, as is any real space for radical progressive politics.

Secondly, one of the most positive aspects of the “indyref” was the self-education of hundreds of thousands of Scots who showed initiative, curiosity and a willingness to learn and act for themselves, rather than being spoon-fed the predictable narrow diet of official Scotland. It is this rich practice – of opening up debate and choices and refusing to accept the stale offerings of politics, media and power which have historically characterised so much of our public life – which has to be encouraged and given sustenance.

The UK as a whole faces a General Election in 4 months….in the last run-up to an election, an electoral reform movement (The Power Inquiry) failed to make any dent on the power structure. This time there is not a whisper about challenging the power structure (unless you count Russell Brand's rantings) only talk of “austerity” and “immigration”.

Romania missed an opportunity to have a national conversation….the November Presidential elections were controlled by a powerful set of media oligarchs…although a Protestant did rather upset their applecart by winning!
The Bulgarian protests of 2013 did conjure up hopes of reform but became fond memories after the elections of early 2014……

Of course I have “form” with such dialogue and discussion! In the early 70s, in my capacity as Chairman of a new Social Work authority in Scotland, I organised annual gatherings of neighbourhood groups with the local state and business class about confronting the problems of a shipbuilding town…In the 80s I did the same for the West of Scotland around the issue of urban poverty….  And, between 2006/07, I prepared a Road Map for municipalities in Kyrgyzstan

Most attempts at such dialogue can be dismissed as mere “talking shops” since they seldom cover the basic economic aspects of life – although I was part of a small group which came together to start a community banking system in the West of Scotland in the late 1980s. We started with a visit to the Triodos Bank and, some time after I had left Scotland, a venture did eventually emerge which I think is now part of the Community Development Finance Association set-up. Developing Strathclyde Ltd was also established in 1993 with similar aims…..Community enterprise is now an important element in Scotland’s economic life – as can be seen in the activities of the Social entrepreneurs network Scotland

In these crisis times, it’s sad that so few attempts seem to be made to bring people together for such cooperative ventures – if only for solace if not solidarity…But people seem to have little energy or confidence left – save for quick “fix-its”. I referred in September to the impossible deadline a Bulgarian project was given to deliver a national strategy when something more like a “Future Search” Conference was actually needed.

All credit therefore to Open Democracy for continuing to bring important material to our notice – such as this article on “social innovation” which led me to a website Emergence by Design, containing an interesting manifesto which, on study, disappoints for its failure to situate itself properly in historical context (and for its high-falutin language). 

The elephant in the nationalist room

There were two dominant themes in this year’s blogposts which I have just reviewed - the need to dismantle the political class; and the “independence question”, whether Scotland should break away from England……

One of my strongest reservations about that discussion came from its failure to engage with the question of how exactly Scotland could break what seem these days to be two “iron laws” – namely (a) of capital flight from countries which show any signs of challenging corporate power; and (b) of the self-serving nature of the political and professional class which moves into any vacant positions of power. An August post referred to the first as the “missing question at the heart of the Scottish debate”; and one just 2 weeks before the vote referred to an article which contained the following assertion -

 Nowhere in the mainstream campaign has anyone from Yes or No acknowledged that our financial and fiscal systems are fatally flawed. No plans have been proposed to tackle the creation and destruction of money as interest paying debt, a system that cannot be sustained for much longer before it buries us all under a mountain of credit that’s impossible to service. None of the good things that enthusiasts for independence want to happen are likely to happen or be sustained until we make structural reforms to our dysfunctional systems of democracy and finance. The same goes for the “strength in unity” arguments of those who seek to preserve the union by voting No.

I am not therefore surprised by today’s news that Craig Murray – whose blogposts always enlighten my day – has been rejected as a candidate for the lists of those approved to fight the general election as Scottish Nationalists. Nor that the grounds on which he was rejected relate to his reliability as a “loyal” party supporter. He apparently gave a negative response to a question he was asked during his interview about his willingness, in the case of a coalition, to support a new tax which was highly unpopular in Scotland (and whose rejection is actually still official Nationalist policy). Note also the designation of the man signing the letter of rejection - "corporate governance and compliance manager"!!!!!!!

Murray is a man of conviction – and a thorn in the side of the powerful. The statement he was required to give in support of his candidacy was typically blunt and uncompromising..

You see him here in an extended (skype) interview earlier today,

The interviewing panel (of 3 parliamentarians) seems to have been very stupid and he has, typically, gone to town in exposing the new breed of career politician which has embedded itself in the party. Anything less than a quick disavowal of the panel decision will badly affect the standing of the Nationalist party. But that will not be easy for a party which took a very clear decision a few years ago to present itself only in a positive light and to stifle dissent……and the public and aggrieved way in which he has reacted will confirm many in the nationalist party in their belief that he lacked the suitability to be a political figure - with all the compromising that involves........ 

The Labour party has been hemorrhaging electoral support and will relish this turn of events – but would be very ill-advised to try to use it to their own advantage since it is exactly how their own higher echelons behaved in 1998 during the interviewing of candidates for the elections to Scotland’s first Parliament when they selected only loyal Blairites…..  

update
A recent post from Craig gives a link to a strong, balanced counter-response - which has the ring of truth to it....