The New Oligarchy

Woke up at 01.30 to check the French Presidential results (and the supermoon) – and delighted with what I saw - on both counts. Only the second soi-disant socialist President in the 60 years of the 5^th French Republic. 

Although the commentaries all mention the political and financial constraints in which Hollande will be operating, I see no mention of how quickly Francois Mitterand had in 1981 to reverse his radical strategy in response to speculative pressures. Nor of the role which Jacques Delors played as his Finance Minister in those days in capitulating to such pressures.  

Significant that I can’t even find a google reference to these traumatic events. 

Proof again of the pitiful lack of even recent history our political and financial commentators have. 

I alighted a few days ago on a wonderful term about this - neophilia 

Drove at midday to Brasov in order to book myself a plane to Glasgow ( I refuse to put my credit card details online) and found a great one-way deal for only 190 euros which gives me the flexibility on return date which I had wanted. Had a notion to buy a lightweight netbook to take with me – but a bit put off by the small keyboard still costing 300 euros - and decided to deny myself ( and my readers!!) the pleasure of instantaneous web access for the last 2weeks of the month. 

Found a powerful article on the  currentinequities by an arch-conservative – Frederic Mount (who was, for a time, Head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit. By virtue of its source, the argument (and book  - "The New Few" -  of which it is effectively a summary) should have a larger impact on the apolitical citizen than similar points made by a leftist - 

Wealth is not trickling down to anywhere near the bottom. The rowing boats are stuck on the mud. Many of the worst off are sinking into a demoralised and detached underclass, just as the top earners are congealing into a super-class who hardly belong to the society which they flit through. What is so dispiriting is that the gap appears to be widening all the time, regardless of whether we are going through a boom or a slump, and certainly regardless of which party is in power. As a result, we begin to sense that we are living in a dislocated society. It's much the same story with the other disquieting trend that we cannot help noticing: the trend towards centralisation.

Power in Britain used to be spread around in a rather casual fashion that had grown up over the years. We rather looked down on continental countries such as France, which had inherited a highly centralised state from Napoleon and Louis XIV. General de Gaulle once said that centralisation was the one thing that France would never be able to get rid of. But now the roles are reversed. While many other European nations, not least the French, have been busily decentralising their arrangements, power in Britain has drained away from private individuals and local communities up to central boards and bureaucracies and government agencies and ministries. Central control is our orthodoxy, in private and public sector alike. And for the men and women at the centre, the salaries and bonuses go zooming up, for hospital administrators and university vice-chancellors and the director-general of the BBC and the head of the Post Office just as fast as they have for bank chiefs, retail tycoons and the bosses of privatised utilities. 

Again, we lament the change without having much clue about its causes. Why in one area of life after another has centralisation become the default solution, the irresistible option? What or who is driving this apparently inexorable trend? How come local government was so effortlessly stripped of its old powers? Why have political parties become hollowed-out shells, relegated to impotence and contemptuous manipulation by their leaders? Is it possible that centralisation and inequality are related, that the one trend enables the other, and that both are facets and consequences of oligarchy? Is it possible that, as well as sheltering the oligarchs of other nations, we have been hatching our own? It is oligarchy – the rule of the few – that appears to be the common denominator of the system. So perhaps we need to ask what are the factors that make oligarchy possible. Certainly you can blame Margaret Thatcher for the careless liberation of financial services in the big bang of 1986, but then you must also blame Bill Clinton for making exactly the same mistake in 1999. The roots of our shared illusions lie deeper and further back in modern history. After all, George Orwell said in 1946 that "for quite 50 years past the general drift has almost certainly been towards oligarchy." He detected then "the ever-increasing concentration of industrial and financial power and the diminishing importance of the individual capitalist or shareholder". In their classic, The Modern Corporation and Private Property , published in the depths of the Great Depression, Berle and Means pointed out that the powers of shareholders to control runaway executives had already become an illusion. The concentration of power had brought forth "princes of industry", or as Tom Wolfe called them half a century later, "masters of the universe". The princes dazzled us. We lost our bearings.

Worse still, we lost the will to defend our institutions. Two centuries ago, Adam Smith warned us about the dangers of merchants conspiring together and of ownerless corporations. The trouble is not that our policy-makers had read too much Adam Smith, but too little. So they let corporate governance go slack, and believed everything the bankers told them. For our part, we watched the big political parties wither away with indifference if not pleasure – who needed those gangs of outdated obsessives? We let local government, so unglamorous, so drearily provincial, fall under the total control of Whitehall. We watched Parliament decay into near-irrelevance – or rather we didn't watch, for BBC Parliament was reserved for the anoraks and the bedridden. And now at last, at a cripplingly slow pace, we might be waking up to what we have allowed to happen.

 I remember making myself very unpopular in the mid 1980s at a political rally in Liverpool warning the protestors against the Thatcher attack on local government that we would never get popular support as long as we, on our part, continued to allow the salaries of senior local government officials to escalate. 

Now – almost 30 years on – some municipal Chief Executives get paid more than the Prime Minister!

And, for those waiting breathlessly. here is the latest version of my booklet on Bulgarian Realist painting

Stories

I  learned only this morning that the moon was special last night - but I had spotted its brightness from my verandah and snapped this at 21.00.


My upbringing in a Scottish manse imbued me with a strong Protestant ethic. I have, as a result, always driven myself hard. “The devil finds work for idle hands” did not need to be uttered at home simply because it was an unspoken adage. Rather than loafing around as a teenager, I was busy organising and getting up at 05.30 to do my rowing training on the choppy Clyde waterfront. And I was soon trying to hold down 2 jobs – academic and political. However ironic Weber’s thesis about Protestantism being the cause of capitalism might seem, it always had a certain plausibility for me.  

The German sociologist Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1914. The Protestant Ethics is variously defined as - 

a feeling of obligation in one's calling (a sense of vocation), hard work, self-discipline, frugality (thrift), sobriety, efficiency in one's calling (stewardship), rational and systematic behaviour, high ethics, earthly rewards as signs of grace and salvation.

Not surprising, therefore, that I had (in my younger days at any rate) a rather furtive attitude to novels – could I really justify such an indulgence when so much needed to be sorted out in the world?

My anxieties, I now read, were apparently in vain - all storytelling, regardless of genre, increases society’s fund of empathy and reinforces an ethic ofdecency that is deeper than politics. 

The article is in a rather annoying format so I have excerpted its key argument here - 

Is fiction good for us? We spend huge chunks of our lives immersed in novels, films, TV shows, and other forms of fiction. Some see this as a positive thing, arguing that made-up stories cultivate our mental and moral development. But others have argued that fiction is mentally and ethically corrosive. It’s an ancient question: Does fiction build the morality of individuals and societies, or does it break it down?

This controversy has been flaring up — sometimes literally, in the form of book burnings — ever since Plato tried to ban fiction from his ideal republic. In 1961, FCC chairman Newton Minow famously said that television was not working in “the public interest” because its “formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons” amounted to a “vast wasteland.” And what he said of TV programming has also been said, over the centuries, of novels, theater, comic books, and films: They are not in the public interest.
Until recently, we’ve only been able to guess about the actual psychological effects of fiction on individuals and society. But new research in psychology and broad-based literary analysis is finally taking questions about morality out of the realm of speculation.This research consistently shows that fiction does muold us. The more deeply we are cast under a story’s spell, the more potent its influence. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and sceptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.But perhaps the most impressive finding is just how fiction shapes us: mainly for the better, not for the worse. Fiction enhances our ability to understand other people; it promotes a deep morality that cuts across religious and political creeds. More peculiarly, fiction’s happy endings seem to warp our sense of reality. They make us believe in a lie: that the world is more just than it actually is. But believing that lie has important effects for society — and it may even help explain why humans tell stories in the first place.

Back in the Carpathians

Monday and Tuesday were the last days in Sofia until September. The last cycle rides – in quiet streets since May Day is taken seriously in this part of the world and many people had decamped in the warm weather.  
Loaded the car Tuesday – except for about 12 paintings which were loaded early Wednesday. 

Two new paintings which Yassen had produced for me were left in his tender care – one of which is this great Dobri Dobrev.

Then a leisurely 3 hour drive to Veliko Tarnovo to visit the Boris Denev Art Gallery there – in a superb location. 

The walk across a footbridge over the River Yantra offers the perspective of the ancient town given by the painting I posted last Tuesday

The Gallery was originally built in the 1970s as an Art School but actually opened as a police station! Very symbolic! 

It was eventually opened as an Art Gallery in the mid 1980s. 

The Director showed me round a great collection – 2 Tanevs on display and a room and a corridor devoted entirely to Boris Denev’s work – the room with about 7 large oil paintings of the town and the corridor with aquarelles mainly of Italian scenes. 

For this post, I have selected this moving portrayal of his mother.

Then another leisurely 3 hour drive to Bucharest where, once again, the car conked out while sitting outside the Vodaphone shop in the heat. But started and drove fine after a wait of 20 minutes or so. 
I’m writing this a few days later – after a visit to the great Bosch garage at Zarnesti in the Carpathian mountains whose boss (Sorin) tried to diagnose the problem on Friday afternoon after my drive to my mountain house Thursday. 
Some further work is needed on the old car on Wednesday – and has made me question the notion of my 7,000 kilometre round-trip to Scotland next week for my daughter’s wedding. I've done the drive several times and know the road well and driving this time seemed a good idea since I could take the 30 litres of Bulgarian wine I have to the wedding plus the Slovak, Austrian and German I could buy on the trip - and bring back books from the second-hand bookshops I intend to visit in the UK. But it is about three times more expensive than the plane (with about 6 overnights plus 450 euros for the Zeebrugge- Hull ferry) AND the stress on the old body and car!!   

This morning I had the bath taps and boiler replaced and water therefore restored in the house. For the last couple of days I have borrowed water from a neighbour in large plastic bottles. There are actually ecological advantages in operating this way. You waste less water!

For those interested in the vagaries and delights of the English language, have a look at this highly entertaining website and weekly post 

Bread and Circus

Glad to see a voice of common sense among all the media hype about the London Olympics - in an article the stupendous insanity boiling around the London Olympics  which focuses on the incredible money being spent on things such as the security systems to ensure there are no protests let alone terrorism. Harold McMillan - a British Prime Minister in the 1960s - was once asked to suggest the collective name for a group of Prime Ministers and famously replied "a lack of Principles"! I think of this phrase whenever I think of the Organising Committee of Olympic games - the most aloof, out-of-touch and corrupt group of people one can imagine who inflict on hapless cities a modern-day equivalent of potlatch (burning of one's possessions as a sign of wealth and conspicuous consumption) . We should remember that the Athens Olympics were probably the straw that broke the camel's back in that country.

The Olympic spectacle has always crystallised two things: first, the unrivalled power of governments to lay on such gigantic and ludicrously wasteful spectacles; and second, whatever madness is swirling around the host country. Running, jumping and swimming, by comparison, will always be an added extra.In Moscow (1980), the Olympics displayed the vanities of what might be called late communism, just as the invasion of Afghanistan revealed fatal Soviet hubris. In Los Angeles (1984), the games embodied the decisive arrival of the consumer capitalism that has since eaten the planet (my favourite bits of the opening and closing ceremonies were Lionel Richie, and the 84 grand pianos). Beijing (2008) attested to the niceness of the Chinese state by forcibly moving 1.5 million people to clear the way for Olympic buildings and installations, and allowing no opening for any noises-off about such minor matters as Tibet. And Berlin in 1936 barely needs mentioning, though it's worth bearing in mind the subsequent comments of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee: "People are worried … by the fact that the 1936 games were illuminated by Hitlerite strength and discipline. How could it have been otherwise? On the contrary, it is eminently desirable for the games to be thus clothed, with the same success, in the garment woven for them over four years by each people."
The London games will be an expression of three of the most rotten aspects of our version of modernity: surveillance and the arms trade; out-of-control consumerism; and most spectacularly, the fact that the elites who make their money out of these things have been barely touched by the crisis that is ruining lives across the planet. The fact has been barely commented on, but needs repeating: no matter that this week sees thousands of disabled people having their income cut by £100 a week, or that endless areas of public provision are being hacked down at speed: the cost to the public of an orgy of corporate hospitality, is currently put at £11bn. £11bn! Meanwhile, the distance between 99.9% of people and the Olympic elite has been beautifully demonstrated by perhaps the event's most unpleasant bit of symbolism: those "Games lanes", along which dignitaries and sponsors will be sped to east London, while the rest of us sweat our way through likely gridlock.

 A year ago, the blog was asking whether our much-vaunted political system "in the West" was actually all that much different or better than that of the Chinese.

Nomad

Clearing the flat here in Sofia for a 4 month absence - during which my landlady may rent the place out. 
Michael Palin's BBC 's "Other Europe" series has him today on BBC Entertainment here in Bulgaria in the Plovdiv gypsy quarter; then onto in Edirne in a container lorry; and then in Istanbul at the Bosphorus. As I watch, the idea comes of renting a flat in Istanbul for 6 months or so from next spring. This at the same time I am contemplating buying a flat here in Sofia - or in the old part of Brasov! 

Tomorrow early I hope to leave Sofia and cross the Danube border at midday before the returning Romanian holiday-makers from the Black Sea cram the border. Then on to the Carpathian house for last-minute tuning before making the drive through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany and Belgium to Scotland ( via the Zeebrugge overnight ferry) by mid-May

Verily I am a nomad! Indeed I was just counting how many addresses I've had over the last 25 years - it works out at 25, a new one each year on average. That's why it has sometimes been impossible for me to fit some bureaucratic requirements eg informing of change of address!! Scottish courts used to (may still) have a term for people like me - NFA (No Fixed Abode). As a young magistrate in the 1970s, many of the miscreants who appeared before me were so designated. "Nomad" or "peripatetic" sounds so much better!     

At a time when commentators are trying to work out how the 20% of French voters who supported Le Pen's candidacy for the French Presidency will cast their vote in the second round next Sunday, it's useful to read again what was in my blogpost of 29 April last year about populism

The sculpture which I recently bought at Astry Gallery is, aptly, called "Paddling his own canoe" and is by Petra Iliev

Great art in Sofia

A flurry of artistic activity, starting on Thursday morning with a visit to the designers of my booklet on Bulgarian Realists to organise the CD which will accompany it (with 800 photos of Bulgarian paintings of that period); and to get an initial rough copy. 

This last was particularly needed to take with me to the midday invitation I had received to visit what had been the home of one of Bulgaria’s great painters - Tsanko Lavrenov. The invitation came from his grandson (Plaven Petrov, now the owner of the Loran Gallery) who has turned the flat in one of Sofia’s nice old areas into a great showpiece for this self-taught artist from Plovdiv. 
Born in 1896, Lavrenov viewed with suspicion the new artistic trends coming from Western Europe, wanting instead to establish a style more faithful to local traditions. He spent considerable time in monasteries in the area and on Mount Athos, studying the paintings and books in the archives. He was a close friend of Zlatyu Boaadjiev and Danail Dechev. 
Plaven had been impressed that a foreigner was so interested in Bulgarian art as to prepare and publish – at his own expense - a booklet on the subject. Over wine, we explored some of the peculiarities of the Bulgarian market. Then an inspection of the superb collection he has of his grandfather’s paintings. He was kind enough to present me with this print signed by Lavrenov himself.

Evening saw another great Vernissaj at Vihra’s Astry Gallery – this time showing some of young Maria Raycheva’s output from a visit she made recently to Paris.

Notre Dame and the Seine must be the most over-painted subjects of all time. Tackling them again runs therefore the risk of boredom – the artistic equivalent of a cliché. 

And I feel that the painting shown behind Maria in the photograph does fall into that category. 
Others, however, do show a really original touch – including a couple I bought. 



And while there, I also bought two fine 
bronzes - by Petra Iliev. 

This is her "Lady with Double Bass"

Friday morning, it was a visit to the Sofia City Art Gallery’s special exhibition of Ivan Nenov, another of Bulgaria’s greats -  but this time in the modernist style. 

He lived to the grand old age of 95 and apparently remained active and dignified to the end. 

He is known for his portraits of women on the beach or at windows but, over his long life, was very versatile and went through different stages. He traveled extensively in the 1930s and took part in international exhibitions of modern art in Italy and Germany.

However, he was declared a formalist in the 1950s and, for almost a decade, could not exhibit his works. Instead he focused on ceramics and mosaics. In 1975 he managed, somehow, to give his first solo exhibition in Sofia (previous attempts had been thwarted). Rehabilitated in the late 1950s, he was elected in 1994 an academician in the Academy of Sciences.

Peeling the layers of the onion

The way the media control our politicians (and shape the way we look at the world) was laid bare by yet more stunning information thrown up by the continuing investigation in Britain of the operations of News International (the Murdoch Empire). We didn’t learn a great deal from the appearance of Murdoch and his son some months ago in front of the UK Parliamentary Committee on Culture – except perhaps that he has a beautiful young Chinese wife and suffers (as does his son) from memory lapse. But an official inquiry (Leveson ) is now looking (in public) and in detail at the behind-the scene operations of media owners, their contact with politicians and their ethics. It has revealed, for example, howthe Scottish First Minister (Alex Salmond) bought the political support of Rupert Murdoch  - the the News International (NI) newspapers suddenly, as result, switching from hostility to the nationalist cause to support. Even worse, the inquiry has laid bare the private contacts there were between News International lobbyists and the Minister who had the authority to decide whether NI would be allowed to take-over a new TV media channel. Polly Townbee has a powerful article on the story which sets out very well the political issues which are at stake. The article should be erad by everyone - 

The picture emerges of a party deciding long before coming to power to gift Rupert Murdoch a media and cultural dominance beyond anything seen yet. So much is known already: the Prime Minister made a hasty speech threatening to abolish the regulatory agency which tries to ensure competition and standards in the communication industry (Ofcom). . The relevant Minister (Hunt) rejected Ofcom's advice to refer the BSkyB bid to the Competition Commission. Cameron was completing what Margaret Thatcher began – and all for what? Fickle support from Rupert Murdoch's press.

Thatcher broke every rule, twisted every regulation and bent EU law to give Murdoch a newspaper and television dominance unthinkable in the US or most countries. We have ranted and railed helplessly over the decades, pointing our finger every time politicians of any party kowtowed to the man they feared. Democracy was bound to be suborned. That's precisely what competition law is there to prevent: monopolies are monsters. Is there anything so exceptional about Rupert Murdoch? He's canny and fly, but probably no more so than many sharp-witted businessmen who spot their chance in a flabby market.

All he has done is exactly what Adam Smith (the real one) famously said every businessman does given half a chance – corner markets and conspire against the consumer. The success of his business was built on gaining the edge by evading regulators and avoiding taxes, as all companies will unless stopped. So let's not obsess over his character.

 If you think this is a navel-gazing media story, here's a reminder of what Hunt was about to unleash on the country, with Cameron and George Osborne's approval. If Murdoch were allowed to own all BSkyB, within a year or two he would package all his newspapers on subscription or online together with his movie and sports channels in offers consumers could hardly refuse, at loss-leading prices. Other news providers, including this one, would be driven out, or reduced to a husk. His would be the commanding news voice. Except for the BBC – which his media have attacked relentlessly for years.Sky's dominance over the BBC is already looming: now past its investment phase, Sky's income is multiplying fast at £5.5bn a year, against the BBC's static £3.5bn. Sky's growing billions can buy everything, not only sports and movies, but every best series: the BBC trains and develops talent, predatory Sky will snatch it. Nor is Sky that good for the Treasury: for every £1 in Sky subscriptions, 90p flees the country, straight to News Corp and Hollywood in the US.

The BBC is remarkable value for money: Sky subscribers can pay £500 a year, the licence fee is £145 for masses more content. Sky is parasitic, as its own subscribers watch many more hours of BBC than Sky, so Sky would collapse if the BBC denied it its channels. Yet the BBC still pays £5m a year for appearing on its platform, a deal struck by Thatcher to help Murdoch.The sum was cut, but in all other countries commercial broadcasters pay national broadcasters for the right to use their content – not the other way round. The BBC should be paid a hefty fee from BSkyB to compensate for the 16% cut it suffered, partly as a result of Murdoch lobbying. The cut was pure spite, since the licence fee has no connection with Treasury deficits. Pressure persists to deprive viewers of listed national events saved to watch free on BBC: Wimbledon and the rest would go the way of Premier League football.

If it does nothing else, this scandal will stop the government daring to give anything more to Sky. Much as the Tories detest the BBC – which, like the NHS – stands as a defiant symbol of non-market success, expect no overt attacks on it for a while now. But the BBC charter comes up for renewal in 2017: a Tory victory at the next election would liberate them to follow their vengeful instincts.Jeremy Hunt was within days of giving Murdoch everything, because the government wished it. A token gesture would have put Sky News behind Chinese walls, but on all previous precedent, soon his newspapers, print, online and TV would have merged into a single newsroom. That would require repeal of the law imposing impartiality on broadcasters.

But already Murdoch's friends were softening up opinion against old-fashioned, dull TV news, unsuited to the rowdy, opinionated internet era: Fox News would soon be here. If the arrival of Murdoch's kick-arse Sun was a shock, we'd look back on it as an age of innocence compared with what Fox would do – look what it's done to US politics.Cameron has said it is his ambition to finish Margaret Thatcher's work. As she privatised nationalised industries, so he would marketise the public sector, with his NHS commercialisation and his promise to put all public services out to tender. The dismantling or shrivelling of the BBC would soon have followed. If the Guardian journalist, Nick Davies, had not exposed the hacking of a missing and murdered girl’s phone in the nick of time, all would have been lost – an odd way for the BBC to be reprieved.

The 81-year-old under scrutiny this week rambled a bit and remembered nothing to his own detriment. He was an unsatisfying villain, as most are. But the villainy here is not about one man. He stands as an Adam Smith lesson in the primacy of competition law and what happens when politicians let the free market rip to do political favours.

A famous British politician (Aneuran Bevan) once wrote a book in which he compared his search to discover where power lay in Britain to the peeling of an onion - each layer stripped, there was yet another beneath it. With the current, public inquiries in Britain, we seem to be getting to the core......

I couldn't find an appropriate painting to illustrate the title - and have used this instead this Stanio Stamatov painting which was pulled out of the Shumen archives specially for me to view.