Having My Cake

So anyway, H and I sat under the tree on Christmas morning and unwrapped our jumpers. Yes, we bought each other jumpers. "Darling, it's over. We're middle aged." I said, and hugged her tightly for a fearful moment, as we stared together into the oncoming storm. If the experience contained any truth, then the future will be mostly about baubles...

If I say that I hardly left the kitchen all day it will sound like a complaint, but in fact it was highly rewarding - and not just because of the constant supply of port and chocolates. I reduced raveous in-laws to muffled moans for mercy not once, but twice, and once they had been sent packing loaded with my "Nuclear Ginger Cake 2.0", my triumph was universally acknowledged. Domestic godhood is mine.

Meanwhile, the England & Wales Throwing Things at Australians team secured custody of the burned sticks for another spell, and I got to watch the Ospreys spank the Scarlets back west so hard, what was left of them probably washed up on the Wexford coast. As we always say in these parts, it's not really Christmas until you've stuffed the Turks.

It's shaping into a highly satisfying Winterval, and it's not over yet. Middle-age ain't so bad.

Demo 2010: An Open Letter In Both Directions

TO THE RIGHT:

STOP characterising the demo violence as an organised anarchist assault on public order. The troublemakers are a small minority, and you know it. The same types turn up to any public demonstration against the establishment, they always will, and you can't use them as an excuse to stop peaceful protest. So stop trying.

STOP jumping to knee-jerk defences of transparently excessive police tactics, like the outrageous intimidation tactic of “kettling” in sub-zero temperatures, or the use of mounted baton charges against unarmed kids. Yes, policing these protests is a bloody difficult job, but you do the Met no favours by leaping to their defence quicker than they do. Oh, and Mr. Plod? The next time you're reaching out to topple some kid out of his wheelchair, you might just want to ask yourself; what could I possibly let him get away with that would look worse than this?

STOP calling for draconian punishments for “rioters” from the comfort of your armchairs. You probably still haven't noticed, but this kind of pathetically faux machismo simply drives down the consensus as to the probable size of your penis.

TO THE LEFT:

STOP pretending that this is about Tuition Fees, an issue on which the NUS and the Coalition Government are about as ideologically conflicted as Ant & Dec. It's an ideological reaction to the very notion of Conservative government, and its root are far wider. Which is perfectly fine – just so long as you admit it.

STOP fuelling the narrative of “Betrayal” by the Lib Dems, who are unable to enact their policy by virtue of (read this next bit carefully) losing the election. Yes, coalition politics is a bit new, and it may seem counter-intuitive that a party in government may lack both a mandate for its promises, and the responsibility to enact them. Boo Hoo. Get used to it. Anyway, even fewer students voted Lib Dem than in the electorate as a whole; and that was bugger all. Doesn't an election “pledge” kind-of carry with it the implicit notion that those you are pledging to will actually vote for you? So, who “betrayed” whom first?

STOP using the tired Thatcher-era language of class war, as if the last thirteen years never happened. When the Government first launched its attack on “benefit scroungers” while ignoring billions in tax fraud, there was an echoing silence from over there. When the Government first let the banks off the hook while planning swingeing spending cuts..? Hmm, still barely a grumble. The single defining difference between then and now, is that “The Government” are now (mostly) from the blue team. Your embittered, righteous fury is actually pure, cynical political opportunism, and shame on you for it. An illegal foreign war that kills thousands; a crusade against the common liberties of ordinary citizens; collusion in torture for fuck's sake; all these things could be allowed to stand, but a modest re-adjustment of Higher Education finance is the cue to unleash Hell? Bollocks.

Now, both of you – go home, calm down, and grow the fuck up.

Secret Messages

So... WikiLeaks, then.

Like a million other, cleverer observers, I find my responses genuinely conflicted. In saying that, I do not imply some 50:50 fence occupation strategy; I am firmly towards the “Freedom of Information” side of the equation. But that doesn't blind me to some simple, pragmatic realities.

Foremost of which is that no human relationship - whether it be in a marriage, between tennis partners, or between national governments and international organisations – can possibly function in an atmosphere of 100% disclosure. During the relentless assault on western civil liberties that has occurred in the last ten years, Establishment voices have been keen to use variations on the mantra, “If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear”. Now, the poverty of that argument stares them coldly in the face. EVERYONE has something to hide; it's how we function in societies. If we knew about others all the little things we find shameful in ourselves, we would all retreat to the caves and eat spiders.

So, if we are to engage in international diplomacy – and even the most reclusive regimes have yet to find a way of avoiding that entirely – then of course it must remain just as possible for two high-ranking officials to have a private conversation, as it is for a co-habiting couple to have a quiet word over the cornflakes.

We deplore the instinct to cover-up when battles go badly, or when soldiers behave in reprehensible ways. But it is those same mechanisms of obfuscation that allow terrorist cells to be infiltrated and destroyed, or hostages to be rescued. If we accept that military operations are sometimes necessary, then military secrecy must be an allowable concept.

Julian Assange has some good points to make, though, when he talks about the mechanisms of conspiracy, and his agenda to erode them. He takes pains to differentiate his notion of “conspiracy” – an emergent behaviour arising naturally from power structures – from the “Big C” notion of moustache-twirling super-villains. His position is undoubtedly extreme, but it can be argued (by which I mean, I have) that extremists are sometimes useful where there is imbalance.

I believe it is clear that the balance between diplomatic utility and military security on one side, and public accountability and civic enfranchisement on the other, is severely out of alignment in the western democracies. As such, I'm excited by the possibility of effecting a shift. And in those limited terms, I support what WikiLeaks is doing.