All The More Reason

There’s a fantastic site up at lefigaro.fr which has clips of famous events from previous French presidential elections. This is interesting both from a political and rhetorical perspective. It’s amazing, for example, to hear the “correctness” of De Gaulle’s French, but also its debilitating slow pace. I’d have to check this with other sources, clearly, but I suspect that this idea of people speaking “better” in the past is probably directly linked to the pace of their speech as well. In other words, it’s easier to speak in grammatically correct sentences if one speaks more slowly and deliberately.

J.S.

Based on this article in Lemonde, students in France don’t spell as well as they used to. Very roughly speaking, 13 year–olds write at the level of 11 year–olds 20 years ago (this is based on groups in 1987 and 2005 writing the same dictée – I’m not certain about the ages of the grades involved). I’d love to know though what the level of writing was 60, 80 or 100 years ago. I suspect that if all 11 year–olds were tested 100 years ago, and not just those at school, there would be quite a few mistakes too.

J.S.

I almost considered posting this as a comment on my previous post, but being the only commentator on your own post is almost too sad for words.

First of all, I am still baffled by Jack Straw’s insistence, neatly summarised in his article for The Guardian today that, because some argue for a fully appointed upper house and others for a fully elected upper house, the sensible thing to do is opt for a 50-50 split. If one were dividing, say, a cake, perhaps this logic would hold. But there are deeper principles at work here.

The White Paper is really the government’s first legislative response to the recent scandal surrounding the alleged trafficking in honours. Having actually read the thing now, it is heartening to see that it appears to have committed itself to ridding the process of appointing party-political peers of its current, corrupt odour.

Until Inspector Yates got on its case last year, the government had always rejected any suggestion that the Appointments Commission should have responsibility for selecting, rather than merely ‘vetting’ political appointees. To quote its 2003 White Paper:

“The Government does not accept the Royal Commission recommendation that the Appointments Commission should have the final say over the identity of party nominations. Parties of whatever persuasion must be able to decide who will serve on their behalf.”.

Indeed. And some wags may point out that all three political parties would be far more skint now if they had been unable to do so.

They say that a week is a long time in politics; six years, it’s safe to say, is bloody ages, and at some point since that last quote was written, the government decided that ‘the current system of appointment cannot be retained in a reformed House… the new Statutory Appointments Commission would have power over both non-party and party-political appointments’. Of course, the short-list of nominations will still come from the parties themselves and, as such, will still liable to jiggery-pokery. But it’s progress of a kind, even if the only truly legitimate appointments commission is the British people.

Michael P

The Conservative peer, Lord Mowbray, died last month. When the government took away the rights of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords in 1998, he was one of the 92 peers - nominated and elected by his aristocratic brethren - to receive a stay of execution.

The retention of these hereditary peers, which turned a potential annihilation into a mere decimation, formed part of a slightly unsavoury back-room deal between Conservative peers and Labour whips. The former, led by Lord Salisbury, were worried that the removal of their reactionary bulwark would leave the Ancient Constitution unguarded and ripe for socialist – or, worse still, clumsy- violation; the latter were, in turn, fearful that their party’s manifesto commitment to abolish the hereditary peers would be frustrated by a hitherto absent rafter of noble turkeys turning up in their hundreds to gobble their opposition to an Act of Christmas. Ninety two pieces of ermine was the price accepted by Conservative grandees for calling off the troops. This hereditary rearguard was mandated to stay “temporarily”, until such time as a coherent plan for House of Lords reform could be put into action.

The House of Lords, like a black hole, has the capacity to distort time. The first attempt at reform took place in the Parliament Act of 1911 which, in a celebrated piece of historical understatement, declares in its preamble that ‘it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation.’ Almost one hundred years later, this government – now on its third House of Lords White Paper – is unable to decide whether or not a Second Chamber ‘constituted on a popular basis’ is even one of the options for reform it wishes to consider .

A similar tear in the fabric of time has also meant that, nearly ten years after they were spared the axe, the ‘temporary’ noble stop-gaps (absent Lord Mowbray and a few of his fellow ex-peers) are still in place. More ludicrous still, each time one of their number shuffles off to take his seat on the red bench in the sky, a ‘by-election’ must take place to replenish the dwindling bank of blue blood. The death of Lord Mowbray means that the geriatric caucus of hereditary peers will once again have to stir itself to vote for the resurrection of one of its (upper) class of 1998. To its shame, Betfair is yet to open a book on the race, but early indications are that Earl Cathcart is eager to avenge his defeat in the last contest of March 2005, when he narrowly lost out to Rupert Charles Ponsonby de Mauley, the 7th Baron de Mauley (I’m not making this up). Earl Alexander of Tunis, who received zero votes in the last election, is yet to confirm his candidacy.

Whilst this feudal sideshow plays itself out, the elected representatives of The Other Place are to make yet another effort to fashion a Second Chamber that is both legitimate and effective. As ever, the composition of the upper house poses the main obstacle to consensus. Even if his own suggested solution is a hound’s hors d’oeuvre, Jack Straw’s admirable attempt to create a novel system of voting which takes MPs’ second preferences into account may be enough to swing the will of the Commons behind one proportion, most likely one of the majority elected options. One wonders whether, if the government had swung its own will behind a fully elected option, this question could have been resolved in a more timely fashion. Instead, we have endured the worst of all possible worlds: a lingering rump of crusty, fusty aristocrats sitting alongside a no less illegitimate  collection of party donors and clapped-out politicians. Even if one of the latter, David Steel, now thinks that this motley brew of anachronism and cronyism could make good legislation, it could never make a good legislature.

Michael P

A Welsh couple have been ordered to pay over £200,000 to a parish church after an arcane piece of land law led them unwittingly to become ‘lay rectors’ of the building.

The judgement has left Mr and Mrs Wallbank in financial ruin.

Vicar of St John the Baptist, Father David Addley, said he was pleased the issue had been resolved: “It’s been hanging over us all this time. I’m pleased it’s at an end.”

Demography and cultural masochism are combining to a hand a bloodless victory to the forces of Islamization, argues Christopher Hitchens in his review of Mark Steyn’s apocalyptically titled new book ‘America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It:

Mark Steyn believes that demography is destiny, and he makes an immensely convincing case. He stations himself at the intersection of two curves. The downward one is the population of developed Europe and Japan, which has slipped or is slipping below what demographers call “replacement,” rapidly producing a situation where the old will far outnumber the young. The upward curve, or curves, represent the much higher birthrate in the Islamic world and among Muslim immigrants to Western societies.

As Hitchens states, ‘any emphasis on the relative birthrates of Muslim and non-Muslim populations fall on the liberal ear like an echo of eugenics’. So it does. A central tenant of psuedo scientific racism has always been the ‘rabbit’ like tendencies of the denigrated ethnic group. The craven antecedence of this mode of analysis requires it to be treated with a healthy amount of scepticism. Can it really be argued with any certainty that the growth of Islamism is an inevitable corollary of a growth in the Muslim population?

I don’t think it can. The threat posed by Islamism will only grow with the Muslim population if nothing is done to address the causes of Islamisation. But something is being done. The West is alive to the threat of creeping Islamism as it never has been before.

Britain is a case in point. Since the brutal wake-up call of 9/11, we have witnessed a dramatic shift in the attitude of the public and its government towards the threat of Islamism and religious dogma in general. The veil debate has confirmed a deep-seated reluctance amongst the British public to allow religious superstition to trump practical necessities, be they in the classroom or in an MP’s constituency office. A raft of assertively secular reforms has been passed in the face of shrill protest from ascetics and right-wingers. Gay couples have been given unprecedented rights and the 2006 Equality Act will consolidate these gains.

The picture of cultural masochism painted by Frances Fukuyama in this month’s Prospect magazine isn’t an accurate portrayal of Britain either. He argues that European multiculturalism has been too respectful of cultural differences that are inimical to progressive values:

The civilisation of the European Enlightenment, of which contemporary liberal democracy is the heir, cannot be culturally neutral since liberal societies have their own values regarding the equal worth of individuals. Cultures that do not accept these premises do not deserve equal protection in a liberal democracy.

Whilst Fukuyama’s analysis might have been true of the UK ten or twenty years ago, it can no longer be said that tolerance of different cultures in Britain encompasses acquiescence to homophobia, sexism, or any other form of discrimination.

It would be disastrous if, despite evidence to the contrary, the demographic time-bomb thesis was accepted. The policy implications that follow, including caps on Muslim immigration, are grossly indecent. To compromise with the far right is to lose the battle with militant Islamism. Our enemy is, after all, one and the same.

Justin M

Before the pianoforte, there was the harpsichord. No matter how hard you struck its keys, the harpsichord played at the same volume. This was because it plucked strings instead of striking them (although I’m sure someone could design a harpsichord that plucks at different velocities). The pianoforte was given its name due to the fact that it could play both softly, piano, and loudly, forte. This dynamic difference between the harpsichord and the piano proved to be the difference for the last three centuries. With time, as often happens, the name was whittled down to the piano. Here’s a new manipulative technology that looks like it’s somewhere before the harpsichord on the digital evolutionary chain. It comes across mildly like conducting synthesizers – or playing air hockey with a soundtrack.

The musical potential of this technology looks quite limited for the moment, but it’s possible that later versions could show more promise. For example, the ability to change pitches (the note) quickly and efficiently to the pitch one desires looks very cumbersome. This is one way in which the piano truly shines. And yet, this kind of development does stimulate the mind, and provides intuitive musical opportunities for a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t have a decade to learn the piano. Specifically, the idea of being able to move musical objects around, whether they be digital or analog, has not been explored in the same way as treating an instrument with care and not letting it leave one’s grasp.

Sometimes I feel that oral debate between politicians could benefit from a similar use of imagination or zest. The advantage of having a traditional debate is that the audience is certain to understand the narrative structure of the debate, and thus the issues themselves are allowed to take centre stage. The disadvantage is that with a routine so well known by experienced politicians certain lines and even paragraphs of the debate are almost word for word verbatim to their speeches. This leads some listeners, myself included, to think that one’s time is better spent simply reading their campaign plan. The risk with livening things up a bit is that people will remember the fireworks and not necessarily which politician stands for what issue. And yet, politicians do use real fireworks all the time in their own campaigns.

The show Whose Line is it Anyway is a perfect example of how political debate could be changed somewhat without making it a farce at the same time. In that show, the audience was actively encouraged to shout out ideas that comedians had to improvise upon. Also, the comedians were required from time to time to use props in their skits. A few choice props with politicians could be a wonderful thing to see. If nothing else, this kind of debate would do the following:

1. Show a politician’s humanity and flexibility. This would benefit certain politicians and hurt others (one could have the debate about whether or not politicians should be on a different level and somewhat removed from their fellow citizens or not – personally I think it’s the position that’s special and not the man)
2. Inject some humour.
3. Encourage other kinds of people to consider political office who normally wouldn’t.
4. Encourage even other styles of debate in the future.

It’s amazing to me how often debates, even between political commentators, are allowed to run along the same roads they all know so well. Sure, television stations have incorporated better graphics and theme songs along the years, but little of it appears to be interactive with their guests. This doesn’t have to be digital. A good moderator, with a few cue cards and markers, could get our politicians to flex their grey matter a little.

Jonathan Smith

The title of this piece in LeMonde roughly translates into Creationist Offensive Directed At French Schools. It also says in the article that the guy who wrote the book which is being used to popularize creationism has his own site called the lie of evolution. Sigh. In these situations, it’s never “The mistakes within evolution”, or “Possible contradictions within evolution.” One must go for the biggest thunder, and nothing pulls on the ear faster than “The lie…” or “The real truth about…”. I believe the rhetoric used here is not only interesting to note, but also a real clue as to the amount of respect the writers have to critical thinking.

J.S.

Interesting interview with Samuel Huntington here, via aldaily, that covers some of his thoughts on Islam and 21st century politics. Here’s one choice quote:

NPQ | Many tout Turkey as a bridge between the Western world and the Muslim world. Do you see that?

Huntington | I wouldn’t put a great deal of emphasis on that. Turkey has its own interests and, historically, Turkey conquered most of the Arab world, and the Arabs had to fight wars of liberation to free themselves from the Turks. That’s in the past, of course, and doesn’t necessarily shape what is going to happen. But it’s there in people’s memories.

Jonathan Smith

Latin I know none. I had to even use an english–latin translator to create this title.

In order to stoke the fires of curiosity for latin, I give here a quote from a great book to read at a coffee shop or train station: The Book of Tells by Peter Collett.

The ancient Romans used the term super cilium, literally ‘raised eyebrows’, to refer to the facial expression where the eyebrows are raised and the eyes are slightly closed. This is, of course, not the gesture of submission – it’s the exact opposite, an expression of haughtiness or, to borrow from the Latin, superciliousness. The fact that this gesture and the facial gesture for submission are distinguished on the basis of whether the eyes are in repose or slightly closed shows how very complex facial expressions can be (p.61 – 62).

I understand how someone could make the argument that knowing how to speak Latin is too demanding. However, after reading a paragraph like the previous one, a rudimentary understanding of Latin strikes me as not a supercilious undertaking in the slightest.

I’ve included a link below to an extremely smug looking “roman”. Also, compare these two images to see how subtle the difference is between the offensive and defensive.

Jonathan Smith