The Referendum: Head, heart and gut.

I was on a training course the other day. At the end of the course, the participants had to fill in one of those monitoring forms where they ask about your age, gender, ethnicity and all the rest of it. Apart from noting that there seemed to be quite a few gender options available these days, the question that gave me most cause for concern was this one: 

Ethnicity: please indicate how you would describe yourself (please tick one box). 

Among the options were ‘Scottish’ and ‘British’. I wondered which one I should pick. I had to give it some thought; in fact, I’ve been thinking about little else recently as I’ve grappled with the issue of what to do with my vote on 18th September. I’ve been thinking about the country I grew up in, about how that country has changed and about how it’s likely to change even more. I’ve been thinking about the kind of place I’d like my kids and their kids to grow up in. I’m pretty clear that there are good (and bad) arguments on both sides of the referendum debate and also believe that -whatever happens- we’ll somehow manage to get along reasonably well once the dust has settled. In the process of reading, thinking, listening and arguing about this, I’ve been trying to find some kind of peaceful resting place for my referendum vote. I’ve been waiting for a moment when my head, my heart and my gut would be in alignment; only when that moment arrived, I thought, would I know what I was going to do.

Something from years ago has been playing on my mind recently. I recall watching, sometime in the early 90s, a news item on TV about a group of young musicians who had formed what seemed, at the time, to be an unusual band. They were called Bombay Talkie and the members were all of South Asian descent, but spoke with broad Glaswegian accents. They played Bhangra music and dressed in a bizarre mix of traditional Asian costume and tartan. Some of them wore kilts and turbans; I suspect that bagpipes were also somewhere in the mix. The young men in this band spoke with clarity and confidence about their identity as what they called ‘Scots Asians’. They were completely comfortable with the idea that they were Scottish, but had roots in Asian culture. They saw no contradiction in that and wanted their music to express the push and pull of the various cultural influences they had been exposed to.   

This may sound a bit soppy, but watching that news item made my heart soar. What a great place to live, I thought. And what a great time to be alive, in a country that could welcome folk from foreign lands, a country that could house them, employ them, give them opportunities and support them to the extent that -just a generation or two later- their kids could be so assimilated that they could nonchalantly mix and match their various influences to produce a vibrant musical expression of their cultural confidence. The lads from Bombay Talkie were fantastic ambassadors for their families and for these islands. I loved the fact that these young men saw no problem whatsoever in the idea that they could be both ‘Scottish’ and ‘Asian’. I felt proud to be, in some small way, part of that, part of a United Kingdom which was -in essence- a great, ongoing multi-cultural experiment, a land that had peaceably (but not without difficulty) transformed itself over the years.   

By way of contrast, I also recall that the Conservative government minister Norman Tebbit made some ill-judged remarks in the late 80s about English-born fans of West Indian descent who supported the West Indies cricket team over the English one. He was critical of their decision not to support the home nation and appeared to suggest that this was a test of ‘Britishness’ that those cricket fans had somehow failed. Mr Tebbit was vilified for what I’ll call his ‘insensitivity’ on this matter, but sadly, during this referendum debate, some folk seem willing to lapse into that same kind of thinking. I’ve been dismayed by some of the things that seemingly intelligent folk are willing to write and say. I resent, for instance, the notion that there is a ‘Team Scotland’, and that if you are not ‘with the programme’, if you are not swept away by the sheer momentum of it all, then you are somehow not part of that team. Your Scottishness is questioned, as if you somehow don’t care or haven’t thought about the issues involved in the referendum debate. I resent being told that the vote on 18^th September is a no-brainer, when it is clearly the exact opposite. I resent being told that, if I were to side with the No camp, I’d be a stooge of idiotic and venal Westminster politicians, as if a decision about a 300-year partnership should be made on the basis of despising a few clowns who will be forgotten before the decade is out. I resent being told that a Yes vote is the only progressive choice and that to contemplate saying No is to side with the forces of darkness. In fact, I’m more than resentful at all this febrile stupidity; I’m furious, because I just don’t recognise my country in some of the things that are going on just now.         

Anyway … back to the tick-box option on that monitoring form. 

Ethnicity: please indicate how you would describe yourself (please tick one box). 

I thought about those lads in Bombay Talkie. What would they have done, had someone asked them to pick between ‘Scottish’ and ‘Asian’? It’s obvious, isn’t it? They would have told them to get lost, although I suspect that they would have used much stronger words.  

So I ticked the two boxes: Scottish and British. 

And do you want to know something?  It felt good.

Referendum Dictionary

The Scottish independence debate is getting a bit heated and I have little doubt that the temperature will rise even further between now and September 18^th. It’s only natural that folk get worked up about such a big subject, but as both sides continue to make claims and counter-claims, promises and counter-promises, it can be difficult to drown out the background noise and focus on exactly what is being said. Sometimes people say one thing when they mean another. And sometimes people say one thing without realising that they are actually saying something else. 

With this in mind, I thought it might be useful to provide a brief ‘strip-away-the-bullshit’ guide to some of the assertions that are made regularly during discussions and debates, both in the digital domain and in that much more civilised neighbouring state, the real world.

Debates are more interesting when the participants speak with clarity and passion, maintaining a respect for (and understanding of) the arguments of their opponents. There will be plenty of passion, but I’m not confident that ‘respect’ is going to thrive over the next couple of weeks. As for clarity, I hope that this modest attempt to decode some of the referendum bunkum, baloney and balderdash makes a small contribution to the debate. I should point out here that the views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the author, unless they are. 

What they say	What it means
‘It’s a no-brainer’	I am not prepared to give this subject much thought.
‘We need to address the democratic deficit’	I want the party I support to win every election.
‘After a no vote, there will be more powers for the Scottish Parliament’	You can have just as many Gaelic signs as you like.
‘Here’s a link to an interesting article’	Here’s a link to an article that supports my opinion, because I only read stuff that backs up what I’m thinking anyway.
‘After independence, we’ll be able to vote for whichever government we want’	After independence, we’ll be able to pick from two slightly different brands of ‘tax and spend’ socialism.
‘A report by a leading think-tank says that the oil might run out by 2018’	I really don’t have a clue about any of this.
‘An independent Scotland will have better public services, free prescriptions, no tuition fees and better retirement conditions for everyone’	I’m not very good at sums.
‘Such-and-such an actor from such-and-such a TV show has come out in favour of Yes /No’	I think that people who dress up for a living and then say stuff that is written for them by other folk are best placed to advise us on how to vote.
‘There was no clear winner in the first televised debate’	I’m voting Yes, no matter what.
‘The second televised debate was a bit of a shambles’	I’m voting No, no matter what.
‘I’m voting for the future of our children’	Anyone who doesn’t agree with me is a selfish unthinking bastard and probably not much better than a child abuser.
‘Anyone who votes Yes/No is selfish, unthinking or stupid’	Trapped within the dreary architecture of a limited imagination, I am unable to grasp the simple concept that other people might hold legitimate opinions which don’t coincide with my own, so I just settle for calling them names.
‘I don’t know’	No.
‘After independence, we’ll be able to make our own decisions’	I want the party I support to win every election.
‘There are some interesting arguments on both sides’	One side is as bad as the other.
‘It’s our pound, so we can use it if we want’	What does ‘lender of last resort’ even mean?
‘I don’t think an independent Scotland could pay its way’	I hate Alex Salmond.
‘This is not about Alex Salmond’	This is about Alex Salmond.
‘The likes of David Bowie and Eddie Izzard have no understanding of what the Yes campaign means in Scotland and about how  it represents progressive values.  If they lived here, I’m sure they would be Yes voters’	Fuck off back to Englandshire and mind your own business.
‘The media bias in this campaign has been astonishing’	I don’t like it when folk present views that don’t entirely accord with mine.
‘What do a bunch of public school toffs know about the real world?’	I hate Boris Johnson.
‘I hate Boris Johnson’	I have a sneaking suspicion that this man somehow possesses a broad popular appeal and that he might actually end up as British prime-minister.
‘Neither side has made it clear exactly what a Yes or No vote actually means’	I’m still not sure which side is offering the electorate the biggest bag of sweeties.
‘The artistic community in Scotland is right behind the Yes campaign’	The artistic community in Scotland is right behind the Yes campaign, except for the ones who are afraid to speak up in case they get crucified on the various social networks.
‘After independence, we’ll be one of the most progressive, forward-thinking, greenest nations on the planet with a commitment to social justice and international peace’	Pass the bong … this is some really good shit.
‘This article, by Professor Whoever from the University of Hot Air, demonstrates that Scotland will be mega-rich /flat broke after independence’	40% of statistics are based on firm evidence, 25% are based on subjective interpretations of selected data, 25% are based on subjective readings of anecdotal evidence and the other 17% are just made up on the spot.
‘Scotland has been betrayed by the quislings in the Labour party’	Lacking any sense of perspective, I have no appreciation that a casual use of the word ‘quisling’ might just be insulting to the memory of the Norwegian Jews who were sent to concentration camps in 1942 by Vidkun Quisling, the puppet dictator supported by the invading National Socialists.
’We’ve got an ageing population and being part of the UK means that we’ll be able to share the pensions burden across a much bigger demographic’	Vote independence and, by the time you’re old, you’ll be burning your own furniture and hunting scabby pigeons for your dinner.
‘This isn’t about being anti-English, it’s about being anti-Westminster’	Such is my hatred for the Tories, I’m happy -for the moment, at least- to go along with the SNP’s subtle re-branding of its chip-on-the-shoulder petty nationalism as a ‘principled stand against Westminster politics’.
‘I just hope we can all get on after September 18th'	If my side loses by a narrow margin, the campaign for a re-run will start immediately.

 

"I'm not a nationalist, but ... "

A few years ago, the lugubrious American comedian Steven Wright was appearing on a chat show. He was known to be a big sports fan and, inevitably, the subject of baseball came up. The presenter said to him: “I understand that you’re a big fan of the Boston Red Sox?”  Wright, in his usual deadpan style, replied: “I have been attending their games for more than thirty years. I buy merchandise and collect memorabilia relating to the team and I have a season ticket. But I do not consider myself to be a fan.”

In highlighting the incongruity between his actions and what he pretended to believe those actions meant, Wright was making an obviously comedic point. Over the last few weeks, however, I’ve noticed more and more folk, either in conversation or through pronouncements on social networks, drawing a similar line between what they profess to believe and what they intend to do in the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence. There appears to have been a proliferation of posts and declarations in which people make one variation or other of the following statement: "I’m not a nationalist … but I’ll be voting yes.” 

You’ll never, of course, hear anyone saying “I am a nationalist, but I’ll be voting no”, because that would be absurd. Not that absurdity itself would be out of place in a campaign in which both sides have made ludicrous claims and counter-claims, offering bribe and counter-bribe to an electorate they clearly don’t have a very high opinion of.   

Only four years ago, the SNP polled 19.9% on a 63.8% turnout at the general election.  Unless my arithmetic is off, that means that only around 12% of those eligible to vote could be bothered to state a preference for independence. Now, just a few years later, we are on the verge (depending on which polls you read) of breaking up the UK. The Yes campaign has been extremely effective and has worked diligently to establish clear ground between ‘good’ nationalism (the kind we have in Scotland, where everyone is socially progressive) and ‘nasty’ nationalism (the UKIP kind they have down south, where everyone is reactionary). But however Blair Jenkins and his team might spin it, there is an ugly side to Scottish nationalism. Most nationalists are decent folk, but there is a significant minority motivated principally by the politics of difference. That’s about as succinct and polite a way to describe it as I can manage. And I suspect that it is this factor which has caused some people to feel the need to put a positive spin on their voting intentions.  

Steven Wright got laughs because of the obvious incongruity between the list of things he did and what those things actually meant, but if someone said something like that in normal conversation, we’d probably feel obliged to draw attention to the discrepancies between their actions and their idiosyncratic interpretation of those actions. We might even be tempted to point out that people don’t ordinarily get away with defining themselves by what they say, because -most of the time- we are defined by what we do.          

I think there are some good arguments for independence, just as there are some good arguments for maintaining the union. I make no judgement on the position that anyone chooses to take. It seems to me, however, that if you campaign, and then vote for, Scottish secession from the United Kingdom, you are –by definition- a nationalist. Wouldn’t it be more honest just to accept the ‘warts and all’ reality of that political choice?

Dominic Frisby - 'Life after the State'

I’d have to admit that the idea of a stand-up comedian writing about a serious topic doesn’t sound all that promising, but Dominic Frisby has managed to pull off a quite startling achievement; he has written a book about the economy that is actually a pleasure to read. ‘Life after the State’ seeks to address these basic questions: What is money? Who controls it? What happens as a result of that control?  

As a keen traveller in Latin America, Frisby undertakes a revelatory visit to Cuba in 1996. Having gone with what he calls ‘preconceived notions about what an amazing place it was’, he starts to challenge his own ideas about government and money after he rents a room with a local professor and his family. His straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth anecdotes about Cuban life and the Cuban economy ought to be compulsory reading for anyone who might still have a rosy view of Castro’s ‘socialist’ paradise. Frisby found a society “so imbalanced and distorted that taxi drivers and uneducated young people could earn, in one night, many more times than a professor, a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer might earn in a month”, a society where huge numbers of young girls in Havana worked in the sex trade, always for foreign currency. His experience of the useless Cuban peso made him think about how important a properly functioning system of money is to a society and about what happens when politicians use money as a political tool.

By the turn of the century, he has become fascinated by the world of finance and has reached alarming conclusions about the massive Ponzi scheme that is the western economy. He anticipates the crash of 2005-06 (taking preventative measures with his own assets) and is amazed that so many politicians, economists and journalists didn’t see it coming. The bad news is that he thinks there might be worse to come.   

His argument is that our fiat monetary system (in which governments, regardless of their assets, print money whenever it suits them) doesn’t just encourage massive debt or stifle innovation and self-reliance; it is doomed to fail. Through the grubby racket of central banking, we are made to exchange goods and services in a currency that is constantly devalued through the dubious practice of money printing (now euphemistically re-branded as ‘quantitative easing’). It's a 'smoke and mirrors' trick designed to obscure the real cost of their debts.

Frisby makes a distinction between the actual free market (which he’s very much in favour of) and ‘crony capitalism’, our current system in which bankers, politicians, large corporations and special interest groups are subsidised by the tax-paying majority. He is highly critical of ‘rent seekers’, meaning individuals and organisations who are able, for one reason or another, to exert influence over politicians. The banks provided the most notorious recent example of this when they pulled off the spectacular trick of privatizing their profits, but socializing their losses. In a genuine free market economy, these bad businesses would deservedly have gone under. Unfortunately, the system encourages rent seekers, lobbyists, quangos, bureaucrats and special interest groups who all benefit from subsidy (at the expense of those who don’t). It's quite clear that the closer you are to the people who control money, the better off you’ll be.   

The author writes with passion and clarity to counteract the ridiculous argument that only those who espouse leftist-liberal views on health, education, employment etc. care about people. He believes that human nature, left to its own devices, is invariably a force for good and that, when we limit the freedom to trade and exchange, we limit our possibilities.  Describing himself as a ‘bleeding heart libertarian’, he unashamedly espouses his libertarianism to champion ideas that would be familiar to many so-called progressives, although most of his proposed solutions will be anathema to those of a statist mindset.    

“All those people agitating for change should forget marches or demonstrations, or calling for this or that regulation or ruling; if they all just concentrated on one thing –reforming our system of money- then … freedom, justice, equality of opportunity and everything else they want can follow.”   

But first of all, he argues, we must separate money and state. A recurring theme of ‘Life after the State’ is the inefficiency and inadequacy of big government. If you’re wondering what ‘big government’ means, then here’s one revealing statistic: Before the outbreak of the First World War, an average British household typically spent between eight and nine per cent of their earnings on government. Today, it is around forty six per cent. Some will argue that our society benefits from this and, to an extent, that is true. But, according to the author, the problem is not just that government spends too much money and does too much stuff; it’s the fact that it invariably spends money on the wrong things and does the wrong stuff.

There is a chapter devoted to the decline of Glasgow, entitled ‘How the most entrepreneurial city in Europe became its sickest’. The story of the city’s rise and fall provides a perfect illustration of the fate of industrial Britain. From being known as the ‘second city of the empire’ and considered to be one of the best-governed places in Europe, Glasgow became one of the sickest cities on the continent, with high unemployment rates and areas of deprivation wherein life expectancy was comparable to that in Palestine and Albania. For all the huge amounts that have been spent (with the ostensible desire to do good) on infrastructure, housing, benefits, health, education and various other subsidies, more and more people have fallen into welfare rather than escaping from it. The more the state has provided, argues Frisby, the worse Glasgow has fared. 

(I should point out, in the passing, that the author is in favour of Scottish self-determination, mainly because he thinks that independence would force the country to rediscover its entrepreneurial roots and forge a small, vibrant, dynamic economy). 

The book contains some interesting ideas on taxation, but Frisby’s big idea is that we should be able to exercise the freedom to choose between competing currencies; this alone would begin to dismantle the power of the state. In a genuinely free market, we could trade in gold or metals or virtual currencies like bitcoin (which –surprise, surprise- HMRC has now started to take an interest in). 

But for all the economic analysis in this book (and elsewhere), the truth is that none of us really know where all of this heading. You can’t help but feel, however, that the odds are against it being somewhere pleasant. For all the received ‘austerity’ narrative of the last four years, the fact is that the coalition government has only managed to slow down the rate at which the deficit is increasing. That sentence alone should send a shiver down our spines. We are nowhere near addressing the question of government debt and that is surely a moral issue, because the generations that have benefited most from deficit spending (i.e. anyone reading this article) are about to bequeath something awful to their children and grandchildren.    

Writing about the American economy, the Canadian political commentator Mark Steyn observed that: “It took the government of the United States two centuries to rack up its first trillion dollars in debt ... now Washington piles on another trillion every nine months.”

According to Steyn, ‘reality’ (that is, fiscal reckoning) doesn’t need to win popularity contests or lead in the opinion polls. It doesn’t even have to run for political office because, sooner or later, reality is going to win. ‘Life after the State’ provides food for thought and will perhaps encourage more folk to think about where the deficit spending model of government is taking us. James Harding, Director of BBC News and Current Affairs, has described the book as “a wake-up call for politicians and economists”.  

I'd like think that some of our opinion makers may yet be influenced by it.