Is sugar really the new tobacco?

An interesting story caught my eye the other day. Tony Badger, the owner of a British food shop in Canada, was ordered to stop selling Marmite, Ovaltine and Irn Bru because they contained ‘illegal’ additives. Mr Badger had been selling these items since 1997, but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is now increasing its inspections of suppliers and cracking down on the sale of such goods.
I wrote almost exactly a year ago about a proposal to introduce legal limits on the sugar, salt and fat content in food in the UK.

I said then that:

"Legislation … can only be defined as ‘helpful’ if you think that it is your responsibility is to remove choices from people who are unable to act rationally and who might otherwise damage themselves. Legislation only counts as help if you believe that people are not capable of helping themselves, not capable of making informed decisions in their own interests."

The politics of food are even more depressing now. Every other week some quasi-autonomous pressure group will try to flex its muscles, which will usually be followed by a politician -out to make a name as a reformer concerned only about the public good- proposing another asinine and illiberal piece of legislation.

The pressure group Action on Sugar is currently getting lots of exposure in the UK. Their poster boy, Dr Aseem Malhotra, has been floating the idea that ‘sugar is the new tobacco’ and urging government action. One of the central planks of their argument is that sugar has ‘no nutritional value’. I must have missed the memo about abolishing eating for mere pleasure. Why do these people think that everything we eat has to have some nutritional value? Has it occurred to them that perhaps people like eating sweet things because they taste nice?

I'm a non-smoker, but from a civil liberties point of view, I think the way the smoking ban was introduced provides an interesting model for what our food future will look like.

The 'health' justification for a smoking ban had been around for decades, but it was only in the last few years that governments got around to imposing it. The first epidemiological studies showing an association between smoking and lung cancer were published as far back as 1950. If the health risks were /are that serious, why was the full ban not introduced in 1968 or 1975 or 1994? Why the long delay?

One of the reasons, I would suggest, is that the concept of a ban had to be allowed to percolate for a while in the public consciousness. People have to be primed in order to accept a law like that. Potentially ‘difficult’ ideas get introduced into the public domain via the drip method: first you suggest something fairly radical, see how that goes down, then let it simmer for a while. Once it becomes a notion that many folk find more or less acceptable, it starts to acquire a certain inevitability.

Now that the smoking ban is an accepted part of everyday life, all bets are off on where we might end up. ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) has already proposed that the ban be extended to smoking in cars; I’d wager that it is only a matter of time before smoking is completely illegal. This ‘public health’ model of government intervention is also being applied to the debate on internet regulation. The arguments have become familiar: vulnerable people have to be protected, children can't be exposed to porn and paedophiles, militant nutters can't be allowed to propagandize and proselytize, yadda yadda yadda. It's not that big a leap to envisage a gradual clamping down on internet activities 'in the public interest'.

For a certain type of person, the answer to every perceived ‘problem’ is always more government action, more legislation, more decision-making taken out of the hands of people like you and me, people who simply can’t be trusted to act in our own best interests. We needed to be told to stop smoking. We’ll need to be told to stop eating doughnuts. We’ll need to be told to stop accessing inappropriate material on the internet. Left unchecked and unchallenged, there is simply no area of private life into which these people will not attempt to intrude. Of course, the sugar Nazis -motivated by a vague desire to do good- will argue that legislation is required because the food industry can’t be trusted to act responsibly. But the darker, less palatable truth is that they don’t trust us, the people, to act responsibly.

The more that slick opportunists like Dr Malhotra pop up on TV and radio telling us that ‘sugar is the new tobacco’, the more likely some folk are to believe it. The pressure for legislation will then start to build, because that’s how it works. They won’t be happy until they get what they want. And once they get what they want, they’ll want a little bit more. And then a little bit more. And the more we allow ourselves to be governed like this, the further that trend will develop. We will sleepwalk towards a future in which our children and our grandchildren will have fewer rights as citizens than we currently have.

Somehow, I’m reminded of that old saying:

Why does the dog lick his balls? Because he can.

What's the point in making an album?

Having spent some time trying to get re-acquainted with the idea of making and performing music (after a few years in which work and stuff had taken over), I have decided that 2014 will see me record, and then release, an album. What is the point, you may well ask, in undertaking a project like this?  Do people even listen to albums these days?  Don’t they prefer to just pick and choose individually-downloaded tracks?  And, perhaps more to the point, what’s the point in an unknown middle-aged bloke making an album? Who on earth is going to care about a vanity project like that? Who on earth would want to buy it?   

I do understand that not many folk will reckon that what the world needs right now is some more middle-of-the-road pop music. I won’t be surprised, therefore, to encounter a tsunami of indifference (with perhaps the odd showery squall of derision), but I’m going to go ahead with it anyway. And, in a series of blog entries over the next few months, I will look to explore some of the considerations and processes involved in recording an album. 

Among the questions I’ll try to address are: If you are not making a living from music, what is the point in making an album? Why, indeed, bother writing songs at all? What does the process of making music do for the soul? How will I decide which songs will go on this album? What will these songs be about? Who is going to play on them? How will they be recorded? What would I like them to sound like? What is it that makes certain sounds and musical arrangements attractive or unattractive? How much money am I willing to flush down the toilet spend on recording the album? Do I have even the remotest chance of recovering some of my costs? And, if I am to do that, how will I make people aware that this album exists?

If my current selection of sketches and demos is anything to go by, what I am going to end up with will probably be a middle-aged sort of album; by that, I mean that the music will be middle-of-the-road, with an emphasis on song construction, tasteful arrangements and songs that are shackled to the ball and chain of ‘verse’ and ‘chorus’. That’s the kind of music I’m invariably drawn to and it’s the kind of music I usually end up making. I see no need to apologise for that, because there are really are only two kinds of music: the kind you like and the kind you don’t (or perhaps, in this case, there might be a third category: the kind that will embarrass my kids and family). This album certainly isn’t going to be 'cutting edge’; I’m way beyond the point of trying to surf the zeitgeist. There was a point in my life when I knew (and cared about) what was going on in the world of contemporary music, but those days are long gone. I wouldn’t recognise the zeitgeist now if it stopped me in the street and hit me on the head with a vinyl copy of James Blake’s latest album. 

Whatever else happens, I’m planning to have some fun doing it and writing about it, but I also hope that a few folk might be interested in reading about the development of the project. So … to kick off, there’s a link at the bottom of this post to something I’ve been working on for a while. I think it is just about finished and it feels at the moment like it might turn out to be one of the signature tracks on the album. It’s called ‘Far side of the moon’. The theme of the lyric is ageing and disillusionment, with the far side of the moon representing the point at which someone is completely cut off from a place (or a mindset) they used to inhabit. In a state of existential ennui, the individual might come to terms with things that may not previously have been viewed with any degree of positivity; but on bad day, that person might be tempted to measure life in terms of the things they don’t have, as opposed to finding comfort in the things that they do.        

My starting point for songs usually involves banging out a few chords on guitar or piano (that will be a topic for another post), but in this case, it began in the studio with me just playing bass guitar along to a drum loop. At the start of the session, I had no idea what I was going to play; all I knew was that I wanted to try a slightly different approach to constructing songs. I recorded six bass lines to match six different drum loops, then lived with these demos for a while to see if I had anything worth developing. Of those six loops, there are now perhaps three with a chance of becoming songs for the album. I should point out here that I am by no means an accomplished bass player. The truth is that I am barely even competent but, thanks to the excellent working relationship I have with Eddie MacArthur at Stealth Studios, I knew that the session would not be wasted. His technical skills consistently allow me to get the most from my very limited musical abilities.      

As I listened to the demos (usually in my car, on the way to and from work), various melodic ideas began to form and -in the case of this particular track- I started to focus on a general feel for what the song might be about. Once the mist had cleared, I was able to work out the chord structure and the architecture of what would become the final arrangement.  For quite a while, the breathy backing vocals sounded like they might have been the main hook, then -relatively late in the day- I managed to come up with the guitar motif. I’ll write some other time about how musical influences get absorbed into the process of writing and recording, but I can spot a couple of powerful influences on this recording. It may have started with a slightly haphazard process (and one which could have potentially wasted a bit of time and money), but I find the end result quite pleasing on the ear. And that, ultimately, is what this is all about. 

Far side of the moon

Let's blame the nasty referee.

The New Year, alas, sees football, as represented by the ‘best league in the world’ (a.k.a. the league for selfish pampered millionaires who cry when they don’t get their own way) continue its inexorable moral decline.

After suffering what he considered to be a couple of dodgy decisions in the recent match against Manchester City, Liverpool manager Brendan Rogers claimed that because referee Lee Mason lived in greater Manchester, he was unsuitable to officiate at a game between a Manchester club and a club from Liverpool. In other words, he believed that the mere fact of Mr Mason’s postcode prevented him from being professionally objective during a game of football. Rodgers compounded his pathetic slur during a press conference a few days later by having the audacity to state that:

"In terms of geography, I certainly wasn't questioning the integrity of referees. It was more than logical in terms of having a referee from that part of the world refereeing a game in Manchester. I was only speaking honestly after the game. I think the FA knows perfectly well I am someone who engages in supporting the referees."

Ah … that makes it so much clearer. Brendan Rodgers supports referees and doesn’t question their integrity. Except, that is, when he doesn’t support them and states that they can’t be trusted because of where they live.
I wonder what Mr Rodgers would think if a pundit had said before Liverpool’s game against Chelsea that: "I don't think Liverpool will really go for it against Chelsea this week, because Brendan Rodgers used to work there and he's basically still Jose Mourinho's apprentice." That would have been a stupid and insulting statement to make, just like his was a stupid and insulting statement to make.

That incident was bad enough, but the ‘spoiled brat’ bar has just been raised by Southampton, with their egregious complaint to the football authorities about referee Mark Clattenburg. They don't want him to referee any of their matches again because he 'insulted' one of their players. And what was the nature of this disgraceful insult?

When their player -Adam Lallana- challenged the referee over his refusal to award a penalty in the game against Everton, Clattenburg is believed to have said: "You're very different now you've played for England. You never used to be like this." I’m sure that poor Adam had never before heard such shocking language on the football field; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the lad was being counselled after this truly horrifying incident.

A spokesman for Southampton claimed that it was not ‘appropriate’ for Mr Clattenburg to officiate in any of their matches until this matter had been ‘properly resolved’, because “Any official insulting any player, no matter his intentions, is clearly not acceptable behaviour”.

Anyone who watches football will know that, in the course of the average game, referees are routinely subjected to the foulest abuse, so it is depressing to realise that so many high-profile figures don't give any consideration to how their actions might impact on the culture of the sport. Those at the top have a responsibility to set a professional and respectful tone, so every time a manager or player bleats about being cheated or robbed or, in this case, ‘insulted’, he contributes just a little bit more to football’s moral decline.

I watch my 15-year old son playing every week and the lack of respect for officials, even at that level, looks to me like a cancer that is eating away at the heart of the game. I sometimes wish my boy had chosen another sport to pour so much of his time and energy into. I'm amazed that anyone would want to be a match official these days. Who would want to give up their free time to take abuse from belligerent idiots who don't even know the laws of the game?

So congratulations to Brendan Rodgers for his unique method of supporting referees. And congratulations to Southampton for having joined the league for selfish pampered millionaires who cry when they don’t get their own way.

I’m sure they must feel like a proper big club now.

The dark side of Camelot

Built to a large extent around interviews with friends, colleagues and former associates, this remarkable book by Seymour Hersh –first published in 1997- delineates a world that, to the modern eye, seems barely believable.
We are all used to reading about political scandals, but John F. Kennedy's activities went far beyond the odd indiscreet affair or dodgy business connection. His 'unofficial' CV is remarkable, containing as it does dalliances with prostitutes, connections with organised crime, a string of mistresses, bribery, election fraud and links to a number of assassination attempts on the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

In tracing Kennedy's inexorable rise, Hersh sets the scene with some illuminating background information on the family, particularly on his ruthless and ambitious father. With rumours constantly linking him to bootlegging, profiteering and organised crime, the bad smell around Joe Kennedy meant that he could never have been president, but he made up his mind that one of his sons would be, whatever it cost. As Hersh puts it, “Joe Kennedy spent his life making money … and then hiding it.” Once his own political career had perished on the rocks of a disastrous tenure as US ambassador to the United Kingdom, Joe used his vast fortune to get his son into the White House.
There seems little doubt, for instance, that the 1960 election was crooked, with even Kennedy's opponent -Richard Nixon- later conceding that, in the realm of street-fighting politics (yes, that's a euphemism for bribery, cheating and lying), he was out of his depth when he tangled with the Kennedys.

The iron curtain around the family can be hard to breach, but Hersh manages to secure a number of startling interviews with former associates and colleagues, revealing several jaw-dropping anecdotes about the extent of the ‘unusual’ lifestyle enjoyed by the president, his brother Bobby and their inner circle.

One of the key arguments of the book is that this very lifestyle presented a significant risk to America’s security. There is certainly evidence to suggest that the president’s complicated relationship with drugs (he was constantly on a cocktail of powerful medication for Addison’s disease and a chronic back condition) may have accounted for his unusually high sex drive and his willingness to take risks. Hersh puts the case that the Cuban missile crisis was down to a disastrously inept policy on Cuba, fuelled by what appeared to be a pathological hatred of Castro and a dangerous taste for brinkmanship. There is little doubt that Kennedy sanctioned various (rather inept) attempts to assassinate the Cuban leader, but he also gave tacit approval for the coup in South Vietnam which resulted in the murders of president Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother and chief adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu. The fall-out from that would prove to be disastrous.

It might be tempting to think that any modern politician behaving like Kennedy would be exposed and excoriated in the press and social media, but the truth is that many influential people -particularly in the world of journalism- knew about the Kennedys, but chose to put a blind eye to the telescope when it came to the behaviour of the up-and-coming senator and, later, the handsome young president. Having an ideological crush on a politician invariably impairs the critical faculties, a fact that is as true today as it has ever been.

Hersh offers no theories on the assassination, other than to state that the lack of credible evidence points to both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby acting alone. If however, you are inclined to conspiracy theories, the book’s merciless accumulation of grubby detail might tempt you to look in one particular direction; when you add up all of the connections with (and favours owed to) various shadowy underworld figures, it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to suspect that someone somewhere might have nurtured quite a grievance against the Kennedy clan.

One can’t help but wonder how a family with so many dodgy connections, so many skeletons in so many cupboards, managed to attain a status somewhere between royalty and showbiz demigods. You come away from this book with the impression that, for all the charisma, the glamour and the showboating idealism, the fact that people like this could accede to power is something of a stain on America's soul.

In defence of charlatans

There was an interesting story on the news the other day about Sylvia Mitchell, an American clairvoyant who was sentenced to fifteen years in jail for conning customers out of thousands of dollars. One woman re-mortgaged her house after Mitchell told her that, in order to “break her attachment to money” (which had been developed in a previous life as an Egyptian princess) she should hand over $27,000. Most of the clients had forked out money for the psychic to rid their lives of ‘negative energy’, but Mitchell’s defence team argued that she had not conned them, but had merely charged money for a service that they had agreed to buy.

I am not exactly a believer when it comes to the power of so-called clairvoyants, but I do think Mitchell’s defence team had a point. Let’s leave to one side the question of whether or not the statute book should protect someone stupid enough to believe that she should hand over a bucketload of cash to atone for having been an Egyptian princess in a previous life. Critics argue that psychics prey upon the gullible and vulnerable, but –beyond the purchase of food and shelter- every commercial transaction we undertake exploits our desire for happiness and, in that sense, all consumers are willing victims. Many folk who employ the services of psychics will perceive themselves to have benefited from their consultations, so whose perception is more important here: the people who don't believe or the people who -for whatever reason- choose to suspend disbelief as part of their contract with a clairvoyant?

If a music-loving, middle-aged bloke like myself buys a 're-mastered' box set of albums by an artist I love when I already have everything that artist has ever released, am I being preyed upon for my gullibility? And, even if I concede that I am somehow being exploited, what if I choose to do it anyway because, on some level, it makes me feel better to own that box set? The record company and the psychic are both selling stuff that, strictly speaking, their clients don’t really need. It can be argued that my arrangement with the record company is no different from the arrangement between a clairvoyant and a lonely old woman who hopes that she might make contact with her deceased husband. In both cases, the consumer believes that their emotional or intellectual well-being will be improved by the exchange.

I’m worried that the Mitchell case might set a precedent; if we accept that ‘exploitative’ clairvoyants should be prosecuted for their practices, who will the law go after next? How about shrinks, counsellors, chiropractors and all holistic practitioners? What if I worked in a beauty salon and persuaded an ugly person to pay for an expensive makeover, then told that person that he or she looked sensational once it was done? If some bad-mannered oaf later pointed out that the person was still ugly, could I be prosecuted for fraud?

I suspect that most clairvoyants are charlatans, but we should defend their right to practice their charlatanry, because interventionist approaches are invariably based on subjective judgements and are usually illiberal and authoritarian. When we grant the state the power to outlaw ‘harmful’ stuff on behalf of those perceived to be unenlightened or likely to be exploited, it not only makes huge assumptions about those people, it leads inexorably to more things being deemed harmful and more things being banned. Look around and you’ll see plenty of examples of how this process works.

If someone uses a psychic to 'communicate' with a dead relative and that 'communication' gives them solace, who are we to deny them that? Isn’t it better to live in a society that allows folk to get at least some comfort from mumbo-jumbo than a society in which the authorities decide, on our behalf, whether or not something is good for us?

I suspect that many of the folk who use psychics probably know, in their heart of hearts, that it is phoney-baloney. They just choose, for reasons we have no right to disdain, to suspend their disbelief.

And if that helps them make it through the night, why should the law take an interest?

Let's hear it for humankind

In the recent BBC 2 show ‘Don’t Panic – the truth about population’, the statistician Professor Hans Rosling provided an amusing and refreshing antidote to some of the alarmist guff regularly peddled in the mainstream media about the ‘dangers’ of human development and population growth.
I’m not sure whether the doomsday merchants drive or merely reflect public opinion, but we do seem to have something of a fascination with the day of reckoning. There are always people willing to predict that apocalypse is imminent; these dire forecasts used to be mostly about food and resources, but current concerns about the environment appear to have added some misanthropic spice to the cataclysmic mix. Indeed, some folk now place the interests of animals and vegetation above those of their fellow human beings. David Attenborough, considered by some to be a national treasure, announced on his TV show ‘The Life of Mammals’ that:

"Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment."

Forget racism, homophobia, sexism and any other form of prejudice you’d care to mention. It’s hard to imagine anything quite as bleakly misanthropic as that quote. Who, I wonder, does Mr Attenborough want to save the planet for?

But none of this stuff is new. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Malthus was considered to be something of a prophet because of his widely-read grim prognostications about population growth. Needless to say, his predictions didn’t work out. In the twentieth century, Paul Ehrlich was the darling of the catastrophe set when his best-selling book 'The Population Bomb' forecast -with some relish- food riots in the USA and the introduction of martial law by the mid-seventies. Needless to say, his predictions didn’t work out.

Chatter about population control is usually carried out among citizens of developed countries and the 'problem' usually refers –directly or indirectly- to people in underdeveloped countries. Some might argue that there is an unsavoury aspect to this, but whatever the motivation, you get the distinct feeling that folk who talk about 'controlling the population' invariably believe that there is just enough people like them, but rather too much of, you know ... other folk. 

Whenever the subject comes up, it is often useful and illuminating to cut to the chase by asking these questions:
Who are the people who should be told that they can't have any children? Who are the people who should be told that they can't have more than one child or two children, or whichever number is deemed to be 'too much'? Who gets to decide what is ‘too much'? Where do these people who will be ‘controlled’ live? How is this 'control' to be exerted over them? Who will exert it? From where will the ‘controllers’ derive their authority?

The developed world, alas, is never going to be short of people with an unhealthy appetite for apocalypse porn, but all of their horror predictions have one startling thing in common: they fail to take into account the sheer ingenuity of humankind when it comes to overcoming difficulties. Instead of seeing each new human being as a potential prize-winning scientist or wealth-creating entrepreneur or a decent, loving, responsible person who might raise and nurture a hard-working family, they see each new person as a potential problem. It is an utterly abject and anti-humanist outlook.

But don’t take my word for it. Watch Professor Rosling’s show for yourself and decide which camp you’d rather be in. As he so eloquently puts it:

“I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I’m a possibilist.”

Just don't use the M-word

The ridiculous furore over the England football manager and the ‘monkey’ joke says a lot about the sorry condition of our cultural discourse. In case you missed it, Roy Hodgson –during the half-time interval in England’s game against Poland- was reported to have told an ancient joke about the relationship between an astronaut and a monkey; he used it to illustrate the connection that he required two of his players to make during the second half of the game. Here’s the joke:

NASA sends a man and a monkey together into space. After they’ve been up in space for a while, the intercom crackles and ground control gets in touch with an instruction: 'Monkey, fire the retros.' So the monkey fires the retros. A little later, another instruction comes through: 'Monkey, check the fuel supply.' So the monkey checks the fuel supply.
Later on, another instruction comes through: ‘Monkey, check the life support systems’. So the monkey checks the life support systems.
By now, the astronaut is getting pretty hacked off with this state of affairs, so he contacts ground control and says: 'Hey, when do I get to do something up here?' The folk at NASA get back to him: 'Don’t worry. In 15 minutes, we want you to feed the monkey.'

Now, as far as this joke related to the tactics Hodgson was trying to impart to his team, Chris Smalling (who is white) was to be the astronaut, while Andros Townsend (who is black) was to be the monkey. Smalling’s job, as the manager saw it, was to supply Townsend with the ball. One of the players in the dressing room -whose identity has yet to be revealed- felt that this was racially insensitive, and later leaked the ‘story’ to the press, where, of course, it was devoured. Some elements of the chattering classes viewed the incident as problematic. Indeed, had you been listening to BBC radio the day after the match, you might have been tempted to believe that this was a major story which could conceivably have led to Hodgson losing his job (in spite of the fact that Andros Townsend had publicly stated that no offence was meant and none was taken).

For those who don’t follow the sport and may have some prejudice against football and footballers, I should point out here that Roy Hodgson is by no means a run-of-the-mill manager. He has lived and worked in several countries, is fluent in five languages and conversant in three more. He lists Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Sebastian Faulds among his favourite writers. By most reasonable standards, he would be considered to be a cultured individual and has a reputation within the game for being a thoroughly decent chap. You could argue that he chose a rather convoluted way to make his point; perhaps he would have been better advised to have said: ‘just get the fucking ball to Andros as soon as you can’. But in using the joke to make his point, he would not have considered the possibility that it might have caused offence, not because he is a closet racist but because he is a nice man. I’m willing to speculate that it would simply not have occurred to him that there was any link between black people and monkeys.

But even if it hadn’t been someone like Roy Hodgson telling that joke, the folk who over-reacted would still have been wrong to over-react. Surely the notion of any link between a black footballer and a monkey is so utterly ridiculous that only a complete moron would entertain it? It’s as ridiculous a concept as claiming that all Welsh people smell of turnips. If anyone tried to promote that particular idea, they would deservedly be laughed at or, more likely, ignored by polite society.

With that in mind, one can’t help but wonder why so many people reacted in the way they did to the monkey joke; in fact, it’s tempting to speculate that there might be more to it than meets the eye.

During the recent American presidential election campaign, there was some hostile media reaction to one of the speeches given by the Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Some mainstream commentators accused Romney of using ‘dog whistle’ politics to appeal to extreme right-wingers. According to these critics, he was talking in code in order to re-assure the lunatic fringe that he was the real deal. On the surface, it may have looked like he was speaking the language of consensus, designed to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters, but he was actually giving out secret messages that only his core support would understand. These messages would re-assure them that a victorious Romney would indeed govern as a hard-line, kick-ass Republican president. This interesting theory, however, was deftly undermined by the cultural commentator Mark Steyn, who pointed out a simple and devastating truth: if you can hear the dog whistle, it usually means that you’re the dog.

By sensing something ‘offensive’ in Roy Hodgson’s joke, by making some connection between a black footballer and a monkey, the person who leaked that story and the people who took offence on behalf of Andros Townsend have perhaps revealed rather more about themselves than they might comfortably care to acknowledge.