The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)

[Grant]

Ivan Illich was right all those years ago. He wrote a book called Deschooling Society. I think he proposed that everyone should be given an educational allowance which they could use throughout their lives to help fund whatever learning they required.

[Mick Harper]

And Medical Nemesis. A very great man. I must dig them both out (it must be thirty years) to find out how much I have unconsciously (honest, Ivan) nicked from him.

The voucher idea was toyed with by the Tories but it turned out -- I am again speaking from memory -- to be a way of helping near-toffs to pay for their children to go to private schools. My own version says you must first abolish that universal modern curse, compulsory education. That way every kid can go to private school. If they want to go to school at all.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

Dancing pony, ignored!

[Mick Harper]

A quite shocking report by Newsnight on football agents and the 'half a billion' lost by the Inland Revenue because of 'dual representation' -- agents being paid by both players (lots of tax) and by clubs (not a lot of tax). But, as usual, the really shocking aspects were completely missed by the pundits.

First, if this is such a scandal, then both HMRC and the Public Accounts Committee of the HoC should be roasted over hot coals because it is an absolutely standard practice that has been going on in the full glare of day for years and years. But that's only to be expected of such time-servers. The real scandal is dual representation itself. On Newsnight, everyone from tax barrister to agent's spokesperson went to great pains to explain that the agents were providing the clubs with valuable services so it was perfectly in order that the clubs should pay their fair share of agents' fees. The talking heads even told us what the chief one was

[Mick Harper]

The National Football League is a collective of thirty-one billionaires and the Green Bay Packers, who are a collective of some sort in themselves. A franchise costs billions -- the Washington Commanders are currently on offer for six/seven billion -- hence the billionaire owners. The players are mere millionaires. Not only is professional American football perhaps the most technical of all sports to play, the rules about who pays what to whom is so fiendishly complex that an agent is a prerequisite. Surprisingly perhaps so is a players trade union, the NFLPA. They are to the British PFA as ice hockey is to grass hockey.

The rules about agents by contrast are reasonably simple. You have to be accredited by the NFL and no club may deal with anybody except an accredited agent or the player himself. A handful of whom have decided to go without one, vastly to their own detriment, especially as agents cannot charge more than 2% for their services. The rest of us are lucky to get out below 15%. Some of us would love to earn enough to shell out 15%. The agents are entirely in the service of the player. If they weren't, the NFLPA would nix them.

Although the NFL is all-powerful, it operates in the land of fierce anti-trust laws, so retaining their monopolistic position means they have to play nice. It also helps that American football is under one jurisdiction, proper football is beholden to dozens of national governments and several different footballing authorities. Aaron Rodgers won't be needing a work permit when he moves from Green Bay to the New York Jets this summer. Although the negotiations will take all summer. Of course there is a certain amount of cosiness in the American system but since everyone has a vested interest in the success of the whole and the separation of powers is properly respected, it seems to work well enough.

Would the same system work over here? We'll never know, it would never be allowed.

[Mick Harper]

I was more than ordinarily in despair when my two staples, Channel 4 News and Al-Jazeera's evening bulletin, devoted their entire fifty minute running times to the arrival of Donald Trump in New York for his arraignment on Stormy Daniels charges. This normally only happens when a particularly popular British monarch has just died or, if it's a New York story, when a particularly notable landmark is destroyed by terrorists flying planes into it. To decide to do it on this particular occasion -- not for a trial, not for a verdict, but for an arraignment! -- was not just bizarre, it was political.

The liberal news media seem to have added a new watchword to the one we already knew about:
1. if it shows the right in a poor light, move it up the news agenda
2. if it shows Donald Trump in a poor light, throw away the agenda.

I get all this, I accept all this. The liberal news media are way better than anything else on offer so I don't have much choice. But even so throwing out every principle of news values for this piece of political tomfoolery was a new low. Everyone knows he's not going to jail, everyone knows that rehashing it all is not going to make a ha'pporth of difference to whether he is adopted in 2024, so what's it really all about? That I can't figure but I've got a feeling I'm going to have to get used to it.

My God, when Stormy takes the stand it’ll push Aliens Have Landed into the “and now for other news” bit before the weather. It really is disgraceful. What both liberals and conservatives forget is that we anthropologists are people too. Put on a show for us by all means but, please, keep it real.

[Mick Harper]

Two pieces back to back on Al-Jazeera featuring the tribulations of life in Argentina and Cuba reminded us there is more than one way to perdition. Both should be, and once were, wealthy countries but were ruined by (a) too much democracy and (b) too little democracy.

In Argentina all governments spend more than they receive in order to win elections, the result being more or less constant inflation. No country with a duff currency can expect to flourish. It's not rocket science, but they haven't managed it for a hundred years.

In Cuba, sixty years of socialism has done the job with greater expedition. Nobody looks to Argentina for lessons, but Cuban governance has legions of fans the world over. Our own NHS could learn from their health provision. Nobody goes to Havana A & E because they haven't got any bandages. You guessed it, bandages are on the American sanctions list. Along with Buick spares. What chance did they have?

[Mick Harper]

Simon Jenkins waxed interestingly about what to do about English churches in the Guardian this weekend.
Fun fact: more people now attend mosques than attend churches.
Fun fact: when asked, only two per cent of the British population described themselves as 'practising Christians'. (And, if you ask me, the two per cent only practise an hour a week. Blimey, I spent longer than that learning not to play Claire de Lune and going to Sunday School.)

Anyway, Simo didn't do what run of the mill commentators always do: demand the C of E become 'more relevant'. No, he said, accept it. And therefore accept that the most imposing building in most neighbourhoods is going to be completely empty except one Sunday in eight when a woman on a bike turns up wearing vestments under her day-glo skin suit. (Are you listening, St Paul?) Jenks proposes redundant(ish) churches should be handed over lock, stock and font to the local authority, something apparently forbidden under some obscure Victorian rubric.

I'm not sure about that, they don't exactly give one a great deal of confidence about how they look after their current estate. What about a quango? What about Simon Jenkins as its first head? I'd vote for that.

[Mick Harper]

Do you remember the great computer chip scare of a few months back when carmakers and white goods manufacturers were having to cut back production because they couldn't get hold of enough of them for love or money? Well, now it's the chip companies that are having to cut back production because there's a glut and they can't sell them for love or money. Tulips, anyone?

[Mick Harper]

I'm all in favour of bold new initiatives in the First World where we can afford to make mistakes but I must caution Third World countries that bold new initiatives are not the sort of thing that Third World countries are really designed to make, not counting what happens if they go wrong. Thus

Sri Lanka passes a law forbidding the use of artificial fertilisers because one of the brothers running the country read somewhere they're bad for the environment. Result: collapse of Sri Lanka and departure of the brothers.

India announces that large denomination notes will cease to be legal tender in a month's time because Narendra Modi read somewhere that the black economy runs on them. Result: collapse of India but, alas, not the departure of Modi.

Nigeria announces that a new currency is to be issued with fab new security devices because some big banana (not Canaan, he's Zimbabwe) read somewhere that somebody's passed a forged 50-naira note in Port Harcourt. Result: collapse of Nigeria because the banks haven't got enough of the new currency and the old one is no longer legal tender. They're having an election soon so I expect the big banana will win re-election by the usual margin.

Lebanon: the banks won't pay money to anyone. No, wait, isn't Lebanon sort of First World, maybe Secondish. You think they should invent a new category for Lebanon? You're probably right. The government can't be changed because of the Constitution so the floor will be the new ceiling. If that isn't a sick metaphor in the circumstances.

[Mick Harper]

Fascinating goings-on in Jerusalem. It's the holiest day of the year (isn't it always) for the Orthodox Christians (aren't they all), Easter Saturday. I knew about Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday but Fire Day Saturday was a new one on me. The tradition goes back to... well, anyway a fire is kindled miraculously inside the Church of the Whatsit and everyone lights their thingummyjobs from it and then goes round waving them. Not the best idea in these old buildings but who am I, health and safety already?

But here's the weird thing. Miracles aren't really true (no, honestly) so how are they are going to order one up on a spare Saturday in April? Little wonder the Israelis limited the congregation to eighteen hundred. "Would you all now kneel in silent prayer as we await the Divine Fire. No peeping."

[Mick Harper]

I shall vote for any politician who says they are complacent. It's a tremendously advantageous state of mind to have at your command because it means you don't have to think about whatever it is and can concentrate on things you do have to think about. I've got it by the bucketload if anyone wants to vote for me.

[Mick Harper]

An insight into Chinese governmental attitudes was provided by news that eleven people have gone on trial for a hotel fire that killed many people. The cause has been established as 'sparks from renovation work'. As it happens, this is the chief cause of fires in large public structures (e.g. Cutty Sark and Notre Dame) because combustible materials are always present during renovation work and they are unavoidably left unattended when everyone knocks off for the day. It's a worldwide problem, and a seemingly ineradicable one.

It can be argued that negligence is involved in any, every, particular case but to put eleven people on trial could only happen in China where worldwide ineradicable problems are not recognised as applying to China. They are, it seems, better than that.

[Mick Harper]

Every time David Miliband pops up on my telly screen, I reflect

1. If he had got 50.1% of the votes rather than 49.9% in the Labour leadership race, Labour would have won (or drawn) the 2015 general election.
2. No Brexit, Britain swanning happily into a rose-tinted future.
3. David Miliband popping up on my telly screen relentlessly.

I'm undecided.