Elsewhere (55)

Chris Snowdon, author of The Spirit Level Delusion, spends an evening with the New Economics Foundation:

The NEF recently revived its idea of restricting working hours to 21 hours per week as a means of creating full employment and achieving the work-life balance that is so cherished by wealthy, middle-aged academics. This idea - which can be most charitably described as ‘eye-catching’ - revolves around ‘redistributing time’ to deal with ‘time poverty.’ The twist is that, unlike with income redistribution, it is the indolent poor who will be the ones handing over their spare time to the over-worked rich in this zero-sum, leisure-heavy Shangri-La. […]

A bit of banker-bashing yielded the one and only round of applause of the night after an elderly gentleman asked how a reduced economy is supposed to pay for geriatric services. [Professor Robert] Skidelsky side-stepped the question by diverting the discussion towards the evergreen issue of bankers’ bonuses... Never mind. It was all good sport and it took our minds off the fact that several hundred reasonably intelligent people were sitting in a room discussing the prospect of making people happier by halving their incomes.

Tim Worstall on the same:

They also recommend that we do more of our own housework, make and mend more, darn socks and so on. Essentially, live as the poor of our grandparents’ time did… The NEF are quite deliberately insisting that we turn our backs on the division and specialisation of labour and go back to doing everything, ourselves, in our own households. This isn’t just perverse or stupid, it’s ignorant.

I particularly like Chris’ observation that some contributors were happy to ignore the data presented on their own charts, busying themselves instead with a collective denunciation of advertising, which apparently should either be taxed or, if possible, banned altogether. (No doubt George Monbiot would approve, given his stated belief that “advertising is a pox on the planet… driving us towards destruction.”) Newcomers should note that the NEF thrilled us with their socialist brainstorming not too long ago. Oh, how they brainstormed. Oh, how we laughed.

Via Ross, House of Dumb mulls the morality of Ken Loach:

Nothing sums up the demented nature of the modern left better than a soi-disant socialist party that supports taxing janitors in Leeds to give money to millionaire luvvies in London, so they can make films about how folk in Yorkshire are ignorant bigots.

For more, see this, this and this.

And Tim also tackles the great question of our time:

Why isn’t there a Grindr for lesbians?

By all means add your own.

Comments

[svh]

Oh, how they brainstormed. Oh, how we laughed.

I laughed too. Are these nef people bullshitting or are they really that dense?

[David]

svh,

“Are these nef people bullshitting or are they really that dense?”

I don’t think they’re necessarily dense. As Chris Snowdon notes, the NEFers include a number of (otherwise) intelligent people. It seems to me it’s more an imperviousness to reality, combined with a dislike of other people’s autonomy. For some people, totalitarian fantasies are quite intoxicating. Not least when rationalised as altruism and compassion.

[mlrosty]

"An olfactory artist has transported the stench of Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park to a Staten Island art gallery. “The Smell of a Critical Moment,” which opened yesterday at Doorways on Van Duzer Street, features 99 T-shirts that protesters wore for a week straight, without washing them. Artist Gayil Nalls distributed new white tees to OWSers and on Jan. 12 collected the body-odor-drenched shirts to capture the revolution’s essence."

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/01/195389/

[rabbit]

This "Let them eat diversity" attitude of our economically challenged left will be the impoverishment of us all.

[watcher]

NEF may well become the new reference point for brainless thinking. The result of their simple thoughts, that we can all be happier darning socks (if we can afford them in the first place, of course) could give rise to phrases like "You silly neffer," or even better: "Nef off!"

[sackcloth and ashes]

Ah, Ken Loach ... On the one hand, there's 'Cathy Come Home' and 'Kes'. But on the other, there's all the rest of that unwatchable dreck he's made. And then there's the issue of his obnoxious politics:

http://standpointmag.co.uk/overrated-july-09-ken-loach-film

He's a bit like Le Carre. He's a once-great artist gone to seed, and his opinions are now both pathetic and vile.

[David Gillies]

Organisations like the whimsically capitalised nef seem to me to exist on the sort of rarefied plane where one would in years gone by have found earnest convocations of priests arguing matters of ecclesiastical whimsy that have absolutely no bearing whatever on the outside world. I often think of the sub-plot in The Name of the Rose, where clerics from all over Europe gather to discuss the vexed question of whether Christ owned the clothes he wore, while round about the monastery the populace is mired in unspeakable ignorance and poverty. Apropos, also, are Swift's Projectors and their attempts to find the best mechanism for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. This is category error enshrined. It's so orthogonal to reality as to be, in the words of Wolfgang Pauli, "ganz falsch" or "not even wrong".

[David]

David Gillies,

“…extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.”

Utopianism is usually simple-minded and silly, but the NEFers are particularly laughable. I say they’re laughable, but of course these people would like to influence government policy and determine the shape of our lives. So it’s funny provided no-one grants them an inch of leverage.

[mojo]

Why isn't there a Grindr for kidnap/torture/killers?

Oh, wait...

[watcher]

Do people like NEF (and with them, the Occupy movement) ever stop to look around themselves? I wasn't at the NEF shebang, thank goodness as I would have a few things to say about lazy leftys, but I presume the meeting took place in a room that was weatherproof and moderately comfortable. Indeed, if it was in the evening there would be electric light (from a wind farm, they might hope, but probably more likely to be oil or nuclear power). I also assume the meeting was announced via the miracle of print or even on the interwebs.

So who, in this brave new world of NEF-noodle, is going to build the meeting hall, maintain the structure, supply electricity from consistently sourced supplies, set up the printing presses and provide the distribution, come up with ideas about new communication channels and do the necessary research into their development? Who is going to make the effort in their proposed nirvana to do something extraordinary?

Perhaps they believe that we have reached a peak of human ingenuity: we have everything we need so let us stop now. I believe in the Victorian age there were people who claimed we had reached the pinnacle of invention, but I believe subsequent events proved them wrong.

So what the lamentable NEF is saying is effectively: "We can't be bothered to be motivated to improve, we cannot be arsed to explore or create and we certainly have no truck with opening up new ideas. We have reached a point where we can demand everyone stops and be happy with what we have, especially if we stop now while I personally am ahead in terms of creature comforts."

But, dear NEF, what about the poor sods who poke and prod and ask "How about we try this?" or "Can we improve the way we do this?" or even "What's out there?" They would have to stop too, because there would be no point in anything other than being supposedly content not to ask.

[Mr Eugenides]

I'm sure you've seen this by now, but if not:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2012/01/occupy-movement-london

The people who live full or part-time in the camps can now be divided into roughly three categories: those who were homeless before the occupations, those who will shortly be homeless, and those who merely look homeless. [...] For the more media-savvy organisers of Occupy London, this has created something of a public relations dilemma.

I've switched round the order of those two sentences to make more sense out of context, but that last sentiment is still making me smile uncontrollably, twenty minutes on.

[Mr Eugenides]

And again: (it's taking all my self-control not to just repost Laurie's entire piece)

It should be noted that no amount of scrupulous cleaning stopped the police in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and other major cities from using the excuse of "unsanitary conditions" to evict protest camps calling for banking regulation -- it's infectious ideas, not infectious diseases, that really have the authorities worried. In London, some of the cleaner activists I meet, including those who have been involved in organising the camps from the start, quietly express the opinion that eviction might now be the best thing that could happen to the occupations. But not everyone agrees.

In the back room of the courthouse I meet Tom, 24, who describes himself as "tramp liaison". Like many members of the movement with less reliable access to showers, Tom has a lot to say about the way "sociology students in jumpers" are setting the agenda. "They talk about 'the homeless problem' at general assemblies, and I stand up and say, 'I'm homeless, are you talking about me?'," he says, sipping from a can of cheap Polish lager. "Yeah, there's definitely tension. All the camp beauraucrats will come up to you and say, 'oh, you can't roll a spliff in the uni tent', and I'm like, 'fuck off man, I'm an activist. I've been out fighting the EDL in Barking all morning'."

[David]

Mr E.,

Yes, it’s the trademark obliviousness that tickles. When in a hole and all that. Though I did like the fact she was at one point quoting someone called Spiral, a name that commands gravitas, I think you’ll agree.

What’s telling, I think, is the way Laurie tells us it’s all about “community” and “maintaining an honest counter-culture,” rather than, say, having definite, credible objectives and a realistic idea of how to implement them. Thus, the ostensible reason for pissing about can change as whim and fashion dictate, and the “protest” can go on indefinitely. What fun.

[ Added: ]

Actually, this non-specific grievance theatre was evident from the start, as when Laurie kept telling the credulous: “The space is its own demand… the occupation is its own demand.” In other words, “We can always think of some pretext to get noticed.” And so protest becomes evacuated of content; it’s now like a gap year. It’s something you just do.

[ Added: ]

As I said a while ago,

And so the “occupiers” complain about their shanty towns finally being scraped from the streets in an attempt to restore order and basic hygiene. And like so much else before it, this too is disingenuous. Given their behaviour and the growing squalor, what did they expect to happen? What was their exit strategy? At what point were they planning to clear up their garbage, pick up the excrement, apologise to the locals and go home peacefully?

[watcher]

"it's infectious ideas, not infectious diseases, that really have the authorities worried"

I beg to disagree, Ms Penny. It isn't infectious ideas that worry anyone, rather it's the unworkable and the unrealistic ideas and their slavish pursuit by unqualified and the unintelligent that cause the worry. While you have written a nice line of rhetoric, you only have to look at, say, communism to see how well an "infectious idea" worked out. Mind you, as for "the authorities" you could argue that communism simply adopted its own authoritarianism, which was only troubled by those who didn't agree with it.

[AC1]

The occupy rabble remind me of the underpant gnomes, just without plan parts 1 and 3...

[ErisGuy]

A tax on advertising? What a great idea. I advocate a 1000% percent tax on all public-service announcement advertising.

[watcher]

I think a limit on the size and number of public service ads placed in the Guardian would be a great start. It would save paper (and thus aid the planet) if they couldn't print all those outreach co-ordinator ads. Of course the lefties would struggle to find exciting new well-paid and utterly useless jobs, but then their beloved socialist masters worked hard to do that a few years ago for the ordinary person, so it's only fair...