tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18077334602322952012023-11-15T10:33:53.819-08:00Lost Among the Subway CrowdRSDavieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00714219328113071567noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807733460232295201.post-59655128496619961332012-02-29T06:27:00.002-08:002012-02-29T06:29:15.816-08:00Ultimately this is not about preserving the past, or regeneration, but about democracy<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool City Council has decided, as the
democratically elected representatives, to approve the Peel Holdings Ltd’s
development proposal, Liverpool Waters. In doing so it has placed itself on the
front-line of a national cultural conflict. The division centres upon the value
that the community, the nation and the various special interest groups place
upon the architectural and cultural inheritance of any and all communities in
the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">United Kingdom</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">English Heritage’s power and influence has grown
phenomenally since the 1970’s to the point that it has been able to shape </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s capacity to
respond to change. Culturally, Great Britain has, since the end of empire
following World War Two, rejected much of modernism, building upon late 19<sup>th</sup>
century reaction to the changes that industrialisation brought. The
self-presented positive image of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> has been dominated
by architecture and the environment, and the impulse to preserve a bucolic
past. As </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> struggled with the
loss of international status and the decline of economic power, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s establishment
resisted change and egalitarianism, and sought to maintain the advantages that
the inheritors of the feudal elite enjoyed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Thus while the British elites were content to utilise
the products of industrial </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">, such as machine
guns and Dreadnought battle ships, they rejected the centres that produced
them. The only residual component of these centres that is regarded as valuable
today is the major municipal and commercial architecture of that period. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> and Merseyside
exemplify this. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s cultural elites
valued the “Journeyman with his pack horse coming over the hill” and produced
the Arts & Crafts Movement. It had no significant equivalent for Bauhaus or
any of the other movements across industrialised </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Europe</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">. Their dominance
of education and the media ensured their political dominance, and led
ultimately to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s loss of its
industrial and commercial lead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Those factions, like English heritage, that demand that
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> and Merseyside preserve for posterity the 19<sup>th</sup>
century city environment are the same that repeatedly remind everyone that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s wealth was built
on slavery. This assertion carries with it a sense of assignment of guilt
specific to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> and its current inhabitants. It is not
entirely dissimilar to the unfair opprobrium directed towards young Germans
regarding the Holocaust. It is conveniently ignored that the entirety of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">, and especially
the City of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">London</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">, benefited from
slavery.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">This repeated concentration on the slave trade, leads
to other events and developments being overlooked. Merseyside, like many other
northern industrial and commercial centres, was also a centre for positive
innovation and social progress. It was not by chance that today’s Russell Group
of universities was overwhelmingly located in the industrial north. Whether it
is the world’s first </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">School</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Tropical Medicine</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Birkenhead</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Park</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">, “Penny in the Pound”
worker health insurance or any number of construction innovations, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s commitment to
innovation led the world, and arguably had more importance globally than any of
the physical environment that English Heritage and UNESCO seek to preserve. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s current city
environment was the product of a culture committed to innovation and modernity of
its day, and reflected the community’s culture. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s culture was
centred upon trade and sustained through the employment it created.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Since World War Two Liverpool has struggled to redefine
itself and recover from the impact of the extensive bombing damage, changes in
international trade and an almost constant stream of negativism directed at by
the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">UK</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s media. That </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> has survived as a
city at all is quite surprising, given that by the 1980’s even the British
government was willing to voice consideration of formally abandoning it. Thus
while the nation, and international bodies like UNESCO, place inordinate value
upon a number of buildings in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">, it does not
exhibit the same degree of interest or value for the people of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> nor their ability
to sustain this architectural inheritance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">It is as though English Heritage and UNESCO regard </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> and other
communities as little more than theme parks that visitors may descend upon for
their entertainment. They are indifferent to the well-being of the community
that lives in and around these architectural edifices they value so much. They
have no interest in how these environments will be sustained. As publicly
funded bodies their existence is informed by their own culture that posits them
as “Guardians of the Public Interest”, yet neither of them is subject to the
democratic process. They arrogate to themselves the right to define the “Public
Interest” that they are defending. In their arrogance they assume that all
“right thinking” communities will place priority upon the preservation of
environmental inheritance above that of community well-being and economic
development.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">The Liverpool Waters development offers </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> the opportunity to
turn around its fortunes and once more emerge as a commercial powerhouse, able
to provide all of its communities with gainful employment and a decent standard
of living. As commercial operator Peel Holdings Ltd is driven by the need to
generate profits and cannot call upon a vast public purse to fund its
activities, unlike English Heritage and others. As a developer Peel Holdings
has a prime interest in ensuring that these developments are successful and
self-sustaining. The by-product of such a major development should be the
heightening of Liverpool & Merseyside’s international profile as a place to
do business, and thus attract greater inward investment and be a catalyst for
wider regeneration. But it is at a price, and that price is the destruction of
some part of the older environment and changes in the city’s appearance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">English Heritage is threatening to seek Ministerial
intervention and a public enquiry, and with it a delay at best to the renaissance
of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">. Peel Holdings Ltd has, understandably, stated that
they will abandon the development if this occurs. Understandably because they
cannot stand still waiting for the process to end, while there are business
opportunities elsewhere. If this occurs, then the market will respond
accordingly and relegate </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> to the league of
cities where developers cannot turn a profit. Once that occurs, then </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> residents might as
well abandon the city as they will have effectively lost control of it. They
will be like the impoverished aristocrat who finds themselves owner of a grand
pile, unable to dispose of it but unable to maintain it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">English Heritage, and to a lesser extent UNESCO,
demonstrate their total disdain for the democratic process and the expression
of the popular will. Further neither English Heritage nr UNESCO show any
consideration for the balance between authority and responsibility. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s built
environment is the product of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s communities, and
remains responsible for it. Yet knowing that Liverpool’s democratic leadership
have considered all the issues openly and decided to pursue a path towards city
revival, English Heritage has determined to ignore that and seek to oppose the
proposed development. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Although English Heritage might claim that its mandate
affords it the responsibility for challenging proposals it finds unacceptable,
it is in fact authority and power that it possesses. It has no responsibility
for the consequences arising from its actions. It will not compensate </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> and its
inhabitants for the lost opportunities, neither will it reimburse </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> for the
maintenance of the current city environment. The management and officers of
English Heritage will not live in the urban decay of Kensington or any other
run down part of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">, and more than they will stand in
the dole queues for the want of work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">UNESCO’s threat to down-grade </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’ status as a
“World Heritage Site” is, for most </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> residents,
probably fairly meaningless. What proportion of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s inhabitants
derives its income from this status and city tourism? Tourism and other service
sector employment is notoriously insecure and poorly paid, and is often dependent
upon other industries to create wealth to sustain the city environment that it
relies on. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">English Heritage and UNESCO regard </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">’s inheritance
solely in terms of its built environment, and in doing so show disregard for
its powerful and creative community-based culture. Towards the end of last year
I attended the final evening of the Liverpool Music Week and witnessed in
microcosm the spirit of Merseyside culture in the form of the “Infinite Love Orchestra”
performance as an example of international, collaborative, innovative
professionalism. It was a small “brick” of an intangible and constantly
evolving inheritance of very distinctive culture that is Merseyside. It cannot
be listed for preservation, nor awarded some accreditation by UNESCO, yet it is
upon these inherent values that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> will experience a
renaissance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">I believe that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> is at a crossroads
and whatever is the outcome of this will determine whether it will experience a
revival or simply drift endlessly into irrevocable decline. It is clash between
cultures and communities. If </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> inhabitants simply
stand silently hoping that the government will do the right thing and quickly
consider all the factors, then they are probably in for disappointment. English
Heritage knows that if it can force a public inquiry then it can stop this development
dead in its tracks, and that Peel Holdings Ltd will walk away. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">I urge the people of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> to vocally take a
stand and express their will very publicly. Their democratic representatives
have made a decision on their behalf, which an unrepresentative quango, English
Heritage, is seeking to overturn. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">The government has placed special emphasis upon local
decision making and the strengthening of local communities, where those
communities take authority and responsibility for their futures. In making the
decision for </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> to approve this development, Liverpool
Council signaled its will, and that of the people of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">, to take the
responsibility for their future. It is therefore the duty of this government to
respect that expression and support that decision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Ultimately this is not about some old buildings, or a
cityscape, it is about democracy and communities taking responsibility for
building a sustainable future. English Heritage has had its opportunities to
articulate its objections and offer a viable alternative. Having lost the
argument, it should gracefully accept the will of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Liverpool</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> people and work
with them to find some common ground to preserve what it values.</span></div>RSDavieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00714219328113071567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807733460232295201.post-85218724457592384082012-02-23T05:52:00.000-08:002012-02-23T05:52:41.667-08:00And what of the majority of women?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the
recently published Forbes magazine (no I don’t’ normally read it) there was featured
the publication of “Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets: Why Women
are the Solution.” by S.A. Hewitt. It trumpeted the rise in the number of women
attending and graduating university in a number of developing countries. (http://blogs.forbes.com/sylviaannhewlett/)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">While for
those individual women who are now attending university in the cited countries
it is clearly an achievement. But I have serious doubts whether this will have
any positive impact on women as a whole, and may well an overall negative
impact if the patterns of social development in those countries mimics that of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">UK</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">UK</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> we consider that we are a broadly
egalitarian society where men and women have equal opportunities, but we
recognise that women still face apparent barriers to entry into certain areas
of employment. What we do not examine in any depth is the perception of
opportunity and the realities of choice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Feminism has
posited the notion that women by right should have the right to choose from a range
of lifestyle and career options ranging from pursuit of a professional career
to being a stay at home parent, and any permutation in between. Feminists have
successfully politicked for regulatory frameworks and the provision of public
services to provide the exercise of choice. The Feminist paradigm also promoted
the concept that women could revise their lifestyle decisions at will, and
expect society to facilitate this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">But for men
such range of choice does not exist, and I would argue that the entire feminist
paradigm is based upon men not seeking to exercise choice. Broadly for men
there is but one choice, work or unemployment. As we can see reinforced by
endless advertising and other media activity, men with poor earning potential
are excluded from enjoying the opportunity of family and relationships with
women. Comparing and contrasting advertisements for proprietary healthcare
products highlights this, where positive health for women leads to exploration
of potential, empowerment, socialisation etc. But for in the case of marketing
to men it is primarily focussed on either functionality (i.e end of pain) or
the maintenance of economic status. There is no offer of quality of life improvement
or empowerment for men through health. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">A decade or
so ago, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">UK</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> media and social commentators asserted
that “Men Are In Crisis”, and there were a vast number of articles written
about this. At the heart of this was the concern that boys are not doing as
well in school and thus not securing such good jobs. In the conferences that
followed it was women who composed the bulk of the audiences. Rather than it appearing
to be a crisis for men, it appeared and was a crisis for women. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">The crisis
for women is as follows. If boys and men are not motivated to apply themselves
to study and secure good jobs, then their earnings will be less and the
likelihood of long term unemployment greater. The consequences of this is that
men will not have surplus income to be able to support women’s choices and
women’s reliance on the public sector to provide services and employment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the
preceding decade there are been many interventions to assist women into
employment and to promote girls / women’s interests. There developed, funded by
the public sector, an entire industry in providing women with a variety of
courses / workshops to empower women. Public and private sector funding set up
training programmes for “Women Returners” in potentially medium to high skill,
and traditionally male dominated, sectors. But by the late 1990’s it was clear
that participation for a large number of women had been determined by their
desire to defer entering the workforce, rather than an interest in entering those
fields. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">With the rise
of Feminism since the late 1960’s, in parallel there has also been a massive
change in men’s real earnings. Whereas in 1970 it took approximately 36% of an
average man’s wage to provide accommodation for his family, by the 2005 this had
risen to 70%+. In effect men’s purchasing power in relation to housing has fallen
to the level of the average woman in full time employment in 1970. Although
women’s notional pay in relation to men had risen during this period, their purchasing
power had actually fallen slightly. Had it not been for the massive supply of
very cheap food and clothing during this period, the entire economic model would
have collapsed. Thus the lower down you were as either a man or woman in
society the less choice you had regarding your lifestyle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the bottom
end of the working class, women had always had to seek paid employment to
augment the family income. It was in the skilled working class and in the
middle classes where women did not generally work once they were married, and
many never took paid employment at any point in their lives. The Women’s
Movement of the 19<sup>th</sup> century had not forgotten the lessons of the
1840’s Mines Act which excluded women and children from the workplace. Despite
predictions of economic catastrophe for those mining communities, it was found
that the standard of living improved as it created a labour shortage, and drove
up wages. This in turn compelled mine owners to invest in machinery to improve efficiency,
and society to start establishing primary schools to cater for the now
unemployed children. Thus the Women’s Movement and the Trades Unions were in
agreement that married women should be excluded from the workplace and actively
sought to promote this.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Post-war
Feminism demanded initially that women should have an equal opportunity to
access employment and progressed to promoting the idea that women, even with
dependents, should be in employment. Paid employment for women was promoted as
fulfilling, and repeated surveys indicate that women do value the social
aspects of work. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">As women
entered the workforce in large numbers, they demanded that their incomes were
taken into consideration by the banks and building societies when applying for
mortgages. In theory, women’s wages should have contribute to family wealth and
thus choice. But in practice the housing market simply responded with price escalations
driven by the scarcity of housing and the available money. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">For successful
professional women, these changes in the socio-economic balance had little
impact, for those women in the lower end of society it brought little if any
benefit. As men and women struggled to maintain family units, it became often
economically beneficial to seek separation and divorce with the public sector
funding their decision and protecting them from economic catastrophe. Divorces
became characterised by battles over custody as the bulk of community property
and access to welfare followed the children. As society became more and more
consumerist, men with their declining purchasing power became increasingly
marginalised and the object of opprobrium. Despite society being still
dependent upon men conforming to traditional patterns and seeking life time
employment, men as a group became a target for an endless stream of Feminist
condemnation. Feminist pundits progressed to asking “what is the purpose of men
and have they any future meaningful role in society?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Even where
men challenged some aspects of this, feminist political influence engineered
functional inequality. Thus with the ready availability of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">DNA</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> testing men could for the first
time definitively challenge paternity claims. The </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">UK</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> parliament in a late night sitting
passed legislation that denied men the right to seek to establish their
paternity of a child without the mother’s or a court’s permission. Further the
Family Courts ruled that a “named father” could not, despite not being the
biological father, abdicate his responsibility for any child born within the
marriage if it was not in the child’s interest. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Feminists had
achieved this by becoming part of the establishment and being able to assert
overwhelming political influence. At the end of the 1990’s the Royal College of
Nursing passed a resolution calling upon the newly elected Labour government to
align funding on clinical priorities. The </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">RCN</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> claimed that the allocation of
funding was politically driven, with lower clinical priority women’s treatments
being promoted at the expense of men. The minister responded that if men wanted
better health they could either change their lifestyles or purchase health services
from the private sector, and that the government was not willing to re-assign
funding. At the time less than 12% of NHS funds were spent on men.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">The above
example highlights the degree to which feminists had shifted from seeking
equality, to securing advantage. In doing so they made a mockery of the notion
that public services were based upon the concept of being needs based.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Boys and
young men could readily look at the world around them and could only wonder
what motivation was there to engage in society, if society showed such scant
interest in them. The further down the economic scale they were, the
opportunities to participate in society seemed to be. They were assailed with
profoundly negative statements in the media. They witnessed their father’s and
other men being daily marginalised within the family and society at large.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">For the women
around them, mothers, teachers and girlfriends, this was also a bewildering situation.
These working class men could not longer provide the security and stability
that the pre-1980’s men, their fathers, had delivered, and most of all the
choices that Feminism promised. While education and egalitarianism in the
workplace afforded women the opportunity to secure paid employment and develop
careers, the loss of men’s earning power meant that they lost the choice to be “stay
at home” mothers to bring up their children as their mothers has done. Those
that did seek to combine home and work, had to rely on expensive child-care
that often consumed almost all their earnings, and their husbands worked longer
and longer hours.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">When the
European Working Time Regulations was first mooted it immediately became a
major political issue in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">UK</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> as so many people, mainly men,
worked far in excess of the recommended 48 hours. Industry had also come to
depend on this long hours culture and had built its business model around it.
Towards the end of Tony Blair’s term in office, he proudly stated that there
were more people in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">UK</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> in employment than at any time in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">’s history. He omitted to mention
that despite all this work being undertaken and wages earned, the gulf between
the rich and poor had widened to reverse the achievements of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Proudly
announcing that, in one country or another, increasing numbers of women are
present in tertiary education is in itself meaningless. These women are an
elite who are unlikely to share in the experiences of women in the bottom half
of society. As an elite they will join the establishment, and like all members
of establishments seek to preserve and extend their advantages. Their access to
political and economic power will enable them to shape society in accordance
with their wishes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">United Kingdom</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">, the battle is no longer about
gender but about class, and class unity. While in popular expression husbands
and wives became referred to as “partners” as though co-join in some union. Yet
Feminism dealt in polarities, and the division of men and women. The Feminist
paradigm posited men and women in eternal battle against each other. The division
in the working class that Feminism has sown has led the poorest and weakest in
society into catastrophe. To reverse this will require massive structural and
attitudinal change in society, and requires the elites to relinquish much of
their power and wealth.</span></div>
RSDavieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00714219328113071567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807733460232295201.post-21445181894782382382012-02-20T14:49:00.001-08:002012-02-20T14:49:52.549-08:00The Eternal Page 3 Issue<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">For those
alien to the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">United Kingdom</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> they may be unaware the Page3 is a
reference to the Sun newspaper’s page 3 image of a topless young woman. A
number of decades ago it was seen as a tad risqué but fairly harmless. The
young women concerned were posited as being wholesome “girl next door” types.
However in the age of feminism, the Page3 image attracted complaint by
feminists, but not enough to remove it from the Sun newspaper. In fact it was
copied by others.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the
Leveson inquiry Anna van Heeswijk, representing a collection of feminist
groups, told the inquiry: "Page 3 tabloids contribute to a culture in
which the value of women and girls is reduced to their appearance." Jennie
Bristow offered another view in the Spiked blog. (<a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9922/">http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9922/</a>).
Zoe Williams, the Guardian journalist, saw it as the Sun baiting feminists, but
quite frankly I doubt that the Sun staff think feminists are worth the candle.
Yet all these women miss a fundamental issue. Harriet Harman called for the Sun
to be banned or removed from general accessibility in shops (i.e. top shelf)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">If Page 3 of
the Sun and similar depictions of women objectivise women, then so too does a
vast proportion of advertising and other activity in our society, including
that of feminists, objectivise men. The band the Good Charlotte summed it up
succinctly, “Girls don’t like boys, girls like cars and money.”, and millions
of men can readily acknowledge this to be their experience. The recent </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">ING</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> advertising campaign depicted a
number of scenes in which men were faced with women’s demands for material
goods without any regard to their ability to pay for them, and by implication
would need the loans that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">ING</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> offer. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">The most extreme
of these was the scene of a couple looking at engagement rings in a jeweller’s
window. The man points out something he can afford, to which the woman responds
“oh no, that looks cheap. I want that one” presumably pointing to the most
expensive ring in the window. The man looks on despairingly (his chest explodes
with an “Air Bag like in a car) and doesn’t say a word. The male viewer knows
implicitly that to deny this woman her desire for an expansive and unaffordable
ring would result in the relationship breaking down in some way. The message is
for the man “if you want the girl you provide the money”. For the woman it
validates a stance where intimacy and the continued relationship is secured through
the provision of expensive goods. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Peculiarly
feminists are seemingly silent regarding such adverts. Even though ostensibly
the depicted woman is implicitly trading her body for money, and is in effect
no different than a prostitute. Feminist’s silence effectively adds to
validating such behaviour and reduces men to objects to be exploited. No wonder
some men in return regard women with such disdain. Sadly this attitude towards
men is repeated in varying degrees in a number of adverts. Fortunately none of
the current advertisements are as bad as some of a decade ago, where women in
permanent relationships were shown successfully using the withdrawal of
intimacy (sex), manipulation of children against their fathers and isolation in
the home as acceptable mechanisms to secure men’s acquiescence to unaffordable
credit purchases. In one very successful ad campaign the man’s discomfiture and
powerlessness was clearly depicted.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">A man walking
into a high street newsagents and browsing the magazines, cannot help but
notice that the majority of leading women’s magazines are strongly focussed on
how to get better sexual performance. Other than top shelf pornography, men’s
magazines are largely devoid of any sexual content.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">For the
average married man, he must surely wonder why it is that single and married
women seem so obsessed with sex but the experience of married men indicates the
opposite. He must surely question whether women’s interest in sex is either a
harmless fantasy centred on a fantasy male, or what women in general will do in
order to secure the man of their dreams. Either way the average married man
knows it doesn’t apply to him anymore. Even single men, whose sex lives are
infinitely more active, know full well that while women might intimate that sex
will be the finale to an indulgently expensive evening, the reality is that
women always have the choice to change their minds. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Even little
girls are encouraged to regard men as objects. Fairy stories such as
Cinderella, Snow White and others, repeatedly present men as featureless
objects without agency or personality. In the pantomime Cinderella, Buttons the
powerless peer is asexual at best. Despite his obvious concern for Cinderella’s
well-being, he can never aspire to be her partner due to powerlessness, poverty
and class and Cinderella is indifferent to his feelings for her. The entire
story focuses on Cinderella’s machinations to obtain status, power and wealth,
and above all uncritical adulation. The men, her Father and Prince Charming,
are featureless entities subservient to the will of women. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">If we look at
the modern epitome of girl’s play, the ubiquitous Barbie, we find that Ken is
merely an accessory with no greater worth than the handbag or car. Feminists
attacked Barbie believing her to depict women as subservient sexual objects.
What they missed is that Barbie as a plaything present women as having choice,
and men as objects to be used and discarded at will. This little plastic model
is primarily about how women egotistically relate to one another and compete
for resources. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">The little
girl who owns Barbie invests the toy with personality to act out her fantasies
as an adult woman. There is no distinction between her fantasy and herself, no
requirement for skills or knowledge. Any averagely developed girl can be
Barbie. Doesn’t the media endlessly say she can, and feminists for their part
do not demur. Herein is the distinction between classic boys and girls play. In
boys’ fantasies of being a footballer, soldier, and so one there is a skill and
ability requirement. Boys know from the outset that to be the figure on TV
requires the development of skills and knowledge, and that for most there will
be disappointment. They know that they cannot buy the realisation of their
fantasy. If they buy football shirts, they know that they remain the same, a
kid with a football shirt Whereas for women there is a vast marketing industry
based on the notion that women can buy their fantasy through cosmetics and
clothes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Women’s
desperate need for validation and the profound sense of inadequacy is exploited
mercilessly by the marketing industry. The volume of advertising targeting men
is dwarfed by that target women. Negative images of women are not permissible
in advertising, whereas men are readily the object of derision and dismissal. The
power of marketing directed at women is immense and highly effective. Concepts
such as “Must Have” are alien in the male market. But to satisfy this generated
demand, women need access to men’s earning capacity and credit worthiness, and
to achieve that they must hold out some inducement. An intellectual exchange
would not produce the goods, simply because both parties would recognise that
buying unnecessary goods is in no one’s interests. Thus women’s bodies become
the marketing tool with techniques to raise awareness (push-up bra’s etc) and
the implied promise of satisfaction. Unfortunately for men they have no
recourse to Trading Standards if the delivered goods and services prove to be
disappointing. But nevertheless the exchange has all the hallmarks of a
commercial deal.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">If women are
encouraged to regard men as objects to be manipulated to obtain material goods
and money, then it is little wonder that men cynically return the compliment
and reduce women to being objects. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">But is the
Page3 girl evidence of this objectivisation? Daily she is depicted smiling and
not the least bit sexually provocative. She is the embodiment of most men’s
real fantasy and ambition. She is ultimately the pretty girl next door who
wants nothing more than a relationship between equals, a partnership. She
doesn’t make the production of endless consumer durables and luxuries the
condition for her affections. She doesn’t need the endless pandering to a
profound sense of inadequacy that a vast proportion of women demand. But she is
also unattainable fantasy and men know it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>RSDavieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00714219328113071567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807733460232295201.post-91857591786687800282012-02-14T14:29:00.001-08:002012-02-14T14:29:59.226-08:00National Service – Hypocrisy at its worst<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Every decade has its crisis with “youth” and it seems that
there is always a faction that calls for the return of National Service. This
faction asserts that National Service would reintroduce into society that
self-discipline that it is allegedly missing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Somehow forcing young people, mainly young men, to don
ill-fitting uniforms and heavy boots, march up and down and do largely
pointless things, like painting coal white, would foster an inner desire for
self-discipline. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not only do the National Service faction seem to think that military
service is a source of self-discipline, but they also imagine that young
criminals would also benefit from the same rigours. Quite what training young
criminals to the peak of fitness and in the use of a variety of firearms would
do to reduce crime figures is frankly beyond me. Surely it would simply mean
that once these young tearaways were demobbed they’d simply be able to run away
faster and if cornered shoot their way out of the situation. Not exactly
conducive to decriminalising “youth”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most striking characteristic of the National Service
faction is that they are generally too old to be required to endure it
themselves, but too young to have done National Service in their youth. It is
of course just another instance of gross hypocrisy among our 30+ generations.
If, of course, these older persons were standing in line begging the TAVR
(Territorial Army Reserve Force) to be let in to do their bit, one could look
at it differently. But they are not. Most likely they are entrenched in their
sofas watching the television and listening to the latest over-hyped report
about Britain’s
broken society and wayward younger generations. It should not be forgotten that
no male born after 1942 has been subjected to National Service (it ended in
1960), and that makes the last National Service man about 70 years old. So what
is National Service?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well bluntly it’s an arrangement by which the government
compels you to leave your home for a period (18 months) and live in a communal
facility with little concession to privacy with a bunch of people you wouldn’t
choose to be with. The government conveniently suspends your basic human rights
and denies you the opportunity to freely leave. It demands that you learn to
kill and maim, using traditional and hi-tech weaponry. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you decline to participate in this activity the
government awards itself the right to charge you with various offences and
potentially imprison you. If you choose to leave without permission, then the
government as representative of the greater community awards itself the right
to dispatch its agents, burly military police personnel not known for their
delicate handling of arrestees, to bring you back and face trial. Of course if
you are a university student you could get deferment and hope that your late
teens and early twenties drug consumption renders you unfit. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However if you don’t happen to have sufficient
qualifications and parental financial resources, you are likely receive through
your letter box a terse invitation to attend a medical at the age of 17 and 9
months. This may be very inconvenient for any number of reasons (i.e. you may
have just met the woman of your dreams, be on the cusp of getting that job, be
in the middle of an apprenticeship), but if you correspond to “Fodder, Canon
for the use of” off you jolly well go. Of course if you are unfit (obese,
anorexic, drug induced paranoid etc) they won’t want you. But if you’ve had
your “5-A-Day” and kept yourself trim, then you’re exactly the material they
will take.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The big day comes and off you go to waste 18 months of your
precious youth doing nothing of any value whatsoever. There aren’t any decent
sized wars either (underway or planned) so you won’t get to use any of the
skills you acquire, and the nation can’t afford to start one for you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of it, you’re back on “Civvy
Street” and if you’re lucky your job has been held
open for you. But the fat, asthmatic, flat-footed slob who was your colleague,
who was rejected at the medical, has completed his studies and been promoted
and could well be your supervisor. Of course your employer may have gone bust
as all its plans to utilise you as a trained and newly qualified craftsperson went
down the pan once you disappeared into the Army, and they couldn’t replace you
because the generous government had passed a law to prevent it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may have been further disenchanted if the feminists in
government insisted that young women were exempted, as they were during the
post-war National Service. So while you’re wandering about on the pittance the
government pays you while on National Service, your (former?) girlfriend,
sister, female colleague, former fellow secondary student is partying on the
higher salary she receives due to the sudden labour shortage caused by the
disappearance of all the fit young men on National Service. In response you
drink yourself silly on cheap supermarket beer, while you wait for the
inevitable “Dear John” txt to appear on your mobile phone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But really this wont be a prison sentence, they’ll let you
have leave once in a while. They’ll even pay for the journey in the form of a
travel warrant. Of course the army will have posted you as far away from your
home town as they can achieve, and so there you are standing on some drab
station waiting for a train. Provided the rail operator doesn’t cancel it and
there’s no weekend engineering works, you get home almost a day later. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Naturally you’ll travel most of the way with your new found
National Service mates, and having no better way to pass the time you’ll have
polished off several crates off beer long before you’re anywhere near home.
Naturally having spent the previous three months in the company of other men,
you’ll be keen to re-acquaint yourself with the opposite sex. However,
excessive alcohol consumption, fast food, train compartments and young women
rarely mix, and can easily result in any number of anti-social outcomes. All of
which are encompassed in the ready descriptions that were used to justify the
return of National Service.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you make it home without be arrested and charged, you may
soon find yourself wishing you hadn’t bothered. Even if you haven’t received
the “Dear John” txt from your girlfriend, the embarrassed silence at home when
you mention phoning her will quickly tell you what’s she’s overlooked. Even if
you deal with it calmly, it will be tremendously galling to go down town to
find that there she is in the company of the overweight asthmatic former
colleague who’s recently been promoted to the supervisory post over your
“reserved” job. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course for the middle aged person sat in front of their television
with the same company night after night, National Service doesn’t look so bad.
For the balding father the idea of being compelled to participate in seeming
pointless activity for the benefit of someone else may not be very different
from daily life. The same father might indeed welcome separation from his
spouse and have little issue with the lack of sexual intimacy in a barrack
room. There being little substantive difference between the barrack and the
“master bedroom”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But for the 18 year old to be condemned to waste 18 months
in some far flung barracks for no earthly reason, other than the desire among
the old to punish the young, is a tragedy of epic proportions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Frankly we haven’t the morale right to do this to our young,
if we are not prepared to volunteer ourselves first. So let all those who call
for the reintroduction of National Service line up now and put themselves
forward to be first.</div>RSDavieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00714219328113071567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807733460232295201.post-7174865315575955922012-02-13T15:20:00.001-08:002012-02-13T15:29:47.400-08:00Titanic Man<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like many of you, I grew up with images of classic films
where the men are expected to give priority to vulnerable women and children. These
men were portrayed as sterling, stalwart individuals who put aside their
interests for the interests of the vulnerable. For the purposes of this article
I have called these men “Titanic Man”. We all know the scene where the SS
Titanic, holed by an iceberg, is sinking. The ships officers call out “Women
and children first!” The few panic striken men who seek self-preservation and
push their way into the lifeboat queue, possibly even dressed as women, are
clearly depicted as craven cowards. In the lounge the all male band plays on,
while other men calmly sit down to smoke and drink, and await their fate. The
“Titanic Men” are the paragon that society espouses for men generally, and
ideal that all boys should aspire to be. Thus at the beginning of the 20th
century the male ideal was a man who sacrificed his life for inherently
vulnerable women and children.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite heroism of “Titanic Man”, I find myself questioning
the rationale for this ideal. How and why in a society where men were
principally the sole breadwinners, and where men held all the power, and there
is a surfeit of women and children, is it in the interests of society that men
should be sacrificed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the early 20<sup>th</sup> century Britain
was a place where widows and orphans were vulnerable, as they had been in
previous centuries. In a world where men’s wages far exceeded those of women’s,
and that many women had few employable skills, the loss of a husband could be
a tragedy from which a family might never recover. The majority of men on the
SS Titanic would have had wives and children back home who depended upon their
ability to earn money.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the decks of the Titanic, we are shown the men who as
individuals stand aside and let the women and children survive. The men stand
there stoically as the last life boat is lowered, and resign themselves to a
freezing end in the North Atlantic.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Behind the majority of these stoical male figures positioned
across the decks of the SS Titanic existed a very large number of women and
children dependent on their husbands’ and fathers’ wages. As the SS Titanic
slipped below the waves, these women and children were rendered widows and
orphans. Despite their losses, their voices remain largely unheard and
certainly never given tongue in any of the films. Even if we put aside the
emotional impact of these losses for widows and orphans, the economic and
societal impacts of the loss of these men is considerable.<br />
In a society
dominated materially and legally by men, the loss of a male head of household
is a tragedy almost beyond measure. In an environment where women cannot hope
to earn enough to replace their husbands earnings, widowhood would result in
perpetual impoverishment and dependency upon charity. For the orphans not only
do they lose their father, and important figure in a patriarchal society, but
they also lose opportunity. The impoverished child lacks access to learning and
the materials for learning. They are likely to be compelled to leave school and
go to work at an early age, whereas they may have remained in school and have
progressed beyond it if their father had lived.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If on the other hand a woman perishes beneath the Atlantic
waves, she may leave behind a widower and children but in a world where there
was a surfeit of women her husband has a greater chance of remarrying. As a man
he has greater earning capacity and could buy child-care services in the form
of a maid. If a child died, it was of course tragic but not catastrophic. One
only has to view the registers for the late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup>
centuries to be aware that infant and child mortality was extremely high
compared with the 21<sup>st</sup> century. Children are however dependants and
the economic loss of a child is negligible compared with that of a man at this
time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If we look beyond these simple familial associations and
consider that in a world where men are the captains of industry, the loss of
key male corporate figures could have consequences far beyond the realms of
their families. Imagine the capitalist industrial innovator whose imagination
and management skills have forged new industries, and upon whose capacities are
built immense industries. If these men die, the need for transfer of power to
the successor management is inherently problematic. They might not have
immediate and identified successors who can quickly grasp the reins. In this
case the banks may lose faith and call in their loans. The consequence could be
the collapse of the enterprise, and for the employees and their dependents it
could mean long term unemployment and poverty in a world without a social
safety-net. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thus we find ourselves with this bizarre paradigm. In a
society in which men created virtually all the wealth and upon whose wealth
creation women and children are dependent, the epitome of masculinity is the
man who sacrifices himself regardless of the consequences for himself and his
dependents. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Titanic Man was an irrational model at the beginning of the
20<sup>th</sup> century, and remains so. In today’s world, where women demand
equality, men should not be expected to put aside their interests for
self-preservation and the interests of their dependants for the interests of
some anonymous woman or child. Yet we still as a society cling to the notion of
“Titanic Man”. While we might debate whether men should continue to display
deference to women by opening doors and surrendering seats on public transport,
we still expect men to be stoical. The vast inequality in state health care
provision in UK
between men and women exemplifies this. No one looks back to the days of
National Service and raises the profoundly inequality contained in it where it
only applied to men.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Coward remains a pejorative term when applied to men. In
fact it is rarely if ever applied to women. Yet if women are men’s equals then
the expectation of self-sacrifice should be the same. We retain at the heart of
our society the notion that men should be able to put aside their urge for
self-preservation and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good. Where
women do carry out traditional male roles, such as in the armed forces, and die
in the course of that, they are distinct exceptions and eulogised for it. While
we might have current media and thus political attention given to the men that
are injured and killed in the armed forces, they do not receive the same degree
of attention and there very few of them compared with earlier larger conflicts.
For those of the post-war generation they will recall that the casualties
(physical and psychological) of WW2 received very little care and concern,
often bordering on aggressive intolerance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Titanic Man” is a Victorian / Edwardian anachronism that
needs to be swept away. Men should not be expected to put aside their desire
for self-preservation and self-interest any more than women. Women might like
to cite that they sacrifice themselves for their families by doing a
disproportionate amount of housework, but they have a major self-interest in
making sure that their homes are tidy and clean. Indeed their allegedly
disproportionate contribution to the household provides them with significant
influence where they define the standards and style for the home they live in.
No amount of housework is quite as demanding as being willing to go to your
death for the sole benefit of a stranger.</div>RSDavieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00714219328113071567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807733460232295201.post-63762521181799002522012-02-13T15:13:00.000-08:002012-02-13T15:30:21.679-08:00Power Elites Destroy CommunitiesThe phrase "Power Elites Destroy Communities" seems a given because we all see others as the "Power Elite". They are the bankers, opinion formers and so in our society, and we can see the damage they do.<br />
But actually they are often us, and the worst groups are "Resident Representative Groups" who form themselves into factions to assert their power over the area they live. Residents have the vote, if they are over 18 years of age, and through the ballot box they can assert influence, and between elections they can use the threat of the electoral power to influence outcomes. MP's and Councillors react swiftly to "Resident Representative Groups" demands for action, and as a consequence councils and other government administration respond to their demands.<br />
Residents perceive that because they have invested in housing and chosen to live somewhere they are possession of the right to determine the characteristic of an area. Thus while the stakeholders in a viable community are both residential and commercial interests, it is only the residents who have a vote. Commerce may seek to represent their views, but at the end of the day it is only the residents who can cast a ballot. (Of course businesses can seek to influence politics through party donations) <br />
Thus in an agro-industrial area where animals and plants are husbanded for food, and which provides employment across a complex economic chain, for their activities to be curtailed or suspended through resident action. With the trend to purchase country cottages among the urban wealthy, the prevalence of residents with no historic or economic connection with the agro-industrial economy has grown phenomenally. These inward migrant residents can then through the ballot box and through "Resident Representative Group" power seek to prevent the local agro-industrial enterprises (farms) from continuing their normal business activities if any aspect fo it has a negative impact upon the inward migrant residents' lives. Thus if the newcomers don't like the smell of cows and pigs wafting through their homes, they can demand that the council takes action.<br />
One could of course ask why these people moved to an agro-industrial / country environment when they object to the smells or noises connected with these business concerns. Their counter is that it is their right to live as they wish and their choice is determined by their desire for "country" views. They overlook the fact that out countryside looks the way it does because of the agro-industrial / farming business concerns.<br />
In the last few days an article was put out by a blogger in Liverpool regarding a complaint about noise from a music venue from an inner city resident. (http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2012/02/noise-debate-at-static-gallery/) While the issues relating to this incident are not significant, what is significant is the reaction by Liverpool Council and the consequences for the venue.<br />
In response to the complaint, the venue has had its entertainments license suspended and cannot stage any amplified music events. The particular venue has only ever had this single complaint against it. But a venue is not just a venue, it is ostensibly a production facility for entertainment that provides employment and attracts inward investment that shapes the nature of the city. Were for instance a factory to open its doors in the middle of the night and a dreadful noise poured out. to which the residents complained, the Council would certainly attend but they would prevent the factory from continuing production as it would threaten employment. But music and arts are not regarded in the same manner, because we assign them other values. Nevertheless nightclubs, bars and venues are places of production, and they cluster in places where there ancillary support services and transport infrastructure, just like any other industry. Late night venues also contirbute significantly to local economies as their customers often start the evening at other places such as bars, cafes and restaurants, where they spend a significant proportion of their money. These customers make a considerable contribution to the city economy and make some operations that the day-time economy relies upon viable. Yet despite the importance of venues to the character and viability fo city communities, they appear to have little power to influence local events.<br />
Instead Power Elites composed of local residents, who most likely have chosen to live in the inner city environment, have the power to influence policy and demand that council officers curtail the activities of legitimate business interests, which have no vote. The inequity of this is considerable. Any city centre business owner can easily have invested far more of their personal wealth into the area than a home owner. They will have invested their skills and knowledge, and are likely to have created employment, unlike the homeowner. Their activities create wealth which in turn supports other enterprises, and thereby creates and sustains employment. Yet they have no formal means of expressing their views and ambitions, and seeking to obtain representation.<br />
In Liverpool it is the entertainments industry that has been at the forefront of shaping the city and its atmosphere. It is this ambience that has been the catalyst for articulate and politically astute individuals to move into the city centre. Yet now through their application of their rights a business operation has had to suspend its activities, and cancel contracts. There is no interest among the "Resident" Power Elites for the consequences of their actions, and that some economically marginal music group has now lost the opportunity to perform and generate income. Power Elites don't care about anything but their own interests.<br />
It is time for businesses, whether they be farms (agro-industrial concerns), factories or city centre venues to demand a modicum of equality and demand that inward residential migrants are not awarded the right to curtail the very business activities that have created the environment that attracted the inward migrant in the first place.RSDavieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00714219328113071567noreply@blogger.com0