Meritocrats

I have to say that it's not terribly often that I agree with things I read in The Guardian, but Julie Burchill's anti-monarchist rant contained an entirely accurate snipe at one of my growing hatreds.

The spectacle of some smug, mediocre columnista who would definitely not have their job if their mummy or daddy hadn't been in the newspaper racket advising working-class kids to study hard at school, get a "proper" job and not place their faith in TV talent shows is one of the more repulsive minor crimes of our time.

[From Once we had anarchy in the UK. Now all we have is monarchy in the UK | Julie Burchill | Comment is free | The Observer]

One of the reasons why I still consider myself a working class Thatcher Tory is that she believed in meritocracy and had a suspicion of embedded privilege, whether at the stock market or anywhere else. It seems to me that over time, meritocracy makes a nation stronger. I think that's true at an individual level as well as at a Darwinian social level.

If my next door neighbour makes more money than me because he's better at something than I am, then I don't hate him. But if my next door neighbour makes more money than me because of some regulatory capture or market dysfunction or government nonsense, then I feel angry and resentful. This isn't conducive to the social order, and I think I'm noticing it more and more in newspaper report, blogs and media from the US at the moment. Americans in particular, and more so than the Brits, are happy to see someone make it so long as the game isn't rigged. But when they see the 1%, the banksters and the oligarchs floating free from the rest of us _because_ of the rules of the game, they feel that society is broken.

This explains why people feel so differently about different kinds of "rich" today. If some film star gets $50m for a movie, I might think it's sick and tragic, I might think it's an insane waste of resources and I might think it's a revolting commentary on our degraded values. But I don't really care about it. Good luck to them and good luck to David Beckham and good luck to Alan Sugar. They made their way to the top by being better at something than their peers. David Cameron didn't, of course, and neither did Baronet never-had-a-job Osborne, which is why I suppose I have so little respect for them.

Of course, this doesn't apply to all actors, because the establishment are working hard to make acting an hereditary profession, but you get the point.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Stupider means poorer

The bad news is that not only has it been scientifically measured that the English are getting stupider, after about 30,000 years of steady progress from the simple use of tools in Kent chalk pits up until David Blunkett took over at the Ministry of Edukashun, Edukashun, Edukashun. Since when...

A study in 2009 led by James Flynn himself and published in Economics & Human Biology compared IQ scores obtained by British teenagers in 1980 and 2008, using the same test. The average had declined by two points on average, but by as much as six points among teenagers in the top half of the IQ scale… a six-point decline in IQ would equate with a 0.3 per cent fall in GDP.

[From Received wisdom | Prospect Magazine]

It's the second point that's even more disturbing than the first. In the olden times, stupid people could contribute to the economy by farming and such like, but those days are over. We now have an economy where stupid people are unemployable, and that's a real problem for society. I suspect when we look back on this era from the perspective of the distant future we will be genuinely perplexed about the "design" of society. A welfare state that's gone horribly wrong -- leading to an overproduction of stupid people -- and an education system optimised for jobs that vanished a generation ago. There's probably no way back -- the English will vanish like the Easter Islanders, having created an environment that cannot support them -- but we may be able to launch a rearguard action if we take immediate steps. I don't know what these might be -- it's hard to think of ways to reduce the number of stupid people without veering into eugenics -- but one place to start might be to stop stupid people from voting. The political process is undermined by stupidity as it is, and as the population continues to get stupider than state actions will become further deranged.

One defence worth considering is immediate action to reduce the size of the state, so that there are fewer aspects of society for it be deranged about. If sectors such as health and education were not run by the government it would be much more difficult for stupid people to obtain control of them, and this would be much to our benefit I'm sure.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Back chat

I hate chat shows. Former chat show host Paul O'Grady -- famous for creating the comic drag character "Lily Savage" -- made an acute observation about the nature of such entertainments.

I felt I was part of the PR machine. There was so much interference. They’d want this guest or that guest. Every question had to go through the lawyers. I was just another plug for someone’s book or film.

[From Paul O'Grady: Why did I give up the chat show? I couldn't stand the guests! | Mail Online]

This is why I don't watch chat shows, even Graham Norton who can be very funny on occasion. They should be banned from the BBC completely and only shown on ITV with an OFCOM warning that you are watching advertisements disguised as programmes.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Sticks and stones

A few weeks ago, I happened to glance at the Motoring section of the Saturday Telegraph. I can't remember why, because I normally just chuck it into the recycling with Travel, Gardening, Vienna—Gateway to the East and such like. But anyway, I remember thinking it odd that noted left-wing BBC-style comedian Alexi Sayle was writing a column about motoring.

I called the president of Malawi a name he certainly wouldn’t hear at the Court of St James’s as he shot across my path.

[From Alexei Sayle: what your car says about you - Telegraph]

Well, sticks and stones, as they say. But hold on. Later I read that

The government of Malawi has officially confirmed the death of the country’s president, Bingu wa Mutharika. Government officials said Mutharika suffered a heart attack on April 5

[From Banda Sworn In as Malawi's President | News | English]

Coincidence? You be the judge. Personally, I found Alexi Sayle's swearing on his first album to be wonderful and expressive and listened to it many times, but I'd never realised how deadly his vernacular could be.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Transparency next step

I read in today's Telegraph (but can't find it online) that the average farm in the UK had an income of £25,000 last year and that four-fifths of this income comes in the forms of EU subsidies (that rob taxpayers in two ways: by spending their tax money and by artificially raising the price of food). If you want to know how much your friendly local Farmer Giles gets from this racket… you can't.

European rules forcing the publication of details of the people who received farming subsidies and how much they received breached those people's rights to privacy, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.

[From Farming subsidy database 'breaches privacy rights' • The Register]

So now farmers can keep their looting of the public purse to themselves. This seems wrong, especially when the terms for applying for these handouts clearly state that the amounts will be published. The right solution is, naturally, to abolish farm subsidies at the earliest opportunity, but, failing that, we should at least be allowed to see where the money is going.

Here's a positive suggestion though. I see today that the government is proposing to send taxpayers a pie chart of where the money went with their tax demand, a bit like the pie chart you get from Woking council with your enormous council tax bill. Not a bad idea - at least people can see where their money is going. But why not put this on food too: you're Waitrose bill could tell you at the end: you spent £35.45 of which £1.41 went on VAT and £24.21 went in EU subsidies and £2.91 went to Waitrose profit and…

What's wrong with some transparency?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Mary Portas hasn't a prayer

Remember last year, when retail expert Mary Portas published her report?

Ms Portas outlines plans for cutting regulations for High Street traders and the launch of a national market day. But council leaders have criticised her for not consulting them

[From BBC News - Mary Portas unveils report into High Street revival]

Now Mary Portas is a smart cookie. If you've ever wondered why the stars of the BBCs "Absolutely Fabulous" went on about Harvey Nicks all the time, it was because Mary promised

writer and star of the show Jennifer Saunders the run of the store for research in return for Saunders namechecking the business

[From Mary Portas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Smart, as I say. I haven't read the report, but I can tell you right now she's wasting her time. Yesterday I needed to buy a phone for a relative, so I called two local mobile phone shops to see if they had the particular handset in stock. Neither of them picked up the phone and in both cases I left messages asking them to call me back because I wanted to buy something. Needless to say, neither of them did.

Driving home from the station, I did think of popping into a store to pick up a couple of things, but to park outside the Tesco Metro and Co-Op costs money which, even if I was prepared to pay it (I'm not) I don't because I can't be bothered to find to walk down to the machine and find coins to feed in to it. I was dying for a coffee, and I thought maybe I'd pick up a Starbucks but there's nowhere to park and I can't be bothered to go into the town centre and park in a multi-story just to pick up a coffee to take home. I thought this then I was driving through Weybridge the other day: I saw a Caffe Nero and I just fancied a large latte with an extra shot, but there was nowhere to park so I just drove on.

In the end I drove home without a coffee, bought the milk from the petrol station and ordered the phone online, just as I order everything else online. The UK High Street is as dead as the Dodo.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Power to the people, oh no

Why should be people be allowed to vote? We think of it as a right, but I'm not so sure. Rights have related responsibilities, and presumably one of the most basic responsibilities associated with voting is a basic level of intelligence and a minor smattering of actual knowledge about the real world.

Almost one-third of Americans believe the ancient Mayan prediction of global calamity this December are “somewhat true,” according to a recent National Geographic poll.

[From America, the Beautiful (And Nutty): A Skeptic's Lament | Wired Science | Wired.com]

Democracy has no future. The electorate have voted themselves into a cultural cul-de-sac from which there is no escape beyond destruction. The levels of ignorance are so great as to make public opinion meaningless on almost all topics.

Some 70% of Americans believe in some aspect of the paranormal — ESP, devils, ghosts, homeopathy, and spiritual healing. More than 25% believe there are humans who can “psychically” predict the future. About 20% believe it’s possible to talk to dead people (and that the dead talk back).

[From America, the Beautiful (And Nutty): A Skeptic's Lament | Wired Science | Wired.com]

These happen to be the figures from America, but I'd be surprised if the UK was much less nutty. It's certainly as ignorant. And don't fool yourself that things are going to improve. A third of UK students don't know that milk comes from cows. (And as an aside, half of them couldn't name a single ingredient of bread and 42% didn't realise that social security payments come out of taxation, which explains a lot).

What I can't figure out is why it is that the race to the bottom is accelerating. I can see that post-war governments might at some level have concluded that an ignorant electorate might be easier to control and manipulate, but surely the malaise runs deeper. Perhaps, though, the answer lays in the rise of the stupid as well as their growth in the numbers.

It is not difficult to understand how social, political and institutional power enhances the damaging potential of a stupid person.

[From The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity]

What has changed in recent years is not that there are more stupid people (although I'm sure there are) but that stupid people have more and more power over us.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]