The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Muslim attitudes in the US and elsewhere… July 29, 2016

Kind of find this well worth a look. It certainly shoots down the idea that Muslims are a particularly heterogenous lot. Attitudes to Sharia alone are very varied – and perhaps predictably in certain more authoritarian states there’s much greater adherence to them whereas – say – take Turkey, there’s only a minority in favour. Moreover one has to ask what flavour of Sharia.

Attachment to ISIS is very low. Attachment to the use of political violence is very low. And fears of Islamic extremism is high.

Even the importance of religion is a variable, though belief in God is very very strong.

Perceptions of Muslims? In the US they are regarded on a par with… atheists!

Check out characteristics associated with Westerners and Muslims by each other. Muslims see “Westerners” as being from their perspective more violent than Westerners see Muslims.

North and South July 29, 2016

David McWilliams in the SBP this weekend had some comparative statistics in relation to North and South which led him to suggest that ‘the Union has been an economic disaster for all the people of Northern Ireland…. they’ve all ben impoverished by it and this shows no sign of letting up’. Granted one suspects that the last few decades have been kinder to this state than to the North, but he has a point. He notes that in 1920 80% of industrial output came from the three counties around Belfast. And in the 1910s Belfast was the largest city on the island. I’ve got to admit I only learned that this year and I still think it fascinating and perhaps indicative of the true nature of the ‘union’ at that time.

By contrast the South was mainly agricultural, no strike that, overwhelmingly agricultural. And was to remain so – and let’s not ignore the fact that that sector is still massively important.

Whereas today, industrial output in the South is ten times greater than that of the North, Exports (as he notes distorted by multinationals, but still not unimportant) are €89bn as against €6bn, the size of the RoI economy is four times the North, and income per head? That of the North is a little over half that of the average income per head of the South which is just shy of €40,000.

Of course it’s not quite that simple. The histories of the two parts of the island have been considerably different and as we know all too well economic winds blow hot and cold. Moreover the progress of the economy of this state was hardly an upward climb since partial independence. It might also be worth factoring in – and again in fairness he does mention this – different public services and so on. Though I think some might wonder given the nature of the dispensation there politically and socially whether that rebalances the scales. He makes the point that the Union did protect living standards but that that changed around 1990. I’d like him to expand on that.

He’s no demographic determinist, but he sees in the 2011 census returns for the North the possibility of increasing nationalist populations in the medium term. Still all this dovetails with Michael McDowell’s piece in the same paper referenced on Wednesday where he asks whether the South would be willing to assume the economic burden of the North?

Still, a contemporary resonance too, he notes that Conor Cruise O’Brien once said that Unionisms last battle would be with English nationalism. Loath though I am to credit CCOB there’s an aspect of that today, isn’t there with the post-Brexit developments?

Living in the past July 29, 2016

A most thought-provoking point made on Slate in this examination of US based couple who attempt to live their lives as if it were the late 19th century. If your sense is that that seems like an over-extended variant of cosplay you might be right. The author Rebecca Onion, I suspect would agree.

The question of health brings me to perhaps the greatest fallacy inherent in the Chrismans’ method of “living history.” The “past” was not made up only of things. Like our own world, it was a web of social ties. These social ties extended into every corner of people’s lives, influencing the way people treated each other in intimate relationships; the way disease was passed and treated; the possibilities open to women, minorities, and the poor; the whirl of expectations, traditions, language, and community that made up everyday lives. Material objects like corsets or kerosene lamps were part of this complex web, but only a part.

Onion points to some of the more contradictory aspects of the Chrismans’ approach – for example they appear to believe that society now is more rigid and conformist than in the late 19th century (and some of the comments BTL make it clear that one doesn’t have to go as far back as the 19th century to see massive changes in everyday life – and many of us here will remember vastly less technological lifestyles only a relatively short time ago. Though speaking of BTL, the phrase ‘Cultural Marxism’ rears its ugly head in one criticism of the author). A questionable assumption many would think. And while they make great play of their desire to ‘escape incomprehensible technologies that now govern our lives…’ they also happen to have a website.

Of course the past is interesting. It has a fascination for us. Looking through some documents recently from the 1970s, a period I and it would seem a fair few who engage on this site actually lived through, someone commented that it was amazing how evocative the papers and photographs were.

Sure – the whole of the Left Archive is, on one level, an exercise in revisiting that past – we could have transcripts of content and once someone very thoughtfully offered to provide same. But my sense has always been that to get a better understanding of the time it is probably best to present texts in the format they were originally found, that is on the printed page of a magazine accompanied by photographs, advertising, etc.

Onion notes that the very process by which materials survive to this day or are represented is in itself a ‘type of commentary’.

The primary sources the Chrismans choose to read made it to the present day because they held some kind of value for the intervening generations. The couple finds its period magazines on Google Books, that redoubtable Victorian technology. It seems not to have crossed their minds that a series of human decisions resulted in the digitization of those magazines and not others, and that those decisions are themselves a type of commentary.

Exactly.

But the Archive is about getting a sense of the time, not about a hope to position oneself within it. On one level what the Chrismans are doing is innocuous, on another a little troubling. Onion notes that they tend to gloss over the problematic aspects of ‘living in the 19th century’. They’re not living as labourers, or as servants or as African Americans, theirs is, as Onion says ‘a version of … a comfortable and privileged life’ and even that is a stretch. Moreover the Chrismans appear to believe that only through their route is it possible to understand the 19th century – that historians of the period are intrinsically untrustworthy, and that ‘their’ understanding of the period is the only correct one. This too seems a stretch.

One thing that continually strikes me, and this again is drawn from my own historical research, an engagement with the Archive and just general general observation, is how much is beyond the grasp of analysis, materials that don’t exist – or are lost, partial accounts of a time, the lack of knowledge of life as it is experienced. Try doing an oral history of a given topic, say in the late 1960s – as I’ve had cause to in recent years – and you’ll soon realise how, even for a period of time well within living memory there is so much that is lost, so much that is unrecorded, so much contingent on fallible memory. For periods before living memory, well, that’s an even greater challenge.

None of which is to say that one shouldn’t attempt to engage with the past. Anything but. But it’s worth keeping one’s head about it – no?

Housing crisis response July 28, 2016

Eoin Ó Broin notes in the SBP in regard to the Housing Action Plan that yet again there’s an over reliance on the private sector. Quite some over reliance too. One of the most iniquitous aspects is the construction, as he points out, of 10,000 supposedly social units that will actually be private and leased to the state for 10 to 20 years. Rather than building a public housing stock the HAP seems determined, doggedly so, to keep away from such responsibility. As he also notes the recommendations of the Oireachtas Housing and Homelessness committee report which sought 10000 social housing units each year will not be met, with only 6,000 per annum constructed. And Ó Broin is correct too to argue that it is the very dependence upon private systems that has led us in large part to where we are today.

What’s telling is that Pat Rabbitte in the same edition starts out criticising ‘Trotskyite’ TDs responses to the HAP and then addresses not at all the issue of ownership. In the course of a column it does not trouble him in the slightest. Indeed for him it is all about process – supply, building costs, price of land. None of which are unimportant. But he himself has to admit that the commitment to 47,000 social units is ‘modest’. Perhaps I’m being unfair, but right there we see at least a part of the problem. If even those nominally on the left aren’t exercised by the who as much as the how and the when then the prospect for social outcomes is hugely constrained.

‘Flexible’ labour markets July 28, 2016

Great takedown in the Observer earlier in the Summer of the above, where Philip Inman notes that this is ‘the new injustice inflicted on the working class’. What’s interesting is that Inman notes that:

Globalisation is to some extent at fault, though not necessarily in the way we previously thought. A recent study of US wages data found that despite China, Russia and the previously communist east European countries entering the global economy in the late 20th century, wages generally increased until the turn of the century and the first term of George W Bush’s presidency. It was not until 2003 that most household incomes went into decline.

And:

So rather than the previous narrative of stagnant wages for three decades, it seems that the incomes of all but the lowest-skilled blue-collar workers followed a rising arc in the 1980s and 1990s before a sudden reversal soon after the year 2000.
This more recent decline in incomes was matched by rising costs, in particular one cost that is deliberately not captured in official inflation figures: property. For most people, that is not an insignificant expense, and, as we know, house prices began to rise steeply from the late 1990s, pushing up monthly mortgage payments.

It’s not even that governments were unaware of the problem. He notes that tax credits in 2003 was driven by a wish to put a floor under falling incomes and rising costs. But, those costs keep going up. This has had knock on effects in terms of employment patterns – or rather ‘flexibility’ has become a watchword for those who find it expedient. And, surprise, surprise, while a small number find flexibility useful, for most it is a short-cut to perpetual impoverishment. The financial crash, of course, was another part of this dynamic.

And how does this work in practice? Inman points to an area one might not think was exposed to these practices:

For years, the health service has maintained a low basic wage for Monday-to-Friday daytime working and higher rates for other times of the day and week to persuade staff to work unsociable hours. That’s not enough any more, apparently: despite being highly coercive, it still gives the employee too much power.

It is already common to find radiographers and phlebotomists on zero-hours contracts and tied to a bank of staff who must cater for a range of hospitals, minor injury units and GP practices. They sign up to monthly rotas and can’t plan for a holiday or persuade a high street lender their work is secure enough to gain a mortgage.

It’s that dynamic in which workers are trapped, unable to break out, unable to put down roots. And that’s telling in itself, for Inman addresses that point about a small number liking the approach:

The defenders of flexible working argue that people like it. They are supported by surveys that show most appreciate being offered it. But as employment expert John Philpott points out, those who say they like zero-hours contracts are generally students and older workers, who have another income to fall back on.

Indeed he goes further and points out that ‘flexibility’ means two different things depending on where one is in the employment process:

…full-time workers say the flexibility they like does not come from draconian rota systems, but from time off to look after a sick child, and the opportunity to take leave or make up the hours another time. Working weekends and nights is rarely a pleasure.

Party name changes? July 28, 2016

Here’s a question, does anyone know what the effect of name changes of political parties is on membership? My sense is that it is generally negative. But what of the shift from Sinn Féin The Workers’ Party to The Workers’ Party, did that lose them members – or gain them? And what of the shift from Militant to the Socialist Party?

And how about broader alliances? A good or bad thing in peoples opinions?

Given that name changes are usually made in order to indicate some new shift in direction, and to encourage others to join, what are the usual outcomes – positive or negative? Anyone know?

Workers lives…a continuing series July 28, 2016

Latest data on life expectancy for those who work at desks – boiled down, one hour of exercise per day is required to mitigate the negative effects of same, as noted in the Guardian.

But…

Ekelund acknowledged that work pressures made taking lengthy breaks – the legal minimum in the UK is one 20-minute break – unrealistic for some.

Eklund argues that television viewing time might offer some time there for exercise and that’s okay as far as it goes but factor in travel times, overtime, etc and that legal minimum break…

Signs of Hope – A continuing series – 28th of July July 28, 2016

Gewerkschaftler suggested this recently:

I suggest this blog should have a regular (weekly) slot where people can post happenings at the personal or political level that gives them hope that we’re perhaps not going to hell in a handbasket as quickly as we thought. Or as the phlegmatic Germans put it “hope dies last”.

Any contributions this week?