Having grown up in the rural North Cotswolds I can assure you that the so called 'small-town mentality' is something more than apparent, and in fact something very real and tangible. In small towns and villages in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire it is not uncommon to find that everybody knows everybody else, everybody knows everybody else's business, and everybody is quite happy to talk about it. As a newcomer to the area you might well conclude that rural Britain is rife with scandal and intrigue. Unnerving? Perhaps. Conspicuous? Perhaps not. But this phenomenon definitely should not be surprising since it is not so much a measure of scandal, as the degree of focus.
As an uncertain person in a competitive city environment, one must necessarily pick their battles carefully. In a small rural hideaway, one can afford to be more or less indiscriminate - keeping an ever vigilant watch out for betrayal, opportunity, and weakness. The brief glare from a solitary passing stranger instead morphs into the all-seeing eye of the parish community. I'm sure it would not be too difficult for you to imagine the scene (bearing in mind that cliche and stereotypes do not sporadically sprout from thin air) of the local village pub. The place might be full of many groups of friends, family and colleagues - each having their own conversation about work, sports, or even politics. But quite probably the conversation will veer towards the latest local scandal to have found its way through the rumour mill. With flippancy, gentle misogyny, casual racism, unwarranted hubris, and above all a healthy dose of hypocrisy, the group parse the latest indictment, ferociously castigating one party, whilst maybe reluctantly praising another, and eventually come to their own conclusions about the matter. The next day they will go to work and disseminate their philosophy to their further friends and colleagues, revel in the attention, and enjoy the humoured banter that results from this mitosis.
Of course, this narrative may well make the event sound far more malicious than its participants would have you believe. But if you can see past this, perhaps you could imagine the subject of such a discussion standing up in the pub and demanding that conversation about him cease immediately. The fellow would be laughed, jeered, and snorted at. He would be accused of wanting to have his cake and eat it - or perhaps make his bed and then wish to lie in someone else's. The fact of the matter is that to adhere to his vain cry of anonymity would strain the instincts of all involved, and forever engage them in a masochistic web of complexity and deceit. Even on a small scale, the submission to such a request would be the beginning of the end of honesty.
But let's multiply out the numbers, shall we? Say the small village of a hundred becomes hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, who, if they don't know you, at least have access to information about you and your activities. Suddenly, the issue of privacy becomes one of great concern to such a person and, as we have seen recently, they will go to great lengths and expenditure to maintain it. Tens of thousands of pounds can be spent in an effort to silence as many individuals as possible, to the point where we very nearly face the absurd prospect of trying, and possibly imprisoning, someone with a legal bar on them being named even after their conviction. But does all this rigmarole really preserve someone's privacy?
The obvious problem with this system is that far from being fair, it openly dictates that the level of this vague 'privacy' one might be entitled to is determined by your ability to pay for it. Our poor friend in the pub might well wish to take out a court injunction could he afford it, but he can't. Therefore, the oft invoked 'court of public opinion' can do its worst. If you can afford it even public opinion is of little consequence.
The less obvious characteristic of this issue is how people view 'privacy'. Privacy is of course nothing to do with other people talking about us. Privacy is everything to do with people talking about things we do not want them to know. And one could be forgiven for thinking that there may be something more than a little suspicious about wanting to do something but actively not wanting people to know about it. There is no implicit bowing to the tyranny of the majority here - if one partakes in something considered just by the cringeworthy minority but wishes to remain anonmyous, then one should not be surprised when people begin to question your motives. Either such a person agrees with the minority but wants to assume the position of the majority, or they ostensibly wish to appease the minority whilst being part of the majority. In either case, the subject is both deceitful and duplicitous, and it remains to be seen whether such characteristics can be good for the human condition.
Ultimately, 'privacy' is the shield we use to excuse our dishonesty and deceit. The cornerstone of liberalism is the ability to exercise our freedoms so long as we do not restrict the freedoms of others. But the corollary of such a maxim is that you must be prepared for dissent and debate. If we are not proud of our actions then we should not partake in them. If we are proud and true to our convictions then what does it matter when the baying crowd decry them - they are what we believe to be true and just. We make our own privacy and we get the final say on what is said and what is not by virtue of our actions. The moment that anybody is able to circumvent this simple responsibilty then the focus on such a person necessarily increases. To put it another way, the more you seek to protect your privacy, the further you thrust yourself in the public eye. What do you have to hide?
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
The AV Referendum is not the 'be all and end all' of political feform but it will certainly set the tone of future efforts
'A miserable little compromise' is how Nick Clegg defined the Alternative Vote. No one can claim that he is the victim of quote mining, these were his actual words, and the 'No to AV' campaign have been repeating the phrase with almost reckless abandon. However, any man who walks into the negotiating room with the lowest possible result as his opening bid is not going to win many favours. Clegg was right to deride it then, just as he is right to support it now. We always assumed that the Tories wouldn't budge on Proportional Representation, but if we had given up before the fight had begun, we would only have ourselves to blame for failure.
And failure, if the polls are to be believed, is where we are still heading. With the majority of polls firmly putting the 'No' Campaign furlongs ahead, scathing attacks on the No Campaign's strategies have been present for at least a week - and it's hard not to see why. There are good reasons for not adopting the Alternative Vote system, such as the strength of any resulting government, for example, but the No camp seem quite happy to settle for the lowest common denominator and spread misleading information and lies
The amount of money that the Alternative Vote would cost is a good example of a claim by the No camp being both misleading and false at the same time. The claim that it would cost £230 million is misleading since £91 million of the total has already been spent (on the referendum), and false because another £130 million of the total is allocated for voting machines which no-one is asking for. Taken at face value such a claim would understandably concern a number of voters, especially those who are losing jobs, finding their local services cut etc. The No camp are also quite happy to use extremist parties as an additional bogeyman to the mix, serving to frighten voters more. And this is where the Yes campaign will have failed, in it's inability to fight dirty.
Obviously, by the nature of its title ('Yes to Fairer Votes'), the campaign would have struggled to fight fire with fire, but there are a number of equally low arguments which could have frightened voters in the opposite direction. They could have for instance linked the 'MP's Expenses' scandal with the 'safe seat' phenomenon and played that ace repeatedly. They could have played the extremist card themselves, since the BNP are campaigning for a 'No' vote. But most importantly, they could have claimed, loud and clear, that voting 'No' will set back voting reform for a generation. Admittedly, all of these things have been said, loosely, by the Yes camp, but none of them have been their central arguments, and perhaps they should have been.
Whilst dismissed as scaremongering by some, it is a concern that a 'No' vote tomorrow will put the reform genie back in the bottle, and you only need look at the language used by politicians to see why. When Labour and the Conservatives both promised (and failed to deliver) a referendum on Europe in the run up the election, one phrase was repeated ad nauseum. "The voters will decide once and for all" was what MPs promised, and it is this very language that we should be wary of. The notion that a referendum can decide an issue, any issue, once and for all is a very seedy one, and implies of course that any negative result is likely to be taken into account regarding any future referendums for some time to follow. Indeed, it would not be unwise to suspect that future referendums would need to be triggered by a suitably large cry for one in parliament, rather than by a progressive elected government. This should worry all of us who are in favour of reform.
The Conservatives and Labour are unlikely to call for voting reform once in power. It is going to take a minority party to make particularly vocal stand (or a second coalition government) to bring this issue back to the table. Even then it is unlikely that such a party would have the clout to be able to successfully get one. Once past that hurdle, the years since the last referendum would have to be sufficient in number to successfully argue that the mood of the public has changed. As you can see, it will not be easy, and the Conservatives are well aware of this. Were they really committed to electoral reform, they could have enacted an AV-style referendum, offering the public a variety of different voting methods - but they didn't. Instead they offered one alternative, and picked the one which was most likely to fail at the ballot box. We should not be at all surprised if a 'No' vote is proclaimed as a ringing endorsement for First Past The Post - my only hope will be that the 'No' voters who get stung in this way will still be around to draw on the experience for the next referendum on voting reform - whenever it may come.
And failure, if the polls are to be believed, is where we are still heading. With the majority of polls firmly putting the 'No' Campaign furlongs ahead, scathing attacks on the No Campaign's strategies have been present for at least a week - and it's hard not to see why. There are good reasons for not adopting the Alternative Vote system, such as the strength of any resulting government, for example, but the No camp seem quite happy to settle for the lowest common denominator and spread misleading information and lies
The amount of money that the Alternative Vote would cost is a good example of a claim by the No camp being both misleading and false at the same time. The claim that it would cost £230 million is misleading since £91 million of the total has already been spent (on the referendum), and false because another £130 million of the total is allocated for voting machines which no-one is asking for. Taken at face value such a claim would understandably concern a number of voters, especially those who are losing jobs, finding their local services cut etc. The No camp are also quite happy to use extremist parties as an additional bogeyman to the mix, serving to frighten voters more. And this is where the Yes campaign will have failed, in it's inability to fight dirty.
Obviously, by the nature of its title ('Yes to Fairer Votes'), the campaign would have struggled to fight fire with fire, but there are a number of equally low arguments which could have frightened voters in the opposite direction. They could have for instance linked the 'MP's Expenses' scandal with the 'safe seat' phenomenon and played that ace repeatedly. They could have played the extremist card themselves, since the BNP are campaigning for a 'No' vote. But most importantly, they could have claimed, loud and clear, that voting 'No' will set back voting reform for a generation. Admittedly, all of these things have been said, loosely, by the Yes camp, but none of them have been their central arguments, and perhaps they should have been.
Whilst dismissed as scaremongering by some, it is a concern that a 'No' vote tomorrow will put the reform genie back in the bottle, and you only need look at the language used by politicians to see why. When Labour and the Conservatives both promised (and failed to deliver) a referendum on Europe in the run up the election, one phrase was repeated ad nauseum. "The voters will decide once and for all" was what MPs promised, and it is this very language that we should be wary of. The notion that a referendum can decide an issue, any issue, once and for all is a very seedy one, and implies of course that any negative result is likely to be taken into account regarding any future referendums for some time to follow. Indeed, it would not be unwise to suspect that future referendums would need to be triggered by a suitably large cry for one in parliament, rather than by a progressive elected government. This should worry all of us who are in favour of reform.
The Conservatives and Labour are unlikely to call for voting reform once in power. It is going to take a minority party to make particularly vocal stand (or a second coalition government) to bring this issue back to the table. Even then it is unlikely that such a party would have the clout to be able to successfully get one. Once past that hurdle, the years since the last referendum would have to be sufficient in number to successfully argue that the mood of the public has changed. As you can see, it will not be easy, and the Conservatives are well aware of this. Were they really committed to electoral reform, they could have enacted an AV-style referendum, offering the public a variety of different voting methods - but they didn't. Instead they offered one alternative, and picked the one which was most likely to fail at the ballot box. We should not be at all surprised if a 'No' vote is proclaimed as a ringing endorsement for First Past The Post - my only hope will be that the 'No' voters who get stung in this way will still be around to draw on the experience for the next referendum on voting reform - whenever it may come.
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