Bogey-man and Magic Wand Politics - The Conservative Assault on Sexuality

Imagine teaching your son or daughter to cross the road safely.  Having got them as far as the pavement it's fair to say that the first thing on your mind is to tell your child about all the terrible risks of being in the road, - the fast cars, the inattentive driver, the risk of injury or death - all of the possible dice we roll whenever we step out onto the tarmac.  Once your child understands this you might then begin to teach them how to look left, look right, and so on.  Taking the utmost care to make sure your child fully appreciates all of this, you content yourself in the knowledge that you have done well by your child, and have made them that much safer and responsible.  And even better than this - no one had to tell you to do it.

Fast forward a few years and your son or daughter may well be straying forth into other unknown territories of responsibility.  Whether it be drink, drugs or diet, your child will be needing the best information they can get in order to behave rationally and responsibly with their health, sanity, and general well-being.  And indeed it may be the case that you constantly remind your child of the consequences of drink and drugs, or a poor diet.  But there remains a subject that only just registers a pallid, weak response that barely registers above the din of the school playground, a subject that people know rather a lot about, but about which nobody speaks.

In a month of great success for mindless reactionism, sex is back on the agenda.  Cries of outrage at the latest pop performance on television, the implicit and explicit meanings of song lyrics, suggestive advertising, and Internet pornography are now fast becoming a daily occurrence.  Having realised that they can only bleat on for so long about the economy to justify their continued existence, the Government has found a new bogey-man, and indeed is grasping for a new magic wand.  Having identified society's enemy they now seek to destroy it, quickly and painlessly, and then you can be grateful.  Cliché can sometimes appear lazy, sometimes boorish, but often than not it is by its very nature quite apt.  Rarely was this more so than the proclamation that 'history has a habit of repeating itself'.

And so it is proved today with the latest outburst from Mike Stock, a man who by all means made plenty of money by writing songs palatable for a large audience.  But now the product is 'highly sexualised' on its "slow but unmistakable descent into pornography" and this he is not happy with it.  But he would do well to recall that we genuinely have 'been here before'.  At the very peak of his songwriting successes this very debate was being hacked out, not just in the press, but actually in the United States Senate, accosted by a group of Washington wives calling themselves the 'Parents Music Resource Center'.  To speak against the notion that pop and rock music in America needed either self-regulation, or Orwellian state legislation, music professionals such as Dee Snyder, Frank Zappa, and John Denver were invited in 1985 to present their case to the Senate.  The aforementioned (and other artists such as Tina Turner, Sheena Easton, Motley Crue, and Prince), were accused of a variety of ills ranging from corrupting the young, being responsible for the rise in incest amongst the population, teenage pregnancy, teenage suicide, and even the spread of HIV.  In fact, one edition of CNN's 'Crossfire', a political debate show, even carried the tag line "Does Rock and Roll Cause AIDS?".  The outcome of the entire sorry affront to liberty (not to mention the U.S. Constitution) were the "Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" labels that record companies now voluntarily attach to their releases.  But even though this debacle was put to bed around a quarter of a century ago in the States, it appears that we are hell-bent on repeating history in our very own British way.

Following neatly on from the Bailey Report, Mike Stock has effectively condemned the nation's broadcasters for putting such filth into our homes without permission (the similarity between the words of Tipper Gore and Mike Stock is uncanny), as well as denouncing the watershed as being largely meaningless.  But although the argument of corporate responsibility is an enticing and obvious one to address, the real nettle that both Reg Bailey and Mike Stock have comprehensively failed to grasp is why, if there is such an inexorable influx of 'pornography' into our, and our children's lives, is it actually a problem?  Try as they might, proponents of the 'fight' against the 'sexualisation of the young' are only able to muster a spluttering, indignant mumble about something called 'their day' and decency.  If you're really lucky, you might come across some bloated, red-faced parent who will repeat ill-informed nonsense about paedophiles with such frequency as to make any criminal psychologist weep at the futility of it all.

One thing is clearly a problem however - none of these moral crusaders are in any way, shape, or form, prepared to actually talk to their children.  As alluded to in my preamble, you simply would not allow your child to learn to cross the road by trial and error.  But in the case of sex, parents are more than willing, if not enthusiastic, at the prospect of burying their head in the sand and vainly hoping that their child gets it right.  Sex is largely off the table for discussion, but to read the Bailey report one could be fooled into thinking that the entire population is talking about graphic sex from the breakfast table to the dining room, in the schoolyards, on the television, and on the news.  But, perhaps disappointingly for our saviours, no such conversation is taking place.  Allusions are made, and suggestive imaging is surely used, but none of these outlets actually talk explicitly about sex or sexuality.  As Frank Zappa pointed out the first time around:

 "It's not sex, it's titillation.  Given the choice between broadcasting violence or graphic sex usually it is the violence that is opted for."

 What we really need in the West is not less sex, but more of it.  First impressions are priceless, and the first contact that a child has with any topic will lay the foundations for their interpretation of everything that succeeds it.  Information and education, not cotton wool, are the key to making better choices.  For when they finally unravel the swaddling the young will enjoy their freedom, but they will not be prepared for it. By submitting ourselves to a vow of silence on the matter we condemn ourselves to be forever battling against your child's first experience of anything sexual.  Suddenly we are no longer the authority, we are withholder of truths, and we will have to fight doubly hard to regain the trust of our children when the rest of the world (to them at any rate) has appeared so ostensibly candid and honest.  There the seeds of ignorance are sown and victims are created.  People's lives can be ruined by a misjudgement in their sex life.  People can spend their lives perpetually anxious and paranoid because of a reluctance to talk about their sexuality.  Sex is fun, but sex is also risky and traumatic.  So instead of allowing our children to stumble blindly into the wilderness, why not at least point them in the right direction?

The only way to maintain privacy for anyone is to guarantee it for no-one.

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?

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.

The 'No to AV' Campaign's arguments rely on condescension and scaremongering, with nothing to say about principle

A pamphlet dissected:

As May 5th draws nearer I of course should not be surprised if I were to be submerged in a wash of campaign leaflets, but if the truth be told only one solitary leaflet has so far appeared on the doormat, from the 'No to AV' campaign.

Purple seems to be the colour of the month at the moment - census forms, 'Yes to Fairer Votes', and also the 'No to AV' camp seem to have taken it up, but only the 'No' camp seem to have additionally opted for this rather sickening off green colour to compliment it.  This is probably to portray some sort of party political neutrality but quite frankly it makes me feel a little queasy.

None the less, the first thing to notice on the front cover is the rather spasmodic claim that 'None of your taxes have been used to print this leaflet'.  I say 'spasmodic' since the thought had genuinely never entered my head - the question of campaign funding was not asked by me of anyone.  But of course, once I opened this quasi-psychedelic leaflet the purpose of the outburst on the front cover becomes all too apparent - by stating the bleeding obvious immediately before stating a piece of obfuscatory nonsense the campaign hope that you, the reader, will conflate the two into one congruent and unassailable truth, that AV will cost a fortune.

The first problem with this imaginary £250 million is that it heavily relies on the notion that £130 million will be spent on electronic voting machines, something which neither the Yes campaign is advocating, nor anyone else for that matter.  The exact mechanics of how a vote will be taken is beyond the scope of this referendum, and is well out of the hands of either side of the debate.

And so begins a subtle subtext of extreme condescension and insult which litters the entire leaflet.  The very fact that the No campaign assert that electronic machines must be used in order to conduct a vote implies that marking an 'X' on a ballot paper is easy, but to write the numbers 1 through to 5 in sequence requires some sort of state of the art technology.

The No Campaign then append a veritable shopping list of things that could be bought using such a sum of money (forgetting of course that £91m of their £250m is already being spent in the form of the referendum itself) which fails as a cogent point in its entirety.  There are any number of things which the government spends money on which inevitably are diverted from public services, the Olympics for example.  The question is whether you can justify your alternative spending in terms of the net benefit it may bring to nation as a whole and whether it suitably offsets the noted sacrifices (I would argue that the Olympics is likely to be the greatest waste of money since the Millenium Dome but that's for another day).  Following in this vein, the price of the Alternative Vote is, in accordance with your political standpoint, the price of a greater democracy.  If you believe AV will provide an enhanced level of democracy then of course the cost is worth it, if you are against AV then the cost is obviously not worth it.  The cost of the change itself is irrelevant to the argument at hand.

The literature then goes on to explain the Alternative Vote system relatively simply, in fact it does it a much better way than some of the Yes campaign's own literature, and does absolutely nothing to state why this system is deserved of opposition.  Except scanning across the page, it appears they do have a second argument (hurrah!) centered around the popularity of the AV system.  The first line of the page reads "AV is not a fair system.  That's why only three countries in the world use it..."  This is of course something of a leap to make this connection.  No quotes are included from other world leaders to say that the reason they do not use the system is because it is unfair - indeed our own country has not proposed an alternative voting method in any serious context until now, and so we can safely say that at least one reason the United Kingdom does not use AV is more likely because it has never been in the offing.

The next page displays a side-by-side comparison of how the two systems work.  Here is where obfuscation is taken to a higher level.  The First Past The Post system is explained in just over 10 words, the AV system in over 230 words (in direct contradiction with the previous explanation which managed to do it in 20-something words with a few diagrams).  A brief read of the explanation of the AV column reveals the most bizarrely constructed and protracted sentences ever written, in a deliberate attempt to make the explanation harder to follow.  It should be noted that the Yes campaign's explanation of the system uses 100 fewer words to describe the same event.  But as a piece of visual trickery it is at least inventive if completely devoid of a note worthy point.

Now we come to the page that most bothers me.  At the top of the page is a picture of a running race with a caption indicating that second place is the winner.  Obviously, politics is not an athletics event, and no runner is ever going to win because he has the majority of the crowd support - if they were, then we can expect a mountain of gold medals next summer.  False analogy, move on.

Underneath this picture comes the scaremongering, in the form of a brief but vacuous paragraph.  Apparently it's wrong for the person in second or third to overtake the person with the most votes because the "lower choices of supporters of extreme parties such as the BNP are counted again..."  The sheer affront to democracy of this paragraph is staggering.  Firstly, it appears that if you vote BNP you are not entitled to have a second preference.  In fact the implication of this sentence is that because the votes of extremist parties are included that somehow makes the whole thing much worse, that in fact we would prefer to disenfranchise voters of such parties.  The subtext of this is a naked argument against representation and democracy itself.  When an organisation actively wishes our voting system to discriminate against the votes of BNP supporters what they arguing for is for a voting system which is palpably, and unarguably rigged.

Incidentally, the next line makes a throw statement about AV being 'the end to equal votes' but, as the pamphlet has already disclosed, they doesn't necessarily regard all votes as equal anyway.

The final page essentially attacks Nick Clegg's integrity.  I'm not going to spend much time on this, since I have very little sympathy with Nick Clegg.  Deriding his motives for advocating the Alternative Vote is a waste of time, and completely irrelevant to the debate.  Even if I hadn't voted Lib Dem in the past I would still be in the Yes camp, and I wouldn't be remotely concerned with Clegg's performance in government.

And so to round off, the No Campaigns arguments seem to fall into four categories - 1) AV is expensive, especially if you demand voting machines to conduct it, which nobody is of course.  2)  Fifteen million smokers can't be wrong.  3)  Extremist votes shouldn't be counted and we want to do everything we can to rig the system against them (note that Nick Griffin is supporting a No vote) and finally 4) You don't want to side with Nick Clegg, do you?

You didn't happen to spot any major democratic principles in there did you?