On Gay Marriage And Ice Cream

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Ben and Jerrys - Ice Cream - Appley Ever After - Gay Marriage

 

The Daily Telegraph’s aptly-named politics and religion correspondent, Will Heaven, huffs and puffs in his latest column that his favourite brand of ice cream dared to promote a social cause – in this case, that of marriage equality for gay and lesbian people.

Mr. Heaven has had quite enough of his favourite consumer goods telling him what to do or think, thank you very much. And he isn’t at all homophobic, we can tell, because at one point he writes:

“Reading that PR announcement made me want to bulk-buy Häagen-Dazs. Why? Not because I’m a crazed homophobe, but because I’m so irritated by my food telling me what I should believe.”

So not a crazed homophobe, check.

Will Heaven goes on to write:

“This kind of crass marketing technique has “Democrat” written all over it. They’re shamelessly using a delicate social issue to make money. It’s a very American style of Left-wingery – and that’s why I don’t think it will work here.”

Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t. But what I find more interesting is the fact that Mr. Heaven is so outraged that a company should take a public moral stance on an issue (though I do doubt that he would have been moved to write this piece if Ben & Jerry’s had, say, opposed the new UK high-speed rail link that will cut through the countryside, or maybe supported the decriminalisation of fox hunting – and I don’t know his views on those topics, just call it an informed guess) and seek to influence public policy by doing so, but has devoted zero column inches to complaining about the many ways that corporations and other special interests continually seek to influence public policy behind our backs and without our knowledge.

Through lobbyists and charity golf games, and exclusive parties where the great and the good from industry mingle with politicians to make their case for new laws that favour their own companies and industries.

Mr. Heaven is free to boycott Ben & Jerry’s if he doesn’t like the fact that they have decided to publicly support marriage equality. But is he familiar with all of the causes that his bank, his supermarket, and even maybe his employer actively support (through lobbying or cash donations) without making it publicly known? Or is it fine if they sometimes act against his interests and those of the general public, as long as they don’t have the gall to announce it on their product packaging?

In Honour Of Philip Langridge

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

philip langridge 1

 

I have been meaning to write this blog for about six years now,  but only managed to start five days ago. That is quite a remarkable feat of procrastination by anyone’s standards. But there were some long-imagined blog posts that I am not willing to let slip into oblivion, no matter how overdue they may be. And this is the much-condensed version of the post that I would and should have written upon learning of the death of the much esteemed British tenor, Philip Langridge, in March 2010. His obituary can be read here.

I have been a fan of classical music ever since I first listened to my mother’s old tape recording of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony (conducted by Colin Davis) when I was too young to even remember. I would arrange my stuffed animals in the rough approximation of an orchestral layout and pretend to conduct them. Go ahead and laugh all you want! And she would take to me classical music concerts at the Barbican Centre (once we discovered how to find it, buried as it is in one of the more labyrinthine parts of London) and the Royal Festival Hall, and I will forever be grateful for this because there is nothing – nothing– that compares to hearing a great symphony or an amazing piece of chamber music played live in front of you by some of the most talented players in the world. My late grandfather was also an enormous fan of music of all kinds – from classical to Scottish country dancing – and he also played an enormous part in my musical development. To this day, I practice playing the piano on his old electric Yamaha Clavinova piano.

After I graduated from university and gained a position at a respectable firm paying a decent salary, I wanted to give something back after all that classical music had done for me. And so after some discussions I decided to become a patron of the London Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble that I would hear most in my childhood, providing a modest amount of financial support to help to keep ticket prices low so that future Samuel Hoopers could attend the finest classical music concerts in the world (bar none) for a low, affordable price. My association with the London Symphony Orchestra has been wonderful and is one of the things in my life of which I am most proud.

Since I have been a Patron of the LSO I have had the great fortune to be able to meet and speak with Sir Colin Davis, the former Principal Conductor and now the President of the LSO, and the first thing that I mentioned to him was that old tape recording of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, without which my life might quite literally have taken a very different path. He told me that he remembered recording it, at Abbey Road Studios, just a stones throw from where I used to live at the bottom of West End Lane in West Hampstead, London.

But the single most special, musical moment of my life occurred a full year before I commenced my patronage of the LSO. I had only just moved to London, and for comfort and the knowledge that I would be in familiar surroundings, I booked a ticket to an LSO concert at the Barbican. To be quite honest, I bought the ticket online and did not even look at the programme until I had arrived at the concert hall after rushing across town from the office. It turned out that the programme was a performance of “The Dream of Gerontius” by Edward Elgar.

I took my seat (in the stalls for the first time, since I was now a man of at least some limited means) and sat back, ready to unwind after a hard week in the office. But before the orchestra took the stage a man from the Barbican Centre came out with a microphone and informed us that although this evening’s concert would go ahead, the soloist, Philip Langridge, was recovering from a heavy cold, and that the performance might not be up to its usual standard.

What followed was the single most amazing, breathtaking concert that I have ever been to. Even when recovering from the ‘flu, Philip Langridge brought a passion and intensity and musicality to the part that I have never heard matched, before or subsequently. In both the first half (where he sings the part of the dying Gerontius on his death bed) and the second half (where he plays the part of the soul of Gerontius in purgatory) his voice was clear and articulate and sublime, and I don’t mind admitting that mine were among the many non-dry eyes as the final part, “Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul” drew to a close.

Whether I have another five years or fifty years left on this good Earth I will never forget that most special of concerts, and all of the concerts that my mother took me to when I was young, and all of the concerts that it has been my privilege to bring my dearest friends and family, and my darling wife to, at my second home, the Barbican Arts Centre in London.

And though he may have passed away two years ago last week, I will never forget how the voice of Philip Langridge made me feel on that evening in 2007.

Angel: Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And o’er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.

Angels to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.

Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.
Farewell! Farewell!

Growing Up In The Age Of Facebook

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Facebook Password

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There’s an interesting piece in The Daily Telegraph today about a 12-year-old girl from Minnesota who is taking her school to court because she was forced by the school authorities, against her will and without the expressed permission of her parents, to divulge her Facebook password and allow school officials to read her private messages.

I read this article and my first thoughts were – thank God for the Americal Civil Liberties Union, who are bringing the case on her behalf. Much maligned by the American right wing because they defend those rights that conservatives would actually quite happily squash (flag burning, mosque building, same-sex marriage) while they hypocritically parade around acting like the last stalwart defenders of freedom, you can usually rely on the ACLU to defend the cause of liberty, even if it means holding up a mirror to society and making us ask ourselves some difficult questions sometimes.

The article goes on to mention some additional egregious instances of personal privacy violations by schools and employers, including the following:

“The ACLU recently forced the Department of Corrections in Maryland to stop requiring applicants to provide their Facebook passwords when applying for jobs.”

As if such a practice should ever have been attempted in the so-called land of the free! And:

“In an recent investigation, the TV station MSNBC found that many university sports departments now require students to “friend” their coach, giving officials access to their “friends-only” posts. The University of North Carolina handbook reads: “Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of team members’ social networking sites and postings.”

Such actions are a total affront to privacy, and organisations that deal in such underhanded and coercive tactics deserve to be named, shamed and sued. Though many of us now live a substantial portion of our lives online in terms of our Facebook and Twitter accounts etc., this only makes the need to enforce a boundary between one’s personal and work lives even more important. There are many ways that a person can bring their family, church, school or employer into disrepute, but just as your boss cannot invite himself round for dinner to make sure you aren’t complaining to your family and neighbours about work at the end of the day, neither can your employer eavesdrop on the digital footprints you leave on social media. No ifs, no buts – it’s wrong.

But moving beyond this issue, we must recognise that growing up and going through school today is surely more different for today’s generation of schoolchildren than most people can ever appreciate. Facebook and Twitter, and the fact that everyone has a mobile phone from about the age of seven these days certainly makes socialising more fun and exciting, but can also take the damage that is caused by “run of the mill” bullying and increase it exponentially. Sadly there are already cases of teenage suicides precipitated by social media-related bullying, and the problem has attracted enough attention that Facebook and other social networks have had to take steps to make it easier to report such behaviour. Faced with this new threat to the wellbeing of young people you can therefore understand the school’s alarm, and perhaps understand (if not accept) the action that they took in this instance. However, I truly would have expected a story about the forced divulgence of personal passwords and the snooping by authorities on a school pupil’s online identity to have originated from Britain, and not the United States.

And it should not have to fall to the ACLU to argue the blindingly obvious in court – that schools, employers and other such authorities have no remit to spy on a private citizen’s online life.

On Closed Information Loops

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Apparently we are all busy fleeing from, unsubscribing from or de-friending people who espouse differing political opinions on the social media sites that we frequent. Or so says Howard Kurtz, writing in The Daily Beast in an article entitled “Unfriending Over Politics”:

“According to a fascinating survey by the Pew Internet Project, 9 percent of those who frequent social networking sites have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because they posed something about politics or issues that the user disagreed with or found offensive.”

I find this interesting because it doesn’t chime with my personal experience at all. While I will never know how many people have spat out their morning coffee and hurriedly de-friended me after reading one of my rants on Facebook, I do know that I have never even thought of doing this to anyone else. Well, with one disclaimer – I once defriended someone after she posted a comment in which she eagerly anticipated the death of Margaret Thatcher, a callous thing to say but really only the straw that broke the camels back in terms of that particular connection.

facebookdislike
Computer, cross-reference my friend list with the electoral register…

 

Perhaps I am the exception to the rule, but I rather like hearing contrary opinions expressed on Twitter and Facebook. I like dissenting and hearing other people disagree with me. Sometimes it makes me change my mind, and other times it makes my own arguments stronger. Life would be so dull if we lived in a world where everything that you posted was automatically “liked” by everyone else, with no dissent or discussion. But apparently this is the world that a lot of people are slowly moving towards.

Of course, we have observed this phenomenon for some time in terms of the traditional media, the newspapers and television news. With ever more options at our disposal it has never been more easy to gather one’s news from friendly sources and voices with whom one shares the same biases, prejudices and political leanings. I am guilty of this to some extent myself. As the US Republican Party has drifted ever further to the reactionary right over the course of the Obama presidency, I have found my television news habits shifting from a blend of CNN, Fox and MSNBC to the significant exclusion of Fox News and a slight decline in MSNBC viewing, compensated for by a large reluctant increase in CNN. And in terms of UK politics, when The Times Online went behind a paywall, my first instinct was to gravitate to The Daily Telegraph as a natural substitute, over The Guardian or The Independent.

However, I try to always remain very aware of the political biases of the news sources that I consume, and to compensate for them by reading or watching alternative outlets too. This is really important if we are to avoid buying in to the two-dimensional caricatures of our political adversaries that the television talking heads often perpetrate. Most Republicans are not racist, backward people harbouring a cultural resentment against President Obama and interested only in their own economic wellbeing, and most Democrats are not union-beholden thugs committed to subverting America and establishing a socialist economic model in the United States.

But at times you could be forgiven for holding one of these opinions, given the poisonous rhetoric and lack of balance that exists almost everywhere now. Take CNN for example, the only major cable news network that makes an honest effort to tow a middle-line and avoid political bias in its coverage – they are consistently beaten in the ratings by FOX and MSNBC, each of whom have carved out a lucrative niche catering to and reinforcing the preexisting leanings of their viewers.

Should we go back to the old days, when the trusty voice of Walter Cronkite or the generic BBC News announcer was the sole source of information and the undisputed truth? Surely not – though it is hard to see that movements like the “birtherism” movement in the US, questioning President Obama’s citizenship, would have prospered were it not for a television news network ready and willing give such radical voices succour and airtime.

Surely we would all do well to take time to watch and read the news from alternative perspectives sometimes – and not just to laugh at the crazy stupid liberals/conservatives, but really to watch and see the world from another perspective. We don’t have to change our minds, but we can change our tone and improve the level of public discourse in our respective countries.

Slave Labour, Or Earning Your Keep?

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

Welfare To Work - Job Centre Plus

 

Much hand-wringing in The Guardian today, as they continue their ideological crusade against the government’s Welfare-to-Work programme. This time, the cause for outrage is the discovery that several large charities also signed up to participate in the scheme.

In high dudgeon, the article demands:

“The question is, what were large voluntary sector organisations doing embracing such arrangements when people think of them as supporting the disadvantaged? Who is speaking up for disempowered and marginalised people, including the young, disabled and unemployed?”

Obviously, offering work experience opportunities to predominantly young, less affluent people with little prior experience of the workplace doesn’t count as “supporting the disadvantaged”. No, they are clearly much better supported when they are kept on welfare forever, with little to no hope of finding work. Note to Peter Beresford – helping people doesn’t always just come in the form of writing them a benefit cheque – sometimes equally important are the non-financial benefits that can be offered – such as work experience.

He goes on to comment:

“But this isn’t the first time that we have seen big charities behaving more like corporates.”

And:

“…many charities have lost sight of their traditional value-base, and become indistinguishable from the state and private sectors. They have become permeated by their personnel, ways of working and ethics.”

Remember, everyone. Capitalism = bad. Corporations = bad. Emulating a corporation or profit-making organisation, in any way (including striving to be more efficient, lower overheads or improve productivity) = bad. In fact we would all do well to remember the true intended beneficiaries of some of these third sector organisations – the people who work for them, not the people they claim to help and represent.

Continuing the theme, Iain Duncan-Smith (the Work & Pensions Secretary) embarked on a war of words with Simon Cowell when he lamented that perhaps too many young people see the only path to wealth and prosperity as being through entering TV talent shows and trying to “make it big”.

This is one of those rather eye-rollingly typically conservative comments moaning about the youth of today, and it received a predictable backlash from Mr. Cowell, the end result of which appears to be that Simon Cowell may take on an apprentice or two, and Iain Duncan-Smith has won front-row seats to the taping of the next episode of X Factor.

But joking aside – and ignoring for one moment the terrible thought of Simon Cowell moulding a group of impressionable young people in his own image – what exactly is wrong with the idea of workfare, and why do so many on the British left get upset about it?

The left wants to preserve an umbrella of universal, unearned benefits, for everyone. They were furious when the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government moved to put a cap on child benefit payments for households earning over £40,000 per year, because they (probably quite correctly) realised that if the wealthier segments of the population whose taxes fund this benefit then don’t also receive a portion of it back themselves, they will be much less inclined to support it, possibly leading to a slipperly slope where eventually it is abolished.

And in much the same way, we hear cries of “slave labour!” when the government tries to introduce what is actually a very sensible scheme to offer unpaid work experience to the long-term unemployed. Of course, the work is “unpaid” only in the sense that the companies taking on and training these individuals do not give them a paycheque – they still continue to receive their Jobseekers Allowance benefits courtesy of the taxpayer.

There is nothing kind or compassionate about leaving people to fester on benefits without helping them back to work. This government programme is voluntary, and has loopholes large enough to drive a truck through to ensure that those who can’t be bothered to attend their placements, or those who commit all but the most egregious of offences while on their placement will remarkably still keep their benefits nonetheless.

But despite being emasculated by these concessions to Labour scare-mongering, the Welfare-to-Work scheme will still provide valuable work experience for young people who, in many cases, have not had the opportunity to experience the workplace, thus helping to prepare them for a lifetime of productive self-sufficiency. This programme is designed to help people help themselves, and therefore it deserves the support of the so-called “compassionate” Left.