For those who have been spending their Easter holiday away from the news or are living abroad: one of the chief aides to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Damian McBride, resigned yesterday. The reason for his departure was the revelation of certain emails which he sent from his 10 Downing Street address. In these missives, he described a series of smears he wanted to use against the leadership of the British Conservative Party.

His ideas range from the plausible, such as the suggestion that a gay Tory MP was using his office to promote his boyfriend’s company, to the preposterous, including speculation about the mental health of the Shadow Chancellor’s wife. Overall, the emails are a mental wastebin of dirty tricks: there is nothing in them about attacking the Tories on the issues, rather, it’s mostly gossip, intended to inflict damage even if the claims can’t be substantiated. There is a most unpleasant smell of mischief about the entire enterprise.

The television news is full of stock footage of Mr. McBride which indicates his former proximity to the Prime Minister: he has been shown by the Prime Minister’s side, or just behind him, or talking with him. Both looked dour and grim: they appeared to be two of a kind. As I watched, I couldn’t get a line from Pink Floyd out of my head:

All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.

In this case, the wall is a barrier between Gordon Brown and re-election. I can’t say I’m sorry: I know that the Conservatives won’t be any better, however the McBride scandal is yet another indication that the Labour Government has run its course. Having clung to power for so long, some fear losing it so much that they will resort to desperate means to hang on.

That said, perhaps the most feeble operation that Labour has attempted is their efforts to disassociate themselves from the present recession. Gordon Brown has been saying, unconvincingly, that the crisis was manufactured in America: this must have made for an interesting topic of conversation when President Obama came to Downing Street for tea. Interestingly, however, the McBride incident can be viewed as “another brick in the wall” which boxes Labour in to its responsibility for the economic crisis as well.

If there is one ethos that has united both the government and the bankers, it is the idea that the end justifies the means: it didn’t matter to the bankers that they had to cut corners in order to achieve gigantic bonuses, it also didn’t matter that they had to put together investment vehicles which no one understood, the profit, the win was what was all important. What does it matter if you stand upon a house of cards, if you can touch the sun?

Labour did not defy nor challenge this culture, rather, the entire New Labour experiment indicates how the party had become part of it. Pitch all previous commitments over the side, pitch the awkward party members out of the convention hall, pitch clear policies into the rubbish bin and replace them with a glossy brochure: it didn’t matter in 1997 if this left the party with an agenda that was bereft of solid ideas. They then proceeded to manipulate what is best in human beings: the tendency to hope, that burning idea that the present state is not optimal, nor is it pre-ordained that things have to remain as they are. In other words, their house of cards rested on a cynical promise of a new dawn. It worked for a time: Labour reached the summit of power and has remained there since.

We have had over ten years of this grasping and grabbing without regard for what lies beneath. Each time someone cheated, someone lied, or someone manipulated a situation without regard to ethics, they put another brick in the wall of the prison in which we now reside. We are now wandering in the proverbial grey mist that follows a disaster, disoriented, vaguely seeing, barely comprehending. We still have not had a reckoning. At best, we get committees on standards in public life or another committee about banking regulation; what we don’t get is a cultural discussion, and it is rare to hear the question asked: how did we destroy ourselves?

From my vantage point in academia, I can get a view of society’s priorities: my observations may provide a clue. If you are a scientist, and you have an idea for a product on the basis of your research, it is relatively simple to get funding: if companies aren’t beating down your door, certainly the state funded research councils will do so. Both Brown and Obama have stated that they want science to remain a education priority.

Neither has talked about education in terms of providing “morals” and “ethics”. This is a thorny area, because whenever these are mentioned, the association tends to be with religion, and fanatical preachers persecuting individuals on the basis of lustful malfeasance. Perhaps the greatest damage the Religious Right has inflicted on society is to create a situation in which ethics has become a taboo subject, lest one be accused of intolerance or homophobia. However, ethics should belong to everyone, not necessarily in terms of describing one’s responsibility to God, but certainly in describing our responsibility to each other. To this end, philosophy should be there to to provide guidance as part of a balanced curriculum.

However, in contrast to science, philosophy is in dire straights. The University of Liverpool, one of the more well-established institutions in the United Kingdom, is likely to close its philosophy faculty. So: we are presented with a situation in which our knowledge what we can do is relentlessly on the rise, but it is not being accompanied by a subsequent increase in our knowledge of what we should do.

Every indication I see suggest that policy makers don’t want to think about this; the bailouts and stimulus packages look to me like an attempt to reconstruct the old order rather than an endeavour to put a new framework in place. The G20 summit was not a redux of Bretton Woods; while leaders say that things are changing, the relationship between governments and giant corporations has become one of mutual dependence, rather than disassociation and dissolution. The deck of cards is merely being reshuffled, a prelude to another attempt to reach the sun. Considering the misery that is presently afflicting the unemployed, the repossessed, and the poor, this is more than a shame, it is a crime. One wonders how many bricks in the wall we require, how high do the prison walls need to be, before a genuine rethink occurs. I just don’t know; but hope remains, so long as the aforementioned human instinct to progress refuses to lay down and die.

If there is one day in the year when it is positively encouraged to be down on the Roman Empire, it would have to be today, Good Friday. I recall seeing an oil painting reproduced in a children’s Bible, which showed Pontius Pilate washing his hands in a jewel-encrusted golden bowl; a beaten, bleeding Christ was prostrate at his feet. Crucifixion, I was told, was a punishment the Romans reserved for the worst of the worst; given that they did this to the Son of God, what kind of people were they?

Even after Christ died, rose and ascended into Heaven, the Romans behaved no better: St. Paul was executed. St. Peter was crucified upside down. Nero made the Christians into the scapegoat for the fire which engulfed Rome. From a Christian perspective, Rome was a menace, a brute, up until Constantine arrived and turned the Empire into a force for the propagation and preservation of Christ’s message.

Diocletian, who reigned from 284 to 305, was not a friend of the Christians. He arranged for the last major persecution of the faith; to this day, he is remembered by the Serbians as “Dukljan, the adversary of God”. It is perhaps because of this, and the fact that Constantine’s reign was shortly after his, that he has been mostly forgotten, relegated to being a trivia question, if he’s recalled at all. This is too bad, for he has as much to teach us as Julius Caesar or Augustus: given the endurance of much of his achievements, perhaps more.

When Diocletian came to power, the Roman Empire was surrounded by enemies (including the Sarmatians and Persians), and was fraught with internal issues: its tax system was irregular, the provinces were badly managed, and it was lurching from crisis to crisis. Worse, the empire was suffering from a problem of manpower: for example, the Germanic tribes which threatened Rome had a tradition of “every man is a also a warrior”. Rome’s relative sophistication had created a society of specialists: it was not reasonable to expect a Senator or tax collector to suddenly pick up a spear and wield it usefully.

Diocletian’s response to inheriting this messy, dysfunctional system was interesting, and leads to his first management secret: you can’t run everything, even in a crisis, so delegate.

Diocletian was a soldier, and thus he had a pool of talented people with whom he had served to choose from. He chose a fellow officer, Maximian, to assume the title of co-emperor, or more specifically, “Caesar”. While the idea of ruling with others was an old concept in Rome (the Roman Empire began with a series of “triumverates”), this rejection of power in order to preserve the nation was unprecedented. Indeed, it was a recognition on Diocletian’s part of his own limitations: while he had sufficient guile and intelligence to become emperor, he did not believe himself to be all-powerful.

Humility worked well; indeed, the empire was divided again, thus yielding a Tetrarchy. Much depended upon the co-emperors’ willingness to agree, but while Diocletian was alive, the system held. Diocletian took the concept further within his own court by creating what could be called a “cabinet”, with departments (called scrina) responsible for specific issues. Again, he realised the limits of his knowledge, and thus created a mechanism whereby decision making could be transferred to an appropriate level.

Having created a formula for leadership, Diocletian’s reforms moved in another direction: he decided to base his authority on a religious obligation as opposed to continuing to rely upon his influence in the army. This decision yields a second lesson: might won’t make right.

It had been a tradition among Roman emperors to proclaim themselves gods; Diocletian could have gone in this direction, but rather, he went for a humbler designation, that he and his fellow emperors were merely the representatives of the gods on Earth. This is a subtle distinction but nonetheless an important one: rather than proclaim divinity, he proclaimed himself a man albeit one with a divine charge to keep. It may very well be this decision which was the first few pebbles in the eventual avalanche which took out the divine right of kings.

The shorter term effect of this decision, however, was to remove the army as the arbiter of who was emperor and who was not. Diocletian obviously believed that its might was far too shaky a foundation for his rule, no matter how much brutality he could summon them to do. After all, another general could happen along, win the support of the army and take him and his co-emperors out, if the previous principle persisted.

As important as these decisions were, Diocletian still had to stamp down the overriding administrative chaos and furthermore, deal with problems of taxation.

One of the commonalities between ancient Romans and modern Western citizens is their dislike of taxes, and their willingness to evade those taxes in whatever way they can. However the Diocletian experience is very interesting: if rules are clear, fair and accompanied by appropriate transparency, people tend to follow them.

Diocletian reformed taxation to be based on heads (e.g., the number of people employed by a landowner) and land size. He also stressed that everyone had to pay taxes, whether they were poorest or the richest. He also supplemented the system by putting tax records into the public domain, so that everyone could see how much their neighbours were paying. This clever reform also likely acted as a deterrent to fraud.

Consistency in the administration of taxes was also important; Diocletian ensured that the rules that applied in Mediolanum, also were in effect in the most remote border town. This added coherence to the functioning of the Empire, and likely assisted in supporting its overall identity.

That said, perhaps the greatest lesson Diocletian has to teach comes from how he departed the scene. Unlike most of the Emperors, he did not die in office, either through natural causes or at the hands of an assassin. He knew:when you no longer have the will to lead, don’t lead any longer.

Diocletian fell ill in 304. The following year, he addressed a crowd at Nicomedia, telling them he needed to rest and thus had to retire. He then proceeded to his palace in what is today Split, Croatia. He enjoyed a six year retirement before his death in 311, in spite of being begged to return to power. He reportedly told one such petitioner: “If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.”

While the Empire was not fully secure due to Diocletian’s work, he had many reasons to be satisfied: the administration had improved, the frontiers had stabilised. Diocletian had managed to secure peace with the Persians after a bloody war, and had held the line in the Balkans and Egypt. Things were not perfect, but they were better. Yes, the Western Roman Empire collapsed less than two hundred years after his death; however the division of the empire that came out of his reign, between East and West, meant that there was a basis for the East carrying on in the same tradition. That empire, later referred to as the Byzantine Empire, survived until the fifteenth century, in no small part thanks to the reforms they inherited from Diocletian.

None of this is intended to disguise the more horrific aspects of the Roman Empire; Diocletian was an autocrat presiding over a brutal regime that relied upon slavery. It was no beacon of progressive ideals in most respects. The Empire’s (and Diocletian’s) virtues mainly reside in comparison to what existed before, and what was spawned later on, namely an intellectual basis which eventually led to modern, Western progressive thought. However the Diocletian experience shows that even amidst the gloom of such a Social Darwinian atmosphere, small gleams of wisdom still were able to penetrate. We know that power corrupts, we know that the worst kind of manager or leader is the one that takes too much control, we know that rules should be clear and fair, we know that there is a time to let go. The problem is that this knowledge doesn’t always translate into action. With Diocletian, to his credit, it did.

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It’s difficult not to sympathise with Margaret Mitchell. After she put down her pen upon completion of “Gone With the Wind”, she must have wondered, “how can I top this?” The same situation faced Harper Lee after she wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird”. If I recall correctly, J.D. Salinger disappeared for years after the publication of “Catcher in the Rye”, preferring to become a hermit rather than face the typewriter again.

However, most writers don’t have the time or the financial capacity to choose a poetic form of exile. Rather, they have to keep pushing onwards towards the inevitable second work, and hope for the best.

I couldn’t shake these thoughts as I read Alaa Al Aswany’s latest novel, “Chicago”, which was published last October. His first major novel, “The Yacoubian Building”, was masterful, a key work which provided inspiration and information that I used in writing my PhD. That novel established Al Aswany as a master of “human mosaics”, he created a long work out of assembling a number of narratives, which in my opinion is an admirable reflection of day-to-day reality.

With the Yacoubian Building, the mosaic had a clear, strong frame in which the bricolage was contained and constrained; it also helped a great deal that Al Aswany had worked in a building of that name. In “Chicago”, the mosaic is assembled within the city limits, specifically, within the campus of the University of Illinois and its environs.

Yet, the frame does not hold: despite the title and setting, this is most decidedly an Egyptian novel. Most of the protagonists are Egyptian; though it must be said all of the Egyptian characters in the novel are emigres or overseas students. Very little is mentioned about any Egyptian neighbourhoods within Chicago or the presence of a permanent diaspora. Indeed, apart from some historical notes about the city, the setting is incidental to the story. Aswany’s research even falls down in some places: he suggests Chicago is called the Windy City due to its inclement weather. This has been proven to be false: the moniker came about due to the pomposity and long-windedness of Chicago politicians.

I’ve been to Chicago; I first arrived there on a summer’s day, but a chill wind had blown in off Lake Michigan and thus the city was covered in a cold mist. Shorts and a t-shirt were inadequate. Yet, a few hours later and the sun shone out again.

The city was full of lively bars and brownstone buildings, great museums and jazz clubs; like a number of great cities, Chicago can create the illusion that it is the entire world and that it’s impossible to see and know it all. There is an air of industry, grit, effort, yet sophistication, culture and sheer naughtiness. The politicians may be crooks but they do it with a smile. Things may not run well all the time, but the gin of 1920’s speakeasies still flows through its veins. It’s a place of contradictions. However, in my opinion, Aswany under-utilises the setting’s potential, and its possible impact on his characters.

That said, the characters themselves are very interesting: however, some items did make me raise an eyebrow. Really, is the medical faculty of the University of Illinois a bolthole for Egyptian exiles? These exiles range from the Americanised to the fiercely traditional, encompassing both Muslims and Copts. If there is one thing that unites them all it is the impression that Egypt is not something any of them left behind, rather, Egypt is there with them.

It’s there with a brilliant surgeon, who left for America because he was discriminated against for being a Copt. It’s there with a professor of medicine because he believes himself to be a coward for not having stood up to the regime long ago. It’s with a young couple struggling with love: thrown together by the circumstances of their university, they realise that actual “courting” is atypical, and yet they need each other. It’s with an Egyptian professor who believes himself thoroughly Americanised, but then he discovers that he has rather traditional ideas when it comes to dealing with his daughter. Egypt hangs over a young poet in exile, who has mixed feelings about falling in love with an American Jewish girl, but no such hesitation about wishing for the downfall of the Egyptian government. Aswany even brings in a member of the Egyptian security services who threatens the poet; at this point, Chicago almost fades away entirely. We are back in Cairo. If that was the point – that you can take the Egyptian out of Egypt but not the Egypt out of the Egyptian, well all right. But using Chicago to this end, and making it such a focus that it lends the book its title, seems somewhat odd.

I had another problem with this novel: its preoccupation with sex. Yes, the effect that lust has on people can be an interesting dynamic, however there is a point where it detracts from rather than supplements the narrative. For example, one of the American wives of an Egyptian professor, is almost incidental to the story until we are taken through a rather painful narrative in which she purchases her first sex toy. We know more about this aspect of her than anything else, which seems rather shallow. Similarly, we are introduced to the misadventure of the poet trying to arrange a liaison with a prostitute, and the awkward fumblings of a devout Muslim couple who are yet to be married. There were more finer feelings in the Yacoubian Building; it is a shame Al Aswany wasn’t able to produce them here.

Despite its weaknesses, “Chicago” has one great virtue to recommend it: it’s a good read. I picked it up in the morning and finished it in the afternoon of the same day. Not all of this alacrity is due to the speed at which I read: even when he isn’t at his best, Al Aswany draws you in, makes you suspend disbelief, even if that suspension is tentative. It isn’t the “Yacoubian Building” – however, at least he’s gotten through the barrier of tension and pain that surrounds a second major novel. Liberated from this, it will be fascinating to see what he produces next.

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I happened across the works of Jose Saramago quite by accident; the Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek mentioned him in reference to the novel “Seeing”, in which a democracy ceases to function because the electorate decides to submit nothing but blank ballots.

Intrigued, I decided to keep an eye out for his works. One day this past February, I was forced to remain home due to poor weather: the skies alternately dumped snow and sleet on Chichester, leaving a cold, slushy mess which trickled into the gutters, flooded the streets and made the sidewalks impassable. I braved this to go to the local book store: there is only so much weather reporting that can one take, and the BBC had become particularly apocalyptic in its predictions, stating this was the worst winter storm since God knows when.

After sliding along the pavement for a time, I arrived at my local Waterstones. I had hoped they would have “Seeing”: no such luck. Instead, they had “Blindness”. I don’t regret their lack of selection in this instance.

Saramago is a Portuguese author, and perhaps knowing this coloured my impressions of the novel from the start. As I settled down into my chair with a mug of coffee and the novel, I envisaged sunnier climes, a clear contrast to the harsh, cold grey light penetrating my living room window. While the setting is not stated, I couldn’t help but think “Lisbon”: there is a definite southern European feel to it. I could imagine the old buildings and modern traffic lights side by side, and life proceeding at a sultry pace.

The story is relatively simple: a plague of “white blindness” runs rampant through the population. The first sufferer is struck down while sitting in traffic. From there, the disease spreads in a geometric progression: the optometrist who examines the first victim gets it. A thief who steals the first victim’s car also loses his sight. Other patients who are in the optometrist’s office also become infected, including a man with one eye, and a young woman in sunglasses. Strangely, the only exception is the optometrist’s wife, who tells the authorities she is blind in order to join her husband in quarantine. She helps her husband and the group at the heart of the story to avoid the worst consequences.

Saramago vision’s of humanity in crisis is rather dark; the authorities respond to the plague with panic, first by quarantining people in a disused mental hospital. Within the walls of the hospital, things quickly become unhygienic, and hardened criminals rule the roost; I was somewhat nauseated during a scene in which the criminals demanded “favours” from female inmates in exchange for food.

The plague, however, becomes total, and systems entirely collapse: after the group at the heart of the story escape from the facility, they find people are sleeping where they can, collecting rainwater to drink, and eating whatever they can find. Saramago perfectly captures the general dissolution and selfishness that would take place in this scenario.

However, Saramago’s writing style won’t be to everyone’s taste. Saramago utilises a lot of run-on sentences, and none of the characters are explicitly named. Under normal circumstances, this is to be avoided: however, in this case, it’s peculiar but it works. Even without names or a typical structure, the reader can follow precisely what’s going on.

The novel has a deep philosophical core which is particularly appealing: the book draws our attention to the fragility of what we call civilisation. Saramago goes into exquisite detail; he tells us what it would be like if we were deprived of water and sewage services: there is a touching scene in which the blind wash themselves in the pouring rain. While some people are unchanged in character due to their infirmity, others become feral: we are introduced to a blind woman who has eats animals raw. Knock one support of civilisation away, and does the edifice entirely crumble, or does it fall down temporarily, only to be rebuilt again? Saramago offers no clear answer, but presents a number of potential scenarios through his characters. There is the spectacle of the blind lecturing the blind in the streets, and the tragedy of the blind wandering into whatever empty edifice they can find to shelter from the weather. There is love too: the old man with one eye and the young woman with sunglasses fall in love, a scenario that Saramago implicitly suggests would not have taken place without the plague.

The best novels, in my opinion, make one think: Saramago’s “Blindness” is definitely a journey of reflection. On a day when the apocalypse was being proclaimed due to poor weather, it was interesting to have in hand a sketch of a genuine calamity. The novel confirmed for me that perhaps the worst of any disaster may not be the catastrophe itself, but rather what people make of it. I look forward to delving into the other scenarios, other books that have arisen out of Saramago’s fertile imagination; it is perhaps this hunger for more that “Blindness” leaves behind which is its most potent recommendation.

OK, so I’m disappointed. We’re 77 days into the Obama Administration, and not everything is perfect. The economy hasn’t recovered. Carbon emissions haven’t stopped. My mortgage isn’t paid off. I still have to get up at 5:30 AM to get ready to go to work. I want a bailout but there wasn’t a cheque in the post today. It’s all Obama’s fault.

I’m kidding, of course. President Obama came into office with perhaps the most overloaded in-tray in the history of the American Presidency. It makes me wonder what the traditional letter from one President to the next said:

January 20, 2009

Dear Barack –

It’s all yours now. Bye! ;)

Yours, Georgie

And then Barack discovered that the change in power relationships meant that his former colleagues were no longer his friends; this shift was almost immediate. Witness how he has had to cajole a number Democrats to vote for his budget. He’s also been having problems getting Congress to behave on earmarks; the stimulus package is loaded with items which make absolutely no economic and environmental sense. For example, I understand that a small part of it is going towards building a convention centre in Dallas. Why? The last time I passed through Dallas, I saw they weren’t short on big buildings, including potential venues for all manner of shindigs. I wonder if they intend to turn Dallas into an American Sheffield: Sheffield has a number of sports arenas, shopping malls and convention centres which were built in order to provide work to local people, now they sit empty half the year.

To add insult to injury, Joe Biden was right: foreign powers tried it on with President Obama very shortly after he took office. Witness North Korea’s recent launch of a ballistic missile: they claim they were putting a communications satellite into space. Obviously the Ministry of Excuses in Pyongyang is a bit irony challenged: a country that makes such a point of not talking to other people would be better off claiming they were doing it for the hell of it. Considering Kim Jong-Il’s behaviour, that would be more readily believed.

Europe has turned out not to be as helpful as President Obama hoped, and there are good reasons for this: first, Europe is broke. Speaking from where I sit in the United Kingdom, we’re having intermittent problems auctioning off government debt. The French economy has been sputtering for years. Spain’s property market collapsed, taking a lot of employment with it. Italy is now the private property of Berlusconi and Co. Germany is paranoid about having another Weimar situation. Of course, with no money, there’s no European stimulus, and there’s no funding of further missions to Afghanistan. Saving the Afghani government isn’t exactly a mission of the righteous either: Afghanistan’s President Karzai let Obama (and half of his country) down by signing into law a nasty piece of legislation that says that allowing sexual assault is a wifely duty.

So Barack is facing a world of trouble, and the first 100 days have been very short of quiet. Is any of it his fault? On balance, I’d have to say “Yes.”

Take it with a pinch of salt, after all, I’m just one person: however, I believe that President Obama is suffering from a problem that Winston Churchill once had. According to legend, Churchill, a renowned gourmand, turned away a pudding and told the chef, “it has no theme”. Similarly, I believe much of Obama’s policies and vision are in soft-focus, rather like how 1940’s films developed a slight ambient blur whenever they did a close-up of Olivia de Havilland.

This lack of clear direction is most evident in the stimulus package. I thought, and had assumed, that he was going to announce a new “New Deal” on Inauguration Day which would serve as an overall theme. Then within the “New Deal” vision, there would be a number of other clear, concise schemes. FDR’s model was ideal in this respect: to this day, people recall the National Recovery Act’s blue eagle, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Furthermore, the purposes of Roosevelt’s plans were succinct: the TVA, for example, was there to provide electricity to people who didn’t have it before.

President Obama could have had his own TVA, except this one would have constructed a proper infrastructure for Green Energy. He could have had a clear programme for upgrading broadband and another for improving rail links. He could have dedicated a programme of infrastructure repairs to those who lost their lives due to the I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minnesota in August 2007. Instead, he put everything into one giant stimulus package and as a result he’s diluted the message. Worse, he’s made the progress of the individual schemes that much more difficult to track, not just for his own Administration but for the public at large.

The public needs this clarity; a lack of focus could be costly: I’ve already seen worrying signs that the stimulus is going to be wasted on worse things than the aforementioned convention centre in Dallas. My sister’s new boyfriend works for Perot Systems, a company founded by the former independent Presidential candidate. I was curious to see what kind of work they do, so I looked at their website. What I found was a large presentation about how Perot Systems could be spending the stimulus money (click here for more). Ross Perot is a billionaire, the last time I checked; why is the wealth of the nation going towards enhancing his bank balance? The moment that others find this out, I suspect the same question will be asked, and in stronger terms.

The soft focus approach is also evident in foreign policy. Yes, President Obama has done well by pledging to close Guantanamo Bay. Some of his overtures to Iran have been masterful; few recent spectacles have been more satisfying than watching the Ayatollahs scrambling for a response to the new, friendly face of the “Great Satan”. Their justification for oppression and mismanagement is dissipating. However, Obama’s overtures to the Islamic world have not been consistent: while extending the olive branch with one hand, he is sliding more troops into Afghanistan with the other.

A military solution to Afghanistan is not possible. The Soviet Union found this out in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and their tactics were far more ruthless than what the European Union and America will allow. No less a military genius than Alexander the Great had problems with Afghanistan. He invaded the country with his battle hardened troops in 330 BCE; it had taken him 6 months to conquer Iran (Persia), in contrast, it took him 3 years to conquer Afghanistan. It may have been these difficulties which persuaded him to take an Afghan bride, Roxanne, as a political gesture. Apparently, Alexander wrote to his mother that while she might have been under the impression there was one Alexander, Afghanistan was a nation full of them.

Given this, a full, clear, “peace out” strategy, which had a dimension for the Israeli / Palestinian conflict would have been infinitely preferable. But rather, we are stuck with the soft focus. In Olivia de Havilland’s case, soft focus only made her more beautiful; perhaps the President feels that present Gaussian blur will continue the impression of glamour around his Administration. After all, if the Administration maintains a set of unclear or conflicting goals, then everyone can read into him what they want. Tough questions can be avoided by yielding to speculation about the First Lady’s dress sense.

However, this form of governance contradicts the experience he had on the campaign. People voted for him because he was the clear one. He had one great big theme: America needed change and hope. The first 100 days have desperately lacked this; but fortunately, there is still time.

Recently, I was amused by a news item about what could generously be described as a “Christmas theme park” located on the Dorset / Hampshire border. Called “Lapland New Forest”, its website made some outrageous promises about a “magical” experience, frosted by realistic looking fake snow and augmented by a stunning “tunnel of light”. The price of entry was between £25 and £30 per head.

In reality, it was a muddy field with some unhappy looking animals, stalls that charged £2.50 for a plastic cup of mulled wine, and a cigarette addicted Santa sitting in a large, cheap garden shed. Needless to say, the suckers, pardon me, visitors were disappointed and angry: perhaps the most outrageous element was the two to three hour wait that parents and children had to endure before seeing Santa. Furthermore, once you got there, a picture cost an additional £10.

I doubt I’d ever heard of anything more brazen; however the immediate reaction of the organiser was to blame any problems on a rabble of disgruntled people, and to say that there was nothing untruthful on the website. He later had to backpedal somewhat, and after it was revealed that the owner of the park had been in prison for tax evasion, the “theme park” was closed.

There was an understandable level of outrage about this; parents were particularly upset about their children’s Christmas dreams being shattered. At the same time, I do have to wonder: what did they expect? A lot of modern capitalism is based on fraud, smug, smirking, outrageous fraud, and this is perhaps part of what has led us to the situation we’re presently in.

For example, a long time ago, I worked for an online travel company. Through our website, you could book a flight, and near the end of the process, you could tick a box to indicate you wanted to rent a car as well. The default, quite sensibly, was not to have the box ticked.

The company was not doing particularly well: then as now the profit margin on selling flights was very low. So my boss, the manging director, had an idea: he wanted me to make it so that the box, as a default, was ticked “yes”.

To the best of my ability, I refused. If people wanted to rent a car, they would do so – what he was hoping for was an uptick in sales of car rentals, which could help him cling on to his job. This was not actually going to increase actual sales, rather, it was going to increase accidental sales, all of which would have to be refunded. In other words, it would actually cost the company money, not make it.

I did some digging and found out that this had been attempted before; and the consequences were precisely what I thought they would be. Confronted with the evidence, and the certain knowledge I would have taken it to the CEO, he backed off. My understanding is after the company was sold and he was dismissed that he has been bumping along the bottom of the travel industry, a rare instance in which justice was served.

It might be possible to dismiss this as an isolated incident, however, I’ve seen other examples of this kind of behaviour. Perhaps the most insane boss I ever had, thought he could make thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, by acquiring domain names. You see, he was (in his own mind) truly clever and had spotted the value of these domain names well before anyone else had: he could stockpile them and make a killing. I warned him that he could not: the domain names, I said, don’t inherently have a value. It is the products and services that are offered by the websites that sit behind domains that have value. He didn’t listen; after all, “get rich quick” schemes had benefitted him before.

Confidences forbid me saying all that I know, but the owner of this company had and has a relationship with a certain African country which in recent years has tried to burnish its reputation as a tourist destination. The nation in question is governed by a military junta, whose leader believes that a herbal paste (and his touch) can cure AIDS, and has threatened any homosexuals with severe reprisals if they dare make themselves known. More recently, the country arrested some European missionaries for sedition on extremely shaky evidence. Because the owner could stomach dealing with such a regime when no one else could, he made his initial fortune. I found out recently that due to bad investments, he has lost much of it, and some of my former staff have lost their jobs as a result.

To be fair, Adam Smith had a beautiful theory: that in the pursuit of self interest, individuals would make decisions that would lead to prosperity. He thought that people would demand quality services and goods and that businesses would provide them. What has happened instead is that businesses try to trick the customer, and the customer tries to cope as best as possible. Corners are cut, fine print is added, plastic trees with fairy lights are called “tunnels of light” and Santa sits in a plywood garden shed. Brokers and investors try to repackage subprime mortgage debt into “instruments” which hide the toxic ingredients contained therein. We had only the appearance of prosperity as a result; the recession hurts so much because we’re discovering the truth behind the facade.

The recourse we have is to the law: if the regulatory framework is stronger, then perhaps businesses will live in fear of trying to cheat anyone. The other pillar should be a strong public sector, in particular in education and health: my work in the education sector has so far been inspiring. Academia, at least insofar as my university is concerned, actually appears to be concerned with achieving the public good: for example, the School of Education is keen on trying to reduce student drop out rates in secondary schools, and is developing techniques to achieve this. Other schools within my university have produced spin out companies which are producing energy from wave power and developing polymers for fuel cells; perhaps the most stressed individual I’ve met since I started in my new role is the gentleman who has to convince venture capitalists to put their money into such ventures. Investing for the long term is not something that causes their eyes to light up, apparently.

But it should. The edifice of modern capitalism has basically collapsed and people are scrambling around and wondering why: maybe, just maybe, it was because there were too many dishonest people doing too many dishonest things. I would hate to think that we need a Hobbesian Leviathan to punish chicanery; at the very least, we need to have a reckoning, and a rebalancing. “People not profits” has been used as a battle cry for so long that it has become a cliche: perhaps we ought to demand honesty, morality and ethics instead. This recession, after all, is a symptom of failing trust: all the remedies that are presently on offer are desperate attempts to go back to the time before trust was broken. But once trust is gone, it can’t be rebuilt without the truth: the sooner the politicians understand that, the better off we will be.

Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher, once said a metaphor for cinema could be found in a scene from the 1974 film, “The Conversation”: Gene Hackman, playing a paranoid detective, flushes a hotel toilet experimentally and is horrified to see the clean water replaced with blood which overflows the bowl and spills all over the floor. Similarly, Zizek says, cinema is like a toilet out which we are expecting the excrement of the netherworld to flow.

I’m not sure if Slavoj has seen the latest James Bond film, the Quantum of Solace, but if he does, he may need to revise that thought: in this instance, the toilet is wired to a cannister of nitroglycerin and the viewer is greeted with a fiery explosion which takes out the entire hotel. Strike that, it would take out the entire town.

I had been looking forward to this film; the fact that it followed directly on, narratively speaking, from Casino Royale, hinted at a discipline that had been previously lacking in the Bond series. Each Bond film has been hitherto a set piece: the villains are different, the scenery is different, and no Bond girl manages to make it from one film to the next, even if she survives to the end of the film. It is this lack of continuity which perhaps has sustained the film series, as it makes it easier to adapt stories to a particular time and place. Furthermore, if I may indulge a Lacanian impulse, it may satisfy the need of the viewer that Bond is able to press the “reset button” constantly: Bond can change women, change vehicles, change locations and change clothes without any consequences. He has the ultimate “disposable” life, which includes being able to dispose of others.

A good symbol of this discontunity is not only found in the variety of actors who have played the lead: a more dramatic example is Bond’s CIA counterpart, Felix Leiter. Hitherto, Leiter has not only been played by a variety of actors, they have also come in different ages and even different races. Quantum is the first example of a Bond film in which Leiter was played by the same actor as in the preceding film. Quantum is the breaking of the habit. But is it successful?

From a storyline point of view, Quantum is an absolute disaster from its first moments. The director has chosen to eliminate the flow of motion for bursts of energy which are as staccatto as gunfire. We are not permitted to see how, say, Bond’s car swerves to avoid uncoming traffic: rather, we get a montage of the car and Bond driving in order to create the impression that somehow he is magically avoiding a crash through unseen manuevers. Most of the action sequences are done in this manner, which is entirely disorienting.

Bond has always been a rebellious character, but hitherto there was a humourous edge to his being an upstart: not so in this instance. Indeed, Bond is a moody, semi-psychotic loner in this film, who only associates with those whom he could find helpful.

This is not to say that touches of the original Bond series do not come through: for example, when Bond arrives in La Paz, Bolivia, he is greeted by a young woman from the British consulate wearing a short dress, who informs him that her duty is to put him back on a plane to London the following day. The idea that even the British government would put a young, attractive, unarmed woman in charge of handling a proven killer with a history of seducing and manipulating women is patently absurd from a narrative point of view, in any other film besides a classic Bond movie.

Even more absurd is a hotel which appears in later scenes: we are informed that its omnious gurgling noises have to do with the operation of its fuel cells. As the hotel is in the middle of a desert with an almost uninterrupted flow of sunlight, the idea that such an establishment would not be taking advantage of the solar energy potential is ridiculous. However, solar energy does not explode and the narrative needed hydrogen cannisters in every room for the purposes of using the studio’s arsenal of special effects.

To be fair, there are some delights to be found: there was a fleeting moment of narrative joy when it seemed as if MI6 and Bond were going to have to go up against the CIA as well as the standard supervillains of the piece; a long, prolonged war in which Britain’s intelligence services stood alone would have made for great suspense. However, the film backed away from this implication, and the CIA was presented as having been duped: they were more stupid than malevolent, which is probably closer to the mark.

Another delight was how the “board of directors” of the evil conspiracy met: rather than show the standard meeting room on a yacht or somewhere underground, it was done during a performance of Tosca using earpieces and small microphones. This led to the most satisfying moment in the film, in which Bond had stolen one of the earpieces and suggested that they should perhaps find a more secure place to discuss their plans.

The evil plot at the film’s centre also contains some elements of interest: the villains plan to steal water from the Bolivian people and store it in a vast reservoir beneath the desert. The reason why this is done is never resolved: one can only assume that this will be stated in the next film. However, highlighting the lack of potable water at the moment shows an awareness of environmental issues which is astonishingly better than any previous Bond film.

The finished product is a slurry of seriousness and silliness, half-finished ideas, some of which are good, others poor. It is slickly packaged, but has a great many defects. What it is definitely not is the Bond film of yore: a fantasy world of espionage that bears so little resemblance to our world it cannot possibly disturb us. The problem for the makers of the next film is if they want to continue onwards towards things which can affect the audience: do they want to use the context of illusions to inform us of the Real? If this is the intent, then far from finding any quantum of solace, this film could represent the next step in the series’ evolution to something more challenging.

As presented by the Long Johns (John Bird and John Fortune):

Less than twenty four hours after explaining to my colleague what created the credit crunch and the subsequent economic turmoil, my own job was swept away by the rolling tide. There is very little to tell; the processes involved were not transparent, all I know is that there was a meeting of senior shareholders, most of them looking grave and grey, and hours later, I was packing my bag and leaving my work laptop behind. I don’t believe I was alone; I went into London on Tuesday in my hunt for a new job and to my surprise, a former co-worker (who worked at a similar level of management) boarded the same train as I did. We didn’t speak to each other, and we barely acknowledged each other with a glance. He was dressed to the nines and was looking sheepish; the scene would not have been out of place in a film entitled “Middle Management of the Damned”. I’ve heard a lot of nonsense about the “dignity of work”; nevertheless to be unemployed does feel like one has a giant pimple right in the middle of one’s face. I’d rather not see my friends or colleagues in this “condition”.

I am better equipped than most to ride out this situation; I had a notice period payment, and I have a skillset which is still in demand. I’m also not the only income in this household. All may yet be well. However, the situation is not helped by the turmoil on the stock market. As I look at my handy stock ticker, the Dow was down yesterday by nearly 200 points, and, yesterday the FTSE closed down over 200 points. This is after massive intervention by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank to stabilise the situation. Indeed, the British government is now injecting capital into the banks directly and has made a £500 billion credit line available.

Despite all of this government cash, all of the bailouts, all the promises of buying toxic debt and basically begging the markets to behave themselves, here we are. Governments are obviously determined to continue molly-coddling the investors and bankers which got us into this trouble in the first place: everything hinges upon what precisely they think about the future. If they think things will improve, the market will rise. If they think things will remain in the doldrums, they will continue to hammer the economy. Creating this level of assurance is now so important that governments are falling over each other in order to make it happen, and in the process, creating an absurd form of socialism which hits the average person in order to prop up the rich.

I’ve tried to calculate the amount of money that has been thrown away so far in this pursuit; it is already in the trillions, most of it is in the form of new debt, which will be passed on to European and American taxpayers. All of this debt will have to be repaid, and mostly, it will be repaid to the Chinese and governments in the Middle East. And yet, if the stock market is any indication, they want more.

If at this point, you feel like you’re being robbed it is because that’s precisely what’s happening. Let’s be clear: the banks loaned money to people who could not pay it back. We all make mistakes in purchases: I wish I hadn’t bought the used car that I did, for example: it’s temperamental, and keeping it in good nick is a pain. However, as most of us are not banks, we accept and simply learn from mistakes, and write off the losses involved. Yes, there is a difference in scale, but if there is one emotional quality that is lacking in the banks it is maturity; though wisdom runs a close second.

What’s truly horrible is that the heist will get more expensive, the longer the situation lasts: the commitment is open ended. Furthermore, simply handing over the money is not going to help the poor and unemployed. There is no bailout for me, or for my sheepish colleague hiding on the train. Rather, we are simply expected to find work, even if the paralysis in the economy makes this very difficult. If I go down to the unemployment office, I will be faced with a government which is going to try and stop me from claiming any cash, in spite of the taxes I have paid into the system over the years.

If there is any good to come out of this, it should be the realisation that capitalism has reached a point of crisis. It was nice to believe that somehow it could be the quickest means by which poverty was alleviated: there was a point where one could offer it as a magic bullet and not be laughed at. Furthermore, it required little intellectual rigour in its application: politicians can be lazy, and just “leaving things to the market” sounds like a labour saving device. We should have known better: setting loose the market may have let many good entrepreneurs come to the fore, but it also unchained forces of greed and stupidity. Now that the government and business are so intertwined by necessity, we now have a choice: we can either continue to be subject to further muggings by big business, or the balance can be shifted in favour of stability, security and the environment. Favouring the latter would likely mean economic growth is not as sprightly, or that we don’t produce as many Bill Gateses or Steve Jobses as some would like, however perhaps it’s time to recalibrate our expectations. What’s better, being able to have the absolute latest in every gadget and the indulgence of every whim, or knowing that your home won’t be repossessed, and that your employment won’t go up in smoke?

I admit I’m writing as someone whose vice is spending money on my education; as such, I don’t have far to go in changing what I want out of life. A transition of this type would likely hurt others far more than me. However, there is a world of pain out there anyway; returning to the train carriage of several days ago, I saw no smiling faces, heard no laughter. This may not seem unusual in a train in the middle of a big city; however the overriding tension was new, not something I’d seen since the early 90’s. Back then, I hoped we’d never witness this again; this time, I hope we have the wisdom to make the choices to ensure that it doesn’t.

I think I’m a reasonably good manager in at least one respect: I try to shield my team from the horrors of what exists outside of our limited domain. I don’t rehash every argument I’ve had, or tell them every silly quip that has been said by my superiors; I try to create an atmosphere that is conducive to creativity.

However I’m beginning to wonder if some members of my team are almost too insulated: I got asked yesterday, “What is all this?” This being the economic crisis, the credit crunch and the subsequent fallout resulting from it.

I could sympathise; the present crisis is not easily understood. In fact, I’m not sure I understand all of it: what I do know sounds thoroughly crazy, but given that unlike fiction, reality doesn’t have to be realistic, perhaps it’s true. I attempted an explanation for his benefit and that of my team.

I asked him if he’d ever heard of a company called Yes! Car Credit; this is a British firm that sells cars to people with bad credit histories. He said yes. Fine, I told him, have you ever seen the interest rates they charge on their car loans?

He hadn’t. The interest rates, I explained, are much higher than they would be for a “standard” borrower. It’s a premium you get charged for being a bigger risk: Yes! Car Credit makes their money this way, by being a lender of last resort and socking it to those who have nowhere else to turn.

Similarly, subprime mortgages were attractive to investors because of this higher rate of return. If houses kept rising in value, these were not as risky as usual, because even if there were some “deadbeats”, the houses would still be valuable asset, and could be sold on at a profit.

This problem was made worse by the present banking culture; investment bankers are incentivised to get high rates of return on their money in the short term. Subprime mortgages offered these high returns, quickly. The bankers, eyeing big bonuses, Saville Row suits and Aston Martins, said “Yes, more of that please”.

“But,” my colleague said, “the people taking out the mortgages didn’t have any money!”

Right. A lot of people got into a financial hole and the only way to keep above water for some was to borrow against the perceived (rising) value of their homes. There was an insane situation, repeated throughout the United States, in which people were taking out loans just to pay their mortgages.

Government made the problem worse because they didn’t tell the banks to cut it out; indeed, in America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provided guarantees for the issuance of these subprime mortgages. So long as the market kept rising, the day of judgement was kept at bay.

This is not to say the banks were oblivious to risk. The way they handled it was by issuing “derivatives”, which packaged the subprime debt into other securities which were sold on to other banks throughout the world. Banks, again, liked them because they offered a higher rate of return than more conservative investments.

I then had to lower the boom on my colleague: I said, “What if I told you that all banking is a con trick?”

“Say what?”

When one looks at their bank account, they assume that the nice figure on the ATM or computer screen is somehow stored in the bank’s vault. It’s not; for banking to make a profit, they loan the money out or invest it. Thus the money in your account is actually not there; all they have on hand is a fraction of total deposits, and a hope that you’ll believe the money is secure.

My colleague visibly paled. I continued: so let’s move on to recent times. Bought any petrol recently, I asked. He replied in the affirmative and complained about how expensive it was. I said, because of the constraints on the supply of oil, food and other commodities, prices have been rising quickly. This made subprime mortgages even less affordable for those who had them. Add to that the measures that central banks took in order to stamp down price increases, namely, by raising the main interest rate at which banks operate, those mortgages became even less affordable. Subprime deals began to collapse like a house of cards; in the United States, some people went so far as to evacuate their houses and hand their keys over to the banks without bothering to go through repossession. House prices have plummetted as a result: according to the Guardian, you can buy a two bedroom house in Detroit for £800. My colleague said, “Cheap holiday home!” I think he hadn’t heard the “Detroit” bit. However, the price is an indicator: subprime mortgages stopped meaning anything other than losses.

My colleague then wondered why it’s our bad luck; surely the banks should just tough it out and suck up the losses. I replied that in an ideal world, that’s precisely what would happen. The problem is that the derivatives bundled in these bad assets in so many wrappers and spread them so far and wide that the banks actually don’t know what their assets are worth any more. Furthermore, they don’t trust each other’s assets to be worth anything.

“Is that important?” he asked. Yes, it is: a lot of banks lend to each other to cover temporary shortfalls. They’re now treating each other like subprime borrowers, raising interest rates, and thus discouraging the consistent flow of credit. Furthermore, some institutions are regarded as being too risky lend to: Lehman Brothers failed because no one wanted to loan them any money, in spite of the fact that much of their business was profitable. This problem is made more complicated because the banks obviously mistrust each other even without a credit crisis and won’t get around a table to discuss the problem: new disclosure rules, for example, could show who is toxic and who isn’t. However, those who are toxic don’t want to show that they are until the very last minute.

Because of this mistrust and lack of lending, all credit is drying up: it’s not just affecting the flow of money between banks, it’s also affecting the amount of money banks have to lend. Individual savers are more inclined to stampede to get their money out: because of the con-trick at the heart of banking, a lot of banks can’t withstand that at the moment. They have to maintain higher reserves from now on in order to weather the storm. This means there is less to loan to businesses and individuals. Economic activity, as a result, is slowing down, if not shutting off.

My colleague asked how the bailout would fit in. The idea, I replied, is that the government would buy these toxic assets and thus flush the system out of what’s creating the mistrust. However, there is another way around it: make the subprime assets into good ones. This can be done through revision of the terms of these mortgages (i.e., at a lower interest rate) and also by giving cash to homeowners. This has the added benefit of making fewer people homeless. However, unlike buying toxic securities, there is no prospect of the government actually making a direct profit out of it: they are trying to get these assets at a bargain price, with the hope of making money after the situation improves, and thus minimising the cost of the bailout. But that’s just a hope; and it won’t reduce the number of tent cities of repossessed people that are springing up.

My colleague then asked the killer question: “How long is this mess going to last?”

I had to tell him the truth: I don’t know. If the banks can somehow manage to get rid of the toxic assets, and if the “bailout” is done in such a way that confidence returns, the worst may be over by the end of 2009. I did remind him that the worst performing business of all time is predicting the apocalypse: so far they’ve been wrong every single time. Somehow, we muddle through war, chaos, and economic catastrophe: even the Black Death didn’t finish off humanity. However, it could very well be that we are like Japan, which sleepwalked through a deep recession for over ten years. In any case, the era that we are coming into is a more modest one, a less reckless one, one in which we can and should be more aware of how things actually work. It may not make anyone happier, but at least, it should make us safer.

My colleague asked what he, personally, could do.

“Keep your head down,” I replied, “and if you’re religious…pray.”