The Bewilderness

Red Labour revived?

A concerted union effort has placed Ed Miliband in the driving seat of Labour, defeating his brother and swinging the opposition party towards the Left. Cue the shrill stereotypes of extremism, a 'lurch to the left' and generational unelectability. Predictions that rely upon the assumptions that the British electorate enjoy innate sage advice and that the coalition will remain a viable option for both parties.

Only with his speech as new leader to the party will we see how far 'Red Ed' remains wedded to the promises that he made on the campaign trail. He has already maintained that he is not a pawn of the unions, despite their all-out support on his behalf. The prospects are not good: a combination of anti-Blairite rhetoric ("New Labour is dead") and a continuation of Brownonomics, deficit denial and the reactionary defence of unreformed public services remain the hallmark of Labour's arrogance. As the author of their manifesto, Ed Miliband, more than most, is responsible for opposition. Yet, the statements remain a mantra: spending cuts bad, public spending good.

Within a few years, this mantra will appear as outdated as Thatcherism was by 1997. All political culture changes and, unless salvaged by crisis, Labour will be playing catch up, since the springs of renewal do not appear to command the opposition front bench. But politics can surprise....

 

Uglyville

An ugly nation breeds ugly people. This is the conclusion of a new website that is just for beautiful people. I have not applied for understandable reasons, mainly years of abuse. Why bother getting rejected?

It seems that the British and Germans are remarkably ugly whereas the Brazilians, the Swedes and the Norwegians really rock. But, I do wonder how they achieve this success rate. The answer is subjective:

The 'elite dating site for beautiful people only', went live across the globe on 26 October this year. Over the past two weeks, the site has rejected nearly 1.8 million people from 190 countries.

From the total number of hopefuls, only 360,000 new members have been admitted - meaning five-out of-six applicants (83 per cent) have been turned away.

Sweden, Brazil and Norway are proving to be the most beautiful countries overall, with applicants from Germany and the UK among the least successful.

If it is based upon photos alone, well, photos can lie. There may be a bias in the application process or, pickled herring is better than fried mars bars and pigs knuckle with dumpling.

This does answer one question: why I have ventured abroad for such matters. I am trying to flee uglyville.

Death I

I was at a gathering of philosophes on saturday morning where they engaged with that major preoccupation, death. The conversation veered between the analytical, the confessional and professions of not fearing what was deemed the inevitable.

There is a danger that such discussions can topple into mawkish demonstration. This one did not do so. Almost all of the group shared the same values about death. It was a natural process that reaffirmed life and provided individuals with a reason for life. The whole dialectic was a play on these values.

Despite the appearance of some bad science and a variety of philosophical traditions, the surprising holdfast was that the values remained the same, whatever the justifications aired during the discussion. These were usually a combination of the rational, the aesthetic and the personal.

This does not indicate that values on death are the same throughout society but collect a gathering of reasonably well-educated post-christians and they will hold similar views. Death is considered natural, because of its inevitability and people will use whatever is at hand to craft acceptance of their fate.

We are coming to a time when people do not have to accept their fate and societies where death may not be permitted.

New Social Evils

Joseph Rowntree, like other Victorian Giants, campaigned against social evils in the footsteps of William Wilberforce, the abolitionist. The list of evils are clear, universal, puritanically nonconformist and relevant to the twenty-first century.

When Joseph Rowntree, the chocolate baron, established his charitable trust in 1904, he charged it with seeking out and curing the "great scourges of humanity".

It should pay particular attention to "war, slavery, intemperance, the opium traffic, impurity, and gambling", he said.

Now, the Rowntree Trust has become dissatisfied with traditional social evils. They are probably too fuddy-duddy and fail to move the charitably inclined. But Julia Unwin,  the Trust Director, who also deputises at the Food Standards Agency, has a list...

The ambitious 18-month project will be launched with a lecture at the Royal Society of Arts tonight by Julia Unwin, the trust director.

She said: "From the very start our founder had amazing far-sightedness in predicting that both the causes and manifestations of social evils would change over time. We are asking people: 'What is it that really appals you?' "

Miss Unwin, deputy chairman of the Food Standards Agency, was reluctant to sway public opinion but said many new social problems arose from our growing affluence, including over-consumption; an ageing population; obesity; integration; alienation and political apathy.

You can add your vote here.

So, disgust with politics and choosing not to vote is now a social evil. How we can see the voluntary charity worker is now transformed into the professional disciplinarian, the whip of the public sector professional class, with all three parties as their political wing.

The Granny Groomers

Who would wish to age? Not only are you at the prey of the damage caused to your own body, but you also prey to those who you trust the most: your family.

Greedy middle-aged sons and daughters are the people most likely to rob their parents of money, valuables and even their homes, according to a report today....

They show that far from the family being a haven for the elderly, many pensioners are victims of their close relatives' avarice and psychological cruelty. They are regarded as easy targets if they have disabilities or suffer dementia.Other "financial abusers" include friends or paid carers coming into the home on behalf of local authorities, known as "Granny Groomers" because they ruthlessly target older people for their profit.

However, the report shows that 53 per cent of theft, fraud and deception was committed by the victim's children.

Temptation proves too much for some who are unwilling to wait for  the deaths of their parents. Demographics plays a part here. The children think that they have a 'right' to the property of their parents. The costs of long-term care and inheritance tax can be subverted if the property is gained before the deaths of the parents. Indeed, they may argue that they are doing their parents a favour: removing the cares and burdens of property.

This is rationalising theft and betrayal. These abusers are thieves and insufficient care is taken by the courts or banks to ensure that a transfer of property is willingly undertaken.

The majority of victims were women, aged over 80.

The majority of perpetrators were sons or daughters aged 41 to 60.

The report says it is remarkably easy to gain control of an older person's finances. Many high street banks require little or no paperwork to give control of someone's bank accounts to a third party.

Campaigners for the elderly say even formal systems such as power of attorney, in which an elderly person gives another person the power to act on his or her behalf with regard to his or her property and financial affairs, and enduring power of attorney, in which power is given away if the elderly person becomes mentally incapable, are characterised by their "lack of regulation rather than as an excessive burden". There is no standardised version of a power of attorney and it can be purchased from some high street stores.

The pity of this is that the person capable of such an act probably works a desk away from you or passes you in the supermarket. This strikes me as a curiously English crime.

The New "Downtime"

Every time that one sees a national test from soem country, publicising the results of telephone habits or driving skills or a variation on everyday life, one is appalled by the stupidity of some people an wearied by the universality of the phenomena. A case in point: The GMAC survey of drivers was published some time ago. Given their busy lifestyles, many drivers now view driving as "downtime" and catch up on other tasks.

Younger drivers aged 18-24 who are accustomed to always being "plugged in" have the most mentions for every distracting situation while driving:

Eat - 62%

Talk on a cell phone - 71%

Send text messages - 24%

Select songs on an iPod - 20%

Apply makeup - 8%

Change clothes - 8%

Read - 4%

Send e-mails - 1%

I am still nonplussed by how you can drive and read or change clothes. That takes multi-tasking to new heights.

Replacement Bus Service

If there are three words that can strike gloom into the heart of any traveller within the bounds of London, it is the title above. The art of getting from here to there is complicated by the dusty ejection from train or tube onto the road, where one is placed at the mercy of the traffic jams and Livingstone's nightmarish road policy. Worse, the replacement bus must follow the path of the railway or underground, twisting and turning back upon itself, prolonging what was expected to be a straightforward and swift journey.

Such journeys are tolerable if there is time to relax and alternative routes prove just as long. But, if it is the last train or tube, and the only alternative is the night bus, then you are well and truly screwed. You will be a long time getting home.

Cinematic Derivatives

Commercial releases of dark fantasy look ever wider for the local colour that injects authenticity into the puzzle-box narratives that masquerade as plot. For "The Dark", an Anglo-American enterprise based upon Simon Maginn's novel, The Sheep, Welsh pronunciation lessons on Annwn and Dafydd form minute infodumps on the supernatural backdrop.

Coupled with the derivative cinematography of helicopter runs across bleak coasts for the introductory scene to the film, the face rising out of a conveniently placed bath and plot driving objects located in  every accessible nook and cranny, The Dark perches comfortably within its genre. The familiar depths trawled by the novel of a pubescent girl facing up to family separation and tapping into the parallel experiences of past suicide are open to the horror aficianado, opaque to the unfamiliar filmgoer. The Dark remains an unusual oddity in that Maginn's inversion of the meek into menace, the quotidian into terror, seeps through, with the unsettling images of sheep. However, this inversion is also a source of humour, since we are unable to take the sheep seriously.

Maginn was one of the British dark fantasy writers of nineties and The Dark is interesting as an adaptation. Like all hauntings,  the resolutions and dark twists do little to anticipate further original work from the exhausted genre of supernatural thrillers.