Chris Bertram

A brief note on “the crisis”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/ that is currently shaking public confidence in the British government and its MPs: some MPs are making the point that they merely did what they were entitled to under the rules. Much of the public reaction to their behaviour is predicated on the view that, whatever the rules said, strictly speaking, they acted unjustly in milking the public purse for private advantage. An interesting echo, there, of Jerry Cohen’s view that justice should not just govern institutional design, but also private attitudes and actions. Thomas Nagel observed,

bq. it is difficult to combine, in a morally coherent outlook, the attitude toward inequalities due to talent which generates support for an egalitarian system with the attitude toward the employment of their own talent appropriate for individuals operating within it. The first attitude is that such inequalities are unfair and morally suspect, whereas the second attitude is that one is entitled to try to get as much out of the system as one can. [_Equality and Partiality_, p. 117]

Nagel, thinks (on broadly Rawlsian lines) that the “personal perspective” is entirely defensible and that the difficulty can be overcome. The British electorate may take a different view.

Rupert Murdoch thinks “he can charge people for reading The Times online”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites :

bq. Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that.” Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin “within the next 12 months‚” adding: “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”

Hmm. On Tuesday I attended the Bristol Book Awards. Nick Davies walked off with the prize for his “Flat Earth News“:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099512688/junius-21. The killer “findings”:http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=40123 :

bq. 80 per cent of news stories in the quality UK national newspapers are at least partly made up of recycled newswire or PR copy, according to new research. This was one of the findings of a study by Cardiff University’s journalism department which also claimed that fewer Fleet Street journalists now produce three times as many pages as they did 20 years ago. The research was carried out for a controversial new book investigating Fleet Street by Guardian journalist Nick Davies. It also claims that the majority of home news stories in national newspapers are mainly made up of PR and/or wire copy. The research claims that the proportions are: The Times, 69 per cent; The Daily Telegraph, 68 per cent; Daily Mail, 66 per cent; The Independent, 65 per cent and The Guardian, 52 per cent.

So why would people pay for that?

bq. Particularity by itself, given free rein in every direction to satisfy its needs, accidental caprices, and subjective desires, destroys itself and its substantive concept in this process of gratification. At the same time, the satisfaction of need, necessary and accidental alike, is accidental because it breeds new desires without end, is in thoroughgoing dependence on caprice and external accident, and is held in check by the power of universality. In these contrasts and their complexity, civil society affords a spectacle of extravagance and want as well as of the physical and ethical degeneration common to them both. ( _Philosophy of Right_ sec 185).

Alternatively

… “Everything is amazing; nobody is happy.”

via “The Online Photographer”:http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html .

I’m lecturing on Hobbes this week. Since it is a first year lecture, I’m not going to get too deep into any of the controversies, but I will try to give the students a sense of who Hobbes was, why he remains important and how his ideas connect to other topics they may come across. I’ll probably say something about Hobbes’s time resembling ours as a period of acute religious conflict.

Suppose I were lecturing about Karl Marx: I’d do the same thing. I’d probably start by discussing some of the ideas in the _Manifesto_ about the revolutionary nature of the bourgeoisie, about their transformation of technology, social relations, and their creation of a global economy. Then I’d say something about Marx’s belief that, despite the appearance of freedom and equality, we live in a society where some people end up living off the toil of other people. How some people have little choice but to spend their whole lives working for the benefit of others, and how this compulsion stops them from living truly truly human lives. And then I’d talk about Marx’s belief that a capitalist society would eventually be replaced by a classless society run by all for the benefit of all. Naturally, I’d say something about the difficulties of that idea. I don’t think I’d go on about Pol Pot or Stalin, I don’t think I’d recycle the odd _bon mot_ by Paul Samuelson, I don’t think I’d dismiss Hegel out of hand, and I don’t think I’d contrast modes of production with Weberian modes of domination (unless I was confident, as I wouldn’t be, that my audience already had some sense of those concepts). It seems that Brad De Long “has different views to mine”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/04/delong-understanding-marx-lecture-for-april-20-2009.html on how to explain Karl Marx to newbies. Each to their own, I suppose.

Martin Kelner’s “utterly cynical piece in the Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/apr/13/hillsborough-disaster-liverpool-martin-kelner-bbc rather sums up the attitude of metropolitan journalists. OK, so he focuses on the BBC rather than asking directly, “why don’t those mawkish Scousers shut up about their 96 dead?”, but the comparisons to Diana and Jade Goody are there for a purpose (there are some excellent comments by readers in response). Actually, I think the BBC’s coverage of the anniversary has been rather good, especially Kelly Dalglish’s fine radio programme (not mentioned by Kelner, but also featuring interviews with the parents of the Hicks sisters). There are lots of good reasons not to shut up after 20 years. Not only has there been no apology from the police for their actions, but many things haven’t changed. I was reminded of this whilst listening to the current Chief Constable of South Yorkshire explain how much the police have learnt and how it wouldn’t happen today. Oh really? Well as we know from the G20 protests (and other recent events such as the de Menezes shooting) the police still try to get their “blame the victim” story in early. They still represent themselves as helping the victim but being prevented by a hail of missiles that no-one else saw. Videotapes that might have provided evidence of police misconduct or ineptitude still disappear, or cameras “malfunction”. And the police still get to compare their notes after events involving deaths, just to make sure that their stories are consistent and supportive of the institutional stance. Yes, all good reasons not to shut up.

I’ve posted before about harassment of photographers by police, para-police, security guards etc. The latest panic in the UK has concerned section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. I’m inclined to think this is actually less of a problem than random and unlawful action by police officers, and the British government, in the shape of Shahid Malik MP (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department) has told us all to calm down, “in the following terms”:http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090401/halltext/90401h0005.htm

bq. It makes it an offence to elicit, attempt to elicit, publish or communicate information about an individual who is or has been a constable, or a member of the armed forces or intelligences services. The information must be of a kind that is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing acts of terrorism. It has been suggested that the new offence could criminalise people taking or publishing photographs of police officers. A photograph of a police officer may fall within the scope of the offence, but would do so in only limited circumstances. The offence is designed to capture terrorist activity directed at members of the protected groups, which, sadly, we know occurs. An offence might be committed, therefore, if someone provides a person with information about the names, addresses or details of car registration numbers of persons in the protected groups. The important thing is that the photographs would have to be of a kind likely to provide practical assistance to terrorists, and the person taking or providing the photograph would have to have no reasonable excuse, such as responsible journalism, for taking it.

Well now we “have a very good example”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/ian-tomlinson-g20-death-video of why it is important for the public to have the freedom to photograph and film the police: in order to gather evidence against them of violent and oppressive conduct. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has appealed people who have film or photographs of the events leading up to Ian Tomlinson’s death. It would be perverse if the taking of those photographs were itself a crime.

There’s “an obituary of Brian Barry”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6010790.ece in today’s Times,

It seems that Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary “may have been put in charge of international space collaboration”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7973747.stm .

Congratulations to Ireland on the “first Irish grand slam”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/7954758.stm in the 6 nations since 1948. I’d buy Henry, Maria and Kieran a drink if they were within drink-buying range. A very dramatic last minute of the final match, too: it could have gone either way.

I finished Lionel Shriver’s “_We Need to Talk about Kevin_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006112429X/junius-20 (“UK”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852424672/junius-21 )
this morning. Shriver writes superbly, with acid observation dripping from every paragraph of Eva Khatchadourian’s letters. Nor is pleasure (if that’s the right word in this case) only gathered from the writing: Shriver’s plotting and characterization are brilliant – so much that I didn’t see coming. Also impressive is the fact that Shriver gets inside a parent when she isn’t one. A commonplace view is the non-parents can’t really imagine how becoming a parent changes your attititudes. Part of Eva’s problem is that, in her case, it doesn’t — but there’s an imaginative gap to be bridged nonetheless, and Shriver gets across it, and right into the dynamics of a disastrous family. Those who have read the book already will also know that it deals with _big questions_ ™. Since the premise of the book is a mass killing at an American high school, it gets a head start on that. The central idea of the book, that children come into the world with definite personalities that escape their parents’ attempts at moulding, but that society (teachers, politicians, other parents) hold parents responsible anyway, also seems plausible. Discussions on CT (often initiated by Harry) have often dealt with this. A book that I’m keen to recommend to everyone: and certainly one that you should read before Hollywood gets hold of it.

(Irritating fact: when I got to the last page of the book, I was confronted by two further pages with the title “Reading group questions that have arisen from publication of _We Need to Talk About Kevin_ in the USA.” Eva Khatchadourian would have been disgusted.)

Commenters please avoid plot spoilers.

First of all, sorry that this has taken so long. What follows are some reflections on ch. 4 of G.A. Cohen’s _Rescuing Justice and Equality_. I _think_ I’ve got the basic argument right, but I’d welcome corrections and clarifications.

The key shock of this chapter is Cohen’s rejection of the difference principle itself as a basic principle of justice. In the earlier chapters, Cohen focused on the fact that the inequalities supposedly justified by the difference principle might often be the result of more talented people holding out for higher pay, despite the fact that they could perfectly well supply their labour for less. To act thus, is, according to Cohen inconsistent in people who affirm a commitment to the difference principle (as _ex hypothesesi_ all citizens of the well-ordered society do). Contra Rawls and most Rawlsians then, Cohen there argued that the difference principle ought to mandate a more equal society than is commonly supposed, because most applications of the standard incentives argument ought to fail. It isn’t that we must pay the talented more because otherwise they won’t be able to supply the labour that benefits the least advantaged; it is that they choose not to supply it unless they are bribed. But a person sincerely committed to maximizing the expectations of the least advantaged wouldn’t need to be bribed.

[click to continue…]

The Online Photographer reports that the firm of Franke and Heidecke is going out of business – perhaps permanently. That’s very sad news, for they are the firm that launched the famous Rolleiflex brand in 1929. As it happens, I bought a 1932 Rolleiflex Standard that I bought in a junk shop in Wales last year. I’d actually seen it a year before. The owner had spotted me with a camera and asked me whether I was interested in the Rollei. At the time I declined, but regretted it as I thought back to the beauty of the image in its ground-glass screen. So I was amazed, when I went back, to find it still unsold and snapped it up. I keep meaning to write a post about what you could, pretentiously, call the “phenomenology of technology”. The Rollei feels so different to a modern digital camera: since it is a twin-lens reflex, you hold it at waist level and look downwards; like other film cameras you don’t get the instant satisfaction of digital – you have to wait and see what came out; and since you have a mere 12 shots on 120 medium format film, you can’t just snap away and select for the best. There’s also the fact that is is a superbly made object. How many other machines made in 1932 still work, and work pretty well. Vorsprung durch Technik, I suppose. Here’s a photograph I made with it:

From “an article on growing protectionism”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123388103125654861.html in the Wall Street Journal:

bq. The U.S. is planning retaliatory tariffs on Italian water and French cheese to punish the EU for restricting imports of U.S. chicken and beef.

Well I guess Americans can just drink different water, and Europeans can eat their own beef and chicken. But the cheese thing, that’s just masochism.

Just back from seeing “Slumdog Millionaire”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/ . Very good, I thought. No doubt those who know India and Mumbai would have a better critical perspective on the film’s portrayal of time and place, but as a piece of cinema it is superb. It isn’t a feel-good movie for the most part, though it is consistently funny when it isn’t being horrifying, and it does make you feel pretty good at the end. (I had tears in my eyes, but since that was also true of the closing scenes of Crocodile Dundee, you might not think that much of a test.) Of the three excellent films I’ve seen recently (the others being The Reader, good, and Baader-Meinhof Complex, terrific) this is the one I’d say that no-one should miss.