Have cake and eat it too - How to beat Brexit, steal best state school pupils, get paid and retain tax charitable status

Anon




On 9 December I was perplexed to read The Telegraph headline “Private schools plan to offer 10,000 free places to children from low-income backgrounds”. 

Immediately I thought, ‘This is a good idea’

A few seconds later, I remembered that we are in the era of post truth politics. So, I thought let me look behind the spin and see what the proposal actually means.

Many of the UK’s fees collecting private schools are charities according to their tax status. This status has been challenged by successive governments who have found few instances of charitable work and more instances of price rigging. These schools also face the new prospect of Brexit and fewer fee paying EU students on their rolls. 

To overcome this threat, The Independent Schools Council (ISC) has proposed to teach 10,000 state school students if the government agrees to pay them £5,550 per student. This will enable the private schools to demonstrate their charitable work to retain their charitable tax status and will assure them with a steady supply of students to replace the EU nationals who may prefer to go elsewhere post Brexit.

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In my view this proposal reminds me of the PPP (private public partnership) and PFI (Private Finance Initiative) proposals which have bled the state’s coffers and unduly benefited private firms. Here are some ways the state will be worse off by accepting the ISC initiative. 

No further need to do charity work: Any private school charity has to demonstrate actual charitable work in order to enjoy its tax status as a charity. The ISC hopes this proposal will enable them to overcome criticism of not doing sufficient charitable work.

Raiding state schools of better able students: State schools already feel beleaguered with budget cuts affecting their ability to teach students. This proposal will result in a further exodus of better able students who will be cherry picked by the private schools.

I feel there is no need to accept the ISC proposals. ISC members already enjoy a subsidy in the form of a charitable tax status despite not complying with the requirements of a charity.

Secondly, the above proposal if accepted will resemble the Nissan deal where the state intervenes with a sweetheart deal to once again protect privileged profit making non charitable ‘charities’.

But, I must confess the ISC have adapted well to the era of post truth politics by presenting a self preserving proposal as a charitable act. Is it a case of eating cake and having it too?

The middle-class malaise that dare not speak its name

Zoe Williams in The Guardian


 

Illustration by Jasper Rietman


What is a “middle-class” expense? According to the Daily Telegraph, after considerable dialogue with its own readers, the key items in the portfolio of the bourgeoisie are as follows: school fees, dental care, health insurance, holidays, wine (fine), new cars, holidays and “cultural activities”. The price rises in all these areas have been astronomical – health insurance has gone up by 51% over the past six years, school fees by 40% – while over the same period earnings in the double-average-wage bracket have gone down by 0.8%.

Private school fees are paid by 7% of the population; private health insurance is taken out by 11%. This isn’t really the middle: the determination to retain the term middle class for those who are actually wealthy is akin to the care with which the right wing never describes its views as rightwing, preferring “commonsense”. It is a constant project to reframe what is normal in the image of what is normal for one person in 10.

But actually, on this matter, the middle classes are pretty normal. Income has stagnated across every section of society apart from the top 1% (whom the Telegraph would probably call upper middle or well-to-do). GDP per capita is lower than it was seven years ago. “That,” said the economist Joseph Stiglitz in an interview on Sunday “is not a success.”

It’s hard for the wealthy to mobilise around their declining living standards. Their options are limited. When so much of your wealth is spent avoiding the social structures on which solidarity is based – education, the health service, our crap dentistry of international renown – who do you complain to? Who are you going to stand shoulder to shoulder with? Your outrage at the world is limited in its expression to your power as a consumer. That’s why the incredibly angry, bright pink man yelling at a BT helpline is such a staple of modern British sitcoms; as a guardian angel against feelings of impotence and injustice, BT can’t really help – even if it does answer the phone.

So there’s the stain of self-interest barring entry to the language and power and solace of unity. There’s also a huge amount of shame involved in being in debt or struggling, especially against the backdrop of assumption that privilege is somehow the result of a lifetime’s sound financial decisions.

There’s a public pressure not to mention declining living standards, because that would be to insult people whose living standards have declined to the point of being unable to eat. There’s also a private pressure, since the status of the affluent is, of course, rooted in the affluence – and if one breaks ranks to say there’s actually quite a lot of anxiety involved, it makes everyone look bad.

Oh, and one other huge impediment: nobody wants you for an ally when your complaint is that health insurance has gone up three times as fast as wages. Had housing been added to the Telegraph’s basket of middle-class goods, they would have seen that, for the older homeowner with a mortgage, the rise in other prices is offset somewhat by the very low interest rates. But they would also have seen that the “middle-class” renter, or even the renter who actually is middle class, is suffering rent rises with no respect to wages, insecurity of tenancy, crummy conditions and life-changingly large proportions of income going on housing costs – very similar conditions, in other words, to everyone else.

The extent to which we are all in this wage-stagnating, price-increasing swamp together is a question of age rather than class. A middle-class person coming out of university is part of the private personal debt boom; a middle-class person under 30 is a victim of the rentier economy. When you strip out the peculiar lottery-win of being over 40 in the housing market, you can see the picture more clearly: everyone who earns, now earns less, while, by incredible coincidence, the ratio between profit and wages has tipped in the shareholders’ favour.

It is deeply ingrained in our political culture that classes must be held in opposition to one another; and a confluence of interests between the middle and the bottom is only possible when the bottom tries to emulate or join the middle (sorry, did I say tries? Of course I meant aspires).

It cuts across the spectrum – on the left, you would never want to preach allegiance between the person hit by the bedroom tax and the person who can’t afford the second holiday. On the right, you would never admit that there was any systemic connection between falling wages for the bottom decile, and falling wages for the eighth.

But considering them together would make it easier to see the patterns: wage depression never conveniently stopped at the bottom 20%, there is little brake on corporate power, and credit is allowing prices in every sphere to peel away from earnings. These trends are obscured by the rather dated political determination that “the needy” must be interested in one kind of politics, and “the aspirational” a completely different kind. Better to acknowledge the similarities in the situations we all face.

Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold

For 67 years the US has pursued its own interests at the expense of global justice – no wonder people are sceptical now

BETA

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Monday 9 September 2013 20.30 BST

US troops fire a white phosphorous mortar towards a Taliban position on 3 April 2009 in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: John Moore/Getty

You could almost pity these people. For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN security council. They've defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators. They have abused the powers and trust with which they have been vested. They have collaborated with the other four permanent members (the UK, Russia, China and France) in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.

Eighty-three times the US has exercised its veto. On 42 of these occasions it has done so to prevent Israel's treatment of the Palestinians being censured. On the last occasion, 130 nations supported the resolution but Barack Obama spiked it. Though veto powers have been used less often since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US has exercised them 14 times in the interim (in 13 cases to shield Israel), while Russia has used them nine times. Increasingly the permanent members have used the threat of a veto to prevent a resolution being discussed. They have bullied the rest of the world into silence.

Through this tyrannical dispensation – created at a time when other nations were either broken or voiceless – the great warmongers of the past 60 years remain responsible for global peace. The biggest weapons traders are tasked with global disarmament. Those who trample international law control the administration of justice.

But now, as the veto powers of two permanent members (Russia and China) obstruct its attempt to pour petrol on another Middle Eastern fire, the US suddenly decides that the system is illegitimate. Obama says: "If we end up using the UN security council not as a means of enforcing international norms and international law, but rather as a barrier … then I think people rightly are going to be pretty skeptical about the system." Well, yes.

Never have Obama or his predecessors attempted a serious reform of this system. Never have they sought to replace a corrupt global oligarchy with a democratic body. Never do they lament this injustice – until they object to the outcome. The same goes for every aspect of global governance.

Obama warned last week that Syria's use of poisoned gas "threatens to unravel the international norm against chemical weapons embraced by 189 nations". Unravelling the international norm is the US president's job.

In 1997 the US agreed to decommission the 31,000 tonnes of sarin, VX, mustard gas and other agents it possessed within 10 years. In 2007 it requested the maximum extension of the deadline permitted by the Chemical Weapons Convention – five years. Again it failed to keep its promise, and in 2012 it claimed they would be gone by 2021. Russia yesterday urged Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control. Perhaps it should press the US to do the same.

In 1998 the Clinton administration pushed a law through Congress which forbade international weapons inspectors from taking samples of chemicals in the US and allowed the president to refuse unannounced inspections. In 2002 the Bush government forced the sacking of José Maurício Bustani, the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He had committed two unforgiveable crimes: seeking a rigorous inspection of US facilities; and pressing Saddam Hussein to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, to help prevent the war George Bush was itching to wage.

The US used millions of gallons of chemical weapons in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It also used them during its destruction of Falluja in 2004, then lied about it. The Reagan government helped Saddam Hussein to wage war with Iran in the 1980s while aware that he was using nerve and mustard gas. (The Bush administration then cited this deployment as an excuse to attack Iraq, 15 years later).

Smallpox has been eliminated from the human population, but two nations – the US and Russia – insist on keeping the pathogen in cold storage. They claim their purpose is to develop defences against possible biological weapons attack, but most experts in the field consider this to be nonsense. While raising concerns about each other's possession of the disease, they have worked together to bludgeon the other members of the World Health Organisation, which have pressed them to destroy their stocks.

In 2001 the New York Times reported that, without either Congressional oversight or a declaration to the Biological Weapons Convention, "the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities". The Pentagon claimed the purpose was defensive but, developed in contravention of international law, it didn't look good. The Bush government also sought to destroy the Biological Weapons Convention as an effective instrument by scuttling negotiations over the verification protocol required to make it work.

Looming over all this is the great unmentionable: the cover the US provides for Israel's weapons of mass destruction. It's not just that Israel – which refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention – has used white phosphorus as a weapon in Gaza (when deployed against people, phosphorus meets the convention's definition of "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm").

It's also that, as the Washington Post points out: "Syria's chemical weapons stockpile results from a never-acknowledged gentleman's agreement in the Middle East that as long as Israel had nuclear weapons, Syria's pursuit of chemical weapons would not attract much public acknowledgement or criticism." Israel has developed its nuclear arsenal in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty, and the US supports it in defiance of its own law, which forbids the disbursement of aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction.

As for the norms of international law, let's remind ourselves where the US stands. It remains outside the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, after declaring its citizens immune from prosecution. The crime of aggression it committed in Iraq – defined by the Nuremberg tribunal as "the supreme international crime" – goes not just unpunished but also unmentioned by anyone in government. The same applies to most of the subsidiary war crimes US troops committed during the invasion and occupation. Guantánamo Bay raises a finger to any notions of justice between nations.

None of this is to exonerate Bashar al-Assad's government – or its opponents – of a long series of hideous crimes, including the use of chemical weapons. Nor is it to suggest that there is an easy answer to the horrors in Syria.

But Obama's failure to be honest about his nation's record of destroying international norms and undermining international law, his myth-making about the role of the US in world affairs, and his one-sided interventions in the Middle East, all render the crisis in Syria even harder to resolve. Until there is some candour about past crimes and current injustices, until there is an effort to address the inequalities over which the US presides, everything it attempts – even if it doesn't involve guns and bombs – will stoke the cynicism and anger the president says he wants to quench.

During his first inauguration speech Barack Obama promised to "set aside childish things". We all knew what he meant. He hasn't done it.

Fleeing the light - Political Parties and The Right to Information Act

ARUNA ROY

NIKHIL DEY in THE HINDU

  

 

Political parties have acted as judge, jury, supplicant and advocate in their move to amend the RTI Act and exempt themselves from its purview. Their rhetoric on transparency is more hollow than ever

A friend called the other day, and said: “I want to congratulate all of you in the RTI community, because you have managed to do what no one, and nothing else has managed to for a long time: bring about unity and unanimity in the political class.” His comment, laced with irony and sarcasm was not far from the truth.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) decision to classify political parties as public authorities and bring them under the RTI Act has kicked up a storm in our democratic polity.

The reaction of the parties to the Central Information Commission order that political parties will be considered public authorities under the RTI has been poor in content and abysmal in form. It is a pity that the opportunity provided for the politician to transform into a statesman is lost in the muddle of apprehension and self-interest. For a country that is unanimous in its opinion that electoral politics and democratic governance are being perverted by the undue influence of money, and vested interests, both the content and the form of reaction are important.

Let us understand the content first. Through the one line amendment, political parties in parliament are seeking to carve out an exclusive space for themselves beyond the reach and purview of the RTI Act. While all other associations or bodies constituted by law, can come under the purview of the RTI Act, an insertion “explains” that by law, this will exclude any association of persons registered under the Representation of Peoples Act.

Here are a set of implications that arise from this quick and potentially decisive amendment: The representatives of the people, have made it clear that they do not want to be answerable to the people. By removing themselves completely from the purview of the transparency law, they are preventing any obligation they might have to directly answer any query from the citizen on any issue.

This amendment dramatically exposes the extent of doublespeak. Many politicians have shared their concern with the growing influence of money, and even political parties have expressed distress that the use of unaccounted money is completely perverting the democratic political system. While parties across the spectrum have publicly reiterated their commitment to full financial transparency, the content of this “consensual” amendment has revealed the truth. By proposing a blanket exemption for themselves from the RTI Act, it is clear that they are not willing to answer questions of the citizen on anything- even financial matters.

Credibility gap

The yawning gap between ‘statements submitted’ and real expenditure during elections is no secret. Recent statements by politicians have exposed dramatically what real election spending to "secure" a seat means. This does not end with party issues but also determines key appointments in government. Is it surprising that the citizen wants to know where the money comes from and where it goes?

This amendment would negate one of the biggest opportunities we have had to identify, and fight the misuse of money in politics. Let us not have any illusions. Fighting corruption, and corporate/commercial influence in politics is only possible with the help of the ordinary citizen. The RTI has evolved into a decentralised process that allows an ordinary person to interface at her own expense and with her constitutional legitimacy as a sovereign citizen. The multiple uses of the Act to improve government functioning are so many that they defy enumeration. Accepting applicability of the RTI is therefore seen as the one stated intent of any structure to lay itself open to scrutiny and accountability. It is the many questions that citizens will pose, in a million places across the country, that will shine the torch, search, probe, expose, audit, and actually help regulatory institutions like the income tax department, and the election commission to eventually bring about real change and political reform.

Legitimate objections

This is not to say that we do not understand the complexities of political activity, and the need to keep some internal discussions out of the public domain. We do not feel that every question that is asked by every citizen needs to be answered under this, or any other law. The technical reading of the Act by the CIC brought political parties under the purview of the RTI Act as public authorities. The technical implication of being classified a ‘public authority’ has led to many legitimate objections from party leaders. Even with the current CIC decision, the concerns could have been “technically” addressed without amending the act – even through some amendments to the rules, perhaps. After all, even the defence establishment keeps strategy and internal matters out of the public domain while subjecting itself to, and benefiting from the purview of the RTI Act.

The nature of the political response has been even more disappointing and unacceptable. When a privileged class closes ranks to impose its decision, it is “technicalities” with the inevitable fallout that will determine the outcomes. Politicians know that substantive constitutional principles override technicalities of law. That is why perhaps in this case alone they were not willing to take the risk of taking the CIC decision to court.

And now the likelihood is that they will pass this amendment in their own court without even allowing the matter to go to the Standing Committee of Parliament. Can any institution be judge, jury, supplicant, and advocate, in a matter in relation to itself? Is this interpretation of privilege constitutional? Is it ethical or logical?

Eventually, none of us want to weaken the political system, or burden it with questions that will not allow it to function. But a blanket exemption can surely not be the means to make a political system strong, transparent, and accountable. This has led to the belief that freedom in internal matters and strategy like candidate selection is only a red herring to take the attention away from the real worry of financial disclosures.

If there had to be an amendment, it was incumbent upon parliamentarians to show that the political class was going to overcome technicalities to improve the scope of the law, not curtail it. People focus on substantive issues- not the technicalities. They want parties to live up to their rhetoric of transparency, and their stated desire to fight corruption in politics. This was in fact a historic opportunity lost to the exigencies of obvious and immediate self- preservation. It could have been used to enforce greater transparency not only amongst the political class, but also to expand direct coverage of the RTI to all institutions and organisations who spend public funds. In finding the substantively correct way of broadening coverage of the RTI, the political class, would not only have created a standard for themselves, but for the whole fabric of Indian society.

That would have been a huge quantum leap towards a healthy and ethical society.

In praise of cynicism

It's claimed that at the age of 44 our cynicism starts to grow. But being cynical isn't necessarily a bad thing, argues Julian Baggini. It's at the heart of great satire and, perhaps more importantly, leads us to question what is wrong with the world – and strive to make it better
Test how cynical you are

• 
• • Julian Baggini
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 10 July 2013 18.27 BST

Bunch of cynics … Hislop, Brockovich, Bernstein, Snowden, Woodward and Tucker. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

If there's one thing that makes me cynical, it's optimists. They are just far too cynical about cynicism. If only they could see that cynics can be happy, constructive, even fun to hang out with, they might learn a thing or two.

Perhaps this is because I'm 44, which, according to a new survey, is the age at which cynicism starts to rise. But this survey itself merely illustrates the importance of being cynical. The cynic, after all, is inclined to question people's motives and assume that they are acting self-servingly unless proven otherwise. Which is just as well, as it turns out the "study" in question is just another bit of corporate PR to promote a brand whose pseudo-scientific stunt I won't reward by naming. Once again, cynicism proves its worth as one of our best defences against spin and manipulation.

I often feel that "cynical" is a term of abuse hurled at people who are judged to be insufficiently "positive" by those who believe that negativity is the real cause of almost all the world's ills. This allows them to breezily sweep aside sceptical doubts without having to go to the bother of checking if they are well-grounded. In this way, for example, Edward Snowden's leaks about the CIA's surveillance practices have been dismissed because they contribute to "the corrosive spread of cynicism".

In December 1999, Tony Blair hailed the hugely disappointing Millennium Dome as "a triumph of confidence over cynicism". All those legitimate concerns about the expense and vacuity of the end result were brushed off as examples of sheer, wilful negativity.

A more balanced definition of a cynic, courtesy of the trusty Oxford English Dictionary, is someone who is "distrustful or incredulous of human goodness and sincerity", sceptical of human merit, often mocking or sarcastic. Now what's not to love about that?

Of course, cynicism is neither wholly good nor bad. It's easy to see how you can be too cynical, but it's also possible to be not cynical enough. Indeed, although the word itself is now largely pejorative, you'll find almost everyone revels in a certain amount of cynicism. It's the lifeblood of the satirical comedy of the likes of Ian Hislop, Mark Steel and Jeremy Hardy. Great fictional cynics such as Malcolm Tucker are born of cynicism about politics. It can provide the impulse for the most important investigative journalism. If Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had been more trustful and credulous of human goodness and sincerity, they would never have broken the Watergate story.

It can provide the impulse for the most important investigative journalism. If we were all habitually trustful and credulous of human goodness and sincerity, then there would be no questioning of dubious foreign interventions, infringements of civil liberties or sharp business practices.

Perhaps the greatest slur against cynicism is that it nurtures a fatalistic pessimism, a belief that nothing can ever be improved. There are lazy forms of cynicism of which this is certainly true. But at its best, cynicism is a greater force for progress than optimism. The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success. Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that bad and are bound to get better anyway.

This highlights the importance of distinguishing between thinking cynically and acting cynically. There is nothing good to be said for people who cynically deceive to further their own goals and get ahead of others. But that is not what a good cynic inevitably does. Whatever you make of Snowden, whistleblowers and campaigners such as Karen Silkwood and Erin Brockovich are both cynical about what they see and idealistic about what they can do about it. For many years, I too have tried to make sure that the cynicism in my outlook does not lead to cynicism in my behaviour.

That's not the only way in which a proper cynicism challenges the simplistic black-and-white of received opinion. The cynic would surely question the way in which the world is divided into optimists and pessimists. Optimism has various dimensions, and just because some people take a dim view of human nature and some future probabilities, that does not mean they are hardcore pessimists who believe things can only get worse. Cynics refuse to be typecast as Jeremiahs. They are realists who know that the world is not the sun-kissed fantasy peddled by positive-thinking gurus and shysters.

Indeed, the greatest irony of all is that many of the people promoting optimism are unwittingly feeding a view of human nature that is cynical in the very worst sense. Take psychologist and neuroscientist Elaine Fox, who is on Horizon tonight talking about her book Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain. Like many, she traces our tendency to make positive or negative judgments back to our brains and the ways in which they have been cast by our DNA and shaped by our experience. Her upbeat conclusion is that by understanding the neural basis of personality and mood, we can change it and so increase our optimism, health and happiness.

The deeply cynical result of this apparently cheerful viewpoint is that it encourages us to see what we think and believe as products of brain chemistry, rather than as rational responses to the world as it is. Rather than focus on our reasons for being optimistic or pessimistic about, say, the environment, we focus instead on what in our brains is causing us to be optimistic or pessimistic. And that means we seek a resolution of our anxieties not by changing the world, but by changing our minds. If that's not taking a cynical view of human merit and potential, I don't know what is.

So far, I have avoided the easiest way to defend cynicism, which is to point to its illustrious pedigree in the ancient Hellenic school of philosophy from which it gets its name. But I would be cynical about that too. Words change their meanings, and so you cannot dignify the cynicism of now by associating it with its distant ancestor.

Nonetheless, there are lessons for modern cynicism from the likes of Diogenes and Crates. What they show is that a proper cynicism is not a matter of personality but intellectual attitude. Their goal was to blow away the fog and confusion and see reality with lucidity and clarity. The contemporary cynic desires the same. The questioning and doubt is not an end in itself but a means of cutting through the crap and seeing things as they really are.

The ancient Cynics also advocated asceticism and self-sufficiency. There is something of this too in their modern-day counterparts, who are aware that we waste too much of our time and money on things we don't need, but that others require us to buy to make them rich. People who live rigorously by this cynicism are often seen as grumpy killjoys. To be light and joyful today means spending freely, without guilt, on whatever looks as if it will bring us pleasure. That merely shows how deeply our desires have been infected by the power of markets. It is the cynic who actually lives more lightly, unburdened by the pressure to always have more, not relying on purchases to provide happiness and contentment.

Finally, the Cynics were notorious for rejecting all social norms. Diogenes is said to have masturbated in public, while Crates lived on the streets, with only a tattered cloak. Whether anyone is advised to follow these specific examples is questionable, but it is surely true that we do not see enough challenging of tired conventions today. Isn't it astonishing, for example, how, once elected, MPs continue the daft traditions of jeering, guffawing and addressing their colleagues by ridiculous circumlocutory terms such as "the right honourable member"? It comes to something when the most controversial defiance of convention by a politician in recent years was Gordon Brown's refusal to wear a dinner jacket and bow tie. People would perhaps be less cynical about politicians if the politicians themselves would be more cynical.

Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accepted when younger. But the result of this is to make us see more sharply the difference between what really matters and all the dross and nonsense that clutters up life. So as cynicism about many – perhaps most – things rises, so too does our appreciation and affection for what is good and true. Cynicism leads to more tender feelings towards what is truly lovable. Similarly, doubting the reality of much-professed sincerity is a way of showing that you respect and value the rare and precious real deal.

It's time, therefore, to reclaim cynicism for the forces of light and truth. Forget about the tired old dichotomies of positive and negative, optimistic and pessimistic. We can't make things better unless we see quite how bad they are. We can't do our best unless we guard against our worst. And it's only by being distrustful that we can distinguish between the trustworthy and the unreliable. To do all this we need intelligent cynicism, which is not so much a blanket negativity, but a searchlight for the truly positive.


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The test: how cynical are you?

Do you think your pet only wants you for food? Or that Clare Balding is an ambitious back-stabber?

• 
• • Tim Dowling
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 10 July 2013 18.24 BST

Clare Balding: self-obsessed back-stabber? Photograph: Richard Ansett

There are many ways to express one's cynicism – Diogenes the Cynic, for example, slept in a jar – but the true cynic knows he must be more cynical than anyone else, surprised by nothing but the boundless naivety of those around him. Use this handy checklist to see if you qualify: if you agree with seven or more of the following statements you may count yourself a super-cynic. Not that it means anything. I mean, who cares, right? We're all gonna die alone.

1 You believe that mankind has failed to achieve anything of interest or note since the moon landings were faked.

2 You can look upon the grinning face of George Osborne and still declare that all politicians are as bad as each other.

3 You feel the current cultural debate is missing nothing other than the widespread dissemination of your low opinion of Channel 4's output.

4 You remain convinced that they just throw all the recycling away at the other end.

5 You believe that the editor of the Daily Mail has a dangerously rose-tinted view of human nature.

6 You have a "tendency" to put "inverted commas" "around" "everything".

7 It is your firm conviction that professional wrestling is completely staged, with the outcome of every match determined beforehand, just like professional cricket and professional tennis.

8 You think your dog is only in it for the food.

9 You used to vote Tory out of naked self-interest, but it didn't work so now you don't vote.

10 You stopped watching the Olympics because you could no longer stand the sight of the ambitious, self-obsessed, back-stabbing Clare Balding.

Why Ukip, the Tea party and Beppe Grillo pose a threat to the mainstream

These populists are asking the right questions, but they don't have the answers. Mainstream parties must revitalise and respond

• 
• • Anthony Painter
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 March 2013 14.13 GMT

Ukip supporters with 'Thank you' leaflets in Eastleigh, where the party came second in the recent byelection. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The rise of populism across western Europe and the US – especially in its radical right form – poses more fundamental questions for democrats than has been acknowledged. Whether we are talking about Ukip, Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement or the Tea Party, populists of all kinds are exposing old and hidden fault lines in democracy, and mainstream democrats need a greater alertness to the nature of the threat. Modern democracy, like a hot-air balloon untethered from the ground, is suddenly floating free and its destination is not yet known.

Populists pose a basic question: why is democracy not run as the true expression of a morally pure "will of the people" against a self-serving and corrupt political, bureaucratic, plutocratic or legal elite? This is a forceful question as old as democracy itself and it reveals what has become liberal democracy's unspoken compromise – democracy is bounded by institutions, laws and constitutional limits. It is democracy through pluralism and compromise; "minorities rule" as the American democratic theorist, Robert Dahl, described it. For populists, the problem with this notion is that they have their eyes on what they perceive as the majority (it usually isn't, in fact) against constitutional, legal or international constraints that have been placed on the "general will".

Mainstream democrats take their cue from American republican democracy with its checks and balances and self-restraint. This is an impediment to the true democracy for populists. They wish to sweep away any barrier to their desired ends – whether of the left or the right.

So the Tea Party proposes a radical reduction of the role of the federal government in the US political system. The FPÖ challenged the authority of Austrian courts with respect to upholding minority rights. Ukip demands a UK withdrawal from the EU. The Front National drives an anti-Islamic and anti-Gypsy agenda in France. Geert Wilders' PVV – following in the footsteps of Pim Fortuyn – also confronts fears over the growth of Islam and its purported incompatibility with Dutch values. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez created a parallel state and augmented his own constitutional power. Viktor Orbán's Fidesz rewrote the Hungarian constitution to give the executive more authority over the courts and to safeguard "traditional family values".

The binding element to all of these movements and parties is that they are not simply seeking to compete for ideas, policies and power but want to change the rules of the democratic game in favour of executive, majority rule. They are democrats but majority rule is their guiding force rather than a legally enshrined pluralism with minority protection. As my new Policy Network report, Democratic Stress, the Populist Signal and Extremist Threat shows, the upshot is modern (liberal) democracy in a state of stress.

Underlying the growth of these populist movements is a series of stressors that come to bear on liberal democracy and its mainstream party systems. They are socioeconomic, cultural and political in nature.

As the economy has moved away from mass production and many have lost out, socioeconomic change has loosened the ties of parties. Austerity looms large but is one factor among many. The rise of a politics of plural cultural identities catalysed by modern technology, transport, communications and media has further loosened the grip of mainstream parties on a solid and predictable base. Finally, political changes such as the expansion of the EU's acquis communautaire and the increasing comfort of mainstream parties within the system has created an opening for political challenger brands. Those challenger brands are the populists – more so than the green movement and even nationalists.

Mainstream parties have to prove that republican, pluralistic democracy, despite its frustrations and complexities, can be navigated through the trade-offs that all societies face better than populism can. More often than not, populists have simplistic and, in the worst case, highly damaging policies which if ever enacted, could cause significant harm. The desire for a return to economic growth, a sustainable welfare state or reducing debts is just as great as controlling immigration more tightly or seizing significant powers back from the EU. Mainstream parties can cope with these trade-offs between these demands and needs better than populists can – as long as they craft a viable statecraft.

Just maybe there is some truth in the populist critique of political elites – in Brussels, Washington and right through western democracies – and the way they have embedded their own self-interest in the system. Mainstream parties have lost their edge. They have grown comfortable, closed and politically nepotistic – relying on voters having nowhere else to go. That works for a while but becomes progressively more difficult to sustain. Mainstream democracy needs to become a contact sport again – with greater openness and engagement between the people and those who seek to represent them. Parties need to open up to real change and diversity.

Populism doesn't have the answers – you don't need to be Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or even Edmund Burke to see that. In many ways, however, it is posing some of the right questions. New policy approaches are necessary but not sufficient. The political mainstream needs to ask more fundamental questions of itself and its ability to govern with real legitimacy. That is if they are not to continue to age as the societies around them age. People will be left with a choice between a tired political mainstream elite and populists with all of the answers but few solutions. It's not a choice many will savour.