‘Sir’ Nick Clegg? A true sign of how Britain’s elite rewards failure

Owen Jones in The Guardian







The establishment is a safety net for the shameful and the shameless. Once you’re in, you’re in: and even if you played a prominent role in plunging your country into crisis, and inflicting injustice on your fellow citizens, there are still baubles to be had.

Former chancellor George Osborne got his own newspaper, and ex-deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is reportedly to be made a knight of the realm. It has become fashionable in certain liberal circles to rehabilitate both as courageous warriors against the calamity of Brexit. But here are surely two architects of our crisis-stricken nation.

Nick Clegg to be knighted in New Year honours, say reports



Let’s start with Clegg. For those wonks who sifted through his speeches before he led his Lib Dem party into the coalition in 2010, there was ample evidence that Clegg would prove an amenable ally to a slash-and-burn Conservative government. Three years before Osborne began wielding his scalpel, Clegg promised to “define a liberal alternative to the discredited politics of big government”. Months before the banks plunged Britain into national calamity, he railed against “nationalised education, nationalised health, and nationalised welfare”.

But in order to get elected, the Lib Dems made cast-iron pledges to scrap tuition fees, and had students queuing around the block on polling day. “Students can make the difference in countless seats in this election,” said Clegg, which they did; and hiking fees to £7,000 (let alone £9,000) would be a “disaster” because “you can’t build a future on debt”. The Lib Dem’s flagship political broadcast was titled “Say goodbye to broken promises”, in which Clegg bemoaned the dishonesty of the political elite.
Clegg said after the election that he had no choice but to go back on his word: a national economic disaster loomed, national interest trumps party politics, amassing power and all its trappings through brazen dishonesty was actually an act of sacrifice! As former Liberal leader David Steel put it, Clegg could have met Gordon Brown first “instead of leaving talks with Labour to his acolytes later”, and used the prospect of a Lib-Lab coalition to extract “far better from the Tories”. But he didn’t.

Clegg claimed that new information about Britain’s economic plight from Bank of England governor Mervyn King was critical to his U-turn. But King himself said he had told Clegg nothing the Lib Dem leader didn’t already know.

So here is the truth. Clegg formed an austerity coalition because his socially liberal anti-state worldview was fundamentally in accordance with that of Tory leader David Cameron. “If we keep doing this we won’t find anything to bloody disagree on in the bloody TV debate!” as he was accidentally recorded cooing to Cameron in 2011.

So everything that then happened is on him, as much as anyone else. The longest squeeze in wages for generations; the ideologically driven privatisation of the NHS; a bedroom tax that disproportionately compelled disabled people to pay for the housing crisis; the humiliating and degrading work assessments forced on disabled people in a failed attempt to balance the nation’s books on their shoulders; the surging homelessness.


A man who uses human misery as a chess piece should, in a decent country, lose their privileged position in public life


But this is nothing compared with the indulgence of George Osborne, just because a dinner party friend has given him a newspaper to play out a vengeful grudge against Theresa May based far more on personal affront than political principle, like a toy catapult handed to a spiteful toddler. The bedroom tax, the £12bn pledged in social security cuts; the benefit cap; the systematic demonisation of benefit claimants. As Nick Clegg – once the voters had thrown him out of government – said himself, Osborne’s behaviour was “very unattractive, very cynical”; for him, welfare “was just a bottomless pit of savings, and it didn’t really matter what the human consequences were”, it was just a means to boost his party’s popularity.

This is grotesque behaviour, like a child who takes a magnifying glass to ants. A man who uses human misery as a political chess piece should, in a decent country, lose their privileged position in public life.

“Ah, but Osborne and Clegg oppose Brexit!” is a common comment. But no one who ever utters this has been a victim of the bedroom tax. Yes, this Tory Brexit is a national disaster. But the details of Britain’s relationship with a trading bloc is a secondary issue for those who spend their waking hours worrying over paying their food and energy bills.

In any case, if you want to understand why Brexit happened, look no further than these two individuals. Is it any wonder that, in a referendum on the status quo, so many opted for the Big Red Button?

These individuals are far from alone in being protected by the establishment, of course. Tony Blair is one of the most unpopular individuals, let alone politicians, in the country; but the man who helped lay Iraq to waste and works for torturing and murderous dictatorships is treated by much of the media as an oracle of wisdom.

If we are to have an honours system that is more than a sordid backslapping exercise, there are far more deserving recipients than Clegg, such as Maria Brabiner, a Mancunian bedroom tax victim who fought back. Surely those who struggle against injustice should be honoured, not those who impose it.

But let me offer some praise. Both Osborne and Clegg were in many ways also architects of the Corbyn project. They played critical roles in creating the army of the disillusioned who flocked to join the Labour party, and then in their millions voted against a bankrupt status quo. Thanks to them the self-serving, mutual appreciation society – otherwise known as the British establishment – may soon find its time is running out.

Salman Rushdie - On Writing

Binaca Geetmala - A nostalgic trip with Ameen Sayani

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Volume 5

How India rejects bad patents

Feroz Ali & Sudarsan Rajagopal In The Hindu


In 2005, India made some remarkable amendments to the Indian Patents Act of 1970, to keep medicines affordable in the country. Since then we have faced a significant blowback not just from the global pharmaceutical industry but also from developed world including from the U.S. and the European Union.

At the heart of the matter are the strong standards for patents which India introduced to promote genuine innovation across all fields of technology, in perfect compliance with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms. In contrast, developed countries have weaker standards as a result of incessant lobbying by corporate behemoths. Twelve years later, we now know what it means: India rejects bad patents in far greater number than developed countries.


The background

The findings of a new study by us which examined all 1,723 pharmaceutical applications rejected by the Indian Patent Office (IPO) between 2009 and 2016 have been an eye-opener.

Section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act, a provision introduced to restrict the patenting of new forms of known pharmaceutical substances, became the subject of international attention after its use in rejecting a patent application by Novartis for the anti-cancer drug, Gleevec. We found that exceptions to patentability in Section 3 of the Act, which includes Section 3(d), were responsible for 65% of all rejected pharmaceutical patent applications.

Over its short lifetime, Section 3(d) has survived a challenge to its constitutionality before the Madras High Court, and Novartis’s fight against the rejection of its patent that went to the Supreme Court. Both courts ruled decisively to uphold the legality of Section 3(d). The United States Trade Representative has also repeatedly rebuked India for this provision in its Special 301 Report, despite its perfect compliance with WTO norms. While the world’s attention is still fixed on this legal experiment that the Indian Parliament introduced into law, there has been a dearth of information on how the IPO has applied Section 3(d). We found that it filters the bad from the good, with the lowest possible administrative and financial burden.


Rejected using Section 3(d)

An astonishing 45% of all rejected pharmaceutical patent applications cited Section 3(d) as a reason for rejection: the applications were identified as mere variants of known compounds that lacked a demonstrable increase in therapeutic value.

Between 1995 and 2005, prior to our new law, India provided a temporary measure to receive patent applications for pharmaceutical products at the IPO, called the mailbox system. Though introduced in 2005, the use of Section 3(d) gradually increased from 2009 when mailbox applications were examined. The spike coincides with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Novartis case, in April 2013. It would appear that this judgment provided legal certainty to Indian patent law in general, and Section 3(d) in particular, enabling the IPO to weed out trivial innovations.


At the patent office

In the last decade, we found that the IPO rejected about 95% of all pharmaceutical patent applications on its own. Only 5% were through the intervention of a third party, such as a pre-grant opponent. Our basic patentability criteria, that the invention should be new, involve an inventive step (also known as non-obviousness), and should be capable of industrial application, were the most frequently used grounds for rejection, followed by the exceptions to patentability grounds in Section 3.
Section 3(d) invaluably equips the IPO with a yardstick to evaluate applications that are merely trivial innovations over existing technology. In cases where the invention is a variant of a known substance, the criterion for patentability is proof of a necessary improvement in its performance for its designated use, i.e., increased efficacy. In the context of pharmaceuticals, as was the case involving Novartis, this translates to evidence of an improvement in therapeutic efficacy. In other words, trivial innovation must result in a far better product in order to qualify for patent protection.

Within the arcane world of patent law, an argument against provisions such as Section 3(d) is that it is no more than an extension of one of the basic requirements of patentability: non-obviousness. Certainly, for an application to be deemed non-obvious, it has to establish a technical advance over what was known before.

But non-obviousness standards are more effectively applied in invalidity proceedings before a court of law than by officials at the IPO. The advantage that a provision such as Section 3(d) provides is the ability to question an application at the IPO itself without having to go through expensive and time-consuming litigation. The high cost of litigation poses significant barriers. Cases are often settled before reaching a conclusion, in pay-for-delay settlements negotiated by patent owners, where generic manufacturers are essentially paid to stay off the market. Patent litigation is expensive, but it is the patient who eventually pays a higher price — by being subject to exorbitant medicine prices, driven by the unmerited exclusivity that bad patents create.


As a check

Without Section 3(d), the Indian public would have to bear the burden of invalidating a bad patent through litigation.

India is certainly not alone in facing two connected challenges: constrained government budgets and urgent public health needs. As Section 3(d) has been efficient in separating the bad patents from the good in India, it would be a wise move for other developing countries, grappling with similar challenges, to incorporate similar provisions in their law.

Reinventing communism can help both the CPI and India

Anand B in The Hindu




The Communist Party of India and its ideology seem to have lost a bit of its sheen in the last three decades, today peeking shyly from the Kerala undergrowth. Time to take to the streets — er, the social media? | Wikipedia

December 26, 1925, was the day the Communist Party of India considers as its foundation day. The party is now 92 years old. There are 84 parties that branched out from this party and follow communism today. This is, however, not about the party leaders or the staunch followers of communist philosophies in the party. This is more about actual communist and socialist workers — people who believe in communism and socialism regardless of their being a member of any affiliated parties.

The communist parties have succeeded in alienating themselves and the communist philosophy as a whole from the youth. Sure, the parties have members under the age of 35. But again, this isn’t about the party or its student-body members.

This is about the man (or woman) who works hard every day to earn a living. The man who no longer cares about philosophies or society as a whole. With the advent of technological advances, communism or Marxism has been left behind. Unfortunately, it is not Marx’s fault. He welcomed technology. He never recommended the destruction of the means of production; he asked the workers to seize it for the greater good. 
The IT and BPO industry sans unions have completely blocked a section of society — a vibrant section — from the philosophies and, subsequently, the parties too. An industry which attracted a whole generation for over two decades now has been kept away from the Left and this has crippled the spread of the ideology as well as its philosophy and politics greatly.

How did communism grow?

To delve a bit deeper, let us take a look at how communism spread. It did not spread merely through charismatic oratory figures or sectarian ideologies like caste or language. It spread from the bottom up. It spread from the workshops. It spread from the factories. It spread from weavers. It spread from the farmers. It spread in the form of trade unions. It spread in the form of student bodies. It spread based on the success it had in the form of USSR, which went toe to toe with the United States.

This meant a person who was to eventually join the party would first have to be attracted by its ideology and the philosophy. This was achieved by a propagandisation of the benefits one would get as a member of the proletariat as much as the power of the workers’ rights against the exploitation they were subjected to. It was done by apprising the worker of their rights. Grassroots propagandists like Jeevanandam or Jyoti Basu or E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who went on to become leaders, greatly helped in taking this message to the common man.

What changed?

The factors that helped in spreading the ideology largely disappeared during the final decade of the last century.

With the globalisation of the Indian Market, the death of the USSR, and the absence of grassroots propagandist leaders in the league of EMS or Jeevanandam, the party and its ideology have come in for hard times. The current party leaders confining their discourse largely to politics is not helping either. Not to mention, the mass influx of American culture along with the growth of the IT/BPO industry further dented its reach — the youth became more interested in seizing the day than seizing the means of production. And then, when the communists of the country started to set themselves against both globalisation and pop culture, they completely alienated the present generation, and they were forced to retreat to the universities in the north and factories in the States they ruled.

But they do exist. The philosophy, like all others, cannot be killed so long as even one person believes in it — indeed, even if no individual believes in it. The communists, however, are no longer as ideologically relevant or politically dominant as they used to be and should be to keep the social balance. Nor are they spreading the word as effectively as they used to.

The fact that they still limit themselves to talking about farmers and factory workers is ensuring that a young section of society finds communism or socialism an alien concept. Without meandering into the partisan part of it, being unrelatable is not doing the philosophy or the ideology any favours.

The need for communism

So, why bother with rejuvenating a dying movement? Because the need for communism and socialism is now higher than ever. When the Right gets stronger, the Left is needed to balance it out just as the Right balances the Left. Like the force from Star Wars, the balance of power needs to be restored.

On the personal front, the youth no longer are interested in hunger unless it is their own. They are not interested in problems until it affects them. By living each day for itself, we, the youth, have forgotten the lessons the past taught us and ignore the impact that forgetting these lessons can have on the future. Likes, Shares and Retweets are the highest form of response you can get for actual issues from other members of the proletariat today. All their intelligence and ability to understand politics and social structures is being squandered as they spend all of it on pop culture. The politics in House of Cards and Game of Thrones is more interesting than the actual politics that affect them on a day-to-day basis.

Seeing the bigger picture, unchallenged power corrupts. Congress — left of Center under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi — is just not enough. With the currently weak leadership in the party, be it at the regional or national level, Congress is not even a challenge for someone like Modi. As much as we need the aggressive development BJP promises, we also need to have checks and balances politically.
The news channels are not helping. They are giving more coverage to moralistic or mundane controversies (Padmavati, Trump tweets) than actual issues of economic and ecological significance (GST implementation, education sector woes). It is easier to distract the news channels than to distract the youth. Thanks to the TRP race, the current hot issue matters more than the ones that are important to the country as a whole in the long run.

Socialistic and Communist thinking could be the perfect cure for these modern-day ills and help create a future generation that is aware of the hows and whys of the policies that affects them. Taking the thinking to the youth and first-time voters will help the country greatly. The parties that follow Marx are the ones who should take ownership with this. They are better equipped to take this responsibility than anybody else.

What can they do?

Marx talks more about factories in his manifesto than agriculture. Lenin is credited with bringing in farmers into the fold of socialism and communism — he brought in the sickle and made the philosophy relevant to a larger audience.

Instead of limiting themselves to Marx’s writing, they need to evolve, much like Lenin, and reach out to the larger audience on the issue that affects them. They lost a wonderful opportunity during the recession-driven IT layoffs, for instance, to emphasise their philosophical importance.

Just like they went to universities to reach students, went to factories to reach workers and to farms to reach farmers, they need to go where the youth are concentrated today — the social media.

The philosophy needs to go into their handheld device, those we spend more time with than our better halves or parents. It is up to the party to take it there, to them, with a renewed set of issues that can be solved or mitigated by the application of socialism. This cannot involve merely creating an app which echoes the leaders’ political critique of Modi’s policies but also about creating awareness about the philosophy as a whole in a simple and reinvented ways. They also need to acknowledge that the present generation seeks out the trappings of global pop culture to decide which ideas to consume. Therefore, communism needs to outgrow the books and literature that helped propagate the philosophy in its heyday and be more proactive in its outreach.

Failure to evolve will result in extinction. And socialism/communism is one philosophy that needs to exist in our country and survive as a counterbalance for the other side. The ball is in the parties’ court for now, as always. It is up to them to decide on what to do with it, for it decides their future and ours.

Why are growing numbers marrying themselves?

More and more people around the world are choosing to "marry" themselves in symbolic ceremonies, and businesses are catering to the trend. But what motivates someone to say "yes" to themselves?

Didem Tali in The BBC
In the summer of 2000, New York-based performance artist Gabrielle Penabaz decided to throw a wedding party for herself while nursing a broken heart.

She carefully chose a location, flowers, a quartz ring, a sweetheart-neckline wedding dress and wrote thoughtful vows.

She even wore "something borrowed, something blue" on the day, even though the event was purely symbolic and lacked one crucial component: a groom.

Nonetheless, her friends and family attended and Ms Penabaz says she had the "best wedding ever". Since then she has been "officiating" at other people's self-marriage ceremonies as a form of performance art - a service for which she charges.

Her clients are usually single women, although people from all genders and marital statuses have taken part.

Image copyrightMARRY YOURSELF VANCOUVERImage captionWomen attending a self marriage ceremony in Canada

She claims to have "married" more than 1,500 people, typically in ceremonies like her own, with mock-up chapels, costumes, cakes and most importantly, vows.

"The ceremonies are usually very cathartic and all about self-love," Ms Penabaz says.

"80% of the people whom I married to themselves shed a tear reading their vows. They usually say things like 'I forgive myself' and 'I will no longer call myself ugly'."

Welcome to the world of self-marriage or "sologamy", which has attracted increasing attention over the last few years.

While it is not legal to marry yourself anywhere in the world, reports of people holding mock ceremonies go for several decades and can be found everywhere from Japan to Italy, to Australia and the UK.

The act has also been the theme of episodes of popular US TV shows such as Glee and Sex and the City, and there are now whole businesses - such as Ms Penabaz's - dedicated to helping people plan their solo events. 

Dominique Youkhehpaz officiated at her first solo wedding in 2011 at the US arts festival Burning Man and has since set up the consultancy Self Marriage Ceremonies.

She offers a 10-week online course to prepare brides or grooms for sologamy, costing $200 (£149), as well as private counselling sessions. Ms Youkhehpaz says she's worked with more than 250 clients to date and business is booming.

"A self-marriage ceremony can be anything from a simple ritual in one's bedroom to a more lavish celebration," she explains.

She also thinks it can be incredibly therapeutic for those who take part. "I have witnessed people leave abusive relationships, step more fully into their life's work or meet their beloved after marrying themselves."

Proponents say sologamy is about self-love, acceptance and claiming the social affirmation normally reserved for couples who wed.

While there are no official figures about those choosing to marry themselves, the interest comes at a time when the number of unmarried people is at record highs in many advanced economies, according to the OECD.

Image copyrightSOPHIE TANNERImage captionBriton Sophie Tanner tied the knot with herself after her partner cheated on her

Not surprisingly, businesses have been catering to this new market. In 2014, the Japanese travel agency Cerca Travel reportedly offered a two-day package for solo brides for upwards of £2,500. It included dress fitting, make-up and hair styling and a photo shoot.

Dan Moran, a Los Angeles-based jewellery designer, says he started receiving calls from clients wanting sologamy rings 18 months ago and wedding planners and photographers he knows are getting similar requests.

Most of his new clients are "urban, affluent and educated" women, and interestingly many are already married.

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"In the coming years, people who work in the wedding industry will definitely have to keep sologamists in mind and tailor their service," he says.

Certainly people are willing splash out on sologamy. Italian Laura Mesi wed herself at a "fairytale" event this September, complete with a white dress, three-layer wedding cake, bridesmaids and 70 guests.

The 40-year-old, who made the move after her 12-year relationship ended, spent £8,700 on the day.

Image copyrightSOPHIE TANNERImage caption"It was the best day of my life," says Sophie, here hugging her father - who gave her away
In the UK, Sophie Tanner married herself in 2015. "For me, it was an important ceremony that demonstrates my commitment to self-compassion, " she told the BBC.

"The wedding was the best day of my life, complete with vintage gown, teary dad giving me away, and dancing bridesmaids."

But not everyone welcomes the sologamy trend. Some call it narcissistic and others criticise it as a pointless submission to a patriarchal institution.

Karen Nimmo, a clinical psychologist in New Zealand, says: "Self-dislike is at the root of so many psychological issues, so where marrying yourself is about healing from past trauma or relationship issues it can be helpful.

"But it's important to make sure your other relationships are healthy. If you rely too much on yourself and constantly put your own needs ahead of everyone else you may be slipping into narcissistic territory - and that's an unhealthy and lonely place to be."

Alexandra Gill, co-founder of consultancy Marry Yourself Vancouver, accepts marrying yourself "kind of is" narcissistic, but adds: "Aren't all traditional white weddings also narcissistic?"

She also says that marrying yourself doesn't have to be taken deadly seriously.

Since 2011, her firm has helped solo brides plan their big days, but is now branching out to offer a "ladies' night" concept which celebrates "self-love and sisterhood".

"Let's face it, all women grow up with the fairytale wedding stories and the princess culture isn't going away anywhere," she says.

"But self-marriage ceremonies allow us to re-write this narrative in which we don't need a groom."

"Weddings have always been a female-centred celebration, anyway," she says.

"Many more women would love to marry to themselves, but they're just self-conscious about it."

Sex in the City's heroic protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, who wed herself in a 2003 episode of the series, would surely agree.

Who pays for Manchester City’s beautiful game?

Nick Cohen in The Guardian



Even though I come from the red side of Manchester, I want Manchester City to win every game they play now. Hoping City fail is like hoping a great singer’s voice cracks or prima ballerina’s tendons tear. Journalists have written and broadcast millions of words about the intensity of Manchester City’s game and the beauty of its movement. You watch and gasp as each perfect pass finds its man and each impossible move becomes possible after all.

Everything that can be said should have been said. But here are words you never hear on the BBC or Sky and hear only rarely from the best sports writers. Manchester City’s success is built on the labour extracted by the rulers of a modern feudal state. Sheikh Mansour, its owner, is the half-brother of Sheikh Khalifa, the absolute monarch of the United Arab Emirates: an accident of birth that has given him a mountain of cash and Manchester City the Premier League’s best players.

An absolute monarchy is merely a dictatorship decked in fine robes. The usual restrictions of free speech, a free press, the rule of law, an independent judiciary and democratic elections still apply in the Emirates federation of seven sultanates. Critics are as likely to disappear or be held without due process as they are in less glamorous destinations. The riches that supply Pep Guardiola’s £15m salary and ensure the £264m wage bill for the players is met on time do not just come from oil. The Emirate monarchies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia rely on a system of economic exploitation you struggle to find a precedent for.

In the UAE as a whole, only 13% of the population are full nationals. In the glittering tourist resort of Dubai, citizenship rises slightly to 15% and in the Abu Dhabi emirate to 20%, but everywhere a subclass of immigrants does the bulk of the work. The obvious comparison is with apartheid: Arab nationals sit at the top, white expats have some privileges, as the coloureds and Asians had in the last days of the South African regime, while the dirty work – from construction to cleaning – is done by despised immigrants from south Asia.

But comparisons with apartheid or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or America’s old deep south miscarry because the Arab princelings import their working class rather than rule over subdued inhabitants. It’s like Spartans bringing in Helots. Or if images of stern Spartan militarists feel incongruous when imposed on the flabby bodies of Gulf aristocrats, Eloi importing Morlocks. Timid labour reforms are meant to have improved the lot of the serfs. In law, employers can no longer keep them in line with the threat of deportation to India or the Philippines if they do not please a capricious boss. In practice, absolute monarchies repress the lawyers and campaigners who might take up their cases. Now, as always, activists are silenced and workers fear the cost of speaking out.

You should be able to praise Manchester City’s football and condemn it owners. Or, if that is asking too much, you should at least be able to talk about its owners or mention the source of their wealth. If only in passing. If only the once. Instead, there is silence. With Mansour building a global consortium of clubs, Qataris owning Paris Saint-Germain and Emirate money poised to buy Newcastle United, rich dictatorial states are engaging in competitive conspicuous consumption. They are creating the world’s best clubs and may one day take them off into an oligarchs’ league. You are not “bringing politics into football” when you worry about Sheikh Mansour. You are recognising that the future of football is political.

The silence about the fate of the national game covers much of national life. Everywhere you look, you are struck by the arguments that are not being made.

Mainstream Conservatives refuse to join Tory rebels in speaking out against the dangers of Brexit. They like to boast that they are stable and commonsensical types, with no time for dangerous experiments. When confronted with the reckless nationalism of the Tory right, however, they prefer the safe option of keeping quiet until public opinion shifts. Many Labour MPs and leftwing journalists deplore Corbyn and the far left. I speak from experience when I say they talk with great eloquence in private, but will not utter a squeak of dissent in public until Corbyn’s popularity among party members falls. They, too, will speak out when, and only when, they can be certain that it is too late for speaking out to make a difference.

We think of ourselves as more liberated than our ancestors, but the same repressive mechanisms silence us. In the 18th and 19th centuries, few wanted to say that gorgeous stately homes and fine public buildings had been built because the British looted Indians and enslaved Africans. Today, it feels equally “inappropriate” – to use a modern word that stinks of Victorian prudery – to say that a beautiful football club has been built on the proceeds of exploitation.

Football supporters reserve their hatred for owners such as the Glazers, who bought Manchester United with borrowed money and siphoned off the club’s profits to pay down the debt. If billions are available to turn Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain into world-class clubs, the fans do not care where the money came from. Nor do neutrals who love football for its own sake. For them, it is as miserablist to talk about Manchester City’s owners on Match of the Day as to talk about the factory farming of turkeys at the Christmas lunch table.

Honest sports writers fear the accusation that they are joyless puritan nags whose sole pleasure is ruining the pleasure of others. In Britain’s vacuous politics, Conservatives fear accusations of ignoring the will of the people on Brexit. Labour MPs fear their activists rather than their voters. In both the Tory and Labour cases, the worst that can happen to MPs is deselection. Mail or Express journalists who came out against Brexit would, I imagine, risk their jobs or being moved on to a different story. But no leftwing paper would sack a columnist who criticised Corbyn. The worst they would endure is frosty words from line managers and twaddle on Twitter.

We do not live in Abu Dhabi. The police do not pick up dissidents. Jailers don’t torture them. Yet peer pressure and trivial fears are enough to suppress necessary arguments. If you do not yet have a New Year resolution, it’s worth resolving to treat both with the contempt they deserve.