Hardcore for Nerds

Tais-Toi!: A Couple More Thoughts on Savages

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:17:00 +0100

As their singer is French, I’ve wondered if that is a reason or inspiration behind the album title Silence Yourself - since the French verb is a reflex one, se taiser, or in its second-person form, tais-toi. Whereas in English ‘silence yourself’ is an entirely non-colloquial, highly formal construction, it is the literal translation of the French equivalent of ‘shut up’ (at least in a semi-polite form; the more impolite version would be ta gueule, literally ‘your throat’ - as in “shadduppa your..”). The opening song is in fact called ‘Shut Up’, an indication perhaps that the process of translation did consciously happen, but I think there is also an obvious motive for using the more complex form in the title. ‘Silence yourself’ focuses attention on the idea of action and reflexivity, even though its literal meaning is no different. The exploitation of such a quirk of language could be seen as either clever or cheap - I suspect the difference lies in your estimation of Savages’ success.
I saw Savages perform on the excellent Irish live music series Other Voices last week (may be geoblocked outside of Ireland), and I was impressed despite myself. They played ‘Waiting for a Sign’ and ‘Husbands’, and I got the sense of how good their live show is supposed to be far better than in any YouTube videos I may have watched before. Part of that might have been the reliably dramatic setting of the Dingle church, and a lot of it was simply watching them play; but there was something more that came through on the recorded broadcast, akin to the most captivating times watching music on TV. In the interview with the presenter Aidan Gillen, Jehnny Beth got to trot out the line that what they are primarily interested in is the ‘physical’, as opposed to the intellectual, experience of music. So perhaps it was simply that the songs were freer and looser than on record - and rather than being one aural signal amongst many simultaneous possibilities, many of which they compare poorly to, they become an immediate and focused subject of attention. Which fits into their woolly manifesto, but it also suggests that they are more performance art than what we normally think of as good (recorded) music. And I don’t think it’s because there’s anything in the music itself that’s difficult to transfer from live to record, but quite the opposite: the music is a relatively unremarkable vessel to the experience, and not the other way around. I found myself thinking while watching and enjoying their performance that what I recognised in the music - the tired, jaded post-punk references - hadn’t really changed, and they wouldn’t change my non-enjoyment of the record. Whereas a band like Fugazi (admittedly a high bar, yet also apparently the go-to comparison for those wishing to break Savages out of an older post-punk ghetto) is quite capable of live performances that still resonate even with those of us unable to have direct experience of them, but also of producing very interesting records. Savages themselves may be interesting; but Silence Yourself - not so much.

abandoned MA dissertation chapter/indefinitely postponed PhD one

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:04:46 +0100

abandoned MA dissertation chapter/indefinitely postponed PhD one

Support for suicide abortion down: Poll - Independent.ie

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:36:00 +0100

Support for suicide abortion down: Poll - Independent.ie:

The headline on this story in today’s Sunday Independent - “Support for suicide abortion down”:

“A SLIM majority (53 per cent) finds abortion acceptable in cases of a threat of suicide – down five points in three months, according to the latest Sunday Independent/ Millward Brown opinion poll.”

There are at least two issues with this that I can see (although the main overarching one is that the Irish media is not very good at transparent analysis of multiple polls over time).

The first is that, according to the RTÉ report on the same poll, a further 16% seemingly supported abortion in case of a threat of suicide in certain circumstances - which would be a total of 69% support in either some or all circumstances, with 23% opposed and 8% don’t know. That is much more in line with previous polls on the suicide question, which don’t appear to have split the question (or at least haven’t reported it if they have). After all, it’s not clear what the other circumstances are surrounding the threat of suicide, an extremely particular circumstance in itself - and how such circumstances would affect the X Case judgement itself.

The second is that the (unnamed) poll being compared to doesn’t add up on either set of figures: despite saying that “the noticeable fall since February in support for abortion where there is a threat of suicide will be of concern to the Government”, the only poll I can find in that month was the Irish Times/MRBI poll which gave 71% support for abortion in case of suicide, either an 18-point drop or (if one compares the I believe more accurate 69% figure) a 2-point one. To further strengthen the comparability of the some-or-all circumstances figure, the combination of those opposed (11%) and no opinion (18%) - 29% altogether - in February’s poll is very close to the remainder of 31% in the current poll. But regardless of which figure is used, there is no five point drop. The closest to that is a January Sunday Times/Behaviour & Attitudes poll which found 59% support for the suicide option, although in the same month a RedC poll found 64% (presumably within the same margin of error, but not five points from 53% - indeed, between two polls with typical margins of error of +/-3%, a five point drop is not statistically significant).

If there really were only 53% support in total for abortion in the case of threat of suicide, that would be an even more dramatic drop of 6, 11, 18 or even 32 points over recent polls (the last according to the X Case question in RedC’s December poll, a month after the Savita case became public - but there are particular difficulties with using that poll as comparator, which I will discuss below). However, it seems to be to be an artificially low number created by splitting the question into two different levels of support. Reintegrating it to 69%* to compare with other questions based on the X Case criteria, and making certain other alterations (detailed below) to create comparable results, this is what the last six months of polling on abortion looks like:

(‘X Case’ means any question referring to the threat to life of the woman, including the threat of suicide; ‘Excluding suicide’ is the same with the obvious exception; and ‘On request’ is of course the true pro-choice position which remains a minority but a not insignificant one, certainly much larger than the 10% who consistently oppose even the most restrictive options offered - threat to life excluding suicide.)

Of course, in five polls from four firms, differences in question framing and sampling technique will have an impact on the extent of comparability - in fact, the biggest disparity is between the two RedC polls, which used two different forms of questions as discussed below.

The X Case And Excluding Suicide

The December RedC poll attracted some criticism for the seeming incompatibility of its results and the unusual way of framing the question: it asked for people’s responses to each option together, which caused some surprise when 85% supported the X Case criteria (including suicide) while 63% supported removing the suicide grounds. As the don’t knows remained constant (5-6%), that meant an extra 20% opposed the exclusion of suicide who most likely supported the X Case criteria in full. Although the result seemed counter-intuitive in the context of the poll, given that we have had two referenda in which the option of excluding suicide was defeated by a combination of liberal and conservative voters, it is not so surprising.

The following RedC poll in January was commissioned by a different organisation and used a different form of questioning again: respondents chose just one of the four options - X Case, X Case without suicide, on request, or never. On the assumption that anyone who supported the most liberal option of abortion on request would also support the X Case criteria if it was a standalone option, I have combined the two; and likewise for the less favourable again option of excluding suicide. Although this may seem to contradict the interpretation of the December poll, I think there is a difference between seeking people’s opinion of each option simultaneously (in which case more liberal voters are opposed to an option that excludes suicide) and effectively ranking them in terms of which gets the maximum support if they were the only option.

This latter approach seems to best reflect the Behaviour & Attitudes and MRBI polls, in which threat to life excluding suicide remained the option with the broadest support - and also the most restrictive one. On this basis, and including the Millward Brown result as 69%, support for this option has been declining gradually, although there is much less change in those opposing abortion in any circumstances, suggesting that a decline in positive support is translating into don’t knows instead. (For the Behaviour & Attitudes poll, outright opposition was gleaned by subtracting the number - 92% - supportive of any one of the four options given, from 100; don’t knows were not indicated, and would in any case make the actual figure smaller.)

Other Limited Circumstances

The Behaviour & Attitudes poll lacked a question about abortion on request, although it did include an interesting figure for the number who supported each of the four options given - abortion in the case of risk to life, risk to life excluding suicide, as well as rape and fatal foetal abnormality - which was a bare majority of 51%. Since the least popular option overall, risk to life including suicide, still had 59% support it indicates that there is also still an element of non-linearity amongst the supposed liberalness of options - i.e. someone who supported suicide grounds may have opposed rape, as well as vice versa. It also indicates a difference between the proportion of the population shown in other polls to support abortion on request, on average about 30%, and the rather larger, but still barely a majority, number who support abortion in all of the (very) limited circumstances given.

More sympathetic views are evident when the trio of alternative circumstances (than risk to life) are considered individually. Across four polls there are three data points each for risk to health, rape, and fatal foetal abnormality:

For all three support is relatively constant in a band between 70-80%, although risk to health has dropped from a high in December (shortly after the Savita case) to a lower level in more recent polls. What is intriguing about the health option is that it closely tracks the X Case criteria question in each poll: 82% to 85% in the first RedC, 70% to 71% in the MRBI poll, and 69% to 69% in the latest Millward Brown (further support I feel for using the latter figure, not 53%, as the more comparable one).

This is despite the X Case criteria clearly and explicitly dealing with risk to life “as distinct from health”; but in the discourse surrounding ‘suicidal ideation’ and a suspicion that we will be following the broader UK mental health grounds for abortion by legislating for risk of life from suicide, the two seem to be converged in the public mind. In terms of ‘liberalness’, suicide and (implicitly physical) health grounds have been equated.

The Trend in Excluding or Including Suicide?

I would think therefore that the initial high support for the X Case in the December RedC poll still stands as an accurate reflection of public opinion then, and although it is not representative of more recent polling on the issue it is so consistent with the also-declining health option that is remains a valid comparison. However, the stark change in preference from it being more popular than the exclusion of suicide, to being less popular, makes the two in combination hard to credit as comparators. Since each is out by about twenty points on the later four polls, removing them changes the average - making the X Case less popular and the exclusion of suicide more popular - by around five points in each case.

One can perhaps isolate the suicide question in the December poll as contrasting so much in its mechanics from the later ones. In the first, broadly liberal respondents chose to register their opposition to a proposal seen as either undesirable, unrealistic, or both**; whereas in later polls (after the political concerns over suicide grounds had become more vocal, and after the methodology had changed to produce less ‘confusing’ results) it has registered consistent support as the most broadly acceptable option, although hardly the most preferred.

Unfortunately, apart from the December poll the figures for ‘don’t knows’ on this question haven’t been published, so one can’t discern whether the gradual decline from 90% to 78% support for this option - rather than the less obvious drop, at least from January onwards, in the X Case including suicide - is due to increased opposition from whatever quarter or, I would think more likely, increased uncertainty over the issue. Indeed, if one uses the 69% figure for support for including suicide, the two options could be seen as converging.at somewhere around the 75% mark - with everyone beyond that either wholly opposed or just unsure about the issue.

*An earlier version of the same chart with the Millward Brown figure at 53% is here

**Technically, since it represents a majority in favour of excluding suicide, if it were a question in a referendum it could alter the X Case judgement and overturn the two previous referendums; but there’s a long distance between a single poll question and a referendum result. The real question of such a referendum would be whether it would follow the trend between 1983 and 2002, where liberal and conservative constituencies remained polarised but a general social shift meant that a restrictive amendment passed in 1983 with 67% while a further one in 2002 was defeated by just 50.4%; or that of 1992 when an anomalous coalition of liberals and conservatives defeated an essentially identical restriction by 65% - could conservatives adopting a more pragmatic position today swing an exclusion by that amount? Well, it seem unlikely given the consistent majority in favour of the X Case as it stands - but the apparent shift in the polling questions.away from seeing the exclusion of suicide as an overly-restrictive option to be rejected, to an option that creates the least opposition, rather complicates such a prediction.

Under-45s hit ‘dramatically’ harder by recession,...

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:59:00 +0100

Under-45s hit ‘dramatically’ harder by recession, ESRI finds

The ‘jilted generation’: Ireland has spared the old but robbed the young

“The Irish are thought to be a compassionate people who care about human rights, but we are also capable of appalling selfishness towards our own citizens. A report this week from the Economic and Social Research Institute suggests that few developed nations have committed the level of intergenerational theft we have witnessed in Ireland since the financial crisis began.

The headline finding of the report, by Petra Gerlach-Kristen, is stark. “The younger age group on average spent 20 per cent less per week in 2009/2010 compared with five years earlier. Over the same period, those aged over 45 managed to keep most of their bubble-era gains, spending 31 per cent more each week than they did in 2004/2005.”

In a very short period, two groups in society have experienced a huge disparity in spending power. These groups are separated not by class or occupation or education but by the timing of their births.”

Except looking beyond the “headline finding” (or just reading it carefully), the result of this “huge disparity” is that the disposable incomes in the two age groups have converged (chart on the left, from the ESRI report). And data from the OECD up to 2009 (chart on the right) shows that Ireland has a similar distribution of income by age group to the OECD average, although 18-40 year-olds still earn somewhat more and 41-65 year-olds somewhat less, with 51-65 year olds the only age group in Ireland with a poverty rate greater than the OECD average.

This has been explained to a degree already - during the boom years Ireland did relatively well in reducing poverty in older age groups compared to a previously much worse situation, and in a way it can be said that we became a society kinder to the aged rather than one less favourable to the young. The current decline in the incomes of the young is unfortunately easy to explain - unemployment and bubble-era house prices (indeed it is only the blue line of non-housing expenditure that they are significantly worse off than the older group). The increase of the older group is more difficult to account for however, although the report itself suggests that “to a certain extent” this is “due to a rise in the average education level of older households”:

“Younger and older households earned and spent about the same sums in 2009/10. While some of this may represent a natural convergence given the rise in average education levels of the older half of the population, we argue that it is also due to young households facing credit constraints and building up savings in anticipation of these. In particular, credit constraints are likely to bind for households that are unemployed, in arrears or in negative equity. Using household budget data, we construct age profiles and show that young households are indeed more likely to be facing credit constraints than older ones.”

So the recession has impacted negatively more on younger households - that’s not in dispute. But in doing so it has only brought parity between overall incomes, not a disparity; and from a Keynesian point of view presumably it’s a good thing that some of the lost demand from younger households has been taken up by older ones (and I wonder to what extent this might include intergenerational transfers and financial support), rather the overall demand plunging even further. Additionally, compared to the OECD average income was already shifted towards the young in Ireland; and since that bloc contains a wide variety of countries, it’s useful to look at particularly equal Scandinavian ones like Denmark, Sweden, Finland or Iceland - all of which skew significantly more towards older incomes (admittedly, so does the more unequal US).

I’ve written before about the problems with the ‘intergenerational equity’ argument and how it undermines concepts of solidarity and almost explicitly rejects class-based politics (as it does here). To split society along age lines blatantly ignores that the greatest inequalities are replicated within each group; but what is particularly bad about this example is that its simplistic reading doesn’t even stand up on its own figures, were we to use the distribution of income between young and old as the main measurement of the fairness of our society.

likeapairofbottlerockets: theothernwa: Finally got access to...

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:09:29 +0100

likeapairofbottlerockets:

theothernwa:

Finally got access to Joel Stein’s paywalled TIME cover story, “The Me-Me-Me Generation.” Glad he cleared up this misunderstanding about poor millennials so eloquently and non-racist-ly.

Wow I’m so glad I still haven’t read this.

How Not To Do Intersectionality

Modern Vampires of the City - some initial thoughts: it’s...

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:22:00 +0100

Modern Vampires of the City - some initial thoughts:

it’s nice to have an album that has such a strong positive reception without it being a ‘new’ band; we’ve had the hyped-up debut stage, the on-mature-reflection thinkpiece’d sophomore stage, and now they’re on their third record in good time. Two of the normally most curmudgeonly people in my Twitter feed (not, admittedly, usually on the topic of music) are big fans of it so far.
I don’t use iTunes and it hasn’t been released on Spotify yet, so while everyone was talking about it I still hadn’t heard it - aside from the singles, and once while part of it was playing in a record store - so, figuring I’d be buying it anyway, I went straight for the vinyl today. The moment of putting the needle down on the start of the record was actually the first time I’d heard the opening song, something which rarely if ever happens in my listening.
I like it, obviously enough, but at the same time I’m only getting into it. What I do like in particular so far is that feels like such a composite record: ‘layered’ would suggests depths that I haven’t uncovered yet - which may or may not be there - but it’s more that it’s a familiar sound mixed with snippets of, seemingly, everything.
Hey, Vampire Weekend are appropriating my culture now! (The end of ‘Unbelievers’, with its pipe-band crescendo - the liner notes credit players of a tuba, trombone, trumpet, accordion and a ‘flistle’, presumably a combination of flute and whistle.)
The stark purity of the black/white design on the record itself - even as merges into misty grey on the front cover - I think complements, and probably has an influence on, the idea of the music being a perfectly balanced amalgam of sounds.
Already I’ve seen it described as a ‘perfect pop record’: that didn’t make much sense to me based on the singles, although they do have a rather striking dissonance about them; through the record as whole, however, is a reminder of how their first record felt - summery, playful and free, yet this time even more lighfooted and airy. I really liked Contra as well, but by comparison it felt much more statement-like.
Vampire Weekend » The Clash, Contra » London Calling (or rather, Give ‘Em Enough Rope), Modern Vampires of the City » Sandinista!?
That minute few seconds of dub echo on ‘Hudson’; the semi-faux-baroque piano closing out the album on ‘Young Lion’ (as a throwback to the first record, surely); everything’s a little weird on this album, but precisely and economically so - and that is perhaps its greatest strength.

thewoodquarter: Waiting to board. in case anyone missed the...

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:25:00 +0100

thewoodquarter:

Waiting to board.

in case anyone missed the joke…

Irish income distribution 'more equal' than OECD average

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:03:00 +0100

Irish income distribution 'more equal' than OECD average:

That’s the headline, but what’s the figure?

The report shows Ireland’s Gini coefficient stood at 30.7 in 2010, compared to an OECD average of 31.3.

Not much of a difference, really. ‘Close to the average’ would be a more honest headline. And not only that, but the report itself points out that the average is over a wide spread:

“Differences in levels of income inequality across OECD countries remain large. The Gini coefficient ranges from 0.25 in Iceland to almost twice that value in Mexico and Chile. Nordic and central European countries have the lowest inequality of disposable income while inequality is high in Chile, Mexico, Turkey, the United States and Israel.”

But since the lower values are more bunched together, most countries are more equal than the average. In fact, we’re the 18th most equal country out of the 34, sharing the median position with the slightly lower Poland. ‘Ireland at the median of OECD income inequality’ would carry a rather different message than the actual headline (and presume slightly more knowledge of basic statistics).

Furthermore, elsewhere on the OECD their own figures show that in 2009 Ireland’s Gini coefficient was (slightly) above average at 0.331, having increased sharply from 0.293 in 2008 - when it had been on a downwards trend for several years. In other words, Ireland had been becoming gradually more equal up until the recession hit. The 2010 figure in the latest report is noted as being provisional and based on the EU-SILC database; if accurate it is a good sign by comparison, but still a slight increase on pre-recession levels of income inequality.

The rest of the Irish Times article also features some partial interpretations of statistics:

“The report finds that the economic crisis had the effect of increasing inequality of earned income in most OECD countries, but that welfare systems offset the effects on inequality when total incomes (including social transfers) are considered.

In the three years to 2010, Irish households suffered the seventh-largest decline in market income (ie before welfare benefits) in the OECD.

The decline was just over 5 per cent, compared with an average decline of 2 per cent. Icelandic households suffered the largest decline in market incomes, at 12 per cent.

Polish households were at the other extreme, with market income growth of 3 per cent between 2007 and 2010.

The picture for household income changes considerably in most countries once the cushioning effects of social welfare systems are taken into account.

In Ireland average household disposable income, which includes social transfers, fell by just under 4 per cent in the three years to 2010.

Social transfers boosted disposable income by 2 per cent over the same period, the joint highest effect of transfers, along with Finland and New Zealand.”

Again, the relevant figures in the report show that while Ireland indeed had the seventh-largest decline in market incomes, it also had the fourth-largest decline in disposable incomes (-4%, behind only Greece, Mexico and Iceland) despite the effect of social transfers: apparently because, unlike Estonia, Spain and New Zealand which all suffered larger declines in market income, changes in tax had a negative effect on incomes in Ireland (-0.51%, the highest in the OECD). Or at least average incomes - to get the picture in relation to inequality, or the distribution of incomes, one has to turn to another chart.

Market income inequality rose by the highest amount, as measured by the change in the Gini coefficient, in the OECD bloc between 2007 and 2010 in Ireland: from 0.510 to 0.576. The next largest increase was in Spain, from 0.447 to 0.507. Yet the increase in disposable income inequality was much lower in Ireland over that period, from 0.299 to 0.307, compared to 0.309 to 0.338 in Spain. A general theme of the OECD report is that taxes and transfers - or “the mitigating effects of the welfare state” - have softened the impact of increased market income inequality. Yet only social transfers, not taxes, are mentioned in the article. Tax benefits had a positive effect on average incomes in many countries, although the effect was negative in Ireland; but in Ireland, the effect of market income inequality was lessened on disposable income by a notable degree - a sign perhaps that increases in income tax (in all but name) in Ireland’s low-tax society have given some protection to societal equality.

Anilingus

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:04:00 +0100

citationneeded:

Not to be confused with Aer Lingus.

Link

Whatever Aeroflots your boat (not to be confused with…)

[actually, according to the Wiki article ‘Aer Lingus’ was an anglicized spelling of ‘Aer Loingeas’ (same pronunciation, more or less), or ‘Air Fleet’ in Irish]

Editors - ‘A Ton Of Love’ (2013) While we’re...

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:35:00 +0100

Editors - ‘A Ton Of Love’ (2013)

While we’re arguing about Savages, my actual favourite UK post-punk/Joy Division apers are due to release a new album, the first since 2009’s In This Light and On This Evening (which I wrote about here). It appears they have since lost their lead guitarist Chris Urbanowicz due to ‘differences in musical direction’ - I assume he was responsible for their shimmering, high-flying sound which is notably absent here. Instead, it feels dry, muted, spacious - and even more 80s. Rather than their previous gloomy Factory Records posturing updated for the modern taste in bombastic rock, it’s a throwback to the stadium rock of the day: Springsteen and U2 both come to mind. And I wouldn’t expect to like that, especially not the latter, but I really do.

There’s something to the lyrics, normally impenetrably vague, that resonates too: “now bathe my idle soul in… desire”; what could better, and more beautifully, describe the modern, materially sated human condition? And wrapped in the soft sax and ringing chords of the sound of the technological and economic liberation of the 80s; the decade in which a new openness promised everything, just as our crisis today is subsumed into the internet’s instant gratification. “I don’t trust the government” is a familiar and jaded cry, but “I don’t trust myself” is a more chilling sign of the breakdown between the individual and the collective. ‘Desire’ is the animating force of our capitalism, here expressed in pitch-perfect irony as the throwback sonic signifiers of pleasure, hope, and confidence.

Much better than manifestos about silence, I think (and their art, as always, is wonderful).

Album reviews | Savages - Silence Yourself (Pop Noire/Matador) | COLLAPSE BOARD

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:09:00 +0100

Album reviews | Savages - Silence Yourself (Pop Noire/Matador) | COLLAPSE BOARD:

Pretty good polemical review of the Savages album (which, as I’ve said before, I’m rather disappointed by) although I feel like the last third is unnecessary - or at least I don’t feel the need to judge their ideas, just that they don’t make a very interesting expression of them. That said, this is a great putdown:

“Everything about this record reeks of conservatism, right down to the last deviant sexual fetish and the drummer bringing a copy of The Fountainhead to the Pitchfork interview (+1 journalism points to the interviewer for mentioning it, but -25 journalism points for not actually, you know, asking her about it).”

And also, it’s almost too easy, but I’d already noticed that on re-reading their interesting-seeming ‘manifesto’ it’s actually rather wobbly. Or:

“Conservative with a lower case c, Savages are such bad poets they don’t (I’m assuming) realize they’ve written a manifesto that would make Thatcher proud. Seriously, it idealizes a golden age that never existed, bemoans the diversity of voices in the culture, and longs for rational simplification in the face of messiness.”

That’s certainly a literal interpretation of complaint about “too many voices” and “noise” as “a constant distraction”, but while’s there’s a certain post-punk astringency about it (which is again not only unoriginal but also undeveloped), it’s the “angry young tune” that confuses me now. What, exactly, is ‘young’ about a band so steeped in replicating the past?

There’s also this follow-up post which counters some expected criticisms that is worth reading. I came across Collapse Board through Jake Cleland when they were writing about Iceage, and similarly at that time providing a useful oppositional critique of the Pitchfork celebration of alternative post-punk that is, to me, more style than substance (and worryingly so). I don’t agree with everything they write, as it is in a strongly polemical style, but it’s good to see the effort being put in. There are some useful critical thoughts to come out of not being silent.

On Self Destruction

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:32:00 +0100

Powerful quote from Adorno in this (itself excellent) Guardian piece about applying the Frankfurt School to the contemporary situation:

“The prospective fascist may long for the destruction of himself no less than for that of the adversaries, destruction being a substitute for his deepest and most inhibited desires … He realises that his solution is no solution, that in the long run it is doomed. Any keen observer could notice this feeling in Nazi Germany before the war broke out. Hopelessness seeks a desperate way out. Annihilation is the psychological substitute for the millennium – a day when the difference between the ego and the others, between poor and rich, between powerful and impotent, will be submerged in one great inarticulate unity. If no hope of true solidarity is held out to the masses, they may desperately stick to this negative substitute.”

I’ve always thought that the nihilism of punk (which at times drifted into Nazi imagery, if generally not unironically) was an expression of this same idea.

deadgirlfriends: this is kind of an amazing...

Sun, 12 May 2013 22:49:46 +0100

deadgirlfriends:

this is kind of an amazing gif

crabcooooooooore

"Screaming is not the most popular thing. I run a risk doing it because I know, as well as you do,..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:01:37 +0100

“Screaming is not the most popular thing. I run a risk doing it because I know, as well as you do, that not everyone likes to hear a person scream, especially a woman. It’s different when a woman screams. I wish it weren’t, but it is. I’ve been told my whole life to sit down, shut up, be quiet, stop being a whore, whatever. There comes a time in your adult life when you realize you do not have to listen those ridiculous demands. You can reject the archaic stereotypes of your gender.”

- Mish Way of White Lung on screaming at The Talkhouse

Irish debt levels, 1980-2013 (via)

Sun, 12 May 2013 20:06:41 +0100

Irish debt levels, 1980-2013 (via)

Bruton redux redux

Sun, 12 May 2013 20:01:00 +0100

andrewtsks:

hardcorefornerds:

[…]

Paul Krugman recently provided an excellent response to that line of thinking in his New York Times column. It wasn’t aimed at Bruton, but was a general response to that line of thinking (and we have a lot of political leaders here in the USA who totally approve of it). Here’s what I find to be the most relevant passage:

if you look at United States history since World War II, you find that of the 10 presidents who preceded Barack Obama, seven left office with a debt ratio lower than when they came in. Who were the three exceptions? Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes. So debt increases that didn’t arise either from war or from extraordinary financial crisis are entirely associated with hard-line conservative governments.

And there’s a reason for that association: U.S. conservatives have long followed a strategy of “starving the beast,” slashing taxes so as to deprive the government of the revenue it needs to pay for popular programs.

The funny thing is that right now these same hard-line conservatives declare that we must not run deficits in times of economic crisis. Why? Because, they say, politicians won’t do the right thing and pay down the debt in good times. And who are these irresponsible politicians they’re talking about? Why, themselves.

To me, it sounds like a fiscal version of the classic definition of chutzpah — namely, killing your parents, then demanding sympathy because you’re an orphan. Here we have conservatives telling us that we must tighten our belts despite mass unemployment, because otherwise future conservatives will keep running deficits once times improve.

Krugman’s column is carried by the Irish Times on the front page of its business supplement, below the fold, so I read that ;) I thought the chutzpah bit was particularly good.

It’s quite likely Bruton saw that too - I suppose the difference is that every Irish government since the late 1980s (the last time Ireland was in a serious recession) left office with a lower debt-to-GDP ratio than it started with; including his own government between 1994 and 1997 which lowered the ratio from 88.4% to 73.4% (see). Presumably he’s aware of that, which is why he referred to spending rather than paying down debt (or its relative erosion by growth).

But I also think it’s because the idea of ‘starving the beast’ hasn’t, at least up until now, had any currency in Ireland - even on the right. Without a large military and with historic economic underdevelopment, there was no ‘beast’ until the boom years allowed Ireland to do some catching up compared to European levels of public spending, although the boom-time economics also allowed the later governments to do so while keeping the tax take (as a percentage of GDP) below the European average, closer to the US level. And we did this while running budget surpluses and reducing our debt levels, conditions Europe sees as evidence of good fiscal housekeeping.

Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas “a lock for appearing in at...

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:39:50 +0100

Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas

“a lock for appearing in at least 50% of the next round of those I Paid For My Music I’m Really Special posts tumblr people make” (via)

Dear internet, have a picture of a donkey (previously)

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:29:52 +0100

Dear internet, have a picture of a donkey

(previously)

Jawbreaker - ‘Save Your Generation’ from Dear You I...

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:20:08 +0100

Jawbreaker - ‘Save Your Generation’ from Dear You

I bought this album on vinyl this week, along with Mclusky Do Dallas, for an even €40 - comfort purchases for memories of younger days wallowing in the emotional and impotent rage of punk rock. I.e., still current.

Here’s my Zen interpretation of the full lyrics of the song from May 2011.

Bruton redux

Sat, 11 May 2013 21:53:00 +0100

The ex-Taoiseach made a bit more of a splash today on Twitter with this:

Mr Bruton said: “I am not in agreement with President Higgins because it is not realistic nor moral to say that we’re not going to face difficult issues now, but instead we’re going to avoid them by borrowing money that our children or children’s’ children will have to pay.

“That is not moral, socially just or socialist. In fact it’s immoral.

“It’s anti-social for us to avoid our responsibilities and pass them on to the next generation. Yet that’s the cry of the opponents of austerity,” he said.

It’s not really surprising that conservatives manage to make the macroeconomics of austerity to be about the family; it’s another version of making government finances about household budgets. It’s a way of fitting radical actions within a narrow worldview, and painting any alternative as contrary to natural law and individual common sense: you wouldn’t spend more than you earn, or borrow money for your children to pay off, would you? Unless you’re a sociopathic monster with no conception of the common good, of course.

But government budgets don’t work like household ones (neither do debt-laden corporate ones, it seems) and the capacity of a government to raise taxes from an entire economy means that debt is paid off from its growth. The spectre of future impoverished generations relies on absence of growth - exactly what austerity is creating, and what its opponents want to avoid. But fundamentally the image of “our children’s children’s” takes no account of inflation, of technological, social or economic progress - a true conservative vision.

It also neglects to state whose children will be suffering most from this debt burden: the privately educated with access to the most profitable careers, or the underprivileged reliant on state services being progressively dismantled by ideological austerity? Or instead will it be a more equitable world where everyone’s children will have an equal opportunity to benefit from and contribute to our economy and society? In other words, ‘children’ is not a neutral image: it is a projection of the existing social order into a future shaped by current policies.

Now that the backlash to austerity is gathering momentum in political circles, conservatives are returning to attacking the economics of the alternative. Or at least the economists. I have a certain sympathy for Niall Ferguson’s self-admittedly stupid comment on Keynes: homophobia notwithstanding, he was riffing on a particular quote, the “in the long run, we’re all dead” to point out - however callously - that while we might be dead, our descendants aren’t. Assuming we have them, however - and that is where the conservative obsession with the traditional family re-emerges.

It’s not just that it excludes homosexuals and the childless by making not only marriage but also economics (the world as a household, remember) about procreation: it also suggests that since we are concerned for our own children, we are less concerned about those of others. Or about humanity in general. Of course parental instinct is a strong and admirable force, but in our divided world is it not better that it coexist with some more communal feeling, like empathy perhaps?

It doesn’t seem as if Bruton made the same error as Ferguson, although the substantial point of his argument above is the same, when criticising Keynes:

In an unusually pointed speech to an insurance event in Dublin yesterday, Mr Bruton – who now commands a reported six-figure salary as president of the Irish Financial Services Centre – went on to vilify John Maynard Keynes, the economist seen as the father of borrowing in tough times to create economic growth.

“The assumption that you can borrow more now because in the good times you can save a bit more is wrong. In politics the last thing people will consider is cutting spending in the good times.”

The error here is assuming that Keynes meant “cutting spending” rather than saving, or increasing spending at a reasonable rate. Ironically Bruton’s time as Taoiseach is usually contrasted favourably with the later years under Bertie Ahern (and Charlie McCreevy) in that respect; even still, with all the pro-cylical tax cuts and spending increases in the boom years Ireland - in common with other bailout countries - ran budgetary surpluses and paid down significant amounts of its debt (our parents’). That didn’t help, however, when our borrowing capacity was maxed out to save the banks and, with the collapse in tax revenues based on an unsustainable property-boom economy, the government switched to equally pro-cyclical austerity measures. And the only difference since Fine Gael came into power is that the tax measures have been less progressive and the attack on state spending more ideological: so really, Bruton, fuck your morals.