r e a l r e v i e w . i e

They said 2011 was the year of change. This simply has to be true, as it’s impossible to imagine anyone who even vaguely qualifies as sane and ordinary trying to make the argument that Diane Abbott and Patrice Evra are, in fact, terrible and appalling racists.

I try not to write about what are often called “liberal issues” on this blog, because decrying things like racism and homophobia usually seem so cock-obvious to me that it’s too dull to bother writing about. Dammit, at least sexism can be subtle. I considered writing something about the Suarez – Evra affair, but again, it’s not even complex enough to get a 1,000-word post about. This is an affair in which Suarez – and Liverpool Football Club, who let us not forget are a fucking community organisation – have cried all sorts of foul, alluded to various conspiracy theories which are all clearly absurd and – having seen their stance thoroughly and fairly discredited – are now down to muttering that the comprehensive 115-page report about the affair has left important bits out. Not that they’ve said what those omitted bits are, of course. All this to bravely and courageously assert the right of Luis Suarez to call an opponent “negro” in an argument. Because, y’know, it’s actually quite friendly in Uruguay when used amongst friends.

(For the record: some black Uruguayans actually do object to the use of the term; Suarez and Evra were not friends; they were engaged in an angry argument; Evra was clearly incensed, but Suarez continued to use the term and never apologised for the “misunderstanding”; Suarez was not in Uruguay; Suarez has lived in Europe for 5 years, but somehow claims he never learned that black Europeans aren’t generally wild about the word “negro”; Suarez knew Evra’s name but referred to him by his skin colour, and all else is whataboutery.)

Similarly, the Diane Abbott affair is beyond stupid. But sometimes it’s worth walking through stupidity. I do this is a middle-class white male, who is therefore one of the vulnerable minority that Abbott slurred.

It’s easy to forget that racism is, like any other form of discrimination, fundamentally about power. This is why people who complain about “reverse racism” always look so silly. And this is why the furore over a Diane Abbott tweet - “White people love playing ‘divide & rule’ We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism” – is so very stupid, and cynical, and desperately unhelpful.

The old standard – “imagine if a white person had said it” – requires a heroic ignorance of how power works. Racism is a very distinct and nasty way of reminding people that they are, in some way, inferior. It’s particularly vicious because it relates to qualities with which one is born, and of which one should be proud rather than ashamed. It is also a form of discrimination that has enslaved and killed hundreds of millions of people.

Without being backed by that sort of power balance, without implying an inferiority that has been affirmed in other ways by real and bloody discrimination, enslavement and dehumanisation, racism has little or no meaning. It is a form of thuggery that can only ever be visited by the powerful on the powerless. On occasion the standard dynamics can reverse, which is why – say – it’s broadly OK to have a robust pop at US foreign policy in a public forum, but not particularly noble to start slagging off a lone American backpacker in a bar.

Quite apart from the fact that Abbott’s tweet actually referred to colonialism, making the context of her statement abundantly clear, the careless wording could not possibly be said to seriously attack or offend anyone. If it had been a white person had said it… yes, it would have been worse. Because when white people attack black people they do so in a context of centuries of slavery and dehumanisation, ongoing and very real discrimination, and a world which still sees murder being committed on racial grounds, and nasty bands like the BNP getting too much attention and support (not least by some very stupid Irish student debating societies I could mention). There are surveys to back up the oft-denied reality that black people are not well-treated by western societies. Now, I can’t know what it’s like for somebody black to take racial abuse against that sort of background, because I’m not black. But I do know it’s a damn sight worse than someone slagging off my cultural heritage, because being shit at dancing isn’t exactly comparable.

And as for that role-reversal argument; it’s also worth remembering a mostly-forgotten tempest of 2011, when Brian True-May – producer and creator of Midsomer Murders - defended the lack of black (and other non-white) actors in the programme. At the time this was largely dismissed as a storm in a teacup, with politicians and commentators of all stripes queuing up to say it was all a bit silly, really, and we all knew why Midsomer Murders didn’t have black actors in it, and it wasn’t exactly realistic what with a small village playing host to a new murder very week. They dismissed it as “PC”, too, which we all know has gone too far.

Now, I’m sure Brian True-May is a lovely man and is nice to his mum and would never dream of being racist, etc etc. And yes, we do all know why Midsomer Murders doesn’t have black people in it; it’s a deliberately nostalgic programme that presents a weird hybridised world that’s halfway between 1930 and the present day, with huge chunks of it based on an Agatha Christie aesthetic. Just as Agatha Christie stories didn’t take place in a multicultural society, a multicultural aesthetic doesn’t suit Midsomer. There’s certainly a discussion to be had about what that says about its viewers, and what they expect from television -

(Full disclosure: I quote like it)

- but all that misses the point. True-May didn’t say this. What he said was that Midsomer was a “last bastion of Englishness.” The implication of that statement, whether he meant it or not, is that non-white people are not properly English. It is not “PC” to point out this sort of sentence as being unpleasant. Nor is it a stretch to suggest that the same people who decried Abbott’s supposed racism would have shrugged off the Midsomer affair as oh, just one of those things, PC out of control, you have to think twice these days before speaking in case you offend someone.

(The last of those was a comment by an audience member on Question Time, right after the True-May teacup-squall. The Important People nodded sagely, instead of saying “actually, yes, you do. It’s called having manners.”)

The other thing about power is that it’s a relative concept; the powerful tend to think of themselves as ordinary. They speak of being under attack, when in fact all that’s happening is th removal of privilege. We see it in the rhetoric of pro-church commentators in Ireland, desperate to look for an anti-church agenda, smarting at a series of “attacks” that actually just amounts to the church being treated the same as any other organisation. And we see it in the white establishment, so convinced that if you aren’t a racist you can say whatever you like, so used to making good-humoured jokes about minorities, so happy to be in the position of power. Their right to affirm that power, always with a smile on their face, has been compromised. So they seize on any chance to show themselves as persecuted. The doctrine of “political correctness,” a term that has always been used as a meaningless slur on tolerance, was and is an important tool.

Abbott’s tweet was silly, for a politician speaking on an open forum. It was open to misinterpretation by stupid people, and her apology was sensible. But newspapers and far-right voices have seized on this, just days after convictions in the Stephen Lawrence case. It’s an attempt to recaste power-dynamics that obscures the real meaning of racism. It’s cynical and nasty, and ultimately dangerous; it is the action of people who are unthinkingly desperate to portray themselves as the hunted, and in so doing hold on to what little power they have left.

A while back, I wrote a blog post about something I called “economism,” in a spurt of self-parodic buzzwordising. The cornerstone of this was that people had simply stopped viewing the Irish budget as a socio-economic document, and viewed it instead as an accounting exercise; that only someone bound by a sociopathic devotion to ledger-sheet politics could possibly find Ireland economic policy defensible.

Back in 2008 and 2009, the cuts seemed to be inflicted as a result of desperate, bludgeoning, selfish incompetence. Just as Ireland had reacted to BoomTime (cue hollow laughter) by cutting as many taxes as it could, it responded to recession by cutting public services with quiet savagery. It became a simple truism that Ireland had been successful because it was A Good Place To Do Business, and very, very few voices even wanted to think any deeper than that. In much the same way that the Tories believe that the Private Sector will drive the UK’s growth once the state is rolled back, because – um – well that’s what business does, Ireland’s government believed it would naturally get out of this rut if we only kept cutting, because that’s how Celtic Tigers work.

If there’s a difference between the Fianna Fáil government and today’s Blueshirt-piloted brigade, it’s simply that Noonan, Kenny, Varadkar et al do what they do out of ideology rather than cronyism. Fine Gael have long-since styled themselves as the respectable, pro-business, small-state party who wear well-ironed suits. Fianna Fáil treated the IMF as enemies over whom they had failed to pull a fast one; interest rates on bailouts aside, Kenny sees them as partners. Shrinking the public sector and cutting back on Ireland’s excuse for a welfare state is something he’s more than happy to do; Eamon Gilmore, meanwhile, has apparently decided that it’s Frankfurt’s way after all.

It’s easy to think of the indiscriminating butchering of Ireland’s social structures imprecise, but the cuts of the last four years have been very precise indeed. They have unerringly sought out the neediest, the weakest, the most powerless. They have never visited any financial hardship on the wealthy that has not first been visited on those with little or nothing. Every year, social welfare has been cut; community projects have been ravaged; health entitlements have been scaled back. Corporation Tax and the top rate of tax are untouched.

The justification that is always given for these actions is to reduce Ireland’s budget deficit, and yet-

No, wait. Let’s spell things out. Ireland’s budget deficit is in the order of €18 billion. It has begun to shrink, but not by any serious amount, and to a triumphant fanfare that betrays the fervour of people who know they are wrong. And yet in 2009 the Irish government took the decision to close Combat Poverty, an organisation whose funding amounted to €5.5m or so per annum. What sort of impact did that €5.5m have on Ireland’s budget deficit, exactly? Let’s just remove the emotion from the equation, and look at the figures; who talks about the desperate need to balance the public finances and cuts a 5.5m project, while voluntarily repaying billions of the unsecured loans of defunct, non-systemic bank that have nothing to do with the state? For that matter, who point-blank refuses to consider even a one percent increase in an absurdly low corporation tax rate, or even to close off any of the loopholes in that tax rate, and then focuses on the chicken-feed of community employment schemes? Are these seriously meant to be financial measures?

The truth, or course, is that this is not about public finances; it is about shaping the future. It’s only if you accept that simple fact that the budget makes any sense at all. Once you do, of course, a number of things become switchblade-obvious.

Ireland’s budget has confirmed eloquently that who we have in government makes no real difference. Both Fine Gael and, loudly, Labour, were flushed into power while shouting how they were going to change things. Enda Kenny called the bank bailouts an “obscenity,” but has happily continued them when no such obligation exists.

This week has seen an astonishing attack on the disabled, the introduction of a VAT hike that could tip thousands of families into poverty, and even – there’s something almost poetic about the historical irony of this – a “Household Charge” that has yet to be widely decried for the poll tax it is. It has brought about the end of countless community employment schemes and projects. I use the word countless literally; no-one appears to have collated just how many schemes have been terminated in the last couple of years (this was, of course, the sort of thing Combat Poverty used to do). The Festival of Defiance and Hope had children carrying fake headstones, each one representing a cancelled scheme. There were a lot of headstones. This has saved the state next to nothing.

In fact, let’s play the accounting game for a moment and forget the emotive specifics; just look at the headline figures. While the government happily talks about “savings” of 3.8bn, the truth is miles from this. Much of the money spent by the state comes in the form of wages; about half of it would immediately come back in taxes and levies anyway. Benefit payments are spent by those who receive them, and translate to VAT receipts. This is even before one factors in Leaving Cert Economics concepts like the multiplier effect. If the €3.8bn “savings” knock close to a billion off the bill, the government will have done better than anyone could reasonably expect. The notion that these “savings” will close Ireland’s deficit is laughable, and the accounts of every government currently in the midst of austerity provide clear data to support this.

In fact… let’s stop using this word austerity. It is no longer enough. This is a very, very distinct and deliberate economic war.

It is born of many things. The radical individualism pioneered by Thatcher and embraced in this country – in particular – by the PDs, although it’s increasingly become a default cross-party position; this has lead to the belief that those with the least are, in a basic all-encapsulating way, to blame for their own misfortune. The gutting of production industries, be they manufacturing or agriculture, and the embracing of a service-based economy as a template for “success.” The pseudo-professionalisation of our workforce, resulting in huge swathes left behind and feeling unwanted. It was David Simon who put it clearest; there are 10% of our workforce that we no longer economically need.

When the revenue was flowing, the solution was simply one of containment; so long as budgets balanced, and those at the top continued to be treated and paid as natural emperors, the system was fine, and it didn’t matter what happened at the bottom. You only worry about pests once they begin to bother you.

This is not just about protecting the rich; about protecting the illusory system that sustains them; about refusing to puncture the belief-system of capitalism, the mantras of trickle-down and wealth-creators and ever-expanding growth. The week has closed with European leaders making a pact to preserve their mythologies; they formalise austerity rulings, based on nothing but dogma, that will inflict astonishing suffering on tens of millions of people. The only man to walk away was preserving his own mythology, about Britannia and the fundamental goodness of bankers.

Community schemes are being destroyed, not because of budgets, but to appeal to people who flatly believe that they should not exist. Enda Kenny says that Ireland must show we are prepared to pay our way. What he means is that we must show we are sufficiently cruel, sufficiently callous, sufficiently contemptuous of our people. Then, and only then, will we be a viable credit risk to the powerful.

To a small, influential coterie, this recession is not a hardship. It is an opportunity. They see a chance to remake the world in a dreamed of image, and they see an acceptable collateral. When people talk about resisting, and resistance, they use the only words left that are apt.

This isn’t the sort of blog that deconstructs other peoples’ articles piece by piece, normally. Nor is it one that gets too technical about stuff related to building, even if I am an architect by day, and even if I do expect my readers to have semi-encyclopaedic knowledge about Doctor Who. This isn’t meant to be a professional blog, after all.

But Michael Casey’s article about architects in the Irish Times… that really can’t be allowed to stand. It isn’t the usual portrayal of architects as a feckless, superpaid elite (unemployment over 50%, many others part-time). It’s a deconstruction of architects’ standard forms of contract, and it’s wildly inaccurate. It’s just… untrue.

I’ll probably write a broader, more contextual article about this in a day or so. I don’t think it’s really about architecture as much as it’s about all professions, and that deserves a brief discussion. But first, it’s necessary to go about the wearisome job of dismantling the article itself. I’ve had to reprint about 80% of the original article, such were the inaccuracies. The thing is that, even if you took it on trust that most of what Casey wrote was nonsense, phrases like “almost entirely untrue” and “scurrilous hyperbole” have lost their meaning. I don’t think anyone would guess how untrue it is.

If you believe me that the article was about as accurate as a Richard Littlejohn opinion piece, then you might want to come back in a couple days for my super-broad socio-economic assertions. For those of you who are interested, here we go. To liven proceedings up, you may wish to visualise Casey’s article keeling slowly to the ground like an enormous wicker effigy of Del Boy.*

Frank McDonald recently quoted the director of the Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland (RIAI) claiming that “architects are not involved in the construction stage of buildings . . . where the problems happen”.

Important point; the quote was taken out of context. It related to developer-lead buildings, from which – on-site – architects were usually excluded.

It’s a small distinction maybe, but important. Casey invokes Priory Hall, a horrible story… but the article he goes on to write ignores the existence of property developers entirely. He deconstructs an RIAI Building Contract (badly, as we’ll see) – but the problem at Priory Hall, and other developments like it, was that this contract wasn’t used. This means his article is gloriously irrelevant from the kick-off.

I want to be clear here because I don’t want to play the apologist. First, the construction trade in Ireland is desperately corrupted and far too many of the buildings built over the last ten years were awful. Second, the architectural profession – simply through a terrible acquiescence to a status quo they knew were wrong – has a chunk of responsibility for this, even if it’s not a primary responsibility. Third, in my opinion the profession needs some reforms.

But what Casey attacks is something the profession has got right. It is where architects save clients a lot of money. It’s why architects exist.

For years now, architects have deflected responsibility from themselves by means of a standard contract that they encourage their clients and building contractors to sign. Take the short form contract, SF-88, drawn up mainly by the RIAI. This neatly encapsulates the mindset of the architectural profession. (My request to the RIAI to provide a copy of this contract fell on deaf ears but I managed to acquire a copy elsewhere.)

A big error from the off: SF-88 is not “a standard form.” It is a deliberately simplified form of construction contract, used for very small jobs – usually internal fit-outs.  You want to build a nice reception desk in the lobby of a hotel? SF-88 is your man. Occasionally it might be used for small domestic extensions, but even that’s a stretch. In my ten years of practice I have never used it. The construction contract is called “The Agreement and Schedule of Conditions of Building Contract,” and is about five times as long. Maybe that’s why Michael Casey chose to read SF-88 instead; he’s probably a busy man. One can’t spend more than an afternoon on these matters.

(Small point; all the building contracts are available from the RIAI Bookshop on Merrion Square. They post them, too. Specimen forms are €2.99. Not so hard to get hold of.)

The contract is between the client (employer) and the builder (contractor). The architect does not feature prominently in the standard version. In fact, his relationship with, and duties to, the client/employer are vague.

Focus on this.

Remember how I said SF-88 was a construction contract? That’s because it’s a contract between the client and the builder. The “architect” (it doesn’t have to be a registered architect, it can – theoretically – be anyone at all provided both parties agree) administers the contract between them.

So the architect’s duties to the client / employer are “vague” because this isn’t the agreement between the architect and employer. There’s a completely separate contract, which both the architect and the employer sign, that sets out the architect’s scope of services and duties to the employer; the standard form is very thorough. It’s signed at the beginning of design, months before the job even starts on-site. It isn’t set out in SF-88 because that’s not what the form is for. You might as well criticise the warranty for your car because it doesn’t contain the rules of the road.

So if you think Michael Casey might have expertise in this area, just bear in mind that, on two counts, he hasn’t actually managed to read the right form.

For example: “The architect shall carry out periodic inspections . . . these inspections shall not in any way relieve the contractor of his sole obligation [my emphasis] to carry out the works in accordance with the contract.”

This means that the architect has no responsibility to ensure that the works are up to standard. Periodic inspections are almost always done after work has been done, usually too late to make a proper assessment. Quality control is the contractor’s responsibility. This is extraordinary since it allows the builder/contractor to supervise himself.

There is a very clear division of responsibility in the contract. The architect is responsible for the design in every detail. This means where the lead flashings go; what the skirting boards are made of; the position of light switches. This is obviously a huge responsibility.

The builder is responsible for building the design accurately, and in a workmanlike manner. The architect has a duty to inspect the site to ensure this is happening; if the builder is not following the design, the architect can and will instruct him to make changes. Inspections are usually every 1-2 weeks; if the architect isn’t inspecting the site regularly enough, s/he is being professionally negligent. In practice, the duty of inspection makes the architect partly liable for anything that goes wrong.

Michael Casey’s confusion at this is moronic. Of course it’s the contractor’s sole obligation to carry out the works in accordance with the contract (“the contract” includes all the drawings, specifications, schedules… everything). The architect can’t be responsible for someone else doing their job; they are, however, responsible for inspecting the works to ensure they comply. It’s clear and sensible.

… the builder…  is contractually bound to follow all instructions given to him by the architect. Even if these instructions are unsound, the builder has to take responsibility for them, not the architect. This makes no sense.

It makes no sense because it isn’t true. The architect is responsible for every single instruction – be it oral, written, a drawing, or conveyed by interpretive dance. The builder is responsible for carrying them out accurately. The thumbnail is that the architect is responsible for the design, the builder is responsible for workmanship. It’s very clear and it makes sense.

Under this contract, the client/employer has few rights. The architect becomes, through some mysterious process, the administrator of the contract between the client/employer and the builder/contractor. In essence he is the boss. The architect can issue new instructions without invalidating the contract and he can put a value on any additional works he deems appropriate. This is such a sweeping power that one wonders what purpose the initial contract serves.

The architect is the client’s agent; s/he is duty bound to pursue the client’s interests in all regards. That’s in the client-architect agreement and it’s the cornerstone of the profession. The employer is represented through the architect.

There isn’t anything “mysterious” in the process by which the architect becomes the administrator of the contract. It’s written into the contract. Somebody has to administer the contract, and the architect – with knowledge of the design, experience of and training in construction, and a relationship with the client – is the obvious person to do it. The architects powers and duties are very clear, and the most important of all is that the architect be fair and equitable to both parties.

With regard to instructions: buildings tend to vary as they go on. The client might change their mind, or the budget may need to be cut, or their may be a soft spot found in the ground. The architect has to be allowed to issue instructions or no construction job would ever be built.

The idea that architects can value the work themselves, however, is purely fictional.

“The architect can decide when he deems the works to be completed so that they can be taken over by the client/employer for their intended purpose.”

This is nonsense. The building contract specifically sets out when a building is “practically complete,” – it is when the works can be used for their intended purpose, and where any outstanding defects are trivial in nature and their rectification will not interfere with the use of the building. The architect administers the process, that’s all.

“If it happens that the architect and the builder have a long and cosy association then the client could be on a hiding to nothing. In administering the contract, the architect could, if he wishes, always take the builder’s side.”

Wrong again. If the architect takes anyone‘s side, s/he is professionally negligent and will end up in court. The architect has to be fair and impartial in administering the contract. It’s also worth noting that Michael Casey offers no evidence of anything of the kind ever happening.

If the builder runs over time, the architect can grant him an extension.

The contract sets out every single criteria for which a builder can claim an extension of time. These include “exceptionally inclement weather,” “civil disturbance, strike, or lockout” and “force majeure,” amongst others. The architect administers the process, but can’t simply grant extensions.

He can certify stage payments to the builder, thereby accepting and vouching for the quality of the work done. This is surely inconsistent if the architect has no responsibility under the contract for quality control to start with.

The architect isn’t responsible for the contractor’s workmanship, but the duties of inspection mean s/he cannot certify payment for defective work and would be found negligent were s/he to do so. The architect does control stage payments, but it’s a detailed process based on the contractor’s Bill of Quantities**; a Quantity Surveyor*** (or more often, two – the builder will employ one) is usually involved.

There are other weird aspects to this contract: a liquidated damages clause which is more or less unenforceable, the delegation of site safety completely to the builder…

The clause about “liquidated damages” enables the client to be fairly compensated for financial loss suffered as a result of the builder running late. In the case of a house, for example, it would be rental payment on another property. I’m fairly sure it isn’t unenforceable, since – ahem – I’ve previously worked on a job where it was enforced.

Given that it’s the builder who runs the site and is there every day and all day, it’s difficult to see what’s “weird” about him being responsible for site safety.

Notwithstanding the lack of responsibility, architects were able to charge lucrative fees during the Celtic Tiger period. For some jobs, they could charge up to 30 per cent of the total cost of works.

Unsubstantiated, and utterly ludicrous. I don’t know an architect who has charged one-third that figure. During the boom, a domestic job generally cost about 8%. Larger jobs varied according to their complexity, but 5-6% would be a decent fee. At the moment, many architects are bidding at about 2%.

[Architects] were protected by a one-sided contract which should, in the public interest, be scrapped immediately. If retained in anything like its present form, no client should ever sign it.

Let’s be clear about this. The contract is not “one-sided.” It is fair.

The first standard form of contract appeared in 1910. The current contract grew out of a liaison committee between architects, surveyors, contractors and engineers that was set up in 1950; it isn’t a unilateral architect’s document. It’s been tweaked on numerous occasions to keep up-to-date, but has been more or less unchanged since the early 80s.

This contract has been tested in court many, many times. Building is an expensive business; people tend to look for weaknesses in contracts as there’s a lot of money in it. And the whole point of contract law is that contracts have to be fair and equitable. If they aren’t, they aren’t valid contracts.

The fact is, the standard building contract still exists because it is fair – if it wasn’t, a court would have thrown it out years ago. It’s a touch overcomplicated, yes. It’s written in some legalese that’s difficult to understand (there is a plain-language form that is much clearer, and isn’t used half enough in my opinion), and this can alienate clients. Because of this, architects have to study it very carefully for months, and there is a guidance book that’s something like 350 pages long.

But it is not one-sided. It’s court-tested and repeatedly found to be equitable. On the other hand the person who is calling for it to be “scrapped immediately,” based – apparently – on reading it for maybe half a day, wasn’t even reading the right contract.

The director of the RIAI seemingly accepts that architects should do more. He believes that, from now on, “the design team on each project should carry out inspections during the construction phase and, on completion, to ensure building works have been carried out in line with the original drawings”.

Note where Casey’s quotation marks are located. I doubt that the RIAI said this should be the case “from now on,” because it is already the case when the contract is used.

This represents some improvement, but “inspections” are not the answer. Supervision is. Otherwise the builder will continue to supervise himself. If the architectural profession is not prepared to step up to the mark, we should bring back clerks of works or other hands-on professionals to ensure works are carried out properly.

First of all, I’m going to ask two people in my office to ring the Clerk of Works on their jobs and inform him he doesn’t apparently exist any more.

Second; the answer, it seems, is “supervision.” This means an architect on-site, all day, every day, fully devoted to the job. The good news is that there’s a lot of unemployed architects around at the moment, so you won’t struggle to find candidates. It does mean for – say – a six month house extension, that if you want a properly experienced candidate you’ll have to shell out an extra €20k or so for something that’s completely unnecessary. Did I mention the bloke with this thorough an understanding of value for money was a board member of the IMF?

Existing standard contracts need to be fundamentally re-examined, with input from the Competition Authority and consumer representatives. The International Monetary Fund-led troika will also be able to advise on this matter. The efficiency and fee-structures of professional groups in this country have an important bearing on the competitiveness of the country.

And here’s the crux of the matter. Quite apart from the absurdity of the IMF advising on private construction contracts – and let’s fact it, Michael Casey’s attempt at understanding the contract doesn’t exactly suggest that IMF board members are particularly gifted here – the paragraph is a code for the meme of opening up these inward-looking, inefficient professions. Except Casey offers no evidence of the fee-structures beyond his batshit, unverified 30% comment (architects don’t even have imposed fee-structures – they have competitive tendering for all jobs), or their inefficiency. It’s also interesting that a former member of the Central Bank and the IMF is castigating another group as an unpaid, unaccountable elite with enormous power over ordinary people. The word “transference” springs to mind.

And yet, if we accept that Casey wants to open up the construction trade, what this actually means is deregulation. For all the obvious reasons, that’s a word no-one wants to hear in relation to construction.

It leaves the question of why. There are two answers. One is that an architect once keyed his car. The other… oh look, I’m going to write about that in the next day or so. You’ll love it. You know you will.

So, it’s two days after I gave a talk about the building industry down at Occupy Dame Street. Stomach has finally untied itself, body is finally acquiescing to my demands to absorb my dinner.

I’ve only really mentioned Occupy in passing previously, for a number of reasons. The main two are easily summarised: first, that this is something that doesn’t need a patronising pat on the head from a lazy do-nothing shit of a – ugh – blogger like me; second, a deep-seated sense of shame that I don’t do anything to participate in such things. My enjoyment of Occupy Dame Street as a concept is appallingly vicarious; given that I’m not entirely comfortable in the company of the demographic group known as “Other People,” my engagement generally consists of saying “good for them” and hoping no-one actually tries to talk to me.

So I’ll just say that I really, really like it. I like it simply as an image, for starters – given that the public space outside the Central Bank was appropriated in 1996 so that the Important People within didn’t have to suffer the indignity of people sitting on their steps and eating sandwiches, the sight of an open community taking some of that space back is really rather glorious. And that’s even before you take into account everything they’re actually talking about, and the space and environment given for open discussions that lead to real engagement. But many others have written about that – these two rather good Observer and Grauniad articles are good places to start.

So instead I’d like to talk about something rather more primal and petty and childish, which is this; that anyone criticising it, so far, has looked like an arsehole.

Perhaps what’s interesting is that, faced with a movement that is participatory and states its openness for people of any political opinions, the commentators who opposed the idea lapsed very, very quickly into just stereotyping those involved. One of the first notable smackdowns to circulate the web came courtesy of whatever-show-it-is-Bill-Maher-hosts-these-days, with Alan Grayson delivering a robust rebuke to PJ O’Rourke:

What makes this notable isn’t so much the cogency of Grayson’s statements; it’s the fact that the first rebuttal O’Rourke could come up with was to refer to bongos and shoelessness. O’Rourke is a humourist – well, insofar as he thinks he understands humour, anyway – but only a child, an idiot, or a bully could argue this way. This wasn’t an unusually cheap or lazy mode of argument for the getting of laughs, it was just stripped bare of the usual cushioning language that the “serious” press use to couch some facile points.

Most seriously opposed commentators say that the protestors are incoherent. Well, on a point of order; why is Occupy Dame Street’s statement so thoroughly cogent? How is it that every single meeting is minuted (I read them, y’know; look, I said it was vicarious)? This isn’t the usual work of an incoherent mob…

…but even if it was, multi-voice conversations probably do appear incoherent to those who expect everything to be in the form of a policy document. “Incoherent” is simply a code for “not normal; not couched in the usual language; naive; stupid; the work of hippies.” In other words, it doesn’t count. But if that’s the case, then we might borrow a meme from Occupy… this is what coherence looks like:

By turn, the “protestors” (and that clearly isn’t the right word) have been characterised as hippies, crusties, posh middle-class kids playing at being poor, a dangerous rabble, feckless idiots getting in everybody’s way, threats to life and limb for people escaping from a burning cathedral, and – usually – a combination of the previous, no matter how mutually contradictory they seem. Most memorably, Occupy London were simultaneously classed as stayaway wealthy spoofers, and – um – Nazis:

Seeing an establishment lapse into name-calling without actually engaging in argument, seemingly without even realising how petulant it looks, ultimately just suggests that they don’t actually have any decent arguments. All we get is a succession of strawmen, and gratuitous discrediting based on thermal imaging cameras on the wrong setting.

Perhaps the most telling incident of all was the hearty slap-down on Have I Got News For You of Louise Mesnch – formerly Louise Bagshawe, still a purveyor of chick-lit, and one of the new breed of media-friendly young Tories – dismissed the rigour of protestors who got coffee from Starbucks as they they tried to bring down capitalism. The full exchange is here - at least until someone from Hat Trick Productions spots it – and it’s worth your time, not least for Mensch’s apparent belief that people can’t complain about the financial system if they own a tent. Yes, really.

There are two things worth mentioning about this. The first is relatively straightforward; by mentioning iPhones and coffees and tents, Mensch was deliberately implying that, should capitalism vanish without trace, these items will cease to exist. Only someone who sees the main purpose of life as acquisition – who simply doesn’t believe that anyone really cares about liberal concerns like societal equality and fairness – would actually think this qualified as a point, even a satirical one. Mature, intelligent people don’t believe you can deal with grownups by threatening to take away their toys, or that adults would be turned to quivering jelly by the prospect of a world without frappacinos. By searching for the cheapest angle, Mensch just cast herself as a smug, privileged adolescent who tries to win arguments by doing impressions of the other kid’s speech impediment.

But there’s something even more telling. Mensch referred to the protestors being “against capitalism,” and implied that they wanted to indiscriminately rip apart the system with their bare hands. This is not a million miles away from the shorthand of “anti-capitalist” for anyone who opposes the financial system. But… how “anti-capitalist” are these protestors, exactly? All capitalism really means is a system of private citizens selling things to each other. Given that many involved in various Occupations actually run their own businesses, how anti-capitalist are they?

Since this is a rather personal view, I might as well make it more personal still. As someone whose own politics lie somewhere between Noam Chomsky and Lenin, and whose clothing regime consists of rotating three jumpers, I probably fit that “anti-capitalist” slot quite well. That’s not so far off the mark as far as my broad, future-of-humanity aspirations go, but… deep breath… I don’t see any system more credible than capitalism as a means of distributing goods at this particular moment. The financial system, the delusion of growth, and the increasing power of tiny elites aren’t actually essential to a capitalist system – they’re central to our capitalist system, sure, and there’s a welter of evidence that these things need be controlled. I just have an antediluvian belief that shared ethics and social principles should decide how we order our economy, rather than the blind devotion to the doctrine of growth; that an economy should adapt to serve society rather than the reverse. It’s not a particularly radical manifesto, I grant you, and places me – shudder – as a dull moderate who wants to reform our capitalist system rather than destroying it.

To those within the system, of course, the distinction doesn’t matter. Whenever they hear the word “change,” it’s interpreted as “tear down”; anyone who suggests real reform, as distinct from cosmetic sops to fairness while doing whatever the mantra of growth requires, is immediately a dangerous subversive and/or naive crackpot who wants to destroy any post-1893 technology and execute the entire staff of Google. This isn’t even the logic of a 13 year-old; it’s that of a tantrum-throwing toddler who, as soon as he’s told playtime is over, starts screaming that his parents hate him.

Like many others, I heaved a sigh of relief when Seán Gallagher failed to become president of Ireland. This wasn’t actually because of his Fianna Fáil bagman status, or questionable business dealings, or even the telling way his first instinct was to deny everything when confronted with the (actually quite widely-known) reality of his fundraising for the party. My quibble with Gallagher was his sheer vacuity, his inability to talk about anything other than business, the repeated references to “jobs” and “entrepeneurs” and being “open for business” as if they seriously qualified as any way to talk about a country. Were you to ask Gallagher to talk about Irish society, and tell him he wasn’t allowed to talk about the economy, he would literally have nothing to say. This view – that the economy is all that matters, and society is something nebulous that happens around it – is exactly how we wound up with a culture where enormous equality, and endless attacks on public provision, are justified with “well, the economy works that way. Don’t complain, you’ve got an iPhone.” It’s an attitude that meets the fact that people are angry about the injustice of the bank bailout, rather than simply its economic effects, with blank incomprehension.

By providing a space, an environment for real, meanngful discussion, Occupy Dame Street is the antidote to that emptiness. The catchphrase “this is what democracy looks like” doesn’t really sit well with me; I’m uncomfortable with anyone telling me what democracy looks like, and the implied notion that there’s a “right” form of democracy. That’s a semantic quibble. But as a place  where non-orthodoxies aren’t automatically crazy, where ideas of social change take in more than what to cut next, it’s a vitally important democratic space. It’s a long time since we’ve seen anything like this. We’re lucky to have it.

It’s difficult to discuss the events at Priory Hall without seeming dispassionate. This is a horribly unjust situation for hundreds of people, and looking for villains is the obvious thing to do. It’s obvious that the builders did a perfectly horrible job, and “negligent” seems a mild word based on what we know. But equally clearly, they were allowed to be negligent by the way the Irish building system is regulated. This is about far more than building, if that weren’t important enough.

It’s necessary at this point to do a quick thumbnail of how Ireland polices what gets built in the country, if only because there’s been little enough attempt to explain the situation and a fairly surprising number of references have been made to – say – Planning laws, or Health and Safety, which have nothing to do with the situation at Priory Hall.

There are two main strands of legislation pertaining to buildings: there’s the Planning process, and there’s Building Control. The broad thumbnail: Planning is there to police what gets built – how a development fits into the local area (zoning, its use, connections to sewers and so on) and what it looks like; Building Control is concerned with how something is built – it’s the legislation that makes people build things properly.

There are twelve main building regulations – Parts A through to M – and the best known is Part B (Fire). It’s necessary to get a Fire Safety Certificate before starting to build at all (except for houses, which are exempt from this process, althought they still have to comply with the regulations).

So. Did Priory Hall comply with its Planning Permission? Probably, but this isn’t relevant to the current situation.

Does its design comply with Building Regulations as regards fire safety? Almost certainly. The building wouldn’t have got its certificate otherwise.

And the big one; was it built in accordance with Building Regulations pertaining to fire, or indeed anything else? No, it definitely wasn’t.

How could that happen? Because no-one checked. This was reported by the Indo as if it were a great revelation, but they missed the point; it isn’t anybody’s job to check. Sure, Fire Officers “may” check under the legislation, but there’s no requirement for them to do so. And by and large, they don’t.

Ireland has an official self-certification system. There’s no “Building Control Guy” who shows up every now and then to see everything is in order (as there is in the UK). There are so few spot-checks carried out in the country that there might as well be none. There’s… well, nothing at all. It’s essentially like having a legal system but no policemen; in fact, the most difficult thing to explain about the whole Priory Hall affair is how Building Control found out there was anything wrong in the first place.

There’s been a bit of talk about the “certification,” so this should also be clarified. All that happens is that a suitably qualified person (and the list of acceptable qualifications is a broad one) walks around a building at the end of a job, then produces a certificate to state that - to the best of their knowledge – the building is compliant. At that stage most defects are hidden, so regardless of who does them, these certificates are almost worthless – and even these aren’t lodged with the state. If banks, solicitors and insurers didn’t demand them, most developers probably wouldn’t bother producing them at all.

In summary, the building industry in Ireland has, for decades, been almost completely unpoliced. Priory Hall has been a disaster waiting to happen for some time, and most people in the building industry will tell you that it’s probably far from the only one. It’s just the one that happened to get caught. The issue of non-compliance in Ireland is endemic.

I’ve posted on these matters previously – and so this time, I’d like to focus on why we have a system that’s so obviously open to abuse. I mean, seriously – a lot of knowledgeable, well-paid advisors of all stripes must have looked at this legislation, and they decided the best thing was to let the building profession police itself? How did that happen?

The Building Control Act dates from 1990. Before this, there were a few local building by-laws, but nothing else. The notion of regulating buildings was comparatively new; the industry didn’t trust book-learning. And in 1990, Ireland wasn’t in good shape. Unemployment was at 17%; the national debt was one of the favourite themes of public discourse. There’s a lazy-minded tendency amongst some of the commentators to talk as though the country spontaneously turned around after Italia ‘90, but it wasn’t actually like that, and only professional talking heads could believe otherwise.

At the time, government was doing it all it could to generate recovery. So how exactly would it have gone, against this background, to introduce a regime where builders had to submit drawings demonstrating that they complied with all twelve building regulations? How would it have played out if Building Control officers regularly appeared on sites and stopped work that didn’t comply? If councils had to inspect and police every building in the country?

Badly, let’s say. And let’s also imagine what those counter-arguments would be. Huge government inefficiency; extra time and cost; red tape; that old favourite of those who hate regulation, “bureaucracy.” And yes, establishing a procedure where the state examines buildings to ensure its laws are complied with would be enormously expensive. They did it in the UK, but no doubt there was a certain amount of pride in Ireland’s leaner, more dynamic solution.

Does any of this sound familiar yet?

The grand lesson of the Priory Hall situation-

- if indeed you need a lesson, in a story that has already left hundreds of people homeless and comes with near-certainty that many other buildings are in as bad a condition -

- is that, whenever the great monolith that is “business” complains about being over-regulated, or wrapped up in red tape, then… well, at least cast a sceptical glance in their direction. The narrative of “bureaucracy” is beginning to surface here – it always surfaces during recession, when margins are squeezed and the focus shifts increasingly to Getting The Economy Moving. Business needs to be freed up from red tape; bureaucracy needs to be cut. Enough with this obsessive regulation!

After the Conservatives came to power in the UK, they instituted a programme whereby owners of ordinary businesses – they love that chat – could tell them about the red tape that needed to be done away with. The overwhelming winner was health-and-safety, so glibly demonised by the same party (and right-wing press) that happily talk about faceless bureaucrats without having the slightest idea what they actually do. Health and Safety, that law that’s brought nothing but trouble… with its break entitlements for employees, its requirements for decent places of work, its standards for sanitation, its necessity for clean drinking water and comfortable desks, chairs and equipment…

…and that’s even before you look at the huge falls in construction related deaths and serious accidents since its introduction. There are hundreds of thousands of people walking about in Britain and Ireland who, were it not for Health and Safety, would be confined to a wheelchair. Or dead. The occasional pointless seminar is a small price to pay.

That’s the reality of red tape.

People who run businesses have a difficult job, and it’s not surprising they see such things as a pain. However, it’s these “pains” that protect those with the least power. Many people tell us that we should trust the business community, with its respectability, to do the right thing anyway. They tell us the market will punish those who don’t.

They’re foolish, and they’re wrong. The proof is 250-strong, in a hotel in Drumcondra; evicted from their homes, cheated and forsaken. Not by a discrete, walled off phenomenon like “cowboy builders” or “developers.” By businessmen.

In all the discussion of Steve Jobs’ impact on the world in the last few days-

No, wait. There have already been far too many articles about Jobs, and (for those of us who believe that the main change Apple brought to the world was to fill it with shiny white objects, and “being able to do the same boring stuff I always did, but on a bus” doesn’t constitute that much of a change) the barrage of hagio-analysis has long since passed the point of silliness. It’s the tone of the analysis that intrigues. It highlights how effectively Jobs perpetuated the myth of “nice” capitalism. Many who have lionised Jobs seem to speak of him as the antidote to capitalism as evil and lowest-common-denominator (based largely on the belief that non-tactile, cloyingly slick objects represent a triumph of design, rather than a blank, branded aesthetic). Those who quibble have pointed to Apple’s involvement with Foxconn – not exactly unique to Apple, it should be said – and their restrictive and tightly-controlled licensing. Both are pretty much what you’d expect of any firm in Apple’s position, and the thrust of these critiques is to somehow imply that Jobs wasn’t as cuddly as all that; that he wasn’t a “nice” guy. Rather than look at the capitalist system, they ask us to question the individuals who operate in it.

A disinterested observer would be fairly astonished that Jobs should be criticised for doing exactly what his competitors did, and exactly what the system in which he operated expected of him. The notion that Jobs was personally responsible for oppressing the unfortunates at Foxconn, or even that he failed to reform this system, is ludicrous. Apple is a public company, bound by law to maximise profits for its shareholders. To criticise its heads for exploiting cheap labour in China is, ultimately, like criticising a pilot for Ryanair’s carbon footprint. They do as the market demands. If they don’t, someone leaner swallows them up.

The notion of benign capitalism buys into the great myth of patrician conservatism; that all that’s necessary to control market forces is a voluntary decency, and one that comes naturally to the rich because they are – generally – a nice, well-bred lot. This year’s Global Ireland Forum has given us the grotesquery of tax exiles discussing what can be done to fix and streamline the country. This talking-shop is treated as important no matter how banal it is, just because of who’s involved. Admirers justify the enormous salaries by muttering about “creating jobs,” but the truth is that these individuals see their wealth is naturally fine because they’re decent people. And, of course, they’re decent people because of their wealth.

This idea of decency is – in a very important sense – unabashedly cosmetic. Status is a game of appearance, in which the most important quality of all is decorum. The reason Michael O’Leary gets a bad press is that he’s not interested in behaving like a respectable, pre-eminent citizen. In spite of what some think, he’s not any more disliked by the left than anyone else of his ilk; he’s disliked by the establishment, who hate the frankness with which he speaks about his purpose as a money-maker. This isn’t a million miles away from the rush to be furious at, and to deny the legitimacy of, Alessio Rastani. He told us nothing about traders we didn’t already know. He just failed to couch it in the language of respectability, and didn’t bother concealing the grubbiness of what he does. Small wonder the Daily Telegraph did their best to discredit him as a representative of his trade.

The problem with this attitude is that, if you’re going to put such emphasis on decorum, you can’t be surprised if your commentariat speaks about nothing but decorum. What’s frightening is how rooted this idea, of powerful men behaving decently, has become.

This presidential campaign has been soaked in piousness, both from the candidates themselves and those who purport to examine them. The real pity about the tanks of muck being slopped on the various candidates is just how insubstantial it is. Mary Davis announced she would be publishing her expenses for the last 67 years or so after rumblings had occurred about her being on the board of a few too many companies for comfort. Seán Gallagher was queried over the earth-shattering news that he had been in Fianna Fáil, and that he was wealthy (points of fact that Gallagher hasn’t exactly hidden). Rose Scallon was revealed as untrustworthy because she didn’t reveal her dual citizenship, even though it has no bearing whatsoever on her candidacy – unless you seriously believe that repeating the wording of the U.S. oath should be taken literally as proof that, as soon as she’s in office, she’ll sell the cliffs of Moher to Texas (it’s also worth noting that the IT article which broke this story de-emphasised the real point of interest, which was that a judge said she had been economical with the truth in a court case). Gay Mitchell is bad, of course, because he’s kind of dull. All these people are, in their own way, quite ghastly. But to expose their ghastliness would mean engaging with their views, or their beliefs. And in a political world run by ideas of decorum, discussing the merits of a view is not what anyone does.

(This is why a certain amount of righteous distaste about Seán Gallagher’s wealth is de rigeur in right-on circles – there was even discussion of him releasing his accounts, don’t forget – but anyone who suggested that wealth might be capped by a 90% tax rate for super-earners is dismissed as a lunatic idealist. This is about picking fleas off the individual, not questioning the system.)

Even without bringing Norris and McGuinness into the mix – the latter is too big to even begin to discuss here – what’s notable is how all the negative stories have focused on the candidates’ deviation from the Right Sort Of Person. The ideal politician must be of moderate wealth (not poor, obviously – darling, they might have an accent or something then) and preferably ascetic, entirely non-violent throughout their lives, completely honest about everything that has ever happened to them, unfailingly generous and humble, rarely utter a sentence that the ‘ordinary’ person would find unusual, and generally behave like real people with all the inconsistencies and foibles ironed out. If you prioritise this “ideal” political profile, and if you and look hard enough, you’ll probably find the right man-in-a-suit eventually. You’ll also end up with a succession of people who have nothing to say.

It’s interesting that Seán Gallagher has done the best in polls, and is probably the one who’s come closest to saying nothing at all. He is a triumph of decorum, of the notion that there is a correct way to behave – but this is such a limiting, management-class belief. If you believe that transgressing or challenging “acceptable” beliefs or behaviour is stimulating, rather than a desperate gaffe in a comedy of manners, then all the piousness of election coverage achieves is to guarantee that you won’t be presented with anyone interesting. Similarly, if you satisfy yourself with describing beliefs or behaviour as “controversial,” rather than bothering with the tedious business of trying to understand them, then don’t be surprised if you end up with a political climate that does nothing but preserve orthodoxies.

(Literally as I wrote this paragraph, Gay Mitchell said in interview that he wouldn’t be “drinking champagne and reading poetry” if he was elected. As Michael D. Higgins was the only candidate as-yet unblemished, it wasn’t long before someone implied he was a feckless poet and pseud, not a serious individual. I’m tempted to rest my case at this point, but we might as well tackle the obvious example first.)

David Norris obviously can’t be ignored any longer. In all the discussion of what-was-probably-called-Lettergate-dear-god-why-can’t-people-try-harder, the most notable thing was how these letters were described. They were “controversial,” “disturbing,” and they would “trouble” many people. And yet… discussing the content of the letters was nowhere near as prevalent as discussing how Norris had handled the issue. The discussion centred largely on matters of conduct (his use of Seanad notepaper) and appropriateness in their existence at all, on his suitability for the presidential role, and on how many of his supporters would be “concerned.” Many said that this was about character, but no-one actually discussed what the letters actually said about Norris’ character. His views were controversial, and that was it.

So it’s worth saying that Norris didn’t actually say anything particularly unreasonable at all. It’s impossible to judge his claim of the victim being a honey-trap without more information-

- this claim is almost certainly why his other letters aren’t being released on legal advice, incidentally -

-but it is, at worst, the error of a man concerned for someone he loves. His other assertion – that sex with minors should be seen differently in a heterosexual and homosexual context – is uncomfortable, sure, but… isn’t it just true? This was a time when gay relationships had been criminalised and stigmatised for a lifetime, and when just by dint of a same-sex relationship one placed themselves outside the law and conventional morality; yes, that is a very different context, thanks very much. I don’t really know what that life would be like in such a world, and how it would affect my behaviour, because I’m not gay and it isn’t 1988. But I do know that David Norris is probably a better-informed commentator than me, and I certainly wonder what my behaviour would be like if being attracted to women was both illegal and a sign of my own sordid evil.

And the irony is this; the other point for which Norris was so castigated was his Magill article, particularly his discussion of pederasty. And as it goes, I actually remember that article. In articulating a wish that when he was younger he could have been guided through his sexual awakening by someone older, Norris said something I found instinctively repugnant. Considering it further, it occurred to me that – when I was fifteen or sixteen – I would have really, really wanted the same thing, albeit with a woman rather than a man. So who was I to judge? Perhaps this wasn’t always a predatory situation; or perhaps this wasn’t as absolute as it seemed. Perhaps my instinctive revulsion at the idea was based on a personal view, not an abstract unquestionable morality.

So David Norris is one of very, very few politicians who ever made me seriously think about anything. For that, I’ll always have a certain regard for him. And yet that is why he isn’t suitable for office.

The other grand irony, of course, is that the Presidency is now concurrent with the Occupy Dame Street campaign. On one hand, you have a group of people – just instinctive, ordinary people – setting themselves up as a mini-community within sight of the heart of the Central Bank, and roundly rejecting the pre-eminence of the institution simply by being there. Regardless of what they say, or achieve, they have made the landscape of the city just a little more joyous, and textured, and interesting.

It’s a glorious contrast to the spectacle of besuited, respectable figures, on a quest to become Head Of State by saying as little as they possible can. Barely aware of how empty they are, of their own elegant irrelevance. Never stopping to ask themselves what all this was ever for.

Here’s an opening question. What do “JobBridge” – the snappy name for FÁS’s National Internship Scheme, presumably because they ran out of inverted commas to put around the word “Internship” – and the Conservative Party’s attitude to the BBC have in common?

From the start, it’s worth noting that these comparisons are no longer academic. Whatever insults you want to hurl at Fianna Fáil government and their crass, testosterone-sodden backroom excuse for “vision,” it was always clear that they weren’t quite like any of the British equivalents. To see what’s changed, it’s simply necessary to glance at the makeup of the two governments: one traditional party of power, out of government for a generation, with a small-state pro-business edge that’s rooted in ideology rather than expedience; one smaller party previously styled as nice, uncomfortable with its new position, embracing an austerity programme with obvious discomfort and no courage. If you want to find a foreign equivalent of Fine Gael, you couldn’t do better than glance at the Tories. The two are, socially and economically, indistinguishable.

Jeremy Hunt, the UK’s Culture Secretary, has a thing or two to say about the BBC. He is, he assures everybody, an enormous fan of the BBC. He loves it. So it’s odd that pretty much everything he does is geared towards reducing its power. Recently he has approved plans for local television stations, which – so long as they include an hour of local news-based programming a day – can pretty much show whatever they want, with as many adverts as they want, free from any independent quality control (or “bureaucracy,” as small-staters like to call it). Like most Conservatives, Jeremy “Rhymes With” Hunt is…

Okay, let’s be charitable here. Hunt is uncomfortable with the BBC. His gripe is that it’s a huge, publicly-funded body that is both popular and miles better than commercial competition anywhere (have you seen ITV lately?). The BBC isn’t perfect, but at a time when popular culture is in a ghastly place, it still produces more worthwhile programming than anyone else.

To anyone of the mindset embraced by the Tories – or Fine Gael, Ireland’s very own Tory-anaologues – the success of the BBC is further proof of just how wrong it is. Those who detract from the BBC despise its core being, the very philosophy on which it is based. It is an unfair behemoth that extinguishes competition. Commercial channels can’t match the BBC’s enormous resources (so long as you ignore, say, the last twenty years of bidding for football rights). Nor can they match the BBC’s huge outlay for its stars (except they can, and do, and the supposedly-enormous salaries of BBC presenters are as nothing compared to pay-packets ITV offer). No, the BBC is a state bully, driving well-intentioned private companies out of an otherwise-lucrative marketplace. It’s worth noting that the pressure under which the BBC now constantly operates – the ooh-it’s-too-big handwringing lead entirely by the UK’s elites – really began after a speech by James sodding Murdoch.

The BBC is there to serve the public, and the public are happy with how it works*. Thing is, the Tories don’t see a successful state institution, they see disenfranchised companies being unfairly excluded from potential markets. It’s exactly the same instinct – because “theory” is too strong a word – that has them opening up the NHS to private companies. Or, in an Irish context, has every party talking about Health Insurance schemes, but never once treating the question of genuine state provision of healthcare seriously. Essentially, a successful public organisation is unfair.

If looking at the grotesquery of JobBridge, it’s worth clarifying what this mindset really implies. It believes that the basic unit of society is not the individual, or even the family**, but the company. I don’t mean this in a lefty rhetoric way, but just as a simple statement of fact. If a government has been made to believe that business is the engine of the economy, if they are conditioned to listen to the advice of Ireland’s entrepeneurs above everyone else, if representatives of Google can blithely give Powerpoint presentations to the entire cabinet about how Ireland should be run… once you swallow that, it’s easy to start unconsciously believing that businesses matter more than anything else, and a government’s prime responsibility is to PLCs***.

JobBridge – in which prospective waiting staff can receive six months training for fifty quid a week, in which owners of a Chemistry PhD are employed for less than the minimum wage – is perfectly coherent if, and only if, you see the company as the basic unit of society. The systematic outing of its more appalling positions over the last week or so has been one of those events that actually remind you what a good thing Twitter can be, and while the results of the JobBridge initiative aren’t a surprise, it’s been a joy to see it laid bare. However, many of the conclusions have been fundamentally misguided. The JobBridge situation is characterised as that of unscrupulous companies exploiting a well-meaning government programme that was supposed to Get Ireland Working. While I certainly won’t be drinking in the Lansdowne Hotel any time soon, and it’s nothing but a good thing that this sort of exploitation is exposed, the idea that tighter controls will solve the problem of a basically well-meaning scheme is fundamentally off-base. JobBridge is working exactly as it’s supposed to.

When Ireland’s banking-lead collapse occurred, a narrative emerged – driven entirely by the business sector, it should be said – about the uncompetitive nature of Ireland’s economy. Ireland’s high wages and inflated economy left the company incapable of competing in markets. This has persisted even though Ireland’s export market is just about the only sector of the economy to do well, and very little economic policy makes any sense unless you bear in mind the mantra of “competitiveness.”

The last three to four years have simply been a protracted exercise in internal devaluation, and JobBridge – with its obvious downward pressure on wages, and its state subsidy of low-cost jobs dressed up as “training programmes,” is a carefully-judged extension of that policy. The hastily-reversed minimum wage cut was just the most obvious forerunner. The cuts in public sector wages, dressed up as being about savings, have not actually saved anything at all; what they have done is provided downward pressure on wages through the economy as a whole. Cuts in welfare, and increases in taxation, similarly reduce consumer spending and prevent wages from increasing.

None of this is to protect the jobless, or to provide training for Ireland’s workforce. Since the programme of cuts began, Ireland has made no move to protect its low-paid, or its struggling self-employed, or its citizens as a whole. It has routinely, however, protected its companies. If you are asked to name a scheme to protect individuals that has been introduced in the last three or four years, you’ll struggle. On the company side we have the reduction in VAT, the proposed reduction in the minimum wage, the sudden pressure put on weekend wages, and now an “internship” scheme specifically designed to give companies cheap labour. So who, exactly, does this state prize?

This week, Eamon Gilmore stated that the Ireland that emerged from recession would be different than the one that came before. And yet, if we want to look at one of the most corrosive beliefs that came from the Celtic Tiger, it was the notion that – rather than an “economy” being something that fitted around the rights of citizens and the values of the state – the rights of citizens were subject to the expedience of the economy. There are many things nasty about JobBridge, but its core being is the facilitation of companies and the commodification of the individual. Because ultimately, if companies are all that matter, commodities are the only entity worth anything at all.

Note: this will have all the necessary hyperlinks and what have you added over the next couple of days. Once UPC actually get internet into my apartment. Because they’re a shower of – no, no, never mind.

First things first; it’s obviously crass to link the two great institutional collapses that are currently going on in Ireland and the UK. The Cloyne report is a very real installment of the grand unfolding story of generations of pain, systemically inflicted, systemically concealed. For all the nastiness of News of the World’s phone tapping, and the growing conviction that this practice might well have extended beyond The News of The World, the slow deflation of News International really isn’t in the same league.

And yet these two events are strangely similar. Both were “shocking,” but in a subtly specific way. There is very little more shocking than finding out that everything you carelessly suspected has turned out to be absolutely true. Just as nine people out of ten, if asked, would say that of course the tabloids might hack voicemail and blag medical records – we’re talking about people who go through bins, for fuck’s sake – those same people would have cast a sceptical eye on any notion that the Catholic Church has cleaned up its act. That it failed to report cases to the Gardaí, that it failed to follow its own supposed guidelines, that the Vatican was less than helpful; these are old standards, and very few people seriously thought they’d shifted. The newness of the Cloyne abuses is… well, vile, and certainly one might just have hoped for better. But if this shocking, it’s no surprise.

What we’ve seen from both stories is that the stories have been dealt with by an ever-more-desperate attempt at containment. With the phone-hacking story, the steps have been clear. It was a rogue reporter; it was a few rogue reporters; it was just celebrities; it was just News of the World. More and more revelations have pushed the frontiers of containment further back, so that the whole of News International was tainted; it’s only now being commonly speculated that this might just be something that’s commonplace right across the media.

This basic technique of damage limitation – contain a story within a certain zone, and don’t be afraid to set that zone on fire if it restricts the spread of contagion – is a universal tactic. And yes, the Church’s response to the ever-expanding abuse claims has, over the last few years, been almost identical. A few rogue priests, a few bad apples. Then it was a few rotten dioceses. And the Industrial schools, and the Magdalene Laundries. Anything has been offered up as a suitable sacrifice.After hard questions being asked of the Papal Nuncio, Enda Kenny has made a statement that certainly qualifies as an attack on the Vatican itself, and calls for the Nuncio’s expulsion has come from mainstream political quarters.

And yet, if the Papal Nuncio is offered up as a sacrifice, it’s important to understand that it’s just another part of that damage limitation process.

Here is the most telling part of the government’s statement.

“Clericalism has rendered some of Ireland’s brightest, most privileged and powerful men, either unwilling or unable to address the horrors cited in the Ryan and Murphy Reports.

This Roman Clericalism must be devastating for good priests… some of them old… others struggling to keep their humanity… even their sanity…as they work so hard… to be the keepers of the Church’s light and goodness within their parishes… communities… the human heart.”

Yes, really.

What does this actually say? It portrays the Irish church as being – effectively – a collective of good people, corrupted by the influence of the Vatican. These good people, these bright men, were trapped by clericalism, found themselves “unwilling or unable” to stop crimes being perpetrated on Irish citizens. These oh-so-good men were trapped between “clericalism” and the  law of the people (let’s just set their consciences aside). Devastated, struggling to keep their humanity. Oh, out of their own goodness, how the Vatican has made a net that enmeshed them all.

I hope, at this point, my sarcasm is obvious.

We might ask ourselves; what exactly is Ireland’s church hierarchy, and its establishment politicians, trying to protect? Themselves, naturally; but beyond the venalism of self-preservation, their first interests don’t lie with the Vatican. They see the Church as underpinning Irish society, a mostly-benevolent force for good that oils Ireland’s social makeup. This doesn’t spring from a Roman hierarchy of which Irish people are only abstractly aware; it’s in parish-gate collections, the status of the priest as a community elder, and the position of the church within Ireland’s communities. It’s noticeable that, whenever David Quinn or his obnoxious ilk talk about the Church being “under attack,” what they actually mean is that it is no longer treated as a privileged organisation.

And yet, it’s also notable that even Quinn does not shy from attacking the dark and twisted depths of the Vatican. These depths do not impinge on the Church’s role in Ireland, and only the Pope – a direct symbol to Ireland’s churchgoers – is really important. Putting it simply, very few practising Catholics in Ireland give a flying fuck about the hierarchies of the Vatican, and still fewer would view the Papal Nuncio as a figure of importance. This is why the calls for his expulsion are so desperately wrong-headed. They take the catalogue of wrong-doing and put it somewhere safe, external, and untroubling.

So; these are the people who have now been encircled, and accepted as rotten, and will – if necessary – be set on fire. You’ll notice, though, that the senior figures in the Irish church are quietly unmentioned. This is damage limitation, not contrition. It focuses the blame on faceless figures, or token diplomats, who the Irish authorities can never prosecute. Whereas the Irish people, bound by Irish law, who aided the cover-up of crimes against Irish citizens… they were the victims of a clericalism that is specifically identified as being Roman.

Not once did Kenny mention Irish bishops. Not once did he explicitly state that the failure to protect the country’s children is a collective, societal failure for which everyone is responsible. And not once did he call for the arrests of those responsible for systemic cover-ups and the frustration of Garda inquiries.

In fact, the sanitisation of Ireland’s role went further. Kenny said “[this is not] industrial-school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish-Catholic world.” But it is; this is that country, tainted by that heritage, living with the consequences of its failures.

What was dressed up as a brave challenge to the Vatican’s might was, in fact, a carefully-judged abdication of domestic responsibility. I struggle to think of anything more repugnant.

If members of the Church view themselves as being answerable to a higher authority than the Irish people, then that’s their business. But in focusing on the Vatican, we simply validate that perverted view, and perversely we increase the reach of the Vatican’s power. It isn’t “us” that’s to blame; no, Ireland is a victim, misunderstood, a land of good men lead astray, of a great domestic institution corrupted by a few bad apples.

You might stop to think just whose rhetoric that view resembles. If you don’t fight them, you become them.

Or, to summarise; there are a great many Irish people connected with these cover-ups who should be in jail, and aren’t. Once that happens, then by all means accuse the Vatican of what is effectively an act of sedition. But until that’s corrected, and privileged wrong-doers are in court, these strong attacks on the Vatican amount to nothing more than a grisly, two-faced, pathetic excuse for the collective. It’s another insult to the people this country has let down. Enough of this.

Last Thursday, Question Time featured a lengthy discussion about the “sexualisation” of children, on the back – or so it seems – of ideas being floated to ban such things. The discussion wasn’t helped by the fact that Peter Hitchens and Germaine Greer were present; Greer is an interesting sort but she’s hopelessly academic, and ended up vanishing down a Freudian molehole of fathers kissing their daughters goodnight – as a form of beginner’s tutorial in flirtation, no less – to an audience who weren’t actually round hers for a dinner party. Hitchens (who is, it must be said, a more thoughtful kind of right-wing bore than many of his ilk) just blamed it all on the 60s, as is his wont.

What was remarkable, then, was how the term “sexualisation of children” was thrown giddily about, but – Greer’s sometimes-interesting ramblings aside – at no point did anyone actually say what it meant, and at no point did anyone utter the word “misogyny” or “sexism.” Instead, “sexualisation” was used as a catch-all term for a number of… well, I don’t want to say “irritations” as that trivialises the problem, but each one individually counted as an irritation; clothes for girls these days are too tarty, and pop stars don’t wear enough, and ooooh why can’t children just be happy being children?

(I can answer that last one, incidentally. Children don’t want to be children because being a child is shit. Everything’s too big, everything’s complicated, you can’t do what you want and you don’t understand huge chunks of the world. If being a child is so great, then how come your average four year-old bursts into screaming tears every single day? I’m not entirely joking here. Certainly I’m a damn sight happier now than I was when I was eight, and I spend a disproportionate amount of my time complaining about things on the internet; that should, theoretically, make me a poster-boy for bitterness.)

If anything, the Question Time non-discussion just highlighted that, whatever this phenomenon is, it’s broad-based and difficult to discuss as a single entity. I’m not even entirely sure what “sexualisation” means, frankly; a clever chap on Twitter* suggested it might be defined as applying sexuality to places where it isn’t appropriate, and this seems a reasonable definition, even if I’m not quite sure it’s as accurate as “little girls appearing to know a bit more about generic sexiness than we’d like.”

At this point, we might stop and ask if that is, in principle, such a bad thing. Standard disclaimer applies – I don’t have kids, and I don’t know what it’s like, blah blah you know the drill – but for kids to be comfortable with the idea of sex? For it not to be a great, terrifying taboo? That they be aware that it can make people very happy indeed, and that it isn’t something to be afraid of…? I can’t claim I find that intrinsically distasteful, and it’s certainly better than the incredible repression we had before (as everyone in this country, in particular, should know – I don’t want to go on about the culture that this has replaced, but I’ll just say “Magdalene Laundries” and you can work the rest out yourselves).

However, that isn’t what we’re dealing with by any stretch. The generic merchandising of what adults unthinkingly equate to “sexy,” pushed and marketed to younger and younger girls – and let’s face it, while the accepted phrase is “children,” it’s always girls – and carefully dressed up in kiddish vernacular… that phenomenon isn’t primarily about sex at all, but something far nastier. It’s a cartoon version of sexiness, sure, but that’s not at all the same thing.

At this point, I’m going to brave the charge of predictability and have a brief look at Girl Power.

In an interview in the Observer last Sunday, Caitlin Moran blamed the Spice Girls for ruining everything, while remembering a halcyon time before when girls attended Blur concerts without wearing makeup. Subjective memory is never a reliable guide, and it’s simplistic to say a phenomenon as populist as the Spice Girls could really change anything, rather than reacting to what already existed. The Spice Girls didn’t actually invent Girl Power at all**. There may have been more girls going out without arming their awful beauty before the Dawn of Spice, but that’s at least partly because grunge just happened to be popular then, and everyone – regardless of gender – pretty much went out wearing their acne as a badge of honour.

And yet the Spice Girls do feel, in retrospect, like a watershed moment. It’s not just the band themselves, but what came after; so long as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera stared moodily at the camera a few times per video, they could pretty much do whatever they wanted and still be talked about as “role models.” Yes, the early 90s had its share of absolutely appalling pop music, and bands like 2-Unlimited weren’t exactly a glorious heritage… but a pop star like – say – Beyoncé, who is at least as much about her six-times-a-show costume changes and her operating-an-invisible-pneumatic-drill dance moves as she is about whatever-that-shrieking-sound-is-that-she-calls-music, would have been pretty much unthinkable in 1994. Even Whitney and Mariah were dressing down and pretending to be artists. The only vaguely comparable figure was Madonna, who – at that point – was in the middle of her Justify My Love dominatrix phase that most of her fans now pretend didn’t happen; by now she was an absurdity who was only famous due to past glories. Nobody really liked her – pretty quickly, she was pretending to be all intelligent-like by starring in Evita, dying her hair black, and playing chess in her videos.

Let’s be generous and say that the Spice Girls were simply a reaction to grunge and indie more than they were any sort of manifesto, and that Gucci dresses were a natural reaction to the previous mode of pop-culture that encouraged boys and girls to wear baggy jeans and pretend to be ugly on purpose. The fact remains that what the Spice Girls dressed up as comic-book empowerment was designed by men, and – by a staggering coincidence – was the sort of thing men happened to like. You could argue that this was about reclaiming the miniskirt, or the same idea as – say – gay people appropriating the word “queer.” However, it was the Spice Girls movie (oh god oh god oh god the pain) that really gave the game away; these nu-feminists, with their badges of Girl Power, spent most of the film gleefully doing the bidding of Richard E. Grant, even if they were supposed to be more fun than him. Perky, sassy, and gloriously submissive. Middle-aged coked-up boardroom execs would have happily spunked all over their cinema seats, if they weren’t too busy catching the live shows in hotel rooms.

And yet… well, it wasn’t really about the fact that, ultimately, the Spice Girls were told what to do and how to dress and put together by a bunch of men. In spite of their pose and their shallow approximation of attitude, the most objectionable thing about the Spice Girls was just how boring they really were. It’s fashionable to dismiss Victoria Beckham as evil, but in fact she’s just… banal (In fact, what am I talking about? Am I forgetting banality is a discrete, and very powerful, form of evil?). The idea of Girl Power was really just about finding a way of selling music without having to go to the trouble of make it interesting; a few basic memes repeated over and over again, without any attempt or desire to tie them together. The fact that the 1990s were really the point when advertisers started to really discover the power of branding isn’t coincidental. Girl Power – a dynamic-sounding phrase that actually says nothing, and divests itself of the spiky uncomfortableness of feminism – is the perfect branding soundbite.

It was, of course, massively successful. Children and teenagers are at a stage in life when they’re still trying to figure out a way to belong – certainly, there was no other time in my life when I was so painfully aware of the need to part of something, anything – and branding makes it so very easy; it doesn’t ask you to make ethical decisions or to think about what you do, it just lets you pull on a jersey and become part of the team. It’s maybe interesting that Laddism-culture happened at pretty much the same time as Girl Power, and we shouldn’t be surprised that both of them effectively restated “traditional” gender behaviour while cloaking them in self-awareness. Male hegemony didn’t do this to keep women down – its primary aim was to sell us shit, and reinforcing stereotypes is just the easiest way of making something palatable. If we wonder why so much culture tells us that real men like cars and football and pints, and women can counter their inner turmoil by wearing fewer pullovers, we should remind ourselves how effectively “men” and “women” have been recast as demographics – their traits have been branded, and the portrayal of their relationships cast as cartoons. I violently dislike it, and truth be told it’s got nothing to do with anything as heavy as women’s rights, and everything to do with it being crass and reductive and desperately uninventive and just plain fucking dull.

The inherent misogyny of that narrative is simply a historical quirk, and one that happens to sell. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there, obviously, and shouldn’t be called for what it is. There are too many examples of sexism to list, now in plain view and frequently targetted at the young, which would have been unconscionable in the early 90s (this was a picture that most recently caught my eye. That’s in Tesco, incidentally). Certainly, it doesn’t make it any easier to tolerate Destiny’s Child looking for a soldier to take care of them, or Beyoncé literally commodifying herself (”if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it”… whenever I type that shit I literally can’t believe I’m not making it up) and saying in interviews that she likes “manly men,” or to put up with the sheer stinking existence of the Pussycat Dolls – who are definitely an apotheosis of something evil, but I’ve never been able to look at them long enough to figure out what. And it’s not a surprise that a thousand celeb-mags and hagiographic profiles treat these women as successful, given that the baseline of today’s culture is that anything that makes money is admirable by default. What is shocking that, in a world where gender-based stereotyping seems to be the one type of discrimination that’s getting actively worse, the fact that young girls buy into the prevailing pop-cultural brand is talked about in terms of “sexualisation” – as if it’s something walled off, specific to children, and entirely divorced from a succession of blockbusters where female characters walk around with no clothes on for no apparent reason. If it’s based on sexualised imagery, that’s just because happens to be the most workable aesthetic.

Or in other words; stop talking about children, and sexualisation, and kids being kids. That’s got nothing to do with this phenomenon, big and broad and difficult to define as it is. “Corporate Misogyny” might not be 100% accurate, but it’s maybe a more uncomfortable reminder of what’s actually happening; so that’s what it should be called.

These words matter, after all. Just ask anyone who works in branding.

11:34 am on the 6th June. It’s now well over 36 hours since the Doctor Who mid-season finale aired, and having spent the best part of a day in recovery, I’m finding it more or less impossible to talk about it. There were more things wrong with the episode than anyone could enumerate, in the micro-sense; we could start with the Doctor blowing up a huge spaceship to make a point, and this being presented as a “wow, cool!” moment, rather than the actions of a bombastic twit; we could mention that the character’s emotions now change so quickly from scene to scene that it’s hard not to think of Tyres from Spaced; or we could point out that the Doctor’s characterisation – in which, when he’s given a revelation about River Song’s identity, he giggles and grins and makes references to kissing, in the company of two people who’ve just had their baby stolen – is starting to resemble that of a sociopath. It’s too cock-obvious to bother writing about, as well as being too depressing.

So instead, I’d like to talk about interpretation.

It used to be quite commonplace – and pretty damn stupid – for any criticism of a film/book/play to be met by somebody tedious with “oh yeah, how many films/books/plays have you written?” That’s not to say this is unheard of now, or that “I don’t listen to the critics” isn’t still a mantra of some people involved in the creative industry (and is somehow seen as evidence of strength of mind instead of idiocy). However… I think it is fair to say that this is a culture that is increasingly beginning to fetishise interpretation over creativity. Worse, that these interpretations tend to be presented as the only valid ones.

There is a huge hulking example of this, but it’s current-affairs-y rather than cultural; the recent visits of the Queen and Barack Obama were notable for the symbolism of the events being interpreted, on everybody’s behalf, by political and media elites. This was something dissected beautifully by Gavan Titley on Vincent Browne not long after the event, and something I’ve mentioned before here, so I’ll let it sit. We’re going to stay cultural here, so I’m going to talk about The X-Factor instead.

I don’t particularly hate The X-Factor, although I have no interest at all in watching the bloody thing (nothing to do with cultural snobbery – I do like The Sugababes after all – but just because it isn’t entertaining). The popular counter-culture narrative holds that it is single-handedly destroying music, so it’s worth being clear here; worthless, terrible pop music has always existed, and so have dull talent shows. New Faces and Opportunity Knocks are direct predecessors of – say – Britain’s Got Talent, and the “luminaries” they gave us were people like Bobby Davro, Les Dennis, and – yes – Jim bloody Davidson. I don’t subscribe to any sort of theory that the noble lineage of popular entertainment has been corrupted and ruined by these programmes, and anyone who does is just deploying an incredibly selective memory. I don’t watch them, and I don’t care.

But… The X-Factor is different, in one important way – namely, that it is constructed so that the judges are central to the action. If we look at The X-Factor’s lineage it essentially replaced Pop Idol, and the format was almost identical except for some small, but crucial tweaks: this time different judges mentored different contestants so that, as well as the acts competing, the judges are overtly competing against each other. This week has seen an almost-certainly manufactured falling out, and it’s by no means the first – cf. the sacking and return of Louis Walsh. It’s now commonplace to discuss the “makeup” of the judge’s bench and the “chemistry” between judges, but it’s really not that long since this was considered gloriously irrelevant. It wasn’t the case on Opportunity Knocks or even the early series of Pop Idol, but nowadays it’s certainly true to say those who interpret the acts on our behalf are far more important than the acts themselves. In fact, the clearest demonsration of this is hiding in plain sight; Chery Cole is now better known as an X-Factor judge than she is for being in Girls Aloud.

The pre-interpretation of X-Factor acts is by no means limited to the judges. Each act comes prepackaged with a backstory and musical cues designed to tell us how to react to them. I’ve never heard Mary Byrne sing, and I couldn’t pick her out of a lineup – and no I’m not making that up as an affectation, it’s really not that hard to ignore this shit, you know – but the one thing I do know about her is that she worked in Tesco. We are told how we should see these people, and even the post-performance space where we might just respond to them is filled with miked-up audience cheering.

The X-Factor didn’t start this – pop-culture never starts anything, that’s where the “pop” comes from – it has just reacted to it. The pre-interpretation of work has been slowly moving from niche to mainstream for quite some time. Go to an art gallery, and you’ll see paintings. You’ll also see people walking around with audio-guides explaining the paintings to them through an earpiece, and information signs directly beneath the picture telling you that the child in the corner is there to symbolise mischief rather than innocence. You could argue that the audio-guide has just supplanted the guide-book in this regard, but the format leads to a key difference: audio-guides encourage their user to listen to the “right” interpretation of every single painting, in sequence; a guidebook at least encouraged a user to pick and choose, both what they chose to have guidance on, and when they chose to have it. Increasingly, anyone interacting with a work of art is being discouraged from taking what they want out of it. I don’t want to bring up “trust the tale, not the teller,” but – well, those dots are pretty easily connected by now anyway.

But what does this really mean, beyond the obvious pointlessness of National Trust benches talking with the voice of Stephen fucking Fry? The danger is that subtext is, increasingly, becoming a perverted concept. I vividly remember various people referring to the “Christian subtext” of Superman Returns, and even Mark Kermode (who, tellingly, is far better-known than many of the actors/directors/writers he admires) could see that the clunking symbology was closer to supertext, if such a thing exists. It used to be the case that subtext underpinned drama, rather than being part of it – think of the Freudian / Jungian undercurrents in Forbidden Planet, almost entirely disguised to create a rock-solid B-movie which was just more cohesive in its imagery than most of the other B-movies of the time; think of the way Memento is about the dislocation of yuppie-culture, but never claims to be anything more than an odd, challenging narrative; think of the unstated love affairs between Jo Grant and Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, or Avon and Blake.

Compare this to the dramas of the moment. The Shadow Line would once have been a bright drama about the meeting point of two independent worlds, but it now feels compelled to tells us – repeatedly – what the “shadow line” is. Mad Men would purport to be about mapping the social changes of the Sixties but, to make sure we get it, it gives us overt mentions/instances of sexism, smoking and John F. Kennedy in its first episode, and actually has the incredibly crass line “the men who designed this made it so simple that even a woman can operate it,” for fuck’s sake; Life on Mars had the potential to lightly track the changes of the 70s, but almost always finished up with a big speech from Sam Tyler about how football hooliganism was really quite bad. This goes both ways. It’s now commonplace to say that Season Three of The Wire is about the Iraq invasion – because David Simon mentioned it a few times, because it features a drug war, and because a building gets blown up at the start. In fact, The Wire is one of the few pieces of contemporary drama to do subtext properly. Season Three isn’t about Iraq, it just used imagery and tropes from the War on Terror to give its story an extra resonance. Like all seasons of The Wire, it’s about a distinct type of underclass, and saying it’s “about” Iraq is doing a disservice to a universal theme. But really, if the coverage of any form of narrative is all about who can spot the allusions first, then why would you bother?

In short: this is a form of culture that accepts – doesn’t posit, just accepts, as unquestioning truth – that Animal Farm is good because it’s about the Soviet Union, not because it’s one of the most achingly perfect children’s books ever written.

And so, let’s return to Doctor Who, at least to wrap up. The primary sin of A Good Man Goes To War is that it’s bombastic, and it’s boring. But it’s boring in a very specific way; it’s boring because it keeps telling us how great the Doctor is, and because he is defined solely by the way other people react to him. We’re supposed to believe he’s important because River Song says so, because the churchy-bad guys keep speaking about him in awestruck terms, because a lizard and a Sontaran do what he tells them, because lots of pe ople seem very very afraid of him. Whereas in fact – he doesn’t do anything in the story at all. Or rather, he does two things – blow up half a cyber-fleet, and infilitrate the Headless Monks – and they both happen offscreen. Everyone might have heard of him, it might even be revealed that the word “doctor” comes from him (ugh), but he’s just another intergalactic celebrity with a pre-prepared narrative. By making him a force before which everybody lies down in terror, it’s ensured that he doesn’t have to show us that he’s brave or clever. No longer are we asked how we see him, we’re told how we should see him, without him ever doing anything to justify the interpretation. The more hushed the tones with which he’s spoken, the more powerless he really becomes.

Just like a pop career means less if it comes on the back of being an X-Factor judge, or a landscape means less if a talking bench tells you how to feel about it. Just as, the more we are told how any symbol or act or object should be interpreted, the less and less it can ever mean.