Random Variable

I’ve not been writing much in the last few months since my first year exams. Now, it’s time to kick things back into gear. A few updates:

• I changed the theme to journalist. It did look nice on orgtheory…
• The blogroll’s had a big cleanup. I’ve been shifting between Google Reader and Newsgator over the last year, and have settled with the ones who don’t want to be evil. I merged a lot of the categories together to save on maintenance and the mental effort required to decide what field a blog belongs. Thus, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science are now all merged under social sciences. The URLs have been updated wherever possible.

x-posted from Boris Watch

The following is just one of the findings of a new paper by Andrew Eggers and Jens Hainmueller on political power and wealth:

MPs with at least one (self-)reported outside interest (directorships, consultancies, and work in journalism) attended fewer votes compared to MPs with no outside interests; attendance rates are around 4-6 percentage points lower and the differences are all significant at conventional levels.

From 5 May 2005 to 4 June 2008, Boris had a dismal voting attendance of just 45%. See where that places him on the following jittergram:

What does this suggest?

While positions taken in parliamentary votes are not very informative about the influence of MPs’ clients on policymaking, the attendance of MPs for voting sessions does suggest that outside interests tend to distract members from legislative work.

Boris ought to reconsider that publishing contract amongst any other gigs he might be doing if he intends to run London properly.

Source: Andrew Eggers and Jens Hainmueller, The Value of Political Power: Estimating Returns to Office in Post-War British Politics (Harvard University, August 2008).

x-posted at Boris Watch

Leuwig, Swaffield and Hartwich think they’re some brave radical thinkers, but in reality, are nothing of the sort.

Instead, they continue the trend of trumpeting a world in which “human beings are worth less and less.”As Daniel Davies points out, the report focuses on GVA instead of GVA-per-capita. The authors are more concerned with the competitiveness of cities rather than the well-being of its vulnerable populations.

Liverpool comes under significant flack in Cities Unlimited but their recommendation of migration out of Liverpool is already taking place according to a IPPR paper that they actually cite, with a 3% drop in population from 1996-2004 and a 19% increase in employment from 1995-2004. However, in 2007, around 15% of Liverpool’s population is still unemployed, and 30% of working age residents have no qualifications-amongst the highest in the country. I don’t see how encouraging migration whilst not concentrating on urban pockets of deprivation is a suitable policy.

Demographic change gets a small chapter towards the end of the report, when it should be a key focus for something which purports to be so forward-looking. It’s not clear that nations like Britain will be significant players with the global demographic changes suggested to take place within the next forty years.

The report also makes a large gamble on London’s ability to remain the world’s premier global financial city, which is not necessarily guaranteed in the long run. A shift in the regulatory environment or competition from competing global financial cities such as KAEC (King Abdullah Economic City) and the Qatar Financial Centre could lead to decline in the City of London.

I found a certain level of dishonesty in their proposal to move control over regeneration to local authorities, suggesting that Labour’s government has over-centralised executive power by providing no historical context whatsoever. Local authorities lost control over spending during the Thatcher government, whilst the EU has been strongly promoting localism in regeneration efforts. What Leunig and Swaffield choose to overlook are the real innovations of the Livingstone administration. Implementing the congestion charge whilst gearing policies to ramp up urban density as per the Urban Task Force report leads to real economies and ecologies of scale. The authors chide city authorities for not learning from other cities across the world, but they overlook the fact that the GLA took transnationalism to a new level by forming a partnership with Venezuela, as well as being a participant in the Clinton Climate Initiative. Both of these transnational partnerships have fallen apart within months of Johnson taking power.

If we really want to talk about localism, we need to go beyond just electoral politics and think about civic renewal as the key to urban regeneration. The authors state at the outset that a future Conservative government will not look keenly on regeneration funding, but say that elections are a crucial part of making local authorities more capable. But, this is still low intensity democracy, with an emphasis on efficiency rather than well-being – as a result, the authors get terribly hung up on improving the Audit Commission’s website. A radical step towards localism would involve intensifying local participation in executive decision making itself with innovations such as Participatory Budgeting? Of course, this reeks of all the South American leftist politics that we’re cutting off ties to.

All in all, for a report that plays loose with facts, Cities Unlimited is dull, unimaginative, and patronising to boot. You’ll learn more about the urban poor from a HBO cop show than Johnson’s favourite Exchange.

Last Wednesday, as part of the Boris Watch team, I was invited to a Liberal Conspiracy event at the Guardian on how liberal-left bloggers can affect national politics.

LSE’s Polis director Charlie Beckett was not impressed, saying that right-wing bloggers like Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale were far more entertaining than their left-wing counterparts.

Mark Hanson said the m-word, and then immediately withdrew it saying we are a “family” instead. Patriarchy aside, what is a successful political programme other than the representation of a popular…umm….movement? The network metaphor was overused, particularly by Sunny. It’s always good to step back and look at what work the word “network” is performing. There was more concern about getting into the mainstream media than convincing the public of the superiority of a leftist programme over the right. In fact, I counted the word public being used about three times. We need some conception of the public sphere and its relation to party politics. The goal of blogging to be the recruitment of activists to do door-to-door-knocking is a bit weak.

Georgina Henry said that the UK blogosphere is the opposite to that of the US, and this might have something to do with who is in opposition. There was a suggestion that perhaps the left blogosphere would flourish once the general election was conceded to the Conservatives.

Dan Hardie, perhaps gave the most enlightening talk of the evening. Giving a detailed analysis of the partially successful campaign to save the Iraqi interpreters, his main point is that blogging campaigns give mediocre results. The real gains are to be had from the traditional methods of attracting media attention and lobbying MPs, and even then, the government can lie to the media.

The second session sought to answer why feminist bloggers are, to use Sunny’s terms “insulated from the rest of the liberal blogosphere.” Many men felt that women had to do more to explain feminism to them. This is just an excuse. Much like asking Muslims to continually speak out violence committed by extremists, you can indefinitely tell feminists to make things simpler for men to understand, whilst justifying a position of continual non-engagement. The problem of feminist disembeddedness in the liberal left is a male problem. Besides, can my fellow men really not Google?

The liberal-left does not have enough to distinguish it from the right. Both sides now argue from a libertarian conception of rights, except the liberal left are perhaps the more conservative, in the sense of wanting to maintain existing creaky structures. Here, Philip Bobbit seems to be right in arguing that the social democratic contract has now expired, and that we live in the time of the ‘market state’, whose pact it makes with its citizen, is one that promises to maximise the free market opportunities of it citizens. In contrast, the earlier leftist social democratic programmes were founded on “pacts of security at the moment of a demand for war.”

In this understanding, Libertarianism, grounded in a theory of neoliberal state cooperation is easy to promote and adopt. Many Libertarian claims, however, can often be challenged on feminist or racial terms, for example, how libertarian feminism relies on an underclass of women’s labour or how many libertarians want to undermine neoliberal steps to a safer world by closing off borders and practising “libertarianism in one country.”

In its stead, the Left can therefore develop a pact for a generation without wartime memories, aimed at the old and unfinished goal of substantive social equality.

The real causal nexus, Ennis claims, was differential attention to the crossovers by outlets that were relatively marginal and localized within its home stream. Outlets and networks in Memphis, Tennessee, happened to be prominent enough on the black as well as white sides to be catalytic in the overlay. The main key were those radio stations that were small in the national picture but plugged into regional networks of playing clubs and also into networks of smaller record companies. A crucial catalytic role was played by the disc jockeys, whose interest was in the development of distinctive new combinations.

…

The bishop at first was merely what we call today the priest, but this was already a revolution in the Pauline formation. In the latter, sacerdotal authority was with the traveling apostle, not in the locally-rooted authority. The bishop–priest’s combination of the two authorities supplies the key in helping to contain, as well as generate, doctrinal disagreement and confusion. The bishop could define purity, holiness, and yet he was rooted. Two fixed points of the emerging Church doctrine were one bishop for one city, and anathema on the translation of a bishop from one city to another.

That from Mohr and White’s new paper on modelling institutions[1]. Mohr and White are contending that institutions only exist because of situated agents operating across sites of social organisation performing a succession of semi-coordinated actions. The agents in the emergence of the Rock n’ Roll were artists in black and white communities borrowing from each other’s contemporary musical styles. The emergence of Christianity occurs through the interactions between nomadic priests and a growing class of sedentary artisans.

Another interesting contention made by Mohr and White is that schisms can be modelled by looking at agreements amongst a group of situated agents operating across levels.

With perhaps a nod to trends in universities in Britain and the USA, they touch upon the call to restructure colleges with reference to science departments. The shambolic internal appearance of university departments, where many disparate research groups might be lumped together, is the result of institutionalisation and not a sign of institutional inefficiency. Instead, the networks that appear in colleges, often referred to as the invisible colleges, form much like Indian subcaste groups that grow through family and intermarriage ties, but through faculty appointment and networks of specialty.

Throughout the paper, Mohr and White refer to how differing styles emerge over time. Simply looking at relational ties, as in social network analysis is not enough. A hermeneutical angle is also required.

I wonder how much time and money organisations are wasting to make their organisations have a nice social graph, when they are actually destroying their formally invisible multi-situated groups.

[1] Mohr, John, and Harrison White. “How to model an institution.” Theory and Society (June 10, 2008).http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9066-0.

A friend of mine has started a shop in which you send in a photo of yourself (or a friend), and have a sock puppet made based on her interpretation. Here are some previous examples:

[Rollingfuntum's Operatic Boutique]

Press release:

Notts Uni detainee innocent but still facing deportation

Hicham Yezza, a popular, respected and valued former PhD student and current employee of the University of Nottingham faces deportation to Algeria on Sunday 1st June.  This follows his unjust arrest under the Terrorism Act 2000 on Wednesday 14th May alongside Rizwaan Sabir and their release without charge six days later.

On his release Hicham was re-arrested under immigration legislation and, due to confusion over his visa documentation, charged with offences relating to his immigration status. He sought legal advice and representation over these matters whilst in custody. On Friday 23rd May, he was suddenly served with a deportation notice and moved to an immigration detention centre. The deportation is being urgently appealed.

Hicham has been resident in the U.K. for 13 years, during which time he has studied for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Nottingham. He is an active member of debating societies, a prominent member of an arts and theatre group, and has been writing editorials for the Student Peace Movement magazine for the last five years. He is well known and popular on campus amongst the university community and has established himself as a voracious reader and an authority on literature and music. An application for British citizenship was underway, and he had been planning to make his yearly trip to Wales for the Hay Festival when he was suddenly arrested.

Alf Nilsen, a research fellow at in the school of Politics and International Relations says “This is a clear case of the police trying to cover up their completely unjustified targeting of these two innocent men by making Hicham look guilty by deporting him. Hicham is entirely innocent and the rushed and heavy-handed way in which the authorities are dealing with this matter is outrageous.”

DSquared has a post on JEM launching an attack on Khartoum today. He thinks the various militias will resemble little more than criminal gangs in the near future, with a footnote warning against our own smugness as “the Free Companies went in for this sort of thing in the fourteenth century and made lots of Italy a purely horrible place to live in.” This is basically Tilly’s (now sadly departed) argument in his famous essay. But today could be seen as quite different to the C14 in the following ways:

1. There are ready made states with external legitimacy (in the international system of states), but lack internal legitimacy.
2. Easy access to a plethora of low-to-medium damage weapons. Weapon financing isn’t carried out by wholly separate competing organizations, but organizations fighting over parts of the state.
3. No access to the big weapons that could clearly differentiate the competing groups.
4. No wars of religion to homogenize ethnic identity.
5. The winning organizational forms today (OECD nation states) are too divergent, having followed long path dependencies for easy and stable isomorphism to occur.

From NotBBC forums, via Liberal Conspiracy, comes an eyewitness report on Johnny Vegas’ set as part of Stewart Lee’s “Ten Best Stand-Ups in the World Ever” series:

It was pretty contentious, so I’m slightly concerned about misrepresenting what happened if you didn’t see it with your own eyes. I can’t give you the complete context without recounting the whole set, and that would take forever and I’d probably get it wrong anyway. With that in mind, I’ll try to explain what happened, but please take what I say with a pinch of salt and bear in mind that it’s my intepretation.

Anyway, fairly early on in his set, he stated that he had no material, and that he was there mostly to get laid; it came across as quite possibly the truth spoken in jest. He started chatting up girls in the front row in an exaggerated, slightly cartoonish way, and quickly focused on a girl who was about 18 or 19 and was very obviously unnerved by it. To cut a long story short, he fairly insistently press-ganged her into getting carried onto stage by six members of the audience, while pretending to be dead. The premise was that they would then lay her down on the stage and he would bring her back to life with a kiss, and he warned her that there probably would be tongues. Honestly, you couldn’t have found a nervier or more passive girl if you’d scoured all of London - she was like a rabbit in the headlights, but she was giggling and clearly somewhat enjoying the attention, so it just sort of went ahead without so much as a yes or no from her.

Once she was on the stage with the 6 ‘bearers’ lined up at the back, he told her to lie very still and he turned back to the audience for a bit. She couldn’t stop her nervous giggling, so he told her to shut up and look more dead or he’d kick her in the ribs. There was a menacing tone to his whole set, so I have to admit it didn’t come across to me entirely as a joke. There wasn’t anything funny about it anyway, unless you find that funny in itself.

Eventually he got down next to her and started stroking her breasts. That hadn’t been mentioned before, and in the light of of the repeated refrain of “don’t fucking move” it seemed like an abuse of power. She could have got up and walked away, but it would have taken a lot of courage to do that in front of a large room full of people, against the explicit orders of the famous guy with the microphone. Then he started running his hand up her leg and pulling her skirt up. Every time he looked up to address the audience, she’d reach down and pull her skirt back down, but he kept pulling it back up and ended up fingering her through her clothes for a second or two. Then he straddled her, completely pinning her to the floor, and kissed her quite full-on for quite a while. Then he asked if they could bring the curtain down, which they couldn’t, so there was an awkward minute until Simon Munnery came out and brought down an improvised curtain consisting of his coat.

It was pretty hard to know what to make of the whole thing. I came away with the distinct impression that she was given very little chance to say no, if at all. The six ‘bearers’ made it even more grim, as it seemed their sole purpose was to make it look more acceptable - more endorsed, if you will. If it had just been him and her on the stage, I think it would have been rather harder for the half of the room who laughed through it to do so.

I say half, as my impression at the time was that people were going along with it and broadly enjoying the set, but on leaving, I heard nothing but “that was disgusting”, “that was practically assault”, and so on. My girlfriend was quite upset that she’d sat through it and not done anything, but I’m not sure what she could have done - walk out, I suppose. I was just fucking confused by trying to find a way in which it was acceptable. I don’t like to think that any area is out-of-bounds for comedy, even if the comedy is lazy nonsense (which on this occasion, I think it mostly was) - but that really only applies when you’re talking about words and ideas. Once you’ve got someone pinned down on the stage, it becomes a rather different matter.

If this account is accurate, then I’m appalled to have UCL associated with this performance (The Bloomsbury Theatre is a UCL subsidiary).

UPDATE: Johnny Vegas is suing The Guardian for Mary O’Hara’s reportage, and has had to take down the content. Here is Google Cache:

Since when is sexual assault funny?
This article appeared in the Guardian  on Thursday May 01 2008 on p12 of the Comment & features section.

I go to comedy gigs almost every week, but I’ve never seen anything quite like what I witnessed at the Bloomsbury theatre in London last Friday night. Like many people I’ve often left gigs offended. That’s stand-up. If you go regularly you need a thick hide - a good comedian will often say or do something that offends you and, if you’re in the front row, you may well be targeted for public ridicule. Until Friday, however, I had never left a gig feeling disgusted.

Along with hundreds of others I watched a set during which Johnny Vegas, without any discernible artistic or comedic merit, gratuitously groped a young woman on stage. Judging from some of the furious postings on the internet that followed the gig, I was not the only person asking if he had crossed a line.

Vegas stepped on stage to cheers and immediately announced that he had no material, and that he was there mostly to get laid. There

followed a short meandering ramble (mainly about lap dancers) before he turned his attention to the audience - and to one young woman in particular in the front row who, he announced, he wanted to be “inside”. Anyone who has seen Vegas live knows to expect the unexpected, and you take a front row seat at your peril. He can appear deliriously and uncontrollably drunk and casually offensive, and he isn’t afraid of injecting a dose of tension by involving members of the audience in his erratic act. But something backfired this time.

The woman he focused on was about 18 or 19 and was very obviously unnerved by his attention. I saw her expression clearly - I was in the front row too, just three seats along. Vegas insisted that she allow herself to be carried on to the stage by six members of the audience - he called them “pall bearers”. She must pretend to be dead, he said, and he would bring her back to life with an onstage kiss. He warned her that there probably would be tongues. As James Williams, writing on the NOTBBC forum after the gig, put it, “Honestly, you couldn’t have found a nervier or more passive girl if you’d scoured all of London - she was like a rabbit in the headlights, but she was giggling and clearly somewhat enjoying the attention, so it just sort of went ahead without so much as a yes or no from her.” As she was carried on stage, Vegas repeatedly goaded one of the pallbearers to “finger” the girl.

Once she was on stage, Vegas told her to lie very still. She couldn’t stop her nervous giggling; he threatened to kick her in the ribs. It didn’t come across to me as a joke - and near to where I was sitting, no one was laughing. Eventually Vegas crouched down beside the nervous girl and started stroking her breasts while repeatedly saying, “don’t fucking move”. Then he ran his hand up her leg and began pulling her skirt up. Every time he looked up to address the audience, she would reach down and pull her skirt back down, but he kept pulling it back up. According to Williams, who had a different view of the stage from me, Vegas ended up “fingering her through her clothes for a second or two”. What I heard was an audible sharp intake of breath from the audience as they realised that the woman was getting much more than the kiss Vegas had told her to expect.

There was an air of menace from the outset, made worse by the fact that Vegas clearly had no idea where he was going with his act. The more the young woman was groped, the more anxious one of the “pallbearers” looked. Then Vegas straddled the young woman, pinning her to the floor, and kissing her for quite a while. Most disturbing, perhaps was that around half the audience seemed to find this really funny. Vegas asked if the curtain could be brought down; when it wasn’t, Simon Munnery, the comedian who had been on stage before him, came on stage and used his coat to screen the pair from the audience.

Back before Vegas was famous, his act often involved him - the shambolic, hapless, self-loathing buffoonish bloke - persuading a woman in the audience to feel sorry for him by letting him give her a quick kiss. It was funny because he had no power. He wasn’t famous then. Being famous and the power that it brings changes the dynamic in such a scenario. This time, I could see nothing creative or subversive; just a powerful, famous man on a stage seedily touching up a young woman.

Soon after the gig, a furious exchange began on the internet. James Williams kicked off the debate on NOTBBC.co.uk: “I don’t like to think that any area is out of bounds for comedy, even if the comedy is lazy nonsense (which on this occasion, I think it mostly was) - but that really only applies when you’re talking about words and ideas. Once you’ve got someone pinned down on the stage, it becomes a rather different matter. I honestly don’t know what to think. Really, did no one else see it?”

Some leapt to Vegas’s defence. Others wondered if the issue was whether it was Vegas or his stage “persona” doing the groping, and, if so, what was the underlying point of it. The debate has since evolved to a broader exploration of the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in comedy. One poster (who wasn’t at the gig) encapsulates many of the views in a response to Williams: “It’s always hard to know with Vegas where the pathos starts and ends - aggression to the audience has always been part of his act.”

Others have no such qualms. “I have no problem with the view that comedy should be allowed to address any idea or subject it likes,” says Fiona Knight, who is Williams’s girlfriend, and was with him at the gig. “Ideas cannot hurt anyone until they are turned into actions. But any performer has a responsibility for what they (or their character/persona) does, just as the audience has a responsibility for its reaction to their actions. For me, at this gig, Johnny Vegas crossed the line from fantasy to reality when he translated his ideas into actions that I thought were unacceptable, and I only wish I had had the guts to say so at the time.”

Good comedy is frequently uncomfortable for those watching. Brendon Burns, last year’s If.comedy winner at the Edinburgh Fringe, is brilliant at making his audience feel so awkward they wish they were somew here else, and the previous year’s winner, Phil Nichol, spends a lot of his gigs naked for all but his guitar as some of the audience look on in horror. Sometimes, people vote with their feet. I’ve seen people walk out when the gay comedian, Scott Capurro, got a bit too graphic. Often, as happened at the end of Friday’s Vegas gig, some members of the audience withhold their applause.

But like Knight, I wonder if members of the audience - or Stewart Lee, the comedian who hosted the event - should have intervened. The young woman had seemed to go on stage of her on volition, but had no reason to suspect she would be pinned to the floor and groped. I did shout “get him fucking off you”, but obviously not loud enough.

Reviewers, who could have made an impact by registering concern, seemed largely unmoved by the groping. Steve Bennett, founder of the UK’s most popular comedy website, Chortle, alluded to what happened, and referred vaguely to Vegas’s “rather pervy” come-ons, but says he “wouldn’t go as far as condemning him”. Bruce Dessau, who, like Bennett, wrote a rather benign review of the gig for the London Evening Standard on Monday, had by Wednesday decided to blog about it, acknowledging that other people were bothered by what had transpired. In the blog he says: “I’ve often said that one’s response to a performance depends on where one is sitting … But from where I was sitting, my concern was more about his substantial bulk bearing down on her than where his wandering hands were … Our very own Richard Godwin was at the gig and he was closer to the action than me. He clearly felt Vegas went far too far. Others have also made similar allegations, that Vegas took advantage of an innocent woman.”

The Guardian asked Vegas for a response to the reaction to his performance, but he was unavailable for comment. Lee’s agent did not return our calls. That is a pity. Friday’s gig needs to be openly debated. One comment posted on Chortle, which appears to celebrate the sexual molestation of a woman in public, illustrates why. It reads: “This was the most enjoyable night of comedy I have ever experienced. The discomfort in the predominately middle-class section of the audience I was sitting in was palpable during Vegas’s set! During the bit where Vegas was sexually molesting a librarian whilst singing Shakespeare Sister’s Stay With Me Baby I overheard a lady behind mutter under her breath ‘this is hideous!’ The scene was horrifying yet hilarious and Vegas was relentless until Simon Munnery covered the spectacle with his jacket! I will be laughing about this evening for a very long time!”.

Here’s Infinite Thought:

As Don Letts put it: ‘They used to say don’t trust anyone over 30, but today I don’t trust anyone under 30 - let’s be blunt: today’s young are spoilt motherfuckers.’ Reared on warmed-over irony, children’s cartoons, cynicism and celebrity medja, those puffed up bastards who work in the city and offices all over London are exactly the kind of person who’d think: ‘wouldn’t it be hilarious if Boris Johnson was mayor, huh huh huh’. You fucking idiots! My generation can go to hell, spawn of Thatcher and Hobbes, with their fucking egotism and ‘what’s in it for me?’ attitude, trained like Pavlov’s puppies to respond only to money and to, like, stuff. Wankers, the lot of them.

Don’t take out your anger on us, at least not all of us. The views of people I know amongst the under thirties were (in descending order or popularity):

1. Why would anyone vote for Boris. Vote Ken. Tell everyone you know to vote for Ken. Shout it from the fucking rooftops.
2. We are libertarians. Johnson rox! Lolz. (approx 10%).
3. What election? (approx 20%).

That’s still 70% of us who are not wankers.

I think it was the bread and peace model that showed itself at work here. If economic growth falls below a certain point, then the incumbent loses. At the end of the day, it came down to issues. People want lower taxation and Boris will deliver it, at the risk of the collapse of public transport.

Voters are sooo predictable.

But perhaps Ken knew which group would destroy him:

… London’s financial centre was this small inward-looking club of old white men who’d all been to the same schools; [Thatcher] destroyed them, they were swept aside by international capital, which is much more dynamic, much more progressive, less racist and sexist (I mean, it’s not wonderful in there, but compared with the old lot …); and the new people were quite prepared to engage with me, whereas that lot would refuse to meet. Now they recognise that mayors can deliver things, and they rely on me to try and get the flow of office development and new housing.

And now the old club fought back.

And with that, I announce the launch of Boris Watch, keeping an eye on the mayoral trainwreck. I need co-authors for this to get off the ground. Anyone want to volunteer?