Dispatches and the Adam Smith Institute are both set to condemn the government's gambling plans this Monday. A leaked report from the ASI i've got hold of says the gambling commission 'isn't fit for purpose'. The right wing think tank's main criticism seems to be that the commission is spending too much, it's budget having soared from £3m to £15.4m pa. To be honest, I'm more interested in hearing what dispatches has to say - I remain pretty unconvinced by the government's case, even though I don't have any moral objection's to gambling myself (and to be honest, I think there are far worse social ills which need to be tackled). The ASI is pretty scathing of the gambling commission's power in dealing with online gaming outlets however, the majority of which will remain incorporated offshore and unregulated.
Read More......Friday, January 19, 2007
In it to Winner it
Michael Winner isn't going to die. In fact, he's not even going to lose his leg. Or at least that's what I've heard through people on the Sunday Times who spoke to his secretary a few minutes ago. Apparently it was an adverse reaction to anti-biotics he took while he was holidaying (or living?) in the Caribbean. He's even managed to submit his column for this week's ST. I don't think he's keen for people to know he's not that ill though. Calm down, dear, it’s only a commercial.
Read More......Forbidden Starbucks, Hidden Dragon
FAO: Xing Ba Ke, 1 Dragon Pavement, Hall of Supreme and Heavenly Harmony, Forbidden City, Middle Kingdom.
The Emperors of China - mediators between the Sky and Earth - were, for the most part, keen on inventions. Marco Polo's horological prowess gave him pretty good access to the son of Heaven. Clocks were cool. Had the emperor had access to a Starbuck's coffee frother, I think he might have been just as impressed. Too bad the inimitable Seattle baristas are a few centuries too late.
Rui Chenggang, the blogger behind Why Starbucks needs to get out of the Forbidden City has sparked off the controversy in China - and now more than half a million have signed his petitition. He makes a pretty good case for getting rid of Amex from China's cultural heritage too: "The introduction to every site says: 'Made possible by American Express.' It is as if the Mona Lisa had a label saying: 'Made possible by the People's Bank of China.'"
Admittedly, the Forbidden City - all 178 acres of it - hosting millions of Western visitors a year, could do with a Western coffee shop. Yet the problem, of course, in having a Starbucks in Beijing's Forbidden City goes way beyond the practical.
"But please don't interpret this as an act of nationalism," says Rui, "It is just about we Chinese people respecting ourselves. I actually like drinking Starbucks coffee. I am just against having one in the Forbidden City."
On the issue of Starbucks I think Rui has a point, but there is an emerging trend in China - a trend worryingly mirrored in countries such as Russia - namely, a growing and powerful sense of national infallibility. National belief.
While I was editor of the student paper at the LSE it was something I came across time and time again from Chinese students. In response to an article we printed exposing the Chinese government for threatening the school authorities (after a talk by two 'defectors' to the students' union) I recieved countless letters berating my shamelessness and slander against China - I was even labelled a racist for giving an 'anti-chinese' platform to these 'defectors', who, I was told, were no doubt funded by the Falun Gong. The same happened again this year after the paper published a comment article on Chinese human rights abuses.
Will Hutton's op-ed in the Guardian yesterday I think misses the mark. "The lesson Deng drew - that the party can remain in Leninist control of a market economy that needs no democratic institutions -was as wrong as Mao's." In fact, through fostering a powerful and spirited sense of nationalism, the communist party can and has retained easy control over peoples lives - even in a rapidly modernising market environment. Nationalism has proved a far more powerful solvent than freedom and you wont find liberty in a latte.
Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser
Brigitte Zypries, the German Minister of Justice announced plans to crimilise holocaust denial across Europe - a plan the Bundesrepublik hopes to fasttrack through during its sixth month EU presidency. I don't think the laws have much chance in being passed (the UK for one has indicated its reluctance)
Zypries is invoking quite a heady historicism to her plans- “This historical experience puts Germany under a permanent obligation to combat systematically every form of racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia. And we should not wait until it comes to deeds. We must act already against the intellectual pathbreakers of the crime."
For me, the interesting point is not so much the hype about whether this will pass into law, or even the pertinent debate over censorship/offence etc. The question is rather, over what comes first, the word or the deed? Banning words and symbols won't, I think, halt the rise of extremist movements - and it's a lesson which Zypries would do well to learn from the history of National Socialism. The Justice minister seems to belong to the school of thought that teaches German guilt through absolute complicity - the Daniel Goldhagen school of shoah atonement. I don't think the story is so simple. German's didn't exterminate the Jews because they were all vicious anti-semites (i choose this phrase carefully, clearly most card-carrying nazis were) - instead its a complex pattern of guilt, willed ignorance and utopian delusion.
The road to Auschwitz was not paved with anti-semitic hate - but all the more tragically, with the mundane and petty pieces of ordinary people's lives - people who looked away because everything was just swell for them. People who hated because it was easier too. The path to the holocaust was the path of least resistance.