Had John Lennon lived, he would have turned 70 today. Celebrating his music seems a good way to celebrate his life. Perhaps the song that best fits this occasion is the one the that his fellow Beatles made (using an old Lennon recording) as a final commemoration of John’s life and their splendid career:

The lyrics can be found here.

It’s long been forgotten, but there was a mini-recession between 2000 and early 2003. It occurred largely due to the dot com bust, an event which seems a mere firecracker going off in comparison to the nuclear detonation that is our present crisis. However, I was negatively affected by the downturn: the company for which I worked shed most of its people and I was made unemployed as of December 2002.

What to do? I was living in a small flat in North London, surrounded by the few bits of furniture which I had saved from the wreck of my marriage in 2001. As the situation implies, I had little savings upon which to rely. Soon, I had none. I was forced to seek assistance from the state.

I recall the Job Centre Plus offices on Holloway Road with a special kind of loathing. Everything about the place seemed designed to generate resentment: the officiousness of the people manning the desks, the slight flicker of the florescent bulbs, the too-glossy and glib marketing materials which seemed to indicate that finding a job was somehow easy or pleasant. However, these subtle touches were as nothing compared to how difficult it was to get help.

I had never “signed on” before; I had worked full-time since I’d left University in 1994. I had some vague notion that having contributed to the system so consistently that it wouldn’t be too difficult to draw something out of it again. I was wrong. I had worked abroad between 1999 and 2001 and for this reason, I was informed by the balding middle-aged man in a white polyester dress shirt and maroon and blue striped tie, I would have to be means tested. His expression slightly softened when he saw the look of shock on my face.

Nevertheless, I signed my forms and got my benefits, which meant my cash in hand was a little over £50 a week. However, I was told I’d have to come back every seven days and tell the centre how I was getting on with finding new work. I was informed that for up to 6 months, I could, more or less, apply for a job that suited my skillset. After that, it was said, I’d have to take whatever position was available: I had nightmare visions of having to stock shelves at Tesco, my technical skills and education having come to nought.

So, every day, I sat at my computer and applied, often well into the night. Jobserve became my constant companion. The wireless hub broke, so I trailed a long network cable into my tiny office room and hooked it up to my computer. I kept going. I had to print out the job ads as I went along: they were evidence that I was fulfilling my end of the bargain so far as the Job Centre was concerned. I remember the studied indifference and tired glances of the various officials who looked at the papers each week. I recall the long walks along the Holloway Road after such encounters in the winter of 2003; it was mostly cold, the skies were grey. I had to be careful with every penny when I went shopping for food. I feel slightly nauseous when I think of the lingering scent of cheap bacon in my small dingy kitchen and recall the depression I experienced looking out the window at the bare trees swaying in the cold gusts. At those moments, I pondered over my life and wondered what could possibly be its meaning and worth. After a time, the melancholy would pass: I’d sigh and return to applying.

Eventually, persistence paid. I got a new job in May 2003 and it went well. I recall the day when I received my first pay slip: I was quietly overjoyed. At that moment, all questions regarding life’s value had vanished. And while I have had trials and tribulations since, my life has generally improved from that time onward. I reached new heights just this past year when I graduated with my PhD and my novel was published.

Conservatives will read this story and perhaps see a validation of their political viewpoint: the awfulness of Job Centres and the difficulty in obtaining benefits, they’d say, provided me with an incentive. However, no rational human being wants to be idle: I would have worked just as hard to get myself out of unemployment without the additional pressure. My dignity demanded it. Not everyone perhaps feels that incentive so urgently: yet if we consider the link between poverty and crime, could it not be said, at least in some cases, to be due to dignity being denied and desperation taking its place?

The economy is far worse now. Yet, the government’s rhetoric presently includes references to the “undeserving poor”. This begs the question, how do they know who is deserving and undeserving? If the Job Centre Plus on Holloway Road is any indication, no reliable measure is in place to assess who is striving and who is not, and who is trapped and who has relative freedom. Given the state of the employment market, it is far more likely that there are many more people who feel imprisoned than are gaming the system. Yet the suggested remedy is more stick, less carrot. Grotesque stories in the tabloids about exceptional individuals who are able to obtain ridiculous amounts of state help provide a false veneer of legitimacy to these moves. I cannot imagine how many people’s lives are about to be made even harder: will they look out their windows this winter and wonder if their lives can have meaning and worth, particularly since the government’s demeanour towards them is so negative?

While cuts and more stringent conditions will hit the unemployed, it appears that financiers do not have to jump through nearly so many hoops in order to get their state assistance. For example, in the initial version of the act which set up the American Troubled Asset Relief Programme, there was to be no oversight of the money spent. The banks have been saved. According to the London Evening Standard, bonuses worth up to £7 billion will be handed out this winter: this is being spent on lap dancers and fast cars. While this group will pay more tax on their regular earnings, their capital gains have barely been touched. Meanwhile, those on modest pay, particularly those in the public sector, are more in the firing line than ever. The talk of “undeserving poor” under these circumstances is not only misguided, it’s obscene: society is in the process of becoming two-tiered. If you’re wealthy, not only will you be left in peace, you will be helped by the State without question: if your means are modest, the American acronym “BOHICA” (“Bend Over Here it Comes Again”) applies.

It is doubtful that the politicians will want to alter this status quo too dramatically. Their hope is that a revival of business as usual will make its way sufficiently down the food chain to avoid a cataclysm. It’s a stupendous risk. It doesn’t take too much for despair to turn to anger, and for long, lonely winter walks to coalesce into marches. If I’m right in that humanity strives towards dignity, this will assert itself: the experience may be searing, but such an event may be the only way that natural justice can be restored.

This blog post is being written as the sun is setting over the Mersey. Outside my hotel room window, I can see the last hints of orange and pale blue fade out on the horizon: the streetlamps are lit, there is a distinct chill in the air. Another day is over, and the city is gently falling asleep.

I am here, which is far away from my usual place of residence, due to a business trip. I have never been to Liverpool before; this is rather a pity as I had sentimental reasons for visiting. For example, after leaving University in the early 1990’s, I worked for a technology company which sadly no longer exists. In order to go to my office or on the myriad trips that the company required, I was required to do a lot of rail travel: my companions on these journeys were my books and my portable CD player. Invariably the latter contained a Beatles album. I am not entirely sure how my passion for their music began, but to this day, I can still quote lyrics from memory and recognise most of the songs. Humming tunes from “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” helped me to stay sufficiently calm in order to pass my driving test. Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane are forever in my ears and in my eyes.

I had another reason to want to come: I also relish the works of Alan Bleasdale, who wrote about Liverpool’s turmoil during the Thatcher era, first in his famous tele-drama, “The Boys from the Black Stuff” and later in “GBH”. Bleasdale’s Yosser Hughes (from “The Black Stuff”) remains an iconic figure, his desperate plea for employment (“Gissa job!”) symbolic of how many in Liverpool felt during the crushing recession at the beginning of the 1980’s. “GBH” featured Michael Palin as a sincere, kindly schoolteacher who was up against a far-left faction (and its far-right puppetmasters) which was unmistakably a poke at both the Tories and the Trotskyite Militant Tendency.

Liverpool, of course, is a dynamic, evolving place, and is neither defined by the black and white world of the early 1960’s nor the blight which scarred it nearly 30 years ago. Time has moved on. There are many grand buildings which indicate what a rich city it was when it was the centre of the world cotton trade, but they’ve been updated. For example, I went to a meeting at the Royal Liver Building, perhaps the city’s most recognisable landmark. Based upon its grand facade, I suspected I’d find within creaking oak floors, marble staircases and an old fashioned elevator, the kind which is like an brass fringed iron cage. Instead, the interior of the building is fully modern, the lifts were operated by a touchscreen which allowed one to select which company one wanted to visit rather than simply pushing a number. The offices themselves were climate controlled and double glazed. The coffee was adequate. This is better. Yet, somehow it felt wrong.

After my meetings ended, I went in search of the Cavern. I found what remained of it on Matthew Street; it’s long gone, replaced by a nine-level building. A sign states where the entrance once stood. A facsimile of the club is a few doors down. A rather unconvincing statue of John Lennon looks cooly on. It’s progress, presumably, from a time when the streets were dark and dirtier and less prosperous. Yet somehow I wanted the excitement that greeted the striking new sounds from the four lads. It’s disappeared, replaced by a tourist trap: what I saw simply didn’t inspire.

Theoretically, progress isn’t supposed to stir mixed emotions. However this is precisely what I feel while I’m here. It is the same sensation I felt when I watched BBC Parliament replay the February 1974 election night broadcast. As the results were listed, the newsreaders identified various constituencies as being centres of the “steel industry” or “coal mining”. They aren’t any longer. Yes, in a sense, things are better given that people are no longer exposed to the dangers of digging coal out of the ground, and working at a desk in the Royal Liver Building is probably more pleasant than turning iron ore into steel, yet somehow it feels not entirely right. We lost something; our present era may be forcing us to confront what we left behind.

Britain is now a post-industrial nation in most respects; despite some world-class firms like Rolls Royce (I refer to their aerospace division), it is not the “workshop of the world” any longer. We put our trust in financial services: now that has proven to be folly, we are looking around, trying to find something else to do, something else to sell. Information technology is one possibility, but it is not a solution which provides mass employment and remains highly competitive. We cannot simply go back to manufacturing, as the skills were lost after the factories shut and the industries crumbled into the dust. We are going to have to come up with something else: green technologies may offer an answer. However, that will require research, and the government is showing little sign of wanting to fund more of this, despite the fact that two University of Manchester physicists just won the Nobel Prize for their work with graphene, a new material which is a successor to carbon fibre. Rather, this government appears to be content to summon up the spectre of Yosser Hughes once more and to leave him to his fate.

Liverpool previously revived because a lot of government and academic money flowed its way: for example, the Home Office has a substantial presence here. I had a walk through the city campus of Liverpool John Moores University, which seemed to be modern and buzzing. I noticed also that the universities’ common pension scheme has their head office at the Royal Liver Building. Given the new era of austerity, and the pompous manner in which the resulting changes are being presented by the Conservatives, Liverpudlians should be terrified about what the future may bring. I didn’t see any evidence of this. Rather, from the taxi driver who picked me up at Lime Street Station, to the receptionist as the company I’m here to visit, I have been treated with kindness and courtesy. The receptionist saw that I was a bit out of sorts after my long journey and treated me as if she were my Scouse grandmother. Usually anxiety doesn’t translate into cheer, let alone niceness. But perhaps after all that Liverpool has been through, its citizens have developed a thicker skin than most. The disaster that sometimes masquerades as “progress” or “change”? Been there, done that: it’ll come right one day. Maybe they’re right: I certainly hope so.

I spent most of yesterday watching the results of the Australian federal election. Some may wonder why such a remote contest would be of interest: my reply is straightforward. The Australians use the Alternative Vote system in electing MPs: their election could be very instructive for countries like Britain which may adopt this method. Furthermore, the election was another opportunity to see the way the wind is blowing through Western democracies.

Neither Australia’s Labor Party nor the Liberal / National Coalition has emerged triumphant: it looks like the result is going to be a mess regardless of who ends up with the largest number of seats. Either Labor or the Liberals will rely upon an awkward squad of 3 to 4 Independent MPs in order to sustain themselves in power. How troublesome these mavericks will be is difficult to say. I saw a campaign ad for the Independent MP for Kennedy, Bob Katter: apart from fixing dangling corks from the brim of his hat, he appeared to be playing at being an Australian stereotype to the hilt. This was not at all comforting. Indeed, the only real bright spot was the triumph of the brilliant Adam Bandt for the Greens in the Division of Melbourne, and the Greens upping their numbers in the Australian Senate from 5 to 9.

Overall, Australia’s electorate seems to have blown a raspberry at their political elites. This follows a series of inconclusive results in a number of important elections: Britain voted in a hung parliament in May, Canada has been operating with minority governments since 2004. America is likely to choose gridlock in its own way: polls indicate that the Republicans are going to win control of one or both of the legislative branches this coming November. Nor is this phenomenon confined to the “Anglo-Saxon” world: Germany’s recent regional election in North Rhine Westphalia was just as inconclusive. We can ascribe this phenomenon to a number of factors: discredited governments earning a good swift kick from the electorate, people wanting change but not sure about the options, disillusionment with the power of politics to change lives. As important as these reasons may be, the word “stupidity” is seldom used. It’s not a word that rolls off an academic’s tongue nor often makes its way to a respectable newspaper column. However, perhaps it is something to be confronted: many political elites, particularly those of the centre-left, are blindly, irretrievably stupid.

Australia’s Labor Party perhaps provides the most pungent example, if only because the stench of its incompetence is the freshest. Let’s review: the Rudd Government was elected with a strong mandate in 2007. Prime Minister Rudd faced up honestly to the economic problems confronting Australia: he confessed early on that the government was going to find it tough going. This contrasted favourably to Gordon Brown who did not want to be so forthcoming. What is more, through Rudd’s stewardship, Australia managed to avoid the worst of the troubles. Furthermore, Rudd managed to re-cast the often-fraught relationship with China, facilitated by his ability to speak Mandarin fluently. Yes, his poll ratings were slipping due to some awful television appearances; however, the Labor leadership’s response was perplexing to say the least. Rather than roll with the punches and run on a record that Britain’s Labour Party would have shed blood to obtain, they decided to dump Rudd in a very uncerimonious manner. His replacement, Julia Gillard, was selected because she was deemed to be popular. Obviously, she wasn’t sufficiently well-liked to override the sense of injustice Australians felt due to Rudd’s removal: indeed, I accuse Australia’s Labor party of being so stupid that they simply didn’t understand the concept of “a fair go” which underpins Australian society. For those who are unfamiliar with this idea: perhaps due to the nation’s troubled origins, it is a commonly-held value that everyone should get a decent chance to prove themselves. Rudd did not get an opportunity to defend his record and that of his government in an election: this sounds unfair even to non-Australians. What Labor did was perceived as a con-trick merely done to stave off disaster, and it destroyed them in places like Queensland, Rudd’s home state.

This should have been obvious. It does not take years of experience to discern this. Yet, as I watched some of Australia Labor’s luminaries struggle to answer questions from journalists, I couldn’t help but think they resembled refugees from some inept marketing department; Senator Penny Wong struck me as being remarkably dreadful in this respect. Other examples of Labor being purely dumb abound: for example, I dug deeper into the altogether wonderful Melbourne result. The contrast between the articulate and lively Adam Bandt and the lacklustre Cath Bowtell couldn’t have been more stark. I am happy about that result, but it’s necessary to be mindful of the overall picture. Labor was running against Tony Abbott, one of the most right wing politicians in the history of Australia, a man who denies climate change and torments the electorate by appearing in Speedos in public. Up until this year, he was something of a joke. Yet, he stands on the verge of becoming Prime Minister. Reflecting upon this, I feel like asking, “Labor, what were you thinking?” and indeed, “Were you thinking?” All in all, from the defenestration of Kevin Rudd, to the selection of Cath Bowtell, to the over-catered victory party at their election night rally, 2010 is a year I am sure most Labor people would rather forget assuming they have the memory capacity to retain it.

However, Australia’s Labor Party is by no means the only stupid party. Britain’s Labour Party seems to be an orchestra in search of a theme: none of the potential conductors has given them a popular tune to play, certainly nothing that sufficiently contrasts the Coalition’s Big Society jazz. In America, Democrats pass behemoth bills, each in excess of 2000 pages, to reform both the finance and health care industries: years will be spent arguing over their meaning, and mostly by lawyers seeking to increase their billable hours. The only argument the Democrats seem to have left is “Don’t vote for the Republicans, they would be worse”, though people tend to vote for the party that promises better. Canada’s Liberal Party does not appear to be faring all that well with Michael Ignatieff in charge; his botched attempt to bring down the Conservative minority government has set them adrift. Overall, the centre-left seems to be dropping IQ points, unable to articulate a coherent programme, formulate wholesome laws, nor is it able to manage a decent campaign. However, help is on the way. The Green parties in Australia, Britain and Canada are on the rise; nevertheless, the rate of progress is slow. In an era of fiscal retrenchment, political idiocy is a luxury that can no longer be afforded: too many will be disadvantaged by the neo-liberal agenda of spending and job cuts. This is the point where bemusement with stupidity should turn to anger and an urgent desire to reform.

Will it happen? The omens are not encouraging; the best option at this point remains building an ever stronger Green movement. Again, Australia has much to teach: like Britain’s Green Party, they matched a candidate to a location and triumphed. There is no doubt that the Australian Green Party has emerged from 2010’s results a strengthened force, definitely the 3rd largest party and certainly one that inspires genuine enthusiasm. It is a long uphill struggle, but the stupid parties can no longer be relied upon to provide even a modicum of protection for progressive interests. As nice as it would be to say otherwise, it may be time to recognise that as they now stand for little, they have little upon which to stand. Time to bid them farewell.

Last night, I had one of the most horrific nightmares I’ve ever experienced. I dreamed I was in some sort of a control room in which earnest looking operators tended to flickering computer terminals. Beyond them lay a panoramic window which overlooked an open landscape which was mostly sand, interspersed with a few trees. Suddenly, there was a large nuclear detonation: the sky turned blood red, a large white mushroom cloud rose up in all its terrible majesty, and as the shockwave visibly built up, I shouted, “That’s it, we’re dead.”

The force of the blast then rolled out towards me. I dreamed that I crouched down behind a chair, and as the wave hit, I felt my body dissolve. A grey mist was all I could see. One minute I was there, the next, I didn’t exist at all. It was at that point, thankfully, I woke up.

It took a few minutes for me to regain my composure in the darkness. I found that I was breathing quickly and had to slow my heart rate. No, I hadn’t died, I reassured myself; I was lying in my comfortable bed. A few plaintive cries of birds could be heard in the distance, a small gust of wind touched the blind covering the open bedroom window. My respiration slowed. All was well in my bed and in my quiet town. Eventually, I shut my eyes and I fell back asleep.

I can only assume that the nightmare was triggered by the shenanigans associated with Iran’s nuclear programme; as has been widely reported, their new reactor is about to come onstream, and cranks like John Bolton have given Israel only a matter of days in order to stop it from going live. But if we think about it, the nightmare I described is not a mere matter of nocturnal fiction, an invention of a mind that has overdosed on too many news programmes. Nuclear weapons are there to literally make enemies disappear: cities, homes and people can all be scattered into the ether in a matter of moments. Perhaps one of the most horrific aspects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were the human “shadows” which outlined where a human being once stood; worse were some of the deformities to children which resulted as well. The Cold War world was one in which an even more terrifying scenario of nuclear annihilation was a very real possibility. It was bad enough to think of Soviet missiles exploding over London or New York; the world rightly breathed a sigh of relief when Gorbachev ended the stalemate. But rather than having learned from the experience, now nations of all kinds want in on the same club. Following the fearful example provided by America and the Soviet Union, the new entrants to the nuclear gang want to be able to tell other countries in the manner of a hoodlum, “Mess with us, and we’ll wipe you out.” Even Britain, a medium sized power with a very limited budget, wants to continue to hold this ace up their sleeve.

Yet, we secure nothing by retaining these nightmare devices. The terrorists who took control of the planes on September 11th were not at all deterred by America’s ability to blow up half the earth. The problems in Darfur, Afghanistan, and Iraq cannot be solved through using such a crude and devastating weapon: how can one use them to destroy bad ideas? All the expense and posturing has no real purpose behind it; it is solely an irrational measurement of national virility. At best, the weapons will sit in their silos, costing billions, cold metal and hot uranium resting quietly within concrete walls, never to be disturbed nor even aimed in anger. At worst, there are those with apocalyptic visions who want use these devices to bring about Judgement Day. This basic calculus is the clearest indicator as to why they need to be gotten rid of immediately; it used to be that the balance between America and the Soviet Union was represented by the acronym “MAD”, as in Mutually Assured Destruction. Now holding on to them can be called nothing other than “mad” in the non-acronym sense.

However, I don’t have a terrible amount of faith in us as species. We seem to want to believe in easy solutions to our problems whenever possible: we like the idea that we’re not causing climate change, we want to think that the free market will solve all our problems, we seem to just want to watch television and eat fast food and not think too much. In this context, being able to make any enemy turn into a pile of incoherent goo or a shadow sounds attractively simple. Press a button, bang, he’s dead. You won’t even have to clean up the bones, not that you could go anywhere near them. If he gets the same weapon, fine, then you’ll both keep your hands at your sides, so long as you’re both not insane; fortunately, the Communists weren’t. But the more that nuclear weapons proliferate, the more likely it is that someone insane will get them. “Containment” is not enough: there needs to be a commitment from all those who presently have nuclear weapons that they will be eliminated. With that firm promise, those who aspire to such weapons will be the ones caught on the wrong side of world opinion. Economic and political sanctions then become that much simpler to implement as nations like Iran are that much more easily turned into pariahs. North Korea is a good example of how a nation behaving aberrantly can be punished: the regime is slowly suffocating, despite its retention and flaunting of a crude nuclear capacity.

But we won’t abandon nuclear weapons. It’s far too easy to retain the balance of terror; we may be too set in our ways and have too little faith in our ability to make civilisation mean something, even if it is merely the prevention of suicide. While nightmares like mine are thankfully rare, they still have the capacity to persist. Worse, they still have the potential to come true.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=0571225233]

It’s rare to see anything brave or daring emerge from a mainstream publisher these days. For the most part, they are inhibited by those who cling more dearly to accounts ledgers than fine literature and as a result are perpetually unprepared to take a risk on anything new. Truly, they seem to be more willing to look for the next Dan Brown or Dick Francis than for something genuinely extraordinary. How refreshing it is to see Faber & Faber willing to invest in this new work by Francis Spufford, a work which isn’t quite fiction, isn’t quite history, and whose first sentence assures us that it isn’t a novel.

I find it difficult to describe “Red Plenty” in a few words; it could accurately be called a series of vignettes interspersed by history essays. It could be also be characterised as a series of interlocking short stories which are partitioned by explanatory notes (I prefer this option, but neither explanation is totally accurate). In any event, Spufford may have invented a new means by which history is told; he tried to not only to capture the substance of events but also the gist of them in the lives of both the great and the humble. Even more courageously, he chose a period in the history of the Soviet Union during which there was a widely-held determination that Communism was going to match and surpass the capitalist west in economic terms, a prospect which seems utterly ridiculous to those of us living after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Writing this book was a brave endeavour. What made the task almost ludicrously valorous was Spufford’s admission that he neither speaks nor reads Russian.

Spufford sets the scene by fictionalising Khrushchev’s visit to America in 1959, in which he makes a wild, if well-intentioned boast to his hosts that the USSR would overtake the USA. That same year, the Americans brought an exhibition to Moscow; we are introduced to two (fictional) young Communists who heckle the American tour guide about race relations in the United States out of a misplaced, if strong sense of duty. Through another story, we are introduced to a mathematical genius who is going to introduce a pricing system which will help the centrally planned economy become more efficient. Computers of the old kind filled with glowing vacuum tubes, are introduced as a solution to achieving the mighty mathematical feat. We are also told about how the Soviet Union intended to gather its best minds in a remote Siberian town just for academics (a real place entitled Akademgorodok); we are shown that it was a haven for scientists in fields as badly regarded by the Communist leadership as genetics. Jazz and skinnydipping are also allowed. At this point in the book, the future looks relatively bright if almost too blinding; Spufford not only introduced the raw facts about the period, but he captured the optimistic mindset which prevailed from the top down.

But then it starts to go sour, mostly due to incompetence. We are introduced to the managers of a viscose fibres factory who destroy their own machine as they cannot fulfill the requirements of the Five Year Plan; they hope to get a new, more efficient machine which will enable them to meet their targets. Not that it’s particularly good that they’re producing anything in the first place: the reader is informed the factory’s effluent is poisonous. Be that as it may, because of another wrinkle in the Plan, the manufacturer is obliged to send them a machine of the old design. It would seem that the price of machines is based upon their weight, and since the new machine was less hefty than the old one, it cost less. In order to meet their sales target, they needed to sell the older, more obese product.

In the real world, as well as Spufford’s fictional universe, a class of white collar criminals was created to overcome such obtacles. Spufford introduces us to a character named Cherkuskin who is one such “entrepreneur”, in perhaps what is the most brilliantly told story in the book. Cherkuskin is introduced as a man who enjoys Spanish dancing, and his love of “fancy footwork” extends to his employment. He deals with party officials, factory managers, thieves; his presence is the lubricant in the system, he makes its rusty, badly designed gears turn. He uses charm, vodka, threats and bribery in order to shift resources and people so that everyone gets to live yet another day. While we are not fully told about the results of his efforts on behalf of the viscose fibre factory managers, based on the display of his prodigious talents, we can only assume that his work will yield results.

Optimism falls over after Khrushchev is removed in 1964; his frustration with inability to change the Soviet Union quickly enough led to rash decisions, such as the attempt to split the Communist Party into two divisions, one dedicated to agricultural concerns, the other focused on industry. Fed up with such ill thought-out wheezes, his colleagues removed him; afterwards, rather than matching the West, the new leadership is merely content with things just the way they are. Repression seeps in; we are told the tale of an academic banished from the intelligensia’s Siberian enclave because of signing an inopportune letter. The ideas on rational pricing are shelved; old controls are re-imposed. Torpor seeps in; the dream dies, in the end the Soviet Union is set for its collapse, the curtain falls. Spufford’s talent lay in keeping the reader’s attention throughout; both fiction and history bubble together in a stew which has a peculiar flavour, but it works. The narrative is coherent, the stories interesting, even the historical interludes are charmingly told. Perhaps this may prove to be an object lesson to the likes of Faber & Faber; it’s not always wrong to take risks, indeed, as the book perhaps ironically proves, organisations which refuse to take chances on something new can seal their own doom.

A lengthy but illuminating exposition of Zizek’s latest batch of ideas:

It has been nearly a month since I graduated. My life is slowly returning to its normal rhythms, and typical work weeks and work days lay ahead for the foreseeable future. My initial thoughts about moving to America have faded, lost in the incessant drone of talk radio, which I perhaps misguidedly tuned into in order to get a handle on the present passions gripping the body politic. Furthermore, I recently attended a party at my sister’s home; her future father in law, who is of Chinese derivation but has spent most of his life in Vietnam, summarised matters best. He said that he liked Britain because he felt safe and nothing ever became too extreme here. On that gentle evening, with the orange streetlights visible through the window illuminating soft summer breezes swaying the sycamore trees, I could see the point. Yet back at work, I do see that while the extremes may not fully prevail, what is happening is bad enough.

I keep thinking about my fellow graduates, particularly those who had just finished their BA degrees; the thoughts are particularly strong and poignant whenever I cross the same courtyard where we celebrated after the ceremony. While my university has a good reputation, how many of them are now in their parents’ homes, their smiles of yesterday faded into hard grimaces while scanning websites for jobs? How many have just had the bill come due for their student loans and face years of repayment? How long will it be before they can even consider getting on the property ladder and settling down? I know too that these scenes are being repeated throughout the country and the situation may get even more strained. Lord Browne’s report on student fees is due soon; given cuts in government funding, these charges are likely to rise. Youth’s struggle to emerge and prosper will become all the more difficult as a result.

Unemployment blights the experienced as well. A friend of mine has been unemployed for as long as I’ve known her; while full of energy and ability, and even though she has an impressive CV from having worked as an administrator for investment banks, she cannot seem to get a break. The latest economic statistics suggest that the fragile shoots of new growth are hesitant and even wilting. We are lost in a miasma of uncertainty; while the majority are still thankfully employed, enforced idleness and resentment is being entrenched within the system. Furthermore, it does not appear that the government understands precisely how to fix it; all they know how to do is cut spending. The hope is that by reducing the role of the state, that this will create more space for the private sector to grow. As business increases, the theory continues, employment should rise. However there is a flaw in this idea: the incentives of private industry are geared towards maximising profit, not increasing employment. The last businessman who realised that he needed to improve pay and conditions in order to create a new market for himself was Henry Ford; he was right. However, his ideas have largely been forgotten. The people now serve the economy, rather than the other way around.

“South Park” perhaps summarised this system of belief best: in an episode entitled “Margaritaville”, the characters are seen almost worshipping the economy as if it was a living but elusive entity. All effort and austerity was intended to appease the almighty beast, in the hopes that it would restore prosperity of its own accord. In the end, the situation is saved because one of the young boys has access to a credit card with an unlimited balance, with which he uses to pay the entire town’s debts. The quasi-mystical rhetoric and the humourously messianic treatment of the boy with the credit card struck home because of the reality within the fiction. We want the economy to bestow grace and favour upon us again; we want 3% growth, we want to be employed, but we feel powerless to do anything except lay sacrifices at the altar. This is perhaps the most pernicious belief to which we cling at the moment: our inability to conceive of doing anything directly leads to inaction. Our horizons of the possible are shrinking, not expanding. The Left can protest the cuts, but seems unable to find the rhetoric which will get people to believe that the way things are now is fundamentally wrong and that radical change is possible.

Lest we forget, the way that the world is now is not how it has been, nor is a determinant of how it will be. This morning on Radio 4, a gentleman stated that Roman charioteers were proportionately wealthier than sports stars of today. His comparisons were interesting, but what was really noteworthy was his statement that such analogies were difficult to make, as the economy of the Roman world was much different to that of the present day. The changes which led to our modern system are of human creation; it is possible to take those changes back into human hands, rather than letting them be the aggregate of individual desires which have collectively run out of control.

If we refuse to do this, then the shadows which linger over our period will only lengthen. It was a feature of the French economy in the 1990’s that graduates would work without pay in order to get experience and hopefully gain a job later on. It is with some distaste that I see this practice now emerging in post-recession Britain. A generation is being lost, whole groups of people are slipping through the cracks into a vortex of economic exclusion all because we want to breathe life into something that is neither sentient nor respires, yet coils around us like a temperamental dragon, ready to expel devastating fire the moment we disturb it, but is also unwilling to move when we need it to do so.

No doubt the economy will eventually improve; I suspect that weak growth will be, to borrow a phrase from the famed bond trader Bill Gross, the “new normal”. There will likely be sufficient improvement in employment to prevent this safe country becoming too unsafe. An adequate number of graduates will get into work and get on an upward track. However, if we accept this as a good result, we are probably setting ourselves up for another eventual fall, another lost generation. We simply shouldn’t live like this; far too many good people cannot achieve either dignity or prosperity. But most of us are safe, and we don’t want to challenge lest our own lives be disrupted: it’s a pity, and in terms of wasted lives, it’s a tragedy.

I think it was while we were on Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt in Paris that my father told me that he and my mother wouldn’t be visiting Europe in 2011. We were taking a stroll after visiting an exhibition of Spanish art at the Musée Jacquemart-André; they were going to have a wander, I was headed back to my hotel in order to drop off a jacket which had seemed sensible to wear in the early morning, but was entirely superfluous in the midday sun.

“We’re going to take a cross-country tour,” my father explained. I found out later they were planning to buy a new car, even going so far as visiting a car dealer in London to see if they could find out what precisely “metallic umber” looked like as the purveyor at home didn’t have a sample. Although they haven’t told me the details of the trip yet, I presume it involves travelling to the great cities of Boston and Chicago, swinging south to imbibe the multitude of pleasures in New Orleans, then perhaps proceeding to the Rocky Mountains, and finally touring the vineyards of California. While this is ambitious, it is somewhat less so than trips of previous years. Looking at my father, thankfully healthy, dressed in a blue blazer, perfectly pressed jeans and clean black loafers, I realised he was getting on a bit. My mother is as well. The travels they undertake will likely be less adventurous as the years pass, the soujourns they undertake less far from home. It will be a slow, gradual process, but at some point, they won’t stroll down Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt any longer. If I want to see them, I will have to go to them in their quiet house amidst a leafy New York suburb.

A refrain from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” has occurred to me in recent days:

HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
Good night Bill. Good night Lou. Good night May. Good night.
Ta ta. Good night. Good night.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

Graduation was an purging exercise, whereby all my ambitions, hopes and yes, fears, were capped off by the donning of robes. Perhaps it’s time, hurry up, good night. My parents are getting on a bit, and it may be time to leave these shores back for America.

There are other elements to consider. Back in London, I went to visit my parents in their timeshare flat along with my sister and her fiancee. We ate Chinese and Malaysian food out of takeaway boxes and drank fine Rioja. My father turned to my sister and I and said, “I don’t know how you guys do it. Everything is so expensive, how do you survive; the cost of living in the United States is so much lower!” And he’s right: yesterday, I filled up my car and my eyes watered as the digital display ticked over the £30 mark. My wages are stagnant, prices go up, the quality of life gets squeezed. The austerity era policies flowing out of Whitehall mean this will be our fate for half a decade at least.

Hurry up please, it’s time. It’s not like I couldn’t make a success of going back; after all, I have excellent qualifications, a good resume, and international experience which could be quite valuable. My relatives are scattered throughout the United States, so it wouldn’t be like I was without help.

Good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night. Furthermore, I’m selling my car and my house anyway. Debts are being paid and a conclusion of sorts is being reached. If not now, when?

There is a catch to saying “ta ta” and “good night”. I try not to read American newspapers or watch American news these days, because what I’ll find will usually offend me somehow. It’s not just the antics of Glenn Beck, whose programme is too bizarre to be believed, nor is it the dreary monotony of Congress, nor is it even the grinning inanity of American breakfast news programmes. Rather, it is the feeling that there is a pervasive mess in American affairs, a destructive untidiness, which has yet to be resolved. I would draw the reader’s attention to the opening lines of the American Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

However, is the union becoming more perfect or more frayed? Is justice established or increasingly distant? Is there domestic tranqulity or are there tea parties? Is the common defence failing as an offence in Afghanistan? Has the general welfare been promoted as of late? Are the blessings of liberty secure? Or has it all degenerated into a swamp of paperwork and nonsense, as exemplified by Health Care and Finance Reform bills which each exceed 2000 pages?

A former colleague of mine provided a partial answer. She was a Democrat activist who helped draft health care legislation for the state of California. She stated that the Health Care bill was too complex and wouldn’t work. And it doesn’t even now: my father told me that he had to get my mother off Medicare as quickly as she was put on it. As it turned out the additional premiums were the same or higher than if she was off Medicare. So: a government benefit intended to provide health care for those over the age of 65 doesn’t actually provide health care for those over the age of 65, and indeed costs some of those receiving it a great deal of money. The bureaucratic complexity described by my father was also tedious in the extreme. The health care bill doesn’t assist in clarifying matters, rather, it adds to the burdens.

I have encountered similar issues when I’ve filled out my tax returns; even though I don’t earn enough to be of interest to the IRS, in order to be compliant with the law, I have to fill out several forms every year. Even now, I’m not sure if all of them are entirely correct. However, as I’ve received no warnings and I’ve filled out true and faithful returns, I assume all is well. But maybe not. After all, according to the Economist, it is extremely easy to be locked up for a fair amount of time for offenses as inoccuous as not having proper paperwork when importing orchids. Can one be secure in one’s person there?

And indeed, how did this situation come about? My personal theory is that too many politicians have been looking after themselves or rather their congressional districts or states instead of the national interest. Having to satisfy this unbridled greed leads to 2000 page bills with provisions to pay off each Representative and Senator; rather than work for the public good, they serve personal ambition. This leads to bad law which is enforced badly. Republican or Democrat, it makes no difference, it is the quality of the system and the lack of public ethics which has created the problem. Say what you will about Britain, but at least self-serving politicians, as exemplified by those caught up in the expenses scandal, tend to be roasted alive by the press.

And yet, the refrain occurs to me, “hurry up please, it’s time”. Maybe things will get better: America has an enormous capacity for renewal. Maybe I can be part of it. Or maybe America will become a vast version of Italy, in which the government can pass what laws it likes, but the citizenry will become selective about which rules they will obey. I kind of like the latter idea, particularly if it involves fine California wines and the building of vast art and history museums, in which citizens can take pride in the glories of the past while coping with a sordid present. Perhaps the storied boulevards of Chicago and New York will become as laced with tourist sentimentality as Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt; if I go back, no doubt in years to come I will see a Chinese or Indian father tell his son or daughter that this will be their last tour of America for some time. Good night.

I am lucky in that my future is open. I can make a choice whether to stick with Britain or risk America, and reverse the decision if need be. I haven’t yet made up my mind: at this point, I am knocking on all doors to see which ones will open. If indeed it is a portal to the States that unlocks, while I’m realistic about what I’ll find, at the same time, I realise a mess can be glorious too. Yes, it would be a sadness to say farewell to my university, the summers that never quite happen, the rail that never quite works, the comedies on Radio 4. Yet I believe progress sometimes is achieved by reaching for the next horizon, an American sentiment which has never quite let me be.

As I write this, I am sitting on a futon in Rotherhithe. Just outside my window, the sun is up, and powerful breezes are gusting through the yard. A bird sings a cacophonous tune. To my left, my suitcase, prone on the floor, awaits being refilled with what I’ve taken out of it before I head off to Paris on the Eurostar. Opposite is a green plastic bag which contains a larger garment bag which holds my doctoral robes.

It’s been twenty four hours since I awoke to graduation day, and all of it seems a bit like a dream: everything from the loping down the stair in the early morning light, to making the coffee, to checking the news. Then there was finishing packing, picking up my freshly repaired shoes and taking a shower. This was followed by putting on a dress shirt, my cufflinks, my dark grey suit. I wore a red tie which had both British and American flags as a pattern: I thought it was a suitable reflection of my hybrid origins. Once everything was packed, I proceeded down to the train station, and then to my university.

I met up with my family. I drank a Diet Coke. We then went to the campus and I proceeded to pick up my robes: it was at that moment that it really hit me. The maroon and sky blue robes were in a plain cardboard box, and came with a black hat tied with a maroon silk cord which is unflatteringly called a bonnet. A young fellow with a Superman symbol belt buckle helped me put them on. There was a matter of some debate: there’s the robe, and a loop which goes over the shoulders. I was under the impression that the loop was part of the ritual: the officer at the ceremony called the Esquire Bedell, I thought, was supposed to put that on me as I knelt in front of the presiding official. The young man had no idea. The people at the ticket tent said I was going to get a second loop. Such small matters kept me perplexed and occupied up until I got to the theatre in which the ceremony was held.

My family and I went our separate ways. Two nice young ladies explained to me at the graduate entrance that I did indeed have to take off the loop. Furthermore, I should hold the loop in a rather uncomfortable position so that the Esquire Bedell could pick it up easily. Oh and by the way, the bonnet needed to be kept tucked under my left arm until I left the ceremony. So I sat, loop held in place, bonnet tucked under my arm, and felt how heavy the robes were: made of satin and wool, they added gravity to the proceedings.

As I waited, I thought of all the things which had led to that moment. I thought of the long weekends spent locked in writing; the studying and research, the arguing with myself. I thought of my Norwegian grandfather, the colourful storyteller, who probably gave me the traits that led to this moment. I had found out the previous day that I was the first PhD in Creative Writing to graduate from my university. My colleagues were kind enough to put up a press release announcing this and the forthcoming release of my novel; my grandfather would have been so proud. All of that hard work and determination had led to here. What would happen next? Where would I go? The funny thing about graduation missives is their repeated insistence that everyone in the cohort is leaving, as if we are compelled to instantly proceed out to the far corners of the earth. Oh, and by the way, the marketing materials also say, don’t forget to tell everyone how great the university is! I did not need reminding.

Is that the expectation now, I wondered, that I should go. Will the next phase of my life begin upon departure? What should I do? My life for the past 5 years had been focused on achieving first my master’s then my doctorate, so what next? Another novel, certainly. But like the bird outside my window now, do I insist on singing from the same tree, or do I flit to another one?

I cast a look at the audience: my father, mother, sister and her fiancee were there. They waved; I waved back. At that point, I looked a bit lonely, as I was the only doctor of philosophy in the room. Three others eventually came along, though they were seated in another area: this was partially due to the way the ceremony had been organised, and it was also due to the fact that my doctoral colleagues were archaeologists. Not only first, but in terms of English, I was alone.

The ceremony began; Handel was piped in, and the officials and academics filed up the stairs to their seats. The Dean of Humanities read out name after name of Bachelor’s Degree students. I noticed that the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, was in the crowd. The names almost became a litany: I felt sorry for the presiding official, in this case, the pro-Vice Chancellor, as she had to shake the hands and greet every last one of us.

Then it finally came to me. I got on stage, smiled at the people I knew among the dignitaries, knelt on a cushioned stool and lowered my head, clasping my hands together. The loop was placed over my head and around my shoulders. The pro-Vice Chancellor took my hands in hers and urged me to stand. We chatted for less than a minute in a hushed whisper: she congratulated me on completing such an ardous course of study, I pointed out that I worked full time as well, and she said “My goodness”. One more congratulations, then off.

I stepped into the hall outside the theatre so I could go to my original place via the back way, as per the organiser’s instructions. I believe my feelings were best summarised by what I said to the young lady guiding wayward graduates like myself: “Help?” She pointed the way. I went back to my seat.

After a few words from the pro-vice chancellor and more Handel, I went outside into the breeze and sunshine. I put on the hat; it was one of the few days in which it won’t be out of place. Many excited graduates surrounded me: they were clinging to each other or to their families and friends. I smiled. “I’ve made it,” I thought. It was all over. The Head of Education for English shook my hand on his way past me. After a while, my family emerged from the depths of the theatre; I met with several dear friends and colleagues en route to getting photos sorted. I got an unexpected card which touched me. Then my family and I went to dinner, at which point the robes were put into the garment bag in which they now reside.

The rest of the day sustained a dreamlike quality: I went up to London with my sister and her fiancee. The route we took was almost a personal history tour. We went through Richmond, where I did my BA. We went through neighbourhoods I knew and loved, past places where I used to work: London seemed full to bursting with life, with people sitting in outdoor cafes in Knightsbridge, and the lights twinkling throughout. My sister’s fiancee said he’d have problems if he’d ever have to leave London, and from the vantage point of driving past Buckingham Palace, I could see why. There is a grandeur in some parts which can be quite addictive. Eventually we arrived at Rotherhithe, and now I’m here on this futon, after a restful night’s sleep and thinking of the promise of Paris ahead of me. Graduation stupefies, leaves one in a daze for a time afterwards: I know that life has irrevocably changed. It is so odd to have that event condensed into a single day; for the moment, there is no onus on me to figure out what follows. I know that I have a book launch to do; but beyond that, there are no more questions to be answered insofar as my programme of study is concerned. The daze will pass, how this achievement is to be integrated into my life will become clear over time. For now though, at this moment, there is quiet except for the birds and the breeze.